Wes Huff and Mike Winger

Summary

Podcast Summary

BibleThinker with Mike Winger: Conversation with Wes Huff
Episode Date: February 3, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode features Bible teacher and apologist Mike Winger in conversation with Wesley Huff, fellow apologist and director at Apologetics Canada. Their discussion delves into popular misconceptions about the Council of Nicaea, the doctrine of the Trinity, historical development of Christian doctrine, and lessons in responding empathetically to objections about Christianity. Throughout, the pair combine historical clarity with personal insights and a strong pastoral focus.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Connection and Apologetics Background

• Mike and Wes recount their roots in Christian apologetics, highlighting early collaborations with Tim Barnett (Red Pen Logic) and Amy Hall.
• They discussed their practice of analyzing books they disagreed with, focusing on logic and theological soundness, notably works by Brian Zahnd and Andy Stanley.

  "We were basically picking books that we knew we disagreed with, and we were...pulling them apart and kind of analyzing the logic..." — Mike Winger [00:58]

2. Mythbusting the Council of Nicaea

• Popular Myths Circulating Online:
  • The council chose the books of the Bible.
  • Constantine manipulated doctrine for control.
  • The Trinity was invented there.
  • Reincarnation was "removed" from Christianity.
• Origins of the Myths:
  • Many stem from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, which borrowed from Holy Blood, Holy Grail, itself relying on Voltaire's writings—and ultimately a medieval Latin forgery.
  • The "choosing books by leaving them on a table" story traces back to the Synodicon Vitus, a known forgery.

    "...That the books of the Bible were chosen there... That's kind of the one that's floated in the Da Vinci Code...Dan Brown had [a character] propose this idea..." — Wesley Huff [03:30]

3. Clarifying What Happened at Nicaea

• Reality: The biblical canon was not decided at Nicaea.
• Scripture Usage at Nicaea:
  • The council cited Scripture as already authoritative, never discussing which books belonged.

    "...Nicaea quotes Scripture as if it's already authoritative and binding..." — Wesley Huff [06:41]

• Council's Actual Focus:
  • The main topic was the nature of Christ and the Trinity, particularly addressing the teachings of Arius (Arian controversy).

4. Early Church’s Cultural Context

• The episode emphasizes how Christian beliefs and practices interacted with surrounding cultures—borrowing language or concepts for communication, but often reframing or sanctifying them.
  • E.g., Paul citing pagan poets in Acts to connect with Greek audiences, or God co-opting existing practices (like circumcision) to give them new meaning.

    "...it's not that this is like copycatted...God is using something that has cultural understanding. And then when you add in all the things that are completely different, you see—well, actually, there's a lot more going on..." — Wesley Huff [10:04]

5. On Empathy in Apologetics

• Lessons from Experience:
  • Both speakers describe personal journeys from combative apologetics to a more empathetic, pastoral approach, with an emphasis on assuming the emotional vulnerability of questioners.

    "Assume that the person asking the question is the most vulnerable person you can think of." — Wesley Huff [16:22]

  • Logical arguments don’t always address the heart behind objections; hurt or past trauma often motivate people’s skepticism.

    "...Logically, that's not a defeater for Christianity. Logically, for that person, it is." — Mike Winger [16:18]

6. Debunking Constantine Myths

• Constantine's Conversion:
  • It’s often claimed he adopted Christianity to gain power, but previous emperors (like Diocletian) simply declared themselves gods, an easier route for control.

    "...if Constantine wanted to rule the masses, converting to Christianity and glorifying a crucified Savior—that's a disadvantage..." — Wesley Huff [12:49]

• His Role at Nicaea:
  • He commissioned the council for unity but did not dictate doctrine. Most likely, Constantine did not even attend, deliberately maintaining distance from theological decisions.

7. The Doctrine of the Trinity

• Arius and Arianism:
  • Arius taught that Jesus was divine but created—a view opposing "eternal Sonship" of Christ and the fully co-equal, co-eternal Trinity.

    "...Arius believed Jesus was divine. He just didn't believe that Jesus had eternally existed, that he was almost a lesser divine being than the Father..." — Wesley Huff [23:29]

• Modalism vs. Trinitarianism:
  • Common analogies (like water) often accidentally promote modalism (one God, three modes) rather than Christian orthodoxy.

    "There's no good analogy of the Trinity that won't devolve into a heresy." — Wesley Huff [25:07]

• Nicaea’s Achievement:
  • The council articulated formal language (one Being, three Persons) for what Christians were already confessing—a crucial development, not a doctrinal invention.
• Widespread Misunderstanding:
  • Many Christians unintentionally express modalist or other heretical ideas due to lack of theological education, not willful rejection.

    "...if you actually parse out what they believe and they start to do things like give analogies of water or eggs or four leaf clovers, are actually more accurately articulating a heresy that's condemned than they are actual biblical Trinitarian." — Wesley Huff [38:20]

8. The Bar of Trinitarian Belief

• Ignorance vs. Rejection:
  • You can be a Christian and ignorant of Trinitarian intricacies, but once biblical Trinitarianism is explained and rejected, that departs from Christianity’s core.

    "There's no doctrine, theology, test to enter into the kingdom of God. However, if proper biblical theological Trinitarianism is explained to you—and you reject that—you are rejecting the essentials of Christianity." — Wesley Huff [37:17]

9. On Deathbed Baptism and Constantine

• Deathbed Baptism:
  • Popular in the 4th century due to beliefs about original sin and the cleansing effect of baptism; not evidence of insincerity.
• Constantine Baptized by an Arian:
  • Likely circumstantial, not theological allegiance; Arianism had a resurgence after Nicaea.

