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In this episode Trent replies to Wes Huff’s recent video on why he’s not Catholic.
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Transcript:
Trent Horn (00:00):
Hey everyone. In today’s episode, I’ll be responding to Wes Huff’s recent video on why he isn’t Catholic. And from the outset, it’ll be easy for me to say, I appreciate Wes Huff’s work defending the foundations of Christianity because I featured him in my previous episode along with Father Mike Schmitz as being the best public witnesses of Christianity today based on holiness, boldness, and reach of influence. But that said, I strongly disagree with his criticisms of Catholicism. No surprise there. So I’ll be addressing those in today’s episode and to make sure I didn’t misunderstand anything in its original video, I sent this script to Wes for review. Now, he’s a very busy guy so you can only briefly look it over, but it did help in shaping the final episode. Now Wes’ original video was divided into various sections, so I’ll divide my response into three sections to help us navigate the flow of the conversation.
(00:48):
Let’s start with part one, the sufficiency of scripture. Wes said scripture is unique because it’s the direct speech of God and because of that, scripture has unique authority among believers. And because of this unique authority, scripture is sufficient to give Christians what God intends to reveal to them. Now, Wes’s view of the sufficiency of scripture is similar to what we might find in the 1689 London Baptist confession, which isn’t surprising given that Wes is an historic Baptist himself. The confession says the whole council of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man, salvation, faith, and life is either expressly set down or necessarily contained in the Holy Scripture. Now here’s where I disagree with Wes’s argument. First, just because something is unique, that doesn’t mean it has supreme authority or even authority in general. Wes would agree that church is unique and scripture says the church is the pillar and foundation of truth.
(01:41):
But Wes does not believe that because of this, the church is capable of acting in an infallible way. Now Wes may respond by saying that’s because while the church is the household of God, scripture is the very word of God. And so what God says has supreme authority in the church, but the Bible doesn’t treat the word of God as a synonym for scripture. In actually the apostles, Luke says the word of God grew as the church spread. So the word of God is identified with the church or believers who have accepted the gospel. In one Thessalonians 2:13, Paul says, when you receive the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of me, but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you believers. For more on this, see my episode on the word of God fallacy linked below.
(02:29):
I’ve argued before that in scripture, the phrase the word of God refers to the spoken words of God, prophets, or apostles and not human writings. Now, some critics have challenged me on that and I plan to reply to them in full in a published article, but even if scripture does on occasion call human writings the word of God, my objection would still stand. That’s because Wes’ argument relies on the claim that scripture is unique because it is the word of God. But the Bible says other things like apostolic preaching are the word of God. And if being the word of God makes something infallible, then that means the written and unwritten word of God are equally infallible and so scripture is not unique in this way. This is why the Second Vatican Council said, “The church has always veneerated the divine scriptures just as she venerates the body of the Lord since especially in the sacred liturgy, she unceasingly receives and offers to the faithful the bread of life from the table, both of God’s word and of Christ’s body.
(03:27):
She has always maintained them and continues to do so together with sacred tradition as the supreme rule of faith.” Now West might say that this may have been true when the apostles spoke during their ministries, but the only artifacts of the word of God we have today are contained in sacred scripture or the Bible is the only infallible record we have of apostolic teaching, but that’s just an assumption. And so we should ask, where is the evidence for that claim or assumption? So consider these facts. Number one, Jesus never said all revelation would eventually be confined to the written word alone. In fact, prior to his ascension into heaven, Jesus never told anyone to write anything down. Number two, the New Testament writings never say all revelation is found in scripture. Indeed, no New Testament writing could have said that unless its author knew that he was the last entry into the New Testament canon and all the other apostles were no longer alive to preach.
(04:22):
But unlike its frequent references to Christ returning in the future, the New Testament authors never say there will be a time in the future when authority in the church would transfer from tradition and written word as we see in two Thessalonians 2:15 and living teaching authority like we see in Acts 15 to just scripture alone. And number three, the earliest church fathers like those before the Council of Nice never say that scripture contains the whole council of God or anything like that. None of them say they operate under anything like solo scriptura. Instead, they speak about how divine revelation is found in scripture and tradition. For more on this problem, see my episode on the fallacy of trying to find solo scriptura and the church fathers link below. All of these facts are very difficult to explain if solo scripture were true, but they make perfect sense if God never intended for the written word alone to be the church’s only infallible rule of faith.
(05:16):
West also said in his episode
Wes Huff (05:18):
Tradition for Protestants has a vote and it has a voice scripture simply has the veto.
Trent Horn (05:24):
But how do we identify which human writings are scripture? That is a tradition that scripture cannot veto because we use it to know what scripture even is. The New Testament writings never even tell us the criteria to look for in discerning if something is scripture. This is important because people still debate what does and doesn’t count as scripture today Wes himself says that the specific text describing the story of Jesus saving the woman caught in adultery in John eight is not scripture because it’s not found in early manuscripts.
