Transcript

Welcome everybody.

First and foremost, Happy Easter.

It's such a joy to be with you.

Um, I'm really excited to be doing this, and I hope your Easter was as good as my own.

One thing we do as a family that I, I really recommend if it's possible in your own kind of life situation, Thursday evening, from right before the Mass of the Lord's Supper until after we go to Easter mass, we did the vigil this year, we do a sort of technology fast and even like, we don't use lights, we don't use I mean, we say we don't use electricity.

That's not remotely true.

We, you know, we'll use like the microwave and, you know, we still have heating in our house and all that.

Uh, we still have like an air conditioner if need be.

And if you're familiar with April in the Midwest, heating and air conditioning might both be needed in the same day.

In any case, it's a great fast from just being online, from, you know, all, everything else.

So tried to like not do any work, tried to not do anything, just spend it in With prayer and with family and, you know, did some gardening and stuff.

It was, it was a bless- a real, real blessing, a real pleasure, and uh, given how much I've been on the road lately, it was a, I think a really wonderful time with the family.

So, I've had a wonderful Easter, I am thrilled to be with you.

I hope that your Easter is wonderful as well.

I, um, was also really excited to get to share the debate with you all, which just came out this morning.

And if you haven't had a chance to see it yet, I've already posted, uh, a link to it.

I talked about one of the, you know, themes from the debate in today's episode, but not really the debate itself, uh, just one of the themes that had come out, uh, in the debate.

Uh, so yeah, I'd, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I, I would just reiterate, if you're going to comment, if you're gonna do all of that, please be charitable.

I'm not actually worried for my own sake.

People can be mean to me, I don't mind.

But I don't want us to give a bad witness, particularly, you know, Catholics who are commenting, let's not do it in such a way where we're triumphalistic in a way that's off-putting and annoying to people who aren't already Catholic, 'cause that doesn't help.

So, um, yeah, if you wanna send a Superchat, Vanessa is gathering them all, and then I am answering them.

So, I've got a couple things from last time that I'm gonna do my best, uh, to understand and answer, and you'll, you'll explain what I mean by that.

The first one is from, this right here is by PBS, who says , great, I love these usernames, you guys do some really good usernames, Can you explain the Paschal Proposal for the time Jesus celebrated the Passover?

The Paschal Proposal.

Now Paschal means Passover, so the Passover Proposal for when Jesus celebrated the Passover.

I, I'm not 100% sure what you mean by that.

It is, might be a question of the dating of, uh, the Last Supper and thus the dating of Easter.

If that is what you're asking, Jimmy Akin actually just had a good piece on that, um, it's on catholic.com right now, uh, under the somewhat confusing title, The Biggest April Fool of All Time.

Uh, he looks at when the weeks and dates for Passover were from the year 29 to the year 36, and there's two years, the year AD 30, uh, Passover fell on Friday, April 7th, and then in the year 33, it fell on Friday, April 3rd.

So, uh, he then narrows that down to argue, uh, for April 3rd in the year 33, uh, being the, the date of the original Good Friday, um, but then he points out this is the Julian calendar, and, uh, that would then be April 1st on the Gregorian calendar.

So, one of the confusing things when you talk about an ancient date for something, if you say, Oh, well, you know, a thousand years ago today, such and such happened.

Well, are we factoring in the difference between the fact that we now use the Gregorian calendar and we used to use the Julian calendar?

There were a couple days off between them at, at the most extreme there were 10 days between the old calendar and the new calendar before we kind of reset it.

So, he, he makes that point, which is kind of fascinating and classically Jimmy, but I, I think he does a good job narrowing down the most likely time for the original Passover would've been, um, Friday, April 3rd.

Now whether you think of that as April 1st or April 3rd depends a lot on, uh, which calendar.

Uh, let's see, H.W. Metzger says, Can you align the passages about faith or the passages about eating in John 6's Bread of Life discourse?

I'm a hun- not 100% sure I understand this question either, but I might understand it, because Jesus talks about believing in him, but also talks about, uh, e- like eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

So, he says, um, I am the bread of life.

He who comes to me shall not hunger and he who believes in me shall not thirst.

And so some Protestants are gonna say, okay, when Jesus is talking about eating his flesh, that just means coming to him and believing in him because of passages like that.

Uh, For this is will of my Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.

And then later, uh, he uses very similar language, uh, he says, He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life and I will raise him up at the last day.

And so sometimes Protestants will say, Therefore these must be two different ways of saying the same thing, because in both cases there is a promise of resurrection attached to it, the rising up on the last day.I don't actually think that works.

Uh, I, I think i- it is true that one of the ways And we can even say one of the ways we feed on Christ is by receiving not simply, uh, bread alone.

You know, man does not live by bread alone, but every word that comes from the mouth of God.

That you can use that language of eating as something of a reference for a contemplation of the words of Jesus.

In, and in that sense, that is one of the ways in which he is the bread of life, that he nourishes us both as the one who gives every word that comes from the mouth of God, and also as the manna from heaven.

And Jesus is clearly presented as both of those things.

Those were two different things in the Old Testament.

Like, in the original context, I think this is often lost on people, the original context man does not live by bread alone was talking about the manna.

That And it was not knocking the manna.

The point of the manna was to point beyond itself.

That yes, the manna was gonna nourish you physically, but it was gonna do more than that.

It was going to point beyond itself that you have a God who loves you, and also you should listen to what He's gonna tell you.

And so the, the manna was connected to every word that came from the mouth of God in the Old Testament.

In the New Testament, similarly the liturgy of the word and the liturgy of the Eucharist are connected because Jesus as the bread from heaven and Jesus' teachings are connected.

So, the reason I don't think that these are the exact same thing, but are two related things, is because Jesus makes, I think, that very clear because He's using this language of being the living bread and then He's obviously using some metaphorical language here.

Catholics and Protestants actually agree.

When He says, Bread from heaven, He doesn't mean He's literally bread.

But the question is, what is this a metaphor for?

Does this mean, uh, believe in my teaching or does this mean receive my body eucharistically, or does it mean something else?

And on the surface, all of those are, I think, reasonable, uh, guesses or interpretations.

But I think Jesus actually answers the question in, in Matthew or excuse me, John 6:51.

He says, I am the living bread which came down from heaven.

If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever.

And the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.

He doesn't say, Is my teaching He could've.

He could've said, This is the bread.

Like, Do this.

Like, Believe in me.

Did he talk about works of the Father before?

If you wanna do the works of the Father, believe in the Son.

Uh, and so you could just say, All you need is just believe in the Son.

But no.

And, and in fact we know that is a bad interpretation.

Uh, so we know, because Jesus has told us that, I mean, we need to believe in Him, we need to believe in His teachings, but we also need to eat His flesh.

So the problem with reducing this, which is what the Protestant interpretation here is, and I'm not saying all Protestants interpret it this way, but the ones that I'm imagining you're kind of referencing here.

John 6, they say to Him, What must we do to be doing the works of God?

Jesus answered them, This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent.

On its surface someone could say, Okay, this is really easy.

I'm just gonna say the sinners prayer, I'm just gonna believe God is who He says He is, and that's literally all I have to do.

To be doing the works of God I just have to believe that Jesus really is God.

That's obviously wrong.

And when I say obviously wrong, I mean it's contradicted by the rest of the New Testament, including other things written by John.

Jesus says things in the Gospel of John like, If you love me, you'll keep my commandments.

And so believing Jesus is who He says He is, but not loving Him, will not save you.

Saying that you love Him but not keeping His commandments, Jesus said that's not what loving Him looks like.

So clearly it's more than just believing He is who He says He is.

Otherwise, uh, well, the devil would be saved, for one, 'cause the devil knows Jesus is who He says He is, better than you and I do.

Uh, so, yeah, that's what I would, that's what I would say on that score.

All right.

Um, oh, by the way, Vanessa, if you wanna move some of the ones this time about the debate up.

Um, I will Yeah.

See, yeah, Cruz Demiseen said, Defense sola Scriptura?

Uh, well, where's your list of traditions?

How do you deal with this constant attempt to I think the word is supposed to be shift, topics in all your debates?

Uh, that's a great question.

Um, first, it's not an actual argument in favor of sola Scriptura.

This I find this really fascinating.

Like imagine if somebody said, Hey, I'm gonna debate you on whether or not aliens exist.

And you're like, Great.

And they're like, I can prove aliens exist.

And you're like, I will, I will argue they don't exist.

And then you, you get together and you get to the big debate, and their opening statement is just like Or sorry, they, they, they did that entirely backwards.

They say aliens don't exist.

You say aliens do exist.

And they're like, I can prove aliens don't exist.

You're like, I'm fascinated to hear.

Well, show it to me.

And they get up there and they're like, All right, whole crowd's together, he can't prove the names of all the aliens.

And then they sit down.

I think you would say, That's, uh, not a very good argument.

Like that's Like even if I don't know the names of any aliens, which in fairness I don't, that doesn't mean they don't exist.

So even if I didn't know any apostolic traditions, that would not mean apostolic traditions don't exist.

That is simply an argument from silence, and I've seen some very sophisticated Protestant apologists use that argument, and it's still a pretty naked argument from silence.

They'll just say, Well, we know this is God-breathed, we don't know anything else that is, therefore we should follow this.

I- that's not a good argument.

It just isn't.

Uh, you certainly can't use that as ..

um, any kind of positive argument for sola scriptura.

Ha, you know, if somebody has only gotten some of the New Testament documents, then they might say, These are the only documents I know.

I know these are inspired.

They're all I know.

That doesn't mean those are the only documents.

Like, let's say you're in the first century church and you've got copies of Matthew and Mark, but you don't have Luke and John.

Okay.

Does that mean Luke and John don't exist?

No, it just means you don't know about them.

It would be absurd to say, Therefore, uh, those are the only ones that exist.

Uh, DJJudge asks, Can we ask you any question, or only about the debate?

You can ask any question.

But I am giving a certain priority to questions about the debate, just because I don't want to, uh, miss the questions this I mean, these questions are all so early, I'm gonna get to all of them.

But sometimes when, like, it's later on, I don't get to them till two weeks later when I do this again.

And I don't want to have people asking questions or commenting or anything about the debate.

And I'm kind of hoping that this will make you interested in clicking on the debate and watching it, and that you'll enjoy it.

We'll see if it happens.

Um, do do do do.

Um.

Ah, nice.

This guy, PenceWithAquinas says, Great job on the debate, mate.

Hey, that's really wonderful.

Thanks.

I, uh, really enjoyed the debate.

I, I thought Doug Wilson was a real gentleman.

I, I went in there knowing not a ton about him and having heard a lot of people complaining about him.

And actually it, it I don't know if I should, I don't know if I should share this or not publicly.

When I got to the hotel, somebody working at the hotel asked what I was in town for.

And I said, Oh, I'm actually here for a debate.And they're like, Oh, are you the guy debating Doug Wilson?

And I was like, Yeah.

And they're like, Get him.

And at first I'm like, Oh, that's really nice.

But then, the more I talked to them, the more I realized like, they weren't Catholic or anything.

They were just, like, a person who lived in the town of Moscow, Idaho, who really was annoyed by their church.

And they started talking about how, like, people would drive by and flip off Doug Wilson, and he would just kind of like chuckle about it.

