My Conversation with a “Protestant Gentleman”

In this episode Trent sits down to be interviewed by “The Protestant Gentleman”.

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Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:00:32):

Trent, I’d be foolish to try to debate you of some sort in the theological frameworks. So today I want to have some fun. This is a big conversation that’s happening. Catholics versus Orthodox was Protestant. But there’s some stuff I’m genuinely curious about. I think there’s some stuff that people are genuinely curious about because I see it all in my comments. But this is just a conversation that I am excited to have. But some topics that I think you as a Catholic creator give such a good based, respectful analysis on so many different things. And so I just want to talk to you and ask you some questions that a lot of people are asking. But in a way that’s not trying to debate you because I know where I lie in that. I’ll leave that to Gavin or something, but I just want to be curious.

Trent Horn (00:01:35):

Well, even Gavin, I mean, Gavin and I have done debates and replies back and forth, but I think Gavin’s a really cool guy. He’s going to come into my studio in a few weeks actually just to sit down across from me. We have a lot to chat about because honestly, he and I, our channels are, in many respects, actually very similar to each other in our goals and methodology for trying to share the truth with people. And yeah, I want to just bring down the heat in all the different areas and really get the truth out there in a win some way.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:02:06):

Yeah. I can’t wait to talk to you about that because I think that was perfectly put. And I do watch both of your guys’ content to get two great perspectives, but in different camps on a particular topic, I find myself going back and forth between you two, so that’s funny. So I want to start a little light and then we’ll get into the hard stuff. So just a little volleyball tip over. Is the Catholic church the one true church and me as the Protestant gentleman, a true Protestant through and through, am I damned to hell in a, what is it? Hand hell into a basket, whatever it’s called. You’re going to hell in a hand basket.

Trent Horn (00:02:41):

Hell in hand basket, hell in a hand basket damned hell in a hand basket. That’s a good phrase

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:02:44):

Right there. Is that me? Is that me, Trent? Just a little softball for you.

Trent Horn (00:02:49):

Sure. And I think the question, the response that I would give might be similar to a response that you might give to a non-Christian. Someone says to you, now they’re, am I going to hell in a hand basket if I don’t believe in Jesus? Now, there are some Protestants who would say, “Oh, absolutely. Yes, you 100% are. You and everybody else who never knew Jesus, even a 10-year-old Native American girl living 600 years ago who could not have possibly known Jesus, she’s going to hell for sure.” But I think many Protestants I speak to don’t hold to that few. They hold to the possibility of salvation for those, even if they don’t have full knowledge of the means of salvation that Christ gave us. I think many Protestants hold to that view, an inclusivist to you of salvation where it’s possible, but not guaranteed. And I would say the same thing.

(00:03:36):

To someone who is not Catholic, you are a Christian, you are baptized. And so in that respect, you do have an imperfect union with the body of Christ, with Christ Church. The Catholic Church teaches that the Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic church. So it has its enduring hierarchical visible identity. And the Catholic church has maintained continuity for 2,000 years through the succession of bishops going all the way back to the apostles, but we don’t deny that other baptized Christians are connected to the body of Christ though in imperfect ways and connected to the church in imperfect ways. So we desire for all Christians to be in perfect communion with the church that Christ established. And so there is a possibility of salvation for anyone who doesn’t have the fullness of what God has revealed. God will judge that person based on how they responded to what was revealed to them.

(00:04:32):

Did they lazily or maliciously reject the truth or did they sincerely seek after the truth and respond to God’s grace? And I do think though that many, many people, when they respond to the grace that God has as present for them in the Catholic church, I’ve seen many people respond though by saying, “You know what? I think that this is where I’m called to be home.” So I would say it’s possible, but it never hurts to fully come home. Something to think about.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:05:01):

It is something to think about, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot. That’s why I ask. So I would consider myself the man of the people. So I’m like a more common sense logic type of guy. And so when I hear that, I listen to these podcasts, I read these books, I went to seminary, I did the thing, I heard all the big words, I heard the arguments. And for me, it comes back to common sense. What you said there was yes, but no, which is what the Protestant church would say. And so where I’m going with this is to me, if it’s like all the way, yes, I think there’s something there. I truly think out of everyone, the Catholic church has the best argument and the best, I would say logical consistency of being the one true church if they go all in.

(00:05:48):

But to me, it’s if you even give a little inch there, then it starts to fall apart very quickly of the one true church. If truly there’s apostolic succession, the sacraments are valid in the Orthodox church, there’s different denominations within the Catholic church that have valid sacraments. It’s like, to me it falls apart if you even give it an inch, but if you keep it all the way, then Catholicism makes so much sense to me. And it’s like, I think I would jump ship because of the submission to the one true church, just like Israel. When I’m looking back at the Old Testament, I’m kind of contributing, maybe you would say the same thing, but the Roman Catholic church to Israel and to the Jewish people, they were imperfect, the priest were imperfect, everyone, kings, it didn’t matter, but God’s promises came through that church no matter what.

(00:06:43):

Infallible, fallible, he sustained through them because of himself, not because of them. And so if you were to keep that consistent, the Roman Catholic Church makes so much sense. But as soon as you start to give a little bit of rope, it falls apart from me. What says Trent?

Trent Horn (00:07:01):

Well, I would say that we cannot give any more than what God has given us. The Second Vatican Council in Dave Eribam says that the church is not above the word of God, but serves it, faithfully guards it and hands it down. So we cannot say, and I mean, there have been, this is something the question of who can be saved has … This is something that has been debated and talked about since the beginning of church history. So Saint Cyprien said, “Outside the church, there is no salvation.” Or he said, “You cannot have God as Father, you do not have Church’s mother.” And so there’s been a debate all throughout 2000 years of church history who can be saved. And so these very strict formulations of outside the church, there’s no salvation, tended to relate that there’s basically two groups. There’s Catholics and there are heretics.

(00:07:56):

There’s people who are sinfully, willfully rejecting the truth and so they cannot be saved and then there are Catholics. Or by the time that most of the world has been, it seems to be evangelized, pagan darkness has been eclipsed basically, and you just have Christendom. But as I said before, my example with Native Americans, even Catholic theologians had to reexamine what this doctrine meant in light of, for example, discovering that there were millions of people who lived in the new world who had never had an opportunity to hear about Jesus. What about them? Or to go back through church history, and you mentioned Israel, but even throughout scripture, we see examples of righteous Gentiles or if people who God reveals himself to the God fears. You think about Cornelius in the New Testament, for example. We even see this in some of the Canaanites who eventually come into Israel in the Old Testament, but because God loves every person and desires the salvation of every person, we know that God can save whoever he chooses.

(00:08:58):

So nothing restricts, God saves whoever he chooses. Paragraph 12:57 of the catechism says that salvation is bound to the sacraments, but God is not bound by them. God can give his grace to whoever he pleases. So that means then, even though there are ordinary means of salvation, that does not preclude the possibility of salvation for those outside of those ordinary means. So I see what you’re saying. It would be nice if you say, “Okay, well, look, the people who are saved, if you’re Catholic, you’re saved. If you’re not Catholic, you’re damned.” It’s clean, it’s easy. And if you put it to me that way, it feels like you’d feel like you have a GUN to your head. I don’t know what I can say on YouTube, and you’d just be like, “I got to go. ” I mean, what if I’m wrong there? But of course, God doesn’t want to save people and don’t want to coerce people and do that.

(00:09:51):

And you’re right, that’d be very clean and quick. But I find that theology, any theological answer that is the virtue of it is that it’s really easy to understand is often an error or a heresy. It’s like, man, the Trinity is really, really hard to explain. You know what’s easy? It’s just there is just one God and he’s one person and he acts in three different ways. So like a father, uncle, brother, or a coach, dad and husband.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:10:22):

Jesus is created. We don’t know how to explain it. Jesus has created. Let’s move on.

Trent Horn (00:10:27):

He’s an amazing creative being, but there’s one true God and he’s a person. So that’s where I would say to you is like, I would say to be … Actually, if a theological explanation is very simple and clean, I think that’s often a temptation to error. But in that view though, then we get to the problem of what about the nine-year-old Native American girl who never had it or the … Because some people try to get out of this and say, “Oh, well, toddlers and infants, they’ve never sinned, so they’ll go to heaven.” Well, surely even … I have children, I have 11, nine, and a five-year-old. Even by five years old, kids are sinning. They’re disobedient. They break the moral law. And then you have the problem of what about five-year-old … Are there five-year-olds in hell because they never heard about Jesus? Some people say, “Yep, sorry, that’s their lot in life.” And I think most people do not believe God is really that cruel to damn a five-year-old to hell for eternity through no fault of the child’s.

(00:11:25):

But then that opens the door. The door is now open for, oh, it is possible for people outside the ordinary means of salvation to be saved. And so even though it’s possible, not necessarily probable, that’s why we have to evangelize. I give the example of in my book, Why We’re Catholic, like crossing a frozen lake is shrouded in fog. It’s like, “Can I make it? ” You might, but there’s this bridge I know about. And I think it’d be you’re much preferred to go across this bridge. And so the church teaches that the church is that bridge that God has given us, that God desires to save us through sacraments, through right worship, through right teaching. In fact, it’s a shameless plug, but I will send you a free book and maybe you can talk about it on your show. But I just wrote a book called Salvationist from the Catholic Church and talking about how obviously it was not the church that paid for my sins on the cross, but God didn’t just leave us a Bible.

(00:12:20):

God, in fact, Jesus during his earthly ministry never told anyone to write anything down, but that the church is a enduring, visible, hierarchical institution with real universal teaching authority so that I can be saved by knowing what is it that I need to believe? What can I not reject? What actions are gravely sinful and incompatible with the Christian life? What are the means God has given to supply grace? Do I have to be baptized? Do I have to receive the Lord’s supper? What do I do if I gravely sin? How do I come back into communion with God and his church? So I find that the church saves us by answering all of those questions. And I find other Protestant ways of answering the questions have problems as I talk about in the …

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:13:02):

I’d probably agree with some of those, so I’d love to read it actually. Great. And so the reason I really wanted to ask that is I guess my goal, I am proudly Protestant and will continue to be. But I truly think that we have a valid church and that the one true church, sometimes Protestants just get strawmanned to death and a lot of Catholic creators will stop at, we are the one true church, there’s no question about it. And then you actually press them and they usually give somewhat of an answer like that, that the door is a little bit open and there’s a mystery behind some of these conversions. There’s a mystery behind some of these movements and we come across people who are definitely Christian. And so we don’t know how to answer that. We come across Orthodox having very similar paths as we did and they followed all the same steps.

