SPEAKER_01 0:00

We have both sat down opposite the great Alex O'Connor. The last Alex video I watched, he was asked what would move him towards faith, and he said it was it it would be Let's think about vibes back in the New Atheist era and vibes today.

SPEAKER_04 0:15

There is a greater a little bit of a vibe shift towards interest in traditional Catholicism, in Eastern Orthodoxy. Tradition is, you know, in vogue at the moment. People will feel like I've was given a soft version of Christianity that that feels incoherent or may be effeminate. I mean, frankly, as a guy, I would I would go bonkers if my worship service was just singing songs about Jesus being my boyfriend.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

When I look at the Council of Trent in the 16th century, um the language there that is anathematizing what I think is central to the gospel, is my problem. But but is is this infallible teaching? We have both uh here's here's a point of commonality. We have both sat down opposite uh the great Alex O'Connor, and you you've done it at least twice, maybe three times? Have you done a sort of a I think it's three three times now, yeah. Yeah. And he has declared to you to be uh his uh most formidable debate opponent, which of course cuts me to the heart because you know he look he looked right past me when he said that. And uh how how have you found sitting opposite Well, we'll we'll talk more generally before we talk about Alex himself. Um but how have you found yourself in this space of sitting down opposite people and having um robust conversations of of disagreement? Is is this something you were born to do?

SPEAKER_04 1:41

Certainly not, at least not in the religious sphere. Uh I converted to Christianity from a very vague deism belief in a generic God to being Christian in the middle of high school, and then shortly after that, uh becoming fully received into the Catholic Church. And so that conversion experience for me was in high school. And then after that, I was really involved with the Catholic youth group as a leader with the pro-life movement uh here in the States, uh speaking on the issue, bioethical issues, uh pro-life, the protection of life of the unborn. So uh I would say it was around the end of high school and then into college where I started engaging more in like debate with people on various issues. Uh from there, I really wanted to help other people. I thought about writing a book at one point. And then it was in 2000, at the end of 2012, I had found out there was an opening of Catholic Answers. I showed them the work I had been doing in different dioceses and regions, uh, Catholic diocese, things like that. And they liked it. They gave me a chance and they they published my very first book, Answering Atheism. I wrote Persuasive Pro Life after that. Uh, and from there I said, you know what? I I you know, I was used to debating people on college campuses. Let's set up formal debates. Uh so I had my very first debate was with Dan Barker, who's a former Christian pastor, turned co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Dan and I have done two debates so far uh to get my feet wet into that. And then I just started taking more and putting myself out there. And then I forget, it was like 2018, 2019, it was before the pandemic when I first encountered Alex. I debated him on Pints with Aquinas, uh, and I and I presented a case for theism that he was not as familiar with encountering because I think he had engaged more people, uh, more evangelical Christian apologists who don't incorporate as much uh philosophy into their arguments of the existence of God, things like that. And we had a good back and forth. Uh, I think later, a few years later, uh, we were able to sit down in Texas to have a talk about God, morality, and evil. And then recently on Unbelievable, we talked about the resurrection. Uh, always enjoy um chatting with Alex. And so, yeah, I'm happy to do it again if he's ever interested.

SPEAKER_01 3:51

What's your sense of the place of the new atheism over the last 20 years? As you said, your first book um was really about sort of answering atheist objections, and really we're talking about the heyday of the new atheism at that point.

SPEAKER_03 4:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

To some degree, that's a little bit in the rearview mirror, that sort of moment. And perhaps Alex is a bit of a bellwether of that. He he was a massive fan of Christopher Hitchens, and now some of his most popular videos are him debunking Hitch and sort of moving beyond that moment. Have we moved beyond that moment? Or like what where would you put your finger on the sort of this the spiritual map of Christian, non-Christian uh dialogue?

SPEAKER_04 4:34

Yeah, this is really interesting because both sides will try to claim victory, and I don't think it is as simple as that. So I started writing my book, Answering Atheism, I think around 2011. It was published in 2013, and I did that because I wanted to have a distinctly Catholic reply to newer atheistic arguments that were becoming popular since the beginning of the 2000s. And there were only a few books on the Catholic side that were engaging this, and I felt they were either somewhat superficial in their treatment or they had adopted the same snarky tone as the new atheists, like Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris, et al. And I didn't want to follow that path. So I wanted to have something different. So I wrote that in 2013. I will say, though, by the way, that I'm working on a new book now called The New Case for God. And we can get into that if you like here a little bit later. Uh, because I look back, I wrote Answering Atheism, it's gonna pretty soon it'll have been 15 years ago. I've learned a lot since then. I thought about writing a second edition, but I might let that one go out of print because I think I can even make the arguments more robust. Uh, there's just been a lot that's been happening really in the past like 20 years in philosophy of religion, and I think that has shown a problem with the new atheists, that the new atheists got on the scene and they became very popular because they allowed the isolated, fragmented thoughts of atheists spread around the country and the world to be able to coalesce in one place, and that would be the internet. And in a post-9-11 world, they were free to indulge in the message that religion is not just false, it is dangerous, it is delusional, it deserves to be ridiculed, uh, and seeing science as the antithesis of religion and the means of promoting a rational world. And so that was, you know, that that was what we were dealing with in the 2000s and throughout most of the 2010s, uh, this kind of a simplistic mindset, responding. Listen, when you read like the God delusion, people who aren't versed in philosophy might think Dawkins has destroyed religion. But Alvin Plantinga, one of the best Christian philosophers in the world, uh said that Dawkins' arguments against God are to call them sophomoric would be an insult to sophomores everywhere. That they were, they were, they were astoundingly bad. Uh, and I think now that this next generation, so we have the new atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett, Harris, uh, very loud, vociferous, believing that science uh they endorsed a scientism as essentially the only means of acquiring knowledge about the world. And uh they usually promoted a kind of modified utilitarianism to establish ethics. You see that in Harris's book, The Moral Landscape, which you see these pro-scientist arguments against religion. Moral landscape was absolutely panned by philosophers, even non-religious ones, right, uh, for trying to resolve something. Morality is something that has vexed very smart people for a long time and will continue to vex them because it's not something that can be reduced to science alone. Uh so uh so what's happened now, where we're getting into Alex has become popular. He started putting videos up shortly before 2020 and uh embracing these issues. I think the people that a lot of atheists are looking up to now uh want to have a more sophisticated atheism, what might be called analytic atheism. And so I think there's a lot of people, so you had the new atheists, right? And then the response to them, you had a you had a resurgence in Christian apologetics to reply to them. JP Moreland, uh William Lane Craig would probably be at the top of the list there. Craig demolishes Hitchens in their 2009 debate at Biola. It was an it was a bloodbath. Hitchens absolutely could not stand up to it. And so I think the many atheists then seeing, oh, okay, we need to take philosophy seriously, because what new atheists would do when they were shown these philosophical arguments for the existence of God, would say that's just word salad, or that's just uh, you know, the the the emperor has no clothes. This is just uh sophisticated faux language that doesn't mean anything. And that was their way of avoiding the argument instead of engaging it. And they became philosophically unsophisticated, even though at least one of them, Dennett, was a philosopher, but they would treat the arguments for God with uh uh it was just astounding how much they would misunderstand them. So now O'Connor, I think, has received goodwill from non-religious and religious people saying, okay, here, let's look at these arguments, let's take them seriously. I'm gonna sit down with these philosophers. Which ones are good, which ones are not good? And O'Connor has done something else where he has said, hey, here's the common atheist arguments you've heard, like, well, if you were born uh in another country, another time, you wouldn't have been Christian, so Christianity is not true, and showing these are really bad arguments. So I think that's one thing that people have liked with Alex and other similar new new atheists or analytic atheists, you might call them. Though I will caution, I have seen many popular atheistic streamers online who parrot the new atheist talking points. Yeah. And where I think they're not as popular is because there has been what the kids would call a vibe shift. And that would be that 20 years ago, being religious is something, oh, we're all going to make fun of you for like this is uh, you know, country bumpkin, this is backwater, this is not sophisticated or cool. But and so this idea, well, science is going to give us rationality and make the world perfect. 20 years later, people see the consequences of establishing LGBT ideology of technocracy. People are more isolated today, they're more miserable, and people are seeing, oh, these religious people have community, stability, foundation, morality. Maybe they weren't really that wrong after all, and it's science isn't the answer to everything. And so I think that that has allowed even the people that will parrot the new atheist talking points of 20 years ago, they don't make as big a splash because there's many other people, this is something I do worry about in the Christian world, who like the Christian aesthetic now, even if they're not actually fully Christian. And so that's there's a plus and a minus there. So I threw a lot out, but feel free to pick apart when anything you like from it.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Let's let's think about vibes, both vibes back in the new atheist era and vibes today, because it's interesting to me that Richard Dawkins' arguments were so terrible and yet it sold in the millions, the God delusion. Or Sam Harris's book was utterly panned by by those who are experts in the field, and yet it was a bestseller. William Lane Craig might have demolished Hitch, and yet Hitch swaggers on as though he is the winner. Right. And how how do we account for that? What's what what what sort of anthropology should an apologist have so that we go into these conversations eyes wide open, that that actually we're not doing a syllogistic exercise in kind of comparing two people's analytic philosophies. Um there's a lot more going on, isn't there?

