I Had a Friendly Chat with Gavin Ortlund

In this episode Trent sits down with Protestant apologist Gavin Ortlund to discuss what they agree and disagree about.

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Gavin Ortlund (00:00:00):

What is Christianity? And you and I can recognize each other. I would say you’re my fellow Christian, but I would say we have a different vision of where we set the boundaries. I don’t think it happened. That’s my issue is I don’t think it is true.

Trent Horn (00:00:12):

Criticizing us for disagreement, but you have disagreement too. It’s just oriented in a different direction.

Gavin Ortlund (00:00:17):

But that’s a fair critique. I’ve always said the best argument against Protestantisms I think is disunity and I think is the fragmentation impulse. So if someone were to say, “Well, why don’t you think that’s a decisive knockdown objection?” I think one thing I’d observe is I don’t know that I see in the other direction the solution.

Trent Horn (00:00:42):

Welcome everyone to the Council of Trent. My guest today is someone I have crossed paths with many times in person and online and videos. He is Gavin Ortland, the host of Truth Unites. He engages in a wide array of apologetics content and I’m just really jazzed you here. Gavin, welcome to the Council Trent.

Gavin Ortlund (00:00:59):

Fun to be here. Glad to be in person together. Looking forward to this.

Trent Horn (00:01:02):

I know. You already had a treat. I’m glad you were able to come visit me here in Dallas because I was able to at least restore one of the things you lost after leaving California, got to have in and out.

Gavin Ortlund (00:01:12):

One of the big grievances of leaving California. So In-N-Out has come to Tennessee, but I think I mentioned to you there was a three-hour wait the first day that it opened because there’s such a craze to go. So I still haven’t been since it’s there. So this is the first time I’ve had it in years.

Trent Horn (00:01:28):

I think I’ve found now in doing debates in a lot of places, I think it truly has a ecumenical power to it. I have not seen in any other establishment. I’ve seen so many pictures of people doing theological debates and they end up together.

Gavin Ortlund (00:01:43):

Exactly.

Trent Horn (00:01:44):

I think the last time I was there in and out, I was there with a Presbyterian, a Baptist, a Muslim, all a bunch of old from the TGT, the Gospel Truth Conference. So we were able to do that here. All right. We’ll

Gavin Ortlund (00:01:59):

Take the ecumenical progress however we can get it.

Trent Horn (00:02:02):

Absolutely. Let’s talk a little bit for people who aren’t as familiar with you. What is your background in doing apologetics? Because you were previously a pastor in California, right?

Gavin Ortlund (00:02:14):

Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah. Apologetics was kind of a second win for me in terms of my public career, I guess you could say. Yeah, pastoring a church, and then I did academic stuff, got a PhD and taught kind of adjunct and that kind of thing for many years. And then about sometime around 2018, 2019, I mean, I’ve always loved apologetics and I’ve always watched debates with great interest. And I think just coinciding my own interests with the sense of the needs and the culture, and we’ve talked about this a lot, just where Gen Z is at, where the culture’s at. There’s a tremendous amount of spiritual hunger, spiritual anxiety. And my own study led me into that. And then my heart just connected with wanting to help people. And just the basic … I know what it’s like to have doubts about faith and to feel anguish and wonder what if I’m wrong?

(00:03:07):

How do I know what’s true?

Trent Horn (00:03:08):

Now, did you grow up in more of a classical, well-grounded Christian home? You don’t have one of those dramatic … Well, actually, the last person I interviewed was Sean McDowell, and he grew up … Josh was his dad. But it seems like a lot of people say, “I got into this because you had this dramatic conversion experience,” but it seems like you’re probably blessed with, given what your dad does, pretty classical Christian upbringing. I

Gavin Ortlund (00:03:33):

Had a great family. In fact, the last video that I just put out on my channel was an interview with my dad, in- person interview, which was a lot of fun. So no, I had awesome Christian upbringing, and the churches that I went to were actually pretty healthy as well. So for me, it wasn’t a big dramatic thing, although I have been through seasons as an adult where I’ve kind of gone back to the basics and just thought from the ground up. But my love for apologetics is just I want to help people, serve people. And there’s so many needs right now. And I don’t think there’s any need that could be greater than just not knowing what is ultimately true.

Trent Horn (00:04:08):

Well, it’s funny when I’m talking to people, sometimes people introduce me as Trent Horn. I’m a Catholic apologist. And I do believe that the Catholic faith is that which is true, good and beautiful and the answer to the world, but I’ve tried to be very clear that Catholic and Protestant distinctives are not the only things that I talk about. I mean, the very first book I wrote was Answering Atheism in 2013 because the reason I wrote that was because there were just so many, there were a ton of books responding to the new atheists from a Protestant perspective. And I thought, oh, well, I’d like to have something like a bit … There were a few Catholic books, but they were very cursory. And a lot of them, I think you can appreciate this with how internet is right now. The new atheists were snarky, Get Under your Skin.

(00:04:52):

And for a lot of people like, “Fine, I’m going to get under your skin the same way.” God doesn’t really want us to do that. We can be assertive. We don’t have to do the same thing. So that’s why actually I wrote Answering Atheism because one of my favorite books back then was The Last Superstition by Ed Faser. And that was a really great book combating atheism. I would never give it to an atheist though, because he’s really snarky in it. So I’m really glad that Ed has written a book called Fai Proos the Existence of God. That’s gone way beyond that. Oh, yeah, yeah. So it’s nice just to see that. But for me, when I go on channels, I often say, I want to reach the most number of people who are the furthest away from Jesus Christ.

Gavin Ortlund (00:05:31):

Right. And this is something that’s good for people who watch both of our channels to understand is that you and I have a lot of common ground because what I most deeply want to do is just general Christian apologetics. My next book is called Why Christianity Makes Sense. It’s just chapter by chapter walking through, starting with total apathy, trying to get someone’s attention. The last chapter is on why you should get baptized and why you should become a Christian. And that’s where my heart is at. I’ve gotten pulled into Protestant apologetics. I’m happy to do it, but honestly, it was the need that pulled me

Trent Horn (00:06:02):

Into it. Yeah. I was going to say, what pulled you in? I remember the first time I saw you engaging in Protestant apologetics. I’ll get to that in a sec, but yeah, what made you feel like, oh, I got to do something on this. You got pulled into it.

Gavin Ortlund (00:06:15):

Yeah. So I started a YouTube channel during COVID, pastoring a church in California, kind of needed a new challenge, was writing a book on the existence of God,

Trent Horn (00:06:23):

Wanted

Gavin Ortlund (00:06:23):

To put content out there on that. And then just watching the state of discourse on YouTube, I just felt like there are not as many good Protestant representatives, defending Protestantism. There’s lots of Protestants defending Christianity, but less so kind of explaining historic Protestant views. I mean, there are a few people out there. I don’t want to denigrate the contribution of people who have done that, but just the optics are Protestants need to step up their game here and just explain. I mean, my thing

Trent Horn (00:06:58):

Is- Well, especially a few years ago, I think it was a lot different. I’ve seen more channels that are defending distinct Protestant perspectives rooted in the teachings of the magisterial reformers, much more so in the past year or two than maybe I saw three years ago. I think

Gavin Ortlund (00:07:16):

You’re right. I think it’s growing. And I think if my thing is, if people are wrestling with these topics, I don’t want them to compare their anecdotal church experience to the best of Catholic apologetics. I want them to be exposed to historic Protestant theology.

Trent Horn (00:07:33):

Well, I think I’ve said this before, whenever you’re comparing worldviews, you always want to compare best to best, not best to worst. If you’re going to do worse, there’s got to be worse across the board, worst to worst and best to best, not one or the other. I think what’s interesting in the Protestant Catholic dialogue that’s happened over the past 40 years, I think in the ’90s and going the 2000s and 2010s, it was dominated by … There was a certain kind of evangelical writer who might’ve been very focused on biblical exegesis, engaging Catholics, but church history was real spotty. But I feel like your work and also the work of Jordan Cooper, Sean, Luke, and a lot of others have really tried to get people to reclaim that. I want people to look at history in general. I think it’s always great, but I think you probably … When you say a need, do you think that’s probably one of the biggest needs that you saw?

Gavin Ortlund (00:08:26):

That’s a big part of it. And that’s my academic work is in historical theology. So that’s where I felt like maybe I could make a contribution. But yeah, I mean, I think the average Protestant doesn’t know church history at all, and so it makes people very vulnerable to the claim to be a Protestant, you don’t have any sort of real authentic relation to church history, and I don’t think that that’s the case. So yeah, that would be a huge area for need. And then also just being able to celebrate common ground. Sometimes it feels like the only Protestants who will speak up for Protestantism are those who have nothing nice to say about non-Protestant Christian traditions. So that’s another area where it’s like you want to be able to have, I’m trying to find the right balance. Let’s honor the disagreements. Let’s not take away from the fact that these go deep and they matter, and we can honor that and argue about them, but then we can also come together when it’s appropriate.

Trent Horn (00:09:19):

Yeah. And I think, so we’ll talk about agreements and disagreements here in our chat. I think starting with things like agreements, it’s interesting how you felt like, okay, a lot of Protestants will defend fundamental Christianity, but you don’t see a lot of Protestants uniquely responding to Catholicism or defending Protestantism, co-Protestantism, at least with rigorous arguments. So you feel like there’s a need, you need to step into that. I felt something similar, I guess in the reverse, I felt like there were a lot of Catholics willing to defend Catholicism, the Catholic Protestant distinctives. But then when I would try to see, well, who’s doing debates on the resurrection? Who’s doing resurrection apologetics? Who’s really responding to atheists? Who’s doing pro- life apologetic work? Because for example, I got involved in pro- life apologetics. Well, in college, I started doing that 2006, 2007, and there were two groups of people I was learning from.

(00:10:20):

So there were Protestants on the ground who had popularized arguments. People like Randy Alcorn had a book, or Pro-Life Answers to Pro-Choice Arguments, Greg Kokel, Scott Klusendorf, Stand to Reason Crowd, people like that. But then I saw there were, oh, there’s Catholic philosophers who’ve written on this and no one’s seeing all their arguments that are up here in academia. People like Frank Beckwith, Patrick Lee, Chris Kazor. So I’m like, oh, how can I synthesize this and get our people really out there? But especially on the fundamental Christian apologetics, my heart is especially, I would really want … And that’s why I often, I’ll have in my episodes be talking about the divinity of Christ. I think once I was like, and this Messianic prophecy says this, if you want more Messianic prophecies, Gavin Ortland has a video. And it’s so funny. I’ve gotten some people giving me flack about that.

(00:11:15):

Why are you telling people to go to Gavin Ortland’s channel? He has this anti-Catholic content. I’m like, “You make a Messianic prophecy video. You make an argument on divine hiddenness. If you’re not, then don’t get in the way of people who are making good stuff.”

Gavin Ortlund (00:11:32):

Yeah. If we can’t come together around the basics, then we’re going to be weaker on those things. I mean, you just think of, I think we’ve talked about this. Most of the people in the world that need to be reached need the basics. Even some of our own sheep, they don’t know why they believe the divinity of Christ, or they’ll have a counterargument to that and they will not have any sense of preparedness to answer that. So I think we can come together around those things. And then you mentioned seeing a gap between scholarship and the online world, that’s another problem I see is most of the best work from both of our traditions is unknown just generally at the lay level. And so however we can be a bridge, that’s a lot of what I’m trying to do is kind of step from that world into the popular level world.

Trent Horn (00:12:18):

Do you ever get flat? I’m having fun talking to you because it feels like a mirror image sometime of myself. If I were Protestant, I would do a YouTube channel where I talk about Protestant a bit, but I like talking about Christianity and I care about the scholarship even if it makes people mad. People will give me flack when I’ll say, “I know that’s a popular argument you like, but the scholarship actually shows it’s really weak and we probably ought not use that. ” And it’s a favorite among more traditional Catholics and people gripe at me about that. I don’t know if you’ve experienced the same thing on the Protestant end.

Gavin Ortlund (00:12:49):

Say it again.

Trent Horn (00:12:50):

I didn’t follow that. There’s an argument in your camp people like, and you say, “Well, the scholarship says that’s not a really good argument.” We probably shouldn’t use. And people are like, “Why are you getting mad at me about my pet argument?”

