Joe Heschmeyer exposes one fatal flaws in Protestantism that unravels the whole movement.
Transcription:
Joe:
Welcome back to Shamus Popery. I’m Joe Hess Meyer and I want to explore a question today that I think unravels a lot of the false promises of the reformation, the kind of promises the Protestant reformers made, but neither they nor their successors could really deliver on. To get there though, I want to start with some common ground popular maxim you may have heard just goes in essentials unity in non-essentials, liberty in all things charity. It’s a beautiful expression and it’s one that I think most Catholics and most Protestants would say, yeah, that’s a great principle to strive for and it gives us an actual framework in which to talk about theology. Which things should we agree to disagree on, which things are not worth dividing the church over, and which are things that are absolutely essential things that we really have to hold in common. And that actually gets us right to the question that I think unravels the promise of the Protestant reformation.
And that question is this, which doctrines are essential. Now depending on the conversation you’re in, the person you’re speaking to may have a different idea of what that means. I want to give five different ways of phrasing that question, all which are slightly different, but they’re getting to the same nucleus of the same idea. So you could say, well, which doctrines must Christians agree upon? Or what do I have to believe to be a Christian? What do I have to believe in order to be saved or negatively? Which incorrect views are acceptable and which incorrect views are heresy? Fifth and finally, which incorrect views are acceptable and which incorrect views are damnable? Hopefully framing it that way makes it clear why we care about this. The point here is not just to gate keep Christianity, the point here is that we care about doctrine for the fact that some false teachings may imperil your salvation.
So which doctrines are essential? And also how do we know? So in part one of this episode, I want to explore that. How do we know which doctrines are essential from a Protestant perspective? This is an episode I’ve been planning to do for a while, but I saw a really fascinating conversation on Facebook. I didn’t jump in for reasons that are going to be very clear. A Protestant Facebook friend of mine who I don’t know in real life said recent conversation had me curious Protestants only, what do you think is a bigger deal? A sofie. That’s the doctrine of justification by faith alone or B, the Trinity. Now the Protestants that I saw responding to that said the Trinity, but he replied that he thought Sofie was more important because it’s foundational to what the gospel even is. And the Godhead, while important is ultimately an interesting intellectual point, not an indicator of a regenerated heart.
It was kind of a fascinating thing. I saw what he considered essential and non-essential, but sofie, this Protestant distinctive was actually more important to get right than the Trinity like understanding who God is. That seemed very backwards, but I want to understand kind of the thinking that goes into that. And so one of the people who’s been asked this question of essentials and non-essentials is someone I actually have a tremendous amount of respect for who is a Protestant William Lanere. But I think if you listen to his answer, you’ll see several red flags that this is not a good way of trying to do theology and we’ll explain why as we go, we’ll see what the problems are, but here’s Craig in his own words.
CLIP:
I think the centrality of certain doctrines compared to others will be evident in a couple of ways. One will be by the emphasis placed upon them In the biblical text, for example, the existence of God is just everywhere, presupposed and affirmed throughout the Bible. This could hardly be a peripheral doctrine. By contrast, the doctrine of baptism is rarely spoken of in the biblical text.
Joe:
I thought this was a really bizarre answer, partly because I think the example he gives is pretty bizarre because it seems to be the baptism is spoken of quite a lot. Now, sure, not spoken of as much as God’s existence is spoken of, but what doctrine meets that standard. But if you look at the New Testament, baptism is mentioned several times in ways that make it sound pretty essential. For instance, in Mark 1616, when Jesus is talking about how you’re saved, he says He who believes and is baptized will be saved. That makes it sound essential. There are only two things on that list. In one Peter 3 21, after describing Noah and how he and his family were saved on the ark through water, he says, baptism, which corresponds to this now saves you. And then he goes into how in Acts chapter two at Pentecost, when the crowd listening is cut to the heart and say, brethren, what shall we do?
Peter says, repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And then he goes on from there and we’re told that he testified with many other words and exhorted them, saying, save yourselves from this crooked generation. So those who received his word were baptized and then it says, and they were added that day, about 3000 souls now added to what added to the church that makes it look incredibly important and very central essential, even both for church membership and for salvation. It would be hard to find a doctrine more obviously connected to those two things with a very short list. Things like faith, the existence of God, the cross are all connected with church membership and salvation. Not a lot of other things are on that list, which is why I find Craig using that as an obviously non-essential, unimportant rarely mentioned.
