Transcription
He called the Catholic doctrine of the mass a possible denial of the gospel. That last line is the strongest thing he has said in this entire video and I want to address it directly.
Wes Huff just released a 47-minute video explaining why he is not Catholic. And I have to give Wes a lot of credit here. Wes is a careful scholar. He was respectful the entire way through the video. This is a very thorough video as to the reasons why he is not Catholic. And he ended his video by saying yes, he believes that there are in fact Christians within the Catholic Church. I appreciate that.
But I've watched his video a couple times now and for all of Wes Wes's care, you cannot help but find that Wes is under the Protestant burden. And what is the Protestant burden? It is that if you have the ability to read your Bible and to read scripture and to make decisions based off those two things as to your own salvation, make decisions as to what you actually believe about God as a Christian. You are your own authority as to what you believe. That is a heavy, heavy burden to bear as opposed to submitting yourself to the guidance of Christ's church that Christ established a church and he gave us something that can help to guide us in these incredibly complex issues of all of these events that happened 2,000 years ago and the divine deposit of faith that was given to us.
So with that burden which can be crushing, Wes I think gets a few things wrong on scripture, on what the early church actually believed, and what the Catholic Church actually teaches about very important topics like grace, faith, justification, and the holy mass. And I think he's wrong in a couple of places that he thinks that he's arguing against a Catholicism that no actual Catholic believes. He's arguing against a version of Catholicism that doesn't exist.
So today I'm going to walk you through Wes's eight arguments because in this video he essentially lays out eight arguments. We're going to go one at a time in order. I'm going to give you the Catholic answer as best that I have the ability to. Lord help me. And I'm going to base it off of scripture, what what the early church fathers said, the councils, and of course the catechism and other Catholic resources so we can give a thorough response to Wes's thorough video. I think that's very important.
And if you haven't been here before, the name of the channel is Lexio. I'm your host, Sean Hiller. I ask you to subscribe and ring the bell and all those fun things at the bottom of the screen so that you never miss out on anything that we post. We try to represent what the Catholic Church actually teaches from the sources of the church. And yes, scripture is one of those sources.
So, let's get into this video of Wes Huff. Here are the eight reasons that Wes gives as to why he is not Catholic. Number one, the sufficiency of scripture. Number two, the sufficiency of faith. Number three, the sufficiency of grace. Number four, the papacy. Number five, praying to the saints. Number six, the mass. Number seven is what he calls the changing, unchanged church. And eight is justification. That is what we're going to go over. We're going to go over them thoroughly. This might end up being a longer video than I really want it to be, but these are very important topics and Wes addressed them with care, so we want to as well.
And two quick ground rules. I'm not going to character Wes. He spent 47 minutes being very careful as to what he believes. I am the same response with this. And second is I'm a convert. I went from atheist to Calvinist to Catholic. So when I push back on some of these Protestant arguments that he has, I'm not pushing back at something that I haven't thought about or dabbled in. I held almost every one of the positions that Wes holds when I was a Protestant. So I really understand where he's coming from and that's the spirit of this response. Let's get into it.
Let's move on to Wes's point on the sufficiency of scripture. Sola scriptura. While Luther and the reformers taught that the Bible alone is the authority for Christian faith and practice, the Roman Catholic Church responded at the Council of Trent by affirming that truth and salvation's rule exist in both written scripture and in unwritten traditions received from the apostles. So, Roman Catholics therefore operate with a two-source of authority: scripture and tradition, grounded in scripture and cherished historically but ultimately subordinate to scripture. Tradition for Protestants has a vote and it has a voice. Scripture simply has the veto. This distinction between scripture's ultimate authority and tradition's secondary role marks the Protestant position's essential contrast with Rome's dual-source framework. I believe scripture to be sufficient to effectively communicate. Neither tradition nor personal experience have the same divine authority. So scripture in that way is sufficient. That's the classic Protestant principle of sola scriptura.
The Catholic Church agrees completely that scripture is the inspired word of God. It is unique. It is the speech of God. The Catechism of the Catholic Church says in paragraph 105, "God is the author of sacred scripture." Catholics aren't soft on scripture. We hear more scripture proclaimed publicly in one weekday mass than most Protestant services hear on a Sunday morning.
But Wes's argument breaks in three places. First, sola scriptura says the Bible alone is the ultimate authority for the Christian. So I have a very simple question for him: Where does the Bible teach that? Where does the Bible teach sola scriptura? Wes pointed to nothing in his video that most Protestants would heavily lean toward a verse, 2 Timothy 3:16-17. Verses that "All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work." Notice what Paul says. He says scripture is profitable. He says scripture equips. He does not say that scripture is the sole rule of faith.
