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Trent Horn explains why it is important to come to the fullness of understanding on theological divisions between Catholics and Protestants, such as Marian and Eucharistic doctrines, and demonstrates why the mere fact that the two churches disagree does not mean that no definitive answer can be found.
Transcript

Host: We go now to Len in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, listening on Sirius satellite radio. Len, you are on with Trent Horn, what&#8217;s your question?
Caller: Good evening, guys. So I&#8217;m a lifelong Catholic, but I&#8217;ve studied Protestant theology probably at least as much as I&#8217;ve studied Catholicism. I have the same objection into both churches, and that is the extent to which both churches tend to divide over issues as to which there is no definitive answer on this side of Heaven. And the <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/isnt-consubstantiation-more-incarnational-than-transubstantiation">transubstantiation/consubstantiation</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/hail-mary-conceived-without-sin">whether Mary was born with Original Sin</a>, <a href="https://www.catholic.com/qa/justified-by-faith-or-works-or-both">whether we&#8217;re saved by works</a>, whether works have any salvific value, and it just seems like there&#8217;s divisions over points that just simply cannot be definitively answered. And it causes me, you know, great heartache because theology tends to divide people, whereas mission work, for example, tends to unite people. I just wonder what your thoughts are about that.
Trent: Okay Len, I guess my first question would be: you&#8217;re saying that these issues such as the nature of the Eucharist or Marian dogmas or the nature of salvation can&#8217;t be resolved. Why do you think they can&#8217;t be resolved? Is the only reason you think they can&#8217;t be resolved is because people disagree over them?
Caller: Well, the problem&#8217;s the proof. I guess the question is, where do you look to find the answers to such questions as, for example, whether Mary was born with Original Sin, or whether the Holy Eucharist is actually Christ&#8217;s body or whether it&#8217;s a symbol. Protestants and Catholics look at the same Bible, essentially, and come to different conclusions, and yet they divide over issues like that.
Trent: Okay, sure. Well, I would say that where you would look would be the sources of divine revelation, which as Catholics we believe would be Sacred Scripture&#8211;so God&#8217;s Word in its written form in Sacred Scripture, God&#8217;s Word that has been passed on to the Church and sacred tradition&#8211;and the Church that Christ founded, what the Church teaches on these subjects, because God didn&#8217;t simply leave us with a Bible, He left us with a Church endowed with His authority that could be passed on to successors. So I would say that it can be resolved, these issues can be and have been resolved, the Church does definitively teach on these issues.
There are other issues, I agree with you, that the Church has not definitively taught about, that our&#8211;we are separated by the veil, if you will, and so the Church has not definitively taught, for example, what the exact nature of Purgatory is, for example. Or even issues related to Mary&#8217;s virginity, the Church has not definitively taught who the Brethren of the Lord are. Whether it&#8217;s definitive that they are cousins, or half siblings, whatever it may be; so there are issues where the Church has not definitively defined a subject, but then there&#8217;s issues where it has. And just because there&#8217;s disagreement, I don&#8217;t think that takes away from&#8211;you know, there&#8217;s disagreement, just some people are right and others are wrong.
Because, Len, look at it this way: you say, &#8220;Well, Catholics and Protestants look at the same thing, they disagree, so let&#8217;s not focus on that.&#8221; Would you agree that Christians and atheists can look at the same evidence in the natural world, and they disagree about whether God exists?
Caller: Sure.
Trent: Okay, but would that mean there&#8217;s no definitive answer to the question of whether God exists?
Caller: No, I would say not, no.
Trent: But why is that? Atheists look at the same evidence and they don&#8217;t come to that conclusion.
Caller: Well, we come from a different worldview. Atheists, for example, don&#8217;t accept the Bible as the Word. If you&#8217;re going to ask the question, I think part of the question has to be, where do you find the answer? And if you&#8217;re going to ask the question, for example, about how we were created, the atheist worldview is not Biblical, and obviously the Christian&#8217;s is. So where you stand is where you sit.
Trent: I think I see what you&#8217;re saying here about presuppositions a little bit. Do you think, though, that a person could use reason to show God exists? That you don&#8217;t have to assume the Bible is true, that you could just make an argument based on nature that shows God exists? Do you think that&#8217;s possible?
Caller: Well sure, I know about the ontological arguments and all the arguments that are positive, but, you know, even those have weaknesses as well. I mean, at some point we can reason through, but at some point we can&#8217;t understand and we have to apprehend what we don&#8217;t really comprehend.