And I was just like, man, like, Doug's not looking bad in this.

Like, this is, uh, he seems like he, like, maybe he enjoys the spotlight or the controversy or something.

But he seemed to be carrying a pretty resentful feedback from townspeople, uh, pretty amiably.

So I thought, well, if that's, if that's the worst.

And then I had breakfast with him the next day, and we, we really en- enjoyed talking with each other.

I, I emailed him afterwards and just was like, Hey, here's my number and here's, you know, if you want to keep in touch.

And so hopefully, you know, we can continue to have a, a good fruitful conversation.

I, I think he's someone with whom, like, the thing that makes him controversial is he's, he's willing to entertain ideas, and willing to push ideas that are provocative and, and all of that.

And some of his ideas are bad.

I don't agree with some of them.

Uh, and some of them I think are, are even kind of silly.

But I, I respect that he's willing to be thoughtful and willing to kind of take an idea where, where he thinks it should go.

Uh, because a l- a lot of people don't do that.

Like, he, he follows a kind of line of thought.

I think our Lord can do good things with that.

I think he already is doing some good things in Doug's life, and, and I think Doug is someone trying to serve him.

Um I know.

I, I know some people are gonna be very upset about that and say, Oh, you're, you know, you're, you're validating him or whatever.

He doesn't need my validation.

He's very fine not being validated.

But yeah, I, I came away impressed with him, not impressed with sola scriptura as, as a doctrine.

But I think, I think he did a very good job kind of giving a, a Protestant case for it.

And so I think the fact that that case doesn't hold, uh, is gonna say a lot.

Which leads into SirCadzelot's question.

He says, What's the best steelman for sola scriptura?

I think it's what we hear.

It's gonna be something like, um, number one, scripture is described as God-breathed.

And we're not explicitly given that kind of language about tradition.

Number two, it is sometimes tricky to say exactly what is an authentic tradition and what isn't.

Now, the pushback on that is gonna be, that was also true of the early documents purporting to be, you know, maybe scripture.

Like, the gospels don't claim to be scripture.

Other documents do claim to be scripture and aren't.

So, how do you know what is and isn't scripture?

Just like how you know what is and isn't tradition.

Those things are legitimately hard questions on, on both sides.

And I think both sides need to just admit it.

Like, yeah, sometimes it's hard to know, is it an apostolic tradition?

Well, I'll give you an example.

The salvation of Adam.

Somebody, might be Saint Basil, I can't remember who it was, one of the Church Fathers talks about one of the things that we know from unwritten tradition is that Adam was saved.

And very clearly, the early Christians were convinced not only that Adam was saved, but that Jesus had visited Adam on Holy Saturday.

There is a, in the Office of Liter- in the Office of Readings and the Divine Liturgy Nope, let me try that again.

In the Office of Readings and the Liturgy of the Hours, uh, the reading for Holy Saturday, the second reading, is an ancient, probably second century homily where Jesus in the harrowing of hell goes to visit Adam and liberate him and, and elevate him and glorify him so that he can go to heaven.

So, is Adam saved?

The early Christians were convinced, number one, that he was, and number two, that this was an actual dogma not taught in scripture, but known from apostolic tradition.

But I think a lot of people today would say, whether that's absolute tradition or not is, is a little murkier.

So, the steelman for sola scriptura is gonna say it's sometimes hard to tell which things are and aren't .

apostolic tradition.

And so, if you say this thing either is apostolic tradition or it's just an old custom, then it seems like there's a lot of room for error.

Because even if all of the apostolic traditions are without error, plenty of the old tur- you know, old customs, we'll say just for the sake of clarity.

Old customs might have error.

There might be old beliefs that are wrong.

So knowing what's what.

There's, there's a legitimate, uh, confusion there.

This is one of the reasons why the church has this important authority.

But then you have the, uh I guess, if I were gonna continue the steel man.

They're gonna say, Well, sometimes Catholics speak as if there's no room for personal interpretation or anything like that.

But you need personal interpretation just to do something as simple as know which church to follow.

All that's true.

Um, yeah.

So hopefully that helps.

All right.

Max Sigmund says, Can you explain the Zechariah point you made in the cross-examination of Doug Wilson?

He seemed to walk that back really fast.

I, I would be thrilled to.

This is I was really hoping this would come up because I saw Doug make this point at- in a video that he'd made, and I was hoping that he would make this same point, and then he did, and, and then I was, uh, getting to nerd out about it.

So let's unpack.

There's, there's a lot here.

One of the questions Protestants are stuck with is, um, how do we know which books belong in the Bible?

This is what's called the canon question.

And how, how sure can we be, number one, which books belong in the Bible?

And also, on what authority do we have any certainty about which books belong in the Bible?

And so I, I pressed that basically, like I'm not someone who believes you need an infallible canon as such.

If you don't have sola scriptura, you don't actually need the canon at all.

You need the regula fidei.

The canon is great.

It's helpful, but it's not strictly necessary.

You can have an illiterate Christian who knows all the contents of the faith.

And so even if they can't read the Bible, they know what they're supposed to believe and they believe it.

Great.

But if your doctrine is we can't trust the church to get it right, it's- the church is capable of erring and maybe has erred, uh, then you really need to know where you can find reliable answers.

And it's gonna- if you're gonna say scripture alone, that's the only one that's without error, the only one that's infallible.

Okay.

Uh, it's really important to know which things are and aren't scripture.

And then you ask, Okay, which things are scripture?

And the answer is like, We think it might be this.

It's a fallible set.

And it's like, okay, you just told me the only thing you can rely on are the books of the Bible and you don't know for sure which ones those are.

Like the whole method falls apart there.

Um, and you don't have any way of interpreting.

You know, a- a- again, you can throw the question back and say, Well, what about tradition?

Well, the church can tell us which things are binding in apostolic tradition and which ones aren't.

So, and you have a clear regula fidei, which tells us how to interpret scripture as well as tradition.

You don't have that in a binding way with sola scriptura because they don't believe the regula fidei is infallible.

They think it's correct.

They don't think it's infallible.

Okay, where am I going with all that?

That in trying to defend the ahistorical 66 book Bible, uh, Protestants will try to find some explanation, ideally within scripture, that points to this being the right Bible.

And so they'll often make the claim, and this claim is demonstrably false.

Scholars who research this are well aware this is not true.

Only Protestants claim this, as far as I can tell.

They'll claim, oh, the Jewish Bible was already set and known in Jesus's day.

It w- was not.

We have rabbinical debates for two centuries after the time of Christ.

At least the Jewish Talmud records all of this.

We even know the names of which rabbis were on which positions with books like Esther and Song of Solomon and so on.

We know that the Septuagint tradition records like the Hel- like the Hellenic, the, the Greek-speaking, uh, Jews who had more books that they accepted as scripture.

We know the early Christians talk about, uh, the Jewish canons.

And at one point, I believe it's Origen, who seems to talk about Maccabees being treated as scripture.

Th- the passage is notoriously unclear because he says, Besides these, there's the Maccabees, and then he gives a Hebrew title.

So he's either saying it's canonical or that it's not canonical.

Either way, it's one, or really two books that he mentions in addition to the ones that are clearly in the Jewish canon.

And so the whole question of canonicity is, is murky and complicated and really points to why you need the church, because it's just not true.

I know many Protestants are fond of saying, Oh, look, the Jews were able to have knowledge of what the canon was.

Uh, they had a clear canon without an infallible church.

And they simply didn't.

The Sadducees only accepted five books of the Bible, the Torah.

Every time Jesus debates with them, he only goes to the first five books.

So no, I think the uncertainty around the canon is a pretty good argument, uh, for the church's role.

The fact that you're now in a situation where Jews today celebrate Hanukkah, but no longer have as scripture first or second Maccabees, the two books of the Bible that talk about Hanukkah, points to this kind of confusion.

The fact that the Jewish Talmud both quotes Baruch as- or excuse me, quotes Sirach as scripture, and then elsewhere talks about Sirach not being scripture shows the kind of confusion that there was within Judaism for a while after Christ.

So these days in a Jewish Bible, you have the books arranged in a different order than they are in a Christian Old Testament.

And the last martyrdom in canonical order, not chronological order, canonical order is in Second Chronicles, uh, with the death of Zechariah.

And, uh, it's significant, um, which Zechariah we're talking about.

So in one of Doug's videos, and then he, he makes this same point as well.

Um..Sorry, let me find It's Second Chronicles 24.

Okay.

Okay.

So in, in Matthew 23, I'll, I'll get to where I'm going with this in a second.

Matthew 23, Jesus says, um, That upon you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zechariah, the son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar.

And so Protestants seized upon this and said, Aha, this proves the Jewish Old Testament was set at the time of Jesus.

And this is the Old Testament that we should be following, because, uh, Abel is clearly the first martyrdom recorded right there in Genesis, and then the death of Zechariah in Second Chronicles 24 is the last one.

Not chronologically, but the last one in the order the books appear in a Jewish Bible.

So what are the problems with that?

On its face, it's a clever argument.

Uh, the problems are this.

Number one, the order of the books is way later.

Like, Second Chronicles is there in the canonical ordering of the books today in the Jewish Bible, but the Jewish Talmud actually gives a different order.

Second Chronicles is also the last in, in the Talmud's list, but the books in the Jewish Bible today don't match the order of the books in the Jewish Talmud.

And the Jewish Talmud is inventing an order of books that wasn't practiced in the days of Jesus, because at the time of Jesus, you don't have the entire Bible arranged in any order at all.

I think people just miss this, this very basic but important point.

The biblical texts were recorded on individual scrolls.

There was no book.

Uh, bible means book.

The idea of a book, a byblos, having all of the inspired books all together bet- between two covers.

This is a Christian invention, and a well-documented one with the rise of the Codex.

So the Christians were not the first to, um, use the Codex, they were the ones who popularized it so that they could put the Bible all in one place.

And when you do that, two things happen.

Number one, you need to know exactly which books do and don't count as biblical books.

And number two, you start to have a certain order that you present them in to organize them.

There was an order you would present books in terms of the scrolls, so like the 12 Minor Prophets would appear on one scroll in a certain order, but you didn't have that for the entire Bible.

So the question of book order is several centuries after the time of Christ within Judaism, probably about three centuries after the time of Christ.

Uh, and then when there is this question of book order, it's not settled right away.

Th- So it's really not till the Middle Ages that you end up with the modern Jewish Old Testament in terms of starting with Genesis and ending with Second Chronicles.

That's the first big problem.

Like, it obviously isn't true.

The second big problem is, remember it was Zechariah, son of Berechiah, but that's not the actual Zechariah who dies in Second Chronicles.

So it's just, even if you didn't know all this history, you should be ab- at least able to go to Second Chronicles and say, Hey, um, it's actually very significantly Zechariah the son of Jehoiada the priest.

And this is an important point that is made, uh, Thus Joash the king did remember the kindness which Jehoiada, Zechariah's father, had shown him, but killed his son.

And when he died, he said, 'May the Lord see and avenge.' So it's two completely different Zechariahs.

So unless you think Jesus got the Zechariah wrong, he's simply not talking about the Zechariah who is killed in Second Chronicles.

