Why Gen Z is Converting to Eastern Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism with Redeemed Zoomer

This transcript has been lightly edited from an automated transcription for clarity and readability. While we've worked to preserve each speaker's words faithfully, errors may remain.

1. 0:00

   Michael Horton

   Lactantius, Augustine, Jerome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, all claimed a church is not a Christian sanctuary if it has any pictures painted on the walls of anything sacred. That was the teaching. Now, those are the Orthodox Fathers. Those are the fathers. They're the church fathers. They become heretics once in the eigth century, The Empress Irene gets her own council together to say that icons can be placed in churches. Whatever you say about who's right about that, there is no unbroken tradition. There have been debates and controversies and depositions, and Athanasius, good grief, how many times was he thrown out of Constantinople and practically chopped up?

2. 0:52

   Michael Horton

   And practically chopped up, and then brought back and then sent out again and excommunicated and then brought back. History has a way of taking nostalgia out for a ride to see what actually happens in real life.

3. 01:06

   Michael Horton

   We don't want to live in the Village Green at the end of the day. We can all leave and return to our houses of worship, but our goal is to encourage conversational theology in the Village Green where we can rub shoulders with Christians from different traditions and expressions.

4. 01:31

   Michael Horton

   Well, I've been looking forward to this conversation with Redeemed Zoomer, AKA Richard Ackerman. And Richard, it is a pleasure to have you on the program today.

5. 1:44

   Richard Ackerman

   Well, thank you, Dr. Horton, for having me on. It's an honor to finally meet you. I've been a fan of your work for many years now, and I know lots of other people who recommend your work as well. So this is great. This is going to be great.

6. 1:55

   Michael Horton

   Well, thanks. Thanks a lot. You have quite a following of people who are hearing your concern that you're raising about coming from a leftist worldview, as you call it, a whole religious package.

7. 2:14

   Michael Horton

   To Christianity and then Reformation Christianity. Can you, first of all, start out by framing the challenge that people of your generation particularly have, both the pros and the cons, when it comes to movements toward faith. We hear so much about de-churching, but there's another thing going on, right?

8. 2:41

   Richard Ackerman

   Yeah, so I think maybe the generation above me was involved in the whole de-churching. I grew up in a very secular generation in a very secular part of the country. I grew up in New York. And I went to public school in New York, so I was—in part—probably the most secular part of the country. So when I was a teenager, I was surrounded completely by the secular world. Christianity was extremely unpopular. Almost nobody my age was religious, and I was taught in school that Christianity was bigoted and anti-scientific and outdated. So that was the biggest challenge I had to overcome coming to faith, was wrestling with atheist doubts and wrestling with the idea that Christianity was like a hindrance to societal progress. That's what I was always told. And the Reformed tradition was the one that gave me the most resources to help with that. When I was coming to faith, when I was—when I wanted to be a Christian, but I was struggling with atheist doubts, nobody helped me more than Tim Keller. And because he's also—he was also from New York like me, he was very accustomed to answering those sorts of objections to the faith. So that was what I struggled with when I was more in high school. Now I'm a bit older, and luckily so many young men, it turns out, had the exact same experience that I did of growing up in a secular world, but just seeing how spiritually dead it was. That was one of the factors pushing me towards faith, is just seeing how nihilistic and depressed the secular culture around me was compared to the few Christian people I knew. I converted at this Christian-themed music summer camp, and the Christians just had this life in their eyes and this hope that nobody else had. So when people say, like, what converted me to Christianity, I always just say Christians, right?

9. 4:20

   Richard Ackerman

   Christians are the body of Christ. And what converted me away from atheism? Well, it was atheists. What converted me away from leftism? It was leftists. By their fruit, you'll know them. That's very true. So it turns out tons of other young men had the same experience as me. So I think in the 2010s, that was really the high point of leftist and secular dominance over culture. Now we are seeing lots of young men in Gen Z push back because Gen Z men were raised with the worst of leftism. And now there's a strong reaction against leftism and towards traditional Christianity. That's the good news. That's very good news that young men are craving something spiritual, craving something traditional, craving something rooted in the eternal. Now, there is still bad news for us Reformed Christians because the vast majority of these young men who gravitate towards traditional Christianity, whether they come from a nondenominational evangelical background or whether they come from a secular background, avoid Protestantism like the plague. They almost always end up in Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. There's especially a really strong trend of young men these days becoming Eastern Orthodox. And there's a lot of reasons for this. I do think objectively you could argue Eastern Orthodoxy is the most traditional form of Christianity. And if there's a big reaction of young men that want tradition, that's where they're going to go. But another thing is there is just this massive disparity in how much online apologetics content those two traditions have versus how much everyone else has.Versus how much the Protestants have, especially how much the Reformed have. And later on, I can give you examples of just how severe this disparity is and just how powerless it can feel to be a Reformed Christian in the modern Gen Z Christian internet.