Trent: Sure, and Len, I think that this example would show that on important issues, like the existence of God or the deity of Christ, Christians and non-Christians, whether they&#8217;re atheists or Jews or Muslims, will disagree over evidence they look at, but you and I would agree that Christians are correct on this even though there&#8217;s disagreement, and we would agree there are still definitive answers.
And your your point about &#8220;Well, it&#8217;s about ultimately your own worldview,&#8221; I agree with you, so that same logic would carry over to the Catholics and Protestants. We look at the same evidence, we&#8217;re gonna be approaching it in different ways, and we come to our foundations of our worldviews in different ways; but there are still definitive answers there even if people don&#8217;t agree.
There&#8217;s one last point I&#8217;d like to address before we move on: you say &#8220;Well, theology divides, but things like mission work unites.&#8221; But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s necessarily bad if something divides. For example, you would&#8211;would you agree that Jesus, during His earthly ministry, what He taught, He divided people. Wouldn&#8217;t you say?
Caller: Oh absolutely, no doubt about that.
Trent: Yeah, but that&#8217;s okay, because truth is ultimately going to divide people between those who accept the truth and those who reject the truth. So it&#8217;s okay to cause division; in fact Jesus Himself said, &#8220;I&#8217;ve come to bring division, to set father against son, brother against brother,&#8221; because the truth does divide people. That in itself isn&#8217;t bad; it&#8217;s necessary, so that we can help people who are in error come to the truth to pass over that dividing line, if you will.
So that&#8217;s probably how I would take a look at all that, and I still think theology would be important, and what the Church has defined on dogmatic issues related to the nature of the Eucharist, or Mary, I think that we have very good evidence for that from Scripture, from tradition, and from the teaching office of the Church. And if you would like more information about those subjects and their foundations in the deposit of faith and divine revelation, I&#8217;d recommend visiting our website Catholic.com and looking up those points, and I think you&#8217;ll get a lot more from there. So thanks very much for calling in.

Are Theological Divisions Pointless?

Karlo Broussard discusses the sacred tradition concerning who the first souls were to enter into the Beatific Vision with Christ when he ascended into Heaven.

Who Was the First Saint?

A caller asks Tim Staples why he believes in the bible when the writers make claims that science has disproved. The caller uses the global flood as an example, and Tim responds citing biblical references, church history, and church councils.
Transcript:
So, I wanted to ask, why do you believe the Bible, when the Bible makes accessible claims, disproven by modern science?
And there&#8217;s not&#8230; Yeah, the only problem is Gabe, there&#8217;s no claims made by the Bible that are disproven by modern science.
The global flood?
Okay, well Gabe, I don&#8217;t believe there was a global flood.
So why does the Bible trust it does? The Bible doesn&#8217;t say it does. See, Gabe, understand that when the ancient people&#8230; Now, by the way, I should say, Gabe, that as Catholics, we are permitted because there&#8217;s never been an infallible pronouncement from the church that declared there was a worldwide
flood in a strict literal sense. The church has never taught that. You can go through all 21 ecumenical councils, teachings of&#8230; you know, definitive teachings of popes, and it simply is not there. The fact is, the church permits us to believe that there was no universal flood. Understand that, Gabe, when the inspired scriptures were written,
they are&#8230; You know, a lot of people have a wrong idea of what that means.
Inspired scripture does not mean that God dictated everything to the inspired authors so that it is God himself that is using perfect grammar, perfect language, perfect even science. No, we believe that the inspired authors use their intellect, their will, their understanding of culture and language. In fact, this is why some books of the Bible, even in the New Testament, have better Greek than others. Some of them&#8230; I remember my Greek professor saying, you know, some of them, you know, a few of them, the grammar is not very good at times. And others like&#8230; I mean, Book of Hebrews is a very&#8230;
It&#8217;s written by somebody who really knew Greek really, really well, and it was in St. Paul. But we&#8217;re not exactly sure who. It may have been Apollos, may have been&#8230; It was probably someone, Pauline, who had contact with Paul, but it certainly wasn&#8217;t. It&#8217;s pretty certain today that it was not Paul. But anyway, here&#8217;s the point. Is that they will use also categories that were well known at the time to communicate truth. Let me&#8230; Gabe, I&#8217;ll give you an example.
