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Season two of the Street Preachers podcast is here. In a culture that prizes fitting in. Following Jesus can make people stand out. And that's not a flaw, it's a calling. Hear honest conversations that challenge comfort and point toward purpose. Listen and share these episodes Struggling with Weight Loss Prolon's five Day Fasting Mimicking Diet is a clinically developed nutrition program designed to promote fat loss while protecting lean body mass. Developed at USC's Longevity Institute, it assists the body in entering a fasting like state that helps reset metabolism and target visceral fat in just five days. Prolon offers a science backed approach to weight loss without extreme restriction or guesswork. Get 15% off plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe@prolonlife.com now do you
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think that Protestants are going to hell because they're not Catholic?
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I would say that is parallel to the question, will non Christians go to hell because they don't believe in Jesus? And the answer is it depends. You go to heaven if you believe in Jesus. You don't believe in Jesus. You're a six month old baby, you go to hell for eternity.
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Being honest, as I, as we're talking, I'm like, man, these nuances feel like some sort of mental gymnastics for me.
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Every Christian articulation of salvation will have a nuanced explanation that could sound like hoops or a bunch of explanations like super complicated.
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But where I land on the Eucharist theology line is I don't believe. It's just a symbol.
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The early Christians used that language. They said, this is the medicine of immortality, not that we earn eternal life by receiving the Eucharist, that death didn't kill Jesus, Jesus killed death.
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Am I going to hell because I'm not Catholic? Should I return back to Rome to the church? You know, what are the views of the sacraments, the Eucharist, Catholicism? Is it the true church? These are questions that I've been having and been pondering for a while now. And, and so I thought no better way and no better person to sit down with than Catholic apologist Trent Horn to ask these questions. Trent, how are you doing?
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Rice, it's great to be here. Thanks for having me, man.
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Thanks for coming on. I got tons of questions for you. I mean, I think the overall main question to kind of get into is like, why Catholicism? Out of every tradition, you could say within Christianity, what about Catholicism kind of draws you to it?
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Well, I think the biggest thing that draws me to Catholicism is Jesus's promise that he would establish one church, not two churches, not five churches, not 10 churches. And we got to figure out which one is the best one. But that Jesus would give us one church built on Peter and the other apostles and their successors to guide people into truth. And so if there is one church Jesus established, I'm going to ask myself, well, where is that church today? And someone might say, well, the church is just the invisible bond between all true Christians. That's the church. But to me, I have a hard time with that because I say, okay, well, can the church help me know what doctrines I'm supposed to believe if that is what the church is? It's just everybody who's Christian, they make up the church. Well, I can't really ask them anything because they all disagree about really, really important things. Like, is it, do I have a moral duty to baptize my baby? I have three kids, right? There are Protestants will say, it's bad for you to baptize a baby. You got to wait until they're older. And there's other Protestants, like Presbyterians, who would say it's a sin to not baptize them even though baptism doesn't regenerate. Then there's Protestants who would say, yeah, you need to baptize them because baptism is what saves even infants. And that's just one example. There's moral issues, theological issues, but what really draws me to the Catholic faith is its preservation over 2,000 years. The deposit of faith, what Christ and the apostles have given to us, that is there for us to believe and not just to try to decipher from Scripture alone, which results in a lot of these conflicting theological opinions. So that, and then especially just reading the early church fathers, when I read the earliest ones, like St. Ignatius of Antioch, he wrote in the year 107, about 70 years after the crucifixion. And when I look at him and say, okay, what are Christians like this? This is second generation Christianity, right? The apostles have passed away. What's this first church like? And he doesn't say, get together and read your Bibles. There wasn't a compiled biblical canon at this point. Instead what he says is, follow the bishop as Jesus Christ follows the Father. Honor the priests and the deacons. If your church does not have deacons, priests and bishops, it's not a true church. For Ignatius, authority was in the Church of Christ and the church was found in the bishops, those who have succeeded the apostles. So history, scripture, all of that is what really led me from non religious deism. When I was I, I'd been a deist from junior high, the beginning of high school. And then in high school, I became Christian. I was watch. I just watched like William Lane Craig debates. Well, watch. I listened to them. This is before YouTube. I just like went and scoured the Internet. I read them and I downloaded them. And William Lane Craig, JP Morland, seeing these debates with atheists, I was like, oh, wait, no, there's really good evidence that God exists and Jesus rose from the dead. And so I was like, I prayed like, Jesus, I believe in you. You're real. Tell me to love you. And then it's like, okay, now what church do I go to? And that's what sent me down the path of studying history to determine that I wanted to be a part of the Catholic Church, because Catholic is a Greek word for universal. The one universal church Christ established.
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So that happened in high school. High school was the conversion of Christianity and then ultimately going down Catholicism. And you've been Catholic since then and how old are you now?
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I am 41, so I think just a few years ago. I have spent more of my life being Catholic than not being Catholic. So I grew up in a pretty non religious household. Not really non religious, not church going. So my dad was Jewish, but he hadn't been to temple in a very long time. So nominal. My mom used to be Catholic and then she left the church.
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Okay.
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And so we, we didn't go to church as a family. The most religious upbringing I had was my mom would show me these Hanna Barbera Bible cartoons. The same people who made the Flintstones and the Jetsons. They're super awesome. They're on YouTube.
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Wow.
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Definitely go and check them out. And, and I liked that. And I like these stories. But by the time I got to junior high, I, you know, asked my mom like, okay, these are neat stories, but how do you know they really happened? And she couldn't give me a good answer and other people couldn't give me good answers. And so I became like the, the pre Internet atheist. I mean, this would have been like 97, 98. So this is like the Stone Age period for the, for the Internet, for us. Which, by the way, I, I feel bad for your generation because like, as a millennial, older millennial, when we went on the Internet in like the late 90s, early 2000s, we felt like explorers in unchartered territory. And it was, it was fun and exciting and scary in parts. But now I feel like when you go on the Internet, it's so commercial algorithm driven. Yeah, it's like when I went on the Internet. When I was your age, we were looking into the Internet, but for you guys, the Internet's looking into you and us.
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Yeah.
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And so it's like you're fighting an algorithm and companies just spend billions of dollars on you and all that, like,
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to keep you on the screen and things like that.
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Oh, yeah, You're. You're. It's a drug that manipulates you.
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Yeah.
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So in. In doing that. So I was going on. This is very early message boards where I was, like, debating other Christians, and I felt like, okay, to be a Christian, you have to believe the Earth is less than 10,000 years old, you know, and evolution never happened. And. And I was like, well, I don't believe that. I'm in the Young Astronomers Club. You know, I. I like doing. I love science when I'm a junior high kid. And so I thought, you know, science is all you need. Religion's a crutch. And then I realized, oh, science tells you the way the world is not where the whole world came from or why the laws of physics are the same in all times and places. That's pretty wild. Yeah. That we can trust scientific experiments that they're not. They're not changing the universe is constant. Speaks to design or science can't tell you the way things ought to be. You can do an experiment to figure out, okay, here's how the laws of gravity work. But laws of morality are different. You can't ignore the law of gravity. If you fall off a building, you're just gonna go, you can ignore the law of morality that says, don't push this person off. But it's like, okay, so normally I can't ignore a law of nature. Just happens to me. But I can ignore the laws of morality. That means they're not purely natural. There's something beyond nature about where morals come from. But at the time, you know, I didn't see this as debating people, but then I saw these other Protestant philosophers. William Lane Craig was an example, JP Morland saying, no, you can believe in modern science. And actually science and philosophy points to God and history points to the reality Jesus rose from the dead. And I was listening to the atheist rebuttals, thinking, oh, wow, these are not very convincing rebuttals. And so then I just went through it and I went. I even went to the atheist websites, like, read the essays and wrote notes in the margins like, yeah, what about this? What about that? And then, yeah, then became Christian. And then it was about another year later, so it would have been early 2000s. I was baptized in 2002, and then I was received into the Catholic Church.
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B
Amazing.
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Wow.
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So cool. Yeah, I have a lot of. I have a lot of respect for Catholicism. I think over the years, the hardest thing for me with Catholicism was in an honest, sincere way, would, like, make a loose statement about Catholicism that wouldn't be like, the full truth, you know, and it's not like in a. Oh, I was attacking Catholicism. It was just more like, oh, this is what I've known to be true about Catholicism. And it would be like a loose statement. And it would be, you know, it wouldn't do Catholicism justice, and it would just kind of like harm the reputation of sincere believers of Catholics.
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Had you known Catholicism just as you weren't raised Catholic?
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No, no. I was raised Southern Baptist and then became Christian when I was 17. And I am a non denominational Protestant. But I've. I've been to everything. I love going to Mass.
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Yeah.
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I think it's a beautiful place. I love. And I. I mean, I could sit here and go, I love the tradition, I love the sacraments. I want to get in.
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But when you're not raised in it, it can be hard. You don't know all the ins and outs for sure. So it's like when I remember, I used to do pro life outreach, and this is after I graduated college. It's been in the early 2000s, like 2007, 2009. And we would go to college campuses with big pictures of unborn children before and after abortion to get people talking. And people would get mad at me, like, I'm so angry. Why would you put this up? And I'm like, why are you mad at me? You know, I didn't do this to these children. You're more mad at me showing this than this actually happening in our country 3,000 times a day. And so it was. We were half Catholic, half Protestants in this group. And so we have little debates and we had a lot of hosts. And when we would go to the south, like Alabama, Georgia, people would host us there. We had met people who had, like, never even talked to Catholics.
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Wow.
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I met this one nice lady. She's like, oh, it's been so great meeting y'. All. I didn't. I've never met a Catholic that loved Jesus. What? It's just. Well, they just never, like, had met anybody. And even, like, when we make, like, the sign of the cross, yeah, they would be kind of weirded out. And I said, like, well, people have been doing this in the church. We have records going all the way back to the third century of that. This is just. It's just a sign of saying, like, I believe, you know, the Father's on my mind, the sons of my heart, the Spirit is across my shoulders, helping me to carry everything that God gives me today to understand our trinitarian baptism. And it's just a sign of offering prayer to God. But it was great to be able to speak with them. And what I encountered was a lot of people would have these misconceptions about Catholicism if you're not racing it. And the same thing happens to me. I'm trying to learn about Mormonism. I wasn't raised Mormon. So right now, when I make videos about Mormonism, I email Mormon apologists.
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Yeah.
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And I say, actually, I'm doing this now for as many people as I can. I say, hey, I'm making a video about what you believe. Here's my script. Did I get anything wrong about what you believe, or did I misunderstand your argument? Wow. And that's what I'm trying to do. Even when, like, I talk about Protestantism, like, different Protestants I'll send my scripts to just to say. And I think it's in, like, the online apologetics world. It's like, I'm going to refute you. I'm going to own you. It's like, we don't have to have that attitude.
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Yeah.
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Like, I think my argument's strong. So it's like, hey, I'm not going to surprise you. Here's what I'm going to say. If I got something wrong, tell me.
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Yeah.
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That way you can't later say, oh, Trent misrepresented me. No, we talked about this.
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Yeah. That's good. Yeah. That's why I've been looking forward to this, is because I'm, you know, I'm verbally. I'm trying to honestly and verbally process and understand Catholicism because, again, you know, I mean, I grew up in a small town north of Atlanta about an hour. So I think a majority of any Catholic church would be in Atlanta.
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That's.
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And then you go outside.
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I was just there. I. I had an interview with. I finally got to sit down William Lane Craig, because he's like, my hero.
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Amazing.
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Which is. Which is funny because like, a few years, like two years ago, I made a video saying I thought he was wrong about a certain argument, the Kalam argument. But then we just sat down and, like, I could have done it virtual, but, like, he was like. I mean, he was like the guy that Led me to Christ.
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Yeah.
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And it was just like.
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And he's got great books on apologetics.
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Oh, it's awesome. Great.
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Great.
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And so there's a lot I agree with. There's stuff I disagree with, but for me, I was. I told him. He's like, why'd you want to do all this expense? Just to come down. So what you're describing, it was up in. I think it's like Alpharetta or Marietta, I think was up there. Near your old stomping grounds. Yep. And we were there, and I said, you know, Bill, I. I just really wanted to meet you. You know, you. You were so. You know that your work and the. How it brought me to Jesus is just so powerful. And we. And when we had our interview was crazy how much we had in common. Like, I met my wife doing mission work, and he met his wife doing mission work. My wife's name is Laura. His wife's middle name is Laura. And the kicker with. With Craig and I, we both wear the same kind of wedding band, a silver elastic one.
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B
Wow.
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I do it because I do martial arts, so I don't like wearing a metal ring. And he has, I. I think health issues. He wears more of an elastic one.
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Gotcha.
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But you. Sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off, but when you said that area, I'm like, oh, it reminds me of that.
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Yeah, yeah. No, they're. They're more like Marietta Kennesaw, because you' closer to Atlanta with the Catholic churches and stuff like that. But I. Yeah, you know, you hear and. And we'll get into it. You know, I got tons of questions, but you hear, like, oh, praying to the saints. And, like. And, like, you know, at first. At first thought, you're like, it. That definitely makes me hesitant. I'm like, whoa, what does that mean? Or, you know, oh, the Eucharist is literally the body and blood of Jesus.
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Yeah, that.
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That makes me a little hesitant, you know, in an honest way, because I'm. I've never heard that before. I was raised Southern Baptist, so I was raised. Oh, this is just a symbol.
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Yeah.
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And then as I research, I'm like, I don't know if I agree with that anymore. I'm leaning, you know, and so there's all these things that I think they can sound polarizing when you're not raised Catholic.
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And to be honest, though, the same is true of Christianity. Think about if you're going to evangelize a Muslim, for example, and you say, oh, you know, well, you know, Muslim will say, God has a son. What do you mean, God has a son? Are you saying God has a wife and they have little children? Like that doesn't make any sense. And you say, well, no, no, you don't fully understand what we, what we mean by that. Yeah. And so. And it's the same thing to understand that. Just as for the Christian faith in general, there's a lot of things people can misunderstand about it. The same is true for understanding how Christianity is lived out in the Catholic Church that Christ established.
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So in the late Middle Ages, there was a convert to Catholicism, 6 of Siena, and he came up with a classification system for the books of the Bible, the proto canon or the 66 books Catholics and Protestants both recognize. Then he used the word apocrypha to refer to those books that claim to be Christian that Protestants and Catholics both reject. Like the Book of Enoch, but between that would be deuterocanonical. So proto canon, first canon, deuterocanon would be the second canon. Catholics also recognize these are Scripture, but we recognize that, we see that there's scripture, we see that Protestants don't recognize that. Modern Jews don't recognize that either. But first century Jews would have recognized that these books were scripture because later rabbis in the second century had to issue instructions telling Jewish believers not to consider these books sacred anymore. And some people say, you know, well, why don't you follow what those rabbis in the second century said? I'm like, well, because they also said, don't listen to the New Testament. So it's like, I'm not going to really do what they, what they say. I'm going to go with the Old Testament that Jesus and the apostles had. And so those books, Judith, Tobit, Baruch, 1st and 2nd Maccabees, Sirach wisdom also includes portions of Daniel and Esther were in these Greek translations of the Old Testament. And we also see allusions to them in the New Testament as well. So I would say that there's good evidence that this was the Bible of the apostles and their followers and the Old Testament that was used in the early church.
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B
So I guess that's been a difficult thing for me to understand because if you look at the Ethiopian Bible, right? I think it's got like 81.
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It does have, it does have some more books.
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Yeah. So, so like you have, you have like the Protestant 66, right? The, the Catholic 73, Ethiopian 81, right. And there's all these disagreements on these, like, other books. Like you, you take the three and it's like, okay, we got 66, all right? And it's like we all agree there, but then the Catholic has the, the seven, and then you have a few extra here. I mean, what are your, what are your thoughts? Like? Do you think that this is a matter of sound like that salvation is on the line based on what canon that these denominations have, or it would depend.
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Salvation is bound up in being united to Christ. So to be united to Christ, we have to receive Christ into our hearts. We receive the Holy Spirit in baptism. Paul makes that very clear. In Romans, chapter six, he talks about dying and rising with Christ Connect, you know, that being connected to baptism. And so in being united to Christ, what would separate us from Christ? Now it's interesting, in Romans 8, Paul has that wonderful section where he says, what shall separate us from Christ? You know, sorrows, difficulties, powers, principalities. You know, that whole section you'll notice there's one thing in there he doesn't mention. He doesn't say sin. He never says, shall sin separate us from Christ? Because it can. It certainly can separate us. And Jesus makes that very clear in John 15. He says, if you do not remain in me, then you will be gathered up like the branches and burned. Not, you know, remaining would imply you were once united to Christ and then you're not connected to him anymore. Galatians 5. 4. Paul talks about those who fell from grace because they tried to justify themselves through circumcision. To fall from grace means you were in a place of grace at one point. So the question that disobeying Christ in a grave matter could cause one to forsake their salvation. And that can include, for example, saying, you know, Jesus, I know that you said, you and your church say that this is revealed scripture, but I don't believe that, you know, so. Or like, if you said, you know, I know you said that there are angels watching over me. I don't believe in angels. I think that's something that people kind of made up, you know, so there's. That gets down to a bigger question of what do we have to believe as Christians to be saved. Yeah, one of the. I think for a lot of a Protestant like yourself, one of the concerns is, you know, Catholics make it too complicated. Like, I gotta. You're telling me I gotta believe this, I gotta believe that. I gotta believe this. I gotta believe that in order to be saved. Like, did Jesus really want it to be that way? But the reverse side of the problem is saying, if you. Like, if somebody says, just believe in Jesus and you'll be saved. But it's like, okay, well, what if I'm a oneness Pentecostal? I believe in Jesus, and I think God is one person, you know, he's the Father, sometimes Jesus, the other Holy Spirit. I believe in Jesus. Like, oh, but that's a trinitarian heresy.