    "I don't know. I don't think that was purposeful. I just think it was the fact that Arianism had a resurgence after Nicaea." — Wesley Huff [33:46]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Nicaea Myths:

  "People who couldn't name other councils in church history...know a bunch of stuff about the Council of Nicaea and it's all wrong." — Mike Winger [03:05]

• On Empathy:

  "I try to remind myself, always talk about an issue as if someone listening to you is deeply personally connected to that issue." — Mike Winger [19:34]

• On the Necessity of the Trinity:

  "Asking what does the Trinity have to do with Christianity is like asking what does my wife have to do with my marriage? And that if I don't have a wife, I don't have a marriage. And in the same way, if you don't have the Trinity, you don't actually have Christianity." — Wesley Huff [37:54]

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Timeline of Important Segments

| Timestamp | Segment Summary | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:01–02:46 | Personal history and formation of their apologetics community | | 03:05–04:50 | Popular myths about the Council of Nicaea | | 06:22–07:38 | Scripture at Nicaea and confusion about the biblical canon | | 08:15–11:38 | Early church's use of culture, analogy, and confronting skeptics | | 12:49–16:22 | Empathy in apologetics; motives behind skepticism | | 19:34–22:43 | Practical lessons in apologetics and ministry | | 23:18–29:04 | History and theology of Arius, Arianism, and the Council’s real debates | | 31:02–35:23 | Development and nuances of Trinitarianism | | 35:24–39:29 | On heresy, ignorance, and grace in doctrinal understanding | | 39:32–42:45 | Wes’s new documentary series “Can I Trust the Bible?” |

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Additional Resources Mentioned

• Apologetics Canada YouTube & apologeticscanada.com
• Wes Huff’s documentary series Can I Trust the Bible?, featuring episode plans on the Council of Nicaea.

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Closing Remarks

The discussion between Mike Winger and Wesley Huff combines careful historical explanation, biblical fidelity, and genuine pastoral care. The episode equips listeners to differentiate between truth and myth regarding early church history (especially Nicaea), understand foundational doctrines like the Trinity, and approach tough questions with intellectual honesty and compassion.

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Listen or watch more at apologeticscanada.com and BibleThinker.

Transcript

[Wesley Huff]

Wesley Huff, Mike Winger.

[Mike Winger]

People don't know this, but we go back a ways. We actually met from Tim Barnett, who does Redpin Logic, which is a great, great program. He connected us when we got together and did a book club and we were trying to figure this out. You think it was 2018?

[Wesley Huff]

I think so. I'm trying to figure. I removed a bunch of clutter in a closet at our church and made an office out of it, and we were doing it when I was in that space. So I'm thinking 2018, it couldn't have been later than 2019.

[Mike Winger]

Right. And do you remember what we were reviewing?

[Wesley Huff]

It was Brian Zahn's Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God of an angry. Of a. Oh, yeah, because he.

[Mike Winger]

Because he was a playoff of the sinners in the Hands of an angry God sermon that he was. He was trying to respond to.

[Wesley Huff]

I think there was one more book we definitely did that.

[Mike Winger]

Andy Stanley.

[Wesley Huff]

Andy Stanley and his book Unresistable.

[Mike Winger]

Irresistible.

[Wesley Huff]

Irresistible.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. And we. We were basically picking books that we knew we disagreed with, and we were. The. The four of us were pulling them apart and kind of analyzing the logic and trying to figure out what was going on here.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, it was Tim, you, me, and Amy.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, yeah, Amy.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Amy Hall. We. We should. We probably should have just recorded those.

[Wesley Huff]

And then it would have been great content.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, it would have been interesting for people to. To see it because those books are problematic and. And sometimes in complex ways.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, it would have been incriminating for Tim, though, so.

[Mike Winger]

That's true.

[Wesley Huff]

Outed him as a heretic. But now I go back, I go back years with Tim because he was a high school teacher. When I was in grad school and I was going to my wife's church, we just gotten married, and we were in a Bible study on Wednesday evenings with this guy, Andrew Barnett. And Andrew was saying, my brother's a high school teacher. He likes apologetics, too. You guys should talk. And that went on for a couple of years where he kept saying, you got to talk to my brother Tim. And then I met up with Tim, and before, he was the internationally known apologist that he is today, and he was just a humble high school teacher who was plagiarizing Greg Kokel's stuff, worried that he was going to get that cease and desist letter.

[Mike Winger]

Told me about that. Yeah, he said he just copied all their stuff. And he was like, turns out they liked it.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah, he told me. He's like, they're either going to offer me A job or they're going to sue me.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, you never know. Well, it worked out. Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. So it is. We go back a few years. Although this is the first time we've met in person. In person, yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Because you live in Canada.

[Wesley Huff]

I do, yeah.

[Mike Winger]

With like four other people, apparently.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, we're. We're a small group, but we're holding the country down.

[Mike Winger]

You and the moose.

[Wesley Huff]

That's right. Yeah. Someone's got to send that lumber over the border.

[Mike Winger]

That's true.

[Wesley Huff]

Before we become the 51st state.

[Mike Winger]

Okay, so let's launch into some of our topics. We were talking about going over the Trinity, but that relates to the Council of Nicaea. So the Council of Nicaea, which is probably the most mythological council as far as the Internet world's concerned. I hear more misinformation about the Council of Nicaea. People who couldn't name other councils in church history.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

They will be like, they know a bunch of stuff about the Council of Nicaea and it's all wrong. It's all like fabricated. So how about maybe you could lay out what are some of the things people believe about the Council of Nicaea? Let you see kind of popularly floating around.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. Well, like you said, the Council of Nicaea becomes this catch all. If you don't like something about Christianity or you have some conspiracy theory about Christianity, you can pin it on Constantine and you can pin it on the Council of Nicaea.

