Transcript — Steelmanning and destroying the Protestant argument - Fr. Stephen De Young & Jonathan Pageau
Auto-generated captions (timestamps link to the video). See the summary · watch.
00:00 I want to steal man the Protestant position as much as possible. Like what value does it have that we have in some ways taken up this way of understanding tradition you know where there is there is in some ways a messy aspect to it where things get taken in some things get rejected some things get kept uh and we don’t have this hard this like hard line like the Bible and only the Bible and nothing else. Um, you know, maybe you can help us. I I in some ways I’m I’m trying to steal manand the Protestant position to see how you can how you can defeat it or how you can answer those types of >> Right. Right. Well, yeah. And that is true that that doesn’t stop. Right. You read you read the Apostolic Fathers, right? There’s some ideas contained in like the Epistle of Barnabas or the Shepherd of Hermas, right?
00:52 that get dropped frankly right and there’s other things that get picked up and continued um just like with second temple literature right within Christianity there’s um you know Tertalian isn’t Staint Tertalian origin isn’t Staint Origin right there’s and there’s but there’s elements there are things written by both of those authors that end up being important right um and other things that are not right that are dropped So yeah, that happens that happens through history. And from our perspective, of course, it’s the Holy Spirit guiding that. Um, it’s one of the problems with the people who spend their time on the internet posting quotes from contemporary elders and stuff that haven’t been sifted yet, right? Because some of the stuff that contemporary elders are saying will still be around 500 years from now and be being quoted >> and some of it will not.
01:46 Some of it will have dropped out, right, over that time, and we don’t know what yet, right? Um, I I think the Protestant position made eminent sense in the 16th century in Western Europe because a lot of people don’t realize that there were fake writings of church fathers all over the place. Fake writings of St. Augustine, uh, the donation of Constantine, right? All kinds of stuff that people were using to bolster the claims of the right? things that not only the Protestant reformers thought were wrong, but that we as Orthodox Christians also think are wrong. Right? But they’re all these fake texts, right? And in the 16th century in Geneva, Switzerland or in Germany or in France, right, you don’t have any way to establish, okay, what if this was actually written by St.
02:40 Augustine and what wasn’t. >> there are fake epistles of St. Ignatius >> right? There are, right? we’ve got a lot of pseudos now, right? That’s um in these texts. And they had no way to separate that. But they could say, well, look, and even even the Latin Vulgate of the 16th century, having been handcopied all that time, was not identical to St. Jerome’s translation, >> right? And we know that for a fact now, right? Um, so if they wanted sort of stuff that they knew went back to the apostles that hadn’t been fiddled with by Rome, what did you have? Well, you had the Hebrew text of the Old Testament that you could, you know, take from your local synagogue, right?
03:27 And no, nobody in Rome could read Hebrew really, so we knew they hadn’t messed with that, right? Because the Jewish people had it. And you had Greek the Greek New Testament texts that they had just come to Western Europe after the fall of Constantinople. >> Right? And they knew well that’s the Greek church had that so we know Rome hasn’t been fiddling with that. Right? And so they said this will give us a direct window into in their view right or at least the most direct possible window available to them into apostolic faith right without any pseudo and false writings. So that’s my way of steel manning it is saying that makes eminent sense if you’re living in western Europe in the 16th century.
04:14 >> Right? Uh but I don’t live there. Right. um in the 20 in 21st century, you know, United States, Canada, Great Britain, Western Europe, Australia, wherever we want to say, right? We have access to copious amounts of data about the biblical text in all of its translations and versions over time, over centuries. We could watch things happen, right? all of these texts, we have a pretty good idea which ones are authentic and which ones aren’t now. Um, pretty reliably. Um, there’s some things still argued about, but pretty reliably. Um, and so it doesn’t make a lot of sense now to wall off certain data, to present certain data as irrelevant.
05:12 >> Um, and it’s honestly hard to, as someone who’s been to a Protestant seminary, it’s hard to do. >> Um, I still remember, and I mentioned this before in various settings, but this was one of those, this is another one of those dominoes that fell over for me. Uh, I was in the the ancient church history at probably the most prominent on an academic level Protestant seminary in the US. And the professor, a very intelligent man, very well- read man says, “At the very beginning of the 2n century AD, in the letters of St. Ignatius of Antioch, we have spelled out in detail the role of the magisterial bishop governing the church.” Then he pauses and says, “How did things go so wrong so fast >> in the second century?” >> Because to him, obviously that’s an having bishops is an unbiblical form of church government.
