Trent sits down for the Protestant YouTube channel “Gospel Simplicity” for a congenial interview on the nature of and evidence for the papacy.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
My favorite people in the world are those who are intellectually honest, and those who are courageous enough to talk to those who disagree with them because they want to seek out the truth. Welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Recently I was invited onto a YouTube channel hosted by someone who exemplifies those traits. It was the Gospel Simplicity channel hosted by Austin Suggs. Austin has asked me to come on and talk about papacy. What’s interesting is that Austin was doing previous videos. He is an evangelical Protestant, but he’s very interested in Catholicism. In fact, he had a small YouTube channel, mostly a Protestant following, until he decided to go to a Latin mass. He went to a Latin mass, he did a video about it, and it just exploded on Catholic Twitter. Now he has a lot of Catholic followers and he’s been investigating Catholicism for a while now.
His followers asked if he and I could have a chat. We had a wonderful conversation. He really wanted to ask about the papacy, because I think he’s getting towards that crucial dividing line between Catholicism and Protestantism and Eastern Orthodoxy, and he wanted to talk with me about it, so we had a really great chat. I think this is a great video, especially if you find the video, go to Austin’s Gospel Simplicity channel. You can share the video, or you can share today and Thursday’s podcast episodes where you hear the entire episode. I decided to make this a part one, part two episode, so enjoy it. Feel free to share with others, and be sure to pray for Austin, for his spiritual journey and his discernment of God’s revelation. Without further ado, here is my conversation with Austin Suggs. A Catholic apologist explains the papacy to an inquiring Protestant.
Austin Suggs:
I came across your work a little bit ago. I think you were rebutting Mike Winger is the first time I saw your channel and have been listening to your podcasts ever since, and watching your videos. I’ll be leaving links to all of Trent’s stuff in the description here today. If you don’t know him by chance, which I think almost my entire audience does, but if you don’t yet, be sure to check him out. Today we will be talking about …
Trent Horn:
I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. The audience you have, though, it’s kind of a mixture of people from all different backgrounds. Is that my correct understanding?
Austin Suggs:
Yes, it is. It’s kind of interesting how I’ve gotten to where I am. I’m an evangelical and my channel, at one point I imagined, was entirely evangelical. Then I made a video about going to a Latin mass and the YouTube algorithm found me all of the traditional Catholics out there. My channel is pretty diverse. The predominant audience right now is Catholic. The second largest is Orthodox. The third largest category is Protestants considering converting to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Then the smallest after that is Protestants. It’s a really interesting audience. Yeah.
Today we will be talking about the papacy, and this is a topic I have been really looking forward to talking about. In fact, the first Catholic podcast I was ever on, it was with Keith Little, and I made a comment on that, that I think is, I don’t want to say it’s been haunting me ever since. I think I still stand by it, but I kind of want to start with it. That was, if you convince me of the papacy, I wasn’t thinking of you specifically at the time, but if one is convinced of the truth of the papacy, everything else kind of falls into place.
Now, since then, I’ve began to question whether or not that is really the case. I think it probably has something to do with whether we’re looking at truth in terms of coherence or just correspondence to reality, but I’m much more of a theology guy than philosophy, so I’m already swinging above my weight there. I want to kind of set it up. What would you say? What is the importance of the papacy? Clearly it is at the center of many of these divides, but how important is this?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think it’s really important, Austin, because it goes back to the question of authority. What is a Christian’s authority? Who do we go to or what do we go to, to understand the truth of God’s revelation, of what God desires of us? Do we go to scripture? I think all Christians would agree we go to scripture. Where we disagree is do we go to scripture alone? Is scripture our only source of authority when it comes to God’s revelation, so that we have scripture and then we have other human beings and their varying opinions about scripture, or do we have the authority of the apostles that existed in the first century? Do we have that authority continuing today in some form? I really do believe the papacy is the most distinctive doctrine of the Catholic faith. If you type in Catholic in Google, I’m sure one of the first things that … Google images. The first thing you’re going to get popping up is probably the Pope. That’s usually one of the first things that comes up.