Wes Huff (05:55):
While I do not think it is an inspired piece of scripture that John wrote, I actually think that there’s a lot of evidence for that being something that Jesus would’ve actually done.
Trent Horn (06:04):
And Ryan@needgod.net tried to rebut Joe Heschmire’s argument for baptism saving us by saying Mark 16:16, he who believes in his baptized will be saved is not inspired scripture. Is it your position that Mark 16:16, the long form is both false and not canonical and also false?
Wes Huff (06:26):
Yeah, I’d say it’s not canonical and is it false? Well, this is the thing is that if it’s not actually in the Bible, then it’s not really even need to be dealt with.
Trent Horn (06:33):
Now against the claim that one ought to be Protestant because of the sufficiency of scripture, I would as a Catholic point out scripture’s inability to answer the question, what is scripture as being a massive problem for the claim that scripture is formally sufficient and an infallible church is not needed. If scripture contains the whole council of God, then at the very least it would tell us how to identify scripture and it would explicitly say that in the future, all revelation would be contained in scripture alone, but scripture doesn’t do that. In fact, I found it interesting that while West cited scripture often in his section on the sufficiency of faith, he never cited scripture in his section on the sufficiency of scripture and wouldn’t we expect scripture to tell us it’s sufficient if it were? We should also be skeptical of the formal sufficiency of scripture apart from an infallible church because scripture is unable to guide the entire body of Christ to the answers for many important theological questions.
(07:30):
In his video, Wes said that scripture can be sufficient even if people misunderstand it because in the Old Testament people misunderstood God’s direct speech, but that didn’t mean that God wasn’t the ultimate authority. However, the Catholic position is not that Catholicism is totally free from doctrinal misunderstanding and Protestantism is nothing but misunderstanding. That’s not our position. There are many issues that Protestants, including liberal ones, get right because scripture is clear on these matters. These include Jesus being the Messiah or salvation coming from faith in Jesus Christ and sometimes Catholic teaching can be misunderstood, but here’s the difference. If the church has a magisterial or a teaching role and not merely a ministerial or serving role, then the church can act as a living voice and can correct people’s misunderstandings. God often did that in the Old Testament when his people misunderstood him. The church acted this way at the Council of Jerusalem in correcting misunderstandings people had about circumcision and expectations for Gentile converts.
(08:32):
And the council’s teachings were infallibly binding on the entire body of Christ decades before they were written down as scripture in the book of Acts, but scripture itself is not a living voice and so it can’t function in this way. Instead, the doctrinal misunderstandings that arise from people misunderstanding scripture persist and they get worse over time, leading to division in the body of Christ over very important issues. Returning to Wes’s point about scripture simply having a veto power over tradition, to be honest, it isn’t scripture that has the veto power in Protestantism. It’s the theological tradition an individual Protestant belongs to that says what scripture means. For example, consider what the Westminster confession of faith says about scripture. The whole council of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man, salvation, faith in life is either expressly set down in scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture under which nothing at any time is to be added.
(09:30):
Now, this sounds exactly like the London Baptist confession of faith, but there’s a key difference. Instead of saying or necessarily contained in scripture, Westminster says, or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from scripture. This allows Presbyterians who follow the Westminster confession to say it is sinful to not baptize babies, even though scripture neither explicitly commands infant baptism nor does it describe an infant being baptized. Baptist, on the other hand, would say those reasons show infant baptism is not required or is even sinful because infant baptism is not necessarily contained in scripture, but which of these views of solo scriptura is correct? Scripture can’t tell us and so it has no veto power in this respect. When I debated Presbyterian Anthony Rogers, he said that scripture is clear on the important doctrines of the faith and people only misunderstand it because they’re spiritually blind.
Andrew Wilson (10:28):
Jesus said, “I did tell you and you didn’t believe.” He went on to say, “You don’t believe because you’re not my sheep. Not because my word’s unclear. If a blind man doesn’t see the light, there’s nothing wrong with the light. It’s something wrong with his eyes.”
Trent Horn (10:42):
But Rogers believes that infant baptism is morally required. And so I asked the audience to raise their hands if they believed in solo scriptura. Almost all of them did. I then asked them to keep their hands raised if they thought infant baptism was required. Almost all of them put their hands down and disagreed with my Presbyterian opponent who believed it’s sinful to not baptize a baby, which would mean all those people who disagreed with him must be spiritually blind. But a more charitable assessment would be that these people were not spiritually blind. They’re just mistaken because as St. Peter says, there are some things in scripture that are hard to understand and those things that people misunderstand are important because this misunderstanding can lead to their own destruction. Ironically, many of Wes’ criticisms of Catholicism actually shows scripture is not sufficient since when taken together, most Protestants embrace one or more of the alleged errors that Wes highlights about Catholicism, which brings me to part two, the sufficiency of faith and grace and the nature of justification.
