In this episode Trent sits down to be interviewed by “The Protestant Gentleman”.
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Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:00:32):
Trent, I’d be foolish to try to debate you of some sort in the theological frameworks. So today I want to have some fun. This is a big conversation that’s happening. Catholics versus Orthodox was Protestant. But there’s some stuff I’m genuinely curious about. I think there’s some stuff that people are genuinely curious about because I see it all in my comments. But this is just a conversation that I am excited to have. But some topics that I think you as a Catholic creator give such a good based, respectful analysis on so many different things. And so I just want to talk to you and ask you some questions that a lot of people are asking. But in a way that’s not trying to debate you because I know where I lie in that. I’ll leave that to Gavin or something, but I just want to be curious.
Trent Horn (00:01:35):
Well, even Gavin, I mean, Gavin and I have done debates and replies back and forth, but I think Gavin’s a really cool guy. He’s going to come into my studio in a few weeks actually just to sit down across from me. We have a lot to chat about because honestly, he and I, our channels are, in many respects, actually very similar to each other in our goals and methodology for trying to share the truth with people. And yeah, I want to just bring down the heat in all the different areas and really get the truth out there in a win some way.
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:02:06):
Yeah. I can’t wait to talk to you about that because I think that was perfectly put. And I do watch both of your guys’ content to get two great perspectives, but in different camps on a particular topic, I find myself going back and forth between you two, so that’s funny. So I want to start a little light and then we’ll get into the hard stuff. So just a little volleyball tip over. Is the Catholic church the one true church and me as the Protestant gentleman, a true Protestant through and through, am I damned to hell in a, what is it? Hand hell into a basket, whatever it’s called. You’re going to hell in a hand basket.
Trent Horn (00:02:41):
Hell in hand basket, hell in a hand basket damned hell in a hand basket. That’s a good phrase
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:02:44):
Right there. Is that me? Is that me, Trent? Just a little softball for you.
Trent Horn (00:02:49):
Sure. And I think the question, the response that I would give might be similar to a response that you might give to a non-Christian. Someone says to you, now they’re, am I going to hell in a hand basket if I don’t believe in Jesus? Now, there are some Protestants who would say, “Oh, absolutely. Yes, you 100% are. You and everybody else who never knew Jesus, even a 10-year-old Native American girl living 600 years ago who could not have possibly known Jesus, she’s going to hell for sure.” But I think many Protestants I speak to don’t hold to that few. They hold to the possibility of salvation for those, even if they don’t have full knowledge of the means of salvation that Christ gave us. I think many Protestants hold to that view, an inclusivist to you of salvation where it’s possible, but not guaranteed. And I would say the same thing.
(00:03:36):
To someone who is not Catholic, you are a Christian, you are baptized. And so in that respect, you do have an imperfect union with the body of Christ, with Christ Church. The Catholic Church teaches that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic church. So it has its enduring hierarchical visible identity. And the Catholic church has maintained continuity for 2,000 years through the succession of bishops going all the way back to the apostles, but we don’t deny that other baptized Christians are connected to the body of Christ though in imperfect ways and connected to the church in imperfect ways. So we desire for all Christians to be in perfect communion with the church that Christ established. And so there is a possibility of salvation for anyone who doesn’t have the fullness of what God has revealed. God will judge that person based on how they responded to what was revealed to them.
(00:04:32):
Did they lazily or maliciously reject the truth or did they sincerely seek after the truth and respond to God’s grace? And I do think though that many, many people, when they respond to the grace that God has as present for them in the Catholic church, I’ve seen many people respond though by saying, “You know what? I think that this is where I’m called to be home.” So I would say it’s possible, but it never hurts to fully come home. Something to think about.
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:05:01):
It is something to think about, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. That’s why I ask. So I would consider myself the man of the people. So I’m like a more common sense logic type of guy. And so when I hear that, I listen to these podcasts, I read these books, I went to seminary, I did the thing, I heard all the big words, I heard the arguments. And for me, it comes back to common sense. What you said there was yes, but no, which is what the Protestant church would say. And so where I’m going with this is to me, if it’s like all the way, yes, I think there’s something there. I truly think out of everyone, the Catholic church has the best argument and the best, I would say logical consistency of being the one true church if they go all in.
