One thing it means is “Infinitely or inconceivably extended; vast.” Angels are inconceivably extended intelligences, who are created immediately knowing almost everything that is even knowable. Their role seems to be to properly order and guide the universe. “Cosmic” can also mean “of or relating to the regions of the universe distinct from Earth.” Angels are distinct from earth, although demons have “fallen” to it. This does not necessarily mean they are spatially located here with us, but rather that they have no higher purpose and thus must exert their mission here upon men, which is a malevolent mission.

The Century Dictionary says this about the word “cosmic”: “of or pertaining to the universe, especially to the universe regarded as subject to a harmonious system of laws. Hence Pertaining to universal order; harmonious, as the universe; orderly: the opposite of chaotic.”

So angels are essentially massively powerful intellects in service of God that are behind the management of the operations of the universe.

Now imagine if a third of those cosmic intellects who help order the universe rebelled against God.

You get the origin of chaos.

And from this we can begin to understand what evil is on a deeper level. It is opposed to order, because it hates order, as to be ordered is to be subject to laws. But like human sinners, the demons wanted something that lay beyond what is lawful for them to possess.

As Fr. Ripperger once put it, they want a “perfection” they saw in another, perhaps in other angels, humans, or even God Himself, and decided that not possessing it was worth fighting God over.

And this is also what humans do when they decide to sin. They want something that is improper to them. For example, it is against order to desire certain perverted sexual acts. A human will decide, consciously, that these acts are so desirable that even though they’re irrational and going after them is rebellion, these acts are worth pursuing. They are so attached to a sin that, consciously or unconsciously, they prefer to be without God to not having it. Just like a demon once consciously and in full knowledge chose damnation over not having a perfection.

The goal of demons is to cause as much discord, or chaos, to the created order as possible. Destruction of all sorts is desired. In their hate and anger, these malevolent cosmic intellects prowl with their leader, Satan, about the earth seeking to influence man to cause chaos and reject order. They exert themselves on humans by placing ideas into the intellect, inspiring them to do evil through their own imaginations.

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Similarly, our friends the angels exert themselves upon the human intellect to encourage humans to do good, and to pursue order and harmony. This is why having a conscience is as inescapable as experiencing temptation. A conscience can be thought of as the inverse of temptation. That is why all humans have consciences telling them right from wrong. It is also one reason why humans with sufficiently developed intellectual faculties are culpable for knowing that there is a God, as all laws obviously require a law giver. The conscience, as well as temptation for that matter, informs us that there is order and chaos. That there is good (harmony) and evil (discord).

Adam and Eve opened the doorway for humanity to be influenced by malevolent cosmic intellects. The devil lied to Eve, but largely by omission. What Adam and Eve received really is the “knowledge of good and evil,” just not how Eve may have imagined they would. Now these evil intellects can prey upon their offspring, urging them to do evil, whereas previously, in an innocent state, Adam and Eve did not suffer temptation in exactly the same way. They were tempted to eat the forbidden fruit itself, but now mankind is tempted to all sorts of violations of order. Mankind is now also corrupted by ancestral (original) sin, and is guaranteed to sin once the faculties are sufficiently developed due to this very strong pull towards corruption and selfishness.

God gave Adam and Eve sufficient rational faculties and information to know for certain that cooperating with the temptation to desire a “perfection” (the knowledge of good and evil) not allocated to them was wrong. But, He did not coerce their wills into obedience. He allowed Satan to tempt them with this “perfection,” just like he allowed the angels who would become demons to notice and be tempted by what amounts to jealousy or zeal for what they should not have. This shows God gave angels and men free will.

He gave them sufficient information and faculties to make a conscious and informed decision for or against order.

Now we can begin to understand on a rudimentary level what “free will” is, and in some way how grace works, and why it’s always prevenient. There is no room for boasting in cooperating with order, which is love, as God must supply by grace the ability to even choose the good. Notice that this does not override free will. It elevates and enhances the will, for to be free is to be able to choose love, while not being forced to do so. Human corruption due to ancestral sin weakens the will to resist sin, and performing sin damages the will even further. Grace is always sufficient for those on earth to make the appropriate decision in the will when temptation arises. This is a topic for another essay, so let us return to the cosmic intellects.

You’re being acted upon by these external entities, which are, like us, part of the created order. We are not dealing with something supernatural, but rather preternatural. Preternatural means “exceeding human nature, but below God.” There are simply parts of creation that are concealed to us, poorly understood, or only understood through many anthropomorphisms and “shadows.” Angelic beings are something we scarcely understand. Ancient Christian and Jewish writers heavily clue us in. But the cosmic, or angelic intellects are part of creation, like you are or a tree or a your aunt’s pet cat. They’re even very integral to the management of creation, unlike the cat.

One way to better conceive of how cosmic intellects interact with humans is by thinking of locutions. A “locution,” as I define it for the purposes of this article, is when a person receives information from an external spiritual being.

We are all “locutionists,” under this definition, to some degree. An Old Testament prophet or Biblical author is recording greater locutions (indeed we could term them “proper locutions”). But we all have a conscience, and angels directly help us by urging us to proper action. When it comes to both demons and angels, our will is the gate that says “yes” or “no” to their suggestions. Therefore, we must carefully guard our will. This is why purposely attacking your inhibitions to a certain degree is sinful. I am speaking specifically of drinking alcohol in excess or doing recreational drugs.

If you damage the will to such a degree that the will fails to say no to evil, then you are entirely at fault, and the substance abuse you practiced is itself a grave sin.

Jeffrey Dahmer, the prolific serial killer, homosexual rapist, necrophiliac and cannibal used to drink himself into a considerable state of intoxication before he committed his murders. He had to damage the will in order to make it easier for him to listen to the temptations of the demonic intellects urging him to commit the most depraved acts imaginable. He was arguably practicing a form of what Scripture calls “sorcery,” or in the Greek, “pharmakeia” where the word “pharmaceutical” derives from.

Sorcery, or drug abuse, goes hand in hand with demonic influence to commit acts of wickedness. This is one reason why it’s important for governments to suppress recreational drug use and public intoxication in society. If it lets it get out of control, chaos will run rampant. The malevolent intellects will have a field day with their prey.

Now, when one takes drugs for true medicinal purposes they do not sin or commit any kind of sorcery, but even then they must often be wary, for while one might be innocent of damaging the will with such drugs, this does not mean that they will avoid temptation in an inebriated state.

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I venture to speculate that one reason American society is having so many mass shootings and other ghastly crimes is that you have a lot of people on certain drugs that damage the will, in order to address mental struggles. I am not against proper use of psychiatric drugs, but again, even when a drug is employed licitly it does not mean there is not a potential weakness to demonic temptation. So, as a society we must be exceedingly careful of avoiding over-prescription of psychiatrics, and take special care of those on such medications.

People want to construct systems to block out the pleading of the conscience and the angelic intellects from convicting them. The angels do this in order to help them of course, to bring them to order before it’s too late, but man typically seeks to purposely numb them through various means. On the other hand, the Christian, through sanctification, is seeking to essentially numb himself to the demonic intellects, to temptation, at least while he is on earth and they can act upon him.

It might help if you think of yourself locked in a temporary cosmic battle between order and chaos. Both sides are warring for your soul. This is what we call spiritual warfare. Cosmic forces are battling for your soul, and the malevolent forces have no hope of winning over you if you cooperate with grace by exercising the will according to order, or love.

You have sufficient help to win this war. You indeed have overwhelming help. The more you know about the Catholic faith, which is itself the ultimate anchor to reality, the more help you have.

A major help Catholics have is the confessional. Even Protestants running deliverance ministries, which are sort of minor exorcism (which can work, provided the demons involved are minor enough that they can be cast out with simple measures, as opposed to by Apostolic authority from or delegated by a bishop. Exorcisms and deliverance prayers are how malevolent cosmic intellects can be cast “out” of a person they have for whatever reasons “entered”), attest to the power of confession of sin at breaking one free of demonic possession. This is why confession of sin is one of the first things a priest will typically encourage a potentially possessed person to do. Often times this resolves the problem. But why?

Well, when we confess our sins we are using the faculties rationally by admitting that our behavior has been irrational. We are making a conscious decision of the will to admit we were wrong and to amend our ways. This seems to weaken demonic attachment to a person, which thrives in irrational hosts that have previously yielded their will to the demons. Demonic possession is essentially when one of these vast, malevolent cosmic intellects gets hold of the rational faculties of a person, typically due humans making conscious acts of the will to yield to these malevolent beings by saying “yes” to their temptations. Thus, demons take possession of a person’s body and faculties.

However, possession of humans and animals is not the primary goal of demons. Their primary goal is to destroy humans by causing temptation. They want as much of the created world out of harmony with God as possible, especially humanity, as humanity is made in God’s image. They also hate humanity because of the favor shown upon it by God, having such love for such weak creatures, to the point where He even elevates some humans above angels themselves, such as the Theotokos and ever-virgin Mary, more honorable than the Cherubim, and altogether more glorious than even the Seraphim, two “orders” or kinds of high ranking angelic beings.

A demon wants to get you to hell. There, they can prey upon you for eternity. The pitchforks demons hold in medieval depictions of hell are symbolic. They symbolize the ability for malevolent cosmic intellects to prey upon your imagination forever. And in hell of Gehenna, you will be both permanently fixed in evil, and without grace, and thus defenseless against these malevolent intellects. So for example they could torture you by exploiting your sexuality after the resurrection, causing you extreme temptations that you have no possible means of either satisfying or fleeing.

The medieval Christian artists tried hard to communicate to simple peasants very complex and deep theology. Angelology is not a topic an uneducated person can typically touch in significant detail. God in His mercy provides all that is necessary to people to sufficiently understand before holding them accountable.

Just as there are a myriad of different looking demons in medieval art, some large, some small, there are myriads of different types of angels. We can think of them as “snowflakes,” not in any pejorative sense, but in the sense that they’re all totally unique individuals. They have their own personalities. They are “persons.”

Angels and demons also exist within an ordered hierarchy. Consider Colossians 1:16 - For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him.”

This verse is in the context of addressing people who excessively concerned themselves with angelic beings. St. Paul was emphasizing that they are not deities, but creatures beneath God, and so they should not be excessively feared, nor should they be worshipped like gods. Angels are owed a special honor as powerful servants of God. Demons are owed disdain as permanent enemies of God.

So, “thrones, dominions, powers and principalities” are ranked categories of angels. Within them are also sub-types. According to St. Thomas Aquinas, who studied this topic in extreme detail, the orders are as follows:

Highest Order: Seraphim > Cherubim > Thrones (Satan is traditionally believed to be a fallen seraphim).

Middle Hierarchy: Dominions > Virtues > Powers

Lowest Hierarchy: Principalities > Archangels > Angels

Considering Holy Mary is above even the Seraphim, this should give you a sense of how honored she is, and highlights why she is worthy of hyperdulia, or an elevated level of veneration not due to any other Saint. She is the holiest and most powerful creature in existence. Traditionally, she is thought to have taken Satan’s place before he fell, as it is commonly believed that he was once the highest created being. And a humble, impoverished girl from Nazareth supplanting him is indeed a great humiliation to him and his followers the demons.

The corporeal world is governed by angels who execute actual administration of it. The first hierarchy receives and contemplates God’s purposes. The second orders and and administers them. The third executes them within reality (these are the typical “hands on keyboard operators” in IT parlance).

Both angels and demons can directly cause local motion, which is why demons can cause things like doors to slam shut or books to fly across a room.

We can see how demons are in a sense rogue administrators. They were created for a very high purpose in creation, but decided to abandon that purpose.

As Jude 1:6 says, “the angels too, who did not keep their own domain but deserted their proper dwelling, he has kept in eternal chains upon gloomy darkness until the judgment of the great day.”

They were supposed to, along with the rest of the angelic beings, super-intend and direct the cosmos through secondary causes such as gravity, biological reactions, and such. Instead, they’re fighting to cause as much destruction as possible.

Now, we wouldn’t say “angels are the laws of physics.” Rather, they are intelligent operators of God’s created order. This is why I said earlier that they are very integral to the corporeal or physical universe. But we can see how powerful both angels and demons are, and why forays into the occult are extremely dangerous, while leveraging angelic assistance is extremely encouraged, whether by listening to their pleas or directly reaching out to them for intercession.

Pagan religions often involve reaching out to malevolent cosmic intellects for aid, while Protestantism makes the serious error of ignoring a multitude of members of the Body of Christ by partially ignoring the benevolent cosmic intellects. Protestants do not avail themselves of a powerful aid from God, namely requesting angelic intercession directly, and so may in some cases perish eternally whereas they otherwise would not have if they had a fuller arsenal. There are sometimes tragic consequences for being wrong, even innocently so. We have to be very careful of treating ignorance as a blessing and knowledge of God as a curse.

The powers behind idols consist of cosmic powers hostile to Love. This is why a Christian society must prudently protect itself from pagan activity. This is a topic of great nuance. On one hand, we do not want people in our midst to be consorting with demons. This potentially harms us all. On the other, the government can do greater harm in some cases by insufficiently allowing a degree of religious freedom. On a personal level, we are called to actively love the pagan, not shun them. But we simply must keep in mind that there are malevolent intellects behind what they worship and take appropriate precautions. The idols may be inanimate, but that does not mean there are not demons associated with them. Scripture indicates there is.

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If a demon can possess a man, it’s fairly straightforward to conclude that a demon can also associate with an object or place (as in a haunting) or even a conception of something like a false deity or idol. Basically, what they have done is “fallen” from the purpose they had in the divine order to take another domain, a pathetic one, that of a false god or something else dishonorable and debased. We can understand something about angels by noticing that demons can be powers behind something. Since the corporeal world is good and created by God, it’s sensible to conclude angels are of course behind certain “domains,” as, say, Baal is a certain demon’s “domain.” The demon might even adopt the idol’s name.

Knowing theological things about demons and angels are a product of grace. If you want to know more you should study St. Thomas Aquinas’ angelology in particular, and I recommend focusing on Dominican-produced and Thomistic content on the topic. They are the most advanced theologians on this particular issue. In a pinch, there are many great videos featuring exorcist priest Fr. Ripperger on the topic, who is of a Thomist theological background.

Hopefully, this information helps you in your journey towards theosis. You know now, if you did not already, that when you’re being tempted there are demons preying upon your imagination. You know now that angels are actively loving you and helping you. You also know that visuals and drawings of angels are largely analogical or anthropomorphic, and that angels and demons are these invisible vast cosmic intellects, or spiritual entities that can even in some cases move matter or manipulate things like the laws of physics, causing levitation and such. Demons are nothing to ever mess with, but angels are powerful brothers you need to be calling to your aid.

Additionally, you can understand how no one on earth escapes knowing what is right. Just like every single person with sufficiently developed faculties is regularly tempted, every single person is aided by angels to know what is good. Ignoring one’s conscience deadens one to the voices of the angels, thus “alienating” grace and being turned over to an increasingly depraved intellect of your own shaping. You will simply perform worse and worse sins, as rationality declines and the will to do good weakens. The will is already corrupted due to ancestral sin, though not totally depraved, and capable of cooperating with the conscience.

Even a person who has never heard of Christ, in say Somalia or North Korea, can be saved through cooperating with angelic aid, or the “law written on their hearts.” Ultimately, God will continuously guide a person who cooperates with the aid given them to all they need, including baptism via some means, as long as they continue. Temptation permeates the earth, but so does angelic aid. And two thirds of the cosmic intellects are indeed angels, not demons who are outnumbered.

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Psalm 14:1 calls atheists “fools.” And Proverbs 26:4, 29:9, 14:7, and 18:2 among other verses tells us all about arguing with fools. Baptists and Evangelicals are really into the topic because they ignore or even shun things like the Summa Theologica, and their main outlet for learning some form of natural theology is to jump into debating with atheists about it, as their primary exposure to presuppositional arguments happens externally.

Arguing with atheists for too long is almost always casting one’s pearls before the swine. Your pearls are not only the precious truths of the faith that you have learned by grace, but also your time and sanity. Fools are not rational debaters. An atheist can make a rational argument, but because it is ultimately underpinned by a fundamentally irrational position you will always reach the point where they turn to irrational and emotional arguments, usually quickly. Atheists can be nice people, even virtuous, but they still remain fools regardless, according to Scripture, and arguing with them is an exercise in futility. We do not argue with atheists. We simply tell atheists what is true, and even obvious.

If an atheist is of good will and wants to learn arguments for God’s existence, the case is all very straightforward and simple. Many Christians tend to over-complicate it, or use arguments with fancy names. But it is sufficient to point to the Uncaused Cause and that all laws require an ultimate law giver. Do you presuppose yourself to be a better debater than Divine Revelation? What arguments do Divine Revelation give?

Sometimes Christians get into a trap of thinking that because an argument is simple or basic, it is a bad argument. Or that they need an even more complex argument to separate from the “generic” or “mass appeal apologetics” approaches. We see this when people dismiss actually great arguments such as:

The Catholic Church is the biggest and oldest, therefore it is true.

Without non-inanimate infallibility somewhere, that is visible, you cannot get to certainty and unity in many religious disputes.

Miracles make it evident that Catholicism is true.

You can trace the Papal lineage to St. Peter.

These are not slop arguments. They appeal to many people precisely because they’re actually intelligent. A simple person can grasp them because they’re clear and obvious, that is why they work at scale. When you start thinking these are bad arguments because they’re simple and have been rejected by educated people, then you have probably been arguing with sophists and taking dismissals of these arguments as proof that they’re bad. Just because someone dismisses a common sense claim does not make it wrong.

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These are arguments non-Catholic Christians really cannot answer well, and you shouldn’t just let them skip past them. At least make them struggle with them first and cobble together some kind of defense. The weakness of that defense will often eat away at them over weeks, months and years.

You have all the arguments you need to deal with atheists already, and the detailed explanations found in the writings of St. Thomas or Bl. Scotus are enrichment and elaboration. You can employ them too if an atheist will listen, but you are still usually dealing with a person who has already rejected the best and clearest argument: nature itself. Again, are you a better debater than God? Are you a greater witness than the mountains and the cosmos? Can you come up with a stronger argument than simply observing an ant hill or animals on an African Savannah, or noting the intrinsic existence of good and evil?

Sometimes we can elevate ourselves above God inadvertently by dismissing the very arguments God makes as “infantile.” There’s spiritual danger there.

When I see a Catholic engaging in a lot of atheism debates, it seems like he or she is also learning presuppositional arguments through externals like a member of Pastor Jim’s Bible Church. They might find some exciting arguments they wish to employ that they think will really break through, only to end up spinning their wheels. What such Catholics need to do is learn from internals. Learning from externals is generally a sign of poor catechesis. We have a massive theological “database” we can simply pull from, written by men and women with powerhouse intellects guided by grace.

You do not need William Lane Craig, a rare avowed monothelite, when you have better wells to drink from. A Protestant often fears the wells of the Saints because they contain arguments for the Papacy, Saintly intercession and purgatory. But they will brush aside Dr. Craig being a literal monothelite in 2026.

This shows that a Protestant does not often understand how important basic Christology is, and is often just stuck on proving God’s existence over and over. They often can’t move on from that topic - proving bare-bones deism and basic monotheism. They often focus on one tree at the expense of the forest. You can prove God exists and someone can become a Muslim or a Jew, or even a Hindu if you properly understand what they believe. While better than atheism in some ways, these religions are still non-salvific in themselves and potentially worse in other ways.

Catholics are right to engage with atheism on a limited basis, and it’s a feature, not a deficiency, of Catholic apologetics that we generally avoid wasting time on such debates. There is not a whole lot to say besides repeating what God told us through nature and Divine Revelation.

You can engage with and convert atheists through many means, the chief among them being love and demonstrations of love. It can be hard to reason with a fool, but it’s often not reason they need to convert. It’s transcendence. Active love is often the only thing that breaks through intellectual hardness.

The cosmos have already stated the case for God. Point to the cosmos and move on to active love.

Firstly, I have become busier. For a few years I had a lot of free time. This was a huge blessing and I had so much time that I wanted to give some back to God, and having some talent for social media marketing and a serious debating background forged largely through political science clubs during my college years, X was actually a great fit. But I no longer have all the free time I once did, and it’s also a blessing not to have it, as I am busy with some exciting activities.

Secondly, I have returned to playing sports, specifically hockey. Between injuries and illnesses I had been partly sidelined for years, only engaging in powerlifting. This has put a lot of muscle on my frame, but I need organized sports to keep my edge physically. So, I have begun playing hockey again, and I am taking a year to essentially “rehab” to start playing adult hockey at its highest recreational level. I have come to see this is something I actually do need in my life to help me spiritually, as spiritual battles become easy when I have activities that cultivate the virtues. I want to help create a modern spirituality that can be lived around sports, to help get more Catholics healthy spiritually, mentally and physically. My daughters are now starting to play sports competitively too, and I have to dedicate time to training them and supporting them.

Thirdly, I believe it’s my job, regardless of audience size, to now move beyond apologetics into theology. There is a lack of Byzantine insight in American Catholic media, as well as perspectives informed from someone more informed regarding the Old Testament and ancient Jewish sources. For example, did you know the story of Judas’ repentance is support for the Confessional? Judas repented, but because he lacked the virtue of hope, having rejected it, he did not seek absolution as did St. Peter. St. Peter clung to hope and went to Christ and was absolved. St. Peter had repented before Christ absolved him. So, when Protestants say “just go directly to God,” while there are many arguments for the Confessional, one is that there is more to repenting than being sorry and confessing it. Absolution must be obtained, and there is only one way God gave us to obtain it with certainty.

Judas did confess to the Sanhedrin, which you will notice did not absolve Judas, but St. Peter confessed to the everlasting High Priest, who gave the power to absolve as He absolved St. Peter to the Apostles and their successors. This is an insight you don’t really hear among Latin Churches that I learned from a Byzantine Catholic priest, and I have enough familiarity with Roman Catholicism to know exactly where most Roman Catholics probably have not heard of something before. The Catholic Church will become predominant in the West again partly because it will be a theological juggernaut that combines Roman insight with that of the other Suis Juris Churches. No one will be able to compete with it. Other Catholic groups are starting to become prime contributors, especially Byzantine Catholics and Maronites. But expect to see more from Armenians, Coptic Catholics and others soon.

Fourthly, debating people online was for a couple years a way to refine arguments and actually grow in faith. St. Thomas Aquinas cites public debating within a narrow range of circumstances as an activity that builds the faith. While I can always learn more about false sects in particular, and engage more directly with other false religions and atheism broadly, the utility of this is not yielding the fruit it used to for me. By this I mean I am hardly learning anything new.

So, debating becomes even more of a time sink. It informs Catholics and those leaning Catholic, but it cannot pierce a hardened heart. It can help remove intellectual obstacles to the reception of Divine and Catholic Faith, which is saving faith that is also free of invincible ignorance, but it requires one to be an earnest seeker of truth. What I have discovered is the majority of people you debate with are actually not earnest seekers. This surprised me, as I have always assumed myself to be one earnest seeker in a sea of them. Now I see that most people are actually not earnestly seeking the truth. Most people are actively rejecting it. The opponents of Catholicism are not merely misguided, but much of the time possess a darkened intellect, through their own fault. So winning an argument with them will not change anything. They do not lack information, they are actively rejecting grace somewhere.

In fact, without naming names, I have discovered that a few non-Catholic people that I once respected are bad faith actors. I have even learned that some Catholic apologists are bad faith actors too, and are involved largely for monetary reasons or are driven by pride and ego. So while there is a place for debate, and I am not against people doing it, the conditions for fruitful debate are narrow.

Fifthly, and forgive the term as it can be offensive to some, I have become a major proponent of “Christian Retardmaxxing.” I am an overthinker. Occasionally, this helps me solve hard problems and answer difficult questions. Usually, it does more harm than good to me as an individual. But just retardmaxxing I have already seen very good results spiritually.

This approach is really what the Catholic Church has primarily taught people for centuries, with massive spiritual success. It is true that you just need to say your prayers, go to Mass and read your Bible. Aren’t doing all three? Then you don’t have time for anything more, sorry. Doing more will be actively harmful.

Lack of retardmaxxing is behind the one or two cases of self-destruction we see among Catholic apologists and pop theologians every single year online. This even goes for non-Catholics. They’re not doing the basics of living a Christian life, and they get wrecked while trying to win money and/or prestige utilizing Catholicism or Christianity broadly. Every e-Catholic crashout and scandal is an instance of someone who isn’t retardmaxxing and doing the basics, but is trying to supplement income or personal ego through apologetics anyway.

You have to be retardmaxxing first before you can do anything well as a Catholic.

Sixthly, and related to point five, I have been undisciplined in my own prayer rule and spiritual practice, as a result of lacking time (due to wasting too much of it). X in general detracts from time to see spiritual obligations through daily, at least for me. I do have another, anonymous, account, but it’s strictly used for keeping up with sports and video games (it is important to have normal hobbies, rightly ordered). I hardly spend any time on it, as it’s of a different nature. X can be helpful for many people, but using it as I had been is not helpful for me holistically.

Seventhly, I have been promising a book for a couple of years. Well, I am now working on that book more diligently, and I have decided to make it free and open as I originally intended. Some have advised me to publish and sell it, and their opinions are wise and informed, but I strongly feel God wants me to make it free and publicly available. It will be a massive work that makes the positive case for Catholicism, and then tackles false religions and explains why they’re wrong and irrational. It’s not exactly a catechism, but something between a Summa and a treatise. I wanted to write this simply to teach my children and help with their catechism, but I know for certain that this can help others. I do plan to accept donations from those who find it helpful, as donations can be used to eliminate tasks (such as yard work) and allow me to write more. If I can shift responsibilities I can produce more, simple as.

Eighthly, I haven’t been a good friend on X. I leave too many of you in my DM’s unread. This is because I’m too busy to get to everything. I truly want to have relationships with the manifold people who have supported my content with likes, shares, comments and additional insight, but I also can’t keep up with everyone on X via DM’s. I am exploring other ways to get this under control while maintaining direct contact with some individuals.

Ninthly, I have a tendency to sometimes lose charity when I debate people who are obtuse, irrational, or even wicked. You can’t let sins in others become sins in you. Little venial sins add up and damage one spiritually. I also don’t believe in debating the same people over and over. St. Paul teaches us in Titus to move on from heretics after only a few interactions. Otherwise, you are casting pearls before the swine (not an insult, so much as understanding they are gentiles). There are many Protestant, Sedevacantist, Mormon, “Orthbro” and other accounts that act in bad faith, and need to be ignored, and I want to stop feeding them.

We should admonish and move on, and continually engage with truth seekers. Who is a truth seeker and who is a heretic is difficult to ascertain, and we must use prudence. But frankly I believe many people are not honest interlocutors. I still maintain good relations with certain popular Protestant and Orthodox individuals in particular, even though we fiercely disagree, because I do not get the sense that they are bad faith in any way.

Lastly, I believe that many “e-Catholics” need to move to more legitimate ministry. Become a member of an actual Catholic organization like the Knights of Columbus, or even your parish men’s or women’s group, and serve within it. Become a deacon or even a priest. Let’s stop confusing callings to serve with a calling to be an e-celeb. I want to help established groups and do more local service.

My mission can now be fulfilled through Substack and whatever platform I start publishing my book on. The book will be a sort of wiki that is continuously updated, with updates noted on Substack. So Substack will be the best and really only place to follow me going forward. I am not disappearing from the Internet, simply leaving X. I know this will dent my reach and popularity, but reach and popularity are not a high priority.

I will continue to pray for those who blessed me or even did otherwise, and I hope you will pray for me. I would also love to hear from you in the comments section here, or via Substack DM’s (please be patient with my replies).

Firstly, we have to note that the controversy over this topic is almost entirely among American Catholics. It’s hardly a topic of debate in places like Italy, Spain or Chile. These places have banned capital punishment for years now. And even further, it’s a topic that mostly concerns American Catholics with a Republican political bent in particular. Globally, there are very few Catholics that had or have a problem with Pope Francis’ changes, or the fact that every Pope since Pope St. John Paul II has called for the abolition of the death penalty. This is a settled issue in most places.

Secondly, we have to note what kind of restriction is in place. It is an authentic act of the Magisterium, which is owed religious assent of the intellect and will (Lumen Gentium 25), restricting support for capital punishment, and declaring it “inadmissible.” That might be hard for some people to grapple with. This does not mean you have to intellectually agree with supporting the abolition of the death penalty though. There is important-to-note nuance here. The reason is because it is based on a prudential judgement on the part of the Pope and bishops.

Over the centuries since Christ, the Church slowly banned slavery altogether, even though Scripture, Christ and the Apostles did no such thing. This is because slavery is contrary to the Gospel. This is not to say all forms of indentured servitude are an intrinsic evil. An intrinsic evil is an evil that can never be allowed under any circumstances. It is always wrong.

Certain forms of indentured servitude can be allowed if societal conditions are so primitive that many will starve to death without a debt peonage or bond servant system. What the Bible allows is not chattel slavery like the formerly Mainline Protestant United States once had, using enslaved Africans, but a form of servitude where indentured servants had some rights.

Banning slavery wholesale in 33 AD would have gotten many people killed. There was no welfare system, and social support networks were limited to familial bonds. Over time, society evolved enough that doing away with all forms of slavery completely was possible, and so Rome, along with the Orthodox Churches as well, banned slavery altogether, and cracked down on individuals and governments still trying to leverage it for wealth generation and colonial purposes.

Indentured servitude is not an intrinsic evil, but it is contrary to the Gospel, because the Gospel is a call to the Kingdom of God here and now. It is unfathomable that there could be slavery in heaven and on the new earth, the fulfillment of the Kingdom, and thus there should ideally not be any slavery in the Kingdom now. Church leaders are saying that since we can ban capital punishment, and in fact banning it would save lives and give souls more time to repent, it should now be banned.

Pope Francis said that capital punishment is “contrary to the Gospel.” Indeed it is. Is there going to be a death penalty in the fulfilled Kingdom? No. And the Gospel seeks the repentance of all men and women. Therefore, capital punishment should only be tolerated as long as it is strictly necessary and there is no better alternative.

The Pope and Bishops are not saying that capital punishment is an intrinsic evil.

Indeed, God even proscribed the death penalty for certain crimes, including disagreeing with the Levitical rulings in a matter of dispute, a foreshadowing that disagreeing with the decrees of the Church in disputes would result in spiritual death.

So, the Church can never teach that capital punishment is an intrinsic evil. It does not and has not. I am not aware of any bishops or priests who have said that the death penalty is an intrinsic evil, but if any have, they are wrong and are accidentally impugning God and the Prophets.

The language used by individuals such as Pope Francis can sound like they are calling capital punishment intrinsically evil, but I have never come across a case where this was proven so. Rather, people have interpreted the bishops and Pope without sufficient charity. Others have not sought out a fuller understanding, but have jumped to harsh conclusions all too swiftly, although they are not exactly lacking in charity.

Perhaps certain bishops and popes could be more careful with their language and use more linguistic precision, but we are required to view others with maximal charity, and presume the best in good faith.

When the Catholic Church banned slavery it made a prudential judgement. Its leadership decided it was prudent to ban it. Similarly, it has decided it is now prudent to ban capital punishment. And that’s where we can disagree. We can disagree with the prudential judgements of Church leadership and not sin. But, these prudential judgements are indeed authoritative. The Catechism is authoritative teaching, even though it’s fallible.

The Church has a special charism of protection even in its fallible magisterium that ensures it cannot bind the faithful to sin in any matter of faith and morals. It is not immoral to support abolishing capital punishment. Following the Church is always safe.

People who say that it is immoral to ban it must absolutize the death penalty as a moral good under certain circumstances, meaning any act of clemency would be a moral wrong. But St. Augustine explicitly denies this idea, and the Old Testament itself had stories and scenarios where clemency was granted, including for King David, who murdered a man.

“If, then, there were no other means established to curb the malice of the wicked, extreme necessity might perhaps urge that such men be put to death, though, in our view, if no milder punishment could be imposed on them, we would prefer that they be released rather than that the sufferings of our brothers be avenged by the shedding of their blood. But now since some means can also be taken to show that the Church is meek and to check the audacity of the brash, why do you not yield in favor of the more foresighted and gentler sentence, as judges are permitted to do even in cases not pertaining to the Church? Fear, then, along with us the judgment of God the Father, and teach the forbearance of our mother. For, when you do so, the Church does it on whose account you do it and as whose son you do it. Use goodness to contend with the evil. They tore members from a living body by their cruel crime; by your act of mercy cause their members, which they used for wicked actions, to be by their wholeness of service for some good work.” - St. Augustine, Letter 134 to Apringius 4

Absolutizing the death penalty impugns God, the Church Fathers and the Prophets equally as declaring capital punishment an intrinsic evil. Do not forget that Jesus pardoned the adulteress who was about to be stoned, and the death penalty for adultery was just and in accords with the perfect Law.

Since the Church cannot bind you to a doctrinal error, you must give full religious assent of the intellect and will to its binding decrees, and the Catechism is a binding teaching document.

Thus, a Catholic should not advocate for the death penalty or promote its expansion, given the Church’s authoritative teaching. A Catholic cannot support its implementation, or vote for politicians strictly because they promise to implement it. There is nuance here. You can vote for a pro-capital punishment politician, just not because they are pro-capital punishment specifically. If you happened to have two perfectly equal candidates who had the same position on every topic besides the death penalty, you would be morally obligated to support the one who is opposed to it, even if you personally disagree with the prudential judgement of the Church on the matter.

In the real world, particularly in the United States, usually a politician who is for the death penalty is also pro-life, and many politicians who run against them are pro-abortion. Abortion is a greater wrong than supporting the death penalty, so you’re in good standing voting for the pro-death penalty politician if you want to.

In the real world, this ban has little practical effect as concerns voting, especially in the USA.

Furthermore, if you believe that heinous criminals, such as serial killers and abusers of children, deserve the death penalty, I totally agree with you. The Pope probably also does.

But, just because they deserve it, does not mean we should actually implement it. There are other considerations.

Taking a life is not a trivial thing. Have you ever considered what life is? What is animation? It is participation in God’s creative act. It is the breath of God that animated Adam. And this is passed on to all mankind. When you kill a person, you do destroy an image of God, and in some way snuff out the breath of God on earth that was in them.

This is no light matter.

Unless we are forced to kill because there is absolutely no better alternative, then we should not kill. Therefore, even though many men deserve death, we should not kill them, because despite them deserving it, there is a better alternative in 2026 for the whole of society.

And again, this is where you can disagree. You can believe, prudentially, that society has not evolved enough to eliminate capital punishment, and that maybe it never will. That’s fine. You do not sin. But, you’re not the Pope or bishops. It’s not your prudential judgement call to make at the ecclesial level. So you have to follow the call of those who have the appropriate authority, even if it is hard.

If it is hard, it is sanctifying for you. Do not resist your own sanctification. It never goes well.

The Church’s teaching has developed in its application, not in its moral principle. The State retains the theoretical authority to inflict capital punishment - the Church now judges that in modern circumstances this authority should not be exercised. One way to state this is that the government retains the intrinsic right to carry out capital punishment, but it now lacks an extrinsic right.

To summarize, the death penalty is not an intrinsic evil. Given the Church’s authoritative teaching, Catholics should not advocate for or promote the death penalty. A Catholic can have a private prudential judgment concerning the Church’s decision, and does not sin by believing the Church has “jumped the gun.”

Absolutizing the death penalty by claiming it’s a requirement for certain crimes, and that no clemency is possible for all or some, impugns God just like saying that capital punishment is an intrinsic evil. It also impugns a number of the Holy Saints, such as St. Augustine.

Many pro-death penalty Catholics make the critical error of absolutizing the death penalty in an effort to defend their position. It is ok and normal to believe that heinous individuals deserve the death penalty, you are correct, but the Church has declared there’s a better alternative for the whole of society - long term or permanent imprisonment.

Lastly, no prior Church teaching has been contradicted at all with the death penalty ban. The ban is prudential, not doctrinal. Similarly, the ban on slavery does not contradict Scripture or the Apostles. The Church possesses the authority from God to bind and to loose, and it has chosen to do so on this topic. If it is hard for you to obey it, you are in a position to benefit heavily from this because submission will help sanctify your soul.

