^{July 14, 2026}

Trent Horn Answers My Biggest Objections to Catholicism

Inside This Episode

For 500 years, Catholics and Protestants have debated some of Christianity's biggest questions. In this conversation, Eric Huffman sits down with Catholic apologist Trent Horn - not for a debate, but for an honest, respectful discussion about where they agree, where they differ, and why it matters. As a Protestant pastor, he asks Trent about salvation, apostolic succession, Scripture and Church authority, Mary and the Saints, purgatory, and the possibility of greater unity between Catholics and Protestants. Trent also responds to Wesley Huff’s recent comments about Catholicism. 

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Transcript

Trent Horn: When the scary, terrifying things happen at home, people don't call the pastor at the First Baptist Church. They want a Catholic priest there.

Eric Huffman: When you talk to a Protestant, what category do we fit into? Are we heretics? Are we fully fledged brothers and sisters?

Trent Horn: We want reform, not revolt. We want the body to be healed, not a part of it to be amputated. The Reformers were right. There were things that were going bad that had to be fixed.

Eric Huffman: There's your quote, by the way. The Reformers were right. Our mutual friend, Wesley Huff, he came out with this video where he talked about the reasons he's not a Catholic.

Wesley Huff: It's because of my study of Scripture and church history that I am a convictional Protestant.

Eric Huffman: The money line was, there are fully redeemed, saved brothers and sisters in Christ in Catholic churches, not because of the Catholic Church's teachings, but in spite of it.

Trent Horn: If somebody says, I can never be a Catholic, because they baptize babies and they think your salvation can be lost, then I would say you can't be a Lutheran or an Anglican either, because they believe those things. What in particular do I do as a Catholic that could put my salvation in jeopardy?

Eric Huffman: In the Protestant way of thinking, when things go wrong, churches get off the beaten path, denominations go heretical, we look to Scripture as the standard. When the system or tradition of apostolic succession and the tradition of the Catholic Church goes off the rails, what do you look to then as that standard by which to judge what even off the rails means?

Trent Horn: Well, for me, Scripture cannot be an authority because it is a document.

Eric Huffman: Scripture cannot be an authority.

Trent Horn: Well, let me put it this way.

[00:01:31] <music>

Eric Huffman: I've been a Protestant pastor for 27 years now, and I've always assumed that the Protestant way of doing Christianity is more faithful and biblical than Catholicism. But recently, some of my assumptions have started to crack. It's not because I'm walking away from Protestant Christianity, but because I've started asking questions that I've never considered seriously until quite recently. So today I'm sitting down with one of the most well-known Catholic apologists in the world, Trent Horn, to better understand the Catholic perspective on some of the most controversial issues, from Mary and the saints to Purgatory and the Pope.

So, Trent Horn.

Trent Horn: Pastor Eric, thanks for having me.

Eric Huffman: Welcome, man. I'm so glad you're here. Welcome to Maybe God. Welcome to Houston.

Trent Horn: Yes, always great to be down here.

Eric Huffman: You made the long journey down from Dallas today.

Trent Horn: The quick, yeah, 20 minutes up, 20 minutes down in the plane, and then you're here.

Eric Huffman: It's amazing, right?

Trent Horn: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: That's good. Well, I'm glad you're here. I've admired your work online for some time.

Trent Horn: Thank you.

Eric Huffman: I've watched many of your conversations with people ranging from Christian apologists, Protestant apologists to men like Alex O'Connor, the famous agnostic, I guess.

Trent Horn: I don't know if he's agnostic or he's still within atheism. If I could get him to agnosticism, that would be at least a partial win for sure.

Eric Huffman: For sure.

Trent Horn: But he's definitely... Alex is promoting a more open-minded atheism than the rude rhetoric of the new atheists from 20 years ago. I'm grateful for that.

Eric Huffman: There does seem to be some sincere curiosity from him. If anybody could continue him along that journey toward agnosticism and maybe toward faith, it's you. He said you are the most formidable Christian biologist he's faced, I think, or something like that?

Trent Horn: Yes. We had a debate many years ago on Pints with Aquinas, and in that debate, I had presented arguments that were not as common as Alex was used to encountering, and that really encouraged him to think a lot, in a deeper way, about the case for God, the case for Christianity. We've had two engagements since then, and he's certainly is a thinker who is striving to be clear. He will even correct other atheists when they make very poor arguments. So I think Alex does care about the truth and I'm happy to walk with him through it.

And I think what makes so formidable isn't necessarily even the complexity of the arguments. When Alex was talking about that, he said that I was just willing to talk to him in a kind and respectful way. Something could be formidable in the sense that you just present the gospel, present the evidence for it without having to browbeat the other person. So if they have concerns about not accepting the gospel, they can't just blame you. I think that whenever we share the gospel, the only thing that should be offensive to the other person is the gospel. It should never be us. People will be offended. Our Lord's the rock of offense.

Eric Huffman: Sure. That's right.

Trent Horn: The goal is that it's never on us for the cause of offense.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, sometimes we add to the offense factor with our attitudes and politics and things. Obviously, that's not why either of us are here. I'm just curious, you do these interviews a lot, whether it's with Christians or non-Christians. Why do you think conversations like this one matter so much?

Trent Horn: Well, they matter because we're talking about the most important questions of life. Alvin Plantinga, who is a Christian philosopher, probably one of the most famous philosophers of religion in the 20th century, I like his definition of philosophy. He said that philosophy is answering the questions that everyone asks. Not everybody is going to ask, what is a quadratic equation or need to know the periodic table of elements, right?

People, indigenous tribes in the Amazon don't even know that. They're not asking about the periodic table of elements. But they are asking, where did everything come from? Who am I? Why am I here? What's my purpose? What am I supposed to do in life? What am I supposed to do? What am I not supposed to do?

So, when you put a lot of these questions together, that's philosophy, and a lot of it gets into philosophy of religion. And then, naturally, these big questions that people ask, philosophy can take you a certain amount of the way, but eventually then theology needs to take over because God has fully revealed the answers to these questions.

Everything came from God because God is the source of infinite being itself. God isn't just a being. He's not like a cosmic genie looking at the universe. God is just the act of being, infinite, perfect being itself. And because of this super abundant love... like God didn't make us, because He was just like lonely out there. He made us because He is just super abundant love itself. And love is self-giving. He brings the universe into existence and He orders it to a particular end, that our good end is ultimately bound up in Him because He's the highest good.

So that's why reason can get us to, okay, there's a creator, this creator's perfect and unlimited. But reason ultimately... people will ask me, what's the hardest thing for you to wrap your head around when it comes to God? And for me, it's just the fact that God loves me. Because I mean, think about this: could I love an amoeba, a little one-celled amoeba? I mean, it's so different and lower a life form than me. No. But if I can't love an amoeba, God is infinitely beyond me far more than I am from the amoeba.

Eric Huffman: Totally.

Trent Horn: So it's like, how could a being like that love something? And reason alone, I just couldn't get there. But that's why God, dying on the cross in a visceral, graphic way, imprints the message "I love you". And so that's why the incarnation, and I've devoted my adult life since my conversion in high school to defending the historical reality of the Christian faith, because I want every single person to know God loves them and He desires eternal life with them.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, amen.

Hey everybody, Eric Huffman here. Welcome to Maybe God. Whether you're Protestant, Catholic, religious, or non-religious, I hope you'll subscribe to this channel right now so you don't miss any future conversations like this one. Here on Maybe God, we believe the best conversations happen when people who have differing perspectives come together with mutual respect and a shared desire to pursue the truth. If you enjoy exploring the big questions about God and hearing thoughtful voices, engaging crucial topics with clarity and with depth, subscribe today and be part of our Maybe God community. Now let's get back to my conversation with Trent Horn.

Eric Huffman: One of my favorite Christian authors, it's G. K. Chesterton. And one of my favorite quotes of his is, "You matter and I matter." It's the hardest thing in theology to believe that we matter to God. And it's the simplest thing, but the hardest. Chesterton was known for unpacking complex theological conundrums. And he said, "This is by far the hardest that we would matter to God." But that's the message of the gospel is that we matter immensely.

Trent Horn: It's sort of a preamble to when someone accepts faith. I think that a lot of people who are finding it difficult to accept faith, they're stuck in a mindset where they're totally wrapped up in themselves. It's going to be hard for... I mean, you can't really serve God and have faith in God as the most important thing in the universe if you think that you're the most important thing in the universe. You know, there's no place for two. As Highlander says, there can only be one, right?

But then when you get out, and even if you don't accept faith, when you leave the point of saying you're the most important thing in the world, there's this deep sense you either... you really have two paths. You can go to nihilism and realize, oh, I'm just cosmic dust. I'm the leftover waste from nuclear reactions in a star.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Trent Horn: Or I matter because from the beginning of all creation, the Creator willed for me to exist. He wants me to exist because He loves me, has a plan for me. I mean, really there's the nihilism that comes from seeing that your existence is an accident, and then there's the hope that comes from seeing your existence was willed by the perfect triune God who loves us.

Eric Huffman: Amen. That's beautiful. And what you're describing is fundamentally it's Christian apologetics. And you're an apologist and a great one. Apologetics have meant a lot to me since my conversion in 2013. I was a little late to the party. I was 34 years old when I really gave my life to Jesus, and it was in no small part due to the work of apologists and to some degree, archaeologists and some of the science that evidences claims made in Scripture. It's only recently that I've started tuning into modern Catholic apologists as you and a few others have really made some waves in the apologetics space. And I'm fascinated by it because of the different language and rhetoric and claims being made that support claims that I would make, generally speaking. There's some differences, and we'll get into that in a minute.

Trent Horn: Sure.

Eric Huffman: But what are the distinctives of Catholic apologetics that add to the whole argument for the gospel in the apologetic sense?

Trent Horn: Sure. Well, there's a few different elements. I think that Catholics bring with them a very rich theological and philosophical tradition. Sometimes it's misunderstood. For example, when I was in philosophy class, we did philosophy 101 when I was 19 years old, go to community college, and you have an anthology of readings. And one of the readings is St. Thomas Aquinas's Five Ways for Showing the Existence of God. And the professor just brushes through them, oh, these have all been disproven, but it's an interesting curiosity to read.

Richard Dawkins had a similar approach, the author of The God Delusion. He was saying, oh, well, Aquinas has these five ways, but they're all the same way. They just say there can't be an infinite past, so there had to be a beginning. And Dawkins says, well, that beginning could have just been a big bang. So Aquinas didn't know science, and that's refuted. And I love that Plantinga said that Dawkins understanding of Aquinas and philosophy... Plantinga said, "To call it sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores everywhere. That is just so colossally wrong."

So St. Thomas Aquinas believed that we could know from faith, from the book of Genesis, the past had a beginning because God created it. But proving it from reason alone, he said, well, I don't think you could prove it from reason alone. But Aquinas said, even if the universe did not have a beginning, even if it were eternal into the past, he said, look at the world around us, there's change, things change, and they move. He used the argument for motion, but he really means change. Like I have this water here, it doesn't heat up on its own, right? In order for it to be heated, energy has to be applied to it. The microwave. But the microwave can't turn on its own, it's gotta be powered by something. Everything that moves or changes, it can't change itself. It's changed by another.

And so Aquinas says there's a chain of these things, but that chain cannot go on forever. For example, imagine you saw a boxcar going on a track, like what's pulling it? Another boxcar. Well, what's pulling that? Another one. What have you said? Oh, well, what's pulling all of them? You say, well, it's just an infinite number of boxcars. But that doesn't explain why the train's moving at all. Because there could be an infinite number of boxcars that are standing still. This could be a universe that's just perfectly frozen without change or motion at all. It's just like a painting. It's just static. But why did the boxcars... even if it's infinite, that doesn't explain the motion. There has to be a car on the set that gives motion to the train without receiving motion from anything.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Trent Horn: An unmoved mover, if you will. The locomotive. Oh, so that explains it. So that's what Aquinas says that ultimately when you look at the universe around us, that this change, which he says changes potential to actual, that's what change is. So like this water in this coffee, has the potential to be steam. It's not actual steam, it's potential. It can be actualized by something else.

So Aquinas says this unmoved mover, it would have to be pure actuality in order for the entire set to move. So if it's pure actuality, you can deduce many interesting properties from it. It must have necessary existence because it has no potential for non-existence. It would have to be immaterial, because any material thing has potential to grow or change or be minimized. It could not be in time because things in time, like you or I, we have potential to exist at different points of time. So it'd have to be outside of time, eternal in that sense. It could not be limited in what it could do, because that's a potential. So it'd be omnipotent, not limited in knowledge and ordering things — omniscient.

It also could not be bad because Aquinas says, and this is more Catholic theology coming in here, that when we talk about things like goodness or truth or being, these are transcendentals. We're just looking at the same thing from different directions. So if something is bad, it also tends to be ugly and false. And if something is false, it has those things bound up into it. So when we look like, for example, like a bad tree, well, it's missing the nutrients it needs to like have fruit. A bad person is missing the virtues. So you could have like a bad baseball player, he's just missing good aim with his pitch or a morally bad one, he's missing integrity to not cheat.

