Are Protestants Christians According to Catholics? (Second of Five Conversations)

when I talk to some Catholics I get the impression they would say I am NOT a Christian because I have not received the Eucharist okay from a church that properly places the priestly blessing on the Eucharist and I have never consumed the actual body and blood of Christ and there are other Catholics I talked to who I think would call me a brother like a Christian what is just the actual right position what I mean what is the actual Catholic position on me yeah the actual Catholic position according to you know the official teaching at the Second Vatican Council it would be that hey I'm Matt this is the 10-minute Bible hour and when I was a boy my mom said that if I wanted to learn things about things I should ask questions of people who know what they're talking about so since I'm a Protestant who wants to learn more things about what Catholics actually think I started by going to the Cathedral of the Madeleine in Salt Lake City Utah which is a place where there are Catholics and I talked to the Catholic priest there I was like hey I'm a Protestant can you show me around and tell me about your stuff and he did and it was really nice and I learned a lot of things I feel like I made a friend and I was like I'd like to know more and so I asked my theology professor buddy Jeremy Holmes if we could sit down over a long meal that I don't know if we actually ever ate our food but theoretically it was a long meal to talk shop and ask questions and bounce things back and forth and that conversation has been a little bit different than the one where I went and just asked questions of a priest at a Cathedral because here I know Jeremy and so I felt like we could do a little more give-and-take I thought we could get deeper into it if I'm throwing out some stuff but I think as well I look if you were here and you're like oh cool Catholics and Protestants cannibalizing each other I love religious debates you are gonna be so disappointed because we don't really fight at all it's incredibly boring and nice that's not boring it's just nice and that's because we really do like each other and I really do think that there's a ton of overlap in terms of what we think but part of what I like about Jeremy is that he's not weirded out by going right at the stuff that really is or really are rather the points of distinction between our two traditions so last time around I left it on this gigantic cliffhanger and as promised we're going to pick it up exactly where we left off with an uncomfortable question and see what Jeremy with it so once again my name is Matt is the 10-minute Bible our my buddies Jeremy Holmes and let's talk about Protestantism and Catholicism 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 I think that one key thing is to maybe clarify the Catholic idea of what the importance of Rome is from and how it is important how it's not important and that is a something that that is bound up with this history that you're telling that is the the big deal in the minds of the early church as I understand it was the Apostles now Peter was sort of the the lead voice in that group but there was no no thought that Peter was a kind of lone monarch with the other 11 apostles as his employees or something okay right but it's the cut it's big Catholic circles refer to the College of apostles right the apostolic College which has a lead guy kind of a head of the college but but he's not a solo route he's only a ruler in as much as he's the head of this College if this it's the apostles who are the rulers of the church and so then they head off and do their things and what becomes very important to early Christians is what did the Apostles do so Peter dying in Rome has its parallel in other places were there other Apostolic sees their place other churches that are associated with this or that apologies you would call those apostolic sees as well yep so traditionally you guys have Thomas dying in India mm-hmm I know some people disagree about where she winds up yeah we've got Matthew in the north central Africa like the agency dying what we'd call Sudan or something like that Ethiopia at all but I'm not sure either John and Asia Minor then the question could be comes which of those places sort of remain in the consciousness of the church as we remember this apostle has associated with this place and this and and as we as Rome is associated with Peter so this place is associated with this apostle if that remains in the in the consciousness then people look to that church as having relatively more important than other churches so yeah you'll find for example you know when Saint Agustin is on Christian doctrine is offering advice to people who want to know well which books are in the Bible because at that point there's no super codified list you know can't go to the bookstore and get it off the shelf yet he says well um in a pinch used the books that the most important churches use right so he in his mind not all churches are equal and what's making them unequal is some of them are more associated with an apostle now that what that would mean is that the the kind of first among equals relationship that Peter had to the flesh-and-blood apostles as they walked around with Jesus then has its reflection in the various communities they founded where there are various churches that would be seen as rulers places of the prince and rome would be sort of the the most important but not the only important one not the only authority may be the biggest authority but historically then what happens is that other apostolic seesee it wiped out right the Moslems come through and destroy this place you know this place a long ways after the fact at that point yeah sure sure so so some good ways down the road the landscape looks really different and you don't have the same sort of gentle slopes up to the peak of Rome you've got Rome standing a lot more alone than she used to yeah I think I think in terms of intimacy that can trace itself back to an apostle okay and so I think at that point you'd say the that first among equals thing gets more and more emphasis as the that alumnus becomes more of a reality and then of