Today, Joe is trying something a new! He takes his first stab at doing a tier list, and what better way to start than by tackling the Protestant arguments against Catholicism? Which ones are actually compelling? Which ones are completely made up and terrible? Let’s see what Joe thinks…

Transcript:

Joe:

Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer and I want to do something a little different today. I want to take a couple dozen different Protestant arguments against Catholicism, and I want to rank them in a purely subjective way or almost purely subjective way in terms of how good and interesting I think the arguments are compared to how much they can just be dispelled by having the other person read a book. I dunno if you’re like me, I really like your lists. I like watching people’s videos. I have no idea why it’s not like this desire for order goes anywhere else, but it does help me, I don’t know, evaluate how convincing other people find arguments that maybe I’m familiar with. For instance, Austin from Gospel Simplicity recently did a tear list on Catholic arguments and how convincing he found them and unconvincing and his on my list would’ve looked pretty different.

So take it for that, right? These are the arguments I find, obviously not personally convincing because they haven’t convinced me to not be Catholic, but at least ones that maybe make me stop and think more. Or ones where I think like, oh, I see why a person struggling with that would think I can’t be Catholic. And then the ones that I’m sometimes a little baffled by the ones where I struggle a little more to think, yeah, I can see why someone would think that. So please take it in that spirit. And obviously I don’t mean any disrespect. If you find some argument more or less convincing, you might have a different list. And obviously the most important arguments are the ones that you are grappling with, and I’m happy to grapple with whatever arguments people have. So I’ve done the tier list in this order.

At the top are arguments that I find actually interesting, so I’ll give an example of this papal authority in the first thousand years. This you’ll often find, even though I’m putting it in a sample Protestant arguments list, this makes more sense as an orthodox argument where it’s like, okay, we’ll grant you that there is something like a papal office in the early church. We’ll grant that Peter has a special authority given to him by Christ. And we’ll grant that this even seems to continue through the bishops of Rome, but what are the limits of it? Is this just a first among equals? Is this something more? If it’s something more, what are the contours of it? How does that relate to the authority of the local bishop? How does it relate to the authority of an ecumenical council? Those questions are really good. I think there are answers to those questions.

I think those questions ultimately point to the Catholic church, but somebody asking those and not just assuming, oh, it must’ve been first among equals, or it must’ve been a primacy of honor. No, but to see that the answer to that is no, that it is something more than that. You actually have to do a little more digging. And so I respect people who can say, all right, I see all of this and this is my hangup and it’s kind of in the weeds, but it’s an important one. And it also points to something really true, which is there is an evolution in the papacy. There are things that look different today than they looked in the past. And if you watch my recent video where I talk about this from the mustard seed to the mustard tree, all of that is present there in Jesus’s parables about the church, the Kingdom of God parables or kingdom of heaven parables in Matthew 13.

That’s fine, but you can at least still see why someone would say, how do I know this mustard seed is the same one from this mustard seed? And so it’s actually interesting, the ones below that. I originally tagged this understandable, but I couldn’t figure out how to make all that text fit on one line. So I changed it to, I get it. And for the, I get it. I’ll give solo scriptura as an example. I don’t find the solo scriptura debate nearly as convincing or interesting as the one about papal authority in the first a thousand years. Here’s why I’m still going to find it more convincing than a world of Protestant arguments, but I think solo scriptura properly understood. The way the term is used today is what’s in technical terms called a mot and Bailey argument. A mot and Bailey is just a technical term, therefore a bait and switch.

It’s where you have two different positions, a strong one in a weak one. And so you’ll make the really big position and it’s not very easy to defend. So then when somebody attacks you, you’re say, no, no, no, I just meant this much narrower strong position. And the easy example for this is feminism. If someone says, you are not a true feminist because you think abortion is bad, then okay, your definition of feminism seems to include the legalized murder of children. But if I challenge that, then the pushback will be something like the bumper sticker, right? Feminism is a radical notion that women are people, well, obviously you’re using the term feminism to mean something safe and non-controversial. Women are people and something incredibly controversial. Abortion should be legal. And by using the same term for both positions, you can sort of switch around as it suits you.

And sometimes people will fall for this. I think it’s when you do it on purpose, it’s a dishonest argument, but sometimes people do it without really consciously knowing what it is that they’re doing. So a solo scriptura, the bait and switch, or the Maan Bailey works like this. One form just says, well, all you have to believe in to believe in solo script Torah is that scripture is divinely inspired or God breathed and nothing else has that same attribute of being God breathed in the same way. But a Catholic could actually agree with that, that scripture is God breathed in a sort of unique way. It is divine inspiration consign to writing. Now, we also know that God inspired people not just in what they were writing, but in what they said. For instance, when Peter gets up on a Acts two and Pentecost, the Holy Spirit is working through him, God is breathing that as well, if you want to put it that way.