SPEAKER_04 11:25

Yes. I think one thing that Christians have to take into consideration, and when we have to be cognizant of this and aware of this, and this is something I believe actually that uh C.S. Lewis made this point in Mere Christianity. So Lewis said, uh, if you read a little pamphlet on Hinduism, why you should be a Hindu, it probably wouldn't bother you very much. But if you were to read the best astronomy and geology books uh in the science library, and you found they were all written by faithful Hindus, uh, that might shake you a little bit to think maybe Hinduism is on to something. And so I think that what gave the new atheists a lot of credit in the early 2000s was hey, here's Richard Dawkins, well-respected Oxford biologist. Here's Christopher Hitchens, uh one of the most uh famous and well-respected literary critics, uh has a has a as a sharp tongue. And uh what made Hitchens critiques, what's interesting is that Hitchens' arguments are are laughably bad, but he can but when he he puts forward arguments and uses rhetoric, he's knowledgeable in a lot of areas to have cultural, historical, and literary references put together in a pithy way that is humorous and engaging, and people look up to that. Now, same with Harris, that he's he's well spoken, he's very knowledgeable about science, especially neuroscience. And so I think that as Christians, we don't do ourselves a favor when we say, oh, well, the smartest people we have are the people who defend Christianity, instead of saying, oh, well, here's this scientist and that scientist, when in actuality, in the history of Christianity, many scientific breakthroughs were were brought about by Christians. Uh my favorite example is Monsignor Georges Lemaitre, the Catholic priest who helped to develop what would eventually be called the Big Bang Theory, for example. Yeah. And then there's many others. Francis Collins would be a contemporary example. He wrote the book Language of God. He was he's the head of the NIH and he was the leader of the Human Genome Project. So I think that that's I think a lot of it looking in the early 2000s was hey, here's these really smart people, and they uh put forward, you know, they're saying, hey, religion is silly, and they're the smart cultural leaders. I think I'm gonna follow them. Where their um rhetoric begins to lose its force with people and where things I think start to break was this idea that, okay, once we get rid of religion, we'll have one purely rational, unified system of thought, and then we'll have prosperity and we won't need these myths, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. The problem, though, is that you can take religion out of the man. Uh, sorry, you can take the man out of religion, but you can't take the religion out of the man. So then you see these conflicts where people, even though you took away religion, many people they wanted a religion still. And for many of them, it was it was woke ideology, anti-racism, LGBT ideology, radical feminism. That's they wanted something that said, here is the here's sin, here is salvation, here are the villains, here are the heroes, here are the sacraments, here is what you must do, here are the rules of life. They wanted a structure, they wanted something like that. So what's hilarious then is you had people like Dawkins and Hitchens and Harris and others. Peter Bagoshin would be a perfect example. He wrote a manual for creating atheists.

SPEAKER_02 14:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 14:53

And you all of them are saying, hey, this is ridiculous. Men can't be women. They're by obviously they're biologically different. Uh you can't say that, you know, there's, you know, saying, oh, well, all religions are equally peaceful. No, sociologically, Islam commits more terror attacks than this other religion here. And those who embraced a woke uh counterfeit religion, uh, you know, an alternative religion, then suddenly now the new atheists have been excommunicated for their political incorrectness, their anti-woke ideology called racist, sexist. Dawkins was called sexist, for example. Uh, and so they're seeing, and Bagoshin is a big example, he's now really gone full. He doesn't really critique religion anymore, he critiques the left. And so I think for many people, this idea that they were sold, oh, if we just got science and rationality, we'll just get perfect unity and belief and truth. Right. Well, no, the answer is not are you religious or not? It ends up being what religion are you going to subscribe to?

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 15:50

And Christianity has a better foot in there to have realism, human equality, human dignity, uh, and things like that.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

And is that what you would see at the base of the vibe shift that um you could think of the rise and fall of the woke, so to speak. Um interestingly, what progressives ought to be able to offer you is progress, is a future, is uh a hope that tomorrow will be better than than yesterday. Um I think largely the culture is not buying that anymore.

SPEAKER_04 16:25

No. No, because people look and they can see, they look back and see it's kind of like when um I believe it was it was when Ronald Reagan was was running for, I believe it was Reagan, who asked in a debate, are you better off now than you were four years ago? You know, people said, Well, no. So it's like then you should vote for the other guy. And so people, you like you're seeing, especially here in the States, but in many other places, a um a wave of nostalgia, even for the early 2000s. And and I was and I was in college in the early 2000s. I did high school, well, I'm sorry, I did more middle school in the 90s, uh, high school college in the early 2000s, where people had a desire for something different that you you see. Progressives will say, Oh, you should have unlimited autonomy, don't have religion telling you what to do, uh, having all of this. And then people received that. And what do you have? You have people are you have the male loneliness epidemic, people are lonelier than ever, uh, prescription medications for antidepression are through the roof. People look around and say, I'm I got everything I wanted, but I'm I'm miserable. I don't, I don't want this. And so it's reminiscent of when Christians were evangelizing in the first three centuries that pagans, you know, could do it. You could do whatever you wanted in pagan uh Rome. You know, you you you had a God you worshiped, but you didn't die for that God. That would be stupid because the God you worship, there's like 80 gods, and they don't really care about you. The idea of dying for your God would just be it would be why, but seeing Christians doing this for their God, they know that there is something very different here. So I think part of the vibe shift, yeah, is people saying, Oh, I thought I got everything I wanted, and now you see you're saying I want something that has more stability and an enduring quality to it. Uh, but I mean that's for some. I think though we should not overstate, because some people will say, Oh, Gen Z is this the religious revival of Gen Z. No, Gen Z is still the least religious generation in history. So there are but the ones who do become religious are very fervent in choosing to do that. Yeah. So there's the the the vineyard is still wide open, the the harvest is quite plentiful, and the laborers are still very few.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

And I mean, the front door is very busy of church at the moment, but also the back door remains to be busy. And there there are many people leaving church. Um a friend of mine, Mike Graham, has written uh a book together with uh the statistician, sociologist Brian Burge and Jim Davis called The Great De Churching, and that came out a couple of years ago, um, revealing that 40 million Americans stopped going to church this century. They're about to come up with a a follow-up book. And um what Mike Graham is now saying is we probably could have said 50 million in the former book. We're going to have to say 60 million in the next book. Yeah. I mean, that's that's an astonishing hemorrhaging of church going in a country that has just historically had it's always had more than 50% sort of ch church membership um in in sort of living memory, anyway. And now that's ducked beneath that. Um why why are those who are meant to believe the Christian story de-churching at such a rate?