(00:13:50):

They just kind of made a pivot in 1054, but for the most part, they have the same sacraments and they have followed similar rules. And so what I want to try to say is the Protestant church I think needs a reformation, but I do think that we could have a valid church just like the Catholic and Orthodox. And mainly I want to come and communion with one another if I had this perfect vision, which I hope we figure out on this podcast. I hope us too right now, we figure out how-

Trent Horn (00:14:17):

Well, I gave a suggestion. I gave a suggestion to redeem Zoomer and he said no. I said, “What about a Protestant Pope?” He’s not infallible, but he does have universal teaching authority for Protestants. And he was not enthused at the idea because the closest you would have for that in Protestantism might be someone like the Archbishop of Canterbury for Anglicans before that became a lady. I was going

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:14:49):

To say Joe Olsteen, but okay, that one makes sense too.

Trent Horn (00:14:52):

Oh my goodness. Joel Osteen, he would be the ninth century Pope for it. Now, he’s not involved in any sexual sins. That was a prinocracy. That’s one evidence for the Catholic church is we’ve had a handful of real loser popes, some of them very scravely sinful, but they still didn’t officially teach heresy. They just engaged in debauchery. No, he would be more like the border popes, the ones whose sin was greed and excess, things like that. But yeah, that would be my … Although, because that was my biggest thing for the Protestant church, if the Protestant church is the invisible bond between all baptized Christians, what I think becomes missing there is that universal teaching authority

(00:15:41):

On really important issues. And there’s nobody if the Bible is the only infallible rule, but it really ends up becoming the only rule because no one can ever say, “Yeah, the Bible’s the only infallible…” Yeah, it’s the only infallible rule, but there’s no one who can universally say, “All right, we need to settle on this question or that question.” It really does become splintered. I think Catholics should not say there’s 38,000 denominations, that’s not true in Protestantism. I just say there’s a lot. I don’t know how many, but much more than I think Christ would want.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:16:14):

I totally agree. I don’t know if I’ve ever said it so plainly as I’m about to say it now, but I think not having some hierarchical structure in Protestantism is potentially going to lead to the demise of at least the American Protestant way. If we continue down the non-denominational route, I think it’s just going to be anarchy. I think a lot of these churches are holding on by some tape and some glue, and then the next pastor that comes in is going to continue to up the ante and they’re going to eventually just go off the rails. It’s just a matter of time. I know the mainlands don’t have much more of it together. I mean,

Trent Horn (00:16:49):

The problem with the main lines is they’ll have structure and then an entire new branch will split off over homosexual conduct, female pastors. But what’s interesting is that I think one of Protestantisms, especially one of non-denominationalism’s greatest strengths actually becomes one of its weaknesses. So for example, there are many non-denominational churches and pastors who are really stellar preachers and they can just really engage people. If you ask Catholics, homilies, they tend to be a bit vanilla at church. I prefer that the Popes say seven minute maximum on them. I don’t want it going on too long. The problem is most priests, they are not the greatest oraiders. Usually the homilies are just … But the thing is, that’s not why we’re there. We’re there for the sacrifice of the mass. That’s the centerpiece. And the homily is important though. It should not be neglected. We’ve had great … St. Francis of Asisi in the Middle Ages, people always think of him as this hippie who preached to animals and stuff, but actually he was a very traditional Catholic.

(00:17:54):

He preached Hellfire, brimstone, but he preached with such emotion that he would move people to tears. And during his time in the Middle Ages, a lot of priests were formed in really academic seminaries where their homilies were really, really dry. So his were just so unique in that regard. So you’ll have non-denominational churches where it’s like, “You’ve got to come here. Pastor so- and-so, he’s just awesome. He’s so awesome.” But then it creates this, it’s kind of like being a content creator on YouTube where it’s like you got to do whatever it takes to keep that audience. And now it’s like you’re creating content to keep people rather than just proclaim the word and serve your flock. Whereas in the Catholic church, it’s like, “Hey, the bishop gave you this area. This is your area and serve the people here.” But there’s not competition like, “I got to give people to my church because for any Catholic priest, it’s not their church.

(00:18:49):

It’s Christ church. And the bishop could just move you in two years anyways.” And he often does until you become settled and then you’re there for a long time. So I’ll wrap so I don’t want to be long-winded, but I do think that sometimes it can create that mentality of like, oh, as Protestant to non-dominational, it’s like competition for people and then you resort to things like the pastor comes in on a rollercoaster to like, it’s really spicing it up to get people in here and we start to lose the plot a little bit. I don’t know, did that make sense?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:19:19):

It makes total sense. And I think what you’re hitting on is like, what I’ve heard recently is that what non-denominational and the Protestant church started, mainly throughout the ’90s was like this rebelliousness of church, almost like a punk rock version of it and that it was really fun, it was really exciting. They were coming up with new stuff. It was Americana and church. But what you start to realize, like when you create something, if you create a startup, if you create a country like us in the 1700s, it’s like there are a couple things where kind of breaking stuff and moving fast works really well, but it’s very short lived and people get somewhat tired of the rebelliousness and the constantly changing nature of it and the celebrity culture, whatever it might be, this charismatic leader. It doesn’t matter how charismatic you are, but eventually that candlestick burns out.

(00:20:13):

Maybe, I mean, you’ve been a content creator for a little bit, maybe you’re feeling like kind of the ebbs and flows of that. It’s kind of hard to keep that attention. But I think you start to get to a place where you got to get out of startup phase. Mark Zuckerberg is a great guy, not a great guy, a great entrepreneur, but he did not … How Facebook started, how Apple started is not how it looks now. And I think the Protestant church needs to kind of understand that there’s a different iteration, there’s a different maturity. We need to bring in structures, hierarchy to keep this thing sustainable for the long run. It needs to go into a different level of maturity. And I think what you’re explaining is something of like a rebellious and a Baptist American version of Christianity that’s not going to sustain.

(00:20:59):

Well,

Trent Horn (00:21:00):

You know what’s interesting, you’re talking about we need like a startup or when you start a tech company and when you do things like that, it’s, we need to just move fast and just get going. And you’re right, for a lot of like in the business world, if you just sit around and plaude, you probably won’t be successful. You have to pivot and move fast and don’t feel straight jacketed in by the rules. And that can give you a really big flare up for success in the business world. But I mean, 50% of all businesses are out in five years, I think it’s like 90% in 10 years. They drop off pretty quickly. And so you’re right, you think about non-denominational Christianity in the US, I mean, going back to Calvary Chapel in the 1960s, I would say this movement is about 60 years old, even if I was really generous and at 100 years old to like the Azusa revivals in the early 1920s, like the Catholic Church, many of our cathedrals, just that one building we’ve made, I’m sorry, I have to do it.

(00:22:01):

The thought of like, we got to move and make this movement and go, and we’re creating this new church.

(00:22:09):

Yeah, right. And we’ve got to move fast. The Catholic church moves in centuries and that’s one of the benefits is that in order to get radical change in the Catholic church, you have to get every bishop in the world together with the Pope at an ecumenical council. It’s not like you can just turn on a dime like that. And I think that’s a good thing. So for example, like Notre Dame, Notre Dame in Paris, it took 182 years to construct that cathedral. The longest ones, you do Saint Vitus and the Czech Republic, 585 years, the Cologne Cathedral, 630 people. It’s funny, people were sacrificing and pledging from their families and traditions, generations to generations. You’re working on a cathedral, your great-great-grandfather started and your great-great-grandson will eventually see. So this idea that from the Catholic perspective, speed is not necessarily something that we want. Now we do, there are reforms sometimes that have to be implemented.

(00:23:04):

During the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Trent was very quick to say … And that’s a funny one too, and not funny. It’s like funny haha when a clown dies. So you have the Black death in the 14th century, and Europe totally changes, right? A third of continental Europe dies. So it’s weird is that people actually become wealthier and more prosperous because people are dead and you get their stuff. And for the priesthood, the good priests have all died because the good priests were the ones that went and ministered to the sick and gave them last rights. Now we’re left with the priests who were, if you were a noble family, you said, “My oldest son will be the Duke of Wellington. My second son is a total idiot. I’m going to send him to be a priest.” And there weren’t really seminaries. To learn to be a priest, you just worked alongside a priest in a parish.

(00:23:52):

So by the time we get to the time of Martin Luther, we get to the late 15th, 16th century, we’ve got a lot of priests who’ve got concubines, they’re not literate, they’re corrupt. And so there were a lot of legitimate issues. The reformation needed to … There was reform that was needed, but it was breaking away from the church. That’s where we feel like it went too far.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:24:14):

That’s perfect. I was literally going to ask you about this. Is there any redemptive qualities from your perspective? Like I said, I wanted to talk to you because I believe you’re a respectable opponent. Is there any redemptive qualities of the Protestant Reformation? Say that you were actually in the 16th century and you were seeing all this debauchery, you were seeing things like the three Pope situation, you were seeing guys buy out the papacy and just fumbling over each other and you were to know about some of those things. You were trying to interact, you were trying to change the church. You get thrown out of the church is essentially what happened. But do you think there’s any redemptive qualities of the Protestant reformation and do you think it was actually good for the Catholic church?

Trent Horn (00:25:01):

Well, I think that in bringing up where their abuses, that was something that was obviously needed where there were issues. So when it comes to indulgences, indulgences are not tickets to heaven, no indulgence can … If someone is damned to hell because they’ve rejected Christ in his church, nothing can change that except for them seeking confession and reconciliation with God. Indulgences deal with the remission of the temporal punishments related to sin. That Hebrew 12 talks about how we have, just as our fathers disciplined us in this life, we have a father in heaven who disciplines his own children. And a discipline is not always pleasant, but it is good for us. And so that Christians, even when they sin, and I know many Protestants who will say, no, you can’t lose your salvation, but if you remain in sin, you might lose rewards or God might even punish you in this life.

(00:25:56):

So Catholics would say, “Well, that could also be the case that you might be punished if you remain in sin, even though you’re saved, you might be punished after death to reform you and there’s a natural justice in moving the will back to God in that way.” But is there a way though that you could turn away from all of the attachment to sin in this life and be able to turn towards God? Yes, and that’s where indulgences came in. And one of the things you could do to say, “I have not been living a life in accord with being a Christian. I don’t want to be attached to these sins, so I want to do something to move my will back to God.” One of those things you could have done is, “I’m going to give some of my money to the poor to show that I love God and I don’t love this stuff.” And so alms giving is a good thing.