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B
Yep.
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A
So it's like, okay, you got to believe in Jesus and the Trinity. Okay, do I have to believe in Adam and Eve and original sin? Do I have to believe that it's important to be baptized? So there's always going to be this, like, okay. People say, hey, Catholics, you're making me believe too much. And I'm like, okay, but you're doing too little. What mechanism do we have to determine? So I would say, for example, like, I would say to you, what if somebody said this? They said, I. I believe in the Bible, I don't believe the book of Hebrews is Scripture, though, because it's technically anonymous. I just treat it like it's a human writing.
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B
Yeah.
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A
Like, would you say that person's like, maybe not saved or they're just a weird Christian?
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B
I mean, I would, I would be the one to make a case of being like, look through Christian history. Look at what has been accepted. And that's why I wrestle with the Apocrypha so much, is because I go to something like the museum of the Bible and you see all these old
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A
texts and it's in there.
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B
And it's in there. It's in a lot of them.
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A
That. Because that's another problem. If, if you're going to say, well, look, even if the Bible doesn't say, these are the books that belong in the Bible. Right. You might end up saying, okay, maybe scholars. And this isn't just new. Even Origen said only God knows who wrote Hebrews. There's a very old view of saying that it's technically an anonymous author. Well, then why should we believe that it's Scripture? And you'll say, well, look, Christians throughout the ancient church believe that this was Scripture. But then if you go to those same Christians, you'll see that they cite the book of Baruch as evidence for Christ's divinity. Or they cite the book of Wisdom, a deuterocanonical book, because Wisdom, chapter two, read wisdom, do it tonight, you'll have fun to look up Wisdom, chapter two, verses 12 through 20. And it's going to sound exactly like Jesus being crucified on the cross to me. That is the most explicit prophecy of Jesus in the Old Testament, even more than Isaiah 53. Interesting, because in the Gospel of Matthew, it's interesting the priests say, he says that he's the Son of God, let's see if God will save him. But there's. But in the proto canonical Old Testament, there's no verse where someone says, oh, if they're the Son of God, God will save them. But in wisdom too, it is in there saying, he claims to be the Son of God. Let us see if God will rescue him from this. And it's just like clearly maps on. Even Protestant scholars will say, this is either a prophecy or Matthew was drawing on this when he was composing. Composing is account of Christ's crucifixion. So yeah, so it's interesting if you appeal to. And this is where I get concerned about Protestantism, if you appeal to the consensus of the early church for things like the canon of the New Testament. Well, I believe in Hebrews because the church, the early church believed in it. But the early church, the Codex Sinaiticus, if you went to the museum of the Bible, the first complete manuscript we have has those deuterocanonical books in there. And I mean, some are missing because, you know, some things, well, in some of the manuscripts are incomplete, but in, you know, in others they're also missing the proto canonical books as well. But we see them clearly attested in these early authors. And not just that they're cited because like Paul, you know, he'll cite Greek poets. Enoch gets cited in the New Testament. Not just that they're referenced, but they're referenced. Like the early church calls them sacred Scripture or they use it for proof of prophecy, proof of doctrine. They use it in a way they don't use non religious works. It's interesting that you see, like Enoch is really popular at the very beginning of church history. Then there's a huge steep drop off the deuterocanonical books. It's more of like a gradual acceptance and increase.
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B
So what is your, what is the Catholic perspective for Protestants that don't, that don't hold to the Apocrypha as the inspired word of God?
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A
You're missing out, man.
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B
The Protestant, you're missing out. Hey, I respect them. They're great documents, but not the word of God. I mean, what's that then?
- [25:30]
A
It, well, ultimately it's going to be rooted in this. When we determine you're saying, well, you know, Protestants have 66, Catholics have 73, East Ethiopian Orthodox have 81. We could get a Jew in here who will say, well, what about 39? We all agree because you're saying, well, we all agree on 66. Can't we just be cool with that? But a Jew could say, well, we all agree on 39. Why can't we be okay with that? Like, okay, just because we have a common belief doesn't mean we should stop there. Yeah, it's going to go back to who has the authority to bind all believers, to say these are the books of scripture and it is heresy. It is a sin against the faith to deny them. I would say the only body that has that authority is the Church Christ established. And the Church Christ established is a visible one, connected to the successors of the apostles, going all the way back through the Church's history, through the bishops one after another, going back to the original 12. So it's going to come back to that. If you say, well, I don't believe that. Is it because you've made a mistake in your reasoning. You don't think Catholic arguments are convincing if it's because you say, yeah, I know that this is Christ Church and they say it is, but I know better than Christ Church. That's not great for the state of your soul. But for people where it's similar to the question of will I go to a non Christian saying to them, will they go to hell if they don't believe in Jesus? Well, I guess I could, I could ask you. I mean, let's say. Yeah, you, you talk to. Well, there's different levels on this. Let's say somebody who never knew Jesus, like someone who was a Native American a thousand years ago, you know, and Mormonism is not true. You know, the Native American a thousand years ago, they've never heard about Jesus. Right. Do you think they're definitely going to
- [27:15]
B
hell that they don't know about Jesus?
- [27:17]
A
Yeah, because they, because they couldn't. They'd never been a missionary.
- [27:20]
B
Yeah, because you have to have faith in Jesus.
- [27:22]
A
Right, Right. So the question is, are they definitely damned or is it possible they could still be saved?
- [27:27]
B
I mean, I, I don't know what they did in their last dying breath. I don't know if Jesus revealed himself to them. I don't, I don't know the full scenario. But if you don't have sincere faith in Jesus and you don't get eternity
- [27:36]
A
with him, so, so it's interesting, then a Catholic could, could take a similar view. But I would say Catholics tend to take a view that Protestants might call inclusivism. And I think there's many Protestants who would say that someone who, they don't know Jesus through no fault of their own. And I think you might, you'd probably agree with that, that if the, if a person, because you're saying that like it sounds like you're saying that everybody at some point has a knowledge of Jesus where they can be held accountable for that knowledge. Like.
- [28:15]
B
Well, I think, you know my perspective. I mean, I first think of Romans 1, right. God's divine righteousness is displayed throughout all of creation, so that humanity is without excuse. So whether we're talking about the Native American a thousand years ago or we're talking about the tribe of 12 people buried deep in the Amazon that have their own language revelation would say every nation, tribe and tongue is represented. So that gives me some sort of hope of going, okay, well, I hope that how God's going to judge the earth is going to be righteous justly and perfect, because that's his nature and his character.
- [28:45]
A
Yeah, you go back to Genesis when Abram is bargaining to try to get as many people out of Sodom and Gomorrah as he can. And I love the line, he finally gets it down to 10. And I love that God lets him whittle down knowing that it's still not going to be it. Sure, 10 knowing it's not going to be enough. But, but Abraham, he says to himself, will not the judge of the whole earth do what is right? I love that line in the story, will not judge. And I think we're have a common ground here that Catholics would say that people will be held accountable for the level of knowledge that they've been given about revelation. So if somebody knows the Catholic Church is the true faith and says, you know, I just don't want to be Catholic anymore, it's too hard, they're going to be judged differently than someone who has maybe presented a defective, incomplete version of Catholicism who wasn't given, you know, the best, you know, presentation of it to help them really see, oh, this is something credible to believe in. And I think many Protestants would agree with that if they, they would agree with that. Similarly, of the question of what about people who never believed in Jesus through no fault of their own versus that they committed some kind of fault, they loved sin more than God, they're rationalizing this away. I would just say the same thing about non Catholics. There's a difference between people who are Catholic through no fault of their own and people who are not Catholic because they're like, yeah, maybe it could be true. Like I could really see that. But like, I disagree. I don't want to have to like live my life without using contraception. So I'm just not going to look into that anymore.
- [30:11]
B
So then is the perspective, do you think that Protestants are going to hell because they're not Catholic?
- [30:18]
A
Like I said, I would say that is parallel to the question, will non Christians go to hell because they don't believe in Jesus? And the answer is it depends.
- [30:28]
B
Well, I, I, I guess my question though is like, where is the standard then? Right, because you made a point earlier about salvation. Right, Where I would agree, like the Scriptures say even the demons believe.
- [30:38]
A
Yeah.
- [30:38]
B
So I was, I was just talking to a mentor of mine last night. Just because someone fills out a connect card at, at church does not mean that they're going to heaven. I don't know if they have sincere faith because someone asked me a couple weeks ago, they said, how many salvations have you seen? I said, what are you talking about they're like, how many people have you seen saved? And I was like, I can't track a salvation. You know, I can't put like, oh, here's this person got saved on this date. And this is what it looks like. Now I can say that personally about my own life in a confident manner, because I know, okay, when I was 17, this moment happened. And from that day forward, I've been chasing Jesus wholeheartedly, sincerely, with integrity, right? So, like, I can testify about my own life and go, okay, I've been following Jesus. So. So where's the standard of measure though, then? When it comes to the. It depends, right?
- [31:25]
A
So what I would say is that when it comes to salvation, John 3:36 says, whoever believes will be saved. But it says. Also says those who. Whoever believes in the Son will be saved. But whoever disobeys the Son, it says, does not believe. And whoever disobeys in John 3:36 will not be saved. So it's not just about believing in Jesus. It is about receiving all of the faith that has been handed down to us from the apostles and being obedient to Jesus and his church. I think where sometimes we might talk past each other is that as a Catholic, we see the Church as kind of as a sacrament to salvation. It's not that the building saves us, but. But that the Church provides us with those things that are necessary for our salvation. So the Church tells us this is what God wants us to believe as Christians, and to deny these things is heresy. And it's incompatible with the. The Christian faith. Like, if you believe that God is an embodied man somewhere in the universe, for example, or, you know, there's a whole list of heresies that Jesus is not as equal in divinity with the Father. These are the heresies that are incompatible with faith. The Church says, these are the actions that are incompatible with the faith. These are the sins. And because there's many people who would try to justify, you know, all kinds of sins today, say, well, does the Bible really condemn that or. Well, the Bible doesn't say anything about a woman renting out her room to. Sorry, renting out her womb for gestational surrogacy, which I would say is. Is human trafficking. But of course, that technology was invented 2,000 years after the biblical authors. We wouldn't expect a condemnation of it in Scripture. I've seen Protestants defend. I want to use my words. I'm just gonna be blunt here, defending masturbation. As long as you're not thinking lustful thoughts during it, because the Bible only condemns lust, it doesn't say anything about self gratification. See multiple Protestants, even very learned ones, putting that out there. So it's about not rejecting heresy, rejecting sinful behaviors, even ones that people justify. So as a Catholic, we would say that to be united to Christ, that if we are united to the Church, we faithfully believe what the Church teaches, has handed on from the apostles, we obey its teachings on how to live a holy life, then we can be guided into salvation. And it's not about us trying to work our way to anything. We're very like the catechism is really clear in paragraph 2010 that nothing merits the initial moment of salvation. So like my wife, for example, I'm a convert. My wife was baptized as a baby. And it's interesting the way you and I, you say there is a moment you were saved, there's a moment to find it. I agree. There is a first moment of salvation. I think where we can talk past each other is people say to you, how many salvations have you seen? And like, if somebody asked me that, I could answer it in two different ways. I could say, I have no idea. I've seen like hundreds of baptisms, because that's where it begins. But as Catholics, we would say salvation is not just a moment, there is a first moment, but it's also a process. Because in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul says, you're saved by the faith. You are being saved if you do not forsake it, if you do not believe in vain. Philippians chapter two, work out your salvation. And fear and trembling. There are things we have to remain obedient. And then finally, in Romans 13:11, Paul says that salvation, he says that salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believe that. I would say, you know, I've seen hundreds of people get saved, but I've never seen anyone enter into heaven. And I would say, that's final salvation. I've never seen that.
- [35:17]
B
Yeah.
- [35:17]
A
Because I'm on this side. Yeah. So it's like I've seen hundreds, I've seen zero, you know. So I would say then, in seeing that salvation is a process that can help us bridge the divide a little bit to say that I agree. So my wife getting baptized as a baby, I think that's the perfect example of salvation by grace alone, because she did nothing to boast about her salvation. She did absolutely nothing. It's a perfect example of salvation by grace alone. Because if you think about it like even someone like yourself, you said, you're what, 17? Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our associate degree in nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing. Save your spot now at Carrington. Edu Events. For information on program outcomes, visit Carrington. Edu Sci.
- [36:22]
B
I was 17 when I became a believer. 22 now.
- [36:25]
A
Okay, so, yeah, so I would say that I was 16 when I became a believer. And I could have boasted that. Like, hey, I read the atheist arguments. I watched William Lane Craig debates. I had doubts and I had questions and I looked at the arguments and I figured out that Jesus rose from the dead, but that would be a sinful thing for me to do. But I realized this faith was a gift that God gave me. Now there are things I did to cooperate with it. I was really interested in the truth. I wanted to learn, but I didn't figure it out on my own. God, it was a gift. But it was a gift I still chose to receive by being open to God, by being naturally open, even though I could have never gotten there on my own. God had to give me a supernatural gift of faith, but. So I could have boasted like I did apologetics. And I just found out Jesus is God and I believe. Look at all the great stuff. I would never do that. It's boasting, but it's amazing. People will get down on infant baptism. Oh, this is works of men we talk about. My wife is when water's poured on as a baby, can she boast about the moment she was saved? No, she had no control over it whatsoever. But salvation was given to her because Jesus says, let the children come to me. Do not suffer. The children come to me. And that God wants everyone to be saved. And he wants the first moment of our salvation to be identified, objectively identifiable. Because here's a problem I've seen sometimes Protestantism, to level with you, you know, somebody says, you know, they're, let's say they're 12 years old, they go to a altar call, prayer night, give their lives to Christ, and they feel high school, they're, you know, fully convicted, right. College get into some bad stuff. You know, I really, I don't believe this stuff anymore. Fall away from the faith. Then maybe when they're late 20s, they're like, you know, I was wrong. I want to come back. So it's like, okay, do I have to get back? Do I have to get saved all over again? Or, like, was I just falling away? Or. Because then people will say, okay, I was saved when I was 12, and this person is an atheist, and they were an atheist, and then they died a week ago in a car accident. And a lot of people will say, oh, well, they were never saved in the first place. And so that can create, I think, a lot of confusion of when salvation is just an internal witness. It's hard to make it the objective beginning. That's why salvation beginning with baptism was the universal teaching of the early church. Even Protestants that I debate will say, yeah, if there's one thing the early fathers agreed on, baptism is when salvation begins. Like, hands down, I do want to
- [38:53]
B
get into the baptism issue in a moment and like the sacraments and the infant baptism and things like that. I think the hardest thing for me is understanding. Like, okay, you know, the, the, it depends on salvation based on how much knowledge someone has about the Catholic Church or things like that. I, I, I just don't understand because I, I know you're saying it's more than an institute, but now I feel like if I, if I am not, you know, putting, if I don't become Catholic, you know, the Bible says, too much is given, much more is required, right? And so like, okay, I'm learning about Catholicism, and if I make a consensus, like, hey, I respect you guys, I'm respectfully a Protestant, then what am I? Am I damned for hell because I decided to not convert to Catholicism.
- [39:37]
A
It would depend. If the reason you didn't convert had to do with some kind of sinful avoidance of Catholicism versus just making, like, a cognitive error. And to continue my previous analogy, it's like the question, if someone doesn't believe Jesus is God, will they be damned? And I would say if it's for a sinful reason, even out of omission, saying, I don't want to learn about Jesus, he's a lot of trouble. Their soul could very well be in danger. If they have ignorance of Jesus being God that they could not overcome themselves. They're born in a communist or Muslim country where they're not given the full knowledge of who Jesus is, then God will judge them based on what he's revealed. And I believe the same thing is true for people who are not Catholic that God will judge him. There's a difference between someone who is raised in a Protestant community and has very minimal knowledge of Christ's church and one who is aware of this and is suspicious. This could be the church Jesus established. I don't really want to learn more about that because that would involve a radical. I know pastors who said to me, I'm worried I'm going to have to quit my job. I'll lose my job if I become Catholic. And I say to them, well, look, what does it say In Mark, chapter 10, Jesus says, those who follow me who lose houses and livelihoods and family in this life, will they not regain 10 times as many in the Kingdom? You know, it's the perennial problem. The same with a Muslim who wants to become Christian. He could lose his life. But what does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his soul? Right?
- [41:08]
B
Sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess the Catholic Church thing, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you mentioned it earlier, not attending Catholic church is a moral sin. Right? Is that.
- [41:17]
A
Yeah. Well, let's go back to this. So Jesus to be a saved person. Right. If you're a real Christian, I think you would at least agree to be a real Christian. You're going to be obedient to the commandments, even if you don't think they do anything for your salvation because you are saved. You're going to obey, Thou shall not murder. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
- [41:35]
B
Sure.
- [41:36]
A
Yeah. So I would say you also obey, Thou shall keep the Sabbath holy. But for Christians, we don't follow the Saturday Sabbath. We worship on the Lord's Day. That's become our Sabbath to worship. So the question, it would flip around because any question you ask, like, well, as a Catholic, do you think it's sinful to not go to the celebrate Mass to attend Mass on Sundays? Could you lose your salvation? I could turn that question around onto you and ask, will a true Christian worship on Sundays? Or can you. And I guess I'll ask you that question. Could you be a true Christian and say, well, you know, I don't go to church on Sunday, but I believe in Jesus.
