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In this episode, Trent and Suan Sonna break down his recent debate with Gavin Ortlund on sola scriptura.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey, everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. This is the debrief for my debate with Gavin Ortlund on Sola scriptura. As you can tell by the surroundings, I’m recording it the following morning, actually. So, super fun last night. One, it was awesome to meet so many people, Gavin, obviously. And Suann Sona, Suann came to the debate. I’m like, “Here he is, the man, the myth, the legend himself.” So thanks for coming to the debate by the way.
Suan Sonna:
Oh, Trent, it was such a gift. It was so good to see you again, to see Gavin in person for the first time.
Trent Horn:
So I figured, “Hey, how about tomorrow morning, we’ll just hang out. We’ll talk a little bit about the debate, do just a short debrief.” I don’t believe in doing really rigorous autopsies or redoing the debate over again. I don’t think that’s helpful for anybody. But I think it’s neat to point out the main points and just a few things that we found interesting. But yeah, I was super pumped that you were there. You were sitting… We were joking about this last night because Suann was sitting in the front row. And so when I do debates, it’s one thing you do a debate and there’s other people out there watching, but when you see other apologists, and Suann has done debates on Sola scriptura. So when you have another Catholic apologist who has debated this subject and will approach the subject in different ways, I’ll always catch out of the corner of my eye, I’m like making an argument and I’m like, “Suann was nodding approvingly.” Okay. All right. Looks like that went over well. Okay. So, it was great.
Suan Sonna:
Trent, the fact that you would care if I was nodding in approval also means a lot to me. [inaudible 00:01:42]
Trent Horn:
Well, you’ve got really solid arguments. And also you’ve engaged a lot of Gavin Ortlund’s work before on the papacy, on Sola scriptura. I’m really glad we did this debate, because I actually have a policy that I’m not going to debate Protestants on issues that are way too far away from us. I’m not going to do a debate on the assumption of Mary or the Treasury of Merits. I do think they’re important, and I’ll talk about them. But a lot of those debates, it’s going to come back to what is our ultimate authority. So it’s like, look, we might as well just debate what is our ultimate authority. And let’s talk about Sola scriptura. Is that true? What did you think was interesting though about how Gavin approached this issue versus other ways Protestants have approached it, maybe how James White would approach it in his debate with Pat Madrid?
Suan Sonna:
Right. I think that Gavin didn’t really emphasize, let’s say, the perspicuity of scripture or maybe even the sufficiency of scripture. I think his whole idea was, “Okay, sure, those are secondary things. What I’m mainly going to emphasize is look, premise one, we all agree that scripture is inspired. It’s the word of God. It’s infallible. Second, we don’t know of any other sources.” Or, I think he actually just said there are no other sources.
Trent Horn:
He made a stronger claim than I thought he would make.
Suan Sonna:
Right. And then the third premise would just… The conclusion would simply be that, “Okay, well then scripture’s the only infallible source.” So Gavin was only defending that particular claim. So for example, if scripture’s difficult to interpret, if it is really hard for the average person to understand, that wouldn’t be relevant to his argument. All that would be relevant is just, is there another rule or not?
Trent Horn:
And he would, in formulating it this way, he makes it immune, because the classic Catholic retort, when people bring up Sola scriptura, is a Catholic will just say, “Okay, well, where is that in the Bible?” And if you just say that, Gavin can say, “Well, I’m not saying it’s necessarily in the Bible. I’m not saying that Sola scriptura means everything we believe is in the Bible. I’m just saying it’s one infallible rule. There are no other infallible rules. So it’s the only infallible rule.”
Suan Sonna:
He explicitly said too that it’s a theological inference, or I think maybe you [inaudible 00:03:54]-
Trent Horn:
I quoted him as part of what I try to do in a lot of my debates is read my opponent extensively and see what they’ve said. So here’s what I find interesting about when he’s talking about sola scriptura like it’s infallible, if it’s a sole infallible rule of faith, it does make sola scriptura tied essentially to the doctrine of biblical inerrancy.
So if you have Protestants who deny biblical inerrancy, you have completely undercut what sola scriptura is about. So it was interesting. I wanted to see what Gavin’s thoughts were on that subject. So I read his review of a recent book. I think it’s by Zondervan called Five Views on Biblical Inerrancy. So they have Protestants who are very classical and very firm, the Bible’s inerrant in every way, and the Chicago statement on the Bible. And others who are like, “Well, the Bible does give us saving truths, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s infallible in how it does that.”
