Muse provides a polished institutional solution that fails to resolve the core paradox of using private judgment to choose an authority that supposedly eliminates it. It is a sophisticated attempt to solve an epistemological problem by simply moving it behind a hierarchical curtain.
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The Best Protestant Argument Against Catholicism — AnsweredAdded:
Everybody, welcome Ethan Muse back to the podcast. Ethan, good to see you again.
>> Good to see you, too.
>> So, we uh we had a little chat a couple days ago on the on the phone. I got to know you a little bit better and we started talking about um the sort of Protestant Catholic discourse, uh which is not something that I engage in a lot.
And um one of the one of the common I guess recurring themes in the uh the Protestant Catholic debate is the Catholic will raise some sort of objection to Protestantism concerning issues related to private interpretation or judgment or discernability and the Protestant uh has the two quote qu objection uh essentially saying that Catholics have the same problem too. you know, it might be at a different level.
Uh, but if it's a problem for us, it's just as much a problem for you. And the interesting thing is, you actually see this in the theist atheist discourse, too. Uh, maybe we could talk about that later. You know, theists will accuse atheists of having brute facts or arbitrariness, and they'll say, "Well, you got this problem, too, with God."
But we're going to focus on the Catholic Protestant issue. So, Ethan, um, give us your initial thoughts on this. There's a lot that I'm sure we can cover and we'll cover. Uh, but where do you think we should get started?
Yeah. Well, so the basic objection that the Catholic would generally bring against the Protestant when this like two quoquay argument is made is just that it seems like the means of transmitting revelation that God instituted given that Protestantism is true is just like woefully inadequate to ensure that people get basically all the sound doctrine that they need to ensure and to preserve unity among the body of Christ rather than just leading people in disism. Um and so we just come to them and we say look you need something like an institutional church that has the normative authority to bind consciences to accept its interpretation of and its recognition of certain you know divine revelations and you know implications thereof. And so then the Protestant comes back to us and they say, "Well, look, so this is supposedly going to help people who, you know, are going to struggle with applying their private judgment to, you know, the canon of scripture that's been, you know, inscripturated that's been written down and then handed on."
>> Mhm.
>> But how in the world is then that going to solve the problem since won't the problem just recur when you have to go then and interpret the magisterium? So whatever this church, the pronouncements that it makes, certainly there's going to be a lot of issues where it doesn't make any pronouncement at all. And then you're still going to have to use private judgment and it's going to take a lot of time for it to even develop a body of doctrine that's going to be extensive enough to be all that helpful to people.
>> And also like how are you going to recognize which church is the true church apart from using your private judgment? M >> and you know once it even decides an issue there's going to be further ambiguity and both in the level of authority with which something is taught and what even that teaching means.
>> And so what they're just saying is that if the objection was successful against the Protestant maybe it's um maybe it's successful to a lesser extent against the Catholic but the difference is small enough that basically the objection seems unprincipled you know.
>> Right.
>> Yeah. Good. Yeah. I know. Finish your thought and then I'll try, man. Yeah. Go ahead. Mhm.
>> No, no, no. You go ahead.
>> All right. So, sometimes you hear this called the YouTube fallacy, but I want to I want to clarify that. I mean, in this context, it's not it's not a fallacy, right? Um, if somebody tells you that that smoking is unhealthy and they're a smoker, to point out their hypocrisy doesn't actually engage with the issue, right? But but here, it's being presented as a parody objection because presumably the Catholic is pushing a certain line that is supposed to convert the Protestant, right? this is a good reason to become Catholic. So if they can show that there's not an asymmetry here, that Catholicism doesn't actually offer a resolution to the inherent problem, um then right then that's then then that is legitimate. So I want to say uh structurally or strategically this is not this is not something that because I've seen this response before. This is like they just say, "Well, this is just a fallacy. You can't raise this." No, I want to say this is an objection that deserves a response and uh I think we're gonna be able to give it to you here.
So, I just wanted to put that on the table real quick, Ethan. Yeah.
>> Yeah. No, and I I agree with that that like and I mean basically there's two ways to conceive of the sort of argument beneath the argument when it comes to this two quotequ >> is that it just is showing you the Catholic is on the hook for giving an explanation for why God didn't give us because God could if he wanted to give us means to solve all these doctr doctrinal controversies that were even more efficacious than whatever ones the Catholic says he gave us.
>> Yeah. whatever reason God had for not giving us those means, the Protestant can just be like, "Okay, whatever that reason was, we're just appropriating that for ourselves and that's why he gave us only scripture but didn't give us um >> and so then that that puts the onus back on the Catholic where it actually becomes about better articulating the argument that we were making >> because I think we have common sense where we can say, okay, I can tell they're kind of >> there's something fishy here, right?
>> There is there is a difference between these cases, right? Yeah, it feels like there is. But then why is it so much worse what the Protestant is having to say than what the Catholic is having to say? They're putting the they're basically putting the onus back on us to better clarify and to better articulate the original argument that we were making. Yeah.
>> So I don't think it's facious. I do think it is. I think it's helpful in forcing us to better think through this.
>> Then the second thing that I think >> Can I say one thing real quick before? I think and notice again the parallel here to theistic and atheistic discourse.
There's both the if this is a problem for the atheist, it's a problem for the theist too. Say brute facts or whatever.
But also, if it's good for the theist, it's good for the naturalist, too. So, whatever the theist says, the naturalist, well, well, you think that that you know, God's determinist because it's a necessary reality. Well, I'm a naturalist. I'm going to say this about the initial singularity or whatever, too. Right? I don't think those actually work. I think there are good principled rejoinders that the theist can make. But I'm saying it's just interesting to see how this this this there's a sort of parallel discourse happening here in in in two different areas. Yeah.
>> Yeah. But basically and as it stands with regard to this first um I guess way of understanding what the Protestant is trying to say as it stands basically here it becomes you need a solution to this problem. formulate a solution to this problem and then basically articulate to me why I can't appropriate whatever your solution to that more general problem was. Right.
>> Right.
>> And so um and so that that then becomes the new burden of persuasion that the Catholic has if we want to keep pressing the objection.
>> Yeah. Then the the second problem that's that the basically could be the the argument beneath the argument that the Protestant is raising is just that there is um basically an an actual genuine problem within the Catholic system where we're sort of implicitly assuming the Protestant norm without admitting that that's what we're without admitting that that's what we're doing. So if really what we are in fact doing is going to scripture to decide which church is the true church based on our own private judgment >> and then we're giving like conditional ascent to the church which is as long as what the church is doing is lining up with my interpretation of scripture well that's my motive for ascenting to the authority of the church is really its conformity with what I see being taught in scripture.
>> Yeah. And so therefore, basically we're in practice, even if not in principle, basically um reasoning like Protestants.
>> That's right. We're playing within the Protestant paradigm essentially.
>> Right. Ex. Exactly.
>> And so maybe the the ultimate conclusion that we arrive at is different. But then it's interesting that what we might call like our foundational epistemology, so the way we're deciding which denomination of Christianity to be a part of in the first place, >> Yeah.
>> is assuming the Protestant norm.
>> Yeah. But then we're using it to arrive at a separate norm that we wouldn't have arrived at without the Protestant norm.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. That's funny.
I had a Catholic Answers article years ago. We didn't even mention this. We spoke before called, you know, don't don't let Protestants drag you onto their turf. And it's it's exposing exactly what you're saying, right? It's like you can't you're not going to win this if you already start in that paradigm, right? Like that isn't how this this isn't how it works.
>> Um Okay, good. A lot of people a lot of people do reason to Catholicism that way where what they basically take themselves to be doing >> is like I'm going to do scriptural exugesus. I'm going to solve all the Protestant objections to Catholicism based on scripture and then I'm going to see some kind of textual warrant within scripture for the church. Yeah.
>> And so then my motive ultimately becomes I accepted the authority of scripture and the authority of scripture is sort of prior to my ascent to the church.
>> Right. Yeah.
>> See, we see basically actually the opposite epistemology is what's recommended to us by people like St. Augustine, right? In his like against the fundamental epistle of Manakius >> where what he's saying is >> so the Manaches are coming to him and they're saying we have all these scriptural objections to Catholicism where we're trying to prove you know Manachianism to you by appealing to the scriptures.
>> Mhm. And Augustine's like, "Well, I don't care about what the scriptures say at all except for the authority of the Catholic Church, which tells me that I should ascent to these scriptures."
>> Yeah.
>> And so then he says, "So the and the Catholic Church, when I go to them and ask them, they tell me not to listen to you guys, right?" So either either I don't care what the Catholics say, in which case, who cares, you know, about your arguments from scripture. Yeah.
>> Or I care what they say, in which case, you know, you guys are off limits. But because my ascent to the church is authority is prior to my ascent to the authority of the scriptures. So it's because the church has recommended the scriptures to me. That's why I sent to them.
>> You guys trying to sort of bypass the church and directly prove yourselves from the scriptures. You're sort of missing a step because the foundational pillar is the church, not the >> so we can that is almost what what us reasoning correctly looks like is that no, the the divine legate that we trust is the church, right? And then it's only posterior to the church that we then look at basically other motives.
>> Yes. Yeah. No, I think that's I obviously think that's that's right. And it is interesting like that you know even even in the sort of home field epistemological turf of Protestantism that Catholics can still mount their case. We're saying don't don't do that.
That's not that's not proper procedure.
All right. So >> phrases like Protestantism is a religion loosely based on a Catholic book.
>> Yeah. Yeah. We don't want that. So let that be a word of caution. So, Ethan, I sent you my other Substack where I um talk a lot about this. I don't know if you read it or not, but if you did, you kind of know my my mind and the way I I like to address some of this stuff, but I want to hear yours first and then we'll we'll build off that cuz I I didn't when we spoke before get to hear kind of all your thoughts on this. I know it's something you thought through.
So, let's go back then, I guess, uh to the to the YouTube objection and uh you say we need a principled response to some of these concerns. So, walk us through this if you don't mind. Mhm.
>> Yeah. Well, so the first thing for how do So yeah, let's for first let's just articulate what the objection is more precisely than we did at first. Y >> right. So the objection is basically Christ has come and he's entrusted a deposit of faith to the apostles. So far this is a shared premise between us and the Protestants.
>> That's right. Second is he's chosen to sort of promulgate that deposit of faith to the entire world and he's decided that he wants to transmit it from generation to generation where just the contents of it are going to be passed on.
>> Yeah. And then and then he also is promagating basically moral norms that sort of presuppose that it's reasonable to expect people both to enter into fellowship with each other um in a way that's like sustainable and workable where they have a duty of obedience that they owe to like the ecclesial communities that they're a part of and that they can also be reasonably expected to be like okay this is heretical and to recognize a distinction between you know what's heresy what's merely air you know and it to be practicable for people not to fall into heresies.