Doctrine seems obviously wrong. Now I’m just scratching the surface here, right? A lot of Christians talk about being born again Christians, but when Jesus talks about what it is to be born again in John three, in response to Nicodemus question, he says, you have to be born again of water in the spirit or else you can’t enter the kingdom of God. Now that sounds like water baptism is doing something that’s really essential in some way in Acts 19, they encounter a group of believers who have never heard of the Holy Spirit and the response St. Paul gives is into what then were you baptized into what were you baptized? They say John the baptism. And Paul distinguishes it from Christian baptism by saying, John baptized what? The baptism of repentance. So whatever baptism is, it appears to be something more than the symbolic baptism of John the Baptist and something that seems pretty important because when he finds out they haven’t been baptized, he gets some baptized and we’re told when Paul had laid his hands upon them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.
All that’s to say is it doesn’t appear to be what color shirt was St. Peter wearing. It’s not something in incidental sort of detail. It seems to be pretty important. So I don’t think frequency is actually that good of a test to use. One example we’ll talk about more in a little bit. Think about the trinity. The Trinity, most people would consider extremely important for Christianity. And yet there’s no one verse that just talks directly about the Trinity. It’s actually much easier to find verses talking directly about baptism than about the Trinity. It doesn’t follow that. Therefore, baptism is more important than the Trinity. There are actually several because a lot of times if you think about the New Testament, there may be particular issues that have come up. The so-called Judaizer heresy. Do you have to follow the mosaic law? For most believers today, they’re not even tempted to go follow Levitical laws, but there’s a lot written about that in both the old and the New Testament. So defining the importance of adoption by how frequently it gets mentioned seems at best a pretty imperfect rubric. But that’s only the first standard he has. Here’s his second one.
CLIP:
But in addition to that, it’s not just the number of times that it’s mentioned, but it is how deeply ingrained it is in the structure of one’s beliefs. If a belief if abandoned would greatly affect the Christian faith, then you know that you’re dealing with a doctrine that is right at the core of our web of beliefs. For example, if you were to deny the atoning death of Christ, it’s hard to see how anything could survive of Christianity. What would be left if it were not true that Christ died for our sins? By contrast, if you deny that in the Lord’s supper, we actually consume the body and blood of the Lord, I don’t think that would have much impact at all upon the Christian religion.
Joe:
Again, I find the standard understandable, but the example is bizarre because from the perspective of everyone who believes in the Eucharist, it’s absolutely essential. The Second Vatican Council describes the Eucharist as the source in summon of the Christian life, a phrase echoed by the catechism in 1324 and explains that all of the work of the church is bound up with the Eucharist and oriented toward it. And that in the blessed Eucharist is contained the whole spiritual good of the church, namely Christ himself, our Passover, our Passover lamb. So understandably, if you think it’s just a symbol, maybe you say what’s the importance? But if you don’t think it’s a symbol, it is absolutely essential. It’s absolutely vital. And that was how the early Christians understood it as well. Saint Ignatius of Antioch, in response to a group probably gnostics warns the Christians of Smyrna to avoid them because as he says, they abstained from the Eucharist and from prayer because they confess not the Eucharist to be the flesh of our savior Jesus Christ.
So he didn’t think it was an unimportant incidental detail that had nothing to do with the Christian life. He viewed it as a standard for Christian communion. And so the Christians were warned to have nothing to do with them. And then he warns that those who speak against this gift of God that is the Eucharist incur death in the midst of their disputes and he views it as damnable and says it would be better for them to treat it with respect that they also might rise again. My point here isn’t to show that Ignatius knows more about John, his teacher and what he taught in John six than William Lane Craig does. I think that is true. That’s not my point here. My point here is if you’re defining an essential doctrine in such a radically different way that the earliest Christians idea of what essential doctrines were are your examples of obviously non-essential doctrines, something is really wonky there.
And frankly, even if you don’t believe in the Eucharist, you should be able to see that because if you don’t believe in the Eucharist, then the fact that there are a group of people worshiping what you think is just bread and wine should also be at the level of an important doctrinal disagreement because it looks a lot like idolatry then. But as for that kind of web that William Lane Craig talks about Saint Eu when he’s defending bodily resurrection argues that of course bodily resurrection is real because we’re nourished with the body of the Lord, meaning in the Eucharist, if you eat his flesh and drink his blood, you’ll rise again. He’s using that promise from John six in saying, therefore we know that we’re going to rise again. And so he warns again, gnostics to either alter their opinion or cease from offering the Eucharist and he says, our and is in accord with the Eucharist.