I think that makes sense when it goes back to that issue of authority. It’s interesting, when you talked about your audience, that you have Protestants who would probably accept sola scriptura as their authority, Orthodox, who would see a continuing apostolic authority in the patriarchs and bishops, those who can have apostolic succession, and then Catholics, who would agree with the Orthodox, but see an understanding that one of these particular successors of the apostles, the successor of St. Peter, has a particular role in securing unity in the body of Christ, has a particular role in being the visible head of the church who provides unity for the whole church and fidelity within the body of Christ. I do believe the papacy is the most distinctive Catholic doctrine.
I also believe it’s one of the most misunderstood, even beyond a doctrine like purgatory or the Marian dogmas, many people misunderstand the nature of the papacy and see it as Catholics believe the Pope is some kind of autocratic, theological dictator, whose every word we assent to as if it was the gospel. Rather, we see the Pope as being, as Jesus said of the apostles, he said of them the greatest among you shall be a servant of servants. That was actually a title of the Pope from the early middle ages. The Pope is a servant of the servants of Christ and that it is his role to be humble and to serve the body of Christ, as its head though, as its pastor.
Austin Suggs:
Yeah. Thank you so much for that. I think you bring up a really important point, that it is so often misunderstood. Even at a Bible college, like I find myself at, well, not currently, I’m back home, but I’ve become known as the guy that’s really interested in Catholicism. I had guys on my floor saying, did you know that the Catholics think the Pope was immaculately conceived? You guys are studying theology. How did we get to this?
Trent Horn:
It sounds like they took Catholic stuff and jumbled it together, like a Madlibs. No, that’s not how it works.
Austin Suggs:
Yeah. Not quite. I think there really is so much to go through there, and that could be a whole other episode. I want to get a little bit at the foundation of the papacy. For me, in my pursuit of trying to understand Catholicism and Orthodoxy and making sense of church history, this really has been the place where I’ve said, I’ve got to get this figured out. I mean, this seems super important. I hinted at this a little, but I’d be curious to get your perspective on this before we go through an outline I’ve given you of does the papacy, in your view, does it kind of create this solid foundation, in once you have that, and then everything else is good, or does it create a potential house of cards in that if the papacy claims to have infallibly validated certain things, if you can pluck any one of them, the whole house falls. Does that make sense?
Trent Horn:
No, I think I see what you’re saying here. The idea is, is the papacy an asset to the Christian faith, or is it a liability? You know, the idea is that we say that the Pope is infallible. Well, we’ve got, as of now, 2000 years of Christian history. What have we determined that a Pope made a theological error that would show he’s fallible here or here? The target is very wide, but I would say that’s not unique to Catholicism. I think many Protestants could understand this. Think about the Protestant claim to compare the papacy, especially papal infallibility, which we’ll talk about later here in our interview. I think one good thing to compare it to is the doctrine of Biblical inerrancy, that many, not all Protestants, but many Protestants would say, well, the Bible is without error.
Then what do you do when you have an atheist who comes along and says, okay, so you believe the Bible is divine revelation. Because it’s divine revelation, it’s without error. Is that a house of cards? What about, you go to some atheist websites, they’ll say there’s thousands and thousands of alleged contradictions, and that can kind of shake a Christian’s faith. He thinks, oh man, I believe the Bible, and I believe it’s without error. What about all these arguments that are out there? Actually, Austin, when I compare them, I would say there are far more instances of alleged Biblical contradictions than there are instances of alleged fallibility by a Pope, because fallibility is defined in a very narrow sense. We do not believe everything the Pope says is automatically correct or true, but rather when the Pope teaches under particular limited circumstances, the Holy Spirit prevents him from formally binding the church to an error in faith or moral. For me, it’s one thing to look at it as is it an asset or a liability? For me, the bigger question is, is it true?
Trent Horn:
When it comes to scripture, I believe scripture is inerrant because of my prior belief that it’s inspired. Now, my prior belief that it’s inspired, however, comes from a belief … My chain of reasoning would go something like this, and this is how it was for me during my conversion almost 20 years ago from non-religious to being Christian. I said, look, all right, I believe there’s a God who’s out there. I look at the new Testament, if it was just historical documents, maybe there’s some true things, maybe there’s some false things. But I can look at these documents and say the best explanation for the origin of the Christian Church is that a man named Jesus of Nazareth walked out of his own tomb. If he walked out of his own tomb, I’m going to trust what he has to say.