>> Yes. And so then the the idea is just that basically okay there's some kind of um structure that Christ and the apostles left behind to achieve that um to achieve that end which is just ensuring that all of that revelation is in fact preserved that it's not corrupted that there's not an ad mixture of air that the message isn't lost or the message isn't ambiguous that it can actually reach the masses of people so lay people, illiterate folk, right? All these guys can actually go and they can benefit from this deposit of faith. They can attain whatever knowledge of it is necessary. They can enter into fellowship. They can know which ecclesial communities they have to be a part of. They can avoid heresies and all this stuff. And so that basically so the question is what system did he in fact leave behind? And so one way to approach that is just to do it view it purely as exegetical from scripture. Another approach is to view it purely as historical as a historical matter of looking at what the evidence we have concerning what structure he left behind and what structure he instituted. But there's also more first principles reasoning that we can do. Yeah.
>> That will also kind of help us determine our priors when we're evaluating the rest of that sort of scriptural and historical evidence. Good. which is just like which of these actually make sense and also like which of these rival proposals about how this works like actually works in practice like when it actually gets put into practice what are the actual effects that result.
>> Yeah.
>> And so then the Catholic objection is basically that if Christ and the apostles instituted the system that um Protestants are claiming that they did that made very little sense. It was ill-advised. it's had bad practical effects in practice and like it just resulted in a system for transmitting revelation and applying it that's dysfunctional and that doesn't achieve the ends that it was intended to >> and so it's just ills suited towards those ends.
>> So that becomes that's the Catholic objection.
>> So then what we are tasked with proving is just that first the Catholic system is functional.
So it is basically the the necessary means to achieve the end have been given and so the ordinary means to achieve it too. It doesn't require a bunch of extraordinary interventions of God which is something that we can return to.
>> Yeah.
>> Um >> because there are some Protestants that start to argue as if well no actually the way God is achieving it is actually through extraordinary means rather than ordinary means. So we can also return to question that premise.
>> Yeah.
>> But but just just so we understand the basic Catholic objection here is >> your system is dysfunctional. That's just an observable fact looking at how the system is actually played out in practice. It's also something we could just theoretically figure out just using common sense that whatever this system that you're describing just wasn't going to work. It wasn't a reasonable it wasn't reasonably tailored to achieve that end.
>> Mhm.
>> So then we come and we say okay um now what features of the Catholic system versus the Protestant system account for that asymmetry right? So what are the what are the features that account for the relevant asymmetry? M >> now if the feature was just that basically the Protestant system requires people to use private judgment to decide what religious what religious doctrine is true then that actually wouldn't be an asymmetry between the two for the reason that the Protestant quote points out.
>> Right. Yeah.
>> That can't be the asymmetry. It's just that >> we all use private judgment. Nobody's denying that. We all we all use our reason. Yeah. For sure.
>> You have to use your head to decide what doctrine is true.
>> Right. Yes. At the end of the day, it's always going to be you using your head to make a decision about what you find credible.
>> Yeah. We call this trivial self-reliance, right? Yeah.
>> And so, >> sorry, missing my iced tea here. There we go.
>> So then, so then we just have to start thinking about no actually the problem is not that private judgment is involved even though we're going to speak about private judgment. The problem is actually about so first the extent to which people are relying on private judgment the context in which they're expected to rely on private judgment.
>> Yeah.
>> And basically the absence of the necessary aids and supplements to private judgment to perform a whole bunch of functions that it seems like it would make total sense >> for the church to be able to perform.
>> Good. Good.
>> So, so, so it's not a question about whether private judgment is there. It's a question about whether the sufficient means have been supplied alongside private judgment to perfect it and to make it to where it's sufficient or proportioned to the end that it sort of intended to that it's meant to achieve.
Good. Yeah, I think that's that's well stated. The the Yeah, right. I will reiterate again and again that it's not that we can't that we can get away from using private judgment. It's where private judgment appropriately terminates and what is being asked of ordinary human reasoning capacities.
Right. And whether there's an instance where it's within the realm of what is truly reasonable and responsible and if there's an instance of where it's in the realm that is frankly ridiculous. Right.
And I think that's this is this is the the direction we're going to keep pushing. But you're on a roll, man. So don't let me slow you down. Keep going.
>> No, no, that's good. Mhm.
>> And so but yeah, so that that's the way I like to explain the distinction which is all of us ultimately agree that you will use private judgment to arrive at a final decision about what you accept as credible >> and what you dismiss.
>> Yeah. However, we have dis a disagreement about basically the assistance that God has provided to private judgment because unaded reason and and both of us are actually going to accept that God has provided assistance and that without this assistance it would have been insufficient.
>> Yes.
>> So basically imagine on a Protestant worldview there was a group of people who said the apostles never wrote anything down. There are no canonical scriptures at all. There's also no church. Right. And so then it's sort of just like word of mouth and through fallible human historical testimony and sort of circumstantial evidence from a whole bunch of unreliable largely corrupted records that are all competing that people are sort of supposed to do like historical Jesus scholarship you know and figure it out right >> and then figure it out what what the Jesus and the apostles taught.
>> Yeah. Now all of us can tell that someone who put forward that proposal and there are sort of liberal Christians that believe something akin to that about what actually happened. But all of us that are more conservative in our theology recognize the absurdity of that as being the way of perpetuating Christ's office as prophet, you know, in his >> teach >> past the apostolic age. Right?
>> So, and the Protestant is just saying, >> okay, he supplied inspired canonical scriptures as the necessary means. So, as the supplement to unaded reason because all of us are agreeing unaded reason is inadequate. And so, the Protestant now I'm tooquing you. Yeah.
>> You're going to come to this guy who says there are no scriptures and you're going to obviously point out to him that that's silly. Right. That's not that doesn't make sense.
>> Yeah. Right.
>> You two is going to get a lot of airplay in this episode. That's good. Yeah.
>> Mhm.
>> So, it's an inadequate um it's inadequate assistance that's been provided by God to achieve the purpose that God clearly manifestly wanted to achieve.
>> And not and Yeah. And not to jump the gun too quick, but these are these are you mentioned as common sense before. I think that's right. I think when when when a lot of people hear I don't want to speak for everyone hear the YouTube objection for Protestants they even if they have a hard time answering they realize there's there's something fishy about it right and in everyday life we recognize that there are limits to ordinary human capacity that are easily discerned right and that we frequently frequently rely on aids particularly epistemic authorities where I can pretty quickly recognize when I need an epistemic authority for something like for example, I've got some wisdom teeth issue right now. I don't really want to talk about it. It's annoying. Um, but I also recognize like I know nothing about this. I don't know how to deal with it.
I certainly don't know how to take one out myself, right? But I had no issue identifying that I need somebody to help me with this on many different levels. I also had no issue identifying who the relevant person might be, right? So, my ordinary capacities are very good at recognizing when something is kind of beyond my my pay grade, right? But it's still within my ordinary capacities most of the time to identify somebody that can be that assistance. And by somebody also it doesn't have to be a particular person. It could be a moral person like an institution or something like that.
Right? So you don't need to know what an expert knows to be able to know who the relevant expert is or when you might need one. You also um it might be very well reasonable and responsible, right, to to to know that you need to recognize an expert, but utterly unreasonable and irresponsible to try to replace that expert yourself. I think these are the sorts of distinctions that once you become aware of them, you realize, okay, there's now I'm starting to get a heart of what's kind of like fishy uh behind the YouTube objection. So, yeah, take it take it from there. Whatever direction you want, Ethan.
>> Yeah. Well, and so maybe just to piggyback on what you said, we can also just bring another analogy to help people understand the the um way that we're responding to this. So we can just think about it as like we have a society that's established like a civil society.
So like a government, right? So the United States gets founded and then we come up with a constitution for the government and there are certain ends that we want to achieve, right? So you know, we want there to be domestic tranquility. We want there to be like an economy where people can, you know, cooperate with each other and flourish alongside each other. We want to provide for like a national defense. We want law and order. So the these are all things that we want just when we're creating a civil society and we want it to be functional rather than dysfunctional.
And different societies will have different degrees of being more or less functional, right? And so the United States is not a perfectly functional society even as it's presently constituted. But we can also tell that like it's a lot a lot better than like complete lawless anarchy where you had no government at all in terms of you know civil order right um and so there is a qualitative difference there but even though there will be degrees within how functional it is and how well it's achieving these ends right >> but then we can assume a debate in the early United States where some people are saying you know what I want to have no judicial branch branch in the government and another person says well I want to have a judicial branch in the government. And then the person who's arguing for the judicial branch says, "Well, people need to be able to know what the law is and to have disputes about whatever the ambiguities in the law are. They need to have someone who's able to authoritatively settle those disputes and bind everybody and make it to where people can continue to cooperate with one settled opinion about what the actual law is and who's entitled to what and to promulgate the law and to make it to where not every single person in the entire country needs to get a law degree in order to know what the law is and to settle controversies in individual cases >> and like so there's a bunch of reasons why it would be really nice to have a court system if you're going to have a society of law, >> right? Um, so you're actually going to have people there and who are going to go and hear litigants and be able to pronounce an individual controversies and also promulgate like authoritative precedent setting decisions regarding what the law is when they're sort of edge cases or ambiguities and how it applies.
>> Right now suppose the other person comes back and replies to this and says I don't really see why it's a big deal that we need a court system in the country. you know, like, well, maybe it'd be nice, but I I think it's totally trivial and unimportant because really just all the same problems you're trying to solve are just going to recur where people are going to have to look at the court's decisions, interpret the court, what the court's saying, and you know, and who you going to how are you going to decide which judge has authority to preside over individual cases? You're going to have to make your own private judgment and so it's just going to be terrible, right? It's just going to be all the same problems you were trying to solve. Well, we can all tell that that's a sophistical objection and that if we actually looked out in practice, we can see that that no, actually there is a really big difference between when you have no court to adjudicate a controversy and when you have a court for like actually how well this winds up working for accomplishing all the ends that courts are intended to accomplish.
>> And so just as we say that applies in the civil sphere, this is also going to apply you know to our ecclesiology. So when we start thinking about the structure and constitution of the church, the essential constitution of the church >> and so actually it should there actually be a jeritical system within the church.
So the church is institutional, it's hierarchical and it actually has the ability to settle controversies and to bind people and to promulgate authoritative decisions as to what the law is.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Good. Good. Yeah. That that's that's a very helpful analogy.
Yeah. Keep going. Mhm.
