Transcript

Go ahead, we're live.

Welcome back to Shemas Potpourri.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer, here to have a cup of joe with my friend Austin Suggs of Gospel Simplicity.

Austin, thank you so much for being with us.

It is my pleasure.

I just looked at I don't know if this is the public, uh, title for the conversation, but the one on StreamYard, your favorite Protestant YouTuber.

I'm touched, Joe.

Uh, yeah.

So glad to hear.

I will say two things: one, Mike chose the title, but two, I don't disagree with the title.

I, I think I-

Hey, well-

said something about that, uh, on a stream once, and he was, he was picking that up.

I was like, Ah, my favorite Protestant channel.

So-

You are now committed to that quote forever.

I'm gonna put it on a vinyl now.

Apparently so, which I You know, I've, I've said things I've regretted much more.

Um-

Well, I'm glad- that nothing most regretful-

It's a low bar

than you've said.

Here we go.

Um, so what we normally do on this channel, we have some coffee and talk about some issue of theology, apologetics, et cetera.

So, uh, this morning, got my coffee.

I don't know if you've got anything on your end, Austin, but I didn't think to-

You didn't send me the memo.

I've got water.

No, I apologize.

I've got a stick of coffee.

Okay.

It is called Cup O' Joe, but I guess it's not self-explanatory.

Uh-

I didn't even realize-

So-

that was the title.

Oh, no.

All right

Yeah, I thought I was just doing Thursday live streams.

Okay, it's all ruined from here.

Well, alas.

Just kidding.

I, I gotta work on branding.

That's what I'm learning.

Yeah, it's awesome.

But in all seriousness, uh, maybe you can introduce yourself and give us, uh, a little bit of your own background.

Yeah, for sure.

My name's Austin Suggs, which I find a lot of people don't know my name, even who have watched my channel for a while.

I often get called Justin or just that Gospel Simplicity guy.

Um, but yeah, Austin's my name, if people care to know that or use it.

I run the channel Gospel Simplicity, which I've been doing for a while, has recently become my full-time job.

I s- grew up in the Evangelical Church, eventually got interested in questions of Catholicism and Orthodoxy when I was studying theology during my undergrad at Moody.

Um, after my undergrad at Moody, I went on to-

Sorry, just for, for people who don't know-

Yeah

can you explain what Moody is?

Moody, yes, the place where Bible is our middle name.

Um, Moody Bible Institute is a Bible institute out of Chicago.

Um, and it's, it's kinda like one of the last holdovers from the era of, like, Bible colleges.

A lot of them have either shifted into just Christian universities or have gone out of business.

Moody is kind of one of the original ones that has stuck around.

Basically, everybody there, out of, like, your 120-credit undergrad degree, takes like 90 credits of Bible and theology.

Wow.

So it's Yeah, it's a lot.

Um, so that's kind of their whole thing.

They've got a couple different majors, but they're all ministry-related.

Um, and I studied theology there.

So they kind of bill it as, like, an undergraduate seminary is the kinda type of experience.

I enjoyed it.

And I assume Moody's a last name, like Moody Bible is not just a reference to Lamentations or something.

No, it is not.

Yeah, it is, uh, Dwight Lyman Moody, the mid-19th century evangelist.

Uh, it is named after him, so he started it-

So you-

out in Chicago

you clearly had a passion for God, for scripture, et cetera, to end up at Moody in the first place.

I think that's fair to assume?

Yeah, absolutely.

So out of high school I m- during high school, I had a bri- kind of brief deconstruction period, uh, but came back, I think, even more in love with the faith.

As I was figuring out, you know, like every junior in high school gets asked, like, What are you gonna do when you grow up?

And like most of them, I had no idea.

Um, but at that time, I was really interested in studying medicine.

I was thinking about doing something like Doctors Without Borders.

I'd actually gotten in in my senior year to, like, a combined medical program, so where you have, like, your undergrad and graduate kind of all set up.

Um, I had my roommate lined up.

I was ready to do that, but I was also interning at my church at the time.

And at the end of that internship, they offered me a full-time job, and much to the chagrin of my parents, uh, who are very committed, uh, Christians, but also just American parents, uh, I decided to take a gap year and defer my enrollment into that program, and, uh, see if, see if ministry was for me.

And during that time, I like to say the church made the mistake of letting me teach in the high school ministry, because I absolutely fell in love with it, uh, but I also realized how much I didn't know.

And so that's why I wanted to go study theology at Moody, 'cause I figured that was the place where I could learn as much as I could.

Beautiful.

Now, how do we get from there to here, and what does here look like?

Yeah, absolutely.

Okay, so my current kind of like ecclesial context is that my wife and I worship in an Episcopal church, uh, down the road from us, which is kind of like Anglo-Catholic in its liturgy.

Um, I, I'd like to say there's more Latin in our Episcopal liturgy than there is probably in like 95% of the Catholic churches near us.

Uh, it's, you know, Latin choral hymns, and it, it's beautiful, and we really enjoy that.

But that was kind of a process that we can get into, um, but it was basically an interest in more liturgical expressions of the church, and, uh, it was something that we found locally and really enjoyed.

But how I got to where I'm with Gospel Simplicity and interested in all the Catholic Orthodox stuff would be a different question.

I don't know if that's where you were going or not.

Well, I'd Yeah, all of that is Y- I think having people have a sense of where you are right now, 'cause I already saw someone ask in the comments if, you know, they just didn't know your own background.

Uh-

Yeah

like where are you, and y- I think the I don't know if you wanna pull that up, Mike.

There was a question where somebody asked, I don't Uh, forgive me for not know Oh, here's, here it is.

Please forgive my ignorance, because I don't know what, what flavor of Protestant Austin is.

Why doesn't the universal attestation of real presence in church fathers convince him at least to Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, maybe Luther?

Um-

Yeah.

Great question.

Which I think this is already giving a little bit of You know, 'cause I think people are wondering, Oh, okay, like, so there's You went from a non-denominational thing.

You've clearly got some depth.

I think people looking at your setup can see icons and you know, like-

Yeah

you're, you don't seem like the stereotype, uh, many people are, might have of like a non-denominational person.

It seems like you've been on some kind of journey.

Yeah

What, what's-

That's definitely fair

what's that looked like maybe And, and I know we're gonna talk about that probably a fair amount, kind of where you are, what your thoughts are, but that seems like maybe a good way to, uh, dive into the question from an angle.

Sure.

So when I was studying at Moody, two professors had a really big impact on me, and both of them were Anglican.

And they didn't cause me to become Anglican right away, but they got me interested in church history, what we might call, like, the Catholic tradition generally speaking, uh, which caused me to look into the church fathers and these types of things.

And it was at that point that I became convinced of the real presence in some sense.

I would say from there, you know, how I think about theology today would be like a high church Anglican but whose biggest theological influences are probably all Catholics for the most part.

Um, most of my, like, theological heroes are, like, the people who were parati, I think would be the plural there in Latin, like the experts at Vatican II. My I get in trouble with a lot of Catholics 'cause, like, I feel like I'm a bigger fan of Vatican II than most of the Catholics I know.

Um, but people like Henri de Lubac, Hans Urs von Balthasar, uh, Yves Congar, John Danielou, like these are the kind of people that I spend my free time reading.

Um, so yeah, I would say that might describe my kind of theological trajectory from being really interested in church history, which I still am, and then I'm also really interested in kind of the project of what they call in theology ressourcement, which is like-

I almost

taking the riches of-

Excited to see like you're on your own kind of ressourcement journey of retrieving-

Yeah

retrieving all this stuff from the tradition.

Absolutely, yeah.

That I think that would be an accurate description of kind of my, my theological journey.

So yeah.

All right.

Very beautiful.

Um, I'm sure many people are gonna wonder why Anglo-Catholic and not Catholic or why Anglo-Cat- especially if so many of your, uh, theological influences are Catholic.

I'm sure other people are gonna wonder why Anglo-Catholic and not Orthodox.

Yeah.

So do you wanna take that as one giant question, or do you wanna make it maybe break it up?

'Cause I, I think those would be interesting areas to explore.

'Cause A- and I'll say this, maybe a little bit of unnecessary preamble.

Frequently, when I see Protestants openly exploring Catholicism, there can be a little bit of a boom and bust cycle, where at first-

Mm

everyone clicks and they're like, Oh, we're super excited.