10. 6:08

    Michael Horton

    Wow. When you say that you came to Christianity both out of familiarity with Christians, which is very encouraging, but also wrestling with the worldview of leftism, how—can you tease that out a little bit? What makes it a worldview, an alternate religion?

11. 6:40

    Richard Ackerman

    It has its own eschatology. It has its own orthodoxy and heresy, and it has its own saints and its own angels and demons. So I'm not very political right now, but when I was a leftist, politics was basically my religion, and it was the religion of all my friends around me. So like, voting is a sacrament. The eschatology is utopia that we're going to build here on Earth by political means. The angels are the good politicians. The demons are the bad politicians. And the high priests are like these activists. And the thing I noticed most was there is orthodoxy and heresy in leftism. So I converted to Christianity not primarily for political reasons, just because I was morally moved, emotionally moved by the love I saw from these Christians at this summer camp I went to that was completely unlike anything I experienced back in New York. But I still wanted to be a leftist. I didn't think there was any contradiction. I thought, I'll be a liberal Christian. Maybe I'll even bring Christianity to the liberals and help evangelize them. But what I noticed is that those two systems were incompatible. So, I came back to my, like, leftist and atheist and Jewish friends back in New York, and they made blasphemous jokes about Christianity, as they always did, and I got offended, and they were like, wait, we can't do that? I thought you were Jewish. And I'm like, I'm Christian now. And they're like, wait, you're what? And I'm like, don't worry, I'm one of the nice Christians. For me, Christianity is just about being nice to people. I'm still a liberal. And they're like, okay, but we're watching you. So I started to question some of leftism, not all of it. It was mostly leftist, but I started to question some. And this is not unique to me. Basically everyone who sort of deconstructs leftism, the first issue they stop believing in is the whole transgender issue. I stopped believing that there really were 76 genders because my health class in public school was teaching that there were 76 genders. And I started to think, maybe that's not correct. I don't know. And as soon as I did that, I got canceled by my entire school, essentially, even though I was still like 95% leftist. I still supported all the leftist economic policies. I still supported gay marriage. I still supported feminism. I even tried to like make extra feminist posts on my private Instagram so that people would hate me less. It didn't do anything.

12. 9:03

    Michael Horton

    So you're either 100% or nothing.

13. 9:06

    Richard Ackerman

    And that is fine if you admit leftism is a religion. Like for Christianity, we do act like that and it's okay. We admit it's a religion. Like somebody can't say, oh, I believe in every part of the Bible except the virgin birth. I don't believe in that thing. We would say, no, that's heresy. You can't be a Christian then. So it would make more sense if they just admit that their whole worldview is a religion. And I realized what Tim Keller said was true, that everybody worships something. You cannot have a completely religionless society for long. So you either worship God, you either worship Jesus Christ, or you worship the god of self. Autolatry, I noticed, was very common because the leftists in my school would always post about self-love and self-care and self, self, self, me, me, me. And they're always the most miserable people. And that was plainly obvious. And I was not the only young man to notice this. I am one of millions of young men in America who noticed that, who left leftism, who started inquiring into traditional Christianity, and that's where I am today.

14. 10:08

    Michael Horton

    Why do people then go from exploring Christianity to sort of—I often say from my own experience of watching people that it's like a backyard, you know, a gentle, sweet Midwestern neighborhood where you have fences, but people have their backyard parties. And, you know, Reformation churches are the ones with the beer. So you get the Independent Baptists, Fundamentalists, Evangelicals, Nondenominational, kind of running through our backyard. They stop for the beer and hot dogs, and then they just keep running to the next backyard until they get to Rome or Orthodoxy. Why is that a trend that you're seeing?