(00:26:36):

Jesus himself said, “When you give oms, all things are clean for you. ” So that is a good thing. But what ended up happening was one Timothy 6:10 says, “For the love of money is the root of all evil.” People say, “Oh, you know what? If you want to remit these temporal punishments, just give me money for this building opportunity at the church.” And helping the church is a good thing. We should do that. But you got people giving their excess funds without prayer, without contrition, and it becomes totally transactional. And the other side is just trying to ginny up enough money for building projects. And so that’s why then one of the reforms after the Council of Trent was giving alms can no longer be associated with indulgences, that way people can’t be said to be buying anything. And so these similar things come up to make sure that you always set a fence around occasions of sin, is what the church would say.

(00:27:29):

So that’s an example. The seminary system I think was also a very important one to make sure there is a stable path for training people for the priesthood. And they had rules. Not all of these rules don’t apply today. They had rules, for example, like a child conceived out of wedlock could not become a priest. Now that’s no longer enforced today, but that’s where you had a lot of people like, “Oh, here’s this scandalous child, B word child. I don’t want anything to do with him, just send him off to the priesthood.” And well, that’s not what the priesthood is for. It’s a calling, not a cop out. So they said, “We don’t want any.” So then they would have these rules like, “Okay, we don’t want this happening anymore.” And then eventually that’s no longer enforced because society and the things that are problematic for the church have changed, but we have new things.

(00:28:17):

So for example, in 2005, Pope Benedict said that someone who has deep seated homosexual tendencies or openly supports same sex conduct cannot be admitted to the priesthood. And I would say that makes perfect sense just for the fact that I think priests should live in community with each other, but that’s very difficult if you have attraction to men is why I don’t live in a sorority house, that and for many other reasons, being married, that would probably also just become supremely annoying in itself despite what some shortsighted guys might think it’d be awesome.That sounds like a national lampoons film right there. So the church will … And that all goes back to saying, look, the church has a duty to prescribe rules and guidelines for the good of the faithful, going far beyond what the Bible says. The Bible doesn’t even command Christians to gather on Sunday every week to worship or to worship on holy days like Christmas and Easter.

(00:29:23):

You have a lot of Protestants say, “Well, Christmas is on Saturday this year or Claire Christmas is on Sunday this year.” We all want to really be home, guys. So we could skip this week. We can’t do that in the Catholic Church for Christ’s mass. Whereas the name comes from.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:29:41):

Press a little bit more. Go ahead. Go ahead. When do you think it would be … Do you have some things within your, I guess theology or framework of when would be a good time to separate from the church, like when the church has gone too far? Have you ever thought about, because I think I heard Brian, a Homes worth, say if they started LGBTQ, affirming LGBTQ or I guess contradicting councils, do you have frameworks around your own personal self of when the Catholic church has gone too far? Because what I’m asking is obviously Protestants thought the Catholic Church went too far. And so I’m kind of trying to figure out where you guys think that line is.

Trent Horn (00:30:23):

Yeah. So the question is going to become, it’s one thing to say a discipline is causing harm and so it ought to be changed. And it’s another thing that people might say for even related to doctrine. So you have people overstating the doctrine of purgatory in order to ginny up money for indulgences by saying, “Oh, well, here are all the hellish torments and purgatory.” And it’s good for the church to say there isn’t a specific teaching about the nature of purgatory about what exactly it’s like. And this is similar. Protestants have to deal with this as well, that you’ll have Protestants who will be very creative and insistent about what hell is like. And other Protestants will say, “Well, we don’t know exactly what hell is like. At most, we just know that it’s eternal separation from God.” But whether it’s literal fire, whether you’re getting these particular hellish torments, twilight zonettes, healish torments, we don’t know that.

(00:31:21):

And similar to things like superstitions that arose from that or venerating relics associated with saints. So even there are doctrines where things may not have been clear that the church seems to be very clear about this. And that is why related to salvation, the Council of Trent gave very particular canons about baptism, about how we are justified, the role that grace plays in our salvation.

(00:31:50):

Sorry, I need to put all of that together. So the question you’re asking, I think is an important one in saying, “All right, well look,” because you would probably say, “Look, if I was sitting in my church and then the pastor comes out and says, I’m a woman now and abortion is okay and I married this lady.” Well, first, if it’s a man pertaining to be a woman married to a lady, that’s actually a real marriage, ironically enough, it’s just psychologically disordered, not objectively disordered. And we have to deal with that in the church of someone who claims to be transgender, who wants to marry a woman, but it’s like, well, they are a man. They just are mistaken about that, but are they in a psychological condition to be able to consent to matrimony? That’s a question for the canon lawyers to decide. So I hear you.

(00:32:34):

So then it’s like for me, well, when would ever be okay? And I would say it is just flat out. It’s never okay to separate yourself from the church that Christ established because there can only be one church and it’s indefectable. Christ said the gates of hell will not prevail against the church. And the church is not just the invisible bond between all baptized Christians, that there is this church with a connection to the apostles who are able to teach with their authority. So it’s never permissible. Now, you might have to tell the Pope, “Hey, get out of Abigail and go back to Rome. What are you doing?” As Catherine of Sienna said, but it’s never permissible to leave the church Christ established. It’s just like when the apostles, Jesus said to the apostles in John six, “Are you going to leave too?” And they say, “Well, to who else can we go?

(00:33:19):

” You have the words of eternal life. Now, I would say to you that per impossible, if the Pope said, “Guess what? Infallibly, the church teaches that abortion is not immoral or homosexual conduct is not immoral, or sorry, two men or two women can receive the sacrament of holy matrimony,” then I would say, “Well, this just can’t be the Catholic church. It must exist somewhere else. I need to find it. ” But I would say per impossible, because I would say that that’s not going to happen. And a similar question would arise if an atheist said to you, “Okay, what would the Bible have to say for you to admit that it’s not the inspired word of God?” Because atheists do this too. They’ll say, “Well, what about when the Bible said this about slavery or kill every man, woman, and child, or this Bible contradiction, that Bible contradiction?” And I think you’d be in a similar boat where you’d have to say, “Okay, well, maybe I misunderstood this passage or maybe this needs to be clearer or this doesn’t apply today.” But you’d say, “Well, look, if it turned out Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, I wouldn’t be a Christian.” But that’s another per impossible because he did rise from the dead and there’s not going to be any evidence saying otherwise.

(00:34:30):

So I guess that’s how I would answer that question.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:34:32):

Yeah. And as soon as you started explaining that, I started to understand the pretzel that I put you in because it’s nearly impossible because you have to take a step of faith saying that I believe that this is Christ’s church and he will sustain it forever. You’re asking me about what I think is impossible with God. And so it’s not even an exercise that I’m willing to go through because yeah, it’s like if I’m truly saying the Bible is infallible and then someone is just hammering me on its contradictions or something that it might be wrong, like the Noah’s Ark is impossible, I’ve already taken that step of faith where getting me to admit that it is impossible is like a long shot. I’d have to deconstruct my whole faith, my whole lifestyle. And so now that I’m asking you that and I’m hearing the way you’re saying it, it would be against your philosophical, like down to your core.

(00:35:26):

If you admitted that, then you’ve taken so many steps forward that it would just, you’d have to deconstruct everything.

Trent Horn (00:35:32):

Everybody is in this position. It’s not just Catholics. It’s any

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:35:35):

Christ.

Trent Horn (00:35:35):

It’s any

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:35:36):

Christian

Trent Horn (00:35:37):

Who has an ultimate authority beyond themselves

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:35:41):

Because

Trent Horn (00:35:42):

That ultimate authority, somebody, an outsider could put it to the test. I mean, you could do that with me with the Catholic church, but like Dan McClellan could do that with you. I’m doing a video on him soon. Look at all these things in the Bible. It’s like, woof, this is a lot. And there’s things where you might be more amenable and say, “Oh, that’s a mistranslation. I see where’s coming from.” And others, no, no matter what you say, I know that couldn’t possibly be wrong. There was a question, I saw a survey question on social media recently and I think it’s wording helps reveal because some people use it as a dunk on Catholics and the survey question was, “If your religious group allowed it, would you marry a same sex couple?” So the survey question was, “If your religious group allowed it, would you marry a same sex couple?” And like evangelicals, it was like 85% said no, they would not.

(00:36:33):

Main lines maybe like 50 or 60. I think Protestants, sorry, Catholics, I think it was only like 46 or 50% said no, or like 40% said of Catholic priests said, “If their religion allowed it, they would do that. ” But to me though, it’s a bit of a trick question because you would say, “Oh, well, the Catholic Church is Christ’s church and if Christchurch did allow this, then I would do that, but it would never allow this. So I won’t do that. ” It’s an example of an impossible hypothetical. So the question for the evangelicals were like, “Well, I don’t care if my pastor, I don’t care if the Southern Baptist Convention or the National Association of Evangelicals says you can marry two men. I’m not going to do that. ” I would ask them, the survey question would be, “If the Bible said it is not sinful for two men or two women to get married, would you marry them?” And then, how is evangelical?

(00:37:32):

How would you answer that question? You’d be like, “No, I wouldn’t. Oh, so you don’t really believe the Bible?” Well, yeah, I would if the Bible said that, but it doesn’t say that. So I think that the problem here, honestly, this is one of C.S. Lewis’s, because he was very amenable to Catholicism. He was friends with J.R. Tolkien who was a Catholic. And Lewis believed in a version of purgatory. There’s a lot of things about Catholicism he was amenable towards, but one of his objections was, the problem is if I sign onto Catholicism, I’m not signing onto just everything that has been taught, I’m bound to everything that will be taught by the Pope and the bishops, and I don’t know what’s coming down the pike. So I think for many evangelicals, just this idea that like, well, hey, I have stability because I know if the Bible let you marry a same-sex couple, would you?

