Do we have Anonymous with us? Yeah, I'm here.
All right, well, Anonymous, if you could get your question out to Trent, we may
have to keep you through the break. Would that be okay? Yeah, absolutely.
Okay. So what is your question—hey, wait a second, now,
I get to ask the question: why are you Protestant? All right, go ahead. I'm not
actually Protestant, but at the same time not Catholic. You could say
nondenominational, in a way. Gotcha, okay. I was actually raised in
an Orthodox background, but that's a different story. So basically my question is...
okay, obviously there's differences between the Protestants and Catholics, I have
friends on both sides, and the things that they differ on are such things as
the Rosary, purgatory, and praying to Saints, and infant baptism. Now
my Protestant friends are saying that "No, those are not scriptural, it's not
in the Bible," my Catholic friends are saying, "Okay, it may not be in the Bible,
but that's what the Church teaches." So you got Church/tradition versus the
scriptures. Gotcha. And my question is... okay I can see both sides' views, but... Why do we
disagree if we're all using the same Bible? Yeah, tell you what, you hang on
right there. Actually, Anonymous, you've got quite a few questions for Trent
right there, but we've got to take a hard break right now.
Right now we're on the line with Anonymous, and Anonymous, are you still with us yet? Yes sir. I think
it kind of boils down to, doesn't it, I thought the most important thing you
said there was: we supposedly use the same Bible, but you don't see all these
things like the rosary and purgatory and such—and you listed a few others—in the
Bible. So what gives, Trent? Well actually, I'd like to ask Anonymous a little bit closer
to figure out why we disagree. So Anonymous, is the reason you're Protestant
because Catholics do certain things that you don't agree with?
Right. Like, for example...okay so the concept of purgatory, for example. It
says in the Bible, I don't know exactly, I know it's the New Testament, when a person dies,
to be absent from the body is to be with the Lord.
So if that's the case, I mean, you would think that when one perishes, their soul
goes to heaven—I mean, obviously their physical body's, you know, underground...
You know it's interesting, Anonymous, I actually wrote a blog post on that—the
Bible actually never says that. Right. So Anonymous, I'll answer this first
objection, then I have a question to sort of go back to you. I would agree with you.
Catholics, if we believed in something that—if the Bible is a revelation from
God, it's God's word, and doctrine is found there, and Catholics believe
something that contradicts what's in the Bible, that would be a serious problem
for Catholic theology. Sure. But I don't think the Bible actually does that. And
to take your example with purgatory: what Catholics believe is that those who die
with venial sins—so they're in communion with God, they're in
relationship with God, but they have sins on their soul they have to be purged or
cleansed of because Revelation 21:27 says nothing unclean will enter heaven—
they will be purified in some way in the next life, or their sins will
be forgiven in the age to come, as Jesus says. Now the verse you mentioned, 2
Corinthians 5:8, is often paraphrased as "To be absent from the body is to be
present from the Lord." However that's not what Paul says. In the NIV it says "We are
confident, I say, and would prefer to be away from the body and at home with the
Lord. So we make it our goal to please him, whether we are at home in the body
or away from it." But notice what Paul says there, is that our goal—we would
prefer to be away from the body and at home with the Lord. He doesn't say
"When we are away, we are definitely with the Lord." He says that's why we need to live right
now, so that we can attain the goal, right? That's right. So
I don't think that verse disproves the the doctrine of purgatory. But my second
point would be this: so Anonymous, do you believe that all Christian doctrine is
explained explicitly and only in Scripture?
Well I mean, I know there's some concepts that the Church, you know, came up
with. Like, for example, I mean to me honestly I consider God is the only one
that's holy, but yet Catholics believe the Pope— they call them His Holiness.
Right, but Anonymous, the Bible also refers to Christians as a "holy people,"
for example. The the word "holy" just means "to be set apart." Now I want to go back to
my question, which is: it seems that you're operating from the principle that
if something is not described explicitly in the Bible, you won't believe in it.
