Audio only:
In this episode Trent rebuts an anti-Catholic video on a Calvinist YouTube that prominently features arguments from James White.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. In today’s episode, I’m going to take a look at a video from ReformedWiki 2.0. It has the very subtle title, Satan Loves Catholicism. Let’s just jump right in.
Narrator:
Conservative Catholics, like Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles, fight for a lot of good things, such as the value of unborn children, the definition of men and women, the importance of parents educating their children, and religious freedom. I even support The Daily Wire financially because I think it’s playing an important role in fighting back against those who are seeking to undermine and destroy biblical values. However, the alliance between Christians and Catholics on many issues related to the culture makes Catholicism extremely dangerous, since it’s important to carefully distinguish between where we are aligned with many Catholics and where we are not.
Trent Horn:
I understand why the narrator is concerned. A lot of people I know who became Catholic did so because of the Catholics that they met who were fighting for things like defending marriage or defending the unborn. Patrick Madrid actually has an anthology called Surprised by Life, which describes people who became Catholic because of their involvement with things like the pro-life movement.
James White:
When it comes to how you define Christianity today, it would be a whole lot easier if I went with the mere Christianity view, because we could get a real… We could still put together a decent number of people if you just didn’t have to worry about that gospel thing.
Narrator:
And since Roman Catholicism teaches a false gospel that does not save, Christians should recognize that Catholicism will be one of the primary reasons why so many people will end up in hell.
Trent Horn:
What’s funny is that people who claim Catholics aren’t Christian or that they don’t have the gospel can’t prove that from the Bible alone. We can know that because there’s lots of Protestants who are committed to solo scriptura and they don’t agree with this video. They believe the Bible teaches that Catholics are Christian. How can they say Catholics don’t have the gospel when the Bible doesn’t even define what the gospel is that Catholics allegedly don’t have? The closest the Bible comes to doing that is 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, which talks about the gospel and says, “It’s the truth that Christ rose from the dead,” which Catholics obviously believe.
Trent Horn:
But the Bible does not say the gospel is identical to Protestant sola fide or faith alone theology. I’m just amused to hear these kinds of assertions, these traditions of men, rather than what has been revealed in the word of God.
Narrator:
For this reason, the Roman Catholic church is certainly one of Satan’s greatest assets against the true gospel of Jesus Christ.
James White:
The real issue that I pointed to in the Roman Catholic controversy is the gospel. And if you understand Rome’s teaching on the nature of the mass, the nature of the priesthood, and the nature of forgiveness and the sacrament, then you must come to conclusion that if Paul was right to anathematized the Judaizer for adding one requirement by saying, “To get into the new covenant, you’ve got to get into the old covenant first before you can then get into the new covenant. You’ve got to be circumcised before you become a follower of Jesus.” They added one thing. You got to follow the same path the rest of us have followed.
James White:
If Paul was right to say, “That is anathema. That is not even Christian. You are separated from the faith by your action of doing that,” then logically, when you look at all of the addition that Rome has added to the gospel and Rome’s gospel likewise must be considered be under the anathema of Paul. Otherwise, you just simply have to throw out Paul’s authority. Or you have to say, “Well, back then an apostle could do that. We can’t do that today. We can’t tell what a true gospel is today, even though we have their example, even though we have page after page after page of New Testament writings that illustrate these things.”
Trent Horn:
This is a tacit omission of the problem I just mentioned. Even James White can’t convince many of his Protestant brothers and sisters that Catholics don’t have the gospel. They tell him, “Look, James, we all agree that circumcision is not necessary for salvation. Paul makes that clear,” but Christians disagree about many other things being necessary for salvation. The Bible doesn’t say they lack the gospel, even though they have these theological disagreements. Do people who disagree with James White on the necessity of infant baptism or baptism in general for salvation, do they not have the gospel?
Trent Horn:
From White’s perspective, what is the difference between someone who says that you should circumcise your baby in order for them to be saved and someone like a Catholic and many Protestants who says you should baptize your baby to save them? What about Protestants who say that in order to be saved, you can’t commit apostacy, you can’t throw away your faith? White doesn’t believe in that. But would he say they’ve added something like good works to the gospel? And so now those Protestants like Armenians deserve to be under Paul’s anathema because they add things like man’s cooperation with God? We need to be clear that critics like White, they’re not just saying Catholics aren’t Christian.
Trent Horn:
His argument inevitably leads to the conclusion that nearly all Christians who disagree with James White aren’t actually Christian because of their theological disagreements. Of course, by the way, White’s argument, it assumes that things like the mass really are superfluous additions to the gospel. When in reality, the biblical and historical evidence actually shows they are a part of the deposit of faith given to us by Jesus and the apostles.