(00:38:21):

I would, but that is a really impossible hypothetical to them because they say the words of the Bible will never change, so I’m safe there. But then the problem becomes, well, yeah, the words don’t change, but the meaning changes. I mean, 200 years ago, 180 years ago, Josiah Priest wrote a book called A Bible Defense of Slavery. So during the Civil War, and this is … Oh, what was it? It’s not the scandal of the evangelical … I think it’s the scandally evangelical mind by Mark Knoll talking about how during the debate about slavery … Let’s see. Oh, sorry, I noticed pop up. We’re good. We are still good. During the debate about slavery around the civil war and about abolitionism, what was interesting was you’d have debates between Christians about the morality of slavery, and the abolitionists would often get hammered in these debates because the slave owners, they would just quote Bible verse after Bible verse.

(00:39:18):

In the New Testament, slaves obey your masters, obey your masters in all things, da, da, da, da, da. And they had to argue from larger principles. So that now you have people in the evangelical world saying, “Yeah, I know the Bible is really not great towards homosexual conduct, but our view of that should change like the view on slavery has changed.” So while evangelicals might think, “Oh, I’m secure. It’s never going to change all it takes.” And there are people who were really conservative in the Protestant world. Richard Hayes would be an example of that. He was a very stalwart guy and now he wrote that book, The Wideness of the Mercy of God with his son has basically done a 180 on this subject. So I would encourage them to say the foundation you’re resting your doctrine on, it may not be as secure as you think.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:40:03):

So much so, I think you’re hitting on maybe one of the things that has brought me the least stability here lately is true church authority. What you are saying sounds so awesome to me because basically I just commit to a church and I basically have full faith in the Christ that wrote the Bible. He is the same Christ who established one true church, which is why I asked that first, one true church that is established until eternity and that whatever has been debated and agreed upon through bishops throughout the centuries, whatever is agreed upon, I could just stand on the shoulders and I don’t have to work my way through every single doctrine, every single little nook and cranny that comes up in the Bible that the church has established that for me. And it makes me so excited in some ways and I wish that that was the case.

(00:40:59):

I wish I could get over that hump because if I were to fully buy into the Catholic, the Roman Catholic church, I see that stability, I see that refreshing perspective of like, I don’t have to have it all figured out. I don’t have to try to go through each theological hoop to understand these things. I can trust that the church has done this for me and will continue to do so. And basically all the steps that I’ve taken, you’ve taken like one or two more and that’s it. I’ve just stopped short of that next step of like, hey, the church is also in that same boat of faith that you literally just take a step, you trust in it and you know that the Lord will sustain just like he did with scripture. But for me, I just don’t believe that. And that’s the thing that’s hard is I don’t believe that he established one and true church.

(00:41:45):

I do believe that in my perspective, the Catholic church has erred and that there are contradictions and there have been some corruption. And so I can’t get over that hump of like, if it looked great, but if you start to dig into the weeds, you’re like, well, if he truly did establish that and what they’re saying about all this is true, then to me it falls apart. But I understand the submission and that taking that step of fix- Well,

Trent Horn (00:42:10):

I’m curious, I want to make sure I understand your position. Do you think there is a one true church that does currently exist?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:42:21):

No, I believe it’s either like absolutely yes or no, and that’s the hard part is like, I don’t think there’s a kind of yes. And when I dig into both, like at least orthodoxy, at least they go, absolutely yes. They’re all in. They truly believe they’re the one true church and I think they don’t even consider you guys the one true church, which you guys within that grace.

Trent Horn (00:42:45):

It depends which Orthodox you ask. I find that many people look at Orthodoxy from the Protestant world, and you may be seeing a lot of other Protestants who are like you who will say, “Well, I want that one visible, identifiable church with teaching authority, but I watch these videos and I say this stuff and there’s problems in the Catholic church, I don’t see problems in the Orthodox Church.” I think that’s part of that’s because Orthodox just has way better PR. I think a lot of Catholics will whine about the things that are bad in our church and we just love to whine about it and the Orthodox are way more, “Don’t put that on X. We’re not going to talk about that. ” And it’s much smaller. So it’s like because it’s smaller, like in 1910, Orthodox were like, I don’t know, I think it was like 20% of global Christians, now it’s down to about 12%.

(00:43:33):

So there’s more Mormons and Muslims in the US than Orthodox. Otoxy is really confined primarily to a lot of Eastern block countries in Europe. So because of that,

(00:43:50):

Especially in the US, because it’s a lot fewer, it’s easier to maintain quality control. When you have just a few locations, it’s easier to do that, but it doesn’t seem to have really that same kind of missionary spirit. But I’ve also noticed is that you’ll have Orthodox who will disagree on really, really important questions. Like if I became Orthodox, there are some who would say, “I’d have to be baptized.” I was never validly baptized as a Catholic and others would say, “Oh no, he’s validly baptized.” That’s a huge question right there, among other issues related to contraception, other moral issues, divorce and remarriage is a big issue there. So I think though with the way you’re saying absolutely yes or no. Yeah, I think that’s something I would really encourage you to consider. If that church is out there, there’s got to be someone, even if they’re not there 100%, I would go with whichever the church is at least closest to that

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:44:48):

Marker.That’s a great point. Because

Trent Horn (00:44:51):

It has to be out there somewhere. It’s got to

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:44:53):

Be there

Trent Horn (00:44:54):

Somewhere.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:44:55):

Has to be is probably the word that I would disagree with because I think you are genuinely a follower of Christ. I genuinely think you wake up in the morning, you pray to the same Jesus that I do, you know the God that I know, you have the Holy Spirit. I meet an Orthodox brother in Christ and I feel the same way. I have been all over the globe at this point and I have met so many Protestants who truly love Jesus. And so it’s just like, I don’t know how to circle that square. It just doesn’t make sense to me. And so I’m like, okay, well, if they’re all in these different churches, then there’s no one true church in the way that it would be nicely bowed. And I wish it was absolutely yes. I wish Catholics would just not give any ground.

Trent Horn (00:45:37):

Or there’s one church and people are in varying levels of communion with that church. So a Catholic can be in complete communion. Orthodox are much more connected because they have valid Apostolic succession and orders and share a lot of the similar theology. It’s a lot of finer points we work on. You go to an Eastern Catholic church, for example, I used to go to a Byzantine Catholic church and the worship, it basically feels like an Orthodox church. It just has a picture of the Pope in the lobby. And then among Protestants, I would say there are those who are closer in communion and further away. There are Anglicans who are like one step away from being Catholics and how close and communion they are to the Catholic church.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:46:20):

This is the conversation, Trent, right here. This is the conversation is I think that all of us are Christians and have valid churches, but I truly do think there are practices that have been brought down for centuries and Protestants have, for whatever reason, they’ve given up a lot of these disciplines and these practices, but if we were to bring it back, I truly think we could have that exact same … So I went to a Catholic church, I’m Catholic curious, Catholic Crushian, whatever you want to call it, but Proudly Protestant. And what I noticed was the Catholic service compared to some of these more traditional reverent Protestant churches are very similar. It was much more similar than I thought it was going to be. I thought it was going to be a very different experience, to be honest, but the Protestant church in a lot of ways, if you go to the correct streams, have the same, like you said, like the Anglican church.

(00:47:11):

It’s like, I think Protestant can have this and we don’t have to fight for members. We could all have this experience with Christ and it doesn’t have to have different terms to it. How does the Protestant church get … I know. I know. I don’t

Trent Horn (00:47:22):

Know, but the problem, it sounds good. But then when we start to sit down about the particulars, then the fighting happens like saying, for example- Apostolic

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:47:34):

Succession.

Trent Horn (00:47:35):

Well, there’s one more or just this. I’ll give you, even among Protestants. So the Westminster confession says it is a great sin to neglect the ordinance of infant baptism. It’s funny as Presbyterians support infant baptism. They don’t think it’s regenerative, but they believe that children should belong to the covenant, and that’s what makes them members of it. And I just had a debate with Anthony Rogers on solo scriptura, and this will come out soon or maybe have already come out by the time this episode airs. And in the debate, we were debating and Anthony was saying, “Well, look, we don’t need the Catholic church. The Bible is perspicuous. It is able to teach us what God has revealed to us.” And I asked the audience, I said, “Hey, how many of you agree with solo scriptura?” And basically everybody raised their hands. It was almost all Protestants in attendance at the debate.

(00:48:26):

TGT sponsored a really good debate. And then I said to them, “How many of you agree with Anthony who is a Presbyterian elder?” He does prison ministry, but he’s a Presbyterian. “How many of you agree with Anthony that it’s a great sin and neglect baptizing a baby and 95% of the hands go down?” And I asked Anthony, I’m like, “Because Anthony would be going on like, yeah, some people don’t understand the Bible, but just because a blind man can’t see the sun doesn’t mean I can’t see it. ” And I said to him, “Are these people just spiritually blind or willfully rejecting God’s truth or is the Bible maybe not clear on some things like whether we ought to baptize babies?” Which I do think that it’s not, I think there’s teachings on it, but it’s not as clear on baptizing infants as it is on the necessity of baptism or regeneration, which even many non-denominationalists don’t agree with.

(00:49:14):

So I guess it’s hard. I mean, we want everyone to come together, right? It’s like we all agree, “Hey, let’s all be one church, Hazah.” We all agree on that, but then when it becomes, everybody’s like, “Okay, you give up your thing.” Well, no, no, you give up your thing. That’s where you get to the nitty gritty.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:49:32):

Papa infallibility and Mary, and I’m telling you, you’ll get a lot of Protestants. You guys just got to let them kill-

Trent Horn (00:49:38):

Wait, can I have … Wait, can you be okay with Theotokos? Mary is the mother of God.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:49:42):

Yes.

Trent Horn (00:49:43):

Okay. Protestants have to be okay. Can you be okay with saying that Mary did not have other children? Nobody believed that till Helvidius around in that period. Or do you think people got to be free to be able to say Mary had other kids?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:50:01):

Okay. Well, here’s the thing. I don’t care either way. I’m totally fine with it. I understand that it was his half brother, Joseph had kids before. It doesn’t bother me. That’s one view. When I come to these conclusions, I am starting to see so many people disagree with the non-denominational evangelical church, and I’m okay with that. I think we need to go back. But at the same time, God said that you were blessed with childbearing. Why does her having more children make her any less sinless or any less blameless when God has-

Trent Horn (00:50:30):

Yeah. It has nothing to do with Mary’s sinlessness. It just has to do with the fact Mary not having children after Jesus is a sign in the same way of Mary not having any children before Jesus. Jesus could have been a middle child. The prophecies and everything could have been set up differently for Mary. Mary didn’t have to be a virgin. It’s just prophesied in that way. It’s a sign that Jesus’ father is God the Father. And so that’s just what is important in that respect so that Mary then resembles the Ark of the Covenant, just the arc of the covenant held the word of God written on stone and it was something that you couldn’t even touch unless you would die unless you’re the high priest once a year or sorry, unless you’re the hypriest, you’re carrying it. The same would be true for Mary as the arc of the new covenant treated with similar saintity.

