In this episode Trent sits down with Eric Sammons to discuss the importance of apologetics, how it’s often misunderstood, and how we should respond to confusion surrounding Pope Francis.
Welcome to the Counsel of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. So, I’m currently at the Catholic Answers office right now doing one of my quarterly visits, here in San Diego. And it’s just been fun, hanging out, going to the building, seeing everybody that I normally see on Zoom or on Skype. So, it’s been great. But today, what I wanted to share with you is an interview that I did with Eric Sammons. He’s the editor at Crisis magazine. This was for his Crisis podcast, Crisis Point I think is the name of the podcast. I’ll link to it below. Be sure to check out Crisis magazine, check out Eric’s podcast. I wanted to share some of that interview with you where we talk about apologetics, ecumenism, and Pope Francis. So take a look.
Eric Sammons:
Now, apologetics of course has been practiced since the time of Christ. I assume the Jews probably practiced it even before that, but its been practiced by Christians since the time of Christ. But in the 1970s, particularly, it got a bad name. And I feel like my understanding of the history having lived through some of it myself is that Karl Keating, at least in this country, single handedly, brought it back from the dead. I mean, I know some others did, but I mean he really was instrumental-
Trent Horn:
Well, I’m going to grab… Here, I’m going to disappear out of the frame hold on. I’m not leaving. It’s on the floor I’ve got to grab this. Not just him. I have this little book here, Catholic Apologetics Today: Answers to Modern Critics by Father William Most.
Eric Sammons:
Yes, that was a big one as well, absolutely. I remember reading Catholicism and Fundamentalism, that was a big one for me, but really Catholic Answers, Karl Keating, Father Most, they kind of brought it back. But it was dead, and it was kind of dead-
Trent Horn:
It was on life support for sure.
Eric Sammons:
Life support probably, I think that’s a better way to put it. But, people really thought that it was wrong to do this. And, I’ve started to see some of that coming back. In fact, I saw an article recently where they’re attacking conservative and traditional Catholics and they’re saying it’s based on this idea that you have answers to questions or something like that. Why is apologetics denigrated in some quarters of the church?
Trent Horn:
That’s a hard one. Because what’s interesting here, when we think of apologetics, it’s had a rich history. A great book to read on this is Cardinal Avery Dulles’ History of Apologetics, goes at it from really a second century onward. You see against pagans, counter reformation through modernism against the Anglican controversies in the 19th century, Newman. And then the 20th century you have like Frank Sheet, doing the Catholic evidence Guild. He was doing Catholic Answers back in the thirties essentially. But then after the second Vatican council, I think there was a concern that it was conflicting with the goal of ecumenism. The goal of seeking out, building bridges with other religions, other Christian denominations, other religions, and that if practiced in a triumphal way or in a closed-minded way, it harms that ecumenical movement.
Trent Horn:
And here I want to be fair to both sides. There are brands of apologetics that can be harmful to ecumenism, like genetics that will seek to refute, let’s say Islam or Mormonism or other religions. And it doesn’t understand the very religion it’s trying to refute. So if I go to a Muslim and say, “Well, here’s the problem with Mohammedanism you a Mohammedan.” They would say, “I’m not a Mohammedan I am a Muslim, I don’t worship Mohammed.” I’ve already gotten off wrong foot essentially, I’ve misunderstood. So they’re not going to hear what I have to say and so that can be harmful. But a good apologetic is essential because the goal of ecumenism is to… We’re separated from people who disagree with us, we want to close the gap as much as possible, but then we don’t want to stop and just sing kumbaya. Oh, we want to close the gap so that jumping the gap to bring people to Christ is more manageable.
Trent Horn:
And I think that’s the goal to see and it’s hard when people will try to pit the two against each other, no. If we do ecumenism, say with the Orthodox, we can say, “Hey, there’s actually a lot we can learn from you guys on different issues.” So we get closer and closer and closer when the gap is smaller. It’s easier to do apologetics when the gap is small versus when the gap is wide. So you’re right. But I think that the people in the ’70s onwards had this feeling that it’s either antithetical or it’s not the lady’s job, that’s what priests do, that’s what theologians do. That it’s really, that’s more of a Protestant thing, not a Catholic thing. And yeah, I think Carl, Patrick Madrid, Tim staples, Jimmy and others really revitalized this as a lay notion.
