In this episode Trent responds to Reformed apologist James White’s criticism of his 2018 talk “Answering Protestant Distortions of the Church Fathers”.
Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
So, I guess James White doesn’t like one of the talks I gave at a Catholic Answers conference a few years ago. Well, you can’t please everybody, right? Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers’ apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. And today’s episode, I want to go over some of the criticisms that James White offered of my talk. It was a few years ago. I can’t remember the year. I think it was like 2018. That I gave at the Catholic Answers conference that we hold in San Diego.
Trent Horn:
That year, the talk I gave was called Answering Protestant Distortions of the Church Fathers. Because the theme of the conference was that the early church was the Catholic church, so talking about how Catholic doctrine, faith and practice are deeply rooted in the early church fathers. So, I thought for my talk it’d be fun to talk about how different Protestant apologists have distorted the church fathers in their attempts to refute Catholic doctrine. And so, I guess James White came across my talk, and he’s devoted multiple episodes of his podcast, The Dividing Line, to answering it. He’s devoted a lot of time answering it. In fact, so far, I think he’s only gone through maybe, I don’t know, a third of my talk, but he’s devoted maybe two or three hours. So, I’m not going to go through his entire three hour response.
Trent Horn:
Oh, and by the way, if you don’t know who this individual is, James White is a reformed Baptist. I would consider him a reformed apologist. So, he defends not just Protestantism, but a particular denomination of Protestantism dedicated to upholding the traditional tenants of Calvinism, so unconditional election, irresistible grace, so you can’t reject God’s grace either before, at the initial moment of salvation, or anytime afterwards. Anytime afterwards would be the question of whether Christians can lose their salvation, which White and I engaged back in 2017 at the G3 Conference in Atlanta, and that was a ton of fun, actually. The only thing I regret at the G3 Conference was that my friend, Scott Klusendorf, who was also a five point Calvinist like James White, he was doing a series of pro-life talks, and he would have had me co-host his pro-life session with all the other Calvinists at this conference. It would have been a hoot, but my schedule didn’t allow for it.
Trent Horn:
So, White has been doing this rebuttal, it might even continue after this, so maybe we’ll revisit the topic. I don’t know. So, in today’s episode, I’m just going to focus on the most substantive elements of White’s criticism of my talk in the past few episodes that he’s done of The Dividing Line. So, let’s jump into it right now.
Trent Horn:
In Ralph McKenzie’s book, Roman Catholics and Evangelicals: Agreements and Differences. All right? This is what he says about the mass, “The description of the mass as a sacrifice is found as early as Gregory the Great, who lived in the sixth century.” It’s true, in a sense. I wanted to say it’s a whopper, but the way it’s phrased, yes, the state and the description of the mass as a sacrifice is found as early as Gregory the Great. The problem is when you read that, it makes it sound like that’s as early.
James White:
They’re not saying that earlier centuries did not utilize sacrificial language. What they’re saying is that the utilization of sacrificial language does not mean what it came to mean in developed Catholic theology regarding Eucharistic theology and Eucharistic sacrifice.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So, the main problem in White’s reply is that this isn’t Geisler and Mackenzie’s argument, and I don’t know why he’s going to these lengths to defend them because in another part of The Dividing Line presentation, he says he disagreed with them about some of the stuff in their own book. So, I put here on the screen, this is what they say on page, I think it’s 243 and 244 of their book. They say, “The Catholic view of the Eucharist as a sacrifice vitiate salvation by grace, so Roman Catholics view the Eucharist visa as a sacrifice, although a bloodless one. This idea of the Eucharist as a sacrifice is found in some early medieval fathers,” and that implies that it wasn’t found before the middle ages or before the sixth century.
Trent Horn:
“Gregory the Great was elected Pope and 590, considered the father of the medieval papacy. He held that at every mass, Christ was sacrificed afresh.” That’s not what he held, and that’s not what the church believes. We believe Christ was sacrificed once as a letter to the Hebrew says, but that one sacrifice is represented in every mass. “This notion of the mass,” and he’s quoting another scholar here, “as sacrifice eventually became standard doctrine in the Western church until it was rejected by Protestants in the 16th century.”