course if there comes a moment where maybe some other of the equals want to test that firstness then of course that will also lead to either act situation or down down playing depending on how that breaks right so I think there is a long history to the the idea people have in their minds today of the Pope as a kind of man are people figure who solo rules the Catholic Church well they're um today the ducted themselves like that oh yeah there's a guy crazy but I mean I could put in front of you the commentary on Joe by who was that Gregory Gregory was Gregory you know we read that in seminary I remember thinking like if this was one of those later Folgers blind taste-test things like does that sound Christian every Protestant I know would be like this is fantastic yeah and you know or maybe mild push back here and there just adjusted for how long ago that was in slightly different language I think one of the unfortunate consequences of the Reformation is that as humans we tend to think in terms of binary one zero yes no good bad right wrong and because there are Pope's who were complete dumpster fires as human beings disgrace the office horribly disgrace the name of Christ I mean it was hideous it's really easy to be like well all the Pope's did stuff like what happened in the Vatican that one time before the Reformation and and it's just not true it's just not true I mean you you look at the the cadaver Synod with Sylvester and the two feuding rich families well if that's all you know about the papacy seems a joke yeah and we look at you guys we're like you guys talk about this you know important tradition and how it's all good but we've heard these three anecdotes about stupid stuff you guys did and it's broken it's insane but at the same time you know I can understand how a Catholic looks at embezzlement scandals at some megachurch they look at you know this or that scoundrel that rained it does the the whole la-dee-da I'm an evangelical Christian routine I could see how a Catholic would look at it and say well that's probably how all your things are yeah but when you actually look at the record of history I think this is what you see overwhelmingly the the Catholic Church has put forward popes who think theologically and and you've got a really impressive percentage of not just theological thinkers but due to wrote and processed ideas and I think there's I think there that we are we deprive ourselves by just washing our hands of everyone who's ever held that title because of the abuses of some and you might say that this is a this is one of the hazards of having an actual concrete individual visible foundation that you say is founded by Jesus Christ because concrete individual visible communities are going to have these dumpster fires yes we are yes we are and I'm guessing you and I have both been a part of one or two and if you if you don't have this commitment that that Catholics have then you can kind of become a free agent again and then re associate somewhere else and you're clean of that dumpster that was them I was there but I I thought that wasn't me this is now my congregation over here if you're at Catholic you just go yeah that was us yes for example I feel no ownership of the Salem witch trials right I'm not a Calvinist they were I'm mostly a Calvinist I mean I overwhelmingly agree but that's that's not my tradition it's a different part of the family tree so it's very easy well and not only that but I'm also not a statist so it's double easy for me to be like I don't want the government killing anybody so you get a government killing people and it's backed by the church and 19 people I think that's the number end up dying in that situation it as never once in my life crossed my mind that my ideology or me personally bear any historical responsibility for the Salem witch trials right Michael Servetus gets burned at the stake in Geneva but never felt one ounce of that yeah I mean my tradition in its immediate sense extends to 1950 with some Scandinavians who migrated to Missouri okay and so I think I think what you just said is so important for people from my tribe to understand that it really is we have a very convenient out on everything okay and that's got to look funny to a Catholic or an Orthodox because we do just have the historical convenience I've just washed our hands and you know what if my group gets stupid now and they like burn somebody at the stake or something with that I don't think we're gonna do it of course I'm gonna walk away yeah it's a lot like being in a like being in a natural family where you know if Uncle Louie is a drunkard and a jerk unfortunately he's still Uncle Louie and there's no no making him not related anymore and being Catholic can be like that sometimes right where you say that you just want to tell people look that doesn't represent what we're about but they're like but he was Pope yeah yeah that happened but now you'd take a skeleton and it was rotting and put it on the throne did that he inferred that that went down happened at st. John's Lateran but the yeah but but the positive side you're pointing out is yeah I read Saint Athanasius or Saint Gregory and I have that sense of the flip side oh here's somebody from my community talking to me over the over the centuries I think everyone and once again is very selective in what they do with the Church Fathers because it's such a big body of writing and these guys were they were not a finished product clearly these folks were wrestling me Tertullian ended up at montanus that the end of this life for a while just don't thinking it out yeah they're they're gaming it out together and they're in this dynamic moment where they weren't calcified yet and that's what I think is so neat that's why I kind of I don't want to feel like a guest in that crowd it's something that I want to overcome with my Protestantism because I love reading the church fathers and getting a sense of what that verbal tennis match was about and what they were trying to wrestle through I think the D decay is an early example of the church and wrestling that through I think where we hurt ourselves is when we pick the ones we like and the phrases we like and we try to present that as being