And then if they don't, like, immediately say, And I'm entering RCIA on Thursday, then people say, Oh, you were just doing this for the clicks.

You were just And I don't think that's true.

Like, I don't think, uh, you know I think the, the risk of alienating people is often much bigger than the traffic.

I just think that's a very cynical kind of take.

But I, I think it's better for peop- you know, 'cause as a Catholic, you, you look at this and you're like, Well, of course Catholicism's true, and it, it seems so natural and so, like, how can anyone think otherwise?

But obviously that's not the experience everyone has coming in, including people who might eventually become Catholic, that it, it doesn't always just seem completely obvious and self-evident.

And I think it's very tricky for all of us to sort of step outside of our own hermeneutic bubbles.

Uh, you know, I, I know this as a Catholic, when Protestants are like, Well, obviously this Bible verse means X, because it's what they've always been taught that it meant, that I'd say, Well, it's not obvious to me.

And I think so often the evidence for Catholicism can feel the same way in the opposite direction of, well, clearly this Bible verse points to this Catholic doctrine, or clearly, like, the history of this points in this Catholic direction.

And, and it can be genuinely mystifying, even if you're trying to be charitable, to say, Well, how is someone reading this same, you know, corpus of evidence, uh, differently?

Like I said, unnecessarily long preamble.

Take that wherever you wanna go with it.

Yeah.

So I'll break up the Catholic and Orthodox reasons 'cause I think they're probably different.

And yeah, it, it might be helpful to separate those.

So I'll start with the Catholic.

And I think there's kind of levels at getting into this as well.

So I appreciate you bringing up kind of the boom or bust cycle.

I also think as someone who's a Protestant on the other side, not necessarily like the, the clicks on the YouTube side, but I think there's also this kind of boom and bust cycle as far as excitement about investigating questions like this and looking into the Catholic Church.

So maybe I can tell my own story a bit through that lens.

I, I'll start up front though.

So why am I not Catholic?

I think my biggest difficulty, uh, with Catholic theology would be infallibil- papal infallibility specifically.

Um, and, and we could get into why that is and what I mean by that, but I'll, I'll put that up front for so people aren't kind of-

Yeah

like waiting for me-

Appreciate it

to explain it.

But then I'd say my experience looking into Catholicism feels kind of like that boom, bust, or, like, hills and valleys type of thing.

So when I first got interested in it, I think what evangelicals especially who come from low church settings, when they start reading the church fathers, there is this, Wow, they look really different than my non-denominational megachurch kind of environment, and they look a lot more Catholic and Orthodox than they look Protestant.

And I think that is just, like, by and large, a good assessment of the church fathers.

They do look more Catholic and Orthodox than they look kind of non-denominational Protestant.

And so I think for me, that created this sense of, What am I gonna do?

I also got kind of thrown into this, uh, by making a video about Catholicism that I had, like, 100 subscribers at the time and got, like, 10 views on my videos, and then I made something about Catholicism.

All of a sudden, I was coming across all these arguments for Catholicism, and I went into that, like, rabbit hole of binge-watching, uh, like, Trent Horn videos.

And I don't, I don't think you were making them yet.

This was-

No

a while ago.

That was pre Yeah, that was pre this channel.

But, you know, watching all the debates, and I think-I had a first sense of wow, like, the arguments for Catholicism seem a lot better than the arguments I have in response.

Maybe I should become Catholic, like, right away and then I think one of the biggest things that put the brakes on for me at that point was taking a class, uh, with a Calvin scholar and realizing, Oh, wait.

What I thought was Protestantism, my kind of mega church context of this, looks a lot different than the reformers at the source and so then it becomes kind of a different level of question, right?

So it's-

Oh.

Well, is Catholicism right or do I have the wrong-

Uh-oh.

The trail begins.

Yeah.

Do I have the wrong type of Protestantism?

Trail goes back through history.

Yeah, and so I think that made me say, like, Wait.

I should really get to know my own tradition, because I felt like I was comparing Aquinas to my local pastor, and I was realizing that's probably not quite fair.

And as I was reading, uh, kind of the Reformation sources, I was like, Huh, like, this medieval period, like, had some stuff going on.

These reformers seem to be making some sense, so I'm gonna kind of slow it down and try to understand at that level.

And I Then I think there were certain Catholic apologetic arguments that didn't quite land for me at that point, um, because they began to be arguing against a form of Protestantism that I no longer thought was the best form of it.

Um, and then I think-

Hmm

you know, it took some time, uh, trying to understand my own tradition, those things.

I'd say where I'm at now is a bit different in the way I look at these things, you know, also having changed, uh, within Protestant traditions into a more liturgical, uh, more sacramental tradition, where the questions I'm asking now as I spend a lot of time with Vatican II and, and the people that I like are more It's somewhat theoretical questions of, like, what would be necessary for unity.

Also questioning, not even just that because I think that was early on, but I, I think my view of what the Catholic Church is has changed over time.

Um-

Can, can you say more on that?

I think that's a really fascinating-

Sure.

Yeah

just kind of thing to drop.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

The How my view of the Catholic Church has changed over time?

Yeah.

You're, you're like-

Yeah

Well, I didn't realize before that it's actually the whore of Babylon but I assume that's not it.

No.

Um, I might get myself in some trouble here.

I don't know.

We'll see.

I mentioned in our video that we did recently that I've begun thinking of Catholicism as something akin to, like, a theory of everything and I think the vision of Vatican II is very compelling in a lot of ways insofar as it seems to be this, like, grand project of synthesis and trying to see the good in, like, literally anything that is good and how that can be kind of brought in to Catholicism, going through a, a filter a- and being, you know, seen in the light of Christ, all of those things.

Um, but that kind of, like, outward look at the, uh, look from the Catholic Church towards the modern world.

I made a video yesterday in which I probably very controversially said Gaudium et spes might be the best document the Catholic Church has ever produced, uh, which might just tell you a little bit-

That is, that is very controversial, I will say right now.

But, but I think-

It's-

I think the thing you're saying about the theory of everything, I wanna make sure people are getting it because I think-

Yes

this is brilliant, that the Catholic Church is in this position to say, We have the fullness of divine revelation.

We have this robust belief in the relationship of, uh, faith and reason, that scripture and tradition as well as those things that we can know from sound philosophy and everything else.

Uh, we can build on all of this, and we have this longstanding tradition, uh, that we see both supported in scripture itself as well as from the light of human reason, of believing in even in things like the natural virtue of religion, that w- if you think of the Christian story as God reaching out to man, there is also this movement inspired by the Holy Spirit of man reaching out to God and without the fullness of revelation, that takes all these various forms.

So how do we recognize having the answer key, as it were, where the various members of the class of, you know, people seeking God throughout the world, what answers are they getting right?

And that's not relativism, right?

It's actually the opposite of relativism, but it is a robust embrace of, uh, Catholicism as something more than just, like, one theory among many, that it- it's pointing towards, as you say, a theory of everything, like a, a robust vision of, of the nature of reality.

Is that a f- I, I guess, first of all, is that a fair description of, of what you mean by theory of everything?

And if so-

Yeah

how does that kinda, yeah, interact with?

Yeah.

So I think a- and I, I probably haven't articulated this that well.

That was a really good description of what I mean by theory of everything.

I think how that maybe shifts from my previous version was thinking of the Catholic Church as a bit more kind of defensive, and I think one of the struggles I have today is a lot of the people I mentioned as, like, my theological heroes, they were also at one point banned from teaching theology.

That's one of, like, the fascinating stories of Vatican II, that some of the leading experts at the council just a few years prior were barred from teaching theology.

Um, and so it leaves me in this question today of going back to, like, what is the Catholic Church?

Is it the church that's barring a lot of my theological heroes from teaching?

Is it the one that elevates them to experts at the council?

Is it the Syllabus of Errors, or is it Gaudium et spes?

Like, and I'm not, I'm not doing this in a polemical sense of, um, trying to say that the Catholic Church completely changed its mind.

Like, I-

Right

again, I think Vatican II is actually great, um, but I think in the past I was reading the Catholic Church primarily as, like, Council of Florence, Council of Trent-Syllabus errors, things like this, which are all part of the tradition.

And so the questions I often ask myself today is, like, I can't imagine being a Catholic in the 19th century.

Then again, I- I've never been in the 19th century, so my opinions today are very 21st century opinions.