Otherwise you’d have to say, well, the Pentecost sermon either wasn’t inspired or became divinely inspired when it got written down, not when it was originally spoken, and those would be really weird conclusions. But nevertheless, there’s something special about the way scripture is written. It has a unique status in that regard. And so if that’s really all solo scriptura meant, it wouldn’t be particularly controversial. But notice something here, nothing in any of that explanation says all doctrines have to come from scripture or from necessary deduction. So you could have a doctrine that is true and binding and not found at all in scripture because you could say, yeah, scripture is divinely inspired in this unique interesting way, and also we’re all bound to believe in other things, even those not found in this unique interesting thing called scripture. And so what happens is you have these two positions, one position that says all doctrines have to come from scripture or necessary deduction from scripture.

And then another doctrine that says scripture is unique and interesting in the way it’s inspired. That’s a Martin Bailey, because the scripture is unique and interesting in this way that’s not particularly controversial. That’s like a women or people kind of argument. If it’s all doctrine has to come from scripture or from things that can be tied to scripture, the emanations from scripture, the deductions from scripture, that’s a much more controversial position. In fact, that position I would even say is kind of obviously false. So solos, scriptura, I get it. But I think it’s working in a lot of ways by somewhat misleading, even its proponents, by doing a little bit of a bait and switch where it’s not a very carefully defined term, which is why when you attack solos scriptura, one of the most common response you’ll get from other Protestants is, oh, that’s a straw man.

That’s not what I mean by sell a script Torah. Well, okay, if a bunch of people are using the same phrase for wildly different ideas of the relationship of scripture and doctrine, maybe we should just find a new vocabulary. Nevertheless, I’m going to put that in the, I get it. It’s at least an interesting idea. A lot of smart people believe in some form of solo scriptura, et cetera. Alright, beneath that, I’m going to put these doctrine arguments as mid, and a classic one is going to be your doctrine developed so regularly when we talk about the fact that, oh, we believe X, Y, Z, this Catholic thing, many non-Catholics don’t believe in Protestants will say, oh, that doctrine developed over time. The reason it’s mid is on the one hand, it often has some strength to it. It’s like, yeah, sure, we have a clearer understanding of this in the 21st century than we did in the first century.

On the other hand, it’s not a very strong argument, even though it’s getting something true. It’s ignoring the fact. Yeah, your doctrine also developed. Protestants today don’t believe the same thing as Protestants in the 16th century or of Christians in the first century. And it’s not as if somebody just hears the apostles preach on Pentecost and is like, oh, I get it, the Trinity, oh, I see the two natures of Christ. No, this stuff takes lot of contemplation and working out. And again, as with the mustard seed, there’s a sense in which this development ought to happen. The Holy Spirit is sent to lead the church into remembrance of all truth. Now, that notion of remembrance is really big because no new information is being given from after the time of the apostles. We don’t have some new revelation where the Pope or some prophet or the Mormon president, there’s nothing like that where somebody just says is like, I had a dream that this new thing is God wants us to start believing in this thing that we’d never heard of before. That’s not Catholic teaching. That’s not how that works. Development of doctrine is understanding what we already received at an ever deeper level.

A puppy grows into a dog, puppy doesn’t grow into a cat. So there is a difference, a principal difference between development of doctrine and deviation from doctrine. John Henry Newman is regularly given the credit for this idea. He is by no means the first. The early Christians talk about the necessity of the development of doctrine. St. Vincent of Lauren has a great bit on this and a bunch of others as well. St. John Cassin has some good stuff on this. So all that’s to say yes, it’s is mid, because on the one hand it’s kind of true, oftentimes not always. And on the other hand, it’s not a very interesting argument because if you understand your own history as a Protestant, you’ll realize, yeah, you have to believe in development of doctrine or else you can’t believe in the Trinity or you can’t believe in Christology. You just have to be completely, really out there as a heretic.

Okay, so then I’m going to say flimsy as the tier below that. A good example would be Catholic stuff is pagan, like oh, Easter, that comes from paganism, Christmas comes from paganism. This is a combination of number one, a lot of these claims are actually false, so it could go in the literally fake category. But number two, the word pagan there is doing a lot of work. So as Christianity spreads, a lot of people who had previously worshiped other gods or had been other religions, whatever, became Christian. Now they did things in a certain way. They dressed in a certain way, they used certain language to describe reality. They had certain holidays and customs and the like. And when they became Christian, they didn’t just suddenly forget all of those things and become first century judeans or something. No, they retained a lot of what they had before.