indicative of all this stuff my Lutheran friends could make a case for all the church fathers thought everything they think mm-hmm and they're half right it's fun to get to snipe sure secure position of Protestantism where we can just move on but the reality is that I view this as a shared tradition mmm I do view Catholics pre and post 1517 as my brothers and sisters because of exactly what we talked about at the beginning ya know this is who Jesus is right this is what the problem was this is what Jesus did and you know and in some way we respond and so I don't with your permission I'd love to can continue to effort to feel less like a guest sure yeah part of the world and more like a part of the same when I talk to some Catholics I get the impression they would say I am NOT a Christian because I have not received the Eucharist okay from a church that properly places the priestly blessing on the Eucharist and I have never consumed the actual body and blood of Christ and there are other Catholics I talked to who I think would call me a brother like a Christian what is just the actual right position what I mean what is the actual Catholic position on me great yeah so yeah the actual Catholic position according to you know the official teaching at the Second Vatican Council would be that that you are a Christian and a brother in Christ and obviously from the Catholic point of view you've got some things wrong and you're in a weird position due to a long history okay all right so the the the people who at the Reformation broke away from that visible congregation that I keep going act 2 in a Catholic viewpoint you would say yeah of course there were reasons to do that Uncle Louie was terrible if you guys see something that stuff yeah I mean because the this and this is this is part of what I actually kind of like about the Council of Trent is that they are well able to say boy have we been blowing it we have to get our act together yeah there's a lot of internal housecleaning we have to do but we can't just spend our time firing at the outside right so the the fault is not that that people thought something was wrong from a Catholic point of view the fault would have been yeah but you still can't tear away from the visible community you there's got to be another way to work this out right as painful as it is to stay in somehow we have to do that and so legitimately from a Catholic perspective you would say the people who actually did that where we're being unfaithful to Christ they were not following his intention and many of them surely must have been in some kind of state corresponding to that fact but once they're away and then there have children and their children have children and those children have children and we're now some hundreds of years later nobody nobody today in one of the various Protestant denominations is in the position of tearing away from the visible union right they're just in the position of being what they've been and so there you could say well it's not on you that your church is separated from the Catholic Church you don't have a kind of personal guilt about that is something that we're all bearing almost like original sin right which is not a personal fault right and so you'd say yeah there was a bad deed in the background that explains where you are but it's not your bad deed that's a position of political social religious grace and I appreciate it what's funny about it is if I if I am not sitting across from a Catholic and I've got all of my you know super bearded craft-beer wielding Calvinist buddies hanging around the table and they're talking about what happened there yeah I think most of them would take the same gracious tone is boy me I know Protestants you don't sure you guys are the Antichrist all caps yeah literally Hitler I don't know what they say it would be nice remember the Jack Chick oh yeah yeah somebody gave me the entire sack I have every single one of those I've wrapped in cellophane I haven't had a chance to read them but I'm pretty sure I'm bad because of my blue jeans okay better make a change I look I get that there are Catholics who were super super mad at me I hear from them on the internet yeah and they say really mean things yeah and they think that by yelling at me to come home and telling me that I'm not a Christian that somehow this will accomplish something and that's yes I mean it's repellent it's it's not moving the needle at all yep Oh am i aware on the Protestant side of things there are people who would say all the same stuff the opposite way sure that's what's gonna stick in our ears and that's what we're gonna remember because loud angry people at the end of any distribution curve tend to be the people we actually hear from whereas healthy normal people and the big Bell part of the curve you don't remember what they said is it sounded sane like what you just said we'd both agree on the creeds yeah we both agree on what we're going for yeah key points of disagreement and you and I both know them we disagree about where scripture ranks versus tradition we would disagree about how exactly that initiation point of faith occurs and what role the church plays in it and we would disagree about some of the extended sacraments and whether that is rape actually a vacation impartation of grace or this is an ordinance of the church and this is us being involved in life and pointing people to Jesus we would disagree about purgatory we would disagree about Mary rain but in the grand scheme of things maybe only one or two of those has a ton of weight we would look and say write a necessary break occurred the the church was a dumpster fire there were opportunities to get this straightened out we devolved away from the biblical teachings on salvation the role of the church it got bloody with the church taking over government for huge swathes of the Middle Ages and you know the Protestant would look at that and say yeah we tried John Huss showed up at you know at a council under promise of protection and he didn't leave alive like there were efforts and blood was shed and I totally get the other argument that's why I think a lot of my Catholic friends don't understand is I totally get it the guy hurt I hear