In this episode Trent examines an attitude among “non-denominational” Christians that downplays doctrine and says “all that matters is just believing in Jesus.” Trent shows how belief in Jesus must correspond with obedience to Jesus’ commands and that requires sound doctrine.
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. And today, I want to talk about one of the largest, if not the largest Protestant denomination out there. And if you think about it, if you look at especially American Protestantism, there is a wide variety within it.
Trent Horn:
I mean the term Protestant is really just a way of saying that you are Christian, but you’re not Catholic, and you’re not Eastern Orthodox. So it really is more of a term that describes what you are not rather than what you are. Sometimes, it gets a little bit more specific when someone describes themselves as an evangelical, for example. But otherwise, if someone says that they’re Protestant, I don’t really know a lot about what they believe.
Trent Horn:
I mean, I’m sure they believe in at least some form the basic tenants of the Protestant Reformation, sola scriptura, justification by faith alone. But I’ve met a fair number of Protestants who are skeptical of sola scriptura, and want to have more of sacred tradition guiding their faith. I’ve met Protestants who are skeptical of the early reformation formulations of justification by faith alone.
Trent Horn:
There was a book written by a Protestant author I was perusing recently called Salvation by Allegiance Alone. And the author was talking about how Protestants need to get a better understanding of what the word faith means. In Greek, [foreign language 00:01:35], faith. What does that mean? A lot of times, we think of faith as just an idea or putting belief in someone, or even trust. But he was saying, “No, we need to think of faith as more the concept of allegiance. You not only believe in someone, but you will obediently follow what they say.” And I mean, you’ll see these core doctrine, sola scripture, sola fide, but even there, there’s some variety in it.
Trent Horn:
When you step back and look at the larger denominations, there is a lot of variety. You have Anglicans and Lutherans who might be a lot closer in worship and belief to Catholicism than you might have other Reformed Baptists or Presbyterians that are further away. But when I ask people… So that’s why I ask them if you’re Protestant, “Oh, well, what denomination do you belong to?”
Trent Horn:
And nine times out of 10, the answer I get is, “Oh, well, I’m non-denominational.” I mean, when my mom left the Catholic faith, that’s essentially what she became, a non-denominational Christian. And I usually quip when I hear that, I say, “Oh yes, the biggest denomination of them all.” And they usually laugh in response. They don’t take it as a jab or anything like that, because it’s true.
Trent Horn:
There’s a lot of people who identify as Christian, Protestant, I find that the term Protestant is something most Protestant Christians actually don’t consider at the forefront of their identity, unless they’re involved in discussions or debate related to Catholicism or Orthodoxy. Usually terms just like Christian, Christ Follower, evangelical is one that’s a little bit narrower.
Trent Horn:
And so they will identify with these terms, with these more basic terms, but they don’t belong to a particular denomination. And some of them have told me, “Well, you know what, Trent?” I’ll tell them why I’m Catholic, why they should look into the Catholic faith, and they’ll say, “Well, that’s really interesting but I think at the end of the day, as long as we believe in Jesus, then that’s all that matters.”
Trent Horn:
And so, that underscores their non-denominational attitude, because when they look at all the different Protestant denominations, they don’t see a need to enter into the theological disputes between Calvinists and Arminians, or people who believe in the cessation or the ending of miraculous gifts, and those who believe that they have continued. They might say, “Well, I don’t need to get involved in all of these disputes among Protestants, or even disputes between say, Protestants and Catholics over the role of the church, the papacy, the nature and authority of scripture, salvation,” because they start with this assumption.
Trent Horn:
They’ll start with this assumption that as long as we all believe in Jesus, that’s all that really matters and everything else is secondary and unimportant. And I find that this is a very difficult hurdle to overcome when we are seeking unity in the church and for Catholics to share their faith with Protestants, this is a difficult hurdle to get over because if the other person believes that your faith is sufficient simply by believing in Jesus, and everything else is a secondary issue, they might listen to the arguments. They might think about them for a little bit, but they won’t see an urgency or a necessity in figuring out if they should be Catholic or Orthodox or Presbyterian or Anglican or Lutheran, because they’ve already bought into this idea.
Trent Horn:
“Well, as long as I believe in Jesus, then that’s all that matters. And as long as I read the Bible, then I’ll be fine, because the Bible will tell me the specific things I need to know.” And I think that this idea of just believing in Jesus and that’s all you need. Everything else is secondary. I think a lot of that comes from a doctrine that is a subset of sola scriptura. And that would be a doctrine called the Perspicuity of Scripture.
