If Catholics Are Right? What Scripture and History Add to the Ortlund–Crawford Conversation

On October 26, 2026, the Bryce Crawford Podcast released a long conversation with Dr. Gavin Ortlund, a historical theologian and Protestant apologist: Theology Expert: If Catholics Are Right, What Happens to Protestants? Bryce Crawford asked about the pope, Matthew 16, praying to saints, Mary, sola scriptura, the canon of the Bible, and what happens to a Protestant if Roman Catholicism is true. Gavin Ortlund answered with charity and care.

Many viewers will want to go further than a podcast allows. This article takes the main points about Roman Catholic teaching in the order they came up and adds what Scripture and church history say about them. Some sections back up a point already made. Others, marked "Added," bring in arguments the conversation did not reach, and those are this article's, not the speakers'. Rome reads Scripture together with Tradition, so Catholics dispute arguments from Scripture alone, and the sections name their strongest replies. Two sections fix a Bible reference that came out wrong in the moment, which happens to everyone speaking live.

Each section gives the time in the video where the point came up. Quotes from the video follow the automatic captions, with spelling fixed (for example "solos scriptorera" to sola scriptura and "filioquay" to filioque), some filler words such as "um" and "you know" left out, and "..." marking words left out. Bible verses are from the King James Version (KJV). Under the answers that rest on sources outside the Bible, a Sources box gives the quotes and links.

Part 1 — Stability, the Gospel, and Scripture

Looking for something that will not bend with the times

Added: Gavin Ortlund was careful here: "every story is different." But some who go to Rome are looking for exactly this kind of stability. Rome does not claim that nothing changes: it speaks of development without contradiction. Yet on points it once taught officially, through popes and councils, its teaching has changed.

• In 1864 Pope Pius IX's encyclical Quanta Cura condemned the opinion that "liberty of conscience and worship is each man's personal right, which ought to be legally proclaimed and asserted in every rightly constituted society," joined to a claim of "absolute liberty, which should be restrained by no authority." In 1965 the Second Vatican Council's Dignitatis Humanae declared that "the human person has a right to religious freedom," a right "to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed." (Catholics answer that Pius IX condemned an unlimited liberty, while Vatican II speaks of "immunity from coercion in civil society" and of acting "within due limits," and that it "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies" toward the true religion. But both concern a personal right in religion and worship that the law must recognize: Pius IX condemned that opinion, and Vatican II taught a right of that kind.)
• The Catechism of the Catholic Church allowed the death penalty in some cases. In 2018 Pope Francis rewrote paragraph 2267 to call it "inadmissible." (Rome calls this a development of doctrine, not a contradiction. But the Catechism once allowed what it now calls inadmissible.)
• In 1302 Pope Boniface VIII taught that being subject to the Roman Pontiff is necessary for salvation, and in 1442 the Council of Florence said heretics and schismatics outside the Catholic Church go into everlasting fire unless they are joined to it before they die. Vatican II speaks of Protestants as separated brethren who can be saved. Today the Catechism says that those who know the Catholic Church is necessary and refuse it "could not be saved" (paragraph 846), and Unitatis Redintegratio 3 says those born into the separation "cannot be accused of the sin involved in the separation." Catholics add that Pius IX said in 1863 that people in invincible ignorance (who cannot know better) "are able to attain eternal life." But Florence's own text states no such limit. Its teaching has been narrowed in how it is applied, never formally withdrawn (see 1:36:06 below).

Catholics agree that Christ is the rock, and they add that he keeps his church in the truth (1 Timothy 3:15). Protestants answer that this does not make a church's teaching unable to err. The church stands because Christ does not move:

Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever.

Hebrews 13:8KJV

Jesus said that whoever hears his sayings and does them is like a wise man who built his house upon a rock, and that house stands when the floods come (Matthew 7:24–25).

"Faith plus," and Galatians

Added: Neither speaker named Rome here: Bryce Crawford asked a general question, and Gavin Ortlund said "all of us can be drawn into" a Jesus-plus gospel. Applying it to Rome is this article's step. Rome does not teach faith plus circumcision, or that anyone can earn the first grace of justification: "none of those things which precede justification-whether faith or works-merit the grace itself of justification" (Trent, Session 6, chapter 8). But it does teach that the justified, by good works done through grace, "truly merit increase of grace, eternal life" (canon 32). The dispute is narrower, but it is real. Rome formally condemns justification by faith alone as the Reformers taught it: that faith receives justification with nothing else co-operating to obtain it. The Council of Trent's decree on justification (Session 6, 1547) still stands. (The 1999 Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification said that the Lutheran teaching as presented there does not fall under Trent's condemnations, but the canons themselves were never withdrawn.)

• Canon 9 pronounces anathema (a formal condemnation) on anyone who says "that by faith alone the impious is justified; in such wise as to mean, that nothing else is required to co-operate in order to the obtaining the grace of Justification."
• Canon 12 pronounces anathema on anyone who says justifying faith "is nothing else but confidence in the divine mercy which remits sins for Christ's sake."
• Canon 24 pronounces anathema on anyone who denies that justice is "increased before God through good works," or who says works are only "the fruits and signs of Justification obtained."

Protestants read Paul as teaching what those canons deny:

Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.

Romans 3:28KJV

But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.

Romans 4:5KJV

And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace

Romans 11:6KJV

Catholics answer that Paul excludes works done apart from grace, as Trent does, and they point to James: "by works a man is justified, and not by faith only" (James 2:24). Protestants answer that James means a faith with no works, which "is dead, being alone" (James 2:17), while Paul means how the ungodly are accepted by God at all (Romans 4:5).

Galatians pronounces its curse on those who preach another gospel (Galatians 1:8–9), not on those who trust Christ alone. Whether Trent's canons cross that line is this article's question, not the speakers'. Gavin Ortlund spoke of "the wonderful Christians in these other traditions" (at 10:28), and whether any one person is saved is a separate question (see 1:36:06 below).

"Sola scriptura can't be true because it's not found in the Bible"

Supporting: Gavin Ortlund answered that "the only infallible rule" does not mean "the only rule of any kind," and that no explicit proof text is needed. It is a deduction: God "has more authority than any other person," so "his speech has more authority than any other speech."