Gavin Ortlund (00:13:01):

I know. No, I mean, well, people have an anti-scholarship mindset sometimes, and I want to be careful not to go against that too much because scholarship is flawed. It has its own biases and it has its problems, but it’s also a tool. And I think if we just sort of generally are suspicious of anything that we benefit from in terms of scholarship, we’re in trouble. Even just to be able to translate these texts and engage the ancient world at all, you have to engage scholarship. So yeah, that happens to me at times as well, but it’s always good to remember most of the people who are watching aren’t commenting. I have to remember that.

Trent Horn (00:13:38):

It’s kind of like when you go to a restaurant, you look up a restaurantline and sometimes you’ll see a few negative reviews. I feel like people, if they’re going to leave a review, they’re more likely to leave a negative thing. You and I eat at a great place. We don’t think later, I better go write that down. But if you’re burned, you have that real energy to want to say something.

Gavin Ortlund (00:13:56):

And in the Catholic Protestant conversation, just like in other ones that are similar, there is a tendency for goodwill and an open heart to the other side to deteriorate over time. And so whatever we can do to keep positive relationships, I’m very eager for that. I’m not here to make people angry. I’m not here to step on toes and insult people,

Trent Horn (00:14:20):

But

Gavin Ortlund (00:14:20):

We also need to have space to say, “Here’s the best arguments for my side,” and they matter. I mean, that’s the other danger is the kind of very ecumenical space where we just never talk about- It’s

Trent Horn (00:14:30):

Kumbaya.

Gavin Ortlund (00:14:31):

And the disagreements matter, so we’ve got to be able to argue about them.

Trent Horn (00:14:34):

Yeah. I think what can help with that is when we find that common ground together and we work together, it really creates that kind of space to have those discussions. For example, when I did pro- life apologetic work on university campuses, I would travel with this group doing it, and it was composed of half Protestants, half Catholics. So we would go out on campus, we would debate pro- choice advocates, and then at night when we had the missionary dinner with everybody, then we would debate theology. But I felt like we could do it in a friendly space because we were under fire together, and so it kind of bonded us a bit. So for example, one of the funnest debates I’ve ever been a part of was when you and I did the biblical slavery unit. Oh yeah. Yeah,

Gavin Ortlund (00:15:15):

That was fun.

Trent Horn (00:15:16):

I mean, that was just a cool thing for people to be able to see that it’s like, yeah, we have vigorous disagreements about important things, but it’s like, look, there’s people, the objection to the Bible on slavery is just one of the classic things that is used to drive people at atheism. And I was telling you about this earlier, it’s like you’ll get people say, “Atheism is dead.” It’s like, no, Gen Z is the least religious demographic in history. Now, the Gen Z who are religious are super fervent, but there’s a lot. And so if we can band together and be like, “Hey, let’s engage this. ” I was super pumped when you asked me to help you. I’m like, “Let’s do it, man.”

Gavin Ortlund (00:15:54):

That was fun. It was a total blast. I mean, so I’d put out a video on slavery in the Bible, some atheists responded and then they wanted to do a dialogue and they said, “Well, there’s two of us and one of you. Why don’t you invite someone?” And so for you and I to come together and do that, I would say not only can we come together to do that, but we actually bring unique strengths. So a Catholic and a Protestant might have some different instincts in how we approach, but I think our views are pretty similar anyway, but still you come to it and it’s like, yeah, we have to be able to partner when that’s appropriate. And that’s a good question for us all. Do I have the humility to learn from the people I’m arguing against in one context? But in another context, I realize, wow, they’re actually better than I am at this one particular topic or whatever it might be.

Trent Horn (00:16:37):

Yeah, I think it’s important. We do have to draw lines with people. And I think it’s important to do that so that there is not a lack of clarity. So I was talking with you, for example, I really want to do a conference. We just had the Council at Trent Conference, super fun, and I would like to do another one in the future that’s more about defending the gospel together. So Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox, would love to have you come and speak, bring in Orthodox speakers, people who share a defense who embody the Christian gospel and the Christian spirit. So people who, regardless of their Christian, regardless of their theological stance as a Christian, they model the fruits of the Holy Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, self-control. So there will be some people in the different theological camps who don’t model that. They can attend the conference as guests, not as speakers, but those who do model it, I would love to be able to have that, but there’s sometimes to draw a line.

(00:17:37):

So for example, as much as I find some Mormon apologists to be intelligent and gracious, I can’t have them because they’re not Christian. They do not share common valid baptism, and so I have to engage them. They’re not atheists, as some people have tried to say or something like that, but I have to draw a line there. Whereas I’m glad that you can take a stance. It’s like Catholics are not grouped in here with Mormons and Jehovah’s witnesses. We have important differences, but on the important things like Christological differences, we’re good.

Gavin Ortlund (00:18:09):

Yeah. Yeah. It’s that old idea. So one of my books is on theological triage, which is ranking different issues. And that’s what we’re trying to do here is rank each different issue. And I think when some people hear us say, oh, this isn’t a first order issue where we can’t see common Christian reality on the other side, therefore it’s not important at all. And that doesn’t follow. We can have really important disagreements, but then we just say, “Okay, but here’s the things we agree on and that’s great.” So yeah, I mean, I’m always happy to do that. Like I said, I never got into Protestant and apologetics just to be generally against Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christians. I just want to defend the values and Protestantism that I see.

Trent Horn (00:18:47):

Well, you see is true.

Gavin Ortlund (00:18:48):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:18:48):

And I’m the same way. It’s like, look, here is the cohesive … Because I do think it’s important as much as … My conversion was owed a lot to people like William Lynn Craig, for example, watching his debates on the existence of God, the resurrection. And Craig though was very clear in his work at Reasonable Faith, he wanted to promote mere Christianity. He wants people to believe the most basic fundamentals that God exists revealed himself in Jesus Christ. Jesus rose from the dead and God is a Trinity. And that is good, but I think you and I both agree that it is good for people to receive the fullness of what God has revealed, not just mere Christianity, the table ought not be a mere meal. So that’s why you feel like, well, there’s these other doctrines we need to have. And they’re important too, even if other Christians disagree about them.

Gavin Ortlund (00:19:34):

Yeah. And we should be able to talk about those things without it being seen as you’re a fundamentalist because you’re debating on this particular niche topic. All throughout church history, Christians have taken these things seriously. It’s like, yeah, it’s great to have a ministry, aim at the front door, but then it’s also great to have a ministry that says, “Okay, don’t stay in the front door hallway, move into the house and work through things.” And there’s a relationship there between coming into Christianity and how you sort out these issues. What is Christianity? What church do you go to? I mean, when I get hesitant about doing Protestant apologetics, I think, wait a second, I want to do general Christian apologetics. As soon as someone becomes a Christian or even is exploring, they’re going to ask, which church do I go to? So these things are related to each other.

Trent Horn (00:20:22):

I think you can appreciate this. I remember once Michael Knowles and Charlie Kirk were having a discussion about Catholicism and Charlie was saying something to the effect like, “Michael, you seem like you make it more important to bring people to Catholicism than to Jesus.” And I think Michael pushed back on that. Well, no, but I think it’s obviously important to believe in Jesus, but there’s so much more for people to believe in. And I think some people will caricature Catholicism as, oh, we just care about people being Catholic, not being Christian. But I think you’d be able to stand up for us to say it’s good to be Christian, but there is a lot more that God has revealed. And even if they’re not the essential Christian doctrines, getting questions right about sotiology, about baptism, about sacraments and ordinances and worship and church government, you’re right, it’s not either heresy or trivial.

Gavin Ortlund (00:21:12):

Right. Yeah. There’s that whole middle span of doctrines that are important, even if maybe you’ll make it to heaven if you get some of them wrong, but they still matter. So my rally and cry is both sides should be able to argue for their view. We give space for that. And then we try to maintain a charitable relationship over the years and over the decades, which is hard to do.

Trent Horn (00:21:34):

I remember when we first started the back and forth of the video replies with each other. I remember once you said something like, “I think Trent is someone that I’ll probably be sparring with for a long time, and I appreciate that. “

Gavin Ortlund (00:21:48):

We’d be in our 70s doing rebuttal videos.

Trent Horn (00:21:51):

I hope when we’re our 70s when we’re doing that kind of stuff, we’re like the two Muppets or the two old guys up in the balcony, calling out the, oh gosh, the Gen Beta. I feel bad for them if they’re called Gen Beta, whatever comes after Gen Alpha. They’re dead right from the start if that’s their name. But yeah, no, I remember seeing that thinking, yeah, I would like to be able to have … Here’s what’s interesting to me. I feel like there are some Catholics that it is more difficult for me. It is way more thorny and vitriolic for me to disagree with them than it is for the disagreements I have with you, which are on way more important issues, way more important issues. I mean, it’s so funny. I think I’ve seen, I lurk in all parts of the internet and I’ve lurked in the parts where it gets mad at you.

(00:22:43):

And I’ve seen the worst Gavin Ortland hate I’ve seen is on you on things like climate change.

Gavin Ortlund (00:22:48):

What

Trent Horn (00:22:49):

Are you guys getting so worked up about?

Gavin Ortlund (00:22:51):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (00:22:52):

Is that where you see some of your biggest …

Gavin Ortlund (00:22:56):

Yeah, it feels like in the modern era, you’ve got the kind of conservative to progressive split, which afflicts all of the different Christian traditions. So you layer on top of the Catholic Protestant Orthodox disagreements, this larger issue of your posture in the current culture. And I’m socially conservative, I’m pro- life, I believe in a traditional view of marriage, but I have some critiques for some of the things I see happening on sort of the far right as I would categorize it and I’m vocal about those things. And so that’s led to tension and friction and so forth. Yeah. And then I think some of these issues, I think it’s okay to not slavishly follow where the sociology directs you. So on climate change, I’ve just read a bunch of books and come to my view. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not an expert on it,

Trent Horn (00:23:42):

But

Gavin Ortlund (00:23:42):

That’s just where I land. And so I advocate for what I think is true. But it’s an interesting time just to have any convictions and communicate them publicly at all. So you endorsed my book, thank you- On disagreeing. … on disagreement. I never thought I’d write a book on disagreement, but I find it fascinating. The question of how do you disagree with people without an annoyance coming in and without a deterioration of relationship? And I’m honestly sad, and I’m not perfect in this, but I’m honestly sad at how much that happens. And so I want to keep getting better at it, but it’s a fascinating question to say, why does that happen so much? Why is it that two Protestants can be absolutely at each other’s throats or two Catholics over relatively tertiary cultural and political issues? That’s an interesting question and we all have to think about.

Trent Horn (00:24:34):

I think one reason might be it’s kind of like you get in worse fights with your family than your friends. I think when you’re closer to people, you know how to push each other’s buttons a little bit more and you think like, oh, this person should really be behind me. It’s so funny. I take it more personally when there are traditional Catholics that get really, really upset at me and will call me names and things like that. Whereas there could be people who are … I mean, I’ve gone to university campuses with people that wear genitalia hats and yell at me and say horrible things and I’m like, “Well, God bless. I hope you’re doing okay there. You need Jesus in your life because I don’t expect them to treat me well.” But I mean, it’s like what Jesus says. He says, “This shall know that we are Christians by the love we have for one another.” It’s interesting how it’s phrased within the body of Christ versus just the love you have for anybody, that especially with those who are united by a common baptism, common faith, that you’d expect to see that.

(00:25:28):

But yeah, I think just being able to raise the charity involved, I always hate when people, I don’t know, people will tease about that, but at the end of the day, nobody really wants to fight. They should be able to just talk about it. Sometimes I feel like it’s just kind of a mask that people can put on. Maybe that’s just this new generation of irony and cynicism to cover insecurities instead of just, “Let’s face our insecurities. Let’s be honest about them.”

Gavin Ortlund (00:25:55):

And a huge piece of all this, I think, is the internet and how it affects our perceptions of each other. It is just amazing how I’ll have a great relationship with someone in person, but then online you just see all the distortion that happens. And I don’t understand why that is. I mean, people could write a PhD on this one topic of just how the internet affects communication, but however that is happening, we just need to be mindful of that. Wherever we can get offline and just talk, I think that’s good. I’ll have lots of times where I’ll have conflict with someone and I’ll say, “Can we just do a private Zoom?