And Gavin tries, as he often does, to find a middle ground between everybody. And I think his middle ground in that review was, well, inerrancy is important but it’s an inference we make from the Bible. To which my point in the debate was, “Okay, so if the Bible doesn’t even directly say it is an infallible rule, it doesn’t directly say it’s the only infallible rule. And that’s what we’re here debating tonight.”
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. So when I looked at your argument and what you’re, again, pointing out, I think the two ways that you’re responding is the first premise of Gavin’s argument, which is that the Bible is an infallible rule of faith. I think you were trying to tease out why exactly does he believe that?
Trent Horn:
That’s right.
Suan Sonna:
And I think he even explicitly noted the reason why he believes it’s an infallible rule of faith is different from why you believe it’s an infallible rule of faith.
Trent Horn:
That’s right.
Suan Sonna:
Because you take it on the authority of the church. He takes it because maybe a prior faith and theological inference from the text itself.
Trent Horn:
Right. Because I think this is important for Catholic apologists to watch out for this trap. Because I agree, if you’re going to make an argument for sola scriptura, I think this is one of the strongest rhetorical ones a Protestant can make. Because they’re just saying, “Look, guys, we all agree the Bible’s infallible.” Yeah, of course the Bible’s infallible. It makes it very easy for a Protestant apologist to shift the burden of proof. Where he says, “Well, yeah, I can prove sola scriptura. Is there another infallible rule of faith? Can you prove the church? Can you prove sacred tradition? Oh, you couldn’t do that? Well, scripture’s still the only infallible rule.” And what I know in the book… Let’s see. Actually, I should grab… I’m not going to going to grab it. Hang on everybody. Of when Protestants argue like atheists.
Suan Sonna:
Oh, look at that. I remember that.
Trent Horn:
But to me, it’s such a similar argument to when an atheist will say, “Look, Gavin, we agree the natural world exists, man. We agree nature exists. Can you prove anything exists beyond nature? Oh, your arguments for God didn’t convince me? Oh, well then nature’s the only thing that exists.” And to me, it’s the exact same argument. Because, that was the point I wanted to raise in the debate was the key premise in his argument is, there are no other infallible rules of faith. How do you know that’s true? That’s such a crucial premise. And it seemed like his only evidence for that was, here are a few possible rules, like certain papal statements or sacred traditions. And they have problems. But to me, it’s like, okay, even if they did have problems, you haven’t refuted all the other rules. So I thought that was interesting.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah, because I think to use the analogy again about the debate with the atheist. It would be like saying, with that first premise, we agree the natural world exists. And then if the atheist says, “Well, show me that the supernatural realm exists, or that there are other realities.” What you could say is, “Well, let’s go into that first premise. Why does the natural world exist?” Right. And that’s what you were doing in the debate. How do we know that scripture is infallible?
Trent Horn:
And how do we know these books are scripture?
Suan Sonna:
Exactly. Exactly. Just basic fundamental points on the nature of scripture itself that are taken for granted often in these debates.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. I think one thing that Gavin really focused on was the question of being inspired. And so he basically only had two arguments to try to say nothing else is described like scripture is described. It’s called [inaudible 00:08:05] in 2nd Timothy 3:16. And Jesus allegedly compares tradition to scripture in Matthew 15 and Mark 7 about the corban and the hand washing rules. And so I wanted to point out there is, okay, even just from these biblical, these verses, you’re not going to get the doctrine, a robust, explicit statement of the doctrine of inerrancy or infallibility, because I pointed out, you’re assuming that only that which is [inaudible 00:08:35] is infallible.
And if I could have done something different, I think I would’ve pressed more. Could something be infallible if it’s not [inaudible 00:08:43]. There’s no reason to think, why can’t it be that? But the point I did raise frequently was that in the early church, there were things considered [inaudible 00:08:54] that are not biblical or infallible, like church fathers, early documents. And I quoted John [inaudible 00:09:00] as one scholar on that. And then Lee Martin McDonald, I’m sure you’ve read all of McDonald’s stuff.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. Yeah.
