A Protestant Talks With a Catholic Theologian

like I don't read Jesus words as being you know and Peter on this rock you know on that confession or on you as an individual even the binding and loosing and wherever you die that's who's in charge like I think that's kind of one of the just yeah get off the train points for Protestants why do you guys think that there is something special about Rome and and how special do you think it is mhm hey I'm Matt this is the 10 minute Bible hour and I am a Christian a Protestant Christian to be specific that's where I fit in the big elaborate very old Christian family treatments a 2000 year old religion there are a lot of different versions of the thing that are gonna come along and for some people including earlier versions of myself I think that can be a bit of a point of panic it feels like if there's some other expression of Christianity that people are really into maybe my expression is wrong or there's something wrong with me and the result historically has been that it can get kind of combative I've been a part of that myself recently I've been trying to get outside of that line of thinking a little bit more and one of the ways I've been doing that is by asking questions of people who think other things to try to learn more about where they're coming from so the guy was just talking to is well somebody who thinks other things his name is dr. Jeremy Holmes he's super smart super nice assuming he's a doctor in literally theology he's a Catholic theologian so I asked him if we could just go sit down somewhere fun and I went to the restaurant in town that we both like to hang out at and talk theology like really go right at the stuff that is distinctive between Catholics and Protestants historically and see if we could have some fun with it and enjoy each other's company and learn some things so I want to go talk with my friend dr. Jeremy Holmes and get an answer to that question that I left hang in there I'm Matt this is the 10 minute Bible hour let's get after it so you teach at Wyoming Catholic College Wood yep 4 year what's your title there I am associate professor of theology myself passing out pretty good yeah I don't drop that title out very often cuz it sounds a little fancier than I feel in the room with a bunch of friends see you and I have had a couple of conversations talking shop comparing notes it's been really fun right right that's why I want to sit down and do this because I don't know maybe I'm being narcissistic or overly flattering to the two of us but I thought it was really interesting conversation and you didn't get weird at all when I asked you Protestant questions it was like well let me you really want to know this and I really want to talk to somebody who won't be threatened and weird about it but I'd like to just actually ask the question and you've been great about that my earliest memories are in fact Presbyterian okay my family went through a number of churches when I was young just finally settling into the Roman Catholic Church and so it's not a weird conversation for me at all I appreciate that we have a him in our tradition says the church is one foundation is Jesus Christ our Lord right right how would you answer the question who is Jesus and we're gonna be at this exact same page here Jesus Christ is the second person of the Trinity fully God fully man the one who came into you thrust himself into this realm of time and space in order to culminate human history and save us all from our sins by his all sufficient sacrifice in both of our traditions we'd recite the same creeds right it seems to me like on the question of Jesus it doesn't seem like any of us have any disagreement whatsoever right I mean got in the flesh fully God fully man and Redeemer at the cross and in the resurrection well I guess I'm assuming that I'm asking you questions sure I where does Jesus fit how would you explain that to us soon where does Jesus fit into the equation of God redeeming stuff in this case I'm pretty confident that we we are on exactly the same page right that we have a God who is eternal entirely immaterial all wise all good unlimited in every way rape infinite in being goodness is true that selfie is goodness itself so that when you say that that God it is also man it's that statement has the full shock value it's a very strange statement that the infinite can inhabit this stupid thing that you and I are how would you explain that part to somebody yeah who's coming into faith what does the cross mean why did Jesus have to go do that stuff when God made the world he made a lot of wonderful beautiful things we don't see the whole angelic round the material beings and then he made something that from a certain angle doesn't make a lot of sense he made a weird hybrid of matter in spirit that would be us there's a kind of built-in tension yeah in this thing we're on the side of the material solid that he gave us we are angelic we are eternal we are meant to to last forever but on the side of the body which we sort of have it common to the animals we're destined to die we're gonna what we can suffer pain and these things make odd bedfellows in one nature but it works just that it is a nature it is human nature that's that's us but he didn't just leave us in this situation he gave us a gift that went beyond the ability of our our soul or our body and that gift was he says you know what I'm gonna make you be in accord with your soul by keeping you close to me and so that through our soul being and union with God the body would remain in union at the soul and this is what we see depicted in the first chapters of Genesis with this