Trent Horn (00:26:32):

Yes.

Gavin Ortlund (00:26:32):

We’re not going to record it and let’s just talk.” And it’s amazing the difference that that makes.

Trent Horn (00:26:38):

Yeah, I’ve been in the same area and I want to strive to model that in the exchanges that we have with each other. I’m sure we’re going to have other exchanges. I haven’t replied to you in a while on theology. I’m sure hopefully you got something cooked up that I can reply to at some point, but I don’t mind that. But I think you were the first person that I tried out the script review on. I’m really blessed that it was really hard with Laura’s diagnosis and I was just like, it came to me. I had been up for three weeks straight after the surgery and I was a total mess and I just ended up in bed vomiting. I was totally sick. And I just thought to myself, I just want to have kindness and I don’t want to take things super seriously. Life is a lot more than arguing theology.

(00:27:25):

I think I saw you did … I forget about … No, it was on the church offices. I think it was on offices in the church. And I saw you did that and I was like, “Here, here’s what I’m going to say.”

Gavin Ortlund (00:27:34):

And your video was great. I mean, that’s a great practice to have. And I think you’ve done that twice now where I’ll review the script both. One time I sent you a voice text just saying general thoughts, other time I wrote some thoughts out. In both cases, the script was great, and I never mind you doing rebuttals at all. That’s fine.

Trent Horn (00:27:52):

And I think what helps is another thing I think that can help in keeping the temperature down because the rebuttals, and now I’m seeing the new crop doing this, and it’s like I want to help people, “Hey, let’s keep it productive.” When you do that, or even just if you don’t do that, saying things, for example, instead of saying, “So-and-so misrepresented me, ” I think it could be better to say, “So-and-so misunderstood me. ” I think that gives someone, it gives someone a little bit of the benefit of the doubt.

Gavin Ortlund (00:28:19):

I agree that kind of err in that direction.

Trent Horn (00:28:22):

Not always, but like to air.

Gavin Ortlund (00:28:24):

But if it is a misrepresentation though, I mean, you don’t need to say they intentionally misrepresented me. You could just say they, in fact, for whatever reason misrepresented me, the words of the transcript are A, they said B, and I’m allowed to point that out. Oh, sure. Yeah. But I agree with you though that erring in the side of assuming goodwill, because that’s one thing I do see a lot too, is the assumption of disingenuousness, dishonesty, lying. We get there way too fast sometimes.

Trent Horn (00:28:53):

I think you don’t want to start there. I think you want to approach the conclusion of being disingenuous or lying after you’ve really assessed a lot of evidence, and it’s just mounting. And that’s where … I mean, I had that recently with Jay Dyer. He had said something in one of my replies to him, he had put on a post, Trent Horn criticized me for not calling a fake bishop Bishop. I said, “That’s not what I said at all. ” I said, “That’s a falsehood.” I think I said something like, “And based on my experience, Jay Dyer is not really concerned about uttering falsehoods.” And I was careful not to say lie because to lie means you utter a falsehood and you know it’s false and you don’t care. Someone could say something that’s just not true because they’re careless, they’re ignorant, or it just doesn’t bother them as much.

(00:29:49):

But I think you’re right, you don’t want to start with disingenuous, but you also don’t want to be totally blind like this person’s doing a snow job on you.

Gavin Ortlund (00:29:56):

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Just being careful to get there and then Another thing I’ll do when I’m doing a response, I’ll just wait a few months and just try to let the dust settle and then I’ll circle back to something. But I’m learning on this too, because there are times where I’ve been too avoidant and it’s like, oh, that person, I just want to tune that out and not pay any attention. And then you realize sometimes you do have to respond and you do have to defend yourself, but it’s like Paul in two Corinthians when he’s defending himself, but you can tell he feels kind of awkwardly about it. So there is a time to do that. And I’m trying to figure that out. I don’t think this is rocket science how to function on the internet. I think it’s a wisdom and discernment issue that you learn over the years, but there’s times to defend yourself, but then the one phrase I always come back to is tune out the noise and meet needs.

(00:30:44):

Because for every time I want to respond to something, I have to remember, there’s scores of people who do not care. Totally. But they are in the dark and they need hope. So that’s something I always try to come back to.

Trent Horn (00:30:59):

Yeah. I’ve found now when people reply to me or things like that, I ask myself, will this serve the larger mission of what I’m trying to do? In some cases, yeah, I’ve had people criticize me for my concern that Christians ought to act Christlike and not engage in malice or wraps. Pioty

Gavin Ortlund (00:31:15):

Signaling.

Trent Horn (00:31:15):

Yeah, piety signaling, tone policing. I always take a lot of comfort. My confirmation name is Paul. So Catholics choose a saint name when they receive the sacrament of confirmation. Because when I first believed in Jesus, I watched William Craig debates, read scripture. And when the Holy Spirit convicted me about who Jesus was, I think the first thing I did was I read Acts chapter nine over and over and over again. I was just enthralled with St. Paul’s conversion. I was just utterly enthralled with it. And so I feel like the mantle is set upon me. Maybe you could identify with … It’s funny, when you read in the New Testament letters, it’s interesting how, and I think this is important for scholarship to make claims like, oh, we can learn a lot historically by reading between the lines of what’s in the letters. So for example, I think one argument against the hallucination hypothesis or the apostles, people hallucinated Jesus.

(00:32:12):

It’s kind of interesting to me that in the New Testament, you don’t see the apostles telling people, you didn’t actually see Jesus, stop telling people that. You would think if everyone’s all hallucinatory and they see Jesus on every piece of bread or something, that would be a problem. But it’s like, oh, actually, no, you have the legitimate people Jesus reveals himself to. And it’s not like there’s just this hallucinatory mindset. But back to about the thing with charity, it’s like seeing Paul, he’ll talk about his problems. He’s like, they say about him. He is mighty in pen, but he is mild and meek in person. He writes these thunderous letters and then you meet him. He’s not so tough. And I love when he talks about the super apostles. And I feel like there’s these people who are these orators and they probably just want to own people.

(00:33:00):

Paul just wants people to know the truth, man. He’s not out to please people. I identify with that a lot in his letters. I don’t know if you’ve had a similar experience with that or with something else in scripture.

Gavin Ortlund (00:33:11):

Yeah. Well, and it’s humbling to think if you were back in the first century, Paul would not have seemed like this super impressive person. He’s getting persecuted. He’s having to flee places. He doesn’t have this aura about him. He probably wasn’t really popular in the eyes of the world.

Trent Horn (00:33:28):

The young people then would’ve said he … Oh, it’s like he’s weak in person. Translate for Gen Z today, people were telling Paul to his face he lacked aura. Have you heard of that slangs? Yeah. So that’s what they’re saying about him like, “Oh, he’s all big and bad, but he doesn’t actually have aura.” He was just doing his best and people were just trying to stone him where he goes. I

Gavin Ortlund (00:33:47):

Know. There’s so much I don’t understand about the internet, but the one thing that is great about it is it amplifies your message to try to meet needs. So I have to hold it loosely before the Lord and say, look, I don’t deserve this. God gave me this platform. I want to steward it for good. And that means a lot of times I think we have to be willing to just ignore things and just kind of take some hits, but then focus on that 21-year-old anxious young man who just needs hope and no one has ever fathered him and discipled him and helped him. So that’s the person I come back to in my mind.

Trent Horn (00:34:22):

Do you think some of the internet drama is the devil’s way to get us to ignore that for me?

Gavin Ortlund (00:34:26):

Totally. Distracted.

Trent Horn (00:34:27):

Yeah.

Gavin Ortlund (00:34:27):

We’re at each other’s throats so we’re not thinking about the sheep who are hungry.

Trent Horn (00:34:32):

Do you ever want to just completely get off?

Gavin Ortlund (00:34:34):

Yes, I knew you were going to ask that. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Trent Horn (00:34:36):

I do. I think about it. I do so bad, but I can’t because I would feel like guilt that I can’t.

Gavin Ortlund (00:34:44):

Tell me why, and then I’ll answer too. Why for you do you feel sort of obligated and called here?

Trent Horn (00:34:51):

Because I mean, I pray about it. I feel the calling that it’s where God wants me to be. And just I see the fruit from people who’ve been away from the church for decades, from people who send me emails saying, “My husband didn’t even believe in God and we started watching your show together and now he wants to come church to me. He’s going to get baptized this Easter.” And it is just like, I don’t like distraction. I don’t like drama. I don’t like being tempted to not pay attention to my kids. I want to give everything to them. And also if I just became the bookish academic, wrote my little books and did my fun little thing in my office and taught my little class, be all peaceful and quiet and nice. It’s like a guilt. It’s like the lifeguard to abandon his post.

(00:35:41):

And then there’s people drowning and they wouldn’t have if you weren’t. I mean, God’s up to God, but you get this sense of guilt like, “Well, if I had been there, it wouldn’t have happened.” I don’t know. What about you?

Gavin Ortlund (00:35:51):

Similar. Yeah, that feeling. I feel a sense of burden and calling, but the piece of it for me that people could maybe understand is just once you have felt the spiritual needs, you’re spending time, you travel around and you do debates and things, you’re on college campuses. If you just walk around a college campus right now, you just get a sense of what the younger generation is facing and how few of them have really been set up for success. Once you feel that, like you, I would feel sort of self-indulgent to just go and do a quiet academic thing and just write books. I mean, God calls people to that. That’s important too.

Trent Horn (00:36:31):

Sure.

Gavin Ortlund (00:36:32):

But the needs are

Trent Horn (00:36:34):

Urgent and the days are short.

(00:36:37):

And as Jesus was walking, he looked upon the crowd and he had great compassion upon them for they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he said, “The harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few.” And I think maybe that’s one of the thing you and I can work on now. It’s like, I really want to raise up, especially people who are getting out there who are doing this kind of work, but maybe on TikTok, maybe on other kinds of social media, maybe you and I can encourage them be charitable. Well, above all charitable, then be scholarly and be persuasive. But it’s like, I worry if this generation will, the next crop wants to take these kind of shortcuts to meet what the algorithm demands. Do not conform yourselves to this world.

Gavin Ortlund (00:37:21):

It’s a minefield trying. I mean, I’m 42 and I am regularly having to set better boundaries with my phone. If I was 22, I can’t imagine how I could be functioning. So what I always say is though, younger people who would be just tempted to really want to become well-known, hold off that God’s probably not calling you to be a social media influencer or if he is had to be the exception. But if you’re a 45-year-old pastor with a PhD and you kind of look down on social media, maybe God is calling you to lean in because we might need your voice. And however much we can get people with credentials and character to help elevate the state of discourse, that will be a good …

Trent Horn (00:38:08):

Yeah, I think we can do that and we can do that. So I’ll give you an example. I’m trying to sift through our disagreements we have, and I think they’re important. I think what they ultimately boil down to, and this is something you’ve covered in a whole book, your book on theological triage, really in most of the theological debates between Christians, there’s three kinds of ways we could categorize doctrine or practices. There’s doctrine and practices that are permissible, obligatory, and forbidden. And where we disagree is like, okay, what’s the manner for sorting doctrine and practice into those three barrels it seems like? I feel like you can … I guess I have two … I’ll say this question, I’ll get to the other question, I guess. I feel like more that the Catholic Protestant polemic in the ’80s and ’90s and 2000s was more like Catholics are preaching that which is forbidden and Protestants want to rescue people who are going to be damned by these practices.

(00:39:12):

But I feel like more when we have disagreements and I’ve seen more newer Protestant apologists, it’s more, I think the biggest concern is Catholics impose something to be obligatory that contradicts what should be a matter of Christian freedom. I think it’s shifted a little more in that direction or am I off base? No,

Gavin Ortlund (00:39:30):

I see what you mean. I think if people try to ask me in a nutshell, explain why you’re a Protestant and what your objections are to Roman Catholicism, it would be this sense of a bunch of stuff getting added on and made obligatory from my vantage point that doesn’t go back to the founding of Christianity and to divine revelation. So we have some agreement in that we think public revelation ceased with the death of the last apostle. So then going forward from that point, if there’s stuff that starts to accumulate and starts to come into the picture well after that time, and then it is made obligatory, those would be the concerns. It’d be this sense of we’ve got Christianity and then we’ve kind of layered several things on top of it. Now, to critique my own side, a lot of Protestants come along and we’re pendulum swinging in the other direction, and so we’ve chopped off so much.