Let us close with a prayer:

Dear Lord, please give those who struggle with submission to the Catholic Church on this topic abundant graces to be obedient. Help the Church to better elucidate and explain its positions in great detail. Guide our leaders words, including those spoken “off the cuff,” and help them to be careful in what they say, so that they will not be misunderstood. Finally, we beseech thee to grant us great charity so that we will always interpret the words of others, clergy or otherwise, in perfect charity. We thank you Lord for a Church that is divinely protected from binding the faithful to any error. In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.

If the early Church taught PDP (Passive Divine Protection), we should consider PDP model groups, because everyone besides Catholicism adheres to a PDP model, not only the Orthodox. The Orthodox often profess that the entire hierarchy can become corrupted, and many say that someday the laity might have to save the Church. This is the only position an Orthodox Christian can hold on the matter given their history, and what they believe about Rome as well.

This article should be seen as a sequel to my prior article, so I encourage people to read it first if they have not already. But here is a summary of the differences between ADP and PDP:

ADP (Active Divine Protection): This is the Catholic model of the Church’s indefectibility. It holds that the Holy Spirit actively sustains and protects the Church, and especially the Magisterium, so that she can never bind the faithful to error in matters of faith and morals.

The Church is infallibly guarded at all times. Christ’s promise “I am with you always” from Matthew 28:20 is taken literally - His divine protection is constant and active over the Magisterium.

Doctrinal development occurs within this protection, even when understanding deepens, no dogma ever reverses. The papacy, councils and bishops in communion with Rome are the visible, juridical means through which this protection is mystically exercised.

ADP = Christ is still with us, guiding the Church’s teaching infallibly and actively the same as when He was physically with the Apostles during His ministry.

PDP (Passive Divine Protection): This is the Orthodox and Protestant model (though for different reasons). It holds that God only intervenes occasionally to prevent total collapse, but not that He guarantees constant, active infallibility in the Church’s teaching.

The Church can drift into widespread error, division or confusion for decades or centuries. God steps in only to “course-correct” or preserve a remnant. The result is uncertainty and lack of epistemic unity. There is no visible, divinely guaranteed authority that can settle disputes with finality. At best there is an undefined “universal reception” principle.

PDP = Christ is with us in a vague or occasional sense, but you have to use personal discernment informed by Scripture and perhaps tradition to personally judge what the authorities bind and loose, because it could be erroneous. You cannot fully trust them and receive truth and guidance in docility. They are not strictly owed religious submission of the intellect and will as they cannot be entirely trusted.

Let’s start with the time of Jesus Christ. Did the Church have an ADP or PDP system after the Resurrection? An ADP system, as it had an infallible and physically present and visible head on earth, Jesus Christ.

How about after the Ascension with the Apostles? It had an ADP system, as Luke 10:16 confirms. The Apostles could err as men, but no stain of error could touch the doctrine of the Church. If you followed the doctrine of the Apostles, you could not be misled, and it was impossible that the Apostles could bind any error. Those who heard them in their official teaching capacity heard Christ.

How about after the Apostles? If we were going to have a PDP model going forward, then we should have seen either Christ or the Apostles announce that we were heading into a PDP era somehow and to study up on Scripture and tradition so you can be ready to personally discern the binding actions of the bishops going forward.

But the opposite was taught. “I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.” In Matthew 28:20, we see that Jesus is always with us. When Jesus was with the Disciples, did they have active divine protection over the Church as concerns faith and morals? Of course, because God cannot bind one to error. He can neither deceive nor be deceived.

So the Orthodox claim boils down to “Christ is not with us through the visible Church.” Of course, they would not put it in these terms at all. They would say Christ is with us, but in a mysterious manner that prevents total collapse, and a true remnant will always exist, just as the Protestants claim. But is that what it means that Jesus is always with us? No. It means that the conditions of the Church are always such that it is as if Christ is actually with us, because He is.

In fact, Catholicism asserts that not only is our position in 2025 the same as the Apostles after the Ascension, but SUPERIOR.

As John 16:7 says, “But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go. For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you. But if I go, I will send him to you.”

Is it really “better” if we have a PDP system and we cannot validate with Christ or an infallible, actively protected Church whether or not we understand divine revelation properly? No, obviously not. Catholicism is the only religion that can properly affirm John 16:7 as true. It is better for us today epistemically than the Apostles had it during Christ’s earthly ministry. Why? Because the Holy Spirit has been poured out and convicts the world regarding sin and righteousness.

The Spirit helps guide us to the truth, and understand it. This is why doctrine develops, and we now have a firmer and deeper understanding of the Trinity, Christology, iconography and other topics than we did as a Church in 35 AD.

As John 16:12-13 says:

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.”

The Spirit is actively guiding us into all truth. If He didn’t, we would be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. Your Patriarch could say something and you could not be sure if he was right or not. A controversy would come up where different Church authorities disagreed, and you could not be sure who was right if different groups sought to bind the laity to different conclusions.

It would turn into subjectivism and mere arguments of persuasion rather than receiving truth by the power of God. Men could claim that they heard the Spirit on a matter of dispute, and without an infallible Magisterium they would not be able to ultimately validate that they actually did hear the Spirit and not their own delusions. If you do not believe me, watch an Oriental Orthodox Christian and Eastern Orthodox Christian argue about which subjective criteria made Ephesus II or Chalcedon legitimate or illegitimate. Neither side can produce an infallible authority to settle the dispute.

Unity would be impossible if Patriarchs tried to bind their Churches to different conclusions. But what does the Bible say the Church would be like?

Ephesians 4:13-15 says:

“Until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ; so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the cunning of men, by their craftiness in deceitful wiles. Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ.”

It says that we will “attain to unity,” and grow into the Head. Are the Eastern Orthodox growing into unity when they cannot decide on what a valid baptism is? Are they attaining to unity as concerns the font of ecclesial authority and who can grant autocephaly? Can they even settle these things in a timely manner so that generations of Orthodox can know with certainty what the truth is? A multi-decade or multi-century delay in settling these issues is as good as a complete failure, as now many generations of people have been unable to know what a valid baptism is in Orthodoxy, with certainty.

A PDP model exposes one to being tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine. You can’t know the truth until God steps in when the ship is about to sink, and even then, only maybe in many cases. And for Protestants it is much worse. Orthodoxy is still mostly on the same page. However, can you trust the binding and loosing authority of bishops who could bind you to commit sin and believe heresy like Patriarch Sergius and the Monothelites tried to do to Saint Maximus the Confessor? St. Maximus’ defense was not only to persuade the heretics of dyotheletism, but to appeal to Apostolic power in Rome. St. Maximus knew that if his Patriarch was saying something that sounded wrong, he could look to Rome.

“How much more in the case of the Romans, which from old until now presides over all Churches under the sun? Having surely received this canonically, as well as from councils and the Apostles, as from the Princes of the latter (Sts. Peter and Paul), and being numbered in their company, she is subject to no writings or issues in synodical documents, on account of the eminence of her Patriarchate… even as in all these things all are equally subject to her (Rome), according to Sacerdotal Law. And so when, without fear, but with all holy and becoming confidence, those ministers (the Popes) are of the truly firm and immovable rock, that is of the most great and Apostolic Church of Rome.” - (Maximus, in J.B. Mansi, ed. Amplissima Collectio Concilorum, volume 10 [c. 650 A.D.)

And St. Maximus further confirmed that one looks to Rome for doctrinal safety.

“Everyone who purely and rightly confesses the Lord looks directly towards the Most Holy Roman Church and her confession [doctrine] and faith, as to a sun of unfailing light, awaiting from her the brilliant radiance of the sacred dogmas of our Fathers, according to that which the inspired and holy Councils have piously decreed. For, from the descent of the Incarnate Word among us, all the Churches in every part of the world have held the greatest Church alone to be their based and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ our Savior, the gates of hell will never prevail against her, that she has the keys of the orthodox confession, and she shuts up and locks every heretical mouth which speaks against the Most High.” (Opuscula Theologica et Polemica, Migne, Patrologica Graeca, volume 90 [640 A.D.]

St. Maximus the Confessor explicitly affirms the ADP model in that quote, even tying it to the Incarnation, which we will discuss more shortly. I believe the prayers of St. Maximus may have helped me understand and articulate this very concept.

The Scriptures never suggest that the Church’s indefectibility would shift from an Active Divine Protection (ADP) model to a Passive Divine Permission (PDP) model. In fact, every prophetic and apostolic passage about the New Covenant points to a perpetual guidance of the Holy Spirit, not a sporadic rescue mission.

Old Covenant Epistemology

Under the Old Covenant, God permitted cycles of apostasy and restoration because the Spirit had not yet been poured out on all flesh (Joel 2:28). But under the New Covenant, the Spirit dwells in the Church as its very soul (John 14:16-17), making her indefectibility intrinsic, not occasional. To claim otherwise is to say Pentecost failed - that the Spirit only intervenes when things go wrong, instead of abiding continually to preserve the Bride from error.

During the Old Covenant, revelation was incomplete and veiled, so certainty was also limited in the truth. This is why the Old Covenant emphasized obedience so heavily. The Jew could have certainty that the Law and the Prophets were established by God, and that the Seat of Moses and the Priesthood were authoritative judicial arbiters of how to carry out the law.

So the Old Covenant did have a means of epistemic certainty, but what you could be certain in doctrinally was limited and very narrow. And it was based on the authority of God revealing as well, as Christ points to Moses and the Prophets (Luke 16:31) as sufficient over new signs.

The divine pedagogy trained the intellect through raw obedience until the veil was removed in Christ, when truth itself became visible and living. Then an ADP model of epistemology permanently went into effect. Protestants and Orthodox regress into a dangerous pre-incarnation state epistemically.

When men can no longer recognize divine authority embodied and active, they become soft targets, as the future antichrist will likely promise a visible unity and “certainty” apart from God. Once the Church’s living voice is denied to focus on writings, people will inevitably seek a counterfeit living voice for guidance.

The Post-Apostolic Church

Let us examine the post-Apostolic Church. We have established that the Scriptures never taught any kind of transition from ADP back to Old Covenant-like PDP. It has also been shown that ADP existed after Pentecost, as the last living Apostle died nearly 60 years later. It would be wild if after Pentecost things were less epistemically certain.

In the early Church, disputes with heretics typically turned to leaning on Apostolic Succession as proof. When disputes arose among those with Apostolic Succession, then Rome was held up as the center of sacerdotal (priestly) unity, the epistemic rock of the Church. Divine power and authority is the proof of what’s true, not mere crude persuasion. Christ established an authority endowed with divine power to tell us what is correct and settle all disputes so that there would never be any occasion for schism.

A Demonstration from the Fathers

St. Ignatius of Antioch

St. Irenaeus:

St. Cyprian:

St. Optatus:

St. Jerome:

The Post-Apostolic Early Church Followed a Catholic ADP Model of Epistemology

It is all very straightforward and plain. This shows that the early Church definitively believed in ADP. If they believed in PDP then they wouldn’t be able to appeal to Apostolic Succession and Rome for unity and certainty. Such appeals would be senseless. Would a modern Eastern Orthodox Christian appeal to Apostolic Succession to settle an argument? Not unless he believed it narrowly resided only in the Orthodox, something not even the Patriarchs and Synods of Orthodoxy profess, much less in unison. They never declared such via a Council.

Does any Orthodox Christian appeal to Moscow or Constantinople as sources of “sacerdotal unity” to settle disagreement as concerns the Orthodox Church of Ukraine? No. Because such a thing presupposes ADP exists. It supposes an actively infallible Magisterium rooted in the Apostles.

And this is why I would assert Eastern Orthodoxy is disproven.

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The Orthodox do many things wonderfully well. They focus strongly on the Patristics. They do not mess with the Divine Liturgy. They are much less likely to have liturgical abuse than Roman Catholics specifically. Something like a “pride Mass” is highly unlikely in Orthodoxy. Such abuses are exceedingly rare among the 1.4 billion member Catholic Church, with over 400,000 priests, but Orthodoxy should be rightly commended for adhering strictly to liturgical tradition. But it is still disproven by history and epistemology.

No Eastern Orthodox today would appeal to Apostolic Succession specifically as an epistemic proof of truth, because Orthodoxy no longer believes Apostolic Succession confers infallible authority. The early Church did, and when pressed, looked to Rome to maintain that belief, as Apostolic authorities eventually clashed. Eastern Orthodoxy has no such Divine Anchor to maintain the ancient belief.

The true Church is known not only by her holiness, but by her indefectibility and epistemic certainty - her power to teach with God’s own authority. You should become Catholic if you are not already, that way you can receive true doctrine on faith and morals from a visible and divinely protected Church like St. Ignatius, St. Optatus or St. Maximus did. I can advise or help one with this if you need it. This goes for Protestants as well.

We want you in the Catholic Church because we know with certainty that it is true, and we want you to be free from error. There are modernists in both Orthodoxy and Catholicism. But Catholicism, being divinely protected, cannot be overcome by modernists. Modernism is just the latest testing of the Bride. She cannot lose.

The Devil’s First Trick

St. Cyprian had a fit when he tried to promote a quasi-Donatist view of baptism but was overruled by Pope Stephen, who was validated as entirely correct, as Rome cannot err in settling doctrinal disputes. St. Cyprian remained in communion with Rome and eventually dropped the issue, but the Pope following Pope Stephen maintained Pope Stephen’s stance.

Even in modern times, Catholics love Rome and the Papacy, until they disagree with it, and a small minority have a meltdown and tend to embrace a PDP model, either taking up sedevacantism, something that resembles Gallicanism, or defecting to Orthodoxy or Protestantism. They think everything was right for nearly 2000 years and then because it disagrees with their fallible assessment of Scripture and historical Church documents it is now wrong. They all claim to be personally led by the Holy Spirit instead of to and by an actively infallible Church led by the Holy Spirit.

The First Temptation Was Epistemological

Satan’s first attack was not against virtue but against knowledge. His question to Eve - “did God really say?” - was not merely a test of obedience, it was an attempt to sever divine revelation from divine authority. The devil’s oldest trick is to undermine epistemology. Once man ceases to receive truth from God’s authority, he begins to “invent” it through private discernment. At that moment, he becomes “siftable” - tossed like wheat, precisely as Christ warned while addressing St. Peter specifically. The following diagram from Joshua Charles and the Catholic Eternal Christendom ministry illustrates this.

As Luke 22:31-32 confirms, “Simon, Simon, listen! Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your own faith may not fail; and you, when once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Satan therefore seeks, in every age, to replace active divine protection (ADP) with passive divine protection (PDP) - to persuade men that the Church’s authority can fail, that God might only intervene to prevent total collapse, and that each person must navigate truth by their own reason or spiritual “sense.” This is not humility, it is the old pride of Eden reborn as pious subjectivism and relativism. Only St. Peter can prevent Christians from falling into this, as Christ specifically prayed that his own faith would not fail, not the other Apostles. Only St. Peter can prevent us from being sifted like wheat.

Some might object: “But didn’t you personally discern that Catholicism is true?” Indeed, but, divine faith is not mere human discernment. God is infallible, and He gives an infallible gift of faith that must terminate in an infallible object - the visible, indefectible Church endowed with His own authority. If faith terminates in a fallible authority, then it produces fallible opinion instead of receiving infallible doctrine from God. In some cases, it might not even be divine faith terminating in a fallible authority due to invincible ignorance, but only a natural opinion about religious matters.

If, through no fault of one’s own, a person has not yet reached that infallible terminus, if they sincerely believe in God but remain outside the Church due to ignorance or misinformation, then divine grace has been prevented from reaching its intended end, although the virtue of faith has not been rejected. The role of Catholic evangelization and apologetics is largely to heal that epistemic wound: to help bring divine faith to its fullness, to lead souls to the visible authority God established so that truth may be known with clarity and certainty, that the soul would be optimally protected.

By grace all apologetics seek to help souls overcome the deficiencies of knowledge that keep them from the fullness of faith. For the Spirit leads not into confusion, but into all truth.

At one point in time my faith did not rest in Christ and His infallible Church, which is the ongoing physical incarnation of Christ through the members of His Mystical Body. If there’s an ongoing physical incarnation, then epistemologically we must be able to validate with Christ what is true through that ongoing physical incarnation. I want what I have for each person. A faith built upon the Rock Christ established and upholds - the Rock of St. Peter’s infallible Confession.

As St. Augustine put it: “Rome has spoken, the case is closed.”

Holy Father Augustine was commenting on the authority of the pope and the fact that councils of the Church are authoritative if approved by the bishop of Rome, which cannot bind the Church to error.

Could anyone say that about Constantinople, or Moscow? Could these Sees settle a matter for the whole Church through divine authority? If Moscow accepts a synod or council with binding doctrinal and moral decrees, is the case closed? Why didn’t St. Augustine say “Rome, Antioch and Alexandria have spoken, the case is closed?”

Binding and Loosing

Christ Himself, acting through His Mystical Body, banned both polygamy and slavery authoritatively. This is why the Church’s Magisterium is infallible - if binding and loosing authority is to work, and Christ ratifies it in heaven, Christ cannot ratify sin or doctrinal error. Even the Ordinary Magisterium has a charism of divine protection where it can err, but it cannot bind to error, which is why it is owed religious submission of the intellect and will. How does an Eastern Orthodox Christian know whether or not a binding action of his bishop is actually bound in heaven or not?

Can an Eastern Orthodox Christian give his hierarchy religious assent of the intellect and will? This is the crux of the matter. The answer is “no.”

His Patriarch could be like Patriarch Sergius, or as what Orthodoxy believes of the Papacy in 1054 AD. He could be like Patriarch Dioscorus leading up to Chalcedon. Instead of obeying divine authority in docility, knowing that even when it does err prudentially it cannot bind one to commit sin or believe a serious doctrinal error, the Eastern Orthodox Christian must apply Protestant style self-discernment and self-shepherding to a large degree. An Eastern Catholic might have a Patriarch who errs, but he can always look to Rome as the epistemic anchor and know what is right doctrinally, and thus can submit in docility as St. Peter cannot be overruled by another Apostle.

Since all doctrine flows through an infallible terminus in Catholicism, I can obey my bishop in docility. Even if he gives me an absurd fasting regulation that’s too strict or even too generous, or errs in a prudential matter, obeying him is obeying a divinely instituted authority. He cannot implement a doctrine without Rome’s approval, and Rome cannot err when canonizing a resolution to a dispute. So I can simply follow my bishop, even if he was materially heretical.

An Eastern Orthodox Christian has to look at Scripture and the Church Fathers, as well as the Saints, and triangulate what he thinks the Holy Spirit is saying and decide which bishops are right and wrong in a dispute over something such as baptismal validity, and who God is ratifying in heaven. An Ecumenical Council requires “universal reception,” which could take years to ascertain, and was lacking during prior councils including Chalcedon (where it was not received by Armenia, most of Antioch and nearly all of Alexandria).

Who can compel a council, especially without a Byzantine emperor, and with so many synods and Patriarchs now in Eastern Orthodoxy? Who counts as “universal?” At what point is someone not included who should be, or someone included who should not be? These are questions you do not ask if you have St. Peter with you.

As Joe Heschmeyer pointed out recently, the Orthodox did not always appeal to mystery so heavily to settle or explain fairly basic theological issues. They seem to do so now because they apparently cannot hold an Ecumenical Council any longer.

Divine Mystery

The more you know through divine illumination, the more mysteries open up to you. The awe produced by revelation doesn’t shrink as you understand it, it grows. The Catholic faith explains a lot of topics some others feel best left to mystery, but once something is understood thoroughly, 100 new greater mysteries arise. Thus the Catholic sees the full starry sky, not merely what can be seen through a narrow skylight.

God is not a riddle to be solved but an infinite horizon of intelligibility. The clearer the light of truth, the deeper the mysteries you can behold without distortion.

The Orthodox paradigm keeps divine revelation in a veiled mode, as if Pentecost never fully removed the curtain. It treats the Spirit’s guidance as intermittent illumination - bursts of divine help during crises - rather than a continuous, active protection (ADP). That’s why they often seem to see mystery and authority as inversely related: the more authority you claim, the less mystery you supposedly have.

It is not that Catholics have “sanitized” or “neutered” the faith by explaining, say, transubstantiation, but have moved the boundaries of mystery further, and have found greater understanding but also greater mystery.

Catholicism believes that Christ unveiled the veil permanently (2 Corinthians 3:12-18) and gave the Church His own mind so that the faithful could enter deeper into the mystery without falling into any error. To discern where this is, we need an anchor of divine authority, not merely a bunch of texts to self-interpret and say “this is what I think orthodoxy is.”

The divine speech act that is divine revelation became self-interpreting through Christ, who instituted the Church as His perpetual living voice. So what was provisional (the PDP model with occasional divine interventions through prophets who possessed “episodic infallibility”) is replaced by an ever-active presence of divine protection (ADP) through the Spirit.

The Seat of Moses and the Sanhedrin had narrow juridical authority on how to practice the law. The Church does not decide only disciplinary matters, but settles what divine revelation even is and how it’s to be understood and articulated. This is because we operate as if Christ is still physically with us. He operates through the bishops in communion with St. Peter to affect epistemic certainty through infallibility, the same as when He was physically present with St. Peter and the Apostles.

Heresy is infinite in potential form. Therefore, orthodoxy cannot be merely “not heretical,” as Pope Leo XIII pointed out in the 1800’s. This is a big issue for Eastern Orthodoxy. True faith must be positive adherence to the Church’s infallible rule of belief, not merely an absence of errors. We affirm the Church is true, and therefore, we have to know what the Church teaches, and we cannot accept divergences on things like baptismal validity.

A Church that demands positive adherence must have an epistemic anchor somewhere, or else it cannot be trustworthy. Even if you believe “universal acceptance” is what makes an Ecumenical Council legitimate, you have to answer “by whom?” By the Armenians? By only Eastern Europeans? Does the laity count to any degree? If not, in the future if essentially the entire Orthodox hierarchy becomes compromised as some Eastern Orthodox teach will happen, then is there a visible Church in perpetuity or not?

When “the Word became flesh,” the revealer and the revelation became one. Now, God’s speech is not just spoken but embodied. A divine terminus such as St. Peter ensures that God’s speech remains embodied. In the event of a Church split, we would know in Catholicism who is true, because we could look to St. Peter, just as the early Church did.

“When the Spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all truth.” (John 16:13).

Orthodoxy’s epistemology still lives half within the shadows of Sinai, while Catholicism lives in the unveiled radiance of Tabor. The Incarnate Word now actively speaks through His Body, demanding an ADP model of epistemology. Truth is visible and living, it is no longer veiled as it was before the incarnation.

Consider the verse I mentioned a moment ago, 2 Corinthians 3:12-18:

“Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness, not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside. But their minds were hardened. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside. Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds; but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit.”

Denying ADP is therefore a soft denial of the incarnation, like denying iconography is. If God became man, He could be seen. If He could be seen, He could be depicted, at least in His humanity. If God became man, divine revelation could be understood with certainty, because God could be approached and inquired of and learned from in person.

The Incarnation and Epistemology

The Incarnation means God became man to dwell among us, not just once, but perpetually. He is present sacramentally and juridically through His Body, the Church. To deny ADP is to imply that the Incarnation ENDED with the Ascension or the death of St. John the Apostle. That is similar to the metaphysical beliefs of the iconoclasts. They deny that the divine can dwell stably in the material and institutional, and assert that God cannot be depicted because His incarnation had a sort of “end” at the Ascension.

But the Church is the icon of Christ’s continuing Incarnation. If she can err in faith or morals, then the Incarnate logos can mislead, and God can bind error - which is impossible. But God’s Uncreated Energies preserve the Church as His living icon - the visible hierarchy is the embodied prolongation of the Incarnation’s epistemic presence, just as the Apostles were. Thus, ADP is a necessary conclusion. And a divine terminus is needed, just as the Apostles had with St. Peter, the one set over the entire universe. As Holy Father Chrysostom said:

“Peter, the Leader of the choir of Apostles, the Mouth of the disciples, the Pillar of the Church, the Buttress of the faith, the Foundation of the confession, the Fisherman of the universe.” (Chrysostom, T. iii Hom). “Peter, that Leader of the choir, that Mouth of the rest of the Apostles, that Head of the brotherhood, that one set over the entire universe, that Foundation of the Church.” (Chrysostom In illud hoc Scitote [c. 387 AD]).

Answering Potential Orthodox Apologist Rebuttals

If Eastern Orthodox lay apologists on Twitter or YouTube want to reply to this argument, I suspect that their arguments will likely boil down to: “But Judas is with you, how can I believe?”

They will point to sins on the part of the hierarchy, and conveniently ignore all the sin and scandal among the Eastern Orthodox hierarchy, to try to paint the Catholic Church as a whole as “leftist.” Their argument will likely be “look how ‘traditional’ we are and how progressive they are.” They will not address ADP, just like they do not typically address Elijah Yasi and papal minimalism, much less debate with him live. They will collapse into assertions of whose bishops are less sinful, ignoring the era of Russian forced monachism, collaboration with the Soviet’s, the selling of “absolution certificates” into the 1800’s, or the reported moral failings of Orthodox priests and bishops everywhere today in Eastern European media.

Those who cannot refute St. Peter, seek to refute Judas instead. He is a much easier target. You can always find scandal and sin in any hierarchy. Catholicism does not claim infallibility in behavior, or even in belief of individual clergy and bishops. We know St. Peter acted hypocritically with the Judaizers. Catholicism claims that what is dogmatized and becomes St. Peter’s Confession, the rock on which the Church is built, is without error. Even if the Pope himself is or was a sinful man at any point.

In Acts 1:15-26 St. Peter initiates the selection of a successor to Judas right after Jesus ascended into heaven, and no one questions him. This illustrates the Catholic position that the Pope has the divine right to approve all bishops and resolve episcopal disputes, so that there can be no occasion of discord as there is in Orthodoxy.

We see the embryonic form of papal jurisdiction - the Church’s first act of episcopal succession is performed under St. Peter’s initiation and supervision. They choose St. Mathias collectively and using lots, just as the collective Church helps select bishops today (albeit without the lots)

Moscow does not accept the autocephaly granted to the Orthodox Church Ukraine by Constantinople, and Constantinople does not accept the autocephaly granted to the Orthodox Church America by Moscow. Constantinople does not believe OCA bishops are canonically validly elected. Moscow does not believe OCU bishops are at all bishops. They even recognize the Catholic Church over the OCU.

The Papacy is a divine safeguard against epistemic and also jurisdictional fragmentation. The ongoing Orthodox crises of autocephaly and jurisdiction are the modern proof of what happens when the Petrine principle is denied or ignored.

From the first episcopal succession onward, unity flowed through St. Peter. If the Church needed a successor to Judas, wouldn’t it need one to St. Peter specifically? Of course.

If St. Peter was the leader of the choir of Apostles, and set over the entire Universe, as St. Chrysostom said, who is now? His successor.

If the Apostles, endowed with doctrinal infallibility through the Spirit, needed a leader, why would modern bishops not need a singular head? Are they superior to the Apostles?

Moses and the Prophets are enough. The Resurrection is enough. The testimony of the Apostles and the early Church is enough. Everything points towards the Catholic Church. Those who won’t be obedient due to poor liturgies and sinful priests would not be truly obedient if they saw a man they knew rise from the dead either and testify to the Catholic Church. People find excuses to be anything but Catholic, anything but submit to a living authority that has the power to bind and loose from God on doctrine.

Submitting to the Magisterium is a lot like Confession. People want to avoid it because it can be humiliating to confess your sins to another sinful man, even though he sits in “persona Christi.” They want to “go straight to God.” This is pride, and keeps one from God in the name of going straight to Him. Likewise, pride prevents many people from humbly submitting to fallible men. They refuse to trust Christ’s promises that the gates of hell will not prevail, and that the bishops will never bind one to error, because it puts one at the mercy of sinful men.

They do not trust Jesus’ promises, because they see Judas out of the corner of their eye, and become afraid. But even Judas had real authority from God until it was taken away. He performed miracles through divine power shared with him. This is not to imply all Orthodox Christians are sinning by avoiding becoming Catholic, God holds one responsible for what one knows and should reasonably know, but likely some Orthodox Christians reading this know I am right, and know this warrants further analysis.

Only Catholicism can demand religious assent of the intellect and will to its bishops, because they are divinely protected, even in their Ordinary Magisterium. And unless you have found a Church with bishops you can submit your intellect and will to without reservation, you have not found the true Church in its full sense. Unless the bishops can be obeyed without hesitation as if they were the Apostles themselves, you have not found the true Church.

If one insists they follow what the majority of the bishops say in Orthodoxy, and submit to that, then Moscow being far larger than Constantinople should be followed be every Greek Orthodox Christian on the topic of autocephaly. Such a person would also be in severe trouble during the Arian crisis, as perhaps the majority of bishops defected to Arianism. But truth is not promised to be in the majority, but through St. Peter, confirming the brethren epistemically.

Conclusion

The ADP model of epistemology was clearly believed and practiced by the early Church. Dispute is resolved through divine authority. To practice ADP, there has to be an infallible divine anchor, and it has to be singular or else you could get “competing finals,” a logical fallacy. The Church in modern times has to be as epistemically stable as when Christ and the Apostles were alive, or else one is confessing that the Incarnation ceased in some way, and is not perpetually ongoing and extended through the members of His Mystical Body.

If I have a question, I can ask Jesus what the answer is, through His Apostolic Church, just like St. Andrew could ask Jesus a question. Since Jesus is infallible, St. Andrew could know the answer was true with certainty. Could St. Andrew misunderstand Jesus? Absolutely. The potential to misunderstand Jesus is not what infallibility solves for. What it solves for is providing an authoritative means to canonize truth and to resolve disputes.

If I want to know what a valid baptism is, the Church has the answer. I could misunderstand the answer, but if someone challenged me on my misunderstanding, we could get a perfect resolution and I could be proven wrong and amend my belief. An Orthodox Christian cannot do that in all matters concerning faith and morals. The dispute remains open ended.

Early Church Father appeals to Apostolic succession as authoritative only makes sense if apostolic succession always leads to the right answer. And it does - but only if it has a divine anchor, a Petrine Principle. The Church Fathers continually appealed to Rome when Apostolic succession alone could not resolve a matter. Modern Eastern Orthodox Christians do not appeal to Apostolic succession or a center of sacerdotal unity like the early Church did to settle disputes. “Universal reception” is nebulous, and could be said to preclude past councils such as Chalcedon. This is not a problem for Catholics, as once the Pope accepts a council, it becomes part of St. Peter’s Confession, the Rock on which the Church is built.

As St. Alphonsus Liguori once said, “if the decrees of the Popes were not infallible, unless the consent of the Church were added, indeed it would have to be said that the Church was not founded on Peter, but that Peter was founded on the Church. And so equally it would need to be said that the brethren were not confirmed by Peter, but Peter by the brethren.”

St. Peter is simply integral to the practice of Christianity. Catholics follow the system arranged by Christ to ensure the effects of the Incarnation would not be lost, or diminished, and that the Ascension would yield a superior understanding of the truth through the Spirit, not a lesser one. But without an ADP model, our understanding of the truth is clearly inferior, as there is no infallible source to validate truth with. Orthodoxy cannot answer certain questions that concern faith and morals in a universal manner. PDP is an attack on the incarnation, similar to iconoclasm.

Since the PDP model of epistemology is not true, everyone should convert to Catholicism, and every bishop should be in communion with St. Peter, who strengthens his brother bishops. Those same bishops assist the Pope and help the collective Church resolve disputes with greater clarity and detail, and even correct bad behavior as St. Paul corrected St. Peter.

Only when faith assents to the Magisterium of the Catholic Church without question or reservation does it truly rest in Christ and the Apostles, and become full Fides Divina et Catholica - Faith Divine and Catholic. This is what the Holy Spirit infallibly leads men towards, a living authority from God to to guide His sheep, through the ongoing voice of St. Peter strengthening the brethren. Active divine protection has been ongoing since Christ’s incarnation, and has never ended, and will never end.

The Real Fault Line

While the Catholic–Orthodox divide is often reduced to papal primacy or the filioque, the deeper chasm lies in the nature of divine protection over the Church.

Catholics: the Church is supernaturally preserved from binding doctrinal error upon the laity - an ongoing visible miracle.

Orthodox: the Church is indefectible in principle, but can be overcome by error in practice - even her entire visible structure may fall, though “somewhere” the true faith remains.

This is shocking for a Catholic to hear, but think of who is Eastern Orthodox. Besides the individuals raised in it, you have mostly Protestant and Catholic converts. Protestant converts already believe this. Catholic converts typically believe it too, as they have self-discerned that Catholicism has been corrupted, instead of trusting the Church itself. Some may do this in ignorance, others may do this in mortal sin, as allowing oneself to be scandalized and lose faith is a sin.

Catholics see indefectibility as active divine preservation. Orthodox see indefectibility as within passive divine permission.

Passive Divine Protection (PDP): When God allows something to happen without directly sustaining or guaranteeing its outcome in His providential will. He does not cause evil or error, but permits it within His governance of Creation, respecting the freedom and contingency of secondary causes.

So when applied to the Church it means God permits the Church’s leaders, synods and institutions to fall into error, even heresy, because His promise of indefectibility only applies in a broad, unseen sense - that “somewhere” the truth will always remain, though not necessarily visibly or formally protected. They affirm that the “gates of hell will not prevail,” but do not extend that to the teaching office of the Orthodox Church.

It is a permission model: God allows the Church to function freely, stepping in only after disaster through prophets, saints or future councils to restore what was lost.

Active Divine Protection (ADP): This means that God does not merely allow the Church to persist, He actively sustains it in truth and unity through an unbroken miracle of grace. This is the Catholic understanding of what indefectibility and infallibility is.

The Holy Spirit perpetually acts within the visible Magisterium of the Church to preserve her from binding the faithful to error in matters of faith and morals. It is not divine permission, but divine operation. In passive permission, God lets the “ship” drift but ensures it never fully sinks altogether. In active preservation, God Himself personally holds the rudder the entire time.

It’s not about ecclesiology. People just don’t know how to articulate this. Orthodox apologists are typically attacking ADP. The difference between the two often comes down to whether God’s providence is merely permissive or participatory, making the Western position actually more in line with something like the Palamite Essence-Energies Distinction (EED) on a meta-metaphysical scale. In Catholic ADP, the Church herself participates in the very immutability of God through His ongoing Energies or Operations. She is a living extension of the truth, through participation.

The Implications

If the Church is not protected by an ongoing miracle, then any council, patriarch, or synod could fail catastrophically. And historically, Orthodoxy admits this:

• Constantinople fell into Monothelitism, Monophysitism, Nestorianism and Arianism.

• Alexandria fell into Monophysitism.

• Antioch remained in Arianism for decades, and fell into monophysitism twice, at distant intervals.

• Even Rome, they say, “fell away” after 1054.

So the Orthodox faithful must locate the true Church by personal discernment, not by promise - in effect, a Protestant epistemology. Catholics, by contrast, locate true doctrine by promise, not by discernment - because the miracle of indefectibility is institutionally anchored in St. Peter’s confession.

It is true Catholics have discerned that the promise lies with the Chair of Peter, but how Catholicism sees this is that grace was operating in man’s hearts with no impediment. So God brought someone to the promise by enlightening their intellect and will. All those who have not been brought to the promise are either actively rejecting grace, or, through no fault of their own, have some sort of impediment that prevents them from getting to the Confession of St. Peter.

Orthodoxy believes similar, but it never culminates in something that is knowable in terms of doctrine with certainty and can produce unity. Catholicism does. A learned Catholic cannot accept that infallible faith from an infallible God could terminate in a fallible interpreter, or in an invisible interpreter that cannot be validated with certainty. We see it as epistemically necessary that Christ must have appointed someone with a charism of infallibility (not that he is infallible at all times, but that his Confession is divinely protected), and that was St. Peter.

If He did not, you get into big problems, and Christian unity becomes impossible. Since Christ would not make unity impossible while desiring it, nor would He abandon the Bride to doctrinal relativism, only Catholicism can be true.

Noteworthily, every single heretical sect in history must have the opposite view, which means the Catholic view is a sort of marker of the True Faith in and of itself. Catholics are literally the only religious group in the world to even be in a position to claim indefectibility by ongoing active supernatural preservation. Everyone else by necessity must claim indefectibility by passive divine permission and passive protection. They have no option. Their own history precludes it even getting to the Catholic claim.