He's talking about the prophet Zechariah, who is the, uh, son of Berechiah, the grandson of Iddo.

So that's what I was saying.

Like, uh, the Abel to Zechariah argument is built on several things that we know to be very clearly false.

It's not an argument you can actually point to.

It, it's not, it's not a good argument.

But because I love nerding out about that particular argument, I was, I was very excited to, uh, get to talk to Doug about that.

All right.

Adriel Wade says, Hey, Joe.

I just got confirmed this last Saturday and wanted to say you/your channel were a huge factor in my conversion.

Thank you for all that you do.

Thank you.

Welcome home.

God bless you.

That's wonderful.

This time of year is so incredible as a Catholic apologist 'cause you have all the normal Easter joy, it's the high point of the Church and everything else, but also getting to hear stories like that, it's so beautiful.

So guys, if you're watching this, please do a little prayer right now.

You know, let's just do one together.

In the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Lord, please pray for that commenter and for everyone who just came into the Church.

We thank you for the gift of Easter.

We ask that you bless all of the new members of the family of God, or those who fully joined into the body of Christ, the Church.

Uh, we ask for clarity and guidance and strength for ourselves, as well as for them.

We pray glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

Amen.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

Amen.

Astine says, uh, God bless you and happy Easter.

Likewise.

Haven't finished the debate, but I really enjoy the videos you post that for each one summarizing your points so good.

Thank you.

Yeah, I decided to do something a little different this time, because I wanted to go deeper on why I don't think the Sola Scriptura/Sola Scriptura distinction actually gets you very far.

I think it's pointing to a real distinction that is helpful for Catholics to know, that people who say Sola Scriptura mean wildly different things by it.

But I, for the reasons I laid out in today's episode, I don't think that it, it completely works.

So I, I do like being able to use the debate as sort of a jumping off point in, in covering something semi-related.

I never I'll, I'll tell you honestly, from a content creation perspective, two things.

Number one-It's tricky to know what to, like, I'm obviously excited about the topic.

It's a topic I've been researching.

And, you know, if you're going to debate a topic, you're going to have a lot of time that you're spending researching it, you're never going to get through all the stuff.

So it's a ripe area to be like, Let's make videos about this.

But you don't want to make something exactly like something you've already covered.

And if you make something that's, like, completely, like, you didn't say a word about that in the debate, then people just think that you're, like, bitter, like, Oh, you should have made that point in the debate.

Like, I don't want to make a redundant video.

I don't want to make something people are going to think is just, like, a cope video.

So being able to be, like, We talked about this a little bit.

Let's talk about it more, uh, that's what I've been trying to do.

So I don't know if that's the right way.

Second thing about it, it's very funny, I mean, I have, uh, like, certain things you see as a content creator behind the screen on, on Studio, YouTube Studio, and so you can see how long people watch a video for.

And this, today's episode was crazy, 'cause there was, like, a period where people were very clearly clicking, realizing it wasn't the debate itself and then just like, Okay, find the debate.

And I, I linked to it at the end.

So, um, but yeah, I, I love getting to talk about this stuff and hopefully you all come out of this as, as excited as me.

Cecily says, Doug says Sola Scriptura is needed for our spiritual needs, but never explains what those spiritual needs are.

Also, could you elaborate on Logos/Word of God being more than simply written word?

Yes.

So this is such an important point, Dave Verba makes this point, and it's something that I think is, is dangerously lost.

When scripture talks about the Logos, the full sense of that is actually Jesus.

It's not the Bible, it's not tradition, it's Jesus.

Because Jesus is the image of the invisible God.

Jesus can say at the Last Supper, If you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

You can't say, If you've seen the Bible, you've seen the Father.

So Jesus is the full revelation of God.

Hebrews 1 talks about this, In many and various ways, God revealed Himself as old through the prophets, but now He's revealed Himself by the Son.

Not by the New Testament.

By the Son.

So it's in this encounter with Jesus.

He is the living Word.

That's how you actually have the full revelation of God.

And if you lose that, something important is lost.

So sometimes Catholics will say, We're not a religion of the book, we're a religion of the Word.

And what that means is, we're not Bible-based Christians, we are Jesus-based Christians.

That is not a denigration of the Bible at all.

That is properly understanding the role of the Bible.

Um, so that's, that's what I would suggest there.

Uh, Thane asked a question, it's not actually SuperChat and I happen to notice it and it's a question that I think is really interesting.

He says, Why did Peter not use his papal authority at the Council of Jerusalem?

He, I think this misunderstands, like, by that logic, why were there ever ecumenical councils?

It just misunderstands how leadership is meant to work.

Luke 22, Jesus explains what a leader is meant to look like, and Peter is that kind of leader.

Now, having said that, Peter clearly opens the door of salvation to the gentiles, unilaterally, because God has told him to in Acts 10, and then he defends this in Acts 11.

There's an ongoing question about what this means in terms of participation, uh, with circumcision, which is something that the apostles get together and talk about.

So, we can see that Peter can and does do these things unilaterally.

But a lot of times it makes sense to do them collaboratively instead.

It's like asking, Well if you're the head of your family as a father, why didn't you talk to your wife before you bought that house?

Because you're not insane.

Because that's not what good leadership looks like.

That, yes, there are times where you can act unilaterally, and there are times where maybe you have to act unilaterally, but a good leader doesn't do that as a default.

And that's true whether we're talking about the Pope or any other leader.

So, the kind of objection, like, Oh, if the Pope's the Pope, he should just throw his authority around and not listen to other people or have councils, is contrary to Catholic teaching, and shows a, a deep misunderstanding about, uh, not only what the papacy is, but just what leadership is.

Uh, let's see.

Colin says, Is implicit faith worth drawing out in debates?

Doug made light of the concept at, uh, 16:00, I mean, I don't know if that's 16 seconds or 16 minutes, but invoked it when discussing dissention among Protestants at 1:25.

Ah, that's really interesting.

Yes.

I think that, okay, I'm gonna say this, it is a thing worth drawing out.

The question may be, whether a debate is the right time or place to draw that out.

And I think that would have been a, probably a fruitful avenue to go down.

That one thing you come away from a debate experience, and I think both as a viewer and as a debater, is it's very easy to say afterwards, like, Oh, I wish they would have talked about this, or, I wish I would have asked that, or, I spent too much time on this.

And I, oh man, like, when I watch a debate I've done, you know that scene in Interstellar where he's like screaming, like pounding on the thing, but, you know, his daughter can't hear him?

That's, uh, that's often my reaction to, like, my old self, like, Why didn't you ask that?

Why did you spend so much time debating this?

Or, Why did you spend so much time on that?

So yeah, I think the implicit faith thing is really important, 'cause I think there is this sort of pish-posh about, um, d- you know, like, implicit faith.

It sounds really, oh, you know, the anonymous Christian, very Karl Rahner.

But the reality is, yes, someone who says yes to God and is following Jesus may be wrong about a lot of stuff.

Not out of, um, lack of belief, not out of disobedience, but just out of confusion.

Like, when my children, they are faithfully following Jesus.

At least two of the three of them are saints.

My daughter's six and she's precocious, so she's probably at the age of reason.

I suspect she's a saint as well.

I can say it with theologically, theological certainty for the younger two.

Um, and yet They all have doctrinal things that I'm sure they're wrong about.

Occasionally those come out.

Um, although, a shout-out to my daughter.

We did the Easter vigil.

It went from 8:00 to 11:00.

Her normal bedtime is 7:30.

She was wired because, number one, she knew there was going to be a reception afterwards.

Number two, there was fire outside because of the Easter candle.

And then number three, like, she just loved the liturgy.

She loved the music.

She loved the readings.

She was She kept asking me like, these really hard to answer, in a whisper kind of questions.

Like, when, uh, the reading, I think it's the second reading, uh, they did all of the readings, it was, it was full of beautiful Uh, Abraham and Isaac.

And she whispers, like, Why was it good to obey God when it meant killing an innocent person, or killing a person?

That's a great question.

Like, why was it good that Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac?

And the answer to that, biblically, is different than the answer a lot of people say.

A lot of people just say, Well, you know, as Kierkegaard says, teleological suspension of the ethical.

I didn't use that language with my daughter.

She is six.

She's not that precocious.

Uh, but actually, Hebrews is very clear that he believed that Isaac was gonna come back with him.

In Genesis it says this, that they are going to come back down the mountain together.

Abraham is convinced of this, that somehow he is going to be able to sacrifice Isaac, and then Isaac will walk down the hill with him.

And this, as Hebrews points out, is proof that he believed in something like the resurrection.

Now, why would Abraham believe that?

Because God had promised him descendants through Isaac, and Isaac doesn't have any kids.

And so Abraham is so sure that the God who has told him to sacrifice Isaac is a good God who keeps his promises, that he knows somehow this is going to end up with Isaac still being here, even though there's no way to make sense of that apparent contradiction for Abraham at the time.

And of course, the r- the way it stopped is an angel stops him, and, uh, he's got the ram in the thickets.

The ram is crowned with thorns, and fascinatingly, Abraham says that they're gonna offer a lamb.

And the god Actually, he says God Himself will f- provide the lamb, and He does, but it's not the ram.

It's, it's Jesus.

Anyway, beautiful, beautiful passage.

Uh, I give that to say implicit faith is at work, someone who says yes to everything God says, even though you don't know all the details.

Abraham showed that.

My daughter shows that.

There are plenty of people today who have something like implicit faith, and so they might be wrong on the details, but, uh, their heart's in the right place.

They're trying to follow God, and that is, that is worth a lot to God.

Spencer says, A Joe-whelming victory.

Thank you, Spencer.

I'm still getting over this cough, and making me laugh is gonna make me cough.

All right.

Um, Andrew says, Hey, Joe, I'm giving a presentation on the papacy and using your book a lot.

When explaining how infallibility continues in the Church, is the strongest argument that it must to avoid the Catch-22?

Uh, yes, I think so.

And then the second thing I would It's 'cause you're asking about the infallibility rather than the papacy, that if Christians have to be one, as Jesus clearly prays for his future disciples to be one in John 17, and if schism is a sin, and heresy is also a sin, think about the options left on the table.

We are obviously going to disagree on how to read scripture.

Always have, always will, that there are gonna be times where you and someone else read the Bible, and you in- understand it to mean different things.

That's part of the nature of interpreting texts.

That's part of the nature of interpretation in general.

Like, you can have somebody talking to you, and you and your spouse, say, think they meant two different things.

One of you thought they were serious, one of you thought they were joking, whatever it is.

Like, that is, it is a natural problem of interpretation.

The question becomes what happens next?

And if you've got no recourse after that beyond your own interpretation, then you're obviously not gonna get anywhere.

And you could say, Oh, well, we should listen to the Church, but the Church isn't infallible.

Then how do I know I should listen to the Church in this case, where the whole question is what does the Bible mean?

You can't just say, Listen to the Church unless it, uh, contradicts the Bible, because if they're wrong about the interpretation, then they contradict the Bible.

So I pointed that out in today's video.

I pointed that out in the debate.

So you've got these options on the table.

Number one, you have an infallible Church.

We can all just accept the Church, and anyone who's obedient, anyone who accepts the Church, is gonna be at the right answer.

Number two, we can try to convince each other from scripture, but we know this doesn't work for all the aforementioned reasons.