(00:51:28):

And I’m not going to go down the whole rabbit hole of the Petral Virginia Mary, but I would say that the Protestant reformers would have been aghast. Absolutely.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:51:37):

Yes.

Trent Horn (00:51:39):

Their heads would be turning around at hearing people talk about Mary being just like the rest of us having kids and things like that. So I think that even when it comes to … But I appreciate you saying, because this is a humanism, right? It’s like, “Hey, I can give you all this. I can’t give you that. ” And so then it comes to me. So then from my responsibility as a Catholic, you say, “Hey, here are the doctrines I can’t get. I have to look at it from this way.” Either is there a way of articulating it that would be more helpful or are there elements of it that are actually not essential to the doctrine? And we’ve clarified that and see, oh, the role, the papacy, like the Pope’s temporal power, like the Pope having authority over worldly affairs, that was important when the Pope was ruled over the papal states and had his own kingdom, so to speak, had political power, but now he does not, and that’s not an essential part of the office of the papacy, unlike the spiritual authority.

(00:52:36):

So Pope San John Paul II and Benedict have talked a lot about understanding the Pope’s infallibility and his authority, not in an autocratic way, but as being a brother serving other brothers. As Jesus said to Peter, “When you have turned, strengthen your brother.” And he says that in the gospel of Luke, he says, “Simon, Simon, Satan wants to sift you like wheat. I have prayed for you, singular, so your faith will not fail. When you have turned, then strengthen your brother.” And that the Pope serving in his capacity and having this role and the ability to teach without error, just as when Peter wrote his letter, he did that protected from error, the same as the other apostles writing, that God can protect … We need to go back and say, “All right, look, can God prevent the church from teaching error?” So you and I would agree he can prevent the authors from scripture from teaching error.

(00:53:36):

Maybe they made errors in other parts of their lives, but not when they were writing scripture. So then he prevents the whole church from teaching error. Well, would he prevent all of the leaders of the church, like all of the bishops, maybe some bishops will go whackadoodle, but all of them are not going to fall away. Well, what about the head of the church? Does he have a unique teaching authority? So I see what you … I mean, the papacy, and that’s why I would recommend for your listeners and others, my friend Joe Heschmire has a great book called Pope Peter, that the papacy that many people see it as Catholicism’s greatest liability. You’re putting all this power in one man, especially as Americans. We’re not great fans of that. Did you ever watch Schoolhouse Rock back in the day?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:54:15):

Yes.

Trent Horn (00:54:16):

Oh yeah. So they have the one about the American Revolution. It’s like, no more king. No more kings.That’s who we are, right? We’re like, no more kings. I’m not even going to buy a king mattress on President’s Day. It’s scandalous to … We’re against that, right? So we have this kind of democratic spirit, but we also look and see what democracy will get you. The church is not like a kingdom on earth. And then so we think, oh, democracy is the way to get to the truth. Well, it’s the way to get to a lot of divisions and a lot of error will show up. So people will treat the papacy as a liability, but to me, honestly, I see it as a great asset. I see as easily the Catholic Church’s greatest asset of being able to identify, all right, where is Christ’s church?

(00:54:59):

Where is it? Because there are churches that call themselves Catholic. They’re called the old Catholic churches. They left after Vatican one in the end of the 19th century about papal infallibility, by the way. They were like-

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:55:12):

Wait, where are these guys? Hold on.

Trent Horn (00:55:14):

They’re called the

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:55:15):

Old Catholic

Trent Horn (00:55:16):

You guys. I don’t know. We’ll see how long you like them. So it’s called the old Catholic church. So they broke off in the 19th century, but they’ve withered on the vine. And so you’ll have some old Catholic churches. Yeah, they don’t believe in people and fallibility, but they’re also pro- contraception, pro- same-sex marriage, so- called same-sex marriage. What’s weird is they’ll be really, really conservative on some doctrine like 19th century Catholic theology, but then just go full contraception and so- called same-sex marriage and other things like that. So it’s wild to see. And like I said, they’re very, very small in number, very, very small. And so I could say, “Oh, is this the Catholic church?” Oh, and the priest would say, “Well, I’m not under the bishop of this region because I don’t believe in the Pope or that bishop. I’m under my own fake bishop or whatnot.” So it’s like, oh, I know where I could find the true church.

(00:56:07):

It’s whoever is in communion with the Bishop of Rome. That’s where I can find Christ’s church. And that’s why all throughout church history, you had St. Ambrose saying where Peter is, there is the Catholic church. So you go back to Ignatians of Antioch 107, AD 107. He says there, he says nothing about the Bible because there’s no functional Bible for people at this time. In fact, when they talk about scripture, they talk about the Old Testament, not the apostolic writings. The authority, Ignatius is clear, where the bishop is, that is where the Catholic church is. Do nothing apart from the bishop. If your church does not have priests, deacons and bishops, not a true church. And so where the bishop is, that’s where the Catholic church is. And Ignatius is the first person to coin, the phrase Catholic means universal, cataholos. Then we have Ambrose now there saying where Peter is.

(00:56:59):

So where the successor of Peter is, the bishop of Rome, that’s where the Catholic church is. At the council of Calcedon in the fifth century, when they’re disputing, all right, is Jesus fully God and fully man? We got to get all the nooks and crannies worked out about the hyposatic union. Pope Leo read his tome, his letter, and all the bishops stood up and they said, Peter has spoken through Leo, that the leader of the apostles, his voice has spoken through him. So for me, it’s like, yeah, I understand. It’s like when you give someone authority, it’s like, what if they abuse the authority? But then for me, it’s like, but I see what happens without it. Even in the Orthodox world, that I love being Catholic, that through the Pope I can have things like the universal catechism of the Catholic church, that there is a universal teaching document authorized by the Pope to say, “This is what we believe is Catholics, and this is what the universal church believes and is able to teach in that way because we recognize there is a head in the body of Christ to be able to administer it in that way.” So I get jazzed by that.

(00:58:04):

It makes me happy.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (00:58:06):

I see it. I see it. And you sound like Israel back in the Old Testament where they’re just wanting a king so bad they can’t stand it even though God is like, “I am your king. Why do you want one person to have all of this done?”

Trent Horn (00:58:21):

But remember though, but God was their king, but in uniting all of Israel through a covenant, there was someone who was one person who was selected to be the human mediator of the covenant, right? So God was the king. When Israel left Egypt through the Exodus, God was their king, but people had to listen to Moses. And then finally God does, but God doesn’t give him the king, but he does give them appointed rulers. He gave them the judges, for example. Sometimes he gave them the judges they deserved, but he gave it to them, nonetheless. And even when you look in Isaiah 22:22, it talks about how the vizier, how Shebnah would be replaced with Eliah came, that there was a king of Israel, but there was also a steward over Israel, like a grand visa. And Isaiah 22:22, it says, “Shebna will be replaced.

(00:59:14):

The righteous Eliakim will take his place. What he opens, no one will shut. What he shuts, no one will open. I will give him the keys to the kingdom.” So when the king was away, you had a vizier who oversaw the kingdom on his behalf. And so as Catholics, we see this same model in the papacy and in Peter, that Christ is our king, but he’s the high priest, he is the king, but he has selected the apostles to administer his kingdom. And Jesus said, “You will sit on 12 thrones judging the tribes of Israel.” And Peter in particular has that role as like grand vizier. So that language from Isaiah 22:22 is echoed in Matthew 16 where, Peter, I will give you the keys to the kingdom. What you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, what you loose on earth shall be loose in heaven.

(01:00:00):

And so we see it as, you’re right, there can be times when Israel asked for an authority they weren’t ready for yet, just like they weren’t ready for the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity for centuries until they could get all that idol worship out of their system.

(01:00:16):

But that doesn’t take away from God having hierarchical levels of authority within his church, that just as Israel had, the people were a kingdom of priests, you had the high priest and you had a ministerial priesthood. Catholics see that in the Church of Christ today, Christ is our high priest. Every believer shares in Christ priesthood, but there is an ordained priesthood that ministers to people, the ones who have the authority to consecrate the Eucharist, for example, at mass because they stand in the person of Christ with his authority.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:00:50):

I love how passionate you are about this. I’m probably going to keep you going, but I feel like I got to get this in. So I mean, as a Protestant perspective, what I see is Peter being a spokesperson and I have no problem. I’m seriously the most Catholic Protestant like I know. I have no problem with a hierarchy and a person at the top making decisions, maybe from a more diplomatic and diplomacy type of perspective.

Trent Horn (01:01:14):

Protestant Pope. Give it some

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:01:15):

Thought. Hey, that’s what I said. Maybe I’m your guy on that part. But what I see is Peter as a spokesperson, but nothing special. You see when they’re talking about the Gentiles being circumcised, you see James speaking last. That’s what I see. I see Paul correcting Peter. I don’t see Peter in Rome being that big of a thing. I see the development. I do see the three Cs being as dominant for the first three centuries as Rome was. I mean, Rome wasn’t even at Nicia. If I remember right, the Pope wasn’t even at Nicia and they didn’t really care that much about his seat until about the fourth or fifth century. And I see that this is a problem all the way up until the great schism. And so there was never really this universal Eastern and Western. Absolutely the seat of Peter has this very, very special place.

(01:02:09):

But I am all for that position being established and created and respected for the church’s goodness and sake. It’s just you don’t have to get so crazy with it. I think that’s all the Protestants are saying is like, “Hey, this isn’t the, what is it? The co…” No, what do you guys call … The vicar of Christ. What a phrase that is. It’s just like, why go so far?

Trent Horn (01:02:30):

Well, because in Luke 10:16, Jesus says to the apostles, “He who hears you hears me. ” So the apostles were able to speak on behalf of Christ. Or in one Thessalonians 2:13, Paul commenced this Thessalonians saying, “When you received the words that we preached to you, you received them not as the words of men, but as what they really are, the words of God.” And so we commend you for that. So in calling the Pope the vicar of Christ, we’re saying he’s able to teach with Christ’s authority and Christ had already done that for the apostles. Now there are people who say, “Yeah, that’s just for the apostles. That ain’t for anybody else.” And so my challenge for you and for the listeners, I mean, there’s a lot you brought up there with the papacy. I actually think some of the objections you brought up, I would do theological jiu-jitsu.