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The Consequence

This means Orthodoxy’s ecclesiology is arguably epistemically unstable, so this does tie into ecclesiology, and it is why many mistakenly pinpoint the problem as an ecclesiological one. Something epistemically unstable cannot produce certainty - it can only collapse into moral persuasion. If all patriarchates can fall, and no one can be prevented from binding the faithful to error, then the visible Church can only be contingently trustworthy.

Catholics are claiming to be in an entirely different boat than literally every religion in existence, and other Christians are continually saying “no you are not.” Catholics are claiming to be participating in a visible ongoing miracle, possibly bigger than any other save the Resurrection, in real-time. Orthodoxy must quietly rely on a “hidden remnant” model of truth - an invisible Church of the faithful few, possibly invisible at times.

Some Orthodox believe that in the future, nearly all their clergy will become heretical, and it will be up to the faithful laity to save the Church. This can be anxiety-producing, but when you remember that mankind is inherently inclined towards self-leadership you can understand why many actually find this attractive, as long as it is coupled with psychological confidence in ones salvation somehow.

But Catholicism holds that the visible is not merely a gathering of individuals in the right institution, but a living organism sustained by grace and guarded from universal error. Its hierarchs are completely prevented from binding the faithful to doctrinal error, as long as they are strengthened by unity with St. Peter. Even those mystically united to the Catholic Church are not a separate “invisible Church,” but informal and unknown members in a visible Church. Visibility specifically refers to Church leadership, not discerning who is in direct communion with God, which only God knows.

For the Orthodox, visibility seemingly does not refer to the leadership of the Church in the same way, and those in communion with them, but those belonging to a confession they discern is true. This is why you sometimes see Greek Orthodox and Russian Orthodox having ugly internal strife on social media claiming one or the other has less grace or no grace because of doctrinal divergences leading to different practices in terms of things such as reception into the Church. It is also why you have various conflicting opinions on the validity of Catholic sacraments within Orthodoxy.

Most think our confession is not too far gone to be completely corrupted and acknowledge we produce Saints too. Many have discerned we are too corrupted. They do not have a hierarchy-derived official view like Catholicism has of Orthodoxy (which is that they are True Churches, but not the true Church in the sense of having pure doctrine).

The Miraculous Catholic Principle

The Church’s continued unity in faith and sacrament is a standing miracle - not a sociological achievement. The Orthodox find this shocking, as their own Sees could not possibly have this be true of them given their history. An Orthodox Christian cannot believe the same of their own leaders, and thus cannot really trust them.

“The gates of hell shall not prevail.” (Matt. 16:18)

“I have prayed for you, Peter, that your faith may not fail.” (Luke 22:32)

Orthodoxy must interpret those promises as metaphorical or conditional. Catholicism takes them literally and ontologically: divine protection is operative now, in the visible magisterium.

The Irony

Orthodox apologists often argue the Roman Church lost the Spirit’s protection by “defecting” from the Eastern Patriarchs - but that implicitly admits such a protection exists. The Catholic asks: If the Holy Spirit no longer protects the institutional Church, then who does? If nothing, how is it trustworthy?

And if the Church can lose that protection, then the Incarnation itself fails to guarantee a visible, sacramental continuity of truth on earth.

So for a Catholic who believes in the doctrine of the Church, Christ’s ongoing physical presence in the world through the members of His Mystical Body, Catholicism is the only possible rational form of Christianity that can exist. Since God is rational, an irrational Christianity does not make sense, and so in this way we could as Catholics conclude that Catholicism must be true, or Christianity is not. There is no other rational system.

People can be innocent members of other Christian groups, but each of those systems collapses under scrutiny - they’re epistemically incoherent once divine revelation is taken seriously. As Trent Horn notes,

“We as human beings need things in propositional content in order to fully absorb them. So as Catholics, we’d say that both sacred scripture and sacred tradition are equally authoritative. They are God’s word in written and unwritten form. But we’d also say that Jesus gave us a church with a teaching office, what’s called a magisterium. And that provides a way, an authoritative means for understanding what divine revelation teaches. What does sacred scripture mean? What constitutes sacred scripture? What constitutes sacred tradition?

The implication here is that without “authoritative means,” the only things left “on the table” are deism or non-theism (atheism), or to keep looking for an authority. Divine revelation that cannot be understood authoritatively somewhere is an attack on God’s omniscience, as it implies He had a message for mankind, but was not powerful enough to sustain the intention of His speech, only the text. Besides sustaining the text, God must also sustain its intention with an authority, or else the revelation is not divine, since an omniscient God could not be overcome by entropy. A divine speech act meant for all ages from God must be as knowable in God’s intent in each age as the one in which it entered the temporal order. Thus, deism is a more logical and reasonable conclusion than non-Catholic Christianity.

No one else claims the same type of protection that we do, and it is required for Christianity to continue as surely as the Resurrection is. Once there is no protection, you cannot trust your Bishops not to teach error in a binding way. That destroys the Church’s reliability as a divine teacher. The believer needs to judge whether the Church is correct before obeying it, effectively turning the Bishop into a “suggestion box.” This is how the Judaizers and other early heretics treated the Apostles and their immediate successors.

So we are incredulous when EO apologists start claiming they don’t need to follow their own Bishops, or they call their Patriarchs “heretics” in a formal sense.

Catholics believe the Holy Spirit binds Himself to history through the visible Church hierarchy. Many Catholics falsely assume the Orthodox believe the same thing. The Orthodox believe the Holy Spirit works around the institutional Church when it fails, similar to Old Covenant episodic infallibility. It’s more akin to Judaism in this regard.

Except Judaism had a guarantee of protection allowing full assent to the ancient hierarchy, even imposing the death penalty on those that disagreed with the judgement of the priests, per Levitical law. They had tests for prophets to ensure corrective figures sent by God could be validated as such with certainty. Orthodoxy lacks this. There is no objective way to determine which clergy is listening to in certain doctrinal-level disputes, such on what constitutes a valid baptism. This can be witnessed in the story of William Palmer:

William Palmer, a distinguished member of the Anglican Church and of the University of Oxford, wished to join the Orthodox Church. He went to Russia and Turkey to study the contemporary situation in the Christian East and to find out on what conditions he would be admitted to the communion of the Eastern Orthodox. At St. Petersburg and at Moscow he was told that he had only to abjure the errors of Protestantism before a priest, who would thereupon administer to him the sacrament of Holy Chrism or Confirmation. But at Constantinople he found that he must be baptized afresh. As he knew himself to be a Christian and saw no reason to suspect the validity of his baptism (which incidentally was admitted without question by the Orthodox Russian Church), he considered that a second baptism would be a sacrilege. On the other hand, he could not bring himself to accept Orthodoxy according to the local rules of the Russian Church, since he would then become Orthodox only in Russia while remaining a heathen in the eyes of the Greeks; and he had no wish to join a national Church but to join the universal Orthodox Church. No one could solve his dilemma, and so he became a Roman Catholic.

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Orthodoxy went wrong somewhere

Something fundamental went wrong in the East at one point. It can be elucidated by a Western saint, the great St. Augustine of Hippo.

“I would not believe the Gospel unless moved by the authority of the Catholic Church.”

The Orthodox cannot really say this in the same way we can, as their authorities could be Arians or Monophysites or “Papalists,” and there’s no visible, living and indefectible authority somewhere to look to. If they claim it, what they are calling the authority of the Orthodox Church is what is found only in writing, which can be subjectively interpreted.

Catholicism believes in knowledge by participation. You know what’s true by participating in something protected by a miracle of preservation, including its visible leadership. Orthodoxy very surprisingly takes a much less mystical approach than Catholics on this. It promotes knowledge through historical inference and personal illumination - your bishop or Patriarch could try to bind you to error, and you have to be on the lookout.

Certainty vs. Probability

St. John Henry Newman mentioned that faith requires an illative sense grounded in divine authority, not probability. Basically, faith infers what is true by grounding itself in divine authority. But that divine authority has to be known concretely, and it must be visible and living, or else there’s no certainty. If we are participating in a miracle of preservation, we have knowledge through that miracle. If we are just gleaning knowledge of the faith through historical inference and personal illumination only, the Church necessarily fractures into denominations or competing doctrines. Everything comes down to argument and persuasion, not objective, concrete and visible authority.

The Catholic believes things have to be like they were during the ministry of Christ. There was a visible and infallible authority you could learn the truth from. Whatever Christ said on a matter was true, end of story. Orthodoxy believes that you mysteriously follow the Spirit and it will guide you to what is true. The problem is there is no means of validation. The Orthodox often will point to the lives of Eastern Orthodox saints as a validator, but that is subjective validation. You can only derive certainty from infallibility. There are of course thousands of Catholic saints who lived very holy lives. There are many Protestants who lived heroic and holy lives.

This is perhaps why some Orthodox apologists will attack the holiness and sanctity of certain Catholic saints, especially “Latin female mystics.” Because the Orthodox are using subjective assessments of holiness as a marker, holiness anywhere else is a major epistemic and psychological threat. It is no threat to a Catholic though to see holiness outside of the formal boundaries of Catholicism. Understanding infallible ignorance, we would even expect to find holy saints among the Orthodox, both Oriental and Eastern, as well as the Protestants. It is not a surprise to us. Some Orthodox, likely a minority, cannot fathom that special holiness exists outside of formal Orthodox Church boundaries.

Catholics believe that faith must ultimately culminate in something objective or you need to keep looking and searching - you have not “arrived.” The Orthodox stop at subjectivity, as there’s nothing objective like an infallible Chair around. A primary means of subjective analysis is personal holiness. Holiness is a fairly visible thing. It is the closest they can get to something objective. And when it is found outside of Orthodox boundaries, it is sometimes a big threat to their worldview unless they have a more inclusive view of Catholicism.

How This Relates to the Theotokos

Holy Mary’s perpetual virginity mirrors the Church’s perpetual purity in doctrine - both are protected miracles, not natural achievements. Mary was protected from conception from “all stain of sin,” or from an Eastern angle, filled with grace to the maximum, so that while she had free will, she was not inclined to choose evil.

In Revelation 12, we see that Mary and the Church are intimately related. The Woman is an alliteration of Eve, Israel, Mary (the Ark of the New Covenant) and the Church. You need all four women to understand the depiction perfectly. This is right after Revelation 11, where the Ark of the Covenant is taken up into heaven. The Ark of the Covenant is of course made of incorruptible wood and pure gold. As Mary is alone pure and blessed among human persons, and she typologically represents the Church, the Church must in some way also be pure and blessed.

So the Orthodox view has Mariological issues. There are ways for the Orthodox to get around them, such as by claiming a remnant always remains pure, but then we as Catholics see no reason why they can have trust and faith in their clergy. And if you cannot have that, then you cannot have trust in the Church institutionally. While clergy could become heretical in Catholicism, and have on multiple occasions, there’s something visible and concrete that is indefectible to compare them to that does not require discernment, but submission. As long as they are in alignment with it (the Papacy), we know we are good.

Catholicism teaches corporate participation in theosis. The Church herself is “deified” in her teaching office. What this means of course is that she is prevented from binding the faithful to error on faith and morals, as referenced earlier. This theosis leads to greater understanding (“development of doctrine”) over time, and it is passed on to individuals institutionally through the sacraments and through its official teaching.

The Orthodox would object to this being true of Catholicism by pointing to different things. One might be the death penalty. Despite the fact that almost every Orthodox Church bans it, and Belarus is the only Orthodox country that functionally has it in 2025 heading into 2026, the Orthodox will point out that the Catholic Church is now binding its laity not to support the death penalty.

Outside of the United States this is almost no issue, as only a handful of non-Islamic countries have it. Inside of the United States this is a big issue for many. However, asking us not to support the death penalty is not asking us to sin. So this does not work for Orthodox interlocutors. The clergy could be wrong prudentially, but what they are telling us to do is not sinful. It’s not a sin to oppose the death penalty.

Some Orthodox may respond that Catholicism is teaching that the death penalty is intrinsically evil, whereas the Church has previously never taught such a thing. But there has never been an infallible decree that the death penalty is intrinsically evil. One could interpret Pope Francis’ comments as implying that it is, but none of them are any kind of ex-cathedra statement.

How the Magisterium generally sees it is that the state has an intrinsic right to carry out the death penalty, but in 2025, no duty to carry it out for the common good exists. Since no duty exists, the state no longer possesses an extrinsic right to carry out the death penalty. Orthodox leadership almost universally agrees. The Catholic Magisterium could err in its prudential judgement that no duty exists any longer, but that is still not binding the faithful to sin or doctrinal error. The Magisterium has a right to assess moral duty, and we have to follow it, but we do not have to agree with a prudential assessment, and that assessment is not binding us to any sin or doctrinal error.

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The Eschaton: The Bride as the Last Standing Miracle of the Incarnation

Zoom out to the world-historical scale. The Church is the restrainer holding back chaos precisely through her indefectible structure. This includes the hierarchy and clergy, of course anchored in an indefectible and infallible Chair. Without an ongoing miracle of truth, cultures decay into ideology (communism, capitalism, marxism, fascism, etc) - as seen in both post-Reformation West and post-Byzantine East. The visibility and protection of the Church is the tangible ongoing miracle of the Incarnation through the members of Christ’s Mystical Body. All others ultimately point to it, such as Eucharistic miracles or Marian apparitions. Much of Catholic apologetics is really simply trying to highlight this.

Anthropological Angle

Humans cannot endure absolute uncertainty about ultimate meaning. Without a living arbiter, faith typically becomes anxiety management. We see this perhaps most clearly in the example of the notoriously scrupulous Martin Luther, or certain Protestants falling into “perseverance of the Saints” and “once saved, always saved” beliefs.

Orthodox epistemic insecurity leads jurisdictions with different doctrine and to personality cults - a sociological expression of doctrinal-theological instability. To be sure and to be fair, Catholicism suffers personality cults at times too, but these should not be because there is no epistemic insecurity. Many times Catholics falling into them are simply leaving the Church to join a sedevacantist YouTuber with a cult of personality following, or something of that nature. So you have to defect from Catholic epistemology in many cases to really fall victim to this.

Catholics see an ongoing living miracle, and attach to it. They have reached the ultimate object of faith: truth, which is perfectly knowable in terms of what God has revealed doctrinally.

“But you fallibly discerned it’s an ongoing living miracle” some will say.

We would disagree, we would claim to be illumined by grace, and that grace must lead to something concrete and verifiable in the end. Otherwise, again, you must keep looking and asking God to get you to it. It is not safe to ultimately rest on subjective feelings. For Protestants, they would claim it leads to Scripture, but they have no arbiter in what it means, and no means of unity, precluding their manifold systems from being true.

For the Orthodox, they would claim it leads to the Orthodox Church, but it devolves into self-discernment anyway. They never get to something visible, living and sure to validate the truth with. Only inanimate (the Canons and the writings of the Fathers in conjunction with Scripture). When your authority is inanimate or invisible, you have epistemic collapse and an unwinding of unity.

Conclusion

When the Orthodox say that they have a different ecclesiology, so it is not a big deal that their Patriarch’s fallible statements are sometimes wrong, but it is a big deal that the Pope or Catholic Magisterium’s fallible statements are sometimes wrong, they are misdiagnosing the issue because it’s not an easy thing to articulate. What they are really saying is that it is not a big deal for them because their Church has no miraculous active divine protection (ADP) of the visible Church. It is a big deal for us because we do.

However, they often do not understand the parameters of that active divine preservation. They also find it hard to believe such a thing could exist, as it is difficult for them to believe. Catholics believe in a miracle, and our defense of the Church is often a testimony highlighting how that miracle is indeed truly happening, despite all the groups over the centuries insisting that the miracle has ended.

Judaizers: 40 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Nicolaitans: 90 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Docetists: 100 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Ebionites: 110 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Gnostics: 120 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Cerinthians: 130 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.

Marcionites: 140 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Valentinians: 150 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Montanists: 155 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Encratites: 170 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Adoptionists: 180 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Modalists / Sabellians: 200 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Manichaeans: 210 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Novatians: 220 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.

Arians: 318 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Meletians: 325 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Donatists: 330 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Apollinarians: 340 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Semi-Arians: 360 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Macedonians / Pneumatomachians: 370 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Priscillianists: 380 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Pelagians: 405 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Nestorians: 428 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Eutychians / Monophysites: 444 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Monothelites (proto-forms): 470 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Monothelites (formal 600 AD): “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Iconoclasts: 726 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Gottschalk’s Predestinarians: 850 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Eastern Schism: 1054 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Berengarians: 1050s AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Petrobrussians/ Henricians: 1110 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Cathars / Albigensians: 1140 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Waldensians: 1170 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Joachimites / Spiritual Franciscans: 1260 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Fraticelli: 1320 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Lollards (Wycliffe): 1370 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Hussites (Hus): 1415 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Conciliarists (Basel radicals): 1430 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Lutherans / Reformation: 1517 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Old Catholics: 1870 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

Sedevacantists: 1970 AD – “St. Peter’s confession has been corrupted.”

“There are many other things which most properly can keep me in [the Catholic Church’s] bosom. The unanimity of peoples and nations keeps me here. Her authority, inaugurated in miracles, nourished by hope, augmented by love, and confirmed by her age, keeps me here. The succession of priests, from the very see of the apostle Peter, to whom the Lord, after his resurrection, gave the charge of feeding his sheep [John 21:15–17], up to the present episcopate, keeps me here. And last, the very name Catholic, which, not without reason, belongs to this Church alone, in the face of so many heretics, so much so that, although all heretics want to be called ‘Catholic,’ when a stranger inquires where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics would dare to point out his own basilica or house” (Against the Letter of Mani Called “The Foundation” 4:5 [A.D. 397]). - St. Augustine

The Church requires someone with Supreme and Universal Jurisdiction to function, and we Catholics can actually prove this. But the jurisdictional authority necessary is narrow.

Firstly, Rome, as the final court of appeal, must be universal in jurisdiction, or its decisions cannot be considered binding on everyone, and it is not actually a court of appeal. This was canonized at Sardica, which was often conflated with Nicaea I.

Its decisions also must be protected by the Holy Spirit, or else the Church’s “final decision” in a dispute could bind all Christianity to an error. If you need to analyze the dogmas of your prelates and decide personally if they are or are not dogmas, you’re not actually following the Church, you are doing Protestant-style self-shepherding.

For the Church to be infallible, its dogmas must be infallible. Since that can come down to just one man in a dispute, he has to be specially protected against error, the same as an Ecumenical Council.

This does not mean the Pope is infallible in the sense of his day to day office. He cannot just pick up a pen and start being infallible on the spot. He must be exercising his authority over the entire Church in communion with the Bishops, not acting as a renegade or a tyrant. Luke 22:25-25 explicitly says St. Peter does not rule like an earthly king.

His rule is of a completely different and spiritual nature. It’s epistemological and juridical. The Apostles arguing over who would be the leader “or “greatest among themselves,” was essentially shut down by Christ saying “such a role does not mean what you think it means, it is a great burden not some earthly kingship, and it’s St. Peter, by the way (verses 31-32).”

St. Peter even tried to infer that St. John was better suited, and wound up being killed in a place he did not even want to go. Some rulership. Yet, I am positive in the end St. Peter treasured what he was given greater than any earthly riches or kingship nonetheless. As John 21:17-22 says:

“He said to him the third time: Simon, son of John, lovest thou me? Peter was grieved, because he had said to him the third time: Lovest thou me? And he said to him: Lord, thou knowest all things: thou knowest that I love thee. He said to him: Feed my sheep. Amen, amen I say to thee, when thou wast younger, thou didst gird thyself, and didst walk where thou wouldst. But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and lead thee whither thou wouldst not.

And this he said, signifying by what death he should glorify God. And when he had said this, he saith to him: Follow me. Peter turning about, saw that disciple whom Jesus loved following, who also leaned on his breast at supper, and said: Lord, who is he that shall betray thee? Him therefore when Peter had seen, he saith to Jesus: Lord, and what shall this man do? Jesus saith to him: So I will have him to remain till I come, what is it to thee? follow thou me. This saying therefore went abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die. And Jesus did not say to him: He should not die; but, So I will have him to remain till I come, what is it to thee?”

So, St. Peter and his successors function as the epistemic rock of the Church. When push comes to shove, and a decision is needed to keep the Church united in doctrine, the Pope makes the call, and the Holy Spirit does not let him get it wrong.

He will in fact even kill the Pope if the Pope will get it wrong, before he can do so, as Pope Sixtus V may have learned the hard way. This is for our protection as the Sheep.

St. Peter of course was made the visible shepherd in Christ’s physical absence, as the Church always needs an ultimate visible shepherd to validate that God has actually spoken. Again, we see St. Peter’s role is epistemic.

The Confession

This all goes back to Matthew 16. In Matthew 16, God reveals to St. Peter that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. He validates this with the visible shepherd, who is infallible being God Himself, who affirms that God has indeed spoken to him.

Jesus then changes St. Peter’s name from Simon to Rock (Peter/Cepha), and says that his confession is literally the (epistemic) rock on which the Church is built. The Church is built on St. Peter’s confession. What is St. Peter’s confession? Not only what he said in Matthew 16, but everything St. Peter and his perpetual successors confess to be true of the faith. This is confirmed by the Fathers:

For, from the descent of the Incarnate Word amongst us, all the churches in every part of the world have held the greatest Church alone to be their base and foundation, seeing that, according to the promise of Christ Our Savior, the gates of hell will never prevail against her, that she has the keys of the orthodox confession of faith in Him... and she shuts up and locks every heretical mouth which speaks against the Most High.” - St. Maximus the Confessor

“Number the bishops from the see of Peter itself. And in that order of Fathers see who succeeded whom, THAT is the rock against which the gates of hell do not prevail.” - St. Augustine

“Blessed Simon, who after his confession of the mystery was set to be the foundation-stone of the Church, and received the keys of the kingdom of Heaven. This faith is the foundation of the Church; through this faith the gates of Hell cannot prevail against her.” - St. Augustine

“May all the weeds be uprooted from the church, and may the word of our Lord Jesus Christ be fulfilled, that ‘the gates of hell will not prevail against it,’ and further, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I shall build my church. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatever you bind on carth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ His see shines forth as primatial throughout the world and is the head of all the churches of God. Therefore the same blessed Peter the Apostle, shepherding the church at the command of the Lord has left nothing to neglect, but upholds, and has always upheld, her authority.

If your sacredness cleaves to our apostolic see, which is the head of all the churches of God, and endeavors from the depth of your heart and with sincere intention to follow its sacred and orthodox model without corruption or pollution, being yourself truly orthodox and religious, you will offer this principal sacrifice to the Lord almighty, and as our representative entreat the supreme footsteps of our aforesaid most pious and divinely crowned great emperors and adjure them before God and his fearful judgement to order the restoration and establishment in their ancient status of the sacred images in the God-protected and imperial city and in every place, observing the tradition of this our sacred and most holy Roman church and abominating and expelling the error of the wicked heretics by your struggle and faithful exertion.” - Council of Nicaea II, Pope Hadrian’s Message

“Peter, the Leader of the choir of Apostles, the Mouth of the disciples, the Pillar of the Church, the Buttress of the faith, the Foundation of the confession, the Fisherman of the universe.” - St. Chrysostom

What is the confession that St. Chrysostom is speaking of above? The universal Confession of the Church.

“Peter, that Leader of the choir, that Mouth of the rest of the Apostles, that Head of the brotherhood, that one set over the entire universe, that Foundation of the Church.” - St. Chrysostom

“In speaking of St. Peter, the recollection of another Peter has come to me, the common father and teacher, who has inherited his prowess, and also obtained his chair. For this is the one great privilege of our city, Antioch, that it received the leader of the Apostles (Peter) as its teacher in the beginning. For it was right that she who was first adorned with the name of Christians, before the whole world, should receive the first of the apostles as her pastor. But though we received him as teacher, we did not retain him to the end, but gave him up to royal Rome.” - St Chrysostom

Here, St. Chrysostom was venerating St. Ignatius of Antioch, who obtained St. Peter’s Antiochian Chair, but acknowledges St. Peter was “given up” to “Royal Rome.” This is why St. Chrysostom appealed to Rome when his own Patriarch and government persecuted and martyred him (Rome supported him). St. Chrysostom saw St. Peter as not in charge of any particular See, but all the Sees in a unique way. This unique authority did not pass onto the Bishop in Antioch.

“Jesus said to Peter, ‘Feed my sheep’. Why does He pass over the others and speak of the sheep to Peter? He was the chosen one of the Apostles, the mouth of the disciples, the head of the choir. For this reason Paul went up to see him rather than the others. And also to show him that he must have confidence now that his denial had been purged away. He entrusts him with the rule [prostasia] over the brethren and He brings not forward the denial, nor reproaches him with what had taken place, but says, If you love Me, preside over your brethren, and the warm love which you ever manifested, and in which you rejoiced, show thou now; and the life which you said you would lay down for Me, now give for My sheep. (Homilies on John [21:15], 88.1). “If anyone should say ‘Why then was it James who received the See of Jerusalem?’, I should reply that He made Peter the teacher not of that see but of the whole world.” - St. Chrysostom

Orthodoxy is very similar to Catholicism, and we share most doctrine, because The Confession was mostly clarified and cemented prior to 1054. We could say the Orthodox have the significant majority of the Confession of St. Peter, though not all of it.

In His Net There Was No Schisma (Tear)

Rome was representative of “the whole world,” and St. Peter died there precisely for this reason.

It was fitting that St. Peter should die in Rome, as “leader of the whole world,” as Rome was the center of the world at the time. St. Peter did not want to even go there, as aforementioned. Jesus told Him He would be slain in a place He did not want to go (John 21:18-19). Thus his death in Rome was predicted, and for a reason. His Holy Martyrdom crowned the See with his perpetual epistemic Chair. His blood sanctified Vatican Hill.

In John 21:11, he caught exactly 153 fish. This is the total number of types of fish Jews thought existed at the time, signifying that all peoples would be caught in “St. Peter’s net,” in which there was no “schisma,” or tear. John uses the root word of “schism” in this passage. There is only no schism in St. Peter’s net, the Catholic Church in union with the Pope.

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Just as Christ chose to be crucified in Jerusalem, the center of Israel’s worship, St. Peter was sent to Royal Rome, the center of the nations, so that his witness and the Church’s foundation would be universally visible. He had to die in the center of the world, not a provincial or lesser city of the Roman Empire.

Just as Christ’s Cross was raised in the midst of Israel’s worship, St. Peter’s cross was raised in the midst of the nations. This is a sign that Christ rules the world, whereas if he had died in Antioch the religion would seem just another regional sect.

It is not enough to be an Apostolic Church. The True Church is both Apostolic and also Petrine. For to be truly Apostolic is to be Petrine, as St. Peter was the head of the brethren, as confirmed by Holy Father Chrysostom, and many other Church Fathers. It is also clear in Scripture itself, as even Protestants such as Dallas Jenkins, the producer of The Chosen, acknowledges this and depicts in his show.

Apostolicity guarantees continuity with the Apostles’ sacramentality. A few Churches today can claim apostolic succession. But Petrinity is the mark of visible unity and indefectibility. Only the Church that stands on St. Peter’s confession and office can be the Rock that “the gates of hell shall not prevail against” (Matthew 16:18).

Every heretical and schismatic body can trace some line back to an Apostle. The Arians initially had bishops in apostolic succession. The Nestorians and Monophysites too. Many corrupted entire Patriarchates including those of the Pentarchy on multiple occasions. Apostolicity alone did not save them from error.

What made the difference? Union with St. Peter. He strengthens every bishop in union with him.

“For why did God not spare His only-begotten Son, but delivered Him up, although the only one He had? It was that He might reconcile to Himself those who were disposed towards Him as enemies, and make them His peculiar people. For what purpose did He shed His blood? It was that He might win these sheep which He entrusted to Peter and his successors.” - St. Chrysostom

Ecumenical Councils accepted by the Pope are St. Peter’s Confession. Ex-Cathedra statements are St. Peter’s confession. The doctrine we believe is the confession of St. Peter, given by God, and confirmed by Christ. The need for a perpetual epistemic rock is necessary for Christianity to avoid collapse into relativism or schism.

This does not make only St. Peter important. All the Apostles were pivotal. All the Bishops are pivotal. Every Patriarch is necessary and willed by God. However, just as St. Peter had a unique role, confirmed by St. Chrysostom and all the other Holy Fathers, so too do St. Peter’s successors.

This is something to be joyous over, not jealous of. No Latin Rite Catholic is more powerful than an Eastern Catholic just because their particular Patriarch is the Pope. When we are jealous over St. Peter’s unique authority, we are behaving like the Apostles in Luke 22, arguing over who is the greatest.

The answer has been given. It is St. Peter. And this is a serious burden he carries, not some worldly victory.

St. Peter behaving hypocritically and needing to be corrected by St. Paul is a sign to us that Popes would not always have optimal personal behavior. Other Bishops and Patriarchs need to correct him.

One reason we need the Eastern and Oriental Orthodox is because they are supposed to provide correction and advice to St. Peter along with the other Catholic bishops, within the bounds of the Confession. But assistance from the East and Middle East is weakened, as Eastern Catholic Churches do not represent the fullness or majority of the Eastern Churches. This hurts everyone.

Reunification will make us all stronger. St. Peter’s job is to “strengthen the brethren,” as Luke 22:32 says. How does he strengthen his brother bishops? Epistemically. He gets us to certainty in matters of faith, and prevents gridlock and disunity in matters of the episcopacy. We see what happens without this role.

Among the Eastern Orthodox, Moscow claimed to have granted autocephaly to the Orthodox Church of America (OCA) in 1970. However, Constantinople does not recognize that Moscow even has the authority to do this, claiming Constantinople “replaced” Rome as the first see, and that only they can confirm Bishops, or grant autocephaly to synods allowing them to elect their own bishops within the blessing of Apostolic Canon 34.

So Constantinople and the Greek Orthodox do not accept OCA priests as canonically validly elected.

Similarly, Moscow does not recognize Constantinople’s authority to grant the Orthodox Church Ukraine (OCU) autocephaly. Moscow does not believe the OCU has valid bishops, let alone even valid sacraments. They “rebaptize” those they believe to be “converts” to Orthodoxy who come from the OCU. This is because Moscow claims that Ukraine is under Moscow’s jurisdiction.

Constantinople claims essentially universal and immediate jurisdiction to grant autocephaly. Many Russian Orthodox see the parallels between Constantinople and Rome, while at the same time, Constantinople clearly sees the unworkability of what Moscow thinks the system is, and how it does not sync with the Canons.

Rome simply cannot have these schisms and disputes, as the Church abides by the ancient canons, and knows how the dogmatic canons are to be applied. Rome is still the Apostolic See. Every Bishop must either be confirmed directly by the Pope, or confirmed by a Patriarch or Synod with authority delegated by the Pope, following their election. This is a sort of “Catholic autocephaly.”

Constantinople believes it has this same authority. Moscow believes everyone does provided it’s within their “territory,” or in some cases, the Russian Orthodox may believe Moscow itself possesses it, as Moscow is the so-called “third Rome” since Constantinople is in Turkish hands.

So the Catholic claim is not wild or out there.

Alexandria agrees with Constantinople. Jerusalem is unclear but mostly seems to agree with the Ecumenical Patriarch.

Antioch agrees with Moscow though, and so do several other Churches, such as that of the Georgians and Serbians.

Some remain largely neutral or mixed, such as Romania and Albania.

The Orthodox Church has no universally accepted mechanism for proclaiming or recognizing autocephaly. This problem must be solved on a pan-Orthodox level.

However, without an emperor or Pope to force a council and participation (or to ratify its Canons without the presence of every Patriarch), this problem has not been resolvable at the pan-Orthodox level, and Russia and Constantinople have gone into schism with one another.

What is missing here is the Confession of St. Peter.

The Catholic structure is a divine safeguard against such schisms, that we may all be one.

The Gates of Hell

The gates of hell, or heresy, cannot prevail over the Confession of St. Peter.

In the ancient world, “gates” represented the seat of authority and deliberation - city gates are where judges, elders and counselors made decrees. So the “gates of hell” means the councils, the strategies and the decrees of Satan’s kingdom, which was represented by the pagan temple Christ took the Apostles to in Matthew 16 in order to illustrate his point.

The gates of hell are heresies, which draw souls away from the Church and shut them up in error.

Heresy was able to prevail over all the ancient Sees, but not Rome, because she serves as the Epistemic Rock, as the St. Maximus quote earlier in this article references. Heresies are “gates of hell” because believing in them leads one off the narrow path, sometimes fatally. This is not to say everyone who is not a formal Catholic is going to hell, everyone who is not a formal Catholic is in spiritual danger.

This is why I kindly invite every Orthodox Christian, and every Protestant, to join us in St. Peter’s net, in which there is “no schisma.”

What do you notice in the chart below?

As we can see, everyone besides Rome fell into grave heresy, on multiple occasions. Does this not give you pause?

If multiple Sees, or every See, can fall into error, we have no Confession on which the Church is built that cannot be overcome by heresy. This means we can never really trust the Church. We always have to self-shepherd. It turns the Bishops into little more than sacrament dispensers if we have to judge for ourselves if they are orthodox or not. If we look to St. Peter’s perpetual confession through His perpetual Chair, then we can never fall into heresy. Only this arrangement makes it possible to have wholehearted trust in the Church, which is supposed to be Christ Himself in His ongoing physical incarnation through the members of His Mystical Body. Only having an epistemic rock of some sort allows us to know with certainty where the True Confession is.

Essentially, even if conciliarity were true, we would still be “cooked” without an infallible Chair, because we cannot know for certain if every See is in error, or the majority of the Sees. This forces the Churches to start seeing schism as no big deal, engaging in relativism. In the early Church there were several schisms, but there was always a right side, and the right side always involved Rome.

At the worst, you can try to claim St. Miletius was the true Patriarch of Antioch after Pope Damasus and St. Jerome deposed him and replaced him with St. Basil’s envoy to Rome, but that is impossible to prove, and it is not terribly consequential, because both Paulinus and St. Miletius were valid bishops with apostolic succession.

The people of Antioch were following a valid bishop either way, although one licit and the other illicit. Either way, it’s not clearly a matter of guilt for any of the laity of Antioch.

The Papacy in the Old Testament

Christ chose St. Peter to recapitulate the patriarchs of Ancient Israel - to become the father of the faith in the New Covenant, as Abraham was in the Old, and the leader who ushers God’s people into the Promised Land, as Joshua did (Christ being the “New Moses” leading Israel on an Exodus from bondage - the bondage of sin).

In Isaiah 51:1-2 we read:

“Give ear to me, you that follow that which is just, and you that seek the Lord: look unto the rock whence you are hewn, and to the hole of the pit from which you are dug out. Look unto Abraham your father, and to Sara that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and multiplied him.”

Here, Abraham is the rock and father from whom Israel was spiritually born. So, “Rock” is already a patriarchal title for the Covenant People. Jesus Christ was clearly denoting St. Peter as a “New Abraham” when he transferred the title to St. Peter. It was a direct typological recreation of Abrahamic fatherhood. St. Peter became the spiritual progenitor of the New Covenant people of God. Note that God the Father revealed the truth to St. Peter, who confessed it to Christ, just as God the Father revealed Himself to Abraham.

Abraham believed in the promise, but St. Peter believed in the Person. Abraham’s faith was counted as righteousness (Genesis 15:6), and St. Peter’s confession “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” is the perfection of that faith. Abraham believed in the promise of a seed, but St. Peter saw the seed in the flesh, come to fruition.

Therefore, St. Peter is the new Abraham, the father of all who believe in Christ, and first Patriarch, or Pope, of the New Israel, the Church. The Papacy is Abrahamic in structure: one father, one confession, one household of faith.

Yet, St. Peter was also the “New Joshua.”

Joshua took command after Moses’ departure (Deuteronomy 31:7-8), but St. Peter took leadership after Christ’s Ascension (John 21:15-17), as the new visible Shepherd. In both cases, the leader’s task is to establish the people of God in the promised inheritance.

Jesus and Joshua are, of course, the same name in Hebrew: “Yehoshua.” Christ, the New Moses, sends Peter, the new Joshua, to lead the Church, the New Israel, into the inheritance of grace, the Kingdom.