- [42:14]
B
Well, I think this is where I kind of want to like, begin to bridge the gap a little bit.
- [42:17]
A
I think.
- [42:17]
B
I think Protestantism has done a poor job of a couple things with the local church. I think, number one, it's. We've. I think Protestantism has turned like local church into smoke machines and like an entertainment thing.
- [42:30]
A
Evangelicals did that. The main lines, redeem Zoomer. I know you're watching. They don't do that.
- [42:36]
B
So, so I do, I do love this, like, aspect of tradition. And there's this deep fear of the Lord. When I, when I go to Catholic church or when I visit my Coptic Orthodox brothers and sisters and things like that, I just, you know, understanding. Well, the Sabbath thing, for example, like, we, we. Jesus says that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath. Right. So I think whether someone takes their Friday night to Saturday night as the Sabbath or they do Sunday as a Sabbath, I personally don't think it's necessarily about the legalism. It's the Sunday kind of thing.
- [43:06]
A
Well, do you. So you don't think Christians, a true Christian, has an obligation to worship with the body of Christ on Sunday?
- [43:13]
B
Well, I think we should. And here's, and here's where, like. And this will kind of lead into the baptism thing a little bit like my perspectives on baptism. But when I became a believer at 17, I met 100 people who claimed to follow Christ, who were all posting about Jesus in some form or fashion. And I'm almost positive all of them were Protestant believers. Okay. Now over half of them aren't even Christian anymore. And I think, I'm not saying that this is the main reason, but I think one of many reasons is because they didn't prioritize the local church and that there was some sort of. It's just me and my relationship with Jesus and that's what I need. And I think that there is a reason why God struck down Ananias and Sapphira was to keep the purity of the birth of the early church. I respect that. I read that scripture. It convicted me. It compelled me. It made me go, man, I really want to plant down. I want to serve. I. I want to submit to a local church. I want to be there. I want to fellowship with my brothers and sisters.
- [44:06]
A
Hebrews 13:17. Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are called, they are overseers of your souls. They are going to be called to account for you.
- [44:18]
B
But to think that I don't walk into a building on a Sunday or like, I miss a Sunday or miss a Mass, or I miss a like.
- [44:25]
A
And here's the thing. If Protestantism is true, that makes perfect sense. If the point of church on Sunday is to gather together and do things that you could do at home. Pray, read scripture, offer prayer and praise to God, hear a sermon to open up the word. Because if you think about it, right, I could go online. Maybe my pastor isn't the greatest of sermons. I have an unlimited number of the most amazing sermons in the world right on my laptop. Go listen to why not listen? That edifies me. Why not do that instead. I could go hang out with my friends, and we could sit around our car and sing praise and worship music together. I can do all these things even at home, by myself, with me and God. And is that not proper worship? But as a Catholic, what I would say is, there's one thing I cannot do at home by myself. I cannot gather around the altar. And it's an altar. Altars are where sacrifices take place. In First Corinthians, chapter 10, Paul tells early Christians, he says, listen to me, because it's the question of, can you eat meat, sacrificed idols? And it's like, look, in the first century, meat's a expensive delicacy. And if you're starving, that could stave off literal starvation. It's like, look, they would sacrifice the demons. We don't believe in those demons. You know, you can eat the stuff. You know, now that it's like it's been off, you know, you don't believe in that. But he says, be careful, though, about people who are weak in their consciences. So he says in 1 Corinthians 10, you cannot partake in the table of the Lord and the table of demons. And the word table. There is a reference to altars. So he's literally saying, you can't take part in the altar of demons and the altar of the Lord. And in Hebrews 13, the author of Hebrews says, we have an altar that those who serve at the tent, the temple in Jerusalem, and I think Hebrews was written when the temple had not been destroyed yet. He's saying, those who serve at the tent can't receive at our altar. And that would be the altar where we receive the Eucharist, the body and blood of Christ. That what we receive on that altar is the one sacrifice that Christ presented to the Father on Calvary. That single perfect sacrifice is now represented on the altar for us to be able to receive, because Jesus is the Lamb of God. John the Baptist says, behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. Paul says in Corinthians, Christ, our paschal lamb, has been sacrificed. In the Old Testament, what's. What caused death to pass over the Israelites? It was taking a lamb without blemish, a male lamb without blemish, putting its blood over the doorposts. And then. And then part of it was eating the lamb.
- [47:04]
B
Yeah.
- [47:05]
A
And so as Catholics, we gather together every Sunday to take part in this communal offering that we. Or that we. What do we offer to God? We pray, we sing praises. We have scripture opened up to us, we hear the word of God, Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament and the Gospel. But as part of our worship, we give to God at every Catholic Mass something, the one thing that God truly deserves. It's like we give him finite praise, we give him finite adulation because we're finite beings. But in the Eucharist, the bread and wine that becomes the body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, we offer to the Father something of infinite value. We say, lord, we offer the very Son to you who died for us on the cross. And the Father wants us to receive the Son so that Christ dwells within us. Because Jesus said, unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you have no life within me. We now receive that very paschal lamb and the new Passover is complete for death to pass over us. And the sinful part is if Jesus Christ our Savior, comes down Sunday at Mass to be present on the altar for the community to be gathered. And I say, I don't really need to be there for that. Jesus sin has been defined in the past as loving the creature more than the Creator. If I say, I don't feel like going to Sunday Mass because I'd rather do something else, and Jesus there on the altar, that's a textbook example. Loving creature more than creator.
- [48:31]
B
Yeah, I just feel like that there is. I mean, Jesus tells a woman at the well in John chapter 4 about worshiping in spirit and truth. And again, I love the local church. I'm not denying, like, this importance and purity and beauty of the local church.
- [48:44]
A
But, yeah, he's saying it won't be restricted to one mountain. But that's why the Catholic Church is universal. Every, every Mass, everywhere throughout the world, we have the same readings, the same Eucharist, one faith, one baptism, that it's a faith that goes around the whole world united through all the bishops to the successor of St Peter to maintain that universality, a universal catechism of teaching for people to receive the faith and know how to walk in the Christian life. So, yeah, I see where you're.
- [49:11]
B
But you know, just to think that, like I, I, Christ is only present in the, in the Catholic Church in that moment.
- [49:19]
A
So the Second Vatican Council said that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church. And so what that means is that the visible, identifiable elements of Christ's Church, their historical continuity, are in the bishops, the priests, those who are celebrating the sacraments in union with the bishops, in union with, with the Pope, the successor of St. Peter. And in fact, when you go to the early church, when St. Augustine was arguing with the Manichean heretics, these gnostic heretics, the way he would throw down on them is he would say, you say you're the true Church, we say we're the true Church. Show us your bishop list. He said, give me a list of your bishops, because we got a list that can go all the way back. Where's your list? This is the Church that Christ established. And so that was the test that he used with them. But in saying subsist, we're not saying the Catholic Church, we're not saying that Christ's Church is only the Catholic Church and it doesn't exist outside of it in any way, shape or form. As someone who's validly baptized, you are a brother in Christ. I can recognize that anyone who has received a valid baptism and believes in the triune God is a fellow brother and sister in Christ, and that they even have a kind of imperfect bond with Christ's universal church. Our desire as Catholics is just that. Every single person had that full communion with the one church that Jesus established. To be able to receive Jesus in the Eucharist, to receive the one baptism, that when they are sick, maybe dying to receive that anointing of the sick. That in James chapter five it says, is any of you sick? I love this. Go to the presbyteroi elders. The word priest, the English word priest comes from that Greek word presbyteroi. Go to the priest, have him anoint you with oil. And it says in James 5 and his James 5:16, and his sins will be forgiven. I mean, that's kind of interesting. We always think like, well, just believe in Jesus, your sins are forgiven. But we understand that God gives us material means to communicate his immaterial grace, whether it's baptism, bread and wine of the Eucharist, the oil of anointing of the sick. And when I read the early church fathers like they constantly are referring to this, so much so that in the third century you have Saint Cyprian who says, one cannot have God as father without church, as mother. I know that that can be radical to someone who's Protestant, but I think that can only sound radical if the Church is just this kind of invisible bond that is nice in name but doesn't do anything concrete. But there is a church that can authoritatively say, here's what we're called to believe, here's what we must believe as Christians, here's what we must do as Christians, and here are the sacraments, here are the ways of receiving God's grace to nourish us so we can have eternal life. And that this church is real, identifiable, has authority and really exists in the world to guide believers. When you look at the church in a different way, I think it starts to click.
- [52:20]
B
Well, I feel like when you say that thing of like that, that there's this idea that the church is this invisible bond. I don't think all Protestants just believe that the church is this just invisible bond. Like, you know, like I am someone who deeply respects the local church. I respect it. I think it is concrete. I think it provides value and structure. It may not be the same structure that the Catholic Church has. You know, like one thing I like about daily Mass is like if I go to mass for like a certain amount of time, we would have gone through the whole Bible. I think that's beautiful.
- [52:48]
A
Well, a lot of it, not necessarily the whole Bible, but a lot of it.
- [52:50]
B
You get what I mean. You get what I mean. Like you, you get that nice flow and I think that's beautiful. And so that, you know, I, it's not just, oh, I think that the, the, the church is just the invisible church and we're all united.
- [53:01]
A
Yeah, the local church, it's. You say the local church is important, but let me give you an example. Do you think someone should attend a local Presbyterian Church of America or the local Presbyterian Church of the United States of America or are you not as aware of the difference?
- [53:18]
B
I'm not as aware of the difference.
- [53:19]
A
The PC usa. And once again, Redeem Zoom. Let's make sure I get this right. I've been correct on this before, but could you guys have just picked more clear acronyms is the far more liberal denomination that has female pastors who are pushing for same sex marriage abortion. And you can find this among Lutherans. You have the Lutheran Missouri Synod is the smaller, very conservative branch. The Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, the much larger denomination, totally off the rails in Anglicanism. I'll give you another example. We had a guy who used to be, he was a Catholic apologist, guy named Michael Coren. He wrote a book called why Catholics Are Right. He was a Canadian broadcaster and then he disagreed with the Catholic Church on its teachings on abortion and so called same sex marriage. So what's interesting is he did not stay Catholic because it's like, well, the Catholic Church says you can't believe this stuff. So he became an Anglican and he joined an Anglican Communion where they're totally fine with that. So it's like when we say, yeah, I believe in the local church. But then it becomes. But which of these things that claim to be a local church is the correct one versus somebody that, oh, yeah, this is. Yeah, we're part of the body of Christ and they're pushing heresies and errors. Then it becomes the st. Instead of the church judging me to make sure that I am in line with what God is teaching, I'm kind of judging the church and then picking the one that most aligns with what I think the Bible teaches. And that's not how the church was viewed historically.
- [54:50]
B
Sure. But like, I, you know, we go to pride parades every year here in la, and there's. There's a Catholic representation represented at these pride parades. So I. I could flip it on you and say the same thing. There's going to be people.
- [54:59]
A
But there's no but. There aren't. There aren't Catholic parishes where they are celebrating the sacrament of matrimony for two men or two women. Because if they start doing that, you have a check in the bishop of that diocese saying these sacraments are invalid. You're in schism. The German bishops were flirting with something like that. And even Pope Francis, the people have accused of being a liberal, was telling the German bishops, remember that people who depart from the church, they are like a branch that withers and dies. He's saying, I know you guys. There are going to be people, no doubt. There are Catholics that play Lucy Goosey. There are individual Catholics, even theologians that are off the reservation. But that's why we use a term in the church called the Magisterium. It means teaching office. Yep, the teaching office. The teaching authority of the Church doesn't lie in a podcaster like me or even some charismatic, like a theologian or a priest here or there, random Catholic celebrity. It lies in the bishops throughout the world who are united to the Pope and what they teach on. So, yeah, you're gonna. But we actually, we have a universal standard to say, yeah, you claim to be Catholic, but you're contradicting what Catholicism teaches. I would say Christianity doesn't have a similar standard to say you're contradicting what Christianity teaches because Protestant Christians disagree about that. Because the ultimate authority is not a teaching office. It is a document, the Bible, and then people decide what it means and what it doesn't mean.
- [56:32]
B
Well, sure, but I mean, that debate has been going on for how long? I mean, that's why.
- [56:37]
A
500 years.
- [56:38]
B
Yeah. I mean, even more so. I mean, you go back to, like, that's why we have councils, right? Is to set Things straight.
- [56:45]
A
And who are at the councils? Yeah, look, who were the ones in attendance? They're the bishops.
- [56:51]
B
Yes.
- [56:52]
A
Because they are the ones who have the magisterial authority to be the successors of the apostles. You're correct. And that's why you'll have Protestants who will say, yeah, of course I believe in these early church councils, but why other. It's either it just already agrees with something you previously thought about the Bible, or we see they have actual authority, divine authority, because of who is in attendance and who is making the declarations at them. In fact, Saint Athanasius during the Arian crisis, he said that the word of the Lord came through the bishops who spoke and decided doctrine at the Council of Nicaea.
- [57:31]
B
But I think when we talk about the magisteriums and stuff like that, if I read through your magisterium, then yes, I'm going to interpret in a Catholic perspective certain doctrines of Catholicism where it's like if I read from the Protestant magisterium, of course I'm going to interpret it from a Protestant lens. And so I think when we talk about like, oh, I go to the pride parade. We do it every year. We do multiple pride parades every year. It's not just going to be someone who claims to be Catholic. That's going to be. We're going to see like people who claim to go to Catholic Church or to the Methodist Church or the Lutheran Church. There's going to be legitimate representation with booths passing out flyers. Love is love.
- [58:06]
A
But here's what you can do to them. The ones who claim to be Catholic. You can ask them. Here is what the Catholic Church officially teaches in paragraph 2357 of the Catechism, saying that same sex acts are gravely immoral, they're closed to life. They contradict scripture. This is what the Catholic Church teaches. It's right here. Do you agree with that? The problem is you will not find. There's nothing that can say here is what the Methodist Church teaches on this. It depends which Methodist Church, which Anglican Church, which non denominational. That's the problem.
- [58:40]
B
Yeah, but I don't think that just writes off all of the other denominations because then you can flip it on and say, you know, plenty of Protestants. Protestants. I know you know plenty of Protestants. Probably a Rolodex in your contacts. You could say, these guys love Jesus. You know, I don't want to speak for you. They go, awesome church.
- [58:57]
A
There's a lot that. No doubt there, there's a lot that get it. They get it. Right. For example, when I Was my first Protestant debate was in 2017. I debated James White at the G3 conference in Atlanta. So that was a conference. Twelve hundred reform Calvinists there. My slideshow breaks at the beginning. I said, hey, I'm sorry about this, but you know God, when God predestines things, what are you gonna do? It's a big laugh out of the. The Calvinists that are there. And my friend Scott Klusendorf was also at the conference. And I was so peeved, I flew back early because Scott was one of the Protestants who helped mentor me in my pro life apologetics. And he was like, Trent, if you'd stayed the next day, like, I'd have you teach the pro life section with me, I would have loved. James just walks in and sees the Catholic doing the teaching at G3. But it's not abortion, because we agree, no doubt there. There are Protestants who are absolutely solid on so many issues, but they are also in error about other important issues. And the most important one being which people who claim to be pastors have authority in Christ Church to bind believers. Like, if you look in the. In the New Testament, for example, you don't find anyone becoming a pastor on his own authority. Like, you could ask someone, what gives you the right to be a pastor? You can say, well, God called me to it, you know, or like, you know, I. I started this church where I always went to this seminary. But the Bible never says that people just become pastors in their own authority. It always says that those who are the leaders in the church choose them and lay hands upon them. And in fact, Paul tells Timothy, don't lay hands upon people too quickly because of that, because of this responsibility you have. So it raises the question, even my Protestant friends, we agree on homosexuality, abortion, a lot of these other. Although we also disagree, I think, on important moral issues. I think in vitro fertilization leads to the deaths of children. It leads to children being deprived of their mother and father, created in a laboratory, what God never want. But you can't condemn it, because the Bible's pretty silent on that. But the most important question being, who has the authority to be a pastor in Christ Church? And I would say those who have the authority are those who received it from those who were already pastors in Christ Church. They're the ones with that authority. Okay, now it's like the cosmological argument. Where's the chain end? My authority to be a pastor comes from this person who was previously a pastor. Where did his authority come from? And then his authority and that authority. So I think even these other Protestants where we agree on important moral issues, we disagree on. Who are those that have this authority? And is there someone who is a pastor who oversees the whole church to provide unity in the church to say, oh, this group of churches, they've fallen into error. They're, they're no longer united to the church because they've embraced heresy or whatever it may be. Where is there a way that we can gather all of these authentic pastors together to say, hey, there's people who say, you know, there's people who, who say that Christ, he didn't have a human mind, you know, he's fully God, but like, how could he have a human mind? You know, he's, he's fully God. He has to have. Just have a divine mind only. Does Christ have a human will or a divine will or both? You know, how do we, you know, we look to the scriptures. They don't answer these technical theological questions. Well, who can we bring in? Who are the authentic pastors to say? Here is the answer. That's where I see the importance of the apostolic succession and the importance of the sacrament of holy orders playing into that. Well, whereas Protestantism, as much as church pastors are important, ultimately sola scriptura makes that really difficult for their authority to have that binding force amidst doctrinal uncertainty. Hey guys, I found the only gift that dad wants this Father's Day. Goldbelly. Goldbelly ships the most iconic foods from the best restaurants across the country straight to his door for free. Let him relax and enjoy award winning barbecue from Texas, epic deep dish pizza from Chicago or colossal pastrami sandwiches from New York. Make dad feel like an absolute legend this Father's Day. And go to goldbelly.com to get 20% off your first order with promo code DAD. That's goldbelly.com, code DAD.
