In the Library: Ryan T. Anderson

 

Albert Mohler:

Welcome to In the Library. I’m Albert Mohler, and I’m very glad you’ve joined me and my guest, Dr. Ryan Anderson, who’s president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington DC. So Ryan welcomed in the library.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Thanks for having me. It’s a beautiful library.

Albert Mohler:

Well, very glad to have you here, and I’ve known you as a friend for a long time, and I want to just kind of start with what in the world is the Ethics and Public Policy Center?

Ryan T. Anderson:

Sure. So we’re a DC based think tank. This is our 49th year. So next year we’re celebrating our 50th. When the country celebrates the 250th, I think tank, I use two images to explain it to people. One is a fish tank–we are like fish scholars inside of a glass tank and we think big thoughts, but the second image is GI Joe. We’re like a combat tank. Rather than fighting Cobra from my childhood on GI Joe, our job is to think the big thoughts in the fish tank and then put them into action on the issues that matter most for human dignity, for human identity, for human flourishing. So, some think tanks, they focus on economics, they focus on foreign policy. Our primary focus, at least for this portion of our existence, is the human person, and that means all of the hot button issues.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s part of what makes me appreciate EPPC and from its inception, by the way, and even more so now into your leadership.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Thank you.

Albert Mohler:

You mentioned the think tank and kind of defined it, but I want to press that a bit.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Sure.

Albert Mohler:

We take think tanks for granted these days, but it wasn’t always so and so the think tank is really a mid 20th century development.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. And particularly so for conservatives. I mean technically like Brookings and there’s some of the left leaning think tanks that are older, but a AEI is one of the first–

Albert Mohler:

But even that’s basically a 20th century phenomenon

Ryan T. Anderson:

And it’s partly because we were locked out of the academy

Albert Mohler:

Right.

Ryan T. Anderson:

I think that’s now changing, but only somewhat. So we should talk about how that is and how that’s not changing. But there’s a reason why a AEI and the Heritage Foundation had to be founded. It’s that Harvard Kennedy School of Government–I’m Princeton graduate. The Woodrow Wilson School of Public Policy–they’ve now changed it. They got rid of Wilson’s name during all the whitewashing of history, but those were all left of center.

Albert Mohler:

Right. And under faculty control.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Exactly. Which means no one like me was ever going to be hired. There’s Robbie George at Princeton and there’s no one else.

Albert Mohler:

Right. And it hasn’t been anyone else for a very long time.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Correct.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And whether you’re thinking of Harvard’s Kennedy School, Princeton’s Woody Wood School, many of the other prominent public policy schools, they’re all left-leaning. And so conservatives who frequently you would go to a place like Harvard Study With Harvey Mansfield and then be unemployable.

Albert Mohler:

That’s right.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And lots of Harvey’s students ended up at a AEI doing foreign policy stuff. So yes. I mean, it’s a Heritage celebrated its 50th anniversary a couple years ago. We’re celebrating our 50th next year. It’s a unique moment in time in which if you wanted to be saying truthful things that were controversial, you weren’t going to be tenured in most institutions. You couldn’t be tenured here or hired. Yeah. Let alone tenured. I wouldn’t even be hired. Southern is unique in this sense, but think about some of your peer institutions that have not remained orthodox.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely. No, that’s the war we had to fight. Yeah. I want to go to the think tank thing a little further though. I think of the tank as something that emerged largely because government needed policy.

Ryan T. Anderson:

The RAND Corporation or something like that.

Albert Mohler:

And so the New Deal kind of spawned what became more liberal think tanks, or at least left of center administration, big government, big government–influencing big government–promulgating policy. But then the Cold War came and the federal government outsourced a lot of its scientific and technological needs to basically think tanks. I think of RAND in particular is kind of the classic example.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yeah, no, I think it’s exactly right on both the foreign policy side, but also all of the alphabet soup federal agencies that now would be governed by expert guidance here. I mean, I think this is actually a disaster for constitutional self-government that there was a fourth branch of government where the legislators would say, well, we’re going to pass something and just delegate all of our authority to members of HHS or DOE, wherever, HUD, et cetera, et cetera. But, we started a program at EPPC four years ago when I became president. It started out as the HHS accountability project. And then because it grew so much, it’s now the Administrative State Accountability Project.

Albert Mohler:

I’m all for it.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And what our scholars in that program do is so many other center right organizations either ignore the administrative state because they think it shouldn’t exist. Right? They think there should just be three branches of government. So because we don’t think this should exist, we’re ignoring it, or insofar as they engage, they engage on economic matters or national defense and foreign policy matters. We said, well look, the majority of our religious liberty headaches have come through the regulatory state. The majority of pro-abortion stuff post-ops that Biden did, he did through regulatory agencies: turning, for example, military bases into abortion clinics.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Congress didn’t vote for that.

Albert Mohler:

Especially in states where abortion was restricted or prohibited.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. And that’s how they opened up these abortion clinics in red states on the military facilities. Obamacare was passed by Congress. The HHS mandate was not voted on by Congress. There’s a reason that we refer to it as the HHS mandate, the contraception and abortifacient mandate was simply promulgated by the Department of Health and Human Services. So actually I had a donor who said, I donated millions of dollars suing the Obama Administration over the contraception mandate. What can you guys do to prevent it from coming back?

Albert Mohler:

Good question.

Ryan T. Anderson:

What do they say? An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. A couple thousand dollars of prevention is worth a couple million dollars of suing the government later on in life.