So Aquinas says, all right, then if this pure actual cause of everything, if it's pure actuality, it's just perfect being, it's unlimited being. And so because it is that, it has no deficiencies, it can't be bad or evil because evil is just the absence of good. That's what evil is, which also explains how if a perfectly good God created the world, well, how could there be evil? Well, God didn't create evil. Evil is the absence of good in God's creation. God never created it. It is an absence that exists within it. It's a privation. It's real. Like a hole in the beach, it's a privation, but you can fall into it.

Eric Huffman: It's like darkness being the absence of light.

Trent Horn: Exactly. And so God is not the author or direct creator of evil because evil just is not a thing. If you had complete evil, you wouldn't have some mustachioed caricature from a cartoon. You would just have pure nothingness. I believe it was C. S. Lewis who said that evil is parasitic upon the good. Just like you can't have rust without metal, you can't have evil without good.

That's just one example there of taking Catholic theology and philosophy that I found helpful without even having to argue like the universe began to these classical arguments. I also find many compelling evidences from modern miracles, showing that the Christian faith is still active today. I'll give you two examples.

On October 13th in 1917 in Fatima, Portugal, there were three girls there who had continual interactions with the Blessed Virgin Mary, Jesus's mother, appeared to them and gave them messages about the faith. Then they said that people got... asked people to gather together October 13th, 1917, in a field in Portugal. And the crowd there, thousands of people who gathered, witnessed a miracle of the sun, the sun moving around in the sky in an unusual way. Puddles dried up immediately and people reported this phenomena associated with what the girls had predicted. You know, one person might hallucinate something, but when a whole group of people... that's why we say, you know, how could all the apostles hallucinate Jesus rising from the dead? A group of them saw it.

Eric Huffman: 500 at a time.

Trent Horn: Right. This is more, even more than 500. And there were newspaper, it's not alleged, there were newspaper accounts you can read about this with pictures of everyone gathered together. So that's one.

The other would be starting April 2nd, 1968 in Zeitoun, Egypt, there was an appearance that appeared to be of the Blessed Virgin Mary over an Orthodox church. There was an illuminated figure that looked like Mary and this figure appeared there and hundreds of thousands of people over the course of next three years came to see this. And this was seen by not just Catholics and Orthodox, but Muslims, atheists. Photographs were even taken of this. And the Egyptian authorities weren't sure what was going on, so they cut off the electrical power to the area, but yet the illuminated figure still appeared and people could smell incense and see this interaction.

And I've read many atheists who have written on the Zeitoun case. And what they say is, "I'm just not sure what to make of it." And so for me, I'm not throwing as like a knockdown-proof, but I think that the evidence of miraculous things... so as a Catholic, what really fills me with hope is like, wow, there's evidence of miraculous healings at Lourdes, of the bread and wine at Mass becoming actual heart tissue, like at Lanciano, these apparitions, people seeing the Blessed Virgin Mary and her encouraging people in the faith.

When I see all of that together, I see, wow, miracles are not something that was just 2,000 years ago. Craig Keener has a great book, a two-volume book on miracles. And I think many Protestants also do miraculous healings. So I think God is still well inactive today. It provides evidence to the Christian faith. Where I differ though is that if a Protestant were to heal someone in the name of Jesus, to me, that is not as indicative of specific Protestant theology as Mary appearing to a group of girls saying, I am the Immaculate Conception or the-

Eric Huffman: Is that what she said? That was one of the questions I wanted to ask about.

Trent Horn: Yeah. That's at the other apparition at Lourdes. But at Fátima, she gives specific instructions, things that are related to affirming the truth of the Catholic faith in her interaction with the three children of Fátima before the miracle of the sun with the thousands of other Portuguese who were there. For me, I think there are many miracles in Catholicism. Not only do they demonstrate the reality of God, they have a message that I think points towards the unique truth of the Catholic faith, which is something I think for Protestants to consider.

But at the very least, I find it helpful to share because I've noticed that there... I've seen debates between Protestants and atheists on the resurrection, and many Protestants... or sorry, the atheists will say to the Protestant, well, you believe that people saw Jesus and He was alive, why don't you believe these people who said they saw Mary? Groups of people said that they saw her. And some of them have a hard time wrapping their head around that. But for me, oh, it kind of clicks together. This makes sense to me.

Eric Huffman: It's hard to refute... biblically. Now I'll be honest and say, I'm not sure what to do with the Marian appearances.

Trent Horn: I would just say ponder these things in your heart.

Eric Huffman: I've heard that before. But I don't-

Trent Horn: That would be Mary's advice to you. It worked for her.

Eric Huffman: I don't feel the need to, in a rash way, dismiss them because of stories in the Bible like the transfiguration. A common argument from Protestants against this idea of the appearances of Mary is that Mary's dead and the dead don't appear. Well, we have the transfiguration story where Moses and Jesus and Elijah met up on the mountain. So there are those kinds of hints that these things are not biblically impossible or beyond the pale, so they shouldn't be so summarily dismissed by Protestants. Obviously, we look at Mary differently, that's no secret, and we'll get more into Mary later.

Trent Horn: Yeah, it depends what kind of view you have of her, because Protestants do differ on that, even compared to the Reformers in today.

Eric Huffman: Absolutely. And if the message of it or the takeaway from it was biblical in quality, then it's even harder to refute. If it was a situation of a secret revelation or something where the message is opposed to the truth of the gospel, then we're in other territory.

Trent Horn: Well, the Catholic Church is very cognizant of that and where. So when people make claims that Jesus has appeared to them or the Blessed Virgin Mary has appeared to them, the Catholic Church takes that seriously and doesn't rush in. The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraphs 65 and 66 makes it clear that public revelation, the things that God willed for all people to know and the deposit of faith was given once for all in the time of the apostles. So we believe that there's not going to be, as Mormons claim, another Testament to Jesus Christ, for example.

So we firmly believe all public divine revelation ended with the death of the last apostle or last apostolic man, which also, when I was looking into Catholicism or Protestantism, I noticed Scripture never explicitly says that that is the case. It never says, And here is where revelation ends or there won't be any more apostles, there won't be any more sacred writings. It never says that, but I'm very confident that's true, even though it's not found explicitly in Scripture. I would say even implicitly.

But in seeing that then, so there's no more public revelation, but there could be private revelation. I mean, think about it. When you pray and God moves you to feel like this is what God wants me to do, it's a revelation, but it's not for everybody. So, private revelation, of course, continues from public revelation. But that private revelation could be to one person. Maybe it could be to hundreds of thousands of people in Zeitoun, Egypt. It could be to more than one person at one time. And God could allow holy people who are in heaven, the saints who are... the departed... the spirits of just men made perfect, as Hebrews says, of the departed. That God could allow them to be able to share a message with the other members of the body of Christ. But there have been claims of Marian apparitions that are either unfounded or could be demonic in nature.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Trent Horn: Yeah. I mean, the devil disguises himself as an angel of light, as Paul says. So the church then does exactly what you're saying. Well, what is the content of the message that is being given? Oh, well, if it is promoting things that are a cult or are dangerous, then, no, this is not of God. So even here, and when it comes to these things like apparitions as Catholics, we look to the church, specifically the Magisterium, the teaching office of the church, to guide us in understanding, well, what is the public revelation? You know, the church helped us to know what the canon was in the fourth century, because the Bible has no table of contents, inspired table of contents. But then also helps us to know this private revelation, this is safe to believe if it helps you, or we find this to be beyond the faith and it should be rejected. So we were certainly cognizant of that as well.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. So there's a board or a committee within the Magisterium that defines or determines which of these appearances is legitimate?

Trent Horn: Yeah, theologians and then members of the Magisterium, like bishops, will investigate these things and then reach a conclusion just based on the evidence present. This was also done for a while in the process of canonizing saints, of determining, well, is someone that God can reveal that Jesus said to the apostles, what you bind on earth is bound in heaven, loose on earth is loosed in heaven. Now, the church has the authority to teach people, this particular Christian lived a saintly life and they are in heaven now praying for us and you can ask them to pray for you.

Now, in the early church, this was primarily done by acclamation that the local Christian community would understand this saint, for example, died a martyr. And so we know martyrs immediately enter into paradise and we asked for their intercession because we're facing martyrdom right now or something like that. Then later on, the church exercises authority to say, oh, this person lived a holy life and there are miracles associated with him. That people have prayed and asked for their help to pray to God because James 5 says that the prayers of righteous people are very powerful.

I love the end of the book of Job, when Job's friends get humbled, God says to them, "Have Job pray for you. I'll listen to Job. Have him pray for you." So holy people's prayers are powerful. And so we see, oh, not only do this person live a holy life, but there's evidence of miraculous healings associated with people asking for their intercession.

And there was a position for a while within the, sorry, the Dicastery of the Doctrine of Faith for those who are determining if someone is a saint or not. It was called the devil's advocate. And this person's job was to make the best case possible that this person was not actually a saint.

Eric Huffman: And that's where that axiom comes from.

Trent Horn: That's where it comes from.

Eric Huffman: How funny.

Trent Horn: We said, all right, we want to make sure we. We got this right. This person is not fooling us. We can have confidence that they've died and they are in heaven. They lived a saintly life, and God's revealed to us through miracles that they are in heaven with, you know... so this person's job is say, all right, I'm going to make the best case they're not there. And if you can defeat my case, then I think we've got good evidence.

The Catholic Church has, in spite of what Hollywood has tried to proclaim for thousands of years about being superstitious and gullible, we were the ones that were pioneering science. Medieval cathedrals were actually constructed with the help of astronomers to make sure the sun would shine through the plate glass windows at the right angles during the right times of the year. That's why Copernicus was a cleric in the church, came up with the heliocentric theory. You had so many scientific breakthroughs, even up to the modern age. Monsignor Georges Lemaître, he had a theory called the primeval atom. He says, "I think, look at gravity, look at relativity, astronomy. The universe is not eternal. Everything was once condensed into a single point and then it expanded."

So there was another scientist, Fred Hoyle, at the time, he was an agnostic, and he said, this is a Catholic priest saying, everything began, this is just some stupid big bang theory. Who's going to believe this? And that's where the name came from.

Eric Huffman: Yep. And became accepted science in the next few decades.

Trent Horn: Exactly. So that's why I find that when people will make that claim against the church, like, no, we've done science, but also back to miraculous, you know, claiming superstition. Well, I think the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world he doesn't exist and convincing people to think that things like demonic possession are just superstition when there are well-documented accounts from Catholic exorcists of cases of exorcisms, of people who have superhuman strength, who can speak foreign dead languages they've never heard before. All of this together, I think should make one shudder at the easy thought of a naturalistic worldview.

Eric Huffman: For sure. We've had a couple, at least that I can remember, Catholic exorcists on the show, and always a hot topic. People love to hear about it, whether they agree or not, because it's fascinating. That's one thing I really appreciate about the Catholic tradition, actually, is the process and careful, organized method of exorcism, rather than sort of back of house, let's just see how this goes, you know, dealing with demons.

Trent Horn: I feel like everyone, even secular, non-religious people, even people who are not religious, when the scary, terrifying things happen at home, and I have great respect for Protestant pastors who are so great at opening the word in their Sunday sermons, but when the stuff goes down, people don't call the pastor at the First Baptist Church, they want a Catholic priest there right away.

Eric Huffman: Maybe. I don't know. I get those calls, though, as a pastor in the Protestant tradition. And we do-

Trent Horn: Maybe they go there and then when they start crawling on the ceiling, then, let's upgrade a little bit

Eric Huffman: Maybe. Maybe you're right to a degree there. The point I want to make in these conversations, Trent, is that essentially at the end of the day, I believe we're on the same team. I do not approach these conversations with a man like yourself in the same way that I would someone from the Mormon faith or from Jehovah's Witness or Islam faith.

Trent Horn: They're not Christian.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, they're not Christian. I wholeheartedly believe, and I would love to be a part of some kind of a meaningful bridge in terms of the conversations we're having interfaith as Christians. We share a lot in common. I've heard you alluded to this as well. Our devotion to Jesus, our love for Scripture. I think Catholics and Protestants share in common, charity, justice, love being the highest virtue. All these things are common language and practice. Anything you would add to that in terms of things you appreciate about Protestants that we share in common with your tradition?

Trent Horn: Oh, I would say especially a love for the Word. But there's also things that I do feel like many Protestants actually do excel at that Catholics could take lessons from. For example, take knowledge of Scripture. My mentor and theology professor, Scott Hahn, would say that Protestants know Scripture like the mailman knows the neighborhood and Catholics know Scripture like kids know the neighborhood. So the mailman knows that the Johnsons live on 123 Maple Street and Protestants would be able to cite Scripture chapter and verse. Even there are programs designed for young children to memorize Scripture. It's something that's inculcated very young.

