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In this episode Trent follows up his discussion on Monday with a look at one important question that Protestants can’t uniformly answer.
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answer’s apologist and speaker, Trent Horn. Trend horn. And today I want to talk about one question that Protestants can’t answer. This is a follow up from my conversation with Jeff and Steve Christie I had earlier in the week about how Protestants can sometimes argue like atheists. And at one point, Steve and I talked about Christian essentials, like what are the essential doctrines of Christianity? Because he said that, for example, belief in a young earth, the earth is less than six thousand years old, is not an essential belief to Christianity, but other beliefs are essential, if you don’t believe them, you’re not a Christian. But here’s the problem for Protestantism, what tells us, what authority tells us, what is required to be a Christian? What is not required? And what beliefs would disqualify you from being a Christian?
Trent Horn:
The Bible doesn’t lay out a list saying here is what you need to believe to be a Christian. It doesn’t have any sort of list like that. So you’ll have Protestants disagreeing about these issues. Now, many Protestants will say, well look, yes there is disagreement in Protestantism but it’s over secondary issues like a younger earth versus an old earth, whether certain charismatic gifts have continued since the first century or not, whether a church should be led congregationally or with Presbyters or an Episcopate model, certain models of church governance. But we agree on the main things, because this goes back to the foundational pillars of Protestantism, sola scriptura, not by scripture alone, and sola fide, justification by faith alone. And so sola scriptura says scripture is the highest or the only infallible authority. There’s different definitions, many of which I think are somewhat inadequate.
Trent Horn:
But the idea of sola scriptura is there’s a secondary belief that goes right along with it. If scripture is the highest or ultimate authority for Christians or the only infallible authority, Protestantism has long concluded, has long affirmed I should say, that there is no authority that has the unique responsibility to interpret scripture. So Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation at the Second Vatican Council, talks about how the interpretation of sacred scripture is entrusted to the teaching office of the magistarium. The teaching office of Christ Church. Protestants would say, no, Christians are free to interpret the Bible. The Bible is their authority. And what follows from that is that if the Bible is their authority, then God has made the world and providentially arranged it so that any Christian reading the Bible will know what they need to be saved. They may not know everything in the Bible, but they’ll figure it out.
Trent Horn:
And so Protestants would say they do have agreement. They would say that the main things are the plain things and the plain things are the main things. They may disagree about certain secondary issues, young earth and old earth, how to run the church, things like that, but they will agree on the main issues. And I just want to say, do they? Number one, do they actually, and number two, do they agree on them because scripture is explicit about it or do they agree about it because of a particular shared tradition that they have? So for example, Protestants agree in the 66 book canon of scripture. They agree the deuterocanonical books are not scripture. Of course the Bible doesn’t say that anywhere. I would say that’s an inherited tradition among Protestants that they all uniformly agree upon. But what about these ideas of these main beliefs that you could just read scripture, get them right out of there, and Protestants all agree on that?
Trent Horn:
I’m not sure that’s really true. I think Protestants disagree on certain issues that really are main issues. That if scriptures are the highest authority, Protestants will be in lockstep on these certain issues. But we don’t see that. So, let me give you a few examples. Here’s number one that really jumps out at me. Can you lose your salvation? Can a Christian lose his salvation? I would say among all the issues, the main things are going to relate to our salvation. And this is definitely a main thing related to this. This isn’t something that, oh, it doesn’t matter what you believe in this issue. Oh, it definitely does matter, because if you get this question wrong, your eternal soul is at risk, because some Protestants believe… Robert Wilkins would be one, Charles Stanley would be another… they believe that you can commit any sin and you will go to heaven.
Trent Horn:
I mean, you’ll miss out on heavenly rewards, but no matter what happens, you cannot lose your salvation. Then there would be the traditional Christian view that I defended in my debate with James White, that Lutherans would hold and other historic Protestants, that you can lose your salvation. So if that’s the case, then you have to take steps to ensure that you don’t do that. And if you have broken your relationship with God, to seek reconciliation with God. How do you do that? What’s the process there? Finally, there’ll be some Protestant Christians who will say you can’t lose your salvation but if you become an unrepentant apostate, you leave the faith permanently, that just proves you were never really saved in the first place. But depending on which view you choose, it really has effects on your personal prayer life, on your theology.