Narrator:
The biggest problem with Roman Catholicism is its view of salvation and the atonement. The Bible clearly teaches that Jesus’ atoning work was completely sufficient and that sinners are justified through faith alone.
Trent Horn:
First, Christ’s death on the cross was sufficient, not just for our salvation, but for the salvation of every single human being. Since it had infinite value, Christ’s death wasn’t merely sufficient. It was super abundant, much, much more than merely sufficient. That’s why 1 John 2:2 says, “He is the expiation for our sins. And not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” But this does not mean everybody’s going to heaven. A sinner must still cooperate with God to allow the grace that Christ merited for us on the cross to be applied to our souls. This cooperation must continue through our entire lives, or we can’t die in a state of mortal sin apart from God’s friendship.
Trent Horn:
Hebrews 10:26-27 makes this clear, because in spite of Christ’s sacrifice being sufficient to take away sin, the author of Hebrews still reminds us that “if we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but if you’re full prospect of judgment.” It’s also amusing, the video shows Romans 3:28 when it says “sinners are justified by faith alone,” the word alone doesn’t appear in that passage. Instead, it says, “For we hold that a man is justified by faith apart from works of law.” This is not the same as saying a man is justified by faith alone. If I say a man is made healthy by medicine apart from quack cures, that is not the same as saying a man is made healthy by medicine alone apart from quack cures.
Trent Horn:
Medicine divorced from exercise and a healthy diet can’t make you healthy, just as faith divorced from charity and obedience to God cannot make someone justified. Instead, in this passage, Paul is talking about faith apart from being a follower of the Mosaic Law. He’s saying you don’t have to be a good Jew in order to be a good Christian. That this is Paul’s meaning is clear from the next verse, or is God the God of Jews only? Is he not the God of Gentiles also? Yes, of Gentiles also.
James White:
In Romans and Galatians, to illustrate the reality that it is to the one who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly. His faith is reckoned as righteous in Romans 4. That is destructive of all human boasting. And that’s why it’s so unpopular and will always be unpopular until the day Jesus returned. Amongst worldly people, it will always be unpopular to destroy any ground of arrogant, boasting, and pride on man’s part. It takes the control out of our hand.
Trent Horn:
Romans 4:2-4 says, “For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” The point of Romans 4 is that someone can become right with God without being circumcised, not that righteousness before God comes through faith alone and has nothing to do with our works. The Protestant author N. T. Wright says that in Romans 4, Paul is ruling out any suggestion that Abraham might have been just the sort of person God was looking for, so that there might be some merit prior to the promise. In other words, some kind of boast.
Trent Horn:
Abraham did nothing to merit his initial salvation before God, just as the catechism says Catholics do nothing to merit our initial salvation in baptism. We know this passage does not teach that justification occurs in one moment apart from works, because James 2 says that Abraham was justified decades later when he offered Isaac on the altar. Abraham was also justified years earlier before God made a covenant with him in Genesis 15 when he answered God’s call to go into a strange land in Genesis 12. Romans 4 does not deny the truth that God rewards our good works. God isn’t obligated to reward our works, even though he chooses to do so out of his gracious love for us and his faithfulness to his own promises.
Trent Horn:
But that doesn’t mean that believers cannot increase their righteousness before God by cooperating with God and doing the good works he planned for us. Romans 2:13 even says, “For it is not the hearers of the law who are righteous before God, but the doers of the law who will be justified.”
Narrator:
However, Catholicism adds works that sinners need to perform to remain saved and to grow in justification.
Speaker 1:
That’s why Trent talks about justification, which happens through faith and grace alone, quite right, but then it speaks of an increase in justification which can happen through our cooperation. And in this we get, if you want, the Catholic difference.
James White:
When you understand that there is no finished work of Christ within Roman Catholicism, there isn’t. There is no finished work. That priest right now in services, Roman Catholic churches around the world, there are priests who believe that they are representing. They believe it is a representation of the same sacrifice of Calvary, but in an unbloody manner. They’re representing the one sacrifice of Christ and that it is propitiatory atonement. It’s propitiatory act.
James White:
Once you understand that, then you think through that, what that means is in Roman Catholicism, you can come to the cross over and over and over and over again and still die in pure and have to go to purgatory or still die impure, in fact, having committed a mortal sin, losing the grace of justification and going to hell, even though you went to the cross literally thousands of times in your life.