(01:03:23):

I do real jiu-jitsu. So that’s why my style is I

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:03:26):

Like to do- I just figured out this about you. I would love to get in there. I wrestled back in high school, but you’d probably still kill me.

Trent Horn (01:03:33):

Because

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:03:33):

Wrestlers do terrible. Well,

Trent Horn (01:03:35):

Here’s the thing with when I have to deal with wrestlers, I just let them take me down. Wrestlers have really good take downs, but when they’re on their back, they’re as helpless as a turtle. So then I can get to work on that. So my theological jiu-jitsu is like, Paul corrects Peter, right, because Peter was acting like a doofus and a hypocrite. He’s not willing to eat with the Gentile Christians because he doesn’t want to make the Jewish Christians upset and he’s being a man pleaser and Paul don’t care about pleasing nobody. That’s what I like about Paul. He was my confirmation saint when I converted. I really identify with him, but he tells people. So in Galatians, people are saying … It’s funny when you read Paul’s letters, by the way, you get insight into what people would criticize him about. He’s like writing and you get an indirect reference of it.

(01:04:24):

So he was saying in Galatians, people are accusing him of just being a manpleaser, just saying what appeases people. He says, “I do not care what human beings think. I am doing what God wants me to do. You want to know how much I don’t care what people think. I went to Peter himself and told him he was wrong to his face for not having fellowship with the Gentiles.” To me, what he’s saying there is I don’t care what people think so much. I went to the head guy and I told him that he was being wrong. He’s not wrong theologically. The Greek word in Galatians two, he says he’s not having upright practice. He’s not walking upright. Orthopeddusan. He’s not walking in the statutes that we’ve been given. So he’s not doing what you ought to do as a Christian, but it’s not like he was a heretic.

(01:05:11):

He just didn’t fully live out the faith, but he was willing to even go against the head guy. Similar in Corinthians where Paul talks about having sister wives in one Corinthians nine, Paul says, “Look, do we not have rights as a policy? We don’t have rights to have … ” The phrase is like sister wives to accompany us. This may just be like female helpers. And he talks about, do we not have this authority? Then he talks about the other apostles or the brethren and the Lord or Peter in ascending order. And it seems like he’s putting Peter at the top of all of these people, of those who have this ascending order. So for me, so that’s just a quick aside there. But my challenge for you is I would say this, there’s a law you’re bringing up. It’s like, look, I get Catholicism papacy, but I see a lot of problems with the papacy.

(01:05:58):

Not to be cheeky, but I find when you settle theological issues, like we want to figure out what’s the true church, which denomination has the fullness of the faith or is at least the closest to it. It’s kind of like that old joke, like when you’re running away from a bear with a group of friends, you don’t have to be faster than the bear, you just have to be faster than the guy next to you. So I would say, “Well, look, I don’t have to be completely free of difficulties. I just have to have less and far less severe difficulties than any competitor.” So to me, I would say, “Okay, that’s the standard you’re concerned about that. ” For me, the big reason I’m not Protestant is I have no idea how to get from historical documents from the first century talking about the life of Jesus and the spread of the Apostolic Church to a 66 book cannon that that canon is an infallible rule of faith.

(01:06:56):

You cannot say any of these books are not inspired and that this is the only infallible rule of faith for the church’s practice, faith and practice.

(01:07:06):

For me, that’s my huge gap. That’s a much more difficult gap to get from. When you have the apostles never saying all inspiration be confined to the written word, they never say, “By the way, here’s what you should look for in an inspired document. This is the criteria.” There’s nothing like that. None of them ever say, “Oh, by the way, one day public revelation will end.” You don’t get that either. So that to me, it’s like, okay, we got gaps. Catholicism has its gaps. Where do you show from this papal authority? We look at the evidence here. To me, the Protestant gap, yeah, I got a little parkour jump between buildings. For me, Protestantism is like the Grand Canyon. I could be evil can evil on the motorbike and I’m still not getting across that. So for your listeners, for me crossing the gap on the papacy, I would recommend Pope Peter by my friend Joe Heschmeyer and the papacy revisiting the debate between Catholics and Orthodox by Eric Ibarra.

(01:08:05):

So those are two right there, I would highly recommend. But when I look at other ways of Protestants trying to cross the gap, say, “Okay, why this 66 book Cannon? That’s the sole infallible rule of faith.” Where’s the evidence for that? They’re allowed to have much more tenuous jumps to the evidence. They’ll say, “Well, obviously anything written by an apostle is going to be the inspired word of God.” Well, okay, well, how do we know that? Did the apostles ever say that? Or how do we know there’s many critical scholars who say that Paul didn’t write two Timothy or two Peter. And

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:08:40):

He wrote a lot more. Why aren’t those in there?

Trent Horn (01:08:42):

Right. Or you had early church fathers who did not believe Hebrews is technically anonymous. Even they weren’t sure about Hebrews or the book of Revelation is not in Syril’s canon list. So crossing that gap for me to say, Jesus wanted this to be the sole infallible authority, it’s a harder prospect. So I guess my encourage for you and for others, yeah, of course you’re going to see problems in Catholicism, but I just want you to be cognizant everybody has their problems. And so I guess it’s like as an apologist, I don’t know, some Catholics are going to get mad at me for how I’m doing this because some Catholics would tell me, “I got to just tell you straight up, convert heretic, deus vault, no salvation outside the church, just get over it. ” But I’m telling you, “Hey, I’m just letting you know, yeah, Catholicism’s got its problems, but it’s the least problematic of all the others.

(01:09:32):

So it’s a good one to choose.” But to me, I don’t know, I’m just more about just the modest approach. And I think that can be more convincing to heal when they let it mull over a bit.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:09:42):

This is my favorite conversation I think I’ve ever had in my life. This is exactly why I wanted to talk because I was hoping that I got those statements out of you because I think that’s the most honest take I’ve heard. And truly, you are such a worthy opponent, which I would never just go at you theologically, but I have said the exact same thing to so many Protestants here recently, and I’m going nuts with it, honestly. And a question I’ve just texted my friends here recently is, where do we get our authority? Genuinely Protestants, there have been a couple people who have come out with, where do we get our authority from, from our Protestant perspective? It’s like a Protestant apologetic. And I am so unfulfilled with the answer. It’s actually crazy because again, I’m the man of the people. I’m like a common sense advocate.

(01:10:36):

Just regular logic, let’s not get crazy. And if you logically just think about, okay, say you talked about scripture there. If we were to follow the exact authority of where we think we got our scripture, okay, it was the apostles, and then we believe in councils and creeds. We believe in the church fathers, and that’s where we get it. So we believe as Protestants, those things, solo scripture is the infallible rule, but we do believe there are authorities like the church, like the church fathers, like councils. But then if we took that exact line of thinking and were to go to Mary, for example, like you just brought up and the reformers, let’s even say the reformers are our authority. We don’t believe most of those things now. We take some of them, we cherry pick it. Well, especially

Trent Horn (01:11:22):

Non-denominational, especially in non-denominational

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:11:24):

Christians. That’s why I am pulling so significantly away from non-denominational to where it’s almost an invalid church to me at this point because they don’t do the sacraments. They have no types of tithes to the reformation. I think it should be a separate thing. That’s where I’m getting at this point. But it’s like, okay, we follow one line of authority, quote unquote, towards one conclusion, but then when another topic comes up, we abandon that line of authority full sail. And it’s like, like you said, the chasm is so big on that particular one.

Trent Horn (01:11:58):

But I think the non-denominationals will come back at you and say, “You’re no different than us.” We both agree scripture is the only infallible rule of faith and we agree there are secondary authorities and some of the non-denoms will say, “Of course there are secondary authorities like John MacArthur or something like that. ” And what they’ll say is, “We both agree the Bible is the only infallible authority. There are secondary authorities and Christians are free to decide what the secondary authorities are, but good luck with that being an actual authority.”

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:12:30):

Goodness, Trent. Yeah, good luck. Yeah. Okay. So I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up some of these things before we get off here. So you talked about, okay, American doesn’t like kings, but for whatever reason, we just got this new stat from Harvard that just came out that said for the first time in American history, there is a generation that is more Catholic than Protestant. What do you say with that? I think you’re more reasonable when these stats come out about what the actual conclusion is.

Trent Horn (01:13:01):

I am not a fan of when Catholics want to be triumphalistic. I think there’s things to be triumphalistic about, no doubt. I’ve been cheerleading earlier in this episode. There’s things I love about the Catholic Church, but I’m also honest about where we’re at in different countries. The Catholic Church is, in America, we’re nowhere near as bad as … We are light years ahead of where the church is in Europe, and I’m grateful for that, but we’re not at levels of like, we are seeing the Catholic church explode in Asia, in Africa, for example, amazing gains there. I think that’s particular stat where there’s more Catholics than Protestants, I think maybe in the younger generation, that speaks more about the decline of certain forms of Protestantism, the secularization of Protestantism than any kind of huge Catholic gains. I think I’ve seen anecdotally increases in conversions. I think that people who do become very fervent in their Christian faith tend to go Catholic Orthodox or more mainline historic Protestantism.

(01:14:07):

But I think what we’re seeing is more of this kind of secularization among Protestantism, but Catholics are going into that as well. One thing that has kept the Catholic numbers up, I’m just going to be painfully honest about this. Half of all immigrants in the United States are Catholic.

(01:14:23):

If you look at the demographics, we’ve been 25, Catholics are 25% of the US population for like 70 years. That stat you’re referring to, like Catholics are 20, 21% spent like that among the generation gap for like 50 years. But the problem is we are losing people. I’m super … For me, my heart is like, there was a Pew study that talked about how for every one person who becomes Catholic eight leave. And it may not be that high, but I have met a ton of people who say, “Oh, I grew up Catholic,” or, “I used to be Catholic.” Doesn’t surprise me at all. And I’ve met other Catholics who are like, “Well, they’ll try to doubt the statistic and I’ll give them more data to show, no, this is for real.” They’ll say, “Well, you know what? At the end of the day, at least we’re going to be a stronger church.” And I’m like, “No, that’s like if you had a hospital and for every one new patient that checked in, ate left and went and died out on the street.” And they’re like, “Well, we’re a healthier hospital at the end of the day.” I’m like, “No, that’s our job is for everybody.” Pope Francis even said that the church is a field hospital.

