Catholic vs. Protestant: Praying to Mary | Guest: Trent Horn | Ep 997

Congress is trying to pass an anti- anti-Semitism bill it sounds good but what's really in it and what does the Bible say about this statement that quote the Jews killed Jesus also what are some of the biggest differences between protestantism and Catholicism why do Catholics pray to or through Mary well we are talking about all of this debating many subjects today with Catholic apologist Trent horn this will be one of many conversations that I have with him because we went a long time in our conversation over an hour and we still have so many other topics to get through but I hope that this is a good starter for you all you guys have been asking me to have him on for so long and he is wonderful I thought it was a great conversation this episode is brought to you by our friends at goodranchers go to goodranchers.com use code Aly a check out that's goodranchers.com code Ali [Music] Trent horn thanks so much for taking the time to join us today thank you for having me yes okay you're back uh many people probably saw you in the debate that we did on debatable um with Dr White and now because I didn't get the chance to ask you so many questions that I wanted to during that exchange I wanted to bring you back on for everyone this one won't be behind the pay W so everyone gets to access this so many people have been asking me to have you on so tell those who may not know who you are though and what you do sure so my name is Tren horn I am a staff apologist for Catholic answers uh so I'm a Catholic apologist but I also speak frequently on other subjects atheism pro-life uh I want to defend the Catholic worldview so that includes some things that are unique to Catholicism but in the postchristian culture that we live in a lot of the things that I'm defending are things Catholics and Protestants have in common the existence of God the Divinity of Christ uh marriage being something God created to bind men and women together one man and one woman the sanctity of life before birth even just you General sexual ethics things that people didn't question 30 years ago now are really Out On The Fringe for some people so uh that's what I do I have a podcast called the Council of Trent that is a play on words for those who are not Catholic there was a major ecumenical council held in the 16th century uh in response to the Protestant Reformation called the Council of Trent so my podcast is c n Council Trend it's very providential also uh because my parents are are not Catholic actually I'm a convert uh so it all came about providentially so so that's what I do I I write I speak and I just want to help people come to know our Lord come to know the church he established find Salvation in him and live Godly lives that'll make them happy and holy people and tell us a little a little bit about your testimony because like you said you weren't raised Catholic right so I was raised in a nominally religious household uh we didn't go to church the closest thing that we had to religious instruction were the old Hannah Barbara cartoons uh the greatest stories from the Bible those are still my favorite they are still my favorite uh Bible stories I don't show my kids Veggie Tales I hate that really oh I I hate it it's just like I'm sorry a dancing cucumber and tomato can't get across the gravity of sin that demanded the flood of Noah for examp for kids oh yeah even for kids so I love the Hannah Barbara cartoons uh it shows like you you compare like the Veggie Tales Noah episode to the old Hannah Barbara episode and it opens and God saw the world had become Wicked and sinful and you see the the dancing ladies in the tavern and a guy clubs another guy over the head and God's you know and it's just it it brings a certain gravitas to this that this is cuz to me cartoons are for kids animation is for everyone that's a difference there M there are animated things that are not appropriate for children uh cartoons those are for kids so when I teach my kids that's what I mean that's what I was raised on but the time I got to Junior High high school I kind of grew out of that because we didn't go to church I didn't get religious instruction at home beyond the very Basics you know believe in Jesus but I had questions I asked my mom you know how do I know this stuff in the Bible that it really happened yeah can get a good answer so I became a deist I I wasn't an atheist I believe there was a god up there that made everything but I didn't think he cared about us right then in high school I met uh Catholic Catholic teens in a youth group there and also some Protestant teens in another youth group was befriended by them and that started me on my investigation first into being convinced of Christianity and then looking into okay if I'm going to be Christian well what church am I going to belong to right and that all culminated in March of 2002 when I was 17 I was received in the Catholic church I was baptized uh confirmation first Eucharist and after that I started doing a lot of pro-life work uh I got involved in the pro-life movement because there was a girl she went to a very tiny tiny Catholic School only like 20 people in the high school so they wanted to have a prom so to have a prom they all said okay we're all going to invite someone who doesn't go to the school and so that way they could have 40 people she invited me I met her dad he was the president of the state right to life organization and he kind of mentored me took me under his wings and then I started uh doing pro-life talks and I traveled University campuses and that's where I really cut my teeth on apologetics was debating abortion doing debates on college campuses those things can get pretty wild as we've seen recently uh so that's kind of my background okay got it I love hearing how people came to where they are now and I think it's really interesting that you weren't raised Catholic because most Catholics I know you know they would call themselves cradle Catholics whether they really believe in Catholic theology today most people who identify as Catholics today it's um a long-standing tradition in their family maybe they're from Italy or they're from Ireland and they've just always kind of grown up in Catholic culture and growing up in Texas that Catholic culture really wasn't very prominent or pervasive I went to uh Christian School I think I knew literally one Catholic and then I went to college and I went to college in South Carolina which is still in that Bible Belt not a ton of Catholics there and yet that was like really my first encounter with a lot of Catholics I had a roommate who was Catholic I didn't even know that people actually put Ash on their foreheads and on Ash Wednesday the first time that I encountered that I had no idea what was going on and it's really interesting how Catholics and Protestants seem to kind of occupy in some ways different universes like I was talking to a Catholic who lives in the Northeast she had no idea that we Protestants when we say the church that we're not talking about the Catholic Church like we would say I think you said earlier you know the church that Jesus established I would say that too but I'm talking about the universal body of Believers whereas you're specifically talking about the Catholic Church she had no idea that there was a difference when we say those things um which you know it's it's just kind of fascinating Catholics and Protestants have been together for a long time and yet there are a lot of misunderstandings about the two there are I remember once uh when I was doing Pro life work the organization I worked for we were half Catholic and half Protestant uh so it was a great opportunity to dialogue with each other but we were traveling in the in the South I think in Alabama staying at a host family's home while we were doing pro-life Outreach on University campus and we spoke with them and it was funny they said they said to us wow I didn't think Catholics believed really in Jesus you're the first really Catholics I've ever met and talked to and I've seen that well of course Catholics believe in Jesus we got a big pict of him hanging on the cross because he died on the cross to redeem our sins right in right in the front of church we we received Jesus in the Eucharist so I think that you're right that and that's why dialogue is always important to get past the misconceptions so that we can really understand the the things we agree on yeah and then the areas where we're still dividing where there's disagreement and where hopefully maybe we can bridge the gap on some of that yeah and I I think it it might go back to kind of what I said about a lot of Catholics having just a culture of Catholicism maybe even more so than protestantism most Protestants that I know don't even really know that they're Protestant like they wouldn't call themselves Protestant they don't really know about the Protestant re Reformation they might call themselves Baptist or Methodist or maybe even Evangelical but most Protestants just think of ourselves as we Christian as as Christians yes and a a lot of Catholics because it's really something that has been more uh passed down to them it's part of the culture maybe in the countries where their ancestors grandparents came from um they are very culturally Catholic without necessarily I don't want to say not practicing it but not knowing why they practice it I'm not saying all or even most Catholics but that I think is a lot of the experience that we Protestants have or evangelicals have with Catholics that it's our friend in college who made sure to go to mass every weekend but for the you know the rest of the week didn't care about it or didn't go to Bible studies or things like that it wasn't a very personal relationship it seemed so I'm just saying that that's kind of the impression that I think a lot of us Southern evangelicals have which might