And then the second problem to Wes's claim comes from Paul. Paul is writing to Timothy in the Old Testament. The New Testament wasn't even complete yet when 2 Timothy was written. So if 2 Timothy 3:16 proves sola scriptura, it proves Protestants should only read the Old Testament. And nobody believes that. Nobody's arguing that.
Secondly, the New Testament itself appeals to authority outside of scripture in a few places. Listen to 2 Thessalonians chapter 2:15. It says, "So then, brothers, stand firm and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by letter." So Paul puts apostolic spoken tradition and apostolic written tradition on the same level. Both are binding. That doesn't sound like sola scriptura. That's scripture and tradition, which is exactly the Catholic point.
Sola scriptura is the founding principle to which you are basing what you know about God off of. Then that founding principle needs to go back all the way to the foundation, to the beginning, to Christ, to Christ walking around his apostles and telling them what to do. And it doesn't. The likely the first book that was ever written was 1 Thessalonians, written somewhere around the year 52 maybe, or maybe the Gospel of Mark, written somewhere around the year 52-55, somewhere in that vicinity. Christ ascended in the year 33. Some historians say the year 38. So you've got got 20-ish years there to where there is no New Testament. There are no letters from the apostles. There are no epistles. So if sola scriptura is a founding principle of your faith, then it must go back to the actual founding of that faith. Scripture wasn't there, but the apostles were. That's why the Catholic Church claims apostolic succession. That is where sola scriptura really began to fall apart for me in some other areas too, but that's one in particular.
And Wes later on quotes Augustine, St. Augustine quite a bit. And Augustine talks about this. He puts it very directly in his work *Against the Fundamental Epistle of the Manichaeans*. He says in chapter 5 of that book, "I would not believe the gospel itself if the authority of the Catholic Church did not move me to do so." Augustine, the same Augustine that Wes is going to lean on later.
Let's move on to Wes's point on the sufficiency of faith. Sola fide. If you're interested in what it's like navigating becoming Catholic, then I highly recommend you check out my wife's book, *To Whom Shall I Go?* Ellie wrote this book painstakingly as she tried to run away from the Catholic Church. I wanted to become Catholic. I really wanted to convert and she did not want me to. We both thought the Catholic Church was the church of the Antichrist for a long time and she fought against me on it and we didn't have a great time for a long time. She documents the marital struggles that we have in this book and she documents her story as to why she became Catholic and what really won her over to Christ's Church. So, if you want to learn more, check out the book. It's on Amazon. I'll put the link in the description. If you have it already, please leave us a review on Amazon. They go a long way. Thanks, guys.
Wes joins justification with sanctification and regeneration, tying it to baptism and the sacrament through which grace is infused, making justification a cooperative effort between God's grace and human effort, where believers merit eternal life through Christ's involvement and good deeds. This represents the watershed separation, I think, of these two theological traditions on the nature and sufficiency of faith in salvation. The reformers distinguish their position from Rome's claim that faith constitutes merely one component of justification alongside things like works and sacraments and post-mortem purgation. This emphasis on faith's sufficiency therefore simultaneously rejected both human merit and institutional mediation as necessary components.
Wes said, "Justification is a one-time forensic." Using the courtroom declaration here, God pronounces that the believer is righteous based on faith in Christ. That's it. Sanctification is a separate thing. He says, "The Catholic view turns justification into a cooperative process between God's grace and human effort." He calls this, what he says, the watershed separation. This is his dividing moment. This is where Wes's framing is wrong. And I want you to listen this carefully.
In the Council of Trent, the council Protestants love to point to all the time, says in the Decree on Justification in Canon 1, "If anyone says that man can be justified before God by his own works, whether done by his natural powers or through the teaching of the law without divine grace through Jesus Christ, let him be anathema." Let's read it again. Trent condemns works-based salvation. Catholics do not believe that we earn our way to heaven. We never have. Anyone who tells you that has never read anything by the Catholic Church, has never read what the Catholic Church actually teaches.