Trent Horn:
So if you want a great Protestant scholar on… He wrote a book called The Biblical Cannon. And he’s just very frank about the development of the cannon and how it’s so gradual and incremental that I thought his work in the book. I see on my notes there, page 273. What he says right here about the written gospels and where he says that there were lots of things in the early church described as the [inaudible 00:09:33] and the early Christians could believe… This is a point I actually didn’t get to bring up in the debate, but McDonald cites another scholar. I think his name’s Kaylen, who says that he looked at the first 400 years of church history, and he could not find an example of a non-biblical work called uninspired. So in the early church, something could be said to be inspired as long as it’s not heretical.
And so from there, it’s like, okay, yeah, the Bible’s inspired, but you don’t get that, “Oh, only that which is inspired is our sole infallible rule of faith.” It’s pressing too much into the argument, I think.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. And I think going back to something that Gavin did in the debate was, I think regarding that second premise, that there are no other infallible rules of faith. I think the main thing that he did was by citing those papal bulls or other examples of traditions conflicting, like the date of Easter, was I think he was… Obviously, he was just casting a lot of doubt on any other possibility of there being other traditions. And I think you were trying to show, okay, well that’s an oversimplification. And even so, you can find harmonizations and reconciliations for these apparent contradictions.
Trent Horn:
And that’s important, I think, for Catholics to bring up. And once again, I know Protestants don’t like this, and that’s fine. You can be offended a bit by this. But I still believe the parallel holds when Protestants argue like atheists. And that’s why I brought it up. Like when he brought up the death penalty, for example, it’s always difficult in debates. It’s like, “Hey, here’s this problem with Catholicism. Solve it in 60 seconds.” And it’s like, “Oh, come on, man.” So that’s why I think, all right, look, what you’re doing is no different… When he says, “Look, your church contradicted itself on the death penalty. A thousand years ago, it’s okay. Now it’s not.” And that’s why I said, “Well, Gavin, how would you tell an atheist 3000 years ago, it was okay to perpetually pass someone on as a slave to your descendants, and now you would say, as a Christian, that’s immoral.” You’re going to appeal to the same gradual development understanding of applying morality that I will. So don’t act like you’re immune to this problem.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. I remember in the past too, when Gavin and I debated and I brought up… We were debating the sanhedrin, for example, and talking about some of the Jewish elements in the debate.
Trent Horn:
Yes. And that’s your wheelhouse. I’d love to hear about that.
Suan Sonna:
Yeah. Well, in the past when we debated things like the sanhedrin, I remember Gavin, he was talking about how the sanhedrin was really cruel in some of its rulings. Now, I’m not endorsing the full infallibility of the sanhedrin. I am saying that there might be a precursor though to what the magisterium has to some extent. But I remember I brought up the example of Moses in the Old Testament stoning people. That was pretty cruel. And I remember during our debate on capturing Christianity, I think Gavin took that point. And so I think there are things that we can really press Gavin on, such as development, even in the Old Testament and morality throughout the Bible to some extent.
Trent Horn:
Absolutely. Yeah. But overall, I’m trying to think other things to… It’s always funny when I go back. You know the same thing when you do debates, the first thing you think of is, “Oh, I would’ve said that differently. I would’ve…” But for me doing debates, I always think of debates. This isn’t the place to end an issue. It’s the place to begin it. That I like doing debates, not because I think a debate, this will settle the issue. That no debate can do that. But I like debates because they can get someone excited to think about the issue and think, “Oh wow, that other side made a really good point. I’m going to read some of that stuff they brought up and go and look at that.”
Another point I found interesting from my perspective, okay, I got to prepare. Especially taking the negative, I know mostly what I’m going to be doing all night is rebutting Gavin, not necessarily putting forward a positive case. Now, I did offer some infallible rules of faith, but they weren’t my major case. But I was trying to think, “Okay, well what’s he going to do?” And I basically thought, yeah, he’s going to do 2nd Timothy 3:16 and the corban rule, in order to engage that. I thought he would hammer me more with church fathers. I was expecting a blitz of quotes of fathers talking about the sufficiency of scripture. It must be proven from scripture. But I was surprised he just had a few references from Augustine, and that was it.