I think Vatican II was great.

I also understand the trad arguments against some of the continuity, which places me in a just very different position of thinking about Catholicism, of I find the theory of everything version of Catholicism, like, one of the most exciting intellectual projects I could conceive.

But is it faithfully Catholic in, like, the full sense?

Um, so again, that's a very different question than I was asking a few years ago when I was thinking, like, were the reformers right about X, Y, or Z, or even not so much that.

At first, it was like sola scriptura or sola fide.

Those questions all still matter, but they're just a bit different than the questions I'm asking today.

Um, so that might describe my own journey with the Catholic Church.

Yeah, that's a really fascinating journey because I think you just you hit the nail on the head right at the very end there, that it's not just a question of what do I think on this particular doctrine or that particular doctrine, but it's th- this much broader vision of what is the Catholic church in relation maybe to reality, in relation to truth-

Mm-hmm

and how do we make sense of the way this gets lived out.

And, I mean, if I can maybe just put a, maybe a gloss on, on one part that you said, 'cause you're right, like, the, the nouveau theology guys, I can't speak French, the new theology guys from the early 20th century were, were very controversial.

But a lot of the people who were pushing back against him were a certain type of thomist, and the whole thomistic project, when it began, was very controversial for, frankly, similar reasons of what do we have to learn from all these pagans like Aristotle?

And then it became, what do we have to learn from these, you know, Enlightenment thinkers, or what do we have to learn from, you know, Vatican II? Like, uh, like, what could, what do we have to benefit from even finding out what it is that these other religions believe and what, what we agree with them on?

Like, that kind of perennial question of saying, how do we take You know, 'cause if someone said tomorrow, I'm gonna start a project on exploring the, the Catholic interface with fa- interfacing, uh, Catholic interaction with Buddhism.

Apparently, I'm not gonna try to say interface.

Uh, Catholic interaction with Buddhism, that could be really good.

That could be really synchronistic in a way that is really bad.

And without knowing more about the project, it's hard to know what to make of that, which I think speaks maybe to the discomfort people have had perennially in the Church with everyone from St. Thomas Aquinas to de Lubac.

Uh, you know, like, that And, and you see guys who do it really badly.

Yeah.

So I don't have a good question formulated from that, but I think it sounds like that's maybe where some of your current exploration is of how do we make sense of this sort of ongoing dialogue even within the Church, as well as this ongoing dialogue between the Church and the world or between the Church and other expressions of Christianity or whatever it is.

D- is that I don't know.

I can't even tell if I'm being too heinous.

Yeah.

I, I think that's right.

I would add an, a third layer to that.

Please.

Um, and I, I think one of the most pressing ones is between the Church and itself throughout history.

Um, and one of the areas of thought that interests me a lot is just not, uh, history as just the data of history at a given time, but looking at trajectories of theological history.

I mean And, like, Newman's project of doctrinal development and how we make sense of that, um, and also how we, how we make sense of the Church in this era versus the Church in this era.

The It's this kind of, you know, the, the hermeneutic of continuity, of reform, of, like, how do we make sense of going from the 19th century to the 20th century when there's certainly shifts in attitude at the very least.

Um, I'm I used to look at those things as weaknesses for Catholicism because I'd engage more in the, you know, are there contradictions, which is a good question to ask.

Absolutely.

Um, i- it's, it's not unimportant.

Uh, I think today I'm just also interested in what, what is going on here?

Like, because if there is development, and I think development's a, a word we can all like here, um, what does that mean for where the Church has been and where it might go in the future?

Um, so yeah, I think the, the Church dialoguing with those outside of it i- is an interesting thing.

Um, the Church kind of wrestling with those people within its bounds who are trying to do that is an interesting thing.

Um, but it's not even so much, like, the interfaith dialogue that I'm interested myself, but it's just that movement of, like, what can the Church take in, including change or development within its own history.

Um, yeah.

Yeah.

I think that's, that's very well said, and it's a good question to explore along the way.

Do you have I don't wanna put this too provocatively.

Go for it.

Sometimes people end up being Anglican-

Do it

particularly Anglo-Catholic as a sort of, well, sort of a via media in a negative sense.

You know, when, when the couple says, like, uh, The marriage isn't going well, but we're not gonna get divorced.

We're just gonna live separately.

It's, it's just like, this is not I don't think this is anybody's idea of, of how things ought to end up.

You've just sort of You're not ready to, to just accept where this thing is going or whatever, and I'm not endorsing divorce.

I'm just, just for the sake of the analogy.

Yeah.

No, I get it.

Uh, this would be almost the, the exact opposite in some ways.

That you can have people who are carried along by seeing the force of the Catholic claim or the Catholic argument or the Catholic vision of reality, whatever that is, but then they still have some hang-ups.And Anglicanism, and for some people, frankly, Orthodoxy can be an attractive option for people coming from a Protestant background, where I think two things are true.

One, there often is much more definition and opposition.

You know, like Protestantism exists in opposition in some way to Catholicism in a way that it doesn't to Anglicanism, in a way that it doesn't to Orthodoxy.

Uh, like, the relationship of even in what ways is Anglican Protestant and not Protestant, that's a whole thing.

But it's, it's not really defined in that way.

Like, I've talked to numerous people who their journey was they were drawn towards the Catholic Church, and at some point, either one spouse or a parent or somebody else sort of said, What about Anglicanism?

You know, where it's not like I read all these Anglican divines and was overwhelmed by this incredible English tradition of theology that I just knew this is exactly where I am meant to be or maybe where everyone is meant to be.

It, for many people, seems to be I'm not ready to take that jump at this point in my life, but I want something, as you said, with more liturgy, with more, you know, maybe tradition, with more reverence.

Uh, so do you find you have positive reasons for being Anglican vis-a-vis everything else, or do you find some unsettled tensions in terms of fully committing to being Catholic, or is that maybe a bad way of framing the question itself?

I don't think it's a bad way of framing the question.

I think there's a few different ways of being Anglican, right?

So there are those who say that, Yeah, I've read the Anglican divines, or, I think the Oxford movement is the greatest expression o- of theology.

The Oxford movement, for those who aren't familiar, was, uh, what John Henry Newman was in, St. John Henry Newman, uh, was in before becoming Catholic, helped start, which was like a retrieval project.

Um, so I think there are those who, like, positively Anglicanism is the best on Anglican grounds.

I think there are a lot who say Anglicanism is, like, practically, for me, the best option, which I'd say while there are aspects of, like, the Anglican divines that I find really compelling, I would say I land more in that category of not Anglican because everything else is wrong or Anglicanism is the height of the church, per se.

I think I find myself in this tradition more so because I look at the Catholic Church and there's so much I love there, but I struggle to see how it lives up to its own claims about itself, is often, I think, the way I would put it.

Um, that I think it has maybe set a bar for itself that it doesn't quite meet, and then you kind of have this question, uh, in my mind of, okay, so if you don't think it's true or making good on True in the sense of making good on its claims about itself, um, what do you do there?

For some, you could just become Catholic and think, Okay, like every church, it's gotten some things wrong.

Maybe the one thing it's gotten wrong about itself is that it hasn't gotten things wrong that said it got right.

You know?

Like, functionally, I know people who do that.

Um, or I think you can say, Okay, well then do I become Orthodox?

Do I If not Orthodox, um, you know, maybe if you're, you like really precise doctrinal lines, uh, Lutheranism, I think, is a kind of compelling one.

Uh, this might not be surprising to me or to people listening given my talk about, like, theory of everything and kind of wide Ressourcement type of thinking, but I think what Anglicanism does offer is a big tent that can embark on a project like that of retrieval and synthesis.

N- not synthesis in the sense of, like, syncretism, but in taking truths and trying to understand them better, um, wherever we find truth.

A- and a- again, this all sounds like a lot of, like, interreligious stuff.

That's not primarily what I'm interested in, but more just, like, wide Ressourcement within the Christian tradition.

Anyway, um-

May I-

I, I think Anglicanism can be compelling there

quickly interrupt here with a-

Of course

with a, a audience question.

So-

Yeah

um, we have Roberto asking, Can Austin explain what is Anglo-Catholic and why not just be Catholic?

I think he's kind of-

Yeah

explaining the second part, but may- people may not be very familiar with, uh, the term Anglo-Catholic.

Right.

Like, how is that different than being an English Catholic?

