Transcript

Welcome to The Counsel of Trent.

Joining me today is Redeemed Zoomer.

Thank you so much for being here.

Hey, Trent.

Thanks for having me on again.

Uh, well, now I'm excited for you to be here 'cause the last time you were here, the setup was I- I don't know the best way to phrase it, but crummy comes to mind.

It was-

It's- it's still better than any setup I've ever had in my videos.

No, I- I- I love your videos.

Uh, I- I really enjoy I- I- we had a fun back and forth recently.

Uh, someone said to me I got a reply saying, you know, If you wanna connect with Gen Z more, you know, don't play Super Mario World.

But the reason I did that was I- I don't I feel like I shouldn't pretend to be something I'm not.

Yeah.

Yeah, and it's not like most of Gen Z can't watch a video unless somebody's playing Minecraft in the background.

That was originally what I did because I didn't have a high-quality camera to show my face.

Right.

So you just have something pleasant.

It's- it's hypnotic, actually.

Yeah.

What's nice about when you have Minecraft playing when you're talking about theology is it's a three-dimensional, first-person perspective, exploring things.

So it kinda, like, lulls you into a nice sense of listening while you're just kinda walking around, it feels like.

Right.

When I first started getting into Christianity and listening to a bunch of sermons and lectures, I would play Minecraft while listening to that, and that helped me focus on what I was listening to.

Yeah.

So I wanted to kinda recreate the experience for everyone else.

The closest that I was thinking of And I was thinking, Oh, what could I play to be an analog in replying to Redeemed Zoomer?

Was maybe just exploring, like, empty Halo 3 maps because, like, that's I mean, that's what I did 20 years ago and, uh, still play.

You know, if- you don't People don't know my username, but you may catch me on there.

Uh, all right, so what I wanted to talk today, we might touch on a little bit of some of the things we've gone back and forth on.

But I wanted to especially talk about your views on Protestantism-

Mm-hmm.

and get a better understanding of that.

I saw you speak to Iron Inquisitor about this, and you have some views.

What's interesting is, uh, I- I feel like you are more You're much more concerned, it seems like, about evangelicals and non-denominationals than Catholics, which is different from a lot of other people who have concerns about Catholic theology.

They tend to not think evangelicals or non-denominationals are that big of a deal.

Yeah, well, I'm glad you bring that up because a lot of evangelical creators have been calling me out recently that A Messenger of Truth guy said, Oh, Redeemed Zoomer's not Protestant because he seems to see himself as closer to Catholics than evangelicals, which I do.

I do find a lot more agreement with Catholics than evangelicals, but so did Martin Luther and John Calvin.

They were much harsher against the Anabaptists than they were against the Catholics.

Right.

And the evangelicals today are basically the same as the Anabaptists, not identical-

Mm-hmm.

um, but evangelicals don't really have any continuity to any group.

So, the- the same things that the reformers condemned the Anabaptists for are the same things that evangelicals believe.

Mm-hmm.

Namely, uh, anti-institutionalism and no views of sacramental efficacy-

Right.

and no respect for church history.

So, let's talk a little bit because recently, you said, uh, you're done being a Protestant apologist, you know, whatever- whatever that means.

Tell me a bit Your thoughts on that, and then we can get into what it means to be Protestant.

Right.

I just took a break temporarily, uh, because I was just beginning to study the resources, and I noticed there were a lot of people who had studied a lot more than me-

Mm-hmm.

but weren't making content.

They were just kinda being lazy.

Yeah.

Um, I do think Catholics and Orthodox are much better at defending their beliefs and much less lazy about defending their beliefs.

The second, uh, a kid converts to Catholicism, he makes a channel, like, defending Catholicism, even if he's 15 or whatever.

Yeah.

And I know Protestant seminarians who have been studying for, like, 20 years, and they're like-

Mm-hmm.

I don't know, man.

I'm just too busy to make a YouTube channel.

Uh-

Why- why do you think that is?

Well, most of these people that I was calling out are in the Protestant schismatic groups, like the ACNA or the PCA.

Uh, and I think the retreatist mindset has pervaded its way Has made its way into, like, most of conservative American Protestant groups.

When you call them Protestant schismatic groups L- I wanna make sure we get all of our- our terms clear here because a lot of people when they think of schism, they think about departing from someone who has legitimate ecclesial magisterial authority.

Yeah.

Are you talking about people who It sounds like, correct me if I'm wrong, claim to be like a mainline Protestant denomination, but they're not?

They're only are in name only?

Sort of.

I think voluntary schism is a lot different than forced schism.

There's been many schisms in church history, like the Chalcedonians versus the non-Chalcedonians-

Right.

and the- the Great Schism and the Protestant Reformation.

In none of those cases was there one group consciously and willingly and voluntarily departing from the mainstream established group.

Nobody committed voluntary schism, really, until the Great Awakenings in America, which is really where evangelicalism is birthed.

So, I think if you talk about what's generally perceived as Protestantism, you have mainline Protestantism on one end, which has the historical continuity to the Protestant Reformation.

On the other end, you have evangelicalism, which is Protestant in name only and has zero continuity to the Reformation.

Okay.

And then you have schismatic Protestant groups, uh, which are usually conservative, and they try to preserve some of the beliefs of the Reformation more than the mainlines do-

Right.

but they end up adopting an evangelical ecclesiology by rejecting the institutional Church.

Okay.

So that's why if you go to, like, your old historic, beautiful Episcopal cathedral or Presbyterian church or Methodist church, chances are it's a mainline Protestant church.

Chances are it's not part of the ACNA or the PCA or the Global Methodist Church-

Right.

these recent schismatic offshoots.

So, let's try to understand a bit.

I- it seemed like your concern when you were saying you were done being a Protestant apologist is that you wanna focus on what you call the Reconquista-

Mm-hmm.

Initiative.

Y- your claim was essentially It sounded like you need Before we reach out to Catholics, before we draw people into Protestantism, Protestantism needs to define itself and needs to clean house, and especially needs to purge these, for lack of a better term, liberal elements-

Yes.

within it.

Absolutely.

Um-Uh, so you feel the need to do that.

How would you reply, playing devil's advocate-

Sure.

Um, someone says, you know, RZ, why, why do you care about that?

I mean, uh, Catholicism is just as liberal, if not more liberal.

Like Pope Francis said, 'Who am I to judge?' I mean, people say these things.

Yeah.

But they're wrong.

Catholicism is objectively a lot less liberalized than the mainline Protestant denominations and that's because the conservative Catholics weren't cowards, and they cared about their own heritage, and they didn't run away.

And I respect them for that.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas, a lot of the conservative Protestants in America, and this is specifically in American context, 'cause in most other countries, the mainline Protestant churches are fine.

Hmm.

Like in Brazil, the mainline Presbyterian church there, very historic, got lots of beautiful cathedrals.

Technically, Presbyterians don't have cathedrals, but they call them that for tax purposes.

And it's mainline, it's historic-

Mm-hmm.

it's got a lot of universities, and it's very, very conservative.

It's more conservative than the Catholic Church in Brazil.

But in America-

Yeah.

because of this radical individualism in American culture, the conservative Protestants chose to split off from the mainline denominations and that's what let the mainline denominations drift so liberal.

Do you think part of that's also be- due to being a religious minority?

Like when you're For example, like, in America, it was primarily a- founded on Protestant, you know, ideals.

Well, generally how you define Puritans, but you know-

Oh, Puritans are Protestants.

Yeah.

So, um, uh, the Anakins may not have thought that way about them.

But, uh, so we'll, we'll get to, we'll get to all of that.

Uh, Protestant foundation here, whereas, you know, in South America, it's more of a heavy Catholic influence.

So the Protestants that are going to thrive there are gonna be more, maybe more traditional and conservative.

Similar to like, I think, for example, you think about the decline of Protestantism in America, I think about the decline of Catholicism in Europe, for example, where, you know, especially where it was like just so big, but it turns into something where you rest on your laurels kind of.

Right.

I mean, to some extent that's true, but there e- there even are historically Protestant nations like Australia, where the mainline Protestant churches are mostly still conservative.

Mm-hmm.

The Presbyterian Church of Australia is They actually had women's ordination, they got rid of it.