Suan Sonna:
Well, there’s some merit to that because if you start quoting a bunch of church fathers, then what that puts the burden on you to do is then go into the original context and then do the exegesis. But it’s advantageous for him to take some of the things that he’s really studied like Augustine and drop that. And then other examples throughout history, just having a few there.
Trent Horn:
Yeah. What do you think about… Because my point in the debate I brought up was several caveat, like a caveat, and then engage in the argument. That’s fine. Let’s say Augustin believed in sola scriptura. You can have fathers who are at variance with the church and believe things that are incorrect. And we eventually find the true sacred tradition. It doesn’t have to be 100% unanimous. But I also think, I’m just really skeptical of this idea that, “Oh, yeah, Augustine had a high view of the church like us. He just didn’t think it was infallible. But he believed that only scripture was infallible.” I think that that’s more of a tenuous reading of some of Augustine’s work. I don’t know what you think about that.
Suan Sonna:
Well, this got into another thing that I noticed in the debate, which is when we were talking about the nature of authority. And I remember afterwards I talked to a Dr. Alexander Plato in the cigar lounge about this. But one thing that we noted was, there’s a way in which, as Catholics, even the catechism says that the magisterium is the servant of the scriptures. And so there is a way, as you’re pointing out, that there is a priority to scripture in all of this. And so to use an example, take the Supreme Court of the United States. Well, it should be bound by the text of the Constitution, right?
And so there’s a way in which it has a priority over the institution itself. But then when the institution gives its interpretation, and I remember during Gavin’s first rebuttal, he said, interpretation is everything. And that’s true, right? Because you have the text, but you also have to have that interpretation with it, or else where’s the meaning? And you pointed out very well with Jerome that it’s not the letters, it’s the meaning that we care about. And so if you have this institution that can interpret the text on a definitive level, then you can say there’s an equality there. In terms of for me to understand the text, there has to be interpretation. There’s this mechanism for interpretation, but that doesn’t deny that there’s a priority to the text itself, because that’s what we’re all going back to.
Trent Horn:
And that’s why I thought I just had the pithy phrase off the top of my head was it’s prior not higher, is the idea to say, yeah, the scripture is going to be prior, especially to the magisterium, which serves it. But even to sacred tradition that interprets it. Because he’s making a big point. And it’s true. We will, in dei verbum and other places, speak about scripture being inspired. And that same language isn’t used of sacred tradition. But it doesn’t follow that therefore, one is infallible and the other is not. And so I think that’s the key point to get at the argument that he’s saying. I guess I have just two other things, and then your thoughts would be great. The other main argument he made a lot was the Matthew 15 and the corban rule, which is a very common Protestant argument to say, “Look, Jesus compared tradition to scripture. We should do the same. He only held scripture as the infallible rule of faith.”
And I wasn’t sure how this argument was going to go, ’cause I’d never used it before. But my reply was that Jesus is not talking about scripture. Either he’s not or we have no reason to believe he is, because the phrase “word of God” is almost, or possibly always in the Bible. It’s never used to describe just a written text. It’s used to describe prophetic utterances, apostolic preaching. So what I would say here, what Jesus is saying is that your traditions violate what God told Moses. That it’s not about, “Hey, your traditions violate the written word of God.” It’s God told Moses this. That’s what should really matter in how you interpret things. And that’s why I said in the debate, especially in Matthew, if you’re pinning it on what Matthew says, where Jesus says, “You leave void the word of God,” the manuscripts are divided on that.
Because there’s manuscripts where it says [foreign language 00:17:52], the commandment of God or the noman, the law of God is what you contradict, not just the scriptures. And I think he was just like, “No, of course he’s talking about scripture.” [inaudible 00:18:07] I hear what I just said? You’re reading that into the text because we have this modern assumption word of God is scripture.
Suan Sonna:
So during that debate or during that part of the debate, I should say, when he was talking about the Pharisees, I was just thinking, there’s so much nuance here that needs to be mentioned. Because for example, this idea that the church widespread rejected Pharisaism. Last night, I was looking at Craig Keener’s inner cultural background commentary on the New Testament. And Keener talks about in first Corinthians 11:2 I believe, where Paul talks about traditions and handing them on, that this is exactly what a Palestinian Pharisee would say.
