← Truth Unites
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- [00:00]
A
You know, so like, for somebody to pick up and leave this church, this ecclesial communion, whatever, it's not just a matter of me changing my mind. It's a matter of me changing practically everything, and not just in the sense of worldview, but it reorients all one's relationships and interactions. And I think it's an entirely natural judgment to say, like, if I were to deny this, then it would be, in a certain sense a denial of what's good here. There's a certain hesitancy in Catholic communion to ask God for what we need, whereas I think that. So something I have learned from the way in which my Protestant brothers and sisters pray is that it's. No, it's an appeal to God, who is our Heavenly Father, whose good pleasure it is to give us the kingdom. And so we ought to look to him for providence, for love.
- [00:41]
B
One of the things we can talk about is the issue of real presence and what it means to feast on Christ. But probably, actually, maybe the biggest one would just be, where is it? Would this be one of those areas? Well, we're the one true church, and so we have it and baptism spills over, but the Eucharist doesn't. And tough. Father Gregory Pine, I feel so honored to have a conversation with you. Thanks for taking the time today.
- [01:03]
A
My joy.
- [01:04]
B
Yeah, so we have lots to discuss here, and I'll give a table of contents for viewers in just a second. First, here's a fun ecumenical question. C.S. lewis or J.R.R. tolkien? Which writer do you prefer?
- [01:18]
A
I prefer J.R.R. tolkien. Okay. As far as fiction goes, as far as nonfiction goes, I've read way more CS Lewis, so probably CS Lewis about the fiction.
- [01:29]
B
What about Tolkien do you prefer?
- [01:30]
A
I prefer. I like CS Lewis. As kid stories. I'm thinking especially of Narnia because the allegory is straightforward. J.R.R. tolkien, I think, was critical of the straightforwardness of it because he thought it was somewhat puerile. Whereas he thought that you just tell a story and that on the basis of a well told story, you draw, as it were, thematic content from it. So, I mean, I love the Chronicles of Narnia. I love the Space trilogy. I love Till we have Faces, which I've read now like three times and still don't even begin to understand. But I'd say, as for fiction, JRR Tolkien, as for nonfiction, I've just read a lot more CS Lewis.
- [02:11]
B
I'm so tempted to just throw aside everything else we were gonna talk about and just talk about til we have faces. The whole Time. Cause it's my favorite book of all time.
- [02:17]
A
Let's go.
- [02:18]
B
I love. Well, I love both of them. I could see a case for Tolkien maybe being the better fiction writer from a technical standpoint. But I just love certain books of Lewis, especially the Space trilogy. Now you're writing a book on fortitude right now?
- [02:30]
A
I am.
- [02:32]
B
Do you use as an illustration the scene in the Hobbit where Bilbo is in the tunnel and he hear. Do you know the scene I'm talking about? And he hears smaug. And he's afraid. And it says, it was the bravest thing he ever did. He fought the real battle in the tunnel alone. I get choked up whenever I think about that scene.
- [02:48]
A
I don't use that.
- [02:49]
B
Would you consider changing and putting it.
- [02:51]
A
I take it under advisement. I haven't submitted the manuscript yet, so I'm not against it. Yeah. The examples that I take are from soldiers and martyrs mostly so because they seem like the most potent examples. But Bilbo Baggins is to be included in their ranks.
- [03:08]
B
It's just a powerful scene. The martyrs also make me emotional thinking about courage. So let's do talk about CS Lewis a little bit, but just so viewers will know. What we're going to talk about is sins of speech in an Internet Age. How do we have godly speech in an Internet age? All my questions on that are just going to be help me think this through, because I'm wrestling with it every week, if not every day. And then areas of agreement, Catholic to Protestant. And then at the end, areas of disagreement, not to debate them, but just explore. Work through. But three times for Till we have Faces. So I said that. So if people aren't interested until we have Faces, they can skip ahead in the timestamps here. But this is my second favorite book, Till we have Faces. Curious what you like about it. And then I'll share what I like about it, too.
- [03:57]
A
So I think it's his most elegant work of fiction. I don't know that I've read, or I did read the Dark Tower and other Stories, that one little collection there. But I don't retain memories from most of what went on in that. But with respect to Till we have Faces, I guess when I read it, I didn't know the myth of Cupid in Psyche. So I didn't know what stood in the background and how this was an interpretation of it. I kind of came to appreciate this central role of this notion. Like you can't come face to face with God until such time as you have a face or That's a bad paraphrase. But this idea of coming into possession of one's identity in conversation with God. So, like, I can, like, pull something thematically out of it, but a lot of it, for me is just vignettes. Like her description, for instance, of the cult of Unjit, where she describes the priest of Undit. Like, he had that unjit smell. You know, he had sacrificed birds and small mammals. You know, he had been known to sacrifice men as well. But this idea that, like, sacrifice has this kind of bodily dimension that it, like, lays claim to your life, it reorients your life. Yeah. So there are a lot of, like, little vignettes throughout the course of the story which remain with me. But as to the overall shape of it, sometimes I felt myself adrift.
- [05:10]
B
Yeah. So for people who are watching this video and have never read this, they hopefully have probably read something of C.S. lewis. So this is later in his life, what he said. I think he said it was his favorite of his own works.
- [05:24]
A
I've heard that, too. Yeah.
- [05:25]
B
Along with Perelandra. And it's not easy. So if people are thinking, oh, wow, this is a great book, it'll be like reading the Bible. It'll pick me up. You know, it's kind of a slog to get into it. My experience reading it for the first time was four fifths of the way through it. I was kind of thinking, I'm not sure what's really going on here. And then in the end, it all comes crashing down. And just the theme of redemption in that story as this person who's filled with enmity toward the gods because it's set in this polytheistic world comes to see, I'm the problem. And it's such a vivid way of grasping the idea of conviction, of sin, all that enmity toward. And then it turns inward.
- [06:10]
A
Yeah. And also, like. Well, I think he said he also. He wrote it at about the same time as the Four Loves and surprised by joy. So, like, wrestling with the role of love in his own life or the differentiation among loves and basically how lower loves need be subordinated to higher loves or they go rotten. And you even see that, too. Like, I don't know. Have you read A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Van Aken? Yes, but like, his notion there of this idea that this lower love was taken from him so that it could give space for a higher love. Like a higher love that had, you know, laid hold of his wife but he couldn't appreciate at the time, which is you know, I suppose we can have a conversation about God's perfect and permissive will, but this idea that, like, lower loves need to be subordinated to higher loves, or the lower loves can sometimes become egotistical, or they can sometimes become selfish or rotten or whatever. Yeah. Super fruitful for meditation.
- [07:01]
B
False. Yeah, the exposure of false love. I resonate with that theme in the book. And then also the way she kind of idolizes work. And I won't talk about this too long because it'll turn into me confessing my sins too much here. But, you know, she's basically this person has this deep wound in her life, and she uses work to sort of COVID over it, and it ultimately doesn't work out, and she realizes I've not made any progress. So all my productivity, all my accomplishment, I'm still back this helpless child. So there's something about fiction for drawing out these deep spiritual themes, which is great. I'm sure we could talk about that at great length. But I'd love to talk with you about sins of the tongue. And I like the fact that your book has a positive title, Training the Tongue and Growing Beyond Sins of Speech. I resonated with this book. And of course, I wrote a book on disagreeing, which is never something I expected to do, but I feel like it's. Even since that book came out a year ago, I feel like it's more relevant. And I'm not saying that in a spirit of judgment on people out there, something I wrestle with every day of. How do you disagree? Well, and then how do we use our speech in a godly way in a time when it feels like so many forces are set against us? And I often say this, but, you know, Jesus has the Beatitudes where he gives blessing on certain qualities, and it often feels like the Internet is the inversion of that. It's like from blessed are the peacemakers to blessed are the troublemakers, or, you know, blessed are the what's the poor in spirit. That is not what is blessed on social media. So I don't have solutions for myself. I have guidelines and policies for how to conduct myself on the Internet. But it seems like this is something that. Where I'm guessing we'll have a lot of common ground and shared value. And I was just saying how I feel like Catholics and Protestants of goodwill can come together on a lot. This is one of those areas, I think, trying to be a counterforce against some of these degrading features of our society where we're becoming more animal, like in the way we relate to each other. What made this topic of interest to you that you wrote a book on it?