Because like, if you just-

Yeah

looked at a dictionary, those two should be the same thing.

Sure.

So And I'll be, uh, clear here that it, it can mean different things.

So for some, Anglo-Catholic can refer to groups of Anglican, uh, churches that are in what are known as, like, the continuing, uh, Anglican movements or various offshoots of Anglicanism wherein, like, the, uh, ecclesial governance is all churches that have this specific outlook not only on liturgy, but also theology.

I'm not in one of those.

I worship in an Episcopal church.

I describe it as Anglo-Catholic because of its liturgical style.

And when I use Anglo-Catholic in a liturgical sense, I really just mean it has a more formal, more reverent, robust, traditional liturgy in its expression.

So think, again, you know, choral Latin hymns, uh, maybe the use of incense, vestments, all of those things.

Because within Anglicanism broadly, you can have pretty low church expressions all the way up to, you know, very high church expressions.

So I mean it, uh, not in the polity sense, not in the sense of a, like, denomination within the Anglican movement.

I just mean it in a liturgical sense.

D- does that answer that question?

I mean, I, I, I get what you're saying with that.

We'll see from Roberto if, if he finds that explanation, um, helpful.

Yeah.

I think it's-

Austin?

Yeah.

Y- y- we don't need to necessarily get into even the Continuing Anglicanism.

That's-Kind of the, the schism that happens over women's ordination-

Mm-hmm

back in the '70s, and then that's different from the ANCA, ACE, uh, yeah

ACNA.

I do that every time.

ACNA. I don't know why I just remember-

Anglican Church North America.

I kn- yeah, I, yeah.

Okay, sorry.

No, you're welcome.

So yeah, the ACNA, where that splits over issues of sexual morality, like same sex relationship, uh, stuff-

Mm-hmm

it kind of broad.

Is that a good description and so you're in a church that's in communion with people who maybe you don't share their theological principles.

Is that fair to say?

I mean, I guess that's true in a sense-

Oh, yeah

but I mean-

I'm sure I wouldn't agree with everyone in the Episcopal Church at all.

Um, I, and I, so I think this is where Anglicanism a- and that's another kind of Anglican versus Episcopal sometimes in American context people use Anglican to mean ACNA, but Anglican is just a way of describing the Church of England, broadly the Anglican communion.

Anyway, um, I think one of its great benefits is that it's a really big tent.

I think one of its great drawbacks is that it's a really big tent.

Um, so you have a lot of latitude within the Church of England, uh, from the very beginning, I would say, in what you can believe.

I mean, the Thirty-Nine Articles are not all that restrictive, um, and the way they've been interpreted over time hasn't been.

I think often, uh, Anglicans have seen their unity f- coming from two things.

One, relationally, like agreeing to stay in communion with one another, and two, um, in terms of devotionally praying, uh, with the Book of Common Prayer.

Which I think the Book of Common Prayer is just an absolute treasure, uh, which is at like a personal level maybe my favorite thing about Anglicanism, uh, is just being able to, to use that to structure my own devotional life.

Uh, so yeah.

I forget where I was going before.

I was actually-

Uh, no, I think that-

answering a question

that's helpful.

The latitudinarianism is an interesting kind of principle within Anglicanism as well-

Mm-hmm

of like giving as much sort of bandwidth to believe various things, even, you know, maybe contradictory things, that you, you can have different views.

So one thing that can be very confusing for a Catholic looking in and to say, What do Anglicans believe on X? is there rarely is an answer.

I mean, it, it's often-

Yeah

some Anglicans believe this and some Anglicans believe this, this radically different thing, and in some ways, uh, you know, on, on unsettled matters of doctrine, that might actually be laudable.

Mm-hmm.

On other things it can be, again, speaking as a Catholic, mystifying.

So if you say something like, Well, what's happening from an Anglican perspective in the liturgy?

Is the bread and wine becoming the body and blood of Christ, or is he in with and under, or is it a symbol?

It, it seems like you're gonna get very different answers within Anglicanism.

I mean, the 10 articles of 1536 had a very high Eucharistic theology.

The Thirty-Nine Articles that you alluded to before, uh, reject transubstantiation seemingly, but it's not clear what they're kind of putting forward as a positive Eucharistic vision.

And it seems like within the maybe family of Anglicanism, there are answers maybe all over the place.

It may be even within the same congregation.

And so is the idea, well, if this priest or this congregant believes it's Jesus, that it's Jesus then, but not otherwise Like, I'm tr- like I wanna be charitable to the Anglo-Catholic perspective because I, I love aesthetically Anglo-Catholicism.

I love-

Mm-hmm

uh, what I understand of the idea of what they're trying to do.

Uh, I think I share Newman's sense that I'm not sure it works as a project ultimately.

I mean, he's, as you say, one of the guys who kind of founds the thing and then concludes that it, it can't work.

But yeah, and so particularly let's, let's, if, if you are willing to, to go here-

Sure

specifically on the Eucharist, what is your understanding of what's happening and what does that mean if the person next to you or maybe the priest doesn't share that same view of the Eucharist?

Yeah.

So I think I could probably answer this at a couple different levels as far as like functionally what does that mean if you and your priest disagree or you and the person next to you disagree.

Um, but doctrinally I think the general thrust of the Book of Common Prayer would be towards a view of, I would say, real presence, but probably more in the Calvinistic sense of that, um, as far as presence by the power of the Holy Spirit and less of a localized presence.

So I often describe the difference between like Calvin and Luther directionally as far as what's happening in the Eucharist, as far as, uh, is Christ coming down and being present in the, in with and under the elements.

I would d- describe that as like a downward arrow, and Calvin's being an upward arrow, so that in those elements you are bro- by partaking in those elements, you are brought up to, uh, truly participate or, or partake of Christ's flesh and blood.

Now, interesting things happen in the Book of Common Prayer, uh, like historically in a, like what is the most Anglican of Anglican moves I think, was that I hope I've got these dates right.

The Book of Common Prayer undergoes a couple revisions very early on.

The 1559 edition, I think it was the 1559, uh, had very, let's say, like more Zwinglian language to it.

Uh, so it was like, uh, do this, you know, emphasis on remembrance, emphasis on, yeah, emphasis on remembrance generally.

But then three years later in 1562, it's much more-Literal, so it's, you know, take, eat, this is my body.

It- that's brought back in in the words of the institution there.

Um, you know, feed on Christ is brought in.

And so what they do in the kind of authoritative, uh, version of this in 1662, but this came out before that in two, they just put the two together.

So, like, it- you get this long words of institution where, like, half of it sounds Bingley and half of it sounds Lutheran, and they just kind of put them both there.

Um, but I, I think the general thrust is probably more towards a reformed sense.

I mean, the, the 39 articles are, are fairly reformed in their theological outlook, I would say.

But, like, so functionally, what does this mean?

Well, I think the way I would think about the Eucharist would be, one, having people in the congregation that disagree with you, uh, on what's happening there might be problematic in some sense, but I think it's also just inevitable.

Um, you know, in any church, no matter what their official doctrine is, people in the pews might disagree, but you could at least adjudicate whether one is kind of with the church or without the church.

Um, but yeah, at a functional level, the person in the pew next to you, whether that's in an Orthodox church or a Catholic church, might have a different understanding, whether by bad catechesis or going against church doctrine.

I think what is happening in the Eucharist, um, I, I don't think necessarily depends on Well, how do I wanna put this?

Yeah, I think you're getting to Yeah, I, I understand obviously any, any denomination, any church you go into, you might have someone who does and doesn't believe in, in what that church believes about the Eucharist.

My question is more like, does it change what's actually happening?

You know, 'cause if somebody We would say if somebody doesn't believe in the mass, the mass is still happening.

If- they, they might receive unworthily, they might receive ignorantly, but that doesn't mean that, Oh, well, it's just bread for them.

Like, we wouldn't say, you know, it's not-

Right

Schrödinger's Eucharist where, you know- uh, the-

Yeah

the receiver changes what's happening.

Yeah.

So I would say that from I'll, I'll start with the priest and then come to the person 'cause I think the person's a little more complicated.

Um-

Okay

I think the, the worthiness of the priest, and I think this would be an idea that we'd agree on, their, like, moral worthiness at least isn't, uh, isn't decisive in what happens with the Eucharist.