Rome agrees that its teaching office "is not above the word of God, but serves it" (Dei Verbum 10). The dispute is where God's word is found. Rome says "it is not from Sacred Scripture alone that the Church draws her certainty" (Dei Verbum 9), and Catholics point to "hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle" (2 Thessalonians 2:15). But Paul means what he himself taught those same people. That does not show that a teaching first defined centuries later came from the apostles.

Scripture also shows the practice, though Catholics read these texts differently. The Bereans tested even an apostle's preaching by the Scriptures:

These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.

Acts 17:11KJV

Paul taught the Corinthians "not to think of men above that which is written" (1 Corinthians 4:6). Isaiah gave Israel the same test: "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isaiah 8:20). And Paul says all Scripture is "profitable," "that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Timothy 3:16–17). Catholics answer that profitable does not mean sufficient by itself.

Some leading fathers spoke this way. Cyril of Jerusalem told the people he was teaching around AD 350 not to give even him absolute credence unless he proved it from the Divine Scriptures. Augustine told Jerome that he gave this kind of trust only to the canonical books of Scripture, and read every other writer, however holy, as one who could be wrong. (Catholics answer that they too set Scripture above any single writer, and that Augustine also wrote, "I should not believe the gospel except as moved by the authority of the Catholic Church." But Augustine is arguing against the Manichaeans about why he accepts the gospel at all. He does not say there that a church ruling cannot be corrected.)

Infallible councils become "irreformable"

Added: Rome limits this claim to definitive teaching on faith and morals by the pope, or by the bishops with him (Lumen Gentium 25), and says it brings no new revelation (Pastor Aeternus, chapter 4). So Catholics deny that such teaching stands level with Scripture, or that any council Rome accepts has contradicted another on a defined point. But Gavin Ortlund's word was "functionally": once a definition cannot be reformed, no appeal to Scripture can correct it. Church history shows how hard that claim is to carry:

• The Second Council of Ephesus (449) was summoned as a general council and cleared the heretic Eutyches. Two years later the Council of Chalcedon (451) reversed it. Pope Leo I called it a "robber" council, and it is still known by that name. Rome answers that the papal legate protested the verdict and the pope never confirmed it, so it was never truly a general council. (Bishops said at Chalcedon that they had signed in fear.) But that means a council summoned as general, voting by a large majority, could still be wrong, and that what settles the matter is one bishop's judgment, which is the very authority in question.
• The Council of Constance (1415, in the decree Haec Sancta) declared that it, as a general council, "has power immediately from Christ; and that everyone of whatever state or dignity, even papal, is bound to obey it in those matters which pertain to the faith, the eradication of the said schism and the general reform of the said church of God in head and members." The First Vatican Council (1870) declared that the pope's ex cathedra definitions (official definitions for the whole church) "are of themselves, and not by the consent of the church, irreformable." (Catholic writers argue that Haec Sancta was never validly approved. Yet Rome counts Constance as the sixteenth ecumenical council, and it was Constance that deposed the claimants John XXIII and Benedict XIII and arranged the election of Pope Martin V. Catholics point out that Rome counts those two men as antipopes, that Gregory XII, whom it counts as the true pope, first formally convoked the council and then resigned, and that many treat the council as legitimate only from that session, after Haec Sancta.)
• The Third Council of Constantinople (680–681), which Rome counts as ecumenical, condemned an earlier pope, Honorius I, as a heretic (see 50:56 below).

Mark 7 and tradition

Supporting: The traditions Jesus condemned were not presented as new. Mark calls them "the tradition of the elders," and so did the Pharisees (Mark 7:3, 5). Josephus says the Pharisees "delivered to the people a great many observances by succession from their fathers, which are not written in the laws of Moses" (Antiquities 13.10.6). That was a claim to a tradition handed down from the fathers, outside the written law, and Jesus judged it by the written word of Moses:

Making the word of God of none effect through your tradition, which ye have delivered: and many such like things do ye.

Mark 7:13KJV

See also Matthew 15:3–9.

Catholics answer that Jesus "disavowed certain human traditions of the Pharisees" (Catechism 581), not the Tradition that comes from the apostles. Gavin Ortlund's point is the test itself: no verse has to say that Scripture stands above oral tradition, because "it follows as a deduction from what the scriptures are."

Part 2 — Church Offices and the Canon

"Elder" and "overseer" were the same office

Supporting: Bryce Crawford is right that the two titles were interchangeable, and the New Testament shows it, though they are two Greek words (presbyteros and episkopos), not one. Paul tells Titus to "ordain elders in every city," and in the next breath explains, "For a bishop must be blameless" (Titus 1:5, 7). These are the same men. Paul calls for "the elders of the church" of Ephesus (Acts 20:17) and tells them the Holy Spirit made them "overseers" (Acts 20:28; the Greek word is episkopous, "bishops"). The church at Philippi had several bishops at once: "to all the saints in Christ Jesus which are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons" (Philippians 1:1).

Jerome, the great Bible scholar of the late 300s, said much the same: a presbyter (elder) is the same as a bishop, and bishops came to stand above elders by custom rather than by the Lord's own arrangement.

Gavin Ortlund agreed that "it's undeniable we see an evolution and growth in the church in these various offices." Rome holds that the core of this is not mere growth: Trent pronounces anathema on anyone who says "that bishops are not superior to priests" (Session 23, canon 7). Catholics add that Jerome himself excepts ordination from what elders can do. But he still puts the bishops' higher rank down to custom.

Systems that "oversell" a solution to the problem of interpretation

Supporting: Gavin Ortlund spoke of "different Christian traditions," and he added, "that's not really a jab or a criticism": these ambiguities "are there across the board in all of our traditions." Two examples, added by this article, show the point for Rome.

First, the Council of Trent (Session 4) forbids anyone, in matters of faith and morals, to interpret Scripture against the sense "which holy mother Church ... hath held and doth hold," or against "the unanimous consent of the Fathers." But on the main verse cited for the papacy the fathers did not agree, so the appeal to their unanimous consent gives no answer where it is needed most. Augustine wrote that he had taught both views of Matthew 16:18, that the rock was Peter and that the rock was Christ whom Peter confessed, and left it to the reader to choose. That leaves the sense the Church itself holds. The First Vatican Council says its reading is how Scripture "has always been understood by the catholic church" (Pastor Aeternus, chapter 1), which is the very claim in dispute.