And so, you have to be careful about having Jesus totally reject the authority of the Pharisees, especially when you have Matthew 23, 2 to 3. But also when you have Paul who never gives up the title of Pharisee saying, “I’m giving you written and unwritten traditions.” That’s not an accident. That’s not a historical accident. He is still interpreting and functioning as a Pharisee, but in a Christian context.
Trent Horn:
I think Michael Barber, I don’t think the book is out yet. I think he told me that maybe he and Brant Petri… I’m pretty sure, ’cause I saw him at a conference a while ago. Well, actually it like a few months ago, saying they were working on a book called Paul the Pharisee. I think they are because they’re doing Paul a New Covenant Jew. So that one they’ve already done. And I think they’re working on a follow up to that call… [inaudible 00:19:27] have I got it wrong, I’m sorry. But [inaudible 00:19:29] as I remember, saying that they want to do a whole book on Paul the Pharisee, to understand him.
Suan Sonna:
There’s a book actually edited by I think the Jewish scholar Harvey Falk called Jesus the Pharisee.
Trent Horn:
But that’s something that’s so important for us to bring in this idea that we always just think, “Oh, the Pharisees were these Captain Planet super villains, and Jesus came to defeat them.” And the church is just the resurgence of the Pharisees, without taking really seriously what Jesus said in Matthew 23, “Do what they say, but not what they do.” Which I turned back to Gavin’s like, “Why did Jesus say that? If they were wrong, just say, don’t listen to these. Why wouldn’t Jesus just say, listen to the scriptures, not the Pharisees?”
Suan Sonna:
And the other thing too is that going to your point, your interpretation is possible that Jesus is just more widely just referring to what God said, which could’ve come in an oral and written form in the case of the commandment. But in the second temple period, you had people who claim to be the authoritative, I think it’s Ben Sura for example, who claim to be able to adjudicate which interpretations and traditions are inspired versus which aren’t. And so there was this idea that of adjudicating between authentic and inauthentic traditions based on the spiritual authority that one had. And so we could see Jesus doing this in a way.
Trent Horn:
Oh, absolutely. And it would still go back to the standard argument of saying, just because there are false traditions, doesn’t mean there aren’t genuine ones. There are false scriptures. Doesn’t mean there aren’t genuine scriptures.
Suan Sonna:
And some people will mention, for example, how Jude has the dispute between Michael, the archangel and the devil over Moses’s body. Or a Hebrews talking about how Enoch was taken up. So there are these traditions that you see that aren’t really explicitly mentioned in the Old Testament that would’ve been oral tradition for the Jews. And then it appears in the New Testament as at least that part being inspired, right? Which shows you then you did have, at least in the interim, oral tradition that was always true and then vindicated by God’s word.
Trent Horn:
Or in Paul’s letter to Timothy, when he names the magicians who oppose Moses, Jannes and Jambres, which is not actually in the Old Testament. So it was a tradition that they carried on.
Suan Sonna:
Exactly. So then you can’t say that Jesus had a wholesale rejection of tradition or else then you’re going to have all kinds of contradictions throughout the Bible.
Trent Horn:
So I think the last point I’ll bring up that I’d love to hear just any other thoughts you have about the debate. I really enjoy doing the cross-examination period. Cross-examination is always the most fun part of any debate. And I could’ve drilled down more into his syllogism and say, “All right, let’s…” And I did that a little bit at the end of it. But I decided I thought it would be more fruitful for the audience and for people watching, I really wanted to show the consequences of sola scriptura. And I really wanted to show what happens when you try to adopt this view, the Bible’s the only infallible rule of faith. Well, actually, this morning I’ve got an idea for another book. Another book cooking right up here. That Patrick Madrid coined that phrase, sola scriptura, a blueprint for anarchy. A while ago, he wrote an article on that.
And Protestants often say, “No, that’s overstated. That’s overblown.” So what I tried to do in the cross was just to ask simple questions of what are the essential doctrines? What am I supposed to believe? And I feel like when you look at how Gavin answered the questions and how… Because it’s very easy for Protestants to say this all the time. Well, look, Catholics and Protestants agree on the essentials. Protestants all agree Jesus is fully man and fully God. Then it’s like, do they? Which is, yeah, it’s easy to say. Of course, we believe he’s fully man and fully God. Well, you could have asked Arias, you could have asked a lot of these early heretics. Of course, he’s fully man and fully God. But this distinct part of Christology, well, no, he doesn’t. He doesn’t have a human will.