[Mike Winger]

Right.

[Wesley Huff]

So, yeah. That the books of the Bible were chosen there. That's a pretty big one. That's kind of the one that's floated in the Da Vinci Code. Dan Brown had Shirley Teabing in it, proposed this idea that, you know, Christianity was this theological quagmire. And the only reason we have Matthew, Mark, Luke and John is because these heinous bishops of the Council of Nicaea under the guidance of Emperor Constantine chose those books for some sort of. Because they had content that would help them rule over the people. Kind of missed some of the things Jesus said about.

[Mike Winger]

And then we'll have Rome crucify Jesus. Yeah, that'll help. That'll help our authority.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah, of course. Yeah. My kingdom is not of this world. That will make us.

[Mike Winger]

Let's repeatedly have people call Jesus Lord even though later we'll kill them for it. Yeah, that's a good plan. Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

So you get that. And that's been floating around for a while because Dan Brown appears to have gotten it from a book called Holy Blood and Holy Grail. And then Holy Blood and Holy Grail got It. From Voltaire, of all people.

[Mike Winger]

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

How is Voltaire wrapped up?

[Wesley Huff]

So he wrote a.

[Mike Winger]

Well, for people who've never heard of him. Who's Voltaire?

[Wesley Huff]

He's a. Oh, dear. He is a philosopher. Do you know who Voltaire is?

[Mike Winger]

I mean, he's like. He was like an anti Christian type guy.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Like he was one of those guys who was like touting the end of Christianity is going to end. It'll. It'll be over. And, and. And there's some myths related to that on the Christian side too. But he was anti Christian is effectively.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, well, he produced this, what was essentially an encyclopedia. And part of it is that he used for his action on Christianity and the Bible a document that predated him from the Middle Ages, which is a forgery called the Synodicon Vitus and the Sonata Convitus had this kind of mythological story that the bishops of the Council of Nicaea put a bunch of gospels and books on a table and they left the room and they came back and the books that remained on the table were the books that God had chosen. All the others ended up under the table.

[Mike Winger]

So I've heard this before. I didn't know where it came from. Yeah, I heard this before, though.

[Wesley Huff]

It's a Latin forgery from the Middle Ages. And so he just ran with it and you follow the chain of custody, which eventually gets down to Dan Brown and he adds this idea that's grafted on from Holy blood and Holy Grail, that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline of Jesus exists today in royal families in France, that kind of thing. But part of that is that people, I think largely because they probably don't know much about what actually happened at the council, they just pin these sorts of things on them. Or, you know, that reincarnation was taken out of the Bible. I've heard that one that happened at the Council of Nicaea. And the tricky one about the Trinity is because the Trinity was actually discussed at Nicaea, right?

[Mike Winger]

It was, yeah. So for those who don't know, the canon of Scripture wasn't even a topic.

[Wesley Huff]

No, it's not even.

[Mike Winger]

There are other times where the church was like there was a gathering of some kind of council and they talked about the authenticity of different books of the Bible. But this didn't even happen at the Council of Nicaea. Of all of the councils to pin this on, this is a really weird one.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. And Nicaea quotes Scripture as if it's already authoritative and Binding.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

So not only do they not choose books, there's an assumption that the books that they're referencing already possess the authority that they're giving it.

[Mike Winger]

Right. And for those who would want to know, are there any books that they. Or things that they quote that are not in our current canon of Scripture?

[Wesley Huff]

I don't know off the top of my head, although I wouldn't be surprised because the early church, they. They quoted a whole body of literature. I mean, in the same way that maybe Mike, you and I would quote C.S. lewis or Spurgeon or, you know, these. These people. But we would quote them in a very different way than we would quote the Scriptures.

[Mike Winger]

Right. And the Bible does this too, because it'll say something like, as it is written.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Or the Scripture says, or the Holy Spirit spoke by the.

[Wesley Huff]

By the.

[Mike Winger]

By the mouth of David or something like that. But then it will also just say.

[Wesley Huff]

Like, as Enos prophesied, this is true.

[Mike Winger]

And then it'll offer a quote, or Paul even quotes. One of the trippiest ones to me is in Acts, Paul quotes, like Epimenides, he has these two quotes that are actually about Zeus in their original sources, and he quotes them as if they're about God. Now, I don't think he was trying to trick anybody. I think he was trying to draw, say, hey, look, you've got some truth here, but you've misdirected it into a false God, and God calls you to repent of that. And so it's a complicated way of handling this sort of extra biblical. In this case, false writing. Like not even a true uninspired writing, but a false writing that he's actually quoting.

[Wesley Huff]

So, yeah, I think it's. Knowing your audience, right.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. People quote things.

[Wesley Huff]

Paul is talking to pagan Jews who are very well versed in philosophy. And Paul, as an educated person, knowing philosophy, kind of uses their resources against them and says, hey, you know that hymn to Zeus that you guys have that in him. You have, you know, live and move.

[Mike Winger]

And have your being.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. Hey, guess what? That actually makes more sense of Jesus than it ever did of Zeus.

[Mike Winger]

Right, Exactly. Yeah. It's also like, where you've got. This is so exciting to me because it's the kind of thing that people grab and they attack and they try to destroy Christianity with it. And then you're like, well, maybe let's just think about it a little bit more, you know, so you have in the Psalms, it talks about God riding on the clouds.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

And then the more conspiratorial stuff we see says, see, God's actually BAAL and because he's riding on the clouds, and so he's this false pagan God. And then you're like. Or it's a sense of saying your gods, you know, who really rides on the clouds? Your God's nothing. It's actually Yahweh. It's the true God. Kind of like they would have attributed in the creation accounts, other gods and other beings to the creation of the world. And then the creation account is not a copying of these other creation accounts, which is what we often hear. But it is a challenge and a rebuttal to those things.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

And that's kind of how Paul's using the epimenides quote or.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. These. These things don't happen in a vacuum. There's like a cultural context to them. In the same way, when I was in Egypt a couple summers ago, there was a particular area that we visited that had the earliest. What's it called, hieroglyphic inscription of circumcision on the wall. And it's because circumcision was a practice that was actually practiced and done by the Egyptians before it was done by the Israelites.