15. 11:02

    Richard Ackerman

    Well, I think it's just Isaac Newton's laws of inertia. It's like if something's in motion, it stays in motion until something stops it. So I am very good at one thing on YouTube and Instagram and very bad at another thing. I am very, very good at getting non-denominational evangelicals to question their beliefs and to become Reformed. I'm very, very good at that because all I have to say is, okay, you have John Calvin in your profile picture. Do you know what John Calvin said about baptism? Do you know that John Calvin said baptism saves and that the Eucharist is the true body and blood of Christ? It's very easy to show them that, and it's very easy to get them to abandon their nondenominational ideas of what the church is and what Reformed theology is. and become something like Presbyterian or Reformed or Lutheran, it is very hard to keep them that way because once they are on that trajectory of adopting more high church and traditional Christian ideas, of having tradition play a bigger role in their theology and their belief system and sort of deconstructing their previous notions of what the Bible really taught, once they're on that trajectory, there's nothing stopping them from continuing on that trajectory because then they'll say, Oh, well, if I realize theology didn't begin in the 1900s, it actually began in the 1500s, what's wrong with me saying it actually began with Jesus and the apostles themselves? And these Orthodox apologists on YouTube are saying that Calvin and Luther completely departed from 1,500 years of church history, and, you know, I thought the Bible taught salvation by faith alone, but I also thought the Bible taught that baptism was just a symbol, and turns out I was wrong about that, so maybe I'm wrong about faith alone. And it's just like, if someone is in motion, if they're on that trajectory, it's hard to stop them. I've always been like obsessed with some more traditional aspects of Christianity. Like, not sure if you know, I'm still in the PCUSA because I care a lot about the heritage of the PCUSA, and I started a nonprofit to try and retake the PCUSA from liberalism because I care a lot about the tradition. I think the only reason I haven't been won over by the Catholic and Orthodox arguments is I never started out as something low church. I just went from secular to Presbyterian, and I just stayed that way. I went from secular to PCUSA, and that's where I am. But I think if someone is already in motion, then they just keep going in motion. That's one reason. And another reason is, like I said, it might be easier to intercept those people if there were strong Reformed apologetics accessible on the internet. And I just have to be bluntly honest, there is not. Not even close.

16. 13:40

    Michael Horton

    Is part of this, Richard, that in an effort to sort of win over the broader evangelical movement, sometimes Reformed churches have kind of put their distinctives in the corner. Like, five-point Calvinism, definitely, but the rest, not really essentials. And so a lot of people might think, especially coming out of nondenominational backgrounds, that, well, Reformed Christianity is basically the same as broad evangelicalism on everything but the five points of Calvinism. And it's not really connected to the ancient church.

17. 14:31

    Michael Horton

    You know, do you think that the Reformed camp sort of gets overlooked partly because it's not seen as teaching a different doctrine, for instance, of sola scriptura than the caricature that you get from Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox apologists?

18. 14:59

    Richard Ackerman

    I think that's definitely a big part of it. I think the whole New Calvinism movement where Reformed theology was basically defined as TULIP, I think that was really bad for the public perspective of Reformed theology, and that's why ever since I started getting into theology, I've been a fan of your content, sort of distinguishing true Reformed doctrine from what most people perceive as pop Calvinism. So I think it's very useful. I think it's very important. One thing I've always tried to do in my content videos is saying strictly, Reformed Baptists are not Reformed because Reformed is more than predestination, and using the word covenant sometimes. Reformed is also believing in the sacraments and the spiritual efficacy of the sacraments and a bunch of other things. It's like a whole tradition. It's not just an abstract set of beliefs. So I think that's very important for sure. And I think that maybe Reformed Christianity would see—would have more success in taking in people who are interested in tradition if we really emphasize our traditional roots. But what I've noticed is even when we do do that, Even when we do emphasize the more traditional aspects of Reformed theology, people will be interested in a time and maybe convert for a time, but then they'll see something even more traditional next door.

19. 16:11

    Michael Horton

    Like a drug, once you start taking it, you gotta keep upping the dose.

20. 16:15

    Richard Ackerman

    Yeah, so I feel like we're often just the gateway drug. Same with Lutherans. We're often the gateway drug for evangelicals to go Catholic almost, because we're like, yeah, you can have a little bit of baptismal efficacy. You can have a little bit of real presence. Not enough that you'll be offended yet, but once we get you used to it, then you're ready for the big stuff, which is Rome and the East. Now, that's part of it. Now, another reason is I think the loss of the mainline churches was really destructive, even if it's just like the aesthetics. Like, the aesthetics are powerful and a lot of modern people diminish that. But it's like there's this perception that sadly so many people believe, like, I'm sure you've seen that memes on the internet, like the Catholic Church is this beautiful tourist attraction cathedral, and the Orthodox Church is this beautiful tourist attraction cathedral, and the Protestant Church is a strip mall. Now, as a mainline Protestant, I know that's not true, but most people these days in my generation are not mainline Protestants. So it's like Protestants have these beautiful traditional institutions all over the West, but because most conservative Protestants abandoned those institutions, everyone forgot they exist. So—

21. 17:24

    Richard Ackerman

    Protestantism can feel a lot more modern than it is when most Protestant institutions are very modern. Like, this is something to think about. Like, I don't know, Thomas Aquinas's church is still teaching Roman Catholicism. Lots of very old historic Orthodox churches? Still teaching Eastern Orthodoxy. Is Martin Luther's church still teaching Lutheranism? Not really. Is John Calvin's church in Geneva still teaching Calvinism? Not really. So I think the loss of the mainlines has completely destroyed the perception that we are rooted in tradition. We are. But I think until we get the mainlines back, which I'm actively working for, we're always going to be at a massive disadvantage. Also, you can't have a magisterial Protestantism without a strong magisterium, without strong institutions. Magisterial Protestantism until the 20th century was never divorced from these big institutions, but now it is, and we need to get them back.