- [09:09]
A
Short answer is the publisher asked me to write a book on it.
- [09:12]
B
Okay. I was expecting a big, dramatic story. Okay.
- [09:14]
A
All right.
- [09:14]
B
Same with me for my book.
- [09:15]
A
I disagree. Nice. Yeah. I mean, like, if the publisher had asked me to write a book about the anatomical difference between bison and buffalo, I would have said no. So they asked me to write a book about something that I thought was, one, worthwhile and two, where I had something to contribute on the score. So I think, yeah, like, whatever. The first citation there is from James 3, which speaks of taming the tongue. And obviously I can't improve upon the language of Sacred Scripture, but I thought that by talking about training the tongue, I could accentuate some of the power of speech for upbuilding, for edifying, and specifically for, like, blessing those with whom we're in conversation. So I think a lot of folks are aware of the fact that there are such things as sins of speech, but perhaps they're in a state of, I don't know, despair or resignation as to the possibility of actually rooting them out. And a lot of times it's just because we set for our goal rooting out those sins, which it's just not the whole of our Christian, I suppose, vocation. Because maybe to like, to draw an analogy, let's say that you're entrusted with a garden and your job is to cultivate that garden, and you set for your goal rooting out weeds. Well, if you're really successful, at the end of the day, all you have is a plot of dirt. Whereas if you set for your goal beautifying the space, right, planting good annuals and perennials and other things besides, then you can actually make something wonderful with what you've been entrusted. And so I think that when it comes to sense of speech, that was the focus there. Is cultivating verbal virtue more so than rooting out verbal vice. Like, obviously, we want to root out verbal vice, but when we focus on cultivating verbal virtue, then that verbal vice kind of gets pushed to the periphery. It's easier to identify, it's easier to pluck out.
- [11:06]
B
I already appreciate that so much because, yeah, if we think about, like I was sharing with you earlier, that as much as I see the perils of social media, I feel called to be doing the things I'm doing there. And I was saying how much I appreciate that your mentality about this isn't that every Christian should just completely vacate social media, but then what you're saying now it's this happy, hopeful thought in my mind, I'm thinking, okay, so what would it look like for Gavin to spend his energies as best he can to use his speech on social media, to bless and to encourage and to equip and to. And to heal and so on and so forth. And I like that as a reorientation from just avoiding sin to using speech in a godly way. How worried are you? So when I think about the state of culture right now, I feel an alarm at our speech. I feel like we're getting more combative and more tribalized, and I'm pretty worried about it. What's your level of alarm at this area, especially as you look at how those who profess the name of Christ speak to one another?
- [12:11]
A
Yeah, I think, I mean, you could characterize contemporary discourse in various ways. One thing is, you know, like there's a kind of back and forth between, on the one hand, free speech and on the other hand, censorship. Or we could say, on the one hand, transparency and on the other hand, discretion. And so like the way that we, as it were, police. The discourse will differ, maybe on the basis of prevailing cultural movements, but I think that irrespective of how you frame the discourse, it's still required of you to be virtuous in navigating the discourse. So, like, I think that there's a lot of stuff that's said on the Internet, especially beneath the, as it were, veil of anonymity, or behind the veil of anonymity, one feels free to say whatsoever he thinks, or one feels free to entertain all kinds of wild notions. But my experience is that in person, people who are like lions on the Internet can sometimes be lambs in person. So I tend not to universalize on the basis of Internet based experience because I don't actually know how often that pertains to the particular individual or the particular community. My source of concern is like the general breakdown of society. So it's like the family's failing, the polity's failing, many churches are failing. And when we lack a context in which to be humanized and please God divinized, then we're just. We all kind of feel at odds ends. And I think you see people given to a kind of chaotic discourse or a kind of whatever other type of discourse, in part because there are no guardrails. Like it's just a total free for all. And so I think that, you know, there's been like a lot of stuff in the news recently about how a lot of people are coming to faith. A lot of people are becoming Christian. And I think that's a source of, yeah, great encouragement. And I think a lot of that is due to Internet based videos or like podcasts or whatever else, social media engagement. I think that what we're responsible for is then formation of, you know, converts and reverts and persons of all different kinds of Christian formations. We're responsible for the ongoing formation of those individuals and specifically redirecting them to Christian communities so that they can profit from real life in relationships and interactions which are, broadly speaking, humane rather than. Yeah, crazy.
- [14:30]
B
Yeah. You said something interesting before we started about different temptations for different forms of social media. Walk us through this for TikTok Instagram X. I guess we gotta call it X now. Facebook. What are the particular vices that you see that the different forms of social media tempt us towards?
- [14:49]
A
Sure, yeah, I think, yeah, like TikTok is kind of famous among Gen Alpha, Gen Z for brain rot, in the sense that they'll tell you they go there to be entertained or to be distracted and they end up leaving addicted. But I don't think Most people on TikTok don't necessarily curate content with an eye to edification or instruction or education. It's just to garnering interest. So there's a kind of frivolity, there's a kind of vacuousness to TikTok, which is kind of built into the medium. So whereas like Instagram favors curated content, TikTok favors uncurated content. It gives the appearance of everything having been done off the cuff, or a lot of it does, I should say. So I think there's a risk there of sloth, which, you know, a lot of people associate with laziness. But in its kind of origins, it's understood as a gaze on the divine good, whereby one says, I don't actually think that's possible. You know, you kind of give up on the pursuit of God because it just, it demands too much, it requires too much and you grow sad as a result because you see that destiny as otherwise impossible for you. Whereas, like something like X, for instance, it's, you know, it can have like a visual element, but it's primarily through speech. And so it's typically the platform in which millennials host arguments. And they may have more or less kind of sanguine thoughts about how effective those arguments will be, but it is, it's decidedly polemical in its orientation, at least, as I don't know about Protestant Twitter, but Catholic Twitter can be really
- [16:25]
B
angry Protestant Twitter can be very angry.
- [16:27]
A
Yeah. So I'd say, like, the vice of wrath can be a kind of perennial temptation on X because things are taken personally and they're responded to or reacted to personally. Whereas, you know, like Instagram, I think for a lot of men, it's a place that we associate with lust because it's used as a way by which to titillate or to interest, which can be a source of distraction or temptation. Yeah. Like, who knows exactly what happens in Facebook. But I think it was the original. You know, like, you'd post pictures that you indulge yourself up for for, like, 45 minutes and then said, ugh, just woke up. As a way by which to communicate. Like, I always look this bad. Wink, wink, good. So it was a place in which we began to indulge in corporate comparison. And again, we grew sad that a good had been given to another that seemingly hadn't been given to me. So that's broad brushstrokes, but I think a lot of people find it such.
- [17:24]
B
You didn't mention YouTube. Does that mean we're in the clear here?