[Mike Winger]

Right, yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

And so some scholars look at that, or some, you know, skeptics look at that and they say, well, see, that's just borrowed. And nothing, nothing is original in scripture. It's just all this hodgepodge of mishmashed religion that eventually just ended up being ancient Israelite Yahweh worship. But it's not really unique. And I think what that misses entirely is that when God goes to Abraham and says, circumcise your firstborn son, he doesn't go, well, what does that mean?

[Mike Winger]

You mean I gotta do what?

[Wesley Huff]

There's a context to it in that God does it in a different way, in a unique way. And there are so many other things about the covenant that are genuinely unique. Same thing with the temple. In Egyptian temples, you have holy of holies. This area at the end of the temple where only the priest goes into at particular times of the year. We see that in the temple in Jerusalem. And so it's not that this is like copycatted. God is using something that has cultural understanding. And then when you add in all the things that are completely different, you see. Well, actually, there's a lot more going on that is completely sanctified and unique about Israelite worship or Christian worship. And I think the same sort of thing goes when we look at something like Paul using the pagan philosophers it's not that he's pulling that from a vacuum or that he's giving it even credence, as you know. Well, actually epimenides or menander, they're inspired too. It's that scripture is coming in a time and a place. And that makes sense to the people in that time and place.

[Mike Winger]

You know, what it makes me think of is like trying to witness to somebody who's into spiritism or New Age or something like that, and then they talk about their spiritual experiences they've had. And then you go, let me talk about those same things you are, but let me do it from a Christian explanation. Let me try to give you a Christian worldview for how you process those same things you're already understanding and experiencing and looking at.

[Wesley Huff]

Sure.

[Mike Winger]

And I feel like that's the. We're seeing that sometimes through scripture, you know. And so Paul does this in Athens and he's like, yeah, you have all these idols. You have an idol to the unknown God. Now some people, when he, when he says this, you have an idol to the unknown God. Let me tell you about the God you worship. Without knowing. Some people would probably go back to that idol later and go, this is the Christian one. And they start worshiping at it. And yet Paul would tear it down. Yeah, right. So that you could, you could misunderstand. What he's actually doing is he's just taking what you know and bridging you over to something authentic and real. He's not trying to like co opt it. Exactly, yeah. It's different. It's more. I want to use what you've got there. I'm not co opting what you've got. Like, I just want to make this sort of amalgamation. Like Hinduism is like this amalgamation of a bunch of different religions just sort of smashed together. You know, it's not like that. It is its own thing.

[Wesley Huff]

And that's why putting these things within their historical framework is so important. Because even going something back to the. Something like the Council of Nicaea, I hear it said a lot that while Constantine converted to Christianity so that he could control the masses. And I think what that fails to realize is that, you know, a couple of emperors before him was a guy named Diocletian. And all Diocletian did was say, I'm God. So now anything I say goes. And if you disagree with me, you're disagreeing with a God and you get put to death. Well, if Constantine wanted to rule the masses, converting to Christianity and glorifying a crucified Savior. Well, that's actually disadvantage. That's a disadvantage. It's not advantageous. If you really wanted to control the masses, just do what Diocletian did say. Well, actually now I'm God. Just listen to me because of that. And anybody who disagrees with that, well, then we'll just eliminate them.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. And I try to chase this down in my head. Okay, let's suppose that Constantine did. We don't have exactly evidence of this, but let's suppose he did convert to control the masses. I would want to see evidence to support that belief. But then I'm like, so, like, what's your point? Help me understand your point. Because what you're trying to, I think, ultimately say is Christianity is in its. The largeness of it and the general flow of Christianity throughout history is just false because Constantine converted for an ulterior motive. And they were like, I don't think that follows. Because we do know if you wait later in church history, we do have evidence of kings who would like, depose a pope and then put up their own or get rid of a bishop and install a bishop that was loyal to that king. And so we do have that happening. It's much later because now Christianity just has much more influence at that point. So they, they are trying to sort of take over. And then we have sometimes popes, deposed kings. And of course, I've got my own issues with the idea of a pope in the first place and all that, but. So we do see that happening. But that doesn't revoke the idea that there is this authentic. Like when you look at Jesus, you don't see any of that. You look at the apostles, you don't see any of that. Like this. The abuse of Christianity is not commentary on the authentic Christian value and belief and Jesus being real. It just seems irrelevant to me.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. People doing bad things in Jesus name is no reflection on the truthfulness of who Jesus was.

[Mike Winger]

Right. Or a pastor who was found to be an abuser of some kind. If Jesus was found to be an abuser, that would affect the truth of Christianity.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Otherwise it creates a lot of trauma, a lot of hardship, a lot of. We have to try to deal. We need to deal with this and heal from this, but not, Not a commentary on the truthfulness of it. But that's, that's just where people are at. Like I, you and me, we're into apologetics. We care about what we do is as apologists, you sort of, you push aside all these things. It actually doesn't matter for the truth of this, it just doesn't matter. But then you have to turn back and remember. But to the people I'm reaching, it does matter. Like, whether it's logical or not, it matters. And so then I wonder sometimes if we talk past people because we say things like that and then go, problem solved. I'm moving on. And yet they're like, yeah, well, my kid was molested in the children's ministry at the church.