Catholics, I think they know a lot of Scripture. We say and proclaim Scripture at Mass. During Mass, we say, "Holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty," you know, we're quoting the book of Revelation. But a lot of it it's just not having the chapter and verse. It's like how kids may not know that Johnson's live on 123 Maple Street. But they know Johnson's live at the red house next to the barking dog. So they have a more intuitive way of getting there. And I let my Catholic friends... they'll say, "Well, I want to talk to my Protestant friends, but I don't know Scripture." I'll say, "You do know Scripture." And look, you were allowed to know Scripture in the same way that Jesus did. I love when Jesus is debating with the Sadducees, and he's debating about the resurrection. And He says, "Do you not remember the part in the scroll where he says, I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob?" So if Jesus can say, "Do you remember that part in the scroll where it says, you can say to your Protestant friends, do you remember that part in the Bible where it says?"

But especially also Protestants excel in community, which is so funny because that was actually maybe one of the things that sort of turned me towards Catholicism, ironically. Not obviously. I'm just kidding a bit. But I remember I went to a Protestant church, I'm very introverted-

Eric Huffman: I know where this is going.

Trent Horn: And everyone rushed to greet me and say hi, and I wanted to curl up in my shell. I was like, "Hello everyone." Then I went to a Catholic church and one person hands me the worship aid and nobody says hi. I sit down, no one comes up to me, and I just breathe a sigh of relief. So, for an introvert like myself, it's helpful. I've known many people sadly who have left the Catholic faith, they don't attend Mass because they felt like they left, and nobody even noticed they were gone.

Now, I would say that's not a valid reason because Jesus Christ knows if you are not there. He has made Himself present, body, blood, soul, and divinity under the form of bread and wine to have communion with you. But still, we as Catholics should be able to care for everyone within the body and make all people feel welcome in our parish. So while we have a lot of overlap, there's many things I feel like we can learn from Protestants in this regard.

Eric Huffman: For sure. And I can share a list of things I think Protestants should and could learn from our Catholic brothers and sisters. Not least of which actually is tradition itself and the importance of church tradition. Now, I wouldn't go as far as you would probably in that direction, but I think we undervalue the Catholic witness as Protestants. I think that's fair to say. And our faith would be enriched if we did our homework on things like the church fathers and the roots of some of the Catholic beliefs that we may even disagree with today. But what's the root of that belief and where does it come from? Because usually the root is good, even if we may not agree with the outcome as we see it today, but there's a route there that's worth our attention.

Trent Horn: Well, I think there are many traditions that I would encourage Protestants to look at and to consider. For example, I know there are many Protestants who will celebrate the liturgical season of Lent, for example. And for those who are not, it was to say, well, it's not in the Bible, so why should I celebrate that? Well, you don't see Christians celebrating Christmas in the Bible. The date of Jesus's birth, December 25th, was celebrated later in church history as the day of His birth. But we don't see celebrations of Christmas in Scripture. You don't see Christian weddings in Scripture, but we certainly celebrate those.

So I think that one should be careful about being locked in a mindset of, well, I'm only going to do it if I see it in Scripture. That could lead to a very truncated faith. Now, I would agree with Protestants: you should not do something that contradicts Scripture. And I don't think any Catholic doctrine or practice contradicts Scripture. So I think that's where we can find some common ground. But I would encourage people, yeah, when Lent comes around next year, or even Advent coming up soon. What I love for being Catholic, it's like, look, Christmas is not just one day. We literally have 12 days of the stuff. We gotta keep Christmas going to celebrate Christ's birth. It's time to feast.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. Nobody's wishing each other a Merry Christmas on January 3rd or whatever, and we should. It's a longer season.

Trent Horn: Season of Christmas. Not even that, the season of Advent that I love Advent where our readings are just about the end of the world, which is you're like, well, wait, why are we talking about the end of the world? Well, we're talking about the second coming of Christ and understanding that before we get to Christmas, the first coming. There's a lot of meaning and richness there I appreciate.

Eric Huffman: I'm maybe a weird Protestant and a lot of Protestants don't like me for that reason. And maybe that's why I feel...

Trent Horn: You know what's the great thing about being Protestant, though? You're allowed to own that. Everyone's allowed to have their identity. Who owns the term Protestant to say you're weird or someone isn't?

Eric Huffman: That's true. I guess there's some good and bad to that.

Trent Horn: There is.

Eric Huffman: But I come from the Armenian Wesleyan tradition and I was a Methodist for a long time before we left the denomination a few years ago. I just have a little bit of a different understanding. I think-

Trent Horn: The quadrilateral.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. A little?

Trent Horn: Or is it a parallelogram?

Eric Huffman: It's overblown. I think it's...

Trent Horn: Now it's being press as a parallelogram.

Eric Huffman: Well, it was never meant to be taken the way... I mean, it wasn't Wesley, first of all, it was Albert Outler, but the principle of it is fine as long as from my vantage point, Scripture is supreme.

Trent Horn: And that's the problem when people say, well, you know, reason, tradition, Scripture, experience, and then people just run with experience to say we should have same-sex weddings. And it's like, hold on a minute. And I think as Catholics, we understand a primacy when it comes to revelation. We see the Word of God is communicated to us both in the written Word and the unwritten sacred tradition, intimately bound up together, that the Magisterium faithfully serves and is not above. And so we would follow that through as well, for sure.

Eric Huffman: I want to get into some specific issues that we've sort of touched on, but I want to get into these a little bit more. But first, I just want to set the table by asking you, when you talk to a Protestant, or when you look at Protestants, what category do we fit into from your vantage point? Are we in the same bucket as Mormon or as Jehovah's Witness? Are we heretics? Are we fully fledged brothers and sisters? What I mean by this question is when I'm driving around and I pass a church, I have this sense of like mutual, like I want them to win. I often will say when I'm driving through the country with my family, I'll be like, go get them guys, you know, just as an encouragement as I'm passing a church, regardless of what name's on the door. Now, if it's Unitarian Universalist or something, I might not be as adamant in that sense of collegiality. If a Protestant Christian leaves my church, let's say, and they go and faithfully attend or join a Catholic church, there's really no grief in there for me theologically. I'll miss them personally and I'll wonder what I did wrong, but like, I don't worry about them because I think they're in good hands if they're faithfully following Jesus. Even at the Catholic church, I think that's great. My sense is that most Catholics don't feel that same kind of... there's a sense of loss or grief when someone leaves the Catholic church and goes to the Protestant church. So I'm just curious generally what category you put Protestants in.

Trent Horn: Sure. I guess we could imagine there are firm boundaries and then a wide spectrum between them. I would say, excuse me, that any Protestant who has a valid baptism and recognizes the triune God would be a Christian. We believe that all Christians in virtue of their baptism are united to the body of Christ and even to the church, albeit in an imperfect way. So we do recognize that if you have a valid baptism and you believe in the triune God, that you are a Christian.

So those who reject these essential elements, especially those who would say reject the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed or the Apostles' Creed, if you can't affirm one God, three distinct persons, for example, and throw a lot of other things in there, you would not be Christian. So even if you claim to be. So, yes, Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses, Oneness Pentecostals, many of other people that show up in Walter Martin's The Kingdom of the Cults, for example, we would say, well, no, they're not Christian.

In fact, the Vatican, back in the early 2000s issued a definitive statement saying that Mormon baptisms are not valid. So if you were a Protestant and you became Catholic, you would not have to be baptized because your baptism is valid. But a Mormon would... it's not even rebaptism because the first one's not valid. And what they said was while Mormons use the correct form, they say the right words, the words Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have such a radically different meaning.

Eric Huffman: Totally.

Trent Horn: What the priest writing the article said was... he said it's a completely different matrix. Now, then on the other end, the other bumper would be there are other Christians we recognize as having apostolic churches. And those would be the Eastern Orthodox churches. These are churches that have retained apostolic succession and retained the essential theology of the sacraments. So we could say, for example, that their sacraments, not just baptism, but of the Eucharist they receive in their divine liturgy, that's valid. And Catholics can even receive those sacraments under limited circumstances. So we treat these in Orthodox more... I see them as just like far away Catholics and I do anything for the family to come back together.

Eric Huffman: Really?

Trent Horn: So we would consider these other churches. For Protestants, though, we would say because Protestantism does not have apostolic succession and it's not maintained that essential theology, we would say while they are Christian, they belong to ecclesial communities, not apostolic churches in the proper sense. And within those ecclesial communities, when you talk about heresy, heresy is a very particular word one should not throw around. Catholics define heresy as the obstinate post-baptismal refusal to accept that which must be believed with divine and Catholic faith or dogma, infallible teachings.

So there are Catholic teachings that are dogmas. The church has said, "Hey, infallibly, this is something that is true. This will not change. And you have to believe this. And if you reject this, you put your soul at peril if you know you're supposed to believe this." Such as the deity of Christ, for example, or Christ's presence in the Eucharist, it's not just merely a symbol. So there's those lists of doctrines, but then there's, which we call dogmas or infallible teachings. But then there's other doctrines the church hasn't infallibly defined. These are things the church proposes for belief. We are here to believe them, but to fail to believe them wouldn't necessarily put your soul at risk. Because if you think of theology, if you write down every theological proposition, you could fill a hole in encyclopedia.

I'll give you an example. In paragraph 306 of the Catechism, it says that God creates the soul immediately. It is not produced by a person's parents. But there have been theologians, particularly within Protestantism, who believe in traducianism, that the soul comes from your parents and then you receive that. That's a theological debate people have, the church hasn't infallibly defined this, but the church teaches, no, God creates the soul at the moment that you're conceived. It doesn't come from your parents. Or moral issues. So the church infallibly teaches it is always wrong to kill an innocent person, but the church doesn't infallibly teach that in vitro fertilization is wrong. It just says, no, children are supposed to be the fruit of the marital act, not the product of a laboratory technician's day work.

So going through all that, heresy is not just anything the church teaches, it's these specific dogmas or intolerable teachings. And it has to be after you've been baptized, if you haven't been baptized, you can't be heretic, and it has to be like an obstinate refusal. So it can't just be, well, you've reached a wrong conclusion because you have different theological paradigm as a Protestant, or you were raised in this. It has to be that you understand this is true, you should understand it, and you still willfully reject it. So the label tends to be given more to Catholics who really should know better, who go off the reservation with heretical theology and then the bishops have to step in and their work is censored in that way. We would not formally say someone's a Protestant, a heretic merely because they're raised in a Protestant faith and they're doing their best to try to understand what God has revealed. At the same time though-

Eric Huffman: Our ignorance gives us a pass, I guess, in a way.

Trent Horn: There is invincible and invincible ignorance. In the early church, St. Cyprian in the third century said, one cannot have God as father without church as mother. Especially the first thousand years of Christian history, really first 1,500 years, you wouldn't say which church you go to, which church do you belong to? You just belong to the church. And if you're not in union with the church, you're not in union with Christ. St. Ignatius of Antioch, he's writing in the year AD 107. What I find fascinating about his writings, he's on the way to be martyred in Rome and he writes to all these churches in Asia Minor, now modern-day Turkey. And he doesn't say to them, cling to the Scriptures or the New Testament or the apostolic writings. He tells them, "Follow the bishop as Jesus Christ does the Father. Follow the presbyters as if they were the new Sanhedrin, a good council of elders. Because" he says, "where the bishop is, that is where the church Kata Holos is."

Eric Huffman: Well, that also assumes though the bishop's faithfulness.

Trent Horn: Right. But what Ignatius says is that for a church to be part of... he uses the word Kata Holos that we now translate as Catholic. So Catholic means universal. He says where the bishop is, that's where the Catholic church is. And so he says for something to be a legitimate church, there must have deacons, priests, and a bishop. And he's very firm, like, you know, cling to the church and be united to it.

And then when you go forward in church history, when you have heretics that arise, who try to start their own churches, well, I'm the Bishop of this area in church and this is the church I'm starting. When Augustine would debate the Manichaean heretics or the Donatists, when he would debate them, they said, well, we're the church and Augustine says, no, we're the church. Augustine's trump card was, he would say, "Show us the list of your bishops. Show us the list," going back to the apostles.

Eric Huffman: And Protestants would say, "Show us the Scripture."

Trent Horn: And then my question would be, what do you mean by Scripture? Because in the early church, some people said, well, maybe Hebrews isn't Scripture because it's technically anonymous. Revelation is a really weird book. It was late to be accepted. There was debate. The reason people in the early church did not do that, because there was debate about if some things are Scripture or not. So then who is capable of resolving a dispute when one person says, I think this is Scripture, and another person says that it isn't?

