Transcript

Hey everyone, welcome to the Counsel of Trent podcast.

I'm your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn.

On today's episode, I want to talk about the Church Fathers, Catholic doctrine, and a universal point of agreement that we can find in the Church Fathers.

The reason I want to bring this up is I've noticed kind of an inconsistency among some Protestant apologists.

So what they do is they'll say, okay, you Catholics believe in the immaculate conception of Mary, or you believe in Mary's bodily assumption, or you believe in these other certain dogmas and doctrines that only appear explicitly late in the Church Fathers, either after the Council of Nicaea or maybe even before, but they're more implicit.

There might be disagreements amongst the fathers about how to articulate them.

Some may be even seeming to not affirm the doctrines.

And so Protestant apologists will say, look, if the apostles taught the bodily assumption of Mary, for example, why don't we see that in all the fathers and see it in the early fathers?

If it were an apostolic teaching, we would expect to see it more in the fathers than we do later in church history after the Council of Nicaea.

Now, I don't want to get into a full defense of the bodily assumption of Mary.

If you want to learn more about that, you can go back to a previous episode of my podcast.

I'll try to find a link to it in the description below.

I think I recorded it on the feast day of the assumption to talk about the patristic evidence, Revelation chapter 12, things like that.

That's not my intent to get into here on today's show.

Rather, I want to point out an inconsistency.

It's kind of a heads, I win, tails, you lose proposition that Protestant apologists will share with Catholics.

They'll say, oh, if if the fathers taught this, sorry, if the apostles taught it, why don't we see it in all the fathers?

Their argument seems to be if the apostles taught Doctrine X, then we would find it in all the fathers.

Since we don't find it uniformly and universally, it follows that the apostles must not have taught it like the assumption of Mary.

But I just don't think this is a very legitimate argument that they make, because you can find doctrines that are universally attested in the fathers.

And that's what we're going to talk about today.

The one doctrine that even Protestant scholars will admit can be universally found among the church fathers, and yet they won't accept it.

And that doctrine is, drumroll please, baptismal regeneration.

So I'll talk about the evidence for that.

But that is the belief that baptism is not a purely symbolic right.

Baptism is not merely a means to show other people that we have become Christians by faith.

Rather, baptism is the means by which we become Christian.

Baptism regenerates us.

It takes away the stain of original sin, of personal sin.

It removes all of the punishments related to sin, both eternal punishment, temporal punishment.

As the Council of Trent says, anyone who receives a sacrament of baptism, there is nothing that would hinder them from entering into heaven.

For anyone who receives a sacrament of baptism.

And folded into that is the idea of baptismal regeneration, that it is the waters of baptism.

They become the channel of God's grace for our souls to be renewed, for us to become a new creation in Christ.

As Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 through 18, I would say.

We become, I think it's set for 2 Corinthians 5, 17. 18 is the ministry of reconciliation.

We become new creations in Christ through baptism.

Amply attested to in scripture, in the church fathers.

And specifically, it's a universal teaching among the fathers.

So it's hard for me that, now here's the thing.

There are many Protestants who affirm baptismal regeneration.

It's not the case that every Catholic doctrine is denied by all Protestants.

There's a spectrum here.

There are going to be some Protestants who are way further away from Catholicism than other Protestants.

So high church Protestants, Anglicans, Lutherans, some Methodists, they're going to be closer to Catholicism than low church Protestants.

There are going to be some Reformed Baptists or Anabaptists, things like that.

They're going to be Anabaptists.

That's kind of a deep cut further along into Reformation history.

The Anabaptists, actually, they were called Anabaptists because they re-baptized people.

They denied baptismal regeneration, one of the first Protestant denominations to do that.

And so they belonged to what was called the Radical Reformation because Luther believed in baptismal regeneration.

Many Protestants did.

And so Anabaptists did not believe in it.

So they thought if you were baptized as an infant, you had to be re-baptized again, anabaptism, like Greek meaning, you know, baptize again.

So there are people, there are Lutherans, for example, would heartily defend baptismal regeneration.

So we share that in common with them.

But I would say some of the most vocal critics of Catholicism tend to belong to the Reformed Calvinist tradition.

And many of them, not all of them, but many of them subscribe to what would be called Believer's Baptism, a.k.a. Credo Baptism.

So pedobaptism is the idea you baptize children because either because it's an ordinance, you do it because Jesus said so.