(00:40:28):

And so the quip to be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant gets traction because it makes a lot of sense because a lot of Protestants don’t practice something very historical. But I don’t know that that’s a refutation of Protestantism as a whole, but just trying to say, I understand you can go in the other direction too far.

Trent Horn (00:40:44):

Yeah, because I think what’s interesting here, I think it’s the obligatory nature because for example, with the Eastern Orthodox, I find a lot of things I disagree with them. I don’t disagree with them even in substance. It’s just they’re about, for example, whether Mary was taken bodily and soul into heaven. Most of them, I’d say, would affirm that. They just call it the door mission, as we call it the bodily assumption. Their concern is about being bound to believe something by an ex- cathedral statement made in 1950 and having the theological requirements of this is defeat a dogma, whereas I think the Orthodox would prefer things to be a bit less categorized, more mystical, more of a mystical cabinet of doctrine that we … Let’s not be as strict about what has to do. But the dormition

Gavin Ortlund (00:41:30):

Is in their liturgy, from my understanding.

Trent Horn (00:41:32):

So

Gavin Ortlund (00:41:33):

They shouldn’t be as reactionary against that issue as they are

Trent Horn (00:41:36):

Today. And I think so even with … I’m sure if a Protestant said, “Hey, I have a really high myriology and yeah, it just happened. I think Mary’s body and soul aren’t in heaven.” I don’t think you would even have a problem with that. It’s more the question of it binding the consciences of other people.

Gavin Ortlund (00:41:53):

That’s right. Yeah, I think you’ve hit on the Nerve Center, like Mary’s assumption. I mean, we could put the question this simple to say, what is Christianity? And you and I can recognize each other. I would say you’re my fellow Christian, but I would say we have a different vision of where we set the boundaries

Trent Horn (00:42:08):

Because

Gavin Ortlund (00:42:09):

I would say the bodily assumption of Mary should not be a part of obligatory Christian belief. And that’s when I looked into, I have a whole chapter on that in my book on Protestantism, and I’m pretty persuaded. I don’t think it happened.That’s my issue is I don’t think it is true based upon the historical and biblical evidence. So you can understand the binded … I mean, a sympathetic Catholic viewer could understand. From my vantage point, I grew up as a Protestant, came to faith at a wonderful, healthy church. So if someone wants to say to me, “Gavin, you need to come into Catholicism to get the fullness of the faith.” The dilemma I have is, well, that would mean accepting all these things that I don’t, in fact, in my heart believe are true. And that’s the dilemma that it puts on if you’ve got stuff that’s in the obligatory category.

Trent Horn (00:43:00):

Yeah. And I think that this oftentimes am I apologetic, and I don’t know if this is annoying to people, and maybe it is, but I’m not trying to score points to be polemical or be cheeky, but I often make comparisons when people will lob an objection to me, “Here’s why I don’t want to be Catholic, and the reason is X.” I found I often find parallels between that and people who say, “I don’t want to be Christian because of X.” And so they may say, “Well, I could be Christian, but I am just convinced this particular doctrine is false and I can’t wrap my head around it. ” So for example, you might meet someone who says, “I couldn’t be Christian because I don’t believe in the traditional doctrine of hell, eternal conscious torment.” And there’ll be like, “I am just headstacked.” They could say, “That can’t possibly be true.” Now, what’s interesting though is from a Protestant perspective, you guys give yourselves a little more breathing room because you might say, “Well, you could still be a Christian, you just might have a different view on hell, or would you?

(00:44:03):

“

Gavin Ortlund (00:44:03):

I would say that to be a Christian is to be in submission to Christ. And I mean, my short answer on this comparison is I would say Jesus taught hell, but he didn’t teach the bodily assumption of Mary and we’d bring in the apostles and others too. So I would say we should be willing to submit in our theology to Christ. To follow Christ means in my life, I’m following him, but also in my thoughts and my worldview. So if Jesus teaches something, and that’s why I believe in hell, I struggle emotionally with that idea.

Trent Horn (00:44:36):

It’s

Gavin Ortlund (00:44:36):

Terrifying, but I submit because Jesus, my savior taught that. But I would say the bodily assumption of Mary, the difference there is I don’t see it. So it comes to the question of where do we locate authority to demarcate

Trent Horn (00:44:50):

The

Gavin Ortlund (00:44:50):

Obligatory?

Trent Horn (00:44:51):

Well, would you say that someone can be a Christian and be an annihilationist or have conditional immortality?

Gavin Ortlund (00:44:57):

I would, but not if they said, “Well, I know Jesus taught eternal conscious torments, but I just don’t want to submit to Jesus, so I’m going to believe in annihilationism.” So I don’t think that works.

Trent Horn (00:45:11):

This is like when people … Sorry, sorry, that was loud. It’s like when people ask me, “Well, you saying that I’m not going to go to heaven because I’m not Catholic?” Well, if you believe that Jesus did establish the Catholic Church and it has his authority, but you just don’t want to be Catholic because you really still want to use contraception, you can’t get over that, then yeah, I would say your soul is in jeopardy. But if it’s because you have moved your mind and will to try to accept Catholic doctrine and there is some kind of intellectual barrier you feel like you cannot in good faith get over, it’s different. So I think it’s like the vincible, invincible ignorance kind of. It’s like, what is motivating the lack of faith? Is it just some sort of cognitive hurdle one can’t get over or is there more of a selfish motive hiding beneath the cognitive reasons?

(00:46:04):

That’s always hard to tease out, right? Is it purely intellectual belief or is the sinful self using rationalization? That’s always hard to tease out,

Gavin Ortlund (00:46:12):

Right? Right. Yeah. And with the annihilationism versus eternal conscious torment issue, I just see that as one where people can be sincere in coming to either of you. I see. So someone can be a sincere, they’re attempting to follow Christ. I just did a dialogue on this because after Kirk Cameron put out comments about this, I’m sure you watched this unfold, everyone was thinking about annihilationism, so he had a

Trent Horn (00:46:36):

Dialogue- Is he just unsure about it or has he kind of moved over on it? I

Gavin Ortlund (00:46:41):

Don’t know. I think he’s exploring it. I think he would say it makes a lot of sense to him, but I don’t think he’s committed to it, is my sense. I haven’t asked him recently, but he put together a dialogue that I have to be

Trent Horn (00:46:52):

Part of, so I’ve

Gavin Ortlund (00:46:52):

Been thinking

Trent Horn (00:46:53):

About- He’s going to write a book about why he’s an annihilationist. Fireproof, why I don’t believe in hell. Did you ever see that movie? Did you ever see it?

Gavin Ortlund (00:47:00):

Yeah, many years ago. Yep.

Trent Horn (00:47:01):

Oh, man. Catholics and Protestants, you guys rock on just general graphic design and welcoming churches. I still think Catholics have the edge in some of the film area. Well, the Catholics that let their creative juices flow, so they’re almost over … Mel Gibson. I guess that’s just the one I’ll put out there. But I love those older … I forget the name of the company that put them out, but it was Facing the Giants, Fireproof, the one with the police officers. It’s like they’re always trying to hammer the message India, but it was really entertaining because I grew up with growing pains. So if you put Kirk Cameron in anything, except for the Saving Christmas movie. I have not seen that one. Dude, it is a hilarious mess. So if you want just a hilarious bad movie night. I

Gavin Ortlund (00:47:56):

Will say, I mean, there are many things Catholics generally do better than Protestants at. I think the arts is one of them. Literature, for example, with the exception of C.S. Lewis, but-

Trent Horn (00:48:08):

We got half of them. I feel like we almost had him.

Gavin Ortlund (00:48:10):

C.S. Luis?

Trent Horn (00:48:10):

Almost.

Gavin Ortlund (00:48:11):

I don’t think so. He was pretty clear in articulating his reasons, I think that we can talk about that.

Trent Horn (00:48:17):

One can always hope. It’s interesting, yeah, because he talked about, he liked purgatory, he just didn’t like the Romish version of it, but he understood the idea of sanctification after death being a possible painful necessity for some people. Right,

Gavin Ortlund (00:48:33):

Right. Yeah. And he would say that’s not purgatory proper, I think, because it doesn’t have the temporal punishment and that kind of thing. But I love Kirk Cameron. He’s such a great guy, and I love the fact that he’s trying to get good debate on that issue. But I have friends who are very good exegets who come to an annihilationist view, and I don’t think they’re failing to submit to the text. I think that’s a legitimate interpretational difference, even though I don’t agree with their view of that.

Trent Horn (00:49:00):

Sure. Well, I think, so when we go back, I think that’s where it’s all going to slot into permissible, obligatory, forbidden and raising the bar for the bodily assumption of Mary. For me, I guess the way that I would look at it is when I read Stephen Shoemaker’s book, for example, on Mary’s Assumption, I think the ultimate conclusion that he reaches is that the historical evidence is just too cloudy and removed to reach a firm judgment on the origin of the doctrine after he’s sorted through everything. So I think for me, a lot of times we’ll be in a position where we can’t use the historical sciences to back buttress or externally prove a doctrine. We’re going to have to rely on the ultimate authority to confirm it for us. I guess my closest parallel for me might be seeing how if you hold a biblical inerrancy and you’re going to hold that certain biblical events did happen or certain prophecies were fulfilled, even though Dan McClellan gives you a super hard time about it with what the scholars say about, at the end of the day, step back and say, “Well, maybe I can’t fully explain or prove this, but I believe this is the word of God and it affirms this.

(00:50:12):

And I believe what the word of God says.” I think for many Catholics, we’re in a similar … It’s a similar element, though I don’t think it says hopeless or requirement. I don’t believe obliging my belief that Mary was assumed into heaven would be the church obliging me to believe that Native Americans or the descendants from Semites who went over to the New World and that Jesus appeared there, things like that. Sorry, Jacob, we’ll have you out soon and we can talk about that too, but reference to Jacob Hansen, our mutual Mor menopologist friend. You guys chatted about the Trinity, right?

Gavin Ortlund (00:50:46):

Yeah, we had a good dialogue. Yeah, I like Jacob. Yeah, that was the famous Cynthia versus Sally metaphor that came out that was just on the spot, but I was trying to make the point. It matters whether you’re worshiping this God versus a different God. I mean, if you worship the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, that makes a difference. And that’d be a good example of one where I think we’d have agreement on the obligatory nature of the Trinity at this point in terms of just being responsive to God’s revelation. So in my book on triage, I give the Trinity as a first rank issue, something that demarcates what is distinctively Christian. And that’s one where the kind of classical theism. Some of these areas we have a lot of common ground would be doctrine of God, classical theism, classical Trinitarianism. Those are things Catholic and Protestant have a lot of mutual interest in.

Trent Horn (00:51:38):

Do you think classical theism is up there with the Trinity?

Gavin Ortlund (00:51:42):

No, not all the issues in classical theism as first rank, just that we have it in common.

Trent Horn (00:51:48):

Oh, sure, of course. Yeah. Because I was about to say, I remember when I went to the Capturing Christianity Conference many years ago, once again, this is where I find it just so funny that there’s not as many Catholics out there debating atheists, and I want to see more of that. Cameron had a Protestant who was going to debate an atheist, who’s going to debate Ben Watkins, and he couldn’t do it. So he came to me and was like, “Hey, do you want to debate Ben on the existence of God?” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s going to be super fun.” And I came and it was a bunch of Protestant speakers. Atheism was the conference theme. And we did a panel with all the Protestants who were there and someone asked, “What do you guys believe about the doctrine of God? How many of you believe that God is timeless?” And it was just me and one other guy.

(00:52:29):

It must have been nine other people did not affirm the timelessness of God. Maybe

Gavin Ortlund (00:52:34):

The word timeless threw them off. I don’t know, but it’d probably be the same if you said, “How many of you believe God is simple or impassable?”

Trent Horn (00:52:42):

It

Gavin Ortlund (00:52:43):

Probably would’ve been

Trent Horn (00:52:44):

The same. No, I think even if I went through and explained it and I said that to God, all moments of time are present immediately to him. God does not progress through time one moment at a time like us. I think they deny it.