Eric Huffman: This is where I get a little confused. It seems like in your framework, I would agree that the settling on the canon was the work of the church and the tradition, let's say. And so if we trust that, then we trust the canon as Scripture. So when I say we look to Scripture, that's what I mean. I think the difference might be that the Catholic understanding is because the church, as a holy institution, decided on Scripture, then the church and Scripture are co-equal in a way, authoritatively, whereas a Protestant, I would say, no, Scripture is the dog and tradition is the tail. Even if tradition had the final say in what constituted Scripture, Scripture is still primary because it was for Jesus. When Jesus looked at His Scripture, the Jewish Scriptures of the first century, there was no, "Well, maybe this book, maybe that book." He just talked about it authoritatively as the Word of God and not as the product of a Jewish Magisterium. He didn't appeal to the council of whatever; He appealed to Scripture itself. And for a Protestant, I think that's kind of how we look at it.

Trent Horn: I think that this is not necessarily a path Protestants would want to go down, because when Jesus was preaching the gospel, and drawing from the Scriptures, it seems that he was allowing for a divergent and variant opinion among his Jewish audience of what the Scripture was. That all of the Jews seemed to agree that the Torah was Scripture, or what we call the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament. But beyond that though, you had the Sadducees who only accepted those five books and rejected the later writings and the prophets. You have the Pharisees that have a slightly larger canon, the Essenes who have an even larger canon than that.

So I think that what Jesus is saying that the ultimate authority for Jesus though is not the Scriptures, it's Himself. Because He'll say, "You have heard it was said or it is written, but I say unto you." So, He, in speaking to you, is the ultimate authority. He's showing how it's rooted and fulfilled from these earlier Jewish Scriptures. But even when He engages the Sadducees on the resurrection, Jesus does not quote from the prophet Daniel, who clearly teaches there'll be a resurrection of the just and the unjust, the just to life and the wicked to eternal suffering. He goes back to Exodus and the burning bush because He's drawing from, okay, these are the Scriptures the Sadducees will accept, but I can quote from other things that other people will accept. So I don't think that if one wants to say, oh, well, if the Jews didn't have a Magisterium and they had a canon, we could do the same. Well, they allowed a greater flexibility in their canon than I think many Protestants would want today.

What makes me skeptical about this sort of approach is that when you look in the teachings of Jesus and the writings of the apostles, there's always a threefold element of authority. So there is the writings that are given out that are referred to as Scripture, but the Word of God is almost always an oral, unwritten proclamation. In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, Paul says, well, you received when you heard from us not as the word of man, but as what it truly is, the Word of God. Or 2 Thessalonians 2:15, hold fast to the traditions given to you, whether by word of mouth or by letter.

So we see that there is in the apostolic age, the teaching of the faith, written and unwritten, from a living authority, the apostles who give this authority. So the Council of Jerusalem in Acts 15 had authority long before that was recorded in Acts. I would say that there's nothing in Scripture to indicate that authority structure would change, and nothing in the early church looking back where anyone says that changed and now everything is Scripture is primary, or it is the only infallible rule. I don't find anything like that in the early fathers, which I find very interesting.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, it's interesting. I think I would push back gently on the idea that the Word of God never says the Bible is the Word of God or that Scripture is the Word of God.

Trent Horn: What I just said here was that it's almost... and that's a different debate. I think that you can make... I firmly believe Scripture is the Word of God. My point though is that almost always, though, when the Word of God is spoken of in the New Testament, it's a proclaimed reality, prophetic or apostolic. That's actually the vast majority of the time when that term is used, it's referring to an unwritten or an oral proclamation.

Eric Huffman: And Jesus obviously is named as the Word of God in John, clearly we believe Jesus, that the Old Testament Scriptures even came through Jesus. I think that's another shared belief. The tradition factor being the Magisterium or whatever, Jesus did have a lot to say about corrupt tradition and how to the Pharisees and scribes, I think He said, basically, you love your tradition.

Trent Horn: You have forsaken the Word of God for the sake of your tradition.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. And so, is there any risk that is run in the Catholic way of loving the tradition more than the Word of God in its purest form?

Trent Horn: Yeah. There's always a risk in seeking out a true authority that you will end up obeying or submitting to a false authority. So there can be counterfeit traditions that are not actually part of sacred tradition or the unwritten Word of God, just as there can be counterfeit Scriptures that are not the actual written Word of God. So I agree that there are counterfeit traditions.

Eric Huffman: What do you mean by counterfeit Scriptures?

Trent Horn: Well, think of Apocrypha, like the Book of Enoch, for example. There are the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of Thomas.

Eric Huffman: The Gnostic Gospels, yeah.

Trent Horn: There can be things that claim to be Scripture that are not, but that fact in and of itself would not disprove Scripture as a class. Much the same, there can be counterfeit traditions, but that in and of itself does not disprove the class of authentic traditions, which for me would include the fact that divine revelation ended in the first century. The canon of Scripture itself would be such a tradition.

And that for me, if we say, well, yeah, the church gave us the canon, but it doesn't mean the church is on that level, my reply to that would be, well, if you disagree with the fourth-century church where they believed in many things that modern Protestants don't, if we say the fourth-century church got so many things wrong, why should one be confident they got the canon right? But if we consider them generally reliable to give us the canon of Scripture, no, this is sacred Scripture, we should perhaps see some of these other things they believed in.

Now, on the point about what Jesus said about to the Pharisees, what he was talking about, the tradition there was actually interesting. The tradition was a misinterpretation of Scripture. I find that when we talk about tradition, it's not some esoteric random fact out here. It's usually essentially the tradition is just the understanding of what the Scriptures mean. What Jesus was refuting was an interpretation that said, if you make a vow to the temple, you cannot break it. And the Pharisees appeal to a passage in the book of Numbers to say, "Well, look, I gave my money to the temple. I can't give it to my dad." It says right here in the Bible, you can't break a vow to God. And Jesus says, you're not interpreting it right because that passage has to be interpreted in light of God's command to honor thy father and mother. Jesus gave them the correct interpretation. Their incorrect interpretation was a tradition of men.

So that's why when you look, for example, St. Irenaeus in the second century, he said that heretics, like the Gnostic heretics, they could take Scripture and make it mean something different in the same way you could take a mosaic of a king, like all the stones resemble the ruler, the royal figure, and rearrange them to look like a fox. And he says the heretics do the same with Scripture. Jerome, in the fifth century, was combating the Luciferians, which should already be a tip-off. You shouldn't listen to them.

Eric Huffman: What's in a name?

Trent Horn: People fell for it. And he said to them that the essence of the Scripture is not the letter, but the meaning, and they pervert it with their heretical meanings. So that's where I think when we understand tradition, in many cases, that tradition we receive, like early traditions, Origen in the third century said that the baptism of infants was an apostolic tradition given by the apostles. And that's a way of understanding Scripture when it talks about things like household baptisms, things like that.

Eric Huffman: But the claim isn't that all the church fathers were invaluable.

Trent Horn: Certainly not. We say they're witness to the faith, and Origen is a witness. Some of them we call ecclesial writers because they went off the reservation at the end of their lives, but they were still a valuable witness to what the church was teaching at that time.

Eric Huffman: But there were things that Origen believed that-

Trent Horn: Oh yeah. That they were condemned to ecumenical councils.

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Trent Horn: But also though, if we just cut off the early church entirely because we're concerned that they could be wrong, then we're going to be deprived of the earliest generations of people who had unprecedented contact with the apostles themselves. So when you read, for example, First Clement, this could be the same Clement who's referenced in Scripture and that we have extra-biblical evidence for having been ordained by Peter himself. This is a writing from 90, AD 90, possibly as early as AD 60. And there, Clement, he doesn't talk about the apostolic writings being the rule of faith. He says in 1 Clement 44, the apostles knowing there would be strife for them with the foreknowledge given to them by God, set out that there would be successors for them.

So we have a very early reference to apostolic succession and other elements like that. And also with these early fathers, we see they give us crucial data. For example, we believe that Mark is reliable because he was the traveling companion of Peter. Well, that comes from a church father from Papias, right, writing later than Clement. So I would worry if, you know, we don't want to be skeptical of the fathers. It's not good form if we say, "Oh, this church father supports Christianity as a whole. This is great evidence." But if they start to support Catholicism, "Well, they were kind of fallible."

Eric Huffman: I think we should be careful not to be tribal in that sense and miss out on the truth. And I don't think most Protestants would want to throw out the witness of the church fathers, the early church fathers. I take a Berean approach, I guess, from Acts 17, where the Berean believers they are applauded for basically testing and checking the apostolic teaching they had received against Scripture. They made sure it was true based on how it lined up with Scripture. I think that is, in the best sense, the Protestant way of looking at the Church Fathers and apostolic tradition is to make sure we filter it through Scripture and have some checks and balances in that regard.

Trent Horn: Sure. On the Bereans, though, I think that this story is actually misunderstood. And we have to look at all of Acts 17 to see what is going on here. That prior to when Paul arrives in Berea and he preaches the gospel, he is in Thessalonica and is preaching it. And some people did receive his message there. And so it's good that they received it. But others stirred up a mob against him. And then it says he went to Berea and it says those Bereans were more noble-minded. And I would say the emphasis is not because they searched the Scriptures because there's nothing in that chapter that says the Thessalonians did a bad thing by not looking at Scripture. That's never mentioned.

Eric Huffman: The Christians in Thessalonica aren't really talked about like they are in Berea. Mostly it's about the mob that came after Paul.

Trent Horn: Right. So the difference there is I think the Bereans are noble, and it says "Because they searched the Scriptures daily." It's because they were willing to give Paul a fair hearing and were open-minded to him in the way the Thessalonians were not. I think that the lesson people tried to give is, look, hey, we want to be like the Bereans. They're not going to just fall for anything. They checked this stuff. But the Thessalonians, it wasn't like they just... it's not like Paul told the Thessalonians, "Hey, you guys didn't check what I said against Scripture. Someone could fool you guys." He never says that to them.

What's contrasted is a hostile, closed-minded approach versus an open-minded approach. And they still had to take Paul at his word that what he said didn't contradict Scripture, but the idea that the Messiah would be a particular individual who was crucified and rose from the dead at a certain time and place, that was new information they just had to accept that wasn't necessarily found in the Old Testament. So I would agree, as I said before, as Christians, we should never believe or practice anything that contradicts Scripture.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, that's what I was going to-

Trent Horn: But at most, I think a lot of the differences in Catholics and Protestants is not, Hey, Catholic, what you're doing contradicts Scripture. It's just, well, I don't see this Catholic practice in Scripture, to which I would say, but where does Scripture say everything we believe or practice must be there? That's where I would have the difference.

Eric Huffman: Right. Super helpful. You've mentioned apostolic tradition before. In every conversation I have with a Catholic apologist or just an everyday Roman Catholic goes back to apostolic tradition, really as to be used against the Protestant lack of apostolic tradition as evidence for Catholic validity, I guess. What is apostolic tradition for those who may be laymen and just don't know?

Trent Horn: The word "tradition" comes from the Latin word tradere, which means to be handed over. I believe it's also related to the word traitor comes from there, to be handed over.

Eric Huffman: Did I say apostolic tradition? I meant succession.

Trent Horn: Oh, succession.

Eric Huffman: Yeah.

Trent Horn: So there's different ideas about apostolic succession. And Protestants have their own idea. It depends on what you mean by that word. So we would say that apostolic succession refers to the teaching and pastoral authority of the apostles being communicated to others who have a leadership capacity within the church. Now, it's not fully communicated. We believe the office of apostles ceased, and the church recognized that apostle was a limited office, but that not all of the authority of the apostles was gone because the apostles laid hands on people.

In fact, when you look in the New Testament, no one can ever become a pastor on his own authority. You can't just open the first church of Athens or Corinth and say, I'm starting a church. To be a presbyteroi, to be a Episcopal, you have authority in the church, you had to have had hands laid on you by others in authority. And that's why Paul says to Timothy, do not lay hands hastily on those. So you had to receive it from others.

The office of apostle, while it is ceased, the church recognizes, and this is where I referenced Ignatius earlier in AD 107, he is a great witness to say, all right, this first generation of Christians that received the church from the apostles, how did they organize the church? And it was very clear that there were diakonoi, there were deacons, helpers, there were the presbyteroi, the elders. We get the English word priest from presbyteroi. They are those who lead the assembly, who offer the Eucharist. And then there are those who oversee presbyteroi. That would be the episcopoi, the episcopate, the bishop. And that the bishops have a very particular... they have a unique authority to be able to teach on behalf of the entire church.

Now, they can teach locally for their congregation. They can teach for the whole church if they're all gathered together universally, like they did at the Council of Nicaea, for example, to set forth the Nicene Creed that all Christians had to adhere to.

Eric Huffman: Who in the Bible is described with that term?

Trent Horn: With what term?

Eric Huffman: The Episcopal term, the Bishop term.