There is-

Hmm.

this one liberal Protestant denomination in Australia called the Uniting Church, but it's sort of like the liberal minorities of all the other denominations who just sort of left and made their own thing.

Mm-hmm.

So, Protestantism in America is completely cooked if we don't all return to the mainline churches.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I wanna really communicate.

That's-

So recently, I did come back to Protestant apologet- apo- apologetics and that's why I responded to like your video.

Yeah, sure.

But I'm specifically a mainline Protestant apologist.

What I'm defending is not this category of Protestantism that includes non-denominational churches, or Jehovah's Witness, or Calvary Chapel, or even the PCA.

I'm defending mainline Pro-

The, the Presbyterian Church of America?

Yeah.

That's the schismatic conservative group that left in the 1970s because they didn't like that the Presbyterian Church supported civil rights.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and they I know that that's true because they've publicly repented of that, but that's still why they exist.

Right.

Um, yeah.

Let's try to I wanna break the term center, 'cause I think I look at Protestantism, I have a different categorical framework.

Yours seems to be more institutional based.

Mm-hmm.

Just to understand who is like, who is a Protestant?

It seems like your definition is more of a historical, uh, institutional continuity versus doctrinal methods.

I mean, basically, yeah.

I-

Oh, good.

Nice.

Like if I am some random guy in my basement and I decide that I agree with transubstantiation and purgatory, does that make me a Catholic?

No, I have to actually join the Catholic Church.

So-

Hmm.

I think you're comparing apples and oranges if you compare the institution of Catholicism-

Mm-hmm.

to the vague idea of Protestantism based on the five solas, which didn't exist until the 20th century.

Okay.

I define Protestantism the same way you define Catholicism or Orthodoxy.

It's an institution.

Mm-hmm.

A Protestant is someone who's part of a Protestant church, and a Protestant church is a church with roots in the Reformation.

What if somebody said, Well, I'm an evangelical, and their roots are the Anabaptists who were present at the Reformation, so why can't I be considered a Protestant?

So, if you consider the Radical Reformation part of the Reformation, maybe there is some ambiguity in these terms.

But there was a very clear distinction between the Magisterial Reformation, which was institutional-

Hmm.

and the Radical Reformation, which was anti-institutional.

Mm-hmm.

And the Magisterial reformers, Luther and Calvin and Zwingli and Knox, they saw themselves as having much more unity with the Catholics-

Right.

than with the Radical Reformation.

So if you wanna just use the Protestant label because you have some Anabaptist heritage, that's fine, but then you can't claim Luther and Calvin as your boys the way a lot of- these guys wanna do.

Right.

'Cause I, I think that when, when I'm trying to put everyone in here, like what are the consequences of your view?

So I guess there are, there are Protestants.

Would it be easier if we just said there's, there's Catholic, Orthodox, Protestants, and Evangelicals?

Yes.

Okay.

That's what I basically say.

Okay.

So would you So for example, like would you say, uh, not to Well, I, I think it's fair to name names here to see where people fall.

Yeah.

Like would you consider like Gavin Ortlund a, a Protestant or an Evangelical?

So he's an interesting case because he actually was part of one of the seven mainline Protestant denominations, the American Baptist Church USA.

Yeah.

And now he's part of a non-denominational church and I have publicly voiced my disagreement with him.

I have the utmost respect for Gavin Ortlund.

Mm-hmm.

He's great.

Uh, I do disagree with him on the validity of evangelicalism though.

Mm-hmm.

So I think he definitely has a lot of Protestant roots, um, he is-

Well, his view of the Eucharist seems almost close to the, the Presbyterian spiritual presence view.

It is.

And there are some Baptists with roots in the Reformation, it's just a very small group of them.

Yeah.

Like the American Baptist Churches USA h- are descended from like the 1689, uh, particular Baptists.

They founded Brown University.

Mm-hmm.

They founded Rhode Island.

They have a lot of Protestant heritage.

Yeah.

The vast majority of Baptists you encounter today have no historical connection to that-

Yeah.

and are just non-denominationals with a Baptist label.

Right.

Uh, then moving on though, so I guess you would s- would you say like, like John MacArthur and William Lane Craig- not only are evangelicals, I feel like you'd probably want to label them heretics.

Yes.

They are not Protestants, they're And they are heretics.

They're not even Um, like, you don't have to be a heretic to be an evangelical.

Um, because John Piper, for example, is, is an evangelical-

Mm-hmm.

but he confesses that Mary is the Theotokos.

Right.

Unlike John MacArthur who said Mary did not give birth to God, God was never born, but he became-

Yeah.

Or, or Jesus' blood isn't God's blood or

Yeah.

He is way more Nestorian than Nestorius.

Yeah.

You know, Nestorius said it's more accurate to call Mary the Mother of Christ than Mother of God.

Mm-hmm.

Not Mary is not Mother of God.

Okay.

So you're trying to defend Protestantism and you think, Okay.

If we're gonna make apples to apples comparison, like you're gonna compare the institutional Catholic Church with its doctrines and methods, the comparison must be then to an institutional, uh, Protestant framework, which might include then confessional Lutherans, Presbyterians, Anglicans-

Yeah.

I guess.

Uh, but we have to cut off, for example, like, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, or the y- you know.

I mean, well, they have, like They're for, like, same-sex marriage and, like, female pastors, or do you

I don't think we have to cut them off because, um Just because the, like, German Catholic bishops, um, are teaching a lot of heterodoxy, that doesn't mean we say they're not Catholic.

We say they're Catholics in rebellion against Catholic teaching.

Well, they're not, they're not doing same-sex weddings.

That's true.

But I would still Like, there are Aryan bishops in the Catholic Church in the 400, 300s, and they're still technically Catholic bishops and stuff.

They're just Catholic bishops that are heretical.

So I guess

Like, they're part of the institution.

S- so you'd have a preference then for, like, let's say, like, like a mainline church that has these liberal views and female pastors, versus, let's just say, a really conservative evangelical church that's straight down the line on abortion, same-sex marriage, male pastors only.

It seems like you have a preference for the more liberal mainline one?

Am I hearing this right?

Yes.

And that's kind of why I'm doing the Reconquista, because all the mainline denominations are liberalized to the same extent that the ELCA, the Evangelical Lutheran Church, is.

You just think they can be fixed?

Yes, because Athanasius didn't split off voluntarily and start Athanasius' Free Bible Church in the Desert when the majority of the church was hijacked by heretics in the 300s.

Mm-hmm.

Both Catholics and Protestants agree, it's possible for the majority of the church at a particular time-

Mm-hmm.

at least the institution of the church, to be hijacked by this or that heresy.

Right.

But that does not, in and of itself, warrant schisming.

And by the way, the Reformers and the Presbyterian scholastics agree with this.

Right.

Um, Robert Baillie is one of the four main, you know, Scottish Presbyterian authors of the Westminster Confession, so he's a big deal.

Mm-hmm.

And he says that even if your church gets taken over by heretics, that is not a valid reason to schism.

He said in 1 Corinthians, they were blaspheming the Eucharist, and in Galatians, they were preaching a false Gospel.

And his exact words are, Yet from none of these churches did any of the apostles ever separate, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation-

Hmm.

from any of them.

Mm-hmm.

Samuel Rutherford has a very detailed, uh, system for when it's okay to separate versus when it's not.

And basically, it's if you're excommunicated-

Mm-hmm.

um, then it's an existential decision.

You have to ask, was that excommunication valid?

And in 99 out of 100 cases, it is.

Uh, but the Protestant belief is that the excommunication of the Reformers was not valid.

Okay.

And the reason I'm not Catholic Because everyone's like, Oh, if, if you wanna retake the mainline churches, why not retake the Catholic Church and make it Protestant?

Because I respect the Catholic Church, I respect that they've anathematized Protestant views, I'm not gonna try and, uh, sneak into the Catholic Church and lie about what I believe and try to subvert it.

Right.

Um, like if somehow, uh, the Catholic Church was able to tolerate Protestant views, I know most of the mainline Protestant churches would be happy to go into full communion with the Catholic Church.

But y- I'm sure that you don't support that happening.

I don't think you want us- the Catholic Church to just take back what they said about Protestant theology.