People convert in opposite directions, and, and that's not gonna be a reliable way to, to arrive at the truth.

Number three, uh, we can say it doesn't matter, but then we're giving up on dogma to try to have unity.

That's not what it looks like to follow the truth.

And you, you find this tradition, uh, this, this trajectory I should say, within a lot of Protestantism, even more, like, conservative Protestantism.

They'll be dogmatic minimalists.

Like, the list of what you have to believe goes down, and down, and down, and down.

Um, whereas two generations ago, Methodists and Baptists would fight pretty hardcore about which one you should be.

You know, one of the things you read about, say, in the writings of Joseph Smith, when he's growing up in New York, one of the things that scandalizes him, understandably, is that the different Protestant preachers are all preaching about how the other Protestant preachers are wrong, 'cause the Methodists and the Congregationalists and the Baptists and the Presbyterians and all that don't agree with each other, let alone the Anglicans, who sound Catholic to them, let a- alone the actual Catholics, et cetera.

So you're not gonna arrive at truth just by debating it from the Bible.

It's never happened, and it's not going to happen.

There needs to be some authority capable of resolving that, or you don't have unity and truth.

You end up picking one and accepting heresy for the sake of not going into sc- schism or accepting schism for the sake of not committing heresy.And both of those are damnable.

Then, explicitly damnable in scripture.

So that's the kind of Catch-22 argument, that I, I think that's a good way to understand it.

Uh, Barnett asked, Can you recommend a Bible studies method, excuse me, a Bible studies book?

Nope, let me read that a third time.

There's not many words, but I managed to screw it up twice.

Can you recommend a Bible study methods book?

Um, what's that John Bergsma, uh, book?

Um, ba bum bum bum.

I mean, Lectio Divina is one good Yeah, John Bergsma actually had a, an article he wrote for us called How to Read the Bible as a Catholic, where he gives some basic kind of foundational advice.

It's not a book.

Uh, he does have Bible Basics for Catholics, and he has a much more in-depth, he and Brad Petry, uh, did, uh, what is it, it's called, like a, what is the Bergsma-Petry?

But it's got a really generic name.

No offense, guys.

Catholic Introduction to the Bible.

Yeah, a Catholic Introduction to the Bible, come on.

Uh, they've got one on the Old Testament that, that gives some good scholarly stuff.

That's less on method maybe, but there's a good chunk on method in the beginning.

Beyond that, I don't have great resources.

If anyone else does, please drop them in the, in the chat.

CarMeister says, Hi Joe, I'm entering the Catholic Church this Easter.

God bless you.

Question, what about intersex people?

I have XY chromosomes but have been on hormone replacement therapy since junior high.

Church view?

I have to punt on this one because I don't want to give you bad counsel here, and this is an area that is legitimately confusing.

The question of intersex is very clearly different than the question of transgenderism.

You know, when someone is transgender they are phenotypically, biologically, uh, chromosomally clearly one sex, but then psychologically, they associate more with the other sex.

And even in terms of neurology, they might have neurology more typical of the opposite sex.

Those cases are comparatively easy.

They can, they can be a difficult, uh, burden, but they're easy to know what the, what the right answer is.

When you have the intersex cases and the SRY cases, I don't know enough, and I've not seen the church address this explicitly, um, if you're biologically male but i- so particularly if you have cases of, like, ambiguous genitalia, sorry we're just gonna go there, uh, at infancy and then you have, like, a surgical intervention where someone is externally, they appear like a woman, or like a, you know, a baby girl or whatever, um, that was often the default.

And so someone grows up believing themselves to be a girl, because that's what their body looks like externally, and this is often the case before puberty and now it's, it's more complicated because of hormones as, as, as you mentioned.

I don't know what the appropriate answer there is in some of those more complicated cases in terms of authentic gender if the phenotype and the chromosomes don't match.

I have a guess.

I don't want to share my guess without having a more authoritative answer from the church.

And unfortunately, I don't have that in front of me, and I don't know offhand if that's something that's been addressed explicitly.

Uh, that is a very good question.

I will try to find out.

There's a 50% plus chance that I'm going to forget to do that five minutes after this stream.

I will make a note to myself right now to, this is something that I've Um It's something I've thought of before and heard before but always in the abstract, but the fact that there's a real person asking, I'm gonna try to, I'm gonna try to do my best to find an answer for you.

Okay.

Uh, Jeff Garcia.

Oh, you did, you did the Grateful Dead, right?

Said, I have a friend who is Oneness Pentecostal.

He rejected my use of Greek Hebrew and tradition for the interpretation of Trinity and baptism.

What should I do?

Give me a great refutation please.

I Okay, let's just go to one place.

Obviously, someone who's not willing to listen is probably not gonna be someone who is open to You could have the perfect argument.

Remember, people rejected Jesus.

That wasn't 'cause he didn't have the right argument.

People can reject no matter how good the, the argument is objectively.

I would look at Acts 19 when, uh, Paul is in Ephesus, he finds some disciples, he says, Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?

They said, No, we've never even heard there is a Holy Spirit.

And he says, Into what then were you baptized?

He's very clear that the baptism, which is described as in the name of the Lord Jesus, is not literally, I baptize you in the name of the Lord Jesus.

In the name of, as, as I'm sure you know from talking with your Oneness friend, is in the authority of, in the person of.

Um, but that doesn't mean it's Jesus-only baptism In Matthew 28 when it says, Baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, that also means in the authority of, but there it's an actual baptismal formula.

And we also know this from the Didache.

So I mention Acts 19 because we know that whatever this baptism is that Paul's talking about, he assumes that they would have heard about the Holy Spirit when they got baptized, which suggests it was a Trinitarian baptism.

Because if you just said, I baptize you in the name of Jesus, you're not gonna hear about the Holy Spirit.

Paul is clearly talking to people who have heard of the Father and have heard of Jesus and have not heard of the Holy Spirit, which also points to the fact that the Father, Jesus, and the Spirit are not all the sameUm, and then the other thing, I mean, I just sort of, I want to press people who take these really radical views about what they think God is doing.

Like, okay, if you're a oneness Pentecostal and you think God, from all eternity is just one person, why in the world, number one, does Jesus speak as if that's not the case when He says, The Father is greater than I, or any of these things?

Even if you can explain 'em away.

Why in the world would Jesus speak like that if He was trying to reveal to us that He and the Father are literally the same person?

Number two, if it was important to God that we all know this, why did no one seem to know this?

Like, nobody is just like, Oh, okay, this is obviously written in the first century or the second century.

This kind of oneness view is, is really simple.

It'd be very easy to understand.

It's much easier to understand every heresy like this than it is to understand the actual Trinity.

So, why is it the, the early Christians were convinced of the Trinity and not convinced of this?

Uh, so what, does God not care that they have the right answer?

He just has no faithful people?

All right.

Eh, do, do, do, do.

All right, Henry Tucker says, As long as authority is clearly established by parents, do the kids have to have a detailed list of house rules?

Is this one way to respond to the list of doctrines rebuttal of Protestants?

It is.

Like, if I say, Obey your parents, and you reply, Well, show me a list written by my parents of everything I have to do to obey them, that answer is insolent.

It's not actual search for clarity.

Now, I'm not saying that's true of everyone who asks for a, a, an infallible list of traditions.

But it needs to be clear whether something is binding or not.

Um, or at least it should be clear whether I'm supposed to follow it.

I don't always have to know what the consequences are of not following it.

My kids can tell you that.

If Dad tells you to do something, you do it.

You don't have to find out how big the punishment will be.

Hopefully you never do.

Hopefully I never have to figure out how big the punishment should be because that's one of the trickiest parts of parenting.

But if you just obey, you don't need to know.

Uh, and so similarly, yeah, when you're following the teachings of the Church, it's actually not super important as a Catholic to know, like, is this, uh, defito?

Is this just ordinary universal magisterium?

Has this been defined solemnly and extraordinarily?

Is this, you know, like, doesn't matter, kinda?

Um, it only matters if you don't wanna follow it.

And so, if you just default to, like, I'm gonna follow it, then most of those questions go right out the door.

All right.

Um, okay, these are, um Oh, Isaac Bisbee says, Hey, Joe, quick question.

Is the Diocese of Lincoln, Nebraska on your radar?

Many see it as one of the most faithful and thriving in the US, but it's rarely included in your discussions.

On my radar, yeah.

I lived in KCK. We were surrounded, uh, on the east by KC St. Joseph, where I now live, which was producing more seminarians.

The south, Wichita, another rockstar diocese.

And to the north, Lincoln, which he, he was, I think post-Bruscoist by this point, but it's still You know, who, who was the, who was the last bishop at Lincoln?

Or who was the bishop at Lincoln Oh, gosh, I should know this.

I met the bishop.

Oh, Conley, who is from Kansas City.

So, of course, it's an amazing diocese.

They've got a Kansas City in as bishop.

That's literally the only reason I'm just kidding.

Uh, but yeah.

No, we were kind of the, the small kids surrounded by giants and our diocese was good.

It, it KCK is a great diocese.

But in terms of, like, vocations and everything, we would regularly have, like, northeast and south of us, these, like, national treasure dioceses.

And it was easy to be kind of overlooked in the midst of that.

Uh, I will say, it does seem like per capita, Lincoln's not always keeping up with some of these stats.

In terms of seminary, they tend to be doing great in terms of ordinations.

But in terms of baptisms and marriages, you got some work to do.

That's why you're not at the top of these fruitfulness lists.

Uh, I'm not making those rules.

I would be happy to put Lincoln right there in the top.

It regularly is at or near the top when it comes to ordinations.

But some laypeople need to be stepping up and getting married more, getting their babies baptized more, bringing their friends into church more.

Can't put it all on the priests, that's all I'm saying.

Uh, Daniel, uh, also, I love Sorry, I gotta add this, I love the Diocese of Lincoln and the Diocese of Omaha.

They're, they're both fantastic.

All right, Daniel Balaboni has two questions, and Vanessa has helpfully labeled them as kind of inappropriate.

So if you're watching this with mixed company, I will do a thumbs up like this when you can turn the audio back on if you don't want them to hear about detailed questions about marital relations.

Uh, number one, Smith, Wuest, though it's not like a gun, those are two different Janet Smith, it goes for Wuest.

Say acts like oral and manual stimulation within marriage can be permissible if the act culminates in intercourse open to life, but Saint Alphonsus Liguori condemns such as intrinsically disordered.

If they're correct, why is Liguori wrong?

This is an area where it's not defined by the Church, and so you're gonna have different camps within, um, theologians.

There was certainly a majority view that it was inherently evil pre-20th century.

And in the 20th century, the theological majority view is clearly on the other side of that.

So, this is Because it's something where the Church has not spoken, it would be wrong to claim on my end, like this is what it clearly is.

I can just say this is what the two different factions say, and here's, kind of, which factions were in ascendancy and, and which ones were in ascendancy now.

Ed Feser, I believe, has, uh, partly touched on this in something he wrote years and years ago.

There's not, um I mean, look, so the, the basic arguments for why it would be wrong would be either teleological or human dignity related, that you're misusing the nature of the organs.

Um, but if the purpose is stimulation for the natural use of the organ, it's not a super str- it's, it's an, it's an interesting argument.