In Catechism 1996, it says, "Our justification comes from the grace of God." In paragraph 1989, "The first work of grace of the Holy Spirit is conversion." Grace first. It's always grace first. So the real question is not does justification involve grace, because both sides, Protestant and Catholic, both say yes. The real question is, does justification involve faith alone with no transformation, with no love, no works of any kind? And to that question, the Bible has one verse, exactly one verse, and you've likely heard it a lot before. This verse is the only verse in the Bible that uses the phrase "faith alone," and it negates it. And even if you've heard it a million times, it's worth bringing up here. James 2:24, which reads, "You see that a person is justified by works and not by faith alone." That is the only time the phrase "faith alone" appears in the entire Bible and it appears with the word "not" in front of it.
Luther knew this was a problem. He famously called James "an epistle of straw" in his 1522 preface to the New Testament and he wanted it removed from the canon. He also notoriously inserted the word "alone" into Romans 3:28 in his German translation of it and it basically changing it to "a man is justified by faith alone apart from the works of the law," and that word "alone" is never in there. When Luther was confronted with this, and I'm quoting directly from Luther, says, "Dr. Martin Luther will have it so. I will have it so. Papists and donkeys are one in the same thing."
Paul never opposes faith to works of love. He opposes faith to works of the Mosaic law: circumcision, dietary laws, Sabbath observance. That is the context of Galatians and the book of Romans. He's arguing with Judaizers who wanted Gentiles to keep the Torah. Galatians 5:6 says, "In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything, but only faith working through love." Faith working through love. That's the famous Catholic phraseology. And that is the Catholic position. Philippians 2:12, "Work out your salvation with fear and trembling." And the very next verse after that, verse 13 says, "For it is God who works in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure." Both God works, we work.
Let's move on to Wes's point on the sufficiency of grace. Sola gratia. "Why I am Protestant and not Roman Catholic is that the divide concerns whether grace accomplishes salvation by itself or requires human cooperation. The Reformation debate centered not on grace's necessity but on its sufficiency. Rome maintains that grace enables but does not compel salvation since grace cannot initiate or sustain or complete salvation without human assent and cooperation. This disagreement reflects competing understandings of grace and nature itself. Roman Catholicism treats grace almost as a substance dispensed through meritorious channels. Like I said before, you have the magisterium, you have prescribed rites, you have the mass, Eucharist, baptism, and the sacraments. All of these as a means of grace that improve and perfect the believer toward salvation."
Did you catch what he just said? This is the mistake. Wes said the divide is whether grace accomplishes salvation by itself or requires human cooperation. He says, "Catholics treat grace as a substance dispensed through the sacraments." He says, "Protestants understand grace as God's sovereign power that operates independently of any human cooperation to it." This is, with a ton of respect to Wes, a straw man argument of Catholicism. The church condemned exactly the position Wes is accusing us of in a heresy called Pelagianism. The idea that humans contribute to their own salvation independently of grace. St. Augustine, who was Catholic, wrote an entire apology against Pelagians. Catholic teaching is Augustinian, still. It always has been.
So when Wes says Catholics make grace cooperative, he is technically correct. But cooperative does not mean we add something to grace. It's a turning of the phrase. It means we say yes to it. Grace enables the yes. The only reason you can say yes is because of grace. And the only reason you can respond is because of grace. Grace is on the front end and the back end of all of it.
Paul speaks on cooperation a ton in 1 Corinthians chapter 15:10. And pay attention to how precise Paul is here. "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me." Paul says, "I worked harder." And in the same breath, it says, "it was grace doing the working." Paul does not see a contradiction between his effort and God's grace. They're not in competition. They're one. They're one in operation. That is the Catholic view. This is what the Catechism means in paragraph 2008. "The merit of man before God in the Christian life arises from the fact that God has freely chosen to associate man with the work of his grace. Even our cooperation is itself a gift." Grace all the way down and all the way through.
So what's actually at stake here is that Wes is treating cooperation as if it were a denial of grace. And this is the Calvinist instinct. This was my instinct when I was Reformed and I was thinking like a Calvinist. I I didn't think I contributed anything whatsoever. That that anything that "Sean" added was was dust and ashes. It was terrible. If humans add anything to it, it's bad. But that's not biblical. Scripture constantly puts the two together. How can you be elected and still, as the Catholics say, cooperate with your faith if you're already elected? Peter says in 2 Peter chapter 1:10, it says, "Therefore, brothers, be all the more diligent to confirm your calling and election. For if you practice these qualities, you will never fail." So be diligent in confirming your election. But again, those two things are not competing together. They're they're one with one another. If grace is irresistible, which is the very classic Reformed Protestant theology, if there is no human cooperation possible, then God damn the sinner without their consent. That's the dark side of modernism. This belief that God works entirely apart from the person he is saving. Calvinist theologians like John Piper, they have real difficulty defending that. Catholic teaching avoids that whole problem by being honest about what the Bible says. God moves first, last, and always. And we, by his grace, and with his grace, freely say yes.
