In this free-for-all-Friday, Trent sits down with non-religious Youtuber Potential Theism to answer his questions about Catholicism.

 

Transcript:

Trent Horn: It is free-for-all Friday here in the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Monday and Wednesday we talk apologetics and theology. And today, on Friday, we’re also going to talk apologetics and theology. But actually what I want to share with you is an interview that I had on the YouTube channel, Potential Theism. The host is actually non-religious himself, but he’s fairly supportive of my work. I think he considers the apologetic work that I do worth looking at, reviewing, critiquing. I’ve even seen him on social media and have agreed with some of his posts, criticizing other individuals who offer stereotypical or not well-thought-out criticisms of atheism and agnosticism. So I really enjoyed going on his show. I talked about why be Catholic, differences between Catholics and Protestants, how sometimes Protestants argue like atheists. Check out my book on that if you want more. So without further ado, here is our interview.

Potential Theism:
And one of the things I like about your channel is there’s a little bit of everything. I never know what’s coming up. Sometimes you’ll cover one topic, and then the next it’ll be like, “Oh, here’s a debate review.” And I’m like, “Well, that’s totally different from your last stream.” So you’re always covering different things. So definitely check that out, the link’s in the description.

So what I wanted to ask you about today is folks who may be in a similar situation as me, maybe they’re ex-Protestants or ex-Evangelicals, and they’ve left the faith, they no longer believe in God, but now they’re open to the possibility of believing in God again and maybe they’re even open to returning to Christianity. So I guess a good starting place would be, why do you think they should be Catholic?

Trent Horn:
Well, I think they should be Catholic because I think Catholicism makes the most sense of the world around us. It makes the most sense of the physical and scientific facts of the world. It makes the most sense of human experience. It makes the most sense of our moral intuitions and moral frameworks once we put them together in a coherent way. So I think that that would be what would make the most sense.

Now, I would admit that if you are an atheist or an agnostic, there’s a fair number of steps one would have to go through before you would become Catholic. So different people have different ways of presenting the case, but the way I would look at it is that if you are an atheist or an agnostic, one should answer the question of who is Jesus of Nazareth? If He was not divine or did not rise from the dead, then that at least takes Christianity off the table.

There could be other religious belief systems that are true. You’d have to investigate those. But if Jesus wasn’t who He said He was, not who the apostles said He was, that takes that off the table. But if Jesus is who He claimed to be and who the disciples and the apostles and the leaders of the early church claimed Him to be the risen God incarnate, then that would make Christianity the true religion. And other religions would just be in varying degrees towards the truth, some closer than others. But that would give you a good reason to be Christian. And there I think Catholicism would make the most sense for someone because I think it has the best approach for crossing the gap. So the gap would be… All right, and I went through this myself when I was in high school. I was a deist. I was never an atheist, but I wasn’t Christian either.

I thought there was a God out there who started the universe, but that’s it. But then after being convicted to become Christian, I thought, “Okay, well now what do I do? I believe in Jesus. He rose from the dead. There’s the Bible. Okay, there’s these documents people call the Bible. There are all of these churches around. Why should I believe just because I believe Jesus rose from the dead, why should I believe that the letter to the Hebrews is the inspired word of God?” There’s a few steps one has to go through.

And I find that Protestantism has a harder time crossing the gap from Jesus rose from the dead, to 66 inspired books that is sole infallible rule of faith than Catholicism does, which Catholics would say, “Well, we believe Jesus rose from the dead. He created one church. He gave the Apostles the authority to establish that church. The Apostles gave their authority to their successors, and eventually their successors taught with divine authority, varying levels of authority I should say, that divine revelation can be found in what the church teaches and in this collection of sacred writings that we call the Bible.” So for me, I feel like it’s easier for me to cross that gap of understanding all of Christian revelation within this Catholic context than any other Protestant context.

Potential Theism:
So one of the things that I’ve noticed in my own journey is when I think about these topics, you wrote this book When Protestants Argue Like Atheists, but I find myself as an atheist arguing like a Protestant. So I’ll approach Catholic resources. I had a guy named Catholic Dad on social media send me a bunch of books including yours. And as I’m reading them, I’m sort of approaching these things like I’m still a Protestant. Have you noticed that? Atheists who still argue like Protestants?

Trent Horn:
Oh, absolutely. So for example, I’ve noticed that there are atheists who would say for example, well back when they were Protestants, they might have been more literalists when it came to interpreting the Book of Genesis. So they would hold this sort of framework that the Book of Genesis and modern science are incompatible. So what that means is that Genesis is right and science is wrong. And so you hold that particular young earth creationist Christian view.