A weatherman today in San Diego may say, &#8220;Sunrise tomorrow is&#8230;&#8221; What? &#8220;6 o&#8217;clock or 5.45, whenever it is.&#8221;
Would we say that, oh boy, that weatherman, he must be a geocentrist because he believes the sun rises. Oh my gosh, how can he be so stupid? But no, he doesn&#8217;t believe the sun actually rises and the earth stays still, but we use what we call phenomenological language. In fact, all languages employ phenomenological language to express realities as they are perceived. Like in Daniel chapter 12, when Daniel talks about the resurrection and says, &#8220;Those who are asleep in the dust will rise.&#8221; Now, he doesn&#8217;t literally mean that people are sleeping in the dust and they&#8217;re going to rise. But phenomenologically, if you look at a dead body and it comes to life, it looks like it&#8217;s sleeping and it comes to life and rises. And so that&#8217;s the way language develops over thousands and thousands of years, is we speak of things in the way that they appear. So, no, the weatherman is not saying he&#8217;s a geocentrist, he&#8217;s simply using language the way the language is employed at the time in which he is speaking in the same way. When you talk about the flood, the flood can be understood as, yes, the whole world was flooded, but it can be understood as the whole world as perceived by the ancient writer. The ancient writer had no idea that there was a continent on the other side of the planet. He had no idea Columbus wouldn&#8217;t come along for a long, long time. So, his whole world flooded, absolutely. So, in that sense, yes. And by the way, there is a lot of evidence, yes, scientific evidence, not for the entire world being flooded,
but for a massive flood or perhaps a series of floods. Most likely, at least it may well have been one massive flood that various different cultures comment on that are from that area. I mean, that&#8217;s one explanation. There could have been multiple massive floods, but most likely there was this massive flood in antiquity that was devastating,
took away entire peoples in particularly populated areas and so forth, and that&#8217;s the way it gets communicated down through the centuries. And of course, God used that and Noah and so forth as a, you know,
to kind of further God&#8217;s covenantal relationship with his people. So, the thing is, Gabe, and I know you and I have talked about this before, there&#8217;s a fundamental flaw with folks who want to employ the Bible as a scientific book, and it is not. It is a book about salvation. It uses real history, absolutely, and I believe the flood was a real historical event in order to communicate essential teachings concerning salvation. But we don&#8217;t want to, and I&#8217;ll toss out another idea here, Gabe. The book of Genesis is not about talking snakes.
You know, we don&#8217;t have to believe as Catholics there was a literal talking snake. The inspired author uses a story that was a popular story in the culture in which he lived. And in fact, there are similar stories told, for example, the Anuma Elish among the Babylonians, and we have other cosmological sorts of stories of beginnings in other cultures. They&#8217;re very different from what we find in Genesis in many ways, but in some ways, there are parallels, which seem to indicate that there was somewhat of a common story that was told way back when, but with the divergences of cultures and so forth, we have divergences of religions as well. And so, there you go.
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Has Science Disproved Biblical Claims?

The belief that Mary is the mother of God is not unique to Catholicism. The vast majority of Christians (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Lutherans, and Anglicans) accept this dogma, with only a minority in the Protestant community objecting.
One text appealed to in support of this belief is Luke 1:43. There, Elizabeth, inspired by the Holy Spirit, exclaims to Mary, who just arrived in her presence, “Why is this granted me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” Since Elizabeth was a good Jew, and Jews normally used the word Lord in the place of the tetragrammaton (God’s name), YHWH, Elizabeth is calling Mary the mother of God. Therefore, we have a possible biblical foundation for the dogma of Mary, mother of God (see also CCC 448, 495, 2677).
There are many comebacks that Protestants have to the belief in Mary as the mother of God. But there’s really only one counterargument to Luke 1:43. It targets the assumption that “Lord” is intended by Elizabeth to refer to Almighty God.
Protestant Bible scholar Walter L. Liefeld argues that we shouldn’t interpret this as a reference to Mary, “mother of God.” His alternative interpretation is that Elizabeth was referring to Jesus as <a href="https://books.google.com/books/about/Luke.html?id=0S4aDgAAQBAJ">the Messiah</a>:
<blockquote>Nowhere in the [New Testament] is Mary called “mother of God.” Deity is not confined to the person of Jesus (we may say, “Jesus is God,” but not all of “God is Jesus”). She was, however, the mother of Jesus the Messiah and Lord (834).</blockquote>
The evidence he gives is the fact that Luke frequently uses “Lord” as a title—95 out of 166 occurrences in the synoptics—and not every one is charged with a divine meaning. Moreover, Liefeld argues, Jesus is called “Lord” elsewhere in the Lukan birth narrative in a non-divine way (“For to you is born this day in the city of David a savior, who is Christ the Lord”—Luke 2:11).