Let's move into Wes's argument against the papacy. "I'm I'm not Roman Catholic. Is the papacy. I simply do not see Matthew 16:18 being a statement about Petrine supremacy. So, let me read this for you. It says, 'And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' So the way that Rome today has understood this is that Peter is the rock and that through Peter there is a line of successors, which are the bishops of Rome, and that this specific bishop is the vicar of Christ on earth. I think this is a misreading. Ignatius never mentions any presiding or noteworthy supremacy um authority for the Roman Catholic Church. And this isn't a factious argument from silence. Ignatius held extraordinarily strong convictions about hierarchical church structure and the necessity of obedience to bishops. No writer in the early church asserted the episcopal authority in more emphatic terms than Ignatius. And so his complete silence on papal primacy is an elephant in the room."
These are pretty serious arguments. They're also very lacking, I would say, for someone who considers himself a a historical Protestant or a historian in the Protestant church. They're complete in a lot of different ways. And I want to walk through them carefully. This is a very important point. This was huge for me when I began to convert to Catholicism is the Greek and the Aramaic that Wes brings up.
So Wes made the point about the Greek Petros versus Petra. He said Jesus did not say "on you Peter I'll build my church." He said "on this rock." But Jesus didn't speak Greek in this exchange. And we know this. We know he spoke Aramaic because the rest of the New Testament preserves Peter's Aramaic name, which is Cephas. Paul calls Peter Cephas almost every time he's alluded to in any of Paul's epistles. John chapter 1, verse 42, Jesus says, "You shall be called Cephas," which means Peter. Cephas in Aramaic is Kepha, and Kepha means rock, not pebble. Kepha means rock. In Aramaic the sentence is, "You are Kepha and on this Kepha I will build my church." It's the same exact word twice, not Petros and Petra. Jesus is renaming Simon to mean rock and then telling him that on this rock, that is on Simon, now called the rock, he will build his church. That's the natural reading.
Matthew 16:19, Jesus says to Peter and to Peter alone he says this: "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven. Whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." "You" is singular, only Peter. The keys are given to Peter alone. The language of binding and loosing is later extended to all the apostles in Matthew 18:18. But the keys were never extended. The keys are uniquely Peter's.
And Christ didn't just pull this out of thin air. This is imagery from far earlier on. This isn't random. Jesus is alluding to Isaiah 22:2. And you can read the whole section because it's incredibly fascinating. We've done an entire video on this topic if you'd like to watch it here on the precedent for the papacy. But God is giving authority to his faithful servant Eliakim. He's giving him the keys to the house of David. And it says in that in Isaiah 22:22, "He shall open and none shall shut. He shall shut and none shall open." That sounds eerily familiar. Eliakim is the prime minister of King Hezekiah's royal household. The key is the symbol of the office of the chief steward. And that office continues with when one steward dies, another receives the key. It is a transferable office. So when Jesus, the new Davidic king, gives Peter the key, singular key here, he is establishing an office. And every Catholic since has recognized that the papal coat of arms to this day has two crossed keys. It's not random. That's Matthew 16:19.
Peter is named 195 times in the New Testament. The next most named apostle is John, and he's named 29 times. Peter is always listed first everywhere you read in the Bible. He's listed first of the apostles everywhere. He preaches the first sermon at Pentecost in Acts chapter 2. He performs the first miracle in Acts chapter 3. He receives the first gentile in Acts chapter 10. He speaks at the Council of Jerusalem in Acts chapter 15. And after he speaks, the entire assembly goes silent. That's not nothing. That's an office in action.
Wes said the early church fathers like Ignatius never mentions Roman supremacy. So let's put that to the test. Actually, Ignatius wrote seven letters around the year 107 on his way to martyrdom in Rome. Six of those letters to these local churches open with a very brief greeting. But the letter to the Romans opens with by far the longest and the most elaborate greeting of any of them. Let's listen to a little bit of it. "Ignatius to the church that has found mercy in the greatness of the most high Father and Jesus Christ his only Son. The church beloved and enlightened by the will of him who willed all things that are by faith and love toward Jesus Christ our God, which also presides in the place of the country of the Romans, worthy of God, worthy of honor, worthy of blessing, worthy of praise, worthy of success, worthy of sanctification, and because you hold the precedency of love, presides in the place of the country of the Romans holds the presidency of love." That is not nothing either. That is Ignatius. You should read the other letters. They're easy to look up. None of the other greetings are anything like that. And then in chapter three of that same letter, Ignatius says he will not give the Romans commands as if he were, he says, "as if I were Peter and Paul." Note the order again: Peter then Paul.