Gavin Ortlund (00:52:59):

You might be right. I mean, that would be an area where, yeah, in my neck of the woods especially, because I defend evangelicalism as well. I’m talking to our, we’re going to see our mutual friend, Redeem Zoomer later.

Trent Horn (00:53:10):

Yeah.

Gavin Ortlund (00:53:10):

He’s one where he and I will have differences on those kinds of issues, but I have to admit-

Trent Horn (00:53:15):

Does he differ on … I wonder, I haven’t asked him about the doctrine

Gavin Ortlund (00:53:19):

Of God. I got to have him back in here. Don’t imagine he would. I bet he’d be with us on that. But I was just going to say evangelicals, that’s a weak area for us. We’ve really fallen away from lowercase Catholicity in those areas. So that’s one of the things I’m trying to do is rehabilitate classic Protestant approaches to something like divine simplicity.

Trent Horn (00:53:38):

Well, because you’re seeing, because you go out and you’ve engaged people like Joe Schmidt and Majesty of Reason and a lot of other high level people who engage the theistic arguments. And I think you would probably agree with me that classical theism gives us a much more workable framework to engage that stuff.

Gavin Ortlund (00:53:58):

A thousand percent. Yeah. If, for example, just divine simplicity, so if you’re talking about the fine-tuning argument, on the front end, you might think, oh, I just need to be a really good scientist to make this argument. But you get into it and you realize, I actually need to understand divine simplicity because the response is going to be, well, the multiverse option is “simpler.” And usually the person will misunderstand the idea of divine simplicity, and that’s what Richard Dawkins does. And so when I engage that argument, so that’s one of the appeals I make to my fellow evangelicals is these doctrines are there for a reason. And when you pull them out, divine simplicity is one of those that seems so strange at first, but as you get going, you realize that’s actually pretty foundational for how we function, even just arguing for God’s existence.

Trent Horn (00:54:49):

Yeah, I think it’s important to be able to have that because without this foundation, you can easily … I mean, I’ve been watching debates recently where people get pressed by Mormon critics or atheistic critics about things like the incarnation or the Trinity, and they end up embracing heresy to try to get around … I was watching, oh, I think it was the debate between God logic and Jacob. They were talking about the incarnation and God logic, Jacob asked him, did Christ have a human mind? And he said, no, I think he said he only had a divine mind.

Gavin Ortlund (00:55:23):

Does Jesus have one mind or two? Here’s one divine mind. He has one divine mind.

Trent Horn (00:55:29):

But then this though, this gets back to my concern with the Catholic Protestant divide a little bit. I guess the question I was going to ask earlier, I had that two questions on my mind. Here was the second one. Some people have said that the material cause of the reformation was the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and the formal cause was the doctrine of sola scriptura. So I don’t know if that’s how you might hash it out also, that it’s the authority question we’re ultimately getting back to, even if we start on something like, how is a person justified?

Gavin Ortlund (00:56:05):

Yeah, I think that seems right to me. Yeah, I’ve used those terms before as well, material and formal. Colloquially, I’ll put it, the justification is the what and solo scriptura is the how that are at issue there. But then with that second issue, authority, sola scriptura, that just opens the floodgates open because implicit within that are all these other disagreements that then come up. So when we’re debating icon veneration and praying to the saints and things like this, it comes down to authority. And that’s why people say, “Oh, why are there always debates about sola scriptura?” But solo scriptura versus its various alternatives to me is kind of an important issue that makes sense to have debates about because that is the lever that’s going to determine how you start to function when you’re addressing all these other issues. We’ll do debates on icon veneration, but it really is going to kick back to how do you measure the valid developments from invalid ones?

Trent Horn (00:57:03):

Well, yeah, because I was thinking about, we’ve gone back and forth on icons. And for example, I blurbed a book written by Newsome Orthodox on evidence for icon veneration before the Council of Nysea. And I just said that it was a well-researched book that would profit anyone who would read it. And it’s important to look at all of that evidence. But at the same time, I do not hold to the view that the apostles venerated icons. I do not think St. Luke painted an icon of Mary. I would say that this is something that developed over time and that as this practice of creating images developed, there’s a question that people have to wrestle with. Is this okay or is it not okay? I would say looking at the early, even the anti-Nicine evidence, I don’t really see authors who embrace the view that you and many other Protestants would hold, which is that images are permissible for decorative and instructional purposes, but not for veneration, or that the problem with images is that they violate the second commandment.

(00:58:16):

Really, it seems more like when I look at especially these early writers, it’s more like philosophical disagreements they have rather than going straight to the second commandment. I don’t know. I guess for me where it’s like I see the development, I don’t see the Protestant view early either. It’s just a whole new thing for them that everyone’s trying to wrestle with.

Gavin Ortlund (00:58:35):

Interesting. Yeah. Well, first of all, I think that the tendency of Roman Catholic apologists and scholars to argue for a development, I think that’s a better case

(00:58:46):

Than the Eastern Orthodox claim of absolutely unchanging- Historical continuity. And honestly, some of the Orthodox will agree with that too, especially if you get off the internet and get into the scholarship and so forth. So I think that’s a better way to argue. I do think early on, I mean, you see from the archeological data, you’ll find just art on pottery, Christian pottery and in the catacombs. And so you find people using art. I think that’s pretty there. And I think Finney’s book, F-I-N-N-E-Y, kind of gives us some of that, goes through some of that data. But I think the issue that comes in is just how is it being used? And I think that’s where the debate really falls.

Trent Horn (00:59:27):

But then I think, so we go back to Solo Scriptura. We say, okay, Protestants say, “I want to have Solascriptur. I want this to be my ultimate authority.” But I’ve always noticed that it can turn into one of two extremes because we’re always trying to set those guard … It’s kind of like we’ve got the funnel and it drops things into the three barrels, permissible, obligatory, forbidden because you could say … It’s almost like epistemology. It’s like, I want to have true beliefs. So you could have an epistemology that’s super skeptical and like, yeah, I have a bunch of True beliefs. I have some true beliefs, but I was super skeptical, so I locked out a bunch of true beliefs because I got too scared about them. Or you could have an epistemology that’s overly gullible. So when I look at beliefs, when I look at … How should I put it here?

(01:00:14):

Frameworks for doctrine with solo scriptura. I think there could be two similar extremes there where it’s like you could either say, oh, you can believe whatever you want as long as it doesn’t contradict scripture. And that’s almost a position a Catholic could hold where it’s like doctrine is … And we’re just talking about permissibility of doctrine, not obligatory. It’s permissible to believe as long as it doesn’t contradict scripture.

Gavin Ortlund (01:00:38):

How would the assumption fit into that? Earlier, because that was the example we brought up earlier, the assumption of Mary. Wouldn’t that be obligatory even though it’s not?

Trent Horn (01:00:46):

Right. I’m just saying that if you had a view that it’s at the very minimal, it’s permissible or praying or seeking the intercession of the saints, that it’s a permissible thing. You could have a view that … And I think when I see Protestants talk about solo scriptura, there’s going to be two flavors here that it’s just scripture just says, as long as it doesn’t contradict scripture, it’s at the very least permissible. But then there’s the other side that says it’s only permissible if it’s in scripture. And that can get you things like the cessationism debate. Have divine charisms, things like that? Have they continued? I mean, there’s people who don’t celebrate things like Christmas or lent, or lent might be an example. Well, it’s not in scripture, so we’re not going to do that. We’re only doing things that we find in scripture. So I think at least when it comes to those things being permissible and forbidden, obligatory is a big difference here.

(01:01:42):

We’ll start with just permissible and forbidden. Do you see where it could get stretched too far in those directions where it might be concerning?

Gavin Ortlund (01:01:48):

Oh yeah. Yeah, because I probably want to put it somewhere in between those two, but something like the assumption of Mary looks to me like that’d be … And there’s just been this debate about how do you define solo scriptura? And I still am convinced saying only infallible rule is a good shorthand.

Trent Horn (01:02:06):

I saw you had some videos about that recently.

Gavin Ortlund (01:02:09):

It all comes down to the same thing in the end. It’s just different words being used in different ways, I think. So that’s your basic definition, that this is the chief north star. This is the only rule that is never itself normed. So I have other rules of faith. If I denied the Trinity, I would lose my ordination credentials. I’d be barred from the Lord’s supper at my church. I am submitting to that doctrinal structure I’m under, but those structures are themselves underneath scripture. They’re not ultimate and infallible. So what that results in is we’d say something like the assumption of Mary. We’d say, well, wait a second, this is now obligatory. And I guess I want to clarify in the assumption of Mary, people always say, well, you’re just saying because you don’t have enough documentary evidence or you’re following secular historical standards and it doesn’t come out.

(01:03:01):

But it’s not really that as much as just, I would just say the evidence is positively suggestive against it, not just from one’s real strict methodology.

(01:03:10):

So only infallible rule is going to say, wait a second, what reason, if it’s not in scripture, we would just need some alternative reason then to believe in it. For me, for someone to understand where I’m coming from, it’d be like if somebody, if you didn’t grow up in the Catholic Church or something like that and you were just coming at it and somebody said you had to believe that one of the other apostles was assumed to heaven, like Bartholomew or someone like that, you would say, “Well, I would just need a reason.” I mean, it’s fine if it’s not in the Bible, but I would just need some other evidence for it in order to, in my conscience, feel like I can ascent to that. And that’s the situation I get put in with the assumption.

Trent Horn (01:03:51):

I think the difference though between us would be, I do see other corroborating reasons. I think that you personally don’t find them high enough to clear the evidentiary bar. I find them to be coherent, like the absence of relics venerating Mary’s body where you have similar things for other apostles and saints and individuals like that. I think that’s very telling. I think the early quasi-Christian groups that seem to testify to this going back, it’s not just we have a blank slate until the fourth or fifth century, but I don’t want to get too down the route of just debating Mary’s assumption with you. I think this is going to go back to the bigger issue. The thing I’m more concerned about is what standard does something have to meet for it to be an obligatory doctrine upon Christians? Because then the concern will get us back into two extremes that it’s either like you don’t make anything obligatory, so people have freedom and then you become a unitarian or you make everything obligatory and you turn into some kind of crazy fundamentalist.

(01:04:56):

And so I think that finding that particular … And I know I’m not going to ask you to summarize your whole book or anything, but it does turn into that because it can’t just be like, oh, what’s obligatory is what the Bible teaches because we’re allowed to reasonably disagree about some things the Bible teaches. So it can’t be just be that. If you try to root it in history, well, you might say, I’d be more amenable if we had a lot of early first and second century historical sources, people talking about this, maybe you might say I’d be more open to it, I guess. But I worry with other doctrines though, like the doctrine atonement or original sin, there’s a lot of ambiguity about that till four or five centuries later about what’s true there. And I know you might say, “Well, those are doctrines on an event in history.

(01:05:46):

Did that event happen?” So I’m trying to think of a similar analogy. Another one I might think of might be even just the cessation of divine revelation in the first century. I know it’s not a strict event, but it’s something we say happened, even if there’s no single moment it happened.

Gavin Ortlund (01:06:05):

Yeah. With that one, it looks like you would just judge it consequent upon its occurrence because you’re saying this office of apostle was unique and there’s a unique time and that seems to … The uniqueness of the apostles seems to be taught in the New Testament. But I think you’re asking a fair question to me. I mean, and I will admit and concede, and I’m comfortable with this concession, that there is no neat formula for determining the first rank doctrines. I wouldn’t have written a book if it was like a slogan.

Trent Horn (01:06:38):

Yeah, if you could have put it on a brochure.

Gavin Ortlund (01:06:40):

Yeah. Here’s the first ranked doctrines in 30 seconds, you’ll have the answer in there. I mean, it’s a work of theological synthesis that you’re doing from the text of scripture, dialogue with the tradition, theological reasoning. So some things are going to be more obvious. If you deny the future bodily resurrection, we can rule that one out pretty quick because it’s targeted in the New Testament because Paul says, “Himeneus has left the faith when he teaches this. ” Also, you could just look at that. So in the book, I give these criteria of how doctrines affect the gospel, but I guess sometimes I feel as though ambiguity, which Protestants do have to admit there’s ambiguity here is thrown against us as though, well, that’s a refutation of your system. So I’ll find people say, “Well, people who adhere to solo scriptura disagree with each other about the essentials of the faith, therefore solo scriptura is debunked.” And I think I’d want to say, “Yeah, we disagree, but that doesn’t necessarily debunk solo scriptura.” You can believe it’s the unique and fallible rule and just say, “Yeah, but there’s going to be disagreements along the way.”