- [17:27]
A
Yeah, I tend. I mean, YouTube is social media, but I tend not to think about YouTube and the way that I think about those other platforms. Like, I don't really know anything about Snapchat, so I just stay out of that conversation. But I think YouTube is potentially all things in the sense that it's the least well defined qua medium, which is to say, like, the other ones, they have certain boundaries in terms of characters or in terms of, like, minutes or seconds in certain cases. Whereas YouTube is. It is potentially all things. Now, there are ways in which your content can get canceled on YouTube. If you take it from someone else, for instance, or if you say certain things on which all persons of all times and places can agree, this is objectionable. But apart from that, you know, like, you're just. It's just video.
- [18:12]
B
Right.
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A
You know.
- [18:13]
B
Okay. See, I find YouTube genuinely fun because of the culture of it. And I do feel like the particular pressures that I feel in other contexts, I don't feel as strongly on YouTube for some reason. I've always tried to wonder about why. Yeah. So I keep coming back to this thing of what do we do? And you had a chapter in your book on fraternal correction. Yeah, fraternal having to do with brotherly. Which is. And to get right to the point here, one of the things you talk about there is the importance of love, if I recall, and I don't have any notes in front of me. But you have three criteria for when you give up. Correction. There needs to be. Your motivation needs to be love. Sometimes I like to step back and be really simple, just say the big picture. If Christians had more love in their hearts for other Christians in the way they interacted on social media, I think the name of Christ would be more honored. I think non Christians looking in would. Would have less cause for scandal. I think the church would be built up. I think pastors and clergy would be more encouraged. I think new Christians would be less disillusioned. I really feel this, and I almost kind of like not making it really complicated right up front. Sometimes doing the simple things really well, or at least keep repenting, not stopping to repent when we're struggling in those areas. What are your feelings about the importance of love in the way we communicate with each other, especially amidst disagreement?
- [19:54]
A
Yeah, yeah. I think the way that St. Thomas approaches the question in the Summa Theologiae is he'll talk about charity as a virtue, and then he'll describe its interior effects, joy, peace and mercy. And then he'll describe its exterior activities. So we'll talk about beneficence, and then we'll go into the works of mercy that you have enumerated there in Matthew 25, and then he'll add the spiritual works of mercy which we have in the tradition. And then basically the last question that he does on charity before getting into the various vices opposed to it, is on fraternal correction. So for him, it's a kind of concretization of the works of mercy, because it's a matter of admonishing the sinner. But like, what's won't to, or like to make it fruitful or make it actually helpful. Is love. Like, it's love which commends the correction. It's love which secures a hearing for the correction. It's love which motivates a genuine response to the correction. Because, yeah, sometimes we correct injustice. You know, like you're the administrator of a school and one of your teachers does something that's out of line, it's your responsibility to correct that teacher so that the common good is preserved or is rectified in light of that injustice. Whereas for the most part, like, we don't have. We're not in hierarchical relationships to a lot of people that we meet. We're not responsible for them, they're not responsible for us in a kind of straightforward way in the order of justice. Rather, it's a matter of you Know, we share some of our lives, we share some of our time, and we have some affection for each other. So, like, what does that mean for us? What does that mean for this relationship, this interaction? And the idea is that, like, within the setting of the mystical body, like within the setting of the body of Christ, that, you know, like, for instance, if you're fighting off an infection, you need to send white blood cells in that direction. So it's like there's a recognition that part of the body is diseased or inflamed or wounded, that the rest of the body has ways by which of accounting for that, of seeking to ameliorate that. And so it's like this is our organic life. This is the life that we share. And what really animates us, what flows through our veins, is charity. That's the only way in which this works. So I think that, like, there are various dispositions with which you might approach it, but it seems like anytime you go, like from on high or at a distance in a haughty fashion, it's just going to fail. Unless it's a really, really virtuous person who can basically profit from any feedback he receives. So, yeah, the questions that I ask are, does this matter? Can he change? And then do I love? And if the answer to those is something like yes in each case, then I think it's probably worth it.
- [22:39]
B
Yeah. You had a chapter on telling the truth, and one of the things that struck me as I was reading it is how many different ways there are to not tell the truth. Because we might think of it as just blatant and intentional lying or just inventing some fiction or something like that. Could you flesh that out a little bit and just say anything about where we need to actually be vigilant and alert to? Could we actually be learning habits of bending the truth without fully realizing that that's what we're doing?
- [23:11]
A
Oh, that's. Yeah, certainly the case. I think we have a limitless capacity for self deception because a confrontation with the truth is often uncomfortable. Yeah. Like when a man, for instance, has to confront the fact that he's angry after he's described himself as peaceable, meek. Clement. You know, I don't know that many people describe themselves as Clement, but yeah, I think that's bracing. But I think often of. Flannery o' Connor is another favorite author, but she says until such time as man acknowledges his need for salvation, he won't welcome the advent of a savior. So, like a lot of what she does in her writing is to convict people of their need for salvation. And she'll say, like, to the hard of hearing you shout, and to the almost blind you draw large and startling figures. So I think, yeah, there's a sense in which we buffer ourselves from the truth, because the truth can be discomfiting. You know, it can be disturbing. But we can always have confidence that it's only on the basis of the truth that you can build up a genuine life in love. And so, yeah, well, sometimes we need be kind of pedagogical in helping others to acknowledge it. And God is certainly pedagogical in helping us to acknowledge it. We need never fear that the truth will kill us or prove our undoing. But yeah, that's like within the setting of the body, there's so many resources that we have for acknowledging it, but that we would find it in ourselves. That's a work of God's grace.
- [24:38]
B
Well, I'll encourage people to check out your book. It's linked in the video description. Learn more about this topic. The last question on this is you said something earlier when we were having lunch about a policy for when to not engage with comments. And this is a question for all of us. People on this video will leave comments. You know, we want to be godly in the comments we leave simple thing, but it's something to think about. And you said something along the lines of, if I can say something in the realm of God bless you or thank you and it's sincere, that makes a difference, as opposed to having something charitable like this, and it feels like it would be patronizing or insincere or condescending or something like that. I thought that was an interesting rubric. I think about the same thing as, like, I want to be able to say something to bless the other person. So I'll often think about, you know, what's one way I can leave a comment that indicates I'm not against you as a person. You know, and that's what we mean by love and charity in our hearts, is we want to picture the other person in heaven and hope that for them. And that's a wonderful thing to feel. By the way, there's nothing more fun or more enjoyable than practicing intentional charity for other people and saying, you know, I want the best for you, and so forth. But there are some environments online where it's almost like you feel like you're. It just feels so unnatural to be even be able to say that because of the level of hostility that's coming at you or because it's just so alien to the culture of communication that's present there. So on this question of when do you actually engage with people and when do you walk away? Maybe we can conclude this section of our time by just thinking about that together a little bit. Because I love. You know, earlier we were saying sometimes it's great to be willing to lose a battle. And, like, if the culture on X is super combative, and I know that saying something really combative is gonna mean I own the other person and it's perceived as based and so forth, but if I don't go down that pathway, I'm gonna lose. But that's the godly pathway. What a joyful thing it is to say I'm willing to not engage and I'm willing to lose, insofar as that's the path of virtue. How do you think about when do you engage online? When do you walk away?