22. 18:22

    Michael Horton

    Can we go back to why you think that the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic apologists have a clear edge on Protestants in general and Reformed folks in particular on the internet?

23. 18:37

    Richard Ackerman

    Part of it is just because there's way more of them. I've counted, there's about 50 really, really strong Eastern Orthodox apologists on YouTube. And it seems like every Orthodox person who converts immediately becomes a YouTube apologist. There are just so many of them that go very in-depth on every single issue and quote tons of church fathers, tons of scholarship, tons of scripture, yes. And anytime any Protestant apologist—there's only like a few of them, but anytime any Protestant apologist does make content, there's like 20 Catholic and Orthodox apologists each ready to make a four-hour-long response to it where they just pick apart every single point. So it really seems like Protestant apologists are outnumbered. It's like when I've asked PCA or Nate Park pastors what to do about these apologists, they'll send me some lecture by R.C. Sproul from 2008 about why we believe in sola fide. Meanwhile, the Orthodox have like three-hour-long livestreams explaining how monergism is the same as the heresy of monoenergism, or explaining how Calvinism is Nestorian because it says Jesus was damned on the cross. And a lot of these caricatures like that, and maybe they're true, maybe they're not. Who knows if we don't have people to respond to them?

24. 19:59

    Michael Horton

    Do you find it helpful to show that the Protestant Reformers argued that they actually had the Church Fathers on their side?

25. 20:08

    Richard Ackerman

    I do argue that, and there are Protestants that argue that, but they always accuse us of quote mining. That's the phrase. They always say, oh, just because you can quote mine them out of context doesn't mean that they're actually on your side. And for every, like, one Church Father quote a Protestant apologist might bring up, there's, like, a bunch of apologists who will bring up, like, 50 Church Father quotes in response and will say, oh, well, these Church Fathers were like they were just part of the Orthodox Church. They were just part of the Catholic Church. They believe in one true church. So you can't remove them from that context. So we try. We try. Another thing is that there's—there aren't good, like, trained, like seminary-trained Reformed people who engage in debates. Like most actually educated Reformed folk just avoid those online debates. But online debates are actually how people learn stuff. So like a few years ago, I was sort of lured into a debate with this Orthodox personality, Jay Dyer. He's very smart. He went to Bahnsen Seminary. He used to be a sort of Calvinist and has been debating Orthodoxy for like 20 years. And I was just like a 20-year-old YouTuber. I didn't know how to respond to his claims. And people said that because of my debate with him, they all converted to Orthodoxy. I was like, you based your eternal decision on a debate between a trained apologist and a Minecraft YouTuber? Like, what if I lost a debate to an atheist? Would that make you convert to atheism? I've lost debates to atheists as well. I'm just not a great debater. But the thing is, even though I'm not a great debater, I am basic—I was basically at that point the only reform debater. There weren't better reform debaters that I could defer people to. So it creates this perception that me, this uneducated Minecraft YouTube college student, is the best that Reformed Christianity has to offer. It's not. I've never been to seminary. I don't know what I'm talking about. But the people who have gone to seminary aren't making this accessible content, so that's the way it seems to everyone.

26. 22:05

    Michael Horton

    Huh. We need to be maybe less snobby about the internet and realize that that's where a lot of conversations happen and a lot of conversions.

27. 22:17

    Richard Ackerman

    I hate to say it, this is not a good thing. But Gen Z does not read books. I mean, some of them do. Most of them get their ideologies from the internet and from like YouTube, maybe like TikTok or Instagram. So sometimes I've talked to like some, I don't know, 30 or something year old Reformed seminarians. I'll be like, we got to make apologetics. And they'll be like, oh, I have this blog. It's like, that's not where people are getting their information. You need accessible YouTube content with accessible YouTube personalities. So like an example of types of things that would help is like when a prominent Catholic or Orthodox YouTuber makes a video attacking Protestantism, to have some trained Reformed seminarians who can analyze that video, break it down, and explain why what they said is wrong. Father Josiah Trenum, in his book Rock and Sand, that's a very good summary of the standard Orthodox critiques of Protestantism.

28. 23:13

    Richard Ackerman

    It'd be helpful, like I mentioned to Adriel Sanchez, it'd be helpful to like go through Rock and Sand and explain Father Josiah's criticisms of Reformed theology.

29. 23:21

    Michael Horton

    And he's another example of someone who was Reformed and then went Orthodox. I had a couple of meals with him and—

30. 23:32

    Michael Horton

    Very generous guy. And that's the thing, a lot of the folks we're talking about here are not just sort of angry polemicists. They're really generous folks with whom you can have a good conversation.