Trent Horn:
So, White it seems to be saying that what Geisler and Mackenzie were saying is that before Gregory the Great, the sacrifice language is used metaphorically, but it’s not a propitiatory sacrifice. It’s not Christ’s real presence. It doesn’t take away sin. The problem is that that’s manifestly false, and even other Protestant apologists would agree that the mass as a propitiatory sacrifice is something capable of taking away sin is present long before Gregory the Great. I’ll give you two examples on that.
Trent Horn:
First would be Saint Cyprian. This is letter 62 writing about the middle of the third century, so this is over 300 years before Gregory. This is what he says. “For if Jesus Christ our Lord and God is himself the chief priest of God the Father, and has first offered himself a sacrifice to the Father and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of himself,” so Christ as offered himself as a sacrifice, “certainly that priest who truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did,” so if Christ offers himself as sacrifice, Cyprian is saying, “the priest offers Christ as a sacrifice.” And he makes it clear, he says, “And he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ himself to have offered.”
Trent Horn:
So, that’s clear, 300 years before Gregory the great, we have that. And here’s another source on that. And I cite this, I think, a little bit in my talk. If not, I cite it in my book, The Case for Catholicism. The book is called The Church of Rome at the Bar of History by William Webster. Webster is another Protestant apologist. I’d say he’s a reformed apologist, kind of like White, that he defends a form of Calvinism. And this is what he says. And in The Church of Rome at the Bar of History, Webster tries to show the Catholic church’s claims of the antiquity of its doctrines is false, but he does make interesting admissions throughout the book. One of them is this. He says, “Though the early church generally viewed the Eucharist in spiritual terms, the concept began to emerge of a literal sacrifice in the Eucharist. Nearly all historians agree that this change had its beginnings with the third century North African Bishop and martyr, Cyprian.”
Trent Horn:
So, actually Webster’s not correct on this because I cite other historians in my work that can say the church fathers believed the mass was a sacrifice before Cyprian, but even someone like Webster who would agree with White on a ton of stuff says, “No, the notion of the mass as a sacrifice existed centuries before Gregory the Great.” And Webster himself places it in the third century. So, I’d be curious to see where White would say this doctrine can certainly be found. Would he put it as late as Gregory the Great, as Geisler and McKenzie, which is false? Would he agree with Webster that it’s at Saint Cyprian at the very earliest? But as we continue in this, I would say there’s evidence for it even earlier than that. White objects to that, so we’ll take on his criticisms as they come.
Trent Horn:
He talks about how the mass, that Catholics celebrate… And read Justin Martyr’s first apology on the mass, a point for point correspondence to how we celebrate the mass today. It’s truly striking. He talks about how the-
James White:
Okay. Now that was just thrown out there for the fun of it. Okay? Bring that down. So, someone says, “Go read what Justin said,” and I have this idea of going… Go ahead and bring that down. Of going ahead and doing that. Trent told us this is exactly what we do in the mass. Really? Where’s the priest? Where’s the priest? Where is there a sacramental priesthood here? Because, see, a lot of Roman Catholic historians and theologians will admit that the concept of a sacramental sacerdotal priesthood developed over time, not in a uniform fashion.
Trent Horn:
So, White is correct. This was an offhand comment. So, for example, when I say read Justin Martyr’s first apology on the mass, I’m not saying that’s the title of the work. The work is called First Apology. I mean, read the section that describes the mass or describes the Lord’s Supper, just like I might say, “Read St. Paul’s letter to the Romans on justification.” Som why assume that I was talking about chapter 66 of the First Apology.. Which by the way, if you don’t know who this is, Justin Martyr was a second century Christian apologist. In the middle of the second century, he wrote a defense of Christianity to the Roman emperor saying that Christians are good for the Roman empire, they shouldn’t be persecuted, they’re not cannibals because people think they’re cannibals because they’re eating the flesh and blood of their savior Jesus Christ.