Trent Horn:
But I’ve seen this online, certain social media circles and I always ask people, they’ll say things like, “Apologetics is dead.” Or, “Oh, the last thing the church needs are apologists.” And I ask them, “Well, what do you mean by that?” Like I agree with you, it doesn’t need bad apologists. Just like it doesn’t need bad liturgist, it doesn’t need bad evangelists, it doesn’t need bad bishops, it doesn’t need bad people who do corporal works of mercy in a bad way. You could do that in a bad way to, it doesn’t mean it’s wrong to do these things. It means we should do them the right way.
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. And I also think that wouldn’t you say in the modern mind, there’s this idea that we can’t have Answers that we can’t have definitive Answers and I’ve seen that’s another criticism of apologists, they think they know everything or they think they have a final answer on thing. How would you respond to someone that say, “Why do you think you, you have the right answer on this?”
Trent Horn:
Right? So a few points jump out at me first, this position, if you take it to literally is self-refuting you can’t have any answers, but I know apologists don’t have answers. Now that’s just a quick observation, to be fair to the position. And that’s something that I’m trying to encourage in others when I do apologetics, when I do debates, when I do dialogues, to be fair to the other side. And being charitable, isn’t just about not calling other people names, being charitable also means correctly, understanding your opponent’s position and representing it well before showing what’s wrong with it. Which is what Aquinas does in the Summa, for example. So I think that when you see these criticisms, there is some truth to some of them when apologetics is done badly. So when you have apologists say, “Oh, well, here’s the obvious solution to this problem.” Or, “Here, on this issue, this is the right answer.” An apologists can get in trouble if he fails to acknowledge, oh, well there is another solution that could be offered.
Trent Horn:
The apologists who says, “Oh, there’s only one way to resolve this particular open theological question, the church.” Let’s say they only advocate for a very strict Thomism with predestination. And they don’t even say there is all other things like Molanism and what Don Skoda says, if you act like, oh, I’ve solved it, I’ve got this rigid set of answers and you overplay your hand, that’s problematic. That you should, you should be confident in those things, which are definitive. And you can talk about the variety of options with questions that are more open.
Trent Horn:
But I do think that the critics who say this, to be honest with you, Eric, I think a lot of them, they have bought into a modern heresy affecting the church and that would be a kind of universalism. Idea that look, everybody’s basically going to heaven, we don’t really need to convert people, so apologists, the only thing they’ll do is they’ll come off snotty or arrogant and drive people away that we should just focus on works of mercy and the liturgy and that will draw people in and the arrogant apologists will push people away. Yeah, we don’t need the arrogant apologists, but some people need the answers. They might say, “Hey, this is beautiful, but I don’t think it’s true.”
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now we were talking about the tension between ecumenism and apologetics. Now my most recent book is pretty critical of how ecumenism is done, has been done for quite some time. Because I tend to believe that it ends up being people who just want to talk about how great the other religion is and just then go to their cocktail party and that’s it. There’s no real sense of, okay, here’s where we think you’re wrong. And you can tell us where you think we’re wrong, but we wanted you to know where we think you’re wrong.
Trent Horn:
Or we say, “We think that you’re wrong,” and the other side may say, “Well, actually we agree with what you say, we’re just using different wording.” Look at the efforts that have come in discussions, Catholics, and Orthodox discussions, or the joint declaration on justification between Catholics and Lutherans. Once again about bridging the gap, but still recognizing, well, here is something that we have not resolved yet and to offer to the other side, here’s the problem. So I agree with you, Eric, that think that when ecumenism is sort of done by like these advisory bodies and you’re right, that it’s just about meeting in a fancy hotel and we had a nice banquet hall and a PowerPoint, when it’s done in that way, when it’s not done with a serious attitude of here’s where, where we agree, here’s where we just degree, here’s our arguments, we would like you to wrestle with.
Trent Horn:
But however, I think ecumenism, it can be done in a good way. I try to model that myself on my podcast that I will do debates, or I will do informal dialogues with people that are nice to chat with. And I’ve had these with a wide variety of people that is where you can have that authentic ecumenism say, “Here’s where we disagree. Here’s where I’m not sold.” Or, “Hey, here’s an argument, I really need you to wrestle with.” But I think we’re going to see that more in the personal interactions or among scholars who really take it seriously.