you this is Christ visible church headquarters happen to be in Rome could have been anywhere that's where it happened to turn out to be and Uncle Louie was having an awful stretch that's when he was kind of on the booze and it wasn't his best day I use the same language only Catholicism's an eternal historical dumpster fire I think you talked about the Reformation you're talking about catching the church on its worst day mm-hmm some folks would look at that and say salvation can only come through this organization in this spot this is the only true church I think other people are just gonna be wired to look at that and say well no you try to reform it and if it doesn't work you don't just quit on the gospel you go to this other thing the Protestants would look in and be like at Trent only happens if because of us yeah think it's not us there's no Trent we think Trent was cool too I think that that one of the problems we get often in Congress catholic protestant conversations is picking out an issue then duking it out over this issue when really the deciding factor isn't is not so much this argument where this text on this side it's how does it fit into the whole picture that you're working with right now yeah and you could say you know we can call it my assumptions you have your assumptions but it's that whole set of thoughts and where this fits into the grand scheme that is gonna be the strongest argument for how should I think about this but what that means is that what it means is that is really hard to have the conversation because we can't talk about the whole picture all at once all the time we actually have to go from topic today you don't need any tips if you do yeah so progress you know like you know we can say sacraments right it's some point you just have to start talking about sacraments you can't keep talking about the big picture at all times so humanly speaking it's gonna be difficult - yeah it's gonna be difficult to have the conversation just because to see why are we disagreeing about sacraments you have to not only see well you have these five Bible verses I have these three Bible verses but we have to see oh I have these five hundred assumptions you have those four hundred solutions and they all play together and oftentimes the becoming convinced of the other side of an argument is is not being it's not so much succumbing to it to a text or realizing that eventually that you have to cope with this text that can't play a role more often it's a flip of how you imagined you were imagining one way and then suddenly the picture flipped on you and you were seeing it another way you go oh my goodness that makes more sense mm-hmm when I talk to Protestants who I know who I was friends with when they were Protestants and now they're Catholics that is what happened it's not that somebody was like look at this verse Jesus said this is my body and is is in caps now like what could he have possibly meant yeah look well it's obviously a metaphor it's not even really you guys think the natural reading of that passage is that he was holding bread it was like that is me we use metaphors and all of his teaching why is that the one metaphor and like don't get me wrong I understand your case and it's much more compelling when you go back to the level of assumptions instead of repeatedly typing that verse in all caps in the content section yeah I look from where I sit and my set and 500 assumptions there's just no reason to read that as being literal or efficacious gob viously that's a metaphor he's saying they remember this thing because that's what's about to happen is like I am the centerpiece of everything that's going down on which we agree in defensive rebelling Kalmbach offenders let me just I might borrow that let me just note that Catholics the Catholics especially Catholics who deal with the sort of Jack Chick zone get beat over the head a lot with you have to read the Bible literally so when the Catholic does get to that one spot we're healing read it literally yeah starts jumping up and down saying hey I'm reading it literally and you're not how about that how I've never thought it's it's a it's a little bit of one-up one-upmanship okay and then I'm not trying to say it's good I'm just saying you know maybe cut up some slack they probably had one too many conversations with somebody who kept taunting them with how I read the Bible literally yeah and and forgive me if it didn't sound like I'm cutting them slack I intend to oh that's really I mean for it no I was dead as a my larger point is my Protestant slash evangelical low church crowd they got five hundred assumptions when they come to a passage about the Eucharist John's fix whatever it might be and yet so you guys and yet we can still both say the Creed's and so you go to John 17 you get into Jesus praying for future believers and any you know what he prayed for it be one rights as he and the father are one so people would know that right now the son was sent by the father and I think this is a this is a witness to the world how we interact but here's where I'm at man we still can say the same Creed and we still get on from that stuff and we're not burning each other down right now and we haven't been for a long time and so I don't know I'm interesting your thought on this but make a bold statement okay I think we're actually doing better on that John 17 thing than we're giving ourselves credit for okay I think it's been ugly but I think it's a testimony to the reality and truth of the gospel that you still have so many people inside the circle of historical Christianity who really can't agree on that stuff you were saying at the beginning about who God is who Jesus is what happened on the cross and and where we fit do you think I'm being too optimistic yeah it's a great question yeah I'm gonna do that to you again I'm sorry no why am I saying I'm sorry I'm not sorry at all that's the stupid thing to apologize for I have these in all the time in the world to make an editorial decision decide to hit pause right there but I wanted the cliffhanger and I'm putting it there for a reason and that's because I want you to kick this around with me like is the church in a state of disk unified