Trent Horn:
So, White is saying, “Well, you go to chapter 66, there’s no mention of a priest here,” and that’s correct, but I will say in chapter 66, it does talk about how Christians do not receive the bread and wine at mass. They do not receive it as common bread or common drink. Rather, they say that it is the flesh and blood of that Jesus who was made flesh. So, when talking about what the Eucharist is, I would say this is a very strong witness to early Christians believing in the real presence.
Trent Horn:
What I was talking about in that comment was in chapter 65, the one before this, that talks about the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, how there is a point for point correspondence with how the mass is celebrated today. It’s not going to be exactly the same, but there’s still many similarities. It talks about how having ended the prayers, we salute one another with a kiss, which we have as the kiss of peace. There was then brought to the president of the brethren, the person who presides over the Lord’s Supper, like how a priest presides over mass, a bread and a cup of wine mixed with water. And priests still today mix water into the wine for various symbolic reasons. And taking them gives praise and glory to the Father of the universe, to the name of the Son, of the Holy Ghost and offers thanks to considerable length, bar being counted worthy to receive these things at his hands. That’s the prayer of thanksgiving the priest still does today. When he as concluded the prayers and thanksgiving, all the people present express their ascent by saying amen. And we still have the great amen.
Trent Horn:
So, that was just the point that I was making, is that there’s a lot of similarity here. And I would say that a person reading this, it would be reasonable for them to conclude Justin is talking about a sacrificial service involving the Eucharist with one person who presides over it, that we would say is the priest who is a sacerdotal priest. Now, White denies that, of course, but I think anyone reading this could reasonably come to that conclusion, even if it is not as explicit as, say, in the writings of Saint Cyprian that we just looked at.
James White:
But notice what Gelasius wrote in 490, “By the sacraments, we are made partakers…” You won’t be able to see this. It’s in the footnote at the bottom. “By the sacraments, we are made partakers of the divine nature, and yet the substance and nature of bread and wine do not cease to be in them.
Trent Horn:
So, this is a proof text that Protestants bring up to try to show that some church fathers denied the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. I have here an excerpt from Father James O’Connor’s wonderful book, Hidden Manna: A Theology of the Eucharist, where he quotes Pope Gelasius, and it’s very clear Gelasius believes that the Eucharist is a divine thing. Divina res is what he calls it in Latin. And so, Father O’Connor quotes him in the book saying how, “The work of the Holy Spirit with the Eucharist, the bread and wine, they pass over into the divine substance while nevertheless remaining in their own nature.” So, it’s very clear Pope Gelasius believed there was a change in the Eucharist and that it is a divine thing. Now, of course, Pope Gelasius in the fifth century is not going to have the same theological vocabulary as the Lateran council in the 13th century when terms like transubstantiation are defined, but we wouldn’t expect that.
Trent Horn:
Just like how the early apostolic fathers, like you have Clement for example, or those in the early second century, don’t have Trinitarian theology. The word trinity doesn’t appear in Christian writings until the end of the second century, but you can see how it is formulated even in imprecise language. And the same thing occurs with the fathers when they talk about the Eucharist, as well. So, that’s an important thing to consider. But what White has quoted here from Pope Gelasius, it doesn’t prove what he thinks that it does. It’s very clear, when you read the rest of Gelasius, he believes the Eucharist is a divine thing, and as he says here, “The bread and wine, they pass over into the divine substance while nevertheless remaining in their own nature.” Now, he may use the words nature and substance differently than later writers, but he certainly didn’t hold to some merely symbolic view of the Eucharist.
James White:
Why is it that at this period of history you do not have the reservation of consecrated hosts? There are no priests. There are no censors. There are no statues. There’s no artwork. There’s no procession. There’s no [pixes 00:14:08] and monstrances and [seboreums 00:14:11] and genuflecting, none of that stuff. Notice nothing said here about offerings for people in Purgatory or anything like that at all because none of that has yet developed.