It’s not clear whether Luke uses “Lord,” in reference to Jesus, in 2:11 in a divine or non-divine way. There is nothing in the text that suggests either interpretation. Liefeld simply asserts its divine use without argumentation. Given such ambiguity, we can dismiss this text as evidence for Liefeld’s conclusion.
There’s no doubt, however, that the Greek word translated “Lord,” kurios, is used in a non-divine way in the New Testament (e.g., 1 Cor. 8:5), and even by Luke (e.g., 12:36, 37, 42, 43, 45, 46, 47). However, it’s not the word by itself that indicates that Mary is the mother of God. It’s how Luke sees Elizabeth using it.
There are several details that indicate that Luke is drawing a parallel between Mary and the Old Testament Ark of the Covenant. Take Elizabeth’s words themselves, for example. They almost perfectly mirror David’s in 2 Samuel 6:9, when he says in the presence of the ark, “How can the ark of the Lord come to me?” Other parallels include John the Baptist leaping for joy in the presence of Mary in Luke 1:44 and David “making merry” before the ark in 2 Samuel 6:5. According to Luke 1:39, Mary remains with Elizabeth for three months, similar to how the ark remained in the house of Obededom for the same amount of time according to 2 Samuel 6:11.
Since Luke is paralleling Elizabeth’s “mother of my Lord” with David’s “ark of the Lord,” it stands to reason that Luke intends for us to take Elizabeth’s cry as a reference to almighty God. “Lord” in the phrase “ark of the Lord” wasn’t a reference to the Messiah. The ark was the ark of almighty God. Therefore, we have good reason to interpret Luke 1:43 as a reference to Mary being the mother of God, contrary to Liefeld’s claim.
Now, a Protestant at this juncture might argue that if we take some parallels with the ark, then we need to take all of them. Protestant apologist James White <a href="https://openlibrary.org/books/OL987171M/The_Roman_Catholic_controversy">poses this argument</a>:
<blockquote>Must Mary have been stolen by God’s enemies for a time, so that she could be brought back to the people of God with great rejoicing (2 Sam. 6:14-15)? Who was Mary&#8217;s Uzzah (2 Sam. 6:3-8)? [Catholic apologist Patrick] Madrid draws a further parallel between the three months the ark was with Obededom and the three months Mary was with Elizabeth. What, then, is the parallel with David’s action of sacrificing a bull and a fattened calf when those who were carrying the ark had taken six steps (2 Sam. 6:13) (205)?</blockquote>
White charges that the use of Mary as the new Ark of the Covenant is violating rules of scriptural interpretation, since he perceives it as picking and choosing “those aspects of Mary’s life [a Catholic] wishes to parallel in the ark and those which he does not.”
In response, there’s a hidden principle on which White seems to base his argument—namely, that some parallels requires all parallels. But this is simply false. That’s not how prophetic foreshadowing or intertextuality works. The New Testament authors themselves, for example, don’t honor the principle contained in White’s argument. Consider the first two verses of Hosea 11:
<blockquote>When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. The more I called them, the more they went from me; they kept sacrificing to the Baals, and burning incense to idols.</blockquote>
Matthew takes the phrase “out of Egypt I called my son” in the first statement as a prefigurement of the baby Jesus’ return from the flight to Egypt (Matt. 2:15). Yet Matthew does not intend the latter part of the passage to refer to Jesus: Jesus did not go away from God, sacrifice to the Baals, and burn incense to their images.
There are numerous examples of this in the New Testament’s use of the Old. Whenever prophetic foreshadowing is in play, some elements foreshadow, and some don’t. There are continuities and discontinuities. If the New Testament authors employ this type of hermeneutic when relating the Old Testament to the New, it’s legitimate for Catholics to do the same.
So neither of the above counterarguments undermines a Christian’s appeal to Luke 1:43 as biblical evidence for Mary as mother of God. This being the case, we have confirmation by the Holy Spirit himself, who inspired Elizabeth to utter the words “mother of my Lord,” that Mary is indeed the Theotokos, the God-bearer.