Trent Horn: Oh, yes. Now, in the New Testament though, the terms diakonoi, Presbyteroi, and Episcopoi, they seem to be interchangeable. The problem is that while the terms are interchangeable, it doesn't mean that the offices weren't distinct. Because Paul himself, he considers himself a diakonoi. He calls himself a deacon, even though he's an apostle. Peter calls himself a fellow Presbyteroi, an elder.

So like even today, we would say we have the Pope who is the head of the church, but he's still a priest. And he can talk to his fellow priests. It's like when the president says, "My fellow Americans," it doesn't mean he stops being the president. He's an American just like the rest of us. So the offices of bishop, priest, and deacon, the terms seem to be interchangeable during this first period within the New Testament writings. But after the death of the apostles, the church came to an awareness that these offices were distinct in their authority and that the successor of apostle, having that authority in the church, was then given to the bishops after the apostles died.

Eric Huffman: Okay. And the idea is that the apostolic succession began with Peter?

Trent Horn: I would say apostolic succession began with Matthias in Acts chapter 1, that when Judas goes to his demise, the apostles say that we are to select another to take his place. And they actually quote the Psalms. And the Psalm, the quote is, "Let another his office hold." And I believe the Greek word used there is episcopoi. Literally they say, "Let another his bishopric hold." So they transfer that office to someone else. So that would be to Matthias. And then when the apostles die, our earliest reference to this, we have Irenaeus in the second century talks about how Peter was the Bishop of Rome. And then he had a series of successors after him, then Linus, then Anacletus, Clement, up to Irenaeus' own day, that you are the rightful bishop of this jurisdiction because you received it from the previous bishop. So Irenaeus gives us, I think, like the first six or seven bishops.

Eric Huffman: The first mention of Peter as the bishop of Rome was second century, mid-second century sometime?

Trent Horn: I would say probably mid-second century you have from Irenaeus referring to Peter there. There were certainly a primacy of the Church of Rome that was recognized, like in Ignatius's letter to the Romans he says, "I'm not going to lecture you like I lectured other churches. You were the church that Peter and Paul founded." But I think Irenaeus would be probably one of our earliest, clearest witnesses.

Eric Huffman: Good. Yeah. And the story in the Bible that I hear most often, you know, tied into this conversation is the primacy of Peter, in particular, the passage of, "Upon this rock I will build my church."

Trent Horn: Yes, yes.

Eric Huffman: What is Peter's unique role in this succession and how early on did he become known as not just the chief apostle, perhaps, because he's always listed first in all of the listings of the apostles? And I think that's meaningful. Clearly, one of the two or three primary leaders of the first church, but when did he become more than just that in the Catholic tradition?

Trent Horn: Well, I would say that Peter was always understood to be not just the leader of the apostles, but the leader of the early church. And if the apostles are the leaders of the church, he is the leader of them. And so many things I would say point to this. One, you said about the apostolic list. Whenever there is a list of all of the apostles mentioned, he's always listed first. And some people say, "Well, maybe..." I remember, I think one Protestant said to me, "It could just be he was the oldest."

Eric Huffman: Yeah, there's evidence that he was.

Trent Horn: But I would say that when you look at the list, the list is of... I know this will be hard for some people to hear, but the church isn't egalitarian, most to least important. When you look at those apostolic lists in the New Testament, you have the most notable apostles at the beginning of the list. Then at the end you have Thaddeus and others we don't ever really hear about. You have second and third string. And then who's always last in the list?

Eric Huffman: Judas.

Trent Horn: It's always Judas. In Matthew 10:2, when you have this list, it says protos, Petros, meaning not just first in number, but as John MacArthur says, first in authority, like chief or the anchor, the first in authority amongst the others. The second thing that Catholics would say is the fact that God changed Peter's name, that he was originally Simon. "Simon son of Jonah, flesh and blood didn't reveal this to you. God chose you to receive this prophetic message about me being the Messiah." So then Peter's name is changed from Simon to Petros, rock. It's interesting because in Scripture, when God changes somebody's name, the name reveals something about their identity and mission. So we think of Abram becomes Abraham, the father of many nations. Some people think that they think that Paul's name has changed. Saul and Paul, always had two names. Roman name and Jewish name.

Eric Huffman: Right.

Trent Horn: People don't know that. But with Peter, he's given the name Rock. And then Jesus says in Matthew 16:18, "You are Rock, and on this rock I will build my church." And I've quoted many Protestant scholars, D.A. Carson, Oscar Cullmann, who say, you know, "I don't believe in papacy, but it is really clear rock is Peter." That's who's being talked about here. Peter is referenced more than all the other apostles combined.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, Augustine didn't agree.

Trent Horn: Well, he said now the rock can mean different things. It's multivalent. It can have different meanings. So we understand the Catechism in paragraph 424 says that the rock can also refer to Peter's confession of faith. But the reason the confession is so important is because Peter was able to give it because he was given the Holy Spirit and given this unique authority.

Then when you get to the early church, one of my favorite evidences for Peter's unique authority in the church are actually things that many Protestants say that counts against him, like Paul standing up to Peter in Galatians chapter 2, because there, Peter... so funny, actually. I love Paul and Peter because it reminds me of me and my wife in the sense that Paul is a very stoic, melancholic, "Let's get this done. I don't care what people think," sort of thing. And he's very deliberate about stuff. Peter, I would say he's a melancholic in temperament. Peter is kind of that impulsive sanguine. "I will take my sword and die for You, Lord, when no one else will." He's ready to do it and doesn't always stick with it, as you see what happens in Jesus' trial. But he's got a good heart and that's just one of his flaws. Everyone's got a flaw. Paul had a flaw, he was just made of glass and everything's gotta be perfect, and oh, just hard on people. And so I think they had a little bit of rocky relationship because of that.

So then we get in Galatians 2, and what's the problem in the church? Are Jewish Christians better than Gentile Christians because we have the old covenant? And Peter wants to make everyone get along, just like my wife always wants to make everyone get along, and I don't care about offending people. And so Peter goes and he's, "I'm not going to sit with Gentiles because the Jewish Christians are going to get mad." You know, "I'm just going to make everybody happy." And Paul says... I mean, he literally says, "Grow a backbone." He says, "You are not walking upright," orthopodousin, where we get the word orthopedic. The theology was right, but Peter did it again. He got afraid and didn't want people to get mad at him. And so Paul rebukes him for it.

But here's the thing in Galatians 2. Paul has his own criticisms. People are saying, "You just want to please people. You're a man pleaser, Paul. Why should I listen to you about circumcision?" And Paul says, "Excuse me, man pleaser? I don't care what anybody thinks. I even told Peter to his face that he was wrong," which would be like, imagine someone at the White House, one of the cabinet says, "This guy, this guy's just a brown noser. This guy's a people pleaser." And the guy says, "What are you talking about? I told the president to his face he was wrong. You think I'm a people pleaser?" So I think that that's one.

And there's others in Corinthians when Paul talks about the apostles, the brother and the Lord, and then Cephas in ascending order, having authority. I see that as very early evidence of Peter having unique authority in the early church. And then when you get to the early church, seeing the prominence of Rome, I mentioned 1st Clement earlier, let's say even written in the year 60, or let's say 90 even, Clement, that letter is about how the Corinthian church fired their priests.

And people are like, "We need help, they fired all the priests, the other people here in the church." And Clement says, "If you put them back, and if you disobey me, there will be grave danger for you. If you disobey us, there will be grave danger." And what's interesting there is that the apostle John was probably still alive then and living in Ephesus right nearby, and yet they go to Rome. A letter is sent from the church in Corinth for Rome to settle this dispute, and the letter of Clement is returned.

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Trent Horn: So I would recommend for our audience, my friend Joe Heschmeyer wrote an excellent book, Pope Peter. And it goes through a lot of this about Peter and Scripture, even more things that I've talked about here. But I find it really fascinating to see all this pointing towards Peter. And then I always compare it to, where does Scripture say that I'm not obligated to believe something unless it's explicitly taught in Scripture? I don't see the biblical evidence for that like I see for succession and primacy and things like that.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, yeah, that's helpful. We need to move on to other topics. I'll just say, I think biblically, that maybe the best case against Peter's special status is the Jerusalem council that you mentioned earlier, actually, and James being the one to speak authoritatively in Peter's presence, as opposed to Peter being the one to bring the judgment about the Gentiles' inclusion in the church.

Trent Horn: Well, I would say, while James gives the disciplinary judgment about rules related to how we ought to engage with the Gentiles, even things that might be reversed later relating to what to do with strangled things and blood and things like that, Peter is the one at the council who gives the dogmatic declaration about the Gentiles based on the personal revelation that was given to him earlier in Acts 10 and Acts 11.

I would recommend if you want to go into more on that at catholic.com, just look up Peter, Acts 15, we break that down. But I would just encourage Protestants that not to... I mean, it's important to talk about Peter, his role and his authority, but to ask the bigger question: who has the authority to be a pastor in the church? That's the bigger question because Hebrews 13:17... I remember once a Protestant apologist, he was dealing with these other Protestants online who were being total jerks, and he says to them, "I want to talk to your elder. Who is your elder?" And they said, "Jesus is our elder." And he says, "Not good enough." Because Hebrews 13, the author of Hebrews says, "Submit to the elders and obey them, for they have authority over you."

So the Bible is very clear that there are people that God wants to have authority over us, but who gets to have that authority? Just someone who says they have that authority? "Well, because I got it from this guy"? Well, where did he get the authority? I think I would encourage Protestants, that's a very, very important question to answer. And I do not believe it can be sufficiently answered with, "Well, he has that authority because he really understands the Bible." There's a lot of people who say they do that, and I would be cautious about the interpretations they make.

Eric Huffman: Right. Let's talk about Mary.

Trent Horn: Let me do it. Let's do it.

Eric Huffman: What does Mary mean to you as a Catholic? And what do you think Protestants misunderstand about the Catholic understanding of Mary?

Trent Horn: I would say the best way for Protestants to really understand what Catholics think about Mary would be to read what Martin Luther and the other reformers said about Mary. I am truly amazed, in the past 500 years, how the Christian understanding of Mary has degraded so much from what the reformers... They would be aghast by. Martin Luther, for example, said that all of Mary's glory and honor can be summarized in a single title, Mother of God, or in Greek we would say Theotokos.

I would say who Mary is to me that Mary... Mary is the role model for all disciples and the spiritual mother who prays for me. And just as I said earlier that in James 5, the prayers of righteous people are very powerful. I mean, who's going to be more righteous in heaven than the creature who will bear a physical resemblance to the second person of the Trinity? When we get there, we will behold our Lord, Jesus Christ, and there will be a woman standing next to Him who looks a bit like Him because she's Jesus' true mother. He was truly born of a woman.

And so in seeing that Mary is a spiritual mother and prays for all Christians to lead them to her Son, I say that Mary is the ideal disciple. So she is the Mother of God, not that she created God or something like that, but that title actually protects Jesus's divinity. He was a divine person from the moment He was a single-celled zygote.

Eric Huffman: Say that again.

Trent Horn: Jesus was a divine person from the moment He entered the world as a single-celled zygote, as a one-celled human being in His mother's womb. He was fully God and fully man.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Trent Horn: That's why we say Mary is the Mother of God. But from that, not just that she's some vessel, but that because Mary is the Mother of God, God will do wonderful things through her. Luke 1:48, Mary says, "All generations will call me blessed, for Mighty One has done wonderful things for me, and holy is His name." And so we as Catholics would say, just as we agree with Protestants, Mary was a virgin before birth, even during her pregnancy, she was a virgin because this is a sign that Jesus has no earthly father. We believe that Mary was a virgin after her birth, that she is just overall the virgin, he parthenos in Greek.

Eric Huffman: What do you do with the passage that... I always wanted to ask a Catholic, the passage that says Joseph had no relations with her until the child was born, until Jesus was born?

Trent Horn: The Greek word heos there, until, it can mean a reversal of condition, but it doesn't always indicate a reversal. What Matthew is trying to just say here is that Joseph did not have relations with Mary. So until can imply a reversal. "I'm going to be talking with you until I go on my flight later," you know, as there's a reversal, but not always. So, Michal and Samuel was childless until the day of her death. Or Paul says that Christ must put His enemies under His footstool until He comes again, but there won't be enemies again after that.

Eric Huffman: But if the point was to say that she remained a virgin forever, don't you think it would have made sense to say that in addition to he didn't have relations? Because it's so normative to say a husband and wife have sexual relations, it would seem to make sense that they would have gone out of their way... The writers of Scripture would have gone out of their way to... This is the Protestant argument, right?

Trent Horn: Sure.

Eric Huffman: ...to make it clear that she never had sexual relations.

Trent Horn: But we must be careful though about arguments from silence, that if it were the case, then wouldn't it say that here? Because people can concoct all kinds of arguments. There will be people who will say, "Well, look, if we are supposed to baptize in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, how come nobody in the book of Acts ever does that? Never says that even once in Acts." Now, obviously we have the baptismal formula in the Great Commission that Jesus gives in...