- [26:49]
A
Yeah, I mean, in actual real time. I typically don't respond to comments unless I've solicited them for a particular purpose. So, like, yeah, like something that folks encounter along the way is complicated marital situations. You know, it's like, I was married and then I got baptized, and then I was divorced, and then I got remarried, and then my first wife died, and then my second wife. You know, it's just like all these different things. So in those particular pastoral things, I'll say, just send a comment or just send an email to godsplanningpeas.org and we'll volley back. I respond to all the emails that I receive, and my email address is on the Internet. I don't respond to necessarily any comments on any of the videos that I do because I don't look at them. And part of that is just dispositionally, I find it difficult to sort through comments sensibly. Like, I kind of have it in my mind. The top 5% are probably more generous than they ought be. The bottom 5% are probably, you know, out of bounds. The middle 90%, you could probably learn something from that. I just find it hard to do so. So, you know, we have folks who work for some of the apostolates to which I contribute who will moderate comments and then give feedback as it's approved, appropriate, or as it's necessary. But my experience is like, I think the thing that you said, like, I'm not against you. I think that's important. Sometimes I think it's helpful just to narrate your disposition vis a vis the other, because it can be hard to pick up. Like, I Have a. I always look tired and haggard and just kind of upset. So people will assume that I'm upset at them when I'm just maybe just tired and haggard. So one thing I try to do is just, like, bridge the distance and just to say, like, I'm not against you. I'm for you in simple ways, without a doubt being patronizing or condescending. And I find it much easier in person because, like, you probably get this a lot more than I do in the sense that you do things on YouTube which are more successful than any of the things that I do on YouTube. But people have thoughts as to how you did, or people have thoughts as to how you can improve. And sometimes they'll say them to you, and then it's clear that they want to get out of dodge because they don't want to be there for your response because they suspect that it will be aggressive or transgressive. So one thing I do is when people, you know, deliver their comment, I tried to do my best with just, like, custody of my facial features, which is to say, like, not, or not like, but just like, okay, like, this is not what I would have chosen for myself, but this is what I have. And the first thing I'll say is, you don't have to go if you don't, you know, like, you don't have to leave or I'm happy to chat about it more. And I find that talking helps. You know, it's lamentable that we don't have time to talk with everyone with whom we could talk. You know, it's a little flock that's been entrusted to each of us in certain ways, but to find ways within the little flock to be present and to reassure folks that, like, if you say something harsh, I won't hate you. Because, you know, please, God, I don't have it in my heart to hate. I mean, I know that I have it in my heart to hate, but I'm just praying that God will purify that kind of heal me and grow me beyond that. So, yeah, when I was doing comment moderation for the Thomistic Institute for Aquinas111 videos, I just treated every question as if it were a genuine desire for growth. And I tried to furnish as many resources as I could within the stated kind of time that the job allowed. So just assume the best. Yeah, brace yourself for the worst.
- [30:16]
B
Brace yourself. Oh, yeah. Brace yourself if you're reading, especially if you do read the comments. I like what you said about what was it kind of narrating your disposition for people and kind of helping. I talk about that a little bit in the book on disagreement. Just like telling people, here's where I'm coming from. I'm not against you personally, but here's where my thought just kind of being transparent and sincere in your thought process. And that's a good kind of segue into talking through Catholic Protestant stuff because I do that a lot when I'm doing Protestant apologetics. I'll explain. Like I didn't set out trying to be a Protestant apologist. I got, I felt pulled into it because of a sense of pastoral need for people who are just asking questions and they need resources and they need answers. And I thought I'd be much more of a general Christian apologist, which I do as well. And that's a little bit more where my heart is at in terms of just the fun of evangelism. There's nothing I find more enjoyable than just sharing hope, the hope of Jesus with people. But so this would be very open ended. We can just kind of explore things, just have a good conversation. How about this as a starting point? And we'll have lots of common ground on points of agreement. I'm a classical theist. I love Thomas Aquinas doctrine of God. So in terms of like starting points, I think we'll have a lot of common ground. If someone says to you, why are you a Christian? And they're really looking for a reasoned explanation, not just kind of a personal statement of where you're from and what you knew, how do you give a brief succinct answer to that?
- [31:49]
A
Yeah, so I will often I try to like diffuse a rationalistic explanation by saying, first a genealogical account. I'm a Christian because my parents were Christian. So obviously because can mean many, many different things. Because my parents gave me life and they gave me faith insofar as a human can give another human faith.
- [32:12]
B
Were you raised in a Catholic household?
- [32:13]
A
I was, yeah. Yep. So yeah, I'm a Christian because my parents were Christian and because I think the next thing I would say is I've always found it to correspond. So I'm more of a thinker than a feeler. Like I have feelings, but my feelings, they come in the wake of my thoughts. And I am looking for, I'm inquiring and I'm looking for a correspondence between a stated theory and a lived experience. And I find that, you know, Christianity accounts for all. And in that, I don't mean to say that Christianity exhausts every experience in such A way as to furnish an explanation which quiets all further questions, but that Christianity directs me to our Lord Jesus Christ, and that within the setting of that relationship, I find that there is a light shone on every aspect of my human existence which kind of transfigures those aspects and it integrates those aspects into like, to a kind of coherent reality with which I myself can engage, which is like, overly complicated as far as explanations go. But I think basically, I mean, the shorthand answer is I've met the living God in the way in which one meets him, you know, through faith. And, you know, like in Catholic communion, we insist especially on sacrament. I've met the living God, and the living God has transfigured my experience of reality in such a way that it gives me avenues for further exploration, which I think will lead all the way to heaven. So I don't like, come up against dead ends or I don't find that there are sources of embarrassment which are so scandalous or incredible that they cause me serious doubts or consternation. Sorry, overly long explanation.
- [34:18]
B
No, that's great. So my thoughts on this resonate and cohere with a lot of yours. Let me say this from my standpoint and see how this sits with you. For me, I was also raised in a Christian home. Going to evangelical churches. Growing up became said a prayer at a very young age. And then I think it was really my high school years, I began to more self consciously kind of live into a Christian faith. Had been through two seasons of kind of angst about it. Apologetics has been a resource for me during those times. I don't have a negative feeling about apologetics. I know sometimes the way apologetics is done can make people use that word. But if we're just talking about providing food for hunger, providing answers for questions, giving people explanations for the why questions that they're asking, I found it tremendously helpful. And so, you know, getting drawn into the work of apologetics and trying to do it in a pastoral way that feels very New Testament in its ethos, I hope. But the arguments and the apologetics doesn't do everything for me. It sort of gives me. I would almost. I don't want to put a number to it, but somewhere in the realm of like 60% to 85% fluctuating around somewhere in there, the sheer intellectual arguments propel me. But there's always this remainder, and I'm not saying this is right or wrong. This is just my experience. There's always this existential remainder that it doesn't Propel me all the way into this kind of existential certainty. And if someone says, you know, why are you a Christian? There's a part of that that's hard to put into words. It's kind of like someone says, how did you fall in love with your wife? Or something. I'm like, well, I can tell you about it. I can describe it. It's not irrational. But there's also an experiential element to it that's hard to transfer to another person. And it's right in there with my conscience. And there's just this deep. I think the best way I can say it is I feel within me a deep, intuitive awareness of God. It's in the moral realm. I know I'm a sinner. I feel guilt. It's just in there. It's in my heart. I don't really doubt it. It's like, that's 100%. I know that I have that. You know, there's an awareness, there's a desire for him. Honestly, there's a love for God deep in my heart, and I can't put that into an argument. And it doesn't fit into that 60 to 85%. So when people ask why I'm a Christian, there is this experiential element to it as well. And one of the things I was sharing with you earlier with my forthcoming book is I feel that Christianity makes sense intellectually. It's plausible. Even if the arguments are not always coercive, they're still pretty good. But it also makes emotional sense, it makes intuitional sense. It just resonates at this fundamental level, at the same level at which I listen to music and I yearn for happiness and I love my children and my wife. And so that's not in any way downgrading the role of apologetics, but I think it's. I don't know. I kind of wonder if we'll do apologetics better if we have in full visibility this kind of human dimension to the relation to God that we all find ourselves in.