>> And so basically the question now becomes okay the society. So Christ is the new Moses and he's come to establish a society this kingdom of God on earth right did the society that he established does that actually was it a court was there a court system just like there was in the old covenant you know with the Levitical courts that are established in like Deuteronomy um what is it 16 or 17 so yeah 17 I think but basically there's a Levitical court system that's established under the old covenant is there something analogous under the new covenant that's been instituted to perform a similar function with regard to the deposit of faith right >> that's been passed down >> now and then you start getting into okay based on scripture based on history and then based on this sort of philosophical reasoning about what's going to work and then based on this practical experience of what in fact works >> it seems like all of those indications from the Catholic perspective are all pointing to the same answer which is yes it's an institutional hierarchical church and it does there is basically a jeritical function that it performs and that it's been empowered to perform >> in an authoritative way >> um that can bind the consciences of believers. So now we can go into talking about why it's necessary if you want, but is there anything you want to say?
>> No, I think that's good and clear. Let's get right into it. So yeah, why why is this necessary? And then I do want to make sure we circle back to the question of um or the objection of well, okay, fair enough if if that much is conceded.
Uh but why is it why is it befitting, right? Why couldn't God have done an even more ensured an even more efficient mode of transmission? But we'll work our way up to that. So >> yeah, so we'll return to that. But let's try to establish first of all that there is a difference and that it's not just a diff it's not a quantitative difference.
It's like a qualitative difference.
>> Yes.
>> In in being basically like minimal functionality with respect to these ends. So like a sufficiency with respect to these ends versus a complete disproportionality where like it's almost morally certain without extraordinary assistance that basically system will be dysfunctional and that and and that itself is is adequate right because like okay we have minimal right maybe we just have minimal and like it could have been better uh but minimal is like at least we got that right whereas you don't got that right and so that's that's our claim is that >> there is basically the system that's been instituted So ordinary not extraordinary the basically the society of believers has the sufficient means to achieve these ends that we've discussed earlier.
>> Yeah.
>> You know >> with regard to be basically able to have unity and worship governance and doctrine.
>> Good. Right. So those are basically things that Christ prays infallibly for the for the church that it will have this unity >> and these things are insisted upon and presupposed in many places throughout the New Testament. And so it seems like whatever the equial structure that's been instituted is needs to have sufficient means to obtain them.
>> Yeah. Well, well said. Good. Mhm.
>> Okay. So basically well the first the first problem that's going to arise we can just say historically is that the canon of scripture um doesn't basically not only is it there the canon conundrum where it's like actually it doesn't even seem like the scripture itself contains the inspired table of contents by which you could then recognize what was scripture versus what what wasn't scripture. So then you need some kind of means that's extrinsic to scripture to recognize what is inspired and what isn't inspired that that where there's actually a visible structure that has the authority to make such a pronouncement, >> right? You know, >> it seems like it's not there's not a promise that's made individually, right, to each believer that they're going to be given like extraordinary means to be able to discern what the true scriptures are unless a person wants to basically damn the entire early church where people are debating about the contents of scripture. Like is it is it really true that like you know Augustine wasn't elect because he basically had could have doubts about the canon and if he elect he would have been given extraordinary means to discern the canon you know you know or could it could it really be going back you know earlier that there's just no evidence of these actual elect Christians who had the extraordinary means to discern the canon another historical problem besides just that canon conundrum is also just the problem of illiteracy right so the basically the vast majority of people cannot read or consult or search the scriptures for themselves. So if the rule >> basic access to it, right? Yeah.
>> Right. So then if the rule of faith that these people are having to apply is one that they themselves cannot even put into practice. Mhm.
>> So then the only means they have for receiving doctrine is not through an investigation of the scriptures for themselves, but is instead based off of basically the interpretation of these scriptures and the the passing down of what the contents of the scriptures are by fallible church leaders that like massively corrupted it. Right?
>> Then not a good story to tell, right?
Yeah.
>> That already seems it's inadequate for large historical periods and for many people that are currently living, especially the people that Christ seems to be most concerned with, which are the simple lay uneducated folk, >> right? who seems like they would need to they would definitely need to be relying upon this. So >> yeah, this is and this isn't just like pre-printing press issue, right? It's still it's still an issue, right? Yeah.
>> Right. And I mean there's obviously also the issue of the unavailability of the scriptures for many of these people who are trying to put it into practice and just the absence of evidence that extraordinary means were provided outside of just the church as the ordinary means for the people to basically put into practice.
>> Yeah. all the things necessary for their salvation from this >> to then and to receive the teaching that they needed. Another another reason why it's problematic which is even more problematic is just that we can see that it's morally certain based on ordinary experience and based on common sense that the scriptures are obscure enough even about important matters that there will be divisions among people about how to interpret or to execute the scriptures and both as that applies to very practical matters like for instance when to baptize your children. Do you baptize them as infants? Should you rebaptize people who are part of certain traditions >> with regards to morality? Like we are having debates now today about whether homosexuality is licensed by the scriptures and you know is masturbation allowed, is IVF allowed? Is abortion allowed?
>> And so these moral matters that are very important, you know, um siriology, the way people are saved and so you know what the what the structure of the church is, you need Presbyterian governance, what what do you need? And so all of these matters um which are very very practically relevant, people will disagree and the scriptures are obscure enough that in fact lots of people are going to disagree and don't receive extraordinary assistance to be able to discern which is true, which isn't true.
>> Yeah.
>> And then this will cause them to splinter.
>> Mhm.
>> And so it doesn't and it doesn't seem like the people who wind up on whatever the wrong side of all these splinters are really could be blamed for that. But it also feels like they weren't actually given the necessary means to stay outside of heresy rather than to fall into heresy and to air even within basically the context of the broader you know body of believers.
>> Right. Yeah. And so and so the end result is going to be it also just completely undermines all the prescriptions throughout scripture for people to submit to the authorities because basically there's one thing that's called docility which is a readiness to be instructed.
>> That's right. But the virtue of docsility is only going to be possible to put into practice when you're not constantly critically examining your teacher to see whether he's one of the many, you know, false teachers who's departing from the scriptures and where your standard is that I'm always sitting in judgment of my teacher to decide whether he's a heretic.
>> Yeah. Right. Right. There's always that higher level assessment going on. Right.
>> Obediently submitting to him as to whether something is heresy or is not heresy.
>> Right. Right. Right. It's it's really you. It's you who are the the real the authority. Right. Yeah. For sure. Yeah.
Yeah.
>> Right. And it's like a similar matter where it's like we put into practice things like, you know, in the Gospel of Matthew, we're plainly taught >> if we have a dispute amongst ourselves, we try to work it out, we take it to other believers, and then we take it to the church. And then if the person won't listen to the church, then we cast them out like you're a sinner or tax collector.
>> Well, this whole principle makes literally no sense. If you're able to just form shop between a million churches that will give you a million different answers and like which church you go to will give you a total like yeah >> what normative force is the judgment of the church supposed to have if the if the church's judgment is subordinate to your own private judgment >> why would we actually if there's no actual extraordinary promises or guarantees or sanction or mandate that's given to the institutional church >> right >> you know it seems like the entire principle is foolish and in fact that's in practice how it works in Protestant communions is they >> they may give lip service to like the necessity of, you know, obedience to like ecclesial superiors, but they are always the one sitting in judgment of their queasial superiors, you know, and they can always find someone who teaches what they want to be taught and they have really no greater, you know, debt or duty of obedience to the people they just happen to be hanging out with right now.
>> Yeah. And no, look, I I I was never a Protestant. Um, it was honest, I don't want to sound like totally immodest, but it was never on the table of options for me uh when I was looking at, you know, religion. Um, but I have, you know, two close friends that the the biggest thing for them that started uh to get them to question that paradigm and ultimately become Catholic was exactly what you're talking about. Their their church is splintering, fracturing. Um, right on. So, yeah. By the way, I never asked you, Ethan. Uh, I know you had a spell of atheism there for a while. Did you have anything before that? Were you were you Protestant growing up? Um, what's your >> I was raised Protestant, but I didn't know anything about like theology or, you know, I was basically was very non-denominational. Christianity was what I was raised in. And so, I grew up Baptist and then I fell away from the faith, but I never really had >> um much in the way of theological knowledge before.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Fair. Okay.
Yeah. Sorry to um distract a little bit, but yeah, let's return to the point.
Yeah.
But yeah, so we've we've already looked at a lot of the problems that we're seeing with the way the Protestant system has been devised that seem like they're going to make it like morally impossible for there to be um unity among the body of believers within the Protestant system with regard to very important practical and theoretical matters concerning unity.
>> Yeah.
>> Including that could touch upon issues that pertain to salvation.
>> Good. Like for instance like to imagine illiterate peasants the way that they're supposed to adjudicate you know the Aryan controversy while the you know majority of the bishops in the world have succumbed to Aryanism you know is through themselves going and basically executing this >> getting a relevant PhD and working their way through it >> and and settling all these theological like if you've ever seen how those debates actually play out you know >> and so yeah so it's it seems like it's totally defective with respect to these ends and like like one of the most central and fundamental problems It's just the entire category of heresy doesn't really make sense within the Protestant ecclesiology.
>> Yes. Right. Right.
>> But like >> we all so we're all going to distinguish between heresy and error. So we think there are some matters about which it's okay. You know there can be like aafra that you can have a debate between brothers about whether this is true or whether this is false. Right?
>> And both are acceptable opinions. One guy is right, one guy's wrong.
>> But how do you draw the distinction between heresy and error to where it's like actually now? So first is there's something morally deficient about heresy, >> right? Someone's actually that it's like >> to be a heretic is like a mortal sin, right? Or it's a crime in some sense to be a heretic and then second is that we're supposed to separate ourselves from her heretics and we're not supposed to have fellowship with them.
>> So then raises a bunch of questions which is like one is like why does the category of heresy even make sense?
>> Yeah. It's funny you bring us up I saw someone going off about that the other day. I I don't think that they're they're Christian. And to to a large extent, I think from their perspective, which is I think looking at Protestantism, Protestantism, uh that's right. I think that like within Catholicism, we can make good sense of how someone can be a heretic. And just to be clear, like for for most Protestants, you know, um Protestantism is a heresy, right? But most Protestants aren't heretics because there's there's formal criteria of what is required to to actually be a heretic for Catholics, right? U, but this is made sense of within the Catholic paradigm. I think you're right to say that beyond that, I don't know. I'm left scratching my head.
I'm with you. Yeah.
>> Yeah. I mean, there's so basically to be a heretic um so, you know, materially versus formally, materially would just be to take some um belief that is like a condemned heir >> and to to hold to it and to assert it, you know, to profess that. Yep.
>> Formally would be that that's imputable to you as sin because you're sort of obstinate.