friendship with God where you know God shows up and walks in the garden in the cool of the evening and then we blew it the of course the first man and a woman blew it on our behalf but then every generation has sort of voted in favor of what they did we we've all blown it sort of echoing what they've done and so blowing it meant above all rupturing our union gone then the whole gift he had given us falls apart now we're liable to death and suffering and all the things that our nature would normally entail you know so God didn't need to make anything he doesn't need us he didn't need to make us once he made us he doesn't need us to endure but he apparently took his making us as a commitment and he stepped in to save what he had made he decided to reunite mankind to himself by himself becoming man yeah that is kind of an odd route isn't it yes God becomes an individual man but he does that in order to assume the position of the head of the race which our first father blew so this is the Pauline theology of Romans about Senator in the world through one guy and it being resolved through one guy I mean guys obviously selling a little bit short when you're talking about Jesus sure yep well and I guess what I'm trying to draw out is to use Paul's language is the idea of the church as the body of Christ that that whole idea is drawing out is the intention behind the Incarnation right that that Christ wasn't gonna become incarnate as one man over to the side do his thing blast off the planet and we're all over here maybe sort of benefiting in some indirect way from his activities know that he he became a man in order to unite that man who is God to mankind and sort of reconstitute the race the step to make that work to make that go was of course the the passion right that that he was going to make up for to atone for to bring to bring the race back in union with God after all the things we had done by actually suffering the penalty and his own person in a way that would be sufficient for everybody for all time so that when you or I become a member of the body of Christ then the in the in the body that he wants to assemble the the Holy Spirit is like the soul that inhabits all the members and unites it into one body of Christ and the key step for us then is to receive that Holy Spirit the the whole victory that is the the immortality and the glory that that Christ wants to give us is already present in him it's just a matter of extending it down to the rest of his body that's that's in okay in short kind of how I would say this is where Jesus fits into the whole scheme of salvation okay so the first thing that strikes me about what you just said is that that does not sound that different from how right somebody in my tradition would say that I was really fun to hear that from kind of a different angle because you use some language that I've never heard anybody use but I'm sitting you're running that through my filter I'm like that yeah that sounds like it sounds like what we all think about Jesus it sounds like what we all think about what went wrong with the human problems in the fall whatever you want to call it yeah that sounds like what we think about I mean I do you guys use the phrase substitutionary atonement when you talk about your your theory of the atonement it doesn't tend to be a Catholic phrase but no I think I think Christians of various denominations have been reading some of the same very early classics like Athanasius on the Incarnation which is you know you know where I'm drawing a lot of the way I'm thinking about this so yeah there's a lot there's we actually have most of us more in common than just Scripture we have some of the very early patristic period in common as well even though we might weight it differently in our thought people of all different denominations have been reading this stuff and thinking about it so connecting dots the way athenais just did is not I don't think it's a specifically Catholic thing I don't think so either and and I know one of the things that I hear a lot is careful study in that church history because you're about to become a Catholic like want respected Catholicism before a respect it's still but I've been reading church history for a long time and I'm still not a Catholic but like it's part of the reason that I'm not a Catholic because I I don't feel like I have to be okay I don't I don't even looking at Catholic theology from the outside or reading the Bible myself it doesn't give me the impression that that there is some kind of epic aja sness esse T for me to sign up for the team I mean I mean it feels like I'm a Christian but at the same time I know that the question of the sacraments is a really big one for determining whether or not I am and so you talk about when you're talking about the whole thing here just a minute ago you bring up the day of receiving the Holy Spirit and entering into this this redemptive story this yeah oh you didn't use this language the new family of faith that's the language that I used that Christ is creating that he's the head of the church body the body how do you sign up for that and do you guys think Protestants have signed up or do you think that we're in the neighborhood enough but but not there okay yeah yeah yeah in a Catholic view right we're gonna think of the body as well bodily like it's a visible thing Christ established a visible community and if you want to know where it is you can like go walk to a place and find it it's it's possible to think of the body as being more invisibly constituted where the you know this would be possible to think of Christ's intention as being that well people will receive