sound weird to a Catholic who like you said is like of course we believe in Jesus what are you talking about and that's why it's important because the same thing happens on the Catholic side you'll have Catholics that will meet evangelicals people who call themselves Christians you know someone who says they're Protestant but they have no problem posting really IM modest pictures on their Instagram and they go around saying that they're well I'm Christian I believe in Jesus like well okay but what about where are your other actions conforming and that's why when we uh analyze try to understand another Faith another church uh what we should always do is take a look at what does that group officially teach right and also what is who are the best representatives of it yes and always make the comparisons if you're going to compare it should always be worst to worst best to best not worst to best I I totally I totally agree with that that you have to look at what is actually being taught and then look at the fruit of that actual teaching because there's always going to be Hypocrites and there's always going to be nominal Christians I mean definitely in the Bible Belt there are plenty of evangelicals and Protestants maybe less so today because it's just less popular and convenient and comfortable to be a Christian but certainly throughout the past 100 years cultural Christianity cultural protestantism has been extremely prominent plenty of people who are Christian and name only from all different denominations well we're kind of sifting through the weed and the chaff right now I would say that we live in a post-christian culture in the United States uh that there was a time when Christianity was it was the given maybe it wasn't always celebrated but even as recently as I would say the 1990s um I remember watching uh it was like the old I was watching with my kids X-Men 97 the reboot of the cartoon that I loved as a kid and I remember on the old X-Men animated series there is an episode where uh the mutant Nightcrawler you can see he's a German Catholic and he's talking to Wolverine about Jesus I'm like you're not g to have that and I mean I haven't finished the series yet I don't know if that'll that'll come back in X-Men 97 but yeah probably not as much though they're trying to be faithful the original but you could have that more whereas nowadays it's very clear that there is another worldview that is seen as an opposition to Christianity that has LGBT demad feminism uh radical individualism that that has become it's become essentially a counterfeit religion for people to belong to it has rituals it has do it's so funny people will say oh you religious people you're narrow-minded and you know you you Catholics you burn people at the stake but but today if you go against modern wokeism you you can be excommunicated that you said the wrong thing there's dogmas and secular heresies you can hold to so you can take someone out of relig you can take man out of religion but you can't take religion out of man they'll always just make something else to fill the void yep that's absolutely [Music] true all right quick pause to tell you about our first sponsor for the day it's weart nutrition this is the best place to get women's vitamins for women of all ages I switched to their postnatal vitamin their DHA supplement their wholesome iron supplement a few months ago I've really been able to tell a big difference in my energy and my health I literally have not gotten sick in months after getting sick like every two weeks last year and so it's just been a game Cher for my health it's because all of their ingredients are really high quality they're topnotch made in the most bioavailable form so your body can actually absorb the ingredients plus this is a company owned by Christians who love America they love life they donate a percentage of all of their sales to pro-life pregnancy centers so you can feel really good All Around by getting your supplements from weart nutrition go to weart nutrition.com use code Aly for 20% off your order that's weart nutrition.com code [Music] allei okay before we get into some of the things that um we might disagree on or the questions that I have I want to talk about a couple things that either we agree on or I just want your Insight on and one of them is this anti-Semitism bill or anti- anti-Semitism bill um that is in Congress right now the House of Representatives passed the anti-Semitism awareness act which like most things going through Congress has this very innocuous title to make you think of course if you're against anti-Semitism which I think we all should be then you'll support this kind of legislation but you have to dig deeper and what people are concerned about without getting into the weeds too much just cuz we don't have time um people are concerned that this violates the first amendment that this seems to be policing speech and specifically speech that is found in scripture so one of the things that the bill tries to ban or tries to punish is speech that says that Jews killed Jesus and right they add something to that a caveat that basically says if someone says Jews killed Jesus in in order to indict Israel as a whole like how I don't even know how they call that classic using classic anti-Semitism such as the claim that Jews collectively or totally killed Jesus or blood liable the claim that Jews have some kind of secret conspiracy to um kidnap Christian children and use their blood for rituals and things that have been thoroughly debunked to use that to impune Israel modern Jews uh so what they're saying yeah is um well I let you explain more and I definitely give more my thoughts on it or no that's okay you can go ahead yeah so how I feel about the bill is uh and this I am someone I'm I mean I'm ethnically Jewish half my family is Jewish they're Russian Jews that that immigrated here and so uh I am aware of a growing problem about anti-Semitism uh both on the the far left and the right um seeing um malice towards Jewish people uh uh a unfounded concern that Jews are a threat and danger to society that have to be dealt with sometimes by any means possible that is legitimate anti-Semitism that being said though I don't support this bill um for a variety of reasons first when you're talking about the first amendment I think this bill is related specifically to discrimination title 7 because for example I mean under the First Amendment you can say racist things for example it's not illegal to say things that are racist but if you go to a public university and a professor is saying racist things towards you and is creating a hostile educational environment for you as a student well you can say hey I'm or they're allowing uh whether it's you know whites being racist to blacks or blacks being racist to right to blacks being racist to whites or to whatever racial minority group we would say no a university should protect people from racial discrimination and so in the context there that even if you can say that stuff under the First Amendment we could say look if you're at a publicly funded University if you're at this place of employment you should be able to be protected from racial harassment so I don't think it's a First Amendment issue per se because what it's it's dealing with is the idea okay well if you're protected from racial harassment like no one should be able to racially harass you because you're white or harass you because of your sex because you're a woman or because you're religious uh people shouldn't be allowed to do the same if you're Jewish now the key here is how do you define anti-Semitism uh and I think my also how you define harass I would say is a First Amendment issue absolutely and and what I would say is the the best goal to understand your you're defining it well is that you can apply it evenly across the board that you don't treat groups unequally so for example if the protesters on campuses here are allowed to you know Pro Palestinian protesters Pro Hamas protesters really can encamp occupy buildings can do all these things without repercussion but Christians can't even put up crosses to show children being killed by a abortion you know that's that's unequal we should treat everyone equally so it shouldn't just be when Christians do it it's harassment but for everyone else it's them expressing their views I think that's a good marker to help determine that but I think you and I would agree there are some things that are just legitimate harassment that if it was done to Christians we shouldn't you know people shouldn't do it to anyone else uh so then the problem I have with the bill though is that it doesn't have a it has a a fluid definition of anti-semitism it just says anti an semitism is whatever the international Holocaust remembrance Alliance says as anti-Semitism but I don't like that because what if they change their definition of what it is like the definition should be in the bill itself and if you want to change it later we have to go through Congress to change it later it shouldn't be allowed for a a nonprofit you know a non-governmental organization they could change the definition then that changes the law so I don't I don't agree with that uh so there are there are elements within it where uh for example like I would say anti-Semitism is wrong but not everything is anti-Semitism saying that the nation of Israel did something immoral in its conflict with Hamas well that's not ant it's not anti-semitic to Simply criticize the nation of Israel even if you're really against Israel there's a difference between anti- Zionism and anti-Semitism so people should be allowed to make these good you know these good faith criticisms it's certainly not anti-semitic or unfortunately those two things seem to have a lot of a lot of crossover I agree that there are some maybe nuanced criticisms of maybe what people would call anti- Zionism I found though that typically