Trent Horn:
White’s argument is that the mass proves Christ’s sacrifice was not sufficient, because you can receive Jesus in the Eucharist and still need to go to purgatory, or you could still die in a state of mortal sin. But by that logic, many Protestants don’t think Christ’s sacrifice was sufficient. Because under their view, you could come to Christ’s sacrifice through faith, but you could still go to hell if you reject the faith later in your life. Of course, White believes that you can’t lose your salvation, so this objection’s not going to be very forceful to him. But notice that his objection does show that his simple argument against the mass, it actually relies on a lot of other controversial doctrines, like eternal security, doctrines that were unknown in the church before the time of John Calvin.
Trent Horn:
Honestly, I’ve heard James White refer to some Protestants as closet Catholics, because they understand that salvation requires man’s cooperation with God. In fact, I’ve met people who said they were Catholic because for them, the only options were Calvinism or Catholicism. Everything else was just piecemeal. It only met them halfway from their perspective. They saw that if the Bible teaches that salvation involves man cooperating with God, then cooperation through the sacraments administered through a priesthood, it begins to make a lot more sense. From their perspective, if Calvinism didn’t work out, then Catholicism was actually the most attractive alternative.
James White:
And central to that is the idea of the necessity of the Roman Catholic priest, who, because of his sacerdotal authority, is able to call Jesus down from his throne and render him present upon the altar of the church over and over and over again. That’s their terminology, not mine. That’s their language. You have to have that. That’s why there is one true church. You have to accept the sacerdotal authority of the Roman hierarchy so that you can have that one true church. The sacramental system becomes the means by which the church controls the grace of God and therefore the people of God.
Trent Horn:
Except the Bible does give the church authority over the people of God. Jesus says to bring a dispute with a brother to the church as a measure of last resort. Paul says in 1 Timothy 3:15, “The church is the pillar and foundation of truth.” Paul used his authority, his ecclesial authority, to excommunicate a sinner in 1 Corinthians 5 and cut him off from things like the Eucharist. Paul even instructs us in 1 Corinthians 11 to not receive the Eucharist in an unworthy way, lest you eat and drink judgment upon yourself. When it comes to the language of calling down Jesus upon the altar, I think White is referring to Father John Hardon, who said in an essay once that “the priest in the name of Christ brings Jesus down on the altar and he thus offers a sacrifice of the mass.”
Trent Horn:
I see how people may be confused by this phrasing because it can make it seem like the priest himself has some kind of intrinsic special power over Jesus. That’s why the catechism of the Catholic church puts it this way. In the institution narrative, the power of the words and the action of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit make sacramentally present under the species of bread and wine, Christ’s body and blood, his sacrifice offered on the cross once for all.
Narrator:
In fact, during the Council of Trent, Catholicism explicitly anathematized some of the central teachings of the gospel concerning how sinners are saved.
Video:
Our Catholic friends, listen to this, Council of Trent Session 6, Canon 9, if anyone says that by faith alone the sinner is justified, so as to mean that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, let him be anathematized.
Trent Horn:
This is not the complete text of Canon 9 from the Council of Trent. The text actually says, if anyone says that the sinner is justified by faith alone, meaning that nothing else is required to cooperate in order to obtain the grace of justification, and that it is not in any way necessary that he be prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, let him be anathema. The Canon is not saying we are initially justified by some amount of works. Along with faith. The catechism says the initial grace of justification cannot be merited in any way. Instead, Canon 9 is rejecting a very specific concept of faith alone that precludes any human action whatsoever in our salvation.
Trent Horn:
The Canon is simply saying, we must cooperate with God in order to be justified, but that cooperation doesn’t merit justification, right? Think about when Jesus said people must repent in order to enter the kingdom of God. Repentance is not what merits our salvation, but it is necessary and it’s a sign that you are cooperating with God’s grace in order to receive his salvation. The key part that’s left out prepared and disposed by the action of his own will, which would reject… This is important. This part would reject things like Calvinism’s irresistible grace, a doctrine which says that God saves us and we do not freely accept salvation.
Trent Horn:
Instead, salvation is imposed upon us by a God who alone decides which people go to heaven and which people go to hell and mans free choice in the matter or his free acceptance of it plays no factor at all. Just to be clear, that the church teaches that we cannot merit the initial grace of justification, but we can freely choose to either accept it or reject it.
Video:
Again, Session 6, Canon 11. If anyone says that men are justified either by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone, or by the remission of sins alone, to the exclusion of the grace and love that is poured forth in their hearts of the Holy Spirit and is inherent in them, or even that the grace by which we are justified is only the favor of God, let him be anathema.
Trent Horn:
Right. God’s justification of sinners is not merely a legal fiction. He really does change us and infuse his righteousness into our souls. That’s why 2 Corinthians 5:17 says, “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away. Behold, the new has come.”