the Holy Spirit here and there and you'll never know in what pockets that has happened and you know looking at someone you'll never know whether they're in or out of this body that he's established you can think that way right that's what that's a coherent thing to think both hand yeah that is the when I say a visible body I don't mean to exclude the visible element right but that the the the original intention would be to have a visible group a visible congregation family inhabited by the spirit now of course people mess it up and they can they can lose the Holy Spirit through their own fault or they can you know they can be in the body sort of visibly but spiritually they've rejected it and in a Catholic viewpoint you would still say well yeah they're still in it they're like it'd be as though you had a tourniquet put on your foot and your foots dead now I say your legs alive but the circulation ends of the foot and there is a dead member that's still attached right without the spirit there's no life but it's still in the body right and so the you but but but that's not the intention the intention and the Catholic understanding is to have this visible you can point to it you can go find it and grab it body of Christ inhabited by the spirit that drove his mission and have that be his church well if that's the case so if you just take it as a premise and run with it I'm not have not argued for that I'm just saying that that's a way of thinking sure yeah if that's the way of thinking then then just signing up would include becoming visibly a part of that group right which is gonna be a concrete thing it's gonna involve going to a building somewhere maybe signing a document maybe you know having a ceremony right there's gonna be things you do so that you are recognisably now and everybody knows and because they've seen or heard that you are with this group now so that what that for example would cut out one of my good friends in graduate school became a Christian in a hotel room when some I don't know where what they were some kind of missionaries came by and handed him a Bible and talked to him for a few minutes okay and he started reading his Bible and aunt converted he came to faith to a degree he took in read and believed okay and you'd say on a Catholic view that you would end up having to say that was really good but now you need to go down to a building and you know there may be some paperwork become a Christian in the hotel room he becomes a Christian with the paperwork and the baptism well you guess you would say he's in the opposite scenario of our sinful Christian we talked about a moment ago the sinful Christian is visibly a member of the church but dead invisibly he's not okay my guy supposing he has the intention of like he realizes I've got to join this group he is now invisibly I remember the bodies alive he's just like a buddy sitting around like yeah and the Living Dead but he anybody needs to come visibly attached to the group all right right and in fact if he if he realizes that this was Christ's intention if like if he if he comes to the conviction that Christ intended to found this visible group and then says to himself no I'm not gonna join that oh well now he's not not in union with Christ right that is it's one thing my friend in fact did not come to that conviction and we can we can talk about that interesting crazy but but supposing that my guy in the hotel room reading his New Testament decides that Jesus has found that a visible community then if in fact he has come to faith in Christ his next question has to be where is it and how do I sign up right and I think where we would disagree is on the question of what is the visible community I think I think yeah I mean yeah okay you've got like your apostle Kenneth had a vision that he founded the you know such-and-such community Apostolic Church of super secret no organization we just do things completely on our own okay maybe some of those churches are very very nice but I mean I'm sure you and I would both raise an eyebrow at such a I mean that tiptoes right up to the edge of the dictionary definition of cult and I suppose the way we might maybe at the risk of being judgmental evaluate whether that falls within the boundaries of historical Christianity or outside them would be is can you sign the Creed's is the Bible work there who's Jesus to you guys I mean the right the basic question so setting setting aside that like bizarro outlier sure that he's gonna be hit and miss in terms of what you get I would think most non Catholic Protestants or the the non Catholic groups that would call themselves pre-reformation non Catholics would agree that there'd be something pretty weird about somebody you know like dad I'm convinced the whole Jesus thing and I believe that I have received the Holy Spirit and I'm forgiven for my sins and I would not want to be in fellowship with any other Christians that would be no I wouldn't want to do that well I I think all of us would agree that yeah well something went wrong there well then maybe maybe you're not responding to the same Jesus that we see in the scriptures and yeah the same gospel that was handed down to us because yeah pretty clearly his intent was that we would participate in this larger body that we would participate as agents of the kingdom yet all of his instructions to his disciples the second half of what he's teaching his people and the Gospels is all on mission action-oriented you are a part of this part visible part invisible now and later Kingdom all of this stuff so this is another one of those places where I think you know we high-five across the table right