Well, I think that we can, we can make strides to come together, like the, the joint declaration on justification between Catholics and Lutherans back in the '90s.

Yeah.

But I do think, like for me to define Protestantism, I look at it in a little bit of a, of a different way.

I consider it more like, what is your authority?

Mm-hmm.

So I, I would look at, for example So Catholics have scripture, tradition What is your infallible authority?

Scripture, tradition, and the Magisterium.

Orthodox would have infallible scripture and tradition.

For Protestants, I'm gonna bracket it into two.

I would say that conservative Protestants would say that scripture is, is the only infallible rule of faith for faith, faith and life.

And then liberal Protestants would say they actually don't have any infallible rule.

They don't consider scripture infallible, they might consider it authoritative.

And then, like, b- below that would just be like the non-Christians who say Like Muslims who say, Yeah, there's some things that are true in the New Testament, as long as they cohere with the Quran.

But do you see where I'm doing, where I'm just like kinda going up in the, the authority chain?

So with Protestants, there's the conservative ones who believe in the infallibility of scripture and then the liberal ones who, who don't or give lip service to it.

I, I think that's, like, kind of the big issue there.

Right.

Are you defining authority as just infallible authorities?

I do think that's a big thing, yeah, 'cause I think that that's, that's one of the big barriers, uh, between Catholics and Protestants, is understanding that the Magisterium, you know Does it have infallible authority?

Like when it defines When the Council of Trent defines certain theological positions on justification as being heretical, do you have to accept that or not?

Because it's been infallibly defined, versus just something we might agree or disagree about.

So, is your method of categorizing different Christian groups just what they consider to be infallible?

That's not the only method.

I think there's other issues related to, like, church polity, how do they structure their, their leadership, for example.

But I think when I'm looking at what is the big difference between Protestants, Orthodox, and Catholic, uh Because you're saying that Protestants also believe in an institutional church-

Yes.

Catholics have an institutional church.

It's Well, the difference there is which authorities do we consider to be the highest authorities or the infalli- you know, which things are infallible and can't be, can't be gainsaid.

'Cause when you're talking about like, like evangelicals now how would you respond to this?

Somebody says, Look.

It's really good the Protestant Reformers came along 'cause the Catholic Church lost its way.

And they are, you know, saying, We need to do this theology instead to remedy the, the ills of the medieval church, whoever it may be.

But then what if someone says, Well, then 300 years later, in the 1800s, we see where the Protestant Reformers lost their way and we're reforming that.

You know?

So why, why can't they follow the same, like, principle, I guess?

I mean, they could, but that's kind of a slippery slope fallacy, because if you say that even if the Protestant Reformers disagreed with the evangelicals, their ideas inevitably led to that, the Eastern Orthodox could say even though the Catholic Church doesn't agree with Protestants, their ideas inevitably led to that.

Then the Oriental Orthodox-

Mm-hmm.

could say even though the Eastern Orthodox-

Mm-hmm.

don't agree with, uh, Western ideas, their theology inevitably led to that.

The Oriental Orthodox position-

No.

No.

I, I, I'm not, I'm not just critiquing them.

I'm not saying that the method.

I'm not critiquing the method.

I'm more trying to figure out what is your reply to them, because it seems like you would like to stop this doctrinal or institutional shift away, like say, Hey, let's stay at the Protestant mainlines and fix it, not go away to something else, when these people are saying, you know, What's wrong with what we're doing?

We're just app- we're just applying, like, the same kind of principle, whereas you wanna put the brakes right here and with these, the mainline churches.

Yeah.

If you're wondering how do I, how would I respond to evangelicals, I would use kingdom theology.

Mm-hmm.

That I, I think evangelicalism is mostly Gnostic, not like literally, but Gnostic in terms of their ideas of what the church is.

They believe in mostly just an invisible church.

They don't think the church needs to have a visible, tangible, transformative impact on the world today, and that's largely influenced by dispensationalism and rapture theology.

Mm-hmm.

So I would just argue against them with theology and scripture-

Right.

and say that Jesus' main message was not how to go to heaven, but the kingdom of heaven here on earth.

Right.

I think N.T.

Wright, for example, does a great job at that.

And he's, he's my favorite living theologian, and he's a mainline Protestant, and whenever somebody asks me about kingdom theology or eschatology-

Right.

I just refer them to N.T.

Wright 'cause he's great.

Good old Tom.

Yes.

Exactly.

Uh, so I, I see what you're, you're saying here, but I think one of the problems, and I think when you're try- you know, you're trying to say, Look.

We want to make these mainline churches.

'Cause what I see when people talk about, and people often give this criticism to me, like, You're only focusing on the non-denominationals and, you know, the evangelicals.

And part of me is like, Well, th- well, they're the ones giving us all the critiques and making the arguments and doing the legwork out there.

There's, there's just a few, like, Anglicans, Lutherans, and Presbyterians that are critiquing Catholic theology.

I found, actually, a lot of the people in the past 30 years who've written books on this, they tend to be Reformed Calvinists in a low church tradition, if you think about it.

Maybe.

I mean, a lot of the Calvinists, I would say, are not actually part of the Calvinist church, if you think, like, John MacArthur or John Piper.

And some-

Mm-hmm.

of them are.

Yeah.

But the reason that evangelicals are much more engaged in the debates with Catholics is 'cause evangelicals are a lot more anti-Catholic than mainline Protestants are.

The reason mainline Protestants don't make as many polemics against Catholics is because mainline Protestants generally aren't anti-Catholic.

We generally see Catholics as true Christians.

No.

Now, this is interesting 'cause I, I want your thoughts, 'cause in your, when you were talking to Iron Inquisitor, you said, you know, when you're looking at the institutional churches and especially, like, the confessions of faith, like the Westminster Confession, and I think this is helpful for all of us to be on the same page, 'cause in your reply to me, I was also a bit unclear about y- what you thought about scripture.

There's so- a bit of an equivocation on something being infallible or something being inerrant.

It's a difference.

Right.

Um, a- and I think that gets mixed up a lot too.

Technically, we would say infallibility is a property of an agent to make a judgment and their judgment could be fallible.

You know, they could make a bad judgment or a good judgment.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas you would say inerrancy is the property of, like, a written document.

Does it contain an error or does it not contain an error?

So your view then Well, we'll, we'll talk about Westminster, 'cause I think you said that it's inerrant, but I don't think you would say that it's inerrancy is due to a, a divine quality, it just happens to not have errors.

Of course.

Right.

Okay.

But when it comes to scripture, you would s- you would say Do you believe scripture You'd prefer the term inerrant rather than infallible?

No, I prefer infallible over inerrant.

Yes.

Oh, okay.

So scripture has infallibility.

Scripture is infallible.

The Westminster Confession is not infallible.

I call it inerrant because I just subscribe to it fully the way every Presbyterian minister until the 1930s did.

All right.

Now, so would you be referring- 'cause when I'm talking about, like, the idea that evangelicals and others who wanna continue developing the mainline tradition, things that they felt like were mistaken, the Westminster Confession itself was revised in 1789 in the American church.

Yeah.

I s- the version that I think is inerrant is the Revised American Version.

Okay.

Yes, because, uh, the original one has a not great part in section 25 about the nature of the church, which says this.

There is no other head of the church but the Lord Jesus Christ: uh, nor can the pope of Rome in any sense be head thereof.

And that's also in the revised version.

It, it The revised version removes the next clause of the pope saying, But is that antichrist, that man of sin and son of perdition, that exalteth himself in the church against Christ and, you know, that is called God?

Yeah.

Right.

Okay.

So, oh, w- that's interesting.

So you're saying that the revision that happened in 1789 in the American church, that's the one you consider to be inerrant 'cause it improved upon the earlier one?

Yes.

I think the church has the authority to revise its statements because the church is fallible.

Sure.

Uh, do you see how that would open The people who will try to open the door to say, you know, Maybe we have been wrong, for example, on prohibiting female pastors.

Right.

Uh, what would be your response to say, Well, while in this case, we're, we're not wrong .

versus where, you know, versus something else.

Well, I don't necessarily subscribe to everything that my church says.

Mm-hmm.