But then eventually they come to a point where they say, “Oh, nevermind, I’ve looked at the evidence. I think modern science is correct about the age of the earth, common ancestry of living organisms. So if they’re incompatible and science is right, that means Genesis is wrong. If Genesis is wrong, the Bible is wrong. If the Bible is wrong, Christianity is wrong.” And so they keep that same limited framework that they might’ve had as a Protestant. They just switch out the if-then conditional so to speak. But they’re still operating within that similar kind of a framework.

Potential Theism:
Okay, so let’s talk about some of those objections that a ex-Protestant may have as they’re exploring these topics. So the doctrine of sola scriptura, for example, when you abandon that but you’re trying to investigate Catholicism, one of the things that Protestants hear in church often is that Catholics have a low view of the Bible. So maybe go over what is the Catholic view of the Bible?

Trent Horn:
Sure. So the Catholic view of the Bible is that it is the word of God. So it is inspired, it is authoritative, it is without error. So it is God’s word. However, as Catholics, we don’t believe that God’s word is confined to the written word alone. In the early church, for example, the word of God existed for 20 years before, sorry, the unwritten word of God existed for 20 years before the written word of God and the new covenant ever came into existence with probably the earliest of Paul’s letters, like first Thessalonians for example.

But in first Thessalonians, Paul talks about how the word of God was preached among you. So we do certainly believe that divine revelation comes to us in the form of God’s word. Ultimately, we would say that revelation comes in its most complete form in Jesus himself, that He just is the word of God, God’s single word.

However, we as human beings need things in propositional content in order to fully absorb them. So as Catholics, we’d say that both sacred scripture and sacred tradition are equally authoritative. They are God’s word in written and unwritten form. But we’d also say that Jesus gave us a church with a teaching office, what’s called a magisterium. And that provides a way, an authoritative means for understanding what divine revelation teaches. What does sacred scripture mean? What constitutes sacred scripture? What constitutes sacred tradition? So I would say that we certainly have a very high view of scripture and that the Catholics would say the church is not above the Bible, but the church is the faithful custodian of scripture and serves God’s word in its written in unwritten forms.

Potential Theism:
So obviously Catholic Bibles are bigger than Protestant Bibles.

Trent Horn:
Yes.

Potential Theism:
So are these other books equally as authoritative?

Trent Horn:
Yes. So what you’re referring to are the deuterocanonical books of scripture, while Protestants often call them apocrypha. So Sixtus of Siena, he was a late medieval Jewish convert to Catholicism, and he developed this three-tiered classification system for Catholics. There were the protocanonical books… That Catholics and Protestants have the same twenty-seven books of the New Testament. We differ about the content of the Old Testament. Protestant Bibles would have 30, let’s see, what would it be? 30…? Yeah, 39 books. Yeah, that’s right I think. No, we have 39 books. There’s 66 books in the Protestant Bible, and more in the Catholic Bible.

So the Catholic Bible would include these other books like Tobit, First and Second Maccabees, Baruch, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach and longer forms of the Books of Esther and Daniel. So these longer works are called deuterocanonical. So protocanonical would be the books of the Bible that are the same in Catholic and Protestant Bibles. Catholics would say the deuterocanon are those books that are in Catholic Bibles, like the Old Testament books I just shared with you, but are not in Protestant Bibles. And apocrypha, we would say that refers to books that Catholics and Protestants agree are not divinely inspired, like the Book of Enoch, for example, or other early church writings like The Shepherd of Hermes or the Didache.

So they are different. But I would say that when you look at the Bible that Jesus and the Apostles quoted from, they primarily quoted from the Greek translation of the Old Testament, and that was a Septuagint that included these deuterocanonical books. You can also find these books being written in a special script reserved for… books that are considered inspired among the Dead Sea Scrolls. You see the church fathers quoting from them. You even see in Scripture, sorry, in the protocanonical books, you have for example, the Book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 11, referring to incidents in sacred history and quoting from the Book of the Maccabees describing martyrs as a part of sacred history, not just secular history, which would give evidence that the author letter of the Hebrews believed the deuterocanonical Book of Maccabees was inspired scripture.

And I think going through, when you look at the early church fathers, there is a growth in their citation of these books of scripture alongside the other protocanonical works. I have a chapter on that in my book Case for Catholicism. I’ve also debated the subject with Steve Christie, who is a Protestant apologist. He wrote a book called Why Protestant Bibles are Smaller. So if people want to see a nitty-gritty debate on some of the more technical issues. They can definitely check out that debate between him and I.

Potential Theism:
Yeah, and I definitely recommend this book if anyone has objections, maybe you come from a Protestant background, this would be a good book to look into those. So another subject that they may struggle with is the Marian doctrines. So can you clarify the Catholic view of Mary? Do Catholics worship Mary?