[Wesley Huff]

Right.

[Mike Winger]

And you may think, problem solved, but for me, you want to talk about. You talk about historical evidences. I don't care.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

And so I try to remember this, that even if it's logically, that's not a defeater for Christianity. Logically, for that person, it is.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

You know, and so I want to address it for their sake. So I'm trying to figure out how to do that here.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, I remember I did an event, this was years ago, and one of the organizers of the event said, we're going to do an open Q and A. Assume that the person asking the question is the most vulnerable person you can think of.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

Oh, that's good. And I always think about that because I think that plays well into thinking, because I once attended a talk which was on the problem of evil and suffering. And someone asked a question afterwards to the speaker, and the speaker kind of went in for the kill on the answer to the person. And that person very vulnerably said, I don't think you understand where I'm coming from. And it was like, you could see that the question they were asking wasn't really about why bad things happen to good people. It was most likely that someone they knew personally had had something pretty terrible happen to them. Right. And I've had that happen where I've done talks. I remember this was years ago at a university campus where this person just came, and it wasn't even the topic of the talk that I talked about, but they just came at me right after the event, like, stormed up, and I could tell they wanted to fight. And they just, like, started launching into all these objections, and I could tell something was up because you just, you know, you don't come in that hot for no reason. And I think he was asking something about hell. And I said, you know, that's a great question. Why would you ask that question? And it turned out that he had a family member with cancer. And I was like, okay, this is not someone who's struggling with an intellectual answer. This is someone who's struggling personally. And so, yeah, thinking about that who's the most vulnerable person you can imagine? Just pretend the person in front of you is that person. And so even if it is something like, well, you know, something is seemingly trivial, as the Council of Nicaea invented the doctrine of the Trinity, there could be all sorts of other things in their experience with church, and this is their kind of fallback to. Well, this is something that stands out as a seeming abuse to me of this emperor and these bishops getting together and controlling the masses. And maybe I have an experience with abuse in the church context. And so even something as simple as, well, they invented the doctrine of the Trinity there, that could be the actual objection. But they also could just be struggling with, say, church hurt or church hurt, whatever. However you want to interpret that.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. Oh, that's heavy stuff.

[Wesley Huff]

Where did you take this conversation?

[Mike Winger]

I don't know. I had no real plan today. Okay, so. But let's come back to the Council of Nicaea. Well, let me just say before this, this is something I learned the hard way, what you were just talking about, which is I would speak on a topic and then a couple times over the years, this is before I was even doing online ministry, somebody in the room would come up to me and tell me how the issue I was addressing as like logically chopping it up was an issue that they personally. Because they're like, but my mom is that. Or I'm. That thing that you were talking about Muslim or Mormon or, or same sex attracted or whatever.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

And that happened a couple times. And as soon as I. I remember just this. I was very young, but as soon as I realized somebody in the room was struggling in a personal way with the issue I was dealing with, and I didn't talk to them as if they were. And it, it gave me a rule which is I try to remind myself, always talk about an issue as if someone listening to you is deeply personally connected to that issue. And then it changes the way I address it. So that you're not just trying to get the people who already agree with you to go, yes, that way. You did a good job with that.

[Wesley Huff]

Right.

[Mike Winger]

Because I'm like, why am I talking to them? They don't need me anyway.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. One thing that changed for me, this was a few years ago now. I used to do a lot of campus apologetics and evangelism with Muslim groups and they're a really hard bunch of to do, particularly where I was in Toronto, because a, the Muslim groups are very diverse and don't necessarily agree with one another in terms of Their, like, theological diversity within Islam. So you almost had to figure out which kind of Muslim you were talking to because it could vary quite a bit. But B is that they were often very bright and they were very like, they would push back very hard. And I found myself for about a year actually becoming very bitter and going in as if I was, you know, ready to fight. And I realized at a certain point in time that, you know, these are lost people, that they are souls who are paving their way to hell, and that they don't need to be convinced, they need to be saved. And so I just kept trying to imagine the people I was talking to as people who genuinely, like, empathetically were struggling rather than someone who was fighting. And it, it started to change the way because I find myself just getting almost like that fight or flight response where they're coming at you with all these objections and you can feel your heartbeat raise and your new temperature and you're ready to go in for a fight and thinking like, I need to back up here and I need to just calm down and speak very slowly and clearly but kindly because I need to almost feel sorry for this person, not in a demeaning way, but feel sorry for them in the sense that they're trying to put every barrier up against the truth. And me fighting them is not going to make a difference in that I need to remove those hurdles so that they come to a place where they have no choice but to be confronted with the truthfulness of the gospel. But also I could very well be there in terms of my own sin and the barriers that I put up. So I think, and this is something that I've been trying to do for years and I think has kind of culminated in my interactions recently with individuals like Billy Carson, is that it's been a work in progress to just try to be as calm and as humble as possible, realizing that this person is exactly where I would be without the grace of Christ, Christ and the Spirit working in my life. And I just need to remember that in the average conversations that I have.

[Mike Winger]

All right, so back to the Nicaea Trinity stuff. All right, we're going to make sense of that. So at the Council of Nicaea, one of the conspiracy things is this is they invented the Trinity at this point, and this is actually pretty widespread, people believing this kind of thing or people being unaware of it. We were talking on the phone the other day and you were saying that you thought a lot of people who believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, they don't quite Understand why? Like, you know, they do believe it, but if you were to push a little on it, they're kind of like. And then this is probably true for some people who reject it. They have kind of a list of talking points, but then it doesn't go a lot deeper than that.

[Wesley Huff]

Right.