There's another guy around this same time period, St. Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons, around 180 AD in his book *Against the Heresies* or his letter in in book 3, chapter 3, paragraph 2, it is a matter of necessity that every church should agree with this church. And who is he speaking about? He's speaking about Rome. That every church should agree with this church, Rome, on account of its preeminent authority, in which the apostolic tradition has been preserved continuously by those faithful men who exist everywhere. He then lists the bishops of Rome after that in succession: Linus, Anacletus, Clement. Why would he give proof of an unbroken apostolic line if it wasn't important? This is again around the year 180. This is second century, about 150 years after the resurrection of Jesus.
Wes said papal supremacy doesn't crystallize until the late fourth or fifth century. Then also there's First Clement, which was written in Rome by St. Clement of Rome somewhere between the year 96 and 110, probably leaning more toward 96. And he wrote this to the Corinthian church, which was in utter disorder. And the most interesting thing about this is this Corinthian church wrote a letter to Rome where Clement was. They didn't write it to Ephesus. And this is important because during this time period, the Apostle John, the last living apostle, is still alive. He's still moving around. He's in Ephesus. He lives there. They didn't write to Ephesus where John is. They wrote to Rome. And Clement writes them back. And he, to settle the dispute, he writes them back. In chapter 59 of that letter, he says, "If anyone disobey the things which have been said by him," he's talking about God, "through us, let them know that they will involve themselves in transgression and serious danger through us." The bishop of Rome speaking with that level of authority to another apostolic see while John the Apostle was still alive. The first time I read that, it blew my mind. That's remarkable.
So, the early evidence is not silent. The early evidence is exactly what you'd expect if Christ actually founded a visible church with a Petrine office at its center. A quietly assumed Roman primacy in the first and second centuries, which becomes way more articulate as challenges arise and the church is faced with several persecutions and is finally formalized in several of the great ecumenical councils that came later on.
Let's move on to Wes saying that he can't become Catholic because they pray to the saints. "Proximity to the divine due to their glorified state. Theologically I can understand this, but the practical reality of piety I do think problematically collapses the dulia and latria distinction in an unhelpful way. So prayer is only ever addressed to God within scripture. It is a fundamentally worshipful act in its nature and its function. Even in instances of biblical prayer that encompasses complaints or negotiation or self-defense or maybe even like raw emotional expression, every instance of down under the scrutiny of scripture and I mean this with a great deal of respect to my Roman Catholic friends. But when you look at the practice of prayer to the saints throughout church history, it far too often develops into superstition and supplication to saints in contrast or even instead of God himself. There are countless examples of that where you see individuals throughout church history who have taken on this practice and they pray to saints."
So Wes here said that prayer by nature is a worshipful act. He said the distinction Catholics draw between dulia, the honor we give to the saints, and latria, which is the worship that we give to God, collapses in our practice. And he said biblically, he can find no warrant for praying to the saints.
So first off, what does "pray" actually mean? In English, "pray" has been narrowed down through history to mean you're speaking to God. But the older usage and the Catholic usage still of that word is just to ask. In Shakespeare, "I pray thee, tell me." I ask you, please tell me. That's what you're saying. Asking is not worshiping. I can ask my mother to pray for me. I can ask my pastor to pray for me. Asking is not worship.
That's why the Catechism in paragraph 2683 frames it this way: "The witnesses who have preceded us into the kingdom, contemplate God, praise him, and constantly care for those whom they have left on earth, not mediators in place of Christ, but members of his holy body. And you cannot separate the body from the head." Hebrews 12:1 says, "Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight." A cloud of witnesses. They're watching. They're witnessing. They're not just asleep. They're not severed from us.
Revelation 5:8 says, "The four living creatures and the 24 elders fell down before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." The saints in heaven are holding the prayers of the saints on earth and offering them to God. And many people say, "Wait, wait, wait. Saints just mean Christian. That's what it's always meant." But in this chapter in Revelation, they're talking about heavenly things happening. These are the saints in heaven. Revelation 8:3-4, an angel takes prayers of the saints and offers them on the golden altar before God. Heavenly intercession is explicitly mentioned there.