(11:42):
In his video, Wes had three sections on faith, justification, and grace. So I’m going to summarize them together to make it easier to tease out our differences on these questions. West believes that justification, what makes us right with God is a single moment where God forensically or legally declares the believer to be righteous. The believer receives God’s grace, his unmerited favor in a way that operates independently of anything the believer does Wes puts it this way.
Wes Huff (12:10):
The Protestant position is that humans possess no inherent capacity to contribute meaningfully to their own salvation, having lost the freedom to accomplish anything pleasing to God. So we see that in places like Hebrews chapter 11, verse six or Romans eight: eight, meaning salvation must originate entirely from Christ rather than from human effort.
Trent Horn (12:36):
If by inherent capacity you mean our sinful fallen human nature, then Catholics would agree with this statement. The economical council of Trent even cited Hebrews 11: six saying this, “Faith is the beginning of human salvation, the foundation, and the root of all justification without which it is impossible to please God and to come under the fellowship of his sons. But we are therefore said to be justified freely because that none of those things which precede justification, whether faith or works, merit the grace itself of justification, for if it be a grace, it is not now by works. Otherwise, as the same apostle says, grace is no more grace.” This is why the catechism says, since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification at the beginning of conversion. But even when we do good works after we are saved, they are not pleasing to God just because we do them.
(13:35):
The catechism says this. The charity of Christ is the source in us of all our merits before God. Grace by uniting us to Christ in active love ensures the supernatural quality of our acts and consequently their merit before God and before men. The saints have always had a lively awareness that their merits were pure grace. In my original script, I said that West was describing Calvinism, not general Protestantism when he was discussing issues related to salvation. West told me in response that he consulted non-Calvinist Protestants and they agreed with his script. I also consulted non-Calvinist Protestants and they told me the Protestantism that West describes in his video is really more of a kind of low church Baptist evangelicalism than general Protestantism itself. Consider what West says here about justification.
Wes Huff (14:26):
God pronounces the believer righteous based on faith in Christ. This standing with God excludes all human works, including religious rituals performed through a church.
Trent Horn (14:39):
But what about Anglicans, Lutherans, or the Church of Christ who believe baptism, a ritual performed in church is what spiritually regenerates us. It’s unfortunate when Protestants from low church backgrounds often superimpose their theology over Protestantism as a whole. This happened when William Lane Craig said in my chat with him that the most important thing Catholics should change is their practice of infant baptism, even though many Protestants also baptize infants. It also happened when Gavin Ortland said in our dialogue at the Blessed God conference that Protestantism is different than Catholicism because it offers peace through the fact that salvation can’t be lost, to which I reminded the audience that other Protestants do think salvation can be lost.
Bless God Conference Speaker (15:24):
In your view, like your specific view, will you get to heaven? Can you lose your salvation?
Gavin Ortlund (15:29):
If you are justified, you’re headed to heaven. Yeah. Both
Bless God Conference Speaker (15:32):
Of the guarantee. So that infallible security say, so in that legal declaration, no matter what you do, if you are truly justified, you’re in.
Gavin Ortlund (15:41):
If it’s a genuine justification, there’s lots of people who experience tremendous spiritual realities of some kind or another but are not genuinely believers, are not genuinely justified in the sight of God.
Bless God Conference Speaker (15:52):
So I think some of this too would just be a difference in definitions. Yeah.
Ruslan (15:57):
So let me read this quote over you guys. “Faith alone saves, but the faith that justifies is never alone.”
Bless God Conference Speaker (16:04):
That’s a very Protestant
Ruslan (16:06):
Smoking. Yeah, that was the point. That was the point. So faith alone saves. Faith alone saves, but the faith that justifies is never alone.
Trent Horn (16:16):
Hope Benedict the 16th actually says something very similar in one of his homilies that he said, the formulation Luther uses faith alone is true if faith is not divorced from charity. As I cited Galatians five: six earlier, faith working through love. Though I will be clear though that this view of assurance that justification can never be undone, that is one Protestant view. Others don’t hold that. Luther himself held that because justification accrues by faith through apostasy, justification can be undone. And so that would be the Lutheran view.