Albert Mohler:

And quite frankly, even when you win in many of those cases, it is four steps forward for the left. You win two steps back. It’s still two steps forward for the left.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And so for example, we’re now, what is it, nine months into the second Trump administration, the Obamacare contraception mandate still exists. The best that we could do. And look, we had lots of friends during the first Trump administration who tried. All they could do was broaden the religious liberty exemption from what’s fundamentally an unjust mandate. We realize that take the Green family, the owners of Hobby Lobby, they don’t object to contraception, they object to abortion. And four of the drugs that were mandated by HHS ab Exactly, they carry FDA labels saying that they can cause an early abortion. The fact that we have a federal mandate that employers have to cover cost-free coverage of pills that can kill– that’s unjust. And the best we’ve been able to do is brought on a religious liberty exemption. We haven’t been able to get rid of that.

Albert Mohler:

It’s an absolute atrocity. I want to go back in a few moments to the administrative state and to some of these issues. I want to go back to the think tank for a moment.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Sure.

Albert Mohler:

Because I think the average conservative fails to recognize how much power is in these think tanks to the extent that, well, I mean the left knows to talk about Project 2025 from the Heritage Foundation, et cetera. And the Heritage Foundation has a fascinating background, and I’ve done projects and events with Heritage. EPPC is a little bit different. EPPC you came about with what I would describe as kind of a deeper set of concerns. I hope I’m articulating this rightly. And yet I think the average conservative probably doesn’t know exactly how EPPC in that think tank world came to be and why.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Sure. So if you go back 49 years, our founder was Ernie Lefever, so a Protestant ethicist theological thinker, more focused–

Albert Mohler:

Cold warrior.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes, more focused on foreign policy at the time for that iteration. And some of our founding board members, people like Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Father Richard John Newhouse, Maryanne Glendon– I don’t know if she was one of the founding board members, but she’s a past board member. And the thought there was we’re in an existential battle for the West, and you had a lot of people part of the Blame America First Coalition, and that’s what Ernie and others were pushing back on. And so if you look at EPPC in the seventies and the eighties, Ronald Reagan speaks at our 10th anniversary gala. I’m preparing, we’re going to have a 50th gala.

Albert Mohler:

Hard to top that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And I was going to was like going through the archives. He’s like, wow. And so that was very much providing a theological, philosophical, ethical defense.

Albert Mohler:

The theological part is what I wanted you to say. And so EPPC, the Ethics and Public Policy Center from the beginning had a more self-consciously theological ambition.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Explicitly Judeo-Christian. I am not as enamored with that phrase. I prefer to say the Jewish and Christian traditions because I think there’s obviously overlap, but they’re also distinct. And we shouldn’t make it the least common denominator.

Albert Mohler:

No, but that’s not really how it began. So I will defend the term somewhat, and I’m going to use it without apology. I spoke to this at the National Conservatism Conference just a few weeks ago where we were both present. I think we have to speak of Judaism and Christianity and an allied theism with a moral worldview and even a shared ontology is what I was trying to talk about. But Judeo-Christian came out of a fairly robust argument. It’s been watered down, but it was a fairly robust argument. And so it didn’t mean the lowest common denominator. It did point to a Venn diagram of Judaism and Christianity in terms of moral concerns and worldview. And the fact that the shared territory in that Venn diagram is absolutely massive and directly relevant to the American experiment.

Ryan T. Anderson:

So you can see this actually in the history of EPPC’s first three presidents. First it was Ernie Lefever, then it was George Weigel, then it was Elliot Abrams. So you have a Protestant, a Catholic, a Jew, all of whom were not milquetoast versions, none of whom I should say were–they were authentic versions of their respective theological traditions. And they were outspoken in the public square. They thought that their theological tradition had something of importance to say to the public square that was unique and distinctive, but also they could lock arms in common cause. And I think that’s what’s to my mind’s most important, is that there are differences that make a difference. You and I don’t agree on everything, and we shouldn’t pretend like we do, but you and I agree on an awful lot that really matters when it comes to ethics and public policy,

Albert Mohler:

Especially in public policy, but even the deeper foundation. So I mean, you’re not just a little bit Catholic.

Ryan T. Anderson:

I hope not. No, something would’ve gone wrong.

Albert Mohler:

You’re the full body Catholic and I’m a full body Protestant, Baptist, and evangelical. And that’s part of the reason why we can have fun in this kind of conversation and frankly, work together in so many different things, speak together at an event as we’ve done many times. But when you look at EPPC, as you say, if you look at Lefever and then at, well, George Weigel, I mean a very interesting figure.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And he’s still with us.

Albert Mohler:

A biographer of John Paul II, not just a little bit Catholic, and Elliot Abrams, not just a little bit Jewish. I think it points to something I think American conservatives, American Christian conservatives– I think we have neglected the Old Testament roots of the classical tradition. And I think that’s one of the things we’re recovering now, which is why in my address I said, our civilizational heritage is based upon prophets and apostles and patriarchs.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Well, so a book that I was reading on the flight down here this morning just came out: The Jewish Roots of American Liberty. I think that’s the right title. But Bill McClay, one of the board members at EPPC, former EPPC fellow.

Albert Mohler:

It’s on my desk.

Ryan T. Anderson:

It’s a collection of essays. And so as a result, some will be better than others, but they’re going to be a lot that so far are really quite good. That’s good. And I think you’re exactly right that we should not think of America as primarily a Lockean liberal republic. We should think of it as a Hebrew republic. And there’s another book by a professor at Harvard, blanking on his name, I believe it’s titled The Hebrew Republic. And his argument there is how reformed theologians recovered some of the Hebraic political thought that then informed the founders. So it wasn’t like Jewish thought directly to the founders. It was Jewish thought via reformed theologians.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely. I mean, ask Calvin. John Calvin in terms of his appropriation of the Old Testament, even in his understanding, we could really go into a side angle here, but even in his understanding of the definition of Geneva as a republic, heavy Old Testament influence, unapologetically.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And probably a little more theocratic than you and I would necessarily want. I mean, so we should be debating the finer points of the political theology.