Eric Sammons:
Right. That was kind of my experience because I really got exposed to Catholicism through the pro-life movement. And that was an ecumenical effort and we would get together and a lot of times we’d come together and we’d agree with stuff, the Catholics and Protestants, but then we’d also one on one at the abortion mills or afterwards like that when we’d go out for coffee, after we were praying at the abortion mill, we would then have our debates about, okay, well, here’s why I think you’re wrong and here’s why I think you’re right and stuff like that and it was beautiful. I mean, it was a way that we were working together-
Trent Horn:
And so the other side is correct. They’ll say, “Well, you don’t need apologetics. You just need to have, build a friendship and a relationship with people that draw them to Christ.” And I would say, “You are correct.” We should do that. That’s one of the most effective kinds of evangelism are these relationships of mutual respect and friendship when we have things in common. I would say that in many cases it is necessary. In some cases that will be sufficient to move someone to want to consider Catholicism.
Trent Horn:
But in other cases, it won’t, that’s why… I mean, it’s like saying, “I don’t need a flathead screwdriver. Why would I need that? I can always use my regular screwdriver or other things to get my job done yet. Well, you might have been able to, for any of these jobs, you may come across a job where, oh, actually, I do need this. If I don’t have this, I can’t get this screw out. And you’ll be glad you had the tool when you needed it. Even if there were many cases where you had the tool and you did not need it. And I think that’s true of apologetics.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Now, when engaging in apologetics with… It’s a very broad term, obviously we’re Catholic and you’ve engage with apologetics. Anybody who’s not Catholic, how do you distinguish between apologetics with atheists, Jews, Muslims, Protestants, Orthodox, because you do it with everybody it seems like. And how do you really go about distinguishing between how you approach those different groups?
Trent Horn:
Right. So what I would try to do is understand where the person is coming from and honestly assess the gap that I have with them and see what is the fundamental issue that we are disagreeing about. And not get sidetracked on other issues. So with atheists, I’m going to focus on the evidence for and against the existence of God. And I’m also going to understand that amongst these groups, some people are closer than others. So I have more common ground. So for example, it’s not proper to speak of evangelizing the Eastern Orthodox. What we speak of is unification with the Orthodox to say that the title of church can be applied to your churches because you have valid holy orders and apostolic succession. And so we can recognize that when it’s with Protestant ecclesial communities that I would say, well, we have a firm foundation in the Trinity and a valid baptism.
Trent Horn:
So affirming the similarities we have. But I mean, it could be, you might say, well, what do you do with an atheist? You got no similarities. Not necessarily. I had a wonderful conversation with an atheistic apologist recently, but he has been very critical of atheistic tribalism. Like other atheists have criticized him because he is very pro second amendment for example. And we had a good chat about how you can take the atheist out of religion, but you can’t take the religion out of the atheist. You still want to create your codes of behavior, your group thing. And so even there we found a common ground. Now it was cultural and social common ground. But sometimes that can be helpful. That builds a bridge and caring about evidence and logic. So that’s when I’m engaging people, I just want to see what brings us closer together and then try to really understand their position and being very careful to not play someone a monolith.
Trent Horn:
So that example of the atheist I spoke to, he’s not like your social justice raving, liberal lunatic online, he unique. And the same is true when you look at other apologists or other people you might engage, If someone says, oh, I spoke someone they’re Catholic. You and I both know that word is so elastic. They’re Catholic, oh, that could mean, I mean, there’s a big difference between Father James Martin and Father Ripeger. Catholics, we can be guilty of that too, if we say, oh well he’s Protestant. Well, there’s a big difference between Protestants, even Muslims or Jews. So that’s why it’s important when we engage others to get past the label and really understand what is their particular view globally. Like which religion are they, but also where do they fall within that particular religion or lack of religion.
Eric Sammons:
So you’re trying to figure out where they stand, what you have in common with them. It’s funny, you mentioned that because I know a couple, a number of Orthodox and I have a friend who’s an Orthodox priest who basically thinks all Catholic sacraments are invalid and that we’re all basically out graceless and out of the church and all that and out of the true church. And I know other Orthodox priests who are very much more accepting of Catholicism and understanding Val d’Or things like that. So yeah, you have to kind of know who it is you’re talking to.
Eric Sammons:
And so now let’s talk a little bit more about specifics of today. One of the great challenges I know a lot of people have, Catholics have, when they’re trying to engage in apologetics with maybe even non-Catholics or people, is the scandals within the church today, specifically. Now the moral challenges, the moral problems of leaders, that’s one thing. But I mean like today where we have a Pope who… I’ll be diplomatic and say, he says some problematic things.