Video:
Finally, if anyone says that the guilt is remitted to every penitent sinner after the grace of justification has been received, and that the debt of eternal punishment is so blotted out that there remains no debt of temporal punishment to be discharged either in this world or in the next in purgatory, before the interest to the kingdom of heaven can be opened, let him be anathema. They do not preach the same gospel.
Trent Horn:
Where does the Bible say there are no negative consequences for sin after we’re saved? That’s what temporal punishment essentially means. When God forgave David for committing adultery, his sin was fully forgiven, but God still gave him a temporal punishment by allowing his infant son to die. Hebrews 12:10 teaches likewise that God “disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness.” This would qualify as a temporal punishment for our sins. Even Protestants like C.S. Lewis or Jerry Walls have defended a kind of purgatory that allows believers to become perfect before they enter into heaven since the Bible says we aren’t perfect now, but we will be perfect then.
Narrator:
One central gospel teaching is that sinners are righteous before God, because Jesus’s righteousness is imputed to them. But shockingly, Catholicism explicitly rejects this teaching.
James White:
They reject the idea of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness. Righteousness is infused into you at baptism. It makes you good.
Trent Horn:
There’s an apocryphal story told about Martin Luther that claims he described imputed righteousness in this way. He pointed to a field with dung heaps in it, dug heaps, and he said our souls are like those dung heaps. God’s righteousness is imputed to us. It covers our sins in the same way pure snow covers the dung heaps. When we are saved, God looks at us and only sees Christ righteousness instead of our sins, like we only see snow instead of the dung heaps. The video also quotes 2 Corinthians 5:21 as if this proves imputed righteousness. That’s far from obvious. The passage says, for our sake, he made him to be sin who knew no sin. So that in him, we might become the righteousness of God.
Trent Horn:
The idea is that our sins were literally transferred to Jesus on the cross. He became our sin on the cross and we in turn became his righteousness. The 19th century Protestant author Charles Spurgeon put it this way. “God lays upon the spotless Savior, the sin of the guilty, so that He becomes, in the expressive language of the text, sin. Then He takes off from the innocent Savior His righteousness and puts that to the account of the once guilty sinners, so that the sinners become righteousness, righteousness of the highest and most divine, righteousness the God in Christ Jesus.” But this is impossible. Christ can’t lose his righteousness anymore than he could lose his omnipotence.
Trent Horn:
These are essential properties of God. And if Christ lost them, he would not be the god man. Also, if Christ did not have his righteousness through his entire atonement, then his sacrifice would not be good enough to atone for our sins, because he would just be an unrighteous sinner whose death doesn’t merit anything. Not only does imputation theology lead to a whole host of problems, the text itself doesn’t require this reading. Became sin could also mean that Christ became human. He came in the likeness of sinful human flesh. This would parallel what Paul says in Romans 8:3 which says, “For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. Sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Trent Horn:
It could also mean that Christ became a sin offering or a sacrifice on behalf of sin, which is reflected in several Protestant translations of Romans 8:3. In Hebrew, the same word is used for sin and sin offering. The fourth century church Father Ambrosiaster understood the verse in this way. He wrote the following. “In view of the fact that he was made an offering for sin, it is not wrong for him to be said to have been made sin. Because in the law, the sacrifice which was offered for sins used to be called a sin.”
Narrator:
Why is the Roman Catholic church so wrong on so many foundational issues? The central problem is that it does not view scripture as God’s exclusive revelation to the human race, but also believes that the Catholic church receives additional infallible revelation that is separate from scripture.
Trent Horn:
Unlike Mormons, Catholics do not believe the Pope receives ongoing public revelation from God. Instead, the Second Vatican Council taught the following. There exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and sacred scripture. For both of them flowing from the same divine wellspring, in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end. For sacred scripture is the word of God in as much as it is consigned to writing under the inspiration of the divine spirit, while sacred tradition takes the word of God and trusted by Christ the Lord and the Holy Spirit to the apostles and hands it on to their successors in its full purity.
Trent Horn:
So that led by the light of the spirit of truth they may in proclaiming it preserve this word of God faithfully, explain it and make it more widely known. Consequently, it is not from sacred scripture alone, that the church draws their certainty about everything which has been revealed. Therefore, both sacred tradition and sacred scripture are to be accepted and venerated with the same sense of loyalty and reverence. All right? And then it goes on to say this. It says the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the church, whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ.