Albert Mohler:

But the historians of Western democracy, and by that I mean a constitutional republic, they credit Calvin was setting the foundation for much of that. So in other words, because of the role of the church, I’m not going to argue with your assertion, but he really set the stage for what a republic could look like.

Ryan T. Anderson:

This was probably first really, I impress upon me when I was at Princeton because of John Witherspoon, because of James Madison, because I mean, there’s a whole host of people who come through Princeton in this kind of Jonathan Edwards. I mean, there’s a whole host of people who come through a reformed theological tradition that have a heavy influence on both colonial thought and then founding generation thought.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yeah.

Albert Mohler:

Well, let’s keep talking about that for a moment and then we’ll turn to some of the other issues. When you do look at America in 2025, when we’re having this conversation, I am shocked at the intellectual dishonesty. I used to think it was something of an amnesia or a gap in knowledge. I now think it’s just intellectual dishonesty on the part of so many people on the left who just want to act as if this is nothing, nothing more than a Lockean experiment. And frankly, they’re way to the left of Locke, but they explicitly deny any biblical theological convictional foundation to the American Republic. And you’ve got to really do revisionist history to get there.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Very much so. I mean, so much so that you now see leading new atheists like a Dawkins. Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking of. Richard Dawkins saying, I’m a cultural Christian. I think the more intellectually honest people are now realizing, wait, we’re all running on the fumes of Christianity. And it really goes poorly when you only have fumes. You don’t actually have the gasoline. You can’t run a car on the fumes you need. And then I think you’re exactly right that there are people who are just intellectually dishonest. And then I think there’s probably a category particularly of students who just don’t know what they don’t know, and they were never taught the authentic. Another book that I’m currently rereading actually is Russell Kirk’s book, the Roots of American Order. And it’s about 400 pages before you even get to the founding.

Albert Mohler:

Right. I actually think that’s his most important book.

Ryan T. Anderson:

I think it’s a really good book.

Albert Mohler:

I think he’s more famous perhaps for his basic work on conservatism, but I think the Roots of American Order is one of his most unique contributions.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And I would say that the vast majority of Americans are entirely ignorant of that intellectual narrative that he does. And it’s particularly true for today’s students. I’m thinking even people my age, people older than me, you could get through a Princeton education and have never encountered that lineage of here. He starts with ancient Greeks, ancient Romans. He goes through Augustine right over behind me, as you pointed out. I mean, he goes through all of this and he shows here’s how the founders are drawing on all of these different strands into their thought. So yeah, I think some people just don’t know it. Some people like Richard Dawkins now are realizing that it’s a huge problem that they’ve been attacking the kind of roots of what they actually appreciate. And then some people are being just dishonest.

Albert Mohler:

You’re familiar with the Böckenförde dilemma?

Ryan T. Anderson:

No. Or maybe not under that name. Remind me or tell me.

Albert Mohler:

The German jurist, Böckenförde, and his, actually, you’ll take some delight in this. I actually got to the Böckenförde dilemma through Pope Benedict the 16th. He’s the one who cited, it’s the little book he did with Juergen Habermas.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Oh, sure. Yeah. The Dialectics of Secularism.

Albert Mohler:

Exactly. So he cites Böckenförde. And that really got me into it, and I spent a lot of money getting all those sources because they’re not cheap. But Böckenförde made the statement that Western civilization today is basically trying to cash checks on capital that it spent out long ago–that Christian foundation. And so it is trying to make judgements on the basis of metaphysical assumption it now denies. So you take the glory and the dignity of an American courtroom, and understand that a lot of people are going into that courtroom to demand that it undo everything that made that courtroom possible. All the metaphysical prerequisites, they want to deny–ontological truth, all of it. Justice is something more than a social construct. They want the goods of our civilization. They just want to destroy the foundation entirely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yep. It’s another book that back before he was Pope, so just when he was Joseph Ratzinger, he did with, I think it was Marco Pera, and it was titled Without Roots. And that’s the image that you just described to me was you want the grass tops, you don’t want the roots, you want the flowers from the trees. You don’t want the roots. I think it was something like Europe without roots. And the idea being that you guys want all of the fully matured, ripened fruit that grows off of the Judeo-Christian tree, but you want to deny all of the metaphysical and theological foundations, the roots that got us there.

Albert Mohler:

Well, Ratzinger saw a lot of this very early, and there’s a strange intersection in my life. So I’m a Baptist Baptist, Protestant Protestant – son of the Reformation. I did some of my external doctoral work in a Catholic institution studying Roman Catholic theological method, by intention. So I did two doctoral seminars and I had to read theologians, Catholic theologians. And so I did three, and then it turned into four. Okay. So it was Carl Ronner–

Ryan T. Anderson:

I’m sorry

Albert Mohler:

I was too, trust him. And then Bernard Lonergan, sorry again,

Ryan T. Anderson:

Although mixed bag.

Albert Mohler:

Yes. But so dense

Ryan T. Anderson:

Very dense.

Albert Mohler:

If he had been able to express himself in simpler language, it would’ve been better.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Did you read his book Insight at all?

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, it was brilliant hermeneutical, epistemological stuff in there, but not distinctively Christian necessarily. But anyway, and then David Tracy, recently deceased by the way, kind of a Catholic tillek way out there on the left. But I saw the response of Ronner to Ratzinger, and I thought, okay, now I want to track that down. So I started reading Ratzinger, and the professors were very liberal Catholics, I mean extremely liberal Catholics And they hated Ratzinger. And I thought, okay, well now I’m interested because, so I started reading Ratzinger and I was absolutely fascinated. I had no idea he was going to become Pope, but I want to credit him as saying he was there, and by the way, he was more liberal himself. There’s a conservative turn in Ratzinger, which you can see in his writings, kind of like Irving Crystal or someone mugged by reality. And Vatican II is part of that reality because he was kind of a young Turk could have gone very much on the left, I think.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Although he was always part of the Communio.