- [63:02]
B
I mean, yeah, I think I. As a. Yes, the Protestant perspective is sola scriptura. I like to look at the church fathers. I enjoy it. I think just logically thinking I would want to know what the older guys before me think about, like a lot of stuff. So it has intrigued me.
- [63:19]
A
Sure.
- [63:19]
B
It's something I've been diving into for sure. Yeah, I think that's very fascinating. But what if something has been apostolic? What if something has apostolically succeeded that was wrong?
- [63:28]
A
Could you give me an example?
- [63:29]
B
I don't know, I'm just giving a hypothetical here. You know what I mean? Like let's say, let's say some sort of doctrine let's say, for example, an idea of baptism. And maybe we can jump into that conversation and use that as a leading point.
- [63:41]
A
First. I would say that the question you raise could be understood as an impossible hypothetical. So it's saying, you know, well, what if these people, you know, what if the bishops who claim to be the successors of the apostles teach something they infallibly. Because most of the teaching office of the Church is proposing doctrine, only in certain cases is it infallibly defined to say, this cannot be an error. Other things, it's just teaching is proposed, it must be believed. But it can be revisited. It can be amended as we get greater theological insight to it. But you're like, the impossible hypothetical is, what if they infallibly define something as true that turns out to be false? And I would say, well, if they did, that Catholicism would be false, but they didn't. So it isn't similar to someone who says, you believe in the Bible and it's without error. But what if the Bible had an error in it? You might say, well, then it wouldn't be true, but it doesn't have an error. So it is true. And I think that's a similar problem that's going to be raised where if you say, here is my ultimate authority that can teach infallibly, A critic can say, yeah, but what if it's wrong? And then you say, okay, well, do I have reason to think it's wrong? You raise objections. I don't find them to be compelling. But ultimately, like the reason you believe. I bet the reason you believe the Bible is without error is not because you investigated all 2,000 alleged contradictions in it before you chose to believe. I don't know any Christians who've done that. Nobody does that. Yeah, they just know. Look, and this is what I felt. If Jesus. If there's a guy who walked out of his own tomb and he believes in this, then I'm gonna believe in it, and I trust him. But here's the thing. There's no verse where Jesus says, hey, believe in these writings. In fact, prior to his ascension into heaven, Jesus never told anybody to write anything down at all, which is just really. He never said, this is gonna be our standard. So for me, the reason I believe in the Bible is cause, look, Jesus walked out of his own tomb and he told these guys, in Luke 10:16, he who hears you, hears me. He tells them in John 20:23, whose sins you forgive are forgiven, whose sins you retain or retain. Matthew 16, whatever you bind on earth is bound in Heaven, you know, he gives the apostles authority. That's where the authority lies, in the Church. But they've died, so the authority has to go somewhere. And they never say in their writings, oh, it's only going to be in our writings. And the first Christians, when they look backwards, oh, it's in their successors, it's in the bishops. So I believe Jesus rose from the dead, he established a church. It's always going to exist till he comes back. Here are its successors. And guess what? In the fourth century the successors said there's dispute about what's scripture and what isn't. These are the books of the Bible. These are the ones that are that, these are the books of Scripture. Our councils have determined that that's infallibly taught later during the Protestant Reformation. So for me it's like, well, I believe in, I believe in the Bible because I believe in Jesus. Jesus founded a church and the Church has said with its authority from Christ. These are the books of the Bible we're called to believe in because the Bible never says everything I'm supposed to believe is found in it. The Bible doesn't say, here's the test to determine if something is scripture or not. Doesn't, it doesn't have a lot because it's never meant to have everything. The word of God is given to us in the written form in Scripture, but also the unwritten form lived out in in sacred tradition and taught through the, the magisterium of the Church.
- [66:56]
B
I just feel like a lot of people can, can play the Church Father game or the church history game. Like Protestants do it, you know, a lot. They, I, I, I try my best to keep track on. If I watch a sincere, awesome Catholic and Protestant debate, it's like here's this church Father, he says this thing. Well then here's this church Father and he says this thing. Yeah, and this guy and look at this moment in church history and then look at this moment in church history. And it's like I feel like we can play the game that game with anything across the board. And so it's like, you know, if we say, oh well, Jesus never told us to write anything down so we can't look at those writings, but now we have the writing, so we look at those writings.
- [67:32]
A
Like no, what I'm saying is that what God wants us to believe, the deposit of faith, what is all of the theology God wants us to believe for our salvation, what are all the things that God wanted us to believe, that they are not all found in Scripture. For example, I would say God wants us to believe that there has been no new public revelation since the death of the apostles, that there might be people who say, the word of the God spoke to me. He wants you to know this. You know, there's charismatic preachers who say that kind of stuff. You know, there's Mormons saying, hey, we got golden plates and an angel came down and spoke to Joseph Smith. And you'd probably say, well, no, God hasn't revealed anything since the time of the apostles. Maybe privately to you when you're praying, but not publicly for everybody. But the Bible never, never says that that happened. It never says that revelation ended. It never said the office of apostles one day never going to exist in the church. So for me, I would say, okay, well, I. Sola scriptura, there's no reason to think it's true and reasons to believe that it's false. Because when Revelation was given in the New Testament, sola scriptura could not be true. Because if it were true, as soon as you get 1 Corinthians, Paul tries to give you 2nd Corinthians. No way, man. We already got the writings. You don't need any more. Oh, well, okay. Oh, there's more revelation. Paul, you're telling US stuff unwritten. 2nd Thessalonians 2, 15. Stand firm hold of the traditions given to you orally, word, by word of mouth or by epistle, so to say. Okay, well, we're, we're receiving all of that. Nothing in there. It says that it's all going to be there. Well, where is the ultimate authority for Christians? Where. Where does that lie? And so, like I said, I'm going to look for. There is that church God gave us. He gave us that church. It's here somewhere. It's identifiable. It's instructive. I can go and say, what am I supposed to believe? Which books belong in the Bible? What are the actions that are incompatible with the Christian life? And so I'll lose my salvation if I engage in them. So you're saying when it comes to the Fathers, the Catechism says they are witnesses to sacred tradition, not that they are it. So just as the Church's authority helps us to determine what is the meaning of Sacred Scripture, it helps us understand how tradition is illustrated in the Fathers. But we don't treat the Fathers like they're just some other kind of Bible to decode. But I will say, though, if you say that, you know, you like the Fathers and you, you know, you'd fully agree with them, as I brought up earlier, though, like they universally say, even Protestants admit this, that baptism is what regenerates and saves. But I don't think you agree with them.
- [70:14]
B
Well, when I say. When I say that, I. Well, I didn't say that I believe and agree with everything that they say. I just said that I'm interested in my respect them and I keep looking at them. So, like, with the baptism issue, that's something I've been wrestling with. And maybe we can go on that.
- [70:27]
A
Let's do it.
- [70:28]
B
I mean, you've been saying that and I don't want to. I'll just ask a question. So we clarify it. Do you believe that baptism is necessary for salvation?
- [70:35]
A
I would say baptism saves and it is the ordinary means of salvation. But God. God has bound salvation to the sacraments, but he is not bound by them. So, for example, the church teaches that if someone wants to become Catholic and they're going to walk across the street to be baptized and they get hit by a bus, the church has always recognized that's called baptism of desire.
- [70:57]
B
Yep.
- [70:58]
A
So we've always. Or someone wants to get baptized in ancient Rome and they find out they're Christians, they get fed to the lions. We would say, well, yeah, they're saved. They underwent baptism of blood. They were fully united. Only by being fully united to Christ could they have had the spiritual grace to give a witness to him to death. In that testimony, the church has always recognized baptism. There's other ways beyond baptism of water, baptism of blood, baptism of desire. But the ordinary means. The ordinary means is receiving water baptism. And that's something also many Protestants believe, like Lutherans and Anglicans believe.
- [71:30]
B
So I got interested in the baptism conversation through Church of Christ.
- [71:34]
A
Now, they're an interesting one.
- [71:36]
B
It is interesting. So I'm going to ping some questions and you're going to kind of hear that when I ask.
- [71:40]
A
I have. I've had a friend on my channel, Marco Arroyo. We. He's a Church of Christ minister, and we've had. We've had a few. He has a channel called In Between Sundays. And so we've dialogued about some of these questions, and we also do jiu jitsu for fun. So we theologically and literally fight.
- [71:59]
B
You guys can beat each other up.
- [72:00]
A
Oh, it's super. Oh, it's so fun. But yeah, because when you look at baptism, there's four possible views. Look at it this way. Baptism spiritually regenerates or it doesn't spiritually regenerate.
- [72:15]
B
Define what you mean by spiritually regenerate.
- [72:18]
A
It transforms. You from being a child of Adam in original sin, in need of salvation, to being an adopted child of God for whom nothing would hinder your entrance into heaven. It's what gives you God's grace so that you can be united to him and he can truly be your adoptive spiritual father.
- [72:35]
B
So is that where would you agree with the Church of Christ in saying that's where someone receives the Holy Spirit is the baptism.
- [72:40]
A
So the two questions, does baptism spiritually regenerate or not? And should you baptize babies or not? So there's like four, actually four views. So you have some people who would say it regenerates and you should baptize babies. That be Catholics, Lutherans, Anglicans, Eastern Orthodox. There's those who would say, you, it doesn't regenerate, so you shouldn't baptize babies. There'd be a lot of Baptists, Credo Baptists. It doesn't regenerate you. It's something that you do as a sign of faith to others. So doesn't regenerate, don't baptize babies. The third view would say baptism does not regenerate, but you should baptize babies because it makes them members of the. Of the covenant kingdom. It makes them members of the church community, the New Covenant. So that'd be like. Many Presbyterians hold that view. It doesn't regenerate, but it's sinful to not baptize babies. And then you have Church of Christ, who says, it does regenerate, but you shouldn't baptize babies? And we've had a fun. We had a fun conversation, because that's a view, I find if it does regenerate and the babies aren't baptized, what happens if they die as children? I would say that's very problematic.
- [73:48]
B
And do you believe in full immersion as a Catholic?
- [73:51]
A
I believe that it is a valid way to baptize, but it is not the only way to baptize. So when you look in the first century, there was a catechetical manual called the Didache teachings of the 12, one of the earliest catechisms, the earliest catechism in the church's history. Here's what to believe and how to live out the faith. So it gives instructions on baptism. Because what's interesting is you'll have a lot of oneness. Pentecostals say, why baptize in the name of Jesus? Why do I have to do Father, Son, Holy Spirit? They never use that in the Book of Acts. You know, it's only in Matthew 28. They say but it's not in Acts of the Apostles. Yeah, but it doesn't give us everything we need to know. Here's how you are to baptize. So the Didache says, baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit thrice. And also to use, you can do fully immerse someone in running water, or if you don't have that, you can pour water onto them. Which makes sense because baptism is a universal sacrament. God wants everybody to be baptized because it's, it takes you out of original sin and makes you an adopted child of God. So because of that, like, how do you baptize somebody in a prison or in a desert or in the Arctic? At the very least, if you have just a little bit of water to pour on them or even sprinkle, that's enough to affect the sacrament. But immersion, it's like the fullness of baptism and has special signs to it.
- [75:05]
B
Well, I was going to then ask about the desert fathers, so I'm glad you kind of clarified that.
- [75:10]
A
It is valid, but not the only thing.
- [75:13]
B
So when we talk about basically where I land right now in my, in my baptism idea, theology as, as discussing is, I believe that baptism is necessary, but not in the sense that many people perceive it as necessary, if that makes sense. So, like, I think that people think, oh, well, if you're a Protestant Christian, you're just telling, I've heard this before, people say, oh, well, you're a Protestant. So you, you're telling people just faith alone, don't get baptized. And I'm like, well, hold on a second. Like, if I go to a college campus or, you know, I'm an evangelist. I love preaching the gospel. When I go on the street, I'm not gonna, I'm gonna go over there and preach the gospel to them, right? And I'm gonna say, hey, Jesus Christ died for your sins, resurrected on the third day, defeating sin and death. Like, put your faith and trust in Jesus, right? But I'm not, I'm not telling them not to go get baptized. I mean, if you're a Sincere Believer with 2 cents in your brain, you're gonna go get baptized. You know what I mean? So there's like that aspect of it. But when I say necessary, I, I do not believe that if someone doesn't get baptized that they don't have eternal salvation with Christ. But at the same time, I don't think I, I believe that if you're
- [76:24]
A
a believer, you treat it like going, you treat it like going to church.
- [76:26]
B
Yeah. If you, if you're a believer with 2 cents in your brain, you're going to go to church. If you're a believer with 2 cents in your brain, you're going to go get baptized. Because again, and it goes in that category and we're kind of bouncing to back to this idea.
- [76:37]
A
Those who obey me, you are saying baptism and church attendance are in, to use The Greek word aos. Profitable. So it's second Timothy 3, 16. It says that all scripture is inspired by God. And it says it is aos. It is profitable, useful for equip, you know, for, for teaching, reproof, correction, training and righteousness. It actually never says that scripture is. Is all you need. So what you say there, because there's different views on baptism, because one view could say, well, it's not what saves you, but it is an ordinance that Christ commanded. So the alternative view is it's not something that saves you, but if you were to not follow this ordinance of Christ, that would show you're not a true Christian to begin with. But I don't think you're taking that far of you. Your view seems to be more, yeah, God really wants us to do this, but if you don't do it, it doesn't say one way or another about your salvation. Let me try. Yeah.
- [77:35]
B
Am I getting closer? I guess. I think so. Because when I read script and I'll ping some scripture right here. Right. So the, you know, when we talk, I always hear the first Peter passage about baptism, Baptism saves.
- [77:48]
A
Yes.
- [77:48]
B
But when I continue to read it not as a removal of dirt from the body, and you continue to read that passage and it gives a complete,
- [77:55]
A
but as a pledge for a clean conscience.
- [77:57]
B
Yes. And then it goes on with the ark and it gives the symbolism of the ark.
- [78:01]
A
But what a Catholic would say and many others, including their. I believe it was Oscar Coleman, he was a Lutheran theologian. He says that, well, what is the pledge of the clean conscience? It's baptism. Baptism itself that is the pledge. Not that it's a symbol. That what Peter is saying here, he's saying, look, baptism doesn't save us in a magical way. It's not like just that the water is some kind of magical property that makes us clean in the same way that water takes dirt off of our skin. So, like if you just receive baptism and you just think, oh, well, this is, this is just some kind of magic incantation and I can go to heaven. Well, no, that's not how baptism works. But what he's saying is baptism saves because it washes away original sin. What it does is that it takes away any original or anything, actual sin that has a metaphysical effect on our souls, and it saves us in that way. But I would say for me, when it comes to baptism, I would say that what often happens in these kind of debates between Christians, I kind of feel like it ends up being the person who believes baptism saves. He puts up verses and the other person says, here's why I don't find those convincing. But I think at the very least you would say there are at least like five verses that sort of sound like baptism is what saves us. You say they at least sort of
- [79:26]
B
sound like, yeah, I mean, you got the mark 16:16.
- [79:28]
A
Whoever's not baptized will not be saved. Acts 2:38, Repent and be baptized. But to me, I'm like, okay, but I noticed this paucity of data, an absence of like five. You know, where are the verses that say baptism does not save or baptism is for showing people that you are Christian? To me it seems like, well, there aren't really. It's kind of like, oh, if you can't prove your five baptism verses, Catholic or Lutheran, my side wins. Like, well, wait, where's the data that says baptism is just assigned to others? We've already been saved. I don't see the Bible saying that anywhere.
- [80:05]
B
Sure. I think that's when I would go on the exact word thing, right? Where the Muslim would say, hey, show me where Jesus said, I am God, worship me. We're both going to say. Or even.
- [80:14]
A
Not the exact word, even if it communicates that idea.
- [80:17]
B
Well, I think, I think in the. So. So let's go to the Mark 16:16, for example. It says, whoever does not believe and isn't baptized will not be saved. But whoever believes will be saved. Why didn't it re. Clarify that again in the back half? Why didn't say whoever believes and is baptized will be saved? That's the question I ask.
- [80:34]
A
I think because there really isn't anyone who will not at least in the context that Mark is writing, that there wasn't anyone who was going to seek baptism unless they believe saved. Because in seeking baptism in that context, you're going to be thrown out of the synagogue. You could end up on a cross like Jesus did. So in the context of where Mark is writing to early, especially Jewish Christians, but even Gentile Christians in the Roman Empire, that if you. There are going to be people maybe who. Who believe but don't, maybe don't see the importance of. Of baptism or Maybe they don't. They believe in Jesus, but not fully what the apostles are teaching. So look, you need to believe and be baptized. You need to do both of these things. But the people who don't get baptized, those are, they're going to be people who don't believe. The people who just who don't believe they're not going to be saved.
- [81:28]
B
Well, I feel like if you already clarified it the first time, he should clarify it again. Right? Because if you say, if it says repent and be baptized, the command is there, go be baptized. So in Mark 16, it's like whoever does not believe and is not baptized will be condemned, but whoever believes will be saved. Well, if you clarified it on the contrary, shouldn't you clarify it again the first time so that it's clear? Right, because we're talking about like the clarification. You, you, you made the challenge just in general, you know, for the person that says disprove these five.
- [81:55]
A
Well, no, what I just said was where is it that I'm looking for the scriptural data that tells us what is baptism for? So even here in this verse, all we could say, well, what is Mark 16? What does it say baptism is for? And the most we could get from it is it has something to do with believing in salvation. So we could say that at least it's, it's, it's connected to that in some way, but not that it says, well, it's only for showing belief. Or to say that, well, it has no bearing on one's salvation. Because at the very least, that verse would support a view that goes a step beyond your view that would say baptism is an ordinance of one must receive. And to disobey that ordinance would be so sinful it would contradict you being saved in the first place.