In Joshua 1:5 God tells Joshua “no man shall be able to stand before you all the days of your life, as I was with Moses, so I will be with you.”

In Luke 22:32 Jesus says to St. Peter,” I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned again, strengthen your brethren.” This is the same covenantal formula of continuity and Divine Protection. Joshua could not fail, he was “infallible” in the sense of being unbeatable. The physical “gates of hell” could not overcome Israel in its conquest of the Promised Land. Likewise, St. Peter is infallible in His confession.

Joshua’s mission was to drive out false worship and secure the true worship of God in the Promised Land. St. Peter’s mission is to preserve true worship - orthodoxy - in the New Covenant. Where Joshua conquered physical Canaan, St. Peter conquers error and heresy, the “gates of hell.”

As Abraham, St. Peter is the father who generates the new People of God through faith and baptism, as Abraham did with faith and circumcision. As Joshua, St. Peter is the leader who governs and protects them on the journey home.

Hence the two dimensions of the papacy:

Paternal (Abrahamic) - Doctrinal and generative

Royal (Joshuan) - Governing and protective

Both culminate in Christ. “Simon, son of Jonah.” Jonah, meaning “dove,” evokes the Holy Spirit, as it is His sign. Peter’s fatherhood and leadership are pneumatic: exercised through the Holy Spirit.

A Floriligium:

Since plenty of other Catholics have created great videos and articles responding to Richard’s claims, I would like to put him on the defensive and force him defend his ecclesiology and his own church, Presbyterian Church USA.

On Redeemed Zoomer

In 2014, the PCUSA voted to officially allow “gay marriage.” In 2011, it officially voted to ordained openly gay clergy, including those in homosexual relationships. There are gay couples serving as clergy in the PCUSA. If Richard truly believes his denomination is valid, then he must admit that the Holy Spirit leads men into what Presbyterians and all Christians have universally taught was sodomy and heresy.

If he rejects this, then he implicitly admits PCUSA is a false church which is not actually led by the Holy Spirit. If it’s not led by the Holy Spirit, but he remains in it because he believes none really are, then his critiques of other Christian groups mostly collapse.

If he says no visible church is Spirit-led, then his entire critique of Catholicism mostly collapses, because he admits no one has authority. He’s left with private judgment dressed up in Presbyterian language. He professes Presbyterianism to be the true governance structure, but that God’s chosen form of governance leads to no positive outcomes anyway.

He believes in a God that will not protect his intended governance structure, or even the Churches that actually follow it.

According to Richard, the gay marriage and openly gay clergy approvals were done by a General Assembly which is on par with an Ecumenical Council. Yet he ignores these ecumenical councils entirely, because they do not agree with his conclusions. Richard is like an Evangelical - he has no normative authority.

He is not actually a Presbyterian, because he submits to no authority but himself. He apparently does not submit to any presbyterian church, but you can bet if he had power within the PCUSA that he would not tolerate dissent from others who reject whatever normative authority he seeks to ultimately implement.

He knows the PCUSA has beautiful and costly property around the US, and believes Catholicism and Orthodoxy project institutional power that Protestants lack.

So he wants to Zerg the PCUSA with fake Presbyterians who certainly don’t accept the PCUSA’s values in a dishonest scheme to wrest it from the Presbyterians who run it, who do actually submit to the normative authority.

He calls this “the Reconquista,” which is really “ignoring the normative authority of a church entirely until you have sufficient institutional power, whereupon you then have to suddenly obey said normative authority because now it’s subjectively ‘correct.’”

In short, Mr. Ackerman’s goal is parasitical in nature.

We Catholics have an infallible magisterium. He has nothing but cafeteria submission to a body he doesn’t actually believe in or follow. He is only after its buildings and its institutional heritage. It’s very cynical.

Richard loves quoting Jay Dyer or sedevacantists on Rome’s “corruptions,” but he ignores that his own church has institutionalized blasphemy and heresy. And he does not think it’s a big deal, because he doesn’t believe the authorities have any power at all, unless they agree with him.

He is using the hollow shell of an essentially dead denomination to cosplay legitimacy and authority. His project is parasitic and incoherent, and his “church” is visibly apostate to Catholics, Orthodox and most Protestants alike.

His plan is also doomed to failure. Sure, PCUSA likes the influx of young donors. Richard is convincing many teenaged Protestant boys to support an institution that will turn around and promote Drag Queen Story Hours and abortions. PCUSA won’t say no to youthful support for now, as the average age of a PCUSA parishioner is very elderly, but eventually if they became a threat to actual PCUSA power, they could easily excommunicate Richard, and all his cohorts, in the name of “combating hate.”

As a Catholic I actually respect the PCUSA’s members and leadership far more than Richard. Yes, I disagree with them, but I am not trying to deceive them or take away their Church by sending in a fraction of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics to ruin their organization in a parasitical manner. Not only do I not have time for such a crass endeavor, but I have respect for the people of the PCUSA as people to be wrong. Richard won’t even let them have that dignity and simply join one of the dozens of conservative Presbyterian groups that schism from one another constantly, as the PCUSA itself humorously points out.

In short, it’s not that the people of the PCUSA are wrong that seems to bother Richard, but that they’re wrong and possess certain properties and institutional legacy.

If they could all pick a different logo and move into different buildings, and let him have the buildings and institution, he will have won. He’s trying to get the externals and I have never seen him focus on evangelizing the PCUSA members so much as unnaturally overwhelming them with outsiders.

It is sort of like when someone wants to overwhelm a country with immigrants to change it into something fundamentally different, which the natives did not agree to.

Liberal Presbyterians do not create schisms, because they are essentially unitarians, which almost all Calvinist institutions logically wind up as over time, being the opposite side of the same determinist coin.

But if Richard had his way with it, and it became conservative, we can be positive it would become 3+ PCUSA’s within short order. There would probably still be a liberal schism group chugging along that owns nearly all the property anyway, because of how property is owned and managed within the PCUSA, making it nearly impossible for Richard’s plan to pan out and also come away with almost any of the good buildings he is after.

In Catholicism, we claim to be guided by the Holy Spirit into all truth (John 16:13). This makes the Catholic Church the very pillar and bulwark of the truth itself, according to 1 Timothy 3:15. Thus, the Church cannot become what the PCUSA has. Richard can surely point to priests abusing the Mass or waving a “pride flag,” but his church is doctrinally corrupted, whereas the Catholic Church has sinful men, unable to corrupt the Deposit of Faith.

Richard, why bother being part of a Church whose ecumenical councils cannot resolve anything with finality? Is it not blatantly obvious that the system you promote is INTRINSICALLY INCAPABLE of producing unity, if no Council can be trusted? If nothing is binding, what is even the point of a church?

If no one can tell you that you are wrong, and correct you, what is the point of any church governance system, Presbyterian or otherwise? Richard believes the authority just boils down to whoever subjectively interprets the Bible and Westminster Confessional similar to him. This makes him essentially the sole rule of faith.

Why would he want to become Catholic, when he can exist as a one man magisterium, psychologically confident of his “election?” In his mind, he is all powerful to interpret the requisite texts on his own, and if he’s wrong, he’s predestined to heaven anyway.

It seems like a psychological shield, not a pursuit of truth. He doesn’t need the Church, because he is the church. He doesn’t need correction, because he is “elect.” He doesn’t need indefectibility, because he imagines private infallibility through personal divine election.

Richard believes it is never ok to schism from a church, unless you’re correct and the church kicks you out. Then you can start a new one. He defends Martin Luther by saying that Luther had essentially no choice, as he was excommunicated for being right (despite Lutheranism having the wrong polity among other issues John Calvin claimed to have identified).

But even when the Holy Fathers such as St. John Chrysostom were unjustly excommunicated by their own Sees, and sometimes martyred, they never thought it even possible to start a new church, or that the Church itself would be doctrinally corrupted.

They understood that doctrine was not corrupted, but evil men had ascended to thrones they were unworthy of, and would be dealt with.

But Richard has confessed a subjective system where if you believe you’re led by the Holy Spirit (who somehow equally leads people into Lutheranism and Presbyterianism alike…) it’s ok to reject the normative authority that has excommunicated you and start your own branch. But then church discipline is entirely hollow and without meaning. If you personally judge yourself correct, you can start your own church.

Matthew 18:17 says to take disputes to the Church. But Richard essentially says its judgement does not matter and you can start your own church. In his theology, he accidentally enshrines sincerity as the penultimate sacrament of salvation. Consider the following X post:

This is simply Moral Therapeutic Deism (MTD). It also apparently presupposes that sincerity in studying is what will save you from hell. His post is basically a dressed-up version of “the truth doesn’t matter, God will sort it out.”

If God revealed one faith (Ephesians 4:5), then picking “any denomination” can’t all be equally safe. Saying “I won’t go to hell for picking wrong” implies there is no wrong to pick, which is relativism, not Christianity. It replaces God’s authority with personal preference.

He erases the urgency of unity. If it doesn’t matter which denomination you join, then Jesus’s prayer for His followers to be “perfectly one” (John 17:23) is pointless. The very logic of Richard’s Protestant denominationalism negates Christ’s will.

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Richard also reduces salvation to sincerity: “as long as you tried, you’re good.” But sincerity in error isn’t salvific otherwise all pagans would all be saved by default. Grace demands truth as its object (Hebrews 11:1).

Salvation is not a research project. To think it is, is simply works-righteousness in disguise. The grace of faith orients us to an infallible object - the Church Christ founded. All Apostolic Churches (Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox) participate in this, but only the Catholic Church is able to get an infallibly true answer with no conflicting final authorities, and is its fullness.

His tweet claims to trust God, but in reality trusts “sufficient private effort” and an unfounded belief that one is certainly and infallibly predestined to heaven. His private effort is enough evidence to himself that he is certainly predestined. This is why Calvinism has ironic shades of Pelagianism.

Pelagius: “My moral striving proves I’m good enough.”

Calvinism: “My striving proves to me I’m elect.”

In both cases, the individual makes his own effort the evidence of salvation.

Instead of resting in God’s sacraments, he dangerously makes himself the sure arbiter of the status of his eternal destiny. Not just whether he is in right relationship with God right now, but whether or not he is definitely going to be glorified or not.

That’s why Calvinism ends up looking like Pelagian rationalism. The will has been swapped for the intellect, but the self is still the subjective standard.

Debunking the PCUSA is easy, but it almost seems futile as Richard does not truly believe in it himself, as demonstrated. It is just a husk he wants to inhabit and eventually animate with his own theology and authority.

But let us press on and get to the PCUSA itself, before going after Presbyterianism more broadly.

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The Manifold Errors of the PCUSA

1. Chastity

From 1997 to 2011, the PCUSA’s Book of Order included Paragraph G-6.0106b, which required ordained officers (ministers, elders, deacons) to be faithful in heterosexual marriage or chaste in singleness.

In 2011, the General Assembly approved removing that provision (via Amendment 10-A), allowing openly gay and lesbian persons in non-celibate relationships to be ordained. So the church went from explicitly forbidding non-heterosexual “fidelity/chastity” violations to permitting them.

2. Change in what Marriage is

Historically, PCUSA defined marriage in its constitution as “a man and a woman.” In 2014, the General Assembly voted to amend its constitution to redefine marriage as “between two people.” That’s a direct reversal of the prior constitutional standard on marriage.

3. Biblical Inerrancy

In the early 20th century, PCUSA predecessor bodies strongly affirmed inerrancy of Scripture, the virgin birth, miracles, etc., as “fundamentals.”

Later, through the Auburn Affirmation (1924) and subsequent decisions, the church rejected imposing the “five fundamentals” as tests for ordination by the General Assembly, shifting toward massive theological pluralism and “freedom of conscience.” As early NINETEEN-TWENTY-FOUR the PCUSA was already saying you could reject the inerrancy of Scripture and be ordained. So the collapse of the PCUSA is over 100 years old. It didn’t recently fall into modernism.

It allowed the most grave liberal deviations imaginable 2 decades prior to World War II.

4. Revised Confessional Commitments

Prior to the mid-20th century, PCUSA’s antecedents adhered tightly to the Westminster Confession of Faith as its doctrinal standard. In 1967, the denomination adopted a new Confession of 1967, reflecting modern social theology and loosening classical Calvinist elements (e.g. in predestination, human responsibility, social ethics).

Does Richard acknowledge the Confession of 1967 as binding? If not, can the PCUSA be said to be a normative authority he follows?

5. Doctrinal Decentralization

In the 1920s, PCUSA’s precoursor assemblies had attempted to assert binding doctrinal authority from the General Assembly over Presbyteries and local ministers.

After what the PCUSA calls “The Fundamentalist Controversy”, in 1926–1927, the PCUSA’s antecedents adopted policies to decentralize theological authority, making room for diversity of belief among Presbyteries and reducing centralized control over doctrinal standards. You could have multiple contradictory doctrines under the Presbyterian umbrella. The only important thing was to “be Presbyterian.” This reflects the instability within Protestantism, as lacking an epistemic rock of a visible leader with the charism of infallibility, they can’t know for certain what is true, and have to “agree to disagree” even in the face of extreme doctrinal conflict.

6. Full Communion with the ELCA and Other Ultra-Modernist Protestant Institutions

In 1997, the PCUSA confessed that what they believe to be Christ’s ordained method of church governance was no big deal after all, and came into full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America (ELCA), along with other ultra-modernist Protestant churches.

Yes, this is the same ELCA that had a transgender bishop who was deposed after allegedly making racist comments.

This is the same ELCA that has female pastors claiming that Jesus was a sinner, and the Bible full of errors, among other things.

7. Canonizing Multiple Conflicting Confessions

The PCUSA Book of Confessions was first published in 1983 with a particular set of creeds (Nicene, Westminster, etc.). Over time, it has been revised and expanded (e.g. adding the Belhar Confession, new translations of Heidelberg, new statements) — theological positions that earlier editions would have rejected or considered outside the tradition.

This shows the church is treating its own fundamental doctrinal compendium as highly fluid and changeable.

The Belhar Confession has often been rejected by Reformed churches due to claims of teaching “liberation theology.” It originates in South Africa. But this is official PCUSA doctrine now, which is fine for Richard, because what the PCUSA officially teaches is entirely irrelevant.

8. Women’s ordination

In 1964, the General Assembly of what would become the PCUSA in 1983, voted to allow women’s ordination. According to my research, at least 30% of PCUSA is run by female clergy.

The PCUSA believes this is fine because the Westminster Confessional (WC), which Richard claims is without error (against the PCUSA who claims that it can), does not even address the topic of women’s ordination. But the WC does describe pastors and ruling elders as men, exclusively.

So the PCUSA has issued a direct reversal of Westminster standards. Richard himself agrees with this overturning of the WC, saying that women can indeed have “apostolic succession,” which he defines as merely agreeing with what he subjectively believes the Apostles taught. But of course, no Apostle taught that women’s ordination was at all possible.

PCUSA Conclusion

So, how would Richard deal with all these contradictions? He would simply claim that PCUSA makes no claim of infallibility like Catholicism does. But this is a confession that denomination does not matter. Richard regularly goes after other Protestants and claims they’re schismatic or non-Protestant because they left a main body of some sort, but he’s in direct and official communion with the ELCA. The same ELCA which blesses same-sex marriages, ordains partnered gay clergy, and even has bishops who deny the Virgin Birth and bodily Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Denominations don’t matter to him, as long as it’s a mainline. But if communion means anything, he shares in their doctrinal heresy. If it means nothing, then denomination itself is meaningless, and his criticisms of “leaving the mainline” have no weight.

If the Holy Spirit is not guiding the PCUSA into all truth, and making it the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Timothy 3:15), then how can Richard be certain its origins, or the origins of Presbyterianism, were even of the Spirit?

He accepts PCUSA’s councils as his governing body, but he ignores their decisions when they become too absurd. When Richard retreats to “well, the PCUSA doesn’t claim infallibility,” he’s admitting his church is structurally incapable of truth and unity.

He condemns schism in words, but he lives it every single Sunday, in a way far more radical than the conservative Presbyterians he criticizes do.

Presbyterianism started by partly claiming it had the right ecclesiology and was restoring it, and all Christianity was mistaken for over a millennia because the Spirit refused to protect the Church.

Why Presbyterianism itself is a False Religion

1. False Ecclesiology

Presbyterians claim Christ founded an invisible or loosely federated church, governed by presbyters and synods with no head at all. But the New Testament shows a visible, hierarchical communion with a clear headship (St. Peter and his successors).

Matthew 16:18-19: Jesus founds one Church on Peter the Rock, giving him the keys and binding/loosing authority.

John 21:15–17: St. Peter is commanded three times to feed/tend Christ’s flock.

Acts 15: The Apostolic Church resolves disputes in Council, with St. Peter’s judgment dogmatically decisive, and St. James the Younger proposing the equivalent of disciplinary canons.

Presbyterianism claims there is no ministerial priesthood, yet John 13 clearly shows Jesus Christ ordaining the Apostles as the first ministerial priests through washing, similar to how Moses ordained Aaron and his sons. Every single early Church document exclusively shows that the Church believed in a ministerial priesthood separate from the universal priesthood of believers, such as there was a ministerial priesthood (Levites) separate from the universal priesthood of all Israel in Exodus 19:6.

Since the Church is the continuation of Israel, Christ sitting on the eternal Davidic Throne, the Church inherits the universal priesthood of Exodus 19:6. But this is no way precludes a ministerial priesthood. The original Presbyterians innovated a system unseen for the first 1500+ years in the Church, and claimed to be restoring the true ecclesial system of governance. But Richard professes this is irrelevant anyway, as the system of the Lutherans is true enough that you can be in full communion with the ELCA.

The word “priest” ‘itself is simply a shortening of the word “presbyteros” or presbyter. The Presbyterians came up with a radical innovation of viewing Presbyters not as ministerial priests, but a loose association of church elders.

For 1,500 years, every Christian group - Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Coptic, Armenian, Syriac - held a hierarchical system of bishops, priests, and deacons.

This three-tiered system is clearly spelled out in St. Ignatius of Antioch’s letters. St. Ignatius was of course a direct disciple of St. John the Apostle and St. Polycarp. Here are some of his quotes:

“Now, therefore, it has been my privilege to see you in the person of your God-inspired bishop, Damas; and in the persons of your worthy presbyters, Bassus and Apollonius; and my fellow-servant, the deacon, Zotion. What a delight is his company! For he is subject to the bishop as to the grace of God, and to the presbytery as to the law of Jesus Christ” (Letter to the Magnesians 2 [A.D. 110]).

“Take care to do all things in harmony with God, with the bishop presiding in the place of God, and with the presbyters in the place of the council of the apostles, and with the deacons, who are most dear to me, entrusted with the business of Jesus Christ, who was with the Father from the beginning and is at last made manifest” (ibid., 6:1).

“Take care, therefore, to be confirmed in the decrees of the Lord and of the apostles, in order that in everything you do, you may prosper in body and in soul, in faith and in love, in Son and in Father and in Spirit, in beginning and in end, together with your most reverend bishop; and with that fittingly woven spiritual crown, the presbytery; and with the deacons, men of God. Be subject to the bishop and to one another as Jesus Christ was subject to the Father, and the apostles were subject to Christ and to the Father; so that there may be unity in both body and spirit” (ibid., 13:1–2).

“Indeed, when you submit to the bishop as you would to Jesus Christ, it is clear to me that you are living not in the manner of men but as Jesus Christ, who died for us, that through faith in his death you might escape dying. It is necessary, therefore—and such is your practice that you do nothing without the bishop, and that you be subject also to the presbytery, as to the apostles of Jesus Christ our hope, in whom we shall be found, if we live in him. It is necessary also that the deacons, the dispensers of the mysteries [sacraments] of Jesus Christ, be in every way pleasing to all men. For they are not the deacons of food and drink, but servants of the Church of God. They must therefore guard against blame as against fire” (Letter to the Trallians 2:1–3 [A.D. 110]).

“In like manner let everyone respect the deacons as they would respect Jesus Christ, and just as they respect the bishop as a type of the Father, and the presbyters as the council of God and college of the apostles. Without these, it cannot be called a church. I am confident that you accept this, for I have received the exemplar of your love and have it with me in the person of your bishop. His very demeanor is a great lesson and his meekness is his strength. I believe that even the godless do respect him” (ibid., 3:1–2).

“He that is within the sanctuary is pure; but he that is outside the sanctuary is not pure. In other words, anyone who acts without the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons does not have a clear conscience” (ibid., 7:2).

“I cried out while I was in your midst, I spoke with a loud voice, the voice of God: ‘Give heed to the bishop and the presbytery and the deacons.’ Some suspect me of saying this because I had previous knowledge of the division certain persons had caused; but he for whom I am in chains is my witness that I had no knowledge of this from any man. It was the Spirit who kept preaching these words, ‘Do nothing without the bishop, keep your body as the temple of God, love unity, flee from divisions, be imitators of Jesus Christ, as he was imitator of the Father’” (Letter to the Philadelphians 7:1–2 [A.D. 110]).

Presbyterians will typically just dismiss and reinterpret the early Church Fathers to allow for their system. And they have no infallible interpreter to tell them that they’re wrong. If the Holy Spirit cannot guide the Church into the right mode of governance for centuries, how is Christianity itself at all trustworthy? The original Presbyterians seemed to think their system would actually preserve true doctrine.

Richard claims Presbyterians restored true governance, but simultaneously affirms communion with the ELCA, a Lutheran body that openly rejects Presbyterian polity. By his own standard, the Presbyterian system is optional. And if it’s merely optional, then it’s just one possible arrangement among many.

Catholicism teaches there is only one possible arrangement, logical and rational, proceeding from God Himself, and clearly followed in all centuries. And it has perfectly preserved and expounded upon doctrine, making no error whatsoever.

Presbyterianism redefines the very word “priest” to erase the ministerial priesthood, invents a governance system completely unknown for 1,500 years, and then Richard and the PCUSA imply ecclesiology doesn’t matter anyway, as long as you’re in some American mainline club that universally affirms the Democratic Party platform.

The Nicene Creed calls the Church: One, Holy, Catholic, Apostolic.

One: Presbyterians are divided into dozens of competing denominations and commune with other denominations of a completely different polity and different confessions.

Holy: They permit doctrines and practices (women’s ordination, gay marriage) that all Christians before the 20th century called sins.

Catholic: They are limited to regional/national denominations, not universal. The PCUSA has some alliances in South Africa, Korea, and elsewhere, but it cannot be said to be Catholic.

Apostolic: They completely lack succession from the Apostles. Not even Anglicans recognize them as legitimate.

One: Presbyterian polity itself guarantees the Church cannot be “one.” They assert God created a polity that’s inherently incapable of unity, yet wants Christianity to be united.

2. Circular Authority

Presbyterian ecclesiology rests on sola scriptura, but sola scriptura needs an infallible Church to define the canon. The same councils Presbyterians reject as “papist” are the councils that gave them the Bible.

This leaves them in a fatal circle: they accept Scripture as authoritative, but deny the authoritative Church that defined what Scripture is.

3. Sola Scriptura

Presbyterianism posits the doctrine of “sola scriptura,” or that the Bible is the sole infallible rule of faith. Richard himself, like Gavin Ortlund and most modern Protestant apologists, promotes the idea that the Bible is a “fallible collection of infallible books.” The problem with this is if I have just the books of Esther, Song of Solomon and Jude I have a fallible collection of infallible books. Do I then have a sole infallible rule of faith if I have just these three books?

This is a confession on Richard’s part that the Bible is only fallibly known. The Spirit couldn’t even give the church the right Bible clearly, only “probably the Bible.”

Richard’s faith in the “Maybe Scriptures” as his sole infallible rule of faith collapses entirely into a mere fallible rule of faith, as you cannot derive certainty from uncertainty. It’s a well-known logical fallacy that certainty in the conclusion can stem from uncertainty in the premise.

If you’re uncertain that you have the whole Bible, and it’s your sole rule of faith, you have a FALLIBLE RULE OF FAITH BY DEFAULT.

If “Scripture interprets Scripture” as Presbyterians assert it does, then you need the entire Bible to be infallibly defined, or else you cannot reliably interpret it. Just one missing book or the inclusion of a non-infallible book would virtually ensure a false interpretation of doctrine.

John Calvin himself knew something like a “fallible collection of infallible books” argument was utterly fatal epistemically, which is why he turned to a burning bosom argument, as Joshua Charles perfectly outlines. After Joseph Smith copied this to promote the Book of Mormon, the he argument became nearly impossible in the West to employ, so Presbyterians turned to other terrible answers.

4. The Presbyterian Corruption of the Eucharist

The early Church unanimously affirmed the Real Presence. Presbyterians treat the Lord’s Supper as merely symbolic or “spiritual,” denying transubstantiation and even sacrificial language.

Yet, Presbyterians assert that Christ is spiritually present during the Lord’s Supper, dividing Christ’s humanity from His divinity. This makes Presbyterianism a collection of quasi-Nestorian sects.

In Catholicism, we avoid the Nestorian error of Presbyterianism by affirming that the bread and wine are changed into the body and blood of Christ, present in a Sacramental Mode, because Christ’s humanity and divinity cannot be separated after the Incarnation.

In the Eucharist we eat the Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity of Christ. His sacramental presence ensures it is not cannibalism, as the biology, or “accidents” of bread and wine remain. It is the essence of them that becomes Christ’s flesh and blood. So while having the biology of bread and wine, the Eucharist is no longer bread and wine, but Christ, undivided.

The reason we defined Christology in granular detail in the ecumenical councils is so that we could actually employ its truths to avoid errors like that of the Presbyterians and the Lord’s Supper. Presbyterians will affirm Nestorianism is wrong, but “color outside the lines” anyway.

This is similar to how Lutheran’s will claim Monophysitism is wrong, but collapse Christ’s divinity and humanity by claiming Christ can be “physically omnipresent” although concentrating Himself inside bread and wine, as “promised.” They communicate an essential attribute of divinity, omnipresence, to Christ’s humanity, making it no longer a truly human nature. They “color outside the lines” of basic Christology.

5. Presbyterianism is an Epistemological Wreck

The Word of God is living and active, as Hebrews 4:12 says. That means it must be communicated with certainty to the faithful, which requires, of course, a living infallible interpreter, one guaranteed not to err in teaching what God has revealed. The Church needs an authority with six qualities:

1. Infallibility

2. Visibility

3. Vitality

4. Publicity

5. Perpetuality

6. Singularity

Presbyterianism cannot produce certainty in matters of faith as it lacks these necessities. It can at best produce psychological confidence.

Since you cannot derive certainty from uncertainty, infallibility is a necessity. Even the Old Covenant had Episodic Infallibility to keep Israel on track, that way Israel could follow its leaders with full confidence, knowing that if they erred, God would send corrective Prophets. The Presbyterian ecclesial system is therefore vastly inferior to the Old Covenant system, as at least it could produce certainty and compel obedience. Disobeying the Levitical judgement would result in the death penalty, because they were backed by God, which kept Israel united. Presbyterianism cannot even keep Presbyterianism united within one country.

Because Presbyterianism’s infallible interpreter (the Spirit) does not work through a visible means endowed with a charism of infallibility, there is no way to validate that their interpretations are actually of the Holy Spirit. Anyone can just claim to be following the invisible infallible interpreter.

If Richard tries to claim Catholicism cannot be certain either, his claims collapse into systemic nihilism, and are no defense of Presbyterianism. Without showing how he can derive certainty, he’s only confessing that we don’t need to follow Christ, because no one can ascertain that they actually listen to Him, and therefore He does not even wish to be known with certainty.

Presbyterianism claims the Apostles were infallible, particularly while writing Scripture, but their infallible authorities are physically dead and lack physical vitality, or life. Therefore, no one can validate with them what was meant by their writings. This is not a problem if the Apostles have perpetual successors guarded by the Holy Spirit in matters of faith and morals.

Presbyterianism cannot produce a public authority to follow. Richard follows only a personal private authority, as he ignores the official public teaching and doctrine of the PCUSA.

In Presbyterianism, there is no perpetual direct succession to the Apostles. This is why the Church can be universally wrong in its understanding of church polity for 1.5 millennia.

Lastly, Presbyterianism has the epistemic crisis of Competing Finals on steroids, especially the PCUSA. They lack Singularity. No one can tell you with certainty which group is true. As mentioned, the PCUSA allows a range of doctrinal opinions and treats them as equally valid, as long as you’re convicted in conscience.

So Presbyterianism is an anti-intellectual probabilistic religion. It all comes down to a bunch of individual “burning bosom” arguments based on how strongly one feels something is true. When this is pointed out, they just claim other systems are in the same boat, confessing Christianity to be ultimately unknowable and Christ to be followable only by guessing at what He might want.

The only real criterion is the subjective sense of “this interpretation makes sense to me.”

Or, “this is probably true, but it might be wrong, and every synod can err.” If the Church can err, then Christ’s promises fail (Matt 16:18; John 16:13). That reduces faith to a mere hunch.

Either Christ gave His Church a way to teach with certainty (Catholicism), or He left us in endless probabilistic guessing (Presbyterianism).

If it’s the latter, then Christianity is not followable, since no one can ever know whether they’re obeying Christ or not.

By its own logic, Presbyterianism proves itself a counterfeit religion that denies the very possibility of the Church Christ promised.

Presbyterian friends, your system reduces Christianity to a probability game. But Christ didn’t say, “Guess the truth as best you can.” He said, “I am the Truth.” If your church can’t deliver certainty, then it’s not His Church. And you need to find a new one.

6. Iconoclasm

It is a false assertion that Presbyterians are really iconoclasts. They just hate most religious art. They have tons of icons. Case in point:

They got rid of depictions of saints and Christ crucified for the Bride in favor of other icons.

Iconoclasm is a serious heresy, as it subtly denies the incarnation itself.

If God became man, He could be seen. If He could be seen, He could be depicted. If He could be depicted, he could be used in artwork that enables incarnational prayer. This is praying with objects. If we kiss a crucifix, this is an intercession of affection to Jesus Christ, through the use of an object. All we are doing is praying.

By saying incarnational prayer is wrong, they are implying the incarnation never happened, or didn’t have the ramifications that it did.

To forbid images of Christ is to imply His humanity cannot be represented, which denies or diminishes the Incarnation itself.

In the Old Covenant, certain images were forbidden because God was not yet seen (Deuteronomy 4:15: “You saw no form…”)

Inn the New Covenant, Christ Himself says, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). Iconoclasm drags Christianity back into pre-Incarnational Judaism, as though the Word had not taken flesh.

Kissing a crucifix, bowing before an icon, or lighting a candle isn’t worship of matter but an incarnational way of directing our prayer to Christ through sensible signs. Just as the sacraments use matter (water, bread, wine) as conduits of grace, so icons and crucifixes assist prayer through the senses.

To reject them is to reject the principle that grace comes to us through matter, which again strikes at the heart of the Incarnation, wherein God assumed matter.

Nestorianism divided Christ’s person. Pelagianism denied the primacy of grace. But Iconoclasm strikes at the very possibility of Christ being depicted or encountered as true man. It makes Christianity a purely spiritualized religion, closer to Islam in certain ways.

Catholics act as if the incarnation actually happened. We don’t disregard an entire form of prayer because of a false reading of the Old Testament. The ramifications of the incarnation unfolded within the early Church, and any iconoclastic tendencies quickly subsided, and gave way to the incredible artwork we see within the Roman catacombs and elsewhere.

If Christ cannot be depicted, then Christ was never truly Incarnate, or the incarnation’s full ramifications are artificially blocked. Iconoclasm is not just wrong, it is anti-Christian.

7. The Presbyterian Gospel

Candidly, it’s hard to discern what the PCUSA specifically thinks is the Gospel. It seems to be hardly different in practice from what the Unitarians profess. Here I will return partially to focusing on the PCUSA, as the different Presbyterian assemblies cannot universally agree on what the Gospel is.

Many PCUSA seminaries (like Union Theological Seminary and some Princeton faculty) openly teach “post-Trinitarian” or “non-Trinitarian” theologies.

PCUSA policy allows presbyteries to ordain clergy who reject Nicene orthodoxy, as long as their “conscience is captive to the Word as they understand it.”

Marcus Borg and John Shelby Spong (influential in PCUSA circles although Anglican/Episcopalian) denied the Trinity and divinity of Christ, and were still largely treated as faithful ministers by the PCUSA.

Some PCUSA members describe God as “Mother, Child, and Womb” instead of Father, Son, and Spirit. Several individual PCUSA churches openly self-identify as Unitarian-leaning while remaining in communion.

This is because Universalism is of the same coin as Calvinism. Over time, Calvinist bodies have a strong tendency to collapse into universalism.

Calvinism: God’s will is absolute, but He arbitrarily damns most of mankind to eternal hell without possibility of grace.

Universalism: God’s will is absolute, but He arbitrarily saves everyone, regardless of faith, repentance, or sacraments.

If God is absolute will, as Islam also teaches, and also absolute love, then universalism must actually be true. The PCUSA modernists have just followed Calvin faithfully to his logical end.

Both Calvinism and Universalism collapse into fatalism - man has no real cooperation with grace, no synergy, no covenantal responsibility. Richard’s only real defense against this is to employ the Tu Quoque fallacy, claiming that some Catholic Saints functionally taught the same thing. But the fact is many modern Calvinists have caveated Calvin to the point where they’re more like Banezian Thomists, possibly a positive development.

PCUSA inherited Calvinist predestinarian categories but, under pressure from liberal theology, flipped the polarity: Instead of “God predestines the elect and reprobate, it became “God predestines everyone to salvation.”

It stems from the same root problem: grace is not a living participation in God, but a cosmic decree that does not include the free choices of man within it. Both are systems where God forces man to be saved. Universalists just say God forces everyone to be saved, because He is love.

God wills all men to be saved. But He does not elect all men. He elects those who do not reject grace. He positively damns those who do reject it. All men need to be positively elected by God to be saved, as even not rejecting grace is insufficient to merit salvation. God has to positively choose you. And in His mercy, he does elect some to join His Ark, the Catholic Church.

God gives everyone actually sufficient grace to be saved. He enables their will to be able to receive the amount of “talents” or “coins” he wishes to impart to them. Grace is universally sufficient, but not all accept it.

Calvin: God positively reprobates from all eternity, creating souls only to damn them.

Catholicism: God wills all to be saved; man freely rejects or receives. Election confirms and seals the cooperation of the faithful, while damnation follows the soul’s rejection.

Determinist strands of Catholic theology do not excuse Calvinism. These strands have very detailed theological explanations that ultimately rest on God’s mysterious will. But Calvin essentially dogmatized what he believed was the order of God’s own thoughts, which are unknowable. A reason why Catholics do not dogmatize a particular view of divine causality is because doing so is impossible, as God’s mind is ineffable.

The fact that you had to affirm double predestination, in a Calvinist sense, to even be communed at one point is proof Calvin dogmatized an unknowable theological opinion on God’s inner life, possibly the height of arrogance. Universalists do similar.

God did not give us a blueprint of His thought process in the Bible. Calvinism is dogmatized speculation. Calvin went beyond mystery and dogmatized a speculative metaphysics of God’s eternal decrees, and made them binding for communion.

He claimed to know with divine certainty the order of God’s thoughts: first decree the Fall, then decree unconditional election and reprobation.

Thomism says: “Here is the truth we must hold - but how God actualizes it lies in mystery.”

Calvin says: “Here is how God definitely thinks - and you must accept my metaphysical scheme as revealed truth like the 66 Book canon of Scripture, known by a burning in the bosom.”

Catholicism is humble before mystery though it allows speculation (as theological speculation within the bounds of infallible doctrine allows for development of doctrine, which is progressively better understanding of the Apostolic Deposit); Calvinism is presumptuous before God’s own mind.

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Conclusion

“Redeemed Zoomer” is a grown man with a college degree who is now in seminary to become a minister in a church he does not consider authoritative. About the only thing he believe it gets right is a polity, which has no historical evidence as having ever existed, and if it did exist, is even more problematic because it posits a huge failure on the part of the Holy Spirit.

The PCUSA is mired in several contradictions and epistemic crises. It could not possibly be worse. Richard hopes to take over its husk with enough young men, and change its official doctrine, and then enforce it. He rejects that it is a normative authority today, but plans to turn it into one tomorrow.