Second, Rome has never published a complete official list of which papal statements are infallible. U.S. Catholic counts two, the definitions of 1854 and 1950, while the Jesuit theologian Klaus Schatz is reported to count seven.

Gavin Ortlund also rejected the picture of every Protestant as his own authority: if he denied the Trinity, "I would be barred from the Lord's supper" (at 15:17). But Protestant creeds and confessions are "fallible and therefore they're reformable in light of scripture" (at 20:30).

Old manuscripts with and without the deuterocanonical books

Added: The great Greek Bibles do include deuterocanonical books (Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, among others), and Catholics rightly point to that. But what a manuscript contains does not settle what the church held as Scripture. These Bibles of the 300s and 400s do not match Rome's list either:

• Codex Sinaiticus contains 4 Maccabees, the Epistle of Barnabas, and part of the Shepherd of Hermas.
• Codex Alexandrinus contains all four books of Maccabees (Rome accepts only the first two) and the two letters of Clement (both incomplete), and its table of contents lists the Psalms of Solomon.
• Codex Vaticanus contains no books of Maccabees at all, though Rome accepts the first two.

If the contents of these codices defined the canon, Catholics would have to accept Barnabas and 3 Maccabees, and Protestants would have to accept the deuterocanonical books. They were collections of books in use, not rulings on the canon.

The canon came through a fallible process

Supporting: The words of Luke 24:44 are these:

These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.

Luke 24:44KJV

Israel kept the Old Testament without any infallible decree: "unto them were committed the oracles of God" (Romans 3:2). Jesus still held people to the Scriptures of their day, as Gavin Ortlund said, "without some infallible verdict." Many witnesses to the Old Testament canon, from Josephus and the early church down to the time of the Reformation, stand close to the Protestant list, especially those who looked into the Jewish canon:

• Josephus, the Jewish historian (about AD 95), counts 22 books and says the writings after the time of Artaxerxes are not held in the same authority.
• Melito, bishop of Sardis (about 170), wrote that when he went to the East he learned the books of the Old Testament accurately. His list has none of the deuterocanonical books ("Wisdom also" there is another title for Proverbs), though it also leaves out Esther.
• Athanasius (367) placed Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, and Tobit outside the canon, as books "appointed by the Fathers to be read" by new believers. (He put Esther in that group too, and counted Baruch and the Epistle of Jeremiah as part of Jeremiah.)
• Jerome said the church reads Wisdom and Sirach "for the strengthening of the people, (but) not for confirming the authority of ecclesiastical dogmas."
• Gregory the Great, in his Moralia on Job (written about 579–595), quoted 1 Maccabees as one of the books "though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edifying of the Church."
• Cardinal Cajetan, the Catholic scholar who examined Martin Luther, still followed Jerome on this at the end of his life (he died in 1534). He wrote that Judith, Tobit, and Maccabees "are counted by St Jerome out of the canonical books."

The Council of Florence listed these books in its decree for the Coptic church in 1442, but the Catholic Encyclopedia says Florence "did not formally pass on their canonicity." The first decree that bound the canon under anathema came at the Council of Trent in 1546. The Catholic Encyclopedia calls Trent's decree "the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon." For 1,500 years Catholics, too, had no list defined under anathema. The New Testament is the same: Gavin Ortlund noted that its canon "was sort of finalized maybe around 4th century," and "it wasn't through an ex cathedra statement from a pope or an ecumenical council." (The other side should be stated too: the North African councils of Hippo and Carthage, around 393–419, and Augustine did count the deuterocanonical books, and in 405 Pope Innocent I sent a list containing them to the bishop of Toulouse. Catholics answer that a canon can be widely held without an anathema. Still, the early church was divided on these books, and no binding decree settled the question.)

Gavin Ortlund grants that Protestants have work to do here: "We've gone from they're not at the same level of scripture to we've completely avoided them in many cases and that's unfortunate" (at 24:15).

Added: Two of these books say things that sit oddly with a claim to prophetic standing. 1 Maccabees says that in its own day there was no prophet (1 Maccabees 4:46; 9:27; 14:41). The writer of 2 Maccabees ends with an apology that Protestants find hard to square with a book given by inspiration:

And if I have done well, and as is fitting the story, it is that which I desired: but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I could attain unto.

2 Maccabees 15:38

(Catholics answer that a book need not come from a prophet to be inspired, and that Paul too speaks humbly: "to the rest speak I, not the Lord" (1 Corinthians 7:12). But Josephus, above, gives this same lack of prophets as his reason for holding the later writings lower.)

The main text cited for purgatory (a final cleansing after death for those who die in God's friendship but still imperfectly purified), 2 Maccabees 12:39–45, is about Jewish soldiers who died with objects dedicated to idols hidden under their coats (12:40). In Catholic teaching idolatry is grave matter, and someone who dies in mortal sin does not go to purgatory. (A sin is mortal only with full knowledge and deliberate consent, Catechism 1857.) So the Catholic reading has to assume that these soldiers, who died wearing things consecrated to idols, either did not sin mortally or repented before they died. Catholics point to verse 45, where Judas thought of "great favour laid up for those that died godly," and the verse goes on, "Whereupon he made a reconciliation for the dead." So Judas hoped this for them. But the writer never says these men died godly. The one thing he says about how they died is that the hidden idol-things were "the cause wherefore they were slain" (12:40).

A small correction: "itching ears" is 2 Timothy 4

Correction: Both ideas are in Paul's second letter to Timothy. "In the last days perilous times shall come" is 2 Timothy 3:1, and the itching ears are in the next chapter:

For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears

2 Timothy 4:3KJV

The same reference comes up again at 34:23.

Part 3 — Peter and the Papacy

Matthew 16: "On this rock"

Supporting: "Christ is that rock" was Bryce Crawford's summary. Gavin Ortlund's own reading was more careful (at 48:14): Peter spoke for the disciples, "representing the church," so that the rock "is Peter in this confession but it ultimately is oriented onto Christ." Rome teaches that the Lord "made Simon alone, whom he named Peter, the 'rock' of his Church" (Catechism 881), and also that "On the rock of this faith confessed by St. Peter, Christ built his Church" (Catechism 424). So the real question is whether Peter holds this role in an office that passes on. On the foundation, Scripture speaks plainly:

For other foundation can no man lay than that is laid, which is Jesus Christ.