Well, Paul [inaudible 00:23:17] well, no, he doesn’t have a human mind. He’s fully human. But the [inaudible 00:23:21], he has the divine mind. And these are important questions, not just so on… I focused on Christology and morality, and also sacraments like infant baptism. Just going through and asking, does the church or the Bible have a teaching on this? And I think you see the blueprint very quickly.
Suan Sonna:
Because I noticed during that part that, you had to see Gavin sit down and privately decide there. For example, he said something like, “I don’t think it’s necessary that he has a human mind, maybe.” So he was open on some of that. But then again, he did say, “Okay, I don’t want to be on the spot and have to answer these huge theological questions.”
Trent Horn:
But that’s why we have these ecumenical councils. And I would say, correct. You shouldn’t have to be on the spot to answer it. So for me, any of us going through theological formation, you’d say, “Okay, what do we believe about Jesus?” Well, he’s [inaudible 00:24:19] with the father. He has a fully human mind. He has a fully human will. Here’s what came out of Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon, third Constantinople, and we have our Christology. And there might be some aspects of Christology. People will debate about the precise nature between Jesus’ human and divine mind. What kind of subconscious knowledge did he have? But we can only work on those exploratory areas of Christology if we have the basics locked in [inaudible 00:24:48] defined.
Suan Sonna:
Well, I think the big admission at the end of the debate was when Gavin said, something like the church that is always open to reform or is always reforming. And that sent off some alarm bells in my head. Because it reminded me when I was a liberal looking into conservatism in high school. And I ran across a quote by Thomas Payne, where he basically said, “Every generation has the right to recreate itself based on reason.” And it’s like, yeah, then that’s a recipe for just all kinds of anarchy and chaos and just undoing things and rebuilding things.
Trent Horn:
And when I heard that, that’s what perked my ears. And why I said in my closing statement, if the church is always reforming, that means every doctrine is up for grabs. It is. Because the problem is, you can’t make this dividing marker to say, “Well, here’s the things we can reform and change, but here’s the things you can’t touch.” You can’t do that if it’s just scripture and your interpretation of it.
Suan Sonna:
And this was a point that Gavin made about how other churches have authority in terms of… For example, they can excommunicate members or when he was ordained by his denomination. But the thing is, I think you pointed this out, where if someone has the infallible Texas scripture and they interpret it and think that they are aligning with the infallible Texas scripture. And then you have this fallible human authority that tries to do something to you like excommunicate you, whatever, disagree with your interpretation, then you can just go start your own church.
Trent Horn:
Or join another church.
Suan Sonna:
Or join another church. And so I think Gavin tried to say that it’s not just me and my Bible. But what’s stopping that? What really is stopping that?
Trent Horn:
And even if the Catholic church doesn’t define something infallibly, which I made the point, he’s worried about infallible definitions. That’s why I use the imagery of break glass in case of emergency. The church’s operation of infallibility is not meant to be done every other day. Let’s just infallibly define this. It’s purposely meant after a thoughtful, deliberative process that sometimes takes centuries on issues to finally bring the matter to a close.
But we’re still bound to obey the teachings that are not infallibly defined. That’s almost all of them. So an example I often give is… And that’s why I brought up in the debate in vitro fertilization. Okay, can a church tell me you can’t do this even though the Bible says nothing about it? And if I disobey the church on that, will God have something to say about that? Because even if it’s not infallibly defined, if you say, “You know what? I’m going to donate sperm and egg in surrogacy to help a gay couple adopt, to create a child, to manufacture them through IVF for other people.” Well, I will be held accountable for that sin.
Even if I say, “You know what? I think the church is wrong about that because it’s not in the Bible.” Because what the church would say on IVF, because it’s not infallibly defined, at the very least, you just… Because an [inaudible 00:27:47] doctrine, if you deny this doctrine, you commit a grave sin. If you deny Christ’s divinity or something like that. But for the ones that are not infallibly defined [inaudible 00:27:57] say, “Look, at the very least, don’t get IVF and don’t protest the church on it,” would just be the bare minimum you’re asked to do as a Catholic. Don’t do it. And don’t publicly say the church is wrong on it. And if you do one of those two things, there are spiritual consequences for that. But I think Gavin had to admit, under Protestantism, there can’t possibly be a spiritual consequence for disobeying a church because you think the word of God says something else.