Eric Sammons:
And so when we’re trying to say… Okay, here’s an example I had where a woman wanted to, when I was working for a diocese, she wanted to set up a group that was supportive of homosexuals. Her son had come out as gay and basically she wanted a group that was going to be basically endorsing, homosexual behavior. And I said, no, that’s that’s against our teaching whatever. This was in 2013, 2012 or something like that. Well then Pope Francis came, he said the famous words, who am I to judge and some other things. And then she basically then was like, well, the Pope says it’s okay. Now I know he didn’t actually say that, but the point is that, he’s winked and nudged at times. And so it makes it where I’m going… They’re saying, “Okay, the Pope is this, but you say this,” well who are they going to go with? And I don’t blame them for saying, “I’m going to go with the Pope.” But what do we do in those situations where we do seem to be going against what the Pope seems to at least be indicating if not explicitly saying?
Trent Horn:
Well, I think there’s multiple strategies one can employ. And you might use them in different order. I mean, the basic line here is if you’re engaging someone, you have to make sure if they’re saying that the church teaches X, when it actually doesn’t teach X you’ll need a primer, on understanding, well, how do we know what the church teaches? My friend, Jimmy Akin has a wonderful book on this subject called Teaching With Authority, that goes over that magisterial statements, statements from bishops or the Pope, have different levels of authority. So at one point, the unique catechetics with an individual to say, look, different statements that the Pope makes have different levels of authority. There’s a difference between, something that dogmatically defines something like the immaculate conception versus an impromptu answer on an airplane, to let people know, look certainly you would agree with what the Pope says has different levels of authority and that also is in union with what the church teaches. Because you say, well, look, the Pope doesn’t contradict the church, right? No. So then you go to the catechism paragraph 20 through 57 on homosexuality.
Trent Horn:
But you can also, before this maybe show the person you had to be careful not to act like you’re trying to really grill the person, but you might want to show that they’re being a little self-serving sometimes to say, you know what, you’re right, we got to listen to Pope Francis. So when Pope Francis said abortion is like hiring a hit man, you would agree that abortion’s just like that right? And so, because that’s the thing with Pope Francis, he’s the gift that keeps on giving. And so it’s funny you watch the roller coaster online of people like, Advocate magazine, a pro LGBT magazine and others like Pope Francis is man of the year for them. And then the CDF, under his permission releases a document that prohibits blessing same-sex unions, for example, which includes that it’s released under his permission. And they’re having to back peddle like, oh, well, because he’ll say one thing you’re right and then, it’s a roller coaster for everybody.
Trent Horn:
So I think there, if you’re shrewd, if someone is taking something the Pope has said to try to promote a dissenting view of church teaching, sometimes it’s fun to see, well, what do you do with this very heavy handed Orthodox thing, the Pope has said? Will you go with that too or are you just cherry picking when the Pope says problematic things that happen to favor what you think? So that has to be done with due caution, you want to be gracious with people, but I think that can be helpful to show, look, are you cherry picking or are you listening to the whole of magisterial teaching?
Eric Sammons:
Right. And related to this, now this one, a little bit more tricky. There’s situations in which, as Catholics, we simply just don’t agree with the Pope and what he said, we think something he said is wrong and, and I’m talking of course, not about doctrinal issues like the trinity or something like that, but maybe in him pushing for the vaccine or-
Trent Horn:
Like a Prudential judgment?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah. But even when he… Like the death penalty, probably is the best example in my mind, where it really, to me, I mean, I’ve said this before, it really to me sounds like he’s just simply contradicting church teaching on this. Because the death penalty is clearly justifiable in certain circumstances and I understand Pope John Paul II was making it more like it’s not really necessary in developed world all that. Because I know one of the criticisms that Catholic Answers has gotten is that sometimes it’s a little too willing to try to defend the Pope on some of the more problematic things it says. And is there a role in… I mean, how does it… I’m not even sure what my question here is at this point, but like I just know a lot of Catholics have challenges when they’re talking to their friends who are either falling away Catholics or not Catholics trying, they don’t want to Pope-splain, but yet they also want to be respectful of the papacy. How do we do both those things?-
Trent Horn:
Well, it is a fine line to walk between two errors. And it’s something that I have learned over the course of Francis’s pontificate to walk and I’ve tried to grow in that area, at least in the past few years of addressing these things. Because you’re right. Because Prudential matters are one thing and I’ll discuss that a little bit after this. But this is more the question. Well, it’s interesting as an apologist, people will bring up objections to the faith. And one common objection from Protestants is ah, the actions of this particular Pope, actually show Catholicism as false. The common examples were Pope Liberias, Onorias, Vigilias, from the early middle ages, things like that. And so you’ll go through.