Presbyterianism itself is a false faith, born in the 1500 and 1600’s, with blatant strands of Nestorian and iconoclastic theology. It binds people to believe in things that can only be known for certain in the mind of God, and a specific polity, but ultimately many Presbyterian groups reject even basics such as the Trinity and Virgin Birth as “non-negotiables” of Christianity. Once you commune with a body that refuses to accept the Trinity, you have united yourself to a non-Christian faith. And this is a terrible thing to carry with you spiritually before the Judgement Throne of God.

The solution for all young Presbyterians and others who follow Redeemed Zoomer is to instead come home to Christ’s Catholic Church. At least here you can have epistemic certainty. You might be skeptical that we are correct about everything, but you need to find a Church that claims to be, or else you are left permanently “self shepherding.”

The PCUSA, and all other Presbyterian and Protestant churches, are not called the Catholic Church. And just on this fact alone they are all therefore false, because God’s Church is called the Catholic Church by Divine Protection according to Holy Father Augustine. Whenever anyone separates from us, they need to start adding adjectives.

“The very name of the Catholic Church, which not without cause this Church alone has so held amid so many heresies, so that though all heretics wish to be called Catholics, when a stranger asks where the Catholic Church meets, none of the heretics dares to point to his own basilica or house.”

This is by divine protection, guiding men to the True Church.

Election presupposes being in a state capable of receiving grace. Since original sin blocks sanctifying grace by nature, God provided an ordinary means (baptism).

Limbo (“poena damni” without “poena sensus”) is a common traditional solution to what happens to unbaptized infants. This traditional view diffuses the tension by affirming that unbaptized infants do not suffer torment, but live in natural happiness, while still deprived of the Beatific Vision. This preserves both God’s justice (they remain in Adam) and His goodness (no unjust pubishment).

Poena damni is the pain of loss. This is the chief pain of hell, and it is experienced very acutely by those also experiencing Poena Sensus, the pain of sense. Those who experience the latter do so because they’re guilty of personal sin. The unbaptized infants do not experience any pain, for they’re not guilty of personal sin. They live in eternal natural happiness, although suffering loss. However, it is just that they remain in Adam, for God is not obligated to save anyone, but in His mercy he allows them to live on the New Earth with their families and the people of God in bliss.

But the theory of limbo introduces new theological tension to attempt to resolve.

It seems God has not given unbaptized infants who suffer tragedy sufficient grace, yet all men are offered sufficient grace. If they had no capability to receive or reject baptism, how can it be said grace was sufficient for them?

Catholic doctrine insists that God never positively withholds sufficient grace from anyone. To do so would mean He created souls for damnation.

But how grace is given can be mysterious. For adults, sufficient grace always means a real possibility to repent and believe. For infants, sufficient grace is tied to the ordinary means (baptism), or extraordinary ways known to God alone (baptism of desire, martyrdom, or a hidden operation of Christ’s mercy).

We know infallibly and with certainty that the baby boys slain in Bethlehem by King Herod are glorified, as they are all canonized martyrs, the Holy Innocents.

So, we need here some way to diffuse the tension that also does not make sufficient grace insufficient. Because if they died without any chance, it is logical to conclude that grace simply was not sufficient for them. There are multiple ways to address this, but I believe I have found the strongest.

If sufficient grace is only “potential” but never actually ordered to the possibility of salvation, then it is a hollow category. It collapses into “insufficient.” So we need a way of affirming real sufficiency while recognizing infants who die without baptism.

In Thomistic terms, grace is not “sufficient” unless it actually makes salvation possible in at least one real order. That order might be Normative (baptism), or Extraordinary (God Himself supplying baptismal grace apart from a traditional water baptism).

Thus, every infant is truly given sufficient grace, but it need not be visible to us. To deny this would collapse into saying God positively created souls with no possibility of salvation, which the Magisterium has consistently refused to affirm.

Therefore, sufficiency is actualized either in baptism or in hidden ways known only to God. So this is our limit. God supplies sufficient grace, but in a way we are ignorant of. We don’t know how God actualizes sufficiency in infants who die without baptism. But God does. But what did the early Church believe?

The earliest Church Fathers had no fully worked-out “theory of limbo,” but they did recognize the issue of unbaptized infants. They asserted:

1. Original sin really binds all under Adam (Rom 5:12).

2. God is good and just, and does not damn without personal guilt.

St. Cyprian insists infants should be baptized as soon as possible, because no one is without “contagion,” not even a child just born. Tertullian contested this, but along a line of reasoning proven false and at odds with the rest of the Church. Tertullian believed baptism should be delayed as long as possible to get a “clean slate” as late in life as possible. He had very underdeveloped doctrines of sanctification and baptism alike.

St. Augustine also affirmed that babies should be baptized as soon as possible. The Fathers seemed to take circumcision guidelines as a good guideline for timelines for infant baptism.

Now limbo is actually an Eastern-originated view.

St. Gregory Nazianzen said as regards unbaptized infants (and also catechumens, although we have come to affirm unbaptized catechumens are generally granted the baptism of desire):

“And so also in those who fail to receive the gift [of baptism]…perhaps on account of infancy, or some perfectly involuntary circumstance through which they are prevented from receiving it, even if they wish…will be neither glorified nor punished by the righteous Judge, as unsealed [by baptism] and yet not wicked, but persons who have suffered rather than done wrong. For not every one who is not bad enough to be punished is good enough to be honored; just as not every one who is not good enough to be honored is bad enough to be punished.”

This is the theory of limbo, and it’s slightly before St. Augustine’s time.

From the consensus of the Fathers I think we can affirm these two truths:

1. There is no glorification without baptism (ordinary or extraordinary).

2. There is no torment without personal guilt.

This is found both in the East and West.

The Scholastics firmed up and defined limbo based on these truths.

But this does not mean limbo is definitely true. In fact, if sufficiency is actualized, that makes limbo unlikely. Yet without limbo we can still affirm the 2 truths just mentioned, and not go against the Sensus Fidelium.

The 2007 Vatican International Theological Commission document (“The Hope of Salvation for Infants Who Die Without Baptism”) says limbo remains a “possible theological opinion,” but not definitive. The Sensus Fidelium increasingly gravitates toward hope of extraordinary sufficiency of grace.

The way theology works is that charismated Christians prayerfully seek God’s guidance, and the Sensus Fidelium and ultimately the Magisterium affirm what is false, true, or possible. This is how theology and also doctrine develops. Nothing new is added, we simply better understand what has been delivered.

The Sensus Fidei Fidelium (sense of the faithful) is the instinct of the whole Church, guided by the Spirit, to recognize and preserve authentic faith. This is not majority vote or personal opinion, but a mystical participation in Christ’s own knowing, shared with the Body. We collectively have the Mind of Christ. It does not only help us better understand the Apostolic Deposit, but also resist heresy, which is what was at work among the Nicene Fathers.

So where I see things going is that limbo will eventually be ruled out. Or permitted as an opinion, but rarely believed. Instead, I believe we will simply come to the universal or near-universal belief that sufficiency is actualized for infants, ruling out the possibility of limbo.

How it is actualized will remain a mystery. But this is a source of comfort, as it allows us to rest on God’s mercy and justice, avoid anything arbitrary or unfair (which is important, as our human categories of fairness are informed by the innate “Sensus Divinitatis”. The First Cause (God) must be perfectly good, since evil is a privation, and the first source cannot be lacking).

So we can affirm these things safely:

1. God desires all men to be saved.

2. He wills some to eternal life, namely those who do not reject grace. We can debate over why someone accepts or rejects it, but the fact remains.

3. Sufficiency is in some way actualized in the innocent who die in a way we are not privy to. This likely rules out limbo, but it also rules out any arbitrary damnation and prevents infant mortality becoming a type of baptism, and infant mortality becoming a major means of salvation.

The Church avoids declaring all unbaptized infants as saved, as it would turn infant mortality into a perverse incentive. But the Church also refuses to say they are damned, especially in the sense of torment. However, loss is a form of damnation even if those experiencing it are in bliss. So, there is a hidden mysterious mode of grace at play.

For adults, sufficiency is actualized in their ability to freely respond to grace, either to reject it or accept it. For infants who died without baptism, it cannot be actualized in the ordinary or “normal” way. Christ only gave us the Ordinary means of salvation, and did not entrust us with the Extraordinary means, although He make work through us to carry out Extraordinary means.

The Church entrusts unbaptized infants to the Throne of Divine Mercy. We are not kinder than God. We are not more loving than God. We are not more merciful and just than God. We do not love anyone, even our own children, more than God, who loves them infinitely. So this is the best position for an unbaptized infant to be in. No one is deprived arbitrarily, as God is not unjust. But He does not reveal everything to mankind.

Limbo was made as a safeguard to key truths, and until very recently I leaned towards affirming it. However, there is theological conflict with it that is difficult to resolve, and it is simply no mistake that the Sensus Fidelium is moving a certain direction. Even though most Catholics can be comfortable with limbo, especially when they understand it to be a state of bliss, likely on the New Earth with their families, there is loss without any actualized sufficient grace.

We can also hope that every unbaptized infant is indeed glorified, and should. There are certain things God does not wish to reveal to us, as there are certain things beyond our comprehension as mortals right now also at play that would cause us to receive certain revelation in a way that harms us.

“The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us.” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

Revelation gives us what we need to know for salvation, not everything God in His infinite wisdom knows. Some things, if revealed too clearly, would tempt us to either presumption or despair, because there is a chain of knowledge to understand everything that is beyond the scope of an unglorified person.

Revelation requires trust in God, not exhaustive comprehension of the Divine. A certain level of knowledge would in fact “crush” a finite mind, particularly an unglorified one.

We know that God is perfectly good, just and merciful. We know He does not damn without guilt (and original sin is not the same as personal guilt). We know He provides sufficient grace for all. But we do not know the how in His providence for each individual. We have guardrails, but we do not always get revealed mechanisms. We simply have the mechanisms that are the ordinary means. To demand more than that can veer into asking God to unveil what He has deliberately withheld for our own good.

What He has revealed is the perfect amount of revelation, and what we understand of the Apostolic Deposit is the perfect amount of understanding for the current time.

Sola Scriptura is a fundamental impossibility if one has even a basic conception of the Church as Christ’s Mystical Body.

The Church cannot contradict the 73 Book Bible, because it’s a product of the Church and the Spirit, not because the Scripture is a higher authority than the Church, the Total Christ (the Head and Body together). Thus, sola Scriptura is refuted, for it presupposes an authority higher than Jesus, or it presupposes that Jesus is not the head of the Church.

Some might claim that the Bible is Jesus, but that is conflating an object with God, which is idolatry. The Bible is something God produced through men, it isn’t God Himself. God is not His creations. Scripture is about Christ, not literally Christ. Christ is the Eternal Logos, the Eternal Word. The Bible is not an eternal text, but came into being slowly within time itself. It did not always exist, unlike Christ, who has always existed and is consubstantial with the Father.

“You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39–40).

When Protestants refuse to come to the Catholic Church that they may have life, they are refusing to come to Christ Himself, for the Church is Christ. There are of course degrees of ignorance here that mitigate culpability. However, searching the Scriptures instead of becoming Catholic and reading the Scriptures in light of the Church’s infallible interpretation of doctrine from Scripture is a type of refusal to come to Christ.

The Church is the prolongation of the Incarnation. The Catholic Church is the continuing incarnation of Christ in the world through his Mystical Body. If Christ is the Head and the Church His Mystical Body, then the Church speaks with His voice. To deny the Church’s teaching authority while claiming Christ’s authority is to decapitate Christ from His Body, which is impossible.

The Bible exists because the Church, animated by the Spirit, discerned the canon. The canon is not self-evident, as Protestants themselves cannot justify the 66-book canon without appealing to some external authority (whether Luther’s opinion(s), John Calvin’s “burning bosom” argument which was eventually appropriated by Joseph Smith, Rabbinical Jewish lists from the 700’s, or personal “pragmatic assumptions”).

Thus, the Church is not judged by the Bible, rather, the Bible is recognized and preserved within the Church. To elevate the text above the Body that produced, preserved, and interpreted it is to invert divine order.

When Protestants say “Scripture alone,” they are essentially saying: “I will come to the words about Him, but not to Him as He lives in His Body.”

Some Protestants, such as Dr. James White, might accuse Catholic Solus Christus as being “sola ecclesia,” since Christ and the Church are one. Notice that this is a confession on their part, that they do not believe the Church and Christ are one flesh as the Bible teaches.

Ephesians 5:31–32:

“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother: and shall cleave to his wife, and they shall be two in one flesh. This is a great sacrament; but I speak in Christ and in the church.”

Sola Scriptura isolates the witness (the text) from the Person (Christ).

Sola Ecclesia would isolate the institution from the Head (also an error).

Solus Christus, as understood within Catholicism, integrates both: Christ speaks in and through His Mystical Body, which both produced and safeguards Scripture.

The Bible is about Christ. The Church is Christ’s Body. Neither can be ultimate apart from Him, but because He is Head of the Church, the Church is His living, visible presence that validates and interprets doctrine from the text.

If the Church is not radically one with Christ, then Christ is a “headless Savior,” which contradicts Colossians 1:18:

“And he is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead; that in all things he may hold the primacy.”

This verse is one of the clearest proofs that Christ and the Church are not two separate realities competing for primacy, but one organic whole, the Head and the Body.

If the Church is not one with Christ, then marriage (the analogy St. Paul uses) collapses, because in marriage, the two become one flesh without ceasing to be distinct. Some Protestants will say this is a future reality in the Eschaton, but that blatantly contradicts Colossians 1:18, showing that the Church and Christ are already one flesh, as the marriage took place at the Cross. The future banquet comes in the Eschaton, but the two are no less one flesh.

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On the Cross, Christ “gave Himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). That act is the consummation by which the mystical marriage occurred. The wedding feast of the Lamb in Revelation is the eschatological banquet of that union, not the start of it.

To say “we’re not one flesh yet, only later” would mean the Church today is not the Body of Christ, which contradicts St. Paul’s clear teaching. Thus, Sola Scriptura undermines St. Paul as well.

So the response to sola scriptura is Solus Christus.

Christ is not a book, but a Person.

The Word became flesh, not parchment. To absolutize Scripture over the Church severs the Head from the Body. Christ is one with His Body, the Church.

Ephesians 5:31-32 and Colossians 1:18 prove the union already exists. To separate them is to deny Paul’s analogy of marriage and to gut the meaning of the Mystical Body.

Christ entrusted His authority to the Apostles and their successors. That’s how He continues to teach infallibly and visibly.

Sola Scriptura imagines a Christ who abandoned His Bride to private judgment. Solus Christus insists the living Christ still governs through His Church. We can still validate that we have heard God rightly the same as St. Peter could in Matthew 16:16-17. This is an epistemic necessity.

Scripture only makes sense within Christ. Scripture is not “alone,” it is part of the Deposit of Faith Christ gives to His Church. To pretend it is supreme is to idolize a created text.

Solus Christus. Christ and His Church are one flesh.

To follow Jesus, we must know with certainty what He said and what He desires. We must know precisely how He speaks today to lead His people. Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Arians and even Muslims all claim or claimed to follow Jesus. How do you know you are doing so rightly?

Youth Pastor Ryan: “We know by the Spirit. He leads us into all truth, through Scripture. No man can be infallible.”

Well, we both agree that some men have been infallible under specific conditions, namely, while writing Scripture. The Spirit spoke through them. And the Catholic claim is simply that God speaks infallibly through the Chair of Peter now and then as needed to maintain unity and to sort proper development in understanding from false.

So we do know by the Spirit, and the Spirit acts through the Church, as there needs to be a visible means through which the invisible works. The Spirit works through members of Ecumenical Councils, the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium, and the Papacy. Catholicism gives an actual concrete way by which the Spirit works which can be seen, enabling unity.

Youth Pastor Ryan: “But the Inquisition, Fr. Martin, gay pilgrims at the Vatican and bad Popes.”

In the Old Covenant, God did not nullify the Seat of Aaron after he crafted by hand the Golden Calf. He did not nullify the Throne of David after he murdered a man and committed adultery. He did not nullify the Seat of Moses but rather said to obey it (Matthew 23:2-3) despite the Pharisees being hypocrites and being overly strict. In fact, God punished the rebels in all cases. Korah was swallowed into hell alive.

The rebels who fought King David were all utterly and brutally defeated one by one. Sins don’t allow mere men to declare God’s authorities illegitimate. A person does not have to follow a sinful command, but he must know what is sinful. Since the Church’s teaching on faith and morals is what informs man what is sinful, that cannot be corrupted, or else all is lost.

And there is a majorly hypocritical slant to what Protestants claim here. Their own authorities are also sinful men. The fact that they narrow the range of forgivable offenses is merely proof that they are conglomerations of politically similar individuals, not a broad Church that spans the gamut of humanity which includes people inclined towards all myriad of sins. Some of generally “leftist” nature, some more common among the right, such as self-righteous pride (more spiritually deadly than sodomy) and lack of generosity towards outsiders.

With 750,000 priests, you will find constant serious scandal. You can’t go one night in a city that size without finding some crime. Although the members of the priesthood are generally much better than a whole city in terms of behavior, at those numbers you are guaranteed a daily scandal. At 1.4 billion Catholics, you are guaranteed millions of hypocrites daily.

The Church is a hospital for sinners, and this includes the very clergy who are appointed to run it. They were not glorified before being ordained, and neither was your pastor. The clergy are also held to a higher standard, and will face a very strict judgment, as will you as a youth pastor and I as an apologist, as, apostolic succession or not, we have taken up a mantle of teaching others in some capacity. So we should feel dread for negligent bishops and Popes, and pray for them, knowing we are in a similar though not equal boat as them.

Youth Pastor Ryan: “But the Catholic Church has taught error. Praying to Saints, purgatory, a celebrate priesthood, the list goes on. Therefore it cannot be infallible.”

How do you know with certainty that you’re not the one in grave spiritual error? Protestants cannot agree on what the essentials even are, let alone agree on them universally. You are strongly persuaded that your views are right, but you are not evidently certain. Evident certitude comes from knowing something is true based on plain sight. But Protestants have no one to validate that what they think is plainly true, actually is. They just claim it’s “self evident,” but none dare say they know infallibly what is self evident, a confession of uncertainty.

Since you’re not evidently certain what is true, you cannot be certain the Catholic Church is wrong, only very persuaded. You have no means of infallible validation. You have no narrowing mechanism to get to certainty to settle disputes among Protestants, let alone objectively prove us Catholics wrong. Since you can only subjectively claim we are wrong, it’s actually immoral for you to evangelize anyone.

You’re trying to bind people to something you’re not evidently certain of yourself, only persuaded of. You don’t claim to be infallible, and you cannot produce an infallible visible interpreter to affirm your understanding. If God has only given us something so vague that we can only persuade one another, we are not obligated to be Christian, for we cannot know certainly what Christ even meant.

We cannot infallibly settle any disputes, and He’s not helping us in any discernible way that could create unity. Your own assembly is just one of dozens of conservative Baptist groups, several of which are represented in this very town, which cannot achieve unity. And if that unity is not important, then you’re confessing that God allows disunity because He is incapable of overcoming men’s weaknesses.

Let me ask you Ryan, if you were God, and wanted people to know you with certainty and clarity, and wanted them to be publicly unified as one Church, which could infallibly settle every dispute, how would you go about achieving it?

Youth Pastor Ryan: “I am not sure. I believe God has already acted in the most perfect manner. I don’t think it is possible.”

Yet we know that God wills that He be known. How can a God who is Pure Act will that man know Him, but be unable to bring it about, being thwarted by the limitations of His own creation? Ryan, in your Church, why do you have a lead pastor?

Youth Pastor Ryan: “Well, we need a singular direction in vision, who is learned, and someone with whom the buck stops, who can settle disagreements.”

Exactly. Every time you have what’s called a “multiplicity,” logic demands a higher organizing principle. Your lead pastor is that higher organizing principle, and you and the other pastors are the multiplicity. If a medium-sized Baptist church cannot properly function without a visible head, how could the global Church have unity without one? Every multiplicity roles up to a higher organizing principle until there is only one remaining.

Youth Pastor Ryan: “Yes but that’s Jesus!”

Jesus is seated at the Right hand of the Father. He is physically located in heaven. He’s invisible to us except sacramentally, and thus, He must have appointed a visible leader to shepherd the sheep while He is away. That visible leader is St. Peter, who was told to “Feed my Sheep” and “strengthen the brethren,” who were his fellow Apostles. If the Apostles needed a visible higher organizing principle, and the People of Israel needed a High Priest, why did it suddenly become unnecessary?

Youth Pastor Ryan: “Because divine revelation has ceased.”

That does not address the question. Divine revelation has ceased, but who is its guardian? How do we know its boundaries? Who interprets it infallibly? How do we know they do? These are all unresolvable without a perpetual visible head. Without one, we are in an impossible position. We are unable to know with certainty what the boundaries of divine revelation even is, and unable to have unity.

As soon as there is no living authority who can settle disputes with a charism of infallibility (either episodically with Prophets as in the Old Covenant, or perpetually with the divinely-protected Magisterium in the New Covenant), you have epistemic collapse.

It’s important this authority be living and visible, or else a multitude of people will rise up claiming to follow the infallible inanimate or dead authority, and no one will be able to resolve who is. It will devolve into mere persuasion. Did God leave us to “whoever makes the most persuasive argument is probably the Holy Spirit’s guy?” What kind of system is that?

Youth Pastor Ryan: “Well, we are doing well in my local congregation.”

Sure, but there are comfortable and well-organized Mormon assemblies too. And you say you’re doing well, but it’s unlikely that any Baptists at all from the 1910’s would even consider you to be a Christian given that you believe in contraception and regularly drink alcohol, being in an assembly that is more open to liquor, unlike JimBob’s Independent Fundamental Baptist assembly across the street from yours. It’s safe to say that in 100 years it could be nearly all Baptists believe something you would find intolerable today. And they would be just as comfortable and happy as you are with their situation.

In other words, if God’s Word is only preserved as letters, then it is merely Word-in-Potency, not Word-in-act. It is just “potentially Scripture.”

The Six Requirements of Authority

The Word of God is living and active, as Hebrews 4:12 says. That means it must be communicated with certainty to the faithful, which requires, of course, a living infallible interpreter, one guaranteed not to err in teaching what God has revealed. The Church needs an authority with six qualities:

1. Infallibility

2. Visibility

3. Vitality

4. Publicity

5. Perpetuality

6. Singularity

If the authority is not infallible, then there’s no possibility of ever being certain in interpretation, because you cannot derive certainty from uncertainty. If the premise is uncertain, it’s a well-known logical fallacy that the conclusion can be certain. So you need an infallible interpreter of doctrine from Scripture.

The authority also has to be Visible. This is why it cannot only be the Holy Spirit, because the Spirit is invisible. The Spirit must work through a visible authority. Otherwise, Christian unity in doctrine is utterly impossible, as anyone can claim to be listening to the Holy Spirit, and no one can validate it as did St. Peter in Matthew 16:17. God revealed truth to St. Peter, and it was confirmed by an infallible and VISIBLE authority, namely, Jesus Christ during His earthly ministry.

The authority must be living (possess vitality). It cannot be dead or inanimate. Protestants do in a sense say the infallible authority died with St. John the Apostle. They had a living, infallible and visible authority with Christ, and then with the Apostles (Luke 10:16). With the death of the last Apostle, under any Protestant system, epistemic collapse immediately occurred, because the infallible authority died, or became inanimate (their words on a page - the Word in potency). If the authority is inanimate, it cannot settle new disputes. It cannot confirm what is true greater understanding versus new false understanding.

Authority must be public. This is related to visibility, but not exactly the same thing. The authority cannot be private and visible, otherwise divine revelation is not binding and universal. This rules out all cults and secretive gurus claiming to speak for God in obscure sects. Without a public authority, there would be no way to adjudicate disputes.

The interpretive authority must be perpetual. This rules out sedevacantism as a possibility, and is what makes sedevacantists heretics, not merely schismatics. If the authority is not perpetual, then it lacks vitality (life). It’s dead or inanimate, and there is epistemic collapse. There is no epistemic collapse during a Papal interregnum, because the Papal Office remains, and certainty lives with the visible Church which continues onward via the Bishops, whom sedevacantists typically reject as legitimate along with the Pope. Sedevacantists fallibly ascertain that the Papacy is vacant, they have not produced a Vatican declaration that it is.

There is certainty of continuity, even in a long interregnum (3 years being the longest on record). The Church has clear, visible and public mechanisms for filling the Chair. These do not exist in sedevacantism, as sedevacantists await the apocalypse like Evangelicals do, or a miracle. No new dogmas can be declared during an interregnum, as the Bishops possess declarative authority. They can declare the seat vacant, and fill it. But they lack the juridical authority to ratify dogma. That said, the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium (UOM) does remain, and is infallible as well.

To avoid epistemic collapse, you need an infallible authority with the five aforementioned qualities that can provide certainty, plus singularity. When Jesus Christ said “you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church” He was referring not only to his confession, but establishing the singular epistemic rock of the Church that would continue onward after His Ascension. Ultimately, it’s necessary for authority to funnel down to a singular chair.

If the authority is not singular, you have epistemic collapse via what is called “competing finals.”

This is where you have multiple co-equal termination points. If they do not agree with one another 100% of the time, they are proven fallible. Thus, we can rule out the Eastern Orthodox system. I love the Eastern Orthodox, they are members of true Churches as Vatican II confirmed, and they are a great number of my readers and whenever I have a live space on X they are 50% of the audience and commentators, but I want to help them understand why we have the Papacy as an epistemic necessity, and why I am a member of a Byzantine Catholic Parish as opposed to an Orthodox Church. Epistemic singularity is an inescapable necessity.

There needs to be a singular chair that can resolve disputes, force ecumenical councils without an emperor doing it for them, and even ratify councils and dogmas without the full participation of every Patriarch and bishop. The way we know if an ecumenical council was legitimate, and the Spirit truly worked through it, is that the Chair ratifies it.

So while there can be multiple authorities exercising some form of infallibility (such as the twelve Apostles and the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium), there must be a singular visible office that ties them together.

There must be a higher organizing principle whenever you have more than one thing. This is why Jesus Christ gave St. Peter the Keys of the Kingdom first, and in Luke 22:31-32 confirmed that he would be the epistemic rock to strengthen his brother Apostles. As Holy Father Chrysostom said:

“Peter, that Leader of the choir, that Mouth of the rest of the Apostles, that Head of the brotherhood, that one set over the entire universe, that Foundation of the Church.”

The higher organizing principle of the Apostles was Christ, until the Ascension, and then it was St. Peter. The higher organizing principle of the Patriarchs and bishops is the Pope. Jesus Christ works through the Pope just as He worked through St. Peter, because He is now seated at the Right Hand of the Father. He is not visibly localized on earth. The higher organizing principle must be visible, or else any Patriarch can claim to be following it against the others, and this does happen in Orthodoxy, proving the Catholic claims.

A Computer Science Analogy

The Pope is epistemologically necessary for Christianity to even exist. Orthodoxy gets close, but Competing Finals (multiple equal Patriarchs) is like race conditions on a computer. It prevents them from getting to certainty on doctrinal matters, and often prevents ecumenical councils from even taking place to resolve disputes due to the non-participation of one or many.

The papacy acts as the mutex (mutual exclusion lock) that prevents race conditions. Christ built into His Church a final authority to resolve doctrinal conflicts so that the whole Body can move forward in unity.

Christianity is not just “a set of ideas” but a revealed truth meant to be known with certainty. Without a living, visible, final arbiter, certainty collapses into probability. Thus an infallible Church is needed. But this has to culminate in a singular, visible, perpetual, infallible, public and living authority. Orthodoxy gets the “singular” part wrong.

Protestantism gets it entirely wrong.

Orthodoxy: multiple “master clocks” on the system board. No synchronization, so the system stalls.

Protestantism: no clock at all. Every process runs on its own timing, so nothing stays in sync.

Catholicism is the full divine system, reflected even in nature and engineering. All things were created through Christ, who is the Divine Engineer.

“All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made.” - John 1:3.

This does not mean only the physical cosmos, but the entire order of grace - the Divine Oikonomia. It is all His handiwork.

Just as He designed creation with harmony and intelligibility, He designed His Mystical Body with an ordered, visible and infallible system. Sacraments correspond to our senses, authority corresponds to our social nature, and visible hierarchy corresponds to our need for epistemic certainty.

Faith and Certainty

The words “faith” in Hebrew (’emunah) and Greek (pistis) already demand certainty.

In Hebrew, ’emunah comes from the root for firmness, reliability, fidelity (the same root as amen, in fact). It literally means what is sure, steadfast, unshakable.

In Greek, pistis means trust, conviction, assurance. It is not mere opinion (doxa) or probability (eikasia).

So when Scripture says “faith saves,” it’s not talking about a vague hope or probabilism. It’s talking about assent to God’s word with certainty because He cannot deceive or be deceived.

That’s why the Catechism (157) says: “Faith is more certain than all human knowledge, because it rests on the Word of God who cannot lie.” This is paraphrasing St. Thomas Aquinas.

If faith were only “maybe true,” it would not save. Faith saves precisely because it’s certain. Faith is an infallible gift from an infallible God, oriented towards an infallible Object (truth) which is infallibly known (interpreted), thus providing certainty in what God has revealed. The Catholic Church is the Divine Construct by which this is manifested.

Only the Catholic system gives us everything necessary to move the Bible from God’s word in potency, to God’s word in act, making it living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. It is only sharp for a Protestant when a Protestant happens to interpret it in line with the Catholic Church. A wrong interpretation of the Word of God is simply not the Word of God. It might use the same letters, but only the correct interpretation is what God actually said. And to know what God has said with certainty, we need the six aforementioned qualities.

Without certainty, we are not responsible for following Divine Revelation. This is because you cannot be held accountable by God for something you do not know with certainty. Romans 1:20 says all men are without excuse, because you know through nature that God exists with certainty. All men can come to a knowledge of God without Divine Revelation, and God may impart grace to them if they seek wisdom and understanding but do not know the Catholic Church or the name of Christ.

However, Divine Revelation itself cannot be known at all apart from grace revealing it. If God has spoken, then He must have provided means of certainty and unity in what He has said. Thus, only a system like the Catholic system can possibly be the True Faith. Since no other system even claims to be like the Catholic system, that leaves you with only one option: Become Catholic.

Even if another group popped up out of nowhere tomorrow claiming to have the six qualities I mentioned, you would be forced to dismiss it out of hand, because it would not be perpetual, it would have appeared recently. This is one reason why Apostolic Succession is so important.

All forms of Protestantism are simply probabilism in disguise. They are just best-guesses at what God means. This undermines and destroys faith. It is spiritually deadly, which is one reason why we must evangelize even the best Protestants to the Catholic faith, as their lack of an epistemic rock perpetually exposes them to Lucifer’s original avenue of attack: undermining epistemology.

“Did God Really Say?”

Genesis 3:1 says “Now the snake was the most cunning of all the wild animals that the Lord God had made. He asked the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You shall not eat from any of the trees in the garden’?”

Once certainty is undermined, the door is opened to doubt, reinterpretation, and ultimately heresy (claiming God’s Word means otherwise than it does) and rebellion.

That’s why the Catholic position insists on a living, infallible interpreter of revelation. Without it, every person is left with the Devil’s Ancient Question perpetually ringing in their mind: “Did God really say?” - and no sure way to quell these ancient bells of darkness.

Revelation must be preserved with certainty. God protects that certainty through a visible, perpetual authority. Without certainty, faith collapses into opinion, and we fall back into Eden’s Temptation.

All heresy starts with epistemic doubt and lack of certainty in what God means. The serpent’s first strategy was doctrinal relativism. We know as Catholics what God really says, with certainty. And thus all disagreement with the Church is sin, for it is to fall for the first trick ever played.

We even see Satan immediately employing this strategy with Jesus Christ while He was in the desert.

Notice Satan starts with the word “if.” “If you are the Son of God… (Matthew 4:3-6). He tries to inject doubt into what was already certain: the Father’s declaration at the Baptism in the Jordan “This is my Beloved Son (Matthew 3:17).”

In the second temptation Satan even quotes Scripture (Psalm 91) to argue that Jesus should throw Himself down from the Temple. This is Satan employing private interpretation of Scripture, foisting his private interpretation on someone, and seeing if they will act against God due to it. As 2nd Peter 1:20 says, “understanding this first, that no prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation.”

Jesus rebukes Satan each time with “It is written,” but He does not just cite text. He cites it with divine authority as the infallible Logos who authored it.

The final temptation of Satan to Christ in the desert is offering a probabilistic shortcut. “I will give you the kingdoms of the world if you bow to me.” It is essentially “skip hardship, take the shortcut. Do not be certain in God’s plan, trust what is expedient.” It is an attack on the epistemic rock of divine necessity. “Take what is probably the best option.”

Christ’s responses in the desert are the opposite of probabilism. He clings to the certainty of God’s word rightly interpreted, and in doing so reverses the Fall where Adam and Eve failed to cling to that certainty. If you lack epistemic certainty, you are already in position for Satan to sift you like wheat (Luke 22:31). But notice that the answer to Satan wanting to sift the Apostles like wheat in Luke 22:31 was St. Peter, the Epistemic Rock, strengthening the brethren.

“Simon, Simon, behold Satan has demanded to sift all of you like wheat, but I have prayed that your own faith may not fail; and once you have turned back, you must strengthen your brothers.”

St. Luke mentions the Bereans in Acts 17, and a few chapters later in Acts 23:6 we see St. Paul saying “Brethren, I am a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead I am being judged.” He does not say “I was a Pharisee,” but “I am a Pharisee.” He identifies with their tradition and beliefs. Like the Bereans, he was also from Asia Minor, or what is known as Turkey today. In those days it was Hellenic, being of the Greek-speaking Eastern Roman Empire. St. Paul was a diaspora Jew, and indeed a Pharisee.

The Pharisees sat on the Seat of Moses (Matthew 23:2-3) and were thus charged with the interpretive authority of the law, or Old Testament. When St. Paul appeals to Scripture, he is not using a Protestant-style “Scripture alone” framework. He is arguing and evangelizing as a Pharisaic Jew fulfilled in Christ. He did not cease to be a full-blown Pharisee, he was simply a faithful Pharisee who came to Christ, similar to others such as St. Nicodemus and St. Gamaliel (whom Acts 22:3 identifies as St. Paul’s teacher).

That means the Bereans would have recognized him as working within the Jewish categories they already knew, namely covenant tests for prophets. Being Hellenic Jews, they almost certainly had a larger Canon than the common Protestant Old Testament canon. What made the Bereans noble is that they applied the covenant tests, and did not simply dismiss St. Paul, St. Timothy and St. Silas like the rest of the Jews in Thessalonica, who were ignoble. Let us look at verses 11-13

Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, who received the word with all eagerness, daily searching the scriptures, whether these things were so. And many indeed of them believed, and of honourable women that were Gentiles, and of men not a few. And when the Jews of Thessalonica had knowledge that the word of God was also preached by Paul at Berea, they came thither also, stirring up and troubling the multitude.

Note firstly that the Bereans did not necessarily search the Scriptures daily, they searched them daily while St. Paul was with them, as they eagerly received the word of St. Paul and his comrades. They were doing what good Jews were expected to do - validate that someone was a prophet or divine legate using the covenant tests, which we will get into shortly.

When we obey God’s basic commands we are ennobled, and similarly when we reject them, like the other Jews in Thessalonica, we are being ignoble. So what made the Bereans noble is not that they read Scripture all the time, but as we see, that they tested St. Paul and St. Silas according to Jewish custom. Many Protestants overlook the latter part of verse 11, where it says the Bereans daily searched the Scriptures, specifically to see if what St. Paul said was so. They may well have been avid daily Tanakh readers, but St. Luke never says they were.

The Old Covenant Tests for Prophets

Prophets are a type of divine legate, or messenger of God, who are specifically endowed with conditional infallibility, like the Pope. But unlike the Pope, they often also bought new divine revelation, whereas the Papacy merely clarifies matters of divine revelation already received. He does not create any new revelation.