when you dig deep enough most anti- zionists really just don't like the Jewish people and that's where you would look for is is there a double standard here are you treating the nation of Israel differently because you already have a prejudicial attitude towards Jewish people right uh so some of the other I'm trying to think some of the other elements uh that are oh well one thing like for example if I were to say you know Jesus is the Messiah and Jews should accept Jesus as the Messiah some Jews would consider that anti-semitic I would say well no it's the truth it's Jesus is the is the Messiah for everyone and he's he's come also to the chosen people but there are other things so for example saying that the Jews are Christ Killers to say that all Jewish people bear a collective yeah all Jewish people or even all Jewish people at the time of Jesus to say that all of them have a collective responsibility and thus a unique guilt for the crucifixion that regular Sinners do not share I would say it's anti-semitic in fact the catechism of the Council of Trent uh remember the Reformation Council I referenced they put out a catechism in 1566 and in that this is even this is not a modern this goes back 400 years say 350 years saying that uh the guilt Sinners Like Catholics Christians who sin bear a more enormous guilt for the crucifixion than the Jews did because the catechism quotes what Paul says in First Corinthians saying if they had known Christ was The Lord Of Glory they would not have crucified him they cruci Jesus was crucified by the Jewish leaders because they falsely believed he was a false Messiah yeah but think about us we know Jesus is the Messiah we know this and yet we still sin and yet we still do we still commit sins which are the reason for which Christ died on the cross for us that we even knowing this bear more of responsibility so there's a balance here uh on the one hand it would be incorrect to say there is no Jewish involvement whatsoever in the crucifixion that just contradicts the biblical narrative you'll have some critical Scholars saying oh it was just the Romans well no this is very this is very clear a popular belief that I've seen on X a lot from all different Stripes of people who identify as Christians and that's not quite right either I agree it depends on kind of what your motivation is and by the way I don't think whatever your motivation is and whether you're right or wrong it should be banned by Congress even if you do have malicious intent behind what you're saying I can think it's repugnant without thinking it should be illegal but I mean the Bible does use explicit and I would even say uncomfortable terms when it says in so many words the Jews killed Jesus and but as you said it's not an indictment on all Jew Jewish people or saying that Jewish people today bear that responsibility or or even all Jews at that time because we have to remember that the word translated the Jews in scripture Hoy UD the Jews uh it has a variety of meanings it can refer to all of the people who are descended from the kingdom of Judah or in Hebrew Yehuda so you know so after the davidic kingdom split into the the northern and the southern Kingdom the northern kingdom was assimilated those are the itans the southern Kingdom going into Exile uh the Jews of Christ time you know all Jews are descended from from those tribes in the southern Kingdom the Judes the Jews uh but in Scripture A Udi can also mean a subset of Jews it can refer to the judeans so for example in John 71 it says that uh Jesus remained in Galilee because the Jews were seeking to kill him but that doesn't quite make sense because there were of Jews in gilee right Jesus would have Associated primarily with Jews in gilee what makes more sense there is that to translate it Jesus remained in Galilee because the Udo the judeans sought to kill him and so in first Thessalonians 2 for example when Paul says he gives encouragement to those who are being persecuted by the macedonians saying you know resist them just as your countrymen in Judea resisted the Jews who killed our lord Jesus but what's Paul talking about here what he's saying he's not saying all Jews did this he's referring to the fact that the church was being persecuted by a particular collection of Jews in Judea resist the judeans who are persecuting the church which Paul was once a member of yeah so that's something that's a Nuance there that can be lost in the translation that if you if you don't see that you just run with that and say oh in Jesus's time all of the Jews all of the Jews who were not Christians were killing killed Jesus wanted to kill Christians when there were factions and differences among them and there were those who were you had Rabbi gal for example who said no let the Christians be that if this is from God it will succeed if it's not it won't yeah so so I think that you're correct that the way it was worded just to say Jews killed Jesus well no some of the Jewish leaders were certainly involved in John 11 Caiaphas makes it clear it's better for one man to die than for the whole people to be subjugated and killed some Jewish leaders were involved but it doesn't follow that to use the phrase and then to use it to say oh all Jews bear this guilt and therefore all Jews can be mistreated or punished which Jews throughout history you know have been called Christ Killers have been uh denied civil rights for example people would you know Jews will tell stories about you know on you're on the playground and kids call you a Christ killer and they bully you that's where it moves in anti-Semitism you take something as a kernel of Truth and use it to hurt others right and there's also there's acts 222 through 23 acts 530 acts 7:52 for example acts 2:22 it starts out men of Israel hear these words Jesus of Nazareth and then I won't read everything but and then at the end of verse 23 you crucified and killed by the hands of Lawless men and so that still is not saying that literally every person in Israel or of Israeli descent crucified Jesus but he is saying that look just as our forefathers killed the prophets that God sent to you so we mistreated Jesus and so it's still not saying that every single Jewish person that has ever lived is responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus but in the same way that we would say wow when we see for example the mockers and the scoffers and those who stood before Jesus like we say we did that like it was our sin or we can see ourselves reflect uh in those who mistreated Jesus that we were also dead in sin and didn't realize the sacrifice that Jesus had made on our behalf there is kind of some kind of collective guilt and Collective responsibility we see when they are sharing the gospel to the Jewish people in Acts but again it's more of a wow we bear this kind of um this der elction of Duty we mistreated the one who God sent to us and so as you said it doesn't it shouldn't lead to the actions the Discrimination the hatred that you just described as kind of a consequence of that right that there are going to be people at the time that the historical culpability is going to be different I mean there were obviously there were Jews at the time when Jesus was crucified who weren't anywhere near Jerusalem when this event was taking place they certainly can't be held responsible for that happening that's just what's important to remember in scripture especially in John's gospel when it mentions the Jews and the Jews it of these cases is talking about things like the Jewish leadership so for example in John 9:22 uh you remember the story about the man born blind that Jesus healed and then the the religious authorities the priests say oh well let's go to his parents was he really born blind and they're like we want nothing to we don't want anything to do with this right now this is controversial go and ask him he's an adult he can talk to you and there's a curious line it says they said this for fear of the Jews which is weird because they're Jewish it's just such a weird thing to say but what it's referring to of course is is the leadership especially the leadership within Jerusalem and Judea that was trying to Cozy up to the Roman Empire and maintain their own particular established order and so they were reticent to want to welcome in the kingdom of God because it didn't fit within their Paradigm of how they well they said look we've got everything basically working the way we want we're not going to upset the apple cart with the Romans and we've got a pretty good deal here under their views and they had grown stiff necked and hard-hearted to listen to God to say well what's God's plan for his people and that's why of course Jesus came to inaugurate the kingdom of God yes so just regarding this laws we wrap that up even the ACLU which is now unfortunately a leftwing institution they have come out and they've said we're just we're against this of course they said it's got to be pretty bad when they I like to call them the the the anti-christian Liberties Union or the American Communist lawyers Union that's perfect that's perfect in an April 26 uh letter they said that this act will chill free speech on College campus says equate criticism of the Israeli government with anti-Semitism um and so and they made a statement about that and even if I don't agree with the ACLU on most things I do agree that this is just this is not what we need I think that there are other things that we can do to fix the absolute rot on college campuses and just ideology that is making their brains mush rather than chilling the free speech of everyday people even when that can mean especially when that can mean indicting someone who repeats something that the Bible says because you're reading into their motivations behind saying it that's just too much I agree and I think as I said earlier the key here is going to be equal treatment right if we're treating everyone