Nor do I have to, to be a member of the church.

Right.

Uh, we don't anathematize people in the Presbyterian Church who don't subscribe to every tenet of Westminster.

We just say you have to believe the essentials of the faith contained in the Apostles and Nicene Creeds.

Right, yeah.

That's what you have to believe to become a member at a PCchurch.

Mm-hmm.

You know, typically.

Sometimes it doesn't get enforced.

So, hypothetically, um, if the church revised Westminster to say, Oh, we don't believe in predestination anymore, now we're like Universalist, then I would disagree with that.

I just think the current version of Westminster that the Presbyterian Church uses has no errors.

Right.

That's all I mean when I'm saying it's inerrant.

Right.

Like you would say, I don't know, i- if- you'd say the statement Two plus two is four is inerrant because there's-

Right.

no errors in that statement.

That's all I mean when I say Westminster is inerrant.

Right.

A- and when I say, like, the Bible is inerrant, I also agree it- it does not have errors, but that's because of a particular divine quality of the text.

It's- you know, because it's divinely inspired.

That something could be protected from error through human ingenuity or through the actions of the Holy Spirit, and we'd have to qualify that.

Yeah.

I don't think Westminster has any divine protection against errors.

Right.

I just think it happens to not be wrong.

Right.

I- I can't see anything in Westminster that- that- that I think isn't Biblical.

But then that's where the problem, because t- the goal of where you see things becoming, we ask, like, why are things becoming more liberal in the mainline churches?

They would say, Well, you know, we were maybe, you know, 1789, revise things.

Uh, and it wasn't just the Pope, there were other things that got revised, uh, that were from 1647.

You know, maybe then there's other things that we need to continue revising.

It seems like to me the problem, like, how do we provide uniformity along these mainline churches?

'Cause if you try to go and join them, I'd say, you know, there are Anglican communions, Lutheran denominations, Presbyterian denominations, huge bodies that are just whack-a-doodle off the reservation.

Like, versus, like I think in Catholicism, I would say that the- the Catholic groups that have gone off the reservation are very, very, very small in comparison, like the old Catholic Church.

True.

Like, they're very, very small in comparison.

And- and I think what you guys need, if I can offer a suggestion, w- what about a Protestant pope?

So, we're not gonna have a Protestant pope.

He's not infallible, but he's- but he's the head that gives unity to everything else.

The Eastern Orthodox don't really need a pope.

The Oriental Orth- ah, the Oriental Orthodox.

The Anglicans have the Archbishop of Canterbury.

I mean yeah, uh, different Protestant groups have different ecclesiologies.

It's important-

It hasn't helped them much though either.

It's worth pointing out that the vast majority of global mainline Protestantism is not liberal.

It's mainly a problem in particular individualistic Western countries, where the conservatives have schismed off and done their own thing.

Okay.

Like, in, s- so for example, how many Presbyterians would you estimate there are in America?

Oh, that is a good church stat question.

Just wild guess.

How many Presbyterians?

Yeah.

Let's see.

Well numbers-wise, well Protestants make up 20% and there's about 70 million Protestants, that'd be about f- or sorry, 70 million Catholics.

That makes up, that's- that's 20%.

Uh, I don't know, 20 million?

There's two million Presbyterians in America.

Okay.

And the Presbyterian Church-

Off by a factor of 10.

Not a great start.

Yeah, the PC- is largely hijacked by liberals.

Th- there's two million Presbyterians in America.

There's 20 million Presbyterians in Africa.

All the churches-

Oh yeah.

there are very conservative.

Africa will be- will be majority Protestants.

By 2050, the majority of Protestants will be in Africa.

Yes, and the global South.

So there are-

There are more Anglicans in Nigeria than England.

Of course, and the African Anglicans are very conservative.

The Anglican Presbyterians are very conservative.

So the- the center of gravity globally of mainline Protestantism is not in the places where Protestantism is getting liberal.

That's why I'm- that's why I'm hoping y- you know, maybe we'll get a African pope recorded before the reveal, so that we'll see.

I have been supporting Cardinal Sarah since 2018.

I didn't just hop on the bandwagon- because it's cool.

So we will- we will see though this is recorded, uh, while- while the cardinals were in conclave.

So, um, yeah.

To answer your question-

Yeah.

every single denomination-

Mm-hmm.

every single one except for weird schismatic cults, has gotten more liberal in the past 300 years.

Even the Eastern Orthodox.

Mm-hmm.

Every group has gotten-

Oh yeah, they-

Yeah.

Well, they- they went fully on board, not fully on board, but it's pretty loosey-goosey on contraception and-

Yeah.

yeah.

Um, every group has gotten looser on slavery, has do- adopted more modern liberal views of race.

And by the way, that's a good thing.

Yeah.

Um, and they've gotten more ecumenical, also a good thing.

Some of the modern developments are good.

I think- I think Catholics were always pretty solid on race because our adherence came from every racial group because of the nature of the Church.

I mean, we were the church who was fighting against interracial marriage bans back in like the '40s.

Right.

But every church has still go- adopted more progressive stances on social and theological issues.

Mm-hmm.

Some more than others, but it's happened-

But- but in some of these cases they are justified, like understanding, uh, the role-

I'm- I'm- well, I agree.

I think a lot of them are justified.

I'm not even saying the Catholic Church is bad for that.

But the problem is then threading the needle between the- the heretics will use the ones that were justified in understanding that, uh, a certain evil might be tolerated at a point in the past, like slavery-

Mm-hmm.

and say there's been a development here.

Well, we can have all other kinds of crazy developments.

Like, hey, don't use that to justify your other- your other crazy.

I think the problem becomes drawing the line.

Uh, so I- I feel like you are kind of facing a battle on two fronts between people who want to go super far left.

But then I think the other problem is, what about when like redeemed Alpha gets even more hardcore based than you?

Yeah.

And says like, We need to rescue the church from redeemed Zoomer's evolution and heliocentric heresies.

Yes, yes.

And things like that.

Because that- then it can go too far in the other direction.

I agree.

I have basically equal struggles against people to the left of me and to the right of me.

No, redeemed Alpha will be like, We gotta rescue it from redeemed Zoomer's heresies about evolution, uh, heliocentrism, and race realism.

Yeah, pretty much.

Um, I think that's always a danger if you believe in any development of doctrine.

I do believe in development of doctrine.

Yeah.

Um- just because something can be misused doesn't mean you should abandon it.

So, yes, that is a legitimate danger that people will use legitimate developments to argue for illegitimate developments.

But that's just something we have to be watching for and something we have to be smart and wise about.

So I guess then where, where it becomes a problem here, it's where do we set the boundaries for doctrine?

And that's why I had like the infallible and authoritative rules here.

Yeah.

Uh, so there's, there's infallibility but I think a lot of people misunderstand that about the Catholic Magisterium.

The vast, vast majority of the Magisterium's teaching acts are not infallible, uh, which is, which is a good thing.

If everything you're saying is infallible, it doesn't give you room to develop.

Yeah.

It doesn't give room for the Holy Spirit that might just be tolerating things that are being taught rather than assert, you know, divinely asserting certain things.

Um, but I, I think though when it comes to, when it comes to Protestants, where, how we put those parameters in there, that's one.

The, where we set the infallible guardrails.

And then two might be like if you're coming in saying, Hey, mainlines that have gone off the rails here.

You need to come back.

They'll say, Well, who says?

Is the authority then just who's better at making the argument from scripture and tradition?

Yeah, I think there's, it's, there's an authority problem here a little bit.

I think really the issue is power because it's not like the mainline liberals are saying, Oh, we interpret scripture to think we can do all these liberal things.

Really, they're Marxists hired by George Soros who say, We don't care what the Bible says.

The Bible is not an authority.

The only authority is the people paying us to hijack these churches.

Mm-hmm.

It's a real problem in the seminaries.

So you don't really see Protestants who hold to the infallibility of scripture who are also pushing liberalism.

It's generally a hijack from the outside.

Mm-hmm.

Um, and you could go deep into this.

Uh, there's a lot of money behind progressive hijack of the seminaries.

Mm-hmm.

And what the conservatives did rather than fighting it, is just run, they, they, they just ran away.

Started their own things.