Trent Horn:
This teaching office is not above the word of God, but serves it, teaching only what has been handed on, listening to it devoutly, guarding it scrupulously, and explaining it faithfully in accord with a divine commission and with the help of the Holy Spirit. It draws from this one deposit of faith everything which it presents for belief as divinely revealed. Also, when the video says scripture is God’s exclusive revelation, I would ask where does the Bible teach that? Or when did it become true that scripture became God’s exclusive revelation? After all, God’s exclusive New Testament revelation was oral tradition for decades before the New Testament documents began to be written.
Trent Horn:
But the Bible never tells us when this period of biblical exclusivity began, probably because there was no such period since sola scriptura is false.
James White:
The very fact that most of my debates to Roman Catholics has been on sola scriptura. That’s the one topic we’ve done more than any other. Why? Because Rome rejects it. Why? Because you can’t using sola scriptura and tota scriptura, all of scripture and scripture only, you cannot come up with Rome’s dogmas. You have to have external authorities. You have to have a lens through which to read the scriptures, and then you have to be bringing in external stuff to put this all together. Rome denies the sufficiency of scripture. And it’s not surprising that there is a constant every single generation battle for us to continue to believe in the sufficiency of scripture.
Trent Horn:
Protestantism can’t even give an objective account of what scripture is, let alone identify where scripture teaches what is and is not essential to the Christian life. I debate sola scriptura for the same reason I debate a Mormon about Joseph Smith’s authority. You should critique the central authority scheme of a false theological system. Now, I’m not saying Protestantism and Mormonism are equally in error. Mormonism errs in saying that some things like the Mormon church have divine authority when they actually do not. Protestantism, on the other hand, errs in saying that some things like sacred tradition or the teaching office of the church lacks divine authority when it actually does have it.
Trent Horn:
It makes sense then to debate sola scriptura, because Protestants call it the formal principle of the reformation. It is the central error that allow all other errors to flow from it, because it rejects the teachings that Christ has given through his church.
Narrator:
Next, let’s consider the Pope whom Catholics believe is the vicar of Christ. One obvious problem is that numerous popes have had extremely problematic theology and lifestyles.
James White:
Many people feel that when it comes to our day, maybe we should reanalyze all those anathemas. I mean, does anyone really believe that kindly old fellow in Rome really wants to anathematize all of us? Well, to be perfectly honest with you, I think there’s a pretty good reason to question whether that kindly old fellow in Rome is even a Trinitarian, let alone as there’s really good reason to believe he is a universalist, that he believes everyone’s going to be saved. He doesn’t believe the large number of things that his predecessors did believe, which is one of the complicating factors that we have to consider as we talk about our relationship with Roman Catholicism today. What is it?
Trent Horn:
First, papal infallibility only keeps the Pope from formally binding the church to error. The Pope could still make mistakes when he only presents himself as a private theologian that is not exercising his teaching office. This kind of presentation of teaching in a non-authoritative way can be seen Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth book series, for example. Nothing that is said in this part of the video refutes papal infallibility or papal authority. The Pope could be a huge sinner or even privately propose incorrect theology, but he will not formally bind the whole church to heresy. In fact, this is kind of an argument for the papacy. That even when you had morally awful popes in the Middle Ages, none of them formally defined heresy.
Trent Horn:
Some of them even fought heresies. As for Pope Francis, I think James White should be very careful when he makes accusations about what other Christians believe. I think White is referring to reports that come from an Italian journalist named Eugenio Scalfari, who claims that Pope Francis doesn’t believe Jesus is God, or he doesn’t believe hell exists, but the Vatican has officially denied these claims. They say things like “the Holy Father never said what Scalfari wrote.” I think if White would want us to judge his theology, I think he would want us to judge his theology based on what he has said instead of what other people say about him. If he wants that, he should extend the same courtesy to Pope Francis.
Narrator:
Regarding this problem, Michael Knowles presents the common Catholic response, writing, an important reminder that the Pope is quite fallible, except in those rare cases when he is infallible. However, it seems entirely reasonable to ask, how is it possible for the supposed head of the entire church, the earthly representative of Christ himself to have a world view that is so thoroughly unbiblical? The most reasonable answer seems to be that the Pope simply is not who Catholics say he is.
Trent Horn:
Saying the Pope isn’t infallible because his worldview is unbiblical, that’s the same as saying the Pope isn’t infallible because he is fallible. That’s not an argument. It’s just an ironic assertion, because many Protestants would say the theology on this Calvinist YouTube channel is actually unbiblical.
James White:
One of my first suggestions was let’s debate Pope Francis. It’s not a good day to be a Roman Catholic anthropologist. Every day you have to wake up and there’s that gnawing fear. What has he said now? And to whom did he say it? And how am I going to spin this? I’m absolutely serious.