Trent Horn:
It depends on what you mean by the word worship. So the word worship has undergone a semantic shift, and this is important. When we talk about words and vocabulary, we have to remember that. The older use of the word worship just means to give one their worth-ship. So you have older, even older Protestant prayer books where the husband says to the wife, “I worship thee and I worship thy body, I worship thee.” But it doesn’t mean you worship in a divine way. It means you give one their worth-ship. It’s similar to how we address a judge. We might say, your Honor, for example. So worship in the sense of worth-ship. Catholics worship Mary by giving her the worth she is due. But lots of people even giving judges, magistrates, parents our due honor. We give honor and praise to all creatures in virtue of what they deserve.

With God, of course, being infinite goodness itself, the creator of all things, God deserves the highest honor, the highest worship. And so Catholics would say that the worship that is due to God alone like sacrifice, sacrifices can be only offered to God. There were heretics in the early church called the Collyridians who made sacrifices to Mary and this was condemned as heresy.

So we would say that the honor due to God unique to Him is something that cannot be given to Mary. But I would say for Protestants among all of the creatures that God made, which of those creatures should be held in the highest honor? That if God exists and God entered into the creation he made, and he chose to do that through another creature, because God could have just created a human body for Himself ex nihilo, but He chose not to do that. He chose to be born like human beings are born.

The fact that the second person of the Trinity became man and now for all eternity, God, the second person of the Trinity, God, the Son in His human nature will resemble another human being. He’ll bear a physical similarity to Mary. I find quite striking, and that would seem to make sense as to why of all the creatures God made, the one that should be held in the highest honor would be the creature who bore the Creator within her womb. So that makes that sense to me. And so I think that sometimes Protestants can confuse the fact that the highest honor among creatures is given to Mary, to mean that the highest of all honors is given to her. That is certainly not the case. Even St. Louis de Montfort who has very extravagant language of Mary in his writings says Mary is but a mere atom in comparison to God.

Potential Theism:
Okay, so JB asked why believe Mary was perpetual virgin?

Trent Horn:
Sure. I would say for the same reasons that we believe that Mary was a virgin before Christ was born. What is interesting is that Protestants will often say, “Well, I certainly believe in the Virgin birth,” and I think I might ask them, “Okay, do you agree then, do you believe that Joseph and Mary did not have sexual relations during her entire pregnancy?” Because many of them will quote passages in the Bible that teach that Mary and Joseph did not have sexual relations prior to the conception of Jesus. And we all agree on that point.

Now, why is this teaching so important? Because many Protestants say, “What’s the big deal if Mary was a perpetual virgin?” Well, for the same reason, it’s a big deal Mary was a virgin prior to the conception of Christ. It’s a miraculous sign to show that Jesus does not have a human father. He has no earthly father. He has a father who’s a legal guardian, a stepfather. But the miracle of the virgin birth of the perpetual virginity of Mary I would say. The fact that Mary did not have any sexual relations whatsoever, it is a miraculous sign, it is a wonderful sign of the uniqueness of her only child, that He has no earthly father.

So now why believe that Mary remained a virgin after the birth of Christ? Because interesting, as I said before, Protestants will affirm the virgin birth even though from Scripture, it’s not entirely clear that they abstained from sexual relations during the pregnancy. But most Protestants will say, “Yeah, of course.” Well, why do you believe that? I would say that there is evidence in Scripture that points to this. It points to Mary not having other children, like the fact that John is entrusted to Mary at the cross when Jesus’s brethren, his brothers would become believers shortly after that point, it would make more sense for them to care for his mother.

But I would say, and there’s also some evidence in Luke chapter one, Mary’s confusion about the angel Gabriel telling her that she will bear a son. She says, “How can this be since I know not man?” Some have argued that’s evidence that Mary took a vow of virginity and that Joseph was more of a custodial guardian. People say, “Well, all that means is they were engaged, they weren’t married yet.” So she’s confused like, “How am I going to have a child? I’m only engaged to Joseph. I’m not married to him yet.” But that’s a misunderstanding. Joseph and Mary were never engaged like we talk about modern engagement in American customs. In Hebrew, in biblical Jewish betrothal ceremonies, there were two parts. There was the initial betrothal, which made you husband and wife. You could have sexual union lawfully. And then there was a period that lasted up to a year where the marriage wasn’t complete because you had not moved in together.

Because often during this time, once you were married, then the husband would leave his parents’ home and he would go out and create, build a home from scratch or create or acquire a home for his new bride. It’s a lot harder than what we have today. And so there was this interim period, and that appears to be the interim period when Jesus’s conception takes place. So they were lawfully wedded, they were allowed to engage in sexual union at this time. So it just seems odd for Mary to give this phrase. Now you might say, “Well, there’s nothing [inaudible 00:18:45] in the text that talks about her having a vow of virginity and then Joseph a custodial guardian.” You’re correct. So the other reason that I would give is that historically, the view of Mary not having other children seems to be what has been received among the early church as a historical evidence.