- [37:47]
A
I think about it too, in some. Like when St. Thomas talks about Christian instruction, he lists, broadly speaking, like, four categories of instruction, the first of which is apologetic, charismatic instruction. So, like, you know, fending off arguments against and then proposing our Lord Jesus Christ as Lord. And then he'll talk about catechetical instruction, which is, as it were, preparing people in the rudiments of Christian faith and confession, especially with an eye to sacramental reception. And then moral instructions, instruction, which he says is a matter of the Whole kind of burying or comportment of Christian life. It's like a different way of being. So we need education in that. And then the last is mystagogical instruction. So it's like we need to be actually, like, led into the mysteries themselves and to be schooled in Christian perfection. And so I think that there's a way in which apologetics is helpful for showing that arguments against Christianity do not obtain, or at least do not obtain perforce, and then kind of clearing the ground, as it were, to set forward Christ, to proclaim Christ. But then those who receive Christ into their life, they need some instruction as to what this looks like for them, doctrinally speaking, just like evangelically speaking. And then they also need to, like, put on Christ in every facet or every element of their Christian existence. But ultimately, the point of it is, you know, like. And I suppose like, different Protestant traditions will differ as to the language. But, you know, we talk in the east about, like, theosis and the west about deification, divinization. Like, the idea isn't just to be a swell fellow. You know, the idea is to be God. Like God. You know, like, even the way in which the psalm formulates it, like you are gods and all of you sons and daughters of the Most high, or like St. Peter formulates it to be partakers of the divine nature. It's kind of like unsettling because it sounds ever so slightly polytheistic. But the idea is that it's for union's sake. You know, it's to have God's thoughts. It's to have God's affections, to attain to a kind of confluence in communion, to share his life, to live his life. And I think that, yeah, like, when people are. When people are led into that, it creates a kind of adherence or it begets a kind of adherence which is unshakable because it's at every level of one's being. You know, like evangelically, catechetically, morally, mystagogically. It's a matter of being with in a way that at times feels indefectible. You know, obviously we can all. We're all weak, we're all wounded. We can all deny him at some level.
- [40:26]
B
But, yeah, what is it for you? And I'll answer this question, too. I'll give my thoughts first, and you can see where our thoughts align here that makes Jesus compelling as opposed to other religions. And as I think about that, there are things about Jesus that I find unique, just absolutely unrivaled in all of human History and I would say his claims, the claim in the Jewish sense to be God, which I think can be defended even from the Gospel of Mark, the earliest gospel, and then a bodily resurrection to vindicate those claims. But beyond that, I mean, cause those. Again, you get into the technical arguments. In my heart as I read the Gospels, I feel as though I am encountering a person who. It's like the children before Aslan in the Narnia books or something like that. There's a lordliness about him that I cannot escape and I feel like it's hunting me down almost. So but the two. If I am going to construct it into an argument, I'm going to talk about his claims and I'm going to go a kind of Lord liar, lunatic type direction with that. And then I'm going to talk about the claims of his followers about his resurrection and a similar kind of way with that. And that's what I do in my forthcoming book. What about for you? What is it? Have you considered, you know, why Jesus and not some other religion?
- [41:51]
A
Yeah, I think my thoughts are very similar. So I'd start with the Incarnation. So the revelation within the setting of a monotheistic religion of a tripersonal God, but by way of the Incarnation. So like, when you think about what's most principled about Christianity, it's our belief that God is three in one. It's our belief that the Son took flesh, that the Son became man. But it's through this latter that we kind of get to this former. So there's a priority to our belief in the triune God, but there's, I mean, in the order of being. But there's a priority to our belief in the incarnate Lord, in the order of discovery. Because it's not like it's not as if salvation were impossible until such time as Christ took flesh, like God could save us in whatsoever way he saw fit. But there is a supreme fittingness to his choosing this manner, that is to say, in drawing so terribly close to humanity in a way that like, accommodates the offer of salvation to our sensibilities, that takes into account our weak and wounded nature, as it were, takes us by the hand and draws us into the divine life whilst contending with sin and vice and bestowing upon us grace and virtue. So I think it's like the fact of the Incarnation is a startling claim. So you have other claims in, you know, like Indian religions, for instance, of a kind of incarnation, or even in Greek mythology, of a kind of incarnation, but nothing after the Manner of a tri. Personal God. So the one God himself tripersonal sins, you know, the second, and takes flesh in a way that imports no change in God, but does reconfigure creation. That's. I think that's unlike anything else. And I think about the Resurrection then as serving as a kind of, you know, without the Resurrection, our faith is in vain, our preaching is in vain. This idea that it's the first fruits and then what's the order of those who come next? It's all those who belong to him. So like the Resurrection as like crowning the Paschal mystery or as signifying the accomplishment of the Paschal mystery, then of giving indication to all those who might wonder whether this were just one revolutionary among revolutionaries, that this is a peculiar kind of testimony. So, like, Christ didn't need to rise from the grave, but it serves as the greatest apologetic argument of all time.
- [44:09]
B
Yeah, that's. I like that. And for viewers should be aware of your work on the atonement and the work of Christ and the person of Christ, probably forthcoming books in that realm so they can keep their eyes peeled for your work on there. I love this thought of, you know, what we were talking about earlier, before we started recording of everything Jesus does contributes to salvation. And it's wonderful to think about that. But let's talk a little bit about what so many people are wrestling with these days, and that's different Christian traditions and church history, Catholic to Protestant, but also other traditions as well. I found that those were not live questions as much in my awareness when I was going through doing my theological education a little bit. But it feels like in the last maybe seven years or so, there's been just more and more and more, and people have anxiety about these things. People are arguing on X about them every day. And I'll answer from my side as well. What is it for you that makes you a Catholic Christian specifically, as opposed to a different tradition?
- [45:22]
A
Yeah. So we'll often focus on faith, sacraments and governance as kind of like integral parts of Christian belief and confession. So when it comes to, you know, I think that, like, especially in joint declarations, Protestant Catholics have focused in the last, you know, 25, 30 years on the fact of our shared faith, like a creedal faith. Not in that like God gave us a creed from on high, but in that God revealed Himself in a way that we can understand, expressed in propositional form, which mediates contact with him when it comes to sacraments. So the idea that there are these signs of sacred things which make Us holy, so visible signs of invisible graces which Christ instituted for our salvation. And that kind of like the notion of sacramentality in the early Church is more diffuse and obviously like the practice of certain sacraments only really Coalesces in the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th century in the case of like our current practice of penance or the sacrament of Confirmation, as you know, entailing laying out of hands and Chrismation, like when it becomes ritually practiced in a recognizable fashion after the manner in which it's currently practiced. So like with acknowledgement of like historical development of a certain sort or historical unpacking. But By like the 13th century, the Catholic Church is kind of clear on there are seven sacraments which are privileged kind of places of encounter with divine grace. So baptism, confirmation, the most holy Eucharist, penance, anointing of the sick, orders and marriage, and that these correspond to our organic life in a way. I mean, I should say this, like, just as there are certain things which are integral to our organic life, like birth and maturity and nourishment and healing, so there are things, corresponding things which make up our spiritual life, rebirth and baptism, maturity and confirmation, nourishment in the Eucharist, healing in the sacrament of pen, etc. So I think like the fullness of sacramental life. And then with respect to governance, we point especially to apostolic succession and then like papal primacy and infallibility. So the latter obviously comes in for lots of, you know, like, interesting apologetical back and forths because the Catholic teaching of it is only really concretized at the First Vatican Council. So like 1870-1871. So I know you talk about accretions. So the question is whether something represents an organic development, whether it's present in germinal form and then you see it subsequently take on a more manifest or communicable shape, or whether it is in fact absent and then made present by a kind of accretion. So those are things that obviously are worth debating. But I'd say we point to differences in sacramental economy and then in ecclesial governance.