(16:49):
When this is how Protestantism is described, it makes it seem radically opposed to Catholicism when in many cases it isn’t. Anglicans, for example, have a rich sacramental theology like Protestants as can be seen in their 1549 communion liturgy being celebrated here or consider that the 1997 Joint Declaration on Justification between the Lutheran World Federation and the Catholic Church says this. “By justification, we are both declared and made righteous. Justification therefore is not a legal fiction. God in justifying affects what he promises. He forgives sin and makes us truly righteous. West made a big huff, I’m sorry, I couldn’t help it, about the precise nature of justification being a reason he’s not Catholic. But the debate over imputed and infused righteousness shouldn’t be something that keeps someone from being Catholic because in many cases we’re just using different words to describe the same thing. What Catholics call an increase in justification after salvation, that’s what Protestants would call an increase in sanctification.
(17:51):
We also call it an increase in justification because we believe what makes us right before God is the presence of God’s sanctifying grace in our souls that cleanses us from unrighteousness because that is how God’s grace works in our lives. We can, as two Peter one: four says,” Escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion and become partakers of the divine nature. “And that is two Corinthians 5:17 says,” If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. “This is why the Council of Trent only cited James 2:24,” A man is justified by works and not by faith alone to refer to the increase of already received justification or ongoing growth and holiness. It said, Do you see that by works a man is justified and not by faith alone? And this increase of justification holy church begs when she prays, give unto us, oh Lord, increase of faith, hope, and charity.
(18:47):
“For more on defending the Catholic view of James two, see this episode link below. Wes’s concern about justification seems to be rooted in the idea that when we stand before God, all that God will see is the righteousness of Christ covering our sins that we receive through faith and not any of our works, but this can’t possibly be true because the New Testament frequently talks about rewards believers will have in heaven because of the good works they perform, but not all believers perform the same amount of good works so their rewards will be different, which means God will see not just the righteousness of Christ, but the facts of our own righteous deeds that are perfected through Christ living in us. West also said …
Wes Huff (19:28):
I believe that what Jesus accomplished, he did so sufficiently. His act of justifying the believer was once for all. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. It says in Romans chapter eight: one,” And I can hold that sufficient work in my life confidently.
Trent Horn (19:48):
“It’s true. There is no eternal condemnation for those who are in Christ in the present tense, but that doesn’t mean a person can’t depart from Christ. Just a few chapters later in Romans 11, Paul reminds believers about God’s kindness to you provided you continue in his kindness, otherwise you too will be cut off. I don’t know if he intends this or not, but it sounded like West was equating solephide justification by faith alone with eternal security or the claim that salvation cannot be lost, which is not essential to Protestantism because as I mentioned earlier, many Protestants who believe in justification by faith alone deny the doctrine of eternal security. Also, if as a Protestant you aren’t Catholic because you think eternal security is basically a part of the gospel, then that should really make you question the sufficiency of scripture because that means scripture is not capable of revealing this doctrine to any major Christian figure before the 16th century since none of them believed in eternal security and scripture isn’t sufficient to reveal it to most Protestants and historic denominations today who also deny this doctrine.
(20:59):
Now, regarding the effects of Christ’s death, I would tell Wes that I do not believe Christ’s sacrifice is merely sufficient. It was instead super abundant. Christ’s sacrifice on the cross is capable of saving every single person since Christ, as one John two: two says, is the expatation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. But since the whole world will not be saved, that means what each person chooses to do in his or her life influences his or her salvation. This includes choices we make after our initial salvation that can lead to our spiritual destruction. Hebrews 10:26- 29 says this. “If we sin deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment and a fury of fire which will consume the adversaries. A man who has violated the law of Moses dies without mercy at the testimony of two or three witnesses.
(21:57):
How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by the man who has spurned the son of God and profane the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified and outraged the spirit of grace? Wes also quoted a passage about John Calvin that I found to be interesting.
Wes Huff (22:13):
Genuine faith involves not ignorance, but knowledge of God in Christ, not submission to an ecclesiastical authority, but firm persuasion that God acts as a benevolent father and confident expectation of salvation.
Trent Horn (22:29):
Calvin saw a submission to his ecclesiastical authority as being a part of someone having genuine faith. Some scholars estimate that one in 15 people in Geneva was brought before the Calvinist Church’s court and one in 25 was excommunicated. One of the most common charges was contradicting the ministers since lay people were not free to interpret doctrine for themselves. One citizen named Pierre Amaru was readmitted to the church only after he crawled on his hands and knees to the bishop’s house. He probably did this because he was afraid for his immortal soul since John Calvin said the following about excommunication and what it meant from the perspective of people who were in union with Christ’s church, he said,” We may lawfully judge them, “the excommunicated, aliens from the church and so aliens from Christ, but only during the time of their excommunication. Classical Protestants recognize the importance of an actually authoritative church.