Albert Mohler:

As opposed to Consilium.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. Okay. So you got the distinction.

Albert Mohler:

Explain that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

In the aftermath of the second Vatican Council, there were two groups of–

Albert Mohler:

I’m arguing that his turning point was the observation of the second Vatican.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Only because I would say in my mind, he had a more exploratory stage of his theological career.

Albert Mohler:

Okay, I’ll give you that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Then I think at a certain point, he also realized we actually need the foundations and we have to kind of firm up the foundations. There’s a review that Rusty Reno wrote maybe 20 years ago now in First Things, and it was a review of a book on 20th century Catholic theologians, Fergus Kerr. The title of the book may just be 20th Century Catholic theologians. But Rusty’s point was that you had all of these guys who could just take for granted a certain Neo-Scholastic Thomism Orthodoxy, which would then allow them to do all of their kind exploratory work. And some of them remained Orthodox. And I think of de Lubac,  Hans Urs von Balthasar. And some of them kind of went off in not so orthodox ways.

Albert Mohler:

And not just kind of, and so I realize this is kind of in the weeds, but you did have in Germany, and the point I was going to make about Ratzinger is he’s in the front seat of intellectual history because so many of these things are happening in Germany. It’s true in the 19th century with the emergence of the university. Theological liberalism emerges out of the German theology faculties in the 19th century. And in Catholic circles there you did have a separation into basically two different faculties: one consilium and one communio.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yep.

Albert Mohler:

Okay, so explain that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Sure. I mean, so the more orthodox of the two is commun communio, and it’s still published,

Albert Mohler:

I would simply say by far. Not a close race.

Ryan T. Anderson:

The Orthodox one is communio. And then the other was at what point does Hans Kuhn come into the scene? Is he one of the founders?

Albert Mohler:

I associate him with it.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yeah. The history there’s blurry enough that I can’t–

Albert Mohler:

Certainly by the sixties and the seventies. Kuhn is very much representative of Consilium and explicitly revisionist Catholicism.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And this would be, so for viewers, these would be the Catholic theologians who are questioning whether or not there was a bodily resurrection, questioning the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, questioning Catholic priesthood. I mean, all sorts of theological debates that from an Orthodox Catholic perspective, you would think would’ve been settled quite a while ago.

Albert Mohler:

Well, I guess that’s a part of what makes the Evangelicals sitting across the table wonder how in the world it becomes so unsettled if you have a magisterium able to settle these things. Why didn’t it stay settled? Ask the Evangelical.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. Well, I will say the Catholic response to that would be 2000 years, and I can still point you to what orthodoxy is, even if it isn’t always lived out. So yes, we have obviously had ups and downs and we’ve had leaders of the church who were more vibrant and vigorous in their defense of the truth than others. But there is still, I mean, I’m thinking of this just in the form of something, even like the catechism of the Catholic church, I’m thinking of this. There hasn’t been formal embrace of heresy in the way that, obviously not your institution, but think about all the various… the First Baptist church of this city, the Second Baptist Church, the First Presbyterian, the Second Presbyterian…

Albert Mohler:

You really know how to hurt a guy. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But only to say that that principle of unity, I think actually is honored precisely in the weakest of its leaders. You can judge them as weak leaders. And you can judge heretical German bishops right now, and you can say that German bishop is a heretic.

Albert Mohler:

I’m headed there.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Because you actually have a canon of orthodoxy that you can point to.

Albert Mohler:

No, and that’s fully the answer I would expect. But what I’m looking for is the acknowledgement that liberal Catholic theologians are in rebellion against the church. It’s not just a disagreement. They’re in rebellion against the magisterial authority of the church. They’re an open rebellion against the catechism of the Catholic church that says homosexual acts are in all cases objectively disordered. They’re at war with this.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And in several instances, back when Cardinal Ratzinger was the head of the CDF, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, John Paul’s the Pope, I mean there were theologians that they had to silence in essence. What’s his name? He was teaching at the Southern Methodist–

Albert Mohler:

Charles Curran.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yeah. He used to be at the Catholic University of America.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And he wasn’t there any longer.

Albert Mohler:

The Catholic University of America was supposed to be the conservative answer.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. And I would say today it is; there were necessary reforms that have been made. But simply to say there are disciplinary mechanisms–to my mind, they haven’t been used enough. But on specific cases they have been used and it has kind of policed the boundaries so that both you and I can identify someone like Curran, and say he’s a dissenting theologian. And I think that’s important to actually be able, especially just for the clarity of the people in the pews to know who’s a theologian in good standing and who’s not. Can I cite something authoritative? And look, we obviously have the Bible, we obviously have the creeds, but having certain teaching, whether it’s in cyclicals or the physical book of the catechism, those are also helpful for you to say to your parish priests like you just preached a heretical homily. And let me show you why I haven’t heard a heretical homily in a long time. Because I would say most of the priests that we have in the United States today are from that JP II, Benedict generation. And the quality of the American priesthood is vastly superior to when I was a kid. Those were the guys that had their formation during the heavy days of the Second Vatican Council, where everyone thought the third Vatican council was right around the corner, and the church was going to be embracing liberalism.

Albert Mohler:

They also didn’t expect Vatican II to be ended the way it was ended?

Ryan T. Anderson:

No.

Albert Mohler:

In other words, it was brought to what many of the bishops thought was a hasty end. As a Protestant evangelical I look at that and I think the Pope was very concerned about where in the world this was going.

Ryan T. Anderson:

You don’t want to run away counsel.