yeah yeah we agree yeah I think where we see a different is the uniqueness of one town and the uniqueness of Rome as a Protestant I look at that and I'm like looks like that's where Peter died okay looks like that was one of the five big urban centers of Christianity in the first few hundred years okay looks like some Latin speakers in North Africa and the Italian peninsula gradually kind of won the argument power kind of shifted that way there was a bit of a wrestling match with the Cappadocia and fathers and the Eastern Christians Antioch got on hard times financially gradually we see that cities you know Antioch and Damascus kind of deteriorate and influence and oh okay historically I can see why Rome wound up being really significant there but it's an outsider you know I don't look at it and be like I think God showed up and saved when Attila came and I don't think there's anything necessarily like I don't read Jesus words as being you know and Peter on this rock you know and you know on that confession or on you as an individual even yelling and the binding and loosing and wherever you die that's who's in charge like I think that's kind of one of the just yeah get off the train points for Protestants why do you guys think that there is something special about Rome and and how special do you think it is so there's a bunch of stuff that goes into having an actual individual congregation that on a Catholic read we would say Christ intended to decide some of that because he was in fact founding an individual congregation so the the the idea of the importance of Peter would be would sort of fall under the topic of what do we mean when he said they Christ intended to found a visible church that is did he did he intend to found a church that must make itself visible whenever possible or did he actually found at a concrete tangible individual community that then moved forward because on the latter hypothesis is where we're gonna get into so what did he do in terms of arranging for that community and Catholic read of courses you know it would be well he set the Apostles in charge of that and Peter in charge of the Apostles and you know there's lots of detail work to do around is that even a good read or whatever right but yeah oh yeah and how the I know absolutely biasing in the mind the in in in my mind which I I think by now is a Catholic mind I hope that's true the question of the importance of Rome actually ties back into the Incarnation and what is it for right that is if the Incarnation was to be extended in a certain way in the way that we had that was Catholics with we think it was meant to be extended then that's where you would get an individual guy who died at some individual place having a weird importance and the big scheme of things right that is if the fellowship is as abstract that's not a good way to put it what I mean is if the fellowship is a kind of policy that must be enacted wherever possible then that policy will roll around individuals and idiosyncrasies in individual places and reform somewhere down low down the run line but if the fellowship is a concrete tangible thing from day one and it's this individual concrete tangible fellowship that's supposed to move forward then various individuals and though idiosyncrasies of their lives have a different magnitude of importance for the story and I think that can be an area where Catholics and Protestants can sort of look and talk past each other in terms of yeah if it unless you're thinking that way who the heck cares where Peter died okay but if if Peter is already the the visible leader of a visible group which is the visible leader of this visible body and that's a structure that's supposed to somehow endure oh well then there's gonna be big questions when Peter dies how does the structure endured and they say well as long as he's running around we know how the structures working go talk to Peter but or you know go talk to one of the Apostles if they're closer right here but but Peter dies what do we do well what did he say to do presumably he would have taken care of that some time before he died yeah would ya hey it looks like lesen time of his death more important for the for that structure than a bunch of other places that were big deals in his life earlier well I like the practical rationale that sin turist I don't think I've ever heard of put that way so as always I'm learning and I like learning the my Protestant brain says well yeah but there were all kinds of churches that never interacted with Peter and in any way that were established by the lesser apostles churches that spread out from Jerusalem under the leadership of James who sure looks like he's the guy in charge at the Jerusalem Council in acts 15 and you've got all of these situations where Paul and even second-generation leaders coming after Paul like Timothy they're going around they're establishing these churches their elders there they're effective even the elders who it looks like we're probably running things in Rome when Peter got there even those guys look like Peter hood people who actually Paul raised up in Ephesus in Corinth yeah yeah you know on either side of the Claudian you know the tossing out of the the Jews and the Christians alike for whatever that period of time that was and so I guess I can look at that from the outside and say well it looks like everybody answered that question in isolation not the Rome wielded this tremendous influence at the time of Peters death but again and all of our biases are gonna come into play here so with my biases I look at that and it looks like well it looks like that was kind of retro actively read into