Transcript

Hey, guys.

I wanted to share with you today an excerpt of a recent conversation I had on Catholicism with Lucas of Methodist Ministries.

Uh, he's got an awesome channel, and he was gracious enough to invite me on to talk about the Church.

So, I'm gonna share this conversation with you.

If you wanna watch the full conversation, click the link in the description below.

Now, if you wanna help us to have more conversations like that here in our studio, to bring guests out to talk with them about Catholicism, about Christianity, about important moral issues, please go and support us at trenthornpodcast.com.

And one final note, I'm dressed a bit more casual in this conversation because my family was dealing with the flu, so I just kind of sauntered in, hoodie and T-shirt, to have the conversation.

So I'm just not as formal as I normally am.

But with that said, here's my conversation with Methodist Ministries about the Catholic Church.

And so when I look at Roman Catholics, when they Like, I hear their arguments of why they beli- why they believe this, but I think functionally, they know that they have to be judging this by the Scripture as words.

Like, for instance, and not to throw the Pope under the bus-

Mm-hmm.

and, you know, 'cause I know you're a Roman Catholic, but when he says stuff like, um-

He, he, he's jumped, he's jumped there a few times himself, so.

Yeah, so, on that note-

Like, it's okay.

He, he-

it's almost as if, like, even if I was a Roman-

He didn't even push him.

Yeah.

Okay.

So even if I w- you know, if I was Roman Catholic, Trent-

Yeah.

I would still be raising my eyebrow, and I would be doing it with the Scriptures in the back of my mind-

Sure.

knowing, wait a minute, Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

No one comes to the Father but by me.

Yeah.

And so functionally, I'm acting as if the Scriptures are primary, and I'm judging what he said by the standard and finding it conflicting.

Mm-hmm.

So I'm finding it, even if I got under that, is like I would still- maintain this functional sola scriptura Protestantism with very ingrained And I, and I couldn't ever imagine as a Christian not living like that.

Well, I think what's important here is that, as a Catholic, I, I use Scripture as a standard in, in determining things.

So I mean, if, if, if the Church, if the Pope says something that contradicts the Bible, the Pope's wrong.

So the Pope, when he speaks, like I said before about levels of authority, when the Church speaks and teaches believers, it t- it has ranges of authority.

So it, the Church might just give a recommendation to the world, a prudential judgment saying, Hey, this would probably be a good thing for leaders of the world to do to promote the common good of society.

Now, that's not even a doctrine.

That could just be saying, Hey, there's poverty, and here's something you should think about when it comes to international debt.

That's not a part of the Deposit of Faith, but the Holy Spirit guides the pastors of the Church, and they can use their own prudence and judgment, uh, to provide wisdom for believers, and we can accept it or not, and we should just give it due consideration.

Or the Church teaches on, on doctrine, saying, Well, this is, uh, a corollary of the Deposit of Faith.

This is what the Church teaches on this issue.

It's developed and understood.

And sometimes the Church teaches infallibly.

This is dogma.

You have to believe this on pain of sin.

And then similarly, when the Pope speaks, the Pope could just be giving his opinion on something, speaking off the cuff.

He could be giving a teaching.

But even in these cases, he, he could be wrong.

He, he could make a mistake.

There are popes that have been in error before and have had to be corrected.

The only time the pope is protected from error is when he formally binds the Church to a dogma, when he, he makes an infallible declaration, um, about something.

So I, I think that's why here, like, if the pope says about something, you say, Yeah, that was, um, that was not a great take, for example.

So I don't think So for me, when I'm looking at it, I might say, yeah, I, I have Scripture and tradition to say, All right, what's going And what the Church has taught and currently teaches, 'cause I could say, Hey, what does the Church teach right now?

So I, I don't think there's anything wrong with saying judging what any pastor says based on Scripture.

As I said before, it's fine to say, Hey, does this contradict Scripture?

If it does, we got a problem here.

But it's, it's the corollary of saying, Oh, it's gotta also be explicitly found there.

So I would say you're right, that if you're just saying, Hey, this contradicts Scripture, okay, if it truly does, that would just mean that the pope is speaking in a way where he could be fallible.

But if he's speaking infallibly, there's, there's no way it could contradict Scripture, 'cause the Holy Spirit will, will guarantee that, just as the Holy Spirit guarantees the Scriptures will not contradict each other.

Yeah, and, and that's what I would fall back on too, where all Protestants and Catholics 'Cause I know, you know, uh, even the EOs or Eastern Orthodox-

Mm-hmm.

will use this argument too, where, you know, comes down to, you know, how do you know what the Bible is or the canon of Scripture?