Albert Mohler:

Especially because you had a transition in Popes.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. I think Humanae Vitae, even though it’s anticipated during the council–

Albert Mohler:

It wasn’t anticipated how it came out.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, the own expert commission was saying that you should actually quote “update the doctrine”. Right? We’ve heard that from democratic politicians, but there were forces inside of the church. To my mind, this is actually one of the signs that the Holy Spirit does protect the magisterium of the church when everyone else was going along with the winds of the culture, the Catholic church on ethical question after ethical question, both before I was born and during my lifetime hasn’t budged.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, that’s kind of where I want to press some questions. I’ve lost control of this. But my strategy for this conversation has gone out the window, partly because there’s so many things we both want to talk about. But I’m fascinated. I’m writing a book right now on many of these issues. And for one thing, one entire section is on how birth control came about. So Humanae Vitae is at the center of my concern, and I always ask my first things back in, I think the 20th anniversary, maybe the 30th anniversary, to write a piece. And here we are. Before we know it, it’s going to be the 60th anniversary. But it was really interesting because the commission is put together, and they are clearly going to arrive at a liberal settlement. And then if I had the story right, Pope Paul expanded the commission, which led people to believe he wasn’t satisfied with the direction of the commission, but still they were astounded–

Ryan T. Anderson:

But still the minority reported.

Albert Mohler:

And they were astounded when it actually came out. And so one of the things I’ve been looking at is responses in Europe and in particular in the United States to the release of Humanae Vitae. And it was hot.

Ryan T. Anderson:

If I remember the two reports, and it’s been a while since I’ve looked into this, but the precise question that he had posed to them, is the oral contraceptive pill a contraceptive in the way that we understand it, or is the mechanism something different? And if I remember correctly, the majority report says, yes it is contraceptive in the way that we understand it, but we should just update our teaching so that contraception is no longer a problem. Whereas the minority point was like, yes, it is a contraceptive, and yes contraception–

Albert Mohler:

And there was an American Catholic theologian who made the suggestion because the birth control came. Margaret Sanger, Katharine McCormick, that whole background, Pincus and all that–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Proportionalism in the theological method there–

Albert Mohler:

Right. One of the doctors who was involved in this, John Root, I think his name–Catholic. But he makes the argument that conception doesn’t have to be where it was assumed to be such that you could say the birth control pill is not a contraceptive, but it is something prior to that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Interesting.

Albert Mohler:

And so there’s the attempt to try to fudge all this. And so in other words, you just redefine what it is you redefine. And that’s what the medical profession has done.

Ryan T. Anderson:

So pregnancy starts at implantation, not fertilization or conception.

Albert Mohler:

Right. And that’s playing right into that old strategy. Just rename conception. Very frustrating because that means early abortions, abortifacient drugs, at least it is believed, some heavy progesterone forms of the pill, IUDs, things like that. They can be redefined, but they’re abortifacients. Or at least they have to acknowledge the potential that they are abortifacients.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But I would say even before we get to the abortion causing side of this, think about how much of sexual ethics is downstream from how you understand the nature of the marital act, the nature of the conjugal act. When the Bible speaks of the true becoming one flesh, in what respect are the two united as one flesh, right? And it’s that you have half a reproductive system. Your wife has half a reproductive system. I have half a reproductive system, my wife has, when we unite in that conjugal act, we actually form a complete reproductive system. Everything else, you have a complete digestive system, a complete respiratory system, complete circulatory system. We are created as a potential whole, we have a half with respect to the reproductive act. And so changing the nature of that act to make it by design non reproductive then had all of these downstream consequences.

Albert Mohler:

But see, I don’t think the average Christian, I don’t think the average Christian thinks the thoughts you’re talking about here.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, but Andrew Sullivan did that is so remember the famous New Republic story that he wrote titled Were All Sodomites Now. And there was a certain logic to what he’s getting at there.

Albert Mohler:

Well, unfortunately, I would say, because Andrew Sullivan’s brilliant, I faced off with him in some television events and things. He often says things out loud that are very clarifying even when you’re in radical disagreement with him.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes, because he’s intellectually serious.

Albert Mohler:

Ask him about the transgender issue and he’s a homosexual man. He’ll be very, very clear. I mean, I think one of those clarifying– you talking about ontology, which is what I am we talking about in part in the event we’re holding. You talking about ontology. Okay, so Andrew Sullivan, and I’m just going to quote him here. He says, it’s no fun being a gay man if you don’t know who a man is.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. By definition, what makes me gay is the fact that I don’t like people with those body parts.

Albert Mohler:

Right!

Ryan T. Anderson:

You cant tell me that that’s transphobic.

Albert Mohler:

It’s an absolute rejection of the complementarity you’re talking about, of the union you’re talking about. So what good is it if that? But again, that’s where rightly understood, and this is one of the principles of the natural law, or I would say a Protestant moral reasoning as well based on Scripture, is the fact that a consistent refutation of the truth helps to define our understanding of the truth. So error is to be avoided at all costs, but it is to be learned from at every forced opportunity.

Ryan T. Anderson:

About a decade ago, I was speaking at an ADF event. So this is back in the run up to Obergefell. And I just pointed out, and it’s only become to my mind, the statement has become more true over time. But I said, look, heresy always forces the church to develop a more robust understanding of orthodoxy. And so for the early church, all of the heresies were about the nature of God. They were Trinitarian heresies, they were Christological heresies. And because of the heretics, we got this wonderfully rich, robust like Augustinian, Athenasian understanding of Trinitarian, Christological orthodoxy.

Albert Mohler:

I’m getting ready to head to Turkey to speak at a conference on the 17th hundredth anniversary of Nicaea.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And that creed is in response to various heresies.