Yes.

So when we're talking about infallibility though, I wanted to clear up something I saw in your response.

Uh, I wanted to make sure I heard you right.

You said you believe in the infallibility of scripture.

Yeah.

But not the kind that would be asserted by like the Princeton theologians like B.B.

Warfield.

Yeah.

So what do you exactly mean by the infal- 'Cause I think that that's really important to understand that 'cause I think for many, you go back 100 years when liberal Protestants were denying like the virgin birth, for example.

Oh, no, no.

I, I-

So I'm s-

hold the same type of biblical inerrancy that most Catholics do.

Okay.

So, well, how would that be different from like Warfield or the Princeton theologians?

Like what do you, what do you mean by that?

So they, I think they focus too much on the original manuscripts of the Bible, which we don't have.

Okay.

Um, they say the original manuscripts that we don't have, that's what's inerrant.

Okay, that's not very helpful.

That doesn't really help with textual issues.

Okay.

I think it sort of makes a house of cards.

Um, so what I deny is what I call PDF inerrancy, where there's this platonic, uh, form of the Bible that's just this PDF word-for-word, letter-for-letter.

Mm-hmm.

And that is exactly how the Bible is supposed to be in Hebrew and Greek and Aramaic, and every departure from that-

Mm-hmm.

is a departure from scripture.

So the Princetonian inerrancy is like that, you know, imaginary PDF of the Bible in the original languages, in the original manuscripts.

That's what's inerrant.

Right.

We don't have that.

And I don't think such thing exists 'cause, you know, for Emperor Nero, in some variants, his number is 666 and in some variants it's 6116.

616, right.

And that variant was intentional.

And some of the church fathers say that the variants in scripture are inspired.

Right.

So when I'm rejecting Princetonian inerrancy, that's what I'm rejecting.

Okay.

So you-

Catholi- I'm not rejecting anything Catholics think about the inerrancy of scripture.

Okay, yeah.

So you would reject then someone from a liberal perspective.

They might make this kind of argument, Uh, I don't see anything with female pastors 'cause when Paul says, 'I do not permit a man to teach,' uh, that comes from a, a forgery or an interpolation, uh, that's not actually Saint Paul.

Yeah, that's not a valid way to argue from scripture.

And the people who are arguing for liberalism in the mainline churches are not appealing to sola scriptura to do it.

Mm-hmm.

They are contradicting sola scriptura.

But that's what I was saying.

When I'm looking at Protestants, like Catholics have three infallible rules, Orthodox have two, conservative Protestants have one, and scripture is an infallible rule of faith, and it's the only infallible rule of faith.

And then those who have zero who might be more like the liberal Protestants who say scripture's authoritative, but it's not infallible.

Right.

But if you're-

Mm-hmm.

dividing people into which infallible rules they use, then-

Right.

you'll have to divide Catholics because Catholics often disagree on what is infallible.

Uh, Catholics often disagree on which papal statements are infallible, which councils or what part of which councils are infallible.

Well, I think they, I think they disagree about what is included in the rule, but I think all Catholics agree, uh, in the scripture tradition Magisterium paradigm, they might disagree about what counts as infallible Magisterium, but they agree with the concept of it.

Sure, I just think that's a bit of an arbitrary way to categorize, uh, Christian traditions if you're just categorizing them based on which authority they think is infallible.

I, I, I don't see that it's a, I don't think that's arbitrary because you go to that authority to set your doctrinal guardrails.

Just like yourself would, you would say that someone couldn't say, Well, I don't agree with the virgin birth because, um, Matthew and Luke are contradictory.

That's best explained by these being later traditions that were added to the text.

I think you would say, No, you can't hold that view because that contradicts the fact that scripture is infallible.

Right.

That makes you more of a conservative Protestant than a liberal one.

Right.

But then you'd have to group the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox and the Assyrian Church of the East together because they all hold to the same view of what is infallible basically.

Well, I, I think that they're in a similar, in a similar plane just like there's going to be, you know, some Catholic splinter groups that believe scripture tradition in the Magisterium, but their Magisterium is, is some guy who lives in Kansas.

Yes.

And so I mean, yes, I do agree there's gonna be different-

Sure.

groups, but there's, there's satellites around the same thing.

I, I mean you could categorize things that way.

Um, I just think that that's not what we're talking about when you talk about denominations.

Sure, it's, uh, uh, to me, it's just like at each level there's gonna be like a constellation of people that, that hold to that view because under the, um- uh, scripture is the only infallible rule of faith.

Uh, you would also, that would also include Jehovah's Witnesses, uh, and it would include Mormons 'cause when I dialogue and debate with them, they actually, at least one, at least Jacob Hansen when I was talking to him, said he denies the Mormon church is infallible 'cause-

I've heard some Mormons say that the Mormon Church can make infallible decisions.

So, I guess it would depend which ones-

Yeah.

representing it cor- if they are correctly then, then they would get up in tier three with us if they have scripture, tradition, infallible magisterium.

I've heard other Mormons deny it, but like the, the Jehovah's Witnesses say the Watch Tower always gets new light, that it's not infallible to get out of all the failed predictions-

Right, right.

and things like that.

But I wouldn't put them But I would consider them, they're not Christian.

Yeah.

Because so, so for you then to determine who is or who isn't Christian, this has also been something I find difficult within Protestantism, at least from a sola scriptura paradigm.

Uh, maybe the Evangelicals have a harder time with this, in deciding, like, who is and who isn't Christian.

Mm-hmm.

Like, that, uh, th- because a lot of people say, Oh, well, Trent, that's so easy.

It's just trinity and the deity of Christ.

I'm like, Uh, it gets a bit more nuanced than that.

I mean, you know, then you have people like MacArthur, William Lane Craig, and others deviating, and I think you have to go back to the creeds to help you.

Yeah.

I would say that they have definitely placed themselves outside the bounds of Christian orthodoxy, and I do not presume their salvation the way I presume the salvation of Christians who do not publicly commit heresies like that.

And your reason for that is because the definition of what makes someone a Christian, would you say that definition is found primarily outside of scripture, like in ecumenical councils, or within scripture?

I think the church has the ministerial authority to clarify what is essential and accidental to the gospel.

Okay.

Whe- so when would you say the church has done this?

So, do you believe that the So, the Roman Catholic Church has a list of which baptisms are valid, you know?

Yeah, a rough list.

Sure.

Yeah.

And I have a rough list of which Christian denominations are Christian denominations.

Right.

But, but the list that Catholicism will put forward is derived from previous infallible declarations about whose baptisms are valid or who is outside of orthodoxy, like at ecumenical councils at Nicaea, Constantinople, Chalcedon-

Okay, but do-

So-

does the Catholic Church have a, a, have an infallible canon of valid baptisms?

No, it doesn't have an infallible canon of o-

Yeah, and neither do we.

Ri- right, but I'm just asking you I, I'm just giving you the sources where they come from.

So, would you agree that for your list of whose baptisms are valid and whose aren't, that that comes primarily from outside of scripture?

Like, like where, where, where are the sources-

Yeah, it comes from-

Where are you, where are you figuring that out from?

It comes from the Presbyterian Church.

Okay.

Like, we have an, a universal ordinary magisterium that's not always infallible, but we still have to assent to it.

Mm-hmm.

So, um, the Presbyterian Church now, there are some fringe Presbyterian groups that don't recognize Catholic baptisms, but the PCUSA will accept your baptism if you are a Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox, or Baptist.

Not if you're Mormon or part of the Christian Community of Rudolph Steiner-

Hmm.

which is what I was baptized in as a baby.

Yeah.

The Roman Catholic Church says it has an invalid baptism, and so does the Presbyterian Church.

That's why I got baptized for real in the Presbyterian Church.

Mm-hmm.

Um, so I don't see I don't think there's much of a difference.

And much of my Protestant apologetics has been clarifying that i- uh, Protestant apologetics looks a lot different when you actually have an authoritative normative magisterium.

Maybe it's not infallible-

Right.

but it's still authoritative and we still have to submit to it.

It's still binding.

So, for you though, it would be the magisterium of a parti- the particular Presbyterian denomination, not the PCA.

Or are you talking about the-

The PCUSA.