Trent Horn:
So I would say this is a main issue in that if Protestants don’t agree on whether salvation can be lost, that really counts against the claim that scripture provides them plain teaching on the main things of the Christian faith. A slightly related one to salvation would be does baptism save infants? And I phrase this in a particular way. Not should we baptize infants, because well, how many views would there be on baptism? There would be, I would say, the traditional view. Baptism saves us. It regenerates our souls. And so we baptize anyone including infants, that goes all the way back to the apostles. Origin tells us it goes all the way back to the apostles. It was taken for granted in the early churches, no significant controversy related to it. Controversy about whether you should wait eight days after a baby is born or not or you had some people like Tertullian saying, well, get baptized right before you die so you don’t squander the grace.
Trent Horn:
But the traditional view is that yes, baptize babies, because if you die without baptism the church knows of no other means to go to heaven. The doctrines developed so that we can say, well, there is a possibility. We can have a hopeful confidence, but not a false assurance. The unbaptized are in heaven. That’s a separate show to talk about. Traditional view, yes, we baptize babies because baptism saves us. Among Protestants you have two different views. One would be no, we do not baptize babies because baptism does not save us. It is only for adults, so you don’t baptize children. If you were baptized as a child, these Protestants would say you’ve got to be re-baptized or you were invalidly baptized before. They would be credo-baptists.
Trent Horn:
You baptize someone who believes. Pedo-baptists would say no, no, no, we baptize children. It’s important to do that. Some will say it’s for salvation. Baptism takes away original sin. Some Protestants will say that. But there are other Protestants who will say, well we baptize children, it does not save them, but it’s an important covenant sign. It makes them a part of the covenant even if it does not save them. Some Presbyterians and others would argue this. But the way I phrase this is look, this is an important question. Does baptism save us? Particularly does it save infants? Because some Protestants will say the question of whether baptism saves us is not really that important. I mean, I’m going to have a dialogue soon with Gavin Ortland on this stuff, and he might say, well look, for adults baptism is antecedent, hopefully that’s the right word there, or subsequent to faith.
Trent Horn:
So whether or not baptism saves us, we all agree that faith is involved in salvation in some way. So people who are baptized, they had faith before that. Even if the baptism didn’t save them, the faith does. Now I believe that the baptism saves us, even though God can give salvation to whoever he wants. Separate issue, I’ll discuss it with Gavin hopefully soon. But I’m focusing on infants here because if we don’t figure out the question does baptism save us, how you answer that question is really going to determine whether you baptize babies. And that really affects those children’s salvation if baptism is what saves us. First Peter 3:21 says baptism now saves you. More to it in the verse, check out my previous video I did on baptism where I talk about it in more detail. Because if we’re not sure about that or we get disagreement, you could be mistaken.
Trent Horn:
Baptism does save us and you delay children. You delay baptism for many years when you shouldn’t because that’s an important element in that child’s salvation. So does baptism save infants, that is a main issue. That is a salvation issue, it’s a main issue, and it is not clear. Well, I believe baptism or regeneration is clear, but among Protestants they would say it’s a secondary issue. There’s disagreement on that point and disagreement over something that is extremely important in that regard. Okay. Here’s the next one, are sola scriptura and sola fide necessary to be a Christian? Do you have to believe in these things to be Christian? I mean, I found a poll here that was conducted back in 2017 on the 500th anniversary of the reformation. It’s really fascinating to show who believes in sola scriptura and sola fide.
Trent Horn:
Part of the poll does ask Catholics what do you believe? And the poll questions are not worded super precisely in this regard, so you get some Catholics who say they believe in sola scriptura and solo fide. That’s about 7% of Catholics. Whereas you get 68% who say they don’t believe in either one. And that could be any Catholic person who just says they’re Catholic, they haven’t been to a church in decades. But the response from Protestants is super interesting. It says related to sola fide, less than half believe in sola fide. More than half of Protestants believe good deeds in faith are needed to get into heaven. What does that exactly mean? It’s still a vague kind of question. But definitely not that strong. Sola scriptura, once again a majority of Protestants, self-identified Protestants, would say that no, all religious guidance doesn’t come just from scripture. You need other things.
Trent Horn:
And I know some Protestants will say we don’t believe in only scripture. We believe in the creeds. We believe in all of the things from the church councils, but scripture is the highest authority. I actually don’t know if that’s the case because I would ask a Protestant when has a church council ever overruled your personal interpretation of scripture? When did you interpret scripture and think it meant one thing then looked at an ecumenical council and said, “Oh, nevermind. It actually does not mean that.”? For example, here’s a clip from the Protestant philosopher William Lane Craig. This is from his Sunday School Defenders class, and he’s talking about how he endorses a view of Christ called monothelitism. Monothelitism is a heresy that was condemned, I believe, in the seventh century at an ecumenical council. It claims that Christ had only one will.