disarray it's been a wreck for decades or hundreds of years or whatever or is the church in a little bit greater state of unity than a lot of people give it credit for now look you just saw the conversation you know what I'm gonna argue for and it's the unpopular position but it's the one that says maybe this is going better than we think when you actually sit down and start comparing notes with people of different Christian expressions you discover well and there is a whole lot of agreement on God and who Jesus is and the idea of redemption and the gist of what happened at the cross and most of how you interpret the Bible and then like Jeremy very astutely pointed out what you have that really is the distinction between any two groups of Christian thought and this applies with a token Protestants Catholics or you're talking about you know the one group and the Coptic Christians I'm doing a video with them coming up the Eastern Orthodox Church other expressions when you compare any of these groups you discover that there are a set of assumptions in the background and those sets of assumptions determine what you make of the Bible what authority you ascribe to the Bible how you interpret the trickier parts of the Bible there are some of these interpretations that father Diaz at the Cathedral of the Madelon throughout and the Jeremy's throwing out or they're just like yeah obviously the text means this and I'm going what do you seem so sane how could it possibly mean that why would that be the conclusion you would jump to but they're not crazy people and they're not bad people so what's going on they're not crazy and they're not bad then it must be what Jeremy's saying they have a set of assumptions that cause them to come to the text and read it a certain way I have a set of assumptions I happen to think there are very good set of assumptions or I wouldn't think them anymore because I don't want to think things that are dumb and wrong but I think what we get into in the next couple rounds of the conversation with Jeremy as it moves forward is we do get in a little bit deeper to what those core assumptions are and I already mentioned a couple of you know the Bible but particularly the church what role does the church play my Protestant assumptions say I don't need to go to your church and if things were as weird as we both acknowledge they were at a certain point in the sixteenth century it was more than just like one year it was a bad stretch if things were that bad well Jeremy's assumptions say you can't just leave that's like you're your uncle and sometimes he does weird stuff you can't just leave your family whereas I'm like well my loyalties not really like to one expression of the institution the the church is everybody it's everybody who's a Christian so I I didn't leave I didn't leave it all is just you know my tribe just didn't want to play ball with what was going on there we felt like it was getting in the way of what the actual point is so that's why you hear some Protestants argue like no we didn't leave like that was kind of you guys now look I'm not trying to pick a fight with anybody who sees this in any given way what I'm trying to do is very candidly and very honestly understanding fully that every one of those remarks is gonna get me blown up in one way or another in terms of the comments section and I get it I'm cool that we can just do that as fine what I'm trying to do is to illustrate assumptions about the nature of the church in general the nature of the Bible in general that would cause one thing to be unthinkable to one group of Christians and the same equation causes another group to be like well no obviously we should do the thing you think is unthinkable and guess what I'm relatively sure that I am pretty in on the whole Christianity thing okay I think I'm pretty in on the whole Jesus thing I I think I I think I'm committed to this at this point and Isis fact that Jeremy is exactly the same way so what gives well I think what gives is exactly what he pointed out and that is these different sets of assumptions so for now we're gonna leave it at this question for you to wrestle with is the church in a state of disastrous disunity is the church in a better state of unity than we often give it credit for somewhere in between I'm interested to hear your thoughts on that I'll try to read everything in if I don't reply to everybody I try to catch all of that because I really do care what you think even when what you think is that I'm a great big idiot and that I'm wrong about stuff I can live with that we can have fun disagreeing about things that's cool so we'll think about that next time around we'll get deeper into these sets of assumptions that Jeremy's referencing and try to sort those out a little bit and at the least maybe everybody comes away understanding each other a little bit and that sounds pretty good to me there are two reasons that we're getting to do things like this together one is because I keep finding awesome people of goodwill who are comfortable in their own skin who are gracious who are okay with unpacking ideas and spread them out on the table and thinking about it together and I can't thank those people enough Jeremy and everybody else I've met with in this series of videos the second reason is because some of you were really behind it and you're actually funding that thing and so the way we do that is patreon.com slash T MBH a handful of you have signed up to support the program and it really just makes all the difference in the world so I cannot say thanks enough to the people who are willing to go on camera with me and to the people who make it possible for me to afford to be able to do stuff like this so thanks a ton to everybody thanks to you for watching and hanging around I hope you enjoyed it I hope it gives you something to talk talk about think about maybe both and we'll see you on the other side with the next one I'm Matt this is a ten minute Bible hour let's do it again soon

Channel: Matt Whitman

Views: 273,422

Keywords: jeremy holmes, catholic vs protestant, debate, reformation, martin luther

Id: _M5bDc2RYyo

Length: 32min 3sec (1923 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 15 2020