Every Jew, including the Bereans, knew a true divine messenger had to pass three criteria:

1. Continuity with Prior Revelation (Deuteronomy 13:1-5)

If there rise in the midst of thee a prophet or one that saith he hath dreamed a dream, and he foretell a sign and a wonder, And that come to pass which he spoke, and he say to thee: Let us go and follow strange gods, which thou knowest not, and let us serve them: Thou shalt not hear the words of that prophet or dreamer: for the Lord your God trieth you, that it may appear whether you love him with all your heart, and with all your soul, or not.

Follow the Lord your God, and fear him, and keep his commandments, and hear his voice: him you shall serve, and to him you shall cleave. And that prophet or forger of dreams shall be slain: because he spoke to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and redeemed you from the house of bondage: to make thee go out of the way, which the Lord thy God commanded thee: and thou shalt take away the evil out of the midst of thee.

A divine legate could not contradict the Law or lead into idolatry. St. Paul preached Christ as the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets, not their abolition.

2. Fulfillment of Prophecy (Deuteronomy 18:21-22)

And if in silent thought thou answer: How shall I know the word that the Lord hath not spoken? Thou shalt have this sign: Whatsoever that same prophet foretelleth in the name of the Lord, and it cometh not to pass: that thing the Lord hath not spoken, but the prophet hath forged it by the pride of his mind: and therefore thou shalt not fear him.

If what a divine legate foretold came to pass, he was from God. St. Paul’s message was that Jesus had fulfilled the Messianic prophecies (such as Isaiah 53 and Psalm 16). He did not necessarily foretell the future, but showed specifically how Jesus Christ fulfilled prophecy, being above even a divine legate, as He is truly Divine. This is what St. Paul argued from Scripture in Berea, just like he did elsewhere in the Roman Empire.

3. Signs and Wonders as a Divine Seal (Exodus 4:30, 1 Kings 18:36-39)

Exodus 4:30: And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had said to Moses: and he wrought the signs before the people…

1 Kings 18:36-39: And when it was now time to offer the holocaust, Elias the prophet came near and said: O Lord God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Israel, shew this day that thou art the God of Israel, and I thy servant, and that according to thy commandment I have done all these things.

Miracles authenticate divine legates, especially those carrying new divine revelation. Acts repeatedly testifies that God bore witness to St. Paul and St. Silas as divine legates through a multitude of signs and wonders (Acts 14:3, 16:25-26, 19:11). God does this to firmly establish motives of credibility.

This is one reason why we can dismiss the Protestant reformers as being from God - they did not establish any motives of credibility. They simply argued a myriad of conflicting religious philosophie, only agreeing that Catholicism was wrong. There were no miracles to validate that God had sent them as divine legates to restore “true Christianity.”

The Fulfillment at Berea

St. Paul and St. Silas did not just show up with clever exegesis of the Word. They came with:

• A Message fully consistent with Moses and the Prophets, checking off test #1.

• A proclamation of Christ that fulfilled the Scriptures, and thus prophecy.

• A widespread reputation for Apostolic signs and wonders.

The Bereans checked the Scriptures to confirm continuity and fulfillment, and knew of the Apostolic signs that occurred. We know this because of verse 6 in Acts 17: “these men who have turned the world upside down have come here also.”

There signs were so great, that they literally “turned the world upside down.” Some translations say they simply “set the city in an uproar.” It would be strange if the Apostolic pattern somehow paused in Berea, so we can be fairly certain signs and wonders occurred in Berea as well. The Bereans follow immediately on from miraculous context in Acts 16. St. Luke highlights Scripture examination in Berea, but he assumes the ongoing context of signs and wonders. By the time Saints Paul and Silas reached Berea, their fame as miracle-working preachers was already known.

The Bereans did not meet anonymous strangers, but men with an established reputation in Thessalonica. Berea is a city about 72 kilometers southwest of the City of Thessalonica, a major port city in the Roman province of Macedonia.

Acts 17:13 says Jews from Thessalonica even traveled to Berea just to stir up trouble after St. Paul’s great success there.

How did the Bereans Interpret Scripture?

Now what is overlooked by Protestants here is that the Bereans, Hellenic Jews, were not heretics. If they had interpreted the Bible on their own apart from the Sanhedrin, they would have been a group of schismatics or heretics like the Essenes. The Sadducees were a powerful group of heretics that sat on the Sanhedrin, due to the corruption of many Levites, but God did not remove the Sanhedrin itself as an authority until the veil was torn and the Chair of Peter replaced the seats of Moses and Aaron.

In other words, the Bereans followed authoritative Jewish oral tradition and did not interpret the Bible on their own in a vacuum.

They had rabbinical authority and had to follow the Sanhedrin’s binding decrees. The Berean appeal shows that many Protestants have no idea how 2nd Temple Judaism functioned.

Infallibility and Epistemological Certainty in the Old Covenant

In the New Covenant, we have Perpetual Infallibility in the Catholic Church. The Pope and the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium cannot teach any error on faith and morals. But in the Old Covenant the Jews had Episodic Infallibility. Because the Spirit was not yet sent universally, God essentially micromanaged infallibility. He sent divine interventions at each crisis point.

The Seats of Aaron and Moses, along with the Judges and later the Throne of David, had to be obeyed. But they were not infallible like the Church is today. So when their leaders became corrupt and started to teach error, not having the Spirit or Christ’s promises to always be with His Bride, God sent Prophets.

Whenever the Prophets say “thus sayeth the Lord,” the Sanhedrin, and more specifically the Pharisees who sat on Moses’ Seat (Matthew 23:2-3) understood them to be speaking infallibly as divine legates. These were 2nd Temple Judaic authorities, who themselves were corrected by the fulfillment of the Prophets, Jesus Christ.

It is a necessity to always have infallibility, as certainty can only derive from an infallible source. Judaism was not based on mere probabilism. Faith, both during the Old and New Covenants, is known with certainty based on the authority of God revealing, who can neither deceive nor be deceived. It is not a “blind leap.” This is one reason why all Catholics in particular need to move away from promoting the modern version of “Pascal’s Wager.” The modern iteration is not truly what Blaise Pascal meant to teach, and it is anti-Catholic, treating faith in a probabilistic fashion.

If God exists, and He does, and reveals Himself, and He has, He must speak clearly and give means of certainty, or else we can only “probably” know what He said, or we can only “maybe” have the truth. This is insufficient. Both salvation and condemnation require certainty. You cannot condemn a man to hell for something he did not know was true with certainty, as that would be unjust.

Romans 1:20 confirms that mankind knows with certainty that God must exist, which is why none are without excuse on the Day of Judgement. Those who reject God or claim not to believe in Him at best have some kind of invincible ignorance (which does not save in and of itself), must be negligent in ascertaining the truth, or at worst, must be denying what they know to be true with certainty.

But divine revelation is not known with certainty through nature alone. It requires a revealer, and the revealer must have clearly established authority so that divine revelation can be trusted as surely as we can know with certainty from nature that God exists (in very brief, there must be a First Cause, and the presence of moral law demands there must have been a lawgiver).

Similarly, the existence of divine revelation demands an authoritative revealer with motives of credibility that can be linked directly to God. Or else certainty in matters of divine revelation is impossible, and no one can be culpable for rejecting it.

In the New Covenant, we have this with the Church. Whatever the Catholic Church officially teaches as true doctrine and dogma is certain truth. Not “maybe” or “probably” true, but certainly true. While Protestants remain deeply unsure of what is true in matters of doctrine, and assume God simply cares not that they are stuck nor that they lack essential unity, or assume they listen to the Holy Spirit rightly and yet have no way to validate it, Catholics have a divine system that meets all the requirements of moral necessity.

If the Protestant sola scriptura system was true, the Old Covenant would be obviously superior to the new, because as we know, they had Episodic Infallibility, and God sent them Prophets with signs and wonders to get them back on track when leaders failed. Many, if not most, Protestants believe Christ abandoned the Bride to error for centuries until Martin Luther and John Calvin came around. In the Old Covenant God was sending Prophets as needed, even to pagans such as those at Nineveh, foreshadowing his plan to convert the gentiles.

The ancient Israelites were able to trust the Seat of Moses and their priests, and if things got off track a Prophet or Prophets would be sent by God. Thus they could have certainty. They could trust God’s authorities, knowing He would not abandon Israel, for His promises cannot be broken. They could know with certainty what was true doctrine. This is also why they could justly ignore the Sadducees specifically and follow the Pharisees, as the Sadducees simply followed the Torah and ignored the Prophets almost entirely. The exception would have been most Sanhedrin acts, as the Sanhedrin contained both Pharisees and Sadducees. The Sadducees were also the first “sola scriptura” sect, rejecting authoritative Jewish oral teaching, which Christ said must be followed (Matthew 23:2-3).

The Bereans and Certainty of the Truth

The Bereans may or may not have been Hellenic Jewish Pharisees like St. Paul, a citizen of the Roman Empire. We know simply that the Bereans were Hellenic Jews. But that obligated them to the Temple. All Jews had to participate in the one Temple in Jerusalem, including the Bereans. And it was run by the Sanhedrin.

In Deuteronomy 17:8–12, God Himself commands Israel to obey the judgments of the Levitical priests and judges in Jerusalem:

“If thou perceive that there be among you a hard and doubtful matter in judgment between blood and blood, cause and cause, leprosy and leprosy: and thou see that the words of the judges within thy gates do vary: arise, and go up to the place, which the Lord thy God shall choose.

and thou shalt come to the priests of the Levitical race, and to the judge, that shall be at that time: and thou shalt ask of them, and they shall shew thee the truth of the judgment. And thou shalt do whatsoever they shall say, that preside in the place, which the Lord shall choose, and what they shall teach thee,

According to his law; and thou shalt follow their sentence: neither shalt thou decline to the right hand nor to the left hand. But he that will be proud, and refuse to obey the commandment of the priest, who ministereth at that time to the Lord thy God, and the decree of the judge, that man shall die, and thou shalt take away the evil from Israel.”

So if the Bereans disobeyed and were heretical, they were worthy of death. They would not be noble if they ignored the judgements of the Temple and the Seat of Moses on interpretation of the Law. The fact that the death penalty was not meted out to heretical groups like the Essenes in the Apostle’s day was largely due to a Roman ban on executions without their permission. Rome forbade Jewish authorities from carrying out executions.

Even though the Pharisees were corrupt in practice and often hypocritical, their authority was still real and binding, because they occupied the divinely-instituted teaching office of Israel. The Sanhedrin also could not be disobeyed. The Bereans were noble because they checked St. Paul against Scripture, interpreted in light of binding authority, not because they rejected the Sanhedrin prior to St. Paul showing up. If they had, they’d be clearly guilty of rebellion against God and Torah. They would have been a heretical sect before St. Paul, St. Timothy and St. Silas arrived.

The Bereans were starting with Isaiah 8:20, and applying the Old Covenant tests established by God through the Prophets. They were also using Scripture as interpreted by tradition, not privately.

The Sanhedrin had authority in Diaspora synagogues. For example they issued letters of recommendation or censure (Saul’s letters to Damascus, Acts 9:1–2). Diaspora synagogues looked to Jerusalem for halakhic precedent and authority. Jerusalem had ultimate prestige and authority.

The Bereans and Grace

The faith of the Bereans was also not reducible to persuasion, it was the theological virtue of faith, which requires grace and is accepted or rejected. To reject it with culpability there also has to be certainty, as we have established.

The Holy Spirit inwardly illuminated their minds, moving them to assent with certainty once the external motives of credibility were satisfied. Faith isn’t probability, but again, certainty grounded in God’s own authority revealing.

Apologetics cannot make anyone a Christian apart from grace. Apologetics itself can be a movement of God, of grace, and clear away obstacles so that the theological virtue of faith can be implanted if received. St. Paul could have had the best arguments ever, and it would have been for nothing if grace was not operative among the Bereans.

This is fatal to a sola scriptura position, because faith is supernatural, not merely a product of knowing the right interpretation of Jewish history. The Bereans “believed, as Acts 17:12 says, which is St. Luke’s shorthand for receiving the message of St. Paul as divine revelation, not just as good exegesis.

Sola Scriptura says Scripture is the final and sufficient authority, from which the believer derives doctrine. But if the Bereans belief was an act of supernatural faith, then their certainty did not even come from their own interpretive act, but from God Himself confirming His Word. This is exactly Catholic epistemology: faith rests on God revealing through His legates, not on private interpretation of texts.

The way we know the Spirit has helped us arrive at the proper interpretation of the Bible is that our interpretation of doctrine from it agrees with an external, public, visible and infallible source - the Church.

Just as St. Peter’s confession of faith in Matthew 16 was validated by an external, public, visible and infallible source, Jesus, who established His divinity through signs and wonders, had continuity with prior revelation, and fulfilled a myriad of prophecies for St. Peter to witness up until that point.

The Bereans came to understand St. Paul, an Apostle, as speaking infallible truth, because they were good Jews and did what God required when men came along performing signs and claiming to speak for God. And they were further rewarded by God with the theological virtue of faith, which they accepted.

If sola scriptura were true, then the Bereans should have remained perpetually at the level of probability: always checking, always revising, never reaching absolute certainty. But they received St. Paul’s word with eagerness and believed. That means certainty came from divine authority, not their own interpretive act.

Therefore, Acts 17:11 is actually unassailable proof against sola scriptura: it shows faith arises from God’s authority speaking through His Church, not from private judgement of texts, even if those texts are infallible themselves. The Bereans did not arrive at probability by Bible study, they received the theological virtue of faith (1 Corinthians 13:2 and 13:13) through the preaching of the leaders of the Church.

Why Did the Bereans Reject Jerusalem if it Was Authoritative?

At this point, some Protestants will ask why did the Bereans reject the Temple if it had authority? Firstly, we must remember that nothing occurred as far as the Jews were concerned to abrogate Deuteronomy and other passages in the Torah. Not one jot or tittle of Torah will pass away (Matthew 5:18). The Bereans were not rejecting Jerusalem. They were testing whether St. Paul’s claim fit the Torah’s own standard for prophets, which corrected Jerusalem several times historically. They rejected the Sanhedrin specifically after they established that St. Paul and St. Silas were surely divine legates, like the Prophets of old.

The Sanhedrin’s authority was real, but the Sanhedrin had also condemned Christ, just as the prior Jews had condemned the Prophets.

Every true divine legate is tested. That’s built into the Old Covenant. Elijah, Jeremiah, even Moses himself were tested by signs and consistency with prior revelation.

Some Protestants ask, “if validating divine legates were a matter of routine Old Testament instructions, why did St. Luke treat it as remarkable?”

As I have mentioned previously, it is because the Bereans actually did what Jews were supposed to do, and most others didn’t. The vast majority rejected Jesus and the Apostles. In Thessalonica, the Jews rejected Paul without even weighing his claims. That was ignoble. But the Bereans were humble enough to use the right covenantal tests instead of closing their hearts.

Other Protestants will ask “why didn’t St. Luke mention any of the crucial context clues you have provided to his Gentile audience?”

The answer to that is because the Church possesses all truth. You can’t truly learn the Scriptures independent of the Church. St. Luke wasn’t trying to be comprehensive for the Gentiles, he assumed they had Church guidance. 1 Timothy 3:15.

For any Protestants still doubting the link between the Bereans and the temple, Dr. Donald Binder writes “Note how Philo expresses his conviction that a strong solidarity existed between the Jerusalem Temple and the Jews living in the diaspora.”

Philo Judeus was a legendary Jewish philosopher and historian living in Alexandria, a Josephus-like figure who lived during and after the time of Jesus Christ, until around 50 A.D.. He notes clearly that the Diaspora still had Temple obligations.

Many Diaspora Jews returned to Jerusalem for major feasts (Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles). Acts 2 describes “devout men from every nation under heaven” in Jerusalem at Pentecost. Devout men, from every nation. Primarily diaspora Jews.

Diaspora communities regularly sent contributions for Temple service. Josephus mentions these financial obligations, and Rome even granted legal exemptions so Jews could keep sending the Temple tax.

Synagogues everywhere oriented prayer toward Jerusalem. Even in exile, fidelity to the Temple was central (Daniel 6:10, Philo, Embassy to Gaius).

Diaspora synagogues looked to Jerusalem as the ultimate religious center. The Sanhedrin in Jerusalem was recognized as the highest court, and diaspora Jews deferred to its judgments in principle (even if communication took time). This means that Bereans and others weren’t “doing theology on their own.” They operated within a living covenantal hierarchy, even if they didn’t explicitly belong to the Pharisees. If Diaspora Jews were still Temple-bound and tied to the Sanhedrin, then the Bereans couldn’t have been “independent interpreters” in a sola scriptura fashion.

According to the Jewish Encyclopedia entry on the Church Fathers, the Church Father St. Eusebius “... recognizes Jewish tradition as an authority almost equal to the Scriptures, and calls it ἅγρσΦος παράδοσις; i.e., ‘unwritten tradition.’”

Post-temple Jewish and Patristic witnesses provide us important information to understand the Diaspora Jews such as the Bereans.

Conclusion

The Bereans were not an example of sola scriptura in action, which was a known-heresy at the time and practiced by the condemned Sadducees. The Pharisees specifically sat on Moses’ Seat (Matthew 23:2-3), and they believed in authoritative Jewish oral tradition, and had a much fuller canon of Scripture. Rather, the Bereans are an example of Catholic epistemology being proven true.

The Bereans applied the Old Covenant tests of prophets, and were noble for doing what was required of them by God. St. Paul did not simply come to town and perform excellent exegesis, he proved himself to be a divine legate, similar to a Prophet of old, and taught the Bereans divine revelation they did not possess prior to his arrival.

Faith is knowing with certainty what is true based on the authority of God revealing, and requires grace to be received. It is not probabilism. St. Paul did not prove that his exegesis was most likely true, but that his overall message, the Gospel, was certainly true. You cannot derive certainty from uncertainty. The people of God always need a living, external, public and infallible authority to have certainty and unity in matters of doctrine concerning divine revelation. Since the Protestants do not have this, their belief system is inferior to the Old Covenant, which had Episodic Infallibility, which was still capable of producing certainty and unity. You can have Episodic or Perpetual Infallibility, but you cannot have neither.

It is a dogma of the Catholic Church that all who are in heaven were predestined to be there from eternity. This much is clear. But the history of how great minds have tried to explain this truth is at times both tragic and darkly humorous. The debate between the Thomists and Molinists during the De Auxiliis controversy, though conducted by theological titans, ultimately ended in stalemate. St. Francis de Sales, in his wisdom, advised Rome to leave both positions uncanonized.

Providence intervened and protected the Church against dogmatizing any error, as has happened for nearly 2000 years now.

What was the shared flaw in both systems? They inverted the order of operations. They presumed God predestined the elect positively, and then merely “passed over” the rest, who were thus damned by default. This may have preserved a kind of logical symmetry, but it broke down the moment God’s universal salvific will (1 Timothy 2:4) and His justice were brought into full view.

There is another view that is far superior, and also simpler.

First, God eternally beholds all human persons in the exercise of their freedom. Those who persistently and gravely resist His grace, who obstinately reject the Holy Spirit and thus their salvation, He permits to fall away. He reprobates them. Not arbitrarily, but because they reject Him. This is not a decree of predamnation, but simply the righteous judgment of the damnation of the committedly wicked who hate love.

But those who do not gravely and persistently resist? They are positively predestined to glory. Not on the basis of foreseen merits, for these are not even in view yet, but purely from the goodness of God’s will, who desires all to be saved. Their election is not earned. It is mercy.

Thus the mystery is preserved: God remains sovereign, man remains free, and grace remains grace, not a bunch of different “types.”

To rephrase this, God reprobates based on demerits, and then predestines to glory the remainder. Not because of lack of resistance either, but because He wills all men to be saved, and the remainder are not stopping him. The cause of their salvation is God’s superabundant mercy.

This insight came to the Roman Catholic priest Fr. William Most, a brilliant yet often underappreciated American theologian of the 20th century. As he himself said, it arrived by “a little grace of light.” And perhaps that’s the whole point. Perhaps the controversy was a lesson for the Church itself in how divine truth is known.

Theologians may debate, reason, and speculate for centuries, but without grace, even the brightest minds will stumble past the simplest truths. Divine realities, especially those touching on the mysteries of grace, are not logical puzzles to solve.

Fr. Most’s solution didn’t require discarding human reason, but reordering things beneath the primacy of justice. He saw that the decree to reprobate is grounded not in a mysterious “passing over,” but in persistent resistance to grace, which demerits eternal life. The decree to predestine, by contrast, is grounded not in merit (the error of both the Molinists and the Pelagians), but in God’s merciful will to save all who do not reject Him.

Reprobation is not symmetrical with predestination. It is a response to a will hardened against grace.

This keeps intact all that the Church teaches:

• God’s universal salvific will

• The gratuity of grace

• The justice of reprobation

• The freedom of man

• The simplicity, sovereignty and immutability of God

As Fr. Most pointed out:

1) In Contra gentiles 3.159 [St. Thomas Aquinas] started from 1 Tim 2:4: "Since a man cannot be directed to his ultimate end except by the help of divine grace, someone might think a man should not be blamed if he lacks these things, especially since he cannot merit the help of divine grace or turn to God unless God turns him.... But... many unsuitable things obviously follow... he would not be worthy of punishment.... To solve this problem we must notice that although a man by the movement of free will can neither merit nor obtain divine grace, yet he can block himself from receiving it.... But they alone are deprived of grace who set up in themselves an impediment to grace, just as, when the sun shines on the world, he deserves blame who shuts his eyes...." Had he continued this line, Thomas would not have arrived at the [determinist] position of [Fr. Domingo] Bañez.”

2) In his Commentary on Romans chapter 9, lessons 2 & 3 he started from Romans 8:29 as interpreted by St. Augustine, in which God blindly picks those whom He will save or not save "Since all men because of the sin of the first parent are born exposed to damnation, those whom God frees through His grace, He frees out of mercy alone." However he also wrote: "God, so far as is in Him, interiorly stirs up a man to good... but the wicked man abuses this stirring according to the malice of his heart.... Those whom He hardens, earn that they be hardened by Him."

Had St. Thomas Aquinas been presented with this solution then, perhaps he would have affirmed it, and this view might have become the predominant view of modern Thomists, as opposed to the determinist views of Fr. Domingo Bañez popular in Thomist circles today. If we look to the broader Church, we can see that the consensus is squarely against determinism.

The East has, for centuries, affirmed the doctrine of συνεργεία (synergeia) - synergy, the mysterious cooperation between divine grace and human freedom. Salvation, in the Eastern view, is not imposed upon man but drawn forth from within him, as the created will is illumined and empowered by the uncreated energies of God.

What Fr. William Most accomplished, in classic Latin fashion, was to expound and safeguard a truth first robustly expressed by the Eastern Fathers, using the metaphysical and theological precision of the Western tradition. His approach preserved the essential mystery without diminishing either divine initiative or human response.

He refused to let the pendulum swing into semi-Pelagianism on one side, or deterministic predestinarianism on the other.

His framework is a genuine synthesis between the insights of East and West: God is absolutely sovereign, and His grace always precedes and empowers. Yet man’s free cooperation remains real, meaningful, and necessary.

This is in line with what was taught by Holy Father Clement of Rome, who was mentioned in Phillippians 4:3. “For no other reason does God punish the sinner either in the present or future world, except because He knows that the sinner was able to conquer but neglected to gain the victory.”

Reprobation is not arbitrary but results from foreseen, persistent resistance to grace. Predestination is grounded in God’s universal salvific will, freely applied to those who do not refuse it.

In this, Fr. Most’s work becomes a careful, faithful rendering of the Eastern insight through the clear grammar and logic of the Latin West. With these simple Western clarifications and protections, Synergea is much more optimally protected against semi-Pelagian tendencies. Additionally, the Scholastic West is once again humbled by the wisdom of the Apophatic East, proving once again that if you can’t know something for certain, it’s better apophatically say what you can and go no further.

The greatest theological tragedies in Western history, such as the errors of absolute predestinationism, often began when men presumed to define the unknowable depths of the divine will with too much confidence and too little reverence.

In synergy, man cooperates with God. God is always the first mover, for without grace man can do nothing. But with grace, man can do whatever God enables them to, as it increases the range of what is possible. God gives man a sufficient amount of grace, which is Himself, for salvation. Grace is of course not a “force,” but God Himself.

We can thus do away with categories of grace. Sufficient grace and effective grace are non-Biblical superfluous categories created by good and pious men, but are erroneous because they speak of grace as a created effect.

Grace is God Himself, and is therefore uncreated.

The Eastern concept of grace is that it is an uncreated divine energy of God. Some Western theologians posit that there are both created and uncreated graces, but more ancient theologians have taught or implied that grace is uncreated, including a Doctor of the Church, St. John Damascene, as well as St. John Chrysostom and the Cappadocian Fathers.

The reason why Eastern theologians believe it’s important to affirm that grace is uncreated is because if grace were created, it would mean that we are not actually encountering God, but rather a created effect, when we encounter grace. God Himself is acting in the world, not a separate or created gift. God’s gift is Himself.

Grace is an uncreated energy of God that allows us to partake of the divine life. When we encounter grace, we are encountering God directly. When we reject grace, we are directly rejecting God, but when we accept it, we are accepting God Himself, directly.

As St. Damascene said:

Wherefore by the place of God is meant that which has a greater share in His energy and grace. For this reason Heaven is His throne. For in it are the angels who do His will and are always glorifying Him. For this is His rest and the earth is His footstool. For in it He dwelt in the flesh among men. And His sacred flesh has been named the foot of God. The Church, too, is spoken of as the place of God: for we have set this apart for the glorifying of God as a sort of consecrated place wherein we also hold converse with Him. Likewise also the places in which His energy becomes manifest to us, whether through the flesh or apart from flesh, are spoken of as the places of God.

St. Damascene speaks of God’s essence, energies, and grace in his seminal work, “An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith.” In Book 1 he speaks at length about God’s essence and energies, and affirms they are God. While it is clarified in another chapter, it’s worth reiterating that the distinctions between God’s essence and His energies are notional. They are not real divisions in God, who is not made up of parts. What we call His energies are the manifold ways He operates within Creation, while His essence remains utterly transcendent. He shares Himself sometimes through created mediums, but we are ultimately connecting with God in every case.

In the final sentence in the St. John Damascene quote above, he says the places where His energy become manifest to us are the “places of God.” Since grace is an energy of God, and where His energies are He Himself is, St. John is indirectly confirming that grace is uncreated, as it’s intrinsically related to His energies. This was apparently the uncontested view, at least in the East. Interestingly, St. Augustine did not explicitly teach that grace is a created entity either, but his writings seem to imply he does not always see it as God Himself, but as a divine effect. St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as Bl. Scotus and other Western theologians, fleshed out this idea.

If grace were created, it would mean that theosis itself was not actually uniting us to God, but only to a created effect. This is problematic from a Gospel perspective, because we understand theosis to be becoming like Christ by uniting to Him. Grace is not something between man and God, it is God. Just like love is not between man and God, but it is God (1 John 4:7-21).

Many Bible passages support the idea that grace is uncreated. As Revelation 3:20 says, “Behold, I stand at the gate, and knock. If any man shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.”

By understanding grace as an uncreated energy of God, we can see that God Himself is knocking at the door of our souls, wanting to come inside and into communion with us. If grace is created, then some created thing is standing at the door and knocking. At the very least, it is a proxy for Christ instead of Christ Himself. Again, while God can use created mediums, and does, ultimately the grace being conveyed through them is God.

2 Peter 1:4 says “...he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.” (RSVCE)

Since grace makes us partakers of the divine nature, it necessarily needs to be uncreated, because the divine nature is uncreated.

Grace is also God’s very own fullness. As John 1:16-17 says, “And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (RSVCE)

Grace flows from the fullness of God, which proves it is not something external to Him. When we receive grace, we are receiving God, not something other than Him, or some kind of created intermediary operating perhaps through another created medium.

Romans 8:11 says “And if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead, dwell in you; he that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead, shall quicken also your mortal bodies, because of his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

Grace is given through the Holy Spirit, who is of course uncreated. Therefore, if grace was something that was created, it would mean the Holy Spirit is giving us something other than Himself.

2 Corinthians 3:18 says “But we all beholding the glory of the Lord with open face, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord.”

Since we are being transformed into God’s image by beholding His glory, we are obviously not receiving something created. God’s glory is not created, and only God Himself can transform us into the likeness of the Deity, which is Himself.

How do we know that God’s glory is uncreated though? John 17:22. “And the glory which thou hast given me, I have given to them; that they may be one, as we also are one.”

In this case, if grace was created, we would just be receiving a created copy of Christ’s own glory, instead of His actual divine presence. This is also supported by certain passages in the Old Testament as well, for example Psalm 104:30, which says “When thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the ground.” (RSVCE)

Here we see that the Holy Spirit renews the world. This is grace at work, and as previously mentioned, the Spirit is uncreated. This is dogma in all Christian theology.

The idea of grace being created is theologically problematic for understanding certain events in the earthly ministry of Christ Himself, such as the Transfiguration. Consider Matthew 17:2, “And he was transfigured before them. And his face did shine as the sun: and his garments became white as snow.” The light that Christ radiated here was His divine glory - it was the same grace that affects theosis, for God is absolutely simple. Christ was not radiating something created, but uncreated light.

The official teaching of the Catholic Church allows for both the Thomistic/Western and Eastern understanding of grace, as well as the essence-energies distinction articulated in Byzantine theology. This is affirmed in the UGCC Byzantine Catholic Catechism, 266.

The Source of all grace is God the Father. From the Father, through the Son, and in the Holy Spirit, the grace of God descends upon all creation and sustains its existence. By the power of grace, being has been wisely ordered, the laws of nature have been established, and the beauty of the universe and of humankind has been designed. Of all that was created, only humankind, called to life in God, has been granted the ability to cooperate with the Holy Spirit, the Treasury of Blessings, who grants God’s grace in a variety of gifts (see 1 Cor 12:4-13). In this cooperation (in Greek, synergia), the natural powers (in Greek, energiai) of humankind are united with the divine and uncreated gift of the grace of the Holy Spirit.

As Holy Father Chrysostom once said,

“he possesses not, says he, the gift by participation, but is Himself the very foundation and very Root of all good, very life, and very Light and very Truth, not retaining within Himself the riches of His good things, but overflowing with them unto all others, and after the overflowing remaining full, in nothing diminished by supplying others, but streaming ever forth, and imparting to others a share of these blessings, He remains a sameness of perfection. I possess by participation a small portion of the Whole…”

What the Latins often refer to as graces are simply the effects of grace. For example, some might call illumination from God “grace.” But more accurately, this is an effect of grace. Grace produced illumination. Western Catholic theologians tend to speak of both grace and the effects it causes as grace, professing a belief in both uncreated grace, which Protestants typically reject altogether, and created grace.

While this doesn’t make them ipso facto wrong, it’s a valid way of describing the mysteries of God, it’s arguably a dangerous thing to do. If we speak of God as “created effects,” it can easily lead to false Protestant notions of grace as a sort of “divine force” of God only.

The real distinction, then, is not between different kinds of grace, but only between grace accepted and grace resisted. Those who are illumined or converted have not received “a different grace,” but have responded freely to the One grace that is God Himself.

Again, the problem with the created grace language is not that it’s heretical, but that it can subtly objectify grace, turning it into something measurable, distributable, even manipulable. This risks collapsing into Protestant errors, where grace becomes a “divine influence” or “infused moral quality,” instead of the very divinizing life of God shared with mankind.

As Eastern theology has long held, energeia (energies) are uncreated manifestations of God Himself. When we say a soul is “touched by grace,” we are saying they are literally and directly encountered by God, not a created symbol or force, but the living God.

Every person is fully enabled to attain the beatific vision, or experience what is also called the Uncreated Light, and avoid damnation. This includes those in lands which are not Christian, or hostile to Christianity.

Just because you cannot see clear signs of grace, does not mean that it is non-existent. Man cannot say where grace is not operative for salvation, and we know God’s grace is everywhere for He sustains all things in existence.

God is not bound by the sacraments, though the sacraments, or mysteries, are the ordinary means of grace. The Logos, as St. Justin Martyr taught, is the true Light who enlightens every man (John 1:9), and He has always been at work in the world, long before the Incarnation and Pentecost.

The mystery of synergia, the cooperation between God’s uncreated grace and human freedom, unfolds differently in each soul. Some resist. Some respond slowly. Some die with little visibly accomplished, yet grace was still powerfully at work in every case. We cannot measure the invisible by visible standards.

To presume that God is absent where the Church, or even deficient forms of Christianity, is not visibly present is to underestimate His mercy and the infinite creativity of His providence. For God can reach souls in a thousand ways known only to Himself, and if He allows them to live and move and have their being, then grace is being offered. And where grace is offered, salvation is possible.

Faith is after all a supernatural virtue infused by God. You don’t need to know facts about Jesus to be saved. Theology doesn’t save you. It is true that God guides souls to proper doctrine, but He can infuse a divine faith in any soul, anywhere. That soul must be open to the divine, and cooperating sincerely with the grace God has given them.

Holy Faith is not a product of human reasoning or information gathering. It is a participation in the divine light by which the soul assents to truths revealed by God, because of His authority who reveals them, not because it understands them fully.

This means salvation is not contingent on theological literacy or academic knowledge about Christ. One does not need a catechism to be saved, but rather a sincere heart open to God’s grace and truth, even if that truth is only dimly perceived.

As the Catechism teaches (CCC 1260):

“Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do His will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience, those too may achieve eternal salvation.”

Such a soul, if it cooperates with the grace given, may receive implicit faith in the Redeemer, even without conceptual knowledge of His name. For God is not limited by the Church, but uses her as ordinary means, yet can work extraordinarily outside of her formal bounds.

This is not indifferentism, truth still matters. And God, in His love, guides souls toward the fullness of truth, toward the Church and her sacraments. But He begins with the heart, and no heart open to Him will be abandoned.

In Christian lands, we actually have a lot of clarity, although not being God we cannot judge souls with certainty. But, those who reject Christian truths show clear signs of reprobation, or a spiritual trajectory towards hell. So if one rejects truths such as the Trinity, or that Christ is Lord, it’s highly unlikely that they are on a spiritual trajectory towards heaven.

In fact, rejecting Catholic truths are signs, though not absolute proofs, of reprobation. Rejecting the Papacy is a sign of reprobation, and formally rejecting the Eucharist is a very strong and terrifying sign of reprobation (John 6:37).

Public rejection of revealed truth, especially truths central to the Christian mystery, is an external sign of spiritual disorder. Persisting in such error knowingly and willfully leads to spiritual death.

St. Paul speaks of this in Romans 1 and 2. When people suppress the truth in unrighteousness, God gives them over to a debased mind (Romans 1:28). Similarly, St. John says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us” (1 John 2:19). They were not predestined. And they were not predestined because they refused grace, and thus earned reprobation.

Even when signs of reprobation are present, the Christian response is not condemnation, but prayer, witness, and penance. We are called to discern, not to despair of souls. This can be difficult. Many of us struggle to avoid condemning, and to avoid despair for the souls of loved ones. But prayers for them, even for the dead, are indeed effective. Prayers are applied in eternity.

Souls being saved will not, in knowledge, reject divine revelation and divine legates. They are also in no cases saved by false religions. For example, Hinduism is not a vehicle of salvation for someone in rural India who never hears the Gospel. No, God’s grace is. And there might be elements of Hinduism that reflect truth, and help lead people to God, but this is because God is truth, not because Hinduism is correct.

People can be saved only in spite of false religions, and never because of them. They exist because Satan and his minions have devised thousands of ways to either keep people from God, or to prevent them from coming to the fullness of the faith.

False religions are always the enemy of souls, not their aid, even though elements of them can be true, and those elements can help bring someone to Christ. These elements are preparations for the Gospel.

Everyone who is saved is united to the Catholic Church, and under the Pope, the Divine Terminus, knowingly or unknowingly. For there is no salvation outside the Catholic Church. There is only one Ark, and outside of it there’s no possibility of survival. This Ark is both Christ and His Bride, for the two are one flesh.

Formal submission to the Supreme Pontiff is a powerful sign of predestination. And by this what is meant is a true submission, not submission in name-only as nominals, cultural or “cafeteria Catholics” practice.

The Parable of the Talents is particularly helpful to understanding the truths recently articulated.