From what I see from that evidence, and then shortly thereafter in Christian history, this man gathered together apostles who had authority to form a visible church, a visible church with a hierarchy. The word hierarchy means sacred order. As this church flourishes with a hierarchy that people look to, that in the early church, people didn’t look to the Bible. In fact, the Bible was still being compiled and assembled together. They looked to the bishops to see, all right, is your Bishop, can he trace his lineage back to the apostles? In looking at that, I then get certainty of scripture as it’s been articulated at the various church councils. Then I can have a certainty in the scriptures because they come from the church Jesus established. In fact, Saint Augustine once said, I would not believe the gospels if I were not moved by the authority of the Catholic church.
For me, when I see that, okay, here’s where the authority is coming from. Then already, if I’m there with there’s apostolic succession and the authority, the visible church, for me, it moves me far away from Protestantism. Then the only question remains, do all of the successors of the apostles have the same authority, or does one of them exercise a different kind of authority, just like one of the original apostles, Peter exercised a different authority? I don’t see it as a liability any more than many other claims Protestants believe in, like Biblical inerrancy. Rather, I see the papacy as being something that provides unity in the church, a doctrinal understanding.
I guess one last thing I would put forward is just a common sense argument with the papacy would be this. When you think about … I believe the church is not an invisible union of believers. Now, there’s one view of the church is just, well, everybody who believes in Jesus, that’s the church. It seems clear to me in scripture, the church is a visible, enduring entity, an organization, if you will. It’s God’s organization on earth. If the church has that, think about human organizations. When I think of human organizations, the successful ones always have one leader where the buck stops. Do you remember that episode … do you ever watch The Office?
Austin Suggs:
A little bit.
Trent Horn:
There’s an episode of The Office where Michael, Scott and Jim it’s in the later part of the series, where they serve as co-managers. They’re both in charge of the branch at the same time. It just leads to chaos, having them both involved. Oscar says, Oh, of course, why wouldn’t the branch have two managers? You know, what would America be without two presidents? What would Catholicism be without the Popes, that even in earthly organizations, we see a leadership structure that culminates with a single individual exercising authority and leadership. To me, if that makes sense among purely human organizations, how much more so would it make sense among the church that Christ has established? That, to me, would also mirror, and we’ll talk about this later in the interview, that the church is the analog to Israel, and that when God established Israel, it had a similar leadership structure, both in the older covenants and the kingdom of Israel, of a single individual being a mediator or leader that’s established to lead God’s people.
Austin Suggs:
Awesome. Thank you. I think that was a helpful parallel, at least for me as an evangelical, because that’s like day one Bible college stuff of going through inerrancy. We don’t reason inerrancy from confirming every claim that we believe that to be true, but you start with inspiration, and kind of a parallel there for the papacy. I think it’s helpful as well, as you distinguished, that there’s a difference between asking whether this is a liability, asset, or even the common sense argument versus is it true? Let’s kind of segue into that, because I see a lot that, at least in my comment sections, of but don’t you want a bit … wouldn’t this be good, or people bashing it the other way around. Oh, why would you want a Pope? I’d really love to dig a little deeper and work through the logic of the papacy as seen through history and scripture.
The first thing I wanted to go to, it seemed like the place to start for me. If it’s not where you’d start, feel free to let me know. I wanted to see what was Peter’s role and distinction from the other apostles? I think we have this understanding that the apostles were this special class of people, but the Catholic viewpoint seems to elevate Peter to a special primacy. Could you elucidate that a bit?