Trent Horn:
What’s interesting about White’s argument from silence is that I really think it undermines his own case. You know what we also don’t find in Justin Martyr or Irenaeus? A knowledge of a canon of scripture that matches our canon today. We don’t see belief in Calvinist ideas like that. A spiritually regenerated person cannot lose his salvation. You read people like Protestant historians like John Jefferson Davis, and they’re clear that prior to Calvin, Christians did not believe that it was impossible for a saved person to lose his salvation. And I demonstrated that as much in my debate that we had a few years ago. So, it’s interesting, he’s concerned like, “Where is this here? Why isn’t it here? Why is it in here?” Yet, his own doctrines won’t be found for over a millennia.
Trent Horn:
Number two, he seems to assume that, “Okay, if Justin doesn’t describe these things, then they didn’t happen.” How does he know that? But number three, even if that were the case, how is it the case that if Christians believe that the mass is a sacrifice, then they also have to practice Eucharistic adoration, for example? There are still Eastern Catholic churches to this day who don’t maintain a tradition of Eucharistic adoration. The Eucharist is only celebrated and consecrated in the divine liturgy, and then it is received in the divine liturgy. Because it is a sacred thing, it is just kept within the liturgy. However, as the church developed, you have in the Western church, a growing tradition of reserving the Eucharist, and so that’s a natural development of an original belief in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist.
Trent Horn:
But I think I mentioned this actually in a video I did dealing with White’s arguments, gosh, like a year ago with dealing with Francis Chan’s warming to the historicity of Catholic belief. And so, there, I pointed out that St. Basil the Great talks about how some of the Eucharist was reserved in a golden dove hung above the altar. And actually, at St. Basil the Great Church where I go to church here in Dallas, Texas, we have a golden dove above the altar because that’s what St. Basil talks about.
Trent Horn:
And number three, it’s like, “Oh, he doesn’t mention offering the mass for souls in Purgatory,” as if therefore that’s a belief that people didn’t believe in Purgatory, I guess, or that they didn’t do that. Just because it’s not described, one, doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And number two, we have other evidence attesting to early belief in the idea that there are souls that exist after death in an intermediary state. They are not damned, they are not in hell, but they are not in heaven either. Early evidence of that can be seen around the year 167 in a stone called the Abercius headstone. It was a headstone for Bishop Abercius, the Bishop of Phrygia, and he says there… Actually, it’s a very cryptic headstone because he doesn’t want people to know that he’s Christian. He didn’t want the secrets of Christianity revealed to pagans who had not been initiated.
Trent Horn:
So, in the inscription, he talks about, “Everywhere I was provided my food was a fish,” although, of course, that’s ichthus, that’s a secret term Christians used to refer to Jesus. Jesus Christ, the son of God, savior, ichthus in Greek. And then it talks about giving friends to eat, wine of great virtue mingled with bread. That’s a reference to the Eucharist. So, we see an early reference to that in the Abercius headstone. But in particular it says, “He that discerneth these things, every fellow believer, let him pray for Abercius.” So, here, we have Bishop Abercius, he’s written his own headstone saying, “Please pray for me.” Now, if you’re in hell, prayers aren’t going to help you. If you’re in heaven, you don’t need any prayers. So, the idea of praying for someone after they’ve died only makes sense if they’re in some kind of intermediary state where they’re being prepared for heaven, they have not met their heavenly destiny yet. And that makes sense of the doctrine of Purgatory. So, on all these counts, I really think this argument from silence that White puts forward often just doesn’t hold water.
James White:
And you know that in the ordination of the priest, when he is called an Alter Cristus, the idea that there is a special charism placed upon his soul, which allows him to do what? To work the miracle of transubstantiation so that you can have the mass. That’s why it’s so important. There’s nothing here. Nothing here like that.
Trent Horn:
Okay, just because a term is not used doesn’t mean that people didn’t believe in the idea behind the term, the Trinity is going to be the classic example of that. But when it comes to, by the way, being an Alter Cristus, yeah, the terms may develop later, but go back to what I wrote about Saint Cyprian, for example. He talks about how the priest does what Christ does, in the sense Christ offers himself to the Father, it says, “Certainly the priest truly discharges the office of Christ, who imitates that which Christ did.” Sounds like an Alter Cristus to me even if you’re not using the term.