It's, it's not impossible.

But it does It gets a little tricky.

Um, like, if only organ-to-organ contact is permitted, and someone is having tr- like the man is having trouble, then it seems like the natural use of the organ could actually be, sort of, thwarted by not allowing, like, the hand to be used, like, her hand to be used.

Um, it would Uh, that's, that's too impersonal.

It seems like it'd be wrong f- for her not to be able to use her hand to help prepare him for the deed he is trying to perform.

I hope everyone else is as uncomfortable as I am in doing these on a live stream.

But there, there you go.

This is why you should go to Patreon, shamelessjoe.com.

It's less awkward when there's a smaller crowd.

So, it is something where y- you're gonna have theological disagreements.

It's not something the Church has spoken on explicitly.

Uh, number two, If intercourse completing the act open to life is a rule, what principle excludes acts involving animals or mechanical stimulation related to intercourse?

If those are excluded, wouldn't the same rule also exclude sodomy?

Well, sodomy is not one of the things you mentioned there, um, because I said one of the principles was teleological, like the use, the nature of the use of the organ.

The other one is human dignity.

Doing something that is contrary to human dignity to achieve a good end is inherently evil.

So, I mean, this is a rough example in an already rough, uh, conversation.

But, like, let's say someone was stimulated by violence, and they wanted to be violent towards their spouse and, like, be ha- like, cruel to them.

That's not acceptable because she is made in the image of God, and you're treating her in a way that is offensive to her dignity.

So, you couldn't, like, punch her or something.

The question then becomes what actions are inherently contrary to the dignity of the other person, particularly if the other person is consenting to them and is okay with them?That's gonna be everything from, like, slapping to, you know, oral stimulation, et cetera.

But sodomy seems very obviously contrary to human dignity.

Um, there, there's a reason, like, when people are promoting GLBT whatever, that they are very rarely explicit about what that actually looks like between two men because it's so obviously r- revolting and repulsive to human dignity.

Similarly, anything contrary to animals would be contrary to the dignity of the animal, and, and contrary to your human dignity to involve an animal in that way.

Uh, so, yes.

Okay, we're out of the woods.

JRCE says, With the release of Eric Ebarra's new book in favor of penal substitutionary atonement, do you think you'll revisit the subject or speak with those taking his position?

Cheers.

That's a good question.

I have not read his book.

I do think it is fair to make a distinction between different views that all get lumped together under this broad genus of penal substitutionary atonement, because there are some forms of it that are perfectly acceptable and even true.

There, 'cause there is some sense in which Christ is carrying the weight of our sins.

Catholics on all sides would agree with that.

That doesn't require, uh, that he bears the full punishment of our sins, which would seemingly involve damnation, separation from God, which are impossible, uh, for the God man.

It doesn't involve that the wrath of God is being visited upon his Son or that the Father turns away from the Son.

It doesn't involve any of the, like, the controversial things that I called out in that video that I think you're questioning.

Um, those things are not inherent to the idea of Jesus bearing our sins in some way.

The question is in what way.

And so, you can find things in the Fathers that, if you're reading it through the lens of Calvinism, you're gonna think, Aha, this is just like what Calvinists believe, but I don't think that, that is either required in the text or, in fact, what the Fathers mean to say.

Penal substitutionary atonement is, I think many neutral scholarly parties would say, a 16th century doctrine that comes out of the schools of Calvinism.

And so, it'd be a little bit like So, in my video today, I, I looked at Mathison's book, The Shape of Sola Scriptura.

And he will quote the Fathers in things that sound like they're teaching Sola Scriptura.

They even use language that sounds identical.

But then you read other things from those same Fathers, and they clearly don't believe in Sola Scriptura 'cause they'll cite to, like, the binding authority of tradition and, oh, you know, this stuff.

Uh, and it just turns out that when people aren't aware of a particular heresy, then they're not as careful to avoid speaking in a way that could be misinterpreted as that heresy.

So, that's what I would, I would say, uh, on that.

So, I'm dubious that the Fathers taught anything like what the 16th century Calvinists taught.

I'm open to the Fathers teaching something, uh, that you could call penal substitution in some sense.

But I think- even, like the Thomistic school would say that.

Even though when you read like Thomas' account of the crucifixion, it's very clearly not a Calvinistic account of how the crucifixion works.

Um, yes, let's see.

But anyway, I think Eric does some great work, especially on the papacy.

I've not read his stuff on penal substitution.

So, let's all say.

I mean, I've read like little things he's written, but nothing deep enough to give a more insightful judgment on it.

Uh, Catholic Crusader says, Question: if God works through Protestant pastors to, say, introduce someone to Christ, but they lie about the Catholic Church, should one correct them or no?

Yes.

When people lie, you should correct them.

Um, now, God can still do good things through them, but that doesn't make their lying okay.

I mean, God does good things for Caiaphas.

See John 11.

That doesn't mean that Caiaphas' errors should go unresponded to.

Um, CSAs, Czar C I'm not even gonna try.

C-S-A-C-S-C Nope.

C-S-A-C Nope.

C-S-A-S-Z-A-R zero seven says, Does transubstantiation make the whole Christ, mystical body, present in substance, or Christ without his mystical body?

Ah, that's a really good question.

It is the flesh and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ who is head of the body that is present in the Eucharist, and through the Eucharist, the church becomes a mystical body.

This begins in baptism and is brought to its fullness, uh, in communion.

And because it happens in the mysteries of baptism and the Eucharist, this is why the church is called the mystical body.

Mystical there is from mysteries, which is the Greek for sacramentum, which is sacrament.

So, it's, uh, as John Paul II says in Eucharist De De Ecclesiae.

What is that document called?

Ecclesiae Dei Eucharistia.

That makes more sense.

The church draws her life from the Eucharist.

Um, so the church is present in the Eucharistic sacrifice as a participant and party and is incorporated into the body through the Eucharist.

In the words of Saint Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, We are one body because we partake of the one loaf.

DGAJudge says, Why is reverent reception of the Eucharist tongue not more promulgated by church leaders when reception on the hand is only allowed by an indult?

It is a complicated question.

The early tradition was actually reception in the hand.

Reception on the tongue arose as a pious custom, and I think it's a good one.

I, I receive on the tongue.

But it's not something where it's required by divine law or ecclesiastical law, um, and so this is something where I suspect a lot of bishops have not wanted to pick one more fight in the life of the church, because there's enough fights that are already going on and are kind of unavoidable.

Um, so I, I don't know if this is right or not, but I have a hunch.

By the time people my age and younger start becoming bishops at a higher rate, you're probably gonna see more bishops guiding their flock in the direction of more reverent reception of the Eucharist.

Whether that means communion on the tongue, kneeling, or just being more mindful in the reception of the Eucharist, I don't know what that'll look like, but I think you're gonna see more, uh, more of a push in that direction.

World Peace says, Could you square Dostoevskian type suffering worldview with Catholicism?

Can you be more specific with that?

World Peace, if you wanna just respond, I could try to guess where you're going with that, but if you wanna just respond, um, I can give you a less rambly answer, I bet.

Like, explain what you're thinking of as Dostoevskian suffering, because a lot of Dostoevsky is, is very easily harmon- harmonized with Catholicism.

Uh, Vivi Cory says, My brother's part of the SDA. What would be your advice to discuss their interpretation of the Book of Daniel and us having the mark of the beast?

I pray every day for him to find Jesus as truth.

I did a video on Daniel 2 that might be helpful, because in order to arrive at their interpretation Like, look, they, they are following Ellen White, who they claim to have prophetic gifts, and they don't call her the prophet, but she's very clearly the prophet of their religion.

And so that's one of the tricky things, and she makes a lot of false statements about church history, like that the pope, uh, around the time of Constantine changed the worship day to Sunday.

This is very clearly not true.

I've talked about this before.

The difficulty is so many Southern Seventh-day Adventists are just completely ignorant of actual church history and haven't read things by non-Adventist, uh, authors, that sort of thing.

Um Wait .

Sorry.

For some reason, it looked like a, a couple of good questions are being Oh, oh, I see.

Maybe someone's just asking questions over and over again.

I was seeing good questions getting, uh, spammed.

I see.

Okay, thanks Bigstack.

Um You can introduce them to books talking about the Book of Revelation or the Book of Daniel.

You can introduce them to church history.

I don't really know, it depends.

So, he's, he's your boyfriend, so that actually puts you in a better position to hopefully have a sane, calm conversation about that.

Watch my video on Daniel 2, and I talk about this as well in the debate recap after my debate with Jacob Hansen on Mormonism, that the four kingdoms in Daniel 2 seem very clearly to point to, uh, the rise of the Catholic Church at the time of Christ.

Yeah, she says, It'd be nice to have a whole video on the SDA claims about the Catholic Church.

His mom's an ex-Catholic who didn't know much about it.

Yeah, that is, that is a very, that's a very fair point and a good question.

Um, Miles Christian has a channel, Answering Adventism.

If you're not familiar with that, Miles is a former Adventist who's become Protestant, and he often has good stuff.

He has Sometimes he pushes a little bit, and so he's not gonna be for everybody, but I think if you watched some of those videos, you might find them helpful.

He actually had me on a couple times.

So, um, yeah, you can watch a couple of those videos that are more specific to Adventism in particular.

All right.

It's All Really Good says, Many Protestants like to view the term 'tradition', paradosis in Greek, when it's used in the New Testament only in a negative way.

Is this willful ignorance, or, or are some other modern translations misleading?

Uh, the NIV is completely misleading on this.

There are three, I think it's 13 times paradosis is used.

10 of them are neutral or negative.

Three of them are clearly positive.

Every time that it's presented in a clearly positive way, the NIV translates it as teaching rather than tradition.

Every time it's translated in a neutral or negative way, they translate it as tradition.

That's, uh, that's tough, 'cause that looks pretty bad.

I'm not saying they did that on purpose, but either way, a lot of people believe tradition is just downplayed or rejected by Jesus because in their Bibles, that's what it looks like.

And so things like 2 Thessalonians 2:15, where St. Paul says to hold fast to the traditions you were taught by us, whether by word of mouth or by epistle, where he's clearly putting oral tradition and scripture on the same level of binding authority and calling them both tradition.

Um, that's all lost.

That's lost in, in the NIV. Uh, Samuel Varg says, I became a Catholic at 40.

God bless you.

I never heard about Easter octave before that.

Eight days of feasting is awesome.

Do you celebrate in any special way?

Uh, we're less deliberate about this because feasting is easy, so Unfortunately.

Uh, I'll give you some examples.

So I was doing a pretty serious, you know, no breakfast, um, no snacking, trying to be very intentional about like fasting completely between meals.

If I'd get a coffee or something, I wouldn't have any flavors in it.

And now it's like, not going crazy, but like I did a half sweet coffee.

That's why we were late starting, by the way.

I needed something to drink.

And, um, I'll have like a little bit of breakfast, you know, had some eggs and, uh, just like a little bit of pecan crinkle.

Because it's eight days, you also don't wanna go nuts.

So having like a little bit where you're intentional, like, It's Easter, I wanna do a little something nice, can be a fun way of, of doing a prolonged feast and having people over.