No one. Now there’s different, you might say, “Wait a minute, Trent, you undermined your case. Earlier you talked about the brothers of the Lord. You can’t be a perpetual virgin if you have other children.” Some have argued the brethren of the Lord in Scripture are cousins. That’s one view. It’s not the view that I hold. I hold the older view that was common in the Eastern church that the brethren of the Lord were children of Joseph from Joseph’s previous marriage. I’ll wrap up here. I know there’s a lot here, but it’s a big issue.

I find there’s a lot of evidence actually for this [inaudible 00:19:32] historically and biblically in Mark chapter six, Jesus is referred to as the son of Mary rather than the son of Joseph, which was an odd term in the ancient world. Normally the son of your father, not the son of your mother, unless your mother was a really famous queen or something. Not the case of Mary.

But Richard Bauckham, a Protestant author, says, “Referring to Jesus as the son of Mary in Nazareth would make sense to distinguish Him from Joseph’s other children that were the sons and daughters of his first wife.” So this was an early view. The Protoevangelium of James refers to the brethren in this way and talks about Mary being raised in the temple and making this vow, and Joseph being a spouse to her to protect her after she had left the temple. That the view that the brethren of the Lord were step siblings, they were adoptive siblings. That was actually the view that was held.

No one believed that. That was the view that was held until the fourth century. No one who held office in the early church believed otherwise. Tertullian yeah, but he was already heretic by that point. So I think there’s good reasons biblically and historically to show that in God choosing to become man, Mary’s virginity was perpetual in nature to be an awe-inspiring sign to point to the fact that Jesus was special. He had no earthly father. That was a lot have a chapter out in my book. I hope that was a sufficient place to begin with that.

Potential Theism:
So JB says, Catholics support mythicism. No brothers of Jesus. But I would say actually somebody like Carrier would say that James was the brother of the Lord in a spiritual sense. That’s not what you’re saying.

Trent Horn:
No, it’s not. Now this is interesting. I remember reading Richard Price-

Potential Theism:
Robert Price.

Trent Horn:
… Robert Price. Robert Price, what am I thinking? Robert Price. Yes, he’s a hilarious guy. I love when certain atheists, when they get old enough, they just stop caring what other people think and just tell it how they see it. We’re seeing this more with Dawkins and Bill Marr. I think Robert Price has also done this. He’ll just say stuff even as politically incorrect, and I think he’s a hilarious guy. And he wrote a book a while back called The Christ Myth Theory and Problems or something like that. I’ve got it on my shelf over here somewhere. And in there he talks about the most difficult evidences against the mythicist view that Jesus never existed. And he makes a note. He opines there. He says, Catholics have always been embarrassed about Galatians one 19, talks about James the brother of the Lord. You believe Mary’s perpetual virgin. How can Jesus have brothers? You got to explain this away.

And he says, “Likewise, mythicists like us have to explain this away as well because if Jesus had flesh and blood relatives, well then he can’t be a mythical figure.” So you have mythicists explain that he’s the brother of the Lord in more of a spiritual sense. But I find those explanations to be very unlikely, because James is being distinguished from other Christians who would also have been considered brothers in the Lord or brothers and sisters of the Lord. I find Price and Carrier’s explanation of that not workable. I do think though that the step sibling explanation does work because if you are an adoptive sibling, you’re a brother like any other, you’re treated in the same way. And the term brother is used in Scripture whether you have the same mother or the same father.

So for example, if you go in the New Testament, you remember that John the Baptist lost his head over protesting Herod marrying his wife’s brother. “You cannot have your brother’s wife,” is what John protested to Herod. Now, if you look at Herod and his brother in the Herodian family tree, they actually, the text refers to Herod’s brother, I think his brother Philip. But if you look at the Herodian tree, they do not come from the same mother. They were both children of Herod, but they had the same father, but they had different mothers actually. But the term brother was still used there even though they did not come from the same mother. And I would say the same can be true of brother used, the James brother of the Lord versus Jesus that they have the same legal adoptive father, but they had different mothers.

Potential Theism:
Okay, so let’s talk about Marian apparitions.

Trent Horn:
Sure.

Potential Theism:
So one of the things that I’ve noticed, and I have your book here when Protestants argue like atheists, is that when it comes to Marian apparitions that sometimes Protestants sound like online skeptics.

Trent Horn:
Totally.

Potential Theism:
Yeah. Have you noticed that? And do you think it has the potential to undercut their arguments for the resu... Read more on Catholic.com