Albert Mohler:

Alright so we got to be careful here. So I make that argument when I teach historical theology or systematic theology, I have to say this carefully. I cannot say that error precedes truth. That’s false. That’s false. But the articulation of error often brings a clarifying articulation of truth. And so Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man homoousios with the Father–

Ryan T. Anderson:

From the get go.

Albert Mohler:

Right.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But we weren’t yet articulating it with as great precision.

Albert Mohler:

We didn’t know we had to say it that way until the heretic areas Arius committed heresy. And so now you have a statement you have to refute. And this is what I love seeing students catch onto. Okay, now you have a statement of error. Okay, now you refute it. You refute it. You’re saying things you didn’t know you had to say.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And so if the early church was largely focused on God, the heresies, and therefore orthodoxy’s response, you fast forward a thousand years reformation, counter reformation we’re on either side of who was the heretic, who was the orthodox. But I think we would agree the church as a whole came out with greater clarity and ability to articulate the truth because of that.

Albert Mohler:

Oh my goodness. I mean, so this is fun stuff and I love it again, when students see this, see this. Okay, I see this. What did Catholics believe Catholicism was? Well, you really don’t find out until the Council of Trent, the declaration and decrees of the Council of Trent.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Who gets anathematized.

Albert Mohler:

Right? I mean, the Catholic Church is saying things you never said before. Now, a lot of this was assumed, but you can’t, you can’t find a statement from the 13th century about justification, the way which you do in the decrees of the Council of Trent. So now the Council of Trent denies justification by faith alone, which it did not do officially until then. But the Protestant statements have– and I’m going to say this, as a Protestant who just got to declare these things in Geneva and Wittenberg, the articulation of Protestant understandings of these things also came out. You have Luther at Leipzig and Heidelberg, places like this in disputations, where in an argument he finds himself saying things that are now central to Protestant theology that no one had ever said before– didn’t have to until he had to.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Now, I would push back a little; I think if you read through some of the scholastics, both Albert the Great Thomas Aquinas and Anselm–

Albert Mohler:

I know where you’re going.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Some of this is there–

Albert Mohler:

But it’s not declared as the doctrine of the church.

Ryan T. Anderson:

None of those theologians have any magisterial authority. That’s fair. But all I was going, what I was trying to go with this–

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, you opened the door–

Ryan T. Anderson:

But if the ages of heresy was the Christological and Trinitarian, ecclesial, the nature of the church, soteriological, the nature of salvation. Today’s heresies aren’t primarily about the nature of God or the nature of salvation. They’re about the nature of man, right? And they’re all almost like anthropological heresies, which is forcing us as Christians to do a better job articulating both theologically and philosophically our anthropologies.

Albert Mohler:

Well, I agree with that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

That’s a good thing

Albert Mohler:

I have to say. I’ve got to press back. I don’t think any of the Christological and Trinitarian heresies have gone away.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No.

 

Albert Mohler:

They’re all there. And quite frankly, liberal everything is just a swamp of that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But think about it this way: Amazon won’t refuse to sell your book because of your Christology or your Trinitarian theology. Amazon will refuse to sell your book–

Albert Mohler:

And did. Your book, yes.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And that’s what I’m getting at. Obviously those old heresies don’t go away, but they’re not the focal point. They’re not the tip of the spear.

Albert Mohler:

Oh culturally, yeah. Obviously the faculty at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford don’t care about our Christological teachings. They care about our refutation of transgender ideology.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But the people who have the most orthodox theology of God and of salvation

 

Albert Mohler:

Not by coincidence.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Were the ones that were the first and the boldest to speak out against the transgender stuff. Because what we believe about God and the nature of reality, what we believe about the nature of salvation that influences what we believe about the nature of the creature made in the image of God.

Albert Mohler:

Amen. Because we start with metaphysical reality, ontological reality.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes.

Albert Mohler:

You know Ryan, just to make your point, theological liberalism and Protestantism really began to catch fire in the 19th century and spread from Germany across the Atlantic. And you had figures such as Harry Emerson Fosdick, famous preacher in New York City. And the thing I often point out to people is he was a heretic. And by any classical Christian definition, the Catholic church and confessional Protestants would be in agreement on that. But you know what? He was absolutely clear who a boy was and who a girl was. He was absolutely clear what marriage was. And it’s really interesting, and this is a part of what I’m writing about right now in terms of the book project. It’s really interesting how many of them said, we’ve got to ditch the theology to save the morality. And that was the German equation. We want to save Christian morality, the basic moral structure of Germany, Protestant Germany. So we’ll just ditch the super, we’ll just ditch the virgin birth, we’ll ditch inerrancy of Scripture, and there’s an anti-Judaism in it that’s fierce. So we’re certainly going to reject the Old Testament.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Marcionite heresy.

Albert Mohler:

Marcionite, and frankly just racist, antisemitic. And so we’re going to do that, but we’re going to do it to save religion, to save Christianity as a culturally stabilizing force. And you know what? You can’t have the one without the other as an Evangelical Protestant theologian. And I think it’s because, and I’ve kind of made a crusade on this, and that’s getting evangelical Protestants used to talking in ontological language. That’s the address I gave it Natcon just a few weeks ago, and the book I’m writing right now, and no one in the 19th century in Christian leadership was worried about losing a grip on ontology.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Actually, so I’ll slightly push back. I think Leo the 13th was, and the only reason I mentioned that is because the new Pope is Leo the 14th. If you read through some of Leo the 13, and he wrote dozens, possibly over a hundred if I remember correctly, in cyclicals. But things like Rerum Novarum, which is his big social questions, it is about social ontology.