SPEAKER_04 19:39

Uh I mean, sociology is not my strength, but I can offer just some speculations of things that I see. Uh I think there's a bit of a paradox. Uh it's kind of like I there's the saying I hear online, which is um hard times make strong men, strong men make good times, good times make weak men, weak men make hard times. So it creates a kind of a cycle, right? Uh it's similar that you know you have people who who immigrants who grew up and saved and had to work very hard to be prosperous so that their children would not have to suffer, but their children are raised with luxury and are spoiled and end up worse off than their parents and kind of a paradox. So you see Christianity flourish as good news when people uh you know are oppressed. Uh the Christian Christian message has always been about freedom from captivity, freedom from uh the sorrows of this world, giving ultimate eternal purpose. What I worry is that nowadays we have so many things that are capable of distracting people, of making them think that they can have fulfillment in this life, um, but not even fulfillment, that there's so many things that just distract them. They're not even able to take stock of how empty life is because of the infinite distractions we I mean, we carry around a supercomputer, what we're considered a supercomputer 20 years ago in our in our phones today. Now, even, I mean, so there's those past 20 years, I worry about it getting worse with the advent of things like AI, where people just offload their critical thinking ability and ask a computer to answer important questions for them. Uh, so I I think that there's um so many things that have led to the breakdown of the family. Uh, I was looking at a statistic recently in the US uh that now around the year 2000, the number of married men versus unmarried men were pretty similar in the year 2000, between ages 18 and 39. But now in the 2020s, there are twice as many unmarried men to married men in the age gap of 18 to 39. Wow. Um, which is striking because you have a lot of people who are who are adrift. And normally the things that help to that where religion becomes important, the there's always been a cycle. A lot of people will be raised religious, they will become adults, they will Maybe be tempted by the world. But then when they are brought down to reality, especially through marriage and having children, you have a different sense of things and say, Oh, I want to, you know, I want to give a future for my children. I want to root them in something that is enduring, that's even bigger than I am, to give them an important identity. And so people often come back to faith for those things. Well, we're not seeing that anymore. And we're not seeing people stay around for that either. So I think there's a lot technological distractions, a fragmentation because of social media. We've lost our monoculture. So people just find any niche culture that gives them identity. But I think a lot of all this together is certainly disconcerting.

SPEAKER_01 22:41

You said something interesting, Trent, that that resonates with me in that there are people who okay, they're not buying the sort of enlightenment myth that the future will be better if we just get rid of religion and we will ascend towards rationality. And so they are kind of turning towards a kind of a uh a trad vibe, a trad chic. And they they might be showing up in church, um, not because they were they want to worship the living God, but yeah, um, but because tradition is you know in vogue at the moment. And I I think you and I both both agree that there's an opportunity there, but also a problem. Can you can you identify, I guess, some some of the problem that might be there? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 23:26

So some people have called this trad LARPing. LARPing is a term that stands for live action role play. Uh, it is a hobby that people, some people enjoy. So you know how there are people who might play fantasy role-playing games with dice and notepads, something like Dungeons and Dragons. LARPing is one step above that where you might dress up in armor and go on quests. It's all fun and good. I'm not I'm not knocking that. Uh so LARPing, the idea is that well, you're not really a knight, you're just pretending to be one in a game. And if you want to play games, that's fine. I mean, games are something people have done for millennia to pretend to be what you're not, to go on adventures and other things like that. Uh so that's LARPing. Trad LARPing would be the idea that there are things in modernity that people do not like that they're unhappy with. So they look at the past with distorted or rose-colored glasses and desire things from then that they feel are superior to what we have now. And so they latch on to those elements, but not the underlying religious or ethical framework, at least not in its entirety. So you might have young men, for example, who are dejected because they feel like uh a lot of the women they might want to court or date uh are focused just on careers and quote unquote girl bossing, or they've bought into the feminist lie, they can be totally promiscuous, and so they don't want to, they're not interested in marriage. And those same men, though, also struggle with more access to pornography than any human being has ever had in the history of the planet. That the human brain was simply not meant to process that kind of data. Uh, I the average age of first exposure for men is I think around age 11. And if if you're exposed on average one to two hours a week, by the time a young man hits a marriageable age, like 28 or 29, he's consumed 1,000 to 2,000 hours of uh illicit, you know, the this um pornographic material, and that damages the brain. And people deep down know it, they feel shame, they feel even physically unwell, and then they're just looking out and seeing like, oh, there's a difficult difficulty in economics, pursuing jobs, uh, the median age for buying a home is now up to the age of 40, which is, you know, uh that the you know, to say, okay, well, if I'm gonna get married, what am I gonna do with my family? How am I going to raise them? And so they might look back, and it does and some the the way they'll what they'll look back to, it differs, right? It might be the 1950s, you know, the post-war baby booming uh generation. Or they might look back to the 1850s, uh, when there was stronger patriarchal authority, uh, there was um, you know, more localized uh living versus international cosmopolitan things like that. Or maybe they'll go back to the 1250s and just enjoy Crusader nights and Deus Volt, God wills it. And that's what they want to be doing. And so they will then the the they can't fully live that way. So they might go to church and they will boast about uh having a very rigorous ethical system, uh, a very rigorous fasting or ascetical life, uh, boast about how they only read older theologians and not popular materials today to say that they're they're part of something from from a better time when men had more respect, more opportunities, and feel superior in that way. And that's always spiritual pride is always a great hazard in embracing the Christian life because you feel good that you you've received the grace of God and uh you're a new creation in Christ, and that should feel good. But the devil always likes that as an opportunity to have spiritual pride to enter in to and many people succumb to that in in this way instead of seeing so so they end up essentially like the Pharisees when Jesus told the Pharisees you are obsessed with with tithing and uh and wardrobe and these other issues, but you neglect the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, you know, things like that. So I think that might be a start to break open the trad larping phenomena.

SPEAKER_01 27:24

I see exactly that, Trent. I see I see that somebody like a Jordan Peterson has diagnosed some of the maladies of modern society, that we have kind of left the father's house to use Luke 15 sort of terms, prodigal son terms, and we we have gone to the far country, we have squandered the inheritance, we have found ourselves in a pig sty. Um but the solution, pure and simple, from simply a Petersonian point of view, seems to be um 12 rules for life and 12 more rules for life, which is interestingly what the younger brother was going to say to his father. Like he practices the speech in the in the pig sty and he says, I I you know, make me like one of your highest men. You know, make me like a Pharisee. And of course the father doesn't let him. The father cuts him off. He says, I've sinned before heaven and before you, I'm no longer worthy to be called your son. Tick, tick, tick, all true. The father will not let him become an older brother. He doesn't want an older brother, he wants a reconciled son, which is a radically different thing. And what what I'm finding with the people who are showing up in in church is that actually they'll speak in very um explicit and and very um technical detail about some of the things that they've learnt on podcasts, usually. And they'll have very formed opinions about the filioque clause. Like, and they don't know Jesus.