(00:05:48):
But to me, it’s if you even give a little inch there, then it starts to fall apart very quickly of the one true church. If truly there’s apostolic succession, the sacraments are valid in the Orthodox church, there’s different denominations within the Catholic church that have valid sacraments. It’s like, to me it falls apart if you even give it an inch, but if you keep it all the way, then Catholicism makes so much sense to me. And it’s like, I think I would jump ship because of the submission to the one true church, just like Israel. When I’m looking back at the Old Testament, I’m kind of contributing, maybe you would say the same thing, but the Roman Catholic church to Israel and to the Jewish people, they were imperfect, the priest were imperfect, everyone, kings, it didn’t matter, but God’s promises came through that church no matter what.
(00:06:43):
Infallible, fallible, he sustained through them because of himself, not because of them. And so if you were to keep that consistent, the Roman Catholic Church makes so much sense. But as soon as you start to give a little bit of rope, it falls apart from me. What says Trent?
Trent Horn (00:07:01):
Well, I would say that we cannot give any more than what God has given us. The Second Vatican Council in Dave Eribam says that the church is not above the word of God, but serves it, faithfully guards it and hands it down. So we cannot say, and I mean, there have been, this is something the question of who can be saved has … This is something that has been debated and talked about since the beginning of church history. So Saint Cyprien said, “Outside the church, there is no salvation.” Or he said, “You cannot have God as Father, you do not have Church’s mother.” And so there’s been a debate all throughout 2000 years of church history who can be saved. And so these very strict formulations of outside the church, there’s no salvation, tended to relate that there’s basically two groups. There’s Catholics and there are heretics.
(00:07:56):
There’s people who are sinfully, willfully rejecting the truth and so they cannot be saved and then there are Catholics. Or by the time that most of the world has been, it seems to be evangelized, pagan darkness has been eclipsed basically, and you just have Christendom. But as I said before, my example with Native Americans, even Catholic theologians had to reexamine what this doctrine meant in light of, for example, discovering that there were millions of people who lived in the new world who had never had an opportunity to hear about Jesus. What about them? Or to go back through church history, and you mentioned Israel, but even throughout scripture, we see examples of righteous Gentiles or if people who God reveals himself to the God fears. You think about Cornelius in the New Testament, for example. We even see this in some of the Canaanites who eventually come into Israel in the Old Testament, but because God loves every person and desires the salvation of every person, we know that God can save whoever he chooses.
(00:08:58):
So nothing restricts, God saves whoever he chooses. Paragraph 12:57 of the catechism says that salvation is bound to the sacraments, but God is not bound by them. God can give his grace to whoever he pleases. So that means then, even though there are ordinary means of salvation, that does not preclude the possibility of salvation for those outside of those ordinary means. So I see what you’re saying. It would be nice if you say, “Okay, well, look, the people who are saved, if you’re Catholic, you’re saved. If you’re not Catholic, you’re damned.” It’s clean, it’s easy. And if you put it to me that way, it feels like you’d feel like you have a GUN to your head. I don’t know what I can say on YouTube, and you’d just be like, “I got to go. ” I mean, what if I’m wrong there? But of course, God doesn’t want to save people and don’t want to coerce people and do that.
(00:09:51):
And you’re right, that’d be very clean and quick. But I find that theology, any theological answer that is the virtue of it is that it’s really easy to understand is often an error or a heresy. It’s like, man, the Trinity is really, really hard to explain. You know what’s easy? It’s just there is just one God and he’s one person and he acts in three different ways. So like a father, uncle, brother, or a coach, dad and husband.
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:10:22):
Jesus is created. We don’t know how to explain it. Jesus has created. Let’s move on.
Trent Horn (00:10:27):
He’s an amazing creative being, but there’s one true God and he’s a person. So that’s where I would say to you is like, I would say to be … Actually, if a theological explanation is very simple and clean, I think that’s often a temptation to error. But in that view though, then we get to the problem of what about the nine-year-old Native American girl who never had it or the … Because some people try to get out of this and say, “Oh, well, toddlers and infants, they’ve never sinned, so they’ll go to heaven.” Well, surely even … I have children, I have 11, nine, and a five-year-old. Even by five years old, kids are sinning. They’re disobedient. They break the moral law. And then you have the problem of what about five-year-old … Are there five-year-olds in hell because they never heard about Jesus? Some people say, “Yep, sorry, that’s their lot in life.” And I think most people do not believe God is really that cruel to damn a five-year-old to hell for eternity through no fault of the child’s.