31. 23:51

    Richard Ackerman

    Yeah, like Trent Horn, very, very nice guy. I met with him. But if we don't have a response to their arguments, then we're still not gonna get these young men who are interested in tradition into our churches, and that's what we want. So we still have to respond, even if they are nice.

32. 24:09

    Michael Horton

    What's your plan for the future as far as your— you're very impassioned about this. I noticed that you are doing a lot to coordinate with folks like yourself in other mainline churches to kind of encourage them to go back to their Reformation roots. What hope do you see in that cause?

33. 24:37

    Richard Ackerman

    Well, statistically, the mainline churches will be gone in 30 years, right? So imagine if we just inject a cohort of a few thousand young men who are passionate about Reformed theology into the PCUSA and they just stay there and they don't leave. What's going to happen in 30 years? They're going to be the only ones left. And it is so easy to revitalize a mainline church. My wife and I revitalized a dying boomer PCUSA church in two months. The pastor is really solid, but it's your average PCUSA church. The attendance was like three boomers weekly, so we just invited a bunch of people from the internet. We all showed up, we all hung out, and now we're like leading the Bible studies and participating in the choir and stuff. So it is so easy. That's why I say like revitalizing a mainline church is such a much better alternative to church planting, because like all the resources are already there. All you need is the people, and as long as you can bring those in, you can revitalize like an old community, and the old members will chances are they'll love you for doing it because they're dying to see a face under the age of 80. So—

34. 25:43

    Michael Horton

    How do you deal with conscientious issues such as belonging organically to a church that has to such a large extent abandoned, frankly, the Christian faith?

35. 26:01

    Richard Ackerman

    How do you think Athanasius dealt with belonging to a church where the majority of the bishops were Arian and where he was told the world is against him?

36. 26:10

    Michael Horton

    But he didn't choose to belong to an Arian church.

37. 26:16

    Richard Ackerman

    Right. But it was all one church at the time. He didn't sort of split off and form the Free One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, the One Holy Catholic Apostolic Free Church. He didn't secede. He fought to take the church back. And in my studies of church history and even like the Westminster Divines and the Reformers, none of them had as loose an attitude towards ecclesiastical separation as we do today. Like, you know, Robert Bailey, one of the Scottish Westminster Divines, says in his A Dissuasive Against the Errors of Our Time, particularly the independents, he says that even heresy and blasphemy of the Lord's Supper does not justify separation from the church. Because he brings up the example of 1 Corinthians and Galatians where they were blaspheming the Lord's Supper, and teaching a false gospel. And he said, “from none of these churches did the apostles ever separate, nor gave they the least warrant to any of their disciples to make a separation from any of them.” So I think in our modern culture, I think it's influenced by the awakenings with Gilbert Tennent and the New Side Presbyterian saying, if your preacher isn't saved, leave your church and find a new one. I think after centuries of that kind of rhetoric, we have this attitude where, yeah, if the denomination's just heading in a bad direction, we split off and form a new one. And Catholics rightly make fun of us for that, because like, yeah, there really are way too many Protestant denominations. It's like, seven mainlines, I get that. But all these different offshoots having like 20 different Presbyterian ecclesiastical bodies in the U.S., like, come on. Is that what Jesus wanted? Is that what Jesus prayed for? Is that what Knox wanted? No.

38. 28:52

    Richard Ackerman

    Okay, Dr. Horton, it's a pleasure to talk to you. I know that you're like the beast of Reformed theology of this generation, so there's a lot of questions that I as a Reformed person get from Eastern Orthodox Christians, and I try to answer them as best I can, but I've never been to seminary. I'm just a Minecraft YouTuber, and you've been a seminary professor for a long time, written many helpful books, so here are some of the most standard questions, most standard challenges that Orthodox Christians bring to Reformed theology. The first one is, if we believe in sola scriptura and we can't bind people to traditions outside of scripture, then how can we bind anyone to the canon, which is a tradition outside scripture? If we think scripture's the highest authority, then how do we know we have the right canon of scripture without appealing to tradition? And even if we do appeal to tradition because of sola scriptura, can't someone just say, oh, I have a different canon, and they have the freedom of conscience to say that?