Albert Mohler:

No, I guess I want you to continue that. But what I’m saying is on the left, on the left, there was not an acknowledgement that their rejection would eventually be ontological. Excuse me.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes. Yeah, I think that’s fair. I think someone like Leo saw where this was going. And if you think about Russ Hininger, Catholic scholar, he points out that what Leo is trying to articulate is that there are all of these social ontologies in between the individual and the state. And so think about who are some of his contemporaries? J. S. Mill–radical individualistic–

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Karl Marx, radical collectivist. And both of them are writing in the mid 18 hundreds. What Leo the 13th papacy is 1880s through early 19 hundreds. He’s in this ‘new you’ in which he sees that there’s both radical individualism, radical collectivism, and he’s trying to articulate the dignity of society, which is the title for Francis’s new book that just came out, the Dignity of Society, the idea that there are societies other than the state, they have ontological existence–

Albert Mohler:

Starting with marriage in the family.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Exactly. And that’s what I’ll be talking about tonight during

Albert Mohler:

Well, that’s what I’m talking about tonight.

Ryan T. Anderson:

We’re in typical territory. Yeah. They scheduled it well. Hopefully, I mean we won’t repeat each other, but we’ll compliment each other. So only in that sense, I’m guardedly optimistic and hopeful that part of the reason why Leo the 14th chose this name was that the 13th is writing in the context of the industrial revolution. Our new Leo is writing in the context of the technological revolution. And obviously the original industrial revolution was a technological revolution. It was a steam engine. But we now are living through tech technological revolution in the sense of digital technologies and what they could do in terms of how we understand what it means to be human, how we experience what it means to be human, how we live out, what it means to be human. There’s quite a bit at stake there because I think our technologies habituate us just as much as our theories do.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

We have to take both the material and the immaterial sides of reality seriously, both the ideas and the infrastructure. So anyway, just to say that in the 19 hundreds or 19th century, I think Leo saw the importance of the social ontology.

Albert Mohler:

Yes, so it’s very interesting that you do have some German protestants thinking some similar thoughts, but they’re not developing them.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Kuyper is probably, I guess he’s technically not German, right?

Albert Mohler:

No, he’s Dutch. And I was getting to Kuyper who clearly is trying to understand this because to get to Abraham Kuyper, he was also prime minister in the Netherlands, but had little political influence after that. As a matter of fact, there are a lot of evangelicals who are Kuyperians and cultural transformationists. I am not one of them. I’m influenced by Kuyper, but I’m very Augustinian in terms of my understanding of the culture. And the reason why I want to hold people from being too excited about Kuyperianism is that Kuyperianism died very quickly with very little lasting influence. But the point I wanted to make is that Roman Catholics, just because so much of your thinking is in natural theology, a natural law, you’re quite accustomed to thinking ontological categories. And the average evangelical Protestant Christian is not accustomed to thinking in those categories, often thing are Catholic categories. So I just want to go back and say, not letting you have them– they’re common categories. And I want to point out that explicitly both Luther in his Ordinum theory, and Calvin and the Institutes, they’re clearly affirming ontological claims, which they understand to be central. And so when Calvin begins the institutes and the knowledge of God the Creator, it’s just enormous scriptural affirmation of ontology.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And there have been several recent books on this. I mean most recently by our friend Andrew Walker, and this is why Andrew worked, but you could go back 15 years, Stephen Grable had a really good book on recovering the reformed roots of natural law. There were a couple other, a professor at Union University, I’m blanking on his name. But Andrew and I just co-edited a book. It was title natural Law, five Views. It’s in the bookstore. We took a picture there together just an hour ago. But we have someone doing the reform tradition, someone doing the Lutheran tradition. There’s classical tradition, the new natural law. And then Peter Leithart writes the anti-natural law, the theological critique of the natural law. And what we’ve been gratified by from the reviews and from readers saying, I didn’t know there was a Lutheran tradition of natural law. I didn’t know there was a reformed tradition of natural law. They thought it was only the classical kind of tradition, the new natural law and the anti natural law, those three views they were familiar with. They didn’t realize that not only is there a Protestant tradition of natural law, there are distinctive Protestant traditions. The Lutheran and the reform aren’t the same.

Albert Mohler:

They’re not the same, but they are complimentary. So I actually am reformed, but I use the Lutheran language. I far prefer to talk of creation, order, than natural law, simply because I don’t want to invoke the entire Thomistic understanding. And I want to keep the scripture principle very clear.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And if it’s a stumbling block for your listeners, by all means use the language that’s going to be most conductive.

Albert Mohler:

And I think creation order for us is a theologically prior because it’s not just what is found in nature, it’s what the creator embedded in nature and revealed in nature. Romans 1. While we think about this, let’s just talk candidly.

Ryan T. Anderson:

We haven’t been talking candidly?

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, no. We’ll talk candidly about some stuff that might get us in trouble. So I just want to say it looks like Catholicism’s in a mess. You are quite free to come back and say Protestantism is a mess, but in other words, so it does look like a mess. I’m looking at Germany and I’m looking at the liberal Catholics who appear to be basically defying Rome on the same sex marriage and all these other things. What do you do with a lot of state money, by the way?

Ryan T. Anderson:

Which is part of the problem there, because where the church is alive and growing is where the church is most orthodox. The church in Germany is dying. The church in the global south, the church in Africa, the parts of the church in the United States of America that is flourishing is the part of the church that’s the JP II generation. It’s the Ratzinger, Benedict generation, or it’s even the kind of the pre-Vatican II, the people who are going back to the traditional Latin mass generation–

Albert Mohler:

Which there’s been a little crack in the Vatican door right after Francis,

Ryan T. Anderson:

I think opening it up back, yes. Yeah,

Albert Mohler:

A little bit of crack in the door for the Latin mass.

