Joe Heschmeyer goes toe to toe with Chat-GPT, rebutting the internet’s best large language model’s arguments against Catholicism.

Transcription:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. I want to do something different today and specifically I wanted to try out chat GPT-4o. Now there’s a lot of different ways you can do this and I in particular want to look at arguments against Catholicism. So I have not done this yet. I actually, I’m not sure I’ve ever used chat GPT for, so this is a brand new one. I actually had to pay $20 to get a month subscription just to try this. That is how much I love you, maybe even more than $20. So with no further ado, you can watch it happen. You’ll see me type in, you’ll see first of all how incredibly quickly it produces the answer. And then we can go through and say, how would we reply to these different responses? I have a few tabs ready with some possible bible verses to go to, but to be honest with you, I don’t really know where the rest of this episode is going to go.

So with no further ado, let’s ask chat GPT what are the best arguments against Catholicism? And you can see how incredibly quickly it produces a very systematic response. It says arguments against Catholicism come from a variety of perspective and then it’s looking at theological ones and historical ones. And then I think the third category is going to be ethical or yeah, and then ethical ones looking at social issues. And then I figured we can just go kind of piece by piece through these and give brief counter arguments. Do any of these arguments completely rebut Catholicism or is there something we can say as Catholics in response to what a very sophisticated robot saw as the best arguments? So the first category of arguments are theological arguments. The first thing is the authority of the Pope and it says, critics argue that the concept of papal infallibility and the central authority of the Pope lacks strong biblical support.

They often cite that early Christian communities were more decentralized and then it even offers counter-argument, even though I didn’t ask it to, it’s going to actually do my job for me. Catholics believe that the Pope’s authority is rooted in the apostolic succession from St. Peter who they hold was appointed by Jesus as the leader of his disciples. Great. That’s already a good start. Let’s work with that a little bit. If somebody says, I’m not Catholic because of the authority of the Pope, the first thing I’d say is that is a really good reason not to be Catholic. And don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that this is the winning argument. I just mean this is a helpful thing if you’re dealing with another Christian, Orthodox, Protestant, anyone who calls themselves Christian and respects the authority of the Bible and respects that Jesus is who he says he is, one of the things that you often encounter is it can be really difficult to get through all of the different issues.

People have all sorts of for why they’re not Catholic. And so it can be overwhelming where they say, okay, I’ve got these 20 different doctrines. I think the Catholic Church might be wrong on, but I haven’t carefully investigated them and I’m open to the Catholic church being right and they’ve given themselves this tremendous research project and if they find that they agree with the Catholic claim on all 20, then they’ll become Catholic. And if they find themselves maybe 15 out of the 20 or something, then they’ll hem and haw and say, well, I don’t really know what to do with this because I don’t fit comfortably in any Protestant denomination, but I also don’t really belong in the Catholic church. The solution here is to say, look at the question of authority. Is the Catholic church who she says she is? And a good way of getting to that is, is the papacy true?

So here’s why. If you were listening to Jesus, you would hear him say all kinds of radical things. Some of them you’d agree with, some of them you’d recognize as these brilliant encapsulations of the Mosaic law and other things would probably be challenging depending on what the background you’d come from, depending on your own biases, your own sin, your own intellectual journey, your own spiritual journey. And the question isn’t, do I agree with everything Jesus says? The question is who is Jesus? And if he is who he says he’s, if he is the son of God, then if I don’t agree with him, I’m in the wrong. So I don’t start with the question of do I agree or disagree? I start with the question of who’s in the position of authority to know who’s right on this? Well, likewise what the church, the Catholic claim is that the church is the body of Christ and has been created not by human agency, but by Jesus’s divine authority.

And then has it been empowered by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of truth to guide the church into all truth. Now if that’s true, then all of those times we might disagree with the church are times we’re just flagging ourselves as being wrong. So the one thing you have to sort out isn’t the 20 point checklist of doctrines you might have questions about. It’s that one question of authority. And so the papacy is a nice concrete way of exploring that question of authority. Another way to put it is like this. If Catholics are right about the papacy, everyone should be Catholic. If we’re wrong about the papacy, no one should be Catholic. And when you do that, now that 20 point list is a one point list and that’s a lot easier to sort through. So I’m glad we’re starting with the authority of the Pope.