- [82:42]
B
So if someone, let's, like I'm talking Catholic perspective here, no baptism would desire, no baptism of blood follows Jesus goes to Catholic Church, doesn't get baptized. Do they go to heaven or hell?
- [82:57]
A
That's ultimately up to God. When you say, does someone go to heaven or hell? The Catholic Church does not have a reverse canonization process. So we can know that there are people who are holy men and women of God who are in heaven, who are praying for us. I think even Protestants would say, like, I can't imagine a Protestant who would doubt whether the Blessed Virgin Mary is in heaven or Peter or Paul or the other apostles, save for Judas, you know, is, is in heaven. And we just believe also that because God can continue to do miracles in the church we see, oh, he can confirm this holy person who died. God is doing miracles on their behalf. And so when people ask that person, pray for me, if God does a miracle on their behalf, well, that's a pretty big sign that they're there in heaven praying for us. So we have a process, determine who is in heaven, but who is in hell is no such thing. So we can give all kinds of hypotheticals. And I would say, you give the example, someone who goes to church, they attend the Catholic mass, maybe they're not fully convinced yet. They did not. They did not receive baptism, Will they be saved? And I think the honest answer I have to give you is not enough data to meet a conclusion. The question of who goes to heaven or not, that's just a wider sphere of God answering that. That unless I have all the data, I can't make that decision for a person. That's why Jesus says, do not judge by appearances alone. You know, God doesn't judge us on appearances. He also judges the heart. So when Jesus says not to judge, it's like when we say, oh, that person's. They're going to hell. It's like, we're not really. We can say that person's actions are incompatible with a Christian life. But to say, oh, they're going to hell, it's like, well, we don't know what's in their heart. So we don't. When we can't see all of that and how God judges, you know, how they've responded to his grace in different ways, it's ultimately going to be up to God to determine, okay, is this person seeking after me? And is what's preventing them from coming to me some kind of ignorance they're not at fault for? Or is what's preventing them from coming to me an ignorance they're sinfully dwelling in because they're scared of, well, what's it going to be like if I take that next step?
- [85:07]
B
Sure.
- [85:08]
A
So in the hypothetical, I'd say there's not enough information. It would have to fall into that.
- [85:12]
B
Well, we would believe that heaven is perfection. Right. That, that. So the standard for heaven is perfection. And if we say, well, hey, baptism cleanses, according to the Catholic perspective, cleanses people of original sin. Yeah. Right. And sin keeps people from God.
- [85:29]
A
Right.
- [85:29]
B
And the person doesn't get baptized.
- [85:31]
A
Right.
- [85:31]
B
Then the Catholic perspective, perspective would then conclude that that person wouldn't be in
- [85:36]
A
heaven if there was nothing else that cleansed the person of sin either at the moment of death or shortly after. And that of course, could mean God could be capable of saving that person. And once again, I could turn the same thing around onto you. Not just the Native American example I gave earlier, but let's say a believing couple as a, you know, they have a. Well, I was gonna say one year old. I'm gonna, here's the example I'm gonna give. Okay, what do you think is the youngest a person could give his life to Christ?
- [86:08]
B
I don't know.
- [86:09]
A
Do you think, do you think a five year old could give his life to Christ and be saved?
- [86:16]
B
Maybe three year old, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe three. I think three is getting a little young. I don't know the age. I know that according to the Catholic perspective, there's like an age of, well,
- [86:29]
A
we set in canon law different ages to be held accountable. A lot of Protestants want this. They say, well, the age of accountability is seven. And I'm like, that's not in the Bible. That's something you guys just made up, man. I know you want that, but that's not in the Bible. There's, there's a lot. I'm going to do an episode soon called Things that Protestants Literally Made up. That like, I'm like, oh well that's actually, it's a common, Even many Protestant scholars will say, oh well, that's not actually in there. So the reason I say that is that there's going to be among very young children, like even like a three year old. Like I, I discipline my three year old. I'm not severe about it. But he can do wrong. He's not like a six month old. Yeah, but if you can do wrong, that's sin. Now it's not major sin. So you can have someone who's really young who could do wrong, but they're not old enough to believe in Jesus. So it's like if they've sinned, even minorly, all it takes is one sin. If you got a two year old, one, you know, two year old, three year old, who, who can do something? You could say, hey, no, don't do that. Like you could say you, you did a bad thing. That's wrong. They can sin even minor, one minor, minor sin, but they're not old enough to believe in Jesus. Is that little two year old gonna go to hell?
- [87:33]
B
But is that two year old also old enough to believe in Santa? You know, like we can teach our 2 year olds and 3 year olds, oh, Santa's real. On Christmas Eve, he's gonna come down, eat a bite of the cookie, drink a glass of milk, leave some presents under the tree and you tell a two year old that that knowledge, Christmas comes, he sees the gifts underneath the tree, the bite taken out of the cookie and the milk gone. And they hold onto that truth.
- [87:55]
A
But, but would your church baptize a 2 year old? The parents said, yeah, he's saved, he believes in Jesus.
- [88:01]
B
Well I thought you meant the infant baptism thing. Like no, my church doesn't infant baptize,
- [88:06]
A
but that's the thing. Because what we're saying is if someone can be saved, then they can choose to be baptized, right?
- [88:12]
B
Yeah.
- [88:13]
A
So then logically, if you're saying that a two year old could be saved by believing in Jesus, they could be baptized.
- [88:20]
B
Yeah, Yes. I don't necessarily have a problem with that. I just, I get, and this is just me being honest and trying to verbally process, like I don't have a problem with that. If someone has sincere faith, I think that there's young people that have more sincere faith.
- [88:35]
A
The reason I gave that example is sometimes I'll say, what about a six month old, a newborn baby and then they die and they never had faith in Jesus, like is that baby gonna go to heaven? Some Protestants will say, well they never sinned. But I would say, well what does that matter? They don't have anything human to earn salvation. So yeah, like what would be your like babies who die, they don't have faith in Jesus yet. And you just said earlier if you don't have faith in Jesus, you can't be saved, like what happens to them?
- [89:01]
B
Yeah, I mean that's where like, you know, where you guys would lean on like you know, catechisms and stuff like that for maybe like certain intricacy things or counsels. I would say, well, if someone can't make a conscious decision like a six month old baby, then we're trusting, right, that God's gonna have grace on that child.
- [89:19]
A
And I would give the same answer for somebody who through no fault of their own, doesn't choose baptism or doesn't choose the means for salvation. I think we have some common ground here. What you're saying about that six month old is look, yeah, he doesn't believe in Jesus, but not because he sinned or not because he did anything. He was just literally unable to believe in Jesus. So God is going to judge him, be merciful to him based on what he did or didn't receive. I would say that also applies to people who never heard the gospel or her deficient versions of it once you open the door in that example, then it can say, oh, okay, so if there's other things that we need to be saved and we don't have them, the question is, is it through no fault of one's own or because of sinful doubt or sinful ignorance or sinful rebellion or rejection? That's where. That's where it'll come up. So the question of the guy who goes to Catholic Church is really interested in it, hasn't gotten baptized yet. Well, is it because he was really open and eventually he would have, or because he likes the lifestyle but he's worried about it being true, so he really can't give himself to it? That'd be a different story.
- [90:23]
B
Yeah, I just think, well, the faith alone aspect of Protestantism, I think it gets a bad rap sometimes because I think people are like, oh, we're excluding the baptism, the Eucharist, all these things. It's like, no, not necessarily. But for me to think that my salvation, at least where I'm lying with the baptism thing, there is this spiritual aspect to it that I'm still wrestling with. Where, you know, Romans would say that we're united with Christ, I'm like, what the heck does that mean? When I read that, I'm like, what does that even mean? What do you mean I'm united with Christ when I'm baptized, I'm still trying to figure it out.
- [90:59]
A
The water kills the old self. We die just as Christ died and rose again. The waters of baptism kill the old sinful man. When I was 17, like it killed the old Trent. And behold, as Paul says in Corinthians, everyone who is in Christ is a new creation that we emerge from baptism. It's a kind of mini resurrection.
- [91:21]
B
So was your sin not washed from the blood of Jesus or from the baptism?
- [91:25]
A
It was the baptism that Christ's blood on the cross merited enough. It merited the grace for my salvation. Not so. First John 2. 2 says that we believe that Christ is propitiation for our sins. He's expiation. He covers our sins. And it says in there, not just our sins, but the sins of the whole world. And Calvinists will disagree with this. They're wrong. But when John and Protestant non Calvinists will agree with me when John uses the Greek word cosmos because. Because Calvinists will say, well, when it says that it's Christ's expiation for not just our sins, but sins of the whole world, he's saying of all the Christians throughout the world, no, that's not what he means. Right. What do you mean? Cosmos just means the whole world. Like John will say.
- [92:15]
B
Yeah, you get the limited atonement.
- [92:16]
A
Yeah. Well, John will say that the, you know, the devil is over the whole cosmos. You know, is it just the Christians or is it everybody? Yeah, so, no, it's. It's not just that. Christ's blood he shed on the cross merited salvation because it is so pleasing to the Father, that our sins are an infinite act of dishonor to God because of his majesty, they're worthy of infinite punishment. Nothing we can do can outweigh them. But what if someone. His life was infinitely valuable? What if someone said, I will choose to offer myself as a sacrifice of love and praise to God, that my death is so good because I'm so infinitely valuable, it outweighs that. All of these sins that we commit, there's only a finite number of them. So Christ, what he merited on the cross was salvation. Not just for this, you, me, and other Christian believers, but for every single person in the world. Because God wants every single person to go to heaven. God loves every single person. And that's what I love. Because. Yeah, it sounds like you don't hold the Calvinism, right.
- [93:18]
B
Yeah.
- [93:19]
A
Because here's why. Because you, you. Because as a street evangelist, you can go up to anybody and you can say, you know what I can tell you I know is true. God loves you.
- [93:27]
B
Yep. That's. That's.
- [93:27]
A
He wants you to go to heaven.
- [93:28]
B
That was my issue with the Calvinist perspective, because I'm like, okay, if God is predestined before the beginning of time, group A is going to heaven, group B is going to hell.
- [93:35]
A
Yeah.
- [93:35]
B
It doesn't matter how many times I preach the gospel to X person on the street. So what's the need for me? Yeah, what's the need for a pastor? What's that? So that, like, just messes. And I don't, you know, I don't want to go down that whole route, but we're getting.
- [93:47]
A
Yeah. So I'm pulling it all together here because this is important to build a foundation that you and I agree. It's like, no, God loves you. He wants you. And I could say that anybody we walk down the street here in la, God wants you to go to heaven. He died for you on the cross. He died for you. He died for everyone. He died for me. Died for you. Died, died for. But, you know, the homeless guy will go, we'll go meet in Santa Monica or whatever. He died for you. But here's the thing because God died for everyone on the cross, it. Does that mean every single person is going to go to heaven?
- [94:18]
B
No.
- [94:18]
A
No. So there has to be a difference there. And the difference here is not that we work, but God in dying on the cross. The blood of Jesus is, we call it, it's super abundant. It's not just sufficient, there's more than enough. The only thing that prevents the blood of Christ from sanctifying us would be us saying, I don't want that. And how do we receive Christ's blood? We don't literally have his blood wash over us. Well, we receive it in the water of baptism. That, that is where we receive that where the effects of Christ's sacrifice on the cross, his blood that was shed for us through the waters of baptism, washes over us and cleanses sin. And so if we look in that way, like you go to Hebrews chapter 10, for example, really interesting, Hebrews 10, 26, 29, it says that if we continue to sin, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment. That the sacrifice, this is a perfect sacrifice, it's capable of saving everyone. There is nothing you and I can do to get to heaven on our own, but you and I can get to hell on our own very easily. And that is true whether we reject God's offer of salvation. When it's first, like when you evangelize someone and you give them that first offer to believe in Jesus, they could say no, or they could accept. But as a Catholic, I would say they could accept it and then they could walk away later. It's possible. And not to prove they were never saved in the first place, but that. Because then we will say, well, you can't lose a gift that you never earned. Tell that to Adam and Eve. They were created in a perfect state. They did nothing to earn it. It was a perfect gift given to them and they junked it. And someone who receives the gift of faith in Christ and receives Christ, the Holy Spirit and baptism, they tragically can still junk it. However, baptism, what it does though, is it leaves an indelible mark on the soul. So as a Catholic, I could say that in hell there's going to be two types of people. There will be people who do not have that mark. They never receive the Holy Spirit at all. And there will be people who receive the Holy Spirit. It changed them, but then they rejected God later. But in receiving this indelible mark on the soul, you are still united to the body of Christ. And so you can be Reconciled to God, you're able to come to the church and confess your sins. Yeah. To be able to receive absolution. And some Protestants, like, why do you have to go to a man to confess your sins? Well, the Bible never says to confess your sins to Jesus. Never says that once in the New Testament, that, that's when it talks about confessing sins in the New Testament, the context is always to other people.
- [96:52]
B
Yep.
- [96:53]
A
In James 5, it says confess to one another. In First John 1:9, it's the context, verse 8 and 10, you know, because First John 1:9 says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and he will forgive us. But in verses 8 and 10, it says, if we confess our faith to others, if we confess what we believe to, it's a context of if we are public and don't hide that we're Christians, God will be faithful. So it's talking about public confession to other people.
- [97:19]
B
Yeah.
- [97:19]
A
So in seeing that baptism unites us to Christ even if we throw it away, as a Catholic, I would say that God is not some kind of heartless judge. He is like the Father of the Prodigal Son, that if we are, through baptism, united to Christ, adopted children of God, even if we sin and we reject God and we go away, God will always be at. He will always be standing at the gates of heaven. He'll always be looking out. I love that in the Prodigal Son, he saw the Son coming from a far distance. I always interpret that to mean every day he went out as far as he could on the property to be watching for him, to be waiting for him to come back. And here he comes. He says, my son was once dead and now he's alive again. And so that's why I can say that you can be saved, you can receive salvation, but then you can be spiritually dead. You can stupidly throw it away because you're an idiot and sin makes you stupid. But God loves us and always provides a means to draw us back to Him. Have no fear. Chosen Foods is here to defend your favorite foods from the forces of seedy oils and sketchy ingredients with cooking oils, salad dressings and mayo, all powered by the good fats from 100% pure avocado oil and simple, delicious ingredients. Chosen foods.
- [98:34]
B
Yeah, with the baptism thing and the faith portion of it, like I would say that someone receives the Holy Spirit not at baptism, but at moment of faith. And so I, I see in Hebrews and, and again in Ezekiel. Right. I, I and the reason I pointed Ezekiel is because some People point to John 3 when it says, you must be born of water in the Spirit. I was like, oh, that's a baptism thing.
- [98:56]
A
Sure. And I could agree with you that a person receives the gift of faith, but the only place where the term faith alone is mentioned in Scripture is James, chapter two.
- [99:07]
B
Well, I'm, well, I'm talking about Holy Spirit, like where someone gets the Holy Spirit, right? Ephesians would say that, you know, we have the sea. That's a classic verse, Right. And I'm not just appealing to that as like, sure, only source. That's why I was looking at, hey, Ezekiel. We have Ezekiel here. I think it's Ezekiel 36 referencing back to John 3.
- [99:23]
A
Well, Ezekiel also talks about the sprinkling of water. It does make us clean. Yeah, but I would say that what you are talking about, Holy Spirit, I would agree with you in that. Catholics, when we talk about grace, right, Grace is God's unmerited favor. So grace is this gratuitous gift of God so we can share in his divine life. And Catholics, we talk about two different kinds of grace, Actual grace and sanctifying grace. So sanctifying grace is the undeserved merit of God, the life of God that cleanses our souls of sin and fills it with the love of God so that we can be united to Christ in Him. Actual grace doesn't change our souls in that way, but it moves our will and disposition to want that grace. So it's like when someone says, catholic Church is really interesting. Yeah, I don't know. I want to look into baptism. That's not them purely doing it. That's actual grace at work. They're cooperating, but you can't seek after God on your own. We're too stuck in sin. Or if someone is baptized and they commit a mortal sin, a serious sin, and they're away from God and they think, I got to go back to church and I got to confess this, I got to God, I'm sorry, I gotta, I gotta repent of this. That's the actual grace. Moving their heart to be reconciled to God for them to receive sanctifying grace and absolution, Things like that.
- [100:38]
B
Well, the reason I point to Ezekiel 36 in the Hebrews is it would say that the evidence of the Holy Spirit in someone's life is if they walk out the statutes of the Lord. Right. And there was a. I claim to have put faith and Trust in Jesus. December 25th of 2020. I did not get baptized until mid February, but that two month period in between those times, I'm giving certain habits up. The Lord's sanctifying me.
- [101:05]
A
Yes.
- [101:06]
B
And would I say the Holy Spirit's not leading me to do that, but the Scriptures would say that the chastisement of the Lord and me walking out the statutes would be the evidence of the Holy Spirit in my life?