Trent Horn:
Sure. I think to start here to understand the papacy, and even just starting with etymology. What do we mean by the papacy or the Pope? The Pope comes from a Latin word that means father. The idea here, it’s just interesting. People will say, well, we don’t see the word Pope or papacy in the Bible. That’s true, but you don’t see the word trinity or the word Bible there either. We derive our doctrines from what the text says. The idea of the papacy, and once again, I want to get people away from the idea it’s some kind of autocratic, theological tyrant or something like that. Rather, it’s more of a spiritual father to one’s children. Being a pastor of Christ’s church, you’re a spiritual father. We see this, for example, in the letters of John in the New Testament. It says, my beloved children, I write to you. In I Corinthians 4:15, St. Paul says, you’ve had 10,000 guides in Christ, but you haven’t had many fathers. I became your father in Christ Jesus. That’s the role that Peter has and his successors have in the church of providing that visible unity.
Let me just read what the catechism says, and then I’ll go forward to talk about how Peter is unique. To understand what the papacy is, this is paragraphs 880 and 881 from the catechism of the Catholic church. “When Christ instituted the 12, he constituted them in the form of a college or permanent assembly at the head of which he placed Peter, chosen from among them. Just as by the Lord’s institution, St. Peter and the rest of the apostles constitute a single apostolic college, so in like fashion, the Roman pontiff, Peter’s successor, and the bishops, the successors of the apostles, are related with and united to one another.” There’s this collegiality.
Going back to the apostles, I think, Austin, when it comes to understanding the papacy, a lot of times dialogue between Catholics and Protestants, it’s hard if we don’t get these intermediary steps done first. It’s kind of like explaining the Eucharist. The Eucharist won’t make sense to someone unless they see why sacraments make sense, and why justification is just not simply by faith alone.
Understanding the papacy, these intermediary steps would include the idea that, well, we don’t use sola scriptura as an authority. The apostles were the authority in early church. It’s interesting, you said the scripture speaks to them as a special class of people. I would say Jesus goes beyond that, in that they are treated as rulers in Christ’s kingdom. I mean, think about when Jesus said you will sit on 12 thrones judging the tribes of Israel. He talks in John 17 about even sharing his glory with us, the idea that the apostles were seen as not just, well, these are great role models and they’re going to show us how to be like Jesus, but that they have real governing authority, especially with how Jesus says to them, I’m going to give you the keys to the kingdom. What you bind on earth will be bound in heaven. Keys are a symbol of authority.
When I come here into my office at Catholic Answers, I don’t even have keys to this building. I’ve got to ask somebody else for permission. Now, the president, he can come in here whenever he likes, and people he’s designated it to. We see that with the apostles. it’s not just that they’re a special class of people, but they rule on thrones and have keys to the kingdom. I would start there to say, all right, we see the apostles have this authority, and it’s an authority that would continue in the church even after their deaths. Then we’re going to go to Peter. Does Peter have special authority amongst them that might continue with a successor? Before I continue with that, does that all track so far?
Austin Suggs:
Yeah, it does track so far. I just wanted to maybe ask one quick follow up question on that. You mentioned the keys passage, which is a big one, and binding on earth and losing on earth. Now, I don’t want to single this out, but you said to them. Did you say he gives that to all? I’m sure you’re going to go through this as you get into Peter.
Trent Horn:
Sure. Right now I’m just talking about the apostles’ authority as a single college and leadership within the church. Now, the giving of keys to the kingdom is actually … there’s two different instances where it’s recorded in the gospel of Matthew. In Matthew 18, it talks about the keys being given to the apostles as a whole, which as Catholics, we would believe that the bishops as a whole have authority over the entire church. The college of bishops has authority over the whole church, individual bishops have authority over the flock that they are entrusted with. I have a bishop here in San Diego, for example, although I happen to attend an Eastern Catholic church, which is under another metropolitan part of the Eastern Catholic church, which you should actually invite my friend, Father Daniel Dozier on to talk about Eastern Catholicism, because I find for many people, it’s a neat bridge from Orthodoxy to Catholicism. Basically when people talk about Eastern Catholicism, like Byzantine Catholicism, it’s like being Orthodox, but you have the Pope. I’ll get you his info. It would be great to speak with him.
Austin Suggs:
I would love to. I’ve been meaning to track someone down for that.