In the parable, the master entrusts his servants with varying amounts of wealth (“talents”), five, two, and one. This symbolizes the graces God gives to souls. He gives different quantities, according to His providence and knowledge of their abilities (“to each according to his ability” as verse Matthew 25:15 says).

The servants are not rewarded merely for what they receive (as determinists such as the Calvinists teach), but for what they do with what they are given.

The faithful servants (with five and two talents) cooperate with the gift, invest it, and double it. They show synergia, active cooperation with grace.

The unfaithful servant buries his talent in the ground. He returns what was given on the day of reckoning without increase, as he did nothing with the grace given to him. He is condemned, not because he wasn’t given enough, but because he refused to act on what he was given.

We can think of those in places far from Christianity as having “one talent,” or one coin. It’s totally sufficient. Much less is expected of them. Some will indeed invest it, some will not and perish.

On this point some Protestants accuse Catholics of teaching “works salvation.” But this is ludicrous, as we are teaching, clearly, salvation via grace. We are simply asserting that sometimes this grace doesn’t lead to even knowing the name of Christ. The grace is unto salvation, it’s not unto theological wisdom. Not knowing the name of Christ is a sign of reprobation, not absolute proof of it as some Protestant groups teach.

God can infuse supernatural faith and love in those outside formal Christianity. But if they are saved, they are saved by Christ, not by their religion, and certainly not by works alone. They are saved within the Catholic Church, being united to her mystically by grace. They are subject to the Catholic bishops and to the Supreme Pontiff, but they are responsible only for what they know, their “one talent.”

Imagine a woman in a remote village who has never heard the Gospel, but seeks truth sincerely, responds to the good she knows, and loves the light she has. If she is saved, it’s not because her works earned salvation, but because grace moved in her heart, and she did not resist. She invested her single, sufficient talent. She might have even died a sort of martyr, refusing to do evil her local pantheistic religion taught as good. She may indeed have experienced a baptism of blood rather than a baptism of water or desire.

This is not universalism, nor is it indifferentism. It’s simply the logic of grace. God works even where we do not see, and He saves even when we do not expect salvation.

Everyone at a minimum is given one talent. As St. Athanasius said, “God became man so that man might become god.” God didn’t become man so that some men might become God, but all men.

The Holy Spirit permeates the earth, there is not a single person whom He does not come to. Their very existence is proof that they encountered God, who sustains their continued existence.

There’s not a single soul where Christ does not stand at the door and knock. If you know the name of Christ, you have been given many talents. If you are Catholic, you have been given overwhelming talents. It is true, God has given more of Himself to you than most others, but because of that, much more will be required of you (Luke 12:48).

God came into the world not to condemn the world, but to save it. Calvinism and other deterministic systems, including some of those professed by certain Catholics, implicitly teach that Christ came to condemn the world by giving Himself to just a few in order to increase the damnation of the remainder. These are unbiblical systems.

God is fairer than we are merciful. But those who have everything cannot afford to bury it in the ground. To bury it is to refuse to cooperate with grace. And the reason why any are damned is because they refuse to cooperate with grace and persist in mortal sin. It is not because they don’t know theological truth.

That said, we must balance this. There’s a tendency to become overly-universalist or overly-exclusive. Being an avowed enemy of Catholicism, or speaking ill of the fullness of grace, Holy Mary, is a sign of reprobation and rejection of grace.

Culpability of individuals is impossible to assess without being God. But, a vehement rejection of the Church, the fullness of the faith, is a sign one is warring against grace, because the Catholic Church is itself a supreme gift from God.

Actively fighting against the Marian dogmas, calling the Blessed Mother “just an ordinary woman” or “nothing special” are signs that one does not love God, but a narrow and novel ideology. Rejection of the Sacraments, the Papacy, the Eucharist, or the dogmas concerning the Blessed Virgin Mary, are rejections of grace. Rejecting any of them with sufficient knowledge is enough to damn a person.

Such rejection may not always be fully culpable, only God knows the heart, but the rejection itself remains a sign of reprobation, which is a visible sign that a soul is warring against grace, not cooperating with it, and is on a negative trajectory.

The Catholic Church is not merely an institution, it is the very grace of Christ extended visibly through time.

It is Christ’s mystical Body. To reject it knowingly is not neutral. To reject it without doing one’s due diligence is culpable neglect, and leads to damnation. Thus, many are without excuse.

God does not demand exhaustive scholarship, but He does require a sincere search for truth. Those who could have known but chose not to know, those who heard the claims of the Church and dismissed them out of laziness, pride, or prejudice, are not excused. This is likely a massive amount of people.

As Pope Pius IX taught, ignorance that is invincible excuses, but ignorance that is born of neglect does not.

Many in the modern West, surrounded by resources, access, and testimonies of truth, are indeed without excuse. They have every opportunity to investigate the Catholic Church’s claims, but often prefer comfort to conversion, or even comfort to uncomfortable discovery.

“And this is the judgment: because the light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than the light: for their works were evil.” (John 3:19). To reject Catholicism is to remain in a degree of darkness, and when one either knows it’s true or fails to investigate appropriately they reject grace.

Protestant apologists writing tomes against the Catholic faith and those putting their heads in the sand when it comes to untenable positions in their current non-Catholic religions are in very spiritually dangerous positions. It must be emphasized that the danger is not mere intellectual error, but resistance to grace.

Protestant apologists who dedicate themselves to attacking the Catholic faith are often actively rejecting the grace that presses them toward the Church, as God exclusively presses people towards the Catholic Church, and no other institution. He can use other assemblies to slowly bring someone to the fullness of the truth, but the arc infallibly bends towards Catholicism.

To receive a grace of illumination and bury it in fear or pride is not a small sin. It is a spiritual stiff-neckedness that Scripture warns leads to hardening of the heart. God is patient, but He is not mocked.

Mocking the Catholic Church is in every case mocking Christ, for persecuting Catholics is persecuting Christ (Acts 9:4). As Catholics, we must even sometimes block or avoid anti-Catholics, lest we serve as engines for them to pile up their sins before God. It’s avoiding a casting of pearls before the swine.

There comes a time when engaging certain anti-Catholics ceases to be an act of charity, and becomes an occasion for them to increase their own condemnation. Christ warned us not to cast pearls before swine nor to endlessly strive with those who revile the truth.

When a person persistently mocks the Church, calumniates her saints, or twists her doctrines with obstinacy and malice, our continued debate with them may no longer be for their good, but for their ruin. They may even alienate grace for good, not because God stops offering Himself, but because they harden their own hearts to the point of no return.

We risk becoming instruments through which they pile sin upon sin, and this is not mercy, but misplaced zeal. Many of us are guilty of this. When it comes to publicly promoting Catholicism, it can be difficult to know when leaving a conversation or blocking someone on social media is unloving or an act of charity.

But we are not without solid guidance on this matter. St. Paul commands, “a man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, avoid: Knowing that he, that is such an one, is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned by his own judgment. (Titus 3:10–11).

In some cases, it’s worth striving with someone long term. It’s worth publicly refuting some anti-Catholic apologists continually, as an act of kindness towards innocent onlookers. As St. Augustine said, we must not neglect the weak for the sake of the stubborn.

But such engagement should be done with clarity, not venom; with precision, not pride. This too is hard, because venom against our Lord, our Lady and our Church stirs righteous anger. But that anger can become sinful when we lash out in venom. Almost any Catholic apologist is guilty of this at times too, and must actively fight against such tendencies for the good of their own souls.

If you’re falling into it too often, you need to walk away, block, or stop engaging for a while, whether it is in “real life” or online.

Christ answered Pharisees, but for the sake of the crowd. And St. Paul debated in synagogues but always moved on when hearts remained closed. The Disciples shook the dirt off their feet when certain conditions were met. This is because grace is operative, and grace is rejected. We see that our intellectual arguments are being rejected, but the underlying reality is that grace is being rejected, either actively or even in invincible ignorance.

Discernment lies in knowing when to engage for the good of others, and when to disengage to avoid scandal and sin. We must trust that grace is operative. Rejection of the Gospel, in the sense of the fullness of the Christian faith, is not merely a rejection of words, but a rejection of grace. When we evangelize or engage in apologetics, we are not just making arguments, we are cooperating with God’s action in the soul of another.

Some sow. Others reap. Only God gives the growth. Synergy often unfolds over time, so we also can’t be too quick to dismiss others who don’t accept our arguments on the spot. Are they acting in charity while disagreeing? Then that’s a sign we should continue engaging, and we need to remember that everyone has a bad day. Charity is the measure. St. Paul once actively persecuted the Church, and St. Augustine resisted grace for years.

Discernment means knowing whether you’re helping build a bridge to the Church, or enabling someone to build a case against their own soul. If you’re actively trying to evangelize, you will make mistakes at times, but a powerful thing you can do is simply keep everyone you engage with in your prayers. “Ora et labora,” pray and work, a deeply Catholic tradition.

Pray for the kind ones.

Pray for the cruel ones.

Pray for the mockers and the honest seekers.

Pray especially for the ones you think are beyond hope.

And don’t stop evangelizing just because you’re not perfect. Here’s the thing: you’re almost definitely going to sin anyway. That’s not a license to stop striving for holiness, but it’s also not an excuse to remain silent about Christ.

Some people should not be doing formal apologetics, but all are called to preach the Gospel. Don’t ever let your imperfection be an excuse to avoid evangelism altogether. Don’t let your imperfections become a pretext for inaction. God works through cracked vessels. The Apostles stumbled at times, including St. Peter, and yet they preached. So must we.

God’s uncreated grace permeates the entire earth, giving everyone sufficient “talents” for them to cooperate with Him and yield eternal life. The “talents” represent grace, a self-giving of God Himself. Those whom God knows will not use their talents are reprobated in light of their demerit. All others are positively predestined to heaven due to God’s universal will that all be saved. They don’t merit salvation, God could have left them to their own devices and remained just, for salvation is a work of mercy, but He is good and loves mankind.

A Florilegium

Clement of Rome

For no other reason does God punish the sinner either in the present or future world, except because He knows that the sinner was able to conquer but neglected to gain the victory. (Clement of Rome, Recognitions 111. 23, V. 8, IX. 30., [circa A.D. 80])

Ignatius of Antioch

...and there is set before us life upon our observance [of God's precepts], but death as the result of disobedience, and every one, according to the choice he makes, shall go to his own place, let us flee from death, and make a choice of life (The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, ch.5, long version, [circa A.D. 100])

If any one is truly religious, he is a man of God; but if he is irreligious, he is a man of the devil, made such, not by nature, but by his own choice (The Epistle of Ignatius to the Magnesians, ch.5, long version).

Justin Martyr

God’s foreknowledge is intuitive, not active, and is caused by man's choices… We have learned from the prophets, and we hold it to be true, that punishments, chastisements, and rewards are rendered according to the merit of each man's actions. Otherwise, if all things happen by fate, then nothing is in our own power. For if it be predestined that one man be good and another man evil, then the first is not deserving of praise or the other to be blamed. Unless humans have the power of avoiding evil and choosing good by free choice, they are not accountable for their actions-whatever they may be... For neither would a man be worthy of reward or praise if he did not of himself choose the good, but was merely created for that end. Likewise, if a man were evil, he would not deserve punishment, since he was not evil of himself, being unable to do anything else than what he was made for.’ (Justin Martyr, First Apology, chapter 43, [circa A.D. 150])

I have proved in what has been said that those who were foreknown to be unrighteous, whether men or angels, are not made wicked by God’s fault. Rather, each man is what he will appear to be through his own fault. (1.269)

Irenaeus

For He who makes the chaff and He who makes the wheat are not different persons, but one and the same, who judges them, that is, separates them. But the wheat and the chaff, being inanimate and irrational, have been made such by nature. But man, being endowed with reason, and in this respect like to God, having been made free in his will, and with power over himself, is himself the cause to himself, that sometimes he becomes wheat, and sometimes chaff. Wherefore also he shall be justly condemned because, having been created a rational being, he lost the true rationality, and living irrationally, opposed the righteousness of God, serving all lusts; as says the prophet, ‘Man, being in honor, did not understand: he was assimilated to senseless beasts, and made like to them.’ (Irenaeus, Against Heresies, book 4, chapter 4, 3, [circa A.D. 180])

Clement of Alexandria

Choice depended on the man as being free. But the gift depended on God as the Lord. And He gives to those who are willing, are exceedingly earnest, and who ask. So their salvation becomes their own. For God does not compel. (2.593, [circa A.D. 200])

Hippolytus

The Word promulgated the divine commandments by declaring them. He thereby turned man from disobedience. He summoned man to liberty through a choice involving spontaneity – not by bringing him into servitude by force of necessity. (Hippolytus, 5.152, [A.D. 225])

Cyril of Jerusalem

The soul is self-governed: and though the devil can suggest, he has not the power to compel against the will. He pictures to you the thought of fornication: if you will, you accept it; if you will not, you reject. For if you were a fornicator by necessity, then for what cause did God prepare hell? (Catechetical Lectures IV, [circa A.D. 370])

St. Basil the Great

If the origin of our virtues and of our vices is not in ourselves, but is the fatal consequence of our birth, it is useless for legislators to prescribe for us what we ought to do, and what we ought to avoid; it is useless for judges to honour virtue and to punish vice. The guilt is not in the robber, not in the assassin: it was willed for him; it was impossible for him to hold back his hand, urged to evil by inevitable necessity (Hexaemeron - Homily VI, Chapter VII, [circa A.D. 370]).

John Cassian

For it was not given only to David to think what is good of himself, nor is it denied to us naturally to think or imagine anything that is good. It cannot then be doubted that there are by nature some seeds of goodness in every soul implanted by the kindness of the Creator: but unless these are quickened by the assistance of God, they will not be able to attain to an increase of perfection, for, as the blessed Apostle says: ‘Neither is he that planteth anything nor he that watereth, but God that giveth the increase.’ But that freedom of the will is to some degree in a man’s own power is very clearly taught in the book termed the Pastor [i. e., the Shepherd of Hermas], where two angels are said to be attached to each one of us, i.e., a good and a bad one, while it lies at a man’s own option to choose which to follow. And therefore the will always remains free in man, and can either neglect or delight in the grace of God. For the Apostle would not have commanded saying: ‘Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling,’ had he not known that it could be advanced or neglected by us. But that men might not fancy that they had no need of Divine aid for the work of Salvation, he subjoins: ‘For it is God that worketh in you both to will and to do, of His good pleasure.’ And therefore he warns Timothy and says: ‘Neglect not the grace of God which is in thee;’ and again: ‘For which cause I exhort thee to stir up the grace of God which is in thee…’ (John Cassian, Conferences, XIII.12, [circa A.D. 400])

John of Damascus

We should understand that while God knows all things beforehand, He does not predetermine all things. For He knows beforehand those things that are in our power, but He does not predetermine them. For it is not His will that wickedness should exist, nor does He choose to compel virtue (An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, [circa A.D. 740]).

Many Protestants and other Christians who assent to truths on a one by one basis, such as the Trinity, the divinity of Christ and even soteriology do not believe with a holy and divine faith, but a merely natural faith in supernatural things, which is insufficient for salvation. They may even assent to one of the Marian dogmas after personal study. But a major red flag should go up when Protestants start using natural arguments to “prove” supernaturally known truths, such as what the Canon is or the Trinity. Doing this is actually a sign that one is not predestined.

As St. Thomas Aquinas writes:

“Neither living nor lifeless faith remains in a heretic who disbelieves one article of faith.

The reason of this is that the species of every habit depends on the formal aspect of the object, without which the species of the habit cannot remain. Now the formal object of faith is the First Truth (God), as manifested in Holy Writ and the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth.

Consequently whoever does not adhere, as to an infallible and Divine rule, to the teaching of the Church, which proceeds from the First Truth manifested in Holy Writ, has not the habit of faith, but holds that which is of faith otherwise than by faith.

Even so, it is evident that a man whose mind holds a conclusion without knowing how it is proved, has not scientific knowledge, but merely an opinion about it. Now it is manifest that he who adheres to the teaching of the Church, as to an infallible rule, assents to whatever the Church teaches; otherwise, if, of the things taught by the Church, he holds what he chooses to hold, and rejects what he chooses to reject, he no longer adheres to the teaching of the Church as to an infallible rule, but to his own will.”

So, according to St. Thomas, heretics may believe some things that are revealed by God, but they do not believe because they are revealed by God, rather, they believe them as opinions. Thus, they do not possess the theological virtue of faith. It’s worth noting the Angelic Doctor distinguishes those who are heretics here (obstinate denial of a revealed truth, or failure to do due diligence to know the truth) from those who are in error (the invincibly ignorant).

If your Church has the Holy Spirit actively leading it, all its doctrinal decrees are infallible, necessarily. Therefore, saying your church’s decrees are not infallible is a confession that God is not leading your church. There is no way around it. This truth will play a role at the Judgement, condemning many.

When God says, “did you have faith in me or man,” those who put their faith in what they knew to be fallible truths will confess that they did not put their faith in God, but in man. Protestants don’t profess that their Churches are infallible. They don’t profess that their doctrine is infallible. Thus they profess that their doctrines are either not from God, or are at best “probably from God.” “Probably from God” is insufficient for divine faith. It is the foundation of human opinion, and God does not save us through opinion, but through the obedience of faith revealed by grace (Romans 1:5).

To profess fallible doctrine is to profess uncertainty. And no one can stand before the Judgment Seat of God and say “I was uncertain that this was from You, Lord, but I followed it anyway and told everyone that it surely was despite my own lack of certainty.”

Protestant arguments for the Trinity and Resurrection often rest solely on probabilistic arguments, or “historical proofs.” When Protestants try to defend the Trinity or Christology, with analogies, logic, or “the plain reading of Scripture,” entirely apart from the authority of the Church that teaches it, they show they might not believe it with holy and divine faith, but with mere human opinion.

They may just merely have a natural opinion on supernatural things. The Catholic believes because God said so, through His Church, which is infallible because it is His and He actively runs it. He actively reveals truth to His Bride like Samson in Judges 14, prompting his companions to learn the truth from his bride, the only one Samson entrusted it to.

If your foundation for the canon is natural, and it’s your “sole infallible rule of faith,” then your rule of faith collapses, because supernatural faith cannot rest on fallible, historical opinion. It must rest on the authority of God revealing, and it therefore must be infallible since God revealed it.

Restated, if the Bible canon is infallible, it’s the Canon of God. If it’s fallible, it’s a canon of man. If God left us with a canon, or Apostolic Deposit, then its bounds must be infallibly known, or else God didn’t leave us with any canon at all.

What’s the sole infallible rule of faith for a Protestant? The Bible they will say. Is the Canon of Scripture fallibly known or infallibly known?

Most Protestant apologists, such as Gavin Ortlund, will say it’s fallibly known. The common assertion among Protestants nowadays is that they have a “fallible collection of infallible books.” Which means it’s the canon of man, not God, because if it was the latter, it would be infallible, since God is infallible. So, their sole infallible rule of faith rests in a fallible canon, making it a de facto fallible rule of faith.

Thus Protestantism is rendered untenable. If the canon is fallible, then the Bible is only probably the Word of God. You cannot derive certainty from uncertainty.

Of all people, John Calvin recognized this was true. As Joshua Charles pointed out, he appealed to a “burning in the bosom” argument. About 3 centuries later, Joseph Smith would adopt the same argument for his Book of Mormon. This is why Mormon missionaries plead with people to read the Book of Mormon and see if they experience a “burning in the bosom” to know that it’s “true.”

The burning bosom argument for the 66 Book Protestant canon is actually enshrined in several Reformed and Baptist creeds.

This is because the Calvinist and Baptist reformers knew it was epistemologically fatal to admit that one had faith in something fallible. They knew it would make their “sole infallible rule of faith” a fallible rule of opinion. They never appealed to “a fallible collection of infallible books.” It’s instantly self-defeating to do so. It’s also frankly thinking very low of God, that He would provide a sole infallible rule of faith, but not also define it infallibly.

As the years passed, Mormonism and other cults appealed to John Calvin’s “method” so often that it became untenable for Protestants to hold. Anyone can make such a subjective argument. But at least Calvin and the 1689 London Baptists did try to rest their canon in the authority of God revealing, as opposed to something fallible.

Appealing to inward illumination is gnostic. The standard of truth must be public, visible and objective. Otherwise anyone can subjectively say what the canon is. So even infallibility isn’t enough, if that infallible source is not external, visible and objective.

The only way to have divine faith in divine revelation is to have a visible Church that can speak infallibly, not just guess, not just suggest, but speak for Christ, through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Church always knew that it possessed the entire Apostolic Deposit. While it took time to have infallible decree on which books are divinely inspired, the Church was able to function just fine, because the Scriptures were not the only infallible rule of faith to the early Christians.

They knew that the Church definitely possessed the entire Apostolic Deposit, and that it was being better understood over time, through the Spirit guiding the Church into all truth. To a Catholic, Scripture is infallible, but it’s not the only infallible rule of faith. So is Sacred Tradition, and so is the Universal and Ordinary Magisterium, as well as the Pope exercising his Extraordinary Magisterium. A way Christ speaks through the Church is through Scripture. Scripture comes through the Church, including the Church’s prior form as Ancient Israel.

One cannot be sure that they have divine faith if they profess anything less than what the Catholic Church asserts. One thing is for sure though: If you believe an article of faith based on a fallible source, you’re admitting that you’re not sure it’s from God. If you believe in an admittedly fallible interpretation of doctrine from Scripture, you’re not sure that it is from God, only “probably from God” at best. Why would that be enough for you? Will you really rest the fate of your eternal soul on such a thing?

Matthew 7:24-25

“Every one therefore that heareth these my words, and doth them, shall be likened to a wise man that built his house upon a rock, And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell not, for it was founded on a rock.”

Matthew 16:15-19

Jesus saith to them: But whom do you say that I am?

Simon Peter answered and said: Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God.

And Jesus answering, said to him: Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona: because flesh and blood hath not revealed it to thee, but my Father who is in heaven.

And I say to thee: That thou art Peter; and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.

And I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. And whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever thou shalt loose upon earth, it shall be loosed also in heaven.

1 Timothy 3:15

If I am delayed, you may know how one ought to behave in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and bulwark of the truth.

Protestants claim Scripture alone is the rule of faith. But natural reason demands that for a rule to be sufficient, you must know with certainty what belongs to it.

If the canon is infallibly unknowable, then your rule of faith is fatally incomplete or possibly corrupted, either by addition or omission. This is not a mystery of faith, it’s logical contradiction that is impossible to overcome. Protestantism is therefore completely disproven out of the gate, before you even consider any of the supernatural claims of its hundreds of conflicting groups. This is why to Catholics, the Orthodox and atheists alike sometimes Evangelicals come off as a few cents short of a dollar. Often times they are indeed very smart individuals, but they are typically employing crude fideism to ignore a massive logical hole in their belief system.

Catholicism stands unrefuted by natural reason, because it does not make Scripture its first principle, but rather the living authority of the Church, from which Scripture derives its authority and canon. The Magisterium is a public, visible, apostolic witness, which satisfies both faith and reason.

The most intellectually serious New Atheists (like Dennett, Hitchens, and even Bart Ehrman before his departure from Christianity) destroyed Protestantism not through divine revelation, but through epistemology:

“How do you know this is the Word of God?”

“Who decided what goes in your Bible?”

“Why should I accept your book over another religious book?”

Protestantism had no credible answer, and millions fell away. Growing up as a Baptist, nearly all the kids I went to Sunday School with and attended homeschooling groups alongside left the Baptist/Evangelical faith. Some became functional unitarians, many became agnostic, and a few became Roman Catholic. But very few remained Baptist, including those who were part of an apologetics club which almost exclusively focused on atheism. Not because atheism had a stronger argument concerning God’s existence, no, natural theology is sufficient to actually prove the existence of God. But because atheist intellectuals destroyed individual Baptist positions clearly, even to an intellectually honest 15 year old mind.

And today many have looped back to Christianity, through Apostolic Churches. The New Atheism set off an intellectual bomb in the West before the Internet even bought the Church Fathers to the forefront to deal Protestantism another blow, making it easy for millions to see that Protestantism is hardly older than Mormonism.

In the vacuum left behind by collapsing Evangelicalism, we are seeing:

• A Catholic intellectual renaissance (especially among converts)

• A quiet surge in Eastern Orthodoxy

• A growing hunger for a faith that satisfies both reason and revelation (hence the rise of e-Thomism, something that was hard to predict even 5 years ago)

Catholicism can’t be disproved by reason, Protestantism can. That’s why the New Atheism movement dismantled Evangelicalism but couldn’t touch the Church. Catholics leaving the faith were not doing so over arguments put forth by the New Atheism, but for other reasons, which is why to this day Evangelicals are still hyper-focused on converting atheists, who dealt their movement a gaping wound, whereas Catholics have a more evenly distributed approach.

Catholics are especially targeting Protestants for outreach purposes, because they intuit what will become of many Protestant children in the age of the Internet and after the New Atheist renaissance. If the West is to have a Christian future, it can only be under the banner of Apostolic Christianity. Natural theology, natural reason, and the proliferation of Patristic texts online has made conditions impossible for Protestantism to grow significantly among certain groups probably ever again.

In fact, the only type of Protestantism that is growing at any appreciable rate is anti-intellectual Pentecostalism, and usually among the very under-educated. This is why Pentecostalism is doing well among uneducated populations in Africa and South America, and yet has absolutely no chance of appreciable success in places such as Japan, Norway or Switzerland.

Here is a detailed explanation of how natural theology itself undermines Protestantism:

1. The Necessity of Authority is a Natural Conclusion

Natural reason tells us that the human mind is fallible and truth requires an objective standard for certainty. A living authority, as had existed during the Old Covenant (Exodus 18, Matthew 23:2-3), is needed to interpret laws, texts and principles over time. The moment the authority is no longer living, unity becomes utterly impossible as understanding becomes subjective, relative and unresolvable.

Texts don’t interpret themselves. A book is inert. Once the interpretive authority is gone, the text becomes an object of dispute, not resolution.

Multiple readers will disagree on meaning, even in good faith, because language is complex and context-dependent. Just look at the U.S. Constitution. Could it even function without a Supreme Court? No. The Church is the Supreme Court of Divine Revelation, and has Divine Protection, unlike the US Supreme Court.

Only a living authority can preserve objective meaning. It ensures a text’s meaning remains anchored and communal, not shifting with each generation. It allows for doctrinal development (deeper understanding) without corruption (contradiction).

True unity is doctrinal, not sentimental. “We all follow Jesus” is not a means of unity. Unity is Ephesians 4:5, where we believe with a singular voice. This is only possible if someone has the God-given right to bind conscience on matters of doctrine, which is what a living authority does.

Without a living authority, Scripture becomes a battlefield instead of a foundation.

2. The Canon Problem is Epistemologically Fatal

A rule of faith must be both known and knowable with certainty. If Scripture is the only rule of faith, but its canon is known merely by tradition or democratic consensus (which is ever-shifting), then the rule of faith itself is uncertain. If tradition is needed to define the canon, then Scripture Alone fails, because something outside of Scripture determines it. If your pitch to atheists is “hey, our God left us with an uncertain rule of faith,” no one in their right mind would join you.

At best, Protestants can merely convince atheists of God’s existence through pure reason, but if they reject natural theology, then Protestants must confess they are not even doing that, because Protestants who reject natural theology are asserting that you need to know the Incarnation and Trinity to even arrive at God, and that Romans 1:20, Acts 17:23, Romans 2:14-16 and all of Wisdom 13 are wrong. So now you have the issue of Divine Revelation you do accept conflicting with your own assertions.

The moment a Protestant starts appealing to history, Josephus, or criteria outside of Scripture itself to defend their canon, they abandon Sola Scriptura. The game is over. Their own foundational principle is annihilated.

3. Unity in Truth is a Requirement of Reason

Natural reason affirms this: Truth is one, which means God does not contradict Himself (as He is Truth).

Yet Protestantism is intrinsically fragmented among hundreds if not thousands of groups, doctrinally self-contradictory, and lacks authoritative resolution mechanisms. They cannot even agree on the structure of the Church itself. This is because the structure of the Church is not entirely contained within Scripture, and they are straining to divine it and coming up with a myriad of contradictory answers.

Lacking authoritative resolution mechanisms violates basic rational principles. A truth claim cannot be X and not-X. A divine institution must preserve unity of doctrine and worship, or it is not divine. Protestant disunity is not only a major scandal, but a logical refutation of Sola Scriptura. They cannot appeal to anything to prove their subjective opinions are objectively true.

4. Natural Theology and Liturgy

This is an often overlooked truth arrived at by natural theologians. Man is a rational animal who is made to worship. Public worship must be fitting, ordered, ritual and communal.

Protestantism’s rejection of sacrificial worship in a propitiatory sense contradicts the rational nature of man and the universality of sacred order throughout all human cultures in human history. Man naturally understands he owes something significant to Someone significant, which is why there is no non-religious ancient culture, and there is no ancient culture without some kind of propitiatory sacrifices.

This is not accidental, but a reflection of universal religious instinct gleaned through natural reason. Guilt must be dealt with, and communion with the divine requires atonement.

From the Aztecs to the Greeks, from Vedic India to tribal Africa, all mankind naturally perceives, as Romans 1:20 references:

The existence of a moral order.

Mankind has transgressed it.

Reparation MUST be made to the divine.

This reparation involves death, offering or loss.

St. Thomas Aquinas said the law of divine worship is naturally inscribed in man. It’s plainly observable. A sacrifice of praise is well and good, and all Christians give a sacrifice of praise, but this is not a propitiatory sacrifice. Protestant rejection of the sacrificial nature of the Mass and Divine Liturgy stands alone in history, and is actually a feature it oddly shares with atheism.

Based on this, it is illogical to be a member of any Protestant denomination, just like it is illogical to be an atheist (Psalm 14:1). The necessity of propitiatory sacrifice is known through natural theology and reason, just like the existence of God.

5. The Visible Church is an Absolute Natural Necessity

Nature teaches man that all communities require leadership, laws require interpretation, and societies need continuity. What Protestants are often proposing is that when the Apostles died, there was no Apostolic continuity. This is like allowing a Kingdom to fall into anarchy when its monarch dies.

Protestantism ensures the Church is invisible, divided and subject to personal opinion. All the hallmarks of what would ensure in a state of anarchy in a nation.

This contradicts not only reason, but Christ’s picture of the Church as a “City on a hill which can never be hidden” (Matthew 5:14). Christ used this image because cities have governments. Government largely revolved around cities in ancient times, and areas between them were often lawless and dangerous, filled with bandits and enemies from nature. Safety was in the city, because it was governed.

Conclusion

Protestantism is Contra Rationem. It denies a visible Church, rests on an unprovable and subjective canon that it insists is also the sole rule of faith, rejects the sacramental and liturgical structure rooted in nature itself, and cannot account for doctrinal unity, let alone the possibility of epistemic certainty.

Meanwhile, Catholicism affirms faith and reason. It grounds its authority in a visible Church instituted and ruled by Christ, through the Chair of St. Peter. It recognizes the integrity of both nature and grace, and offers a coherent comprehensive system that cannot be refuted by the natural intellect. You can claim Catholicism gets divine revelation wrong to some degree, as the Eastern Orthodox would assert, but you cannot disprove it by natural reason like you can disprove Protestantism.

Natural theology does not just point to the existence of one God, the Eternal Creator. It points to an Apostolic Church, leaving Protestantism behind as a well-meaning contradiction that is increasingly impossible for educated individuals to remain in. Like atheism, it is disproven by natural theology.

This is perhaps why Protestants such as Gavin Ortlund and others are crashing out lately on X and YouTube over the Catholic assertion that Judaism and Islam can worship the true God as a referent, as God is known through natural reason, albeit their worship Him insufficient. Protestant apologists are increasingly showing itself to be unhinged, as they are forced to publicly defend indefensible positions that make them look silly, just to keep it together.

I will end by saying there are some Protestants who do indeed embrace natural theology, and do agree with the Catholic and Orthodox Churches on the matter of knowing God through it. Millions of Protestants certainly affirm that Jews worship the true God, as millions of Protestants are Zionists and dispensationalists. However, these Protestants would do well to go further with natural theology, and explore and try to refute St. Thomas Aquinas on the topic of natural theology and liturgy in particular. If they cannot, doors of the Catholic Church await them.

John Calvin taught double-predestination - that God creates some for the purpose of damnation. It is harsh and unbiblical, but even Calvin allowed that God could work mysteriously among the unevangelized.

The Orthodox “hardline” position is that Muslims and Jews cannot in any way worship the true God or respond to grace, because they reject the Trinity, which is something only known by Divine Revelation. This implies that no one outside visible Christianity is even capable of responding to God, not even by natural theology, conscience, or sufficient grace. Keep in mind Romans 1:20 says God can be known easily through nature and natural reason. The Trinity cannot, as it is only known by Divine Revelation.

As Romans 1:20-21 says:

Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse; for although they knew God they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking and their senseless minds were darkened.

“Orthobro Jay Dyerite” theology, shared by such “luminaries” as OrthodoxLuigi, Rachel Wilson and many others, is more deterministic than the Catholic view, which rejects indifferentism and pluralism, but upholds that God gives sufficient grace to all, and that worship can be rightly ordered, even outside full revelation.

Romans 2:14-16 says:

When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that what the law requires is written on their hearts, while their conscience also bears witness and their conflicting thoughts accuse or perhaps excuse them on that day when, according to my gospel, God judges the secrets of men by Christ Jesus.

In speaking with Greek pagans in Athens, St. Paul in Acts 17:23 says:

For as I passed along, and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.

Some Orthodox today deny Muslims worship the true God, even by natural light. That’s more deterministic than Calvin, who at least acknowledged God’s mysterious work beyond formal revelation.

When you deny natural theology, you deny the Fathers and Sacred Scripture. Natural theology is sufficient grace.

God has made Himself knowable through creation, conscience, and reason. It’s how God can save individuals despite their personal circumstances, even folks in North Korea or Somalia who might never hear of Christ. While it is not saving grace, it is sufficient to move the heart to seek Him, and to make rejection culpable. This is what Romans 1:20 is referring to when it says “they are without excuse.”

Why? Because the knowledge of God through creation and reason is sufficient to obligate belief and worship.

Man can know natural truths without grace, but cannot reach supernatural ends without it. But he can be moved to seek truth through natural knowledge, and predispose his heart to receive saving grace, even without the intellectual means to know and articulate divine revelation properly.

In the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Filius (Vatican I), it says:

The same Holy Mother Church holds and teaches that God, the beginning and end of all things, may be certainly known by the natural light of human reason, by means of created things; "for the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made" (Romans 1:20), but that it pleased His wisdom and bounty to reveal Himself, and the eternal decrees of His will, to mankind by another and a supernatural way: as the Apostle says, "God, having spoken on diverse occasions, and in many ways, in times past, to the fathers by the prophets; last of all, in these days, has spoken to us by His Son" (Hebrews 1:1-2).

St. Augustine once wrote:

You have made us for Yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.

This restlessness begins with the natural movement toward the divine.

Natural theology = sufficient grace in the moral order. It gives man the ability to seek God and be drawn to Him.

It does not replace divine revelation or the sacraments, but it condemns rejection of God, and predisposes one to receive saving grace, if cooperated with.

If someone cooperates with sufficient grace, he could receive saving grace without knowing Christ formally, or being a formal member of any Christian group, due to invincible ignorance.

If someone cooperates with sufficient grace - the light of reason, conscience, and natural law - then God can, in His mercy, grant them saving grace, even if they do not know Christ.

CCC 847:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or His Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart… may achieve eternal salvation.

To equate salvation with knowledge of correct doctrine is to revive the ancient Gnostic heresy that knowing secret truths saves. The Church has always condemned this. Saving faith may grow into knowledge, but is not dependent on it. The Trinity is a truth hidden to natural intellect, and again, only known by Divine Revelation.

It’s already known that Orthobro theology has a heavy component of Donatism. Now we see that it contains Gnosticism and Pelagian Rigorism, and like many strands of Evangelical Christianity is simply a golem of ancient heresies.

Saving faith is not intellectual gnosis. It is a theological virtue infused by God, even in baptized infants. To claim you must consciously know the Trinity to even know who God is, much less to be saved, is to inadvertently deny the effectiveness of infant baptism and embrace a completely Gnostic soteriology.