Matthew chapter 17, the Transfiguration. Moses and Elijah appear and speak with Jesus. Moses has been dead for, depending on how you date it, over a thousand years at least. He's not talking. He's not asleep. He's not unconscious. He's communicating. And people say, "Oh, that's Jesus. He can do what he wants to do." And that's the same thing we say. It's God. He can do what he wants to do. He's connected us to him. If you are in heaven, you are one with God in such a mysterious way. And the will of God will be your will.
And I have to mention this, but in 2 Maccabees chapter 15:11-16, Judas Maccabeus has a vision. He sees Onias, the deceased high priest, praying for the people of Israel. Then Onias presents Jeremiah, the long-dead prophet, who hands Judas a golden sword. Now, I know Wes doesn't accept 2 Maccabees as canonical, but the book was in the Greek Old Testament, known as the Septuagint. And that was what the apostles quoted from. The Jews of Jesus's day clearly believed the righteous dead pray for the living. That was not a controversial idea at all, and Jesus never corrected it.
And thirdly, the dulia distinction is actually biblical. Wes is right that abuses happen. It can happen anywhere. Catholics agree with that. Bad theology in the pews is real in whatever church you're in. But the abuse of a good thing doesn't refute the thing itself. The distinction between worship due only to God and honor due to creature runs all through scripture. Exodus 20:12, "Honor your father and mother." We honor parents. We do not worship them. The same exact word for "honor" used in Exodus is also used in 1 Peter chapter 2:17, says, "Honor everyone. Love the brotherhood. Fear God. Honor the emperor." That same word is used both in honoring the emperor and for honoring God. So, should we take that at the same level? No. There's different categories of honor, and scripture acknowledges this. Catholics call the honor we give to the saints dulia. The honor we give to Mary, who carried God in her womb, is hyperdulia, a heightened version of dulia. Worship reserved to God alone is latria. These categories are old and they're very, very careful, and they're biblical.
Wes also said he can't be Catholic because of the mass. Let's see what he has to say. "And with what I'm about to say, particularly because I'm about to talk pretty candidly about the mass. The mass, as is understood in formal Roman Catholic doctrine and dogma, is at minimum theologically problematic from a biblical standpoint and at most what I believe to be a denial of the work communicated within the gospel message. Now, that's a bold statement and and I don't say it lightly, but I think it's true. Here's why I say it, though. My position as a historic Protestant is that the Roman Catholic understanding of what takes place on the mass is not compatible with what we see in places like Hebrews chapters 9 and 10, where the mass as a sacrifice is a direct conflict with the juxtaposition of the sacrifices in the Old Testament in the old covenant system being compared with the once-for-all sacrifice of Jesus in the new. A representation of an unbloody sacrifice that needs to be done over and over in order for the remission of sins is contrary to I think what the author of Hebrews describes in what takes place on the cross."
Wes said the mass, understood as a propitiatory sacrifice in which the priest offers Christ to the Father, contradicts the once-for-all language of Hebrews chapters 9 and 10. He said it confuses the directionality of grace. God to us, in his view, becomes us to God in Catholic theology. That's Wes's view. He called the Catholic doctrine of the mass a possible denial of the gospel. That last line is the strongest thing he has said in this entire video. And I want to address it directly because the mass is important.
First, the mass is not a new sacrifice. In the Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 1366, we read, "The Eucharist is thus a sacrifice because it represents and makes present the sacrifice of the cross, because it is its memorial, because it applies its fruit." And then in paragraph 1367, "The sacrifice of Christ and the sacrifice of the Eucharist are one single sacrifice. In this divine sacrifice which is accomplished in the mass, the same Christ who offered himself once in a bloody manner on the altar of the cross is contained and is offered in an unbloody manner." One sacrifice, not many sacrifices. The mass does not multiply Calvary. The mass makes Calvary present.
So when Wes appeals to Hebrews, and Hebrews is glorious on this point, I love Hebrews. He's arguing against a doctrine the Catholic Church doesn't hold. We agree with Hebrews chapter 9:26. "He has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Yes, once and for all. That sacrifice, that one sacrifice is what is represented at every altar of every Catholic mass in the world.