>> You're obstinate, right? Yeah. You've you've been told like, "Hey, knock this off." And you're just persisting.
>> You're unwilling to be docile to the teaching of the church.
>> Yeah. Right.
>> So that you're you're resistant to actually submitting to the authority that is proposing to you this theological um proposition as binding.
>> Right.
>> And so that entire but that entire category, notice, doesn't really make much sense within Protestantism, right?
So what you could say is that like it's based off of the um manner in which something is proposed in scripture. So if it's only if it's plainly taught in scripture, then it's uh heresy to deny it. But if it's not plainly taught in scripture, so if it's more ambiguous, so it's where it's not definitively straightforwardly proposed, then it's not heresy to deny it. So that's like one Protestant approach to trying to understand what the distinction is between heresy versus not heresy. Mhm.
>> But I mean there's a bunch of uh problems with that. But like we So one problem is just going to be that there are many matters that seem very important that aren't plainly taught in scripture.
>> Right.
>> Right. That nonetheless people are going to want to condemn people as heretical if they deny it.
>> And so like for instance a lot of stuff pertaining to like natural theology and God.
>> Right. There's a lot of different mo like I've just saw Mormons the other day arguing that the Mormon LDS view of the Godhead is the one that's more consistent with the reading of scripture based on what all these liberal Bible scholars say and so and go and so they're saying look ours is actually the better um and you can see how you can fit lots of stuff to fit with the biblical texts right >> yes of course yeah >> you can always the text will always sort of underdeterm it if the person is willing to take enough >> um leaps and add enough auxiliary premises is to like reinterpret and reframe things and people can always makeious arguments and stuff >> but yeah so there's lots of stuff concerning the godhead concerning Christ >> that are first if you have any weight in early Christian tradition we see what they condemn as heresy and not all of it is plainly taught >> yeah a lot of it is not plainly taught for sure yeah >> and then and so and a lot of it involves extrapolations and taking principles and going further and a lot of stuff will be moral issues that'll be like assumed but definitely not formulated and where people could take a whole bunch of deviations that seem like they're going to be really problematic.
>> Yep.
>> And so it's like like there's lots of matters where we're going to consider it. It's a matter of faith.
>> Um but where it doesn't seem actually true that like the distinction between what we're considering heretical and versus what we're considering to be merely an error has to do with just how straightforwardly it was proposed within scripture.
>> Yeah. Good. Um.
>> Mhm.
>> Then in in addition to that, there's the there's the matter of like the the obstinency criteria for recognizing someone as a heretic sort of assumes that there's someone who has the normative authority to basically where you are expected to submit to them when they're presenting you with this teaching.
>> Right. Right. Right. And so and I mean it makes especially it makes a lot of sense in the apostolic age when you look at it if if people are coming and they have divine sanction so personally the apostles have divine sanction and they can buy people's consciences to it >> within Catholicism that prerogative has continued with the church right >> within Protestantism it seems like it ceased with the end of the apostolic age but the manner in which they exercised it seems totally fitting that that would continue to be exercised on a go forward basis. Yes, >> really the matter of whether someone is a heretic or not depends on the diligence with which they investigate a whole bunch of controverted scriptural controversies. It starts to seem like a very unpractical category for actually the prescriptions that are actually made and the manner in which heretics are to be dealt with, right?
>> Both in their tradition and in scripture itself.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
>> Like like even if people are in air about these matters to um harshly rebuke basically like the Jehovah's Witness grandma who has like a very deficient theology based on >> to harshly rebuke her just because she's trusting her pastor about all these convoluted debates about how to interpret scripture and her New World Translation rather than you hold, you know, and you coming and you because it's clear to me. And she's like, "Well, I'm not getting a PhD in biblical studies and like the two of you guys sound about equally smart and so like I'm a heretic because I won't listen to you."
No, but but the category does make sense if the foundation of the faith is that there is a divine legate, the church who continues to have divine sanction and who can bind people who can demand faith where it's a sin not to give the ascent of faith given that this this divine legate has been accredited to you. But if you're just a guy and you're saying based on my personal study and investigation, this is what's plainly taught and somebody comes and they're like, "Okay, you're a guy and I haven't looked into it as carefully and I don't have time." And so this the category starts to lose its meaning and significance and like practically like even if they technically find a way to fit all the texts, practically the text just start not to make sense given the nature of the category like the entire manner of dealing with >> heretics. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Right. Yeah. The coming back to the practical always good. It's funny because I know there's a number of people out there that sort of like to advertise themselves as heretical Christians these days. So, it's almost like a badge of honor, right? But no, shouldn't want to be a heretic for sure, right? Once properly understood >> I don't understand. Yeah, I I don't understand anyone who does that cuz it's like >> like if you are bragging about being a heretical Christian, well, first is if you think there's like any historical value to the documents in the New Testament, like I'm not even talking about you accept inherency or anything because obviously a lot of these heretics wouldn't care about that, but I'm just saying like if Paul and the apostles were hanging out, you know, if they received revelations directly from Christ, if the apostles like sat under Christ's tutelage for their entire lives and they're receiving him teaching them directly And then they all care about not being a heretic and view it as really and ownorous to be a heretic. And then that practice and that belief system then immediately becomes normative throughout the entire Christian world as a persistent tradition throughout the Christian world and all these people who are receiving these revelations from basically directly handed down to them. M >> if you're saying if you're professing to have faith in Christ, it just starts to become ridiculous from the perspective of just the historical value of the documents to think that the Christian teaching to think that Christ teaching is one that basically condones heresy.
>> Yeah. Yeah. It's just I don't know, man.
People just try to be edge lords online or whatever. It's it's silly. Um All right. So, all right. Good. All right.
You're all right. Putting a lot of pressure on right now, Ethan. What have we not covered yet?
Um well so I mean and if we could kind of keep going all day with a bunch of the problems.
>> Yeah. So I mean summarize canon issues issues of obviously underdetermination uh making sense of heresy. Right. These are these are serious. These are very very significant. And look there's kind of clever responses to the canon conundrum. I don't think they're that I don't think they're successful at all.
Um but um yeah. Okay. Where where do we go from here? And we're just and we're just viewing it in practice where it's like no dility, you know, like you actually can't really be obedient to Aquazio superiors or just the entire attitude like basically the system and the way the system works and has to work totally opposed to the dility that's and the obedience that are sort of recommended to us >> like the entire like it does lead to basically sism and people breaking off from each other and continuing to break off from each other repeatedly rather than staying unified as a body. Yes.
Yes. And >> so it's like completely opposed to that end. Like it will behave not like a growing tree, you know, the mustard seed that sprouts into the mustard tree, but instead it will behave more like a decomposing corpse. So whatever unity you start out with, >> yes, >> it's going to just become more smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller as you just constantly are breaking away without any means of retaining or preserving unity within the body.
>> Yes. Right.
>> There's a bunch of problems. Um I mean we can keep going there but I think I think people will recognize that there is an asymmetry that exists um in this regard >> and that should definitely then really frame the hermeneutics with which we then go and look back at the history and look back at the New Testament for what system was actually instituted. Good >> because we see practice and we see in theory that the Protestant system doesn't really make sense as a way of transmitting and preserving a revelation in perpetuity in a way that's going to be like accessible and to which people are going to be held accountable.
>> Yeah. Good. Excellent.
>> Um, so then okay, moving on. There was a question that you asked which is like and that I had brought up earlier which is like okay well God could have made the Catholic system even more efficacious for achieving all these ends. So like why didn't he >> right?
Why didn't he just zap all the doctrine right into our head? Right.
>> Yeah. And so and there there are answers that we can give to this but first let's just return to this. Whatever our solution is to this, I'm happy for the Protestant to appropriate it. But it's a solution to a different problem. So the and that's why the objection that we made earlier still stands and is sort of unaffected when this when this question or this conundrum is posed to us.
>> Yeah.
>> This is someone who's maybe an outsider to Christianity could pose this problem to us. But we don't really need to worry about it. Um >> we just have to show that there is a clear asymmetry. Right. Yeah. Yeah. M >> but it's just that so we are saying that sufficient means have been given um in order to achieve these ends so for the corporate body of the church to achieve the ends of you know unity and doctrine and governance and worship >> and to flourish and to sustain itself and for this there to be this vital unity that continues over time and people to get the doctrine they need and to be held accountable to it and like all the locations in the New Testament make sense and like the un the practice and understanding of the early Christians make sense. Mhm.
>> Now, okay, what so could there be more efficacious means? Well, yes, somewhat.
So, for instance, like we could imagine Christ never does the ascension and just stays behind on earth, right? And then he's the pope instead of the human pope.
>> And so, he has personal impeccability and he has just like plenary inspiration for every statement that he makes, right?
>> It's a lot more than just infallibility, right? Yeah.
>> Yeah. It's not infallibility under these circumscribed conditions, but you know, plenary positive divine inspiration for every statement and a personal impeccability.
>> The whole suite, right? Yeah. Uh-huh.
>> And like obviously like God could have given us like a chat GPT for theology rather than a Bible and then we can just go and ask it and interact with it.
Yeah.
>> Right. So, so there's there's a lot of things that God could have done that may be even more efficacious than what he did do. Now the um we can say we can just plead ignorance as to why he does things the way that he does cuz obviously we shouldn't expect to understand everything that God does and there can be a lot of higher order reasons for doing it precisely this way and blah blah blah.
>> Yeah. I mean you can always ask the question well why god did it this way and not not some other way. Right.
>> Right. And we and and it's not a problem when there we shouldn't be expected to give an answer in all such quest cases when the question is posed. And it's not actually a problem for our view that we don't know that, right? Um, >> and like sometimes it could just be contingent like some of this relates to God's liberality, right? So like the old covenant was inferior to the new covenant. It could have been improved in lots of ways. Why did God make it like as deficient in precisely the ways and to the extent that it was rather than making it like a closer approximation of the new covenant than it in fact was?
>> Like you can pose that type of question endlessly too. Yeah. Yeah.
>> And sometimes the answer may just be in God's liberality. So God gives us a certain measure of grace. He could give us more. He gave Mary a lot more than he gave you, you know, and it could just be there's an arbitrariness and there's a gratuitity to it. So since you're not entitled to it, like be happy with what you get and with what you're promised, but don't expect more than that with the with the liberality of the grace that God bestows. And so that may already be a sufficient answer in itself. Yeah. So one thing is just we don't need an answer to all such questions and we complete ignorance. Second is it may just be that it's a contingent decision because there's a gratuitity to grace and it's about God's liberality rather than what we're owed. Right. Then >> Yeah. Yeah. And that some and that some decision had to be made. Right. That it's not arbitrary to make a decision even if there's other areas of arbitrariness. Right. Yeah. Uhhuh.