Trent Horn (01:07:48):

I think my retort to that would be the debunking would only happen, I think, because I had my debate with Anthony Rogers and he took a thicker definition of solo scriptura than you did in our debate because you’re just debating on the only infallible rule. And I asked him, “What do you mean by solo scripture?” And he says, “Westminster section one, paragraph six through 10.” I’m like, okay, that gives me a lot to work with, including a very robust sufficiency of scripture. And I do think of theological disagreement on really important issues, I find that to have a lot of tension with the doctrine of the sufficiency of scripture if that results from it. So I might not debunk might not be the word I throw out. I think at the very least, for me, it creates a nervous uneasiness. One should not just stuff into a drawer.

(01:08:43):

I think that there’s the difficulty there. I always find it interesting when we talk about unity and having, Paul says, “One faith, one baptism. How do we establish that unity?” I’m going to be honest with you, I’m really grateful for the Catholic Ecclesial system. It’s just so interesting that we’ll have within Lutheranism, Anglicanism, Methodism, and even among Baptists, these large communions that disagree on very important things, even can women be pastors, can two men be married, abortion, things like that. But in the Catholic world, it’s like we have these really, really tiny split aways, like the old Catholic church, but it’s negligible because I think there’s this idea, and we have a lot of dissenters even in the ranks, no doubt there, but I think they kind of feel like, well, if I leave, if I’m not under the Pope, it’s just not Catholicism anymore.

(01:09:41):

And I think that can be difficult within more Protestant bodies of saying, “Oh, but if I leave, it’s not Lutheranism anymore. It’s not Baptists anymore.” But of course, that was a big disagreement you and Radeem Zummer had recently a little bit kind of. Because what’s funny there is I sort of in that disagreement, I would kind of see myself siding with you a bit because he’s like, “We got to keep these main lines together. Even if they are preaching heresy, we can’t just flee from the church.” And I think you had a line, it was like, I’d rather have orthodoxy and the sewer than heresy and the cathedralThat’s a good one. But I mean, because there for me, for me as a Catholic, I’d be like, “Yeah, I feel that way about the church because I think it’s got this infallible authority.” So it’s like for me, if the church is fallible, it gives a lot more grounds for someone like you to say, “Hey, it’s lost its way, man.

(01:10:35):

It’s lost its way.”

Gavin Ortlund (01:10:36):

I

Trent Horn (01:10:36):

Don’t

Gavin Ortlund (01:10:37):

Know. Well, this doesn’t answer what you’re bringing up here, but just one thing to remind viewers to keep in mind is when we do compare Catholic to Protestant, it’s a little bit apples to oranges

Trent Horn (01:10:47):

Because

Gavin Ortlund (01:10:48):

The Protestants have a lot more diversity among each other. But if you were to narrow in one tradition, but this is why it doesn’t fully answer your question. So let’s say we compared the Presbyterians to the Catholics instead or something like that, you still have a point- PCA? Yeah, exactly. You still have a lot of diversity and disagreement. So that’s a fair critique. I’ve always said the best argument against Protestantisms, against Protestantism I think is disunity and I think is the fragmentation impulse. So if someone were to say, “Well, why don’t you think that’s a decisive knockdown objection?” I think one thing I’d observe is I don’t know that I see in the other direction the solution because when I look at the magisterium over time, I see similar tensions. So I say 800 years ago, the way no salvation outside the church was construed by most people at the street level, I’ve read the history of that doctrine versus today, it looks like a similar disagreement, but instead of the liberals versus the conservatives alive at one time, it’s just the medieval to the modern and the doctrine seems like … So I’m like, it doesn’t seem to me that you can get out of that reality of disagreement about fundamental

(01:12:06):

Issues. I just think

Trent Horn (01:12:07):

That- Well, I think the problem you’re bringing up seems to be like you’re saying, okay, you’re correct. There’s synchronist disagreement among Protestants, but you’re concerned about diachronist disagreement and Catholicism. So sincronis, disagreement across the same time in different places, but you say, “But wait, Catholics have diachronist disagreement if you were to look at it from a four-dimensional space time perspective.”

Gavin Ortlund (01:12:32):

Big words. Put those words in the thumbnail, it’ll increase the views.

Trent Horn (01:12:36):

But it’s this idea you’re saying, you’re criticizing us for disagreement, but you have disagreement too. It’s just oriented in a different direction.

Gavin Ortlund (01:12:43):

I think that’s one appeal. I mean, in general, I guess I’m just … And with this objection, I think I actually probably need to sit with it more to really digest it, if that makes sense, because for some reason it doesn’t trouble me as much, but maybe that’s my flaw, but I just don’t see the reality of disagreement as so damning to the system. I see it as a function of human error and finitude. It doesn’t invalidate the system. It might invalidate the individuals who are functioning. And again, it’s not just the diachronic unfolding. Even today, I mean, when I ask Catholics about what do I have to believe to be saved and am I saved?

Trent Horn (01:13:27):

I

Gavin Ortlund (01:13:28):

Get different answers. So I don’t know that there is as much clarity. Now, that’s referencing street level what a Catholic might say, but that’s the same thing with Protestants

Trent Horn (01:13:38):

A lot of times. And I feel like as a Catholic, one of my, not an argument per se, but a way of sorting out the evidence even for myself, it’s not that my worldview has to be without flaw. It’s just that it just has the least flaws. It is not without problems. It just has the least problems because I think at the end of the day, we have a forced option. We should believe some overarching worldview and not just be straight up nihilists. So there’s a lot to pick from. And if you try to make a consistent one, each one’s going to have its varying problems. And if you try to wait until you can find a worldview that doesn’t have any problems, you’re just going to be perpetual agnostic, which has its own problems if you really stopped and thought about it. So it’s kind of like that old joke.

(01:14:23):

It’s like, if you and your friends are running away from a bear, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you have to be faster than your friend to get away from him. So I see something … When I look at the different systems, I think my biggest issue, and actually, oh yeah, well, actually I’m going to send this to you and a few other Protestants because I know Redeem Zoomer, he did an episode. It was like 73 reasons I’m not Catholic. And I’m like, I only need one reason that I’m not Protestant. And it does go back to the authority question, but it really goes back to, for me, I call it the Gap problem. It’s like I look at history to get to the Jesus rose from the dead, and then I’ve got the normative rule for the New Testament church is a 27 collection of books and letters that are the inspired word of God that are inherent.

(01:15:16):

And so it’s like, I need to get over that gap. Either the Bible tells me it will be that. Church fathers looked back and said it would be that. It’s about crossing that gap sort of. And I’ve found some difficulties there. One difficult to be like, we talk about scholarship, for example. I think you’ve done great work bringing scholarship in and Catholics have to wrestle with, hey, when it comes to antiquity of some of our prayers or looking at the question of how many presbyters were in Rome in the first century, we got to really wrestle with this stuff. I feel like though Protestants have to wrestle with things too. I guess my thing, I would be peeved if it’s like we’re going to unload the scholars on the Catholics, but then it’s like, well, why do we believe in this stuff? Well, Paul tells us all scripture is inspired and Peter tells us no prophecy came about by man’s own inspiration.

(01:16:10):

And then I say, well, most of the scholars say Paul didn’t write two Timothy and Peter didn’t write second Peter. What do we do if it was just some guy in church history that said that? So I guess for me, it’s like either we’re going to aim the canons of scholarship. We should just be equal where we point those bad boys.

Gavin Ortlund (01:16:29):

It’s a totally fair point. And I think with scholarship, it’s never been my tune that you just kind of blindly yield to scholarship. I actually like engaging the scholarship as just a way to frame questions to say, “Here’s what the scholarship says. Why do they say that? ” And then you get into the evidence.

Trent Horn (01:16:49):

Sure.

Gavin Ortlund (01:16:49):

I also think scholarship for all its imperfections, it at least has some checks and balances, whereas online stuff has far less. But I will say with each particular issue and topic, I think we do have to think critically, and I think there are some reasons why I’m going to push back against scholarly claims about authorship more so than something like what these various scholars are helping us think about how images are being used in the 500s and things like this. And the reason is authorship claims, I think there’s some assumptions in some of these conclusions that … I remember comparing different books of C.S. Lewis. I did this when I was in seminary. You compare all of his different books and you apply the same criteria that are used for various epistles of Paul, for example. And you come out with the conclusion, he couldn’t have written all these books.

(01:17:49):

There have to be other authors because

Trent Horn (01:17:51):

Look

Gavin Ortlund (01:17:52):

How different they are. But I think differences of genre and style and then using, I never know if I’m for sure pronouncing this word right, but an Emmanuencis thing is like

Trent Horn (01:18:01):

A person- Oh, a secretary.

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:02):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (01:18:03):

Yeah, I remember because Paul signs the letter at the end. He says, “Look how big my handwriting is because his eyesight was going a little bit.”

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:12):

So in some of his letters, it wasn’t Paul actually writing, it would be more dictating. So there’s factors like that that come in.

Trent Horn (01:18:18):

And then what was it? Sylvester was the emanusis for Peter, I think. It sounds very

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:23):

Familiar. I

Trent Horn (01:18:24):

Think so. Yeah. Which

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:24):

Gives more flexibility for the differences you might find in terms of style, which is one of the arguments against petrion authorship of two Peter. There’s also some anti-supernatural biases.

Trent Horn (01:18:35):

Second Peter though, but there’s other things that go in there like it sounds really similar to Jude. So it’s like that also gets cropped up in there. One of them seems to be using the other.

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:44):

Yeah.

Trent Horn (01:18:45):

So that’s the other issue.

Gavin Ortlund (01:18:47):

But I don’t know. I mean, to me, that wouldn’t necessarily rule out Peter as the author if there’s an influence there. But I would just say, I mean, again, it’s like when I’m looking at say, or another example would be the dating of books like Daniel. When is Daniel written? And I go against the scholarly majority view there because I think there’s anti-supernatural biases in it of being against predictive prophecy. So I’m not saying people have to just generally yield to the scholarship, but the fact that I have reasons why I think these particular scholarly claims may be wrong doesn’t mean I have to say, “Oh, I can’t learn from the scholarship on this other

Trent Horn (01:19:27):

Thing.” But I feel like sometimes, to be honest though, feel like I run into that too from my own perspective, like trying to talk about the origin of the office of Bishop. I sometimes when I read scholars, it seems like the evidence for the Episcopic, it’s always like, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Oh, it’s a novelty, but he would’ve said X or, oh, it couldn’t possibly mean this because the episcopic couldn’t have arisen this early. So I think maybe both of us deal with that. So maybe I think when Catholics and Protestants who are well-read and want to bring scholarship to the table, I think we should always have it as it’s supporting the arguments we’re making. It’s not necessarily a hammer we should use to thump each other over the head with because Christ didn’t give us the magisterium of the scholars.

(01:20:15):

He gave us at least one of our views of magisterial authority.

Gavin Ortlund (01:20:19):

Probably the two attitudes we want to steer lay Christians away from is number one, total uncritical acceptance of scholarship. And number two, a kind of cynical dismissiveness toward it. At the very least, scholarship should provoke curiosity. Yeah. You should say, why is it going that way? Because there’s something there. Now, you might disagree with the reasons why a scholarly consensus forms, but you at least want to have some humility to consider what it’s doing there in the first place, and so you can have an alternative explanation for that.

Trent Horn (01:20:48):

Yeah. I don’t think there was too many other … I mean, we could talk about all kinds of doctrinal questions all day. I don’t think I have too many others. Actually, there was one that popped up. I don’t mean to put you on the spot about it. Sure, sure. I mean, if you want to sing and you think about it more, that’s fine because I had a discussion with Bryce Crawford recently, and I think he holds to more of a credo Baptist view, but he’s thinking more about that. And I think it’s also important for people when they see the Catholic Protestant debate to, like we said earlier about disagreements, like baptism, that is not a Catholic Protestant issue.That is just a theological issue between those who would hold the regeneration, non-regeneration, or credo versus Pedo, I guess. I don’t want to say Pedo, I guess.