In their rejection of infused virtue and divine initiative in salvation through nature, certain strands of modern Orthodox online apologetics resemble Evangelical fundamentalism more than Apostolic Christianity. It is no coincidence that they are nearly all former Evangelicals and Baptists.

A lot of “Orthobro” theology isn’t ancient Orthodoxy, it’s Donatism + Gnosticism + Pelagianism surrounded by beautiful liturgy, icons and cassocks.

They demand knowledge (gnosis) for salvation, deny sacraments outside their camp, and reject divine initiative through nature.

Protestants discerning Orthodoxy and Catholicism should now clearly see that Catholicism is the true faith and the clearly superior answer, at least to Orthobro theology.

Now I want to be fair to our Orthodox Brothers and Sisters. Not all of them are Orthobros. What I am attacking here is the unlearned and irrational opinions of lay Orthodox converts who have taken it upon themselves, often without the blessing of any bishop, to teach Orthodoxy, and often do so wrongly and defame their own Patriarchs and official teachings.

According to the Orthodox Social Ethos document, section 58, formally and personally endorsed by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, it says:

The story of other non-Orthodox Christian religious traditions is not yet finished, and Orthodoxy affirms that like other non-Orthodox Christian bodies they only find their coherence and clarity within the Orthodox Church. As for other religions, the Orthodox Church takes encouragement from the words of the Apostle Paul to the Athenians at the Areopagus: “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). From this the Church is given license to proclaim that the true God in whom all humanity lives and moves and has its being is worshipped by peoples everywhere, Christian and non-Christian alike. And this makes her only more eager to make all persons and peoples aware that the face of this one true God shines forth unobscured in the face of Jesus Christ.

Sections 56 and 57 of the same document speaks of Muslims and Jews as worshippers of God, not pagans.

Patriarch Kirill has also personally affirmed that Muslims and Jews worship God, on several occasions.

Orthobros will typically follow up on this by claiming that they do not have the same ecclesiology as Catholicism, catastrophically misunderstanding Orthodox ecclesiology, and showing that the Orthodox Churches need to clean up their catechumen programs and include more instruction on ecclesiology. What these Orthobros are professing is more akin to Anglican ecclesiology. Orthobros are more like Eastern Rite Anglicans than the Orthodox.

When Orthodox Patriarchs speak authoritatively, Orthobros hand-wave it away with “well, we don’t follow him.” And Orthodox inquirer on X told me that “all the Patriarchs need to go,” and he was only refuted by Catholics, Orthobros standing by idly.

The Orthobros really believe that the Orthodox Church is merely a loose network of spiritually independent dioceses. This is what they think autocephalous means. And they think they have personal doctrinal autocephaly, apparently.

This is not Orthodox ecclesiology, it is Anglican, where bishops and provinces do what they please and unity becomes optional. Many Orthobros have reduced their own Church to a Reddit Consensus, not a living hierarchy. They call this Reddit consensus “Orthodox Phronema.” They go on to treat synods and patriarchs as fallible blogs and YouTubers, and themselves as the Magisterium. They are doctrinally syncretic and suspicious of their own authorities.

Since we might not make Orthobros into Catholics, lets at least try to make them fully Orthodox.

Orthodoxy does NOT teach congregationalism. Bishops and Patriarchs are not “optional” because they’re fallible. The laity cannot simply reject them. Apostolic succession and obedience to the Bishops and Patriarchs are core tenets of a Church predicated on living authority.

Canon 34 of the Apostolic Canons states:

The bishops of every nation must acknowledge who is first among them and account them as their head, and do nothing of consequence without his consent.

This means that Patriarchal Primacy is real, even if distinct from Catholic Papal Primacy. The Ecumenical Patriarch, as well as the other Patriarchs, are not just “other guys” equal to Jay Dyer and Orthodox Luigi on doctrinal and theological authority. The Ecumenical Patriarch has a role of primacy of both honor and coordination in global Orthodoxy. True Orthodox doctrine teaches that local bishops are authoritative within their territories and synods are authoritative over bishops, and the Patriarchs are the highest among the bishops and over all others within their respective churches, and hold primacy.

The laity have no right to reject their bishop or Patriarchs, unless he conflicts with formalized truths. There is absolutely no synodal decree that Muslims do not worship the true God, therefore an Orthodox Christian can’t simply act as if the bishops and the Ecumenical Patriarch is non-authoritative on the matter. If a bishop disagrees with the Ecumenical Patriarch or others, that exposes problems within Orthodoxy, although there are certainly renegade Bishops in Catholicism too. That said, we know who the renegade bishops are with total precision, because of the authority of Rome.

Orthodoxy allows for tolerance on non-dogmatic issues. Orthobros calling Patriarch Kirill a heretic for affirming that Muslims and Jews worship the God of Abraham are violating all norms of conciliar process, acting as individual laity are the magisterium, and rejecting hierarchs in favor of the Reddit Consensus. It is Eastern Rite Anglicanism.

What is being proposed by Orthobros as it pertains to Islam and Judaism is more fatalist than Calvinism. It is blatantly gnostic in that it teaches that knowing “hidden truths” about God only found in the Church are necessary to arrive at Him. It is Pelagian Rigorism because it teaches that Divine Truth can be known apart from the grace of the Church, if they reject the fatalist position. It can be fatalist or Pelagian, and both are erroneous. I will leave it to the Orthobros to fight over whether they will be Pelagians or fatalists though.

In the following document, I will demonstrate how this can be done. Those who cleave strongly to Thomism or Palamism may not like it, but us Catholics understand that change is constant, because divine truth is infinitely contemplated and infinitely understood, in terms of increasing understanding.

Note the presence of St. Thomas Aquinas and St. Palamas above Pope Benedict in the following picture, taken inside the Remeptoris Matter Chapel at the Vatican.

1. Grace is a Formal Cause, not an override.

In Eastern theology, grace is uncreated, not a substance imposed from outside but a participation in God’s life. Aristotelically, grace can be seen as the formal cause of a new kind of life (Divine Life), not an overriding efficient cause (efficacious grace).

The soul remains the efficient cause of its acts, but grace configures what kind of acts are possible, elevating nature. So grace is the formal cause of Divine Life.

2. Synergy is a cooperation of the Two Wills

Aristotle affirms that form and matter cooperate for an act to be realized (e.g., the sculptor and the marble). Synergy is not “God does part and man does part,” but that God’s action enables and sustains man’s free response. So the Divine Will enables and sustains the free response of a human will. It does not inject Divine Life by necessity, but elevates the soul’s capacity to freely receive or reject it.

The soul remains the efficient cause of its acts, but grace elevates the order of finality of what kind of acts are possible.

Just as form actualizes the potential in matter, so grace (form) activates the potency of the human will. But the will retains its status as self-moved (Aristotle’s kinesis), not passively moved like a stone by a rushing river.

Grace does not infuse Divine Life by sheer necessity. As even St. Thomas says, God does not will all things necessarily. Grace elevates the soul’s potency, enabling it to move freely toward a supernatural end, theosis. The will can still say “no.” The reception of grace is not pre-determined.

The actualization of Divine Life in the soul, theosis, is the effect of this synergy. The soul receives a new mode of being only after a grace-enabled motion. This safeguards both God’s primacy as First Cause, and man’s freedom as a true participant in salvation. Furthermore, God sustains and hold’s men’s decisions in existence, good or evil, making him the First Cause, but not the moral author. This is why even the decision for Divine Life is graced - it cannot exist apart from God holding it in existence. A decision against Divine Life is not graced, even though God holds it in existence because it is a creaturely act that did not require grace to make.

3. Motion V.S. Persuasion

Aristotelian movement actually includes self-motion: a thing is moved per its nature. Grace elevates and heals the will, not dragging it. Grace “penetrates” the natural faculties so that man can truly will in freedom. But this is this is metaphysical elevation, not displacement. Grace restores and empowers the will to act according to its true telos (natural end): communion with God. But the human will can, per its own nature, move against this telos.

Self-motion (per se motus) in Aristotle is real. A thing’s form, gives it its nature, which causes it to act toward its telos. Grace elevates man’s fallen faculties so this natural movement toward God becomes possible again, not automatic. It is wrong to assume hell is the natural telos of man, as we judge a thing’s true telos by what it was created for originally, not any deviations from it, such as a corrupted nature.

Divine simplicity does not require God to be the efficient cause of every volition. Instead, He is the ground of being, who sustains all acts of will in existence, but does not force their content. He holds all decisions in existence, and could do otherwise, but he does not force the content of all decisions.

God should be viewed as the Sustainer, not the Determiner. Our freedom is real, because it is rooted in being, and being is upheld by God’s generous act of sustaining creation moment by moment, including our choices. Just as God’s will is free to act according to its nature, so is ours. But because our nature is not pure love, wisdom, and justice, grace is required to choose something other than what is evil. God freely sustains a world of true secondary causes, including all our decisions.

4. Final Cause

Grace draws us toward our telos - union with God. But the means to that union (faith, works, sacraments, etc) are freely chosen, though enabled to be chosen by God. Thus, God is final cause and empowering agent, not man. When man chooses good the decision is a graced decision, which is not meritorious in and of itself, but it’s graced because it was impossible without grace. When man chooses wrong the decision was not graced, but a self-motion against grace. How this relates to Predestination is thus:

Predestination is the divine knowledge and will to bring about the final end (telos) of those who freely cooperate with grace, whose free cooperation God enables, foreknows and permits, but does not determine by necessity.

So Predestination is not arbitrary selection, nor is it sheer foresight. It is God’s eternal will to bring to glory those who are bought into the telos, and will permanently remain in it. These are the Elect.

This is not Pelagian, since the will cannot act for the good without grace. It is not determinist, since God’s grace heals and elevates the faculties but does not violate them. Nor is Predestination mere foresight of human actions, as Molinism teaches.

God predestines the order of salvation, and the individual’s inclusion in it depends on graced yet truly free participation.

5. God as Pure Act does not run counter to human freedom

God, as actus purus, gives being and sustenance and motion, but does not necessitate evil or good acts. Contingency is preserved in the creature’s reception, not in God’s causality. God’s causality is universal, but not univocal with creaturely volition. His will gives being, but does not impose determinate content on free acts.

This is akin to light shining on objects, some reflect, others absorb. But in this case, self-motion allows the object (human will) to absorb or reflect depending on what it decides. Decisions against the good are acts of madness, against reason. Humans are culpable for these freely chosen acts of madness because their reason was elevated by grace to know that they were acts of madness. As righteousness is infused in the soul, it can be said an increase of grace is infused in the soul. This explains why furthering theosis makes one more and more aware of one’s own acts of madness as sins are overcome over time.

Closing Thoughts

By allowing Aristotelian causality to inform the metaphysical structure of how grace operates, while retaining the Eastern synergistic participatory model, one obeys Pope St. John Paul’s call for a unified philosophical-theological original, new and constructive mode of thinking (Fides et Ratio 85) that both guards the integrity of revelation and engages with the theological and philosophical traditions that shape the human search for truth.

Harmonizing Palamite synergy with Thomistic metaphysics fulfills the Church’s mission to proclaim truth in a unified voice. St. Thomas, St. Palamas, and others such as St. Gregory of Narek can and must be synthesized to attain further unfolding of Divine Revelation. A refusal to integrate the Church’s broad insights and stay stubbornly pure Thomist or Palamite without consideration for other ideas will result in a stagnation of the aforementioned unfolding, and inhibit greater unity. Unity in diversity can lead to even greater unity through synthesis.

To refuse this synthesis is to paralyze the Body of Christ in a posture of suspicion rather than contemplation. But to synthesize is to love the fullness of truth, and to let the Church “breathe with both lungs.”

Not long ago, Fr. Trenham was defended in court by the Roman Catholic Thomas More Society, a public-interest law firm. He was being harassed and libeled by LGBT activists angry with his stand for Christian truth, rooted in Scriptures and Holy Tradition, on marriage, family and sexuality.

However, many, if not most Orthodox Christians now doctrinally accept sodomitical acts. Fr. Trenham is one of the few voices in American Orthodoxy decrying the sin of contraception in all its forms. Archpriest Fr. John Whiteford, another popular American Orthodox Priest who hails from ROCOR (Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia) originally, aggressively argued in favor of condom use with me on X a few months back.

The key issue with Orthodoxy is that it lacks an infallible terminus of faith. Ultimately, their faith terminates in a fallible interpreter. Because infallible truth is infinitely contemplated and understood, an infallible terminus is necessary to sort true understanding from false understanding. The Orthodox would point to Ecumenical Councils as an infallible terminus, but the issue is, without a Pope, unless agreement is totally unanimous, they cannot have a council without schism, and a clear marker for their faithful on who is the schismatic and who is true.

For example, if the Orthodox managed to get every Church to show up for an Ecumenical Council today, it’s unlikely they would come to a universal agreement on contraception. Several equally-powered Bishops would leave or defect post-Council similar to the Council of Florence fiasco. The faithful would have to employ Sola Scriptura and Sola Tradicione’s to self-discern which Church is the True Church, and which one is the schismatic group, because there’s no singular Chair, no singular public infallible terminus, to clearly mark which side God is on.

Unfortunately, no Orthodox Christian can have Divine Certainty in their faith in 2025, as there is no universally agreed upon answer to whether or not contraception is a grave evil, or what a valid baptism is. The latter is an essential of the faith to know, and like contraception, the Church Fathers made clear what the answer is, although many Orthodox refuse to accept it.

To have Divine Certainty your faith must be oriented towards an infallible Object (truth), which is infallibly known (interpreted). The terminus of faith for an Orthodox Christian is in trusting which men to believe in on baptism and contraception, as there’s no clear answer from God for them, and no discernable means for obtaining one. The pro-contraception Bishops have no reason to consent to a Council, and the anti-contraception Bishops have no Pope to force them to the table.

As Catholics, we don’t believe Ecumenical Councils are infallible per se, but rather that the Holy Spirit works through the collective Bishops to help the Church arrive at clarity on matters of truth from the Apostolic Deposit. The sign that the Church has arrived at clarity in the truth is that it’s accepted by the Infallible Terminus, the Pope. So Patriarchs and Bishops could skip a Council, and the Pope would still be able to move forward, and the faithful could assent with Divine Certainty to what is dogmatically decreed by the Chair. The Orthodox are stuck either going into schism, despair (assuming the true Church has fallen into error as some sedevacantists do), or doctrinal relativism. On the issues of baptismal validity and contraception, the Orthodox have chosen doctrinal relativism, an impossibility in the True Church of God, and a form of modernism worse than any Mass abuse, because it has to do with truth on a matter of faith and morals.

Recently, Ubi Petrus had a debate with Alex from Voice of Reason on whether or not Orthodoxy is the True Church. In that debate, Alex called out Eastern Orthodox doctrinal relativism on contraception, and Ubi defended contraception. Matt Fradd from Pints with Aquinas made a short clip highlighting the extreme liberalism of the Orthodox Churches on contraception, and posted it to X.

Ubi Petrus responded to Matt Fradd, and then I engaged with Ubi Petrus.

Below is our conversation, as well as my conversation with Lucas Falango, an Eastern Orthodox Christian apparently against Natural Family Planning (NFP). I believe their arguments to be intellectually impoverished. Ubi continually conflates intention with act, and makes an “ends justify the means” argument. Lucas likewise confuses intent with means.

For Lucas, intending an avoidance of pregnancy is wrong, but this breaks down when we considered he does not condemn total married continence or Holy Mary and St. Joseph. For Ubi, coitus interruptus, condemned by Scripture and the Father’s, is licit because it achieves the same end as continence, and the ends apparently justify the means.

The following conversation can be helpful to all Christians seeking to understand the Catholic viewpoint, and how it handles essentially every possible objection.

Ubi Petrus:

In the Church Fathers, the question isn't whether contraception is acceptable but whether sex outside of fertile periods & beyond fertile years is acceptable. The handful of writers who comment on it lean towards "no & no." The general silence on the issue in the face of other contemporary commentators regularly commenting on other sexual sins (i.e. sodomy, self-gratification, and abortion) stands out. The standard survey of patristic views on sex and contraception is John T. Noonan's "Contraception."

Angelo Romano:

Completely untrue. They condemn coitus interruptus (which condoms are) and they condemn abortifacients and mutilation (similar to tubal ligations or vasectomies today, but primitive forms). So the Patristics allow zero artificial birth control.

John Chrysostom

“Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit, where there are medicines of sterility [oral contraceptives], where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain only a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. . . . Indeed, it is something worse than murder, and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you condemn the gift of God and fight with his [natural] laws? . . . Yet such turpitude . . . the matter still seems indifferent to many men—even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth” (Homilies on Romans 24 [A.D. 391]).

“[I]n truth, all men know that they who are under the power of this disease [the sin of covetousness] are wearied even of their father’s old age [wishing him to die so they can inherit]; and that which is sweet, and universally desirable, the having of children, they esteem grievous and unwelcome. Many at least with this view have even paid money to be childless, and have mutilated nature, not only killing the newborn, but even acting to prevent their beginning to live” (Homilies on Matthew 28:5 [A.D. 391]).

Jerome

“But I wonder why he [the heretic Jovinianus] set Judah and Tamar before us for an example, unless perchance even harlots give him pleasure; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed. Does he imagine that we approve of any sexual intercourse except for the procreation of children?” (Against Jovinian 1:19 [A.D. 393]).

“You may see a number of women who are widows before they are wives. Others, indeed, will drink sterility and murder a man not yet born, [and some commit abortion]” (Letters 22:13 [A.D. 396]).

Caesarius of Arles

“Who is he who cannot warn that no woman may take a potion so that she is unable to conceive or condemns in herself the nature which God willed to be fecund? As often as she could have conceived or given birth, of that many homicides she will be held guilty, and, unless she undergoes suitable penance, she will be damned by eternal death in hell. If a woman does not wish to have children, let her enter into a religious agreement with her husband; for chastity is the sole sterility of a Christian woman” (Sermons 1:12 [A.D. 522]).

Epiphanius of Salamis

“They [certain Egyptian heretics] exercise genital acts, yet prevent the conceiving of children. Not in order to produce offspring, but to satisfy lust, are they eager for corruption” (Medicine Chest Against Heresies 26:5:2 [A.D. 375]).

Lactantius

“[Some] complain of the scantiness of their means, and allege that they have not enough for bringing up more children, as though, in truth, their means were in [their] power . . . or God did not daily make the rich poor and the poor rich. Wherefore, if any one on any account of poverty shall be unable to bring up children, it is better to abstain from relations with his wife” (Divine Institutes 6:20 [A.D. 307]).

“God gave us eyes not to see and desire pleasure, but to see acts to be performed for the needs of life; so too, the genital [’generating’] part of the body, as the name itself teaches, has been received by us for no other purpose than the generation of offspring” (ibid., 6:23:18).

Clement of Alexandria

“Because of its divine institution for the propagation of man, the seed is not to be vainly ejaculated, nor is it to be damaged, nor is it to be wasted” (The Instructor of Children 2:10:91:2 [A.D. 191]).

“To have coitus other than to procreate children is to do injury to nature” (ibid., 2:10:95:3).

The Letter of Barnabas

“Moreover, he [Moses] has rightly detested the weasel [Lev. 11:29]. For he means, ‘Thou shall not be like to those whom we hear of as committing wickedness with the mouth with the body through uncleanness [orally consummated sex]; nor shall thou be joined to those impure women who commit iniquity with the mouth with the body through uncleanness’” (Letter of Barnabas10:8 [A.D. 74]).

Ubi Petrus:

1) All of those are discussed in the video I posted.

2) You're purposefully leaving out all of the quotations forbidding sex during pregnancy and outside of fertile periods.

Angelo Romano:

Ubi, the Fathers who speak of avoiding sex during pregnancy or infertile times are referring to voluntary abstinence, often for ascetical or spiritual purposes (e.g., before Eucharist or during fasting periods). Contraception, by contrast, is the deliberate frustration of the procreative act while still engaging in it. No Church Father endorses contraception—ever. Literally zero. But Church Fathers do allow the marital act during pregnancy and outside fertile periods, which aren’t easy to know, which is why things like the Marquette Method exist.

Not one early Church Father, Greek or Latin, ever defends contraception. If some Fathers also urge abstinence during pregnancy or fasting, that’s not a contradiction, it’s a call to continence, not contraception. You’re conflating two different moral categories. Contraceptive acts, however, were unanimously condemned by the Fathers, and that remains unrefuted and unaddressed in your video. The Fathers saw contraception as a distortion of the marital act’s integrity, not as a form of responsible continence.

Ubi Petrus:

<<the Fathers who speak of avoiding sex during pregnancy or infertile times are referring to voluntary abstinence>> The ones I include in the video forbid it, such as Pope St. Gregory the Great.

Angelo Romano:

Contraception is not avoiding sex, it’s perverting sex. It’s not about when you abstain, it’s about how you engage. There is a difference between saying “sex during pregnancy is spiritually inadvisable” and saying “contraception is acceptable.” Pope St. Gregory the Great and other Fathers occasionally expressed concern about sex during pregnancy, but never because it involved a contraceptive act. Their concern was usually about detachment from pleasure, ascetic ideals, or spiritual readiness, not a moral judgment on the act’s structure. They never said, “Sex must only occur when conception is possible.” That’s not the teaching.

Furthermore, Pope Gregory is actually speaking about sexual pleasure in relation to "immoderate" marital sexual intercourse. He is not criticizing the presence of pleasure in moderate marital sexual intercourse, rather he is criticizing the act of making pleasure the primary purpose in marital sexual intercourse by means of “immoderate copulation.” He’s teaching married asceticism, and not even condemning immoderate copulation as formally the sin of lust. Pope Gregory is teaching that married couples "befoul" the "fair form" of marital intercourse by seeking pleasure through “excessive copulation.” The Pope is teaching a point of asceticism in regard to a venial fault rather than accusing a couple of breaking the law of marriage or lust.

Sex during pregnancy is allowed, and the husband and wife have a right to one another’s bodies, but an ascetic approach would be to avoid it, as it can’t bear fruit even though one is open to life. He’s detaching [sic: meant to say “teaching”] detachment from excess. This has literally nothing to do with coitus interruptus or using abortifacient pills, or mutilating the body. No Church Father ever approved of contraception. Using his words to excuse contraception is like using advice about fasting to justify anorexia. Completely different categories. Fasting is self-giving and ordered. Anorexia is disordered and self-destructive.

Ubi Petrus:

The quotation against sex that isnt purely for begetting children starts at 14:00.

Angelo Romano:

We actually agree entirely with all these quotes as Catholics. The unitive and procreative ends are both intrinsic to the marital act. Procreation is primary in rank. Therefore, all sex must be open to the possibility life, which is why contraception is a sin. It’s sex that’s not open to the possibility of life.

Sex is only for procreation. Therefore, it must be open to procreation, even if it’s unlikely or impossible to conceive.

“Sex is only for procreation” means sex must be ordered toward procreation, not necessarily fertile, but never sterile by intention. That’s what the Church Fathers were getting at, and what Humanae Vitae, Casti Connubii, and St. Thomas Aquinas make clear.

Consider stealing a candy bar from a store. If I steal a candy bar I get the same result as paying for a candy bar, provided I don’t get caught. Namely, I possess a candy bar. The ends don’t justify the means. Just because contraception gets you the same result as NFP or abstinence, doesn’t mean it’s ok to employ sodomy or abortifacients.

In NFP, each martial act is open to life, on an act by act basis. It’s employing fasting for justifiable prudential reasons to delay pregnancy. It’s simply a grace-filled bonus that you can have sex and don’t have to commit to total continence.

Contraception says: “We want the act, but not the consequence.”

NFP says: “We respect the act, even if we choose to abstain at times.”

Thus, Catholics and Orthodox who follow us on this are the only Christians faithful to the Church Fathers.

Ubi Petrus:

What is the likelihood of a woman conceiving in day 7 or day 21?

Angelo Romano:

Morality doesn’t change with statistical fertility. That’s consequentialism, not Christianity.

The morality of the act is not measured by its odds, but by its form and intention.

Just because a couple engages in sex on a day when conception is unlikely does not mean they are contracepting. Natural infertility is a condition of the body. Contraception is an intentional act to sterilize the conjugal act, an intervention that renders it closed to life by will.

The marital act is corresponds to receiving the Eucharist and is the Liturgy of the Body. It’s nuptial and sacramental. It is the bodily liturgy through which spouses express the total self-gift that mirrors Christ and the Church (Ephesians 5:32). Just as the Eucharist is the consummation and renewal of the New Covenant, the marital act is the consummation and renewal of the marriage covenant.

Coitus interruptus would be like spitting Christ upon the ground, as it prevents the intended end, which is full reception and the “conception” of grace within the soul. Abortifacients are like purposely committing death-bearing sin so that the Eucharist cannot bear grace. They deliberately destroy the fruit of the Union.

In NFP, the couple may abstain for a time, but when they do unite, they do so with FULL reverence for what the act signifies. This is like fasting from the Eucharist temporarily, not from rejection, but from prudential discernment and respect for the sacrament.

The body speaks a language. The marital act, like the Eucharist, says: “This is my body, given for you.” To contracept is to speak a lie with the body. To abstain reverently is to honor the truth in silence.

Ubi Petrus:

<<Just because a couple engages in sex on a day when conception is unlikely does not mean they are contracepting.>> They're attempting to lessen the odds of having a child and detaching sex from conception, that's the point of contraception.

Angelo Romano:

The Church condemns contraception not because of the intention to avoid pregnancy, but because of the means used to do so.

Contraception and NFP are motivated by a desire to delay or avoid pregnancy, but intention alone does not determine moral goodness. Recall the candy bar theft analogy from earlier in the thread.

Contraception perverts the act itself, NFP chooses when to engage in a fully natural, procreative-type act. That’s why the Church says contraception is intrinsically evil, while NFP is licit when done for just reasons.

“Lessening the odds” is not the same as “detaching sex from conception.”

A couple who has relations during an infertile time still performs a sexual act that is open in kind to life, does nothing to frustrate the procreative meaning, and does not render the act sterile.

The act remains ordered toward procreation, even if conception is unlikely.

If timing alone detached sex from procreation, then marital sex during pregnancy, menopause, or infertility would be sinful, which the Church has never taught. Some Church Fathers had recommended building spiritual strength by abstaining during pregnancy as pointed out, but this is not the same as forbidding.

You’re consistently confusing intention with means.

When employing NFP every single marital act is good. When employing contraception every single marital act is sodomy or abortion. An NFP user can sin if their intent isn’t pure, but that’s not a sin of sodomy or abortion or of mutilation.

Lucas Falango (Eastern Orthodox against even NFP?):

«NFP chooses when to engage in a fully natural, procreative-type act.» Nope. NFP people proudly says that when done correctly the method is more effective than condoms. It's unnatural, it violates the natural libido of woman. NFP is just the sexual version of "shabbat elevators".

Angelo Romano:

Your objection misunderstands both natural law and moral theology, and falsely equates abstinence with contraception.

Contraception suppresses fertility WITHIN the ACT itself (condoms, pills, withdrawal). NFP ABSTAINS from the ACT during fertile times, it never touches or frustrates the act itself. That’s the key. NFP doesn’t modify nature, it cooperates with it.

NFP can be highly effective, especially when used with precision, but that doesn’t make it contraception. A knife can be used well to cook or to kill.

You wouldn’t say someone is “anti-nourishment” because they fast on Fridays. Yet if you are consistent you have to make this claim too.

Libido also isn’t a command, it’s a passion that must be governed by reason. The moral life involves governing desire, not submitting to it like a pagan.

NFP couples are not “getting around” anything. They are submitting their desires to reason.

The real Shabbat elevator isn’t NFP, it’s Orthodoxy’s tolerance of contradictory opinions on baptismal validity. One bishop says you’re baptized, another says you aren’t, and they call that unity, when it’s just Protestant relativism.

Lucas Falango:

Angelo Romano:

Ok explain why effectiveness makes NFP morally wrong under natural law. Not NFP itself, but its effectiveness. This needs to be established since it is the crux of your argument.

Lucas Falango:

Both have the same intent, the natural aspect of procreation, the primary purpose, is already violated. Also, nature set woman to have libido in a determined period, it is the natural time to engage in sexual relation for a series of reasons, NFP violates that.

Angelo Romano:

By your same standard all female monasticism is sinful because nuns can’t exercise their libido during the natural time.

Think from point A to point B sir. Chastity is not a violation of human nature.

The morality of an act is not judged by timing or hormones, but by the nature of the act itself. An act is “natural” when it respects the full structure and purpose of human nature, not when it simply aligns with biological urges.

Libido ≠ moral imperative. Chastity ≠ a violation of nature.

This is basic Christian moral theology:

Good intent + immoral means = immoral.

Good intent + moral means = moral.

Bad intent + moral means = immoral.

Libido doesn’t dictate morality.

Lucas Falango:

Bad intent + moral means = immoral.

The intent to prevent the procreative aspect of sex (with rates of effectiveness higher than condoms) - the number one objective of the whole thing - is bad intent.

Angelo Romano:

ANGELO’S NOTE: At this point, Lucas seems to have deleted several posts, so I have several replies without a response from Lucas for quite some time in the thread. I have added lines to separate my posts until another one of his posts shows up.

Is the intent to avoid pregnancy sinful, Lucas? Did St. Joseph and the Theotokos sin by practicing married chastity?

Mary and Joseph didn’t contracept, they abstained. NFP practitioners don’t contracept, they abstain. There’s a world of difference between sacrificial virginity and abstaining, and intentional sterilization.

NFP does not attempt to have sex without procreation, it chooses when to have sex without violating its nature. The act is what must be open to procreation, not the intent.

Holy Mary’s intent was to remain virgin. A couple using NFP licitly has a good intent too.

The marital act itself has to be open to life by not having any artificial means of preventing the completion of the marital act. We are concerned with the act. The intent is a separate matter.

If the act is good and the intent is good to avoid pregnancy, NFP is a moral good. When using contraception, it’s always sin because the act is evil even if the intent not to get pregnant is good.

Correct. Consider an elderly couple. They’re not intending to have sex without procreation, it simply cannot happen. When a couple practicing NFP has sex, they may intend not to get pregnant, but the act itself does not purposely frustrate procreation. The act itself is open to procreation, it’s just unlikely. It’s ok to intend not to get pregnant.

It’s ok to abstain from sex. It’s not ok to employ sodomitical devices.

Let me explain what I mean. If a condom is used, that is an attempt at having sex without procreation.

If sex during an infertile period occurs, that’s not an attempt at sex without procreation, it’s an attempt at sex. Just because procreation isn’t likely, doesn’t mean procreation has been purposely frustrated.

Lucas Falango:

It would not be an attempt at sex without procreation IF you are not <planning it> and use both fertile <and> infertile periods at random. Not only "procreation isn’t likely" but in NFP there is lower chances of pregnancy than if artificial methods is used. If you can't see the hypocrisy of it all, sorry, but everyone sees it. And trying to use as a "gotcha" against Orthodox just make you guys look more pharisaical.

Angelo Romano:

You’re literally employing consequentialism in your post as a means of moral licitness. Your morality is based on subjective feelings and interpretations and there’s no consensus among your Church you can point me to, so you can’t even judge me. Your Churches allow something very far left wing, hardly better than Episcopalians or Methodists in many cases. You can’t show me the definitive Orthodox teaching, just other subjective opinions. How can you claim God guides your doctrine?

You must surely know the difference between natural black of fecundity and Onanism, abstinence and indulgence. The Church Fathers would not know what religion you profess, it would be utterly foreign to them.

• God is infallible

• He gives a gift of infallible faith

• It is oriented towards an infallible object (Truth)

• That infallible object is infallibly known (interpreted)

Thus, Catholics have what is called Ecclesial Perspicuity, and it’s the only Christian group to have this, because it is the True Church.

Ecclesial Perspicuity ensures that you can clearly understand everything the Church teaches, through the Church. If you run into ambiguity and cannot resolve it, you can get an authoritative answer from a Bishop. If a Bishop cannot resolve it, ultimately you could go up the chain and get an infallible declaration from the Pope. This is very rarely needed.

Eastern Orthodoxy lacks Ecclesial Perspicuity, just like Protestantism, and it makes Fides Divina impossible, as the termination point of the Orthodox faith is in a fallible Church, as opposed to an infallible one. Admitting your Church is fallible is admitting it’s not divine, and is not the True Church, at least not in the sense of having pure doctrine. Catholics can have Divine Certitude of their faith, the Orthodox cannot. We know for certain that the Catholic Church is true, and the Infallibility Chain allows us to easily assert this.

According to Vatican II, Orthodox Churches are “true Churches,” meaning they have Apostolic Succession and valid (though illicit) sacraments. But they are not true on all matters of faith and morals like the Catholic Church is. So it is in this sense they are not the True Church.

There’s no infallible authority to appeal to in order to resolve Moscow vs Constantinople, or a myriad of other issues tearing apart Orthodoxy. This is because the Orthodox practice Sola Scriptura + Sola Tradiciones at the Patriarchate level.

They have 2 guaranteed outcomes:

Eventual division

Eventual doctrinal relativism

They have chosen doctrinal relativism on issues such as baptismal validity and contraception, and some Sees have chosen division on the matter of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU). It is indeed very disturbing they’d divide on who gets tithes from Ukraine but not a critical matter such as “what is the true way we know someone is baptized and therefore Christian?” It shows what’s most important to the Patriarchs.

I was trying to get to this with Jay, but he kept cutting me off, and tried to attack Catholic epistemology itself. I did get a chance to somewhat clarify it before Elijah’s clip begins. Jay claimed that we essentially cannot know anything except by individual guidance of the Holy Spirit to personally interpret texts. Jay knows his Church is fallible, and so he deals with this utter crisis by seeking what he apparently termed on the X Space the “Protestant and Orthodox” method. I agree, it is Protestant and Orthodox, and anti-Patristic and anti-Apostolic.

Something I want to clear up for Jay and others, Orthodox, Protestant and Catholic alike, is what is considered infallible in Catholicism. Jay was mistaken that the Ordinary Magisterium is infallible, and tried to basically claim all Papal Encyclicals are “from the Chair.”

The Universal and Ordinary Magisterium (UOM) is the collective teaching of the Church held by the Bishops across time. It is infallible because we collectively have the Mind of Christ. God doesn’t guide His people into universal error, so if something is universally held it is infallible.

UOM = Infallible

The Ordinary Papal Magisterium (OPM) is the Pope’s day-to-day, non-ex-Cathedra statements. This is fallible. Fiducia Supplicans, a Papal Encyclical from Pope Francis written by Cardinal Fernandez, for example, does not claim to be ex-Cathedra. It is fallible. There can be Scriptural references within it, or quotes from Ecumenical Councils which are infallible, but it’s fallible as a whole.

Ordinary Papal Magisterium = Fallible

The Extraordinary Papal Magisterium (EPM) is infallible. This is the Pope exercising his capacity as universal teacher of all Christians, invoking the charism of the Holy Spirit to definitively settle any dispute, infallibly. You can read about this special magisterium in detail here, and how it works, exactly.

Extraordinary Papal Magisterium = Infallible

The Ordinary Magisterium (OM) is the local and regional teaching of the Bishops that is not necessarily universal. For example, a Bishop claiming tithing is necessary in one Diocese is coming from a member of the Magisterium, and his teaching is part of the magisterium, but it’s not universal. It has not been taught by the Bishops universally across all ages like for example saintly intercession.

Ordinary Magisterium = Fallible

Catholics owe religious submission of intellect and will to ordinary magisterial teachings, even if fallible, unless they clearly contradict the Deposit of Faith, or Canon Law. If one is going to disagree with it, they must be sure it’s wrong, just like it’s always wrong to disobey one’s parents unless they’re sure they’re asking one to sin, since God placed them in a position of authority.

St. Maximus the Confessor said:

“All the ends of the earth and all the faithful everywhere have only one Church, and only one faith. And the authority of the Catholic Church is defined in the great Church at Rome.”

This is true today. The Catholic Church is the true Church, and it is infallible on faith and morals. If one confesses their Church to be fallible, they’re also in the alarming position of also confessing their Church could lead someone to hell, even if perfectly followed.

Devastating.