(01:15:21):

One of his favorite metaphors for the church. The church is a field hospital on the battlefield. And I love that. That’s what we should be. So that means for a lot of us, yeah, we want people to come to church, but there are so many people who leave. And Catholics, man, we have a real bad thing where you could be going to a Catholic church and you could leave and nobody will notice, but the non-denoms, the small non-denoms, they’re good at retaining people in that way. So they have really good community. And I think that’s why I’m really pushing for Catholics, we need young men to be priests. I know some young men in my own life, they are really on fire for it. And it’s really exciting to see that the liberal Catholic priests are all over the age of 60 or 70. And I have a theory about this too, that Catholic priests, young Catholic priests are usually way more … They’re really conservative and older priests are not.

(01:16:17):

My theory for that is, I remember someone told me when he was in the 19 … He was a priest, he’s like 50, and he said, “Yeah, in the ’70s, the vocation directors would come to us and say, you should be a priest. It’s a great job. It’s cushy. People love you. It’s really nice. It was sold as a good job.” And I put it this way, prior … Okay, this will be controversial. Okay, this could be offensive, but I’m just going to say it, okay?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:16:43):

Please.

Trent Horn (01:16:44):

There were people who had thought, “Hey, you know what? I see you’re not that interested in girls.” Maybe the priesthood is something for you. The priesthood, like I said, it’s a calling, not a cop out. So when people are going to it because maybe you’re not having luck with the ladies or you’re not interested in them, you have same sex attraction, say for example, say you have same sex attraction, you’re like, “Oh, but I’ll be respected and loved and no one’s going to ask any questions about why I’m not married.” That prior to 2002, it was cool to be a priest and it was not very cool to be gay, to identify as gay.You remember in Sam Ramey’s original Spider-Man when he fights Bone Saw and when he’s in the wrestling ring, do you remember that scene?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:17:34):

No, Trent. No. Oh, you’re in

Trent Horn (01:17:36):

A

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:17:36):

Different generation. Millennial. Yeah, like Gen Z.

Trent Horn (01:17:39):

Are you like full-

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:17:42):

The original Spider-Man, what is that, like the ’80s? Oh

Trent Horn (01:17:45):

My gosh. Are you an Andrew Garfield Spider-Man kid probably, or is

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:17:49):

That even

Trent Horn (01:17:49):

…

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:17:50):

Toby McGuire. Toby McGuire. No, but I remember

Trent Horn (01:17:53):

Those. Yeah. So that’s in the original Spider-Man, Toby McGuire, he gets the suit on and he’s fighting Bonesaw in the wrestling ring before we become Spider-Man.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:18:01):

Yes. Yes. Okay. I’m sorry.

Trent Horn (01:18:03):

No, it’s been awhile. It’s been a while for all of us. And so he says to Bones, he’s like, “Nice dress. Did your husband make that for you? ” And it’s like, you could not say that today in a movie. When you go back and you look at in the ’90s and stuff and just like … It was being LGBT, that was still the butt of, no pun intended, the butt of the joke for people. But being a priest was like, “Hey, Catholic priest, there’s a demon around, he’ll exercise you. They’re cool people. ” When Shane O’Connor,

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:18:38):

Real fast- Can I double tap on that? Because you’re saying it as if it was kind of like a innocent transition, but all the things that came out with spotlight as example, but some terrible stuff that came out of the Catholic church, I think-

Trent Horn (01:18:53):

Yes.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:18:54):

Yeah. Do you think that those two things tie together?

Trent Horn (01:18:56):

Yes, they do. And here’s how. So

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:18:58):

Back

Trent Horn (01:18:58):

Then, even so Shanae O’Connor on SNL, she tore up a picture of the Pope saying, “Fight the real power.” And everybody booed hers, like, “You can’t go after the Pope, he’s awesome.” We had a lot of cultural capital as Catholics back in the ’90s, but then the sex abuse scandal emerged and you had a lot of people who were not properly vetted in the psychological process of seminary, of understanding who’s fit for the priesthood. Like I said, cushy job. It’ll be great for you. You’re running away from your problems instead of entering into a calling, that’s going to come back to bite you. And it did for us. Also during that time, by the way, who always put the blame on the Catholic church? But frankly, you look at the ’70s, nobody cared about essay crimes against children. It was like a slap on the wrist.

(01:19:45):

It’s like, “Oh, there’s a misunderstanding. We’ll send you to rehab and you’ll leave.” Everybody treats it. There are movies back in the day with underage actresses that have nudity. It’s crazy how people didn’t figure out like, “Wow, this is a lot of abuse and bad.” And it’s just so much you’re like, “Oh, that’s actually terrible.” And so the Catholic church was part of that milieu, but also you have people who are really not formed well. So like I said, before 2002, cool to be a priest, not really cool to be LGBT or gay, not even the tea back then. But then after 2002, what happens? Culture changes. Being a priest is like people glare at you. You’re a molester. And I know guys who have been made fun of as priests, people will look down on them as kind of bigotry because it’s just this stereotype is hammered home.

(01:20:35):

And if you identify as gay or lesbian or transgender, whatever it may be, if you don’t have to go to the priesthood to seek an audience or recognition, go to TikTok. You could go there. There you go. So now the only people who want to be priests, Catholic priests today are the ones who say, God wants me to lead his people and to build up his church and I’m willing to endure the cross that has to be carried in doing that. So that’s why I have just so much hope moving forward and seeing that. But the problem is for Catholics, to compare to evangelicals, Catholic is not really a sticky term. A lot of people, if you ask them, “What religion are you? ” “Oh, I’m Catholic. “That could just mean I grew up Catholic, but I haven’t been to a church in 20 years, but if they say I’m evangelical, nine times out of 10, that means they go to church every week.

(01:21:25):

So that’s where I think we have a problem for Catholics is like having that identity label have more stickiness and forcefulness to it. But for me, I want to find for the people it’s not that sticky for them, for them to come home and revert to the fullness of the church they’re baptized in.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:21:41):

Yeah, that’s interesting that’s your perspective because I would say I’d have similar perspectives of the Emangelical Protestant church right now where it’s kind of more casual. People are watching their services online, they’re more tied to their pastor than their community, their pastor’s a celebrity of some sort, but they’re not really in community. They’re part of these 10,000 people congregations. And I mean, I think our stats are about the same. It’s like 1.5 times a month or something like that. Reading scripture. So I mean, the thing that you guys have is catechism, which I think we’re lacking tremendously. Discipleship, knowing and understanding your faith, I think that’s where … I would love to hear your perspective. We’re probably, we’re going long, but Catholic YouTube … Sweet. Catholic YouTube is extremely strong and I think people … I would be curious to know where the Vatican kind of stands on this whole content creator community, but there’s a lot more answers.

Trent Horn (01:22:38):

Here in Dallas, we’re going to have a meeting soon with an official from the Vatican who is tasked with overseeing social media, digital evangelism. So that’s one thing. So Pope Leo, there’s a few moments in your life when things just … As a Catholic, when you get in … I mean, I just say to Protestants who are listening who are like, ” Should I become Catholic? “One selling point I’m going to give you is we’ve got a lot of really cool moments when you’re a Catholic. I mean, it’s one thing to be Protestant like, ” Oh, I heard there was a new Pope. “But whenever you get a new Pope as a Catholic, it’s like a generational defining moment. It’s like you remember where you were when you find out you had a new Pope. And it’s just like the whole family gets together. It’s like hearing a new birth in the family.

(01:23:23):

It’s like, ” Oh man, what’s it going to be? Who are we going to get? “If there’s such an electricity, it’s just something else. So I remember where I was when Pope Benedict became … So Benedict was really like my Pope. I came into the church in 02 right at the end of John Paul II. Everybody kind of has their Pope based on their generation. As you can see, I’m an old Geezer, so my Pope is Benedict in the sense that I was formed a lot then. He became Pope in 2005 after John Paul II passed away. And I remember where I was finding out, I was like, ” Oh, this is amazing. “Then I got to go to World Youth Day and see him in the big crowd. For a lot of more Gen Z Catholics, Francis is kind of their Pope. That’s who they kind of grew up under because he became Pope in 2013, I believe.

(01:24:06):

I remember where I was when Pope Leo was announced. I was in my master bedroom with my wife. I think the kids were at school or they weren’t around. It was just my wife and I and we were listening and they were saying, they’re announcing in Latin. I’m a Greek guy. I can’t even fake Latin, but they’re saying all this, the announcement and they say,” Robert Provost. “And my wife says,” Is that the Pope? “I’m like, ” No, it can’t be the Pope. “She’s like, ” Why not? “I said,” Because they’re never going to let an American be the Pope. “Because Americans are seen as we’re kind of privileged, we have too much global power. It’s like we want to keep the church and the global power superpower separate. And then when I look it up and I check on Wikipedia and it’s confirmed, Robert Pravas, and then I’m like, ” What papal name?

(01:24:49):

“Because the papal name is an indicator, it’s kind of an indicator of what’s your style going to be. I love that, that it’s like a little teaser. It’s like the title of a movie almost. It’s like, what are we going to get? So we had John Paul II because John Paul the first died after a month. My mom remembered that she’s Catholic and she saw it on the news, she’s like, ” Didn’t we just get a Pope? And then a month later you get a new Pope. So John Ball first dies a month later, JP II, he picks the name to continue on. Benedict wanted to really continue a lot of what Benedict the 15th did in the early 20th century. Francis though, there had never been a Pope Francis and St. Francis is a very humble man of the people. You’re like, wow, we’re going to be in for, this will be new for sure.

(01:25:36):

“But to pick Leo the 14th, because Leo the 13th, he was the Pope who oversaw the church during one of the, at the time, the biggest change in the history of the world, the industrial revolution. The world would never be the same with the advent of industry and global capitalism. It was just so brand new and the church has to respond to that. So Pope Leo the 14th and picking that name, he’s saying, and like AI, big thing for him, social media, digital evangelism. He invites content creators to the Vatican each year for a conference that for Pope Leo, he’s saying,” Look, the information age and AI is as pivotal for us now as the steam engine and the factory was for my predecessor, Pope Leo The 13th, and he wants to oversee the church to make sure the body of Christ is shepherded in the midst of all the good and the bad that will come from this.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:26:35):

“Interesting. And so they do have their hand on the pulse for what the content creator space is doing. They’re encouraged by it. Yeah. I think I saw that you’re doing a conference yourself on like, ” Are you guys trying to cultivate this here in America to be more unified? And what’s the strategy? “Because what I see right now in the Christian space is just a lot of interdenominational fighting and just kind of like taking shots at each other, theological debates, the Catholic versus Protestant crossover is just like a popular topic. But what do you see as the future of Christian YouTube, Catholic YouTube?