SPEAKER_04 28:48

Well, I think it the pr Yeah, it's it's difficult, right? And I think the problem there is that they are striving for something that is a good in and of itself, and that would be men. I've read in a book before that one of the problems often in marriage is that the conflict between men and women is that women want to feel loved and men want to feel respected. So when women do not feel loved, they start to disconnect from the marriage. And when men don't feel respected, they disconnect. And so men greatly desire respect, that people look up to them, that they have accomplished something worthy of being validated in the eyes of others. And so I think this temptation, like you say, it's like, well, look, I I've mastered the dispute over the filioque, a thousand years of theology. Like, isn't this quite impressive? And so they they want that validation, but they don't understand that the greatest validation we can have is in the eyes of the Father who recognizes that we are in union with his son Jesus Christ, and that it is something we do not merit through our human abilities. And and that's something that, you know, but being in united to Christ, we can do things through our human abilities that does please the Lord, but that the reason we do it is not for our own sense of pride, but for a sense of feeling like we are doing good for the kingdom. I love what Paul says to Timothy in 2 Timothy 4. He said he talks about those who will follow those with itching ears, clever myths. But he says, as for you, be sober in everything, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, carry out your ministry fully. You know, be sober, do, do the work, be equipped to do that. So for these young men, I want to say, knowing a lot of theology, that is a good thing. St. Paul, look at his letters. He knows so much theology to apply and help people. But the absolute most important thing is being united with Christ. So I think another element I want to tag in here and get your thoughts on. Part of the vibe shift also is that the new atheists made headway because it's like, oh, we're gonna ridicule Christianity. And sometimes people who don't think very well through things think, hey, they they made fun of them really good. I'm gonna go with what they said. They really cooked you. And so the shift is now many people on the right or far right who identify as Christian have adopted those mannerisms where they're Christian, but they ridicule their profane, they're aggressive, they ridicule the secular worldviews, non-Christian worldviews. And so many young men find that attractive and they erroneously identify that as strength. And so they say, Well, I don't want this effeminate kind of Christianity, uh, which frankly, if they were to imitate, if they were given just a description of Jesus, they would probably call it effeminate. Uh and they they they think that meekness, for example, is weakness, which is not true. Meekness is the voluntary, like for example, I do jujitsu and I hang around a lot of black belts that are meek. They are not weak. They could kill you if they wanted to, but they don't have to puff out their chests. Their strength is reserved for when it's needed, and that's the same with the Lord. But these guys, I think for many of them, in a in a culture that denigrates masculinity, they want to be identified as strong. So they take a shortcut of, well, I'm aggressive, I will make fun of people, be profane, and I don't care what people think. I just care about defending the truth, and they've they've missed the forest for the trees in that regard.

SPEAKER_01 32:02

Yeah. I think the the the pipeline used to be exvangelical to new atheist. Ex evangelical to new atheists. I think it's now exvangelical to author bro.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

You know, I think that's very true. I've I've seen that as well, that people will feel like I've was given a soft version of Christianity that that feels incoherent or missing or lacking, or one that merely appeals to emotions, or may be effeminate. I mean, frankly, as a guy, I would I would go bonkers if my worship service was just singing songs about Jesus being my boyfriend. Jesus is my boyfriend. I would go. I would go, I would go bonkers. And so what do they want? Well, they they want you know the the the bassed monk with a mile-long beard swinging incense. And nothing wrong with that. I love I'm Catholic, I love incense, you know. But and and of course, many Orthodox and Anglicans and others, Lutherans, that's great too.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:55

But one must not confuse the means of involving all the bodily senses to give praise to God with just turning them into decorations for their own sake to adore.

SPEAKER_01 33:06

Yeah. No. I I I agree with that. And and therefore, let's let's bring it back to the debate thing, because therefore, what is the tone and posture that you are to adopt when some of the debate opponents, some of them are exactly these people, whether whether they're new atheists or or um whether whether they are other Christians um wanting to uh debate different Christian distinctives, and that's great, and let's let's talk about these things, but there are ways of talking about these things. Therefore, what is what is the tone? What are you telling? What is Trent telling himself as he enters into some of these dialogues?

SPEAKER_04 33:43

Uh I just I'm saying Lord help me to be able to speak the truth in love, you know, Ephesians 4.15, uh, and and just be able to represent you well. And I think the way that we do that is to not have a weakness where we're afraid to have any confrontation, but to engage in confrontation while being joyful in Christ, smiling, saying, okay, let's you're gonna say, you're gonna mock my faith, and I'm gonna say, well, where is your argument? Where is your evidence? I'm going to say that that is a very silly argument to put forward. I think a good rule of thumb is always to mock uh an error, uh, and you can call out an error for its absurdity or its inanity, uh, to attack the argument, not the person. The person is made in the image and likeness of God. Attacking arguments is great. I there are many positions, intellectual positions I consider incoherent, absurd, grotesque, barbaric, and that is quite fine when they are applied fairly and accurately. Uh, but I would look at a person and say, um, look, this person is made in the image and likeness of God, and so I want to treat them with the respect that they deserve. So Paul gives once again in his second letter to Timothy, has all kinds of great advice to this. And so in 2 Timothy 2, 24 through 26, Paul says this he says, The Lord's servant must not be quarrelsome, but kindly to everyone, an apt teacher, forbearing, correcting his opponents with gentleness. God may perhaps grant that they, the opponent, will repent and come to know the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil after being captured by him to do his will. I think that's a perfect description of what we do in debates. It's yeah, uh if it's the opponent who is rescued, praise be to God. Usually it doesn't happen, but it but I have had former debate opponents uh change their minds and come to my theological position after I engaged them, uh, whether it's in a debate or in a back and forth video critique, both with non-Catholic Christians and even non-Christians. And what they appreciated was that they could come to my position because I didn't attack them. I treated them with respect. So when they started to come around to my arguments, they're more able to approach me to collaborate and get closer to the truth. So I think that we have to walk that line. We should not be weak or mealy-mouthed, but we can we can attack the argument, but not have an anger or a malice towards the person that we are engaged in intellectual uh debate with. That's why I mean I love doing jujitsu. I think Christian Christians doing martial arts is a great practice because you learn you can get into a fight, and then when you're done, you give the other person a hug because it's not personal. And I think that's what we have to do when we are engaging others on really important questions.

SPEAKER_01 36:21

Yes. So back to Alex himself. Um, there were moments that he found difficult um to deal with because you were you were bringing arguments he hadn't heard before. Were there any moments for you? You th you thought to yourself, yikes, what do I say here?

SPEAKER_04 36:38

Yeah, well, I think what was unfortunate, we had our recent dialogue on the resurrection, and I was excited to talk about that. And Alex offered a different argument that I didn't want to completely go through that I thought took us a little bit off course. And his argument was basically, well, I don't believe in the resurrection because I don't believe in the claims of Mormonism, and Mormonism has better evidence than the resurrection. So if I don't believe in Mormonism, I shouldn't believe in the resurrection. And so we're debating something completely different than, well, what's the historical evidence for the resurrection? Let's say one granted Mormonism. What do you find not compelling about the resurrection in particular? And then we're off debating that. And I do believe, and I'm going to address this in a future episode of my show, that the evidential, the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is of a different and better quality than the evidence of a supernatural revelation being given to Joseph Smith. Oh, sorry, well, by supernatural, I mean a divinely given revelation, because it's also possible it could be demonic or it could, there could be natural explanations there, which are not the case of the resurrection. So there were things that were given there. I say, oh, well, I, you know, I didn't pull all the threads together, or it's not where I thought the conversation was going to go. And I should have been more forceful because one argument I gave for the resurrection that Alex sort of hand-waved away was I said, one reason I believe Jesus Christ rose from the dead is that there are many reports of modern miracles. Craig Keener has a two-volume book on miracles. I referenced uh miracles like the miracle of the sun in Fatima of Portugal in 19 uh in 1917, uh, referencing uh our late uh Marian apparitions at Zatun, for example, healings at Lourdes, and especially these apparitions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. And the hosts of Unbelievable said, you know, Alex, yeah, what do you think about all that stuff? And he's like, Well, I don't really have a thought on that. You know, you don't have a thought. Like, these are these are uh you you say, like, well, I'm not gonna believe in the resurrection because the evidence is 2,000 years old, we have all this stuff. We have newspaper accounts of these supernatural events. There's no disputing these group appearances that many people claim to have seen. Why you you you gotta give me something on that. And to me, my argument was if Christ rose from the dead, these things would not be surprising. But if Christ did not rise from the dead, these other miraculous events, they are quite surprising. And yet I should have pushed back a bit more that he hand-waved it and brought out something else to say, okay, but what about this data? I think you really have to look at this.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yeah, yeah. I've I found the the bringing up of the Mormon thing um to be quite in keeping with um the playfulness that Alex has with ideas. I I think he is uh a fascinated and therefore fascinating thinker, and he's completely fascinated by um what might be, what could be the case. And I think a f a phrase that once once I heard it from Alex once, I I then sort of my ears pricked up every single time I heard it. Um the the phrases that begin, now I could say dot dot dot. Which which I think is is quite characteristic of the playful mind of saying, well, you've you've got your claim about Jesus rising from the dead, but now I could say, and Muslims have indeed said, or I I could I could you know tell this story, I could tell that story, you've got a story, I've got a story, therefore I don't need to be moved in one direction or another. Um and perhaps I can sort of stay above the fray as somebody who plays with those ideas, but that doesn't seem to me to be the posture of somebody who wants to follow the truth.