Eric Huffman: Yes, it's pretty important.

Trent Horn: Yes. I mean, but that's why there are Oneness Christians who try to argue that's an interpolation or that it's not normative for the early church. And that's just one example. But my point is that with arguments of silence, all we can get from Matthew chapter 1 is that Matthew is not trying to... he's not trying to say like... Is he trying to say, "Oh, I'm trying to talk about what Mary and Joseph did after Jesus was born"? His point is just that Jesus has no earthly father because Mary and Joseph never had any relations. So that's the point that he's making there. I want to be careful.

Eric Huffman: They didn't have relations before Jesus was born. That's actually the point.

Trent Horn: That's fine.

Eric Huffman: Not that they never.

Trent Horn: Even if he says the point he's making is that they never had relations before He was born, because I could say that myself as a Catholic and debate the virgin birth with people while still affirming that Mary was always a virgin. But I think there's many other verses and things that indicate that Mary did not have any other children, did not engage in-

Eric Huffman: Really?

Trent Horn: Oh yeah, yeah. For example, when the angel appears to Mary, he says that, "You will..." And here, Mary is already betrothed, really married to Joseph. When you look at ancient Jewish customs for marriage, that you would be married, then the house would be prepared, and then you would move in together.

Eric Huffman: But the consummation didn't happen until the wedding.

Trent Horn: Right. But you would still be understood as husband and wife.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, legally.

Trent Horn: Because in Matthew 1, they are understood they're husband and wife. They're not merely engaged.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, betrothal was a step up from engagement for sure.

Trent Horn: But the problem is in Luke 1, when Gabriel appears to Mary, some people will translate Mary's... when Gabriel says, "You shall bear a Son, and He will be Wonderful Counselor, He will save His people," some people translate Mary's response as, "How can this be because I have no husband?" And it's like, well, yes, you do have a husband. The text literally says, "How can this be because I know not man," but not even, "I know not a man yet," which is a construction that is used later in Luke's Gospel. She talks about as if she is not knowing man in particular.

Now, know for a lot of people, their alarm bells will go off like, "Wait, why would they be married if she has some kind of perpetual vow or something like that?" Well, I would say that one of the earliest documents we have talking about the relationship between Mary and Joseph is the Protoevangelium of James, coming from the first and early second century, talking about how Mary was a servant in the temple or a temple maiden. And this is something that Megan Nutzman and other Protestant scholars have shown there was evidence for.

Eric Huffman: Protoevangelium of James was deemed to be...

Trent Horn: Well, it's not Scripture, but it provides a historical witness of understanding who Mary's parents were, who the brethren of the Lord were. When you look at that and then look at other early sources, what's interesting... so Richard Bauckham is a Protestant scholar, but he holds to the view that the brethren of the Lord were not Jesus' younger siblings. They were His older half-siblings and that Joseph had been previously married, because they bossed Jesus around even though Jesus is the oldest, which you don't do in that time and place. So Bauckham is a Protestant.

Eric Huffman: How do they boss Him around?

Trent Horn: Well, like saying that He's crazy, trying to lay hands on Him.

Eric Huffman: Jesus bossed them around when He told them to go to Jerusalem and celebrate the festival once.

Trent Horn: Right. But also when He's at the cross, He doesn't entrust His mother to any of His brethren. He entrusts her to John the apostle.

Eric Huffman: Doesn't say the brothers were there, though.

Trent Horn: Right. But if you think about Jewish law and things at the time, you know, you don't entrust your mother to a friend. Your mother stays within the care of your family members. So when I look at all of that together... and I would say also the perpetual virginity of Mary was not something controversial during the Protestant Reformation.

Eric Huffman: Sure.

Trent Horn: In fact, it was scandalous among the reformers to propose that Mary was not ever-virgin. So that is one division I would say between Catholics and modern Protestants, not classical Protestants. And that when you look in the early sources, Mary's perpetual virginity was just taken for granted until the fourth century when some people challenge it. That's one I think is a difference more with modern Protestantism than classical Protestantism.

So when I say that Mary though is the role model for Christians, I would say that Christ's merits on the cross were applied to Mary from the first moment she existed to protect His mother from sin. So she received a baptism even at the beginning of her life to receive the grace of God. And then at the end of her life, she was taken body and soul in heaven. And she is the first creature, one of the first creatures to be able to have this bodily eternal life with Jesus. And that's something for us to look forward to.

Eric Huffman: What's the earliest attestation of the Assumption of Mary on record?

Trent Horn: We have early references to this, a tradition I would say going back to the third or even the second century in earlier heterodox Christian writings. We have Epiphanius in the fourth century talking about Mary and comparing Mary and her ultimate fate to that of Elijah, who had been taken up into heaven. And Epiphanius is talking about not knowing. And even as Catholics, the church does not teach whether Mary went into heaven bodily alive or if she died and then went into heaven. That's an open question.

So I think there's good evidence that Epiphanius is the first Christian writer to mention this. We have early references to this in the second and third century. But my concern though would be if someone says, "Well, I'm not going to believe this because it shows up late in the history of the church." Well, by that logic, by the fourth century, we don't have several of the writings of the New Testament aren't completely received until that time period. So if one sets that as a historical standard for doctrine, it could cut out more than what one realizes.

Eric Huffman: Here's my take. I think Protestants should honor Mary more. I think that is clear. I think she deserves more of our attention than just on Christmas Eve and at the cross, perhaps, when we talk about her again. I don't see the need, like a lot of Protestants would say, we don't see the need for a mediatrix or the elevation of Mary to the role that is prescribed for and given to Jesus, particularly to be our, you know, sufficient savior.

Trent Horn: Well, in the early church, there were people who were offering sacrificial cakes to Mary. They were called the Collyridians, and Epiphanius condemns them, and they were condemned as heretics. So we agree, you should not give any creature, even the Blessed Virgin Mary, worship that is due to God alone.

Eric Huffman: Where's that line though? Because it does seem from the outside looking in, there's lots of churches named after Mary. There's just a ton of attention paid to Mary, almost I would say from the outside looking in as much as Jesus, honestly, is what it looks like.

Trent Horn: Well, I guess I would say, who is the most important creature who ever lived?

Eric Huffman: The most important creature who ever lived?

Trent Horn: Yes.

Eric Huffman: I mean, my first answer is the incarnate Christ.

Trent Horn: But He's not a creature, He's the Creator.

Eric Huffman: He's fully, truly God and fully, truly...

Trent Horn: He's not a creature in any way.

Eric Huffman: Well, yeah, so Mary might be the answer to that question. I'm still not sure that-

Trent Horn: But still infinitely below the Creator, which allows us to offer finite worship, acclamation, veneration, and respect to someone who is the Mother of God, while still giving the worship due to God alone, only to God, like offering the sacrifice of the Mass, for example, worshiping, understanding God as the Creator, Jesus is the one who died for us, not Mary. But while understanding... and this goes into the bigger thing though about the Body of Christ, is that as a Catholic, I believe Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. And so you can pray for me, I can pray for you. We are all in this together.

Paul talks about there being... there is one Body of Christ in 1 Corinthians 12, only one body. But the departed in Christ are a part of this one body. In Revelation 1:18, Jesus says, "Behold, I once was dead, I'm alive forevermore. I hold the keys to death." Death ain't going to do nothing to that body. We are still all connected to Christ. So we are capable of interceding for each other, just as I would for you, you would for me. And I agree with you, it's like, well, we shouldn't treat the saints superstitiously like Jesus won't listen if we don't go to Him.

But I think even many Protestants understand. They don't say, "Well, I just go to Jesus. I don't have to go to anyone else." But many times, though, when something bad happens, we email all our friends and say, "I need you guys to storm the gates of heaven with your prayers." But why do that if I can go directly to the Creator Himself? It's because we understand we were created communally within the body. So if we ask others with us to storm the gates of heaven, why not ask people on the other side of the gates to help out too?

Eric Huffman: I think the distinction there is in the quality of connection as opposed to the quantity. So I think when I invite my Christian friends to intercede for or with me, I'm just hoping their prayers will add to the chorus of mine. I don't believe anyone has some kind of special connection or network that gets them a direct line to heaven in a way that the average faithful believer doesn't have.

Trent Horn: But Scripture does say the prayers of righteous people are more powerful.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, the righteous though are those who are redeemed in Christ Jesus by grace through faith, and not any merited-

Trent Horn: But wouldn't you say those in heaven are at least more... they're more sanctified than us.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, sure. But I guess it's just a matter of whether we need mediators to make our prayers more heard and whether it makes sense to pray to those who have departed in ways that I see Catholics doing, as opposed to leaning on the brothers and sisters in Christ around us to intercede for and with us. You would, I think, say that Catholics, although you mention Mary in prayers, you don't pray to Mary?

Trent Horn: Well, it depends what you mean by that word pray.

Eric Huffman: Okay.

Trent Horn: Because the word pray comes from a Latin word, precare, which means to make a request. So throughout a lot of middle and old English and early modern English, the word pray, it was a synonym for request. So you would have in Shakespeare, even all the way going up to Jane Austen, saying lines like, "I pray thee tell what has become of me," or, "Hear my prayer that you should do this or that." It would be a request.

But I think the word prayer, its meaning in modern English has shrunken a lot, that prayer, noun parentheses, prayer just means communication or request made to God. So if that's what prayer is, well, we don't do that with the saints because we recognize they're not God. So the Magisterium of the Catholic Church usually in the language it uses when talking about this part of the faith, it usually doesn't use language like "prayer to the saints." It uses language like "seeking the intercession of the saints," seeking their intercession, or I would seek your intercession or a friend's intercession. So to say "pray to" that can easily... because I think what can be a difficulty here is we think prayer and worship... and this is another difference between Catholics and Protestants, like what does worship mean?

Eric Huffman: Yeah, sure.

Trent Horn: A lot of us think worship is just a binary thing. Worship is the thing you give to God and God alone. And that's what worship is. And you don't worship anybody else. But like I said, remember we've been around for 2,000 years, worship for most of... like in English history, it was a broader term. Worship came from the Old English word weorþscipe, which mean to give one their worth. So you could worship... the highest worth is to God, but you would also say to the lord of the manor, or even today we say to a judge, "Your Honor, Your Honor, I... this..." or in some places, the magistrate, you call the judge "Your Worship." I think maybe Canada or other places, they do that, to give them the honor that they're due.

I think the problem is if worship is a binary thing. It's just the thing you only give to God, and prayer just is a kind of worship, then prayer only goes to God. But we just have a broader view that giving someone their weorþscipe, you give God the highest worth. So, as Catholics, I believe at Mass that the Eucharist is the body and blood of Jesus Christ. I have nothing to give God that's of infinite value, but I have my Lord. I can present to Him the altar, "Lord, thank you for the sacrifice that's been given to us, the new Passover Lamb that now chooses to dwell in me as in John 6 says, so I can eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ to have eternal life." But I can recognize the worth of the saints that You've created, Your mother, who's the mother... Your mother, the Blessed Mother, all of that coming from Your grace, and thank You for their prayers for us, their witness to us. And so to say, "Do you pray to Mary?" I would say I pray to Mary and the saints in the sense that I pray that you should say a prayer for me and ask for help from God. So it's just the meaning of the word. And I do feel like that's one thing as Catholics and Protestants we can easily do, just get past the semantics.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, I do think sometimes the semantics have us talking past each other-

Trent Horn: Exactly.

Eric Huffman: ...and not really appreciating each other. I think we should be better about-

Trent Horn: Worship God seeking the intercession of the saints.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. And just giving each other the benefit of the doubt without compromising on core fundamentals.

Trent Horn: Nearly every Protestant I've met does not disrespect Mary, honors Mary. And I would say they honor Mary in virtue of the knowledge they have of her. And if they knew more of the wonderful things God did for her that I would know as a Catholic, they would be ready to honor her for that. They just need that to be proven first. So, for Protestants to say, "I don't think you disrespect Mary. You don't think I worship Mary as a goddess," then we make progress.

Eric Huffman: Okay, quickly now, rapid fire, because you got to catch a flight. We're both pretty verbose.

Trent Horn: Whatever you need.

Eric Huffman: I can't end this interview without hearing you talk about purgatory. That's another thing in the comment section here on Maybe God that's come up a lot as we've had...

Trent Horn: We should just let this go on for hours and hours then.

Eric Huffman: It'll feel like purgatory. That is a very common dispute and point of contention. What in the purest sense is the Catholic understanding of purgatory and how do Protestants misunderstand it?

Trent Horn: If you look in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, it's around paragraphs 1030 to 1035, it discusses the last things. It talks about hell and it talks about purgatory. So purgatory is not a second chance at salvation and is not a place you go where you really hope you might get into heaven, but you're not sure. Purgatory, we would say, is the final sanctification of the elect. So we believe, as all Christians do, there are the elect. I know we disagree about how you become a member of the elect, who chooses that, what role do I play to say yes to God's offer of salvation. But there are people who believe in Jesus who will go to heaven. We can call them the elect, the chosen that God chooses. And when they receive grace from God, the justification of God, they are immediately transformed from being a child of Adam to being a child of God.