PCUSA, PCUSA.

The PCUSA, yeah.

So, that is the particular authoritative magisterium that you assent to.

Yes.

Um, a- and so why assent to that rather than to the, the Lutheran Missouri Church S- Synod, for example, or, like, a conservative Anglican magisterium?

I mean, my magisterium right now is not conservative, but I guess-

Right.

The, the one you would id-

Sure.

Oh, okay.

So you're Sorry, but for everybody who's got, we've got acronyms flying up the wazoo up here to keep everything straight-

Yes, Protestant Disputes in-

So, you're, so you're in PCA?

No, I'm in PCUSA.

Right.

But you said it's not cons- oh, because you're trying to re-

Yeah.

I'm in a majority liberal denomination trying to retake it.

So, yeah, okay.

So PCA, PCUSA.

But which one would you consider to be the actual, like, conservative Presbyterian denomination that kind of ran away?

The PCA is the conservative offshoot that ran away.

Oh, okay.

Sorry, I got, I got confused here.

I thought it-

It's okay.

I thought, because you said they were, like, schisming off, I thought they were the far liberal one.

Nevermind.

No, the liberals are the ones who kept the institutions.

The conservatives are the ones who ran away.

Okay.

And we s- every mo- modern church split has been the liberals keeping all the stuff and the institutions and the brand, and the conservatives running away.

The ACNA is p-

Take my ball and play somewhere else.

Yeah.

The ACNA is also schismatic.

The Global Methodist Church, also schismatic conservatives.

They actually won the vote and left the church.

Mm-hmm.

American conservatives are just-

The vote about same-sex marriage.

Yeah.

American conservatives-

Right.

are just so cowardly.

And we see this with other institutions, like fundamentalists in the early 20th century retreated from the universities-

Mm-hmm.

and started their own retreatist Bible colleges instead.

Right.

And we see this with the Boy Scouts.

When the Boy Scouts got liberal, um, people just made Trail of Life instead.

So, conservative retreatism is this big, big paradigm that I'm trying to work against.

Yeah.

So I guess so when it's like, okay, as a Christian you need to, you need to submit to magisterial authority.

But you're in an odd position because it would seem like the PCA has more authority because it's more doctrinally sound.

But you want to fix the PCUSA and have it retain its authority.

Yes.

So it's like you have to submit to it, except for the parts where they're kind of bonkers right now?

Well, there are sort of lesser authorities that are orthodox in the PCUSA.

My pastor is fully orthodox.

Okay.

So I advise people to try and find PCUSA congregations that are orthodox.

There's hundreds and hundreds of them.

Like even if only, uh, 20% of the PCUSA is conservative, that's still 1,600 congregations-

Mm-hmm.

because the PCUSA is just so big.

It's like during the Arian crisis, when the majority of bishops were Arian, should people have split-

Not in the East.

Okay.Sure.

But should people have split off and started new, uh, ecclesial communities or should they have just, you know, weathered the storm and wait for the church to correct itself?

Mm-hmm.

A- and that will get back to then the identity of what is the church that Christ established.

Yeah.

And that, that's the, that's gonna be a big question.

If you And I appreciate that you take this, um, uh, institutional ecclesial and hierarchical view of what the church is, that it's a visible church, 'cause this has been one of the hardest times I have when I'll talk to Protestants and talk about, Well, what is the role of the church?

And I'll get answers like, Well, the church guides believers.

It guides them to sound doctrine.

It, it disciplines believers who are wayward in the faith.

And I'm thinking, well, if Because what I hear, and this is not you, you're a minority view, what I hear from a lot of other Protestants or Evangelicals-

I don't think I'm a minority view.

I think I'm a minority view on the internet.

O- on the interne- Yeah.

Well.

Yeah.

It's a different world up there.

Yes.

But even, but, uh, even when I just meet people who go to churches that are not Catholic or Orthodox-

Yeah.

um, the church, the, the fallback position is, Well, the church is just the invisible bond between all Christians.

Yeah.

That's not true.

There, there is a sense in which we can talk-

Because, but that church can't help me do squat.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Um, the church is not purely invisible.

We do talk about an invisible church, but we're not saying that that's the only way to talk about the church.

Mm-hmm.

The church is also visible.

It's an institution with buildings and people and rules that you have to submit to.

It's not just the imaginary set of all believers.

But it seems like what you're saying now is, while PCis, you know, you guys are trying to fix things and people are trying to, to pick the right denomination, and I think that that's a hard time for anybody who, who goes and says, Well, I'm not, I'm not on board.

I think there's a lot of people that might be in this boat.

They listen to you, listen to other people, and they realize, wow, evangelicalism has a lot of problems.

And it's like, Sorry, Gavin, I'm gonna, I'm gonna dunk on low church.

You know, he did that video recently.

And I, and like I said with you, I love Gavin, I would love to have him sit down and offer his perspective on these things, and they think, I wanna get more mainline.

And then they look out and they see, they have to answer the question, you know, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Anglican, Methodist.

But even within those it's like, Ooh, watch out for the, watch out for that denomination.

We still need to fix that one.

Or, Yes, go to that one.

We're in the midst of We're just in, uh, pardon our dust.

It's kind of like you're treating PCas like, Come on in, but pardon our dust.

We need to fix up stuff while we're here.

Sort of.

But a lot of people forget that all the seven mainline Protestant denominations, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, Reformed, Baptist, and Congregationalist-

Mm-hmm.

are all in communion with each other.

So it's a lot like Eastern Orthodoxy where you have different jurisdictions with different identities and even different theologies sometimes, but they're all in communion.

We can all take communion at each other's churches.

We all share pastors sometimes.

We all share the same seminaries.

The Lutherans don't have a closed communion?

The LCMS does, not the ELCA.

Now, the LCMS is not systematic.

I would expect that of the ELCA.

Yeah.

The LCMS is not systematic-

Here's your sparkle Eucharist.

Yeah.

Well, here's the thing.

I think this is a reason why the internet is unhelpful.

Mm-hmm.

Because the vast, vast majority of E- ELCA pastors are not like the sparkle creed lady, but she's the one that gets all the clicks.

A pastor faithfully preaching the word and administering the sacraments-

Hmm.

in his congregation is not gonna go viral on the internet.

Like, the reason you see these priestesses-

Mm-hmm.

you know, reciting the sparkle creed and talking about how God loves abortion, it's very clear, people are falling for their trap.

But, but the body-

They're trying to get attention.

But the body itself still supports evils like legal abortion, same-sex unions, female pastors.

That's the problem.

Once again, I'd say it's always possible, according to every tradition, for the majority of the church, the institutional church, at any given time to fall into heresy.

But we believe that there's a promise from the Holy Spirit that the gates of hell will finally not prevail against the church.

Yeah.

'Cause I guess what it feels to me is like when you're saying people go and they wanna get out of Evangelicalism, go into mainline-

Mm-hmm.

it seems to me the standard they're gonna end up using in sifting through to f- to find the right one would just be applying just Biblical standards to, to these You know, okay, which ones are Orthodox on what the Bible teaches on life, on marriage, on theology.

And so they're, they're, they, they end up going back to the old paradigm they had as Evangelicals of just the Bible alone to figure out what I'm gonna do.

But then you're saying, Well, no, we need to follow It's not just that.

We need to be a, have an allegiance to the m- the institutional church that has its, its roots in the Reformation, even if it's really, really corrupt right now.

Right.

Well, everyone has to make this decision.

Everyone has to choose which church they're gonna submit to.

Mm-hmm.

Um, everyone has to make that private judgment of whether to submit to the Catholic Church-

Right.

or the Eastern Orthodox Church-

Sure.

or the Oriental Orthodox Church, or the Assyrian Church of the East, or the True Orthodox Church-

Mm-hmm.

or the Presbyterian or mainline Protestantism, which is all united.

Right.

Well, I mean, when you say it's united, I mean-

It's united institutionally.

I know it's not very united theologically, but the same-

Well, there's-

could be said about everyone.

But there's wide differences there when it comes to important issues like, like infant baptism, for example, or, you know, children receiving the Eucharist, a lot of things that do relate to questions dealing with, like, dealing with salvation, for example.

Yeah.