SPEAKER_04 40:05

Right. And I appreciate, for example, that Alex recently said, I, or at least I saw a thumbnail related to it, that he would consider Christianity to have better evidence than Islam, for example. So I think one of the hallmarks of the new atheism was a simplistic view that all religious beliefs have equal evidence in their favor. Uh, and that's just plainly false if you were to go and to survey them. You don't even have to be religious to hold that view. I often would ask atheists, what argument for the existence of God do you think is the best and what is wrong with it? And I and some of the new atheists I'd encounter were so snarky, not even willing to entertain it, the lacking the playful mind. They they acted more like fundamentalist apologists. And so a fundamentalist apologist, there's nothing to be playful about. You have the dogma, you defend the dogma, that's the end of it. Uh, and that's that. They I think one of them said to me, Your question is dumb. That's like asking me, asking what is the best argument for God is like asking what is the worst poison. And I said, Well, there is an answer to that. There are there's certainly a poison that is capable of killing the most people in the smallest quantity. We can answer that question. So, what is then that there is a most effective poison. What is the most effective argument for theism? Even if you think it doesn't succeed, there's one that could still be more effective than others. Yeah. To say they're all equal would be that that would just be silly and mean you've never actually surveyed the the argument. So I think I appreciate that Alex would say, and that's why there it's been popular among atheists as recently to do things online called tier lists, where I think Alex did this once with um Joe Schmidt, your Majesty of Reason, who is a who was a non-theistic philosopher, and they were ranking them. This was at Cameron Bertuzzi's home, actually, of capturing Christianity. Right. And I know that if you if you go back and watch the tier lists, because we were there, we had a four-person discussion on the problem of evil.

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Cameron was Protestant at that point, wasn't he?

SPEAKER_04 42:01

Yes, he was. He was Protestant. So we had a Protestant and Catholic, an agnostic, and an atheist, and we were all talking about the problem of evil. And so Alex and Joe went upstairs to do their tier list, and then Cameron and I walked in the middle of it and crashed it. Uh so I remember that. And so the tier list is like, okay, here are the best ones, here's the middle, here are the absolute worst you should never use. And so there's an openness and a playfulness, and so that's why I would encourage people who are not religious to say, look, it's not a binary, it's not this fundamentalist Christian sect or new atheist scientism. There's a wide range. Like I would be happy, I mean, not perfectly happy, but I would be happier if someone said, Hey, I used to be an atheist, but I am a pantheist now because I think the universe has a divine essence towards life. Uh, I just can't get over the problem of evil. And that, I mean, essentially, that's the view of the philosopher Philip Goff, for example. Um, he he sees fine-tuning as proof that the universe must be ordered towards life by some kind of God or creator or divine being. The problem of evil keeps him from accepting traditional theism. Uh, and I think Jack Simes is a philosopher who's also gone to pantheism, probably for similar reasons. So I'm always open to say, hey, if I can, you know, say, hey, you know, it's like Acts 17, you worship this unknown God, the unknown God you worship, this I preach to you. Anything I can move people closer to the truth, at least it's another day closer to the Lord, I'm happy to move them there.

SPEAKER_01 43:27

Um it's interesting you should say that because uh I think the last uh Alex video I watched, he he sort of was asked what would move him towards faith, and he said it was it it would be a religious experience that would that would probably do that. And um let me bring that into conversation with uh an Instagram I've just started following in the last month called Brian Guan. I I think that's how you say his surname. And um I I mentioned him before uh we pressed record, Trent, and you haven't come across him before. Um, but can I can I show you a 60-second reel for From this guy, he's in New York. And uh apparently for two months, um, he had been uh kind of jumping in with both feet to this experiment. Is Christianity real? Well, I will pretend that God is real, and therefore he sort of set himself four practices to do. He went to church, scripture every day, praying every day. Um let's let's have a look at what has happened because by day 20 of uh of this whole experiment, he breaks down in tears and he says, God is real. Uh let's let's see what he has done on day 21 because I haven't even seen this real.

SPEAKER_00 44:38

I pretended God was real for 20 days. Now it's day 21. I'm not pretending anymore. So I'm still doing these four things. Dear God, thank you for this wonderful day. Please forgive me for my sins, my pride, give me wisdom, humility, and grace. Bring me closer. Please protect me from evil. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen. I'm thankful for you, Darcy. I'm thankful for this beautiful weather. Thankful for you, Tofu. Thank you, buddy. I want to thank God for all of the support I've been getting from you guys, all the DMs. For reading, uh, me and my girlfriend just finished John, and now we're going through acts together. I've gotten a lot of comments saying how what I'm doing reminds people of Paul. I'm gonna call my mom and tell her I love her. I know the Bible says honor your mother and father.

SPEAKER_03 45:15

Paul, it's it's it's you're gonna need to.

SPEAKER_00 45:18

No, I'm I'm excited to read about Paul for sure. Also, prayer requests. Um, those bad dreams are spreading to the people that I love, and that is a lot scary. I can handle scary shit. I believe in Jesus. I'm gonna put on my armor, say my prayers, go into scripture. Like I know exactly what I need to do.

SPEAKER_04 45:32

This is beautiful. It's good. I I um I would say, and I could get into more in-depth, uh, but I'd get your thoughts on it first, uh, that it reminds me of uh C.S. Lewis talking about those who are on the fence that one of the best ways to become Christian, even if you're not convinced yet, is to pretend to be Christian and it will kind of rub off on you. I actually I I have the quote. I'll read some of it because I it's um very powerful. And I think it really reflects a lot what you what you see in this here in this reel. Uh so Lewis says when you're not feeling particularly friendly, but you know you ought to be, the best thing you can do very often is to put on a friendly manner and behave as if you were a nicer person than you actually are. And in a few minutes, as we've all noticed, you will be really feeling friendlier than you were. Very often, the only way to get a quality in reality is to start behaving as if you had it already. Now, the moment you realize here I am dressing up as Christ, it is extremely likely that you will see at once some way in which at that very moment the pretense could be made less of a pretense and more of a reality. And so I think it definitely applies to these experiments that someone might take to say if they're on the fence, well, just act as if it were true, and then it it just may sort of get under your fingertips.

SPEAKER_01 46:49

Yes. And I I think this reel uh confirms a suspicion that I've had for the the previous 20 days, which is I bet he's got Christian parents praying for him. And and so it proves to be. He's he Skypes his, he zooms in his parents. In the vein of St. Monica, yes, uh the mother of Augusta. Praying mother is uh is a powerful thing. And and you know, my testimony in in one sentence is two decades of a praying mother, and that and that's kind of but what had not worked for Brian, um you can imagine any any number of you know so-called altar calls in his in his kind of teenage Christianity. Um but what has worked is jumping in with both feet to Christian community. And there's a there's a writer, Rupert Short, who we've had on the channel here. He he says, you don't think your way into a new way of living so much as you live your way into a new way of thinking. Yes. And one thing that does is it it moves against there's a certain, you know, I count myself evangelical and Protestant, but but one of the dangers of of uh some evangelical Protestantism is that we have an allergic reaction to going through the motions. Um and and I would say as an Anglican, as um someone who believes in you know the efficacy of the sacraments and and um and the the liturgy, the the rituals that God has given us, that there are motions to go through. And the discipling of the body and the affections through community and and through the practices that he that he has here. Yeah, he has found faith kind of catching up with him. Um and I just find that an interesting thing to um because we've we've said about Luke 15 that the kid who's in the pig sty, he needs to go home and he needs to know that his his dad has his arms wide open for him.