- [101:16]
A
Well, I would say it is evidence of the Holy Spirit leading you. In the Catholic faith, we have the OCIA process. It's a multi. It's takes about nine months for you to be educated in what the church teaches. What is the faith that you're receiving? Right. Because it was, as I mentioned earlier, it's like, oh, it can't just be, hey, believe in Jesus, be saved, there you go. And they, oh, wait, you were a trinitarian heretic. Wait, get back over here. We gotta fix that really fast. You're actually believing in the wrong Jesus, you know, or you're, oh, you think that you can believe in Jesus and still have an only fans. Hold on, we gotta, we gotta go through the moral teaching a little bit here. So we take it very seriously before someone receives baptism that they are instructed in the essentials of the faith. But we see during that process, I went through it too. I was changing, I was praying more. I wanted to do what God wanted. The Holy Spirit was at work in my life, but the Holy Spirit was preparing me to receive the fullness of the theological virtues of faith, hope and charity. To be poured into my soul and fully cleanse me of original sin. And to initiate my, my first moment of salvation is being an adopted child of God. But that doesn't preclude the Holy Spirit's going to work in anyone who is moving towards God. And also I think we could say if there's someone, a pagan, you know, a non Christian who claims to be Christian is doing good. I mean, God can still move people to do good even if they're not saved, because he knows if they do good, they'll be more likely to go towards the ultimate good.
- [102:44]
B
But you know, I, I think, I don't think you can say that the Holy Spirit is working in someone without him being in them to do the work. I think God used read the Scriptures to say all things work together for the good for those who are in Christ Jesus. God uses all things. God works in all things. But for me to say God is working in me to root sin out of my life, to give certain things up, to make sacrifices, no God, God
- [103:04]
A
used pagans to be able to deliver his chosen people. We could say that he worked through, he worked through some of them without them being fully saved. Like you look at Cyrus, for example in the Old Testament that he was even like talked about being an anointed one, but he was certainly not fully receptive of God's spirit as other people who were actually called by God in the Old Testament. So I don't think I would necessarily agree with that. But I think that we're having common ground here about saying that, you know, Catholics don't believe that it's like a light switch, that it's like you're like basically God isn't in your. We would never say God is never in your life at all until you're baptized. We wouldn't hold that. But we also don't hold the view that there's no metaphysical difference between an unbaptized and a baptized person. Because to me it's very, very clear both in scripture and the tradition history of the Church, that baptism is what changes our souls and it begins the moment of our salvation.
- [104:06]
B
Ordinarily, yeah, I guess when we're talking about, for lack of better terms, the nuances of Catholicism, whether it be baptism or, well, these creeds and these categories
- [104:19]
A
and like I said, but this isn't also a Catholic Protestant thing. This is a preto Baptist. This is a baptismal regenerative thing. Because many Protestants also agree with this field.
- [104:28]
B
Sure, sure. I just mean in general, like with the Catholicism talk here right now, getting into the nuances of. Feels as if. And I know you said some people take this perspective of Catholicism like there's all these hoops to jump through. But being honest, as we're talking, I'm like, man, these nuances feel like some sort of mental gymnastics for me. Well, is someone going to heaven or hell if they don't go to the Catholic Church? Well, it depends. Well, it's like, well what does it mean if it depends or with baptism, if, if someone is, you know, actively a Catholic but doesn't get baptized, has no baptism of desire, no baptism of blood, doesn't get baptized. It's like, well it depends.
- [105:09]
A
And I'm like, well but remember though, the question I brought up about the 6 month old who dies without faith in Jesus, either you're going to say yeah, he's going to hell, didn't have faith, done so, or you're. Or you're going to say it depends. So for the six month old it's either it depends or hell. So which is it?
- [105:25]
B
Well, we're talking about a six month old that can't make a conscious decision versus like the, you know, I, I guess in my mind, I didn't clarify.
- [105:33]
A
I'm just saying the six month old who dies without faith in Jesus, is he going to hell? It sounds like there's only two options. Yes or it depends.
- [105:41]
B
Sure. Okay, let's use this other example again. Let's, let's go back to the moral law example you gave me.
- [105:47]
A
No, I need to push. I have to. Like, are you gonna. It's either yes, it depends or no. Because actually there's three views. Some people will say all unbapt, all babies go to heaven. So it'd be yes, it depends or no, will they go to hell? Yes, they go to hell. It depends on what.
- [106:01]
B
I personally believe all babies do go to heaven.
- [106:04]
A
Okay, so then you would answer. You'd answer no.
- [106:06]
B
Yes.
- [106:07]
A
But that shows you don't always need faith in Christ to go to heaven.
- [106:12]
B
Well, we're talking about children again. Where does faith come from? Faith is like a conscious decision. That's why, like, I do take baptism seriously. Like, if someone comes up to me and is like, hey, I want to get baptized, I'm like, okay, well you. And I would say. And that, and that's like the cool thing about the oc, The OCAA is ocia, oc.
- [106:29]
A
Back when I was a kid, though, it was rcia. They changed it.
- [106:32]
B
They, they're throwing, it's upgraded.
- [106:34]
A
They, George Lucas did it, added CGI and things. So you don't even know what I'm talking about.
- [106:39]
B
It's like, you know, they got, they have these things and it's like, okay, we can say this person's sincere. They're making a step like they've got sincere faith in Jesus. Like, we're talking about a child who doesn't have like a conscious decision, who can't make the conscious decision. I guess in my scenario I'm thinking of like a 20 year old who is, who's. Who's considerably Catholic. And that's why I thought the other example you used earlier in a different context of like, oh, well, we would you hold to do not murder and do not commit adultery. And I'm like, yeah. And it's like, well, what about the Sabbath? And I'm like, okay, well we're talking about more moral law on adultery and that versus like Sabbath, which could be symbolically held on Friday night to Saturday night or a Sunday. So I feel like that example was a little bit.
- [107:19]
A
Well, there's two issues that arise here. First, the reason I brought up the six month old. Is that when you say, well I'm concerned that Catholicism, you have to give a bunch of nuanced explanations about how to be saved. I would say every Christian articulation of salvation will have a nuanced explanation that could sound like hoops or you know, a bunch of explanations like super complicated. Every Christian articulation will have that view unless it's incredibly simple and then creates contradictions. So yeah, you could just, you could just be someone who says, look, you go to heaven if you believe in Jesus. You don't believe in Jesus, you're a six month old baby, you go to hell for eternity. That's very simple. But I think our knowledge of the love of God says that's probably false. Sure. But then someone says, oh well, look, everybody, everyone who never knew who Jesus is through no fault of their own will go to heaven. So all six month olds go, yeah, okay then, but then what about the, the nine year old? What about the Native Americans? A thousand years ago, some of them probably really strove to follow Romans 1 and God and what they knew. Others probably just totally gave in to wickedness. But the fact that a super wicked Native American is going to go to heaven on a technicality because he never knew, he, through no fault of his own, didn't know Jesus, I would say. So back to that six month old question, does the six month old go to heaven? You say yes or no. My point is just that any articulation, whether it's the Catholic view, the Lutheran view, the Presbyterian view, the Baptist view, if it's well thought out, there will be nuances. So the presence of nuances should not make us doubt whether it's true or false.
- [109:00]
B
Yeah, I guess it's not, it's not more, it's not as much of like a doubt, it's just yes, there's a nuance. So like my nuance is I believe all babies go to heaven because of the fate thing being like a conscious decision. Right. That's why I didn't necessarily have the problem with like a 3 year old. If he claims to consciously make a decision to follow Jesus, then like I'm not gonna like First Corinthians 13, love, hopes, all things, I'm gonna hope the best.
- [109:22]
A
But then what about the three year old who doesn't know Jesus and dies like then and has done wrong like that person go to heaven?
- [109:29]
B
Well that's where I, that's where we're trusting that God judges the earth justly, righteously and perfectly. And so like I have to.
- [109:35]
A
And that's, and that's what I say about non Catholics.
- [109:36]
B
Yep. And, and so that's. Yes. And I, and I, I recognize that. I guess that's where I'm, I would, would the Muslim, would the person born a Muslim family that grew up in the Middle east and that person doesn't hear the gospel one time, doesn't get preached to or anything like that, and they die. I'm going to stand 10 toes down and be like, yeah, I think they go to hell. Because I think that. And like, yeah, I'm gonna, you know, be honest.
- [109:59]
A
But I guess, but I guess what's, what's the difference between that person and just like a, like there's different, it sounds like there's just different. There's some kinds of impossible to believe. You're like, well it's not your fault, like if your brain is too small because you're a six month old. But if other impossible to believe, like you could never have heard about Jesus because of where you were born, well, you're still culpable. It just seems like a weird you have different standards of impossible to believe will absolve you or not.
- [110:27]
B
Well, I mean we have the testimony of like what, 500 Muslims all having the same dream in the Gaza Strip and like coming to faith like years ago after October 7th happened. And so it's like they had no Bible, no gospel was preached to them from a person. But they have this dream about Jesus in the Gaza Strip. They come to faith in that way. I'm like man, praise God. And I think God uses, you would agree.
- [110:47]
A
But that means, but that makes it sound like if God doesn't miraculously reveal himself to someone born in a culture where he ordinarily couldn't know Jesus, that person couldn't be saved. So that makes it sound like that's like the Calvinist view of saying that God's going to decide if that person is saved or not because he chose whether to miraculously reveal himself or not.
- [111:06]
B
Well then that's when, you know, we go back to the Romans 1 like God has divinely put his righteousness throughout all of creation so that humanity is without excuse. Where I would say if someone can make a conscious decision in their life, they can look up in the sky with 2 cents in their brain and, and go, wow, there's got to be a creator. Look at the majesty, look at the order, look at the design, which you appealed to a little bit earlier in another point, like we, we would both agree, Majesty, order, And design points to a divine mind.
- [111:33]
A
Yeah.
- [111:34]
B
And so I think anyone can go, there has to be a God out there. And then that therefore makes him question. And you know, we're going down the rabbit hole here. But I, I, I do, I, I want to, I want to be honest in that regard. That's what I do believe about like, oh, the Muslim growing up in that area, in another country who has never heard the gospel preached, doesn't have access to a Bible. If they die believing a false doctrine, then I'm going to be like, well yeah, they put their faith in something else other than Jesus. But that's why I'm like, oh, when Muslims have a dream about Jesus then and they put their faith in that. I mean we have history of, you know, a man in white eyes of fire, hair like wool, meeting the Maori people in like the 1400s at the top of a mountain.
- [112:16]
A
How about just like the five year old girl who's raised in the atheistic Soviet Union communion and dies and isn't going to believe in Jesus, will she go to hell?
- [112:24]
B
I would. If I'm being consistent with my, with my understanding, then I would have to say yes.
- [112:29]
A
3 year old.
- [112:30]
B
If I'm being consistent with what I said earlier, I would have to say yes, if I'm being consistent, yeah.
- [112:34]
A
And I would say that, but that
- [112:35]
B
I, I'm, I can see where I'm falling into, where I'm beginning to get hesitant as we go down the rabbit.
- [112:39]
A
And that's where I do acknowledge that. Yeah. And so that is where my view and the Catholic Church's view of saying that God is the ultimate authority, author of salvation, he has provided us the ordinary means, we reject them at our peril. But God in his infinite grace can work beyond all the sins in our world. And who he saves, who God saves, that's ultimately up to him. There's only one person in this life where we can have moral certainty of their salvation and that's ourselves. And ultimately the end of the day we have to say what does God want me to do? And so just as a Catholic, I would say, okay, well I'm going to go to the church Christ established and say, what has God taught versus me just trying to figure it out on my own. See the discussions we have here, I think Protestants and Catholics we can have really. And they're fun, you know, like scripture mean this, fathers mean that. But at the end of the day what I would say is, did God want to leave the knowledge of the truths he revealed just to, oh well, which Bible debater is the most persuasive? Like, that guy was really good in the debate, so I'm going to listen to him. There's a lot of heretics who are super good at debates.
- [113:47]
B
Yeah.
- [113:48]
A
And I don't. And I would say, no, that's not what God left. He had to leave something else with a sign of his authority to give us these sort of clear teachings. So I think at the end of the day, the Protestant Catholic differences, although a lot of what we discussed is really, it's the baptism debate even Protestants have, it's always going to go back to that bigger step of just what is the ultimate authority to settle these issues? Will it be Christians debating amongst each other or are there pastors who can say, we get that you guys are debating this, but the pastors of the whole church, we've all gotten together, we're bringing this issue to an end now. And everybody's got to knock this off already, just like they did at Nicaea about the divinity of Christ or about the Incarnation, hypostatic union at Chalcedon. I think that's the biggest question that I would encourage Protestants out there to say, look at the ultimate authority question. Who are the authoritative pastors? What are the ultimate authority? I think that's when it's got to be really answered, you know. Yeah.
- [114:45]
B
Let's go to the Eucharist conversation because I think this is very fascinating to me. And the reason that it intrigues me is because I grew up Southern Baptist. So I grew up communion as a symbol. And something that I appreciate is God's grace on me for viewing it merely as a symbol. And I did approach it willy nilly many times, granted, for the sake of. I just thought it was a symbol. Here it is. Take communion once a month, big holidays. That's it. Right. As I've begun to read, I'm going, I don't think it's just a symbol. But where I land on the Eucharist theology line is I don't believe it's just a symbol. But I have not been fully convinced of transubstantiation, which for those listening is the idea that the bread is the literal flesh, the wine is the blood.
- [115:41]
A
We can always work with where you're at. I find a lot of times when people sort through a lot of these issues, I will be honest, in recent years, there's a little bit of a pipeline. People will often start sort of maybe low church Baptists like yourself. Well, actually there was an academic recently, Matthew Barrett. He was A Baptist scholar, he wrote a defense of Sola Scriptura. And then later on though, he's radically changed his theology and is now Anglican. And people question like, is he going to go Catholic? Like he's really tiptoeing in that area. Well, a friend of mine, Stephen Boyce, he has a YouTube channel, Facts F A C T S and two years ago Stephen and I took part in a public debate on justification by faith alone. It was a two, two on two debate. He was partnered with another Protestant and myself and my colleague Jimmy Akin. So we did a two on two debate on justification by faith alone. And Stephen admitted at the time, even, you know, prior to that he was, he was a Baptist, he had been on James White's channel. But he felt like, look, the Baptist theology, Eucharist being a symbol, baptism is something that you just show as a symbol of your renewal credo, baptism. He's like, can't find this in the early church, can't find it. So he then moves towards Anglicanism. Then we debate and he's, you know, still sorting through Anglicanism, but ultimately the Catholic Church's universal claims in relation to the fracturing in Anglicanism, the historical problems. He's now come into the Catholic Church. And so I think sometimes there's like, well, the low church, I want to go to a higher church. But still many of the problems I thought wouldn't persist are kind of still there. And then people sort of move over as a result. So I think that a lot of people when this is debate like the Eucharist, there's actually there is a gulf between just a symbol and transubstantiation to say that Jesus, the bread and wine is the body and blood of Christ. So I guess I put it this way. There's a symbol that's like the zwing. And actually the Protestant reformers, they couldn't agree on this. They had huge fights about this. Cuz Ulrich Zwingli was a Swiss reformer who said it's a symbol. And Calvin's view is more, no, it's not a symbol. Christ is present to believers. So like if you receive the Eucharist as a believer, you're receiving Christ. So the bread and wine communicate Jesus. Lutherans following Martin Luther would say, well no, it's more, it is the bread and wine are Jesus. Not just for unbelievers, but also not just, sorry, not just for believers, but if an unbeliever received it, they'd also be receiving Jesus. And in 1 Corinthians, chapter 11, Paul says, if you Eat and drink of the Eucharist in an unworthy way. You eat and drink judgment on yourself. Why some of you are dying, even. And that would make sense if the Lutheran view is saying, well, no. So it's a symbol of Jesus. Jesus is communicated through the bread and wine. The Lutheran view is called sacramental union. I think the Reformed call it consubstantiation. But Lutherans are like, we never called it that. Dude, come on. To make. Because the Reformed are trying to say, you guys are basically like Catholics, you. They're transubstantiation. Lutherans are just consubstantiation. And they're like, dude, come on. We didn't know. The Lutherans would say the bread and wine contain Jesus. They contain him, and so they have. It affects even the forgiveness of sins. Where Lutherans would stop short is they Catholics? We would. And Orthodox would say, the bread and wine is Jesus. That what we call bread and wine no longer remain. And so the word transubstantiation, it's a medieval scholastic term to describe this change that what appears, they're the appearances, but the substance has changed. And so in the early church, like the Eastern. The Greek Fathers, I think it was Gregory of Nyssa, he used the term metastoichiosis. It literally means trans elementation. So that's where we have to get into substance and accidents. So to make a very rough analogy, you can't press too literally. Like, we could take, like, your. We could get makeup artists and wardrobe people and plastic surgeons and, like, they could dye your hair and give you the curly cues, contacts, all the other stuff, make you look like me, and they could make me look hip and cool like you, you know, with the more carefree hair, you know, put some tattoos on me. I'd prefer Hannah. Gotta get. Gotta get off eventually. Too old to be rocking all that stuff. They, you know, they could make you look like me and me look like you, but inside you're still gonna be you and I'm still gonna be me. This is just an analogy. Don't press it too deeply. But God. So man can change the outside, but not the inside. God can change the inside without the outside. So God could do, like Freaky Friday, where it's like I'm in your body and you're in my body. Just an analogy for the philosophers out there. It's conceptualized, so it's like God could do that.
- [120:31]
B
He.
- [120:32]
A
Man can only change the outside, not the metaphysical inside. But God can change the metaphysical inside while leaving the outside. Now, for human beings in Order to. We can change the metaphysical inside, we usually have to destroy the outside. So, like, your soul being in your body. Right. That's a metaphysical thing about you. But if somebody cut off your head, they'll change that fact about you real quick.
- [120:52]
B
Yeah.
- [120:52]
A
Because your soul will leave your body, but they have to change the outside to do that, to change the inside. God can change the inside without changing the outside. He can change the substance, not the accidents. So to give another example of, like, substance. What the heck does that mean? Like, okay, so you said you were born, what, like 24 years ago?