Trent Horn:
So if something is obscure or fades into obscurity, that means you can’t see it. If it’s obscure, you’re like, “What does this mean? I don’t understand it.” That’s what obscurity means. You can’t really see it. So when we say someone faded into obscurity, they’re not very visible to us. Perspicuity, however, is the idea of the opposite, that something is very clear to us.
Trent Horn:
So when the Protestant Reformers said that scripture is the believer’s sole authority, that you don’t need a magisterium, you don’t need the teaching office of the church to tell you what scripture means, then naturally, the question will follow, well, how will people figure out what scripture means? How will they interpret scripture faithfully, if there is not a divinely appointed custodian, like the successors of the Apostles, the bishops, the magisterium of the church, to help people to understand what the deposit of faith is.
Trent Horn:
And the answer is, well, scripture just tells us because it’s clear. There is a common saying in this regard that goes like this, “The main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things.” The idea is that those important things that you need to know, you’ll see them in scripture. Other things, they may not be as clear, but they’re secondary.
Trent Horn:
The most important things, which I think for a lot of my non-denominational friends turns into, “Well, believe in Jesus. Believe he is the son of God. Believe he is your savior.” That’s very plain and clear, and that’s all you need. Everything else doesn’t really matter as much. This is from a statement involving the Perspicuity of Scripture, that comes from the 1646 Westminster Confession of Faith, which was foundational to the Church of England, Anglicanism, later Presbyterian denominations.
Trent Horn:
This is what they say: “Those things, which are necessary to be known, believed, and observed for salvation are so clearly propounded and opened in some place of scripture or other that not only the learned, but the unlearned in a due use of the ordinary means may attain unto a sufficient understanding of them.” So that’s the idea that scripture is clear. You read it. And many people who identify as non-denominational will say, “I’ve read the Bible and what’s clear from there is you put your faith in Jesus and that’s the central thing. Everything else is secondary.”
Trent Horn:
And now I will agree, there are things within even the Catholic faith that are secondary, that are not obligatory, that we can reasonably disagree about. So you have Catholics, for example, who deny the theory of evolution, and they embrace a young Earth creationism. The Catholic Church permits that view. I’ll say that it’s not very common among Catholic academics, for example, but in Humani Generis, Pope Pius the 12th, says that you are free to hold that view, or you’re free to believe in the theory of evolution as long as you believe that God exists, God made the world, God created Adam and Eve’s immortal souls.
Trent Horn:
You just have to believe that. But when it comes to these other scientific truths, well, the church doesn’t give us definitive teachings on scientific matters. It teaches us on faith and morals, for example. So that might be one, another example might be the precise articulation of the Doctrine of Predestination. There’s different ways of understanding it. Tomas will understand it one way, those who have studied the Jesuit scholar Luis Molina, or Molinus, middle knowledge, things like that, they’ll articulate it another way.
Trent Horn:
And those are open questions. The church hasn’t definitively weighed in on how we’re to understand these issues. But when we recite things like in the Nicene Creed, for example, those are definitive matters that you can’t reject without rejecting the Catholic faith. So I understand where they’re coming from when you have non-denominational Christians will say, “Well, there’s these secondary things. Let’s just focus on the main thing.” My concern is that the main things we need to focus on are far more than just this idea of, “Oh, well, just believe in Jesus and that’s all you need to do.”
Trent Horn:
Because I would ask, “Well, there are certain questions I have that if I were a Protestant and I were attending a church or developing my theology, what are the answers to these questions?” That they are main things. And yet, they’re not plain things because even Protestants disagree amongst themselves about these things. I think that there are two ways to refute the Protestant Doctrine of the Perspicuity of Scripture.
Trent Horn:
Number one, the Bible itself doesn’t teach it and actually teaches the opposite of it. Acts Chapter Eight, verses 30 through 31, Philip The Evangelist meets the Ethiopian eunuch, and he is reading about the suffering servant in Isaiah 53. And Philip asks him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” And the eunuch answers, “How can I unless someone guides me?” So here we have someone showing a prospective believer what the scriptures mean.
Trent Horn:
And Second Peter 3:16 is even more obvious. Here, Saint Peter says there are things in Paul’s letters or his letters, Paul’s letters, that the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction. So here, Peter is saying very clear that people can read Paul’s letters, misunderstand them to their own destruction. This is not just getting a minor point wrong. This is missing something on a main thing if you can misinterpret scripture to your own destruction. So that would be the Biblical argument.
Trent Horn:
The second argument would be that when you look among Protestants, they are not united, even among the main things that ought to be the plain things. So let me give you a few examples of these, and well, I mean, I guess here are two examples, and then I want to talk about also why it’s hard to get people to see the problem here. One would be this question, is baptism necessary for salvation, is number one.