>> Right. I mean just well God when he creates a finite reality outside of himself he doesn't improve the world at all since he was already you know supremely happy in himself. Yes. And he had sort of this infinite value and so he was lacking in nothing.
>> So the when he creates it's just a gratuitous gift to those that he creates.
>> And the idea of God wants to give more he can choose to give more to give less.
And he often chooses to give less. Like the repate and the damn to all of them.
>> God wants to make Yeah. God wants to make France fertile. How many raindrops would it take? I don't know. He sends 14 million. Could he have done it with one less? I don't There might not be a minimum number there. Right. No, but I'm I'm even going further than that. I'm saying he could have done a lot more and a lot better and he can just choose not to do that.
>> Yeah. Even in this case, yeah, I'm just I'm just drawing a point about arbitrariness, right? Is that he had to send some number of raindrops to make it fertile. He could have sent more. He could have sent less, right? But he sent enough, right? That's the point. And he chooses >> and a decision had to be made somewhere, right? Yeah.
>> Yeah. And he chooses to give a measure of grace. And so he cuts off that measure somewhere, right? We're all finding it. So we're circumcribed by limits. could make everything a lot better arbitrarily. He chooses to create some kind of finite reality and so he chooses limits somewhere and so you know to him he loves more he gives more you know to those he loves less he gives less you know so now there are also further reasons why it might actually make sense for for instance um you know to do progressive revelation and to have it be that there's a certain obscurity where people basically the body of Christ actually has to labor to deeper understand the deposit of faith and that the church works it out through debating and disputing among itself and some of it may actually have to do with preserving hiddenness because if you give super efficacious means it's hard to do that in a way that doesn't then basically completely eradicate any plausible deniability for the inspir you know for the inspiration of the scriptures and the authority of the church. So if he wants there to be hiddenenness, you know, and so there's lots and lot there's an infinite number of conceivable reasons we could give for why there is um basically the the limits that there are on the extent to which God gives efficacious means to the church.
>> Right. Yeah.
>> But the but the fundamental premise here is there's an end that God wants to achieve that he's promised that he will give us the necessary assistance to achieve. the Protestant system, the means are insufficient to achieve the end. Um, and meanwhile with the Catholic system, the means are sufficient >> or and that's and that's enough, right?
Could they have been improved in certain ways? That's a great question, but that isn't we don't have to argue against that right now, right?
>> Yeah, we can we can concede that and it doesn't have anything to do with this argument is just the in your case the assistance is insufficient. In our case, the assistance is sufficient. the assistance could have been even more efficient, but the sufficiency um is the is what's at issue, noticy.
>> And again, I would I would caution any Christian to not to not play that game too much because could God have created everyone in heaven and so on and so forth, right? Um if you if you open up those floodgates, you're going to have a lot to deal with that you're not going to.
>> And even though we can ask those questions, it still makes sense to make arguments about what based on what would make sense for God to do.
>> Yes. I actually think there are answers to that. I I think there are good good responses to all of this stuff, but I just want to say like at this point we don't have to give them, right?
>> Yeah. Yeah. And and no, and what I'm saying is we want to make arguments like the one that we just made about what would make sense for God to do, but that doesn't presuppose that we have an answer for why it made sense for God to do every particular thing. It's just that if we have two rival theories, one makes a lot of sense, the other makes very little sense, we start out with a much higher prior and the one that makes a lot of sense versus the one that makes little sense. Even if not everything God does makes sense, right?
>> Yeah. Right. To us anyways. Right. Yeah.
I think makes sense to God for sure. But yeah, go ahead.
>> Right. Exactly. Wait. Exactly. So the point is just that even the fact that you're willing to invoke mystery in some context or be a mysterion in some context doesn't negate that you can make arguments from what seems like it better manifest the divine wisdom in other contexts. Right.
>> Yeah. Yeah. Grace grace builds. Like for instance, let me just give an example that's sort of humorous and related to debates I've been having, >> which is just that >> so God when he um accredits Moses, you know, prepares him with signs and then he gives him those signs and then Moses goes and performs the signs and he persuades the Israelites and then he persuades the Egyptians and then, you know, he goes and he has this covenantal revelation at Sinai. And so Moses was chosen and there's a certain level of fittingness that he has for the prophetic mission for which he was selected. Yeah. Right.
>> And he has some kind of um skeletons in his closet like for instance like he I like it's obviously a lot of Catholic exedites and I personally believe that he was justified in killing the Egyptian slave driver you know um in defense of his fellow Israelite but you know and he was exiled and banished from Egypt whatever right? So he has some skeletons in his closet from that perspective, you know.
>> Um but then okay, contrast Joseph Smith, right? Where what he's going out and doing is he's hunting for buried treasure using sear stones, right? And so one of two options is obtaining.
Either he's like a con man who's lying about what he's seeing in these sear stones and like taking people's money and duping people with them or like he's actually based on his own principles, you know, in his own authoritative teachings >> since this would be like unauthorized like divination like he's probably communicating with demons and deriving this magical efficacy from demons. So then he goes and by the very exact same means, this is how he supposedly dictates the Book of Mormon, you know, receiving that revelation from God by means of the searstones that he either previously used as instruments of fraud or he used as um as like a means of communicating with demons. Right? So I say it's super super silly for God to choose to make a foundational profit that he's trying to accredit to everybody to have him like arbitrarily choose to go use the means to communicate the revelation that are so actively discrediting like to do it in literally exactly the way that he either just perpetrated a fraud or he was communing with demons to then go under these suspicious circumstances. But notice the Mormon can come back to me and can say, "Oh, well, Moses had skeletons in his closet. Not everything God does makes sense, so therefore this argument isn't very good."
>> No, >> we can all recognize. So even if not everything God does makes sense, there are sometimes when something is so silly and foolish and makes no sense that like we can recognize that an infinitely wise being wouldn't do it that way. That's right. Even if there are other contexts where we'll plead ignorance as to exactly why he did what he did.
>> I agree. You can have broad expectations of God. Like I fully expect that God will not just randomly annihilate the world 5 minutes from now, right? That would go against his his divine rationality, right? Um but once you get more particular and more specific, it gets more difficult. Why did God do this very particular thing on this particular I have no idea, right? Most of the time, but nor would I expect to be able to see that. But there are things that I would expect to be able to see that I think are just sort of intuitively obvious. I also think that our priors are set by our nature, right? And our nature comes from God. So like there's a deeper epistemology for me that sort of helps with these with these things, but I don't think we need to put that on the table now.
>> That just makes and so all this is just to show >> that the basically the limits of two quoquay um in that regard >> which is like so because basically we could we could reduce this version of the objection even though the person might not realize this is exactly what they're doing. We could reduce this version of the objection to some stuff God does doesn't make sense. Ergo, you're saying that like it wouldn't make sense for God to do what Protestants say he did, but since some of the stuff he does doesn't make sense to us, therefore this is a bad objection because it's perfectly consistent with God doing what he did that it doesn't make sense to us.
Right?
But that type of objection proves way too much because it basically would defeat anyone who ever pleads basically ignorance or like skeptical theism with regard to literally any datim. That person is then disqualified from ever appealing to broad expectations about divine behavior.
>> That's right. Yeah. Mhm.
>> And that's just clearly unreasonable and also just leads to this sort of nihilistic skepticism about any prediction made by God like the God hypothesis.
>> Yeah. Right. I'm with you. Totally.
Yeah. Good. Okay, then I guess last thing we wanted um was the foundational profit. I mean the foundation foundational criteria versus sort of posterior criteria distinction that we were mentioning earlier.
>> Yep. Yeah.
>> The the idea being um the the Protestant is coming to us and saying, "Well, you're using scripture to decide which re revelation is true and then you're switching around and then you saying that the church is your sort of ultimate criteria even though your ascent to the church is conditioned on your private judgment about >> Yeah. Yeah. I want to Yeah. I mean, one sec. I mean, it sort of went a little bit unsaid, but I think it's also obvious how the Catholic paradigm does not have those same issues that we were just talking about with respect to the canon or having to massively exedute some quite obscure text, right? Because of how different it is. Do you want to do you want to spell out particularly why?
>> Yeah. Well, I mean, just so the the answer is just that there is an institutional church that was established by Christ. He called particular men to be his apostles. He raised them up. He accredited them by signs and by his own pronouncement after accrediting himself by signs.
>> He then they go and they organize a church and then they appoint for themselves successors and then they confer their ordinary prerogatives rather than their extraordinary prerogatives. They confer those on their successors, you know, and there's like a primacy that was had by St. Peter that then he passes on. And so then you have like this sort of monarchical hierarchical institution and everybody who's in Christian fellowship. It's like the society of believers, everyone is part of this institution. And so this institution is tasked with proclaiming and safeguarding the deposit of faith and like interpreting it and adjudicating controversies and applying it to individual circumstances, >> right? And so once people recognize that this church was founded by Christ, once they recognize that, then the church itself provides a way for them while only using trivial self-reliance what what you say to then recognize what its authoritative pronouncements and judgments are concerning the deposit of faith and concerning disciplinary matters. And so there's actually like a very reasonable difference that they have towards the church as an institution. And this difference with the basically bishop of Rome as the final arbiter on these matters then allows them to rely on having sound teaching and to be able to distinguish between heresy and error where if the church proposes um something as a dogma or condemns something as heretical then basically the person is um prescribed from adhering to it.
>> Yeah.
>> And so then we can recognize that you know when the church speaks it's Christ himself that speaks you know. So >> so yeah and so Yeah. Yeah. Good. So, I mean, how does this help for the illiterate peasant, right? I mean, let's just like make it super super practical, right? Because I think sometimes what isn't appreciated is just how different the Catholic paradigm is, how different life in the church is, participation in the church, the sacraments, all of it, versus the, you know, the the Protestant paradigm. It they really are very different paradigms, right?
>> Yeah. when he So the illiterate peasant doesn't need to read any document. The illiterate peasant can just go to church, can receive katakesus from their priest. The priest who's like a expert, like a specialized expert that's been appointed and has been ordained, then receives his instruction from the church, from the higher-ups in the church.
>> And so then and then it's easy. There's a rule of recognition where he can you can tell what the church's teaching was.
is if any questions arose, they can go to like a form where they can have that controversy adjudicated. They're like all these disciplinary norms that are basically just going to regulate this guy's life and all the practical matters that pertain to it. So like the anybody who goes to a Catholic church isn't going to have to read the Bible to figure out that like we believe in infant baptism, right? you know, >> they're not going to have to figure read the Bible to figure out that we believe in the Trinity and the Nine Creed and, you know, they're not going to have to read the Bible to understand Catholic sexual morality and all of these various um issues that the church has addressed and where it's promulgated teaching.