(00:11:25):
But then that opens the door. The door is now open for, oh, it is possible for people outside the ordinary means of salvation to be saved. And so even though it’s possible, not necessarily probable, that’s why we have to evangelize. I give the example of in my book, Why We’re Catholic, like crossing a frozen lake is shrouded in fog. It’s like, “Can I make it? ” You might, but there’s this bridge I know about. And I think it’d be you’re much preferred to go across this bridge. And so the church teaches that the church is that bridge that God has given us, that God desires to save us through sacraments, through right worship, through right teaching. In fact, it’s a shameless plug, but I will send you a free book and maybe you can talk about it on your show. But I just wrote a book called Salvationist from the Catholic Church and talking about how obviously it was not the church that paid for my sins on the cross, but God didn’t just leave us a Bible.
(00:12:20):
God, in fact, Jesus during his earthly ministry never told anyone to write anything down, but that the church is a enduring, visible, hierarchical institution with real universal teaching authority so that I can be saved by knowing what is it that I need to believe? What can I not reject? What actions are gravely sinful and incompatible with the Christian life? What are the means God has given to supply grace? Do I have to be baptized? Do I have to receive the Lord’s supper? What do I do if I gravely sin? How do I come back into communion with God and his church? So I find that the church saves us by answering all of those questions. And I find other Protestant ways of answering the questions have problems as I talk about in the …
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:13:02):
I’d probably agree with some of those, so I’d love to read it actually. Great. And so the reason I really wanted to ask that is I guess my goal, I am proudly Protestant and will continue to be. But I truly think that we have a valid church and that the one true church, sometimes Protestants just get strawmanned to death and a lot of Catholic creators will stop at, we are the one true church, there’s no question about it. And then you actually press them and they usually give somewhat of an answer like that, that the door is a little bit open and there’s a mystery behind some of these conversions. There’s a mystery behind some of these movements and we come across people who are definitely Christian. And so we don’t know how to answer that. We come across Orthodox having very similar paths as we did and they followed all the same steps.
(00:13:50):
They just kind of made a pivot in 1054, but for the most part, they have the same sacraments and they have followed similar rules. And so what I want to try to say is the Protestant church I think needs a reformation, but I do think that we could have a valid church just like the Catholic and Orthodox. And mainly I want to come and communion with one another if I had this perfect vision, which I hope we figure out on this podcast. I hope us too right now, we figure out how-
Trent Horn (00:14:17):
Well, I gave a suggestion. I gave a suggestion to redeem Zoomer and he said no. I said, “What about a Protestant Pope?” He’s not infallible, but he does have universal teaching authority for Protestants. And he was not enthused at the idea because the closest you would have for that in Protestantism might be someone like the Archbishop of Canterbury for Anglicans before that became a lady. I was going
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:14:49):
To say Joe Olsteen, but okay, that one makes sense too.
Trent Horn (00:14:52):
Oh my goodness. Joel Osteen, he would be the ninth century Pope for it. Now, he’s not involved in any sexual sins. That was a prinocracy. That’s one evidence for the Catholic church is we’ve had a handful of real loser popes, some of them very scravely sinful, but they still didn’t officially teach heresy. They just engaged in debauchery. No, he would be more like the border popes, the ones whose sin was greed and excess, things like that. But yeah, that would be my … Although, because that was my biggest thing for the Protestant church, if the Protestant church is the invisible bond between all baptized Christians, what I think becomes missing there is that universal teaching authority
(00:15:41):
On really important issues. And there’s nobody if the Bible is the only infallible rule, but it really ends up becoming the only rule because no one can ever say, “Yeah, the Bible’s the only infallible…” Yeah, it’s the only infallible rule, but there’s no one who can universally say, “All right, we need to settle on this question or that question.” It really does become splintered. I think Catholics should not say there’s 38,000 denominations, that’s not true in Protestantism. I just say there’s a lot. I don’t know how many, but much more than I think Christ would want.
Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:16:14):
I totally agree. I don’t know if I’ve ever said it so plainly as I’m about to say it now, but I think not having some hierarchical structure in Protestantism is potentially going to lead to the demise of at least the American Protestant way. If we continue down the non-denominational route, I think it’s just going to be anarchy. I think a lot of these churches are holding on by some tape and some glue, and then the next pastor that comes in is going to continue to up the ante and they’re going to eventually just go off the rails. It’s just a matter of time. I know the mainlands don’t have much more of it together. I mean,
Trent Horn (00:16:49):
The problem with the main lines is they’ll have structure and then an entire new branch will split off over homosexual conduct, female pastors. But what’s interesting is that I think one of Protestantisms, especially one of non-denominationalismR... Read more on Catholic.com