That doesn’t mean that they took pagan deities and just slapped saint names on them. I don’t think that’s true at all. But if they’re used to celebrating in a certain way, and now they want to celebrate, say the birth of Jesus, the way they celebrate might look like the way they celebrated anything else, a secular holiday, a pagan day, whatever. And now it’s Christian because the people were pagan and now are Christian. So if you’re used to having a big meal to celebrate, then when you find out the good news that Jesus froze from the dead, you might want to have a big meal. There’s nothing demonic or scary about that. So I find that argument really flimsy because on the one hand, a lot of the particular claims are actually just literally untrue. If you watch my videos on the origins of Christmas and Easter and all this Halloween, these are just not, literally, this stuff is not true.

But even when you have something where, oh, yeah, okay, so we have a day called Thursday that really does come from North Paganism, it comes from Thursday. But then the answer again is like, okay, well, so what does that mean if I say holy Thursday to describe the day Jesus institutes the Eucharist at the last Supper? I’m really saying Thor is holy. Only a really foolish understanding of language would lead to that kind of misconception. So it’s a pretty flimsy argument. I would be surprised to see someone finding this argument, anything other than completely uncompelling. But nevertheless, it’s still a tear above the arguments that are literally fake. Let me give you an example of arguments that are literally fake. You’ll have people say, the Pope is the antichrist, and they’ll give this argument. Catholics believe the Pope is the vicar of Christ, and a vicar is a representative and an antichrist, well anti a NTE before Christ, he could be standing in the place of Christ and therefore the Pope is the antichrist when you understand it this way.

And they’re just playing games with the word antichrist. And the funny thing about this, and it’s not good because they’re obviously leading people spiritually astray, and it is by spreading falsehoods. None of that’s good. But if you actually read what the Bible says about the antichrist, for instance, in Second John, when we’re told that the antichrist is the one who denies that Jesus comes in the flesh, that’s a reference to groups like Gnostics. They deny the bodily nature of the incarnation. Who opposed that? Well, the Catholic church who’s obsessed with the dignity of the body. Well, the Catholic church, there’s a reason why Catholics believe sacraments do something that Jesus really comes to us, not in a disembodied way, but actually bodily, both in the incarnation and in the Eucharist, that he actually wants to heal our bodies as he does in his earthly ministry and as he does in the sacraments.

And that the reason something like say, water baptism does something is because we believe that we are not just souls trapped in bodies and that Jesus isn’t just a spirit that was pretending to be bodily, but that we are a true union of body and soul. And Jesus is a union of body and soul and divinity. And so if you read the Bible, what the Bible actually says about the antichrist dearly, this is literally untrue. The people making this argument are dissecting a word without looking to how the Bible uses that word or defines it, and that’s terrible argument. So okay, those are the five kind of tier.

Let’s give another good one. Lukewarm Catholics, this is maybe the strongest argument against Catholicism. I don’t know if it is literally the strongest, but it’s got to be up there that many people, the Catholics that they know are really bad Christians, they don’t seem to take their faith very seriously. They don’t know the teachings of their church, they don’t seem to have any kind of relationship with God. They just seem like they’re going through the motions and they’re checking the boxes. Why is this a bad argument? Well, for many, many reasons, number one, these saints are one of the rebuttable proofs of Christianity. Meaning this is an idea. I’m very much stealing from Benedict the 16th, that you can make any kind of syllogism you want for why a certain proposition is true. But at the end of the day, someone can listen to your reason and they can think, well, I don’t see the flaw in it, but I’m still skeptical of the solution.

So maybe there is a flaw. But when you see the actual saints, when you see people who live a truly holy life, some part of you has to say, that person has something that I don’t, and they have something that I want and that is really attractive. And the attraction of it, you can’t simply intellectually wave it away quite as easily. So the flip side to that is when we fail to become saints, when we fail to become those incredible arguments for the truth of Christianity, we are doing a terrible disservice because this is a shot that anyone, it doesn’t matter how brilliant you are, it doesn’t matter how good at apologetics you are if you’re living a saintly life and other people see that, that is the foundation for evangelization and for apologetics, not for nothing. First Peter three 15, when we’re told to always be prepared to give a defense an alogia where the word apologetics comes from, it’s to give a defense for the hope that is within us.