Trent Horn:
Well, I’ll link you guys up. I think you’ll enjoy chatting with him. That’s Matthew 18, that the keys are given to the apostles as a whole, but also the key to the kingdom is given in particular to Peter in Matthew 16. The catechism goes on to say, “The Lord made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the rock of his church. He gave him the keys of his church and instituted him shepherd of the whole flock. The office of binding and loosing, which was given to Peter was also assigned to the college of apostles united to its head. This pastoral office of Peter and the other apostles belongs to the church’s very foundation and is continued by the bishops under the primacy of the Pope.”
It’s not an either or. It’s not like the other bishops are just puppets of the Pope, basically. They have legitimate authority, especially within their own bishoprics, their own patriarchates. However, they’re still united to the Pope as the head, as the pastor of the church to provide unity, to unite everyone within the church, sort of like the hub of the wheel, if you will. I think that’s important because Eastern Orthodoxy, and to be frank, Austin, I love Eastern Orthodoxy. That’s one of the reasons I attend a Byzantine Catholic church. If you went to my Byzantine Catholic church and attended a Eastern Orthodox church, like a Greek Orthodox church or a Russian Orthodox, you almost wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in the liturgies. It’s very, very similar. I love the spirituality. I love the reverence. I love a lot of it. Actually, I love all of it.
The only parts I don’t love are the parts that would deny distinctly Catholic claims about the papacy, because if you think of the Pope as the hub of the wheel, connecting all the other bishops and providing unity in the church, I worry that one of the shortcomings in Eastern Orthodoxy is without that singular individual to provide that unity, it’s like you’ve got constellations rather than spokes all united together. That’s where in Orthodoxy, you have these differences between … what unites Orthodoxy tends to be geographical or national rather than ecclesiological or magisterial. When we think of Orthodoxy, we think of the Greek Orthodox, the Russian Orthodox, the Armenian Orthodox. It ends up being your union forms around these national identities rather than something that provides a kind of transcended element to it, which I think is a benefit to Catholicism.
With Peter, and I’ll just kind of be brief with this and we can explore them if you want to go more in depth. For me, when you look at the New Testament, it’s not just clear to me, it’s clear even to many Protestant exegetes that Peter had unique authority within the early church and amongst the apostles. Some key elements would be that he’s mentioned more than any other apostle, even all of them put together. He’s almost always listed first in the apostolic lists. Matthew 10:2 even says … it talks about the list and it uses the word protose Peter. In lexicons, what we see from that is that it’s not talking about Peter as first in a numerical list, but chief is Peter in Matthew 10:2. Of course, the last person in the apostolic list is Judas. We see there that most of the apostolic lists, almost all of them, are arranged so you have the least important apostle, Judas, and the most important one, Peter.
Then of course, there’s the traditional texts in Matthew 16. Peter’s name is changed. He’s the rock. I know there’s a lot of debate. I talk about this in my book about what it means. Is Peter the rock? Is he not the rock? For Protestants who say, well, Peter’s not the rock, Christ is, my question is why did Jesus bother to change Simon’s name to Peter? That’s my question, Protestants. If Peter’s not the rock the church is built on, why would Jesus go through all this trouble to change Peter’s name? That’s my question. Why did he do it, then, if Peter doesn’t have special leadership authority?
When you look in the Bible, whenever God changes somebody’s name, the name itself is a sign of their new mission. When Abram becomes Abraham, Ibrahim, he’s the father of many nations. That’s his new mission. It’s the same, I would say, with Peter. That’s a start there. In fact, many exegetes, I have a quote here from Oscar Coleman, who’s a Lutheran Biblical scholar, and he says about Peter being the rock, he says, “Roman Catholic exegesis is right, and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.” Now, he doesn’t think that Matthew 16 on its own leads to the papacy, but he sees the force behind it. Just to summarize, I guess I would say it’s very clear Peter had this leadership role in the early church.
For me, another one that sticks out to me, Austin, is to see this unique role he had is when Paul challenges Peter in Galatians chapter two. Some people will say this. Oh, that shows Peter was a mess up. He didn’t know what he was doing. How could he have this authority? Paul had to correct him. What’s fascinating there in Galatians chapter two, Austin, is that Paul corrects Peter, not because of his teaching, but because he’s not living up to it. He refused to dine with the Gentile Christians.