equally we know we're then we're we're treating them justly in this regard so while people have freedom of speech if I go to a university like I remember I was in a university class once and the professor was doing a lecture on stereotypes and they showed us a documentary about it and the documentary everyone who was an example of making stereotypes was always like a white male Christian right and I was like okay that's cool and the teacher actually at one point cracked a joke cracked a joke saying something something said well about pedophiles she goes oh unless you're a Catholic priest and then I was like you know Professor I thought we were saying stereotypes are a bad thing she got really embarrassed and red-faced but it's like look yeah there's freedom of speech but if I can say Hey you calling me a like saying oh there's our there's Trent who's Catholic he must be a pedophile abler or there's Ally I bet you know she helps those Prosperity swindling preachers tell evangelist scammers say uh no I don't appreciate being maligned that way it really the very worst people who claim to represent what I believe right so if if I should be free from a religious stereotype that makes it hard for me to go to a university where professors can or students can pick on me in that way and make it hard for me to go to school if I and you as a Christian should be protected from that on campus then that that should be the same everyone else who's just going there and who's trying to learn you know the same thing Jewish Muslim whoever it may be protected from these you know malicious forms of harassment and we have an ironclad understanding what that is but then open it up to we have open debate about ideas like you know does God exist is which religion is the true religion is there one that that is the True Religion that's not harassment to debate though and college is the place where you should debate those kinds of important questions right okay I wanted to get into the United Methodist Church spit or the division and the change but I I don't think that we have time I want to get into some of my Catholic questions maybe maybe if we have time at the end then we can get into that or we can have you back and we can discuss that we've got plenty of our own issues in the Protestant World um but I want to talk to you about genuine questions I have about Catholicism disagreements that I have I can't say that I don't already have kind of some presuppositions about what you're going to say because I do but there are a lot of there's just a lot of genuine curiosity I have about um Catholic theology and so I'll just go through them let's try to go through them like as quickly as we can because I have a lot of questions okay um first one is about Mary I would say this is one of the biggest points of confusion for us as Protestants is Catholics praying to or through Mary and it's important to me to try to use language that Catholics would agree with I don't want to misrepresent and so if I do that it's not on it's not on purpose and I've had a lot of Catholic friends tell me Well we don't worship Mary um and while I want to be careful not to say that Catholics worship Mary because you all say that you don't I would say it looks a lot like worship I would say that it looks to me like praying the rosary praying to Mary which is something I completely disagree with um it looks a lot like worship and I don't see this veneration of mar Mary this level of honoring Mary supported by scripture the gospels the Epistles Revelation Jesus himself at all so where does Mary and Doctrine come from well I would say that the doctrine related to Mary comes from the word of God and when you look in scripture the phrase word of God primarily if not entirely actually refers to the spoken word of God what God speaks what the apostles speak so 1 Thessalonians 2:13 for example says that uh Paul went and the word they recognized the word of God had been spoken to them not the words of men so I would say that what we understand just and this is where when you start with Mary of course we have to be careful not to look at it through uh like what is the framework we're using to determine Doctrine because if we start with an assumption related to solos scriptura which I'm sure we'll we'll talk about well I would say well if we're going to analyze something we have to make sure the framework we're using is is a fair one so we would say that it comes from the word of God both spoken and written and when you see you see in scripture uh Mary herself says uh all generations will call me blessed for the mighty one has done great things for me we recognize just even from logic that Mary is the mother of God she is the mother of the Creator she didn't give Jesus's divine nature but she is the mother of the god man so that makes her very close uh in relationship to Christ uh I guess if I'm I could go back I guess there's two ways I could go about this one is giving you a little bit more of the reasons for but also I mean I do have some of some of my own questions because I think sometimes if a Protestant looks at this like I said if you don't have the great if you don't have it depends the framework how you look at it right because you say well where is this in the Bible I would say well where does the bible say everything a Christian believes or does has to be found in scripture um yeah so for so for example like let's take the sinner prayer for example uh see you say Lord Jesus Christ I am a sinner uh I believe you died on the cross for me uh forgive my sins and uh I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior you know the sinner's prayer uh there's nothing like that in scripture like would you agree I mean there's there's no one there's I don't believe that the sinner's prayer is some magical incantation that brings Jesus into your heart now to be fair I was raised believing that or thinking that um but I think it's more about acceptance and belief in confession which we do see reflected in scripture um but not that that particular incantation is found in scripture and that it must be said in order to validate or uh guarantee your salvation I'm not sure that any Protestant believes that but would you agree that it's it's appropriate it's okay to say that prayer as long as you're not superstitious about it um yes I would say it's okay to say that prayer even though it's not in scripture it's still not explicitly but we would certainly say that we find the idea of acceptance and belief and confession in scripture in the same way that we would say the word Trinity is not in scripture but we can see from John 1 for example or even in the very beginning that God is three persons but one God and so I would say that Protestants accept that that not everything is verbatim in Scripture that we say or believe we have our own Creeds we have our own Westminster catechisms that we believe are an accurate summary of scripture but that scripture must be our standard of course we believe in interpretation I believe in Preachers and teachers I like to use different uh acronyms and alliterations to remember biblical ideas um but of course I believe that it's our um that scripture is our inherent inherent and inspired standard and that's what I would say about the so-called sinners prayer is that it's not inherent it's not infallible I would be open to even saying it's wrong it should be changed but by what standard am I comparing that prayer scripture so that would be my issue with like that would be my issue with praying to Mary is that no I don't think that every prayer that we pray has to be explicitly found in scripture but I don't even see the idea of praying to Mary in scripture that's my issue okay so I'm trying to understand your standard when it comes to because you're saying we should use the Bible as our as our standard to determine Doctrine and practice um and what's funny is as a Catholic I could actually agree with that in some sense because I could say I agree with you that as as a Christian nothing we do should ever contradict what is taught in scripture yeah and that's what I don't like about the pray to Mary but then where where is that there's a difference between it not being in scripture and it being contradicted for example no one in scripture prays directly to the Holy Spirit and says Come Holy Spirit and Kindle in your in the hearts of your faithful the love of God you know holy spirit guide me today that's not in scripture but he's God so and so we could at least make the deduction so I would actually even be satisfied with some kind of like deduction deduction but when I when I look at for example which I think we talked about maybe in the debatable so let me let me maybe I can explain my and you can respond to it and you can kind of break it apart maybe that would be the easier way to go so when I'm looking at scripture and I see for example when Jesus is given the opportunity to treat his mother in a special way so I'm looking at Mark 3 for example and his mother and his brothers came and standing outside they sent to him and called him and a crowd was sitting around him and they said to him your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you and he answered them who are my mother and my brothers and looking out uh looking about at those who sat around him he said here are my mother and my brothers for whoever does the will of God he is my brother and sister and mother we don't ever see any kind of special honor special veneration of Mary by Jesus we don't see it in any of the Epistles you would think that she would come up in Revelation like when we're looking at the Last Supper and the and the or in the marriage supper between the bride and the bridegroom you would think that if Mary was this important if we needed to pray to her if she was watching over us if she was protecting us if she was really this person carrying our prayers to Jesus like