The first moment that happens is not through any work, it's nothing you do to merit it. You just receive salvation. And in that moment, nothing would hinder you from entering into heaven. But we also know, as Paul says in Romans 13:11, salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. Philippians 2, "Work out your salvation in fear and trembling." We know there is a journey and we grow in sanctification. Scripture also says, James 3:2, we all stumble in many ways. We still sin in this life. We have attachments to sin in this life. Revelation 21:27, though, says that nothing unclean will enter into heaven. So God will sanctify us in this life, but when we die, if we are still attached to sin, then we will be fully purified of that attachment, be fully sanctified after death.

What the catechism says is that the church gives the name of this process of purification, calls it purgatory. I would just say that if you believe... we agree, we're sanctified before death. And we would just say that if you're not fully sanctified in this life, which is a journey, you'll be fully sanctified after death to enter into heaven. That's the difference.

Eric Huffman: It does make some sense to the Protestant mind, I would say, because sin cannot be allowed or tolerated in heaven. The imperfection of sin must be dealt with before we enter into heaven. And so the idea of full sanctification before entering heaven's gates, it makes some sense. We have the idea in scripture that Christians who are redeemed already will stand trial, will face judgment, not condemnation, but will all stand before Jesus and have to give an account-

Trent Horn: For what they did in the body

Eric Huffman: Yeah, exactly. As a corollary, I've also talked to a lot of people that have had near-death experiences, and they talk about... even the positive ones, every one of them almost talk about a life review with Jesus, where they basically sit down and watch like a movie of their whole life and have to give an account. And it's not always pleasant, you know? And so there's this idea of coming to reckoning with who we've been and what we've done before entering the fullness of heaven. And I think Protestants can at least in some sense get our minds around that.

Trent Horn: Absolutely.

Eric Huffman: I do think though, there's been over the years just a lot of misunderstanding. I think a lot of Protestants conflate purgatory with what used to be called limbo, which was, as I understand it, never an official church teaching, but it was widely talked about.

Trent Horn: Let me pass through a few of those things you correct. Limbo is an answer to the question, what happens to children who die without baptism? Very common, of course, throughout human history. Half of all children did not live past the age of five. Many died shortly after birth or before birth. So what happens to them? Because Catholics, along with many Protestants, believe that baptism is what saves us. Not all Protestants believe that. But Protestants also have to answer this question of what happens if you die and you didn't believe in Jesus, your baby? You know, salvation is through faith in Christ. What happens? Because we know what we need to go to heaven. If you don't have that, how do you go to heaven?

So medieval theologians posited that there's only heaven and hell, but there could be, on the outer part of hell, a place that is not heaven, but there's no suffering. There's just perfect natural happiness. And this was called the limbus, the edge of hell, hence the word limbo. And so unbaptized children would have perfect natural happiness, but not behold the face of God. And so that was their answer to it. But the church holds, while it was a common teaching, it was never infallibly defined.

Now the church leans more towards having a hope, but not a hundred percent guarantee, but a hopeful confidence in our Lord who said, "Let the children come to Me," that children through no fault of their own will also behold the face of God. So that's limbo. Purgatory, very different.

The church does not have a teaching about the nature of purgatory, about its duration. All we know is that this is this final process of sanctification, but theologians have posited and it's... I mean, it's not just like getting cleaned up. There's a punitive aspect to it because we're sanctified from our sins. Hebrews 12 makes it clear that God disciplines those He loves to produce fruits of righteousness. So we would say if Hebrews 12 says that God can discipline me in this life to produce righteousness, and that's very clear in Hebrews 12. He could do that if I still need that discipline, if I died, but I was still attached to sin. So it's discipline for the purpose of sanctifying us.

I would say though, I'm partial to... many theologians have posited that the what makes purgatory unpleasant is that the person knows they are saved and they are going to heaven, but they're not able to behold the face of God yet. I think purgatory is going to be like this. And it will be agonizing, but in a different way. When I remember when I was seven years old, my dad took our family to Disneyland. This was back when you could drive in the parking lot and the parking lot was right at the front gate. Like you could just drive, get into a parking space and walk to the ticket aisle, not take a tram or all this other stuff. It was old school. But I was bad with my siblings and he said, "That's it. You got to wait here for 10 minutes before you get to go in." And I'm looking and I see the Matterhorn and I see Space Mountain and I see the train going by at the front, and I'm seven years old and I am just dying inside. I am dying inside. But I needed that to reset myself.

Eric Huffman: Interesting.

Trent Horn: Because a lot of people think, "Oh, Catholics believe in some kind of arbitrary torture chamber," but it seems that the saints will be like, "No, your full..." imagine that the agony will just be, God is so, not just God, but the beatific vision, the fullness of who God is that even Moses couldn't see, almost there, but I have to wait until I am fully sanctified so that I can receive it.

Actually, many of the theologians said that there is no teaching that the joy of purgatory doesn't outweigh the suffering. I was still jazzed to be at Disneyland. I was still like, "Oh, I was going to get there already." But it's all in seeing that we understand as Catholics, like when we talk justification, sanctification, we agree justification is by faith, but not by just a faith that's an assent or even a trust. We would agree with Paul in Galatians 5:6, what matters is not circumcision or uncircumcision, but faith working through love. And so we trust in God, receive His salvation. We just don't permanently walk away from it. And in this life, we always move towards God. And if we are attached to sin in a way, we will either be unattached in this life or God will perfectly heal us even after death before we enter into the eternal reward.

Eric Huffman: Got it. The Disneyland thing's helpful in a way to help at least conceive of it.

Trent Horn: That it's not a cruel, arbitrary thing. It's the most glim analogy you could think. And especially when you try to think of the world... I think what's hard for you and I as adults to see and think about heaven is that when we were children, the world was so much bigger and magical than it is now. Like I remember when I went back to my old childhood home and I went to this park I played at, and I thought there was a hill and a forest that I would go and run around in behind it. And then I go back and get there, and it's like five trees. But when you're five years old, it's this magical, huge thing. And I think that's as hard as we get older for our faith. What does Jesus say? "You cannot come to Me unless you have the faith of a child." It's because when a child sees... you know, if this world is big and magical, how much more so is God to a child. But for you and I, we can fall into the habit that God is basically a cosmic version of our boss at work. It's not how it's supposed to be. 1 Peter 5 says, "Cast all your anxieties on Him, for He cares for you."

Eric Huffman: And it's other passages I would look to. See, I am not convinced about purgatory, just to be real. I am curious about the Catholic understanding of it, but I would say there's just not enough evidence there to support it as a theory to be taught in the church. But I do believe we should take sanctification seriously. I love the Disney Park, you know, but I think the... Let me just finish.

Trent Horn: Yeah, go ahead. Sorry, I don't mean to interrupt. I apologize.

Eric Huffman: The idea of the Disney Park is an interesting one, but when I read the Bible, it's just absent with the body, for those in faith, absent with the body, present with the Lord. A man dies once to be judged, and that's it. You know, there's no like in between space that is defined in scripture that I can tell. I understand the scriptural passages that are pointed to in support of purgatory. They're just not clear enough for me to get on board with it. Although I will say purgatory is the least of my concerns where Catholic-Protestant divisions are concerned.

Trent Horn: I'd like to reply to a few of those things because that passage in 2 Corinthians, it does not say to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul says, "I would rather... to be absent from the body, would rather be with the Lord." But even there, Paul says that when you're absent from the body, doesn't mean you're immediately at bliss with the Lord because in that same passage, Paul talks about appearing before the judgment seat of Christ.

Eric Huffman: Sure. If we're talking about appearing before the judgment seat of Christ, I think we're all on the same page. But my sense is historically, purgatory has been fleshed out in other ways.

Trent Horn: Well, what I would say is though that there is... you're correct, there is one judgment, heaven or hell. So the question is, you will be judged particular judgment, heaven or hell after you die. But the question is, will you go immediately there? And in the early church, the people who went immediately were the martyrs. That's why they were celebrated so much is because they received the crown immediately. Or will you be sanctified?

But I'm very convinced, like in 1 Corinthians 3:15, Paul talks about people who will be saved, but as through fire. He says they will suffer loss, but as through fire. And what's interesting here, he says they'll be saved, but he also says that they will suffer a loss of some kind. And now some Protestants have said to me, "Well, Paul is just saying because they were bad servants in 1 Corinthians 3, they'll have a loss of rewards. They won't get the rewards they would have had in heaven," which to me, I would say that fits within my definition of purgatory, which is discipline after death to fully sanctify. If anything, that's a harsher punishment than my Disneyland analogy. At least my Disneyland analogy is temporary. To permanently, eternally lose a reward I could have had in heaven, that'd just be crushing.

Eric Huffman: Is it true that there was a time in Catholic history where purgatory and loved ones in purgatory could be bought out or somehow bargained for with indulgences or something?

Trent Horn: Yes. Because the church has authority over believers and guides all people to salvation, and we can pray for one another, that we can pray... If I see that someone is going through a trial in this life, I pray, "Lord, please help him with that trial, whatever he needs to be sanctified, or he's attached to evil. Lord, please help John with his trial or with his sanctification that he's going through right now." We can pray for loved ones who are being sanctified in this life. We can pray for loved ones in the next life. An indulgence would be the church having the authority to pray for those in the next life that this temporary punishment, this temporary discipline leading to sanctification, would be remitted. That we can ask God in His mercy, "Just please sanctify this person. I want to offer up prayers for them or offer up other things for them, like giving alms to offer this-

Eric Huffman: Financial gifts.

Trent Horn: Yes. Now, Jesus says in Scripture, "When you give alms, all things are clean to you." So giving money to the poor is a very good thing. The problem was that there was an abuse that occurred where, instead of being a spiritual good to offer up a sacrifice on behalf of others, people treated it transactionally. 1 Timothy 6:10: the love of money is the root of all evil. They just bought this without saying prayers or being heartfelt, thinking that this is a shortcut, basically. But an indulgence cannot forgive any sin. If you're going to hell, you're going to hell. A million indulgences won't help. It's just a request to God for the temporary discipline for sins in this life among the saved to be remitted, to be sanctified without it. Because God couldn't do that.

So then, at the Council of Trent after the Protestant Reformation, when many reforms were instituted... because the reformers were right. There were things that were going bad that hadn't been fixed. That almsgiving and money...

Eric Huffman: There's your quote by the way. "The reformers were right," Trent Horn.

Trent Horn: They were about some things. That's why the Council of Trent had its own Catholic... there was a period called the Catholic Reformation. So you had, "No, you can't have money with indulgences anymore." These are just prayers for the benefit of those to be sanctified in the next life. And many other things. So for example, the Council of Trent established a seminary system. Prior to that, to become a priest, a lot of times you were the second or third son who had nothing going for him, who was not going to inherit the lord's estate. And you got sent off to the church or a monastery, and you go work under that priest and you learn from him. And maybe that guy couldn't read and you couldn't read. So there was no formal training system for priests.

Here's where it got really bad. 150, 180 years before the Reformation, you have the Black Death, you have the bubonic plague, a third of Europe is wiped out. Crazy changes are happening now in society, as you could imagine. Think what COVID did to us.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, and it was nothing compared to that.

Trent Horn: A third of the population is wiped out. So what ends up happening, one of the groups that's wiped out the most are the good priests, because the good priests will go to the plague victims and give them... James 5:16 talks about the anointing of oil. You know, anoint him with oil and his sins will be forgiven in James 5. So they would go and anoint people with oil and last rites at the moment of death. Well, who's going to get the plague now? So then all of the good priests start dropping like flies and who's left? It's the priests that were hiding in the monasteries.

So then this starts to bear fruit. 150, what do you got now? Priests and concubines, illiterate. No wonder the reformers had to step in there as abuses. But we're saying that the church, we want reform, not revolt. We want the body to be healed, not a part of it to be amputated. In seeing that there, the church... there's so many superstitions that had to be rooted out, priestly formation. There was a rule that said if you were born out of wedlock, you could not become a priest. That's been suspended. But they had to do that because it was such a temptation. If a child was born out of wedlock, "Oh, he's never going to amount to anything. Just send them to be a priest," because he had no other options. But that's not a great reason to become a shepherd of a flock. As a pastor, you know this. You should never become a pastor because I had no other options. That's a recipe for disaster.

Eric Huffman: Well, and I think in the Protestant way of thinking, when things go wrong, churches get off the beaten path, denominations go heretical, we look to scripture as sort of the reed or the standard to say, this is what determines what's right and wrong. When the system or tradition of apostolic succession and the tradition of the Catholic Church goes off the rails, what do you look to then as sort of that standard by which to judge what even off the rails means?

