In this episode Trent interviews a popular Protestant Tik Tok influencer about the “simple” Protestant plan of salvation.

Transcript:

Trent: When you’re saved, Christians will still tell lies, correct?
Taco:
Yeah, some of them will.
Trent:
Okay. Will some Christians then still murder people?
Taco:
Yeah, it’s possible. Yeah.
Trent:
And you can still go to heaven?
Taco:
Yes.
Trent:
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Council of Trent. Today my guest is Mr. Taco Talks. He is a popular talker. Taco talks TikTok, taco for short. I call him T squared I guess. And he shares a lot of messages about Protestantism, offers some criticisms of Catholicism and I asked him here to talk about, I needed to get his thoughts on the issue of salvation. So Mr. Taco, welcome to Council Trent.
Taco:
Thank you for having me, sir.
Trent:
Alrighty. So yeah, I saw some of the videos that you’ve posted and I think in one of them you kind of do a back and forth or you’re one character’s a Catholic and the others are Protestant and you’re trying to, or there was one where you were trying to explain to Catholics how you get saved and you made it seem like we kind of overcomplicate everything and we just don’t get it. So you needed to just write it out in crayon because it’s really simple how to get saved. Was that kind of the thought behind that one video I’m thinking about?
Taco:
Yeah, I find the vast majority of Roman Catholics that I talk to, they tend to fall into the same kind of category as Mormons, where a lot of them don’t actually understand the doctrine of your church. And so for a lot of them it feels like you have to kind of show them what their church teaches when you’re talking to ’em to see if they actually disagree with you.
Trent:
Okay. Well in that video, what I’m thinking in particular is you were saying Catholics don’t understand the gospel. Do you hold to that view?
Taco:
Yes.
Trent:
Okay.
Taco:
Or that they just reject it.
Trent:
Alright,
Taco:
So what is the gospel? The gospel is the good news of God reuniting his kingdom with his creation. It is him bringing salvation to all those who would believe in him. It is his plan of redemption. And so within that there’s going to be caveats of how we are saved, how we can be reconciled and justified before God. And so those are all going to be correlated within what the gospel is.
Trent:
Okay. Because Catholics certainly believe that God is inaugurating his kingdom and desires to save us through his son. Would you say Catholics believe that?
Taco:
Yeah.
Trent:
Okay. So why would you say Catholics don’t understand the gospel?
Taco:
Because Catholics believe that you have to do certain things in order to merit an increase of grace in order to attain eternal life.
Trent:
Okay. And you’re saying that the gospel is that we don’t have to do those things?
Taco:
Yeah. The gospels that were saved by grace alone through faith alone and Christ alone for the glory of God alone.
Trent:
Okay. Where does the Bible say that that is the gospel
Taco:
In several different places. Ephesians 2, 8, 9 is a good one. Going into verse 10, it explains why God saves us. Romans 3 28, Galatians two 16, Genesis 15, six.
Trent:
Do any of those verses say the gospel is X or use the word gospel?
Taco:
If you go into Galatians, that is going to be used in Galatians one, eight referencing the gospel, specifically talking about a false gospel. And then it goes into clarify that in the following chapter in Galatians two.
Trent:
Right. But does it say the gospel is we are saved by faith alone? Does it use those words?
Taco:
No. The gospel is going to be that kind of broader term that is going to be encompassing all of those different things.
Trent:
Okay. So it seems like more we disagree about how to get to heaven. So I guess what I want to ask you is how, so I would like to get to heaven and I’m sure you could tell me how to do that. Would you say that the Catholic view is just overly complicated and your view or the quote, biblical view is simple about how to get to heaven?
Taco:
I think it’s really simple. Yeah, I think that Jesus paid the full price for all of the sins of all those who would believe in him.