1 Corinthians 3:11KJV

Peter himself calls Christ the living stone and the chief corner stone (1 Peter 2:4–8). When the apostles are called a foundation, it is all of them together, with Christ as the corner stone: "built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone" (Ephesians 2:20). The New Jerusalem has twelve foundations with "the names of the twelve apostles" (Revelation 21:14).

Catholics point out that the keys of the kingdom are given to Peter alone (Matthew 16:19), and they read them against Isaiah 22:22, where the key of the house of David passes from Shebna to Eliakim, as an office with successors. But Isaiah describes one steward replacing another, and Matthew 16 mentions no successor. The binding and loosing that Matthew 16:19 joins to the keys is given to all the disciples two chapters later. Rome says it went to the apostles "joined with their head" (Lumen Gentium 22), but Jesus names no head:

Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven: and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.

Matthew 18:18KJV

At the Last Supper the apostles were still arguing over "which of them should be accounted the greatest," and Jesus answered, "But ye shall not be so" (Luke 22:24–26). In the same scene he told Peter, "when thou art converted, strengthen thy brethren" (Luke 22:32), a verse Catholics often cite. Yet when the question of rank came up, Jesus answered with servanthood, not with Peter's office. (Catholics note that verse 26 speaks of "he that is chief," but Jesus does not name Peter or say that any office passes on.) If Matthew 16 had made Peter their ruler, he could simply have pointed back to it.

Augustine's sermons on John fit the reading Gavin Ortlund described: when Peter received the keys "he represented the universal Church," and Christ builds on the rock "which thou hast confessed," for "the Rock (Petra) was Christ." (The same passage speaks of "the primacy of his apostleship," as Catholics rightly note.) In fairness, Augustine also taught at times that Peter was the rock, and late in life he left the reader to judge which reading was more probable (see 19:45 above). He gave the reading that points to Christ often, as in this sermon.

Paul also says Peter's apostleship was to "the circumcision," the Jews, while his own was to the Gentiles (Galatians 2:7–8). Catholics answer that this divided the mission, not the authority (see Acts 15:7). Even so, it fits poorly with Peter as the permanent ruler of a mostly Gentile church at Rome.

The filioque

Added: The filioque ("and the Son") is the phrase the Latin West added to the Nicene Creed: the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son. Rome's own handling of it has changed. Pope Leo III (about 810) agreed with the teaching but refused to add the phrase to the Creed, and had the Creed engraved in Greek and Latin on silver shields at St. Peter's without it. Rome added it to the Creed at Mass around 1014, under Pope Benedict VIII. Later councils that Rome counts as ecumenical then made the doctrine binding: Lyons II (1274) condemned "all who presume to deny that the holy Spirit proceeds eternally from the Father and the Son," and Florence (1439) declared that the explanation of those words was "licitly and reasonably added to the creed." Those councils did not require the Greeks to insert the phrase, though Florence's 1439 bull for the Armenians did order the Creed with "and the Son" to be sung or read "in all Armenian churches." Rome now allows Eastern Catholic churches to recite the Creed without it. So Rome holds the doctrine as dogma while letting the phrase drop in joint prayers. John Paul II recited the Creed in Greek with Patriarch Bartholomew in 1995. The event Bryce Crawford appears to mean is Pope Leo XIV's visit to Nicaea (Iznik) on November 28, 2025, where the joint recitation of the Creed did not include the filioque. Rome's own account, in a 1995 Vatican statement, is that the Greek and Latin words for "proceeds" differ in meaning, so the two forms need not conflict. Still, this is the tension Bryce Crawford noticed: a phrase Florence defended as legitimately added is now left out when popes pray the Creed with the Orthodox, who do not use it, while the doctrine it states remains binding.

"No hint of an office associated with Peter"

Supporting: The New Testament treats Peter as a leading apostle. It nowhere describes him holding an office over the other apostles. (Catholics point to Matthew 10:2, where Peter is listed "first," to Luke 22:32, to Jesus' charge "Feed my sheep" in John 21:15–17, and to Peter's leadership in Acts 1–5. Those texts show a leader, but none of them names an office that passes to a successor. The nearest text is Acts 1:20, "his bishoprick let another take," but that fills the place of Judas, and no successor is named when James the brother of John is killed in Acts 12:2.)

• Peter calls himself a fellow elder:

The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, and a witness of the sufferings of Christ

1 Peter 5:1KJV

• Paul corrected him in public: "But when Peter was come to Antioch, I withstood him to the face, because he was to be blamed" (Galatians 2:11). (Catholics answer that this was a fault of conduct, not of teaching, and Rome does not claim that a pope cannot sin.)
• At the Jerusalem council, Peter spoke, but James spoke last and proposed the decision the council adopted: "Wherefore my sentence is, that we trouble not them, which from among the Gentiles are turned to God" (Acts 15:19; see 15:22). Peter's speech came after "much disputing" (15:7), and James built on what Peter had said (15:14). But the closing proposal was James's, and the decrees went out as "ordained of the apostles and elders" (Acts 16:4; see 15:22).
• Paul lists the leaders in Jerusalem as "James, Cephas, and John, who seemed to be pillars" (Galatians 2:9), with James first.
• The apostles sent Peter and John to Samaria (Acts 8:14). That is an odd way to treat a ruler (compare John 13:16), though being sent does not settle rank by itself.
• Paul's letter to the Romans names 26 people in its greetings (Romans 16:3–15) and never mentions Peter. The letters Paul wrote in prison, traditionally from Rome, never mention Peter leading the church there either. Near the end Paul writes, "Only Luke is with me" (2 Timothy 4:11). The letter's closing greetings name Linus and other believers at Rome (4:21), but not Peter. None of this shows that Peter never reached Rome: Catholics read "Babylon" in 1 Peter 5:13 as Rome, and Irenaeus (about 180) says the apostles "committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate." The point here is narrower: Paul's letters never show Peter as head of the church at Rome.

When did Rome get a single bishop?