39. 29:51

    Michael Horton

    Well, okay, two issues there, canon and discipline. I think of it in terms of Constitution and courts. You have judges who hopefully are not amending the Constitution. They're interpreting it, and they are interpreting it by drawing on landmark cases. That's why they went to law school to learn some of those landmark cases. And they have all kinds of understudies who explore the law library to find out case precedent. There's something analogous there to what goes on in the ancient church. But what I've found, and I have a book coming out on this, Sola Scriptura and the Church Fathers, the question really isn't, let's cherry-pick some quotes. Really, it's how did they use Scripture? What had the final say in their debates? What did they appeal to? And what you find is not only the Church Fathers themselves, but the heretics recognized that there was a canon. The Gnostics attacked the canon, so there must have been a canon already in place to attack. Heracleon wrote the first commentary on the book of John, and he was a sidekick of the heretic Valentinus. Why didn't he write a commentary on the Gospel of Thomas? Because it wasn't authoritative. Everybody knew that they had to appeal to Scripture. Arians appealed to Scripture. Maximinus, in his controversy with Augustine, said, “just show us where the Trinity is in the Scriptures and we'll believe you.”And everyone had this common sense that they had to appeal to Scripture. But then how do you summarize what Scripture says so that it excludes heretical beliefs? And that's where the rule of faith comes in. But the rule of faith isn't an alternative tradition to the canon. The rule of faith is a summary of the canon. It was because they were summarizing the consensus on what the Constitution taught that these church courts were able to exclude people who didn't accept the rule of faith. So they again and again and again say, we only include in the rule of faith that which can be proved from Scripture.

40. 32:26

    Richard Ackerman

    Yeah, the rule of faith is important, but what they would ask is, how do we know what are the essentials of Christianity? How do we know what's included in the rule of faith? Because we could say things like the divinity of Christ and the Trinity are kind of obvious. What about the nitty-gritties like Nestorianism or Monothelitism or Apollinarianism? How do we know what to include in the rule of faith? How can we define what the essentials of the faith are?

41. 32:50

    Michael Horton

    Because you can defend the The Chalcedonian definition, for example, that just wipes out all those you just mentioned. You can defend each one of the positions the church took against the heretics from the canon of Scripture.

42. 33:10

    Richard Ackerman

    Well, what they would say is, do we have a normative authority outside Scripture that can actually enforce the correct interpretation of Scripture? Do we have a normative authority outside Scripture?

43. 33:20

    Michael Horton

    Well, we have a subordinate authority in the—that's what creeds and confessions are. It's very important, I think, on the Reformed side especially, to see that the creeds are not authoritative to the extent that they are faithful summaries of Scripture. They're authoritative because they are summaries of Scripture. So it's not like there's an alternative authority here. It's rather the church courts reaching a consensus about the main teachings of the Scriptures. This is now in the area of church discipline. The church teaches. It's what a disciple is, a student. And so the church is a teacher. As Calvin said, repeating Cyprian, “you cannot have God as your Father if you take not the church for your mother.” We believe that we need a teaching office. The thing is, though, a teacher who says, “just listen to me, I'm the bearer of the truth about what the textbook is teaching,” is not a very good teacher. It's just exercising sort of arbitrary power is not a good way to teach. A good teacher is someone who submits to the textbook and says, as best as I can, and following the precedent of other teachers in this same field, I am going to do my best to teach you what the textbook is communicating.

44. 34:58

    Richard Ackerman

    Right. I would agree that the church courts are our normative authority subordinate to Scripture. But the question that they often raise is, what do you do with the multiplicity of options for church courts for Protestants, given that Protestants have a variety of denominations? Because they would say like, oh, if you are disciplined by your church court, you could always just start a different church in your basement. So what would we say to that?

45. 35:23

    Michael Horton

    New Eastern Orthodox offshoots are starting, it seems, almost every day. Look, Ukraine, for example. I was at a meeting in Cairo where—sitting there with various leaders of the different Catholic and Orthodox churches in Egypt, and they are hardly ever in the same room, much less talking to each other. Eastern Orthodoxy is a constellation of denominations, some of which regard the others as heretical. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding. Same is true of Rome. There is one dogma you have to believe to be Roman Catholic, implicit faith in the teaching office represented by the Pope. And as long as you accept the Pope as the ultimate authority, the buck stops there.You can hold all kinds of views. The Pope himself, the current Pope, doesn't agree with his predecessor on a whole host of doctrinal issues. To the great lament of some of my Roman Catholic friends. So, you have really the same spectrum of denominational sectarian beliefs in the Roman Catholic Church that you have in Protestantism, but it's all still under one hierarchical authority.

46. 36:56

    Richard Ackerman

    I guess my next question is, some—a lot of people will tell me, okay, I know that there's a question whether to be Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox or Oriental, Orthodox, but it's got to be one of them. It's definitely not Protestantism because all those groups have apostolic succession and they have bishops. So what would you say to the idea that most people have that apostolic succession through bishops has been an idea present since the very beginning of the church? The most common reference for this is Ignatius's epistles, and Ignatius was taught by John himself. Are we going to say that Ignatius was wrong about whether there is no church without the bishop or whether there's no Eucharist without the bishop, or are we going to say that all the church fathers were wrong about apostolic succession? So I think that's the kicker. Apostolic succession and episcopacy are seen as marks for many like high church inquires about which churches have any claim to validity.