Trent:
Okay, so walk me through it then. Right now I would like to get to heaven. What do I
Taco:
Do? Well, to go to heaven, you have to be sinless, you have to be perfect. And that is not possible for fallen people. There is no one good but God alone. And since there is no one good but God alone, not even one, no one who understands there is no one who seeks after God for all have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God. That means we’re in a predicament. Because if you sin, you die and the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. So Jesus being God, being the eternal son of God, he took on flesh, he was made to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. And through having faith in him, we are accredited with his righteousness that if we have faith in God, if we have faith in Jesus, trusting his promise that he paid the full price of sin, that he was the propitiation for sin, that it is finished, then that means that through trusting him, not only does he take our sin, but then he puts his righteousness upon us.
So by believing God, we are counted as righteous, and that is undeserved unmerited grace by which Christians are saved through faith apart from the works of the loss so that no one can boast. And the reason God saves us is to use us as tools to accomplish his good works in the world. So the good works that Christians do, those do not merit an increase of grace for ourselves or others, but rather they are merely the fruits in signs of justification already obtained through faith.
Trent:
Okay, so my question though was what do I do? So tell me right now, just give me the formula. What do I do?
Taco:
Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved.
Trent:
Believe in the Lord Jesus. So that’s all I have to do.
Taco:
Yeah, you have to have a genuine trust. You have to believe him. You have to have faith.
Trent:
Okay, do I have to believe So? If I believe in the Lord Jesus and I have faith that he died and he saved me for my sins, and I maintain that belief, I will go to heaven.
Taco:
Yes. I believe that if Jesus has saved you, then you are saved eternally. I do not think that you can lose your salvation. I think your salvation is preserved by God.
Trent:
So then going forward then, so I believe this, I believe this is about Jesus. I and I hold to that. Can I just read my Bible and believe in Jesus and never go to church, but I believe all this about Jesus and read my Bible, but I don’t go to church.
Taco:
Well, going to church will not earn you any increase of grace or get you any closer to heaven. But going and gathering among believers, that is what we’re called to do. The Bible says specifically in Hebrews, do not forsake the gathering. So it’s a beautiful, wonderful thing that Christians should definitely be doing.
Trent:
Okay, but let’s say I don’t do that and I know people who don’t do that. They just believe in Jesus. They read the Bible. If I believe in Jesus and I trust in him alone and I don’t go to church, will I go to heaven?
Taco:
Yes. If you trust in him alone, absolutely.
Trent:
Okay. You don’t have to go to church. So if I don’t go to church, that means I don’t receive the Lord’s supper. So are you saying that I can believe in Jesus trusting him alone, but I will still go to heaven even though I don’t receive the Lord’s supper.
Taco:
So within the category of the Catholic church having a very different view of the Lord’s supper than what I would hold to in John six, Jesus is expressing that whoever believes in him is eating him. That is consuming Jesus is to trust in him. So by believing in him, you are partaking of that. You’re just not partaking of the symbolic ritual.
Trent:
So I don’t have to go to church, I don’t have to receive the Lord’s supper. Let’s say I believe in Jesus, I trust in him, but I choose to not get baptized. Will I still go to heaven?
Taco:
Yeah, because you have been spiritually baptized. If you truly trust in him, then you have been spiritually baptized, not water baptized.
Trent:
Okay? So don’t need Eucharist, don’t need to go to church, don’t need to be baptized. Alrighty, let’s say so I trust in Jesus, I believe in him. He died for me. Rosely dead saved my sins. But I think this doctrine of the Trinity is just Greek philosophy. I don’t think it actually comes from the Bible. So I believe that maybe I believe something else. Jesus is like God, but he’s not fully God. But I don’t believe the Trinity, but I do believe that Jesus died for me, rose from the dead and saved my sins. Will I still go to heaven if I don’t believe in the Trinity?