Supporting: Francis A. Sullivan, a Jesuit who taught for decades at the Gregorian University in Rome, concluded in From Apostles to Bishops (2001) that "the church of Rome was still led by a group of presbyters for at least a part of the second century." (Sullivan himself goes on to argue, on theological grounds, that the Holy Spirit guided the church in receiving the bishops as successors of the apostles, while granting that "history alone cannot give the answer.") The earliest writings from and to Rome fit his historical finding:

• The letter known as 1 Clement (about AD 96) is sent by "the church of God which sojourns at Rome." It names no bishop, and it uses "bishops" and "presbyters" for the same office.
• Ignatius of Antioch (about 110) urges every other church he writes to obey its bishop. His letter to the Romans is the only one of his seven letters that mentions no bishop of the church it is written to. The only bishop in it is Ignatius himself.
• The Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the 100s, speaks of "the elders that preside over the Church," plural. (The same passage gives a man named Clement the duty of writing to churches in other cities, but it does not call him a bishop.)

Catholics reply that 1 Clement 44 says "other approved men should succeed them in their ministry," and that Irenaeus (about 180) names Linus as the first to receive the office of bishop at Rome. But 1 Clement speaks of succession in the ministry, not of one bishop over Rome. Irenaeus does give one bishop at a time, with Clement "in the third place from the apostles," but he writes about eighty years after Clement, and the writings nearer Clement's time, listed above, do not show a single bishop at Rome.

Infallible teaching and supremacy over the whole church

Added: The First Vatican Council (1870) claims both for the pope, and the record of the early church is hard to fit with either.

• A pope condemned as a heretic. The Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III, 680–681) condemned Pope Honorius I as a heretic for supporting the Monothelite error, the teaching that Christ has only one will. Pope Leo II confirmed the anathema (the church's formal condemnation). The Greek copy of his letter condemns Honorius for allowing the purity of the Roman church to be polluted; the Latin copy says Honorius "by profane treachery attempted to subvert the immaculate faith." For centuries afterward, the oath taken by a newly elected pope, recorded in the Liber Diurnus, anathematized Honorius "because he assisted the base assertion of the heretics." Catholic apologists answer that Honorius never spoke ex cathedra (officially, defining doctrine for the whole church), and that Leo II elsewhere faulted his negligence rather than calling him a heretic. Even so, an ecumenical council called a pope a heretic over what he wrote to a patriarch on a question of doctrine, and later popes confirmed the anathema.
• "Bishop of bishops." At the Council of Carthage in 256, during his dispute with Pope Stephen, Cyprian said that none of the bishops sets himself up as a bishop of bishops or forces his colleagues to obey him. Firmilian, bishop of Caesarea in Cappadocia, wrote to Cyprian rebuking Stephen sharply. (The dispute was over whether people baptized by heretics must be baptized again, and later practice followed Stephen. Catholics note that Stephen claimed "the succession from Peter" and that Cyprian elsewhere calls Rome "the throne of Peter." But these bishops did not treat the claim as binding.)
• "Universal" bishop. In the 590s the Patriarch of Constantinople used the title "ecumenical" (universal) patriarch. Pope Gregory the Great objected and wrote to the emperor that whoever calls himself universal priest is a forerunner of Antichrist. Catholics answer that Gregory rejected a title that seemed to make one bishop the only bishop, not Rome's primacy. He did write that "the care of the whole Church" was committed to Peter. But he also refused the title for himself: when the bishop of Alexandria called him "Universal Pope," he answered, "my honour is the honour of the universal Church." The Catechism now says the pope enjoys, by divine institution, "supreme, full, immediate, and universal power in the care of souls" (paragraph 937). It is fair to ask how far that is from what Gregory would not accept.
• Rome as one see (bishop's seat) among several. Canon 6 of the Council of Nicaea (325) keeps Alexandria's authority over Egypt, Libya, and Pentapolis "since the like is customary for the Bishop of Rome also." Canon 28 of the Council of Chalcedon (451) says the fathers gave Old Rome its privileges "because it was the royal city," and says nothing of Peter. (Pope Leo I rejected that canon. The same council cried out, "Peter has spoken thus through Leo," and Catholics read canon 6 of Nicaea as a rule about regional authority, not a limit on Rome's primacy.)

Part 4 — The Saints and Mary

Praying to saints and bowing before statues

Supporting: Gavin Ortlund answered yes. He sees no "examples or exhortations" for it in Scripture (at 53:45) and no "divine authorization" for it (at 54:20). Scripture points the same way:

For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus

1 Timothy 2:5KJV

Christ "ever liveth to make intercession" for those who come to God by him (Hebrews 7:25). The Spirit himself intercedes for us (Romans 8:26–27). Believers are told to come "boldly unto the throne of grace" (Hebrews 4:16).

Rome says the saints "do not cease to intercede with the Father for us," offering the merits they gained on earth "through the one mediator between God and men, Christ Jesus" (Catechism 956). Catholics compare this to asking a friend on earth to pray (1 Timothy 2:1), and they point to "the prayers of saints" in Revelation 5:8. Gavin Ortlund agrees that "we should ask for the intercession of others," but says God has not revealed "any mechanism of communication from earth to heaven to heavenly beings other than God" (at 56:05). And Revelation 5:8 shows no one on earth speaking to the elders.

Prayers to saints are often silent, in the mind. But Scripture says only God can read the heart:

then hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive, and do, and give to every man according to his ways, whose heart thou knowest; (for thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men;)

1 Kings 8:39KJV

Catholic theologians answer that the saints know these prayers in God (Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Supplement q.72 a.1). But Scripture does not say so, and Gavin Ortlund sees no "divine warrant" for it (at 54:53).

Before Christ came, Isaiah did not picture the departed patriarchs as listening: "though Abraham be ignorant of us, and Israel acknowledge us not: thou, O LORD, art our father" (Isaiah 63:16). Scripture forbids consulting the dead (Deuteronomy 18:10–11; Isaiah 8:19). Catholics answer that asking a saint to pray is not the same as consulting the dead, and that is fair as far as it goes. But Scripture never gives a single example of a believer rightly addressing a departed saint.

Both speakers were careful here. Bryce Crawford called it "a big Protestant misconception" that these people are worshiping saints (at 52:20). Rome gives sacred images "respectful veneration," "not the adoration due to God alone" (Catechism 2132). Gavin Ortlund's reply is that "those are different terms, but sometimes they look pretty similar" (at 55:37).