- [48:15]
B
Right, right, right. Okay. Yeah. And my next question is going to be about do you think. So I'll throw this on the table and then I'll answer for myself. Do you think, do you think differences in our traditions can be held in good faith by intelligent people over long spans of time?
- [48:34]
A
Yes.
- [48:35]
B
And the reason I ask that is, you know, I got into these things really in a more sustained way about six years ago. And again, just responding to needs. I'm seeing on YouTube at this time, there's really not many people standing up and defending Protestant views. And what I have seen over and over is kind of the easiest knockdown expression of Protestantism that you might find in. Maybe it's a kind of theologically light evangelical church that doesn't have a lot of knowledge of church history, maybe doesn't emphasize the sacraments at all, maybe doesn't even call them sacraments. Because a lot of what you're saying in terms of just the general significance of sacraments, obviously that's not a point that's distinctively Catholic. So seeing like. And I'm feeling this burden, like I want people to know what Martin Kemnitz said about that and I'm wanting people to know what the Anglican divine said about this. And I'm wanting to represent the Protestant traditions at their best. So I got pulled into these things and on the one hand it's given me tremendous love and respect in my heart for the people in different places and an appreciation for the question I just asked you that I think there's sincere, wonderful Christians in these other traditions that I admire and I respect them. At the same time, I'm still settled as a Protestant and my views about sola scriptura are key to that. My views about catholicity and the wholeness of the church is not restricted to one institutional expression are key to that. Then there's some other particulars you mentioned. Accretions people. I've tried to start using that word so much because it triggers people, but it's just this idea that I think you know the exact question you pointed out, which is good to explore, which is that a lot of the things in the non Protestant traditions sincerely look to me like they're coming in along the way during church history without that apostolic root, without the germinal form there at all in some cases. So that's. But in these conversations online, I'm aware that if I make these arguments for six years in a row, the number of people who assume, well, if you're sincere and if you're studying after so many years, you're going to land on my team. And I just find it doesn't work like that. In fact, because those assumptions that come at me from both the Eastern Orthodox and the Catholics, I kind of feel like, guys, you gotta listen to how you're both talking. Now that is not representative of real life interactions. But the Internet has this very tribalizing effect. So would you say it's important for us to remember that people can be in Good faith, be intelligent, be studied, and still disagree on these topics for the sake of the truth as we work through our differences?
- [51:31]
A
Yeah, I think so. Like, I mean, for transparency's sake, I want everyone to be Catholic because I believe that in the Catholic Church and the Catholic confession, you have the fullness of those means of grace and salvation which conduct us strongly and sweetly back to God. I believe that those resources, those means of grace and salvation, are so potent that they spill over Catholic bounds, as it were. You know, so, like Catholics acknowledge valid baptism and Protestant ecclesial communions, but in a kind of disposition of inclusive triumphalism. The Catholic Church claims that for her own in the sense that she says that it's leading to Catholic communion, it pertains in a way to Catholic communion. So it's like, I think anybody who thinks I've got the goods wants to share the goods with others if those goods are undiminishable, and insofar as we're dealing with spiritual goods, they're undiminishable. It only redounds to the glory of God and the salvation of souls if they're shared. But I do think that people come from different backgrounds, different dispositions, and they hear the proclamation in different ways. So you mentioned, for one scandal, which is not just a fact historically, but it's a fact presently, that it becomes very difficult to hear the proclamation of the Catholic faith when it's proclaimed by Catholics, you know, because we're not the best witnesses in many ways. You know, like, that's so like a judgment as to moral comportment, but also a judgment as to the manner in which the proclamation is formulated. And then also, like, it's addressed to people who live lives that are deeply situated, embedded in other ecclesial communions or churches or structures of whatsoever sort. You know, so like, for somebody to pick up and leave this church, this ecclesial communion, whatever, it's not just a matter of me changing my mind. It's a matter of me changing practically everything. And not just in the sense of worldview, but it reorients all one's relationships and interactions. And there's a real way in which that's all very much present to the individual, if not consciously schematized. You know, so it's like you, you know, when somebody says, for instance, like, hey, healthy people brush their teeth three times a day. I'm over here thinking, like, I brush my teeth two times a day. Am I going to, like, find a toothbrush every day at 1pm it's like, I don't know if I can do that. You know, it's just I don't know if I want to do that because it's a change. Like, every change costs every change. It kind of takes a toll. Now, obviously, certain changes are for the good, and we're glad that we've taken them. But seen, prima facie, it's like, ooh. And then there's the fact that, like, people experience divine life within this setting, you know, within this church, within this ecclesial communion, you know, So I think of, like, movements in Pentecostalism right now. It's clear that you have beautiful missionary efforts among evangelicals, like, deeply indebted to Charismatic or Pentecostal movements, that you have mighty deeds, you know, that you have miracles, like, of a manifestation, communicable sort in these places. And I think it's an entirely natural judgment to say, like, if I were to deny this, then it would be, in a certain sense, a denial of what's good here. So, I mean, like, that's not an exhaustive list, obviously, but there are many reasons for which just epistemically and then existentially, there might be reasons to stay. And they're not all reasons of weakness or woundedness. It's not like, all in the minus category. Often enough, it's in the plus category, the affirmation of something that's good. And so I think it's like, we don't argue, we don't reason in the void. We do so in an embedded way and in a situated way. And so I think, yes, it's possible to disagree for a long period of time in good faith. But my hope is that, like, that grace would continually well up within. And my hope is that it would lead to Catholic communion.