Trent Horn:
Whereas the church teaches that Christ is fully human and fully divine. So he has a fully human nature and a fully human will. He has a fully divine nature and a fully divine will. He has two wills, not one will. And here’s Craig talking about his view and how he recognizes that yeah, it’s a heresy. It’s condemned in the church’s tradition and the creeds, but he doesn’t care because he believes in sola scriptura.
William Craig:
Monothelitism, from mono, means that Christ had one will. Diothelitism like a diad, means that he had two wills. And I have to say that historically the church has a firm diothelitism, that Christ had two wills. He had a human will and he had a divine will. And this was a decision that was made very late in the game. I think it was something like the fifth ecumenical council in the 600s, somewhere around 686. So in that sense, this view is heretical in that it goes against one of the ecumenical councils, which affirms Diothelitism. But I would simply say as a Protestant, I take all theology to the bar of scripture, even the creeds, even the conciliar ecumenical creeds must be judged before the bar of scripture because church tradition does not have the same authority as scripture does.
Trent Horn:
So two things, one what Craig says actually segues into a point I forgot to address earlier, which is on one of the main things, many Protestants will say, look, we believe in Jesus. As long as you believe in Jesus that’s the main thing. You read the Bible. You’ll believe in Jesus. You’ll go to heaven. That’s the most main thing and we all agree on that, but I’m not sure that’s the case. What do you mean that Protestants all believe in Jesus? Because you could say, well, we believe that he’s Lord and savior. Well, there’s some people who would say, well, I don’t believe that Jesus is fully God but he’s almost God, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, and he could be a Lord and savior in that kind of sense. But even among Protestants who would confess the deity of Christ, is that enough?
Trent Horn:
What are the essential beliefs about Jesus that you need to have before you fall all into heresy? Is William Lane Craig a Christian because he denies that Christ had two wills? Maybe a Protestant will say, well, that part of Christology is not that important. Okay, well what about other heresies like Nestorianism? Do you have to believe that Jesus was always God the son and that Jesus was always divine? Or that he became divine later where God the son was joined to Jesus? That’s why at the council of Ephesus, the church dogmatically declared Mary theotokos, God bearer, not just Christ bearer. She didn’t just give birth to the Christ, she gave birth to God. She bore God in her womb. But if you deny that Jesus and God the son are the same person and they’re only one person, are you not Christian anymore?
Trent Horn:
These important points of Christology, they’re really important. That’s why we have the ecumenical councils. That’s why the catechism quotes from the councils of Ephesus, the council of Chalcedon, to make it very clear what is essential, what needs to be believed about Jesus Christ. You have to get your Christology. correct. I think Protestantism is not as uniform on that as one might think. Protestants disagree, for example, about eternal sonship. Was the second person of the Trinity always the son for all of eternity or did he become the son at the incarnation? Protestants disagree about that. Whether God the son is eternal or not is one way that you could put it. So that’s one thing that goes back to that question about, well, we all believe in Jesus. If you put it that vaguely, yeah, everybody believes in Jesus, but they may disagree about what are the most important things or essential things you must believe about Jesus in order to be a Christian. Not just that he’s divine, but what does that, practically speaking, what does that mean?
Trent Horn:
And then number two, I think this example of Craig show that yeah, people might pay lip service to tradition and creeds, but ultimately a personal interpretation of scripture is going to overrule that. And you’re going to see the disagreement among Protestants have already outlined. So you go down to the bottom it’s interesting, the percent of Protestants that believe in both sola fide and sola scriptura is only about 30%. Now I don’t want to knock Protestants with this survey. There was a survey a while back that said 70% of Catholics don’t believe Christ is present in the Eucharist. Of course, that includes anybody who says they’re Catholic, no matter how poorly formed they are. And that might also be the case for Protestants in this survey. So, we do need to take a little bit with a grain of salt here. But I’ve been talking to people.