we would be reading about her a lot more in scripture and we just don't and even when Jesus is given the opportunity to pay special attention to his mom he he basically brushes her off and says I don't even think that she's more special than any of these other Christians out here or any of these other followers of me out here well I don't think that's what Christ is saying here because it reminds me also of the episode where the woman says to Jesus uh blessed are the are the breasts that nourished you and he said rather blessed are those that hear the word of God and Obey yeah that's a great other example of that but I think what we can misread that because Jesus of like one could take that so far as to say oh you know your mother doesn't really matter you don't have to worry about your mother what matters more are other believers but the Bible's also very clear you have special obligations to your parents like Jesus railed against the religious Authority for the Corban rule for donating money to the temple when they were supposed to care for their aging parents Paul says the person who doesn't care for their relatives is worse than unbeliever yeah exactly so I would worry that to take one narrative episode and try to draw more out of it than than it's being taught that's just one example for me sure but both of those examples I'd say what's going on here is Jesus is saying that to have a special relationship with him it is not necessary to be his biological kin uh anyone can have a special relationship with him through faith in him whereas at the time you would think oh to really have a special relationship with the Messiah if you're the brother the Messiah you know I can never be that close just no we all can be close to Jesus that's kind of what Catholics are saying about Mary that she's so special to him because you we don't just pray to anyone in heaven the way that Catholics pray to Mary and so you guys are saying that yeah all Christians can have a relationship with him but Mary has the special special special relationship with him well what I would take from there is what I'm saying is that in order to have that relationship with Jesus you don't have to be biologically related to him but some people have more of a relationship with Jesus or closer to him than others I would I think that's very clear from scripture so for example in James 5:116 it says that the prayers of a righteous person are very powerful or if you look in the Book of Job for example at the end of job when God deals with job's friend friends he tells them have job pray for you I will hear his prayers because you've you've spoken ill of me spoken poorly of me uh that when you see in scripture and that those who are Holier they're closer to God their prayers are more efficacious so Hebrews 12 so who are the holiest people Hebrews 12 says that those who are in heaven the spirits of they're the spirits of just men made perfect so those who are in heaven who are perfectly United to God and we see this in the book of Rev talking about the Angels carrying the prayers of the Saints to the throne that they have that special relationship with God a special efficacy I I think to understand praying to Mary praying to the Saints that's language that I find to actually be not very helpful in fact when you read the teachings the official teachings of the Catholic Church you don't have phrases like pray to the Saints rather the phrases are seeking the intercession of the Saints so for example like let me ask you what would you say prayer is prayer is pleading with God prayer is I mean it can be praising God it can be making requests to God and of course we have access to the father through Christ and that is you know a Protestant retort or retort that I would have is that we have one mediator and his name is Jesus Christ we have the Holy Spirit as our intercessor who when we don't have the words to speak scripture says H the Holy Spirit intercedes on our behalf and I also I love Ephesians 3:12 that through Christ Jesus we have boldness and access with confidence through our faith in Christ so when I read for example James 5 that the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working well I think of that verse that I have boldness and access and confidence through what my good works no my faith in Christ and Christ he who uh knew no sin became sin so that we could become the righteousness of God so that means it is my prayer that has great power as it is working it is every Christian's prayer that has great power as it is working it is not that the quote unquote Holier person has greater power it is that those who have been made Holy by Christ in his perfect righteousness that our prayer has great power um and so again I just don't see a need to use an intercessor of Mary one because I don't think that she can hear our prayers and I don't think that's in scripture at all but also um yeah I I just don't see that biblical support that because she's Holier or because she's relationally closer that she has some kind of special access to Jesus and therefore we should pray through her do you ever ask other people to pray for you yes but not because I think that they have some kind of special power but because the the prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working and so I want you know I I want people praying and I want but but why when you can just pray to God yourself why why involve other people when you're righteous enough just to pray and ask God for it because I think there's encouragement in that and I don't know that it necessarily we don't read in Scripture that it sways God to have a certain number a certain critical mass of people praying for something but because we are all called to pray it's an act of OB obedience and through an incredible pre-ordained order that I don't think we fully understand with the sovereignty of God that he is also in control of all things and yet he asks us to evangelize and pray I don't totally understand that mysterious conundrum and yet he commands us to so I think it's an act of obedience I think it's encouragement um and God hears our prayers you're not sure if our prayers actually affect what he does no I do I think that it's mysterious though for us to say that God is omnipotent that he's not suspended by linear time that we can't that no plan of his can be thed job 42:2 and yet our prayers actually do something I'm just saying that all of that is true and I'm not sure it's within our finite ability to perfectly be able to explain that that's what I'm trying to say I I think the the difficulty that comes when Catholics and Protestants discuss this is going to come down I think to language I asked you when I asked you what prayer is the definition you gave is interesting that prayer is making a request of God one of that's one of the things that prayer can do if what's funny is if that is what prayer is then asking Mary to pray for us that actually wouldn't count as prayer because I'm not directing that request to God I'm requesting it to another creature so what's the When you pray the rosary what is that when you pray the rosary yes well I would say what prayer is prayer is just a request so okay in the mo we've restricted the word prayer in a modern sense to mean exclusively making a request of God but traditionally the word the word prayer comes from the Latin word prare like pray tell pray yes if you've listen to all kinds of Pride and Prejudice I pray the tell pray this right uh so prayer to the saints that that would just fall under I ask I ask I ask this so you're asking Mary to carry your request to Jesus just so the idea here is that we have agreement that it's good for members of the body of Christ here at least on Earth who are in communion with one another to pray for one another that that's a good thing and it's good to seek out intercession among other members of the body of Christ what Catholics believe is that the body of Christ does not exist solely on Earth that there is only one body of Christ there is only one body body not two bodies not three there is one body and that is made up of believers who are on earth as well as those believers who are in heaven or being prepared to enter Heaven uh they're all connected through Jesus who is the vine we are the branches uh he is the resurrection of the life even though you die you will live in me so we believe the Saints in heaven while their bodies lie in the earth they are more alive in Christ now than we are even right now uh that the Book of Revelation says the souls in heaven are aware of the sufferings on Earth and cry out for God to do something about them what's happening to the martyrs so our belief is just that if you can ask for intercession for members of the body of Christ in this life and we're still connected to the body in heaven through the the power and love of God we can ask those in heaven to pray for us that there's nothing wrong so for example if if you have a boy at his mother's Tombstone who's died and he says you know Mom pray for me I think you'd agree there's nothing I I think most Protestants say there's nothing wrong with that wrong with like ask you know asking for example a boy asks his deceased mother and father in Heaven to pray for him oh no we would say that there's something wrong with it why oh we would not we don't pray to the dead and I know that they are spiritually alive but we don't pray to the physically dead we we we don't believe in that we just don't because we believe that Jesus is our mediator and you're saying we can't ask you're saying we can ask Christians on Earth to pray for us we can't ask Christians in heaven to do that yeah that would be the Protestant belief that we don't believe that the dead are hearing our prayers and have the ability to carry our prayers to God or that they are inter because that would be intercession right that they are interceding for us and we don't believe