>> Yeah.
>> And so there really is a way for us to retain like a doctrinal unity, to retain a unity in worship, to retain a unity in governance.
>> Yeah. Good. Mhm.
>> Underneath this system. And uh and but but who's going to interpret the magisterium, Ethan? Right. When they when they issue their their new documents, right? Uh what's are we are we caught there? Um is this the >> then the whole the whole point is that the mag so first is that with regards to the vast majority of controversies that actually arise the magisterium at least can in principle and in fact often does even if it doesn't do it with respect to literally every extent controversy at a given period in time can settle the controversies in a way that's recognizable where we can just tell what the judgment they've made with regard to this controversy is and further controversies could arise and the means means are there to clarify those controversies, but the means are there for the magisterium to speak to the audience that has a question, a practically relevant question >> and tell them what the relevant answer is. And so like the CDF issues a bunch of these judges. So for instance, >> I needed to know when I was Protestant I got baptized invalidly, right? So they use the Wii, right?
>> Yes. Right.
>> So then there's a question that was submitted to the CDF which is like, okay, baptisms that say we, are those valid or not or does the person need to be baptized? And so there's two questions that are filled out on the form that we submit to the holy office ba basically you know like we go and we go okay first question is the is it valid second is okay does this person need to be baptized and then it's like um the then they have okay response negative second response affirmative >> right >> and then this lengthy explanation of why right and so that when they said negative that was pretty clear it wasn't hard to >> who's going to interpret this what could this possibly I mean, I don't want to joke like too much, but I think it is kind of that silly a lot of times because here's the here's the deal.
Scripture was, you know, inscripturated in a certain particular culture. It's it's culturally clothed in a time that is very far removed from us. The difference is with a living authority, it can speak to the people at the present time in a way that is familiar to them and it can always in principle clarify further if needed. Right? This is an imprinciple difference that uh the moral person right that the institution can provide and that to me is a a clearly principled difference. It's an obvious advantage you know to the extent that there's some I don't know some other obscure book but the author has still lived for thousands of years right or there's some lineage of of credible authorities. Clearly, there's a a a very particular and wonderful advantage to being able to just go ask the person who wrote it or somebody who is in authority, even if they're not infallible, just like the court system, to help you understand it. And very rarely, right, is it going to be the case that you're going to need a further clarification, but if you do, you can get one, right, because that's because they are a living authority. So, >> and and I think there's actually worth clarifying like the if if the objection was simply that everybody has to have the right doctrine at all times then this objection would be more pertinent because then there would need to be lots of clarifications that had not yet occurred for everyone to have a full comprehension of whatever the doctrinal >> Yeah. You don't need the whole encyclopedia download. Yeah.
But the the main things that are actually relevant for like making this system at all functional is first is that the the um people need to not be able to have issues where they're going to have to divide the church, >> right?
>> And meanwhile, if I think we should baptize babies and you think it's a sin to baptize babies, we're probably might we're going to probably have to divide the church if both of us are peers and we're on a par, right? We're probably going to have to break up and do things differently because I'm not going to let you be pastors at my churches when you're going to sinfully baptize all these babies that I think then have to be rebaptized, right?
>> Or like if you're a Calvinist, right, and I reject Tulip, you know, we're probably then going to have to divide the church.
>> Yep.
And so we go through and so the good news here is that if ever a controversy arises where basically there's a doctrinal controversy that's threatening to divide the church, the fact that the means are there to adjudicate the controversy in a way where everyone has to submit on partisans of both sides have to submit.
>> Yes. is something that's necessary for safeguarding unity regardless of whether at every time there is explicit teaching regarding what the true interpretation is, >> which is that when the when the potentially rupturing uh disputes, in fact disputes arise, >> then that's when the magisterium is there to be able to step in and to adjudicate the controversy.
>> Yeah.
>> Another thing is just that like a big part of this is not that every person at every time has the correct teaching. But they don't >> but that the true faith in substance um is there and is retained without an ad mixture of air.
>> Right?
>> And what we can tell it just happens inevitably is there's a level of entropy when you take anything. So if I give you a message and we play telephone, there's an entropy that inevitably occurs over time to where the that's like the famous result of playing the game telephone is that there's going to be all this entropy and then the the end result is going to be totally different.
>> Yes.
>> And so the accumulation on any individual issue, maybe the fact that somebody makes an error isn't important.
Though with regard to a lot of issues, even that isn't true, right? But the accumulation of two centuries of air and then two centuries of linguistic and cultural distance between the original revelation and then the people at the end plus the accumulation of all these false presuppositions and ideologies etc. It results in a wholesale corruption of the faith over time to where the faith can't be preserved whole and in violet. So it also becomes an issue about the perpetuity of the transmission of the faith in in a way that just is recognizably the same as what it was at the outset, which is just that there's going to be way too much entropy unless the institutional church is there to safeguard. Yes. Yeah.
Ineffectability, infallibility, right?
That's that's the that and that was Newman. That was I mean that was Newman's sort of like master argument for it, right? Um Yeah. Good. Um okay, so sorry I went that was good. I think that was helpful to get that out there.
All right. Now, um let's go to what we were what we were going to talk about, not not having this conversation by already assuming the Protestant paradigm, right?
>> Yeah. And I mean there's a more basic question which is just like um don't you have to use Protestantism to determine whether the Catholic Church is the true church? And so therefore, like regardless of whether it would be nice to have something like the Catholic system, in fact, you're always sitting there judging the Catholic system for its conformity with the with the deposit of faith. And so therefore, you're always implicitly subjecting it to this test to all these >> Protestantism all the way down, right?
Yeah.
>> And so that's that's one of the questions that we have to ask.
>> And so a first thing that we should recognize, I don't actually think that is how we accredit the Catholic Church.
So I will deny the premise upon which the objection rests. Mhm.
>> But I also think the logic of the objection is mistaken, which is because it's failing to draw a distinction between how you recognize whether the system is true versus once you're in the system, how you appreciate all the consequences that the system has regarding each individual issue and controversy.
>> Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah. Uhhuh.
And so there's a meta level issue which is like in order to determine whether Catholicism is true really all I have to determine is like whether the papacy was instituted by Christ in perpetuity.
>> Yeah.
>> You know and so if I all I need to do is settle that one issue.
>> Yeah. and then all other issues I can say. So it's way more practicable to expect people to tell you know what regarding is the church's claim to have received its authority from Christ credible and you don't then need to um assess literally the church's substantive teaching with regard to every other issue >> if criteria by which it's accredited is just that it's plainly taught that it's given this authority.
>> Good. I want I want I want to pause there and offer some comments because this is there's two things I want to say here. One is this is this is personal for me because this is how I approached it. I remember I sort of looked at the Bible in a in a crude way, you know, for the first time because I was just at least getting interested and the first thing I said is I don't know what what any of this means, right? A lot of it means, right? So, I clearly I'm not going to be able to like figure figure out Christianity from this. But then this is why you're um um you know, I said it in this in the Substack article, the importance of of having multiple different kind of epistemic easy epistemic access points for different people. But I like the way you put it in your chat with Cameron that there's all these kind of dumb dumb the dumb arguments for Catholicism, right? Uh the stuff that people love to make fun of, but it's like, well, don't be so quick to shake this off because this is the exactly the sort of thing that uh the illiterate peasant and every everyday people uh that's going to help them with this particular issue of of you know with the the trivial self-reliance using our head to discern uh the real church.
But the thing about the papacy, I think this is important because one objection, sorry I'm putting a lot on the table.
you can take what you want, leave what you don't. Um, that you sometimes hear about Catholicism is this. It's like, oh man, you know, Catholicism seems cool.
They like are into skulls and bones and stuff like that. But the problem is is like there's just so many more commitments, man. There's just so many more propositions. And when you just you bundle that all up, the likelihood of them all being false, it just it just it just sinks Catholicism for me. I'm going in with my minimal Christianity.
So far, you know, fewer commitments, so on and so forth. I think that's a very bad objection because there's there's really only kind of like one thing you need to affirm a Catholicism and you get the rest for free. But I want to hear I want to hear your response. I'm sure you've heard it, right? It's a pretty it's another common objection. Uh and you you already just said we don't you don't have to and should not have to go substantively investigate every single Catholic. Okay. Is is the immaculate conception true? Is the assumption true?
That would be unreasonable, right?
Nobody should be expected to independently adjudicate all it'd be impossible. So what's wrong? What's going on here, Ethan? Help us think through this. Yeah.
>> Yeah. And just like basically, so there's one problem which you point out, which is that a lot of times the objector is assuming that the probability of all of these propositions, they're basically all probabilistically independent of each other. And so therefore, like whatever their uncertainty is about each, they sort of it multiplies >> and then and then they get to a very small final value.
>> Right.
>> Right. But the problem is that like with the entire Catholic system like all of these propositions that are being proposed are all highly correlated with each other rather than independent of each other. M >> and so therefore even if there's a lot of commitments that all come there's such a um intimate connection between all of them like if if someone were merely coming to you and saying like basically Jesus all the things that Jesus ever said during his entire life take away the fact that Jesus said them and just lay them on a piece of paper and then someone approaches it and then they're assessing the probability that every single statement on the piece of paper is true they probably will get to a low probability but then I give you the additional context that Jesus said All of these are true and rose from the dead.
>> Yeah.
>> And he cannot and he cannot be wrong about them. Right. Yeah.
>> Right. Exactly. So if if it turns out that he said all these things are true and then he rose from the dead and so he's accredited to us by God and we don't think God's a liar and we don't think he's going to accredit to us a false revelation. Well, then all of a sudden, like it's not it doesn't seem as ownorous to accept that if there's any appearance that these are false, that this is just ignorance on our part or we don't see why it's true or we don't know all the the relevant evidence and the facts.
>> It's it's not ownorous at all, right? I mean, like, okay, yeah, you first maybe have to, you know, you use your your head, your little noggin, right, to get to the resurrection and the divinity and all this or that, but then you really get all the other all the other stuff for free or at least very cheaply. But on the Protestant >> paradigm also just just there needs to be a distinction that's made what what comes with cost >> is things that will be actively damaging to Christ's credibility, right? And so if Christ starts asserting things where you start out with an exceptionally low prior so there's just a default prior for any statement where we have no reason to believe it's true, no reason to believe it's false.
>> Yeah. And so the for specific statements those priors will be low but they actually won't cost us nearly anything when we get a good reason to believe them on authority right >> and so like if like the mundane claim that like um my fiance went to the grocery store yesterday right that now she doesn't go to the grocery store with that high frequency right and so therefore my prior with no evidence at all will be fairly low that she went to the grocery store but then when she gives me her testimony that she went like I become virtually certain that she did in fact go like it there was no active impediment to it. It was a specific claim and so because of its specificity it was low but there was very little friction for me updating very high. When I got credible testimony it was true.