Trent Horn:
And so I think your question seems to be concerned, what about people who add Francis to this Armada essentially? What should we do if we agree with them, how do we respond? And you’re right. So there’s the two errors, one would be a kind of ultramontanism that basically treat it is as if the Pope, has every utterance infallible and will bend over backwards to defend him and not ever just say, yeah he just really biffed it on this one. But then there’s another view that goes a bit too far that would almost seem to deny the holy Spirit’s promise that it will prevent the church from habitually falling into these errors or it’s almost maybe tabloid-esk a little bit so much that you sound like those fundamentalist Protestants from the ’80s. I’ve heard some online Catholics talk about the Pope, I’m like, who is this Jack Chick? I’ve thought about it’d be a fun game like, very angry traditionalist, anonymous, Twitter, Catholic, and Jack Chick, the famous very anti-Catholic cartoonist putting their quotes together. I’d be like, “Oh wow, this almost look identical.”
Trent Horn:
So you don’t want to fall into either of those traps. So I think my response to that would be, and I think this is something hopefully that Catholic Answers has grown in and I’ve tried to grow in. And actually it’s interesting something like this to come up in my rebuttal to a Eastern Orthodox apologists named Jay Dier. And so Jay brought up, look at what Francis has done with the death penalty. And what was funny is he sounded a lot like Taylor Marshall with his criticism, but then the conclusion is therefore become Orthodox. And so my reply there, and I think this is important is like I said earlier, we should offer a lot of different options for people. I follow Jimmy in this regard and I think he’s very good at this to say, well, here’s a difficulty and there’s a few different ways a person might address the difficulty. And just allow, hey, there’s certain things we can’t say. We can’t say, the Pope can formally bind the church to heresy or something like that, but we could offer a lot of different options.
Trent Horn:
So one could offer the option that what the Pope has taught that this falls under a Prudential judgment that does not require the religious submission of mind and will. And to say that this is erroneous, but it does not fall under an error that is covered under people infallibility. So you could say that’s one option. Another option that could be presented is that this is a development in Catholic social teaching and give examples about how different social teachings can develop. Like one might say the death penalty, the church always considered it moral to exercise the death penalty for a wide variety of crimes. Even public theft, hunting on the Lord’s land and a wide variety of crimes were seen, it was permissible to use a penalty of death to instill public order. But over time, the crimes that are suitable for death, it shrinks and gets more and more narrow till it’s just like murder or treason. And the idea here is maybe you see there’s a trajectory in development that the justifications keep getting narrow and narrower over time.
Trent Horn:
So as I said, those are two options. So I think that’s helpful that look, we’re a big tent, people are going to have different views about which Prudential judgements or even theological observations that are made or opinions of pellets or the Pope, the value of them. But I think that could be helpful when these things come up to put forward all the options. You can almost put it as like, here’s my preferred one and if that argument doesn’t work, here’s my fallback position and all of them, it’s like, I have all these safety eat nets, if you will that catch me before I fall into schism or leave the faith or something, I don’t know. Does that make sense?
Eric Sammons:
Yeah, I think so. I think the challenge is, I mean, some of it is interesting because, I feel like some of the more ultramontanist at least they’re saying exactly what I was told as a Protestant by Catholic apologist. No, we don’t do that. We don’t think everything that Pope says is infallible and things like that. We don’t treat him as a divine Oracle. I think honestly, to me, I think the people I’ve talked to about this when it comes to Pope Francis, we’re willing to understand that there’s tons of things he says that are just problematic, but they’re just it’s airplane interview. He has certain politics that we don’t agree with, which is fine, whatever. But it’s when he hits on, I think the big ones are probably the death penalty, the communion for divorce and remarried, where it looks like he is changing a church teaching that can’t be changed and the whole structure of Catholicism does really, depend on that.
Eric Sammons:
And I think I know people and I’m sure you do too, who have left the church or following because of this, because they feel like, okay, the foundation is crumbling because we said that Pope cannot change unchangeable church teaching. And yet at least to them, they appears that he has. So I know we’ve had the debate I mean, you’ve been involved with it about what it means to change church teaching. And we both written about that and I think we come at it from different perspectives, but I think that’s really a issue of apologetics that I think is causing a lot of issues, which some of that, I want to try to look at more optimistically is, it helps refine our apologetics, these things happen. But how does it not make the foundation crumble? How would you answer to those who… I mean I don’t think it does, but I know people who do.