Suan Sonna:
And I think there needs to be spiritual consequences because the things that we’re talking about of faith, a lot of them are invisible. We can’t directly access them. And so that is a recipe for interpretation and going off on your own. And so if we don’t have that spiritual penalty, then what really is the disadvantage of, for example, being an Arian nowadays? Or what’s the real disadvantage of, let’s say… You mentioned a little bit about textual criticism in the debate and just, for example, who’s the author of Hebrews and that sort of thing. Suppose somebody says, “I believe that only seven of Paul’s letters are authentic. I don’t believe that the gospels are based on eyewitnesses except maybe Mark or Luke.” And so you create your own canon like Marcian. What would stop a Protestant from doing that?
Trent Horn:
Well, critical scholars do it all the time. And you and I know this. When you read New Testament critical scholarship, they’ll flat out say, “Well, Jesus never said that. He never said this.” So why not just say, “Well, if Jesus never said it, I’m not going to believe it.”
Suan Sonna:
Or even when conservative scholars like Daniel B. Wallace will say that the story of Jesus and the woman caught in adultery is not in the earliest manuscripts. Daniel B. Wallace has said, “This doesn’t belong in scripture.” And I want to know, okay, if you really do that, if you really go down that route, you could actually maybe eliminate other things in the Texas scripture. Or if you have a forgery as Bart Ehrman and other scholars have argued, and even some have a consensus, for example, that second Peter is not by Peter.
Trent Horn:
Because that’s the thing. When you start, if you say as Gavin does, well, the criteria… Because here’s what’s just so interesting to me, is to say, all right… Gavin will say, “I’m going to follow the scholarship on what the scholars say about the assumption of Mary or the veneration of icons.
And I want to say to Gavin, “Okay, Gavin, are you going to follow the scholarship on Paulline authorship?” That most critical scholars will say, yeah, there’s only about… You’re quoting 2nd Timothy, 3:16, most critical scholars say Paul didn’t write that letter. The most of them deny that Paul wrote the Pastorals. And especially 2nd Peter, you only have people like Michael Krueger and others who will really vigorously argue for that. Now, we as Catholics can say, “Well, we can believe these are infallible. They’re inspired.” Because the church has shown us that they can have this authority, even if they don’t have direct apostolic authorship. Because we’re not tying it to say, “Oh, well, it belongs in the Canon if it’s apostolic,” and it’s this and it’s that. Well, we have it because of the tradition that’s received.
And so for example, we can understand, if you go back to the book of the prophet Isaiah, most scholars agree Isaiah, the last third of Isaiah was probably written by Isaiah’s disciples or something like that. But it still is, the spirit has given them Isaiah’s genuine thought. And so it belongs in scripture. And I think, would you say we could say something similar to say to a critical scholar, “Yeah, I can agree with you. Maybe Paul didn’t write the pastoral letters”? I’m not fully endorsing that, but let’s go with your assumption. Why can’t the Holy Spirit still guide that author to genuinely preserve that apostolic thought?
Suan Sonna:
Yeah, because it’s in the church. Because the church is also, let’s say, an epistemological path to truth. And so if God using the church has said, “I want this in the Texas scripture, I want this story to be part of the Cannon and what my son did on this earth,” then through the church, that would become binding or that would be binding.
And so when Gavin talked about how the church recognized the Cannon but didn’t invent it or create it. I think that’s so question begging though. Because what could stop someone from going back and saying, “You know what? Let me revise the cannon based on our best scholarship empirical science and the modern textual criticism that we have.”
Trent Horn:
It wouldn’t surprise me if they do that. That’s why when this comes up, I try to make a distinction. I say, “Look, the church did not determine the Cannon. The church didn’t say this is inspired. That’s not. It didn’t cause these books to become inspired. God did that.” It didn’t determine, but it also didn’t fallibly discover between discover and determine is authoritatively declare. And so I think that’s key for Catholics to be able to emphasize. Yeah, I agree with you it didn’t determine it, but it also didn’t fallibly like, “Oh, we figured it out. We stumbled upon it,” discover it.