It doesn't do anything, but Jesus said to baptize everybody, so you do it.

Other pedobaptists, pedo the Greek word for child, who baptize children like Catholics, Lutherans and others, Eastern Orthodox, Anglican, would say, well, we baptize children because it spiritually regenerates them.

It's what takes away original sin and brings them into the body of Christ.

And then there are other Baptists and Protestants.

Very common view that I see among evangelicals is no, baptism is credo baptism.

It is for believers to show other people that they're Christian.

But what's hard for me is that many of those people, when they start learning Protestant apologetic arguments against Catholicism, might go to the Fathers and say, Magular Conception, Assumption.

You find these patristic citations late.

If the Apostles taught this, why don't we find this early and universal?

And now it's not the case that the Fathers taught on everything.

It's not like the Fathers regurgitate all of doctrine in all of their writings.

But what I want to zone in on in the inconsistency of this argument is that I would say to these people, OK, you're saying if the Apostles taught something, then we would expect to find it universally amongst the Church Fathers.

Well, here's something that is universally found among them.

So right there, that seems to be something that they universally teach.

Baptismal regeneration is baptism that takes away sins.

John 3, 5 is universally held in the Church Fathers to be referring to water baptism.

That's where Jesus says, unless you're born of water and spirit, you cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.

And I'll say to them, well, look at what all the Church Fathers, they say about this.

And the response I get is, well, my theology isn't based on the Church Fathers.

It's based on the New Testament.

OK, but maybe you're misinterpreting the New Testament.

Maybe you're misinterpreting what it says about baptism.

The Fathers were a lot closer to it than you were.

Why shouldn't we think that they've preserved the authentic interpretation of Scripture on this point?

So another point that comes up, by the way, in the debate over baptismal regeneration, this happens a lot when Catholics engage Protestants.

But among Protestants, this happens too over baptism.

It's a burden of proof.

People will say, like with Catholics and Protestants when they debate about Catholicism, if the Catholic can't prove Catholicism, Protestantism wins by default.

I don't like that.

It should be an even playing field.

We start with being Christian.

And then do you go to the Protestant authority, Sola Scriptura, or the Catholic authority, Scripture, Tradition and the Magisterium?

You shouldn't be able to say, oh, you know, we we just stick with that.

Or to Orthodoxy, which would basically, I guess you could put it this way.

You have being Christian.

OK, then you have you could be a Protestant, Sola Scriptura.

You could be Eastern Orthodox, Scripture and Tradition.

Or you could be Catholic, Scripture, Tradition, Magisterium, united to the successor of St. Peter to the Pope.

Which one should we pick?

They should all be weighed on their own merit to see what makes the most sense of the biblical and the historical evidence.

So the same with baptism.

A lot of people when you when I even see you in Protestants debate this issue amongst themselves, people will say, oh, well, that verse doesn't John 3 5. It could mean amniotic water of the amniotic fluid.

When you go to Acts 2 38, repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of sins.

Oh, Peter could just be saying here, repent, be baptized because you have been forgiven, even though it's not the grammar of the passage at all.

I'd go I talk about that at length, by the way, my book Case for Catholicism, whole chapter on baptism there if you want to go in depth on this subject.

But they treat it as if the person who believes in baptismal regeneration, if they can't prove it from Scripture, then it doesn't exist.

No, I would ask the credo Baptist, the ones who believe baptism is merely a symbol to show other people who are Christian.

Where does the New Testament say that?

Where does it say baptism is for showing people we are Christians?

It doesn't say that.

In fact, I've got a great book here, Baptism in the New Testament by G.R. Beasley Murray.

He's a Baptist scholar, actually.

But this is what he says about the New Testament, what it says about baptism.

Very striking from from this whole study on baptism.

He says in the light of the foregoing exposition of the New Testament representations of baptism.

The idea that baptism is a purely symbolic right must be pronounced not alone unsatisfactory, but out of harmony with the New Testament itself.

Admittedly, such a judgment runs counter to the popular tradition of the denomination to which the writer belongs.

He'd say a lot of the Baptists disagree with me on this point.

But he says the extent and nature of the grace which the New Testament writers declare to be present in baptism is astonishing for any who come to the study freshly with an open mind.

I was reading a book by a Protestant author, Ronald Nash, and he made this very interesting insight, admission about baptismal regeneration.

I think, honestly, a lot of Protestants believe baptism is just a way of showing people you're saved.