Trent Horn (01:27:12):

That’s hard to prognisticate. It’s interesting to see how it’s changed. I started my YouTube experience six years ago, COVID had just happened. I was in California when it happened, and I remember telling my wife, I’m like, ” This couldn’t go on for that long. “And then we moved because we realized it is going on for that long. And the cops got called on me for taking my kid to a park. And I was like, ” All right, I’ve had enough of this. “But I started, I just did some response videos. I replied to some videos Mike Winger had made of about Catholicism years ago and no Catholic had really made a response to that. So I thought, oh, I’ll do some of that. And I had been doing Council of Trend audio podcasts for about two years and I thought, Hey, I might put some of this on YouTube and slowly started to put that out there.

(01:27:56):

But six years ago, it was a much more barren space. It’s kind of like if you … I grew up in a sleepy seaside town in San Diego called Encinitas, California. It’s just like 25 minutes, 30 minutes north of San Diego. And I grew up there in the-

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:28:14):

I lived in Oceanside. You did. So I was right next to you. Yes.

Trent Horn (01:28:17):

Okay. So you’ll be able to relate to this then. Yep.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:28:20):

Lapolia.

Trent Horn (01:28:23):

So did you grow up there like late ’80s, ’90s?

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:28:26):

I just moved there. I didn’t grow up there. If I said I grew up there, I’m sorry. Oh, I’m sorry. I lived there for Oceanside.

Trent Horn (01:28:31):

Okay. Okay. So the thing is, I grew up there, I have memories of what that town was like in the early ’90s, very sleepy seaside town. Same for Oceanside. Now you go there, it’s like bustling, very touristy. And lots of people could relate to a sleepy town just becoming crazy bustling like, wow, I can barely recognize this. And I think Christian YouTube is sort of like that, that six years ago, 10 years ago, it was like, yeah, you had a few creators, but not that many. If you wanted to be successful, you had to have a major studio and tons of operations and there were those things that were out there. But now there’s like a gazillion, for me, in my experience, I can’t keep track of the number of Catholic creators that are out there just like, hey, and they have great setups and they’re putting stuff out there and I love it more the merrier.

(01:29:24):

I just want to make sure they don’t feel like that they want to get into competition for views. I want them just to build up the body of Christ each in their own unique way. So when it comes to Christian YouTube, I want that. I think interaction about theological disputes, that is a good thing, but it shouldn’t be a war. We can have disagreements. We can have even bouts, not fights, but like in martial arts, we call them bouts and jiu-jitsu, we call them roles and it’s like, we have a role. We’ll roll about this. But actually here in Dallas, there’s a Church of Christ minister who I’ve been On his channel in between Sundays, people can go and check it out. And we theologically disagree and we go to the mat and we physically roll it out. Super fun. But it’s like when you do it, in both instances, we’re not trying to kill each other.

(01:30:14):

It’s all good natured. But I worry about in the Christian YouTube space, it’s like, no, you’re heretic. You’re an idiot. Here’s why you’re wrong. Laserize. Come on, man. So that’s why what I’ve tried to do, if I reply to somebody now, in order to make sure I understand their position, I’ll write a reply for my channel and then I’ll send them the reply first and I’ll say, “Hey, did I at least understand everything that you said or did I misunderstand something?” That way, and I wish I had done that a long time ago, but I’ve started doing it now for a few months and it’s a night and day. It’s made it so much more enjoyable to interact with other people’s content. And I just recommend everybody give it a try. Right now, I don’t really see Catholic or Protestant a lot of other people, anybody else doing that, but I’d love for other people to do that.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:30:59):

Yeah, no, I love that sentiment. And I see that. As we’re recording this, I just watched a video, John Christen and Matt Frag going to the Catholic Church. And it was so entertaining and so fun, but I had a lot of heart to it, had a lot of understanding of trying to bridge that gap. And I think that’s just a way more commendable way to approach this topic because what we’re doing, honestly, is we’re confusing the world more than anything. We’re confusing ourselves and people are just like, what would you say? Theologically paralyzed because they don’t know if one true church is really the thing and they have to know what they believe about everything and they’re constantly confused. But more than anything is non-believers are super confused. Why we are constantly attacking one another. And if they wanted to get involved, they feel like they’re embarking on this huge journey of picking the right church, of all these people fighting one another.

(01:31:53):

They get into Christian YouTube and they’re even more confused. But it’s like if I were to watch a video of Matt Fratt and John Christ, I’d be like, “Oh, they at least love each other and I can feel that presence of respect.” And it’s like, I hope that that is the approach going forward. And I feel like it’s simmering down. And I feel like guys like you and Gavin are coming at it differently. And that’s setting the pace for us young guys, I think. What’s interesting- Oh,

Trent Horn (01:32:19):

Sorry, I didn’t mean to cut you off. I was going to say, what’s weird is the divide I’m kind of seeing online, it’s not so much like Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox. The divide I’m kind of seeing now where people are, you kind of are going to have to take sides, is how do you want to engage those who disagree with you? Do you want to be kind or do you want to be harsh? And so I see there will be Catholic Protestant Orthodox in the scorched earth harsh camp and Catholic Protestant Orthodox in the kind and charitable camp. So that’s kind of where I’m seeing the divide in the Christian YouTube world. Where what’s interesting is I could have a sit down with Gavin despite we have immense theological disagreements, but there are people who where I theologically disagree with them maybe on like 1% of things and I could never have a productive conversation with them because they don’t have the temperament for it.

(01:33:17):

That’s what I kind of see.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:33:19):

And I get that. I want to do a part two with you on this because there’s like, I didn’t even get to like half my things, but one of those being feminism and that conversation I think you had with Ian, maybe this is one of the conversations you’re talking about, but that was like hostile almost. I don’t know this creator. I don’t know what’s going on with him. And so maybe that’s just like his style. But the feminism conversation and like the conversation around young men, I think it’s affecting both sides equally. And it’s like weird to see that even in both camps, we’re kind of getting the same conclusion on that. But maybe I would love

Trent Horn (01:33:55):

To do a part two. We could do a whole part too, but my brief thoughts on that is I do not like the term feminist. I do not describe myself as a feminist. Some people claim that I do. I do not describe myself as a feminist. I find the term to be toxic and I don’t think we need the term. There’s no term to describe people who think black people and white people should have the same basic rights. There’s no term for that, but clearly I think black people and white people should have the same basic rights and black people have been historically the victims of evil and racism and it’s bad they were subjected to that and should not be subjected to that. And I don’t need a term to describe that. I feel that way. And I would just say same thing about women, that like men and women should have the same basic rights and women have been subjected to like bad things in history and they shouldn’t be.

(01:34:49):

In the past, like lobotomies were disproportionately performed on women because, oh, this lady’s hysterical, better scoop out part of her brain because she’s clearly a hysterical broad or shut her up in her room and don’t let her leave. There have been things to say like, or, “Hey, in the 19th century, you could beat your wife as long as you didn’t leave a permanent mark on her.” So it’s like, no, I think you shouldn’t be beating wives even if … Well, I didn’t leave a permanent mark. Yeah, you probably shouldn’t be doing that. “Oh, Trent’s such a feminist. She’s such a whipped feminist. “No, I think if you think it’s okay to hit women, maybe you’re the one who has massive insecurity issues. Do you think you have to hit women because you’re scared that they might hurt you? Not scared of any of that. I think it would be funny if a lady started like, ” Okay, let’s just calm down now.

(01:35:38):

I don’t have to hit you or anything. “But that’s the thing, that should really be uncontroversial, but you have people who will … I think the red pill manosphere like anti-feminist crowd, and I agree, feminism is basically most modern feminism is evil, abortion, contraception, gender dysphoria and man hatred, legit man hatred in a lot of it, no doubt. But I find that those who are anti-feminists are often photo negatives of that. In the ’90s, you had raunch third wave feminism that would say,” You don’t need men. Women are awesome. Men are the root of all the problems in the world and don’t get married to a man because he’s just going to leave you for a hot younger woman, stick you with the kids and you’re going to be miserable. You don’t need a man to be happy. “And so those women who bought that in the ’90s and 2000s, now in the 2020s, they’re like 50-year-old cat ladies who are totally insufferable and it’s like, I feel bad, but I feel like the guys now, like a lot of the red pill guys on the other side, they’re the photo negative of that.

(01:36:43):

They say,” Hey, look, women are the reason … Women are basically the reason things are bad in the world today. They’re insufferable. You’re better off without them. Just use them and leave them or avoid red pill, use them and abuse them or black pill, avoid them entirely. You don’t need a woman to be happy in life. Men go their own way, da, da, da, da. “It’s like the same thing in the other direction. And I think in 20 years, they’re going to be really insufferable guys either living by themselves, tearing down men who are happy in their marriages, or they’re going to give in and they’re going to marry the one woman willing to marry them who will probably be a divorced woman with her own baggage and their criticisms of women will be a self-fulfilling prophecy. That’s my spiel there on …

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:37:29):

I think I’m going to leave that right there. I think domestic violence in the mano sphere, red pill sphere, I think that just needs to be in the sphere. But Trent, thank you so much. We’ll come back to it.

Trent Horn (01:37:40):

We’ll do another chat.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:37:41):

Yeah, this was so fun. So I tremendously appreciate you. You have been an awesome, respectable opponent. Hopefully I jabbed you a little bit and had some fun. Oh, it’s fun.

Trent Horn (01:37:53):

It was a good role.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:37:54):

It was a good role. I like that. We used to call that in wrestling too, so I understand that term. But thank you. We set out to solve the world’s problems and bring Protestants and Catholics back together. I think we did that. I think we accomplished our mission.

Trent Horn (01:38:07):

We’ve taken a few steps.

Dillon Baker (The Protestant Gentleman) (01:38:08):

We’ve taken a few steps. Trent, thank you so much for being on.

Trent Horn (01:38:11):

Thanks for having me.