On bowing (at 55:42), the apostle who refused it was Peter himself:

And as Peter was coming in, Cornelius met him, and fell down at his feet, and worshipped him. But Peter took him up, saying, Stand up; I myself also am a man.

Acts 10:25–26KJV

Paul and Barnabas did the same (Acts 14:14–15), and so did the angel who spoke to John: "See thou do it not... worship God" (Revelation 22:9).

On the gap between official teaching and what happens in the pews (at 56:37), Scripture gives a warning. The bronze serpent was made at God's own command (Numbers 21:8–9). Centuries later King Hezekiah "brake in pieces the brasen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it" (2 Kings 18:4). A God-given object became an idol through popular devotion.

Some early writers held the same line. Origen (about 248), writing about angels, said that every prayer is to be sent up to God through Christ the High Priest. (He also taught that angels pray alongside believers, "even when not asked.") Gavin Ortlund dates the first "unambiguous evidence" of prayers to heavenly beings to the late 200s, "writing on a wall" (at 54:03). Later writers went further: between 369 and 374 Gregory of Nazianzus spoke to his departed sister in a funeral sermon and asked her to accept his words. When Epiphanius heard, in the 370s, of women offering cakes to Mary, he answered that Mary should be honored, but the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit worshiped, and that no one should worship Mary. (Rome agrees: the Catechism says devotion to Mary "differs essentially from the adoration" given to God, paragraph 971.)

Added: The problem is not only in popular practice. It is in Rome's official prayers. The Salve Regina ("Hail, Holy Queen") calls Mary "our life, our sweetness and our hope." Scripture gives two of those titles to Christ: "When Christ, who is our life, shall appear" (Colossians 3:4); "Lord Jesus Christ, which is our hope" (1 Timothy 1:1). The Catechism says Mary is invoked under the titles "Advocate," "Helper," "Benefactress," and "Mediatrix" (paragraph 969). The Catechism adds that this "in no way obscures or diminishes this unique mediation of Christ, but rather shows its power" (paragraph 970). But Scripture gives the title of advocate (Greek paraklētos) to Christ, and to the Holy Spirit as "another Comforter" (John 14:16), never to Mary:

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous

1 John 2:1KJV

Does "full of grace" mean sinless?

Supporting: In Luke 1:28 the angel calls Mary kecharitōmenē, "highly favoured" in the KJV, "full of grace" in the Douay-Rheims and in the Hail Mary (the current American Catholic Bible has "favored one"). It comes from the Greek verb charitoō, "to show grace to." Paul uses the same verb for every believer: God "hath made us accepted in the beloved" (Ephesians 1:6; the Greek is echaritōsen, "graced us"). Catholics answer that Luke's form is stronger: it stands in place of Mary's name, for a grace already given and still in force. But the same form is used in Sirach 18:17, a book Rome accepts as Scripture, of any "gracious man," so the form alone does not mean sinless. The word describes God's favor on Mary. It does not say she never sinned. Mary herself called God her Savior:

And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

Luke 1:47KJV

Rome answers that God saved Mary by preserving her from original sin from the first moment of her conception, in view of Christ's merits (Pius IX, Ineffabilis Deus, 1854). But Scripture never says so, and Thomas Aquinas, who himself believed Mary never committed a sin, still taught that if she had never contracted original sin she would not have needed redemption by Christ (see 59:40 below).

Mary's other three dogmas

Gavin Ortlund first said that Mary is "such a model of faith," and that the title mother of God is something Protestants have historically "totally been on board with" (at 59:04).

Supporting, perpetual virginity: Matthew says Joseph took Mary as his wife:

And knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son: and he called his name JESUS.

Matthew 1:25KJV

The Gospels name Jesus' brothers, James, Joses, Simon, and Judas, and mention his sisters (Matthew 13:55–56; Mark 6:3). Paul met "James the Lord's brother" (Galatians 1:19). "For neither did his brethren believe in him" (John 7:5).

Tertullian, writing in the early 200s, treated them as Jesus' real brothers alongside a real mother, and wrote that Christ was born of a virgin "about to marry once for all after her delivery." (On Monogamy comes from his years with the breakaway Montanist movement, so Catholics discount it, and the Second Council of Constantinople in 553 calls her "ever-virgin.")

Rome answers these verses directly. The Catechism says the Church "has always understood these passages as not referring to other children of the Virgin Mary," that James and Joseph are "the sons of another Mary" (see Matthew 27:56), and that they are "close relations of Jesus, according to an Old Testament expression" (paragraph 500). Abram did call his nephew Lot his brother (Genesis 13:8), and "till" does not by itself say what happened afterward, so no one verse settles it. But the Gospels never say the James and Joses of Matthew 27:56 are the Lord's brothers, they set his brothers beside his mother again and again (Matthew 12:46; John 2:12), and the New Testament has a word for cousin (anepsios, the KJV's "sister's son" in Colossians 4:10) that it never uses of them.

Supporting, several fathers saw sin in Mary: Gavin Ortlund said many early writers "seem to just assume that Mary was sinful," and he cited John Chrysostom on her "vain glory," naming John 2 and Luke 2 (at 1:01:04). On John 2 the passage is Chrysostom's Homily 21 on John (on the wedding at Cana). Another clear passage is his Homily 44 on Matthew (on Matthew 12:46–49). Others read Simeon's words to Mary, "a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also" (Luke 2:35), as a time when Mary stumbled at the cross. Origen says she was "scandalized" there like the apostles, Basil the Great says she would be "reached by some doubt," and Cyril of Alexandria calls the Lord's death "an offence unto His mother." To be fair, Augustine excepted Mary when he wrote about sin, "out of honour to the Lord," and spoke of the "abundance of grace for overcoming sin in every particular" given to her. But Augustine was speaking of her actual sins, not of the immaculate conception. The Catechism says the Fathers of the Eastern tradition call her "free from any stain of sin" (paragraph 493).