Trent Horn:
But let me offer another example. So, White is saying, the idea of the indelible mark on the priest’s soul that is received in the sacrament of holy orders, there’s none of that here. Well, Catholics also believe that there is an indelible mark left on your soul through the sacrament of baptism. There is an indelible mark that is left. But that language did not develop for many centuries, even though Christians definitely believed from the very beginning that baptism regenerated someone and change their soul. So, you go, for example, [inaudible 00:20:05] go back to St. Cyprian in the middle of the third century, “They who are baptized in the church are presented to the bishops of the church, and by our prayer and imposition of hands, they receive the Holy Ghost and are perfected with the seal of the Lord.” We see this reference of the seal used over and over again in the church fathers. Cyprian says they are perfected with the seal, but we still don’t see language about an indelible mark that is left by baptism on the soul.
Trent Horn:
Nicholas [Sends 00:20:32] in an article in Homiletic Pastoral Review, he says, “Augustine is the first author to use the term character in connection with baptism.” So, the church fathers certainly believed that baptism left a mark on our souls, even if they don’t articulate in their writings. Another thing with Augustine is I’m sure the church fathers and white would agree they believed in original sin, but the term original sin doesn’t arrive until the time of Saint Augustine, for example. So, we can say the same thing about the sacrament of holy orders. Just because you don’t see church fathers talking about the indelible mark on the pre-soul, that doesn’t mean that they didn’t believe that. I think these examples show that kind of argument from silence is very faulty.
Trent Horn:
And it says of the Eucharist to gather on the Lord’s day and give thanksgiving, after you have confessed your transgressions. You got to go to confession, then you can go to mass.
James White:
Okay. Now, immediately… Let’s stop. Now, I’m going to read this. I’m going to point out that this isn’t actually from the Didache’s discussion of the Eucharist at all. “For this is what that which was spoken by the Lord in every place and time offered to me a pure sacrifice, for I’m a great king, sayeth the Lord, and my name is wonderful among the nations.” What’s he talking about? The worship of the gathered body. Did that include the Eucharistic sacrifice? Yeah. It also included doing baptisms and preaching of the word and prayers and singing of psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and everything else. Confession, what’s that going to say to everybody who was sitting there listening to Trent? What’s necessary for confession? Oh, one of those sacerdotal priests again. Right? So, you go and you confess to the Father. Well, that’s not in the Didache anywhere. There are no priests in the Didache. There is no foundation for believing there are priests in the Didache. There is nothing in the context around the Didache to say there were priests.
Trent Horn:
Okay. So, White’s criticism of my treatment of the Didache is similar to his criticism of my treatment of Justin Martyr. He basically says you have one section of this document that talks about the Eucharist, and in that section, it doesn’t mention a sacerdotal priesthood or anything like that. Therefore, we should assume that the author did not view the Eucharist as a sacrifice. But that doesn’t make sense because the authors of these documents, whether it’s Justin martyr or the Didache, do talk about the Lord’s supper, or the celebration, where the Eucharist is the focal point on Sundays. They talk about that in sacrificial terms.
Trent Horn:
And so, we should just read that at face value. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me saying, “Oh, unless the section on the Eucharist talks about it being a sacrifice, then it isn’t a sacrifice. This is another argument from silence that’s being made because the author can allude to it being a sacrifice when he’s talking about the worship service as a whole.Now, White is the same way, he’s saying the whole thing is a sacrifice of praise, and that’s true when you sing psalms and hymns and baptize, we do all that. But the point of gathering on the Lord’s day is to receive the Lord under the form of bread and wine in that sacrifice being represented.
Trent Horn:
Well, let me talk about the Didache, and then I’ll go back one step further to show that this makes sense. Also, when you look at other Biblical scholars, including Protestant scholars, they see this as well in the text, even if they’re not advocating for Catholic belief. There is a good anthology on the Didache put out by the Society of Biblical Literature a few years ago called The Didache: A Missing Piece of the Puzzle in Early Christianity. And one of the contributors notes that the Didache in chapter 14, where it’s talking about just gathering on the Lord’s day… I mean, it just seems silly if James White is saying this isn’t about the Eucharist. Well, it’s talking about gathering together for the breaking of bread. That’s an essential element, that is gathering for the Eucharist.