- [55:25]
B
Yeah. Okay, well, so we've got some overlap here, but this also is an area of some disagreement, too. So just to talk it through a little bit, maybe earlier I mentioned catholicity as a word referring to the wholeness of the church. So I think maybe where I could identify a difference is we both think there are Christians. Like, as a Protestant, I think Catholics, there are many Catholics who sincerely love Jesus and will be in heaven. As a Catholic, I hear you saying you see that among Protestants as well. But from your side, it comes across to me kind of like, well, it's because you're Catholic without knowing it. Yep. And it's because our church is the church, and it just kind of spills over to you guys from the Protestant side, back in the other direction. I'm not thinking like that. So it's a different. We have different mechanisms for making that judgment. Because I would say my vision of the church is the true church is wherever Jesus is present in word and sacrament. And so if you've got a baptism, like so, you know, the illustrations I often use are if you've got a church in the Middle east and it's just Muslims who had dreams, they don't have any apostolic succession, they don't have any bishops, they don't have anybody who's laying hands on anybody. They just had dreams of Jesus. And the dreams lead to sincere faith in the true Gospel. And it's the Lord Jesus Christ from Heaven doing exactly what he did on Pentecost, pouring out his Holy Spirit to awaken hearts to the truth. And these people are gathering, they're baptized in the name of the Trinity, they're taking the Lord's Supper. Maybe even they found the Apostles Creed on the Internet and they're reciting the Apostles Creed and they're genuinely worshiping the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It would never even occur to me to think, well, they're a church because they're sort of. We're sort of overflowing to them or something like that. Because my vision of the church is it's just what Jesus is building. It's just the body of Christ and the institutions are to the end of the larger living organism. But I really struggle with understanding the restriction to one institution of either the church or even the fullness of the church, because. And I think that. But that leads to probably the deeper issue which I also want to ask you about is because I don't see that root there in divine revelation in the New Testament. So maybe we can come back to that. But first, on this point of just, you know, we've got differing visions of ecclesiology, which is the doctrine of the church. And so let me pause there and see if you want to interact with that at all. And then we can come to the. Maybe the question of how do we parse out the accretions from the valid growth. Growths of what God birthed in infant form and that it's growing versus the things that come along. Because I use the word accretions to refer to that which is growing gradually, but it is an innovation. It doesn't have a foundation in divine revelation. But I'm sensitive to not talk too long if you want to jump in at any point here. So. Well, let's talk about that then. So we've identified some differences in terms of Catholicity and our vision of the Church. How do you think through. And I've read John Henry Newman on this, and I've listened to Chabin and other Catholic dogmaticians on this. The difference between the valid developments and the invalid. I think we can all admit things can go awry. A growth can come in and start to get into the mix. And it's not of God. It's not a genuine organic outgrowth from something God revealed. That would be, if I had, in a nutshell, to kind of boil down to this is why I'm not Catholic. And it would be a similar answer for not being orthodox is there's a lot of things that are required. You mentioned the seven sacraments, for example, that there's the number seven that I don't believe go back to what the apostles could have recognized. I don't think it is a valid development. In your own thinking, how do you distinguish between valid outgrowth from divine revelation? Because I think we agree there's something that changes when the apostles die. The New Testament, even though it still needs to be discerned, is no longer being written. And to use your church's language, the era of public revelation comes to a close. That's a significant closure, and we all want to be faithful to that. A lot of the things that are required in Catholic theology I just. I see as. Not just like a little bit off. I see as way later, you know, seven sacraments would be one. Some aspects of Mariology would be another. How do you think through valid to invalid doctrinal development versus accretions? How do you think that through?
- [60:13]
A
Yeah, yeah. I'd say, like broad brushstrokes would be. We can differentiate between, like, the order of discovery and the order of being. So in the sense that, like, there's a particular way that one would come to a belief or come to a confession of these things, and then there's a particular way that one would come to defend them, which I think, while not in conflict, are different kinds of approaches. So, you know, like one definition of tradition from Saint Vincent of Lairens is just what the Church has taught always and everywhere. So there's a sense that, like, I believe what the Church teaches now and I retroject what she teaches now into the past. Like, that's what. That's just like, epistemologically, that's how I come to it. And so then I can give an account of that apologetically, but epistemically or epistemologically, I kind of come to a recognition of it. By virtue of what the Church proposes for belief at present. And I can recognize that it's more or less detailed or it's more or less refined in its formulation by comparison to past generations, typically more. But, like, just organically, I believe what the Church teaches to be held with divine and Catholic faith. But then when giving an apologetic account, I think that a lot can be done by one situating the relative importance of a claim. Which isn't to say that, like, some claims aren't important and other claims are important, but I like to differentiate between, like, primary, secondary and tertiary revelata, in the sense that you have the articles of the Creed, which are proposed for us as principles of belief, in the sense that, like, these are the most principled things from which other beliefs flow or on which other beliefs hinge. So the two most important we already talked about being the triune God and the incarnate Lord. And So, like, when St. Thomas, for instance, reads the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, he'll divide it up into articles, as is traditionally done, and I'll say there's like 12 or 14 articles, and half of them pertain to the triune God and half of them pertain to the Incarnate Lord. And really that's the seedbed of faith. And so then on the basis of those things, we hold other secondary and tertiary beliefs which hinge from them. But when we set them forward, like a kind of litmus test of true belief, or a kind of, like, dog whistle for identifying who's in and who's out, then I actually think it can misrepresent their relative importance. So, like the Marian dogmas, for instance, I would take as of secondary and tertiary importance, not because, like, I don't love the Blessed Virgin Mary, but because the grace of the Incarnation is more principled than the grace of divine maternity, in the sense that, like, this is what we hold with divine and Catholic faith as primarily revealed, and this is what we hold with divine and Catholic faith as secondarily revealed. So it's like that, then, is the primary Marian dogma the fact of the Divine maternity, because it pertains most immediately to the grace of the Incarnation, because it's that in light of which Mary received the peculiar outpouring, the particular outpouring that was bestowed upon her. So I think that, like, we can do a lot apologetically by enunciating the principles in principled fashion. And then you have to do the work of history, obviously, but I think the work of history will always be in a certain sense contingent upon the available data. You know, so it's like when you search the geologic record, you're hoping to find a particular kind of thing, add a particular layer of sedimentary rock, but there is the chance that you won't find it there because of the limited scope of your inquiry. So I think that we're also. We have to be like, conscious of that when it comes to historical study. But I'm talking too long.
- [63:53]
B
No, no, you're not talking too long at all. No. Well, I love you said primary, secondary, tertiary. So anybody who knows my work will know. I love this because I wrote a whole book on theological triage and I won't ask you what the extent of Noah's flood is on that ranking because I get into too much trouble on some of these things. But. Yeah, but I think where there becomes a difficulty is when you have something that even could be down the ranking in one sense of theological importance. It could be secondary or tertiary, but if it is dogmatized, it is now, according to Catholic teaching, obligatory. So it must be assented to. And the bind for the conscience with some of these things. Like to take some of the Marian dogmas. So, you know, the Immaculate Conception as an example. I'll only ever speak honorably of Mary. She's such a great hero of the faith for us all. And I'm happy to speak of her as the Theotokos, the bearer of God. That's just the doctrine of the Incarnation there. I have a video defending that, but it's so much counter testimony that I see in the historical data. And so, you know, we don't need to parse this out and solve this right now. But just to explain from a Protestant standpoint of. One of the things that makes me proud to be a Protestant is I feel as though my teaching and the teaching of my church isn't binding consciences to assent to something that doesn't look true. You know, in the case of the Immaculate Conception, I've scoured through so many of the testimonies early on in church history that even as late as, like John Chrysostom, you know, he'll be preaching on Luke 2 and John 2, and he'll ascribe sin to Mary and in such a way that it doesn't seem like he's even aware this is going to be controversial. And so when I speak of accretions, I really mean sincerely in my heart. A lot of these things seem like they just came about later. Like people didn't really think like that widely. It wasn't Vincent's everywhere. Always by all at that time is what it looks like to me. So I guess I'm just explaining my side of it there. But all of these topics are things that I've done videos on and we could talk ad nauseam about. And I always think let's have lifelong friendships where we keep working these things through. But I'm stating how I see things from a Protestant angle. I often know in ecumenical engagements and disagreements, something we're looking at seems so obvious, but then we're not as attuned to this other thing that the other side is looking at. When you look at Protestants, what are the areas that rise immediately into your awareness that you think this is what Protestants don't see? Here's maybe something that they need to learn from our side more.