Trent Horn:
Actually, Jimmy Akin and I have both offered to debate James White, but he told Jimmy he’d rather debate Pope Francis instead of the central issues that divide Catholics and Protestants. Jimmy has a whole blog post exposing why this topic is a smoke screen on White’s part and I’ll link to that below. But my offer to white still stands and I think it’s a fair one. We have two debates. In the first debate, White would defend Protestant authority structure in the framework of his choosing. He gets to define sola scriptura. He sets the resolution, as long as it’s reasonable. Then in a separate debate, I would defend Catholic authority structure and set the resolution, which for me would be establishing apostolic succession, which you need before any discussion of the papacy can make sense.
Trent Horn:
Gavin Ortlund has already agreed to debate these two topics with me at some point in the future. If James White wants to do the same, he’s more than welcome to let me know.
Narrator:
Catholics argue that Peter was the first Pope and that Catholicism began with Peter, but there is simply no evidence to support this position. There is a vast chasm between what Catholics believe today and what the earliest Christians believed.
James White:
Well, when do you think Roman Catholicism started? That’s actually a very important and good question. I suppose we should define that first, huh? Because a lot of people have the idea that Roman Catholicism starts with Peter. Maybe it was the Council of Nicaea, Constantine. No. As I’ve pointed out, if you look at the official dogmas of the Roman Catholic church, that you have to believe to be a Roman Catholic today, no one at the Council of Nicaea believed what you have to believe to be a Roman Catholic today.
Trent Horn:
How does James White know what every person at the council did or did not believe? Did they all submit their own systematic theologies for review? Also, this objection is disingenuous because Catholic doctrine develops over time. You wouldn’t expect people in the ancient church to have beliefs that were given precise definitions centuries or even a thousand years later. You also won’t find people in the first and second centuries holding the Christology James White says that Christians must believe, like that Christ had a human and a divine will, because those elements of Christology weren’t defined until the early Middle Ages.
Trent Horn:
The question are instead, did the early Christians accept modern Protestant definitions of sola scriptura, or did they believe God had given them a church that continued to exercise authority that originated from the apostles? Spoiler alert, it’s a no to the first question, yes to the second.
James White:
But some of those dogmas were not even heard of in the first 500 years of church history. I mean, you simply can’t point me to an Orthodox believing Christian in the first 500 years that believed in the bodily assumption of Mary as a dogma of the faith. There just isn’t anybody there.
Trent Horn:
In my debate with James White on the doctrine of eternal security, I challenged him to produce a church father who said it was impossible for someone to become saved and then later lose their salvation. He weakly gestured to Fulgentius, but he didn’t give a citation. The fact is he doesn’t mind believing something that’s not in the father’s. The first record of the complete New Testament Canon is AD 367 in the writings of Athanasius. That’s the backbone to Protestant authority claims, but nobody cites the complete Canon before that point, because the early church didn’t operate with sola scriptura as its authority structure. I’ll be addressing the assumption of Mary in a more in depth way in a video in August.
Trent Horn:
But what I want to point out now is that what’s more concerning is not the silence in the early church for hundreds of years on a secondary object of the Catholic faith, like the Assumption of Mary. It’s the silence in the early church on the primary objects, the building blocks, the fundamental elements of Protestantism like sola scriptura, sola fide, and eternal security, things that make up the essence of Protestantism, but are not found in the teachings of Jesus, the apostles, or the early Church Fathers.
Narrator:
The reality is that the numerous unbiblical doctrines of the Catholic church, such as purgatory, developed gradually over time, and eventually these unbiblical doctrines were aggregated into what is now known as the Roman Catholic church.
Trent Horn:
This is the same argument Jehovah’s Witnesses use when they say the Trinity developed over time and this turned into a false church. Everyone accepts that doctrine develops over time. The first explanation of the Trinity can’t be found in church history until the third century. During that same time period, you find references to praying for the dead and for people being purified of sin after death, which are the foundational elements of purgatory. And of course, this is just an assertion that the doctrine is unbiblical because nowhere does the Bible say that every single believer goes straight to heaven after death without any purification from sin whatsoever.
James White:
Where do I think Roman Catholicism really begins? Well, the problem is, if you ever see a track or a book that has a list of dates, be very skeptical because nothing just comes into existence overnight. You don’t have people going to bed one night believing one thing, and then they wake up the next morning, “Ah, purgatory. Yes.” No, there has to be lots of development. There has to be all these sub beliefs that start coming together to form these things over time, and that’s exactly what you do see in church history.