>> So it wasn't it's not something that I have active reason to suspect or to doubt.
>> It was just I doubted it because I didn't have a motive and there were many options and then when I got a good motive I just accepted it. Right? And so a lot of statements are going to be like that where it's like you have insufficient motive to accept them at the outset but they once you have good reason to accept the authority of the person that's proposing them then they come at no cost really virtually trivial cost.
>> Then there are some statements where okay the person's going to actually have to cash into the credibility that they earned to where it will kind of count against them.
>> Y >> right so like if someone comes and asserts to me the trinity and at first I can't see how the trinity is coherent.
Right. So, like I don't see the logical coherence of it or it seems dubious to me that it even makes sense.
>> That's going to be something that may undermine that person's credibility.
It's going to come at cost for them to assert it. Now, they may have enough credibility that I'm willing to accept it on faith because I believe them, right? But it's cost. every time they assert something where I have active grounds for suspicion or doubt.
>> Mhm.
>> Now like now take but then if if it turns out that a lot of the places where I have grounds for doubt, they're all correlated, then that comes at even less cost, right? So let's say I go to the Old Testament and I realize there's a lot of fragmentaryary evidence um concerning these events that happened in ancient history to where we can't really prove one way or the other on independent grounds. And then there seem to be some things that are discrepancies or whatever within the Old Testament text, right?
>> And so then I could just say, okay, assuming I had no reason to think, no unified reason to think that there was a resolution to all these apparent historical discrepancies, >> what would be the probability that all of these would work out in favor of basically the harmony of the biblical text?
>> But that's actually a bad way to approach the probabilistic reasoning, right? because it's not it's it's not that simple. It's not just that I'm going to regard it as the probability assuming I didn't have a reason to accept inspiration and to regard these as sort of exceptionally reliable texts.
>> What's the probability that just if these were ordinary records that they that there would be a harmonization? No.
No. No. The question is conditional on inspiration. What's the probability there would be the appearance of these levels of discrepancies?
>> Right. Right. Yeah.
>> The question is not assuming non-inspiration. What's the probability that there would be a harmonization for all of these?
>> But people often wind up updating on the second rather than the first.
>> Yes, they do.
>> Probability there would be the appearance of this much discordance or this much like sort of incredulous statements >> rather than they they want to update on assuming that the Catholic Church weren't inspired. What's the chance that all these propositions the Catholic Church asserts would all just randomly turn out to be true? No. No, that's not the question.
>> That's not the question. Right. Yeah.
Good. And then even from within the Protestant paradigm, it's like practically speaking. Okay. All right.
uh you you believe in the trinity but it's not like you're agnostic about the pope you believe not pope right you believe not this not that and those cost you right those costs and it is in a context where you have inspiration but not the sort of living infallible authority either so I think when you think about this well um the costs are not favorable to the protestant paradigm um but anyways I think it's enough just to diffuse the the objection from the aimed at the Catholic side because that is that is a very muddle-headed one. I think that's the absolute wrong way to think about it and uh that was a good response. So, sorry I got a little sidetracked from the point we're on previously, but I just wanted to squeeze that in there. Yeah. And it's related. I mean, but the um the the problem that we had earlier was just okay. No, it turns out the ways for people to recognize whether the church has authority or doesn't have authority >> Mhm. basically first even if they were relying solely on scripture it's a far more circumscribed limited and therefore practicable way to adjudicate the controversy to just ask them to settle did Christ establish a a church and confer normative authority on it and you just are answering that one question yes no did Christ do that is that what Christ did >> that's much more practicable than basically investigate through your own private judgment and scientific examination of each controversy basically the first order disputes of every single question on which the church has authoritatively opined. So even if that were what we were doing, they wouldn't there wouldn't be a par.
There would still be a difference which is just that like assuming >> once we've establish which system is true within the system is the system functional or not. Once you've gotten on board, you know, you've gone through those like epistemic access points that you were talking about earlier. Yeah.
>> And like the excess epistemic access points here are way more narrow than just like doing private judgment about everything. Mhm. Mhm.
>> Now, the second thing is that I just disagree with the premise also that that is the way that we're supposed to um determine whether the church has the authority that it claims for itself is solely based off of an examination of scripture, right? And then looking towards whether the scripture credits the church.
>> Yeah. The first thing is that I think when we're actually initially epistemically onboarding, we're not going straight from the we're not we shouldn't actually start out assuming the inspiration of scripture, right? So, we'd actually the the the thing that the person would actually be relying on is the historical credibility of scripture.
Not even not assuming its inspiration, but just assuming its actual value as historical testimony. really reliable historical testimony, right?
>> And then going from there to then Christ established a church.
>> So already that's not within the Protestant Protestantism, right? 100%.
>> That's actually just doing a historical inquiry where they could use all the other evidence on an exact par. Yeah.
Outside of scripture. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah.
>> Right. They could use all the extra biblical evidence on a par if that's what if that's the manner because we're not starting out within Christianity.
We're starting out just assuming like generic theism and then inquiring as to whether any special revelation has been promulgated. Right. Correct. And see, we're not going to assume Christian inspiration within that. In fact, what we're going to look for is historical um testimony concerning whether revelation has in fact been made. But but in addition to that, there are other marks of the church that accredit the church to us as divine legates that don't require any examination of the historical motives from basically the first century material. Mhm.
>> And one thing that's great about the church and the model of um the model that we are working with and defending now is that the church remains as a divine wgate that can be accredited to every generation, right? As something that is just in the same way that when Moses has signs that accompany him that vindicates him, so too for the church, right? And so one thing can be that the church is prophesied in scripture. And so we can look to scripture as a motive, you know, once we have good reasons to accept the authority of scripture or good reasons to accept the authority of Christ and we think he's made reference to the church or good reason to accept the consent, you know, the organic development of a consensus within Christendom. All that's fine. Those can be ways of of identifying that the church has authority. But in addition to that, the church itself actually there are lots of, for instance, vindicatory miracles that are performed by God, which we reviewed that point specifically to and confirm the Catholic Church's claim. You've had a few conversations about some of these, right? Yeah.
>> And so those are evidence signs that point to and refer to and vindicate the Catholic Church's claims.
>> And in fact, those credentials that the church claims for itself, this is a big problem for Protestantism. And it gets back to actually what Augustine said in replying to the Manatees, which is remember what he said was the church's authority is inaugurated by miracles.
And it's only on the authority of the church that he's moved to accept the scriptures. Right. Right. And so what he's actually presupposing is that these sort of vindicatory miracles and these signs and the moral miracle of the church itself and all this stuff is actually convicting him that the church is what it claims to be which is then what convinces him that Christ is who scripture represents him as being.
>> Yes. Right. That's the route. That's the route. Yeah.
>> And so once we realize that the reason we accept the Old Testament, the reason we accept the New Testament is most fundamentally because Christ has the credentials of a divine legate and he affirms them. Right. And so it's because of Christ's miracles that we accept Christ. And then we so then if we start to realize that if the foundation if the most superior credentials that are given to us are actually Christ's body, the church, its miracles that it claims for itself, you know, just as Christ prophesies, you'll do greater works than these. You know, so it turns out the superior credentials of the church, the same reason you had to trust Christ is your reason to trust the church.
>> And so those reasons don't work for the church, then they don't work for Christ.
And so you've defeated your own Protestant religion, right? Mhm.
>> So the credentials, every credential that the the divine legates in the Bible itself can claim for themselves, so too the Catholic Church can claim for itself and with much more um historical credibility, which is I think why God chooses to make it to where these are the more historically credible miracles.
>> Yeah. It's not a coincidence, right?
>> These are ones that we can have photographs for. These are the ones where we can actually have hundreds of eyewitness testimonies where there's no ambiguity about >> scientific investigations. Right.
>> Right. These are the ones where we can send it to a lab. And so if you're willing to play Mr. Atheist skeptic for all the Catholic Church's miracles and then you're going to go based off of the historical value of ancient records with debated authorship, you know, it's just insane. It doesn't make sense. It's not it's not reasonable. And so actually no, we don't we shouldn't assume the Protestant paradigm because even the clearest route to confirm the Catholic Church claims about itself involve looking at the the manner in which the church has been confirmed that is similar to the manner in which Christ himself was confirmed. And so it has the same credentials.
>> Yeah. The motives of credibility. Yeah.
Excellent. Excellent. Ethan, we covered a lot of ground so far. Are we forgetting anything? Any any or just other objection that's that's on your mind that you think needs to be addressed? I I'm glad we did this cuz this has been a very common one that's been popping up. I've written about it, but I don't know. Uh hasn't seemed to end it. So, after this it shall be done.
Uh but yeah, what are we missing?
Anything?
>> Well, just Yeah, I mean maybe we should return one more time to this objection that will be is is made all the time, which is to the people that are actually still applying the Protestant paradigm and deciding whether to accept Catholicism. And so what they're doing is they're saying the Catholic Church proposes, you know, the assumption of Mary as dogma, but I don't see the historical or the biblical evidence that clearly evinces that basically the assumption of Mary, you know, occurred and is supposed to be binding upon all Christians, right?
>> And so people are making reasoning along those lines.
>> Yeah.
>> Well, the first thing is so one is they so they need to remember that what they're doing is an internal critique of the Catholic system, right? And so therefore, they actually are the ones that assume the burden. Because the thing that happens in these conversations all the time when you actually have the conversation, >> yeah, >> is the person's like, well, you're claiming it's a dogma, so you have the burden of proof. And if you can't meet of proof, then I'm not then I don't need to be Catholic.
>> Show me photographs of the assumption. I was >> say, no, no, no, no. That's not how any of this works. It's so >> I'm saying here's proof that the Catholic Church has the authority that it claims for itself. Here's my proof.
Notice my proof didn't involve saying the assumption of Mary is true. So therefore, Catholicism must be true.
>> That was not that was not proof, right?
>> I never made that argument. So I already got my proof. Now you're saying my proof has to fail because the assumption of Mary, >> but notice I don't have the B. So I can I have good reason to accept the assumption of Mary because the church tells me that the assumption of Mary is true. It was apostolic.
>> That's right.
>> So we could lose every historical record on the planet and I would still have good reason to believe it as long as I still had the good motives for believing that the church was what it said it was.
Right.
>> Right. Mhm.
>> And so I don't need it. It's not internal to my system that I need to be able to independently prove to you that the assumption occurred. So if you're saying the assumption refutes Catholicism, you have the burden to prove it didn't happen.
>> Yes. Right. And that's going to be a heavy burden to carry for sure. Right.