(01:21:35):

PAEDO. Pito baptism. A Pito baptist. Totally. Credo versus Piedo because you hold it to Credo baptism. So would you put Paido baptism as permissible or forbidden?

Gavin Ortlund (01:21:55):

I would say it is not the apostolic practice as I understand it. So I wouldn’t say it’s kind of like, well, fifty fifty, just take your pick. But I also think then it’s kind of like earlier talking about annihilationism, it’s that issue of, okay, suppose you judge something to be a departure from the apostolic practice, how high does it then rank up as an error and at what point does it cease to even be baptism at all? And so that then becomes a discussion. So I don’t think I would want to say that this is certainly not like a first rank issue or something like that, but I would say that it just looks to me, and this is the issue I get probably a fair amount of pushback on, but I just genuinely persuaded I got to follow the truth as I see it.

(01:22:45):

It looks to me like the earliest practice was to delay baptism until a person understands what’s happening and can articulate faith, but I don’t see that as a first rank issue that if you depart on this, it’s heresy or something like that.

Trent Horn (01:23:01):

Well, here’s where I get concerned because people will bring up and they’ll say, “Well, Tramp Protestants agree on essentials. They disagree on these tertiary doctrines, but at the end of the day, we agree on the most important things. Why are you was concerned?” I don’t know, because for me, salvation is a super important issue, obviously. And when it comes to credo baptism, here’s the thing, and I look at, and this is also the historical practice, what I wonder about. Here’s where I get concerned. I think I brought this up William Lane Craig, and he had just a fun, more cheeky response to it. My favorite is I think you told me when he said that Catholics and Protestants could get together well if Catholics just got rid of infant baptism. He’s just

Gavin Ortlund (01:23:37):

Swinging for

Trent Horn (01:23:37):

The

Gavin Ortlund (01:23:37):

Fences.

Trent Horn (01:23:38):

Winging for the fences there. And Jordan Cooper was behind the fence at his mitt to catch the ball, throw it right back at him. Where I worry about though in this, why it’s so concerning to me is what is the minimum age for credo baptism? Because that ties us up into questions of what is the minimum … Because if we say, well, in order to go to heaven, you have to have faith in Jesus Christ. It’s like that’s a basement foundational truth about Christianity. And then it becomes, well, what do we do though? How young does it go for … We can say, oh yeah, this seven-year-old, five-year-old, three-year-old has faith. And then where I get concerned, I brought this up with Bryce, and I’m sure that maybe I’ll air this. It’ll be on his show after. And it’s like for me, I’m really not trying to have a got you or anything.

(01:24:30):

I’m wrestling. I want everybody to get to heaven. So then I’m like, well … And it’s like we have little kids, so we can understand this. And it’s like sometimes your four-year-old can just be a jerk sometimes. It’s not infantile innocence anymore because if you disciplined a two-month-old baby, you would be an abusive psycho.

(01:24:53):

They are incapable of wrongdoing, but I can discipline my four-year-old, but that means if I can discipline them, that means they can do wrong. And if they can do wrong, they can sin. It would seem to me. I can’t think of wrongdoing that’s not sin really, even if it’s very minor. So then it’s like, oh, well, he’s a sinner. Well, he’s a sinner. He needs Jesus, but he’s only four. Can he know Jesus? Can he get baptized? Because when I look at the history of credo baptism in the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries, the youngest, rarely would be 12 or 13. Usually it’s like 17 or 18 people would be baptized. So I’m like, what do we do with these sinful kiddos? I don’t know.

Gavin Ortlund (01:25:33):

Yeah. Well, you mentioned three, five, and seven. I got a three, five, and eight-year-old myself and several others, so I’ve actively wrestled with this. I tend to take a view more on the younger side. And my theological rationale for that is let the little children come to me. I’m not going to withhold my child who wants to get baptized from baptism. So one of the last things I did in Ojai before we left our church there was baptized my three oldest kids. I can’t talk about it or I’ll start crying. It was so wonderful. But right now I’m treating my kids like catechumens and they are just in the process preparing for that. So my five-year-old and three-year-old, we talk about it all the time. I would probably daily. It’s actually really cool. One of my other kids will pray for Miriam to get baptized, and then I’m talking to her, so we’re in that process.

(01:26:19):

So I think the stereotype, and I know there’s disagreements here, but there are some common concerns and common ground. It’s not that we’re treating our children like pagans or something like that. To me, it’s, okay, you’re here, but I want you to experience this. So I’m preparing you for that. Your question is, what’s the right age?

Trent Horn (01:26:39):

You have a very long OCIA children’s CIA because we have OCIA is the right initiation for adults. And look, you’ve got something like that even your Baptist church to go on for years with children.

Gavin Ortlund (01:26:50):

Well, the early

Trent Horn (01:26:51):

Churches

Gavin Ortlund (01:26:51):

Sometimes do three years. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the right age, I don’t think there is one right answer because to me the answer is credible profession of faith. And I think the key adjective is credible. If a person is articulating faith in a way that gives testimony of sincerity and openness to Christ, because in some cases, someone could be handicapped in some way and be able to articulate faith very differently, but it could be a credible profession of faith. And I’ve seen baptisms like this,

(01:27:27):

But I just want my kids to experience that. I don’t want to have to tell them … One of the ways baptism is different from circumcision is it’s just this temporary application of water. And I want them, I don’t want to have to just tell them, “Oh, you got baptized.” This is not my main argument. It’s just an experiential piece to it. I want them to feel getting dipped under the water and pulled up in the name of the Trinity, and this is salvation. And on the baptismal regeneration stuff, I mean, people, that’s another one I need to return to to try to say, I believe baptism saves. It’s just a question of what do we mean by that? Because I would just say someone’s actually regenerated before they get in the water, and this is this public expression of that that’s constitutive of salvation and the process, but I don’t think they’re waiting to get regenerated until they get in the water, but that’s a whole separate thing.

(01:28:19):

But the point is I just want to wait for my kids to be ready.

Trent Horn (01:28:22):

Yeah, because I think for me, I’m trying to put all of this together so things are harmonious and make sense, especially because there are other people who will push it much later. I guess you could even say if you were to have a child who is in this catecumina program of yours or three or their four, and if they were to pass away, it’s like they weren’t old enough to have what we would call the faith that could be signified by baptism, but it’s like we talk about baptism of desire in the Catholic church for those who desired it. If you were an RCI candidate, you’re treated as someone who you would have a Catholic funeral because those graces, God’s already given them to you in foreign knowledge of knowing you wouldn’t receive the waters of baptism. But I wouldn’t treat that as a normative thing like how you describe baptism.

(01:29:10):

I see it as more like a vaccine. And so it’s like kid gets it as young as he is. So I guess my worry then in that debate and why it’s important is once again, you could stretch it too far. It’s like we push it like, oh, wait until they’re a lot older. And then it’s like, okay, but then we have this period where people are capable of wrongdoing, but we don’t think they’re capable of having the faith in Jesus where baptism can signify its saving. I worry about their salvation. If you go in the other direction, we drop it lower and lower and lower. Oh, as long as it’s a recognition, it’s almost like we’re almost including everybody. It’s like, just throw in the other little kids, just add them right there, we’re cutting at three or two. Well, I guess the way around that is Lutherans tend to talk about infant faith.

(01:29:57):

I don’t know if you’ve read them much about that.

Gavin Ortlund (01:29:59):

Yeah. Well, Dr. Cooper, someone we’ve both interacted with and appreciate, he and I have done dialogues on this, and the Lutheran view of baptism is very potent. I mean, they really emphasize baptism, but I’m with you on not delaying it on and on and on. That goes against Jesus’ words, let the little children come to me. But I just think my theology is that baptism and faith can’t be separated and that they belong together as both intrinsic and necessary to the act of salvation. And so the point is once you see faith, let’s bring them toward baptism. Yeah, I can’t remember what else I was

Trent Horn (01:30:43):

Going to say. No, I guess to tie it together, and I’ll tie my threads here because we could go on and on forever. I think it is fair for you, you say, “Well, I have concerns about Catholicism because I worry, does it have a divine charism to preserve doctrine when it appears to me what seem like developments are actually reversals or things that are more of a human tapestry than a divine unfurling?” And sometimes I can feel like Protestants like, “Well, I don’t have to worry about that because sola scriptura.” It’s just the contradictions a Protestant only has to worry about is an atheist says the Bible contradicts itself or something like that. Historical contradictions aren’t as big a problem. I think on the Protestant view, if you don’t hold the church to have infallibility, but I still think it’s something to wrestle with if you look at, well, there are developments in Protestant theology.

(01:31:39):

If you go and look at the minimum age for credo baptism, anyone under 12, I think that’s really only about 50 years old.

Gavin Ortlund (01:31:48):

Well, I think it’s very rare earlier.

Trent Horn (01:31:51):

I mean, I’ll send you the … I mean, we don’t have a ton of age data on it, but it’s very, very spotty to find things like that. So I’m just saying, I think we’re going to see each camp is allowed to see developments and understanding. I guess where it comes down to personality, what’s the authentic one and what slots it in?

Gavin Ortlund (01:32:14):

Right. What I was going to say a moment ago- Go ahead. … is with baptism and children is if someone’s out there watching and saying, “Gown, how can you not baptize your children? Aren’t you worried about their salvation?” I mean, I’d appreciate the concern in that sense, but I don’t take the view that God is going to withhold salvation from a person in that circumstance if they’re just the same as you described in your theology. So that’s part of what is on my mind when I’m thinking about

(01:32:43):

Treating my children like catechumens. But to your point here, development. Yeah, you’re right. Yeah, there’s developments in all of our traditions. The question is, how do you measure them? So Protestants shouldn’t think of themselves as looking at church history and it’s this stasis, just freeze frame. It’s like there’s development in our theology. Look at the modern era and just new challenges that have come up that have forced us to go to look at how we interpret Genesis one in certain ways. I’m not saying everyone was a literalist about that, but we have sort of changed in some things, geocentrism versus heliocentrism. That debate rocked things. I mean, we have to reckon with the fact that there’s change throughout church history. I think where the Protestant Catholic difference will come down to is how do you measure the changes? Which ones are the right ones? Which ones are the wrong ones?

(01:33:35):

What’s a valid doctrinal development? What’s invalid? And the Catholic system, for my respect for it, has a lot of sophistication and elegance. And if I would encourage Protestants to read John Henry Newman and his essay, because it’s very sophisticated, but that’s where the … And I think it gets right at the nerve center of the differences is how do you measure those developments? At the end of the day, I just want divine revelation to be the Trump card for everything. I just think a lot comes in along the way of church history

(01:34:10):

That is not obligatory to go to that bucket.

Trent Horn (01:34:15):

Sure. And I think where it’s going to end up, here’s what I think where it ultimately is going to cash out between the two of us. You’re worried that my system is going to oblige things that it shouldn’t. I’m worried that your system is going to excuse … I think a lot of cases either excuse things, sorry, make merely permissible what ought to be obligatory. The more concerning thing with me is not, your concerning thing is obligatory when there ought to be freedom. My concerning thing is excusing that which is forbidden. So for example, I was watching Allie Beth Stuckey put out a video showing … I was so sad. It was two dads adopted a baby probably through in vitro, egg donation, all that stuff. And the baby was asking for mama and they’re like, “No, mama here.” And I’m just like, that’s just sick.

(01:35:08):

That sick is depraved. It’s evil stealing a baby from their mother like this. This is horrible. This is a grave sin that cries out to God.This is something nobody should tolerate. I love that Pope Francis was like, “We need a worldwide ban on gestational surrogacy.” But then it becomes like we have divine revelation in the deposit of faith, but now we have these huge challenges that showed up 2000 years later that’d be so foreign to the eyes of the apostles. So then it becomes like, I just want a universal voice to be able for the church, capital C to be like, “The church’s united, we’re against this, but that’s, well, disagreements aren’t as big a problem.” Sorry, I don’t mean to throw a big emotional thing out. No. I’m getting older so I get sappier. Now when I see stuff with kids, I’m like, “That could be my kid.” I know.

(01:36:04):

And seeing in that, I think some things with bioethics and other things that are newer on the front, because I did an episode of my podcast talking about in the 1960s, evangelicals were not firmly even on board with abortion until the 80s. There were a lot of denominations that were very squishy on it because they said, “Well, it’s not explicit in scripture.” That’s where I get kind of worried.