It authoritatively declare with different levels of authority. So you have authoritative declarations by Pope Damasus and the regional councils in the fourth century and then an infallible declaration at the Council of Trent.
Suan Sonna:
And when we think about, for example… This was one of your strongest points in the debate, which is where you were talking about how Gavin would favor one tradition in the fourth century, which is the New Testament Cannon, but not another tradition, which has a knack of arbitrariness to it. And you could use the same arguments for why he rejects one to reject or question, let’s say, the Cannon that was developed in the Councils of Carthage, for example. But there was another point that I wanted to mention.
Trent Horn:
Yeah, go ahead.
Suan Sonna:
Which is, as we’re talking about private judgment, this was a huge thing that Gavin made because he was trying to say, “Look, we all have to use private judgment here. And so the situation between a Catholic who doesn’t follow the teachings of the church and is excommunicated, it’s just the same as in a Baptist church if they don’t follow the doctrinal statement of the church.” And I think the key difference… And this was something that you highlighted, but the key difference is that if you have an institution that has an objective claim to have God’s interpretation or what God wants in that interpretation, then you have something that nobody else has. It’s an objective claim above everybody. It’s not a democracy at that point. To maybe give an example of morality. For morality, we often to come to our own moral conclusions to some extent, using our moral reasoning. That doesn’t mean it’s relativistic, right? But I have to reason through a problem and come to a solution. That doesn’t mean that morality is an objective.
And the reason why morality is objective is because there’s an authority outside of me that objectively has given me the moral law. And then I have, for example, the church to help show here is what the moral law is, the natural law, and what God has given.
Trent Horn:
Right. Well, I got to probably head off to Pint soon. Got my friendly interview with Gavin. We’ll just talk about atheism. It’d be a fun change of speed. But yeah, I’ll let you close if you have any [inaudible 00:34:51] thoughts or just where we go forward with this debate or anything like that. Now I’m going to peer through the notes like, where’d I screw up? Oh, no, no, you didn’t mess up.
Suan Sonna:
But I want to say that I think the big thing that we’re going to have to talk about and be ready for as Catholic apologists, is really discussing the relationship on a more precise level, on the relationship between scripture tradition and the magisterium.
And so when we get these kind of wrenches in the system, we have to be ready to pull those out and fix it. So those are some things I’d like to mention. And then one last thing. When Gavin talked about how the church came to recognize the proper cannon, that almost sounds like to me like a proto infallibility. Because we would recognize that on their own, they are fallible men, right? But did God through the Holy Spirit guide the church to the correct conclusion on the canon of scripture? And then that’s basically opening the door then for, “Oh, did God guide us correctly to the theological conclusions of Nicaea one?” for example. And so if Gavin’s willing to acknowledge that the Holy Spirit has done this historically, even after the apostolic age, helping the church find the proper cannon of scripture, then you have the Holy Spirit’s guidance and principle already operating to guide the church to truth.
Trent Horn:
So just because infallible revelation and public revelation ended in the first century, it doesn’t follow that infallible guidance ended, that God can still give that to the church. And he says that to the apostles. The Spirit will lead you into all truth. Yeah. Well, very good. Well, thank you guys so much. Thanks for watching and listening to our debrief. But I will close by just saying this, I really enjoyed engaging Gavin. And I know as the future goes on, we’re around actually the same age. So I feel like as we both continue in this field, we’ll both… And you also, like the three of us part of this cohort of the new Catholic Protestant dialogue that’s going on. I am very interested in engaging his work, having him engage mine. Because I do appreciate that he’s thoughtful.
It was a fun debate. I have debated people where it’s like, “Oh, I’m really not enjoying debating this person. It’s a chore.” And when I engage Gavin Ortlund’s work, I don’t feel like it’s a chore. It’s enjoyable. And so I’m looking forward to doing other… There’s some people I will just have public debates with them. I won’t have dialogues because they’re a bit unruly. But I would love to have either a future debate or a future dialogue with Gavin. I would enjoy that.
Suan Sonna:
And I hope so too with Gavin on my channel, Intellectual Catholicism one day.
Trent Horn:
I like it. So great. Thank you guys, and I hope you’ll have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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