SPEAKER_03 48:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 48:50

And we need to preach the open arms of the man who welcomes sinners and eats with them. Even as he is stinking of pig, he is robed by that father, and we need to preach, you know what, the next day that kid probably woke up and worked harder in the field than his older brother ever did. Yeah. And found found himself in the rhythms of the family life that he'd actually grown up with. And that the the rhythms are not to be rejected, but the proclamation of the open arms of the father, um, but b both those things are uh really are really fundamental to to the change of the person, to conversion, would you say?

SPEAKER_04 49:33

Oh, uh a hundred percent. Uh I think that it is very important to behave be able to have that direct intimacy with the Lord, but to not treat it as if uh rituals are a hindrance to that. And I think that we're seeing, especially online, there is a greater, a little bit of a vibe shift among Christian denominations towards interest in traditional Catholicism, in Eastern Orthodoxy, uh, of seeking that kind of ritual that I think you and I would agree that among some low church evangelicals, there's a sense that, oh, well, we can't have rituals because then that would devolve into ritualism and an empty faith. And it certainly could do that. But yeah, or workspace salvation. But then it's like, well, but wait a minute, you're gonna throw the baby out with the with the bathwater here. That's like saying we can't have any dancing because some dancing leads to immorality, and then it's gonna be like the film Foot Loose, for example. We're not gonna, we can't, we can't have any of these things. Well, no, all things in in moderation. Um, and to say that rituals are empty and not a way of communicating intimacy. I mean, imagine if you went to celebrate someone's birthday and you when you say, Oh, you know, happy birthday. I'm so glad we're here. I've enjoyed all this time with you. I I'm so glad you've had 40 years of life, and here's another 40 more, and you have cake, bring a cake out. All right, let's see. Like, well, we're not gonna sing happy birthday. I mean, that's an empty ritual. That's just something we always do for tradition. Well, it's a ritual, but it's it's a it's a way of building intimacy with others through a prescribed thing. I mean, the Lord's prayer is a ritual, it is a prescribed, memorized prayer that if you wanted to, it could become an empty prayer if you chose to let the words no longer have meaning. Uh but there's nothing wrong with it being something specific and set that the Lord's given us. And I think one problem for many Protestants is a concern. Well, I don't want extra biblical things. I believe in soul scriptura. Well, okay, but soul scriptura shouldn't mean that because I mean I don't believe in soul scriptura, but it certainly should not mean I am only going to believe what is explicitly found in scripture, because there are many things that are good for the Christian life that are not found there. There are liturgical seasons like the season of Lent or celebrating the Lord's nativity, the birth of the Lord. That the New Testament doesn't record people celebrating Jesus' birth ritually or celebrating 40 days of preparation before celebrating his resurrection on Easter. Uh, but there are many Protestants who recognize, well, these are good things as long as they don't become empty ritual. And so I think that that having that of finding a way to say, hey, look, through ritual encounters, we can grow in intimacy with the Father, with with the Holy Trinity. And I think that's always something important to have at the forefront.

SPEAKER_01 52:31

Yeah, yeah. So I've I've I've thrown I've thrown you a bone, Trent. I've I've confessed to uh Protestant uh tendencies and uh potential inadequacies. Um let me let me finish by kind of saying one of the things I appreciate being a Protestant is is the you know when I describe the son still stinking of pig, but nevertheless robed by the father, I can't help thinking of similust picata, um simultaneously a sinner and justified, and that there's there's something about the proclamation of that homecoming that still stinking of Pig, I am adopted before the Father, filled by the Spirit, united to Jesus. Um there's some there's something about the the raw power of that sola fide kind of a gospel that that I think i is powerful in that moment. With all the other things that that have been said about the household and ritual and and the ongoing life of of faith. Um I when I think of this the the son stinking of pig robed by the father, I think in quite sola fide terms. I I imagine you you have a different view.

SPEAKER_04 53:54

Well, I think that one area where Catholics and Protestants have made progress over the past 500 years is to try to reduce some of our differences to differences of emphasis, vocabulary, or even semantics. Uh there was a uh Wednesday address that Pope Benedict XVI gave where he was discussing Martin Luther, and he famously said that Luther's formulation of faith alone can be accurate as long as it is faith uh working in charity or faith working through love. And that's what Paul says in Galatians chapter five. He says that it is neither circumcision nor uncircumcision that matters, but faith working through love. So I think, for example, that the the and frankly, the the parable of the prodigal son for me speaks a lot to Catholic theology about justification and salvation, because Protestants sometimes tend to use more of a forensic or a judicial context uh to talk about being declared guilty or innocent, uh having charges covered over, things like that. Whereas as a Catholic, I would frame justification more as familial restoration, that we are born as children of Adam, uh children of wrath, uh, you know, far from the Father. But the Father gives each of us the gift of salvation if we but merely choose to receive it. We cannot, we can do nothing to merit it or to earn it. We can just simply choose to say yes or no to it. And then in receiving it, we be we can become adopted children of the Father. So it's like we were born in that pig sty, but we can enter into the father's mansion, and we're and that smell of pig can be can be rinsed off of us, and we would believe that. And Lutherans and Anglicans and others do believe the efficacy of baptism is able to do that, to wash away all sin. Uh, not that it changes our human nature, we still have concupiscence, we still lean towards sin, uh, but that it makes us truly adopted children of the Father. And so I think that when we talk about salvation by faith alone, many times what a Protestant may say is um justify is uh sanctification, we would say, oh, well, that's ongoing justification. We're talking about similar things. Uh, and I think there's always a great amount of room to discuss, especially with denominations that are closer to Catholicism than further away, especially because there will be some Protestants who will reject uh even, you know, the role of baptism, the role of it for infants, uh the necessity of receiving the Lord's Supper, being united to the church. Uh I think that here, being saved by faith alone, one could use that formula as long as faith is not reduced to mental assent, but it's understood as being union with Christ. And that the only and the only work as Catholics, we do not believe we're saved by faith and works. The only thing one must do as a Catholic to be saved after baptism is to not permanently reject the offer of salvation God has given us. And so, but we are always welcome that even if the son were to stupidly go back to the pig sty, the father would not say, Hey, I did this once, never again. He would always welcome him back. So I think that's another way that that that I would look that I would look at it.

SPEAKER_01 57:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I uh well, and I think union with Christ is often the the the missing kind of locus of theology in in so much of these discussions. Yes. That um if it's if it's merely a judicial imputation or merely about um the working out of your salvation in you, you're you're failing to talk about Christ Himself. And nothing we have in the Christian life is is apart from Christ. It's all it's all in Christ that I'm adopted, in Christ that I'm justified, in Christ that I'm sanctified, in Christ that I'm saved, in Christ that I'm forgiven. Right. All the all these things. Um But that that is judicial as well, isn't it? That that's you know, adoption, you know, where I'm an adopted father. Yeah, there's a legal environment.

SPEAKER_04 57:55

For Catholics, it's it's not yes. For Catholics, a lot of times we use the expression, it is not either or, it is both and. So we would say that God can both declare something and when he makes a declaration, there is an objective change that that happens. So, you know, God declares let there be light, and then there actually is light when he when he creates the universe. When God declares that our sins are forgiven through the waters of baptism, they are forgiven, but something actually does change in our souls, they're flooded with God's sanctifying grace. Uh, as scripture says, we become partakers of the divine nature, as the epistle of Peter says. Uh so I think that, and I think many Protestants would agree, yes, we just would say that you know there's just more of a strict separation between the concepts of justification and sanctification. Catholics tend to see justification and sanctification more being two sides of the same coin in that respect.