Trent Horn:
Then when did Calvinism come into existence? I’m sure White would say at Pentecost 33 AD. Okay, where is the evidence in the early church for eternal security, limited atonement, double predestination, and other Calvinist doctrines? I’m sure White would say, “Well, it develops over time. We don’t see it all at once in the Church Fathers.” I’m sure you see where I’m going with this. Let’s move on.
Narrator:
James White, who has studied Catholicism extensively, argues that the Catholic church essentially began in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, because this was the official beginning of the concept of the mass as we know it today, where the practice of transubstantiation occurs.
James White:
For me personally, I think the best date that I can use for the origin of what would be modern Roman Catholicism would be the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 AD. Why? Because when you look at Roman Catholic worship even to this day, except in the most liberalized forms of it, the central act of worship has remained the same for pretty much a solid 800 years. And that is the concept of the mass. Once you start having the reservation of the host, and so because of the doctrine of transubstantiation, then you believe that God is physically present in the church building and you are bowing to God. That’s why you genuflect. That’s why you do what you do. That dogma was unknown in the first thousand years.
Trent Horn:
Okay, the term transubstantiation was not defined until the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, but the concept was believed long before that period. Just like the term homoousios or being of the same substance to describe the father and the son being equally divine, that was first defined at Nicaea, but it was believed long before that point, even if there isn’t an explicit witness of it in the Church Fathers. These doctrines, whether they’re fundamental Christian doctrines or fundamental Catholic doctrines, just because an important term is defined later in church history, that doesn’t mean the doctrine or even that the whole church came into existence at that moment in church history.
Trent Horn:
White is also confusing discipline with doctrine, the discipline of reserving the host for adoration, that didn’t arise until the Middle Ages, but monks and religious did keep the Eucharist for purposes of piety in their own selves, or they would carry it on their persons in something called the chrismal. And then later, the Eucharist was kept in churches and monasteries. The sixth century Saint Comgall, that’ll be the sixth century, early Middle Ages, he was said to have been attacked by heretics who left him alone when they saw his chrismal on him where he carried the Eucharist. They said they left him alone because they did not want to attack his God. He believed he’s carrying God with him.
Trent Horn:
It’s the kind of reservation of the sacrament, if you will. In the fourth century, Saint Basil the Great kept the Eucharist in a golden dove above the altar. And the church I attend, Saint Basil the Great in Texas has a golden dove above the altar, just like Saint Basil described. This argument from White is unhistorical when it tries to use a disciplinary origin in order to give some kind of theological origin, especially for Catholicism as a whole.
Narrator:
Catholicism also teaches a wildly heretical view of Mary that exalts her in a way that no human should be exalted.
James White:
There’s even another Marian dogma that many Roman Catholics do believe and are pushing to have defined. And there was a possibility back in late 990s that John Paul might have established this particular dogma. It’s the idea that Mary is co-redempter, co-redemptrix for the people of God, so co-redeemer, co-mediator, with Jesus for the people of God. Popes have taught since the 1800s that no grace flows to anyone except through Mary. Mary is the neck that turns the head that is God’s grace. It all flows through Mary. This centrality of Mary is very much a part of the experience of certain strands of Roman Catholicism today.
Trent Horn:
I’m actually going to quote the catechism at length here, because I think it provides a very good summary of Mary’s role in the order of grace that avoids the caricatures that James White presents as if Mary were bossing God around, or Mary is the neck of the Trinity, or something like that. All right, so here’s what the catechism says. In a holy singular way, she, Mary, cooperated by her obedience, faith, hope, and burning charity in the Savior’s work of restoring supernatural life to souls. For this reason, she is a mother to us in the order of grace. Think about John at the foot of the cross when Jesus tells John, “Behold your mother.”
Trent Horn:
This motherhood of Mary in the order of grace continues uninterruptedly from the consent, which she loyally gave at the annunciation and which she sustained without wavering beneath the cross until the eternal fulfillment of all the elect. Taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office, but by her manifold intercession continues to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. Therefore, the Blessed Virgin is invoked in the church under the titles of advocate, helper, benefactress, and Mediatrix. Mary’s function is important. Mary’s function as mother of men in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power.
Trent Horn:
But the Blessed Virgin’s salutary influence on men flows forth from the super abundance of the merits of Christ rests on his mediation, depends entirely on it, and draws all its power from it. No creature could ever be counted along with the incarnate word and redeemer. But just as the priesthood of Christ is shared in various ways, both by his ministers and the faithful, and as the one goodness of God is radiated in different ways among his creatures, so also the unique mediation of the Redeemer does not exclude, but rather gives rise to a manifold cooperation, which is but a sharing in this one source.