Trent Horn:
And number two, can you lose your salvation? Those are a really big deal and people disagree about them. Is baptism necessary for salvation? You have Protestants, Lutherans who would say baptism is what saves us. They believe in baptismal regeneration. Then you’ll have others like many Baptists, who will say, “Well, no, baptism is a sign that we have been saved. It’s not the thing that actually saves us.”
Trent Horn:
And so that makes me think a little bit of the online debate and interactions I’ve seen between Lutheran scholar Jordan Cooper, and a Baptist scholar, Gavin Ortland, where they’ve discussed about baptism, the baptism of children, which naturally flows from that, as well as the question of losing one’s salvation. I remember when I debated James White on the issue of whether a Christian could lose his salvation, I got an email later from someone saying, “Thank you so much for defending the Lutheran position so well.”
Trent Horn:
And I responded, “Yes, this is the historic Christian position that you can lose your salvation, that prior to the Protestant Reformation, all Christians believed in. Many Christians still believe in, and many other Christians think that you can’t lose your salvation.” So is baptism necessary for salvation? And can you lose your salvation? But here’s the problem.
Trent Horn:
While we disagree about the answers to those questions, what ends up happening is we live the same way. So even a Baptist, let’s take a Baptist who thinks baptism doesn’t regenerate you. And he thinks you can’t lose your salvation. That Baptist, or whoever believes those things, he will still get baptized because Jesus says to be baptized. He’ll say he’s doing it to follow Jesus’s command, even though it’s not what saves him. He’s just doing what Jesus said.
Trent Horn:
And he will say, “Well, even if I could lose my salvation, I’m going to act in a holy, upright way, because if I just live a life of unrepentant sin, that will just prove I was never saved to begin with.” So let’s say you have a Catholic and a Baptist or a Catholic and a Lutheran who disagree with a Baptist on whether baptism saves you and whether you can lose your salvation. All three of them will get baptized and live a life of holiness, so their lives may look really similar, but they’re living their lives for very different reasons.
Trent Horn:
So that’s why I think a lot of people will think, “Well, Trent, it doesn’t matter because we all end up doing the same thing. So who cares?” But it does matter, because there are other doctrines and beliefs and practices that flow from these basic questions that we need to answer. So take baptism, for example. Does baptism save us? Is that the means through which we are cleansed from sin? And we enter into heaven? I would say, yes. That’s been the historic Christian understanding.
Trent Horn:
I have a whole chapter on that in my book, The Case for Catholicism. And that is why that’s to me, one of the primary arguments for the baptism of children. Why do we baptize infants? For the same reason we give infants medicine, and we give them vaccines, to protect them even though they’re not old enough to know what this does. It still has an effect on its own.
Trent Horn:
So if baptism is what saves us and children stand in need of salvation, we would baptize them as soon as possible after birth. But if you don’t think baptism is what saves us, then you might not see any problem with letting a child grow up to be seven, eight, 12, 13, 18, until he chooses to be baptized after he makes an act of faith.
Trent Horn:
So this has really dramatic consequences because not every child lives to the age of reason or lives to be 18. And also, what about the consequences of not giving a child the graces of baptism so early in life? I wish I had had those. I didn’t get the graces of baptism until I was 17 years old. And that’s why I’m so grateful my children, that they have baptism, communion… or sorry, baptism, confirmation or chrismation, as we would say in the east, and first communion. John Paul, actually, he got all three at once, at his baptism.
Trent Horn:
And then Matthew and Thomas completed their chrismation and first communion at John Paul’s baptism. So I’m really stoked that my kids basically have all of their sacraments. I wish the whole church actually administered sacraments that way. What do you think by the way? Do you think we should just do baptism, confirmation, first communion right then, when a child’s an infant? I’d be open to that.
Trent Horn:
But back to my point, that important question, should we baptize children? I don’t think it’s just a matter of, “Well, what does the Bible say?” Because the Bible, it doesn’t speak clearly on this. It doesn’t give a clear teaching. And yet, this is an important question. So, ah, here’s something that is a main thing and yet, the Bible doesn’t give us a clear answer on that.
Trent Horn:
We have to look to Christian tradition and to the teaching of the church. So that’s why it’s not just believe in Jesus. It’s these other questions that impact the faith. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me.” How does that relate to baptism? Well, we need more than just believing in Jesus. We need more to be able to answer these questions.
Trent Horn:
Let me give you a few other examples of why it can’t just be just believe in Jesus. Well, ultimately, here’s the problem. When someone says, “As long as you just believe in Jesus, that’s all that matters,” my reply is, “Is it just believe facts about Jesus? Just believe in Jesus, in the sense that I get questions right about Jesus?” Like he is the son of God. He’s fully human, fully divine. He died on the cross to atone for my sins. He rose bodily from the dead.