And the Eucharist in turn establishes our opinion. That’s super early on, right? Iran ans the guy who just said that he’s the one who tells us Matthew, mark, Luke, and John are the four gospels. So we’re dealing with about 180 in the case of sitting Ignatius about 1 0 7. My point here is the early Christians viewed this as absolutely essential. And so they would’ve presumably thought this is very much at the heart of the web. And so to just say, well, we know it’s not essential, not at the heart of the web is kind of begging the question, you’re assuming the conclusion rather than giving any principled way to get there to see the Eucharist is an unimportant doctrine or baptism is unimportant and that we should instead care a lot about a different theology of the atonement. So that’s just the first thing I wanted to throw out there.
I think there’s a problem that when you ask Protestants, well how do you know which things are and aren’t essential? The mechanisms don’t seem to work. And I’m just using Craig as someone who I think is generally well respected, who seems obviously wrong here. But the next thing I want to do is look at 10 particular doctrinal questions. These are 10 different doctrines, big and small, although which ones you consider big and small. That’s literally kind of the point which of these things are essential? And in each of these cases I’ve tried to find people within the kind of broad world of Protestantism, usually evangelicals, but there’s been a few maybe outside of that I had a lot of clips to work through, so I may not have done this perfectly. And sometimes people use the term essential to mean different things. As I said before, there’s five different ways we could phrase that question that have different implications.
Nevertheless, the point here is there certainly seems to be on almost every major doctrine, one group of Protestants saying, Hey, this is an essential doctrine we all have to agree on, and one group of Protestants saying this is something we can agree to disagree on. So it’s not just that they disagree on the doctrine, it’s that they also disagree on whether the doctrine is important or not, whether it’s essential or not. So as we’re going through this, I just say three things. Number one, remember that the point here is not to figure out which side of the dispute is right, whether you agree with the doctrine or not. Instead we want to be looking at well is getting that doctrine right essential to Christianity and to salvation and how do we know whether it is essential or not? And then third, as we’re talking about these issues, be thinking of people who are intentionally rejecting whatever the position is or intentional.
There’s not the people who think they’re affirming it but have a confused understanding. We’re not talking about cases of accidental ignorance, we’re talking about cases of intentional rejection. So in cases of intentional rejections where two groups of Christians just absolutely knowingly disagree with one another, which of these things does it matter enough that we would say this is an essential we all have to be unified in? So number one, can Christians celebrate Christmas? This actually, I stumbled upon this clip while looking up things related to Protestant theories of the true church and it was a list of things to watch out for to know if your church is a true church or not. And here’s the first criterion given.
CLIP:
Are all of these churches part of the same church that Jesus started? Is your church the true church? You should know. I’m going to ask you some distinct easy to answer questions. You will know by your answers whether or not your church is teaching the same thing Jesus Christ taught and commanded his church to teach and observe. Number one, does your church teach you that God is honored when we observe Christmas and Easter?
Joe:
So literally the first essential he came up with was does your church celebrate Christmas and Easter? And you might be wondering why in the world? Well, because the guy speaking is a guy by the name of Mike Shabby, I believe that’s how you pronounce his name from United Church of God, which is an offshoot of Herbert Armstrong’s church. They’re kind of a weird fringe group. This is not mainstream evangelicalism. And I’ll explain why and I’m going to also explain why I started with them in just a second. But before I get there, why do they think it’s super important to know whether you celebrate Christmas or Easter?
CLIP:
Don’t mix truth with pagan rituals like Christmas and Easter. Those celebrations are an abomination to God. He is not honored by it no matter how you try to spin it. So if your church teaches and you observe these holidays, you are not in the true church of God, the one that Jesus Christ started. You have been deceived.
Joe:
So he’s convinced that Christmas is of pagan origin and therefore it is gravely sinful to celebrate it. And if you do, you’re not even in the church, you’re just deceived. That is absolutely essential from that point of view. Whereas other Protestants like Mike Winger are going to say No, none of that is true. So here’s winger saying you absolutely can celebrate Christmas and it’s not a pagan origin.
CLIP:
Now, is anything wrong in and of itself with celebrating the coming of Jesus of Jesus? I don’t think so. In fact, I think we have a biblical case to say that it’s a good thing to celebrate. For instance, it was celebrated in the scriptures. They celebrated it. It was a great thing. The Magi show up from a distant land following the star, they show up to meet this newborn king.
Joe:
So winger’s point, and he’s right here by the way, is that this is not something of Pagan origin, this is something of Christian origin. He then goes on to debunk the idea. This comes from old Pagan mythology with December 25th. I’ve done videos on that. My point here is just, is Christmas something we can agree to disagree on? One side’s going to tell you yes, one’s going to tell you no. What makes this more controversial? And the reason I hesitated even to start with my shabi is because United Church of God, although you’ll find plenty of Protestants who are very uncomfortable with the idea of celebrating Christmas and think it’s sinful and even pagan too. But I started with a guy who I know is not a Trinitarian on purpose. Here’s why. So in the fundamental beliefs of the United Church of God, they make it clear that they believe in soul of script.