Secondly, anamnesis is biblical. And this is the word that unlocks the mass: anamnesis, memorial. But biblical memorial is not just remembering. Listen to Exodus 12:14, where God institutes the Passover. "This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever. You shall keep it as a feast." In the Jewish liturgical tradition, a memorial means you are there. So when you read that Exodus verse, you should put yourself there in Egypt. And this is the same framework that Christ has at the Last Supper. "Do this in memory of me." He's not asking for a nice thought exercise. He is instituting a Christian Passover where the saving event of Calvary is made present in every generation.
And thirdly, John 6, which pretty much speaks for itself. In John 6, starting in verse 51, Christ says, "I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh." Verse 53, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you." Verse 60, "When many of his disciples heard it, they said, 'This is a hard saying. Who can listen?'" And then in verse 66, "After this, many of the disciples turned back and no longer walked with him." What's crazy is Jesus lets them walk away. He doesn't correct them. He doesn't say, "Wait, wait, come back. This is what I actually mean. This is just a symbol. It's just a metaphor." He turns to the twelve and says, "Do you also want to go away?" When you lose followers over a teaching and you don't walk it back, that's because the teaching was literal.
Another reason Wes said he couldn't be Catholic is this concept of the changing, unchanged church. Let's see what he has to say. "My experience of that investigation solidified for me that the religion of Rome being argued for at Trent, at the Council of Trent, is quite different in places to the religion of Vatican 2. Following 1965, the theology of Rome has changed. The historical consistency often claimed within Roman Catholicism is simply not there when actually compared with what the church has in the past declared about its beliefs. Early church taught that submission to the bishop of Rome, the Pope, was a matter of salvation. It was salvific. The papal bull *Unam Sanctam* issued by Pope Boniface in 1303 stated, 'We declare, affirm, define and pronounce that it is absolutely necessary to salvation that every human creature should be subject to the Roman pontiff.' A modern Roman Catholic teaching acknowledges that those suffering from invincible ignorance of the true religion can achieve salvation through moral readiness and faithfully fulfilling God's will through the precise mechanisms that remain unexplained. And this includes, according to the Catholic Catechism, Muslims and Jews being able to be saved even if they are outside the church. Let me read for you paragraph 841 of the catechism. It says this: 'The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims. These profess to hold the faith of Abraham and together with us they adore the one merciful God, mankind's judge on the last day.'"
This is Wes's claim on this. He says the Catholic Church claims an unchanged continuity from the apostles to today. But that claim falls apart, according to Wes, when you compare, let's use the example that he used, that Pope Boniface VIII, 1302 bull *Unam Sanctam*, which said is absolutely necessary to salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff, with paragraph 841 of the catechism, which says Muslims can be saved. He cites Cardinal Newman's 1845 essay *On the Development of Christian Doctrine* as evidence that the church changes and concludes West concludes that Catholicism has no real claim to apostolic constancy.
So first, and this is one of the deeper aspects of this argument, and Newman is a great place to be. Newman is someone who we all should read multiple times, but for him to use Newman is a Catholic argument, not a Protestant one. This is the most important thing to understand about Wes's point is that John Henry Newman was an Anglican when he started writing this essay on the development of doctrine, and he concluded it after he had decided to enter the Catholic Church. Newman wrote that book to explain to himself and to other Anglicans why doctrinal development was not only compatible with Catholicism but proved Catholicism to be true. He entered full communion with Rome on October 9th, 1845, while still finishing the book. He died as a Catholic cardinal. He was canonized by Pope Francis on October 13th, 2019. He is St. John Henry Newman. Now he is Dr. John Henry Newman. It's amazing. So if your argument against Catholicism is Newman's book, you might have picked the wrong book because this is what converted him.
And why did this work so efficaciously on Newman to convert to the Catholic Church is that development isn't change. The Catechism in paragraph 94 quotes this principle very clearly. It says, "There is a growth in insight into the realities and words that are being passed on as believers grow in understanding." The faith doesn't change. Our grasp of the faith deepens. And this is true of the same doctrines that Wes accepts. The full doctrine of the Trinity: three persons in one God, *homoousios* with the Father, was not formulated until the Council of Nicaea in 325. The two natures of Christ, fully God, fully man, one person, was not formulated until Chalcedon in 451. The canon of the New Testament was not formalized until the late 4th century. If development invalidates Catholicism, then it invalidates the Trinity and Christology and the Bible itself. And you can argue that those things are there without these councils. That's what the councils argue as well, that Christians believe this. There's someone coming against this and talking against this and very important thing like the Trinity. So let's actually define it. That's what it is.
Let's go to *Unam Sanctam*, which Wes brings up in context of Boniface VIII, which issued in 1302. The dogmatic content of the bull is the closing sentence. We can go directly to it. You can look this up anywhere. "We declare, we proclaim, we define that it is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman pontiff." That sentence is binding. Catholics still hold to it. So how do we reconcile that with paragraph 841 of the Catechism, which says God's plan of salvation includes Muslims who acknowledge the creator? The answer is that reconciliation already existed centuries before Vatican II ever stated that. It's called invincible ignorance and it has roots in St. Thomas Aquinas, who in his *Summa Theologica* he distinguishes between vincible and invincible ignorance and he says that the latter excuses from sin. Pope Pius IX, long before Vatican II, taught it explicitly. He said, "Those who labor in invincible ignorance of our most holy religion and who zealously observing the natural law and its precepts engraved by God in the hearts of all are able, by the operating power of divine light and grace, to attain eternal life." That's in 1854, and he affirmed it all throughout his pontificate.
So when Boniface says all must be subject to the Roman pontiff, he means it objectively. Christ founded one church under Peter, and all are objectively called to that church. And when Pius IX and Vatican II affirm that those in invincible ignorance can be saved, they mean subjectively. God judges each soul according to the light it had. These are not contradictory. They're the same teaching at different levels of precision. It's often stated like this: We have these ordinary means of salvation, which is the way that Christ gave us. Christ gave us commandments to do, things to follow. As a Catholic, we would say the seven sacraments are definitely a part of that. That's the ordinary means, the way that Christ said to do it. Then you have the extraordinary means, the people who can be saved outside of that by the mystery of God himself, by by God operating outside of his sacraments. We are bound by his rules and his precepts and his sacraments. God is not bound by anything. So the ordinary means, you're doing what Christ has told you to do. The extraordinary means, you're going about it a different way. And invincible ignorance means you you just don't know this way or you don't know it to the point where you've been convicted of this way. And we have a merciful God who desires that all should come to him. So the church didn't change the doctrine. The church developed her articulation of how the doctrine applies. That's exactly what Newman predicted and that's exactly why he converted.
And let's turn this question around on Wes. So if Wes wants to argue continuity, where is Protestant continuity? Where was sola scriptura in 200 AD? Where was sola fide in 400 AD? Where was the rejection of the real presence in the 800s? You cannot find these doctrines in the first 1500 years of Christian history. They appear in the 16th century. Whatever Catholicism's issues with development are, Protestantism's problem is way more severe. It has core doctrines that have no continuity at all with the early church.
Do I think that Roman Catholics can be genuine born-again believers? And the answer to this, and I've maintained this publicly many times, is yes. What I'm about to say, I don't say out of malice or bitterness because I genuinely care for and love those within the church of Rome. Being a biblically based faithful Christian will make you a bad Roman Catholic, and vice versa. There will come a time for the mature believer to have to leave Rome as they realize the incongruity within its doctrines and dogmas with that of the true faith of biblical Christianity.
Here's what I want you to take from this video. Wes Huff is not the enemy. Wes Huff is a brother who studies scripture very seriously, who tries to be charitable, and who at the end of this, his video acknowledged that there are saved Christians in the Catholic Church. I take him at his word and I extend the same back to him. There are saved Christians in his church. I have no doubt of it. Baptism is baptism. The Holy Spirit blows where he wills.
But the question is not, can a Protestant be saved? The question is, did Jesus found a church? Did he give that church his keys? Did he promise the gates of hell will not prevail against it? Did he promise the Holy Spirit would lead it into all truth? Because if you answer to any of those yes, then somewhere in history there is a visible church that has carried the apostolic faith without breaking.
Dr. St. John Henry Newman put it like this: "To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant." That's not triumphalism. That's Newman's story. He meant it about himself. I went from atheist to Calvinist to Catholic because the more I studied the Bible, the more I studied the early church, the more impossible it became to remain Protestant. Wes says he's a conviction Protestant because of his study of scripture and history. I'm a conviction Catholic for the same reason. We can't both be right.
There is so much more we could say about Wes's video. Honestly, I have another 10 pages of notes that I would love to get to on this, but this video is getting long enough, so we're going to end it. But I hope it was helpful. I hope it can give you some clarity as to what Wes is saying, what the Catholic Church position is. If it was, then please like, share, and extend it to a friend who you think needs to see it. Thanks, guys. God bless everyone out there. God bless you, Wes Huff. Thank you for the good things that you do for God and his church. God bless you. We will see you next time on Lexio.