(23:27):
They just disagreed with the authority claims of those within the church, especially the Bishop of Rome, which brings us to part three, the papacy, the saints, and the mass. West began his section on the papacy by saying he’s not convinced that Peter is the rock, but that the rock in Matthew 16 is Peter’s confession of faith. However, the catechism recognizes the rock in Matthew 16 can also refer to Peter’s confession. It can be Peter’s confession, but what makes that confession of faith special is because Peter himself received a unique revelation from God to be able to make that confession. And this is what empowered him to be the leader of the early church, not his own abilities, but God’s grace. The fact that Jesus says,” Upon this rock, I’ll build my church instead of upon you the rock, a point Wes brings up doesn’t mean Jesus was not referring to Peter.
(24:16):
It’s like if I said to my wife, You are the light of my life and this light shines for the whole world. Protestant scholars who are not involved in the debate over Catholicism tend to say it’s a pretty straightforward conclusion that the rock in Matthew 16, even among other things, represents Peter himself. Craig Keener, who does solid work on contemporary miracles, by the way, says the following: Jesus plays on Simon’s nickname, Peter, which is roughly the English rocky. Peter is rocky and on this rock, Jesus would build his church. Evangelical scholar D.A. Carson says, “Many have attempted to avoid identifying Peter as the rock on which Jesus builds his church, yet if it were not for Protestant reactions against extremes of Roman Catholic interpretations, it is doubtful whether many would’ve taken rock to be anything or anyone other than Peter.” The Lutheran scholar, Oscar Coleman said of Matthew 16 and Peter being the rock that “Roman Catholic exegesis is right and all Protestant attempts to evade this interpretation are to be rejected.” West also says he’s not convinced there was a single bishop of Rome in the early church and he cites Saint Ignatius of Antioch’s silence on the matter as proof of this.
Wes Huff (25:24):
No writer in the early church asserted the Episcopal authority in more emphatic terms than Ignatius. And so his complete silence on papal primacy is an elephant in the room.
Trent Horn (25:40):
But that actually undermines the argument from silence from Ignatius. Ignatius says in his letters that you are not a true church unless you have deacons, priests, and bishops. In his letter to the trillions, he said this. “Let all reverence the deacons as an appointment of Jesus Christ and the bishop as Jesus Christ, who is the son of the father and the presbyters as a Sanhedrin of God and assembly of the apostles. Apart from these, there is no church and Ignatius praises the Church of Rome unlike any other church he writes to. Ignatius gives instructions and guidance to other churches, which were probably under his authority in Asia minor since they were near him. But when it comes to the church at Rome, Ignatius says,” I do not as Peter and Paul issue commandments under you. The only thing he asks the Roman church is to not rescue him from martyrdom.
(26:28):
So it wouldn’t make sense for Ignatius to praise the Church of Rome and hold it up as an example to other churches if the church at Rome lacked one of the necessary things that a true church needs, a bishop. Now, Ignatius does not mention a bishop in Rome in his Roman letter, but he also doesn’t mention priests, deacons, or even lay Christians by name in the letter, but that wouldn’t prove there were no Christians in Rome. What’s more likely is that Ignatius, who is on his way to Rome to be executed, deliberately lacked details about the Roman Christians to protect them from imperial persecution. For more on this, Cesar Bernstein’s 2025 article on the subject in Evangelical Quarterly, and papal authority can be found much earlier than the third century. In the second century, Pope Victor threatened to ex- communicate churches who celebrated Easter on the wrong date.
(27:18):
Irines said that wasn’t a good idea, but he never said Victor had no authority to do this. For more on the papacy, I recommend Joe Heschmire’s book, Pope Peter and Eric Ibarra’s book, The Papacy: Revisiting the Debate Between Catholics and Orthodox. I’ll also put some of my episodes on the subject in the description below. I also need to admit that I am much more sympathetic to high church criticisms of Catholic historical claims, like those from Anglican and Lutheran apologists over criticisms from low church Christians like Baptists. At least Anglicans and some European Lutherans recognize the obvious historical evidence for the episcopate in general, even if they don’t agree with papal doctrine. So even if the evidence were the papacy was as strong as the evidence for the episcopacy, the office of Bishop in general, that still wouldn’t convince Wes. That really dampens my desire to try to prove the papacy to low church Baptists.
(28:13):
Instead, I’d ask them to defend their view of church leadership and explain how the entire Christian world overnight without protest changed into a radically different model sometime in the late 1st century so that sainting nations of Antioch could in AD 107 say something like this. “See that you all follow the bishop even as Jesus Christ does the Father and the presbytery as you would the apostles and reverence the deacons as being the institution of God. Let no man do anything connected with the church without the bishop. Let that be deemed a proper Eucharist, which is administered either by the bishop or by one to whom he has entrusted it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let the multitude of the people also be. Even as wherever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic church. Another Catholic doctrine Wes found concerning was prayer to the saints or seeking the intercession of the saints.