- [121:10]
B
22. 2003.
- [121:12]
A
Okay, so you're born 22 years ago, and you not just were the same baby that was born, you're like, you were the same embryo that was in your mother's body. But here's. But the thing is, though, you're the same, but there's nothing physically about you that's the same. You have different cells even from being a baby. They're all basically different. Even if you only have, like 5% of the same cells, you have a totally new body. Like, if I change my car and only 5% of the old parts are there, it's a brand new car, but people are different. So it's like, oh, wait, yeah, we've got this material. The accidents. There's things that can change about us that we don't change. Like, I could grow my hair out, you know, I could do the looks maxing, leg lengthening thing, which. Which guys don't. Girls really don't stop jamming hammers in your face and lengthening your legs. Just. Just be funny and confident and not a weirdo and girls will like you. Sorry. We'll do the whole look maxing episode.
- [122:04]
B
I like it.
- [122:05]
A
Yeah, totally. But, like, you could change that.
- [122:07]
B
You could.
- [122:07]
A
You could make me, like six feet tall and I'd still be me. I would just be really regretting that when I'm 60. Probably.
- [122:12]
B
Yeah.
- [122:12]
A
But I'd still be me. You can change accidents, but there's something that's substantial. It's the metaphysical core that unites all of it together. That. That is something that even that I had as an embryo that still persists into me. And that would be part of, like, my immaterial soul that God gave me. So Catholics believe that, look, God wants us to receive the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. He wants us to receive him as the Passover lamb, but not like cannibals do, with actual flesh and blood. So it's very fitting. Under the signs of bread and wine and their sacramental significance, that the. When the priest prays over them, the bread and wine, the appearances remain, but God can change that substance, the metaphysical inside the core that, like humans can't touch. But God can change. And through a miracle, he keeps all the accidents united. Like our souls are what keep all of our bodily accidents together. Because, like, think about when you die, right? We say a body decomposes. Well, our soul is what makes us composed. It keeps all our parts together. Otherwise it starts to fall apart and decompose. So in God changing the normal substance of bread and wine, what keeps all the accidents together through a miracle that is the body and blood of Christ uniting what appears to be bread and wine, that the appearances remain, what we see, touch, taste, hear and smell, but what we are actually receiving, we would say, no, we're not just saying the bread and wine are containing Jesus. We say we are receiving the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ. And the early Christians like what I said about baptism, they are very clear about this. Like Ignatius of Antioch in the year 107, along with saying, obey the bishop as Jesus Christ obeys the Father. Which is. That's wild. I don't know if I've ever heard a Protestant say something like that. He said that heretics abstain from the Eucharist because they do not confess that it is the flesh and blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ. And they say it's not that. So I'm not going to receive that, but receiving it to say, or Justin Martyr in the year 165, he's saying, not as ordinary bread and wine do we receive these things, but as the body and blood of that Jesus Christ who was crucified. So if you have that understanding of the sacramental worldview, a good book, if your listeners want to go deeper on that, is called Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist by Brant Petrie, that what can be hard for us to understand. A lot of times you'll understand the Catholic faith if when you start to understand Judaism really well and you see, oh, like I've had. I brought Jewish people to Mass, and they'll say, this is just like temple, sort of. And I'm like, yeah, it's the fulfillment. It's the fulfillment of Jewish worship found in the true Messiah, Jesus Christ.
- [124:50]
B
Wow.
- [124:50]
A
And so you see that under the Eucharist, all what Jesus says about the bread of life, about the manna that come down from heaven, it can be very difficult to understand that without understanding the endurance of the Passover, the manna man who in Hebrew in the Old Testament that seeing all these Jewish roots, that's something that's attracted me and many other. A lot of other Jews convert to Catholicism because they see that, oh wow, this if Jesus, the Messiah, what God gave us in the old covenant, it's not just done away with, it's found its fulfillment. Jesus said, I've come not to abolish law and the prophets, but to fulfill them.
- [125:22]
B
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- [125:25]
A
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- [125:46]
B
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- [125:47]
A
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- [125:53]
B
I'm not going to lie. That's the best explanation I've heard of the Catholic perspective of the Eucharist. It makes me think. It makes me think a lot. I, I land in the real presence category right now where I believe that like, the presence of the Lord is there when partaking in communion and when I began to like, kind of have that perspective and get this reverence back. Actually, one of my Protestant pastor friends came back from attending a Catholic mass in New York and was like, I think we have lost a reverence for community. And I just happened to be with him in Alabama.
- [126:28]
A
Let me ask you a question. Do you think Jesus, his real presence in the Eucharist is different than the presence of when two or three are gathered in his name?
- [126:38]
B
In a way, yes, I do. And I think, yes, I do.
- [126:43]
A
I'm nudging you along the spectrum till I can get you to, to the Catholic view I just got. But look, what I'm saying here is, so if it is, then the question you'll have to sort out for yourself is, well, I guess I say this. Let's say you brought a non believer to your church. He's just like, I want to check out church. I'm not sure exactly what this. I'm gonna come check it out. Yeah, I don't believe in Jesus yet, but I want to see. You'd be like, cool, man, come. You know, you could just hang out. You don't have to do anything. Just check it Out. Okay. And people go up to receive the Eucharist. Would it be okay for him to go receive the Eucharist?
- [127:12]
B
I. I personally believe in close communion.
- [127:14]
A
Okay. Pushing you further. I know. You're pushing. Yeah, you're pushing me.
- [127:19]
B
You're pushing me.
- [127:20]
A
Yeah. And the reason for that would be. Oh, it's because it's like we would never say, oh, you can't hear the Bible until you're Christian. It's like, well, of course you can hear the Bible. You can receive. You know, we're hearing the words of Jesus that we're receiving, receiving grace by. You know, obviously we give the word of Scripture to a non believer. But in the, in the Didache, what I mentioned earlier about baptism, it has instructions about the Eucharist and it says it quotes Jesus. And remember, this is like, honestly, it starts. Scholars who believe that Didache is older than the Gospel of Matthew because Matthew and the Didache are parallel. That either Didache drew from Matthew or Matthew is actually paralleling things that are already found in the Didache. And one of those is in the Didache, it says, do not give the Eucharist to those who are not baptized. For our Lord said, do not give that which is holy to dogs. You know, going back to what he said in the Sermon on the Mount, saying, this is what Jesus means by that. The first century Christians would say, what that means is the Eucharist is a very holy presence of Jesus that we share. So we cannot give that which is holy to those who have not been made holy through baptism already. And so if you are you for close communion, that would push one more towards, oh, this is to say, no, Jesus, like the Eucharist, he's really present here, even if you don't believe that is him. And so if you're not prepared to receive, just the same as a Catholic who is in grave sin, cannot go and receive Jesus in the Eucharist because they eat and drink judgment on themselves. You're receiving the Eucharist is a sign to say, I am in communion with you, Lord, and with the Church, and I desire to receive you, Lord. Come and enter under. Under my roof. As the, the Roman soldier said about Jesus.
- [128:59]
B
Yeah, you know. Yeah, I do. I enjoy when I say this. I'm not like just landing, like, yep, this is where I'm going to be for the rest of my life. I enjoy the real presence, perspective right now of communion because I feel like I have found this new profound reverence and respect for the Lord in it.
- [129:16]
A
Yeah.
- [129:17]
B
And my not that it's about experience. But my experience with communion and the presence of God is drastically different. And in fact, I'm at this place right now where Father Lazarus, my Coptic Orthodox friend, we were talking about the Eucharist, and he's like, it's my medicine. Like, I can't live without it. And when he said that, I'm like, it just made me just begin to think of all the different times prior.
- [129:43]
A
I'll give you an example. So we, for those who are too sick to receive the Eucharist, we have a ministry where those priests will do this, but also lay people. When there's not enough priests to deliver the Eucharist to the homebound, to, you know, they're stuck in a hospital bed or something so they can receive. And this is what the early Christians. You. The early Christians used that language. They said, this is the medicine of immortality. Not that we earn eternal life by receiving the Eucharist, but we're saying that just like, look, I'm alive because my parents gave birth to me and they raised me and gave me life. I didn't earn it at all. If I choose to not eat the food, I'm going to die. The food isn't earned my life. It's just saying I could choose to kill myself by going on a hunger strike. Probably the worst way to go. Well, Christians can do the same thing if they choose to not receive Jesus in the Eucharist. You don't always have to receive every Sunday. You have to celebrate, but you could be in a state of grave sin where you're not able to receive the Eucharist. You could live in a very poor area where a priest maybe comes once every few months. The church just gives as a law, when you're able to, to receive the Eucharist at least once a year, preferably during the Easter season, but ideally more than that, because Pope Francis has said, look, the Eucharist is not a prize for being holy. He says it is the medicine of immortality. It is what heals us. It's what gives us spiritual grace to be able to resist sin, resist temptation. So I think there that you are. Yeah, you're on a good and right track with that. But to see that this is important. Why is it important? And yeah, that medicine, immortality language is very, very early on in the church and how it's used.
- [131:21]
B
Yeah, I did like that phraseology in that language. It was very interesting to me. I like talking in honest conversation about this stuff because I am intrigued and Catholicism intrigues me.
- [131:36]
A
And, oh, I forgot what I was going to say about the homebound. Sorry. I have three kids and they kept me up last night. But let's say you believe you're going to go give that Eucharist, maybe in your own church, say, I'm sure you'd love to do this. Hey, there's someone I want to receive the Eucharist. And you're like, oh, you're stuck at home. I'll bring it to you. I'll do that. There were saints in the early church. There's a story of a saint named Tarcissius. This was when the Roman Empire was still persecuting Christians and he was bringing the Eucharist to people in the catacombs. Others who were in hiding couldn't. Couldn't go to Mass, couldn't receive it. And a mob descended on him and asked him what he was doing. And they tried to take the Eucharist from him. And he miraculously held onto the Eucharist so hard they couldn't pry it out of his hands. Even as they beat him to death, he would not allow the Eucharist to fall into their hands. He did not want it to be. He wanted to protect it and to save it. And so that's one of the reasons that he was. The early Christians recognized that God had miraculously worked through him, and now he had died as a witness to the faith, a witness to not just that Jesus died, but that Jesus died, rose, and now is present in the Eucharist for any who would receive the medicine of immortality. And so I think that that kind of a witness, to me, there's only. Look, there's only two options to look at that either Saint Tarcisius was. Was a faithful disciple of Jesus and loved Jesus and died for him, or he was an idolater and he thought a piece of bread was God. So I think, like, one has to eventually make the choice not just that this bread and wine, that it contained Jesus in a spiritual way, but the bread it is. I am carrying the body of Christ with me right now. So to me, it's like, you look at that story, it's like, look, he's either a martyr for Christ, or there are many Protestants who say, that guy's an idolater going to hell. He thinks bread is Jesus. And I would encourage Protestants who think through this question of the Eucharist, if they want to go deeper, I'll shill another book. My friend Joe Heschmeyer has a book called the Eucharist is really Jesus. I'll just. I'm going to mail you all this stuff, man. I'm going to mail you all this. I was going to bring one of my books. I brought another gift for you. I didn't know if I was going to have time to give it to you or not. I'll be sure to ask about it. But I brought you. I'll do it now.
- [133:38]
B
Oh, I'm pumped.
- [133:38]
A
I brought you something.
- [133:40]
B
Whoa. Let's go.
- [133:41]
A
I was going to bring you books, but I can mail books. Wow. That is a Jerusalem cross.
- [133:45]
B
Wow.
- [133:46]
A
So the Jerusalem cross was popular around the 10th and 11th century, and so it was on the flags of the Crusaders who are retaking Jerusalem. Yeah, I bought that from Christians in Jerusalem when I was in there in 2018. And I actually took that and several other crosses that I bought and prayed over them when I placed them on the tomb of Jesus. Whoa.
- [134:11]
B
So this. This one was on.
- [134:13]
A
That was. That is on the. Jesus's tomb. That is in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.
- [134:18]
B
Oh, man.
- [134:19]
A
Yeah.
- [134:19]
B
This is a really kind gift. Thank you.
- [134:21]
A
And so the symbolism, there's different origins of the symbols. One says the five crosses are symbols of the five wounds of Christ, his hands, his feet, and his side. Another symbol is that the four smaller crosses are the Gospels that are being spread to the four corners of the earth.
- [134:39]
B
Very fascinating.
- [134:40]
A
So, yeah, so that was the cross popular. The Franciscan friars of the Holy Land carry that cross as their symbol. But, yeah. Dang.
- [134:48]
B
This is very cool. Thank you so much. This is sweet. I love it. This is. Wow. Thank you.
- [134:53]
A
Have you ever been to Israel?
- [134:54]
B
Not yet. I want to go.
- [134:55]
A
I really do. When things. I tell you what, man. When things calm down there, when they calm down, I'll take you. We'll have a good time.
- [135:02]
B
I would love to go. I really want to go. I want to see it. I want to. I want to. I want to see the Holy Land. I want to walk and I want to go. I. I just want to see it all, dude.
- [135:10]
A
The best is, though, if you go, I love it. You're probably going to be like my wife, because, like, you know, she's got, like, blue eyes and blonde hair. And we went down there. We were there on a mission, like a pilgrimage together. And this is many years ago. And I said. We were staying at our hotel and I said, like, hey, I'm going to go into the Old City. I'm going to go to the Holy Sepulcher where Jesus's tomb is. I'm going to go pray. It was later at Night. And she's like, don't go walking in the city by yourself. Like, it's dangerous. Like, I should go with you. Like, make sure you're not by yourself. And then we're walking into the city and, like, people are looking at us and talking and like this, like, little gang of street kids, like, following us. And she's like, what's happening? And I'm like, one of us looks like we don't belong here. I have an ambiguous ethnicity that allows me to pass for a lot of Mediterranean. Like, when I was there, there are Muslims that were kind of giving me, like, sort of a look. And I walk by them and I just. I just. I try to play it cool. I'm just like, mahabar. They just go, hala, hala. And I'm like, man, I'm glad they didn't ask me if I spoke anything else. If you go, by the way, don't learn Hebrew. It's not as helpful. Helpful. Learn Arabic. Way more helpful. But. But it was nice. Like, I walk around and if I have my sunglasses on, it's kind of blend in.
- [136:16]
B
Yeah.
- [136:17]
A
The Jews think I'm Israeli. People think maybe I'm Palestinian or Muslim. But, like, my wife, blonde hair, blue eyes. So I feel like if you go, well, they'll be like, price Crawford. I can't believe it.
- [136:26]
B
I'm gonna stick out like a sore thumb.
- [136:28]
A
Oh, but it's. But it's. It's a. Awesome. This idea that I think you see an appreciation of sacraments. The idea that the. The immaterial grace God gives us, the. The. The invisible faith is made visible to us because God gives us the faith in matter, because we're made of matter and matter matters. And so it's like there's something else to be able to go there and be like, this is where my Lord walked. This is where he put his feet into the. The Sea of Galilee. This was Peter's house. This was, you know, to be able to really walk along all of this. You know what's funny? Actually, there's two tombs of Jesus in Jerusalem. Interesting. You have a video about it on my channel if you ever want to watch it. So there's a tomb. So. So here's what happens. So Jesus is crucified, right? And buried, rose from the dead, and his tomb is there. And his tomb becomes an object of. For Christians to go and pray at. Right? Like, if you live in the first century, you'd be probably praying at Jesus tomb. Like. Like, man, this is where Jesus rose from the dead. You want to go and pray there. City of Jerusalem is destroyed in AD 70 by the Romans. They're like, we're not, you know, there's a Jewish uprising. City gets leveled, and it's just outside of the old city. So because it's leveled, the Roman Emperor Hadrian doesn't want Christians worshiping there. So he places, builds a temple to Jupiter over the site. But that marks the site for future Christians to know where it is. Then after Emperor Constantine makes Christian, he declares toleration for Christianity in the Roman Empire. So the Christians are no longer persecuted. His mother working together, they're able to go and recover relics from the sites there. And eventually they build the Church of the Holy Sepulcher over the site of Jesus's tomb. And archeological digs have shown that where the Church of Holy Sepulcher is, is, it is outside of the old, the wall of the old City of Jerusalem. Because you remember in Hebrews it says Jesus was crucified outside the gate and people would have been buried outside of where all the Jews lived because it's, you know, you don't be around a bunch of dead bodies. So there's very, very good historical evidence. Interesting to me. Like, and I don't believe every saint story that's told to me, but to me I'm like, wow, there's really good historical evidence that this is Jesus.
- [138:37]
B
Wow.
- [138:37]
A
This is the site. So when you go there, it's this massive, huge building. Like the tomb is this chapel almost like as big as, like big as a studio.
- [138:46]
B
Yeah.
- [138:46]
A
Inside of an even gigantic church. Wow, it's huge. And so you go, and the church is shared by four Orthodox churches and the Catholic Franciscans. So they have the site. And it feels very Catholic and Orthodox. Yeah. So for many Protestants, it's kind of off putting. So in like the 19th century Protestants, there are some people who claim there was this garden tomb with a hole in the rock that looked like a skull. And they're like, this was really where Jesus was buried. And it's, it's, and it looks like the tomb you'd see in a coloring book, like kids coloring book. Very pristine, very quiet, trees, garden. The rock looks like the skull and there's the tomb. And it looks like a storybook come to life. Yeah. But modern archaeology has shown no, the, the ancient cistern there would not have had that skull face. There's. And even they who own the site, they don't make the claim this is really Jesus's tomb. But a lot of Protestants go there because it doesn't have, because Jesus. The site of Jesus's tomb, it was preserved for thousands of years, has a lot of Catholic and Orthodox incense, icons, candles. Very sacramental. The masses, Mass is celebrated. I. When I was there on a pilgrimage, I got to celebrate. I attended mass on Easter morning right by the outside of the tomb.