Trent Horn:
So, it says in this academic anthology, “The text in Didache 14 does not teach that the Eucharist is a sacrifice,” using the Greek word thusia, “but seems to take this idea for granted. It is used as an argument for maintaining that Christians should participate in this sacrifice only with an unpolluted conscience. That goes to the question of confessions. That’s why it was perfectly [inaudible 00:24:53] for me to say you got to go to confession before you go to mass… I mean, they didn’t call it mass. Obviously, that’s a medieval term. Before you gather for the Lord’s supper, before you gather on Sunday to receive bread and wine to receive not as common bread or common drink, as Justin says, but as the flesh and blood of our savior Jesus Christ. Before you receive that, confess your sins.
Trent Horn:
And now White says, “Yeah, but it doesn’t say to confess it to a priest.” Well, no, because when the Didache was written, the confession, it may have been to a priest, but it would not have been only to a priest because at this time in church history, the confession of sins was public before the assembly. David Rensberger in his commentary on I, II, and III John notes this because I John 1:9 says that, “If we confess our sins, he is merciful. He will forgive us.” It’s not talking about confessing sins directly to God. It’s within the context of confessing things to other people, like our faith, for example. So, that’s why Rensberger in his commentary on I, II, and III John says, “Confession of sin was generally public,” and he cites the New Testament, James 5:16, and he cites the Didache, Didache 4:14 and 14:1, to show that you’re confessing sins in the presence of the church, which would include the elders, or we would call the priests, of the church and the assembly, or the bishops, the overseers.
Trent Horn:
So, what we see here is maybe not as explicit, once again, as later authors, but that’s similar to writings from the deity of Christ, the Trinity, other elements of Christology or salvation, things like original sin. It’s certainly here. And people who are not dead set on trying to refute the Catholic understanding of the mass being a form of sacrifice can grant this. As I said before, there’s earlier antecedents that make sense of this idea that when the Didache is talking about gathering together on the Lord’s day, it’s talking about confession of sins publicly within the context of the liturgy so that you are not polluted by sin and can offer up a sacrifice that is received in the breaking of the bread. The antecedents would be, I would cite Saint Ignatius of Antioch and his letter to the Philadelphians, he talks about how, “Take care to have one Eucharist.” There’s one Eucharist, and that means you get that from one cup, one flesh, one altar. There is an altar. You make sacrifices on altars. “One bishop, presbytery, and deacons, my fellow servants.” Ignatius is talking about maintaining unity with the bishop…
Trent Horn:
Which by the way, also, if White applied this standard… Read just the apostolic fathers first and second centuries, would you get the later Catholic understanding of the Eucharist transubstantiation? I think you’d have a better chance of getting that than you would get Sola scriptura. Could you just read the first and second century apostolic fathers and get the 27 book canon of the New Testament and all the arguments about the formal sufficiency of scripture based on that? No way. Absolutely no way that you could do that. And yet, that’s something that James White believes is the central doctrine of authority for Protestants.
Trent Horn:
And to go back the idea that we’re talking about an altar here, you go all the way back to I Corinthians chapter 10, verses 20 through 21, St. Paul is telling the Corinthians, “I do not want you to be partners with demons,” people who are worshiping idols are demons, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons. You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.” This is important because the word table here, it’s not just any old table, it’s talking about, you cannot worship at the sacrificial altar of idols, the demonic. If you partake of the sacrificial altar of the demonic, you cannot partake of the altar where the sacrifice of Christ is represented. So, once again, the arguments he’s making saying that the Didache, he could make an argument from silence saying you don’t get explicit references to sacerdotal priests, but once again, an argument from silence can only go so far.
Trent Horn:
What you do get from this, as I’ve cited here, is that the Eucharist is seen, the breaking of the bread on the Lord’s day is seen as a sacrifice that is offered one that you do not want to be polluted by sin in approaching, so you offer the public confession of sins as a result. And confessing sins within the liturgy would imply that you have a minister to mediate that with the rest of the assembly witnessing, which would be further, at the very least, indirect evidence of the priesthood that James White says didn’t exist at that time.