Pretty much, yeah. You pretty much nailed it. Ok. So Anonymous, where in the Bible
does it say that everything we believe as Christians is explicitly described
there? Well, it's not, but we believe that, since it's inspired by God—like for
example, the Old Testament— Okay, hold on. So you admit that belief that you have
about doctrine, about the Bible, it's not actually in the Bible. You mean the
example that I mentioned? No, when you said that idea that you only believe
things that are explicitly described in the Bible, and yet that rule of faith
can't be found in the Bible itself. So isn't that a contradiction? Well,
I mean, the part where it says, you know, "All Scripture is
inspired by God," we believe that it's the Word of God so that's why we believe it
and have faith in it. Okay, so you're talking about 2 Timothy 3:16.
I believe that's it, yes. That's right, Paul says that "All scripture is
god-breathed," or "theopneustos," so it's inspired, God-breathed, and
and as a Catholic, I totally agree with you. All Scripture is inspired. And Paul
goes on to say it's useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in
righteousness, so that the man of God or the servant of God, may be equipped for
every good work. I totally agree with you. What Paul was saying to Timothy in that
passage is he's telling Timothy "Look, you're going to go out on your mission,
you know, as a presbyter, as a bishop, you're going to go out to lead your
flock, you'll need help," and before this verse he says "Remember the scriptures
you were taught as a child," because Timothy's mother was Jewish (his father was a
Greek). He says, "You've known the scripture since childhood—"
meaning the Old Testament— "and they're there for you, God inspired them, and
they're going to be useful when you have to teach and correct people and train
people to be righteous." But Anonymous, I'm not seeing in this verse where it says
everything Timothy is going to believe is found in Scripture. Do you see it
there? Because I don't. It's not, it's just an implication. Like for example, we know
that over 40 authors wrote the Bible, but obviously it was their witness,
true, but it was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
Okay, well Anonymous, let me ask you another question, then. When Paul says
"All Scripture is inspired," how do you know what documents are Scripture and
what are not? How do you know what Scripture is? History. Basically...
I mean, just the history. I mean, to be honest, one word: faith. I mean, that's what
we have, faith that it is the word of God. All the 66 books, or 73 if you include
the Apocrypha. Right. But you know, it's interesting there, Anonymous.
It seems like you believe things, you want to hold to this view, you only
believe what's written in the Bible, but you believe in things that aren't even
written there, like the truth that the letter of Philemon and the letter of
James are the Word of God, but the first century letter of Clement or the
apocryphal book of Tobit aren't. Where in the Bible does it tell you to believe
that? And Anonymous if I could add real quick: there were many
people in the early church that didn't believe 2 and 3 John, Revelation,
Hebrews, 2 Peter, and other books should even be in the Bible! So where
would you go to get the answer? Yeah. So I guess, Anonymous, that's my question. I think what's
separating us, is that I believe, as a Catholic—well actually, when I was just a
Christian, a minimal Christian, I believed Jesus rose from the dead, that's it—I was
at a position to try to figure out "Okay, now what do I believe? I'll just believe in
the Bible." But Anonymous, you and I agree, the Bible is a collection of books, right?
Absolutely And in answer
to your question about the caonon... Right, who decides? How do I know the books that
are in the Bible are all equally inspired? For me, I can know that if
Christ established a Church, and that Church has had a successive generation
and has Christ's authority, and then has ratified at certain councils, like the
Council of Hippo and Carthage in the fourth century, that the books I read in
the Bible are the Word of God, well, the Church has an authority to tell me.
Otherwise it seems like you're relying on what the Church did in history, acting
as if it's authoritative, but not really giving it that authority. Do you see what
I mean? Right, right. Well, I'll tell you what, Anonymous—I tell you, we could
talk the whole hour just with you, Anonymous. I really appreciate your call.
I wanna encourage you to check out, if you haven't, catholic.com, our website. We
have a ton of information for you there. I'd recommend, in fact, go to the library,
if you click on the library tab, you'll get a drop-down, check out our tracts
some of it, you know, it's about a hundred and twenty plus, right? Yes. Tracts, it's a
good place to start to look into some of the questions you might have about the
Catholic faith. And please don't be a stranger,
hope you call back again.