Taco:
No, John 8 24, Jesus says, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins. So if you deny that Jesus is God, that he’s the eternal son of God, then you’re not trusting in the real Jesus. You would be trusting in a different Jesus like second Corinthians 11 talks about,
Trent:
Okay, so you’re saying that it’s not just I can’t just trust in Jesus that he died for me and that he saved me. You have
Taco:
To trust in the real Jesus. So it is still you have trust alone in the real Jesus.
Trent:
In the real Jesus. Okay. So you
Taco:
Have to, would you say that Mormons have a different Jesus than Catholics?
Trent:
Sure, of course.
Taco:
Yeah, exactly. So
Trent:
You’re saying you have to believe a certain set of theological truths about Jesus in order to be saved?
Taco:
Yeah, you have to believe what the Bible reveals. You don’t have to understand it fully, but if you go in opposition to what the Bible reveals about Jesus, what God has revealed about himself, then you would have a different God, A different Jesus.
Trent:
Okay, so is it just you have to just believe Jesus is fully God and fully man,
Taco:
That’s part of who God is. If you want to
Trent:
Down to that, I’m talking about who Jesus is.
Taco:
Yeah, Jesus is fully God, fully man.
Trent:
Okay. So could I believe that the Father and there’s the Son, the son is fully God and fully man, but the Holy Spirit is not fully divine. So could I believe that and still go to heaven?
Taco:
No, because that would still be denying the God of the Bible and therefore it is not actually believing in the proper God, not the proper Jesus.
Trent:
Okay, so it’s not just about Jesus then anymore. You have to have all your correct beliefs about God.
Taco:
Yeah. So whenever I say that Jesus is God, Jesus is Yahweh, Yahweh is one being three distinct co-eternal persons. And if you deny something about God, then you have a different God. That’s why if you look back in Exodus, whenever they made the golden calf, they didn’t say that we’re making a new God. They said, this is the God who freed you from Egypt. They were trying to make a depiction of Yahweh and worshiping the golden calf as God, but they altered God’s attributes and therefore they created a false version of him.
Trent:
Okay, so it sounds like you’re saying that in order to go to heaven, I have to believe everything correct about the nature of God, but I don’t have to go to, I could be someone who doesn’t go to church, doesn’t receive the Lord’s supper, doesn’t get baptized. Let me ask you, let’s try another question then. Let’s say I trust in Jesus, believe in him, and let’s say I get the trinity correct and I do all that, but I was someone who engaged in fornication before this and I still engage in fornication maybe once every few weeks or something like that. I believe Jesus died for me and we’re all sinners and there’s different sins that we fall into. Would I still go to heaven?
Taco:
That would depend just on if that person’s faith was genuine because if it is genuine, then they’re going to over time start to hate that sin. If they don’t already, it is going to be part of the repentance and sanctification. So people will continue in sin initially in a lot of cases because it’s not this perfect instant sanctification, it’s a slower process for some people than others. So it depends on if that person’s faith is genuine. And for me, I cannot tell if that person’s faith is genuine. I can get a guess. I can get an estimate based on how they live their life, but only God knows their heart.
Trent:
Okay, so how would I be able to know if my faith is genuine?
Taco:
If you yourself, do you love your wife?
Trent:
Yeah, I would say so.
Taco:
Do you know for sure that you love your wife?
Trent:
I’d say I’m pretty sure, yeah.
Taco:
Okay. The same way I can be sure that I love God and trust God. You don’t need to have a big standard for yourself. One John five 13, I’ve written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know you have eternal life. It is simply you can know for yourself if you truly trust God or not. The same way that you can know if you actually love your wife or not.
Trent:
Well lemme ask you a question. Let’s say there is a guy who says, oh yeah, I totally love my wife, but he often goes on OnlyFans to look at stuff there and he does that and he loves his wife even though, but she doesn’t obviously like him doing that stuff, but he says, oh yeah, I love my wife, but he still does these things that hurt his wife. Does that guy love his wife?
Taco:
I don’t think that, no, I don’t think that she would be loving him or he would be loving her in a correct way because he’s committing adultery every single time he does that.