And my wife said, You know, I can either make this or we can pick up f- where you can either have chicken teriyaki or you can pick up Mediterranean food, 'cause I, I work across from this wonderful Mediterranean restaurant.

If it wasn't the active Easter, I would've been like, Yeah, why don't you cook chicken teriyaki?

But we were gonna be picking up some food.

So that kind of stuff where like, it's, it's celebrating in that way.

We were already gonna have the friends over.

We're just adding a little bit, and we're doing it in honor of our Lord's resurrection.

That can be a wonderful way to do it and, and I think a more sustainable kind of way.

And then, uh, was reading the Rhodomeia story with the kids after breakfast.

You know, just things where you're trying to incorporate something explicitly Easter themed, uh, reading of scripture, et cetera, with something that's just kind of like fun and a little treat.

That can be a wonderful way to celebrate the octave in a way where you're just rejoicing in the Lord and the goodness of the resurrection.

Speeda Kokoro says, Can you say hi to my friend, Brennan Watson?

Hi, Brennan Watson.

Also, thoughts on a Catholic Answers apologist boxing tournament.

Make it a martial arts tournament.

I don't have to be in it.

Um, make sure it's not contrary to human dignity, so don't go too nuts.

And I think we should include, um, Edgar from Las Questas Catolicas, as well as Trent Horn, 'cause I've seen those guys spar and it's a blast.

Uh, so yeah, there is, in all seriousness, there is a moral debate about the legitimacy of, like, some forms of boxing and martial arts and everything else.

Like, can you beat people up for fun and, or is that contrary to their human dignity?

And it's something I wish the church would be clearer on, 'cause this is, again, an area where I've seen, uh, Catholics publicly take opposite positions on it.

I, I don't think like playful sparring is a problem, but when you get people like really like face bloody beat up, that I think is, is morally problematic, or at least something we should be thinking a lot more seriously about.

Nick says, Short version.

I was raised Protestant.

Unknown to me, I was baptized Catholic as an infant, married for 11 years, five kids, previous marriages, mine annulled.

Wife is a good woman, strong Protestant, is unwilling as of now to consider Catholicism to pursue annulment for a previous marriage.

Any thoughts or encouragement played a big part in my journey into Catholicism.

God bless you, Nick.This is a tricky one.

So When you say previous marriages, is that on your end?

Y- uh, clearly your end.

Oh, yeah, okay, yeah, it's both of you.

Okay, I got it.

You actually gave all the details I need.

The nuclear option is to just say, Okay, I'm Catholic, and I need to live according to the teachings of Catholicism.

And one of the teachings of Catholicism is you can't have two wives, and that human divorce is unable to separate what God has joined together.

And so for me to be able to live as your husband, I need to have the moral certainty that I'm married in the eyes of God to you, and not someone else.

And you could tell me that I'm married to you and not someone else, and that you're married to me and not the guy you were married to before.

But I need the Church, who I trust, as the pillar and foundation of truth, First Timothy 3:15, to weigh in as a neutral party and say, 'Here's who we think you're married to, if anyone.' Because that's very important to be able to know that I'm not living in adultery, even accidentally.

And there's no You don't have to assume, uh, that there's some big sin or scandal attached to it.

It could be completely innocent.

But if you found out Like, let's say somebody thought they were a widow.

Their husband went off to war, they don't hear from him for years and years and years.

He's, uh, reported as killed in action.

She gets married.

Then it turns out there was a clerical error.

He was not killed in action, he was actually captured.

He's still alive.

He comes home.

What do you do?

Well, you can no longer live with that second guy as your husband.

You can't engage in marital relations with him because you're not married to him.

You were married to this other guy in the eyes of God.

You weren't guilty of any sin at all, because it was an innocent error.

There was no reason you could've known.

And yet, you were unintentionally committing acts that we would say were materially adultery, even though they weren't formally adultery.

All that means is, you c- like, if you pick up the laptop that you think is yours and you walk out of the room, have you committed the, the sin of theft?

No.

Have you done something that is the action of theft?

Yes.

Th- the, the matter is what we would call that.

But for the action of taking something that doesn't belong to you to be theft, it has to also be joined by knowledge and intention.

You have to know it's not yours and you have to intend to steal it.

Uh, that's not the case, so therefore it wouldn't be sinful.

So you can explain all that to your wife, that it- this is not just you wanting her to become Catholic.

Even if she, uh, doesn't become Catholic, you need to know for your own wellbeing, and for your ability to live as her husband, that you're married to her in the eyes of God.

And d- you are gonna need the Catholic Church to step in.

And whether she respects the authority of the Church is basically irrelevant, because you need that authority.

And so if she's unwilling to even have the Church look at Like, if she's unwilling to go through the process of having the Church adjudicate it, then you can't have the clarity you need to live as her husband, which might mean you have to live in a separate bedroom, at least.

Um, as I say, that's the nuclear option.

But l- letting her understand this ca- y- you know, like, if, if there is a dispute, uh, about, um, you know, whether your marriage is valid, whether you're the owner of your house, whatever else.

If there's a- i- uh, let- let's take a- a civil example.

If there is a dispute about whether or not you actually are the one who owns the house that you live in, and it- somebody's suing you and saying, I'm the actual owner of your house, you're gonna have to take that to court.

And if your wife was just like, Well, I don't trust the court system, I'm not gonna cooperate, all that's doing is interfering with your ability to maintain your house.

Well, similarly, if she's not willing to cooperate with the Catholic Church here, all she's doing is interfering with your ability to maintain the marriage and- and act as her husband.

Um, all right.

Charles says, Recently I was exposed to a local church movement detached- detachment at my campus, and wanted to know if you had any thoughts on them/it, Watchman Nee Movement.

I don't know a ton about Watchman Nee.

Um, am I getting Watchman Nee and Watchman Lee confused?

I might be.

Oh, I was getting Witness Lee and Watchman Nee confused.

Are they connected?

Yes.

Witness Lee joined the movement started by Watchman Nee.

It's the local church movement.

They, uh, are big on building up the local church.

I, I think that they're right to focus on the importance of a local church, and recognizing the Church as not just abstraction, but they are, um, they're, they're just another denomination trying to revisit these questions.

I don't know.

I, I, I don't know enough about either Nee or Lee.

I will occasionally read stuff they've written on particular topics, and sometimes find it very good and sometimes find it not good.

Um, but that's not a very deep insight.

So, I will just plead a lot of ignorance, including getting Witness Lee and Watchman Nee confused.Pleasant W-sounding names with rhyming, uh, second names.

A Catholic Christian said, Are you coming to pick me up on your way to Trent's conference, or are you flying first class?

If I had to choose between first class and picking you up, I'm actually gonna do neither of those.

I am going to conference of Trent.

You guys should all come to conference of Trent, although, actually, tickets are all sold out apparently.

Just found out last night.

Um Are you gonna be there?

That's exciting.

I'm gonna be there Friday evening this week, and then I'm speaking in the morning on Saturday.

And then it looks like I'm actually flying back Saturday afternoon at like 3:00 or something, so I'll have to probably take off right after lunch to get to the airport.

But either way, those of you who are watching, come holler if you're at the conference.

Apostle Paul of Tarsus says, Was Lofton's attack on Bishop Barron justified?

I haven't seen it.

What did he say?

Uh, Hilltime Sports says, Former Mormon here, converted five years ago.

My brother mentions he's non-denominational Christian, but he believes Catholic Church had a hard time reconciling bad clergy in the Middle Ages.

First of all, welcome home.

Second of all, there were and are bad clergy.

It's not unique to the Middle Ages.

Um, Judas would be the one I would point to.

Like, there can be moral corruption in the Church.

In fact, this is a passage that I think we don't spend enough time wrestling with, because we look at these bad representatives of the Church and say, Aha, that discredits the whole thing.

And I get it, on a human level.

And this is one reason why you shouldn't give yourself over to sin, 'cause you're not just gonna drag yourself to hell, you may drag other people there too.

Um, don't do that.

I don't want you or them to go to hell.

But it's not a good reason to, like, you shouldn't behave in a way that is a stumbling block for other people, but you also shouldn't allow yourself to stumble over someone else's bad example, a bad witness.

Even if they're clergy, even if they're a pope, whatever.

Even if they're an apostle, like Judas.

In Matthew 13, I just Okay, moved the, like I, I widened the screen and it moved the whole thing.

Uh, Jesus gives the parable of the weeds and the wheat.

I want you to think about what he says.

He says, The kingdom of heaven can be compared to a man who sowed good seed in his field.

While men were sleeping, his enemy came and sowed weeds among the wheat and went away.

So when the plants came up and bore grain, then the weeds also appeared.

And the servants of the householder came and said to him, 'Sir, did you not sow good seed in your field?

How then has it weeds?' And he said to them, 'An enemy has done this.' The servants said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he said, 'No, lest in gathering the weeds you root up the wheat along with them.

Let both grow together until the harvest.

In the harvest time, I'll tell the reapers, 'Gather the weeds first and bind them in bundles to be burned, but gather the wheat into my barn.' I was jesting with this passage yesterday because I was doing weeding, um, which by the way, there's this thing, I think it's What is it called?

Um, this is absolutely not what you are Uh, there's a, okay, standup weed puller, or just weeder.

Uh, Fiskars Deluxe has a stand-up weeder.

These things are magical.

I love weeding the garden with this, 'cause you don't have to bend over, or actually the front yard.

We have a lot of dandelions that turn into weeds.

And the thing with them is that weeds will actually kill the grass.

They'll kill the wheat.

And so it makes total sense that you'd want them out.

They're bad.

They're not, like they, an enemy has done this.

So, the impulse I have in my literal yard and in the church is to say, Let's get rid of all the weeds.

But Jesus doesn't take that approach.

He says, Let them grow together until the harvest.

So here's the thing.

There is this impulse we have, a very human impulse to say, We want a church that's only wheat.

And Jesus is very clear, I'm not gonna give you that, and don't try to create it.

That's my answer to clergy in the Middle Ages or any time that are, that are wicked, or anybody who's wicked.

My own sin, your sin, everybody's sin.

Yes, you can have sin that can really harm other people, and we can say, How can God let that happen in the Church?

And He'll say, An enemy has done this.

And that He's not gonna stop it, lest, in our zealousness to drive out all the weeds, we end up driving out the wheat as well.

Because sometimes the person who is a sinner today is a great saint tomorrow.

There are plenty of examples.

Uh, who was the, the nephew of the Borgias?

Saint Francis Borgia.

Um, he was part of the, a notoriously sinful family within the Church, and yet he becomes a, a wonderful saint.It, you don't want to just slap the label of weed on somebody and, and then go from there.

Uh, I think, and in the same way, like judging the Church based on the behavior of the worst sinners and representatives, if you're gonna do that, I don't know where that ends u- I think it ends up in the, the vagary of non-denominationalism.

'Cause you can't just be a Protestant.

You can't look at all of the wealthy, corrupt Protestant preachers and say, Well, we have to be Protestant because of all the moral rectitude of our clergy.

You have to say, I only defend this portion of the clergy.

And then you can draw a really small bubble and say, I really like my pastor at my non-denominational church.

That's not what it is to be part of the Body of Christ.

You can make a wheat field of just you and one other person.

That's not the Church.