that the dead or that um we would call all Christians Saints so the Saints in heaven are interceding for us or that Mary is interceding for us um yeah I don't think that we necessarily see that reflected in scripture and yeah so the Protestant would say that there is a problem with that we would say oh we don't pray for the de we could think about them and consider them but we wouldn't pray to them no you seem very confident that uh the souls in heaven do not know anything on Earth or can't hear our requests what is the source of your confidence in that no I didn't say that I'm confident that they can't hear or that they can't see I didn't say that okay I said that we don't see that rule supported in Scripture that they are carrying our request to God and I think my other piece of confusion about that I guess not this this piece of confusion wouldn't apply to that example that you gave the grandparent because I'm guessing that maybe the child would be the only one praying to that grandparent but when you've got Mary and you have all of these millions of people asking her for intercession is Mary in the Catholic view omniscient like how does she how does she order all of these prayers if she is a human who is of course now in heaven you're it almost would it would necessitate ascribing to her Godlike characteristics of omnipotence and omniscience if she can hear the prayers of millions of Catholics at once well I would say that Mary's ability to hear multiple requests in different languages that doesn't fall under omniscience because omniscience means that you have all knowledge all truths like like you know for example every single the the solution of every single possible mathematical equation yeah the Saints in heaven don't need to know that they don't need to know Pi all the decimal places of pie um so it's not omniscience the knowledge of the Saints in heaven even if it is vast by human standards it's still infinitesimally small compared to the infinite knowledge of God you see but she so but you believe that there is some kind of um not just spiritual transformation but that there is a an incredible expansion of people's capacity to know and to do when we get to heaven that includes the ability to discern sorry to discern millions of prayers at once in all different languages somehow prioritize order carry those requests to God and that Mary has achieved that kind of transformation and expansion of her capacity and all of the Saints as well does that idea come from well I would say there is nothing to restrict an omnipotent God from allowing his creatures to have more cognitive abilities sure yeah nothing can restrict God from doing anything so I'm not sure if that's necessarily if that answers my question well you're asking how she how she does that she couldn't do it on her own and I would say God allows her to do that that just as God can give humans on Earth Supernatural knowledge of the future for example like to be a prophet or God can give people knowledge of things they wouldn't naturally have uh God can give the Saints in heaven knowledge and abilities they would not naturally have on Earth or have in accord with just their own abilities so Catholics get that get that idea that he has granted Mary the ability to answer all these prayers and to kind of specially give them to Jesus well I would say that there is a long tradition of this like if you go to the catacombs for example that the very first Christians who were you know it's very difficult to find uh early examples of like like for me when I was in my conversion and what I did was first I listened to all kinds of William Lane Craig JP Morland debates this is like early 2000s uh and I was just convinced I was like yeah this this makes a lot of sense I believe in Jesus he rose from the dead now where do I go and I looked at all the different churches out there and so I said well you know what I just want to be like the first Christians I'm going to go back and look at the Historical records what did the first Christians believe but just to say look there's all these different churches that argue about stuff what were the first Christians like I want to be like them and so that moved me a lot into the Catholic Direction at least it moved me a lot away from a lot of a lot of forms of modern protestantism that I felt were very ahistorical in that regard to say look there were the apostles they gave the teaching this first generation of Christians you know they couldn't have really bungled it that badly like what what did they believe it's difficult during this time period though to find a lot of reference you know Finding liturgies or you know you didn't have churches you had house churches you're in hiding you're in persecution from the Romans uh but even during this period we have things like the oldest known lurgical prayer most Scholars date it to the thirr century like the oldest Christian prayer outside of scripture is called the subt presidium most Scholars would dated the third or fourth Century uh and that prayer says it's a prayer to Mary it's a request to Mary oh theotokos god-bearer Mother of God uh Place us under the wings of thy Refuge uh it's it's asking Mary who's the mother of God to intercede on behalf of Sinners or if you go to the catacombs where Christians were hiding where they were buried there's little inscriptions in there that say things like Peter and Paul pray for Primos a sinner you know little little things like [Music] that all right next sponsor for the day is range leather this is a family-owned company it's a related gallon a related bro and they make amazing leather goods from their home in laramy Wyoming is the best stuff it lasts forever they make purses they make hats they've got belts wallets great stuff for Mother's Day and Father's Day earrings this is the kind of stuff that you are going to cherish literally for years to come because the quality the look The feel just gets better and better as time goes on if you go to rang leather.com alley you'll get 15% off all range leather products rang leather.com alley [Music] my concern when Catholics and Protestants dialogue with each other I think the concern that Protestants have is hey Catholic you're not using solos scriptura and I'm worried you're obliging us or permitting us to believe too much like you've got all this extra stuff you know I'm worried about you bringing in like you know prayer seeking the intercession of Mary and the Saints and these other Catholic doctrines if you just said used the Bible in the so of scriptura sense of we have to find it at least deduced implicit you know we have to find it here in scripture you're you're worried about too much coming in and the Bible will uh help cut out some of the extra stuff that's that's an accretion or ancillary that's what I see as one of the big Pro the Protestant concerns where solar scriptura has a benefit well I would now there can be a benefit in cutting out extra things that are just human Traditions that are not Divine Traditions uh that's why I would say you shouldn't believe anything that contradicts scripture but my other concern from the Catholic perspective is that if we use solar scriptura uh if we just use that based on individual interpretations of scripture we risk failing to believe certain things that certain things could get left out for example uh so we risk being able to distinguish like you might say well it's fine if you're a calvinist and this guy is an Armenian like that's a difference that we have but it's not okay for you to be a trinitarian and someone else to be a modalist yeah like but the Bible itself doesn't tell us when do theological disagreements become heresy it's like there is a concern here that if we just use solos scriptura which ends up really being individual interpretations um there be there becomes a problem there I think that that you can you can fail to believe certain things say well but it's like for example and there's big things there's also little things I remember meeting a girl once I said oh what are you doing for Christmas she said oh I don't celebrate Christmas I said why not she said it was not in the Bible yeah so it's like there definitely something like that and Jehovah's Witnesses are all like that which we wouldn't include as a denomination of Christianity we would say is a cult but but but where does that standard because the Bible itself doesn't say what theological beliefs are the minimum ones to be a Christian that's a tradition later established at the cical councils we would I think you and I would agree that there is a difference between not doing anything that is not explicitly um said in scripture which is not where I fall I don't even know really anyone who falls on that because of course it doesn't say in Scripture that you can use a piano in church and that you have to have an altar call and things like that there is freedom among denominations and we do believe that scripture interprets scripture that there is a systematic way an exegetical way to interpret scripture there's a right and a wrong way to interpret scripture that there is actually one meaning of scripture even if there are many different subjective interpretations and I hear this a lot from Catholics that this is the problem with protestantism is that you've got all these different denominations which it's a myth that there are 33,000 by the way age that's looking at like all the different yes that's but just for anyone out there who might be confused about that all the different subsets there are is a much smaller range of actual Christian denominations but I see plenty of disagreement among Catholics too Catholics individually even how they would interpret the Bible now maybe they're disagreeing with official Catholic Doctrine um but there are certainly liberal Catholics there are certainly cath wrot book I just wrote a book about them yeah yeah they're certainly Catholics I