I, I think if you have a bit more Calvinistic understanding of what's going on there, um, it's less of a change in the elements right there, so it's even less dependent on the priest in that sense.

Um, but the person, there is, like, an intra-Protestant debate whether the one who receives unworthily, um, truly receives Christ or not.

Um, and I think there probably would be Anglican disagreements on this.

I, I'll put all this, uh, with the caveat of there are people that are much better at explaining traditional Anglican theology than I am.

Um, again, like, most of the people that I spend my time reading are Catholics.

Um, but I would say that it doesn't change what's happening, even if I don't fully understand what's happening with the elements.

Um, but I do think there's, there's room within Protestant theology to say that the person who receives not Not only Well, it's more so whether or not they're, they have faith in Christ.

Like, whether they are Christians, what do they receive?

Um, I think there's space within Protestant theology to say that perhaps what they're receiving is not, um, quite the same in that way because they are not united to Christ, that the elements then aren't bringing them up into union with Christ on a Calvinistic view.

Um, but I, I don't think that, one, understanding what's going on in the Eucharist or having the completely right theology about it would determine whether or not they partake of Christ.

You know, just as we could say someone who had Well, actually, I don't know in Catholic theology.

If someone had, like, an intellectual disability such that they-

Mm-hmm

couldn't understand transubstantiation, they, they weren't able to do that, would they be able to receive?

'Cause I know you don't give communion to children in the Latin rite.

Yeah.

So, I mean, the rite there is, is a very important question.

The standard usually is for someone to be able to understand that it's not ordinary bread.

Mm-hmm.

But in the case of I don't know how this is normally handled in the West with, like, severe intellectual disabilities.

I believe I mean, there's no reason spiritually they wouldn't be able to receive.

They may not have-

Yeah

an appreciation.

Like, the reason ordinarily in the West that there is this time of making sure that the person can discern that this is Christ is, I think, twofold.

One, we want to kind of spiritually prepare them for this encounter.

And two, we wanna take seriously everything St. Paul says about not receiving without discerning the body.

But someone who's just literally incapable of discerning the body for reasons of, you know, intellectual, uh, inability, I don't think that would be a, a barrier to them receiving.

And, and as you sort of alluded to, this is very easy in the East, where even infants receive communion.

Uh, so-

Yeah

I mean, it's clearly not a, a bar in terms of validity.

Right.

A- and so I guess the point I was gonna make there, as I'm getting to this roundabout way, is I don't think someone having a right theology of the Eucharist in terms of having it all worked out is determinative of what they receive.

Um, I think there's I, I, I guess I would put myself as just a bit more undecided on the question of, like, if someone is not in Christ, can they then partake of Christ in the Eucharist?

I think a more reformed understanding would say no, um, because those things would be put together, one's union with Christ and what it- one is having in the sacrament, um, because again, the kind of it's a directional move, um, rather than-

Yeah

it being focused on the elements.

But that was probably a long and obtuse answer to what was-

Well, I think people who are familiar with-

your original question

kind of the history of the different expressions of Eucharistic theology of the different camps, they have a clearer sense of where you are with it.

Uh, I know we've gotten questions already on papacy, and I think you've alluded You know, one of the common themes that's come up in your story, both in what you are drawn to and struggle with in Catholicism and what you've liked in Anglicanism seems to be this idea of a unit- me, if I can put it in words you haven't a unity in diversity of saying-

Mm

like, how, how do we have a common thing where we're not just Because, like, the, the broadest way would just be like, I'm gonna be an agnostic.

I want, you know-

Sure, yeah

such a broad view of everything that I want people who both believe in and don't believe in God.

And so I'm gonna start, like, the church of agnosticism, where we, we stand for literally nothing and so everybody is welcome because we'd have no principles whatsoever.

And that might be a caricature of Anglicanism, but that's not really what Anglicans believe.

But they're always Like, everyone, no matter how latitudinarian they are, has to say we're united in some way in something.

Mm.

That there has to be s- at some point, a boundary where you say, Up to here and no farther.

Mm.

And some people might draw those boundaries very broadly, some of them might draw them very narrowly, but someone somewhere has to draw a boundary or you have no definition to the thing.

Like, if a term means everything, it means nothing.

If, uh, a body stands for everything, it stands for nothing.

Like, every political movement, every definition of a word seems to You know, like, you can have a word where maybe there's a little bit of, uh, an amorphous boundary where it's not precisely defined.

Uh, Wittgenstein gives the example of the word game.

Like, what does and doesn't constitute a game is something where we know some clear cases, and then there's a lot of fuzzy cases.

But it can't be just literally everything or, or it ceases to be a, a usable term.

Mm-hmm.

Again, long-winded prep.

So someone's gotta draw boundaries.

The papacy is obviously, uh, an important part of that conversation.

Ecumenical councils are obviously an important part of that conversation.

But I also know that even, uh, in that role, there's a lot of controversy with that.

So where you are in your journey now, do you see the papacy, and if you wanna add ecumenical councils, you can, you don't have to, uh, as an important source of unity, as a cause of disunity and, you know, factionalization, or some third thing I haven't, uh, anticipated in, in- that formulation?

Just wanna quickly-

Yeah

call out, uh, Matt Fradd's with us here in chat saying, Austin, what a guy.

What a guy.

You gotta, you gotta do it in, you gotta do it in the right voice.

Hey, Matt.

Thanks for watching.

Hell, hell no.

Not happening.

Pardon my language.

Sorry.

I'm not, I'm not offending Matt Fradd with a, an Australian accent right now.

Nice.

Yeah, I won't do that either.

Okay.

So how do I look at the papacy?

Yeah, um, not to, like, plug my own stuff, but I did just explore this on Substack if people want maybe a slightly more coherent version of my thoughts, um, where the conclusion of that article, uh, it was, like, church unity in a post-Christendom era, and what I say there is, in a time that we live in today where we don't have, uh, civic rulers enforcing doctrinal unity, which I think is an aspect of church unity that's often forgotten in our modern discourse about why the church is or isn't united.

For the record, I'm not calling for a modern confessional state.

That's just, like, a historic-

When, when you were talking about what, what unites Anglicans, I thought you were gonna at least mention allegiance to the king as the head of the Church of England- which is historically what Like, that was the, the boundary.

Yeah, no.

But fair.

Um, so I think that Catholics have adapted to that situation the best, and I think the papacy is the most efficient means of carrying out church unity in the situation we're in today, uh, so points to the Catholic Church for that.

I think what I say in that article, or maybe it was an article before that, I, I've been exploring these things on Substack, is that-

You've had, like, 39, um, articles.

What was that?

Oh,

I was saying, you know, everyone- It was a stupid, stupid joke.

It was a, it was an Anglican joke.

No, that was good.

That was good.

Uh, I was like, I, I don't know if I've had 39.

I don't know how many I've wrote.

Uh, anyway, I'm slow.

Here we go.

I think w- something we have to separate is the papacy could be an adaptive, uh, mechanism that the church came up with for governing the church and happens to work well for promoting unity, but that's not actually what the Catholic Church claims about the papacy.

I mean, it does claim-

Correct

that it is good for promoting unity, but the claim is more than that.

Uh, so I would grant that the papacy is that, that it is a good way of, uh, having unity, especially without even needing necessarily, um, you know, civil rulers to enforce it, even if that might have been a help throughout a lot of history.

The question, though, is what I, I, I think I say in the article, like, but if the papacy is not founded by Christ, then our faith is in vain.

Kind of in, in, our faith in the magisterium is in vain.

Yes.

Referencing Paul there on the resurrection.

So that's kind of the, the more difficult question.

Um, but I, I would grant that it is a, a good way of ensuring unity.

I would even This is I, I probably shouldn't say this online.

I don't know.

Um, I don't get This is just a freebie for all the Catholic apologists out there.

I don't get why you guys don't, like, draw on Vladimir Soloviev more, uh, because he, like, was Orthodox and then became convinced of the papacy, and he has this wonderful book, like, Russia and the Catholic Church or something like that.

Yeah.

And, and he puts forward the argument ab- against ecumenical councils really working for this, um, and he basically says, like, the papacy, this is the way this could work.

And in a lot of ways, I would agree with him.

Like, this I don't have a If we want doctrinal unity, um, and we want it in a certain way, like, the papacy seems to be in the kind of front runner right now for, like, this is a way it could be done.