[Mike Winger]

So at the Council of Nicaea, this was a moment historically where they, like, weighed in on some particulars about the doctrine of the Trinity, like, what happened there and what was the basis of it.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, so there was this guy named Arius who was out in North Africa. And I actually, if you look at sort of the history of how Arius comes to his thinking about Jesus being a created being from the Father, because actually, Arius believed Jesus was divine. He just didn't believe that Jesus had eternally existed, that he was almost a lesser divine being than the Father. And so, because it's often asserted that, well, Jesus is not God according to Arianism. But actually, if you look at what Arius actually said, he did believe Jesus was God. It just was almost like a devalued sense of God. But if you track the history back, Arius appears to be hearing individuals within his circles in North Africa articulating trinitarian doctrine, and he's interpreting it incorrectly as a previous heresy that existed within the early church called modalism. So modalism was one of the earliest heresies that they would argue that God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit were all the same being and the same person that expressed in different modes. So in the Old Testament, it was the mode of the Father. In the earthly ministry of Jesus, it was the mode of the Son. And now when we're in the age of the church, it's the mode of the Holy Spirit, but actually it's the same God dying on the cross and then going out into the hearts and minds of all the believers in the church, period. And. And that's incorrect.

[Mike Winger]

Right, right. And this is. This is. When you push on modern people, they'll often unintentionally express modalism when you ask them, how. What about this? How could this happen? How could that. And then they'll end up going like, well, I guess the Father became the Son, I guess. I don't know, because they haven't worked it out yet. Yeah, yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

Or using analogies that, you know, there's no good analogy of the Trinity that won't devolve into a heresy. And, you know, while water can be ice and can be. What's the other one? Vapor. Right. Well, no, that's actually just modalism.

[Mike Winger]

That's modalism, Patrick.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, that's modalism, Patrick. But it's the same thing in the different forms. But it cannot be all the three things in the same instance. And so it is not one in being a three in person, it's just one in different modes at different times.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, yeah. Inherently, water has a capacity for one to become the other, ice to become water, water to become vapor. And yet the doctrine of the Trinity would say. No, no, no, no, no, that's not. That's an important barrier to keep up.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. And so you see, I think Arius seeing trinitarian doctrine articulated, but misinterpreting it as modalism, and in order to correct one heresy, develops another heresy. And so when he develops that heresy, he doubles down on that and is actually condemned as a heretic before the Council of Nicaea in his own sort of jurisdiction under, I believe it's. What's his name? I can't remember the name of the bishop he's from.

[Mike Winger]

Oh, yeah. He had like a lifelong fight against Arianism. I know you're talking about. I don't remember his name.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. And so he condemns Arius before that, I think it was in 311. Could be wrong on that date. And then later on, when you have the decriminalization of Christianity in 313 at the Peace of the Church, when Licinius and Constantine get together and they.

[Mike Winger]

It's like the edict of tolerance.

[Wesley Huff]

Right, yeah. And that actually is toleration for a number of different minority groups. Christianity just falls under that.

[Mike Winger]

So it's just. And that was. People think that that's often. They think that's when Christianity became like the official Roman religion. But it was really just a. Hey, we promise not to beat you up anymore for this.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. And now you can worship in public without the threat of persecution. Yeah, yeah. So that's also. A lot of people accuse Constantine of inventing Sunday worship. No, he just made it so that you weren't killed when you worshiped openly on Sunday. That was it.

[Mike Winger]

That's just such a wild theory to have because you've got New Testament first century evidence of Sunday worship happening. We have like Pliny and Trajan, their letter where he goes, they gather on the first day of the week.

[Wesley Huff]

Yep. And sing a hymn to Christ as to a God.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. And this is like, this is very, very early stuff.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. And we have. I think it's Justin Martyr talks about why they worship on Sunday, like it's, it's very well documented within early church history that Sunday is the Lord's day because Jesus rose on the first day of the week. And so that is why we, we do it. I think you can actually argue back into when John has his revelation, he calls it the Koryoke Hamera, the day of the Lord. And there's a lot of evidence within the early church that points to that term being the first day of the week. And it's starting with someone like the John the Revelator in Revelation where he gets this revelation on what appears to be Sunday on the day of the Lord. And that's when they worship. But yeah, so Constantine didn't invent that. He just made it, not, he decriminalized it so that Christians were allowed to do it. And so at that point, I think what happens is that Constantine sees that there are Christians right across the empire and they need to get along and there's isolated but non trivial disputes that are happening. And so he commissions the church leaders to get together and figure it out. And as far as the historical record, as far as I can see dictates, Constantine's initial statement is really all his involvement in the Council of Nicaea. Apart from that, we have no concrete evidence that he was personally involved in the actual articulation of what took place.

[Mike Winger]

Now what I've heard is that he wasn't even there, like physically wasn't even at the council.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. And we know that emperors like to take credit for things, all sorts of things. So if he was going to lay claim of fame to something, he could very well have done that. And we just don't see it.

