Welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.

Hey everyone, welcome to the Council of Trend Podcast.

I'm your host, Catholic Answers Apologist and Speaker, Trent Horn.

And today I want to talk about one question that Protestants can't answer.

This is a follow-up from my conversation with Jeff and Steve Christie I had earlier

in the week about how Protestants can sometimes argue like atheists.

And at one point, Steve and I talked about Christian essentials.

Like, what are the essential doctrines of Christianity?

Because he said that, for example, belief in a young earth,

earth is less than 6,000 years old, is not an essential belief to Christianity.

But other beliefs are essential.

If you don't believe them, you're not a Christian.

But here's the problem for Protestantism.

What tells us, what authority tells us, what is required to be a Christian?

What is not required and what beliefs would disqualify you from being a Christian?

Like the Bible doesn't lay out a list saying, here is what you need to believe to be a Christian.

It doesn't have any sort of a list like that.

So you'll have Protestants disagreeing about these issues.

Now many Protestants will say, well, look, yes, there is disagreement in Protestantism.

But it's over secondary issues, like a young earth versus an old earth.

Whether certain charismatic gifts have continued since the first century or not.

Whether a church should be run led congregationally or with presbyters or an episcopalian,

...