Um, but the question again is just not It, it, it has to be more than is this an adaptive mechanism for ensuring unity or-

Absolutely

is it true?

I mean, you're right.

'Cause there's a lot of things that would be Well, this is, this works very well and you could even have things that, like the pentarchy, where you have the patriarchs.

We don't claim that's of apostolic origin, so maybe that's a good way of structuring a church from a pragmatic-

Yeah

perspective.

But that's a very different Like, that is a prudential question, not a, This is gonna determine whether you become Catholic or not.

I mean, one of the things I say in Pope Peter is, If the papacy is true, everyone should be Catholic.

If the papacy isn't true, no one should be Catholic.

And it seems like you have the, the same Is it fair to say you have the same, uh, sort of read of the, the history, that it's not enough to say this works or it doesn't work?

There's a much deeper question to, to be asked there.

I'd agree with it the way you said at the end.

I would agree with half of the claim in Pope Peter.

So I would agree that if the papacy is true, everyone should be Catholic.

I am not convinced of the second half of that, um, because I think you could have a situation where It, it's k- kind of similar to my, like, disagreement with Lewis on, like, liar, lunatic, Lord.

Like, the papacy could be just sincerely but mistaken or it could even be that, you know, I, I Depending on how-

Well, yeah, I mean, I certainly I, I can accept that it could be sincerely mistaken.

My thinking is if it's sincerely mistaken, we shouldn't say we believe that Jesus established a church that, in that case, he seemingly wouldn't have established, even if that church is innocent in its delusions.

Yeah.

I, I guess, like, the way I would put it is let's say that This isn't gonna happen, right?

But, like, uh, you know, next year, uh, some Protestant apologist writes the definitive work that disproves the papacy.

I, I don't think at that point A- and, like, Catholics agreed, like Man, yeah, case closed.

Papacy is wrong.

I don't think, like, the Catholic Church should shut its doors.

I think it would just adapt to that and say, Okay, our claims about the papacy were wrong, uh, in one sense, but we could still say, Of all of our options for governing the church, this is the, uh, the most adaptive one.

And so we might have to massage some of the claims we've made about it, but I, I wouldn't say that therefore everyone should stop being Catholic.

I think just what it means to be Catholic would change in that situation.

That's interesting.

I mean, it's very pragmatic in a certain way.

Um, m- this Okay, that's actually related to a question I wanted to make sure I asked you.

Mm-hmm.

There's a lot that seems that you have an attraction to, and not just have an attraction to.

That's too relativistic.

It seems to me, and correct me if I'm wrong, there's a wealth of things that you think the Catholic Church has gotten right that were in many cases surprising to you coming from, uh, a moody Christian background.

Yeah.

People have to have heard the beginning to know I'm not insulting you there.

Uh

I'm so moody.

Yeah.

Exactly.

And, and even in terms of things that we agree, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, on, things like the three hypostases and one divine substance in the Trinity or-

Mm-hmm

the way the two natures cohere in an unmixed but united way in, in Christ's person.

Those very subtle questions and those things where time and time again it seems that the church is getting things right, not just on the softballs, but getting-

Mm-hmm

things right on the curveballs, the things where the answer is quite surprising, and the church says this thing that when you first hear it, you're like, That's not at all what I think.

And then you do a little more digging and say, Well, actually, the church was right and I was wrong.

Like, this happens In my experience, it's happened over and over again.

I think even from having heard the bits of your story that I've heard-

Mm-hmm

you've had something of this experience as well, but there are still areas where you say, I can get this far, but, but right now I can get no farther.

And my question is what you think is happening, not in the areas where you still struggle to see w- whether the Catholic Church is right or maybe where you think the Catholic Church is wrong.

Mm-hmm.

But what you make of all of those surprising successes because is this that the Holy Spirit was leading the church on some of these things and then, I don't know what you think of branch theory, like maybe started leading different, um, factions of the church in different directions or Do you see what I mean by that?

Like, were they just lucky?

Is this the wisdom of crowds or is this a work of the Holy Spirit or is there some, you know Maybe I'm giving you a false trilemma right after you warned me that Lewis- gave a false trilemma.

Uh, is there some other way of, of viewing this thing?

Because, like, yeah, what How did we get so much right if it's not If, if there's a fundamental, even in a sense, um, self-deception about, like, who and what the church is?

Good question.

So the way I look at kind of the history of this, I, I think it depends on the issue we're talking about.

So when we talk about something like the three hypostases and the one ousia in the Trinity, let the record show, I think that's right.

I also think that I think that's right probably solely on the grounds of tradition, which may be not solely, but the mix of tradition and the credence to which I give that is really high.

Um, and so I, I don't know that it's necessarily like I've exhaustively looked at all the alternative theories on this.

Um, I remember one of my theology professors saying, and this is gonna sound very Catholic, Like, some things just aren't on the table.

And he didn't mean that in the sense of, like, we couldn't ask questions about these things.

He wasn't trying to shut down discussion, but he was like, If you're going to do theology within the-Broader catholic like lower c case c tradition we're not gonna redo the trinity like we hammered that one out move on like figure out the next question um and i think you know like when i look at something like the council of chalcedon we brought this up once i think actually on keith little's channel i find that to be like an incredibly complicated sense like i i again let the record show i affirm the council of chalcedon but i don't know that i could have come up with that on my own and i'm not entirely convinced that it's better than the way that the coptic orthodox church has understood it over time especially in the light of the sense of maybe we've been saying the same thing with different words and so whether our words were better than their words like i i don't know but i'm a christian in the west i take it um so i think you know some of those things on the one hand that's like a strong argument maybe for the catholic church on the other hand it's not so much like a wow i can't believe they got this right so much as a i'm in this stream like i'm not outside of it deciding if it was right in like the just broad lowercase c catholic you know conciliar tradition uh i i'm just i've never looked at it from the outside really because i've all i've never read the bible not thinking that god was triune you know before i could read i was told that jesus is god and i don't think that makes it just a relative claim at that point i don't think it means it's not true but i also recognize like it wouldn't be surprising to me that i think this is right because that's just kind of the water i've always been swimming in um and but i do again for the record think it's right i guess on other areas where i'd been surprised that the catholic church was right on like smaller things i think in some ways it it has shifted my thinking and uh you know at the beginning you think ah the catholic church must be wrong about all of these things because that's just what you think as a low church protestant and then you realize like the catholic church has been the largest expression of christianity with the greatest minds at its disposal for a really long time like i don't think it's surprising that it got things right um but i feel like i'm probably missing the thrust of your question somewhere so i'm gonna let you come in

Well, yeah, I guess I, I mean, you, you said you don't know that you would have come up with like the Tome of Leo, you know, left to your own devices.

Yeah.

I, I, again, I'm paraphrasing you Jack.

But I think it's fair to say almost nobody would.

Like you, you have people who aren't Like, I guess even in, in the way you've just formulated that, you have certain creedal and traditional commitments that you just sort of start from in terms of a hermeneutic of how you read the text.

Mm-hmm.

I think without those, we've certainly seen a lot of people who are trying to be faithful followers of our Lord go in wildly different directions up to and including rejections of the Trinity, getting Christology wrong.

And I don't just mean wording it in a different way where maybe we're saying the same thing in different words.

I mean, like just out and out modalism, tritheism, uh, you know, whatever else.

Mm-hmm.

The Trinity maybe seems self-evident now, you know, if those are the waters in which we're swimming.

And I think we would both say the Trinity is correct, but it strikes me as being correct in a way that isn't intuitive, where, Oh, there are three persons in one divine substance, is the kind of answer it's hard to imagine someone even thinking up as a multiple choice option.

Mm-hmm.

Because it, it You know, you see what I mean?

Like it, it seems like the church got this one right in a very surprising way where it better explains the evidence than any of the alternatives.

'Cause even though, like you, I've always been a Trinitarian, so I've never had this situation of being on the outside looking in.

But in terms of the ability to explain all of the biblical data, say, I would suggest we can say pretty objectively Trinitarianism accounts for the biblical data in a more robust way than any of the options that take the three persons to the exclusion of one substance or take one substance to the exclusion of three persons, where that's doing a good job of one part of the data and not the other part.

But a- again, in this way that I don't think you could reverse engineer very effectively.

Like I don't think you could just start with the biblical data, put 100 people who'd never heard of the Trinity in a room and say, What'd you guys come up with?