I do think that all the seven mainlines in their confessions are united in all, all that's necessary for salvation.

Which would be what?

The Apostles' and Nicene creeds.

Well, ex- except for the ones that won't say the, the Nicene creed, like even at their services 'cause they have theologic There's Baptists, they did that whole thing where they were voting on it and they couldn't even agree on that.

The Southern Baptists aren't one of the mainlines.

They're, they're historic enough to be a mainline.

They're not like the, in communion with the rest of us.

Mm-hmm.

Um, historic Baptists are fine with the Nicene creed.

Okay.

'Cause, yeah, that, that gets in a- another issue of figuring out, okay, what is, like, what is necessary for salvation?

But even, like, the Apostles' creed and the Nicene creed, if you're saying that MacArthur, John MacArthur and William Lane Craig put themselves outside of the bounds of orthodoxy for monotheletism and Nestorianism-

Mm-hmm.

th- then you're having to enlist the other ecumenical councils beyond just the- these ancient creeds.

Well, the other councils mainly clarified the meaning of the first two creeds.

I think the church has the ministerial authority to clarify that.

Mm-hmm.

So, we're not saying that, Oh, maybe you accepted the Apostles and Nicene Creeds, but you're not a Christian because you didn't accept this additional thing.

What we're saying is, if you don't accept that Jesus is one person, that Mary is the mother of God, then you're not really accepting the first two creeds.

Well, they would say they- they accept the creeds based on how they understand what the creeds mean, and the creeds don't explicitly refer to issues dealing with dyothelitism or Christotokos versus Theotokos.

And the Church has the ministerial authority to make judgements about that.

Mm-hmm.

Uh, I guess the only other thing Well, I guess I- I have one last question here to- to pull everything- to pull everything together.

I am super glad you were able to come and sit down with me-

Yeah, likewise.

on this.

Uh, I wanna really improve, like, the conversations Catholics and Protestants are having.

Uh, one in tone, just like, just yelling at everyone saying that they're- they're heretics, submit to Rome or else.

Or- or just some of, like, the rage- like, the rage baiting Catholics do to Protestants, and Protestants have been doing to Catholics lately.

It's like, come on.

Yeah.

Knock it off.

Uh, so that's one.

But I think also, it's- it's interesting, like, for you and I talking about, like, levels of authority in the institutional Church.

Uh, to have these interesting conversations about authority beyond, like, just the, um, the packaged, um, objection counter objection.

So, I don't know, what- do you have any thoughts on just, like, how we can make these conversations better between Catholics and Protestants?

Yeah.

So I heard a very good quote one time that in debates, clarity is more important than agreement.

Hm.

A debate is successful not if one person converts the other, 'cause that almost never happens-

Right.

but if both sides gain a greater clarity of the other side's position.

So, to the Catholics watching this, I'm not asking that you all become mainline Protestant.

That'd be nice, but I'm not asking that.

Mm-hmm.

I'm- I think you're fine in the Catholic Church.

I want you all to understand what Protestantism is.

Mm-hmm.

Protestantism is the seven churches that came from the Reformation, and debatably, their offshoots as well, but not evangelicalism.

The main goal of my Protestant apologetics lately-

Mm-hmm.

has been just to think of Protestantism and evangelicalism as two completely different forms of Christianity, because Protestantism, according to the reformers and the confessions and the existing churches today that are descended from them, sees itself as much closer to Catholicism than to evangelicalism.

Mm-hmm.

So, I would like Uh, I guess my plea to Catholic creators, when they're responding to, like, John MacArthur or rage bait Twitter accounts that say there was nothing special about Mary whatsoever-

Right.

um, it'd be helpful if they used the word evangelicals instead of Protestants.

I think that's helpful.

And- and I think And- and I've tried to use those two terms interchangeably.

I think it's helpful for Protestants to refer to, I guess, these mainline denominations that you wanna call them.

Uh, I think where it gets difficult, though, is, like, when I say evangelical, like, help me run- run through this.

It seems like evangelicals just have a lot more doctrinal u- In spite of them having less institution, they seem to have more doctrinal unity than the mainline churches.

Like, if you're 'Cause you're- you're at- you're prob- you're trying to fix all of, like, this liberalness within the mainlines.

There's not as much of that in evangelicalism.

There's not liberalism in terms of social issues as much.

Mm-hmm.

I mean, evangelicals will disagree amongst themselves on every social issue.

Like, the extent to which homosexuality is okay.

There's the whole side B debate in evangelicalism.

They'll disagree on birth control and IVF.

They will disagree on-

Or do you think maybe they have just as much a problem, they just got better PR?

They have way better PR.

I don't-

Maybe that's true, yeah.

I don't think they have as much liberalism as the mainlines.

Yeah.

But I think that's because there's big money invested into hijacking the mainlines.

Mm-hmm.

And the reason they wanna hijack the mainlines is 'cause, as I'm sure you know, Marxists always wanna hijack the institutions.

Yeah.

Uh, there's a reason that, you know, Scotland has been hijacked and not Somalia by l- the leftists, because they care about-

The Somalians do the hijacking.

Sorry, sorry.

Only- only the bad pirates on the coast.

Yeah, because- Marxists care about hijacking the centers of power.

And if they are invested in hijacking the mainline churches, that tells me there's something very valuable about those mainline churches.

And they tried to hijack Catholicism to some extent, and Catholicism, I think, resisted it better.

Well, that's why I kind of think that there's a lot of people who, uh, will espouse very, very liberal views that are totally antithetical to the Catholic magisterium, but they can't give up that Catholic identity, even at the bare minimum of, I went to Catholic school for 12 years.

Sure.

Because they really- I think they really see the Catholic Church h- kind of having main character syndrome here, and like, they still wanna They- they can't They're like, I still wanna be a part of that somehow.

I- I know what you mean.

I know what you mean.

I've talked to those people.

I think we're talking a bit too much about the theological issues.

I think there is politics behind this too.

Sure.

Like, you know about the Frankfurt School and Antonio Gramsci's long march th- through the institutions, right?

Sure, yeah.

Yeah.

So like, these Marxists literally said, We need to do a long march through all the major cultural institutions of the West, especially the mainline churches.

Sure.

And then they went and did that.

Yeah.

Um, so people ask me, When are you gonna give up on the mainline churches and just go join the PCA or another conservative offshoot?

And I ask, WWMD?

What would Marxists do?

Okay.

Would they ever give up trying to subvert an institution?

No, they wouldn't.

You don't think that maybe you just join the conservative offshoots and the liberal ones just die on the vine anyways 'cause demographically people just aren't interested in them?

I mean, demographically, that's probably what's gonna happen, but I don't wanna sacrifice all that heritage.

Mm-hmm.

Because it's not like the conservatives are just gonna flourish and get all these beautiful cathedrals and- and- and-

We want our buildings back.

and- and- and they're not Like, the PCA is not gonna invent Princeton 2.0.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, yeah, if the PCUSA dies, then the Protestant heritage, or at least the Presbyterian heritage in America is just cooked.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And it's still fine in Ireland-

No.

and Brazil and Australia and Mexico.

But I care about the American-

But-

Presbyterian heritage.

Oh, n- not to I know I said I was wrapping things up.

I don't wanna open a ton of can of worms.

Sure.

But I appreciated your reply to me, and I think it had a lot of thoughtful elements to it.But I, and I understand, I think your position is interesting.

It's basically, yeah, I think Catholicism is false, but I'm not gonna go on a crusade to turn Catholics into Protestants.

No.

That's not your MO right now.

'Cause I think Catholicism is true Christianity.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's, uh, it, it's similar to someone who might think Calvinism is false, but not gonna go on a crusade on that.

It's something they're fine to let be.

Yeah.

Um, but the point I was making, and I was trying to be very understanding, uh, I was not trying to do, like, when I was pointing out you're saying, My problem with Catholicism is it makes these infallible claims, but that holds them to a standard of if you contradict yourself, that's big problem if you wanna still be infallible.

Right.

Um, and when I was bringing up that point about the Bible, I was actually not saying you were go- you were arguing like an atheist.

My point was more if you, and it's s- good, I'm glad you have the traditional in- view of scripture being infallible.

Right.