Let’s look at a few biblical passages to support the Pope’s authority. Now one thing I do want to say, actually before we get there in the chat GPT description, it says the critics often cite that early Christian communities were more decentralized. I would press on that a little bit because a lot is being made usually if arguments from silence or really incomplete kind of data. Now to be sure in the first century, in the second century when things like communication can take months functionally, everything is just decentralized to a greater degree than it is now that you just can’t have the amount of oversight you would want. Empires are more decentralized. Everything is, that is not really a theological argument. That’s a technological limitation that the Pope can’t meddle in your business or can’t oversee what’s going on depending on whether you view it as a positive or negative because it’s just physically impossible with the technology of the day.

So with that said, I think we actually find a tremendous amount of information of people going to the Church of Rome and speaking of the Church of Rome in elevated terms and talk about the necessity of agreeing with that church. There’s all sorts of stuff there, but because this is I think more of a biblical argument, I’m going to look at just the biblical data. Let’s look at a couple places. Alright, the first one I like to go to is the gospel of Luke. It’s Luke 22, it’s the last Supper. And begin in verse 24, the disciples begin to dispute among themselves about which of them has to be regarded as the greatest. So I mean imagine you’re at the last supper. This is the most important meal in human history and here in the midst of it you have the apostles not able to get out of their own way talking about which one of them is the greatest.

Jesus doesn’t rebuke them for this though It’s good to ask the question about greatness and it’s good to want to be great. And instead what he says to them is that the kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them and those in authority over them are called benefactors but not so with you rather let the greatest among you become as the youngest and the leader is one who serves. So this is the creation of what we might call servant leadership. Then Jesus gives himself as an example of this in verse 27, he says, I’m among you as one who serves. Jesus shows us what servant leadership looks like. And then in the next verse, 28 to 30, he tells the 12 that the father has appointed a kingdom for them and that they’ll sit in thrones judging the 12 tribes of Israel.

I guess let me tweak that slightly. As the father has appointed a kingdom for Christ, he’s appointed the sharing in the royal authority in the kingdom. They don’t get separate kingdoms. Just to make sure we’re clear on that. The point though is that he’s talking about servant leadership and apostolic authority and that the apostles are to have genuine authority. Those in authority over them are called benefactors. So he’s using the model of actual authority and then describing something like this for the apostles themselves. And then in the very next verse in verse 31, he singles out one apostle Simon Peter and he says to him, Simon, Simon, behold Satan demanded to have you and you’ll notice there’s you plural that he might sift you like wheat. So all 12 are going to be under a tremendous spiritual assault as we see during holy week, especially here at the night where Jesus is arrested.

And Jesus’s response isn’t to say, I stopped this from happening because I have divine authority. His response is not to say I prayed to the Father for all 12 of you. He instead says, I’ve prayed for you. Now here it’s really critical and we lose this in the English unless you’re checking the footnotes really carefully. He switches from you plural. So Satan has desired to sift all of you like wheat. And I’ve prayed for you, Simon Peter, that your faith may not fail, but he knows it will fail. Simon will deny him three times. And so when you have turned back again, strengthen your brethren. So that in a nutshell is the entire Catholic case. All of the 12 have servant leadership over the church. One of them, Simon Peter, has servant leadership over the rest of the servant leaders. He’s the servant of the servants of God to use one of the papal titles that’s straight out of the Bible about the role that Simon Peter has.

And if you understand why Jesus does this with Simon Peter, then you understand why we believe this was not just a one-off kind of event that he’s creating an actual structure in the church because of all the times to need a human leader like Simon. The time you would seem to need that the least is while Jesus is physically with them on earth and yet he provides for it there. Alright, so that’s one place I would go. Another place I would go of course is Matthew chapter 16. This is a pretty famous one. Jesus asks that, who do you say that I am question? And Simon answers. He says, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. And Jesus then says to him, blessed are you Simon Bara or Simon’s son of Jonah flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my father who is in heaven.

And then he changes his name, he says, and I tell you you are Peter, which means rock and on this rock I’ll build my church. And then the R-S-V-C-E here says, and the powers of death shall not prevail against it. The actual languages and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it or the gates of Haiti shall not prevail against it. And there’s a lot of dispute about what does this mean? There’s a clear parallelism between Simon Peter saying, you are Christ’s son of the living God. And then Jesus talking about Simon’s sonship son of Jonah, and then just as he goes from calling Jesus the Christ, Jesus goes from calling Simon the Peter. So there’s a clear kind of parallel kind of going on here which points to this being a special thing that no one else in the Bible has ever called Peter.