Trent:
Okay, so then a person who says they’re Christian but goes only well OnlyFans once a month, can we say they don’t actually love God?
Taco:
We cannot say that for sure, but we can say that the people who are doing those things that it’s a bad thing that they need to repent of and repentance is a gift of God. So we need to pray that God would grant that to them.
Trent:
Okay, so why were you confident that the guy who looks at OnlyFans doesn’t love his wife, but the guy who looks at it, he could still love God? Why the difference?
Taco:
I don’t think there was much of a difference there in what I said.
Trent:
I said
Taco:
That we can’t know for sure what those people are actually feeling, but by their actions it’s going to give us an idea of what they’re doing.
Trent:
Well, no, lemme ask
Taco:
The question. And so the same way that they’re sitting against his wife or sitting against God is bad in both cases.
Trent:
So the guy who looks at OnlyFans once a month, he says he loves his wife, but he still goes and looks at that. Does he love his wife?
Taco:
Maybe, maybe not. His actions would indicate no because he’s cheating on her.
Trent:
He’s
Taco:
Committing adultery in his heart.
Trent:
So his actions indicate no. Alright, and why wouldn’t that be the same then if a guy who says that he’s Christian does that his actions indicate he doesn’t love God?
Taco:
It could absolutely be indicative of that. That’s what James Stews talks about. It talks about how we can try to get an estimate of what these people are if they’re actually genuine in their faith. But I can’t know for sure. God knows that I can get an idea of it, but I can’t know for sure.
Trent:
So you’re saying that is it possible then that somebody could become a Christian fully trust in Jesus and let’s say they look at for the next six months, they still look at OnlyFans once a week and then they die, they get hit by a bus. Is that person still going to go to heaven?
Taco:
If they truly trusted in Jesus, then yes, Jesus paid for all of their sins.
Trent:
So even if they were looking at explicit images online and had no plan to stop doing that, they’re still going to go to heaven.
Taco:
In first John, it talks about if you sin that we have an advocate with the Father, we’re still going to be sinful while we’re here until the resurrection, we are going to be committing sins of various kinds.
Trent:
Okay. How about a guy
Taco:
Including that?
Trent:
Okay, how about a guy? He converts trust in Jesus alone, but he isn’t just looking at looking at explicit materials involving minors once every few weeks. And the same thing happens
Taco:
Is I would say that guy is almost definitively not actually a Christian.
Trent:
Okay, so well what’s the difference? I thought all sin is sin.
Taco:
No, all sin is sin in regards to you tell a single lie, you’re damned to hell. But obviously the Old Testament ranks sins as different and it’s not that you have eternal consequences that are going to be distinct on that, but some of those like that, the Bible in the Old Testament would indicate that they need to be put to death for harming children in that way.
Trent:
Are there any other sins in the Old Testament where we are to be put to death working on the Sabbath?
Taco:
There’s many.
Trent:
So would you say then that somebody who works on the Sabbath or Sunday, however you would pluck that out, would be doing something just as grave as a Christian?
Taco:
Well, Jesus is the Lord of the Sabbath. So to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy is to worship Jesus as God. So Jesus clarifies that for us in the New Testament. There was that misunderstanding. The Sabbath was always pointing to Jesus.
Trent:
Okay, so my point though is that there’s lots of things in the Old Testament where the death penalty is inflicted or there’s serious crimes. So it sounds like, so you seem to admit that there are different kinds of sins. What I want to get at here, it seems like that when you convert hundred percent,
Taco:
But those sins the one
Trent:
Single
Taco:
Lie, go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead. One single lie will damn you to hell.
Trent:
Okay, and one single murder will damn you to hell.
Taco:
Yeah.
Trent:
Okay, so when you’re saved, Christians will still tell lies, correct?
Taco:
Yeah, some of them will.
Trent:
Okay. Will some Christians then still murder people?