47. 37:48

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, this is a real—I call it the Camelot myth. The whole idea that you even had bishops, much less a Pope, in the first few centuries. Really, it's not until the end of the second century that you begin to have the moderators of presbytery taking on more authority. And a really good book here, a very comprehensive book, is From Paul to Valentinus by Peter Lampe, L-A-M-P-E. And he shows without any polemical flavor, presbyterial government, government by pastors and elders in assembly, was the rule, was the pattern from the very beginning. And the moderator of presbytery, he was the secretary who would write letters on behalf of one church and send it on behalf of that church to another church. For instance, Clement of Rome would be an example. And eventually, that moderator of presbytery had that very significant role of representing that church, became more powerful, and it became a separate office. Episkopos, And presbyteros, elder and bishop, that's the same office in the New Testament. And I have no less an authority than Pope Benedict XVI on that one. He says that the terms are exactly— they're used interchangeably in the New Testament. Jerome said, before the rivalry and attachment to persons arose, presbyter and elder meant the same thing, referred to the same office. And so he said it's not an ordinance of the Lord so much as a tradition that evolved. Ambrose said the same thing. So episcopacy was developing in their day. For instance, Ignatius himself in his letter says, the bishop with the presbytery. And Irenaeus talks about being sent from the presbytery to Rome for a council on various issues. So it's really a myth. And then what—I'll just refer to one more source on this, a contemporary, more recent source. ARCIC II, this is the Anglican-Roman Catholic intercommunion dialogue. ARCIC II, “it is said by the Vatican that there was no transition from Peter to an office of episcopacy.” So, I have no idea what contemporary Roman Catholic apologists are going to do with that when their own church acknowledges that there isn't a successor of St. Peter.

48. 40:35

    Richard Ackerman

    Yeah. I think it's a lot easier to have dialogues with Roman Catholics because they concede a lot more, especially like the higher-ups of the Roman Catholic Church, even if some Roman Catholics on Twitter will not follow suit. But I think the Eastern Orthodox more insist on having not developed over time. So is this compatible with St. Ignatius? Like, I know about the Jerome quote, I've used it many times, but is this compatible with St. Ignatius saying like, there is no Eucharist without the bishop? Would we read that as just saying there is no Eucharist without the minister, for example?

49. 41:07

    Michael Horton

    No, I think he was talking about the bishop. It was about that time that in various places, not everywhere, but in various places, the moderator of presbytery was assuming a sort of separate office managing the presbytery. And so I think that he most likely meant that separate office of a bishop being present representing the presbytery. Again, he says the bishop with the presbyters, and I think it's interesting also to note that Clement of Rome, probably the earliest letter, post-apostolic letter that we have, he is upbraiding the Corinthians for basically firing their presbytery. And if he's a bishop, why is he focusing on the presbytery? Why isn't he saying they overthrew the bishop? you can't sack your bishop. He doesn't mention that. He only mentions the presbytery. So it's still, it's an evolving situation. And even Irenaeus is still being sent from his presbytery, not from a bishop, but from his presbytery, he underscores, to the church in Rome to meet with them about the Montanus controversy.

50. 42:34

    Michael Horton

    And the bottom line is you still, again and again, have them referring to the canon as their ultimate authority. They can make their own determinations from tradition about when they'll celebrate Easter or their liturgy. Liturgies differed from place to place. There were differences in rites here and there. But the canon was the focus of unity for all the churches. They made that distinction themselves. Basil, for example, Basil the Great, said there's a distinction between the traditions we keep in one place and the traditions that are kept in another place, but we all embrace the scriptures as sufficient for salvation.

51. 43:22

    Richard Ackerman

    I have three more questions. So this one is a more like Christological debate, and I've only really heard this from modern Orthodox polemics. I think they sort of made this up, but it still gets some people. So I've heard this idea that monergism is the same as monoenergism. And when I first heard that, I was like, just because they sound the same doesn't mean they are the same. But their argument is that if we believe in monergism, that conversion is only an act of God and not an act of us, then we are believing the monoenergist heresy, where the divine energy sort of overrides the human energy. They say it's the same as monotheletism, where the divine will overrides the human will. And they would say that St. Maximus the Confessor's arguments for dioenergism and diotheletism necessarily presuppose like a human free will in everything. They necessarily presuppose synergy. Because if you are a monergist, if you deny synergy between our human will and energy and God's will and energy, then you are denying the synergy between the human and divine wills and energies in Christ himself, and therefore you are agreeing with the heretic Purus, who was Maximus's opponent, who supported monoenergism and monotheletism. So is monergism monoenergism?