Trent Horn:
I had my dialogue with Cameron Bertuzzi several months ago and I think there are many Protestants who would say, well yeah, being Christian is not necessarily the same as being Protestant. You can be Christian without believing in sola scriptura and solo fide. But I know there are other Protestants who may disagree with that. And especially those would be, here’s point number four, the question are Catholics Christians? Because this is a big one right here for me, about a main thing and a plain thing, right? That if scriptures are ultimate authority, it should reveal to us what we ought to believe. It should give us those answers. Protestants should be uniform on that. And the main thing the scripture should tell us is what beliefs lead to being a Christian and what beliefs disqualify you from being a Christian. In fact, let me share with you a clip from the YouTube channel, Ready Harvest, that talks about the disagreement that exists among Christians… I’m sorry, among Protestant Christians, about whether Catholics are or are not Christians.
Trent Horn:
There’s that clip. I’ve also seen debates, like there was a debate between James White and Doug Wilson about whether Catholics are their brothers and sisters in Christ, whether Catholics are Christian. Once again, that should be a really main question. That should be like I need to know, am I saved or not? Am I a Christian or not? And it seems like Protestantism cannot give me a uniformly agreed upon answer to that really important question. But here’s a clip from Ready Harvest, great channel, check it out, that shows the extent of this disagreement.
Ready Harvest:
Evangelicals may say that the Catholic church deserves to be a Christian under the academic label, and many would say that the Catholic church is a denomination of Christianity because they have the Trinity, right, and so on. But they may go on to say that many individual Catholics aren’t Christian, because evangelicals believe that they aren’t trusting in Christ through faith alone for salvation and that’s a requirement for be being a Christian. Some fundamentalists who believe in eternal security would deny Armenian Protestants the name Christian as well because they teach that someone who believes you can lose your salvation is working to keep it, a violation of sola fide, faith alone, according to them.
Ready Harvest:
It’s not uncommon that a person who denies Catholics the label of Christian would also deny many Protestants the label too. You probably figured that out before I said it, and here’s the point. It all comes down to the fact that contradictory beliefs cannot all be true. Someone is right and someone is wrong. What we can’t expect is that evangelicals, Catholics and Mormons can all sit down and come to the understanding of who is a Christian and who isn’t and realize that only some evangelicals deny Catholics as Christians, some Catholics deny Protestants the Christian label also.
Trent Horn:
First I do want to say that even though some Catholics think Protestants as a whole are not Christian, that’s not true. Maybe I’ll tackle that topic in a full video. But the Second Vatican Council says the following, “Quite large communities came to be separated from full communion with the Catholic church during the reformation, for which often enough men of both sides were to blame. The children who are born into these communities also, and who grow up believing in Christ, cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation. And the Catholic church embraces upon them as brothers with respect and affection for men who believe in Christ and have been truly baptized are in communion with the Catholic church even though this communion is imperfect.” So as a Catholic, I would recognize the vast majority of Protestants have valid baptisms and so they’re Christian. But we see in this video from Ready Harvest, Protestants don’t agree on that.
Trent Horn:
And I think the host makes a very good point that those same Protestants who would deny that I’m a Christian, they might say that many other Protestants are not Christian, and then the other Protestants will disagree with them. But once again, if you can’t get the right answer on this crucial question, who is a Christian and who isn’t, maybe you have a flaw in your ultimate authority if you can’t get a plain answer to what is clearly a main thing like this. So just to summarize, what is the one question I think Protestants can’t answer? At least they can’t uniformly answer, who is and who isn’t a Christian. There’s vast amounts of disagreement, disagreement about essential elements related to our salvation like whether your salvation can be lost, are babies who are baptized, are they Christian or not? What do you have to believe about Jesus in order to be saved? What kind of Christology do you need to have?
Trent Horn:
There’s a lot of disagreement about these important issues. And so I think that counts against severely or fatally counts against the claim that Protestantism has an adequate authority structure in order to teach Christians and to guide them into salvation. So, those are my thoughts on that. Maybe you disagree with me. Some of you might, that’s fine. Leave a comment below. I’d even be willing to sit down with another Protestant and have a dialogue about this question, about whether Protestantism can adequately account for essential beliefs and make it the case that Christians have an authority to guide them into belief about the essential elements of the Christian faith, or that it has a framework to define those essential elements because it’s very clear these disagreements exist within Protestantism because they are not explicitly laid out in scripture in a way for everybody to agree.
Trent Horn:
So as I said, people might disagree, that’s fine. I’m willing to have a dialogue with those who disagree with me. I hope this is helpful just to at least spur some insight and some thoughts in the things that divide Catholics and Protestants, and we’ll see where the conversation goes from here. But thank you guys so much, and I hope you have a very blessed day.
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