[Mike Winger]

Or if he. And politically, just the way that it works. Like politically, if he had showed up and just sat there and not said anything at the council, it would have sent a political message that he is actually in some sort of leadership position in the church.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

And it. I'm wondering if the lack of attendance was actually a deliberate thing of saying, I'm not trying to control this thing.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, it could have been. It could have been. But what ends up happening is that they just flesh out the language of, well, okay, we believe in God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. How do we then figure out the verbiage? Because we have to remember, because we think it's so easy. Right. One being three persons. We throw out these things because we stand on the shoulders of 2000 years of people really hammering this stuff out and forget that the first Christians were Jews. Who were monotheistic by their, like, confession here. O Israel, the Lord is God, the Lord is one. Jews, arguably, from the time of Moses to modern orthodox Jews to today, say that every morning and every evening. And so it's essential to their belief. And yet the Father is referred to as Yahweh God, the Son is referred to as Yahweh God, and the Spirit is referred to Yahweh God. They don't believe in three different Yahwehs. There's the only one, Yahweh. So how do we just even come up with language to discuss this which had been happening for, you know, 250 years leading up to the Council of Nicaea? 300 years. But in light of statements like individuals like Arius, they just need to, okay, how do we flesh this out completely and come up with something that everybody can unanimously agree on? And that's what they do.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah. So they come up with this concept of the Trinity where they go, yeah, this is. And then that was unanimously agreed on. If this had been like a fabricated or foisted, you have it go become widespread. Yes, this is something we all kind of accept and agree on.

[Wesley Huff]

Well, unanimous with a caveat, because there were still Arians who existed. And actually Arianism has a resurgence. Constantine was actually baptized by an Arian right before his death, which is one of the things that people when they want to like, discredit Constantine.

[Mike Winger]

So I didn't know that. Well, hold on, before we. The baptism part.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah.

[Mike Winger]

Why an Arian? What's your thought on that?

[Wesley Huff]

Well, the individual, I don't think. I don't know if it was purposeful. I think the person who he got to baptize him at his death. So this brings up a larger conversation in that there was a practice that was very popular in this period where you would keep baptism. You would hold baptism off until you were about to die. There were a number of reasons for this. One of them had to do with an error in the understanding of original sin. The baptism at the point you are baptized removes your original sin. And then for like a very short period of time, you are perfect. Until then you start sinning.

[Mike Winger]

Right. You have a clean slate and you're sort of like guaranteed heaven if you die right away. Whereas if you keep living, you might do some things to solely that. And this becomes actually more developed later on. Roman Catholic theology, although they never delay baptism, that's not their policy. But the policy comes from that kind of thing. Yeah, so that was. Some people will say, constantine, this is proof that he wasn't really a Christian. And it's like, no, it's proof that he misunderstood baptism. Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

And there's that. And the early Christians took baptism really seriously, and it came with responsibilities. If you were baptized, you were automatically a member of the church, and you had to do things like serve. And there were all sorts of. And it was serious. A catechumen would have to study for a long period of time in order to, at the end of it, be baptized. And then you had things that were essential to the life of the body of the church. And if you didn't want to do those things, if you didn't want to commit to truly being a Christian within the body of Christ and helping others and giving your money away in circumstances where you were being asked to, then you would just not get baptized until you died.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

So I think it was John Chrysostom who actually, we have a sermon of his that's called Against Deathbed Baptism.

[Mike Winger]

Really?

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, because he's like, guys, this is dumb, and it's laziness, and it's spiritual neglect, and you should not do this.

[Mike Winger]

Wow, I got to check that out.

[Wesley Huff]

So, yeah, so Constantine, I mean, he obviously wasn't perfect. Right. So he.

[Mike Winger]

He.

[Wesley Huff]

He did. He. He. He got baptized at his deathbed because of, like you said, this misunderstanding. And the person who baptized him was an Aryan by confession. I don't know. I don't think that was purposeful. I just think it was the fact that Arianism had a resurgence after an isea.

[Mike Winger]

Right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

And. And became popular for various reasons that have nothing to do with power or control or. And. But it's one of those things that if you want to pitch Constantine as the bad guy, you can, like, take these isolated things that were part of his life and say, well, he was. He was obviously an Aryan because he got baptized by an Arian, and he got baptized his deathbed because he wasn't really a Christian. And all of these.

[Mike Winger]

It feels like modern people debating on how religious is Donald Trump or something. Like, you're kind of like, you have a character whose Christianity is connected to them, but you don't really have a lot of info about it. We have more info on probably Trump, his religious stuff than we do on Constantine. But you can see how the mixing of the political side of things and the government side of things and then trying to bring in Christian discernment, it's just complicated.

[Wesley Huff]

Sure. People are messy. And I think we can see the statements of individuals like Jerome who are communicating with Constantine. And I think we can take them at face value and see that. I believe Constantine's confession was true. I believe he actually was saved and understood what came along with that. But he was just in an era where there was a lot of, as there is today, a lot of confusion, a lot of conflation, a lot of misunderstanding. And so he didn't get everything right. So here's why.

[Mike Winger]

Here's a challenging question on this for you. When it comes to the doctrine of.

[Wesley Huff]

The training, I only get easy questions. Yeah, right. Rephrase it.

[Mike Winger]

If you have an opinion about it and if you don't, if you're not sure, that's fine. How much do you, how high of a bar do you set for people's comprehension of the Trinity? Yeah, so you have something like Arianism, you have like the confident proponents who understand it and preach it, but then you have probably the majority of the people who followed it who didn't even know what it was really. Right, yeah. Where do you, you know, when you ask someone questions, what do you believe about the Trinity and how far do you push that? Yeah. At what point do you say, well, that's, that's heresy. So you're a heretic.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, yeah. This is a great question. I did a video maybe two years ago where I responded to, there was this Muslim street preacher doing dawah, which is the Islamic equivalent of evangelism. And he pushes back against his lady and basically says like, well, Christians for the first 300 years weren't even trinitarians. And there are all sorts of non trinitarian Christian groups. And in this video I simply say there's no such thing as a non trinitarian Christian. Christianity by its very definition is trinitarian. And a lot of people in the comments are pointing out, well, you know, there's Unitarians, there's this, there's that. And obviously if you make the bar trinitarian understanding, then you know, you're damning a lot of people who just simply don't understand what scripture says. And I actually think they have a point in that. I would say trinitarianism is the bar, but you can be an ignorant Christian and have genuine faith in Jesus Christ and just simply not realize the exact qualification and understanding of what scripture actually articulates. Because your faith is not based on an intellectual ascent and you don't need to get everything right. There's no doctrine, theology, test to enter into the kingdom of God. However, if proper biblical theological trinitarianism is explained to you. And you reject that. You are rejecting the essentials of Christianity.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