And have any reliable indication that a majority or maybe any of them would say, Okay, I think it is three persons in one being.

Do you see what I mean by Because partly we, we don't have any earthly encounters with multi-personal beings, uh, in terms of the created world.

So that's just one example, but it, it's an example of the church seemingly not just being led be- like, Oh, this is the smartest people, the holiest people in the room, so of course they're gonna come up with the right answer.

But it, it seems to be, and from my perspective, an act of the Holy Spirit guiding the church into the fullness of truth, and would be hard to explain on a merely human level, as evidenced by the fact that on a merely human level, it hasn't really been replicated.

Like, I've never heard of someone who'd never heard of the Trinity kind of stumbling into that as, as the explanation of the data.

I don't know.

Does that, does that make sense?

Like I don't think we can just say, Well, this is what we've accepted, so we're just gonna accept it out the gate, in a, in a pluralistic society in which plenty of people don't accept those starting premises, unless we're just gonna do a kind of presuppositional form of theology.

Sure.

Yeah, I, I think there's a tension here.

So on the one hand, I would grant that these seem like strokes of genius, we could say, and not just a stroke of genius in the human way, but in like, this must have been guided by the Holy Spirit.At the same time you said, like I, I think this is objectively correct and so if it is objectively correct and we have any access to objective meaning in texts, it doesn't seem inconceivable that someone could get to that and I think also we'd have to wrestle with the fact of it's not as though Trinity was first proposed, we would both agree, at the Council of Nicaea.

I mean, maybe Homoousios was like a genuine, you know, Holy Spirit inspired stroke of genius.

But, like, Tertullian got to Trinitas, um, and we wouldn't say, at least in the same way I don't think, that that was guided by the Holy Spirit in the same way a council we might say was guided by the Holy Spirit.

So I, I think there at least has to be the possibility of people getting to that without the council or without a kind of direct input-

Oh, yeah.

So ju- ju- just, sorry, just to clarify.

When I talk about the Holy Spirit leading the church into the fullness of truth, I don't just mean Like I, obviously I would say at the council, but I would include within that the whole movement of the Sensus Fidelium being led in, in this direction that we can look back and say, Aha, the, you know, this great tradition has gotten these things right.

And it, and it doesn't seem to just be this one thinker was really brilliant and came up with this really crazy, innovative idea, but there was something of a shared theological tradition that found increased nuance and expression and development, but we can still see it as as clearly the same thing going through history and becoming more defined.

Um, that like the council would be part of that story, but I, I don't mean to, to just be like, No one had ever thought of the Trinity and then in like 325 they all came up with the I would, I would push very hard against that as exactly the wrong kind of view of history because that sounds much more like just a, a total break from the tradition.

Oh, right.

So yeah.

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm glad you, you've clarified that too 'cause I, I didn't mean to say it that way.

Right.

And, and so I would agree with that, and I would agree that the Holy Spirit is guiding the church generally, but I do think we do I, I, I think we'd have to recognize a, a bit of maybe our own presuppositionalism coming out here because I, I think you had said, um, I've never seen in history where someone just comes to the text in kind of a purely human way and comes to this conclusion.

If I'm butchering that, feel free to let me know.

Because I, I think someone could say, Wait, if we don't assume that the Holy Spirit was guiding Tertullian, like isn't that precisely what has happened?

Like, i- isn't the historical data precisely that humans read this and came up with this conclusion?

Now, we can say it feels unlikely, that there must have been something else going on here, but I do think i- if I'm just gonna be fair to the skeptics, we might be doing a little bit of that, you know, chicken and egg with the Holy Spirit of it's inconceivable without the Holy Spirit, but-

Sure

only if I get the Holy Spirit-

No, I, I get that

exactly.

For the record, I think Theophilus uses it like 20 years before Tertullian.

I just-

Mm

I mention that 'cause Theophilus is not a heretic, whereas Tertullian or, you know, a literature does matter.

Yeah, does make it a little more complicated.

Yeah.

Like if, if the first mention of Trinity came from someone who, who left the church and became a Montanist, that'd be a problem.

Um, but no, I, I think you're, you're right to say, okay, so here the early Christians are Maybe we can put it this way, where, where hopefully I can strip it of the presuppositions.

The early Christians, a- with whatever tools they're using, scripture, the apostolic teaching and explanation that maybe isn't as immediately accessible to us, um, whatever guidance of the Holy Spirit, whatever tools we, we might u- say they're using, the early Christians are explaining the biblical account using Trinity from the late 100s, and this becomes increasingly kind of nuanced and, and explained over time.

And that this seems to do a good job of explaining the biblical data.

I'm not suggesting they're limited to the biblical data.

I don't think that they are, but this does a, a good job of explaining the biblical data in a way that, that no other explanation similarly has that same explanatory power.

Mm-hmm.

And then today if you were to just say, Okay, everyone, just, you know, read these texts and, and tell us So I don't Maybe I'm inadvertently making an argument against sola Scriptura, that maybe with a broader interpretive tradition more people would come to a Trinitarian reading, um, but they couldn't get it from scripture alone and that, you know, maybe I don't know.

I maybe, maybe that's how, how you would counter with that.

It just seems, and, and maybe the Trinity's not the best example to use.

It just seems like there's so many issues where in terms of dogma, the church has this incredible track record over time of landing in the right spots time and time and time again, in spots that even, um, like high church Protestants would say, Yeah, these were the right spots.

And, and spots that a lot of our fellow Christians are failing to kind of land in today.

Yeah.

If I-

Sorry, re- re-

could just interrupt.

Yeah.

Because-

Please do

we're running a little over and out on time.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

I'm sorry.

Oh.

We still have several, several viewer comments that we should get to here.

Uh-

Yeah.

Let's, let's-

There are other people here.

Yeah.

No, I'm okay.

Okay.

I knew you were here.

There's John Robert's question.

It's, it starred, Mike.

Uh, this is back in the very early part of your kind of-

Before, before we-

bio.

Sorry

before we get to there, I think we should hit a few super chats first.

Uh-

Uh, I'm, I'm fine hitting super chats or not hitting super chats.

With, with these conversations I wanna prioritize the, the discussion.

Let's go to John Robert's question first.

That super chat's one of my patrons, though, so just-

Oh, okay

shout out to Bill.

Please.

Thanks for the super chat.

I, I don't Yeah.

Yeah.

What was the question?

Bill, Bill says, Great that you have Austin on today.

My five cents.

When looking, use the Lord's own prayer, 'Thy will be done,' to honestly ask God to put you where he needs you in his church.

He won't disappoint.

It's a beautiful sentiment-

Thanks

and I agree.

All right.

Um John, John Roberts, I don't know if it's the Chief Justice or not, wanted to know if you're a dare we hoper because of your, uh, interest for-

My affection for-

von Balthasar

von Balthasar?

Yeah.

I would say yes.

Yeah.

Um, I think I mean, I think Balthasar is more complex here than people often summarize him to be.

Um, but in so far as the theological virtue of hope, which I, I take him to be making his argument, um, yeah, I, I think we, we sh- we can, we can and should hope.

Um, but I don't, I don't think von Balthasar or myself would say that that should give us license to assume, um, and thus live as though it is definitely the case, um, and become lax in our evangelism, our moral lives, et cetera.

But yeah.

All right.

Um, if, if you wanna jump down, Mike, to channel 74, Broadcast, he asked or she asked, I don't know if there's one near you, Austin, but if you became Catholic, would you join the Ordinariate?

And there's a couple, you know, you can answer that or however you wanna answer that.

Oh, no.

Uh, I So there are two Ordinariate churches near me, which I, I've meant to go to.

I think the answer would be yes, if I became Catholic, I'd join the Ordinariate.

Most likely, I mean, having not been to those churches.

Um, and, and the reason I'd say that Well, one, I've just I love the Anglican liturgy, and I love the Book of Common Prayer, and I wouldn't want to give up either of those things if I didn't have to.

Um, two, if my wife were to attend a Catholic church with me, which I don't know if she would.

But I, I, I don't wanna kind of rope her into this.

Um, but it would be the least liturgically jarring should we do that together, because it would be most similar to where we're at.

Um, so yeah, I think I would-

I, I mean, I don't want to put you in an awkward spot in terms of having to share your wife's journey.

But what, w- if you are okay sharing this much-

Mm-hmm

what was her own background pre where you are now?