- [140:02]
B
Wow.
- [140:02]
A
The tomb is very small. You go in, it's like you're kind of huddled in there, and you can just, like, bend over. And I put that on the slab where Jesus was buried. But you go. And it was. It was really cool. I was the only person from my group who went. I went at five in the morning to get a seat, and I was going through the city, and it felt like, you know, the women going to the tomb, it's still dark out. It's Easter morning. I just, like, felt the Holy Spirit. I'm like, oh, wow. And then I go and, like, a bunch of people are there. And the bishop, we call him the Patriarch, The Latin patriarch celebrated the Mass in Latin for everyone who was there. The funniest thing, though, the Orthodox, they're one week behind in the calendar, so, you know, they have a different calendar than us. So they were doing Palm Sunday in the back of the tomb.
- [140:42]
B
Whoa.
- [140:42]
A
And they were. And they were being a little annoying. Well, because Catholics and Orthodox, I like to think of it as, like, I love them because we recognize they have valid sacraments. You know, they have the Eucharist, they have priests. I don't even do a lot of Orthodox apologetics. I just want to get the family back together. I want to straight up, like, parent trap. Just, like, get Pope Leo and the patriarchs, you know, trick them to get together. I'm like. And they really, honestly, they really seem, like, way closer together than, like, like, Catholic, Orthodox on the Internet. It's like, oh, man, what do you guys. It's, like, crazy, like, anger and, like. Yeah, but, like, when you do the patriarchs, it's a lot. So. So the problem is, though, we're really close. Sometimes when you're close in a family, family members know how to get under your skin. Yeah. So I think of them as, like, the little brother that just, like, really wants to get to you. So when the Latin patriarch got up to give his homily, they were ringing bells, they're making a ton of noise. So he couldn't speak. And Latin patriarch of Jerusalem, he stand up guy. He actually, during the. When the hostages, during the. After October 7th were being held in Gaza, he offered himself in place of some of the hostages.
- [141:48]
B
Wow.
- [141:49]
A
He said like, because he's, he's there, he, and he's super. He's advocating for the Palestinian Christians and for end to unjust war. And like, he said like, look, if you're going to keep hostages, part of this war, I, there's kids and women there. I take me, I'll go take their place. They didn't take him up on it, but like he's the real deal. And so like when he got up and they were doing that, he didn't get mad. He just went like, he smiled and shrugged his shoulders and just like sat back down.
- [142:14]
B
That's cool.
- [142:15]
A
So, so yeah, when, when it calms down over there, we'll go, we'll bring some other people. That'd be fun. We'll have a good time.
- [142:23]
B
Man. Thank you for that gift. That's really sweet. Yeah, thank you. I got a couple more questions. And so the veneration of the saints, something. And it's not that I, my, my quote unquote issue with the praying to the saints isn't necessarily asking the saints to pray for me. It's more so of like, why would I do it if Jesus is already the bridge?
- [142:46]
A
Sure.
- [142:46]
B
You know what, I'm, I'm just like, I actually feel like that's a, that's a pretty tolerable stance. It's, I'm not like necessarily dogging it. I'm just like, if Jesus was already the bridge to the Father.
- [142:58]
A
Yeah.
- [142:58]
B
And I can pray directly to him and why, why wouldn't I just keep praying to him rather than asking the saints to pray for me?
- [143:03]
A
For the same reason that I would ask when something bad happens in a Protestant church. I remember a story about there was this Protestant gathering and they were doing a pool party and this five year old boy, he falls in the pool and they find him and he's not breathing and they take him in the ambulance and they're not sure if he's going to make it. And all of them were just sending texts and emails and they're saying we need to storm the gates of heaven with our prayers. And they're asking everybody that they can pray for this little boy. Come on people, we gotta storm the gates of heaven with our prayers. Why do we have to storm the gates if Jesus already opened them? But I think deep down is because we know that we are not just individuals, we are truly members of the body of Christ. And so to be members of the body of Christ, it's like we're connected to each other. It's like there's a difference between like an, an organic collection and an aggregate. Like, I think a lot of people say, oh, we're part, we're part of the body of Christ. In the same way that like a bunch of bottles in a bag at the store are part of one bag. It's like they're just all sitting next to each other, but they're not really connected. That's an aggregate. But like my body parts are not just happen to be next to each other.
- [144:18]
B
Yeah.
- [144:19]
A
Like my heart is connected to my lungs, connected to my brain. All of the parts are connected to each other. They really impact each other. They do affect each other. That's why Paul says that when, you know, when one part of the body rejoices, all parts of the body rejoice. When one suffers, we all suffer. So to say that God, because he loves us and wants to save not just as individuals, but he wants to bring the whole church to salvation. In Paul's letters, he talks about the church being brought to salvation. There's a lot more language about corporal salvation, the church being saved, than just you or I, the individual being saved. And so in seeing that, then. Oh, because we really are connected. God loves us and he dignifies our requests to one another. Lord, pray for Bryce that you can help him to come to the knowledge of truth. And these doctrinal questions he's really struggling with. And you'd probably be like, man, thanks for. Thank you. Like, praying for me. Yeah, it's like, because I care. Yeah. And so what I would say is like, okay, I would say that, that the body of Christ. Then what I love also is because Jesus is the bridge. Right. I would say, like, he's not just the bridge, he is like the, the hitman of death. Like I love in Revelation 1:18, Jesus.
- [145:31]
B
I like that slang. That's cool.
- [145:32]
A
I'm gonna see it on a shirt soon. Man of death.
- [145:36]
B
I like that.
- [145:36]
A
Yeah, because it's like he says in the book of Revelation. Revelation, I say it's 118. He says, I once was dead and now I'm alive. I'm the alpha and omega. I once was dead and now I'm alive. I'm alive forevermore. I hold the keys to death and Hades. I hold the keys to death in Hades. That Jesus death didn't kill Jesus. Jesus killed death.
- [145:55]
B
Yeah.
- [145:55]
A
And so that gives us hope that like, if someone is in heaven, if they've died and their soul goes to be with Jesus in heaven, they're more, they're not dead. I mean, their soul is away from their body, but we would say they're more alive in Christ now than I am here on earth. Yeah, they're there with him. And so James Fives and James. And also we have to remember, like, the reason, like, well, why, you know, why the saints such a big deal? Well, because heaven is not egalitarian. We oftentimes think everybody's got to be treated as equals. But like James 5 says that the prayers of righteous people are very powerful. Some people's prayers are more efficacious because they're more united to Christ. And so, like in heaven, that's why it's like, you know, what is. I go to heaven anyways? What does it matter if I do here? Well, look, your happiness, your ability to receive God in heaven will be proportionate to how much you've received God here. So it's like, the more you've magnified your soul here in this life to receive God, the more you'll be able to do in heaven. We'll still have infinite. All of us will still have infinite happiness. But it'll be like, I can, you know, analogy. Don't take it literally. It's like on the first day, I. One unit of the beatific vision with God. But this saint, it's five units, then it's two, then it's 10, then it's three, then it's 20. You know, if you look at an infinite series, it's this. It's both infinity, but one's still bigger. So I would say that the saints, then we can say, look, the prayers of righteous people are very powerful. And Hebrews 12 says that the. That these saints in heaven are the spirits of just men made perfect. And so whose prayer is going to be more powerful than them? Just to say, you know, pray for me, you know, and to ask them, and I get their. Catholics can go overboard with that, just like with anything. You can go overboard. Like, people can, you know, people can treat the Bible like a superstitious artifact, flip to a random page for guidance. People can become superstitious with the saints, but it doesn't nullify the basic principle that we are one body in Christ. And we can ask you to pray for us, but especially those who are closely united to God. There's a special communion there. And asking them for their prayers to bond everyone together. Just as I would know, like, if I drop dead after this interview, I pray for my kids and my wife every day I pray. My wife, you know, is healed from the. The brain cancer surgery she did last month. If I drop dead tomorrow, I'm still going to be praying for that stuff. And they. And, you know, and I asked them to pray for me.
- [148:14]
B
Well, I guess the thing that I don't want to say, like, rub me the wrong way, because I'm going to be. Be careful how I talk.
- [148:19]
A
Just be honest.
- [148:20]
B
Yeah.
- [148:20]
A
Okay.
- [148:20]
B
Well, yeah, I mean, it did rub me the wrong way. I went to Mexico two years ago, Mexico City. Went to this beautiful Catholic church in Mexico City, and I went in there, and they had statues of the saints in there.
- [148:33]
A
Yeah.
- [148:33]
B
And one thing that I just did not understand, and I think where the misconception of people are like, oh, praying to the saints is idol worship. I'm not. I. I said that loosely years ago. And now through understanding, I'm like, okay, that's not necessarily what. What you guys mean. Yeah, but when I'm in this Catholic church, there are these desperate Mexican families who go up to. I believe it's St. Peter, the statue, and they're writing, like, prayer requests for healing on these wristbands. I've got this diagnosis. I've got this diagnosis. And they're hanging them on St. Peter, and they're praying to Peter in that moment for the healing. And I was in there for a while just trying to watch and understand, and, you know, it just didn't make sense to me, you know, and it rubbed me weird because I'm like, why are they kneeling before the statue of St. Peter? They're writing this healing stuff on him. They're hanging it on him, they're kneeling before him and they're praying.
- [149:40]
A
Right.
- [149:41]
B
It just. It did rub me the wrong way, and I just didn't understand.
- [149:45]
A
Yeah. There's a few issues that come up with. With this. First, I think there's cultural context, like, when you look in Latin America, especially in countries like the Philippines, where there is a stronger sense of when you have a. Especially when you have a conflict with someone, you don't go directly to the person you have a conflict with. You seek a mediator, usually a family member. So part of that is a cultural institution where we might not understand that as much because we have a culture more of you can just go straight to the person you have beef with. If God. If I have a problem with God, I'm just gonna go to God. I'm sorry. Forgive me, Lord, for my sins. So that can be more of, like a cultural artifact of wanting to seek other mediators. And sometimes it can become superstitious if it forgets that Christ is our one mediator of redemption, and that other mediation is only possible through Him. Another point I would raise though is that in seeing this, this emotional plea to ask St. Peter to pray for some, to. For a person's health. I mean, it's, it's different, but also similar to the emotional pleas of the example I gave earlier of asking people to pray for my son. He's going to the hospital. It's like people like, be tears, like, please pray for him. Like, you know, you know, I know there's difference, but there's a similarity there too, of like be getting emotional and asking a fellow Christian to pray for you when you're in your time of need and still feeling like, oh, all these prayers really would be helpful. Different, but there's a similarity still to catch on to that. I think the other thing to mention with that is that, yeah, it becomes superstitious if the person thinks the saint on his own power can, can grant something. Similar to people. I mean, you did the interview with Kenneth Copeland before. Similar to people who take the Bible and think, if I just read this verse, I'm going to have health and wealth like the Bible, which should point them to Christ, became an idol for them, a magical artifact. I would say you can, if that abuse doesn't disqualify using the Bible correctly. The same is true for people who abuse, seeking the intercession of the saints in that kind of a way. I think. Also I would say when we discuss this issue, we have to define our terms. So like, a guy would ask you, what do you mean by the word pray?
- [151:58]
B
Yeah. So basically what I observed in. And I'm talking particularly to this scenario in Mexico City, what I observed were these people were writing. And I had asked our guide, I was like, what is going on in here? So just for even clarity, they were writing like. I remember this one lady had cancer and she wrote like, I want healing for cancer. Yeah. On this wristband, hung it on St. Peter. It was like a statue of St. Peter and there's tons of them hanging off of him. Hangs hers on there, kneels before this statue of St. Peter and I'm not going to be the one. Oh, she was praying to Peter, but begins to pray.
- [152:34]
A
Well, I think what will happen here is it's that word pray that is going to muddy our conversation a little because we have to define it. The word prayer originally comes from the Latin word precare and all it. The word just meant to ask or request. So a few, you know, centuries ago. Well, not even that, like, honestly, even if you look at the works of Jane Austen, so you look at literature from, like, the 1700s, the 1800s, 1600s, 1700s, people would say stuff like, oh, I pray thee tell what. What is to. To do with Mr. Darcy. Or, you know, whatever it might be. The word pray would. It was a synonym for ask. So you could pray to God, you could pray to a magistrate, you could pray to a friend. I. I pray that you do this. My prayer. Is that it. It was a neutral word. It just mean request. But more, the word prayer came to have a definition that I would say. I think for modern Protestants would say prayer, like noun, period. Prayer, speaking to God and asking him to do something.
- [153:41]
B
Sure. That's what I was meaning when I was saying that. So, sure.
- [153:44]
A
So by that definition, though, I would say, oh, well, they're not praying because they're not. She's not talking to God. She's talking to St. Peter. It can't possibly be prayer. You might say, okay, fine. Prayer, noun, period, is thinking in your mind a request that someone else will fulfill? I think that's literally what now. Because people will think, oh, well, only, you know, only God could do that. But who knows? They figure out Meta and Tesla and they hook things up to our brain, we might be able to think requests and other people ascent to them. Like, that's not that far away from us with technology. You know, we put something in it so we could think something, and it makes a request to an app or to other people. But once again, asking whether you verbalize it, whether you use sign language, whether you just think a thought and your brain is like, red, and that's just making a request. So it's like, do Catholics pray to saints? Not if what you mean by prayer is asking things only God should do. The answer is, no, we don't. You know, we don't ask Saint. Saint Peter, save me from my sins. Yeah, but if you mean just asking, making a request, you know, for. For help, for alleviation of burdens. Yeah. Yes. Just like other people would ask that. Finally, I would say also, as for Protestant, I would say, well, look, should Christians have the freedom to pray as they see fit as long as it doesn't contradict Scripture? And I would say, you know, Scripture doesn't contradict this. So why can't Christians pray as they feel? Right. If it doesn't contradict the Bible, they might say, oh, well, the Bible says not to do necromancy, don't talk to the dead. But those rules in the old Testament refer to what? The necromancy there is referring to two way communication. It's referring to summoning the dead to get information out of them. Like what Saul did with the witch of Endor in 1st Samuel 23. He went to summon. He used the witch to summon the, the, the spirit of the prophet Samuel who had died. That would be wrong. But it's not always wrong to talk to a dead person. I'll give you a prime example. On the mount of Transfiguration, Jesus spoke to Jesus, a living man like you or I spoke to Moses, and Moses had been dead for centuries.
- [155:55]
B
I, I get what you mean by that phraseology, but I feel like, I feel like that could be like a little misleading for, like someone like, like Mexicans who celebrate El Dia de los Muertos. Like, I feel like that's.
- [156:03]
A
Well, that's just the day. That's just honoring the, the day of the dead is just a recognition that we ought to pray for those Christians who have died before us. Just as we would pray for people in this life to grow in holiness. Like, Lord, I pray that Bryce will continue to walk in the faith and that you will sanctify him and help him grow closer to you. We would say, look, there are people. When this gets into purgatory a bit, we would say, look, if you die before you're fully purified from being attached to sin, God will purify you of that later. So just as we pray for someone's sanctification in this life, we pray for those who God is sanctifying after death, who might have been attached to sin when they did die. So it's just a memory of the dead. This idea that every Christian who dies immediately goes to heaven, it's not in scripture. It doesn't say that, that, that's true for martyrs. In scripture, in the early church, it was clear that martyrs immediately go to heaven, but it never says that. And the early Christians, like, the very earliest prayers that we find, like in the catacombs are things like Petros and Paulos precatore primos a sinner. Peter and Paul pray for Primus a sinner. Like, then this is, this is early second, third, like our earliest archeological inscriptions from Christians. So when you mention that. Yes. Are there Mexican traditions like Santa, there's like Santa Muerte, which is like this like kind of like demonic figure. Yeah, that's a. No, no. But Dia de los Muertos, understanding that we pray for those who have died, we remember the dead, we pray for them, and that's Also what I love about Catholicism is like, when someone dies, we have this. This deep yearning to still care for them. And so we. We still pray for them that they. They're now on the. We pray for them knowing that our prayers are really. Are efficacious. I'll give you a weird sci fi example. It's like we can pray. You can pray for anything where God hasn't made his will obvious. So, for example, I can't pray pray like you can't pray that Charlie Kirk would not be assassinated. God's will is obvious. It happened. The past doesn't change. But you could pray that his soul was in a state of grace, so he's fully prepared to be received into heaven, that he was fully sanctified and pray for him that he was, you know, or you could pick anybody who was like, killed, for example. You could pray that God, because he's outside of time, he can apply our prayers for the state of someone's soul in the past, even though we make them in the future, because God sees all moments of time at once. Wild stuff, man.
- [158:38]
B
Thank you for joining me and having conversation.
- [158:40]
A
Of course.
- [158:41]
B
It was super fun. I'd love for you to pray for me and everyone watching and listening to kind of close us out.
- [158:45]
A
I will do that. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Lord Jesus Christ and the living God, we give you thanks and praise. I thank you so much, Lord, for this conversation with Bryce. I pray for everyone who is listening that you will bless them, help them to know that they are loved. If they don't believe in God or don't believe in you, Lord, just open their hearts. Use any of the words that we have said. Humble servants of you who are not worthy, use the words that we've said just to bring others to you. I pray that you bless Bryce and everything he's doing to help lead people closer to you and just to provide him protection and safety. And just continue to bless those who are eagerly seeking after you. And we offer all of this up through Christ our Lord, in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen.