How Protestants and Catholics Approach Scripture

Shannon: Alright. So we're coming together today to talk about the way Catholics and Protestants approach scripture in fundamentally different ways. Protestants, of course, revere scripture and Catholics do as well, but they approach it very differently. I'm here to expound on that. He did a great thread earlier this week is our friend Drago.

How's it going?

Drago: Shannon, what's up, man? Happy Thursday. January. You know, it's like I feel like 2025 just started, but, you know, here we are.

Shannon: It's moving right along. And you're not wasting any time. You've been having some great posts this year. Thought provoking posts as your account continues to grow. What made you now you're a former Protestant who who converted to the Catholic faith.

What made you want to, talk about this topic of the different ways Protestants and Catholics interpret scripture?

Drago: There's a lot of posts where, you know, it seems like people talking past each other when it comes to sola scriptura, when it comes to, being unbiblical or biblical. You know? Your viewpoint is not biblical, and all these things are said. But, I think, fundamentally, there's a misunderstanding in what it means to read the Bible, how Christians supposed to read the Bible. And, you know, coming from my background and, part of my background that has behavioral science training, there are certain concepts.

So I realized, well, wait a minute. This kind of applies to the the Christian debates. You could actually if you understand these psychological principles, you can see that this is exactly what's going on between Protestants and Catholics, at least when it comes to the Bible. So I wanted to create that thread and, you know, specifically use the labels of ex ante and ex post, and I can talk about that in a bit. But, just to provide words to help maybe alleviate some of the frustrations that both Protestants and Catholics might have with each other when it they they just seem like they're talking past each other when it comes to what's biblical and what's not.

Shannon: I know a lot of people found it found it interesting. A lot of people bookmarked it, liked it, reposted it. Talk about these terms you use in this thread, ex ante and ex post. What does that mean for the for the average person?

Drago: Yep. Let's see. Let's dive in here. So ex ante generally means, you know, before. You know, ante is antecedent.

So it's it's it's something that happens before something else. And then ex post is something that happens after the fact. And, you know, for example, like an ex post bias would be like, let's say, hindsight bias where given that you already know something, then you look backwards and then you can see because you already knew it. Whereas ex ante would be like, I'm sitting here. I'm trying to predict the future.

The future is unknowable, you know, but I'm trying, you know, before the future to come up with it. So so what do we mean when it comes to the bible? So if if we agree that a Christian has a set of Christian beliefs in their head. Right? They say, why believe in the Christian faith?

And let's decide what that means for a moment. The question is, how did they acquire the Christian beliefs? How do they come to the conclusions of Christianity? Of course, you know, that Jesus is lord, but, again, you can get a specific baptism, trinity, or whatever it is. Well, there there's two methods.

Right? Either or both and. Either you receive those beliefs because someone taught you. So there was a leader, a mentor, could be a pastor pastor, a priest. And, you know, presumably, that person had authority or they themselves also had reason to believe those Christian beliefs, and then you received it from them.

Or you deduced your way into those beliefs yourself based on just looking at evidence and things. And oftentimes, it's a mixture of that. So when we look at, well, what's the role of bible in as it relates to the Christian beliefs that you've installed in your head? From a Protestant perspective, at its extreme, the hypothetical is like, I can sit here with the book, with the Bible, and I can use scripture and kinda juice out the verses. You know, the verses themselves can be fleshed out, and I will necessarily produce the perfect Christian beliefs.

Because if it's me and the Bible, scripture will now you know, if I just like a lemon, I just squeeze scripture and then the juice comes out and then there you go. There's my lemonade. Right? I I I have now have Christian beliefs. That's called the ex ante perspective because then the idea is I have scripture before I have Christian belief, and so I use the scripture to squeeze out the Christian beliefs from scripture on my like myself.

Like, something and, yes, you know, I might acknowledge that there's some pastors and some elders and some smart people, and I might read their commentaries. You know, I might even look at some parts of history. But at the end of the day, it's the idea that I'm gonna exegete my way from scripture. I'm gonna read the verses, and I'm gonna squeeze the juice out, and that's how I'm gonna arrive at proper Christian belief. Ex post after the fact is the idea where, look, I've received the beliefs because an authority, you know, connected to Christ, right, gave them to me.

They they they delivered it to me. And I use scripture to clarify, you know, with with certainty that what they delivered to me isn't crazy. Like, the like, you know, because scripture is something that I can see, I can I can wrestle with, no one can change and edit? And so, you know, it's it it I take these beliefs, and then I verify after the fact that they are consistent with scripture because scripture is there as a tool to give me certainty. And so, you know, yeah, before I continue, yeah, what do you think about, loosely?

What do you think that's a fair way to describe it, or is there a challenge that, you you know, someone might find it challenging what I just said?

Shannon: No. I think we see it the same way. We're both, converts from Protestantism. I noticed in your, thread, which was just two two or three days ago, that we that when you got to the the post about protestants believing scripture is the sole authority. There's a picture of the protestant pastor John MacArthur.

He's certainly one of the biggest supporters of of sola scriptura, wouldn't you say?

Drago: Right. Yeah. John MacArthur then for the Catholic side, you know, there's Bishop Barron, holding the Bible. Yeah. Absolutely.

Shannon: The problem with with with solo scriptura, of course, is nowhere in the Bible and the scriptures does it say that or does it say what the what the books of the bible would be? So the bible, of course, is a library, a collection of writings that was defined by the church. The church was the editor. The church picked and declared through tradition what the Bible was. There's a verse in Corinthians that Paul writes, I commend you because you remember me in everything and maintain the traditions even I as I have delivered them to you.

These are are, of course, challenges to the position of Sola Scriptura.

Drago: Right. So it it to try to clarify a little bit what what I meant, as far as ex ex anti ex post. I wanna even go straight to the Berean example because the Bereans in Acts 17, this is a common example that Protestants use to say, well, Catholics, you know, the Bereans were praised for looking and to see if what Paul said was in the scriptures. So, obviously, you know, using the scriptures, sola scriptura, there you go. But I I wanna make it very clear.

The proper way to understand what happened with the Bereans is actually an ex post confirmation of the authority that they heard because the sequence of events is that Paul came and authoritatively authoritatively proclaimed the gospel and the message. They received it, but then maybe if there were still any lingering doubts, they opened the scriptures and saw that what he said could be supported in scriptures. Now that's different than the the Berean sat with scriptures on their own, and then they somehow exegeted their way into the idea that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. Completely different idea. Because, again, bear with me here because this could be even hard to elaborate.

But if if I just had old testament scriptures at that time, like, you have the old testament, you know, scrolls, I could read the prophecies about the Messiah, and I could try to exegete those. And what's gonna happen is through reason alone, you could generate five templates of what the Messiah could look like. Let let's just say I mean, I'm picking the number five, but, you know, there's no way from exegesis of the old testament before Christ that you would come up with the precise vision and mental model of Jesus as the Messiah. There's just no way. And in fact, obviously, you know, the Jews today, you know, they because they rejected Jesus as the Messiah, you know, they they would they would have to agree with this that the Old Testament on its own doesn't necessarily ex ante produce the story of Jesus Christ.

It produces five options, and one of those things that fits is Jesus Christ. But then after revelation, we know that, you know, starting with Jesus Christ, if you look back into scripture, then you see how Jesus fits and fulfills all the prophecies after the fact as ex post. And so, you know, similarly, if I were to use an analogy to borrow the, you know, let's say, the the cardinal John Henry Newman, you know, seeds and development. If I see a seed let's say I have the seeds of a, I don't know, an apple tree or something. All I see is the seeds, and maybe I see a little sapling once I plant it in the dirt.

Then I am trying to predict what the adult tree is going to look like, and it might be a big apple tree. It might have 10 branches, two branches. It might be a little tiny apple tree. It might have, like, green apples, red apples. I don't know.

But all I can see is the seed, and so there's a big bound of uncertainty. So in the same way, this is the ex ante approach. You can look at scripture and you can see how, you know, oh, well, maybe infant baptism, maybe not infant baptism. Maybe, you know, hypostatic union, maybe trinity, maybe not. You know, there's all these what does the adult tree look like?

Well, I don't know. Scripture is the seed. Scripture is the baby tree that inevitably will grow. But, you know, on the flip side, right, ex post is I've I received the adult tree. The Catholic church has given me the fullness and the the the full development of the underlying essence that is the tree, the seed that became the tree.

Now that I have the adult tree, I can look backwards towards the seed and I can say, oh, yeah. The Catholic church didn't lie to me. They told me this was an apple tree. And in the Bible, I see the apple seeds. So therefore, the apple tree, you know, can't it it does come from the apple seeds.

There's no contradiction. And so, you know, back to, you know, a technical perspective, you know, the ex anti approach of Protestantism is you start with scripture to derive your beliefs. Because, again, the idea is how do Christian beliefs enter your head. The ex ante approach is, let's start with the blank slate. I take the text, and then I'm gonna squeeze the juice out of the text to give me my Christian beliefs.

The problem is when you squeeze the text, results may vary. There's different juices that come out depending on who's squeezing them. So the ex post approach is after the fact. I'm starting with the beliefs given by the church. I receive the Christian beliefs from the authority, and then I use scripture to confirm them.

Just to say, hey. What they just said is not crazy. It fits. So, you know, ex ante versus ex post. I probably could explain it better, but, it it's really important because with ex ante, you're gonna be stuck in perpetual uncertainty, never ending debate because there's no way to falsify what's the true interpretation of the bible.

Whereas, when you do it the other way, you have the true beliefs from authority, and then scripture is there as Luke chapter one verse four says, to confirm your faith with certainty. So as the church, I give you the instruction, and the scriptures are there simply to confirm with certainty. So you can kind of see that what I said isn't crazy, but actually is supported by the seeds that are contained in scripture.

Shannon: Talk a little bit about this ex ante, how when people are having various, you know, their private interpretations of the bible, how do you think this has affected society? Do you think today when we have all these things, like, people can't even decide what's a woman and abortion is good? Is this related to this sort of rejection of the authority of the church?

Drago: Absolutely. And here's the challenge. Right? Because any look. Any sincere, good, strong Christian, you know, even Protestant brother would say, no.

No. No. I don't believe in individual interpretation. I don't believe that it's just every whoever wants to read the Bible, they can read it however they want. No.

No. No. There is a correct interpretation. And, you know, most importantly, the holy spirit is there to guide my individual interpretation. It is the holy spirit who reveals the voice of the shepherd so that I can recognize what is the true voice of Christ in the bible and what is the voice of the adversary.

The holy spirit will illuminate my interpretive efforts. So that, of course, the protestant would say that. So in that sense, I have the authority of the holy spirit working in me. Now, of course, it kind of ends there. The thinking ends there because the necessary question is, you know, as you exercise your faculties, your intellect, your will, your perceptions, when you hold the bible in your hands, while simultaneously you are connect you are connected with the gifts of the spirit.

You do have access to some infused virtues. How do you know that the belief the Christian belief that you are deriving from scripture is h attributed to the movement of the holy spirit, that the holy spirit is de facto planting that belief in your brain as you read the pages of scripture as opposed to that Christian belief that you are installing being influenced by your own sensitive appetites, by different movements of your own intellect. You know? So, yes, you can say in theory, the holy spirit accompanies me in my interpretation. But what part of it?

You can't you know, it's really important. Does the holy spirit endorse 100% of what your interpretation is? Does the holy spirit maybe speaking to, like, 20% of what you just think you've let? You know, it's too imprecise, and that's the problem because all these different sincere sincere believers of Christ believe and they attribute their interpretation to the holy spirit, but someone has to be making an incorrect attribution there. And, you know, and and that seems very risky and presumptuous.

It it it's very presumptuous to say that my Christian belief that I derived from scripture with my own exegesis is directly the work of the holy spirit. It is a God breathed interpretation. I mean, that's a pretty bold claim. And it's like, how do you know? Well, you know, you just know.

The true believers know. You know, because if you're elected and and you feel I know the spirit, and it becomes as, you know, a self perpetuating, unfalsifiable trap. Whereas, you know, I I I the Catholics, of course, also believe in the holy spirit. Right? It's not about you know, sometimes Protestants say, well, Catholics, you don't believe the holy spirit can help?

Absolutely. But Catholics believe that for matters of interpretation, the holy spirit specifically has chosen to work through the visible authority of the church. And, yes, the spirit does guide believers specifically, you know, I would say in one way, through the supernatural recall of memory. You know, one thing I think the holy spirit does is he'll bring passages of scripture up to mind. He'll bring the stories of Christ, the gospel, in in a way that basic memory cannot explain.

So the spirit does bring the teachings of Christ in a supernatural way to the individual believer, but that's different than giving the individual believer % precision, clarity, and certainty on what the correct Christian belief is as derived from the scriptures. And so, you know, again, it's, the the protestant ex ante approach is a way to bypass reliance on external authority. But, you know, again, it's not as I described it, it's not credible when you look at how the human mind and and psychological biases, you know, the just the basically, the operating system of humanity that God created. That it doesn't really fit with that. And then certainly, it it doesn't fit with, you know, to your point, Jesus's prayer for unity and, of course, the clear apostolic establishment of visible churches and declarations, You know?

Because even in scriptures, you're not gonna find one example of an individual deriving belief separate from an authoritative community. There is always authoritative visible community that reach out to a person, and then that community approves of that person's membership. It's not someone else lone wolfing it, starting their own thing directly from the text, even if they do it in good faith. But this idea of approaching the text on your own and squeezing out the Christian beliefs and creating your own system, that is nowhere to be found in the bible. And again, I if someone didn't miss the part, we can talk about the Bereans again.

Bereans, same thing. They confirmed what was taught to them by Paul. They did not sit and exegete their way into the fact that Jesus is the Messiah.

Shannon: I've been reading a book written in the nineteenth century by a Catholic priest called liberalism is a sin, and it's something I probably do some spaces on probably with you, Drago, and, do some threads on. But I just wanna read this to you because I think it's applicable to the conversation. This this one little paragraph, Liberalism is a direct result of Protestantism with its tenant of private interpretation of the Bible. For if a person has a right to decide for himself what the Bible means, This says in effect, he has a right to choose whether he will believe or not believe certain revealed teachings. Then in effect, he also has the right to believe nothing at all.

Whereas the correct view, that when the mind of man sees the divinely revealed truth, he has no choice, morally speaking, to reject it. It's obvious truth requires that he must accept it as true. Again, we see this in abortion. We see this in everybody saying divorce is fine. We see this in, you know, all these people, like, trying to force children to change their sex.

You know, elaborate on that. Do you find that that passage interesting or relevant to what we're talking about?

Drago: Yeah. Completely relevant. I, I'd add the the clarification too that look, like, because, again, I even within, excuse me, Protestant traditions, there's very devout and serious Christians, and there's very loose and, I'm gonna I'm gonna do whatever Christian. So it's very possible that someone consciously is not choosing to be biased. I'm telling you, I mean, when I was a Protestant, I wasn't trying to pick and choose.

I I wasn't trying to just pick whatever was convenient for me. I wrestled with things. I tried even when I the the Bible you know, if a certain interpretation of the Bible meant that I had to change my life and stop doing certain things, I was open to that. I was I I did let God show me things, you know, that I might not like. So in that case, you could say, I really try to be unbiased.

I really try to overcome the individual subjectivity as a Protestant. So don't get me wrong. Consciously speaking, a lot of well meaning protestants want to fight the bias. They don't wanna just accept whatever interpretation they think willy nilly. They challenge themselves.

They say, you know, that this might be the interpretation, but I could be wrong. And and then it's a never ending kind of struggle and wrestling pursuit of the truth. That's commendable. But but here's, you know, here's the the point. There's the conscious bias, which in this case right.

I could consciously not be biased. You know, I could be doing a sincere good faith effort consciously, and that's great. But there's still the unconscious layer that you cannot overcome completely. Confirmation bias is always gonna be there. Hindsight bias, always gonna be there.

Stereotype bias, availability heuristics, you know, all all this stuff. And, of course, we can talk about what this terminology means. But the point is, you an individual's perception is inseparably plagued by these subconscious biases. Now you could say, oh, you don't think the power of the holy spirit can overcome those biases? Well, can the power of the holy spirit overcome your sin?

Why do you still sin? Right? Well, because we have to cooperate. Right? So it's not that easy.

It's not that easy to say that all of a sudden when I read the Bible, my subconscious biases had de facto been eliminated because some you know, the holy spirit's gonna do that. How do who who told you the holy spirit was gonna do that? So, you know, again, I get benefit of the doubt that, yes, some people will very comfortably twist scripture to accommodate their lifestyle, But other people wrestle with it, and they will actually try to challenge their own beliefs, and they will really try to find the true Christian belief by exegeting their way from scripture alone. That people do that in a sincere effort. But the difference is they haven't realized that it's an impossible endeavor.

By virtue of how the human operating system was created, it is an impossible endeavor for an individual human to believe he can exegete himself into perfect Christian belief. Now one of the escapes that when people say, well, perfect Christian belief, I don't need perfect Christian belief. I need sufficient Christian belief. I just need to get the essential components correct. It's okay if I misinterpret the non essentials.

But then the the question is, well, what constitutes essential Christian belief and what's nonessential? And there you go again. The interpretation comes back in. By what means am I going to declare certain beliefs as more important than other beliefs in a way that doesn't, you know, again, appeal to my biases? And, you know, compared to the revealed alternative of having an authority that makes this crystal clear, you know, you can see why one path will lead you to perfect light so you don't have to stumble around.

It's like you have a dark room. You flip the light switch. I'm not gonna run into the table. I'm not gonna run into the chair. I know where everything is.

Or the other approach is this fuzzy where I'm banging my way around. I kind of you know, it's like having blurry vision, and maybe I'll not fall and, you know, it just it's it's a completely different paradigm.

Shannon: Well, your thread, did really well. It did seven or eight times your follower count. I know you had a lot of lot of comments. What what stood out to you in the comments that the engagement from people that read your thread?

Drago: Yeah. You know, what interestingly enough, I didn't get too much pushback except some people saying, oh, there you go. You you miss, misdefined sola scriptura because I said, you know, the scripture is the sole authority for faith and practice. And people say, well, no. No.

No. Like, we use tradition. We use other authorities too. You know, it's like, okay. Fair enough.

You can't really have it both ways because a true Protestant must admit that, you know, scripture is the only, like, real authority, divine authority. And if my conscience, you know, through me in scripture leads me to feel that the traditions of my pastor and denomination are in error, I think a proper Protestant understanding would have to endorse my individual conscience of, hey, man. Like, I can't make this make sense in the bible when I read it. And so I'm just gonna have to go with the best thing that I can do. And I think it doesn't really make sense for a Protestant to tell that person, no.

No. No. No. Like, you must submit to the traditions of our church. Because as soon as you start doing that, you kinda start sounding Catholic again.

So I I don't really think you can play it both ways. One thing I do wanna say though, because it is rhetorically powerful. In the sola scriptura debate, Protestants walk and say, well, look, Jesus rebukes people with scripture. He he literally just starts reading, you know, you've heard that it was said and and look at the he'll quote scripture. So is it Jesus establishing a methodology there?

Shouldn't we mimic what Jesus is doing? Because if if Jesus is looking at the teachers of the day and then saying, wham bam, thank you, ma'am. Here's some scripture. Isn't that what believers are called to do to emulate what Christ is doing with the Pharisees and the elders? Shouldn't we just keep challenging the church and everyone else and whack them with scripture?

But what what's missing here again, this is actually an ex post use of scripture because guess who's delivering the the the message? It's Jesus, the authority. Jesus, the author of the law, the author of the word of God. He is the one declaring the truth. And yet and he's using scripture to confirm.

Be like, look. I I have the authority. You should listen to what I'm saying. And by the way, I have miracles and, you know, you gotta listen to me. And for the record, everything I say is completely consistent with scripture.

Bam, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am. Here here's here's the scripture. But the reason why you need to listen to me is because I am Jesus. I'm the authority. Not because I am quoting the Bible.

It's not follow Christ because Christ quotes the Bible. It's follow Christ because he's the authority. So again, Jesus rebuking the Pharisees with the bible aligns with an ex post approach. It is truth that is taught with authority confirmed by scripture. It's different than starting with scripture and then saying, therefore, here's the truth.

No. No. Here's the truth, and therefore, you can see it in scripture. You can get certain and and and you can verify it in scripture, but it's not starting with scripture. It's confirming with scripture.

Shannon: What do you say to Protestants who say the Catholic church doesn't revere the Bible? That one of your comments in there was was somebody saying, I was Catholic for twenty years, and they never told me to read the Bible. What do you say to that?

Drago: Yeah. I mean, look. There's, like, the, experiential, emotional component of that, and then there's, like, the logical, you know, implication to that. So, certainly, I mean, that's yeah. Heart goes out to that person.

I mean, if if he had a parish where, if it's true that they didn't really read the Bible and that, the priest got mad at someone reading the Bible, which seems like a very strange thing. I've certainly never experienced that as a Catholic, but maybe, you know, maybe the context would be that, if someone was reading the Bible as a way to challenge and and rebuke the priest, you know, that then all of a sudden you're talking about authority challenge, and then that's a different thing. But, yeah. I mean, look, I used to think Catholics hated the Bible because that's what I believe as a Protestant. I believe as a Protestant that Catholics have to hate the Bible because the Bible rebukes Catholicism.

So, obviously, Catholics have to run away from scripture because if they truly read scripture, it would be so obvious. It would be so obvious, you know, how the Catholic faith is wrong. That's what I used to think because I just I just assumed. Right? But no.

On the contrary, sacred scriptures front and center all throughout everything. I mean, the the Catholic church at every mass, as you know, we, you know, read Old Testament passage, the Psalms, the gospel, writing of the epistles. It's all throughout the catechism. And, of course, it's a cliche, but look. The church gave the scriptures.

So it's very strange to say that the church doesn't like the scripture. The the skirt the the the the church put it together. I mean, what's the allegation that, like, when the canon was formed, was the was the church begrudgingly be like, ah, dang it. Shoot. I was really hoping we wouldn't compile scripture, but these people, those bastards, they're kinda forcing us.

Dang it. We're gonna have to compile scripture here, boys, because, you know, people want it. If I had my way, though, I would never have scripture. It's like that's absurd. Completely absurd.

You know? Because scripture is a confirmation of the church's teachings, and it's a way to, you know, transmit a lot of those teachings. But you still need the proper interpretation of those teachings. So yeah. It's, you know, it's just based on a misunderstanding.

It's kinda like if you grow up in a small town and you've never left your small town, you don't really know what the rest of the world is like. You might imagine I mean, I guess, today, you have the Internet so you can see some pictures. But, you know, even then, if you've never traveled outside of your experience, you don't really know what it is that you're criticizing. And so in charity, I just say I think that a lot of the biggest critics of the Catholic church are like that small time small town perspective. They just haven't traveled.

They haven't walked down those paths. They haven't met fellow travelers along the journey. You know? And so they're trying to speak about things which they they have no experience other than the fact that the leader of their tribe, their local town community, is telling them, listen to my journeys. I've seen the world.

I've gone on these treacherous journeys, and I've seen the Catholics, and this is what you have to look out for. And then they get captivated by these tails around the campfire, let's say, and that they've never actually been out there in the wild themselves. And so, you know, I understand that that that type of response, but, you know, it's really just more of a experience thing than than anything else.

Shannon: It reminds me of the quote from archbishop Fulton Sheen that there are not a hundred people in The United States who hate the Catholic church, but there are millions who hate what they wrongly perceive the Catholic church is. A lot of people, I think, when they the solace of scriptural proponents act as if, you know, in the old testament, god dropped the manna from heaven, right, to feed the Israelites in the desert. It's like the scripture was just kinda dropped from heaven, and we just read this and and follow what god said. But, of course, that's not how it was compiled. It wasn't sent by FedEx like we've been talking about.

It was, the new testament written by Catholics, and the church declared what the library of scripture was. You know, hundreds of years after it was started to be read in the in the churches. And they they took some out, like, I think the shepherd of Hermas was one that was read and revered by church communities that the church and its wisdom said, you know what? That's not in the canon. So very interesting.

Well, I'm so happy you do these threads, Drago, because you you you do these things that are so interesting that a lot of us kinda don't necessarily think about day to day when we're kinda just going through our lives. And so it's a nice, nice way to dig in and and think a little deeper. We're glad you're doing it. And by the way, just wanna say, you and I had the chance to meet in person recently, very briefly. And,

Drago: that was I love that.

Shannon: That was cool. But I think you're the first person I've, my first ex friend that I've met in person.

Drago: Yeah. It's funny. I I'm I'm your current friend, but also an ex friend. That's right. That's a bit so no.

Yeah. Absolutely. The friends from ex. Yeah. Same thing.

I I don't no. You know what? At Seek at Seek, it was crazy at the booth. Jared

Shannon: If you if you will, tell tell people what SEEK is.

Drago: Yeah. Yeah. SEEK is, like, the largest Catholic conference once a year. You have, like, 20,000. I mean, predominantly, you know, college kind of people, but there's all ages.

There's 50, 60 year olds as well, older. So, we had a booth at, with Holy Habits. But, anyway so I did have some people approach me who saw me on x, so that was really special too. But, yeah, Shannon, you're the first person, where we've kind of intentionally met up, and I, yeah, I really appreciated that. I I do wanna address even what you said because it's a good point.

I I I tweeted yesterday, you know, non Catholics pretend you're Catholic for a second. What's the best argument for Catholicism you can present? Because, you know, it's like, it's this weird dynamic, man. You know, for a lot of things in life, if you present a steel man, you know, like like a really strong case for the opposition, and then you can argue against it. And that's fair.

And you're able to do both. You can present the steel man, and then you can refute it. Catholicism is this strange exception, if I might say, that if you're able to steel man Catholicism, there's no going back. You de facto become a Catholic. I mean, I've never seen it.

I've never seen it any other way. I've never seen somebody steel man the Catholic position and then argue against it. Every time someone argues against the Catholic faith, they're arguing against some misconception or misunderstanding of it. So it's this funny unique thing. And, you know, I gotta maybe I'm biased, but maybe someone can point me to a steel man representation of the Catholic faith that they then can refute.

But, that that's why I posted the tweet because I'm looking for any non Catholic to give me the steel man so I can be convinced that they understand what it is they're criticizing. And, heck, I'll I'll give a free holy habits membership to someone who can do this. But, you know, so so so agree with that. And you mentioned Shannon, what did you mention right after that? Because there was something you said I wanted to touch on, after you talked about the venerable Fulton Sheen.

Shannon: I think it was the the thing about the God didn't drop the scriptures from heaven. Yes. Yeah.

Drago: Right. So and I'll probably write about this more in in coming weeks or months. But, a key psychological or or cognitive tool when when a Protestant becomes a Catholic. Because I noticed I use this tool a lot as a Catholic, and I didn't use this tool as a Protestant. So please listen to this very closely if you're someone who's discerning.

The tool that will bring you to Catholicism is the well, the technical way is the the entertainment of the counterfactual. But if we say, you know, more simply, looking for the dog that didn't bark. I mean, you probably heard this popularized, so I don't need to explain it per se. But, you know, it's like the the thing where, Sherlock Holmes solved the mystery because, normally, you expect the dog to bark when someone walks by the dog in the middle of the night. But because the dog didn't bark, therefore, we can conclude that there was nobody next to the dog.

So the dog that didn't bark, which means what did I what would have I expected to happen given my beliefs about the topic? What actually happened, you know, and and then the difference. So and you're bringing it back home. You made a very good point. If the bible and scripture you know, if Christ intended the bible to be this, you know, sola scriptural framework where you start with scripture, you derive your beliefs from scripture, and then you get to Christianity.

If that was the system Christ wanted to usher in, what would you have predicted that Christ would have done? Reasonably speaking. Right? Well, it seems within reason to suggest that, okay, if the system that Christ establishes is I'm gonna give you scripture and then you're gonna have to kind of read the scripture to figure out Christian belief from scripture. Well, you would see a concerted effort to establish some sort of mass scripture producing efforts where maybe instead of being out and about, you have a bunch of disciples, you know, hiding and and and copying scrolls, writing new letters, and then they kind of carry your pigeon, like, send the letters everywhere.

And, you know, they just drop and I don't mean to be facetious or funny about it, you know, necessarily even though I part of it is to show how funny it is or absurd it is. But, similarly, like, you would have thought that Christ himself would have written something. I mean, got you know, wow. Right? Now you say, well, why does Christ need to read something?

You know, he can use the apostles to write. It's just as valid as if Christ wrote it for himself. You know, fair enough, but symbolically, that would be quite the grand statement if Christ himself with his human hand, you know, took the quill and wrote something. And, you know, I mean, that that would have had very strong symbolic significance, certainly would have supported the Sola Scriptura in a in a very epic kind of way. You know, would it make sense that Christ left people without scriptures for a couple hundred years?

You know, that that's the thing that it's kinda difficult for Protestants to acknowledge. The Protestant case would have been much stronger if, you know, right when Christ left, the bible was ready. You know, that, like, when the holy spirit descended at Pentecost, everybody got out their quill and started writing the same words. I mean, that would have been a cool miracle. Right?

Like, if everyone just started writing authoritative scripture, God breathe inspiration at the same time, and they all wrote the same sentence, you'd be like, oh my gosh. Like right? So there's all these things that conceivably, you know, you would have expected to happen if the system of start with scripture, then you get Christian beliefs if that was what Christ wanted. But because Christ didn't do that, as Catholics say, Christ didn't leave us with the Bible who left us with the church, That's the dog that didn't bark. Now you can still insist, oh, even though Christ didn't do those things, even though he set up a church with no real he didn't talk about scripture and, you know, Well, he still intended sola scriptura.

I mean, you can maybe you can try to squeeze yourself into thinking that, but at some point, you have to be honest with yourself and say, what is the most likely explanation? What is most reasonable? Not what's possible. You could, you know, maybe, right, you could say that a sola script to a framework is possible if you really twist around history and say, you know, people apostasize and immediately in the first generation after the apostles, they started getting things wrong. And you can you can twist yourself into saying Solascriptor is possible, but is it plausible?

You know, is it actually, like, the most likely explanation of the of the data, you know, or is it really, like, a fringe conclusion when all said is done? And I'm sorry that sounds offensive. But, you know, if you truly look at the data, as they say, right, to look at histories to cease to be Protestant, it's especially if you if you came in with a blank slate, if you were an atheist or an agnostic choosing Christianity for the first time, it's incredibly unlikely you would come to the conclusion of sola scriptura. Sola scriptura is something you inherit because a pastor or someone evangelized you. You know, maybe you're living a wayward life and then a Christian brother brought you to church.

They introduced you to the bible, to Christ, and you inherited sola scriptura from that interpersonal experience. You did not inherit sola scriptura because you did a survey of all the evidence. You didn't go through the history. You didn't go through the, you know, the Bible yourself. You the reason why you believe sola scriptura is because you inherited it from someone who passed it on to you.