52. 44:45

    Michael Horton

    No, it's a confusion of categories. Monergism is a question about soteriology, about how we're saved. Monoenergism is about Christology. So Jesus didn't happen to be a fallen sinner like we are, and so he wasn't dead in trespasses and sins. There's no comparison between the two natures of Christ, the relation between the two natures of Christ, and the relation between God's unilateral act of regeneration upon those who are dead in trespasses and sins. They're two different questions.

53. 45:33

    Richard Ackerman

    Right. I mean, they would say all theology is connected, and I would agree. What I would say in response is the human will is not annihilated after conversion because—

54. 45:43

    Richard Ackerman

    Sanctification is synergistic. We would say that, right?

55. 45:45

    Michael Horton

    Yeah. It's not synergism the way that it's understood, for instance, in Arminianism, but after conversion, once we're made alive, in conversion we are active. In regeneration, we're acted upon. We're dead, we're made alive. “While you were dead, he made you alive together with Christ. By grace you were saved.” But now that we're made alive, we act. We have our own— see, free will, it's never canceled by sin. First of all, the problem—what works against free will is not the sovereignty of God. We have free will because God is sovereign. God grants to us that free will. Thomas Aquinas, for instance, said as much. But the reason our will is bound is not the sovereignty of God. The reason our will is bound is because of our sin. And therefore, when God releases us from that bondage, we begin to act for the first time like a dead person walking. We're alive now, and we are cooperating with God's grace. God's grace is enabling us to keep in step with the Spirit.

56. 47:10

    Richard Ackerman

    So, last two questions. One is that even if Protestants can make a compelling case for sola scriptura or the development of accretions in the early church, which I think they can, a tough one is Protestant ecclesiology, meaning the idea that the true church, the invisible church, or even the visible church subsists in multiple institutions that are not in official communion with each other. It really seems that for the first millennium of church history, for the first 1,000 years, everyone saw the church as one self-consciously unified institution. And if you were outside of that, you were outside the church. And yes, Augustine does say like, oh, there's a distinction between the invisible church and the visible church. Augustine does say that like the true church is like the elect, but Augustine doesn't seem to think the elect exist outside of this visible communion of the church. Whereas we seem to think that Reformed Christians seem to think that, oh, the true church spans multiple institutions, even ones that are not in communion with each other. So I would say, where is this invisible church doctrine? Where is this idea that you can have multiple visible communions not visibly connected to each other that are still Christian on both sides? Where is that idea in the first 1,000 years of the church?

57. 48:29

    Michael Horton

    Where was the idea that the church subsists in the papacy, in the magisterium, in the first dozen centuries. It's an early medieval development.

58. 48:42

    Richard Ackerman

    Well, what about like Orthodoxy? They don't really believe the church subsists in the papacy. They just think it's salvation by topology. It's salvation by being connected to all the other true Christians.

59. 48:51

    Michael Horton

    Yeah, but there are so many divisions within Orthodoxy, and yet there are ongoing ecumenical conversations between erstwhile Nestorians and Eutychians and Chalcedonians to try to understand each other and reach reconciliation. That happens among Protestants as well. Rome is acutely aware that something has to be said about all of these separated brethren. And so although the true essence of the church subsists in the Roman Catholic Church, according to Rome, they nevertheless hold that there is a true church among the Protestant sects, where baptism is retained, where Where the Eucharist is practiced, maybe not as it should be, but it's practiced, and where the faith is held to, to the extent that it is held, that there are remnants of ecclesiology there. And Calvin made the same point about Rome. There are true churches among her. There are still remnants of churchness. Even in the Roman Catholic communion. So I think we're all trying, we're straining to be able to say the unity of the church is an invisible reality of the elect that is supposed to be visible. And we all need to work harder. To keep that bond, not to make it. Paul says, “keep the bond of unity, hold on to it, preserve it.” We already have that bond of unity in God's eternal counsels, but to reflect that bond of unity and to defend it and to reach broader and broader agreement, deeper agreement. But that's only going to happen as all of us, Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox, return to the canon of our tradition, which is the Holy Scriptures.

60. 51:15

    Richard Ackerman

    I think with Catholics, it's easier to talk about these things because Vatican II really does open up a more inclusive view of the church. I think it's the Eastern Orthodox Church is the main opponent in debating these issues because they have had a very exclusivist view of the church historically. It's like the Eastern Orthodox Church is the ark of salvation. You're in it or you're out. And that's it.

61. 51:38

    Michael Horton

    And, you know, to my Eastern Orthodox friends, I would say to the claim that we have an unbroken tradition and liturgy from the apostles, I'd say, first of all, a clear example to me of why historically that cannot be is that icons are considered essential to the divine service, the divine liturgy. And yet, Lactantius, Augustine, Jerome, Irenaeus, Tertullian, all claimed—and the Council of Elvira—all claimed that a church is not a Christian sanctuary if it has any pictures painted on the walls of anything sacred.