SPEAKER_01 58:53

Yes. But the I guess the problem for me, even if I you know, w when I look at the Council of Trent, not your excellent podcast, but the Council of Trent uh in the 16th century, um, the language there um anathematizes my position, which makes it it makes it tricky, Trent. You know, canon twelve, you know, if anyone saith that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy, which remits sins for Christ's sake, or that this confidence alone is that whereby we are justified, let him be anathema. I kind of believe that, Trent.

SPEAKER_04 59:28

So Well, I'd have I would have to go back to the um to the canon itself to see exactly what is said there. But I could see how many Protestants might agree that that is heretical if what makes us right before God is just a confidence in him, and so therefore one does not need to pursue the sacrament of baptism uh or as long as one has confidence in God, uh, the the deeds that they undertake or actions they engage in, even if they are evil, do not affect justification. I I could see how how there's a concern here. We don't want to endorse Pelagianism, but there are many elements of Reformation theology, and I and I have debated Protestants who hold this view that quickly turn into a kind of antinomianism where salvation is only related to the confidence we have in Christ and the actions we engage in are irrelevant to our salvation. And it's a view that I is it can be very um disturbing for me.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:31

It can be, it can be, but yeah, it feels like I'm being shooed away from proclaiming you know, that gospel that we we seem to both resonate with, that you know, the the son still stinking of pig, clothed by the father, received into the family to be united in that moment that that's you know, the the the God who justifies the ungodly. And it feels like if I if I'm if I'm scared away from preaching that kind of gospel, because there are some anathemas that that sounds there are these little landmines that are sort of exploding all around me. If I want to go anywhere near that kind of gospel, uh won't that won't that prevent me from preaching the kind of freeness of the offer of Christ that is actually what's going to convert people?

SPEAKER_04 1:01:19

I I don't think so, because I think in the analogy that you are giving, there are there are two different elements here. One that I would agree with, but one that I would slightly disagree with, that one would be that the son's salvation comes from the fact uh that there is nothing he must do to merit the father's favor or to merit the return of the father's favor, uh, that it is that it's freely given to him. And so for me, I think as a Catholic, I can boldly proclaim that if if you seek salvation with with the living Christ, if you just come and declare that that uh you believe in God and believe in what he has revealed and you want to be united to him, and so you receive God's love through the sacraments that he has given us, then you can you can you can have that. And I don't think that that's a distinctly Catholic idea because Lutherans firmly believe in baptismal regeneration that Martin Luther, when critics would tell him baptism can't be what saves us because it is a work, Luther said, Well, baptism saves us. And so because it saves us, it's not a human work. It's God's work. It's what God does to us. And so I can freely say to anyone, there's no, you don't have to do X number of good deeds in order to come to, you know, in order to become Christian or to be to become Catholic, you just have to come and uh now you may have to be instructed. It is important, I think, if someone is choosing enter into the Christian life that they understand, you know, because there is a shallowness here too, and I think you would agree, and you appreciate this because we've talked before before the show about the Athanasian creed, understanding who is Christ, his natures, his persons, understanding the Trinity. One doesn't want to be hasty to say, well, look, just believe in Jesus and you'll be saved and you you're restored to God. Well, it's more than just believing in Jesus, because we have to believe that there is one God who is triune and became man, who became the God man. So there might be, it's not a work to earn, but a a catechumen must receive instruction. Here is the faith that God has led you to receive. Do you still want to freely receive it? Yes, I submit to baptism. Praise be to God then. So I do so I would agree that I think they say, look, there's nothing to hinder you, there's no work you must do, you don't have to earn, you don't have to get to certain levels. But the idea of still smelling like pig, uh, for me, I would say that um well, and I and I was baptized as a seven as a teenager. So I'm so great, although I wish I'd received it earlier in life to have those graces, but to know all of my sins have been washed away at this moment, uh, that I am a new creation in Christ. Uh, there's something beautiful there. I I think in knowing the the pieces, I I have come to, you know, I've come back to the Father clothed. We're gonna we're gonna sacrifice the pig, even my older brother's mad about it, to say that at the very least, I am able to still belong to this house and that God, he loves me, and it is not his love is not conditioned on my future behavior. That I that now I gotta be just as good as the older brother, I won't be loved anymore. God will always love me. But as a condition of that, because he loves me, he won't force me if I were to do something stupid and leave again. But he will still always wait to reaccept me if I were to if I were to depart from him uh in the future. So I think that we can balance it uh in that way. And I and I agree, there are Catholics, there are some who simply cannot articulate what the gospel is. That's bad. Like you should be able to say the gospel is the good news of what God has done in the world, that through his son Jesus Christ, the kingdom is entered into the world so that uh so that all people can be united to him. That the there's the good news that God has become man, died, rose from the dead to secure the salvation of all of all people, ideally. Uh so to be able to boldly proclaim that, I think that's something many Protestants, you know, have under their fingers. Well, here is the gospel. Catholics, you know, we gotta, there's a whole, there's gonna be a lot more in Orthodox more to know, but we should be able to give people a simple gospel. And Catholic missionaries have been doing that for centuries all over the world. And and so yeah, I definitely hope others would will do the same.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:26

Hey there. Hope you're enjoying my conversation with Trent Horn. We talk about all the sorts of things that are right at the heart of the gospel, including the threeness of God, the two-ness of the world, and the oneness of you. Are you aware of three, two, one? It's my way of unpacking the gospel. It's life according to Jesus. And we talk about the God of Jesus, who is a father loving his son Jesus in the joy of the Holy Spirit. That's the three. And we talk about the two atoms. We've been speaking about that with Trent. The humanity that is in Adam, that is fallen, that is cursed, that is dying, that is unrighteous. The judgment. And then Christ the second Adam, who joins our humanity as our brother, and he lives our life, dies our death, rises up again, and he says, Be one with me. And if we are one with Jesus, we get his father as our father, his spirit as our spirit, his future as our future. It's entirely free, just like eternal life. And uh you can go and do that now, 321course.com. Now, back to the interview. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's that son who's thinking of pig and asking the father, he's not so much he doesn't have any confidence that he has the ability to remain within the father's love. He he has confidence in the father's love, right? That's that's kind of but that's that's my problem with Canon 12. If anyone saith that justifying faith is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits Christ sins for Christ's sake, or that his confidence alone is that whereby we are justified, justified, let him be anathema. Um it it just feels like that that is anathematizing what I think is central to the gospel is is my problem. And and I ask this out of ignorance. Um and this ignorance will become obvious. But but is is this infallible teaching? Like is is the Council of Trent infallible teaching from Rome?

SPEAKER_04 1:07:13

Yeah, well, the um the solemn declarations of of dogma or of of what are binding upon Catholics to believe, which typically have an anathema attached to them, though not always, would be infallibly defined teachings. Now, understanding them though, there can be a wide range of how it might be applied. And I am very hopeful that in many of these cases we might be talking past one another. So, like, for example, I I often summarize and say that my confidence in my salvation is the fact that there is nothing I can do to get to heaven. The only thing that can get me to heaven is the Father's love for me. So it is God's love that I do have confidence with that will save me. I cannot save myself. I cannot get to heaven upon my own merits, but I can get to hell on my own merits. I am capable of doing that. And I think that is a reality that when you go through uh the New Testament becomes abundantly clear about the warnings, the dangers. 1 Corinthians 9, St. Paul worries about being disqualified. So he trains like a boxer, he doesn't shadow box. He understands, you know, there's there's real dangers here of being able to forsake the gift of salvation that that has been given to us. But our confidence in being able to hold fast to that faith, that salvation, is not just purely our own merits. It's that we love God, he loves us, and he gives us this supernatural life of his grace, in order to be able to do his will. So it's like, yes, our salvation comes from the confidence we have in God. But I would put it this way: you can't get to heaven unless you love God. If you don't love God, can't be saved. You have to love the Father. But Jesus says in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments. Now it doesn't mean perfectly, but if we do love God and we are united to him in this love, then we will live a certain way. And if we choose to live in grave sin, then through our actions we have rejected that salvation. That Catholics don't believe that, you know, you could just do one minor slip up and suddenly you're going to hell. But I think it's very clear in the Christian life that even if you claim, and Jesus talks about this, there are those who say, Lord, Lord, you know, save me, but you know, depart from me, I never knew you. There are those who could claim to know to love God. It's kind of like the husband who says, Oh, I love my wife, I love my wife, but he he cheats on his wife with his secretary. He can say he loves his wife as much as he wants, but in engaging in that betrayal, that act, he has shown he doesn't really love her.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:46

Yeah. Well, but I mean the Jesus, the Jesus line is I I never knew you. He didn't say we were close, what happened. Right.