They believe that the Bible is the supreme and final authority in faith and in life and is a foundation of all truth. They also profess belief that those who by faith accept Jesus Christ as their personal savior have their sins forgiven by an act of divine grace, but they don’t believe in the Trinity. And so the question is, well, somebody who believes in Sola script Torah, and I can’t exactly tell from their website, but seemingly believes in something like sofie, are they saved? Is that kind of belief enough if they consciously reject the Trinity and they preach against the Trinity all the time claiming that like Christmas the Trinity is pagan? So how would Trinitarian Protestants respond to this question? Can Christians reject the Trinity or not? Now you’ll find plenty of Protestants like Catholics who will say this is something that is absolutely essential. You cannot reject the Trinity without imperiling. Your eternal salvation here, for instance, is Frederick Clement of by the book Ministries.
CLIP:
You see, the Father is not the son, the Son is not the spirit and the Spirit is not the father, but each are God individually. So why is this important? Simply put, because the Bible teaches it. Someone said if you try to explain the Trinity, you will lose your mind, but if you deny it, you will lose your soul.
Joe:
But William Lynn Craig actually argues that the Trinity, while being central to theology, is not a salvation issue necessarily, that you could deny the Trinity and still be saved.
CLIP:
And sadly, there may be people in our churches frankly who do not understand and believe in the doctrine of the Trinity, but nevertheless, they are believing in Christ as savior and believing that he is divine, that he’s the Lord. And so I don’t think that belief in the Trinity is essential to salvation.
Joe:
Now, James White was really upset by that clip because he didn’t think Craig did a good enough job stressing the centrality of the Trinity, but then he ends up saying something very similar that the Trinity is itself central, but a lot of Christians unknowingly deny the Trinity and that might be okay. Now remember that’s almost exactly what Craig just said, and then here’s James White while trying to critique him, ending up in the same
CLIP:
Place is the Trinity essential? Of course, it is definitional of the Christian faith. Is it possible for a Christian to be ignorant about aspects of Trinitarian theology? Well better be because probably all of us are.
Joe:
So both Craig and White are taking the example of Christians who think they’re affirming the Trinity, but actually if you press them on it, they have a heretical understanding of the trinity, but they don’t know their heretics. Matt Slick takes the example of what about somebody who thinks they deny the trinity, but then it turns out that they have a bad understanding of the Trinity and so they’re rejecting a false vision of it.
CLIP:
Can someone be saved while denying the Trinity?
When people ask me these questions, I say, technically yes, but they have to understand what I mean by technically because you could have someone technically who could be regenerate and has been taught some bad stuff and just doesn’t understand the doctrine of the Trinity. I’ve had this happen before where I’ve actually talked to someone who says they’ve trusted in Christ believe in salvation by grace alone, but they deny the trinity.
Joe:
The thing is though, it seems like all three of those men are talking about cases of what we would call invincible ignorance. Somebody who is not consciously rejecting the actual Christian doctrine, they’re rejecting a false version of it or they’re affirming a false version of it thinking they’re affirming the true version of it. But what about someone who as the standard I laid out before, knowingly intentionally rejects the doctrine of the Trinity? And so Mike Winger, who I mentioned earlier argues that some forms of that it might be okay, you could affirm non Trinitarian heresies like modalism that there aren’t three persons in the Trinity. It’s just one God in three different roles. So he makes it as a speculative case, but here he is making that argument.
CLIP:
I could be wrong here. In my personal opinion, I think modalism is wrong. It’s incorrect. This is the idea that the father becomes a son becomes a spirit. I think that’s wrong. I’m not sure that it’s damning, so I’m not really sure what I think about that.
Joe:
Maybe the most telling thing in that was that winger acknowledges he doesn’t know whether it would be damnable or not to be a modalist. That seems like an important thing not to know if it’s an essential potentially Damnable doctrine or not. I admire, I appreciate his intellectual humility and not saying more than he can say, but I think it speaks to a weakness within Protestantism if you can’t say whether someone can deny the trinity with impunity. But let’s turn now from the trinity to the virgin birth. And the reason I want to do this that by the book’s ministry that I mentioned earlier by the book ministry talks about the very first essential doctrine all Christians need to affirm is the idea of the virgin birth.
CLIP:
Now, one of the first doctrines that is a must for a person to be a Christian is the virgin birth.
Joe:
Now you might say, well, why is it so important to affirm the doctrine of the virgin birth? And here’s how Frederick Clement, the guy who heard speaking explains that
CLIP:... Read more on Catholic.com