Trent Horn:
Malachi 1:11, the prophet says, “And in every place incense is offered to my name, a pure offering, for my name is great among the nations.” So, that is what Justin Martyr says, that this prophecy was fulfilled in the Eucharist, which is a sacrifice. So, Protestants will say, “Yeah, they believe in the Lord’s Supper.”
James White:
Okay? And so, we dealt with this. This is where we got to last time, where we stopped. There is an understanding amongst Roman Catholics that Malachi one is a prophecy of a… Well, of the idea that there is going to be this worldwide idea of a sacrifice that is pleasing to God. And what you do then is you fill that phrasiology of sacrifice with a theology that developed more than 1,000 years after the time of Christ, and then you read it back into these sources. The early church does believe they’re offering a sacrifice of praise.
Trent Horn:
Okay, so the mass is still called a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving to this very day, but that doesn’t mean that it’s only the sacrifice of praise. So, when I was listening through to White’s response, he never actually puts forward a specific reason why we should think that Justin Martyr did not connect the mass being celebrated by Christians in his time as a sacrifice to the prophecy in Malachi chapter one of a sacrifice being offered all over the face of the earth. In fact, this was a prophecy that’s quoted not just by Justin, but in the Didache, in Irenaeus, and in the Apostolic Constitution. The church fathers were very fond of quoting this.
Trent Horn:
So, I’m not sure why White is so concerned about this, honestly. Let’s just suppose that the church fathers all believed in the real presence and that the mass is a sacrifice, the Lord’s Supper is a propitiatory sacrifice that takes away sin. That’s not going to change James White’s view on the Eucharist not one bit. Because when you examine the fathers, when Protestant historians, even people like William Webster and apologists like White, Webster will say that the early church fathers believe that there is universal consent among the fathers about baptismal regeneration. That’s very clear among the church fathers, that they all believed baptism regenerates you, it spiritually cleanses the soul. White doesn’t believe that, because he would say it’s not from the New Testament. It’s not Biblical, it’s not apostolic, because it’s not what he believes the Bible teaches according to his theology.
Trent Horn:
So, even if it were the case… I just don’t know why he’s so concerned about trying to show the fathers didn’t believe this about the mass, because if it did, it wouldn’t change his position anyways. And when you look at other Protestant scholars on even people like Justin Martyr and the other apostolic fathers, you see them recognizing an early belief in the real presence and the mass as a sacrifice. Everett Ferguson is a Protestant historian, wrote a great work on baptism in the early church. He says, “Although Justin identified the sacrifice primarily with the prayers in the mass, he also spoke with the bread and cup as the sacrifice. Irenaeus more explicitly spoke of the bread and cup as an oblation of the first fruits of creation, or sacrifice.” Harry Lowen, who’s a Mennonite scholar, so he’s Protestant, says, “The church fathers, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian seem to believe in the sacrificial nature of the mass and held either to transubstantiation or consubstantiation.”
Trent Horn:
And then we have Martin Luther writing the Babylonian Captivity of the Church, Luther is talking about, “What do we say? What about the church fathers who speak about the mass being a sacrifice?” Luther doesn’t say that they rejected that and that they held a view like his. Instead, what Luther says is, “It would yet be the safer course to reject them all, rather than admit that the mass is a work or a sacrifice.” So, that is just what is strange from White’s position. If the church fathers don’t seem to endorse a view like the immaculate conception or the mass as sacrifice, then that counts against Catholicism. But if Calvinist doctrines or a New Testament canon of scripture are totally absent from the fathers, that doesn’t matter because people like James White only believe in Sola scriptura.