Supporting, the immaculate conception: Some of Rome's own greatest saints opposed it. Bernard of Clairvaux wrote against the new feast of Mary's Conception around 1140. (He still held that her life was kept "pure from all sin.") Thomas Aquinas taught that Mary was made holy in the womb after she was conceived, because otherwise she would not have needed Christ to redeem her. (He also taught that she "committed no actual sin." Both men opposed the doctrine of her conception, not her holiness.) It became dogma in 1854. (Catholics answer that the date of a definition is not the date of a belief.)

Supporting, the assumption: Gavin Ortlund said that for three or four hundred years the people spoken of as taken to heaven are Enoch and Elijah, that the first text he can find is the heterodox Book of Mary's Repose, probably from the mid 200s, and that some scholars see real traction in the church only in the late 400s (at 1:00:28). Around 377 Epiphanius wrote that Scripture does not say whether Mary died or not, that he would not say either, and that "no one knows her end." He mentions no tradition that she was taken up to heaven, though he leaves open that she may not have died. (The dogma itself does not say whether she died: it says "having completed the course of her earthly life.") The Gelasian Decree, a list of books from the 500s that carries a pope's name, lists the book called the Passing (or Assumption) of Holy Mary among the apocryphal books the church does not receive. Rejecting the book is not the same as rejecting the belief, but it shows that an early account of the story was treated as apocrypha. The assumption became dogma in 1950.

Gavin Ortlund's concern is that by making these things "infallible and obligatory," Rome is "yoking people's consciences to things that just aren't true" (at 1:01:33). Pius XII wrote that whoever willfully denies the 1950 definition "has fallen away completely from the divine and Catholic Faith" (Munificentissimus Deus 45).

Part 5 — The Sacraments

The Eucharist and confession

Added, the Mass: Bryce Crawford named these two and moved on to marriage, so the conversation did not take them up. Rome teaches transubstantiation: at the consecration, "the whole substance" of the bread and wine is changed into Christ's body and blood, while the outward forms of bread and wine remain (Catechism, paragraphs 1376–1377). It also teaches that the Mass is a true sacrifice. Catholics do not say Christ dies again. The Catechism says the Mass makes present the one sacrifice of the cross (paragraphs 1366–1367). The Council of Trent also calls the Mass "a propitiatory sacrifice" that is offered "for the living and the dead for sins" (Session 22, canon 3). Protestants read Jesus' words about eating his flesh in light of what he says later in John 6:

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

John 6:63KJV

Catholics answer that Jesus says "the flesh," not "my flesh," after saying "my flesh is meat indeed" (John 6:55). But he himself says here that his words "are spirit."

In Matthew, after saying "this is my blood," Jesus still called the cup "this fruit of the vine" (Matthew 26:29). Mark has "the fruit of the vine" right after the same words (Mark 14:24–25), and Luke has a like saying earlier in the meal (Luke 22:17–20). After the Supper, Paul still calls it bread: "as often as ye eat this bread, and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come" (1 Corinthians 11:26). Catholics reply that the next verse makes the unworthy eater "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Corinthians 11:27). But that verse too still calls it bread. Scripture says Christ's one offering finished the work of taking away sins:

For by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified.

Hebrews 10:14KJV

"Now where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin" (Hebrews 10:18; see also 7:27; 9:25–28). Rome answers that the Mass is not a second offering: "the victim is one and the same," with "the manner alone of offering being different" (Trent, Session 22, chapter 2). But Hebrews sets the priests who stand "daily" against the one who "offered one sacrifice for sins for ever" (Hebrews 10:11–12). A daily offering made "for sins" is hard to fit with that.

Many early writers speak strongly of the Eucharist: Cyril of Jerusalem says "the seeming bread is not bread ... but the Body of Christ." Even so, some fathers spoke in ways that do not fit what later became transubstantiation. Augustine said Jesus' command to eat his flesh "is therefore a figure, enjoining that we should have a share in the sufferings of our Lord." Theodoret (about 447) wrote that the symbols do not leave their own nature after consecration but remain in their former substance. (He goes on to say that they "are worshipped as being what they are believed to be.") Pope Gelasius I (about 495; Bellarmine disputed that the work is his, but the Catholic editor Thiel ascribes it to him) wrote that the substance or nature of the bread and wine does not cease to be. (He also says the elements pass into the divine substance while keeping the property of their nature, and Catholic scholars read his "substance," and Theodoret's, as the outward qualities. But his plain words are that the substance of bread and wine remains, which later Catholic teaching denies.) The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) made the doctrine binding, using the Latin word transsubstantiatis, "changed in substance." The Council of Constance (1415) made it a law that lay people receive only the bread, while admitting that the sacrament "was received by the faithful under both kinds in the early church." (Since Vatican II, Rome again allows lay people to receive both.)

Added, confession: The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) made private confession to a priest at least once a year a rule for every Catholic who has reached the age of discernment. Rome's own Catechism says Irish missionaries took the "private" practice of penance to continental Europe in the seventh century (paragraph 1447). Scripture's command runs both ways among believers: "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another" (James 5:16). And the promise of forgiveness rests on God's faithfulness, with no priest named:

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

1 John 1:9KJV

Catholics point to John 20:23: "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained." Trent reasons that priests "could not have exercised this judgment without knowledge of the cause" (Session 14, chapter 5). But the New Testament never shows the apostles hearing private confessions and pronouncing absolution. Catholics point to Acts 19:18, but there the believers "confessed, and shewed their deeds" with no word of a priest or of absolution, and in 2 Corinthians 2:10 Paul is forgiving a man the church had disciplined. The New Testament shows the apostles carrying out their commission by preaching forgiveness in Christ's name to all who believe (Luke 24:47; Acts 10:43; 13:38–39).

The "sacrament" of marriage

Added: Bryce Crawford's question was about sexuality in today's culture, not about Rome's teaching on marriage. Gavin Ortlund answered it that way and said of Rome, "this is an area where we can learn from their tradition" (at 1:03:20). The dispute below did not come up.

Rome counts marriage as one of seven sacraments. The Council of Trent supported this from Ephesians 5:32, which the Latin Vulgate renders "This is a great sacrament," where the Greek has mystērion ("mystery"). The argument does not rest on the Latin word alone: Trent says Paul "intimates" the grace of marriage. But Paul says what the mystery is about: "This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church." He does not say that marriage gives grace.