(29:05):
Wes is worried that in practice this can be superstitious. Well, first we have good evidence that the saints prayers are effective in things like medical healing science can’t explain or marry apparitions like those of Fatima or Zetun where thousands of people saw a miracle. I’d hardly call that mere superstition. Second, in practice, many people turn the Bible’s promises about God answering prayers into superstitious prosperity gospel stuff. Just because something can be improperly abused doesn’t mean it can’t be properly used. West also says that prayer in scripture is only addressed to God, but I don’t find this argument to be compelling. We need to define what prayer is. If prayer is just making a request to someone, then people pray to all kinds of people in scripture. That kind of language was common in the West until recently. For example, Shakespeare used the word pray this way often Such as in Much Ado About Nothing, where Claudio says, “I pray thee tell me truly how thou likes her.” In pride and prejudice, Lady Catherine says, “Pray tell her from me that she cannot expect to excel if she does not practice a great deal.” But if you define prayer as making a request to God or talking to God, well then of course you’ll only find examples of people praying or talking to God in scripture if that’s how you define prayer.
(30:24):
That also means whatever Catholics do with departed saints, it can’t be prayer because prayer by definition is just when you make a request to God. Now, a Protestant might say we find no examples in scripture of people asking deceased saints to intercede for them regardless of whether you want to call it prayer. Setting aside the description of elders in heaven, carrying bowls filled with prayers of the saints found in Revelations five and the early evidence for intercessory prayers in the catacombs, let’s say that were true. So what? As I said earlier, we don’t find any examples of people baptizing infants in scripture, but many Protestants deduce from scripture that God wants us to baptize infants. Origin also said in the third century, baptism of infants was a sacred tradition from the apostles. In scripture, prayer is also never addressed directly to the Holy Spirit and some Protestants say that’s why Christians should only pray to the Father and not the Son or the Holy Spirit.
(31:19):
But I think the real divide between Wes and myself on this issue can be seen in this statement about prayer.
Wes Huff (31:25):
Prayer is only ever addressed to God within scripture. It is a fundamentally worshipful act in its nature and its function. So the divide of a prayer to a saint which is understood as non-worshipful and a prayer to God that is understood as worshipful I think actually breaks down under the scrutiny of scripture.
Trent Horn (31:46):
This is something I covered in my episode on what I call the Protestant worship problem, where I said there is a difference between Catholics and Protestants when it comes to the concept of worship. Catholics traditionally viewed worship as a broad category referring to giving someone their honor or their worthship. It’s why we call judges your honor and in some countries civil magistrates are still referred to as your worship. Protestants, however, typically see worship as a binary reality. Worship is just that which we give to God alone and to no one else. And so if prayer is worship, then prayer is something we give to God alone and no one else. But Protestants don’t really reserve worship to God alone. They just reserve the highest form of worship for God. For example, an evangelical praise and worship service may include praising God and thanking God for his mighty deeds and song, but Protestants praise and thank other people without it being called worship.
(32:45):
They simply give God praise and thanks beyond what is due to any creature. That may explain why when Catholics give the mother of God, the bless of Virgin Mary, more praise than any other creature. Protestants view this as idolatrous because it resembles their worship of God being one of unique degree. But Catholics offer God not just worship of the highest degree, but worship of the highest kind. We recognize that the praise we give creatures, even the mother of God, is infinitely less awe-inspiring than the highest form of worship we offer to God, which is the Eucharistic sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood placed on the alterate mass offered to the Father, which brings me to Wes’s next concern about the mass. Here’s what he says.
Wes Huff (33:31):
The mass has the priest offering Christ to the Father and the directionality of the posture then is not heavenly downward for the church, which I would argue is what is happening in the means of grace that takes place at the Lord’s table, but earthly upwards on behalf of the church to God. So in Roman Catholicism, it’s earthly upwards in Protestantism. I would argue in the kind of proper biblical understanding of what’s going on at the last supper at the Lord’s table, it’s heavenly downwards.
Trent Horn (34:05):
I’ll be honest, I’m a bit confused by this criticism. At the mass, we present Christ who is the slain Passover lamb for the forgiveness of sins of the Father. When Jesus told the apostles to do this in remembrance of me, the Greek word for remembrance comes from anemesis, which is used in the Greek translation of the Old Testament to refer to memorial sacrifices. The offering is not so we remember what Jesus has done. It is similar to other memorial sacrifices in scripture. We offer the Son who laid down his life for us to the Father so that figuratively speaking, the Father remembers what he has done for his people. Jesus becomes the new Passover lamb who was presented to the Father to cover our sins and whose body like that of the old passover lambs is consumed by those for whom death is passed over.