Trent Horn:
Right. And I think that that’s where it’ll become problematic. That as an apologist, if you put forward an extremely strong indefensible claim about something that this never happens, or the church never does this, or things don’t change. How you articulate it, you have to be careful so that you’re not left open to a counter example. Whether it’s in the current age or in the past 2000 years, when you look at things like how church fathers have articulated matters in the past versus the development in modern science and things like that. Because you could go too far and say, well, look, if the fathers are in agreement on something, then you’re bound to believe that. But the problem is, well, no, you have to tailor the understanding of what that in particular means, because then you might bind people to believe in outdated scientific theory.
Trent Horn:
I’m sure the fathers of the church all believe in the theory of the humorous. That our health system is basically four fluids going together. We’re not bound to believe that, but that would also apply to scientific observations about the age of the earth or the development of life that could lead you into problematic areas if you’re in conflict with other things. So I think that you’re right, like the concerns that are brought up, you just have to make sure that what you’re putting forward, that you use this as an opportunity to refine the position you put forward. And I think then in charity is to offer people, it’s like they’re looking at Catholicism, they might say… Because it’s interesting, like when I’m engaging, people in Eastern Orthodox, many of them will say, well, I can’t be a Catholic because I think Thomism is bonkers. And I think that Thomas Aquinas, he doesn’t make sense, he’s crazy, it goes against everything, the cap ocean father’s taught.
Trent Horn:
And so I would say, “Well, okay, so there’s two options here.” You could defend Thomism, which I think is a fine thing to do, or you might say, “Hey, you know what, if you find this problematic, there are other ways to articulate these theological issues that you might find to be more like a Franciscan way or this age, things like that.” So just like if I offer let’s say Pope Francis and the death penalty, that’s why for me, I’d say here’s my preferred solution. Someone might say, “That sounds like you’re grasping at straws I can’t really buy that.” All right, here’s what Eric Sammons, would say, and he’s faithful and he’s Catholic, you might prefer that. So I think when we’re engaging others, we should be open to presenting people, a variety of Orthodox proposals, even if we’re not a big fan of them, as long as they’re Orthodox and have not contradicted the positive faith, then that can serve the cause.
Eric Sammons:
Right. Sometimes what I do, I just say, “I don’t know how to reconcile it.”
Trent Horn:
Yes. That’s another approach.
Eric Sammons:
I mean, because the fact is, there’s so much evidence for Catholicism in every other way, the fact that in this one area, I’m not able to reconcile it with my brain, doesn’t make me lose my faith and the fact that everything else. It just means that, okay, my puny brain can’t reconcile that-
Trent Horn:
Well, there’s a parallel here, that if you say, “Well, the Pope said this, but the catechism says that this seems contradictory, therefore Catholicism is false.” If you walk in that mindset of, hey, there is an apparent contradiction to my faith, therefore the faith is not true, you’re only going to get about 10 steps. What do you do when you read the Bible and you’ve got atheists who have assembled 1001 Bible contradictions. Mark 2:26, it says that Jesus said when Abiathar was high priest, when the old testament clearly says it was his father Ahimelech, but then what do I do in those situations? You could say first, if you’ve never studied it, I don’t know that’s weird, but I know Jesus walked out of his own tomb, he established a church, so I’m going to go with him and put a little asterisk next to this thing I don’t understand.
Trent Horn:
And you can do the same thing if Pope Francis says something that, I don’t quite understand what’s going on here. Because if you have that rigid mentality to warn someone, hey look, you’re going to be out the door. You’re not just going to give up the Pope if you say, hey, apparent contradiction, this doesn’t work. You’re going to leave Christianity, you couldn’t even believe in God, because you’ll say, hey, God’s all good, there’s evil, apparent contradiction, I don’t know how to resolve it. If you have this rigid mentality where if there’s an apparent contradiction, I’m out the door, you’re going to be an atheistic annalist.
Trent Horn:
So I think what you said is very good that you can say, you could present possible options, but it’s fine to be humble and say, “I’m not sure, but I have all this other evidence.” Whether it’s a Bible contradiction or a contradiction in magisterial text, I know there’s a God, there has to be a God that created everything. I know that Jesus’s resurrection is the only thing that makes sense of why Christianity got started in the first place. And the Catholic church is the only thing that makes sense of how Christianity grew in the first 300 years and onward. And then from there you’ve got your anchor and you’ve got these apparent contradictions, at least a bit, shouldn’t give you as much work.
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