Occasionally you’ll find Protestants who say, well Peter just means like little rock, which isn’t really true and therefore everyone who confesses faith in Christ is Peter is Pedros is a rock. No one else besides Peter has ever given that title, which suggests that’s a misreading. But more than that, we can go to the very next verse in verse 19 where Jesus says just to Simon Peter, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven and whenever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven and whenever you lose on earth shall be loose in heaven. Now this gets right to the heart of why this matters because if the church is to be one, and it’s very clear from scripture that Jesus wants the church to be one, he prays for this in John 17 verse 20 to 23 at the last supper.

He wants his followers to remain one. If we’re going to remain one, we need some kind of centralized authority when disputes arise because if you don’t have that, if you have total decentralization, then everything goes off the rails very quickly. People divide up and you have infighting and then you have nobody to adjudicate when two different groups fall out over the proper interpretation of scripture. That is the history of Protestantism and to a lesser extent, that’s also the history of orthodoxy that you’ll find people disputing what’s the right answer here and they don’t agree on who the judge can be in the case. Now that is not the biblical model and the biblical model. When you have a dispute, you can go to the church. Matthew 18 shows this very clearly, take it to the church and if they won’t listen to the church, treat ’em as you would a Gentile or a tax collector, that suggests that there is a clear, visible, recognizable adjudicative authority that Protestantism doesn’t really have today.

So that’s why you need something like the papacy. Let’s go on and give one more passage, John 21. I actually want to look at the very end of John 20 appears to be the conclusion of the gospel of John. John says, now Jesus did many other things in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book, but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ is son of God and that believing you may have life in his name. And then you can almost add like the end because that is so clearly a conclusion. And yet John continues with what’s pretty clearly an epilogue. Now, I mentioned this because the point of John 20 is to tell us about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So more broadly, John one to John 20 is looking at the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Christ.

John 21 is doing something different. It’s an epilogue. And what is this epilogue about? It’s the what happens next. So all of the evangelists are left with this. It’s harder to show this with Mark because there’s a dispute about the ending of Mark’s gospel, but Matthew’s gospel ends with the great commission, okay, Jesus lived, died, rose again went to heaven. Church’s mission is go out and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. So you got a very clear mandate, very clear mission. Luke has an entire sequel to say what happens next called the acts of the apostles about, okay, what is the church’s response? John uses a lot more imagery and language and in doing so, he has presented this resurrection appearance that serves as almost like a parable explaining the journey of the church from now until the eternal shores.

And there’s a lot of clues about that in the passage. The first one being that it is written as an epilogue, the second being that the setup is a group of seven disciples. So John 21 verse two shows there’s seven disciples. This is the number of perfection and completion and it points to the Sabbath rest of God, which is to say eternal rest with God. And of these seven, Simon Peter is clearly the leader. He says, I’m going fishing. The other six say We will go with you. That is not a throwaway detail because the church is used. Matthew 1347 to 50, the church is described as a net containing good and bad fish. We’ll get into all this in a second and in Luke five there’s a miraculous catch of fish where Simon Peter is tasked with three of the other disciples there with catching a tremendous catch of fish.

And then Jesus says explicitly to Simon that he’ll make him a fisher of men. So there’s a clear fishing imagery going on there, and this is kind of a recurring image both in the New Testament and in early church art and architecture. If you’ve ever looked at the traditional architecture in a Catholic church, it often looks like an upside down boat the way the ceiling is set up, that’s not an accident. That’s an intentional architectural homage to this theological reality. Okay, so when he says, I’m going fishing, and they say, we will go with you, it’s pointed to this thing that I said a minute ago that the way the church doesn’t have schism is by having this unity around the Pope. But in any case, by mere human effort, central authority isn’t actually enough and so they go out in the boat, but that night they catch nothing in the morning.

Jesus is standing on the beach and they don’t know yet that it’s him. He says, have you caught any fish? They say, no. He says, cast an net on the right side of the boat and you will find some. So they do and they were not able to haul it in, and that’s a significant detail we’ll get back to. Then the beloved disciple John says to Peter, it is the Lord. Simon Peter puts on his clothes and jumps in the sea. I love that detail. The six other disciples then follow behind, but notice they’re dragging the net full of fish for they were not far from the land, but about a hundred yards off. Now that’s obviously a conversion into yards. When they get to the land, they see a charcoal fire. This is another clue, this is a story about Peter’s relationship with Jesus because the only other time a charcoal fire appears anywhere in scripture is where in John’s gospel where Peter denies Jesus three times he’s standing by the charcoal fire. That detail matters, right? Additionally, Jesus is already present with fish. He’s cooking fish on the charcoal fire. This is a good reminder that while we are called to evangelize as the church, Jesus doesn’t actually need us. And the third detail is there’s also bread. This is a eucharistic image. Jesus then says, bring some of the fish that you’ve just caught. So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore full of large fish, 153 of them, and although there were so many, the net was not torn.