So you should be living the kind of life where people want to ask why it is you’re living this way. So that’s what I would suggest there. But even more than that, I think lukewarm Catholics are a tremendous scandal because someone says, well, if everything you’re saying about divine grace is true, why do these people who maybe they go to the sacraments regularly continue to live in this very lukewarm sort of way? I think there’s an answer to that too. You can have the most powerful, I used to live like a half block from a power station. The park near our old townhouse was called Electric Park, which is a nice name to give a kid’s park because it was near a power station, which again, pleasant, my kids are filled with radiation, I’m sure. But the idea was like, okay, you get this incredibly powerful power station, and there would be times where not nearly enough times, there’d be times where all the lights in the house were off.

Now, why was it because the power station wasn’t powerful enough? No, it’s because occasionally the members of my house would remember to turn the lights off or I would, and so the power wouldn’t flow in. Well, likewise, when you come in contact with Jesus in person in the sacraments, whatever divine power flows from that encounter, but you can turn yourself off to it. And we see from the ministry of Jesus that people who spent a lot of time with him still rejected the divine power flowing from him. Think about the high priests, think about Judas. These people interacted with him a lot. Lukewarm Catholics are in a somewhat similar position, which is also why, by the way, St. Paul can warn in first Corinthians 11 about those receiving the Eucharist. It is absolutely possible to have access to all of these great divine gifts and still make nothing of it. So I think that’s an actually interesting argument, not in the sense of let’s read a book about that, but it raises a combination of theological objections and it sort of turns the heart away from the church because you see a lot of ugliness in terms of people’s lukewarmness. Alright, let’s see.

I guess related, okay, we, we’ll get back to that one. Oh, here’s a good, I get it. One, the Marion dogmas being required. So this one, the argument goes, okay, I’ll grant, maybe Mary is perpetually a virgin, maybe she’s immaculately conceived, maybe she’s assumed into heaven. But even if those things are true, how can you get away with requiring people to believe them upon pain of damnation if they knowingly reject them? That’s the argument, and I think that’s a good argument on the surface. I mean, I really do. I get it. I understand the appeal of the argument. Here’s the answer I would make to that argument. As an aside, this argument gets the idea of dogma wrong. Because if your chief concern with dogma is, well, somebody knowingly rejects it, they can go to hell, then the right number of dogma seems to be zero.

You should dogmatize nothing. But if the point of dogma is to help people grow in their relationship with God, then we want more dogma. We want to know more things. Anything we can know with the certainty of faith, we should want to know it because I want to know as much as I can about God. I want to know as much as I can about Jesus. So the don’t, the Arian dogmas argument sounds a lot like the people who say, don’t evangelize, because then someone might knowingly reject the gospel and go to hell. That is a backwards relationship to knowledge where it says, the truth doesn’t set us free. It says the truth creates this burden we need to be freed from. So I get the argument, but that’s why I don’t find it as compelling as the kind of top tier. Okay, let’s see.

Oh, a good mid argument is Catholics aren’t assured of salvation. Here again, I think assurance of salvation, sometimes people mean I’m saved right now, and you can have different levels of surety about that. And other times they mean no matter what happens, I’m going to go to heaven for sure. And that’s just false, and that’s completely unbiblical. You have plenty of passages like Second Peter, chapter two. They talk about people who are ransom by Christ and then deny him. You’ve got people like Simon, the magician in Acts eight, who believes in his baptized, but then commits the sin of simony and then is back in the bond of iniquity, and his salvation is clearly imperiled. Okay, so not a great argument for that. The other thing I think with assurance of salvation, I’ve said this elsewhere, is I think it’s largely, it sounds good, and that’s the appeal of it.

Like, Hey, it’s super easy if we all have assurance of salvation. And so that’s a nice pleasant sounding idea, but it doesn’t read like Christianity. Now, in fairness, you can find things about how to be sure of your salvation. That’s true. That is in the first sense of assurance of salvation. Am I in right relationship with God right now? But in response to this, I think it is still worth pointing out that there are people that you and I probably can point to in our own lives, or maybe people we’ve seen on screen somewhere where that they’re saved and we are not as sure and they might think the same about us. So a proper approach of humility is going to say, at the very least, the assurance of salvation push has been pretty destructive honestly, because the people convinced they’ve got nothing to worry about are often behaving in a way like they’re spiritually bulletproof.

And it’s not great. It doesn’t, in my very anecdotal experience, just mean people are striving for great holiness. They’re often complacent in the same way that if you’re in a pass fail class and you’re going to pass no matter what, you maybe don’t try your hardest. So there’s probably a reason why Jesus, when pressed on questions, how many will be saved? Stress is try really hard and basically assume that it’s really hard to be saved. And then he deflects giving a lot of personal details about exactly how many or questions like that. Alright, let’s see. Oh yeah, here’s a good flimsy argument, the horror of Babylon. Now the argument here is the Roman Catholic Church is bad becaus... Read more on Catholic.com