Did she also-

Yeah

come from a lower church Protestant world or something else?

We met at church, so yeah, we came from the same church.

Um, we met when we were 18 and 16.

We were long distance all of college, got married two weeks after college.

Um, yeah, she was Lutheran before that, um, like her, I don't know, maybe till she was like 10 or something like that.

Um, and so being in the Episcopal Church now has been a, a funny like revert back to a more liturgical tradition, which she would have never expected.

But I will say she is like our church's biggest fan.

Um, yeah- she, she has loved, uh, the Episcopal Church.

She's on the Altar Guild.

It's so fun now.

Altar Guild, for those who don't know, like they set up the altar and like we'll go to church and she'll be pointing out like, not only did I put that candle there, but like this is what it means.

And like she absolutely loves it, so.

Beautiful.

Well, I mean-

Yeah

certainly if, if you end up going the Ordinariate route or becoming Catholic, will you please express to her that we desperately need people with liturgical sensibilities in Catholic churches.

Um, okay, the two more things, if I can knock them out.

Uh, this might be too big of a question to ask at this point in the stream.

But St. Joseph Pray For Us said, As someone who used to be Anglo-Catholic, what convinced me was my affirmation of apostolic succession.

If I believed my bishops were valid from this doctrine, the gates of Hades could never prevail.

That's I mean, it's not exactly a question, but I'm, I'm curious if you have an immediate reaction to that.

Um, and if it If you say that's just too big to hit right now, I, I totally respect that.

Um, I don't think it's too big to hit, probably because I, I don't fully understand it.

I, I would have thought that as an Anglo-Catholic, they would have believed their bishops had valid apostolic succession.

So I, I would have thought an argument for, for apostolic succession of Rome wouldn't have been as compelling, but maybe I'm not understanding the thrust of the question.

Do you feel like you have a better read on it than-

I'm not 100%, 'cause I The way, usually if you hear Anglo-Catholic to Catholic apostolic succession, that means I concluded they didn't have-

Yeah

uh, valid orders, and that might be what's happening in that question.

But the other way of reading it might be that if, if you believe apostolic succession existed in the West up to, uh, the point of the Anglican Reformation, how do we harmonize that with the idea of a total loss of, um, small O orthodox faith?

I'm not, I'm not I don't know if that's where-

Hmm

where he's going with that, but I could see those being the two ways that, that could be interpreted.

Yeah.

And I guess I would just say on the latter part, I, I don't view it as like a total loss.

Um, and I, I think probably from what I've shared, I think the Catholic Church has gotten a great deal right.

Um, but I, I would disagree with certain other points.

So yeah.

But I don't know-

I see

maybe more than that would be too in the weeds.

Okay.

And then the, um, getting back to the interpretive tradition conversation-

Mm-hmm

we had a, a couple moments ago, Green Emperor says, I'm just gonna say, coming from a gnostic background, I get what you're saying, Austin, of coming to the text with no tradition.

That's why I always asked, how do I know Arius is incorrect?

I think that might be a good way of, of wording it, you know, 'cause there were smart people.

When you read the history of the early heretics, when you actually read their writings or the writings of the people who defended their positions-

Sure

we might imagine like, Oh yeah, these people just hated the Bible and wanted to compromise with the world, or they were just, you know, puffed up on human philosophy.

It's like, no, no, they're, they're doing theology, and they're coming to conclusions we would now recognize as wrong.

But how do we know-

Yeah

that we're right, that they're wrong?

I, yeah, I guess I'll just I won't give my own thoughts any further.

I'll just ask you what you, you would say to that.

Yeah, this is good.

So I think one of the big underlying questions with Arius, and there's been a lot of really good work done on Arius.

Uh, not least Rowan Williams, shout out to an Anglican there, uh, has done fairly groundbreaking work on him, is the question of whether Arius was actually more traditional in some ways than the likes of Athanasius.

If that is the case, um, I think that does really interesting work on the question I've asked about the Catholic Church throughout history and some of the, the early conversations we were having of what does development look like?

Um, because in that case, I think we would I, I would still say Athanasius was correct.

And, and this is all provisional and if such a thesis is right.

Um, but it's actually because it's, it's better able to make sense of all of the data.

It's not just kind of, okay, this is more traditional in the sense of I can, you know, attest more people on my side of it throughout history, but actually, as this is developing, it's, it's growing into a, a further fruitfulness, a further explanatory power that maybe we wouldn't have anticipated at the very beginning, but once we see it, we're like, Wow, that's it.

Um, if that's the case, I think it makes it difficult because I think something about knowing a doctrine is right becomes not only its, uh, looking backwards, its pedigree, you know, kind of going in the past, but actually going forward as well.

For those who would really wanna explore this argument, I think David Bentley Hart's book, Tradition and Apocalypse, is where he kind of puts forward a thesis like this, that we know doctrine not just by its first cause, but by its final cause, so where it's heading, um, which is maybe a even more radical sense of doctrinal development.

Um, but if Arius wasn't more traditional, um, but he was at least equally biblical in the sense of his arguments were not equally right about the Bible, but, like, could, uh, adduce the same amount of proof texts.

Yeah, I, I think it becomes difficult in that sense as well, um, and we have to think about what does it mean for me to know a doctrine is right?

Um, we could either say I'm just gonna have less certainty about that than I thought I was going to have, or you could say, um, it has to do with being able to have the most explanatory power, um, or it could have to do with just trusting the church.

I think there's probably other options as well, um, but I think those are a couple just initial sketches on that question, and I think it's a really good question.

Yeah.

I think that's very well said.

And actually, you One of the things you raised there, um, oh, who is I'm, I'm complete- Is it Cardinal Manning, I believe it was?

Mm-hmm.

The, uh, sort of, I don't wanna say rival to St. John Henry Newman, but the two of them had an uneasy relationship.

Papal maximalist.

Yes.

But if I'm not mistaken, one of the points Manning made was that you can't just imagine that you, you do tradition by just doing historical archeology.

Mm-hmm.

Like, just saying, Well, here's all these patristic quotations.

That's an important part of it, but how do you know if a church father is getting something r- Like, what if this is an area where their theology had to be corrected by, by the ongoing movement of the Holy Spirit in the history of the church?

Uh, and I think that something like Arius and pre-Arius quasi-Arians is a really interesting example of that thing being done.

You know, do you just count noses to say what the right answer is?

At, at the time of Athanasius, that wouldn't have looked good-

Mm

amongst the bishops, it would seem.

Or, or how do we do this responsibly and how do we know, uh, what to listen to even when we're, even when we're exploring the church fathers, and we would say, you know, patristic consensus and that the church has this important role in recognizing it.

But I think, yeah, you're, you're raising this really fascinating and a beautiful point that, you know what, there's so much more here.

Austin, I think we should cap the conversation here with my gratitude to you for your time.

There's so much in terms of, like, how do we make sense of this wealth of theology and how do we make sense of the wealth of, like, the spiritual tradition of the, the 2,000 years of Christianity.

Uh, and hopefully you've given people an, a renewed appreciation for someone grappling with that in this deep way and, and hopefully inviting us to grapple with it in a deep way and, and maybe appreciate aspects of this that we haven't noticed or thought about at a, as deep a level.

So thank you very much for coming on.

Obviously, I think I, I speak for everyone in the chat that we'd be happy to, uh, have you come back and, and kind of explore this or other topics at, at a much greater depth, because I think there's just so much here.

So yeah, thank you.

Absolutely.

Happy to come back anytime.

I really thought you were gonna say, I speak for everyone in the chat that would love for you to come home.

Uh, but that's why I thought you were going-

Look, I'll, I'll say this.

Everyone-

Which might also be speaking for the chat.

I don't know if everyone wants me back.

I think about it

pray for, pray for Austin and his wife, and, you know, uh, that the Holy Spirit will, uh, lead him in the direction he's to go, and if that happens to be Rome-ward, I will pretend to be shocked.

Oh, well, Joe, this is an absolute pleasure.

And Mike, also, thanks for that.

Everyone who's been listening.

Yes.

Mike, thank you very much for, for doing all the, you know, polling comments, and, uh, herding cats, and everything else.

All right.

Yeah.

Well, thank you guys both.

It was a pleasure.

Thank you for everyone for tuning in, uh, for Shameless Popery.

I'm Joe Heschmeyer.

God bless you all.