Mm-hmm.

And when you look at it too, everybody at the end of the day, I, you know, another big factor-

Mm-hmm.

is we're all making an historical appeal and then relying on the Holy Spirit.

Yeah.

So, but that would also, to me, though, be another reason why I'm a Protestant because, like, I could, like, even, like if I accepted the, the Roman Catholic Church was infallible, and if I asked Roman Catholics or E- or Eastern Orthodox, you know, why do they believe that-

We make a historical argument.

Well no, no, actually they make a Biblical argument because they-

Yes, they're saying-

they say the Holy Spirit, and then I ask them, Well, how do, well, you only know- you only know the Bible because of the Magisterium.

Mm-hmm.

And so it seems to be circular where it's like, well, you, the real question then would be, how do you know your Magisterium is infallible?

Right.

And then again, it falls back on the Bible, but then you only know the Bible because of the Magisterium.

So it's just like a, a circle to me.

That-

So I'm finding that, like, once more, there has to be a Protestantism principle here.

Well, you're correct that if you say, I believe in the Catholic Church because the Bible supports the Catholic Church, and if you say, I believe in the Bible because it was, um, defined or promulgated, promulgated and later infallibly defined by the Catholic Church, that would be a circular argument.

Um, Catholic because of Bible, Bible because of Catholic.

That's a circular-

Hopefully I explained that right.

Yeah.

No, you're, you're, you're, you're If that is the argument, then it is a, a circular bad argument.

You're correct there.

Karl Keating, uh, he was the founder of Catholic Answers way back in the, the '80s.

Uh, so back in the olden times.

Uh, and so he found, he wrote a book called Catholicism & Fundamentalism.

Hmm.

In that book, he says, Correct, that's a circular argument.

The Catholic argument is more of a spiral argument, similar to the Eastern Orthodox argument.

The Eastern Orthodox, or at least- thoughtful would do this, too.

It's a spiral.

So you would not go Bible to Catholic then Catholic to Bible.

And this was actually the argument that, that I took to being Catholic.

It was, okay, God exists.

Did God reveal himself?

Let me look at history.

Okay, in all of history, it seems like there's one promising candidate of God revealing himself, that would be the person of Jesus Christ.

Here are a set of historical documents that chronicle his life.

From those his- from those purely human historical documents, I can come to the conclusion that Jesus Christ is God incarnate and he rose from the dead and he established a church.

So these historical documents, he came, he died, he rose from the dead, he established a church built on the apostles.

All righty, um, does this church still exist?

Uh, how has Christ's message been given to people who believe in him?

So I go to the fathers, I go to the early Christian sources, and from them, the evidence supports that this revelation has been given through scripture, through the word of God in a written form, scripture, the word of God in unwritten form, li- sacred tradition, and also in the teaching authority of the successors of the apostles, so it would be the bishops.

That that is where this revelation is safeguarded and all of the bishops have their union with one another through the union they have through the successor of Saint Peter.

That the church at Rome has a special authority amongst all of the other churches in Christendom, because the, the see of Rome is the successor of Peter who was the leader of the apostles.

Uh, and from that, I can see, okay.

Then I could see, okay, this is the church that God has given and it's imbued with his authority and this church has also authoritatively taught about which writings are scripture and which are not, to be able to settle, to be able to settle that question.

So for me, so it's, it's more spiral.

It's, it's starting with, okay, I believe in Catholicism because of historical documents, some of which are biblical, some of which are not.

You know, first, first Clement, the Didache, Ignatius of Antioch, uh, so all of the- this So it's the early Christian witness that brings me to the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church helps to delineate what elements of this early Christian witness are the inspired word of God and which are the church fathers and which are ecclesial writers that turned into heretics later, like, um-

Yeah, yeah.

like 0001.

So I guess that's where I would look at it.

And so for me, I, I would pick Catholicism and Ortho- or Orthodoxy, but Catholicism first then Orthodoxy over Protestant 0007-

Not Oriental, not Coptic, Eastern?

Uh, I would pick, uh, I would, I would pick them after Eastern Orthodoxy because there I'm also drawing from the tradition of things like the Council of Chalcedon and the Chalcedonian Christology that has been embraced by the church.

Yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Um, but so, uh, although there, even there, we're, we- we've made a lot of progress and it's a lot of semantics with the Oriental 0007-

You're gonna make a lot of Eastern Orthodox happy by saying this probably.

No.

There's some Eastern Orthodox You know what's funny?

There's some that are s- you know, everybody who is not their particular- follow their guy on this one mountain in Greece, and if you don't listen to that guy, you're going to hell.