- [66:31]
A
Yeah. So one thought is, I guess, one thing about which I think a lot I hope will, is the sacrifice of the Mass. So it's clearly there in Hebrews, one saving sacrifice from the one mediator. You don't want to trivialize that, you don't want to multiply that. And you know, there's a concern among the reformers that the Mass trivializes or multiplies the one saving sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ, the sole mediator of salvation. So it stands to reason that it would cause some fear, trepidation, reaction, whatever. I think that, I don't think there's no silver bullet for these types of arguments. But the type of thing that I like to talk about is this, that you have our Lord's sacrifice. And in his loving kindness he accommodates that sacrifice to our condition, which is the condition of an embodied, time bound creature, right? So God establishes contact with us. He elicits contact from us. We, as you know, like we go to him in faith, spiritually, we go to him in sacrament, bodily. But the fact of the matter is that we forget or we grow weary, or we have need of constant reminders, we have need of a kind of daily bread. And so in his loving kindness, he appoints the sacrament of, you know, the Lord's Supper or the Sacrament of the Mass as a way by which to feed us that reflects our embodied, our time bound condition. So it's not so much a matter of multiplying or trivializing as it is of commemorating to make ritually or mystically present and then applying the graces which were unleashed in that the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ. And so I think that like this, this solves some problems when it comes to, you know, like Catholic Protestant dialogue. Like, we differentiate between the type of worship offered to God and the type of worship offered to saints, and that we differentiate between this sacrificial adoration made available in the Mass. And then, like the kind of veneration, you know, we talk about honor, you know, as you've made mention, you know, that we. That we render to human beings, whether holy human beings or great heroes or whomever else. And it's the Mass that gives us a kind of firm grasp or firm hold. Not that it's ours to possess, it's God's to give on this order of sacrificial adoration. And it makes it possible then to differentiate between worship of God and worship of, you know, like, the saints, Blessed Virgin Mary, that type of thing. So I think that this idea of commemorating and applying the efficacy of the Passion without thereby multiplying or trivializing the one saving sacrifice breaks open the experience of worship. Obviously, it's a thing that many people have talked about before and will continue to talk about until Jesus comes back. But that's my passions there.
- [69:21]
B
Yeah, well, and we, you and I will have some disagreements about the Mass as well. However, what you just said there at the end, commemorating and applying that, I love that as a way to think about eucharistic experience. And I will say I have lots of criticisms for my side on these issues because a lot of evangelicals have a very paltry view of the Eucharist. Well, even the term Eucharist trips people up, but the term is fine. But people want to call it the Lord's Supper. But what I always say is we've fallen away from our own Reformation heritage there because the original Protestants had a very high view of the Eucharist. And actually, I think that language is something that certainly, you know, Lutheran, Reformed and Anglican traditions agree with. When we experience Christ in the Lord's Supper, we are commemorating and the benefits of his saving passion are commemorated and applied to us. And then we have other disagreements for how to tease that out from there. But. But I think for evangelicals to talk with their Catholic friends about the Eucharist is a great way to see how far we've drifted. And a lot of evangelicals need to come back. And I did a dialogue with Brett Salkeld, who's a Roman Catholic theologian that I respect a great deal. And we talked through our differences from a Reformed perspective of the Eucharist to his Catholic perspective. And it was fascinating to see. We have common ground on some things. We have disagreement on other things. And I agreed with his perception that on some points, the Reformed and the Catholics have some points of common ground, even that the Lutherans don't have. But I don't want to trigger the Lutherans because there's no Lutherans here to defend themselves. And a lot of my viewers are Lutherans. God bless you, Lutherans. But commemorating, applying that would definitely be now. Then we would have other differences that. But maybe this is a final question on the disagreements point here. There's a painful reality in ecumenical work, and that is your church would say, I don't have a valid Eucharist. How do you understand that? Do you see any hope for progress on that? Because when we talk about our Eucharistic theology, one of the things we can talk about is the issue of real presence and what it means to feast on Christ. Then there's other sort of administrative questions that come in. Then there's the questions of in what sense is it a sacrifice? So there's lots of different areas under that heading where we have disagreements, but probably, actually, maybe the biggest one would just be, where is it? And so how do you think that through yourself, would this be one of those areas? Well, we're the one true church, and so we have it. And baptism spills over, but the Eucharist doesn't. And tough. Or how do you. How do you explain that to someone who's not already persuaded?
- [72:27]
A
Yeah, I think it's. I mean, the big. The linchpin is valid orders. So I think that, like, it's not so much a question of, I mean, like, eucharistic faith is an important part of the conversation, but I think the bigger question is valid orders, whether one has apostolic succession and validly ordained presbyters. So, like, if it's the Lord's intention at the Last Supper that his apostles be ordained priests and that the priests have a particular care for and competence in sacramental matters than the valid or invalid. You know, celebration of the Eucharist flows naturally from that, or naturally is not the right word, but logically from that. So I think that, yeah, I think it is a neuralgic point, because a what point? Neuralgic point, or it's a point that many feel with great sensitivity because receiving communion is a type of ritual gesture which signifies inclusion, and it signifies specifically inclusion within an ecclesial setting or within an ecclesial body. And so to say that someone ought not receive at Catholic Mass or that someone actually isn't communing with Catholics in their celebration, that's like, that one would feel that strongly. That's Totally. That makes a ton of sense to me because it's among the most intense and intimate of ritual gestures on offer in Christianity. But I think that, yeah, it's a point where, perhaps because it's so sensitive, I think it will probably give rise to the most fruitful exchanges because it really ends up sharpening the pertinent differences, and then we can drill down as to what we think to be the case and what we don't think to be the case.
- [74:20]
B
Right, right. Yeah. And I want to distinguish, too. You know, for me, it's not. These things aren't like personal, emotional things as much as just. I guess my concern is, is that restriction theologically justified? And that's where we would need to kind of work through that. But let's say something about our respective traditions where we can learn from the other side to close with. And I regret that you have a plane to catch because I would love to talk. And we just said, you know, as we paused, let's just keep conversations going. I see this as I think I said earlier, whatever the truth about these things is, we're not gonna solve it in just an hour and a half get together. But lifelong friendships, that can move mountains. So let's just let this be the first of further dialogues and so forth. Something I think Protestants can learn from Catholics is the theology of the body. You guys have really paved the way on so many issues that then play out in terms of social ethics. So a lot of evangelicals are going to be against transgenderism. Good. But maybe won't be able to explain with much eloquence why. And they'll have some answers. But a robust theology of the body is an area where I think Catholics have really kind of led the charge in some respects. Boy, am I putting you on the spot too much to say, hey, be nice to Protestants here at the end?
- [75:46]
A
Yeah, no. I think I have a handful of thoughts, but one is, you know, the kingdom of God is not so much consistent words as in power. And I think that there's a certain hesitancy in Catholic communion to ask God for what we need. Or there's like, a kind of anxiety that crops up in petitionary prayer where sometimes, like, we're asking for God. Well, we're asking for God to give us things that we may in fact, prefer to God. You know, in the sense, like, heal me, because what I really want is health. Whereas I think that something I have learned from the way in which my Protestant brothers and sisters pray is that it's. No, it's an appeal to God, who is our Heavenly Father, whose good pleasure it is to give us the kingdom. And so we ought to look to him for providence, for love. And so I think there's, in a way, a more potent faith with respect to, you know, you see this especially among charismatics and Pentecostals, like, he'll heal you. And if he doesn't heal you, it's not because you're of deficient faith or because you didn't go about it in the right way, methodologically speaking. Like, his ways are not our ways, they're beyond our ways. But you receive little because you ask little. And so I think there's a holy boldness in, you know, like, life in the spirit as seen in many Protestant ecclesial communions, which I think Catholics can certainly learn from.
- [77:07]
B
Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Well, again, I regret that we got to wrap it up there, but viewers in the comments, leave a comment if there's a different topic that you would like for Father Gregory and I to discuss in a subsequent conversation. So we'll know where we can pick things up. But I hope we can have. Hopefully this will be the first of many more conversations. Thanks for. Thanks for taking the time. I really enjoyed it.
- [77:27]
A
My joy. I hope so, too. Cheers.
- [77:29]
B
Yeah, thanks.