(34:54):
It’s birectional. It’s not simply a legalistic offering to God. Now Wes’ main objection is that this contradicts Hebrews nine intends insistence that Christ’s sacrificed once and that it is sufficient, unlike previous animal sacrifices which had to be repeated. And I appreciate that West said Catholics don’t resacrifice Jesus but represent his on sacrifice to the Father. But Christ continually represents himself to the Father in scripture. Hebrews 7:24- 25 says of Christ that he holds his priesthood permanently because he continues forever. Consequently, he is able for all time to save those who draw near to God through him since he always lives to make intercession for them. If Christ were a priest forever, it would follow that Christ always fulfills his priestly duty by offering his one sacrifice to the Father on our behalf. The existence of continuing heavenly sacrifices can also be found in Hebrews 9:23, which says that it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rights, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these.
(36:02):
In his commentary on Hebrews, George Buchanan said that Protestant scholars like him have had trouble with these passages because Christ once for all sacrifice on earth was thought to make all of the sacrifices unnecessary. But he notes that since the heavenly archetype functions just as its earthly imitation, it seemed reasonable for the heavenly high priest to offer sacrifices in heaven. These sacrifices, of course, must be better than their earthly counterparts, but their function is to cleanse the heavenly things. Once again, the author of Hebrews rejects the idea that Christ would have to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world, but he also acknowledges the existence of other heavenly sacrifices as well as the fact that Christ presents himself to the Father where he appears in the presence of God on our behalf. According to the Anglican Bishop Stephen Sykes, Christ continually intercedes with his blood in the presence of God on behalf of sinners.
(36:56):
If that sacrifice is being eternally pleaded on behalf of sinners by the exalted Christ in the heavens, it is but a short step to say that the prayer of the Christian body at the Eucharist joined with that of Christ its head is itself offering of a sacrifice. This is why in 1971, the Anglican and Roman Catholic International Commission said, “We believe that we have reached substantial agreement on the doctrine of the Eucharist. Though issues still persist about which Anglican orders might have valid holy orders and so be able to consecrate the Eucharist in the same way the Orthodox are able to do. And from an historical perspective, the nature of the mass as a propituatory sacrifice goes back early in church history. In Corinthians, Paul compares the table of the Lord with the table of demons or pagan altars, which would imply that the table of the Lord is a sacrificial altar.
(37:46):
In Hebrews 13:10, the author says, “We have an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat. Those who serve the tent are the Jewish priests who serve in the Jerusalem temple, which was probably still in existence when Hebrews was written. Modern interpreters who deny that this is a reference to a literal Eucharistic altar usually base this on the assumption that Hebrews teaches there’s no more sacrifices, but Hebrews acknowledges, as we saw, the existence of multiple unbloody heavenly sacrifices and there’s no reason those heavenly realities would not have earthly counterparts. Even critics like William Webster, who argues against the antiquity of Catholicism said that by the time of Cyprien in the third century, it’s clear the Eucharist was seen as a propituatory sacrifice. Syprian said this, For if Jesus Christ, our Lord and God is himself the chief priest of God the Father and has first offered himself a sacrifice to the Father and has commanded this to be done in commemoration of himself, certainly that priest truly discharges the office of Christ who imitates that which Christ did and he then offers a true and full sacrifice in the church to God the Father when he proceeds to offer it according to what he sees Christ himself to have offered.
(38:59):
West also said he isn’t Catholic because of alleged contradictions in church teaching, such as an apparent reversal on the issue of no salvation outside the church. I’ve addressed this in my reply to redeem Zoomer, so I’ll link to that episode below. All I will say is that I don’t recommend Protestant apologists go down this road to debunk Catholicism. That row being the Catholic church is not infallible as rule of faith because it has a contradiction. You could sick Dan McClellan and other skeptics on the Bible and get alleged contradictions as well. Not a Protestant may say that’s different because there are no contradictions in the Bible, but the reason he thinks that is because he already believes that God’s word has no contradictions so there has to be an answer to every alleged contradiction even if he doesn’t know exactly what that answer is. That’s why I don’t use internal contradictions to argue against the Quran or the book of Mormon either.
(39:52):
I just say there’s no good reason to believe they are inspired in the first place and many good reasons to believe they’re not inspired. And in the same way, I would say that Protestantism is false because there’s no good reasons to believe it has a foundation in scripture or history. Finally, in the last part of his video, Wes said the following about Catholics being Christians.
Wes Huff (40:11):
I know people who I believe to be saved within the Roman Catholic church. However, I believe them to be saved in spite of the teaching of Rome, not because of it. Being a biblically based, faithful Christian will make you a bad Roman Catholic and vice versa. There will come a time for the mature believer to have to leave Rome as they realize the incongruity within its doctrines and dogmas with that of the true faith of biblical Christianity. I say that with love. I say that with care. I don’t say that lightly, but I think that is true.