Trent Horn:
It’s not just believing in facts about Jesus. The Letter of James makes this clear. James says, “Even the demons, you believe God is one. You do well. Even the demons believe and they tremble.” It’s not just believing in Jesus, it’s believing in what Jesus said, and then faithfully obeying what he told us to do. So John 3:5, “Unless you are born of water and spirit, you cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.” John, Chapter Six, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you.”
Trent Horn:
So if we’re going to believe in Jesus and I would say, you’re right, we need to obey what Jesus told us to do. How do we know what Jesus told us to do? Did he tell us to get baptized for the forgiveness of sins? Does Jesus want us to baptize children? Does he want us to receive the Eucharist? Does Jesus want us to abstain from grave sin like remarriage after civil divorce? I think it’s very clear in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus says, “Whoever divorces his spouse and marries another commits adultery,” but look across Protestant denominations. Even on really grave issues that were once universal, like homosexual behavior or abortion, you see many Protestants saying, “I don’t think that these are sins.”
Trent Horn:
But people who would say they’re Evangelical probably would disagree with that. But even among self-identified Evangelicals, does Jesus want us to use contraception? Does he want us to use IVF? Doesn’t explicitly say in scripture, yet these are serious issues. Remarriage after divorce I think is a big one. I think Jesus is patently and plainly clear about the wrongness of remarriage after civil divorce and yet many, many Protestants believe there is nothing wrong with remarriage after divorce, at least in particular cases.
Trent Horn:
Once again, is it believe in Jesus, not just believe facts about Jesus, but obeying him? It’s Jesus tells us, “This is how I want you to live.” Will we faithfully do that? That’s the most important thing, so I think I have here… Yeah, what do you believe about Jesus? Is he just your savior? Is he also the Lord of your life? That’s something called Lordship Salvation.
Trent Horn:
There’s a big controversy about that among Protestants in the 80s and 90s about, “Well, do we have to say Jesus is Lord and savior, or can we just believe Jesus is our savior and we don’t actually have to repent of sins?” I would say that’s more of a minority view, that it doesn’t matter what you do. And I think most non-denominational Christians will say a true Christian lives a life of holiness, but that begs the question, what is that life of holiness? How do we know what Jesus wants us to do? To be able to keep the Commandments, to keep the six… Well, it depends on how you number them.
Trent Horn:
Our Protestant friends are going to number them differently, but how to keep the Commandment, “Thou shall not commit adultery?” Does that include remarriage after divorce? Keep the Sabbath day holy, how do our Protestant friends keep the Sabbath day holy? Some of them think literally, it’s Saturday that we should keep holy, like Seventh Day Adventists.
Trent Horn:
Others will say that it’s Sunday, but all you have to do is just spend time in prayer. I remember once, I was going on a mission trip with a group of Catholic and Protestant friends and the Catholics, we all went to church and one of our Protestant friends, there was no local branch of the denomination he attended. And we asked him, “Well, if you’d like to come to the Catholic parish with us, you’re more than welcome.”
Trent Horn:
And he said, “Oh, no, that’s okay.” I said, “Oh, are you going to go to another Protestant church?” He said, “Nah, I’m just going to stay home and read my Bible.” And I know many Protestants will say, “Church is a great thing. It helps you build and grow in your faith, but at the end of the day, it’s really quite optional.” Yet when you read in the early church fathers, when you read in scripture, the role of the church in the life of the believer seems much, much more central, because it is through the church that we receive Jesus. We keep the Sabbath holy by receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of our savior, Jesus Christ.
Trent Horn:
And if we say, “Well, I’m going to believe in Jesus. Here’s Jesus in the Eucharist,” that’s something that I would challenge our Protestant friends who think just having faith in Jesus is enough. Are you going to have faith that Jesus, the lamb of God, has come to us under the form of bread and wine and wants us to receive him? Because to choose to not receive him when he says in John 6, “Unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within you,” that can have eternal consequences to willfully reject that.
Trent Horn:
So I hope that is helpful for all of you. If you are a non-Catholic listener to this channel, whether you’re Protestant or non-Christian even, I’m really glad that you’re here. I hope that I can challenge you in a loving way to consider the truths of Catholicism. And I’ll also say if you’re a Catholic listener, I hope I can challenge you to graciously reach out to those who disagree and understand that we’re not out here trying to have a boxing match.
Trent Horn:
We want to be able to share the truth and not fight toe-to-toe, but walk shoulder-to-shoulder with one another. So yeah, I hope that was helpful for all of you. Thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a really blessed day.
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