It's not what saves you because they're already committed to the view.

I'm saved by faith alone.

So if I'm saved by faith alone, baptism can't possibly save me.

Even though first Peter 321 says baptism now saves you.

Ronald Nash is one of them.

This is what he says.

There is only one necessary condition for salvation, and that is faith in Jesus Christ.

We can approach the so-called problem text with confidence that they cannot possibly teach baptismal regeneration.

So look what's happening here.

This is something I accused James White of doing in our debate we had about salvation four years ago.

That you're taking your theology and approaching the text and saying, These texts cannot mean anything else because my theology is driving it, instead of letting the text speak for themselves.

So, but once again, not going to be a lot about scripture today.

I want to talk about the fathers.

I'm just going to say that when you go and read the excerpts of the fathers, get Jimmy Akin's book, Fathers Know Best.

But even people say, oh, that's a Catholic collection of the fathers.

It's biased.

Read J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines.

He's an Anglican.

And he says, From the beginning, baptism was the universally accepted right of admission to the church.

As regards its significance, it was always held to convey the remission of sins.

Oh, well, Kelly's an Anglican.

Anglicans, you know, they're high church.

It's biased.

Fine.

How about William Webster?

Webster is I believe he's a Calvinist or at least he's reformed.

Protestant apologist did not.

I don't believe I don't think he believes in baptismal regeneration.

But he certainly is very far away from the Catholic Church.

He's a Protestant apologist.

And he wrote a book called The Church of Rome at the Bar of History.

And it's Webster's goal here to try to show that the church fathers don't really support Catholic doctrine.

They didn't really believe what the church teaches today, or at least they're very far removed from it.

That could be a subject for a whole other rebuttal and things like that.

I address them once again.

I address this book quite often in my other book, The Case for Catholicism.

But what Webster says in this book, he actually says this.

He says, The doctrine of baptism is one of the few teachings within Roman Catholicism for which it can be said that there is a universal consent of the fathers.

So even Webster doesn't believe in this, tries to say the church, the early fathers are not Catholic, admits in here.

No, that's one you could say, one of the few teachings within Catholicism for which there can be said to be universal consent of the fathers.

And what I would say is, well, if the apostles didn't teach this, how did the church so badly muck this up so that this heresy universally spread amongst the fathers, amongst those who are closest to the apostles?

Rather, I would say it didn't. It didn't because the apostles didn't teach believers baptism.

They taught certainly that if you are a believer by faith, you are saved by grace to the sacrament.

You have to freely approach it.

But that it is baptism is the waters of baptism that are the channel through which God's grace renews our souls, takes away original sin and makes us adopted sons and daughters of God.

So, though, I do want to close with some interesting recent objections I have seen to this thesis.

Gavin Ortland is a Baptist.

I think he's a former Presbyterian.

He's a Baptist apologist, and he did a video recently on the church fathers about the universal view that baptism regeneration.

He pointed out some arguments that a few arguments that he thought counted against the view that the fathers universally believed in baptism regeneration.

I'm going to look at a few of those, and then I will offer you my thoughts.

Number one is that all of the descriptions early on of what the rite looked like, from the didache on everywhere, and there's so many of them, and so many of them are detailed, are assuming a discipleship process that involves catechesis or teaching.

It involves fasting.

It involves, as I say, the renunciation of Satan and so many other things.

It's true that the rites connected to baptism talk about faith.

They talk about renouncing Satan and his evil works.

But that's true for infant baptisms today.

In order for the sacrament of baptism to be valid, the person receiving it, there must be faith connected to that person.

Either if the person is an adult, that they have faith and they seek the sacrament.

You can't baptize someone against their will.

It's not valid.

They have to freely choose it because they've been given the gift of faith that they freely want to desire it.

Now for an infant, of course, an infant can't freely desire baptism.

He has no cognitive awareness of it, but the parents can desire it.

They are the ones gifted with faith who bring the child for baptism.

So the parents renounce Satan on the child's behalf, receive baptism on behalf of their faith.

That's why the church will not baptize children of parents who have no desire to raise a child to be Catholic.

So if a pastor sees that the parents are only doing the baptism to please grandma, and they have no intention whatsoever raising the child to be Catholic, then they cannot give the child baptism.

There has to be at least some, a well-founded hope the child will be raised to be Catholic.

So faith is connected.

In the rites of baptism in the early church as in today, we talk about faith, renouncing Satan.