At the same time, the Latin (Western) Church, with few exceptions, requires its priests to be unmarried, and no Catholic priest may marry after ordination. (Most Eastern Catholic churches ordain married men.) Peter was married. His mother-in-law appears in Matthew 8:14, and Paul says Peter took his wife with him on his travels:

Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?

1 Corinthians 9:5KJV

An overseer is to be "the husband of one wife" (1 Timothy 3:2). In the West, the Council of Elvira (about 300) already ordered bishops, priests, and deacons to abstain from relations with their wives and not to have children. The First Lateran Council (1123) ordered that marriages contracted by clergy in major orders be broken, and the Second (1139) declared such marriages no marriages at all.

Rome treats this as discipline, not doctrine: the Catechism notes the East's "different discipline" (paragraph 1580), and Catholics point to those who remain unmarried "for the kingdom of heaven's sake" (Matthew 19:12). The Protestant point is only that this is a calling, not a rule for an office Scripture opens to married men.

A small correction: "but ye are washed" is 1 Corinthians 6

Correction: The list of sins followed by "but ye are washed" is 1 Corinthians 6:9–11:

And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.

1 Corinthians 6:11KJV

Part 6 — Salvation and Assurance

"I'm a Protestant, but Catholicism is 1,000% true. Am I in trouble?"

Added: On Rome's own terms, Gavin Ortlund's answer is right. He said he is thankful for this strand of Vatican II, and the line he drew is the line the Catechism draws (paragraph 846, below). He added that the institution you are under "is not the ultimate arbiter for your salvation" (at 1:36:43). Rome would not put it that way, since paragraph 846 calls the Church "necessary for salvation." And its earlier teaching has been narrowed in how it is applied, never formally withdrawn.

• Pope Boniface VIII's bull Unam Sanctam (1302) declares that it is absolutely necessary for salvation for every human creature to be subject to the Roman Pontiff.
• The Council of Florence (1442) taught that pagans, Jews, heretics, and schismatics who are outside the Catholic Church will go into everlasting fire unless they are joined to it before the end of their lives. (The Catechism today defines heresy as "obstinate" denial of a truth that must be believed, paragraph 2089.)
• The Catechism today draws the same line Gavin Ortlund drew: those who know the Catholic Church was made necessary by God, and still refuse to enter it or remain in it, could not be saved (paragraph 846). The next paragraph adds that this "is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church" (847). Quoting Vatican II's Unitatis Redintegratio 3, it says that "one cannot charge with the sin of the separation those who at present are born into these communities," and that "all who have been justified by faith in Baptism are incorporated into Christ; they therefore have a right to be called Christians" (818). Catholics would say the old teaching was explained, not changed, and the limit is older than Vatican II: in 1863 Pius IX taught that those in "invincible ignorance" who live honest lives "are able to attain eternal life" (Quanto Conficiamur Moerore 7).
• Trent's anathemas against justification by faith alone as the Reformers taught it (see 11:38 above) still stand.

Bryce Crawford then asked whether the same answer holds for a Catholic who dies tonight (at 1:37:15). That was not answered directly, but Gavin Ortlund had just said that "ultimately what it comes down to is your heart before Christ" (at 1:37:04).

Bryce Crawford's fear of not being sincere enough

Added: Gavin Ortlund answered that "ultimately it's not about even our degree of sincerity" (at 1:39:28). Here the two systems differ. The Council of Trent denies that a believer can have the certainty that would settle this fear. (Catholic teaching allows a hopeful confidence, but not the certainty of faith.) It teaches that no one can know with the certainty of faith that he has obtained the grace of God (Session 6, chapter 9), and pronounces anathema on anyone who claims absolute certainty that he will persevere to the end, unless he has learned it by special revelation (canon 16). Trent places the doubt on the believer's side, not God's: "no pious person ought to doubt of the mercy of God, of the merit of Christ," but each one, looking at "his own weakness and indisposition, may have fear."

Scripture speaks to that fear. Canon 16 is about perseverance to the end. These verses are about what a believer has now, and they rest it on Christ's word, not on his sincerity:

These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

1 John 5:13KJV

Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life.

John 5:24KJV

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus

Romans 8:1KJV

Catholics point to Paul: "I know nothing by myself; yet am I not hereby justified" (1 Corinthians 4:4), which sounds much like Bryce Crawford's fear. But Paul is saying that his own conscience cannot clear him, not that Christ's promise is uncertain.

"It's the object of your faith"

Supporting: Gavin Ortlund's picture, just before this, was the Israelites crossing the Red Sea: some "might be tiptoeing," others "brazenly, confidently going through," but "either way, you get through" (at 1:40:50). This article adds a second picture, one Jesus used himself:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

John 3:14–15KJV

A dying Israelite was healed by looking at the bronze serpent (Numbers 21:8–9). It was God's provision that healed him, not how strongly he looked.

Added: The conversation did not reach purgatory, but Protestants press this truth there too. Rome also says Christ is the object of saving faith, and it says that all who die "in God's grace and friendship, but still imperfectly purified, are indeed assured of their eternal salvation; but after death they undergo purification" (Catechism 1030). Catholics point to 1 Corinthians 3:15, "he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire." But that fire tries each man's "work" (1 Corinthians 3:13).

Christ "by himself purged our sins" (Hebrews 1:3). "If we walk in the light," John says, "the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin" (1 John 1:7). The thief went from the cross to paradise the same day: "To day shalt thou be with me in paradise" (Luke 23:43). Paul was "willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord" (2 Corinthians 5:8), and he called it "far better" to depart and "be with Christ" (Philippians 1:23). (Rome agrees that those who die "perfectly purified" are with Christ at once, paragraph 1023, so these verses alone do not settle it. But they name no stage in between.)

The Council of Trent teaches that a debt of temporal punishment for forgiven sins can remain, to be "discharged either in this world, or in the next in Purgatory" (Session 6, canon 30). The Catechism still teaches indulgences, remissions of that punishment drawn from the Church's "treasury" of the merits of Christ and the saints (paragraphs 1471, 1476–1478). It says this punishment is not "a kind of vengeance inflicted by God from without" but follows "from the very nature of sin" (1472). Even so, Trent calls it a "debt," and that is the point of dispute: Hebrews says that by one offering Christ "hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified" (Hebrews 10:14), and it mentions no debt left for believers to discharge after death.