Taco:
Yeah, it’s possible, yeah.
Trent:
And you can still go to heaven?
Taco:
Yes, but typically you’re not going to be doing that in that way. Typically a Christian is not going to murder people, but there’s going to be a lot of gray areas. There’s going to be people who have a severe mental illness, things that lead them to do things that they would not in their right mind do example, if someone is schizophrenic, they literally can change into a different mind and have nothing to do with themselves. Do you think God would damn them because their brain was failing?
Trent:
Right. Well, what I’m talking about though are average people with normally functioning brains. So someone converts, they follow your path saying, I believe and I trust in Jesus, he paid the full price for my sins, but even though I’m saved, I’m still going to commit sins. But I shouldn’t let that bother me because Jesus paid the price for my sins. So a normal Christian, for example, might tell a lie once every few months. Would you say that’s pretty common?
Taco:
Probably.
Trent:
Then could a normal Christian murder somebody once every few months?
Taco:
I don’t think so, no.
Trent:
Why?
Taco:
I think lying is a lot easier for people to do. Murdering is a lot more difficult. But at the same time, Jesus said that if you hate someone, if you hate your brother in your heart, then you’ve committed murder in your heart. So by that technicality then yes, yes, everyone has and will commit murder perpetually in their heart throughout their life.
Trent:
So under your view then that somebody could become saved every few months they tell a lie and this happens for let’s say two or three years, then they get hit by a bus, they’ll still go to heaven, correct?
Taco:
Yeah. If their faith was truly in Jesus Christ, then Jesus paid for all of their sins. Yes.
Trent:
Even though they tell a lie once every few months, then in three years that’s six or seven lies, whatever it may be, then they’ll still go to heaven. Same thing converted. Believe in Jesus, they murder somebody once every few months they get hit by a bus three years later. So they’ve murdered six or seven people, they’ll still go to heaven.
Taco:
If they truly trust in Jesus Christ, he takes the fullness of their sin upon himself.
Trent:
Okay. Alrighty.
Taco:
So it’s not antinomianism, it’s not saying that we have this free ability to sin that’s condemned vehemently by Paul, but within the category, Christians are going to sin less, but Christians are not going to be sinless.
Trent:
Okay? So what do you mean that they’re going to sin less
Taco:
By a natural byproduct of being saved? We are going to start to hate sin and therefore we are going to stop doing it as much.
Trent:
Okay, so, so instead of murdering 20 people a year, I’d only murder one person.
Taco:
Again, if you hate somebody, it’s murder in your heart. So have you ever hated anybody in your life?
Trent:
That’s not the question I asked. The question I asked is, so it’s going to be sinless. So for example, instead of telling a hundred lies a year, I might only tell one lie a year. Would that be a Christian trajectory a person might be on?
Taco:
Do you think Jesus can’t forgive future sins?
Trent:
No. I asked the question, would that make sense if someone they used to tell a hundred lies a year, now they’re saved. They might only tell one lie a year and we could say, yeah, they’re a Christian.
Taco:
Yeah, I would say that people are going to start sinning less. That’s what sanctification is. We’re going to try to stop sinning, but if you do sin, you have an advocate with the father.
Trent:
So it would be the same then instead of doing a hundred acts of adultery, a year might only be one act or a hundred acts of murder, only one act of murder and they would still be a Christian.
Taco:
If your faith is genuinely in Jesus Christ, you are a Christian.
Trent:
Okay, let’s see here. I had a few,
Taco:
Not if you claim it, if you actually truly have that. So I can’t tell if another person has it.
Trent:
Okay? I’m trying to see some other things like what it looks like. So I know, yeah, I believe in Jesus, I’m saved, I know I’m saved. Could it be possible a person is mistaken and they weren’t really saved in the first place?
Taco:
I don’t know. I think that certain people can believe a false gospel for sure. I believe that certain p... Read more on Catholic.com