would say probably maybe particularly in the Northeast who they go to mass and they do all the things that they're supposed to do um but they're extremely liberal when it comes to abortion when it comes to lgbtq and if you compare for example if you go to Pew research and you compare what each religion in America how they fall on these issues of abortion lgbtq even like living together before you get married um Protestants in general are far more conservative on these issues than Catholics are people who identify as Catholics of course we don't know people's real beliefs and like how closely they align but like there are a lot of Catholics who disagree there are a lot of disagreements Catholics a lot of Catholics who do things that are not in accordance with scripture or Catholic Doctrine so I don't know I guess I get confused about like if division is the argument against protestantism there are plenty of Divisions among Catholics don't you think there are but Catholics would recognize where we're divided on issues that the church hasn't spoken on for example like is it um is it okay to go to a pride parade for example like there isn't an official teaching on that but I would say it's scandalous to be there unless you're witnessing to people which I've done before um that's scandalous just to be there wearing the gar even you're saying well I'm just here loving people it's like well but people are going to look at this and take a different message from it uh a stumbly block a literal scandalo scandalon yeah uh but when it comes to saying can a man and a woman be married in church even the most liberal Catholic churches don't do that you'll be you'll get a priest will get excommunicated they try to give the sacrament of marriage to to men or two women whereas in the Protestant world we were discussing this earlier you have the Methodist Church in Methodist churches and other Protestant churches where the issue comes up two churches just come into existence rather than even in the Catholic World there are people who support so-called same-sex marriage they denters but they'd say yeah but the church teaches this and I disagree not this is actually the truth and the church you know you know is that so different than what Protestants do if I say okay for example United Methodist Church they decided that sure lgbtq people active not just people who struggle with that sin but active they can be clergy and I say but that's not what scripture teaches that's not what scripture teaches scripture is very clear um about this so is that is that really so different than what y'all do except for scripture is the word of God and the church even though you believe it's been inspired by God it they're men they're fallible men right uh well I would say that the leadership of the church the the gift of infallibility is not something that is exercised in everything that the leaders of the church say it's under special occasions in instances when it's uh when it's invoked such as at an ecumenical council when all the Bishops of the world gather together to decide to teach infallibly or if the pope using his power as the pastor of the church to infallibly settle an issue like one of the Marian dogmas uh but I think the difference there is that within the Catholic World we do have levels of authority in church teaching to know what are essential and what are not essential so even people who are um pretty far left in the church people that I know would say well no you can't deny that Christ is present in the Eucharist uh you know you can't deny the Divinity of Christ you can't deny you can't say Mary gave birth to other children for example so we have you know certain teachings that would be essential some of which are infall heresy to say that Mary gave birth to other children yes it would be a heresy so are all Protestants Heretics heresy is the PO the obstinate post-baptismal uh rejection of something that's been divinely revealed so there's going to be it's heresy but the responsibility one has for it it's different if you are a Catholic and you reject this it's going and you and as a Catholic you're obliged to believe what the church teaches that's going to be different than a Protestant however I would say that the Protestant reformers like Martin Luther or Ur zwingley probably would have said they would have said it is heresy to say they might have abely he definitely had a Martin Luther had a different view of Mary than most Protestants do today well even Thomas cranmer John Wesley uh and I've seen debate about Calvin what he he believed on this he's Calvin certainly rejected the idea that the Bible could be used to prove Mary gave birth to other children he didn't think those those texts were convincing at all you know not at all so the difference here is what I would say is this would be my question like how do because you would agree that there are doctrines Protestant can disagree about mhm just as Catholics do sure and there are Protestants that there are doctrines they cannot disagree about there's essential and non-essential secondary tertiary not primary and that's a huge that's a huge division yeah and there are people who would disagree on that that's kind of the nature of protestantism but the Bible never tells us which how to divide between the two that's kind of scary it's up to people's interpretation which is why we would say which is why we would say if I say for example in times you might be a premillennialist I might be a post millennialist and I might or well that's not true I'm a premillennialist I might be talking to someone who's a post millennialist and I think I would say look you're you know you're dead wrong on that but I still appreciate you as a brother in Christ now how do I discern that do you believe in the gospel do you believe that by grace through faith you have been saved in Christ and he and only he has become your righteousness your justification your mode of sanctification do you believe in John 14:6 that Jesus is the only way the only truth the only life that no one can come to the father except through him now I think that there are issues like the lgbtq issue that is not the gospel but it gets to the heart of the Gospel so it's still essential now there would be people who probably disagree with this now do I think that you can be wrong on this and still be saved I think that we are all going to die being wrong about some things I don't think that your view of lgbtq is what grants you or what prohibits your salvation but what I typically find is that someone who denies Genesis 1:27 that God made us male and female is eventually going to deny John 146 and so I don't think that your salvation is predicated upon uh what you believe about lgbtq I but I do think that that speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of God and his word and therefore you probably do not believe the gospel let me ask you a hypothetical suppose I had another woman here she's almost she's identical to you we'll call her malie okay uh so malie is identical to you in every way except for one and that is she is married to a woman okay but she's identical to you and she has all of your other same beliefs she just thinks that the teachings on homosexuality don't apply today just like the teachings on slavery don't apply today but she Stills she's against abortion she believes you believe in Jesus so you're not going to heaven so could Mali be saved I would say okay why you believe that Jesus is the only way to heaven you're against abortion but you don't believe that the word of God is authoritative I would that's what I would dig into I would say you don't believe in Romans 1 you don't believe in First Corinthians you don't believe in Genesis 127 why do you believe in John 146 and how did you decide upon that that's that's what I would ask mie cuz mie's got some inconsistencies there and I would say you know this is really this is really important um and I would also say that she is living in it's not just a belief for her she is living In Perpetual sin and we do believe that you die to your old self you become a new creation and even though we won't fully stop sinning that's our belief until until heaven we do believe in Progressive sanctification and that God is going to rid us of our idols and if you see no fruit no sanctification in someone's life let's try another one let's say malie's the exact same as you and she's married to a man even but she uh is also she makes money being a gestational surrogate I wouldn't say that she's not saved I would say that she is really wrong on that but I wouldn't say that she is unsaved okay yeah let me ask you then a question about um so you you agree so there's there's essential doctrines there's ones that are not essential there isn't like a Biblical text or principle there saying the way you divided them you just gave a summary here here just are the ones that are essential yeah and Protestants will disagree so on you would say that homosexuality would go to the heart of the essential it would go to the heart of the essential yes so it's different than let's say contraception um H you could I mean you could argue you you could again argue that this speaks to someone's mistrust of what God has to say about the Dignity of life and the Dignity of The Unborn um so you could argue that that's one thing Protestants are known for is that we're open to argumentation based on the word of God but I would not say that someone who believes the wrong thing about conception is not saved about contraception yeah what did I say conception yeah contraception saved yes right because but what's interesting here is that a hundred years ago all Protestants would disagree with you because before 1930 before the lamb Beth conference all Protestants believe contraception was sinful so it's like are Protestants right now or are they right back then well I I also believe that it's sinful I also well I