06:19 >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And so even if you see that at 100 AD, the question it spawns is how did things go wrong so fast? Not maybe I’ve interpreted the the the Bible >> That’s right. >> Right. Um, and so yeah, now it seems to me that the onus kind of goes back onto the Protestant scholar to justify isolating the biblical text from its historical context, >> right? What justifies that? >> Yeah. Um because if you start to take even just the way word Greek words were used that are used in the New Testament were used by other Jewish authors at the same It bodess ill for a lot of Protestant >> So there has to be this solos scriptor has become this kind of club just to ward off that argument entirely.
07:24 >> Right? that’s completely irrelevant, right? We don’t we don’t even consider that when interpreting the Bible. Um, so it’s it’s just the Bible in and of itself. And so it’s the original purpose of soloscriptor was to have confidence that we were getting sort of directly from the era of the apostles. But the 16th century consensus then what Entright calls Anti Wright says, “Hey, these may be the best answers from a 16th century perspective to these theological questions.” Right? But it’s not the 16th century >> Right. It’s I don’t think they’re the best answers, but you know, anti-rights are Protestants still.
08:11 But but Right. that that like this this time has passed now, right? And you know, we have a lot more witness and a lot more resources and a lot more windows into the era of apostolic Christianity than they did. >> And that and and just saying, “No, this is what was said in the 16th century. This is what we believe this, you know, it’s like it’s like taking the argument we would make based on St. Jude, you know, talking about the faith once for all delivered to the saints and just having it be once and for all delivered in the 16th century. You know that this this framing of it is put forth by Luther andor Calvin andor Zwingley, whoever, whomever, right?
08:58 That was the perfect framing on all these points and that’s it. >> And then you get this circular reasoning, right? Well, they’ll say, “Well, yes, because that’s the teaching of scripture.” But anything you do to try to reinterpret scripture or interpret scripture differently then gets ruled out because it doesn’t match those conclusions. So, the correct way to interpret scripture becomes the way that produces the correct conclusions >> and those are the correct conclusions because that’s what we get from interpreting scripture the correct way in this in this circle. >> Yeah. I remember it’s weird because I do I I really remember uh being told that when St. Paul when I was younger when St.
09:45 Paul talks about you know powers and principalities he’s talking about princes in the world like he’s talking about kings and princes >> as if there were a lot of those in the era of the Roman Empire. >> Yeah. And uh and so >> there’s kind of just one guy ruling the world. And so it’s just it’s interesting that that the opening up of this space has in some ways it’s been fruitful, you know, because it seems to me and this is in some ways now I’m obviously going to argue from the other side which is from the orthodox side. Uh it seems like a lot of the things that were forgotten in in the in Christianity in the modern age are these blind spots that were that led to some of some certain types of arguments that led to some aspects of atheism or some aspects of uh um of of modernism and that it’s in fact by opening up some of these spaces again and by reanding some of these ideas, right?
10:43 Like the idea of the of the council around God or the or the idea of how you know these intelligences uh influence the world is in fact the exact spot we need to be in right now to you know what what what are what are these things that are talking about in a world like a simple example like in a world where for a hundred years for for a few centuries now we’ve literally the language to talk about principalities and and let’s say non-human intelligence and now we’re building a non-human intelligence and we have no way of understanding what what we’re doing like we don’t know what it is we’re doing. We don’t know what we’re talking about. We don’t know we have we have no language. We’ve lost theological language. We don’t understand how how intelligences affect us.
11:31 Um but we’re just kind of blindly groping towards it. And so, uh, all of these questions seem to be the right ones to be asking right now to understand what’s going on. And also how the new Christianity that’s coming in or like the return of Christianity that’s returning in in Catholicism and Orthodoxy, but also in Protestantism is full of is full of this light. It’s full of these answers or full of these questions. You know, like Heiser is an example in Protestantism. And it’s not just happening in Orthodox. It’s kind of happening all everywhere at the same time. Yeah. Well, let me let me make a couple non-controversial statements. Um, like I’m I’m I’m >> You’re known for those, Father Steven. You’re known for sure how real any concept of the West is. I think that’s mainly a discourse that doesn’t have any reality behind it.