>> You're not going to be able to do that.
And so so these but these types of objections reflect this Protestant sensibility where really the way I arrive at Catholicism is I have to independently prove each commitment that follows posterior to accrediting Catholicism. Right. But then they realize they never apply that standard anywhere.
>> Yeah. And you're just assuming the very paradigm that's under question. Right.
Right. Yeah. 100%.
>> Which is you're not you're not allowed to go. So for instance, you don't need to independently demonstrate the truth of every claim Jesus made based on anything other than Jesus's own personal testimony, which is 100% credible. Yeah.
>> So we don't need any evidence that Moses existed.
>> The fact that Jesus Christ personally asserted that Moses existed may not convince a secular historian, but it convinces me that Moses existed. Right?
And I don't need any proof besides his testimony to to that effect. And so and it doesn't undermine him at all for me in that in that regard even if we had no if even if it was completely underdetermined based on independent grounds whether it was true or false that the patriarchs existed.
>> Yeah.
>> So and so that same paradigm or like if there appear to be contradictions or discrepancies because Christ credentials are so good I have faith that there's a solution to them. Yeah.
>> Right. So if there are doctrinal issues that have the appearance of discrepancies with within the Catholic system in your view >> doesn't matter. You should reason the same way you reason within the Bible about discrepancies. Don't argue in the atheist fashion if you're going to if you're going to suspend that reasoning for the Bible once it's been accredited to you. Then you should extend the same charity to the church.
>> That's right. Yes. Right. Yeah. Good.
Good. Uh there is one other thing I wanted to touch on and that is just going back to the befittingness of the Catholic paradigm. One of the things that moved me aside from these motives of credibility and just the uh just Protestantism just being completely a non-starter for all the reasons we've we've covered is that you know um Catholicism does seem befitting like it does not seem particularly arbitrary. Yes, we're rational animals but we're rational animals and animals obviously means that we're physical beings. We're social animals, right? we constantly rely on authority on tradition on hierarchy on kind of heads authoritative heads right um so I do want to say even though I can't I can't you know answer every very particular question I'll concede that I don't there's many instances of why did God do it exactly this particular way uh I don't know but I think there is a good story we can tell certainly from a classical theistic paradigm and a sort of traditional understanding of of philosophical ical anthropology of the befittingness of Catholicism. I'm wondering if you agree with that, if that's a story that you would tell as well, or maybe you take it in a different direction.
>> Yeah. And I mean, I think it's especially a strong argument conditional on scripture just in the background, >> a broadly scriptural model of God's inner interactions with humanity. I think it then becomes extremely clear that the Catholic system is way more fitting. So I I'll give us a number of respects in which I take that to be true.
>> Okay, cool.
>> So first is the entire work of the Messiah that's prophesied in the Old Testament is to come establish a kingdom, a messianic kingdom, right? And so what is a kingdom most properly?
Well, it's not just a society. It's also it's like a monarchical society, right, with a hierarchy.
>> So we're saying part of the essential constitution of the church that was established by Christ is that it's a monarchical, you know, hierarchical society. Yes. which seems to be like a direct impressive fulfillment. So if it turns out that Christ comes and establishes a monarchy and then that monarchy spreads to the entire world and there's a huge fellowship of believers that are all in submission to that monarchy and it has a legal system and all this stuff. That's an impressive fulfillment of the messianic prophecy.
Now the Protestant version is just complete cope. It's like it's a spiritual kingdom but it's not recognizably a kingdom in any other way.
Mhm.
>> In fact, it's completely dis analogous to any kingdom we've ever had in our ordinary experience.
>> And that's what he's come to accept. So, it's like given that the pro given that the biblical frame, the biblical image that we're supposed to use for the work of the Messiah is to come establish this kingdom that will spread to the, you know, all the corners of the earth. You know, given that that's true, they spiritualize that in a way that robs it of any force where it's like impressively fulfilled.
>> Yeah. Right. Yeah. Meanwhile, it actually is very impressive when you actually look at the oldest and largest, you know, institution on the planet that is the Catholic Church, right? That actually that's an impressive fulfillment of the pro. So, it's not just that you can come up with some sense in which it conforms, but it's clearly by far more befitting better.
Yeah. As a Protestant, you have to say, "No, ignore that fulfillment and take mine on." Right? And that's that's clearly ridiculous. And so and then in in addition to that basically we can think about it too typologically where it's like okay Moses is a type of Christ and Christ is the greater prophet than Moses that is to come and Moses what he did is established a religious economy that involved establishing a society and that society there was a legal system that was instituted and so and so there was a whole um and they had priests and so there were there was and there was this whole system that was established under the old covenant Right? And so if that's a type for what Christ is coming to do in a more imminent fashion >> rather than there to be a rupture between what the work of Moses and the work of Christ >> clearly on the Catholic interpretation there's a much greater degree of continuity between the and basically we're just seeing Christ is recapitulating what Moses did except it's universal rather than particular to one race and the basically it's more eminent. So the you know sacraments are you know ex operate operado so they have a sort of intrinsic efficacy and there's like a teaching office that's given a perpetual charrorism of infallibility and so you know so we see that it's literally modeled in the same fashion off of the old testament basically religious economy just basically with superior promises and a superior organization.
>> So we see that continuity. So that's another example of befittingness. Mhm.
>> Yet another example of befittingness is just going to be that the um the Catholic Church. If we if we looked at how the Christ instituted it during the apostolic age, right? So what did Christ choose to do during the apostolic age?
He gave divine sanction to men and put them as church leaders to go around and organize the church. Now is there why did he do it that way? And give me a reason why he did it that way that ceased. before the end of the first century, right? Where it was no longer useful or fitting that they to do it that way with the death of the last apostle, right? And so just just in that initial organizing phase, that's when he's going to give all these prerogatives, you know, whoever sins you forgive, their sins will be forgiven.
And he's going to go and say, you know, whoever listens to you listens to me, whoever despises you despises me. He's going to say that to men, a college of apostles that he's going to raise up and they're going to organize a church. And when they have controversies amongst themselves, they're going to meet in a council, the council of Jerusalem to sort of debate it and then arrive at a verdict about what's how to go forward and that's going to bind people. So, not only is it never explicitly taught the Protestant organization, not only is it kind of ahistorical, the Protestant model for how this is all meant to work, but if we just looked and used what Christ did to organize the church as a blueprint and how the apostles conducted themselves and the fact that it's like a human hierarchy was how the initial structure clearly, if that's the germ of the church, the way more fitting development and maturation of that is into the Catholic Church than basically the de like we could say devolution or disintegration of it into the sort of Protestant system.
>> Yeah. Awesome. Ethan, before we close out here, we've covered obviously a lot of ground. We also covered, I think, broadly how to how to think about this issue, right? How to think about it in a way that you're not assuming the very thing that that's under question. So what would be like your closing final statement to because I have a good number of Protestants who listen to this channel you know uh which is awesome and I know that many of them are thinking about Catholicism uh they're not hardened against it um what do you recommend to them right aside from this conversation right like you know um in terms of of discernment how to keep thinking through the issue um I'm sure you you've thought about about this. I'd be just Yeah. curious your thoughts on it.
>> Mhm.
>> Well, the number one thing I would recommend for people is rather than going through each issue where it's Catholic versus Protestant distinctives and then saying like, I want to figure out what I think about each of these and then whatever is a good fit. That's what I'm going to go with as my personal religion. I want you to actually step back a second and think about how am I supposed to decide what religion is the true religion. So that's the question I want you to ask. Not just like which of these religions is right about all these things that they teach, right? But how does God expect me or want me to decide which religion is the true religion? And then look at the Bible not just for guidance as to what is true first order, but also the second order question of how am I to determine what is true?
What's the right way to reason and figure out what revelation is true and what revelation is false? And so, and that question is going to be, I think, actually a key question for a lot of people. So, if it turns out that you look at the Bible and you think, as I do, like miracles and prophecies, right?
And then you're supposed to be docile as to the actual substance that's taught.
So, you're supposed to say, even if it doesn't make sense to me, there's some way to make sense of it, and I just haven't figured it out yet, but I just need to accept this because God has accredited it to me using these motives of credibility. If you agree with me about that, then go look into all my evidence that the Catholic Church has been accredited in a unique and preeminent way among all the Christian communions. If you think there need to be marks of the church that are practicable, so it's reasonable to expect people to use them, including ordinary people, where it's just like recognizable that one church that's claiming to be the church of Christ is the real deal, then yeah, I would like go read Bellerine on this, but also, you know, and I I'm going to talk about this more in the future, which is like what the marks of the church are and how we can use them and how they can be these sort of epistemic access points to tell which church is the one that Christ is founded, whether we're supposed to be a member of it or a part of it. I mean, a third thing you could conclude is just that um basically what I'm really not supposed to do is to be is to trust in my own ability to do scriptural exesis about a whole range of controversies or see whether stuff makes sense to me like a priori on philosophical grounds whether I can make peace with it or whether I can't because otherwise it seems pretty clear that you're going to be like the disciples that deserted Jesus or you're going to like the Pharisees with regard to many of the hard to >> right many things where there appear to be apparent discrepancies or contradictions. So what I recommend to people is make sure the way that you're reasoning about which religion is true is the manner in which God prescribed you to reason about it. And that means setting aside things even if you don't get it because that's part of what being having faith is about is that you're not going to get it. You're not going to understand why all this stuff is true, but you're going to know that it is true because it's clear to you that God has testified that it's true and he's absolutely trustworthy. And so, suspend your inquiry as to all these first order issues where you need to you need it to make sense to you why intercession to with to the saints is okay given scripture. You need it to make sense to you why the marology of the Catholic Church is true, etc., etc. It'll be good for you to understand those and it'll be easier for you to accept things as you grow in an appreciation for them, but it's just the wrong you're doing it in the wrong order.
>> Yeah, that's great, Ethan. That's a great final statement. Where can people find you online? What are you working on next?
>> Yeah, so um Substack Motiva Credibilatus. Um I've got uh basically a bunch of debates that people could watch, videos that people could watch if they just searched my name on YouTube, lots of places, especially Capturing Catholicism. I've got like this five hour interview on Miracles with Matt Frad that's just about to come out.
>> Awesome. Looking forward to that.
>> And then um yeah, as to what I'm working on right now. Right now I'm mainly catching up on a bunch of school stuff that I've Right. I bet you are, man. Yeah. Good stuff. Good stuff. All right. Well, I'll link your blog. Maybe I'll link a few things down below, but people you could just type in Ethan's name. You'll find it all over the place. Ethan, God bless you. Thank you guys for tuning in. If you like what you see here, comment, subscribe. We'll catch you next time.
Peace.
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