And then you've got a lot of the patriarchs who are like, You wanna sprinkle for baptism?

Sure, why not?

It's not a big deal.

You know?

So I think-

Yeah, they're very funny online too.

Like, yeah, yes.

Online Catholics, online Orthodox, not like But really, it's i- it's same.

I- I deal with obno- there's obnoxious online Protestants.

Yeah, oh, uh, yeah, 100%.

Whereas there's regular Protestants would just be like meet me as a Catholic and be like, Oh, uh, praise, you know, praise the Lord.

Father God, thank you so much that, uh, Trent's here.

My name's Caleb.

I'm so glad you're at our church.

You know, you would just be a normal- I, I just, I'm sorry I had to do those stereotypes in there of praising Father God, and the guy's name is Caleb, but, uh- I was at a talk and I said, you know, Imagine a Protestant goes to me, I don't know, his name is, you know, it's Caleb.

And then a guy came up later-

In skinny jeans, by the way.

What?

Right.

In, in skinny jeans.

Totally, and then a guy came up after my talk and he said, I'm Protestant.

I really liked your talk and I, I, yes, my name is also Caleb.

So - it was, it was, it was the best.

Um, so, so yeah, just, just going back there, so for me it's like, okay, how do I get across a gap from early historical documents Jesus is Lord, to these books are the inspired word of God, they're an infallible rule of faith.

Are the, are they the only rule?

Or are there other things that could be an infallible rule like the Council of Nicaea, these ecumenical councils?

Are, uh, do they have authority just because they agree with scripture or do they have authority because all the bishops of the world got together and taught this?

So, for me it's about getting, getting across the gap from the historical evidence that, uh, of the God man to one of three authority structures, and, and I personally, I, I find it's like, a very solid bridge to get to Catholicism, uh, and, and Orthodoxy, and more, and more solid to get to Catholicism, but it's more like the bridge to Protestantism is like there's a game that I bought for my kids that I played as a kid called Forbidden Temple where, like, you have to-

Mm, I've heard of that.

get the g- you have to get the guys across and it's this-

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's a suspension bridge-

Yeah.

and if you land, like, you press the idol down and it shakes the bridge.

Yeah, I remember that.

It's a bit sha- it's a much shakier bridge for me to get to Protestantism.

So for me, when it comes to evidence, I don't think you need to have a knockdown, drag-out argument for Catholicism.

It's kinda like that joke, it's like if a bear is chasing after you, how do you get away from him?

The answer is you just have to run faster than the other guy who's with you.

Yeah, yeah.

So it's like even if I say, okay, the, the preponderance of evidence for Catholicism, it gives me like a, a 50% confidence level.

Okay, well if that, well if Protestantism is only 20%, then it's like, I- I'm gonna go with Catholicism, it's, as long as it's higher and I have g- and there's a forced option it's gonna be one of these three.

There's not some weird hidden one out there that's been hidden for 2,000 years, or it came back in 1830 or something, you know?

So that-

Yeah.

That's what, uh, I kind of look at it and I think that makes it more manageable for people.

And honestly I think it's similar if I'm talking to an atheist saying like, Hey, look, you don't have to have 100% confidence in Christianity.

Just say you have more confidence in Christianity than any other alternative view.

I, uh, I guess that, that's a good way to put it from your point of view, the spiral, because for me, I do recognize that I'm, I'm viewing it linearly where my first principle is gonna be the scriptures and that's why I-

Mm-hmm.

would even bring up that objection-

Yeah.

uh, as I did with your like, well how do you know your Bi- or your, your, uh, authority is infallible or maybe, you know, not infallible 100% but even normative in, in many regards.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you know, really, you, you know, like, like as you know, like we're just expressing the, the, the ongoing debate between Protestants and, uh, Catholics 0007.

Yes.

Th- so for me though, like the place that I started is not just looking, I'm gonna start with scripture.

I'm gonna start, okay, the only infallible authority I am aware of is Jesus Christ.

So that's, that's, well, the, the, to start it there's an amorphous god and then becoming a Christian, Jesus Christ is the only infallible authority I am aware of now, and I know he is because I've looked at historical evidence.

So when I say the historical argument, it's the Bible but also any early Christian witness that tells me about who Jesus is.

Okay.

Then it's like, all right, Jesus is the infallible authority.

Could there be other infallible authorities?

The Protestants say yeah, Jesus and scripture.

Okay.

Could there be others beyond that?

And so that's where, that's where my line of inquiry starts to go.

Thank you guys so much for watching and remember if you wanna watch the full conversation, click the link in the description below.

Thank you all so much and I hope you have a very blessed day.