Narrator:
Throughout history, the Catholic church has never retracted its errors, but in fact, simply continues to maintain and add to its errors. For example, indulgences, the unbiblical Catholic doctrine that believers can pay to reduce punishment is still very much in effect today.
Trent Horn:
Nope. Nope. Not at all. The catechism defines an indulgence as a remission before God of the temporal punishment due to sins whose guilt has already been forgiven indulgences do not forgive sins. They take away the temporal punishment that is due to sin when the sinner makes amends through acts of prayer and charity, the Bible itself teaches in 1 Peter 4:8 that charity covers a multitude of sins. It also talks about how God remembered Cornelius’s alms giving and acts 10:31. Sirach says, “As water extinguishes a blazing fire, so alms giving atones for sin.”
Trent Horn:
One of these acts of charity was giving alms or money to the poor, but money has a tendency to corrupt people like when 1 Timothy 6:10 says, “The love of money is the root of all evil.” Some people because of this they treated indulgences like transactions. If they had spare money, they just gave the spare money and thought they got a removal of the temporal punishment of sin. It wasn’t a genuine act of charity done and sorrow for sin. Because of this abuse, these were addressed of the 25th session of the Council of Trent and alms giving was no longer attached to indulgences because of that.
James White:
When it comes to Roman Catholicism, Rome has only added to the number of errors that she teaches. She has not corrected any of them.
Trent Horn:
While the church has apologized for past misdeeds, like how it treated Galileo, it hasn’t apologized for making errors related to formal definitions of faith and morals, because there are no such errors. Christ promised in Matthew 16 that the gates of hell would not prevail against the church. If there were such apologies that the church got fundamental theology wrong, well then the video would have a point, but it doesn’t.
James White:
Some people say, “Oh, Vatican II changed all that.” Like what? The documents of Vatican II have more sections on indulgences than they have on justification. Think about that for a second. Indulgences are still a completely valid concept within Roman Catholic theology, and this Pope still gives out what are called plenary indulgences, a full remission of all the temporal punishments of sins upon your soul for doing certain things.
Trent Horn:
Yep, but there’s nothing wrong with indulgences since the Bible does not prohibit them. For more on that topic, I recommend checking out Catholic apologist Peter Williams and his debate with James White on the topic of whether indulgences contradict the gospel.
Narrator:
Many today argue that Protestants should consider Catholics their allies because they share core theological beliefs, such as the Trinity.
Video:
We have far more in common than what divides us. When you talk about Pentecostals, charismatics, evangelicals, fundamentalists, Catholics, Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterian, on and on and on and on, well, they would all say, “We believe in the Trinity. We believe in the Bible. We believe in the resurrection. We believe salvation is through Jesus Christ.” These are the big issues.
Narrator:
However, the unfortunate problem is that Paul himself condemn the Judaizers for teaching essentially the same things that Catholicism teaches today.
Trent Horn:
Unlike the Judaizers, Catholicism does not teach you need to be circumcised in order to be saved, so I have no idea what the narrator is talking about. We are not teaching essentially the same thing as the Judaizers that Paul condemned. You could only reach that conclusion by saying what we both teach at a really basic level is you’re not saved by faith alone. And that’s true. And just because a heretic recognizes that, that doesn’t mean that it’s false. Even a broken clock is right twice a day. This argument saying Catholics are like the Judaizers, it relies on the assumption that things like the Eucharist or the mass that Jesus actually commanded that we receive and the apostles do are as unnecessary as circumcision, which Jesus never commanded.
Trent Horn:
Paul himself says there are things you have to do beyond having faith in Christ in order to be saved, things like not committing grave unrepentant sin, or not receiving the Eucharist in an unworthy manner, as he says in 1 Corinthians 11:28-29, or that you can’t refuse baptism, since Paul says in Romans 6 baptism is what unites us to Christ in his death and his resurrection.
James White:
If what Galatians 1 says is true, if what Galatians 2 says is true, if the anathematizing of the Judaizers is correct and if the statement in Galatians 2, we did not put up them for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel might remain with you. Paul identifies them as pseudadelphos, false brethren. It means they look like us, they talk like us, they use our language, but they’re false brethren. If that is true, then I would say to anyone who says, “Now you’re overreacting,” give me some explanation as to how you can make the Roman Catholic gospel fit with Paul’s teaching of just faith. Show me.
Trent Horn:
And if you’d like to see how they do fit together, I’d recommend two books. One is by Michael Barber called Salvation: What Every Catholic Should Know, and my book has two chapters on justification. The book is called The Case for Catholicism. In any case, I pray that this episode was helpful to you guys. And until next time, I hope that you have a very blessed day.
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