That's not the kingdom that Jesus describes in Matthew 13.

The kingdom Jesus describes has wheat and weeds, and we know from his own example of being betrayed by an apostle that it includes wicked leaders as well as wicked laity.Um, Isaac defends the Diocese of Lincoln by saying there aren't as many baptisms because all the faithful men are becoming priests.

Very clever.

I love Lincoln.

Uh, I was in the Diocese of Arlington, so there's a, a healthy rivalry between Lincoln and Arlington because they both think they're the best and, you know, they're both good.

They're both good.

Nashville's outperforming both, though.

So is Tulsa, actually.

There's a I'm excited about all the stuff happening.

Uh, JF Garcia says, Would you ever debate a Oneness Pentecostal?

Maybe.

I mean, the thing with debates is they take a lot of work.

I don't have a ton of Like, I If you asked me to name a Oneness Pentecostal preacher, I think I could probably name one.

I couldn't name many.

And like, I don't want to go in on a Like, it'd be a big research commitment to, to do something like that.

I'm not against it in principle.

I think it's a really important topic to, to discuss.

I don't know anyone that's a Pentecostal apologist, though.

A lot of times they're just preachers in local congregations, who might be, you know, influential online 'cause people watch their videos.

But they're often not, like I, I mean, they're not well-read in a lot of cases.

I don't want to be insulting.

Yeah, I'd be open to it.

I'll just say that.

I'd be open to it, but I, I would be very hesitant, um, just because of all the, the research burden.

All right.

Um, Hermeneutics Horror, why, why?

Why is that your name?

People have great names.

This is the best part of the job.

Um, Hermeneutics Horror says, When someone asks me what tradition is, where I can find it, and how I know what tradition is infallible and what is not, what do I say?

How can I learn more about this?

Any resources you recommend?

Um, it's partially just by looking at the history of the Church.

This is e- the kind of the question of the list.

So the example I always give is the Gospel Or, you know, the example I give in the debate anyway, is the Gospel of Mark is inspired Scripture.

Nothing in Scripture tells us that.

Nothing from mere human evidence would, would prove that.

This is something we know from the Church and from tradition.

So that's a really easy kind of case.

So tradition is the handing on of the truth, traditio.

It's, you know, the paradosis in Greek.

Uh, you're, you're passing on something that you know to be true.

So our knowledge of Christianity is more than just what we read within the Book.

The knowing which things are meant to be in the Book in the first place is something the Book doesn't tell us.

This is something that's handed on, uh, how to understand what the Book is saying.

You look at the consensus of the early Church and what the, the Church has dogmatically said on it.

So here's the, the major dispute.

This is what's called the partum partum or et et debate.

So when the Council of Trent was describing the relationship of Scripture and tradition, some of the fathers at Trent wanted to say it is part Like Revelation is partly in Scripture and partly in tradition, partem partem.

But that language got rejected in favor of saying that Revelation is in tradition and in Scripture, et et, and and.

Um, and so as I said to Doug in the debate, like it's not like the relationship between 1 Kings and 2 Kings where you have like two separate kind of b- Like you, you're gonna get half the story here and another half of the story there.

It's more like the relationship between Matthew and Mark, where there's gonna be some things in each Gospel that aren't in the other, but they're clearly telling the same story.

They're synoptic, they're seen with the same eyes.

Uh, that's, uh, how we should understand Scripture and tradition.

Dave Arbaum talks about this, and if you want good reading on this, I'd actually recommend reading Dave Arbaum about what we even mean by tradition.

Uh, particularly chapter two, Handing on Divine Revelation.

Paragraph nine talks about how there exists a close connection and communication between sacred tradition and sacred Scripture from both of them flowing from the same divine wellspring in a certain way merge into a unity and tend toward the same end.

That seems to me to be the triumph of et et over the idea of partum partum.

That doesn't mean there are, uh, facts that are known by tradition and not by Scripture, but it When we talk about tradition, we don't just mean there's this secret body of teachings.

We mean that how we interpret the Bible should be through the lens of how people always have, because both the text and the meaning of the text pass on together in the proclamation of the apostles and in the, the carrying forth of that in the Church.

Both in a human way, people pass it on, but in a divinely guided way, that the same God who inspired the Scriptures also preserves the manuscripts or the, the copies of the manuscripts, I should say, and preserves the meaning.

So I, I, I try to cover that today.

Uh, but in terms of what tradition is, that's what it is.

So yeah, I'd recommend chapter two of Dave Arbaum.

Beidrick says, Have you read Paul the New Covenant Jew yet?

No, I haven't.

I need to, um, because I think it's probably very good.

Brett Petrey, Jon Kincaid, Michael Barber, come on, that's gotta be good.

I might have read, uh, like an excerpt of it when I was looking for something else, like online, but I, I don't even know if that's true.

VexedOracle gave $5.

Thanks, VexedOracle.

I hope your oracular abilities are no longer vexedCorey's Cook says, I'm a Protestant convinced Leviticus 16 and Hebrews are connected.

I agree with you.

I agree the atonement is finished in the ascension, but how does that fit with Trent calling the cross the altar if in Leviticus 16 the sacrifice is incomplete at the altar?

Yeah.

That the heavenly temple has a foreshadowing on Earth.

That's true both in terms of, um, the temple in Jerusalem.

It's also true in terms of Good Friday.

That something is happening on Earth that is paralleled and, and completed in heaven.

That the presentation of the blood, that there is this, uh, not just parallel, but there's an actual union sacrificially between heaven and earth.

So, if you think about it, the earthly realities in, like, Leviticus 16, uh, with Yom Kippur, are pointing forward.

You can see this just as clearly with, like, the Passover.

They're pointing forward and they're pointing upward.

They're pointing upward to something about divine life, and they're pointing forward to something about the life of Christ.

In the New Testament, what's happening at the altar, the cross, is completed in bringing the blood in.

Um, and so, the earthly altar is pointing towards something in heaven, and, and you can see this even, this is, like, th- think about the tree of life in the book of Genesis.

Um, the tree of life reappears, as it were, in the Book of Revelation.

And, uh, Revelation 2:7, To him who conquers, I will grant to eat of the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God.

And then, uh, 22:14, Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life, and they may enter the city by the gates.

So, all of that is pointing to It's real.

Like, the tree of life is real, and it's pointing towards a heavenly reality.

The sacrifice, and communion, and everything else is pointing towards a heavenly reality.

Even the Eucharist is pointing towards a heavenly reality beyond our understanding.

Like, in the Eucharist, we encounter the body and blood of Jesus Christ.

We commune with Jesus.

And even this is pointing forward and upwards.

So, you, you have this Think about it in stages.

Uh, think about the mana and the water from the rock.

These are the examples f- in First Corinthians 10 used to look to where in the Old Testament we see the pre-figures of the Eucharist.

With the water from the rock, the, uh, the rock was Christ.

That is a rabbinical tradition that Paul references.

Uh, that God is somehow present and, like, the, you know, the idea The Rock moved with them rather than just Let me clarify what I just said 'cause I'd said that badly.

The idea that The Rock moved with the Israelites on their pilgrimage is something that, um, isn't explicit in scripture, but was in, an ancient tradition.

And Saint Paul references it and seems to treat it as an accurate tradition in First Corinthians 10.

And then he adds to that that The Rock was Christ.

So they're receiving water from Christ who goes before them and with them.

That's already a real kind of communion with Christ, but it's pointing towards a, a fuller communion where we don't just receive water from Christ, we receive Christ himself in the Eucharist.

And that is still pointing towards something even better, because the Eucharist is the mana on our journey to the promised land.

So once we're in heaven, the mana ceases.

When the Israelites arrive in the promised land, the mana ceases.

They've now entered the land of milk and honey.

The mana is food for the journey.

It's viaticum, as, as the church calls the Eucharist given to those who are dying.

It's food for the journey.

Um, so something even bigger i- is being pointed towards.

So yeah, the altar on Earth, including the altar of the cross, is both a real altar and a sign pointing upwards and forwards towards an even fuller kind of communion with God that is beyond our understanding.

But we know that when we see him, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is, as First John 3 tells us.

Uh, Darth Pizza says, Thoughts on the Hebrew roots movement?

Yeah.

My parents became involved and I'm starting to think it's a cult.

It's Christian adjacent, if you're unsure what it is.

Yeah, I'm familiar with it.

It's, it's a weird movement.

Um, I don't Uh, this is another one where I'm, I'm aware of it, but I don't know enough stuff.

It's anti-Greek trying to reclaim Judaism.

So it is somewhere between Protestants LARPing as Jews and just full-on Judaizers.

Like, the very thing condemned in Acts 15, the thing condemned in Galatians and in Romans, et cetera.

And it does have some weird kind of, uh, sociological properties.

I'm not r- ready to say cult, but I understand why people would say cult.

It's, yeah, I think it's a problem.

And I think if you want to see a good rebuttal to it, read the New Testament, read Saint Paul.

But it, it comes out of this outgrowth where, you know, to a Catholic, church history is a great joy.

You look at early Christianity and you say, Wow, there's a lot I can learn from this.

You look at medieval Christianity and you say, Wow, there's a lot I can learn from this.

But there's a kind of Protestant that views this as, like, oh, the ancient, beautiful, pure, first century church, and then it gets lost with Constantine.

So I would say this.

If you want a way of getting an inroad- into why that's a bad theology.

This is why I wrote the book, The Early Church Was the Catholic Church, to show before Constantine, people sounded way more Catholic than that kind of narrative would, would suggest.

They aren't like what you're imagining at all.

And so as a result, you either have to say Christian was lost basically immediately, or, uh, I misunderstood Christianity.

Those are the two options that are ultimately left open.

Winston Von Toast says, Have you lost weight?

You looked so good in the debate.

God bless.

Thank you.

Well, um, I've been trying to.

Uh, lint was helpful and I, like, I was definitely worse about being disciplined about dieting, uh, around, like, December, January.

And so, whew, I looked pretty rough during the pints episode, and, uh, some Mormons pointed that out.

Um, it also is like, it's harder to, like, I, I walk to work.

Usually I live about half a mile from this office, and so I like to walk here.

And, you know, it's good just getting some steps in and everything else.

That was, I was doing a lot less of that during the middle of the winter for partly obvious reasons, but also just 'cause I was on the road a lot.

And when I'm traveling a lot, it's often not great.

You know, you're, you're sleeping worse, you're eating worse, you're, uh, often not getting time to exercise, your, like, stress and everything else is higher.

So hopefully, hopefully, I'm, I'm working on it, but Nicaea Three.

Wait, uh, I, do I have one too few Nicaeas?

Uh, says, Joe, Anglican YouTuber here.

Love your content.

Are you familiar with the Archic Doc, uh, The Gift of Authority, the precursor to the Bishop of Rome Doc?

I actually was familiar with The Gift of Authority, and not familiar with the Bishop of Rome Doc, so maybe that tells you how behind the times I am.

Um, yeah, this is, I'll just say a, a couple things.

One, I just was at a Catholic-Protestant ecumenical event in DC a couple weeks ago, um, a small event with, like, 50, 60 people, that was really encouraging.

And it was a lot of more evangelical types, and some more maybe conservative Anglicans, um, where we just kind of shared, and had some areas of real common ground to talk about and, you know, I, I actually presented.