Trent Horn (40:49):
I know a lot of Catholics who were offended when they heard Wes say this and they claim this shows Wes Huff is not a nice guy, but I’m not offended. I’m disappointed because I wish that Wes wasn’t mistaken and wasn’t encouraging people to do something spiritually destructive, but I’m not offended. If anything, if Wes believed a faithful Catholic can’t go to heaven and he never told any Catholics about this, then under his system, he would be denying those people’s salvation. That would be truly offensive. My attitude towards Wes in this regard is similar to Atheist Pengillette who said he wasn’t offended when a Christian gave him a Bible because if a person thinks that hell is real, obviously he should try to warn people about it.
Penn Jillette (41:35):
If you believe that there’s a heaven in hell and people could be going to hell or not getting eternal life or whatever and you think that, well, it’s not really worth telling them this because it would make it socially awkward and atheists who think that people shouldn’t proselytize, just leave me alone, keep your religion to yourself, how much do you have to hate somebody to not prosthetize? How much do you have to hate somebody to believe that everlasting life is possible and not tell them that?
Trent Horn (42:08):
So I’m not offended at Wes Huff saying Catholics should become Protestant and I hope my Protestant listeners will not be offended when I say they should become Catholic. I also say out of love and truth that because God desires us to have one faith and one baptism, God gave us one church through which we are saved by being united to Christ through the sacraments of salvation that Christ gave us. This church also teaches us what to do in order to live a moral life in Christ. In my previous episode called Why Some Christians Have a Sex Problem, I showed clips of conservative Protestants, defending sinful behavior like mutual masturbation, oral sex, and even anal sex between married couples. Justin Early argued in Christianity today that men should bear the burden of contraception by being sterilized instead of asking their wives to use birth control. And in my episode on surrogacy, I quoted Protestant authors who lament that Catholics enjoy a unified teaching against these modern moral evils, but Protestants who rely on soul scriptura don’t have the same solid moral foundation to authoritatively say they must fight these evils.
(43:14):
And that’s why I want everyone to be Catholic so they can have a firm foundation to live a virtuous life in Jesus Christ because salvation is at its core about being united to Christ and Christ gave us his body, the church to help us do that. It’s possible for a Protestant to be saved in spite of their ignorance of the necessity of being in full communion with Christ church, but I don’t want them or any non-Catholic or any non-Christian to faintly hope for salvation through extraordinary means. I want them to have the ordinary means of salvation that Christ gave his people for 2,000 years since Pentecost when the church was born. The church that scripture repeatedly warns believers to not be in schism or dissension against. Although West said that if a Catholic goes to heaven, it is in spite of Catholicism. All right. Well, I would ask him, what would I do as a faithful Catholic that would put me in danger of not going to heaven as long as I trust in Christ?
(44:14):
Is it getting baptized because I believe Jesus told us to be born again of water and spirit, baptizing my children for their salvation or is it believing that I could lose the grace of justification through unrepentant grave sin? But if these things were something that could cause me to lose my salvation, then many Protestants would also risk hell because they believe these things too. Also, if justification is by faith alone, why does it feel like in Protestantism I have to do a bunch of works to also be saved. I’m saved by faith alone, but I can’t ask saints in heaven to pray for me, even though I don’t think those prayers directly save me. I can’t believe the Eucharist is truly Jesus’ flesh and blood, even though Jesus says that about his body in John six, and I can’t believe Mary’s body is physically in heaven because I’m saved by faith alone.
(45:05):
How does that follow? Now, not all Protestants think that. I recall Redeem Zoomer saying, “Justification by faith alone doesn’t mean you have to believe in Solaphide to be saved, but it still raises the problem of Protestants not being able to agree on the essential elements of the Christian faith. What must I do to be saved? What are the doctrines I must believe to be saved and what are the actions I must avoid to remain united to Christ?” The Protestant church can’t answer those questions because it’s not united on them, but the Catholic Church can provide much more clarity and for that, I’m eternally grateful. So I’d like to thank Westhoff for his thoughtful video and his help in reviewing this script. Nothing in my episode was meant to be an attack on him or Protestants in general. And as I said before, I really appreciate a lot of the work that Wes Huff does.
(45:58):
This was a desire to speak the truth in love as Paul says in Ephesians 4:15. If Wes would like to have a conversation about these topics or anything else for that matter, my studio door is always open to him, or if he’d like to do a team up debate against two atheists, for example, like I did with Gavin Ortland a while back, I’d love to do that. If you guys would like another perspective on Wes’ video, check out my colleague Joe Heschmeyer and if you would like to learn more about what I discussed in today’s episode, pick up a copy of my new book, Salvation is from the Catholic Church: How Christ Uses the Church to Bring Us to Him. Thank you all so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.