That there is a clarity that I think will come forward that when you put forward an infallible rule, like I think if you're gonna revitalize a lot of these liberal institutions in Protestantism, saying that scripture is the infallible bar to judge against is gonna be a very helpful tool-

Yes.

to be able to, to do that.

And, uh, because, so infallibility is an asset in providing that kind of clarity, but infallibility has its own liability when people don't like that asset and want to attack it and try to find contradictions and things like that.

That's all I was saying is that for people who see this with Catholicism, I think anyone who uses an infallible standard to provide doctrinal clarity will have to explain and raise defenses when people try to attack the infallible standard.

That was the point I was trying to make.

Yeah, and I think Catholics do need to try and explain the infallible con- the supposedly contradictory statements in their f- infallible magisterium, just the way Protestants have had to explain the supposedly infallible Bible contradictions.

Sure, absolutely.

I think they've done a very good job at it though.

Yeah, and I, and I think that there are, uh, good expla- there are good explanations out historically.

And, and I really appreciate, what I love about Gen Z-

Mm-hmm.

is, uh, this is a, a positive and a minus in your generation.

I love that Gen Z religious, be they strong mainline Protestants or Catholics, they want to get to the nitty-gritty and the fine details of theology.

Yes.

And so that's a good thing.

So I see a lot of good creators, uh, online with Catholicism, like answering the question, Well, did the church contradict itself on no salvation outside the church?

And they're going through Florence.

They're going through Unipstam.

They're going through the primary sources, and they're going to the, you know, the theological voices at the time to provide context, like what, like Torquemada said that you could still be saved even if you ignorantly followed an antipope-

Yeah.

for example.

And so I appreciate they do that.

My only concern is I, I worry sometimes about Gen Z, sometimes they can't see the forest for the trees, that you'll have people who get so obsessed with, you know, critiquing or defending filioque, and then they're posting horrible stuff on their timeline.

Oh, yeah, that's true.

So that's, so that's what I, that's my honest assessment of Gen Z Christianity online right now.

I just think Gen Z online has an overload of information.

Like, nobody ever had access to this many perspectives and this much information before.

Yeah.

Um, and if you have all these supposedly infallible exclusive churches making exclusive claims, then the nitty-gritties about the filioque actually do matter.

Yeah.

Because that makes the difference between Catholicism and Orthodoxy, uh-

Or the differences between the Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Baptist view of the Eucharist.

I think that's a bit different because none of us really are exclusivists.

None of us really anathematize the other or ever have.

Well, I d- I do think it does get a little bit i- important about whether you-

Oh, it's important.

whether you, yeah.

But we don't think that your salvation is in danger if you get it wrong.

Okay.

So I think it's a bit less high stakes.

That's why th- I think we can-

But I think even just for critiques, like, when we're trying to just do theological discussions, like I hate when Catholics basically say all Protestant Eucharist is just a cracker and grape juice.

Mm-hmm.

It's like, come on, man.

Yeah.

Come on.

You could At least, very at least read Four Views on the Lord's Supper.

That's actually a decent anthology covering the, the major views on that.

So bringing it then full circle, I think what can help then for the dialogues between Catholics and Protestants is to invite a lot more of the heftier theological and historical data to be nuanced about the different positions, and then we can just have a better discussion that way.

I agree.

Very good.

Well, we'll have to have you, have you back for that, or maybe we'll do a, maybe we'll do a roundtable, and we'll have a, we'll have an evangelical we can both-

Sure.

beat up on.

Get Gavin Ortlund here.

Well, I wanna have Gavin out soon.

Get, get Gavin Ortlund and Jay Dyer and then -

Well-

That'll be fun.

No, there's, um, Jay, Jay is an interesting fellow.

We had, we certainly had a, a debate on natural theology.

And I, I thought-

Yeah, that, that was a very interesting debate.

N- No, and I thought he was very actually, um, cordial in that debate.

Uh-

Yeah.

a lot of people give him, you know, grief about his, and, and some of his online behavior is worthy of grief being given.

But I think it was fine there.

I think it's fine.

But I think, I, I think if I was to do a four-way, it might be me, you, Gavin Ortlund, uh, Orthodox, um, Father, uh, actually Laurent, uh, Cleenwerck I believe is his name.

I don't know if you've ever heard of him.

I know.

He, he's really solid.

He wrote a, um, he wrote a book called Healing This Broken Body.

Mm-hmm.

So he's a very, um, uh, astute and scholarly Eastern Orthodox priest.

And he wrote a very good defense of the perpetual virginity of Mary actually.

Nice.

And I believe in that.

And the PCUSA's confessions also teach the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Exactly.

So, uh, yeah, Father Laurent Cleenwerck.

It's called I Partenos.

Mm-hmm.

And he defends the, uh, the Eastern Epiphanian view of the Brethren of the Lord.

So you hold to the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Yeah, what do you do with the Brethren of the Lord?

I think they're-

What's your, what's your out, out?

I mean, I don't have like a solid position.

Like, I wasn't there.

Sure.

But I think they're most likely Joseph's children from a previous marriage.

Okay.

Because we don't hear about Joseph when Jesus is all grown up.

He was probably a lot older.

Yeah.

And that means he probably had a previous marriage and his previous wife died or something.

Yeah.

It's like, that's not the only possible explanation.

It's something you can-

But-

see yourself leaning towards.

Yeah, I li- I think that's the Occam's razor explanation.

It's the simplest explanation.

And that is one, that's one that I'm- firmly behind but I don't anathematize anyone who has Jerome's View.

Though there are Catholics who would take from all of this, like, I can't believe that he d- doesn't believe in Jerome's View and that, that Joseph was married before.

That's the one thing that Now, that, that's the hard part.

You see Protestants and Catholics get worked up about these intradoctrinal issues.

Like

Yeah.

Guys, we've got, we got The world's going to hell in a handbasket here.

Like, we need all-

I agree.

all hands on deck.

I do agree that there does need to be more maturity online and I'm a bit hypocritical because sometimes I haven't been the most mature.

Um, but we It's right that we shouldn't be debating, like, the nitty-gritties of the Filioque or miaphysitism and then posting the degenerate content on Twitter.

Yeah, all of us should be that good example.

I think you've been a good example for-

Likewise.

other Protestants to engage and I would Well, that's why I wrote my book, Confusion in the Kingdom, because we have that problem too.

We've got the hierarchical guardrails to prevent Like, even the most liberal Catholic parish is not doing same-sex weddings-

Right.

because that will go up the chain real fast to Rome, because we've got the hierarchy to do that.

But we still have insidious liberalism, so I wrote my book, Confusion in the Kingdom.

Yeah.

Which deals with, honestly, probably a lot of the same stuff that you're seeing in the PCof saying with homosexuality, transgender, feminism, Well, maybe And they just give, like, this squishy, Maybe it might be this a little bit.

And then the, the liberal camel gets its nose under the tent and who knows-

Yeah, yeah.

where it will go.

But, but, the I That's why I would love in the future, we could band together just for Because there is a Catholic Reconquista that needs to be done against these, these liberal elements.

So I, I will fully-

Yeah, well-

I'll fully support you in what you're, in what you're doing to root out, uh, evils of things, like people, you know, defending all kinds of evils on the left in the Protestant churches.

I'm, I'm happy to help you clear that out.

It's funny you mentioned a Catholic Reconquista.

My mom's Catholic, she's a big fan of your stuff.

She actually asked me to start a Catholic Reconquista group.

So I actually did that in my Discord and they changed their name to, like, Fotius Christi because- uh, they didn't wanna use our Reconquista brand.

But, yeah, I did technically start a small Catholic Reconquista group on Discord.

Well, I, I think that there are It's nice if you can get that in parishes.

I re- I remember actually going to a Newman Center that was run by the wackiest liberal Dominicans.

Mm-hmm.

But then fi- People were fighting against it for a while and finally when we got a new bishop, they'd go to the new bishop and be like, Can you get rid of him?

Yeah, yeah.

And then just, like, out the door.

RZ, thanks so much for stopping by today.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Thank you.

And everyone else, uh, be sure to check out Redeemed Zoomer's channel if you haven't already.

I'll link to it in the description below.

Hope you guys all have a blessed day.