Trent Horn:
That is why when White here talks soon about the issue of debates about… In fact that let me address that point now, then I’ll show you White’s response about this. That is why, ultimately, if James White and I were going to debate this, he has said online, “Let’s have a debate about the sacerdotal priesthood. Did the apostles establish a sacerdotal priesthood?” But we’re not going to be coming at it on equal terms because White is going to say, when we look at all the evidence, the church fathers… Even if I showed the church fathers all believe in this, that won’t matter to him because his standard for determining what the apostles did is Sola scriptura. He says so himself in this presentation because I offered, instead, “Well, why don’t you debate Jimmy Akin on Sola scriptura?” And he says, “Well, I’ve already done those debates a lot.” Well, I looked online. I think he’s done it like four times over 30 years. I think it’s okay to do it again. It’s a pretty fundamental issue.
Trent Horn:
And I offered to debate him on apostolic succession. Are there teachers in the church, are there people in the church who have authority, pastoral authority, unique pastoral authority that other Christians do not have in virtue of them being successors of the apostles? So, before we can figure out sacerdotal priesthood, Marian dogmas, we have to figure out what is our authority? Is it scripture alone? And if it’s not scripture alone, if that is false, where does the authority lie? If it lies in successors of the apostles, how do we locate these individuals? That was what we need to debate, and it’s interesting, actually, to see White’s comments in this episode on the nature of apostolic succession.
James White:
Because see, from a Biblical perspective, the successor of an apostle is a person who teaches what an apostle taught. We have only one example of what the apostles taught, it’s called the New Testament. Irenaeus would be central to any discussion that would be had about apostolic succession. He does have a belief in a charism of teaching ability that is given to the bishops, which is what makes them different from the Gnostics. Irenaeus is a step in what would be the final argument of Trent Horn on apostolic succession. Let’s put it that way. And see, I as a Protestant go, “I see that.” Augustine’s going to be another step later on. And there’s development over here, there’s development over there. I’ve said over and over again, if you read these books where you have this doctrine developed in this year, and this one in that year, those are wrong. You don’t just have a new thing that develops.
Trent Horn:
I was really interested to see what White’s conclusion was about apostolic succession, because he seemed to be admitting that many of the church fathers held to the basic thesis that I would defend in a debate with him, which is that there are certain individuals, this does not apply to every Christian in the body of Christ, but certain individuals within the church have a special charism of teaching or pastoring or leading the church in virtue of being successors of the apostles. He seems to admit that the early church fathers did believe this, and he can accept that they believe that, but he doesn’t have to believe that himself. But he lost the train of thought because he had a technical difficulty and he never came back to the issue.
Trent Horn:
Well, I think I’m going to stop here because I’m just going to keep… He says other things in the talks about Irenaeus and tradition and the papacy, and I think for a thematic purpose, I’ll just keep this episode focused on what I said in my presentation about the Eucharist and sacrifice and White’s reply to that. He might continue talking about my old talk. He might even respond to this video. I’m not sure. And I may make a future response if he does, but I don’t want to get caught in that back and forth. Basically, it’s on the table, we should debate the central elements of authority. The central element is Sola scriptura. Is that your central authority or not? And Jimmy Akin has been willing to debate James White on this for a long time. It hasn’t come to fruition. I don’t see why it shouldn’t.
Trent Horn:
And I will be willing to defend, then, “Okay, what is the basic framework for Catholic authority?” And it’s going to be apostolic succession because there’s lots of things, ancillary details, that we can argue about, but if scripture is not the ultimate authority and that teaching and pastoring authority is found in persons, before we can say if it’s the Pope, we have to say, “Do these people exist? Is that what Christ established?” If they did, then we can have another discussion about whether some of these individuals like the Pope have other special charisms like infallibility. But we got to get to the central issues first. I’m willing to debate James White on that. We’ll see if that ever changes. I’d love to see him debate Jimmy on Sola scriptura. We’ll see how that goes.
Trent Horn:
But if you would like more on this topic and others, I think I would recommend my book, The Case for Catholicism. It’s probably the most in-depth single volume defense of Catholicism against Protestant objections. White is cited many times in there, along with other contemporary Protestant apologists, as well as Luther, Calvin, others like that. Definitely check that out. So, hey, thank you guys so much for listening, and definitely keep, please, supporting the podcast so we can keep putting these videos and episodes out. Go to Trenthornpodcast.com to do that. And I just hope you have a very blessed day.
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