I can't talk about this, you know, uh, Chatham House Rules, I can't talk about all the details of it.

I wanted people to be able to kind of speak freely.

But it was a really good, uplifting conversation.

Came out of there with some really pleasant people, and this is a good reminder to me that there's two emails I'm supposed to respond to today from people I met there.

Um, but one of the frustrations I've had in the past with ecumenism is not that ecumenism of itself is bad, I think it's actually very good and very important, but that the people most willing to talk with the Catholic Church historically have been people who are maybe further from us.

So it's very easy on the Catholic side to sit down with official representatives of, like, mainline Protestant communities, and it's much harder to find anyone representative of, um, like, more conservative Evangelical communities, at least publicly.

And, and then when you really get down into brass tacks, mainliners are often moving in a way that's away from union, because they're, they're becoming united with the world instead, they're accepting radical stuff on sexual ethics and, um, allowing women's ordination was a big hitch for, uh, Catholic-Anglican dialogue.

So this stuff had been going very well in the mid-20th century, and then a lot of stuff happens on the Protestant side that, that kind of moves them further away.

So I mention all this to say, I, I like these kind of collaborations, but I, I worry that we're at a place right now, where I'm not sure how fruitful the official collaborations are, of having, like, this is a representative of this Protestant communion.

And it seems to me like a lot of work should be more like ECT, Evangelicals and Catholics Together, where it's not claiming an official, uh, representation, because, you know, uh, what Presbyterian, uh, stands for all Presbyterians?

There isn't one.

Or what Baptist stands even for, like, all Southern Baptists.

Y- y- even if some, like, let's say, God willing, tomorrow, the Southern Baptists said, Okay, our president has announced we're going to be in full union with the Catholic Church, and we're going to accept Catholic theology.

You know how many conversions that's gonna be?

There's gonna be one conversion, that guy.

That's it.

And so one of the things we have to kind of figure out is how do we, um, how do we do real and fruitful ecumenical discussion, while recognizing that there is no one who is in a position of being able to speak for other Protestants in a binding kind of way.

And also, um, I think there needs to be a little bit of a softening of hearts.

I think that we are wanting to sit down with kind of everybody, but there's much more skepticism about ecumenism within Orthodoxy and conservative Protestantism.

And I would just say, look, obviously we want you to fully join the Catholic Church.

We also just want to understand where you're coming from, so we're not talking past each other.

That's a good of its own, and it's a good worth pursuing.

I didn't mention this earlier, but, uh, for a long time, until the 1940s, our best knowledge of Gnosticism came from Saint Irenaeus, because in his book Against Heresies, he took the trouble to understand what Gnostics believed and why.

And he's obviously critical about it, it's right there in the title.

He doesn't claim to be neutral, but he does his best to understand it.And that's a model for everybody, so that's hard to do if we don't have things like dialogues.

All right.

Ratzingerian Thomist says, Favorite book on overview of theology/apologetics to give to a friend?

When you ask for that, are you asking for a book on the art of doing apologetics or a more basic, like, here's why we're Catholic kind of book?

You know, why we're Catholic, that sort of thing, uh, is a good I really like The Belief of Catholics by Monsignor Ronald Knox.

Um, Theology and Sanity by Frank Sheed is fantastic.

To Know Christ Jesus by Frank Sheed is fantastic.

Anything by Frank Sheed anyway .

Um, I know Dolas did a book on apologetics as such.

What is that called?

A History of Apologetics.

So if you're wanting that, I think Dolas wrote sort of the definitive guide on that, Avery Cardinal Dolas.

Um, but I don't know Yeah, it, so, okay, here's what I'd say.

It depends very heavily where your friend is coming from.

Bishop Barron's book, Catholicism, is also a great, just like Catholic 101.

I, I have found that very beautiful and inviting and helpful.

Uh, do, do, do.

All right.

I'm gonna take, like, a couple more questions and the last few questions I'm gonna have to save for next time.

Um, Darth Pizza, I think he's talking about Witness Pentecostals, says, Also, because of their beliefs, they deny the Trinity.

Their reasoning is the Bible never limits the Trinity to three.

They point to theophanies as other persons.

I pointed out three witnesses in heaven, baptism instructions.

Help, please.

Yeah, also, I mean, the Transfiguration, you have the Father, the cloud which is the Holy Spirit and you have Jesus.

Um, it, yeah, I would just say this is one of those areas where the fact that there, the three are one, y- you have that abundantly throughout early Christianity.

So to say that this is wrong, would mean that, like, God let everybody get it wrong right away, and didn't seem to care to solve that.

That's a real problem.

Um, JF Garcia says, Voice for Reason questioned six Protestants about Sola Scriptura.

They admitted to being able to be bound to error, but claimed we have as well.

Thoughts?

Yes, that their perspective would logically point to their system doesn't work and our system doesn't work.

Our perspective would lead to their system doesn't work and our system works.

You'll notice a common thread there, is their system doesn't work.

Like, if you want unity in the truth, you definitely can't get it in Protestantism.

Catholics think you can get it in Catholicism, Protestants don't.

So we agree that they can't solve the problem, we disagree about whether we can solve the problem.

When you ask them, Why we can't solve the problem?

It, it almost invariably comes down to, Well, the church's interpretation of scripture contradicts my interpretation of scripture.

Yeah, it does.

I'm sure it does.

That's why we need the Church, 'cause otherwise it would be left to your interpretation of scripture and my interpretation, which contradict each other and are bound to error.

So, you'd have to have a pretty slam dunk issue of just saying, anyone looking at this would say, The Church infallibly taught X and then infallibly taught Y, and X and Y cannot be harmonized.

You can have, there were theologians, there were statements, there were, you know, even fallible things said by a pope that were wrong or, you know, whatever.

But in terms of binding church teaching.

Binding church teaching.

What does that You know, and I think when you set the bar there, which is where the bar has to be set, the Catholic Church clears that bar.

If you set the bar somewhere else where it's like, well, people sin, or people make mistakes, whatever else, sure.

And if that's enough to disqualify, then everyone's disqualified.

So we're putting the bar in a, a clear place where no one is going to be bound to error, and we can pass that bar, and it's not clear that Protestants can pass that bar because each of the different Protestant denominations have a statement of faith you might have to agree with, and those statements of faith contradict and they're not right.

They're partially right, but they're not right across the board.

Um, speaking of which, Plate Legs, did you just choose to .

Um, Plate Legs says, Nicaea II looks like it makes icon veneration a defeat at issue the apostles were doing.

How does this square with Roman Catholic development?

How can it be both without contradicting?

Here, let me find the actual language in there.

Um, bum, bum, bum, bum.

Okay, I think this is the We declare that we defend free from any in- and, uh, from any innovations, all the written and unwritten ecclesiastical traditions that have been entrusted to us.

One of these is the production of representational art.

This is quite in harmony with the history of the spread of the Gospel, as it provides confirmation that the becoming man of the word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as it brings us a similar benefit.

Now, we have to distinguish between two things.

Development and innovation are not the same.W- you know, this is Chesterton gives the classic example that a puppy can become a dog, but a puppy can't become a cat.

One is a development, one is an alteration.

So an alteration would be like an innovation, you know, some new teaching that's never been taught before.

You can have things that develop.

The production of, um, representa- representational art is a tradition that they're saying that they It's, it's a tradition, but not an innovation.

Quite normally, it's the spread of the gospel, uh, provides confirmation that the becoming man of the Word of God was real and not just imaginary, and as It brings us a similar benefit.

For things that mutually illustrate one another undoubtedly possess one another's message, given the state of affairs, and setting out as though on the royal highway following as we are, the God-spoken teaching of our Holy Fathers and the tradition of the Catholic Church, we recognize that this tradition comes from the Holy Spirit who dwells in her, we decree with full precision and care that, like the figure of the honored and life-giving cross, the revered and holy images, whether painted or made of mosaic or other suitable material, are to be exposed in the holy churches of God.

Now, I want you to notice, they're not saying, um, the apostles used painted and mosaic and other suitable material.

They're saying this is consistent with the tradition of the Church guided by the Holy Spirit.

That it's not an innovation.

This is a natural outgrowth of what the apostolic practice was.

What the apostolic practice was is, uh, a little less clear in exactly wh- what the boundaries are of that, and are hard to sort of establish, honestly.

Like I know there's a popular, um, Protestant model that says, Well, we don't see proof of this until slightly later, and we see some people who are hostile to images, and, you know, against images in churches early on.

And all that's fair.

But it's also very clear that the Church pretty quickly, and pretty overwhelmingly, has images and that this is relatively uncontroversial prior to the rise of Islam, and that's when you have the whole i- i- like icon crisis in the East, um, which then gives rise to Second Nicaea.

So, it seems to me a perfectly reasonable hypothesis, and one that I hold to, that the apostolic practice was such that it was clear that, uh, the production and veneration of images was not evil and wicked and, and contrary to God.

What that looked like during the first century, I don't know, and other people don't know.

Um, one thing that I think is relevant here What's the name of it?

Um Sorry, I'm gonna find the name of this.

Oh, the synagogue in Magdala.

It was just discovered in 2009.

Uh, they were building for a hotel and they found this ancient, uh, Jewish synagogue that has stonework inside, um, depicting the menorah, and, uh, this was probably the base of a Torah reading stand, et cetera.

So, for a long time, scholars were convinced the Jews at the time of Jesus did not use images.

And we now know that that's, that's just not true.

And so there are still Protestants who say something similar about the early Christians, that the early Christians don't use images.

And, uh, they're basically arguing largely, not exclusively, largely on the basis of lack of archeological evidence and patristic silence.

And I think that eventually it'll be much clearer that that's also not true.

That's, that's somewhat of a guess, admittedly, but it's a guess informed by a belief that the Holy Spirit who guided the Church in Second Nicaea continues to guide the Church.

And I think if you're gonna take the opposite side of this question, um, if you're gonna say the Second Council of Nicaea erred, this actually creates much bigger problems.

Obviously for a Catholic.

Obviously for an Orthodox.

But even for a Protestant.

Because if you say the Second Council of Nicaea erred, I think they got icon veneration wrong.

On a binding teaching that they're claiming they have the support by the Holy Spirit and by tradition and all that, they actually were completely erroneous on that.

None of it was true.

Then on what basis can you insist anyone else hold to the First Council of Nicaea?

If we can't trust Second Nicaea, why can we trust First Nicaea?

And your answer can't just be some form of, It matches my read of scripture, because I don't care about your read of scripture.

I want to know why someone who reads scripture differently than you do needs to follow the First Council of Nicaea rather than their own private interpretation of scripture And if you can't answer that question, then you have to take all dogma off the table.

There's no longer any such thing as orthodoxy, there's no longer any such thing as heresy, and there's functionally no longer any such thing as Christianity.

This is the point that I made, uh, from Keith Mathison, uh, in my episode today.

But you I think Protestants just miss the, the force of this.

You can't tear down an ecumenical council and then insist ecumenical councils are binding on dogmatic dec- declarations if you've just torn them down on dogmatic declarations and said they're wrong and not trustworthy.

All right.

God bless you all.

I hope your Easter octave is wonderful.

Say a prayer for me, and I will say a prayer for all of you.

God bless