this story I think I mean you sold me I mean absolutely there's a practical question but it seems like everybody else answered in that practical question as well it seems like it worked pretty well in a ton of different places and the other thing that strikes me about this is you know the more I do learn about the classical world in the late classical world and the more I learn about what Italian culture was like and it wasn't obviously Italy but on the peninsula yeah versus Greek culture or culture in Asia Minor or North Africa or the Levant is not the same thing it's not uniform he'd had the Alexandrian conquest so you got everything kind of Greek if I'd right you had the Roman conquest BC sward have had things Latin if I'd but I don't think and maybe he'd disagree with me on this Valentin Latin culture ever washed over the mind and the language and the thought process of the the Mediterranean world the way Greek culture did no even after the Roman conquest you're all still Greeks but that legal system kind of shits in and so the the little liturgical language of the Roman Church for the first two hundred years was Greek yeah so well language of everybody was I mean Latin was it was a governmental language a legal language and that was that's about I mean nobody in Galilee is going fishing with Peter and learning about Jesus it's gonna be let's do this thing in Latin but it's also understandable how it did catch on and so again outside looking in I look at that I'm like that's the incredible adaptivity of the gospel so awesome glad the church had the sense to go Latin win that made sense glad it had the sense to be Greek where it needed to be creaking I'm glad there was an Aramaic and a syriac church and a Coptic Church and this is incredible and then and then it seems like there's this real consolidating impulse I think the I would guess that the Roman Catholic would look at that and say you know there's this unifying impulse the outside looking in I've been want to know there's a consolidating impulse to be like this power needs to be centered here you end up with this bipolar Mediterranean world is it Constantinople or is it Rome politics start to factor in in Rome wins out and so historically I've always found myself even before I really cared much one way or the other I always found myself frankly and being more attracted to the Greek claim who I'm most attracted to the Protestant claim but but you know a bit of the the you know on either side of the Great Schism right I guess I've always felt more like mmm I agree with the legal sounding language of the Western read on the Scriptures geologically I find myself more on the same page with my Roman brothers and sisters historically in terms of historical claim I think I'm more compelled by the Greek case which is a little more decentralized come on at the same time I'm an American I'm very libertarian and Sherman said I'm done from stinking Wyoming I mean you know independence individual have to admit that I'm a little bit of product of where I'm from what is the internally within Catholicism what is what is the narrative as the real uniqueness and exclusivity of the claim throughout the centuries I mean if somebody's outside looking in they're like should I be Greek Orthodox or should I be Catholic I mean yeah what would be the rationale for why they should fall on your side of that schism alright I know that's not an ideal place to hit pause and feels like a little bit of a dirty cliffhanger trick but the reality is there's not really anywhere good to hit pause on this conversation because Jeremy is such a great conversationalist and so willing to bounce these ideas back and forth that it just kind of flies along so I will pick up right there in the next video that unpacks this conversation further I told you that guy was cool right really knows his stuff he's a lot of fun to talk with and it even gets more fun as we warm up a little bit more and get more used to how each other do this thing so there would be more videos like this coming down the pike in the meantime of course I want to say thank you to Jeremy for being the kind of guy he is and for teaching me things about Catholicism which in addition to making a friend and getting to know somebody better this is my chief goal and going and having conversations like this hope you gain something from it too will do more of this soon I'm Matt this is the time in the Bible our catching a bit

Channel: The Ten Minute Bible Hour

Views: 427,093

Rating: 4.8906589 out of 5

Keywords: catholic vs. protestant, what do catholics believe, what do protestants believe, reformation, martin luther, pope, mary, saints

Id: hf1kOOE457A

Length: 29min 33sec (1773 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 31 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/BaroqueBarrage]

It always hurts when I hear Protestants talk about why they’re not Catholic because “it doesn’t really matter what denomination I belong to”, even when their beliefs seem to align more with Catholicism than their current denomination.

His comments about the importance of Rome seem to be in an effort to support that line of thinking.

[u/blostopher]

(Speaking as a convert myself) I’m hearing this guy and he’s on the road, asking the questions. I like the Catholic theologian’s manner of speaking (implicit is the difficulty of translating Catholic theology into something a Protestant can understand). Too bad the conversation ended JUST as they were broaching the question of the Eucharist... would have liked to see more.

[u/sudo_armbar]

He does a number of great videos; i learned a lot from his visit to a cathedral.