The word schism comes from this Greek word for torn here, that there’s no schism in the net. Also the word like schizophrenic, torn mind, that Greek word of tearing, that’s what we’re looking at here. So schism, there’s no schism in the net of the church that remember the other six could not bring that in, but at Christ command, Simon Peter is able to bring the net of the church ashore to the eternal shore to dine with Christ. If it wasn’t clear enough that all of this was deeply petron about Peter’s role in relationship with Christ, you then have at the end of breakfast verse 15 to 17 where Jesus says to Simon Peter, Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these? He says, yes, Lord, you know that I love you. Jesus says, feed my lambs. He asks him again, yes, Lord, you know that I love you, 10 my sheep, and he asks him a third time, do you love me?

Peter’s feelings are hurt this time. I’m sure it recalls the threefold denial. And he says, Lord, you know everything. You know that I love you. Jesus says, feed my sheep. So the entire flock of Christ is entrusted to one man, Simon Peter right there three times. There’s no one else with a similar commissioning anywhere in the New Testament, okay? I know I spent a long time on the issue of the papacy, but that’s because I think it’s the one to make sure you get right. If you’re talking to Protestants, Orthodox, et cetera. If you get that right, then it’s like, okay, well if Jesus really did set up an earthly interpretive authority, the governing authority and authority to help lead the church without going into schism, where if you want to not be amatic, you stay connected to Peter and the net. Okay, great. That settles everything else.

Then if I find that I don’t understand why the Catholic church teaches X, Y, Z, that’s a cause for me to spiritually reflect, maybe do more research, but also be ready to just say maybe they understand this better than I do and it can be a cause for humility. Alright, that’s the first. Let’s go onto the next, the Marion doctrines. I don’t know why I didn’t have these ones ready. I should have known that these ones would come up. Some Protestants and other critics believe that doctrines regarding Mary, such as her immaculate conception and assumption are not explicitly supported by scripture and detract from the centrality of Jesus. Counterargument. Catholics argue these doctrines are supported by sacred tradition and the development of doctrine over centuries. Now, there’s a lot that could be said here. I would say this, the idea that it has to be explicitly supported by scripture is a false framework.

This is assuming the Protestant doctrine of soul of script, Torah, which is itself false. So let’s talk about that just for a moment. In Second Thessalonians chapter two, verse 15, St. Paul tells us Soth then brethren, stand firm and hold to the traditions, and parados is the word there. It’s tradition, a thing handed on stand firm and hold to the traditions which you were taught by us either by word of mouth or by letter. Now, you might be using a Bible like the NIV, which will, when it talks about tradition in a good way, it’ll change it to teaching which is inaccurate. The word there is not teaching. The word there is tradition, but because these Protestants are anti tradition and they don’t like the idea of sacred tradition, they’ll literally just edit it out of the Bible. That’s bad theology and bad translation. It’s the exact same way when Jesus condemns the traditions of men, that is the parados of men when St.

Paul commends Parados is coming from Jesus in the apostles, same word. So it’s not a question of tradition, good or bad. The question is whose tradition is it? Is it manmade tradition or is it divine tradition? Because if this is something coming from Jesus in the apostles, we should heed it, right? If it’s something coming from rabbinical authority like the Pharisees, we can ignore it, particularly if it gets in the way of the word of God when we need to ignore it. So we’re using the same word both in English and in Greek to refer to two different realities. One of these divinely given teachings that are being passed down and the other of just human customs and teaching authority. So when we Catholics talk about tradition, we usually are talking, it can be confusing. It depends a little on context, but we’re usually talking about sacred tradition, those things that can be traced back to Jesus and the apostles, and that is very clearly biblical.

So the idea that you need explicit biblical teaching for everything is not explicitly taught in the Bible, so it’s self refuting, but in fact is directly contradicted by two Thessalonians two 15, which talks very clearly about the need to hold both to those traditions passed on by letter that is scripture, but also traditions passed on by word of mouth. He doesn’t say just follow traditions by letter and ignore traditions by word of mouth. He says the exact opposite. Now, Protestants are free to say at some point in history, all of the traditions by word of mouth were written down in epistle form or in letter form, and they now are all contained in the New Testament, but that is a made up teaching. Nowhere in scriptu... Read more on Catholic.com