But this is true for infant baptisms today.

It's true of infant baptisms in the past.

And in both cases, you still have baptismal regeneration.

Second, of course, we've got Tertullian.

Right around the year 200, Tertullian, he wrote the first surviving treatise on baptism.

Tertullian respects tradition way too much to not say something if he's going against the apostolic tradition.

If infant baptism had been around for 100 years, if this is coming from the apostles, if this is the universal practice, he would not have argued as glibly and briefly as he did against it.

I cannot fathom that.

Let me add some historical context to what Ortlin is saying.

So in the early 3rd century when Tertullian was writing, the church father Hippolytus says this, And they shall baptize the little children first.

And if they can answer for themselves, let them answer.

But if they cannot, let their parents answer or someone from their family.

So it's faith, either in the person who can answer or in someone on their behalf, a relative.

The ecclesial writer Origen says this, These are both witnesses at the same time as Tertullian.

So Tertullian, he objected to infant baptism, but he said, yeah, of course infants can be validly baptized.

He just thought it was preferable to wait.

And he thought just the same thing that Tertullian thought that unmarried people should wait to get baptized until after they're married, because when they're unmarried, they might mess around with each other, fornicate after they've been baptized and lose those graces.

Wait until you're married and just save the graces till later in life.

And the 19th century Protestant scholar Philip Schaff agrees with this.

He says, Among the fathers, Tertullian himself not accepted, for he combats only its expediency.

There is not a single voice against the lawfulness and the apostolic origin of infant baptism.

We've got all these inscriptions on tombs in the third century and early fourth century of children and babies who died.

And we're told about their baptism date.

And so many times I was shocked at how many of these there are.

It'll be like an eight-year-old boy or something like that.

And he died because, of course, mortality rates are very high in the ancient world.

And it'll be like he died on April 27th and he was baptized on April 25th.

Or it'll be like a two-year-old and he dies on Saturday and he's baptized on Friday night or something like that.

Over and over and over you have this.

And it looks like, oh, it doesn't look like they're baptizing infants.

Now, again, one or two of these, you can find a way to explain that, but it's suggestive in its quantity.

I'll make this the last argument I'll look at.

Maybe I'll do a more in-depth video on baptism and Dr. Ortlin's objections later.

I think Jordan Cooper, his name is a Lutheran scholar.

He had a dialogue with Jimmy Akin not too long ago on justification.

He critiques Dr. Ortlin.

And I think some of his arguments were probably pretty similar to mine because he's a Lutheran.

So he disagrees with Dr. Ortlin on this.

You can always check out his thoughts as well.

But I would say that this actually, the idea of people being baptized, these children being baptized two weeks before they die, that supports baptismal regeneration.

The reason is, and this is alluded to in the previous thing about Tertullian, is that people thought, well, look, if baptism takes away all sin and all punishment related to sin, just save baptism until the very end of your life.

Or save baptism like if you're going to die, get baptized, bam, you're going to go straight to heaven.

But, of course, that's not a great policy because, one, you don't know when you'll die.

What if you die suddenly and you haven't been baptized?

That's not good.

Also, you miss out on the graces of the sacrament.

All of the graces in the baptismal life that help you to be holy to avoid sin.

And baptism is the door to the sacraments.

Without it, you can't be ordained.

You wouldn't have a sacramental marriage.

You can't be confirmed.

You can't receive the Eucharist.

So you say, well, maybe that's not wise, even though some people think they found a loophole.

They did this with Emperor Constantine to delay his baptism.

So if you see these results of people being baptized for their deathbed, instead of in infancy, that shows a distorted view of baptismal regeneration, not believer's baptism, not the idea that people got baptized as soon as they hit the age of reason when they could say Jesus is their personal Lord and Savior or what have you.

Hey, I hope this is helpful for you all.

I think I love studying the Church Fathers.

If I could recommend a book to get you into the Fathers, The Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett is a super good book.

A great anthology that collects the teachings of the Fathers on various issues is The Fathers Know Best by my friend Jimmy Akin.

Definitely would recommend that.

And I talk a lot about the Fathers and their connection to Catholic doctrine in my book, The Case for Catholicism.

So, hey, thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.

Hey, thanks for watching this video.

If you want to help us produce more great content like this, be sure to click subscribe and go to www.trenthornpodcast.com

to become a premium subscriber.

You'll help us create more videos like this and get access to bonus content and sneak peeks of our upcoming projects.