Gavin Ortlund (01:36:29):

I just did a discussion with Lila Rose, whose pro- life work I really appreciate. And we had a very spirited disagreement about some things, but we also have so much common ground and I respect her a lot for her work. And we talked about these things. And I will say that on issues of the theology of the body and certain social issues, I think Catholics, that’s one of those areas where Protestants can look and say, “We’ve got a lot to learn here.” But just to clarify, to come back and close the loop against myself in a certain way, I wouldn’t want someone to leave this conversation thinking the only differences here are Gavin thinks Trent’s system adds on some things, Trent thinks Gavin takes some away.

Trent Horn (01:37:10):

Yeah, it’s more than

Gavin Ortlund (01:37:11):

That. But I mean, that’s one helpful way to approach the authority question, but I’ve gotten into trouble with this, so that’s why I want to clarify. Go right ahead. So we do have differences that touch upon just how we also just define the gospel and issues related to justification and things like that. Now, I don’t think those differences are so absolute that we can’t see each other as justified and so forth, but I’m just also saying-

Trent Horn (01:37:36):

But I just don’t see how they’re that different from a Lutheran or an Anglican who would say you are justified at baptism and then living a particular Christian life shows that you are … Well, even Lutherans believe you can fall away from the faith if you commit apostasy. That’s why I don’t think it needs to be that. I don’t know if that is big a wedge because I just find Protestant traditions that aren’t as far from us on that. So I don’t

Gavin Ortlund (01:38:05):

Know. The issue where this gave me pause and it made me slow down and say, wait a second, now I got to be really careful here, is when I was studying penance, Roman Catholic theology-

Trent Horn (01:38:17):

Oh, how to be rejustified.

Gavin Ortlund (01:38:19):

And just how do you walk through life knowing you’re forgiven? How does forgiveness actually happen for sins? So I guess I’m not saying we got to get into that. No, I

Trent Horn (01:38:31):

Know.

Gavin Ortlund (01:38:31):

I’m just flagging. There’s these issues too that are also really important, which is why we got to keep having these conversations.

Trent Horn (01:38:37):

Yeah. And I think when we talk about them, I think it will reveal that there’s certain branches of Protestantism that won’t have as much of a problem with this, that I do think there’s a lot of similarity there. But even they, I don’t think a lot of them, even branches that do have confession to a priest, I don’t think it’s used as normatively for being reconciled to God after grave sin as it is in Catholicism.

Gavin Ortlund (01:39:02):

I think so.

Trent Horn (01:39:03):

Yeah. But we do find it to be helpful, and that’s something to more explore. But like I said, well, we’ve gone around the circle with a lot. I guess, well, unless there’s anything else you want to ask me, I was just going to ask you if you had other future projects you want to work on. We could be … I don’t know, but it’s … We could talk

Gavin Ortlund (01:39:27):

For long periods

Trent Horn (01:39:29):

Of time. But look, but it’s funny. Some people might be like, “They didn’t make any progress. They didn’t own each other. They just talked in circles. Hey, come on. We’ve been talking about this for 500 years, and we’re probably going to be talking about it for a while.” But my biggest thing is what I want to try to do is I think we can at least find clarity and reach ends at the very least of seeing more of what we disagree about. I love just the idea like, oh, it’s about that overarching way of slotting in what we believe and or how we articulate the gospel. So I think that once we bring that in more, I think at the very least you and I, way we can serve people is you and I can say, “Hey, Jesus is God. He rose from the dead.

(01:40:14):

Believe in him to have eternal life and here is our traditions where they agree and disagree.” Look at that and pray to God and follow the Holy Spirit in that.

Gavin Ortlund (01:40:23):

That’s

Trent Horn (01:40:24):

Something we can both do.

Gavin Ortlund (01:40:25):

Right. And keep good relationship to have, because I agree with you. Patience and the dialogue over the years is healthy. It’s not compromised to just have conversations where you’re just chipping away. The issues are complicated. I mean, a question I could ask you to finish it here is imagine five years from now or four years from now, 2030, because you know how much happens in just a few years on the internet. What would success look like in Catholic Protestant relationships on the internet in four years? If things started going a lot better, how do you think the situation would look a few years down the road?

Trent Horn (01:41:05):

We would have a lot fewer Protestants saying that Catholics believe you’re saved by works and a lot fewer Catholics saying there are 38,000 Protestant denominations.

Gavin Ortlund (01:41:20):

Oh,

Trent Horn (01:41:20):

58

Gavin Ortlund (01:41:21):

Or 78. The number grows every

Trent Horn (01:41:23):

Time. Every time. I think success might be that we see, oh, they’re not throwing out the old false tropes. They genuinely, they could say, “This is what you believe.” Correct. That is what I believe. Okay, here’s why I have concerns about it that they could do that and not just straight up totally misunderstand the other person or even not even get to misunderstanding it. It’s just berating. Success more will not … Protestants telling Catholics, stop being pagans, Catholics being just really triumphuous and snotty about things like come home to Rome already. It’s just like, oh, I remember once, actually, I was invited by my friend, Randall Rouser, who’s a Protestant theologian up in Canada, and Randall asked me, I gave a talk to a Protestant seminary talking about Catholicism, and there were some more far right Catholics who had commented under it saying, “If the first thing, unless the first thing you say to them is, you heretics should repent and submit to the Holy Mother Church, I don’t have any respect for you.

(01:42:34):

” And I’m like, “You don’t do this very much, do you? Have you ever talked to someone who is not Catholic? It doesn’t quite sound like it. ” It’s kind of like when somebody watches an MMA fighter like, “Here’s what I would do. ” And they’re so overweight, they can barely get off the couch. They never lifted a weight in their life. It’s like, “Before you tell me how to do this stuff, I would like you to give it a shot and you tell me how it went.” I don’t know if you would feel the same way. Yeah,

Gavin Ortlund (01:42:59):

A thousand percent. I mean, it is really hard work. It’s harder than people realize to strike the right balance of striking truth and love. It’s really easy for love to get worn down because everything we’ve talked about about the tendencies toward escalation, but also it’s very hard to adorn the truth with grace and with wisdom and how we communicate it, but also to be robust in our arguments. So I agree with your answer and I would just say, yeah, if there was a way that, to me, a good metric of success is the non-Christian looking on who says these people disagree down to the roots on various issues and yet they’re not-

Trent Horn (01:43:39):

They love each other.

Gavin Ortlund (01:43:39):

Yeah, exactly.

Trent Horn (01:43:40):

They have love for each other.

Gavin Ortlund (01:43:42):

Exactly.

Trent Horn (01:43:42):

Even though they disagree. If we could have that, I would be happy with that. But it amazes me. Although what’s crazy, I think that people that despise me the most are the people who are the theologically closest to me.

Gavin Ortlund (01:43:54):

Yeah,

Trent Horn (01:43:54):

Me.

Gavin Ortlund (01:43:55):

Me too. Me too. Yeah. Yeah, it’s an interesting dynamic. And to be able to articulate the desire for love and charity is not compromise or weakness.

Trent Horn (01:44:05):

Yeah.

Gavin Ortlund (01:44:05):

That’s one of the sad things we see today. People think, oh, to call for charity is this kind of soft appeal. No, you have no idea how hard it is to love your enemies. Yeah. That takes all your curve.

Trent Horn (01:44:18):

It’s easy to hate people.

Gavin Ortlund (01:44:19):

Oh yeah. And yeah, it’s easy. So that’s what I would like to keep. And I’ve even thought, well, I’m in a season now with my content, you asked upcoming projects where I’m kind of going back to the drawing board on various things saying, okay, how do I approach things differently? I’m willing to keep adjusting in how I’m making arguments and how I’m functioning. I want to keep advocating. I mean, I want to keep doing the same basic things I’m doing, but if there’s a way to have dialogues and debates that convey something of you just feel as though Christ is present in it, that’s the goal. And I feel like I need to keep making changes to try to get more like that.

Trent Horn (01:44:58):

Yeah. I think success that I would see in five years from now if we’re doing the Protestant Catholic dialogue to me would be that there are less people who identify as being non-religious or atheist and identify as one of those camps and have gone from not knowing Jesus to now being theological seekers. That would be very successful to me. I would be very happy to see that, and that’s something we can work on together. And that’s why going back to what I said a while ago is I want more Catholics. I think it’s a little bit bogus sometimes if Catholics think, “Oh, well, the Protestants will get them to Jesus and we’ll give them to the church.” It’s like, no, our job is to present the fullness of the faith, the fullness of the gospel, the good news of God’s kingdom entering the world through the death of resurrection of his son.

(01:45:44):

And as a Catholic, that kingdom is fully manifested in the church, but it’s not like I just swoop in there when you do the hard work of bringing them to our Lord and Savior. We should all be doing that because the harvest is plenty, but the laborers are few. Need more.

Gavin Ortlund (01:45:58):

Yeah, absolutely. I love that. And another point of success would just be some clarity and progress and intellectual understanding. I’m appalled at how many caricatures there are in both directions, but just to criticize my own side, growing up, you hear all kinds of horrible caricatures of Catholics. I think a mark of progress is to say even short of agreement, you actually understand what the

Trent Horn (01:46:18):

Issues

Gavin Ortlund (01:46:18):

Are.

Trent Horn (01:46:19):

I think another thing I would be really successful is what’s hard on my end, and I’m a little jealous of you guys is evangelicals. Catholic is not really a sticky identifier term that evangelical is because people will go online and they’ll be like, “Evangelicals are the devout ones.” And the sociological data really does bear that out a lot, more likely to believe in pro- life, sanctity of marriage, core theological doctrines. If you compare evangelical to mainline, Catholic, everyone like that. Honestly, even like Orthodox, if you include global Orthodoxy, not the subset just in here in America and online also. But I think part of that is there’s a lot of people who will still call themselves Catholic, even though they stopped going to church. It’s like still being Irish. You never stop being Irish, you never stop being Catholic. There’s a lot fewer people who will call themselves an evangelical after they stop going to church.

(01:47:16):

They usually become something else. So I think part of that is I like that Catholicism has that long-lasting identity. I think, yeah, if you’re baptized, it’s an indelible mark. It’s always with you. So a part of it, I do believe it is because it’s more than just surface level, but that leads to the downside of when you meet someone who’s Catholic, it’s like, oh boy, who’d you end up meeting? But if you meet someone and they call themselves an evangelical, I can usually write out what they’re like. And there’s probably a 30% probability that this guy’s name is Caleb and he has a Bible study. And when he was younger, he listened to Relying K and all that stuff. And actually I made fun of that once in a YouTube video. And under the comments, the guy says, “My name is Caleb and I do have a Bible study, but I’m okay with that.

(01:48:00):

” That’s awesome. And that’s why I guess I’ll send you a script soon. It’s going to be five things Catholics can learn from Evangelicals. So that’s one there. Also, man, you guys are really good at just bringing people into church. I had to take my kids to a … Laura had an MRI and it was raining, so I couldn’t take him to a park. So I went to Prestonwood Baptist to their indoor playground. Dude, that thing is as big as a discovery zone. It was crazy. And you know what happened then? I get the emails and the phone calls inviting you to church. Catholics are real bad at that. Something to learn. So learning from each other, I’m really grateful, Gavin, that you were here. I think we learn a lot from each other. I think people can learn a lot from you as well.

(01:48:41):

That’s why I’ll link your channel in the description below. And yeah, I don’t know if you had any other thoughts, anything else to close anything out with?

Gavin Ortlund (01:48:47):

No, it’s great to be friends. Thanks for having me. Keep up the great work. And it’d be fun to periodically circle back and just do these kind of check-ins. And then in the meantime, you can still, we’ll do videos on arguing against each other,

Trent Horn (01:48:59):

But

Gavin Ortlund (01:48:59):

Just keep relationship along the way as we go.

Trent Horn (01:49:02):

I think so. And I hope that at the very least we can model for people how to have these theological disagreements. Although what would be nice is, because it’s not just you and I too. There’s other Protestants who might be on my fence and disagree with you, Protestants on your fence, with you that disagree with me. We’ll have to have a council of these people around the table at some point. So that would be a good conference actually. We have to get those five or six together. So we’ll work on that. All right. Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you all have a very blessed day.