Paul corrects him as also a testimony to Paul because in Galatians one, Paul is saying, look, I’m not out to please people. I got this gospel from God. I didn’t get it merely from human beings, and I’m not out to please human beings. I’m here to please God. No human being’s going to intimidate me. Then we get to chapter two, and Paul shows no human being will intimidate him. He will even go up to Peter and correct him. He said, I oppose Cephas to his face. It’s like he’s saying even the person with the most authority among us won’t intimidate me. I’m not out to please people, but he uses Peter as an example of that, as in even Peter. I almost want to call it the even Peter argument to Peter’s authority in the early church.
Austin Suggs:
That’s really interesting. I never would have thought of arguing it from that. I will say, as far as the Matthew 16 passage, and we don’t have to get in the weeds there, but perhaps you’ll end up adding it to your list of Protestant scholars who interpret it along Catholic lines, is I was shocked when I read through my Moody Bible commentary, which doesn’t get much more conservative than Moody Bible Institute.
Trent Horn:
Where Bible is our middle name.
Austin Suggs:
Quite literally. I was reading through that and they’re like, yeah, this is definitely referring to Peter. It definitely wasn’t the Pope. I was like, man, I was shocked to find that in there, but I know that’s a whole rabbit trail. I appreciate the way you went through that.
Trent Horn:
Well, let me add one more thing, Austin, to the discussion. I think it’s also important for Protestants when they are examining Catholic claims to authority, when they’re saying, well, I see how Peter is elevated, I see how Peter is given these honorific titles, but I don’t get the papacy from that. Of course, you’re not going to get an explicit affirmation of the papacy in scripture any more than you would get an explicit affirmation of a formulation of the dogma of the Trinity, or I think for our purposes, a formulation of the inspiration and inerrancy of scripture.
I think that Protestants, if they’re going to be honest and examine the Catholic claims to the papacy, they should ask themselves what evidence will I accept for my own authority? My own authority’s usually this particular 66 book canon of scripture as being the inspired word of God that is without error. That is my authority. What evidence do I follow to reach that conclusion? What I would ask is if here’s the evidence you follow for that, and many times it’s, well, II Timothy 3:16-17, the movement of the Holy Spirit. I find there’s not a lot of evidences put forward for the Protestant view of authority. I’d say if that amount of evidence you accept, and I thought about formulating this into a peer-reviewed article on Catholicism, if you’ll accept this amount of evidence for Protestantism, but there’s more evidence for apostolic succession or even the papacy, then you should accept that if there’s more evidence. That’s what I would encourage your Protestant listeners and others to say, don’t start with Protestantism as the default.
It’s kind of like atheists who will say, well, if you can’t convince me God exists, I’m going to be an atheist. It’s like, well, no, no, no, no, no. Even if I don’t convince you, does the evidence point to your view either? This happens a lot, I think, when Protestants and Catholics talk to each other. Protestantism, even both sides will treat Protestantism as the default. If the Catholic can’t make his case, okay, well then I can just stay within Protestantism. I don’t see it that way. I would say the default among us as Christians would just be history tells us Christ rose from the dead. Then I go from there. Do I go to Protestantism and solas of the Reformation, or do I go to Orthodoxy or go to Catholicism? I think it’s an error to treat Protestant claims to authority as the default. We should examine them along with the other claims. Does that make sense?
Austin Suggs:
That does make a lot of sense, and I’ll definitely be looking out for that article. It reminds me a lot, and I’ll just point viewers to the link of your rebuttal and Cameron’s original video, of the argument that Jerry Wallace puts forward, in that it’s a comparative argument of resurrection versus papacy, but it sounds like a very interesting article if you do end up doing that. I think that’s a helpful way of thinking about it, that we don’t need to necessarily do this on home field for Protestants. Even on the other end, I think your way of putting that is probably the best way.
Trent Horn:
Hey guys, thank you so much for listening to that conversation. If you want more of it, guess what? We’ve got more. On Thursday, I’m going to air part two of our conversation, which includes questions for Austin’s patrons. Be sure to hang on for that on Thursday for our part two episode, and I hope you all have a very blessed day.
If you liked today’s episode, become a premium subscriber at our Patreon page and get access to member only content. For more information, visit trenthornpodcast.com.