Because Christianity is by its very nature the Father sending his Son into the world, who is then self giving in that he goes to the cross voluntarily and in the power of the Spirit, he dies and is resurrected. And then the Spirit empowers believers to live a life that they otherwise couldn't through the finished work of Jesus on the cross. And so there's this great quote. I can't remember who said it, but he said asking what does the Trinity have to do with Christianity is like asking what does my wife have to do with my marriage? And that if I don't have a wife, I don't have a marriage. And in the same way, if you don't have the Trinity, you don't actually have Christianity.

[Mike Winger]

Right.

[Wesley Huff]

But I think you can have a genuine faith and be ignorant in. In that understanding. Which is, I think what we see in what you and I were talking on the phone the other day.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah.

[Wesley Huff]

Is that a lot of Christians, if you actually parse out what they believe and they start to do things like give analogies of water or eggs or four leaf clovers, are actually more accurately articulating a heresy that's condemned than they are actual biblical trinitarian.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, yeah, I think so. And I think there's also different degrees. So like, if, if someone slips into modalism in our conversation, and I go, they're not a convictional modalist here. They're just slipping into this because they're just like, ah, this is hard for me. You know, I have a lot more grace for them, especially because modalism is not. They're not slipping into the denial of the deity of Christ.

[Wesley Huff]

Right.

[Mike Winger]

They're slipping into confusion about the interaction of the persons of the Trinity. And I'm like, I can understand you being confused. This is challenging. It's important, but it's an understandable thing. And yeah. Although then there's the other side who will say, throw me under the bus for what I just said. Because it's not, again, a convictional. Someone who goes, I outright deny this teaching of Scripture. But it's someone who's like, I've got some error mixed in with my beliefs here. And God be gracious to me, I'm a dumb person. That's kind of the reality for a lot of us. I wonder how many errors I've got.

[Wesley Huff]

Totally.

[Mike Winger]

We're straightened out one day and I'll be like, thankful.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. All right.

[Mike Winger]

Hey, look, we're running out of time. So let me ask you this. You guys are working on a project?

[Wesley Huff]

Yes.

[Mike Winger]

And it's about, you know, can we trust the Bible? What's it called? Yeah, can I trust the Bible? Tell us about it.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah. So I started this project a couple years ago with Apologetics.

[Mike Winger]

What did I say?

[Wesley Huff]

Oh, could be. You know what's funny is that. So because of my. The few years that I lived overseas, I was in the British school system. And so I have like a lingering lilt, having a British accent as a child and then going to Canada. And there were certain words that I didn't know weren't Arabic after growing up in the Middle East. In fact, when I was in high school, I would still say so at home we would say bas khalas, which means stop no more. And I knew khalas was not English, but I thought bus was English. And I would say bus stop all the time.

[Mike Winger]

And bus means no more.

[Wesley Huff]

Bus means stop. Oh.

[Mike Winger]

Bus means. Oh.

[Wesley Huff]

I would say bus stop. It was like, I thought I was saying, like, like emphatically stop.

[Mike Winger]

Okay.

[Wesley Huff]

And so my friends were like, why do you say bus stop? Until my. I was in the 11th grade and a friend of mine just went, wes, why, why do you say that? I was like, what do you mean bus? Bus stop? And he's like, I don't know what you're talking about, like the bus stop. And I went home and asked my mom. I was like, mom, out of curiosity, is bus English? She's like, no, it's. It's Ortu. I was like, I was 17, I didn't know it yet. So Canadians tell me I have an accent. So it could be my Canadian accent. It could also be that sidebar on that one. But. So two years ago, started this project. It was a baby of mine where basically at Apologetics Canada, we sketched out a bunch of things. If we could do our dream project, what would it be? And mine was, I want to do a documentary style series called Can I Trust the Bible? And travel to places like Israel and Egypt and Turkey and Greece and Iraq and go to some of these places where these things happened or where, say, the documents that we've discovered come from and just lay them out for people and really give a concrete connection to. Our earliest manuscripts are from Oxyrinchus, Egypt. Take me to Oxyrinchus, Egypt, and I'll tell the story there. And that's. So that's what we did. We started it two years ago. Episodes one and two are out at apologeticscanada.com and this year 2025 is the 17 year anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. And so we are going to be going overseas once again and we're going to be telling the story of what did and didn't happen at the Council of Nicaea in the places relevant to the Council of Nicaea and its actual happening in history.

[Mike Winger]

Yeah, that's awesome. The stuff you guys have done so far has been really cool and because you've already done some videos with Apologetics Canada that people can get and I've shared it on social media as well, so. But. But we have to bus stop our interview. But I want to say thanks to Living Waters because they let us use their studio. They allowed us to use their studio because I live right down the street. And they were like, hey, Wes is going to be out here. You want to have a chat with them? I was like, sure, but I can't fit you in my home office space or anybody for that matter.

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, see, I don't care what the Internet says about you, you're an okay guy there. Mike Winger.

[Mike Winger]

Thanks, Wes, for joining me and I hope people will check out your guys. So your YouTube channel is called Apologetics Canada?

[Wesley Huff]

Yeah, Apologetics Canada. And you can find all of the Relevant Stuff on apologeticscanada.com or on wesleyhuff.com all right, cool.

[Mike Winger]

All right, thanks, man.

[Wesley Huff]

Of course.