believe that hormonal birth control is say okay well I don't think that most Protestants would agree with that today but I don't know that those Protestants who believe that it was all sinful then would have said someone is not going to heaven or someone is not saved and so there's a difference between sinful and a primary doctrine of that we would consider outside the bounds of Christianity like we believe someone saying there's more than one way to God or if you're loving enough for if you're good enough or if you do all the right things then you'll go to heaven even if that person agrees with me on all other doctrines I would say you're not a Christian because Christianity the Crux of Christianity is the cross the Crux of Christianity is what Jesus accomplished on the cross and outside of that I think that we can have disagreements some bigger some smaller some with greater implications some with fewer implications um but your salvation is not dependent upon those secondary inter iary disagreements even if I think that they're getting really really close to the heart of The Sinner and that they probably do speak to a misunderstanding that you have essentially about God but we still haven't found the mechanism to determine which are primary and which are secondary that there's no place you I couldn't ask you where could I go in the Bible to find out which belong to which I don't think there's anywhere you could point me to no and it's not that Protestants don't believe in teaching or interpretation or councils or Creeds or catechisms or debates or discussions or progress when it comes to that because we do and just as Catholics do but we don't have one institution that we go to and say well what does this mean we do believe that scripture is the authority that the church or the pope is not the authority and we also acknowledge that there will be very smart Christians very solid even denominations and churches that disagree on some of these things but we believe that scripture interprets scripture and that very smart brilliant theologians over time have done us a great service and helping us understand what those primary secondary and tertiary issues are the difference is is that we don't have a church institution that we would look to and say these are the categories this is what they all fall into but I believe every Protestant would agree on what the gospel is and that that is [Music] primary all right last sponsor for the day is Jace medical I want to tell you about the Jace case from Jace medical it's a personalized emergency kit it contains five essential antibiotics that treat the most common and deadly bacterial infections Jace is continually working to expand their medication offerings they've even added ior mectin as an option in the Jace case plus you can even buy a gift card for your family or loved one so they get a Jace case for their uh for their own and personalize it to their needs they also have the Jace kid case which has medicines that deal with pneumonia sinusitis strap throat ear infections this way you can get it through the tele medicine process you don't have to go through your doctor and the pharmacy Insurance all that craziness you've got your emergency stash of things that you may need go to jal.com use code Alia checkout for a discount on your order that's jce medical.com codee [Music] Aly what I would say the Catholic view of Salvation is that we receive salvation as a gift of God's grace and you are saved as long as you do not permanently reject that gift before death and so I think that if you if you looked at um like with a a surveillance camera of like a Protestant convert Catholic convert the way they act is actually very similar let's say you have a atheist High School atheist in high school one becomes Protestant one becomes Catholic on camera you would see them I believe in Jesus go and get baptized they live then they live a life where they're not getting drunk they're not fornicating they're praying to God uh and they they don't reject faith in God and then they die at the end of their life I think we would see something very similar uh whereas we would just disagree explaining how that Calvinists wouldn't believe that a true Christian can ever lose their salvation because we believe in the perseverance of the Saints well what we would say is from the camera's perspective they would look the same both of them they don't forever fall away but we would disagree about why that is one we would say that Catholics and other historic Christians because there are many Protestants who traditionally rejected that view would say that this person chose to not reject God or if they did they were reconciled with God like the prodal son and they died in friendship with God and the calvinist would say well no he was it would have been impossible for him to to fall away but I would say that we really do agree about receiving through faith through Grace the Catholic church is very clear you cannot Merit initial salvation that's why babies they're saved immediately baby can't do anything he's just baptized and he's he's saved it's a reception it's a gift of Grace yeah we don't we well I I some Protestants yes I'm a Baptist and we don't believe that that baptism gives any form of Salvation that it's an outward symbol of inward regeneration and so we do disagree on that portion because we would say that's even like a work that you're kind of earning your salvation and we would just reject that well that's why Martin Luther said we're saved by faith alone baptism saves us we're saved by faith not by works is what Luther said and Luther said well baptism saves us so Luther's conclusion was baptism is not a work it's God's work let me just say something that I really appreciate about Catholics because we're definitely going to have Trent back on as long as he is available we didn't even get to half of the questions that I wanted to and we're well over an hour um there are lots of things that I appreciate about my Catholic friends but I really appreciate how strong traditionally strong the Catholic church has been on reproductive technology on surrogacy on um and even recently um the pope making his statements about surrogacy about reproductive technology like he says it should be banned yes that is a huge fail a huge lack of understanding among Protestants among evangelicals that I get absolutely reamed for that every time I talk about it because I mean this is a weakness there is not a congruent and cohesive or authoritative teaching on reproductive technology I would say among it's going to be hard to get the Bible's take on it's going to be hard to get the Bible's take on that well again I would argue that it can be deduced from scripture and the Dignity of life and just looking at what IVF is and that so we could go on and on and on but all I wanted to say is that I do appreciate how clear the church has been on that and sometimes I look around and I feel like it's only Catholics like standing there with me as we're talking about this stuff and I appreciate that well historically when you look in the 1970s even when something like legal abortion the national right to life committee was essentially founded by the Catholic church that evangelicals and pro like the southern baptist for example were allowing abortion in the case of rape up until the 1980s uh that many Protestants were saying well scripture there's some poetic passages about The Unborn but it doesn't talk about abortion or it doesn't talk about abortion in hard cases so we're going to leave that up to consciences and so that goes back to what I was saying before and I do think that that's a benefit when you have an authoritative magisterium yes there's concerns hey this is too much but my other concern I brought up was by using Sol scriptura the danger of failing to believe certain things like the wrongness of reproductive Technologies or other elements like that so I think that's it's a continual sort of uh tension between Catholics and Protestants for us discussing the nature of authority I think that Catholics have in some cases like that case like that case that you're talking about or this issue have pushed Protestants to better practice and to be more thoughtful in the application of our theology I see that you probably wouldn't agree with this that Protestants and the Protestant Reformation in some ways even reformed the Catholic Church the Catholic Church Catholic that's why the Council of Trent reform was needed yeah uh but not Revolution and even and even pushed I would say like Protestants love for scripture and are just emphasis on Bible studies and studying scripture I think has had a positive effect on Catholics and has had a positive effect on Catholicism whereas like I love that the Bible in a year podcast I think is like the number one religion and spirituality father Mike schmidtz I think his name is um father Mike movie star yeah he's got those wonderful cheekbones yeah so I I I see I I I think that Protestants in some ways continue to reform and push and challenge Catholics in a positive way and I would say on these controversal issues Catholics continue to challenge and push Protestants on a in a positive way so I'm thankful for that we'll definitely have you back on thank you so much thank you Ally [Music]

Channel: Allie Beth Stuckey

Views: 274,335

Keywords: Allie Stuckey, Allie Beth Stuckey, relatable podcast, relatable with allie stuckey, relatable with allie beth stuckey, blazetv, crtv, conservative, christianity, christian podcast, theology, news, politics, jesus, trent horn, trent horn sola scriptura, counsel of trent, trent horn council of trent, catholic answers, catholic, catholicism, protestant, protestantism, hail mary, mary mother of jesus, sola scriptura, salvation, Allie on blaze tv, allie on the blaze, Jesus, God, Jesus Christ

Id: ibYS0NF_ZRI

Length: 80min 20sec (4820 seconds)

Published: Mon May 06 2024