12:19 But if we’re talking about like Western European culture, I think the whole rhetoric of trying to save the West, meaning Western European >> is uh fundamentally feudal because I don’t think the contemporary scene is some kind of subversion or falling apart of Western European culture. I think it’s the duma. I think this is the final >> right? Because Western European culture gave us the Enlightenment too, right? Well, first the Renaissance and then the Right. And and that Western European culture post enlightenment led to even Christians, even thoroughly devoted Christians embarrassed of the whole concept of the quote unquote supernatural.
13:11 >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. their worldview was so deeply informed by enlightenment rationalism that believing in a god was kind of embarrassing. But you start talking about angels and demons, right? That’s getting pretty close to ghosts and goblins, right? Like we you know, we can’t we can’t go there, right? Like demons next you’re going to be telling me there’s witches, you know, >> and look at us now. Look at us now talking about ghosts and goblins and we’re fine. Even though people people I know who who are are are old school evangelical I mean evangelicalism now here’s another non-controversial statement I don’t believe is a religion evangelicalism now is a political movement in the United States uh that has little to do with religion um but old school evangelicals in the old sense right protestants >> who are friends of mine who would characterize themselves as being right?
14:08 And and Bible believing and anti- theological liberalism, right? If you talk to them about a miracle that happened, it doesn’t matter if it was in the second century, the 11th century, or last week Tuesday, they’re like, “Well, that’s not in the Bible. I don’t have to believe that. You expect me to believe that? That’s not in the Bible, right?” Like, I sort of have to believe the Bibleism. Like, who came up with those terms? Who came up with the idea that there are no miracles anymore? Like where does that even come? You probably know. Where did they come up with the idea that there are no miracles >> Uh John Calvin. >> Protestant sation is it really starts with John Calvin? Because he wanted to he he was using that to rule out. He said 70 AD it all stopped.
14:54 Um because >> 70 it stopped in 70 AD. >> So basically we So basically then it’s all demons after that. Those are the last miracles because he wanted to rule out all of the miracles within the Roman Catholic Church that they were using as arguments against him. >> And what what what did he see those miracles as? Like just kind of lies or >> delusions or the devil or right whatever because you know they’re coming to him with like eucharistic >> and I mean these were some pretty sus eucharistic miracles. You know, it was like my cousin got possessed by a demon and you know, the priest came and held up a host in front of him and said, “What is this?” And he said, “It’s the body of Christ.” You know, so see, checkmate, Calvin, you know, so they’re they’re a little suspicious, but his approach wasn’t to just say like, “Seriously, man, you expect, right?
15:49 It was not possible. >> All miracles. All miracles. >> There aren’t any anymore, right? Like >> well, that’s not in the Bible. that those that those miracles were just for the age of the apostles. >> Right. They were there for the apostles to confirm the apostolic witness >> to the resurrection of Christ and then that’s it. So that’s that’s Yeah. It comes from Calvin. But yeah, but people were are just kind of embarrassed by that. It’s like I have to believe the ones in the Bible >> because I’m a Bible believing Christian. >> Yeah. But >> man, don’t put this other stuff on me. I I don’t want to have to like believe that other stuff. And why is it a burden? Like I I’ve had like Presbyterians use the term like if if I I I have a friend who’s a Presbyterian minister who uh was it was wasn’t their main worship service but at another sort of service gave a little homaly and he read the martyrdom of St.
16:46 Polycar and a bunch of people in his congregation were really upset at him for having read that to them because they said by reading that to us with all those miracles and stuff, you’re binding our conscience. You’re telling us we have to believe in it. >> This is throwing a burden on them by asking them to believe that God did a miracle right in the past. >> Wow. And the only thing I can see is again it’s deep set like people aren’t thinking about it. They would say they would say they’re anti-enlightenment rationalism if you ask them. >> But that’s just embedded. Stuff like that doesn’t happen, >> right? I have to believe what’s in the Bible, but you know, rest doesn’t. And so >> that’s that’s getting broken down, >> right?
17:37 So the west in that sense, I hope gets broken down and ceases to exist, right? Like that that whole element of western culture. And I think that’s the trajectory. I don’t think this other stuff is foreign to it. I think this is the duma. I think, you know, I my biology doesn’t matter. I’m whatever sex I claim to be or invent. >> It’s downstream from the enlightenment for sure. >> It’s downstream from the liberty, >> libertal, fraternity, right? Like that’s >> for sure.