SPEAKER_04 1:09:53

And so there so there could be some people who, and this is like what we discussed earlier about like the trad larping, there could be people who come into the faith for vibes, and they were never really apart in the first place, certainly. Uh, but also in Matthew 10, though, Jesus does say that salvation will come to those who endure to the end. So he does speak of that. Or in John 15, Jesus says that uh, if you remain in me, he talks about those who remain in me, but he says, those who do not remain or abide in me shall be gathered up like the branches, and they will be burned. So I agree the New Testament does just talk about some people who might have claimed to love God and they were never genuine to begin with. But I think there's many other examples also of people, the letter of Peter also talks about those, it would have been better for them if they had never known the way of salvation in the first place than to have departed from it later. That it does talk about people who truly were Christians, were truly sanctified, but then chose to walk away from the faith. And so I think as Catholics and Protestants, we can have a lot of common ground that the initial moment of salvation, and the catechism says in paragraph 2010, and also it's interesting, the Council of Trent cites Hebrews 11 6, saying that it is by grace not works, because if it were works, it would no longer be grace. It cites this in discussing that our initial justification is not through any work that we do. It's simply we just simply receive the gift of faith. That when Trent discusses um we're justified by works but not by faith, it's only talking about increased righteousness after initial salvation. So, like we have agreement, we become children of God through no merit. And I think that I would try to say that for many Protestants, and there are Protestants who agree and say you are capable, even if you put faith in Christ, to turn away. It's possible to reject God's offer. Just as you could reject the salvatific offer at the beginning, you could also accept it and then freely reject it later. And so where we might disagree is what would one have to do to constitute rejecting? And if you do reject it, what what must one do to be united to to Christ again? Which is interesting, the parable of the prodigal son we've been discussing, it kind of factors into that because the son is a rightful son. He once had the good relationship with the father and he left, which could parallel not necessarily the pagan who becomes Christian, but it could parallel one who was perhaps raised Christian, has always known Christ. And maybe Brian Blunch. Exactly, has always known Christ, leaves in college, you know, that's the pig trough, is the public university he goes to. What am I doing here? And then he wants to come back. And so here it's not a pagan becoming Christian, it's someone who and we would say, but I would say that it would not be the case, oh, he was always saved, and then now he's just been, he's, he's, you know, visibly uh, you know, in friendship with God. I would say that the example is very clear. You would have a saved Christian. If that's the if that's the parable could be applied to, someone who is saved in relation with God loses salvation, but then is restored in friendship and salvation. That would make sense where the parable says to where the father says to the brother, my son who once was dead, is alive again. That you have a condition, you have I was alive to my father, then dead, then alive again. And I think that could mirror in the Christian life that you know, maybe you were raised a Christian, so you've always known salvation, you've always known Christ. You received it as a free gift as a child, you threw that away. But that's what great about the gospel is that God always, always calls us back to him because he genuinely loves us and the desires of salvation of all people.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:40

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:41

I mean, there's there's different ways you could go from that. You could you could say that he does say to the older brother, everything I have is yours. And so, like, we're we're we're talking about um we're talking about people who belong to the father no matter what, in in in that sense, and in even even the other son. But I I guess when you put it in parallel with the lost sheep and the lost coin, these do seem to be pictures of humanity has been raised onto the Son of God who has you know united himself to Adam's nature and marched up.

SPEAKER_04 1:14:10

But I would add we we must be careful with these parables that individual salvation is reflected in them. But I also think many of the parables are meant to teach about the corporate salvation of the Jews and the Gentiles. Because the older brother is seems to clearly be to say, and that's where it's important when I deal with people who are anti-Semitic, who say that God has rejected the Jews entirely, they're cursed before him. No, not at all. Look at the parable of the prodigal son. The older brother might feel jealous about the younger brother getting the special treatment, but the father does not hate the older brother. He wants the older brother to rejoice in the younger brother's salvation. Just like the father would want, just like Paul says in Romans 11, you would want the Jewish Christians to rejoice at the inclusion of the Gentiles and to not have a spiritual superiority complex, you know, things like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:58

Yes. You mentioned about anti-Semitism. I believe you're working on a book at the moment. Is that right, Trent?

SPEAKER_04 1:15:05

I am. It's uh so that now that's getting out there a bit, so we'll see what people think about that. In this, this kind of coincides with the trad larping we were discussing earlier. One of the downsides of people who want Christendom, they want, they don't want a Nambi pamby, weak, watered down, modern version of Christianity that tries to appeal to the masses, which that's a good thing. The bad thing is they may look back and say, I want this, the bold proclamations of Christendom from a thousand years ago. And there's much there to be praised. You know, there's there are many Saint the teachings of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Francis de Sales, St. Thomas Aquinas, many great things. But there are also attitudes at that time we have now come to see are incompatible with the gospel, of incorrectly seeing uh Jewish people today as having inordinate guilt for the death of Christ, for example. Uh, although the catechism of the Council of Trent that the church published after the Protestant Reformation, it actually says in there the guilt in us sinners is more enormous than the guilt in any Jews today. Uh but there are still people, you know, you you they'll so they might see these attitudes about women, about Jewish people, that in this trad larp, they seek the older ascetic and theological fervor, but then they also see license to try to pick up these older ideas of looking at these other groups of people and relish in marginalizing them and having a theological rationale for doing it. And so I'm writing a book showing no, we should not do that. Paul says in Galatians 3.28, very clearly, that in Christ there's neither Jew nor Greek, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:45

Beautiful. And we will we will look out for that uh when it comes out. Is that gonna be a next year thing or when's it coming?

SPEAKER_04 1:16:52

Yeah, so either at the end of this year or probably the beginning of 2027.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:57

Brilliant.

SPEAKER_04 1:16:57

And what's coming up on the channel? Oh, a lot. I've been covering a lot of uh different topics. I'm always eager to see what people are discussing. Uh the my channel, I mean, I discuss Catholic apologetics, but I also really want to uh talk about uh I want to help those who are furthest from Christ, the most number of people who are the furthest from Jesus Christ. So I have hopefully uh more argument videos dealing with moral issues, evidence for God. I'll have dialogues and debates coming up. I have a dialogue. This is a secret thing that'll come out soon. So be it'll come out, uh I think, oh, actually, it should come out very soon here. I'm going to have a dialogue with a non-Christian critic of mine who has returned to Christianity. He was one of my biggest non-Christian critics, and he has now returned to the faith. And uh, you know, so we're we're gonna talk about interacting with that. So I I always want to keep the focus on on the these important things.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:54

I love that. And when when you mentioned about 2 Timothy as well, the Yeah, in in the hope that God would grant them repentance. Um that's such a that's such an important thing for us to remember. And and even if God doesn't grant them repentance, um the idea that this person who I am maybe at loggerheads with um could be a brother next month, next year. Um You never know. Yeah. It chang it changes the interaction, doesn't it? It absolutely changes. Yeah. Absolutely. Brilliant. Trent, you have been so generous with your time. Thank you so much for for joining us uh here at Speak Life. And uh yeah, keep us keep us abreast of all that you're doing because um I I learn I learned so much from you, and I'm I'm glad that you're