Trent Horn: Well, for me, scripture cannot be an authority because it is a document.

Eric Huffman: Scripture cannot be an authority.

Trent Horn: Well, let me put it this way. If an authority must be capable of delivering a judgment, Scripture cannot be an authority in that sense because Scripture is never the one making a judgment. It is always a person with their interpretation of Scripture making a particular judgment.

Eric Huffman: That's why we say it's God-breathed, right?

Trent Horn: Right. But then as I said earlier, it becomes who determines what it means. For example, 160 years ago, Christians were debating about whether you have a Christian duty to free your slaves. This was an intra-Christian debate in America and in England. And I'm going to be honest, when you look at the historical record, the abolitionists versus the slaveholding Christians, when they would debate and they debated the Bible, the slaveholding Christians would usually pummel them because think about all they had to do was say, "Okay, you're saying as a Christian I can't own slaves. Why does Colossians 3:22 say, 'Slaves, obey your masters'? Hey, where in the Bible does it say I have to free my slaves?"

Eric Huffman: Well, I could easily say that 1 Timothy 1:10, where slave trading is on par with killing your parents, and the book of Philemon is pretty solid evidence, Jesus's mission statement as adopted from Isaiah and Luke chapter 4, the freedom of the captives, and just the whole Exodus theme. I don't think it's that hard a case to make.

Trent Horn: Let me ask you this, would the New Testament... if someone wanted to... Let me ask this question. Is it sinful if you're a slave to run away from your master?

Eric Huffman: Is it sinful if you're a slave to run away from your master? I would not categorize that as sinful.

Trent Horn: But then if that's the case, why does Colossians 3:22 say, "Slaves, obey your masters"? Running away would be supremely disobedient.

Eric Huffman: Well, I would say, is it sinful for a woman to enter church without her head covered? No. There are commands in scripture that should be rightly understood contextually. And that command, I think in light of the rest of Scripture around slavery, was for a greater purpose about, I think, preserving the lives of the Christians who were enslaved, and also about this even greater mission of bringing slave and master together in the same congregation where they became brothers in Christ.

Trent Horn: Right. Of course. Obviously, I agree with you, slavery is wrong.

Eric Huffman: Of course.

Trent Horn: But my point is just that it was not very difficult for pro-slaveholding Christians to find Bible passages that just on the face of it supported their view.

Eric Huffman: Oh, for sure.

Trent Horn: So you need some other authority. And then what you're saying here, like, "Well, it meant that at that time we have a larger mission and we have to..." that kind of language is now being used by pro-LGBT activists. And they use slavery as an analogy in the same way.

Eric Huffman: But in the same way that there's 1 Timothy 1:10 and Philemon and Exodus and Luke 4 supporting abolitionism, there aren't those sort of corroborating scriptures supporting the LGBTQ movement. They are not the same.

Trent Horn: And I agree with you. But then there's other things when we look at, for example, moral issues where we've had unanimity as Christians. We say, "Oh, you know, we split on homosexuality. We need to just go to the scriptures and go to the tradition we all have agreed on." Well, all Christians believed that contraception was sinful, not even at the Reformation, but even up until the year 1930. And then you see this radical break from what you see with Scripture, but then also a tradition and how that's been lived out.

So, me as a Catholic, what I get concerned about is we say, "Okay, scripture is our primary authority," but not just in the theology we need to believe, but also how do I live as a Christian? Like, can I hire a surrogate to, you know, carry a child for me? Would that be sinful? That's quite removed from the context of Scripture for the authors to give to us. I see the beauty of that early model of the Word of God spoken and written and a living authority within the church. And I see no evidence that that model was ever changed throughout the 2,000 years of the church's history. So I'm always trying to get back to: where is that church? Because when we ask today, what does the church teach about... because you would probably say that pro-LGBT-affirming Christians are still Christian? Would you say they're Christians?

Eric Huffman: I wouldn't put them all in the same category. I know too many different kinds of categories.

Trent Horn: Would you say there are some? There are some people who say LGBT ideology is not sinful. They're Christians, they're just mistaken.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, there are some out there, and I think generally they are either new or novice to the faith and lack some understanding and maturity in that typically those ideas fade with devotion to Christ.

Trent Horn: A better example would be you're an Arminian, but you Calvinists are Christians.

Eric Huffman: Sure, some.

Trent Horn: No doubt. But the point there would be when we say... and so me as a Catholic, like why I look to the church and look to that so much for teaching and the reception of the Word of God written and unwritten, is to answer the question, what does the church teach about all of the predestination, morality, all of these things, when there are many people within... if you take a broader view of the church where you have some Calvinists in it, some LGBT people, like very conservative, like Richard Hays, who had a... you know, he was very conservative on this and he's changed his mind.

Eric Huffman: Yeah, people do that. People change their minds.

Trent Horn: So you have a cacophony of voices within the church, so much so that it becomes... I don't even think the church is able to speak. And I don't believe that's what the apostles or Jesus ever wanted. That's my concern.

Eric Huffman: I would push back. If we had time, we could get more into it, but I would just say that, you know, I think sometimes the Catholic case for uniformity or unity is overstated because, you know, I had Father Casey Cole on the show, a Franciscan friar, and I had other Catholics in the comments going, "Why'd you get that guy to represent us? He's not legitimate."

Trent Horn: No, but here's the thing. I have critiqued Father Cole. I have given critiques of him. I've done rebuttals of him. But I can tell you, he is completely orthodox on the question of whether homosexual acts are moral, whether two men or two women can get married. Well, yes, there's no such thing as perfect uniformity. Some people like me, they like him. Some people like him and not me. There's always going to be that. But you could have within the Anglican body, the Methodist body, the Lutheran body, the Presbyterian body, within those bodies, you can have... there will be some churches where two men or two women are getting married. But there is no Catholic church in union with the Pope where two men or two women are getting married. Because if that happens, that creates a sacramental record. And then that goes throughout the rest of the church and has to be recognized. And if there's a church doing that and they won't stop, there is an authority structure to say, "If you're not going to do this, you've cut yourself off."

Eric Huffman: That's helpful. Last question has to do with our friend, our mutual friend, Wesley Huff, who we've had on this show and is an amazing apologist. I think you would agree with that.

Trent Horn: Oh, yes.

Eric Huffman: You've seen his video.

Trent Horn: Did you see my video about him?

Eric Huffman: I saw your response to his video.

Trent Horn: Well, not response. Before that, I did a video where I gave an award for the two best public Christian witnesses of the faith based on holiness, arguments, and breadth of reach. Father Mike Schmitz. And I picked Wes Huff and some Catholics got mad about that.

Eric Huffman: I bet, yeah.

Trent Horn: But he's good, man. He's good.

Eric Huffman: And then he came out with this video where he talked about the reasons for not being... he's not a Catholic, and the money line was there are fully redeemed, saved brothers and sisters in Christ in Catholic churches who are Catholics, but they are so not because of the Catholic Church's teachings, but in spite of it. And you responded to that, and I encourage everybody to check out not just that video, but your whole YouTube channel, The Council of Trent, everyone. But give me your thoughts on Wes Huff's claims. Don't get too specific or in the weeds, but just how that video landed with you and what do you think he was wrong about?

Trent Horn: Well, and I corresponded with Wes a little bit before making my reply. And I try to do that in many cases when I'm replying to someone, because it's easy to misunderstand people. I'm not trying to own people.

Eric Huffman: I appreciate that.

Trent Horn: I'm trying to... "What are you saying? Okay, you said this, here's my reply to you." So I wrote to him and we even had a disagreement in our consult because my thought from Wes's video was the problem with Protestantism is it's a spectrum. Like if somebody says, "I can never be a Catholic because they baptize babies and they think your salvation can be lost," then I would say, "You can't be a Lutheran or an Anglican either, because they believe those things." That's not the essence of Protestantism.

And if you think a system is wrong that could allow that, well, Protestantism allows that as being a permissible belief. My concern is, okay, you say, "Oh yeah, I mean, you could be a Protestant, I guess, even if you believe in infant baptism, you believe salvation can be lost." Okay, well, can you believe Mary was perpetually Virgin? I mean, Luther did. Okay, I guess you can believe that and still be a Protestant.

Eric Huffman: Most Protestants don't identify as Protestants, though. I think Catholics identify us as Protestants. We don't even use that word.

Trent Horn: Well, we just need a catch-all term to it. You're a Christian who's not Orthodox or Catholic. You're a Christian. But there's a big difference there. It's not even about the beliefs you have. It's where your ultimate authority lie. Like where do you look to for infallible authority? But I would say, so for Wes was putting out many things, I would say actually... and I had comments in the replies from Lutherans and Anglicans saying, "Yeah, I agree more with you than Wes on a lot of this stuff." That Wes had a line saying that justification has nothing to do with a ritual in church, but many Protestants believe baptism regenerates a ritual in church.

So I would say, don't allow your view of Protestantism to be confined to one very narrow sect of Protestantism. Instead, I would just encourage, ask the bigger question: how do I get from Jesus rose from the dead, sent out 12 disciples, they start a church? How do I get from that to these 27 books of the New Testament, they are the primary infallible authority for me as a Christian? How do I get there? But I feel like you got to go through the church to eventually get there.

So I appreciate it. But that line when Wes said, "You know, they're Christian in spite of the Catholic Church's teachings," well, for me then, if you say that, what in particular do I do as a Catholic that could put my salvation in jeopardy? It's one thing to just have incorrect theology. Calvinists have incorrect theology, some charismatics have incorrect theology, but it takes a pretty big load for incorrect theology to damn you. Especially when I thought we were justified by faith alone.

So it's like, well, wait, I thought if I just trust... I trust in Jesus. Jesus is my Lord and Savior. But then suddenly it's like, is it just my faith alone if I say that and I can't believe in the Pope? But it's like, then is it faith alone if it's, "Oh, Jesus, I trusted in you," "Well, you thought that the Pope was infallible, so you're damned." But wait a minute, I thought it was just by faith alone. So that's where I would just say, going back to the earliest authority, that's where we have to go. But I would say if someone says that I am going to be damned for being a faithful Catholic, I want to know what in particular will damn me. And then I would turn it back to that person and say, "If you believe you're justified by faith alone, how can me believing Mary is assumed into heaven going to damn me or something like that?" That's the question I'd have.

Eric Huffman: I hope everybody that's watching knows our goal at Maybe God, and I think your goal as well is to promote the gospel, period. And I hope more of these conversations can include us locking arms and banding together in unity as we talk about the things we disagree on, because most of those things we disagree on are non-essential things. And we share the essential things in common almost always. And so I think that is to be celebrated. And if we don't approach these conversations that way, then people who really don't have Christ in their hearts and really would love to see the church fall, love nothing more than to talk about how divided we are when we're really not in our hearts and in essence. I have high hopes and maybe overly optimistic dreams of more and more church unity and bridges being built.

Trent Horn: On my channel, the kind of a motto now I kind of have for what I'm trying to do at Council of Trent is I want to reach the most number of people who are the furthest away from Christ. So that's why I debate Alex O'Connor. I've had an atheist on my show. We talked about God and morality. I engage Protestants though, because I want all Christians to be able to receive Christ in the Eucharist, to be fully united to Him in the church, to have the guidance of the church, because I agree with you, I would love for us to all be in agreement on the essentials of the faith. But it gets sticky though when people disagree about what the essentials are. And that gets hard to break the deadlock.

Eric Huffman: Yeah. It also gets sticky when we don't give each other the benefit of the doubt and we just assume the worst about each other because we're unfamiliar with each other's traditions and things.

Trent Horn: Yeah.

Eric Huffman: If anybody watching wants to hear more from Trent, I encourage y'all to check out The Council of Trent. Great YouTube channel. Also, you do a lot of work for Catholic Answers.

Trent Horn: I'm a staff apologist at Catholic Answers. Their website is catholic.com. A lot of great resources there, too.

Eric Huffman: Okay. Really grateful for you, grateful for the tone and tenor you go into these conversations with. I think it's a great witness. You are a great witness to the gospel. Obviously, we talked about some of our disagreements today, but all of that fades in light of Christ Jesus, our Lord. So I'm really grateful to you. I'm grateful to be your brother in Christ.

Trent Horn: Same here, my friend. And I would love to just work with you and anyone who wants to help people believe Jesus is God, believe in the Trinity, save babies from, you know, being... their lives ended at the hands of falsely so-called doctors. I don't want to say words that'll get you striked on things. But you know what we're about, saving people from illicit materials they'll find on the internet because our backs are against the wall in a largely secular world that upholds that.

Eric Huffman: That's right. Thank God for Jesus.

Trent Horn: Thank God for Jesus our Lord, my Lord and my God.

Eric Huffman: Amen. All right. Well, safe travel home and thank you again for being with us today.

Trent Horn: Thank you.

Eric Huffman: God bless you.