Ryan T. Anderson:

I think it was this past Easter that the headlines in the papers were that this was the most adult conversions to Catholicism after a long downward sloping trend. The numbers are now coming up. So I guess what I would say is, look, the church is always in a mess because the church is human–

Albert Mohler:

That’s a very Catholic response.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But the church is also always on the path to glory because the church is also divine. It’s the body of Christ. It’s made up of flawed believers like me. It’s led by flawed believers like me, but it’s also, it truly is the body of Christ, and it is led and guided and protected by the Holy Spirit. And that’s why you’re always, throughout the entire 2000 year history of the church, you see these pockets of reform. You see the Franciscans, you see the Jesuits; various times where the papacy is in corruption and you need an order to reform it. There’s just other heresy, other kind of corruption, and you need a reform movement, whether it’s the Dominicans, the Jesuits, the Franciscans, the Augustinians. And most recently, I would say it’s some of the lay movements groups like Opus Dei groups like communion and liberation, where it’s saying the reform of the church isn’t just going to come just from the ordained clergy. This will be hopefully a very pro Protestant. There’s a priesthood of all believers, which means lay believers actually need to exercise ministry. You need to actually exercise apostolate. You need to actually be evangelizing. We are able to go into places that the ordained clergy can’t, and we’re supposed to be salt and light. And so I would say some of the best fruit to my mind coming out of some of the reforms of Second Vatican Council is more lay Catholics taking the Bible seriously, taking daily devotional and quiet times seriously, taking their prayer life seriously, taking Eucharistic adoration seriously. You may disagree with me on that.

Albert Mohler:

Not a may. This is a central issue, but with respect, we can have this conversation.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But I would say–

Albert Mohler:

I can’t have an argument with a Catholic who’s not Catholic. I hope not. Yeah, right. I mean, there’s no point. So if I’m going to have in conversation with a Catholic, I want a real Catholic to show up–

Ryan T. Anderson:

And the ones who are going to daily mass and who are doing the various kind of prayer life devotional, those are the ones that you can most dialogue with because those are the ones that are the Catholic image of you. I was talking with one of your producers earlier saying that I really liked the episode that you and Robbie George did together. And I was like, well, to a certain extent, Robbie is the Catholic Dr. Mohler and Dr. Mohler is the Protestant Robbie George. And because you disagree where you disagree, and you take those things seriously, that allows for those fruitful conversations.

Albert Mohler:

It’s honesty. So I’m going to stress you out a little bit with a question, and I am not sure where you’re going to go with this. So this is an experiment. This will be fun, this will be fun. In 1924, roughly a date to the mid 1920s, the whole argument, J. Gresham Machen, very famous conservative Presbyterian, defined the issue of the modernist revolt. And in his book on Christianity and Liberalism, he makes the classic argument that Christianity and Protestant liberalism are two different things or two different religions. Would a conservative Catholic say that of liberal Catholics?

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, and I think this probably goes back to our sacramental theology. I think that would be the explanation of why that when people say things like Joe Biden’s not a Catholic or Nancy Pelosi’s not a Catholic, I know what they’re trying to say. They’re trying to say he’s a bad Catholic, but I think the sacramental realities are indelible. And so once you’re baptized into the body of Christ, it’s kind of, you’re always a Catholic, even if you’re not saved. So realize that from our perspective, mortal sin exists and we’re not the frozen chosen, we’re not five point TULIP Reformed thinkers. So we believe that someone like myself, who is a baptized believer could still reject grace, and I could turn away, but I would still be a Catholic, but I would be a Catholic who you would need to pray for that I would convert back. And it’s something that we always have to be aware of, is that God has saved me. He is saving me, and I pray He saves me when it comes time for judgment. But it’s not that assurance of salvation. The way you guys understand assurance of salvation isn’t quite how we understand it.

Albert Mohler:

Or not to mention the fact of inclusion in the body of Christ. We have a basic distinction, and I appreciate your candor. I think it would be shocking to most Protestant listeners or viewers. I think it would be shocking to know that you can reject the Christian faith, you can reject Christ and be a Catholic, still be Catholic. Yeah, we don’t have a category for that, at least among confessional Protestants, conservative Protestants, the liberals, it doesn’t matter. Anyway, doctrinal nihilists.

Ryan T. Anderson:

So what do you do with someone who clearly was a believer, had the fruits of the Holy Spirit, was clearly living a Christian life, and then goes off the rails?

Albert Mohler:

You know how to stack the argument for me to have to answer. So I say touche. Well done. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead.

Ryan T. Anderson:

How would you theologically analyze if next week Andrew Walker was just go off the reservation and I mean, how would you analyze? Was he previously not a Christian or was he a Christian? Now he’s not a Christian. If he repents and converts, he’ll be a Christian again. I’m just wondering how you would think through–

Albert Mohler:

I think what scripture would have us to believe as is articulated and required by our confessions of faith, and in particular by our institutional confession, by the abstract principles, which is derivative of Westminster and the Second London confession. The answer would be that those in whom regeneration has taken place cannot finally fall away from their allegiance to Christ. And though they may grievously sin and bring great damage to themselves and disrepute to the gospel in a period of rebellion, they cannot finely fall away. And so we would say there are those who show as Jesus in the parable, the sower and the soils made very clear. Those who show what we would see as the signs and fruit of regeneration, but in the full noonday sun, they were never actually regenerated. They never actually were regenerated. We have no category for someone regenerated who becomes unregenerate. That’s impossible in classical Protestant theology. And so they will be brought to repentance, and that’s how we pray. When we, at my Baptist church, a Third Avenue Baptist Church, Louisville, Kentucky, when we take ultimate church discipline against a member, we pray that they may nonetheless be brought to the fruits of repentance.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yeah. So I think, yeah, obviously this is just an area where Catholics and Protestants disagree.

Albert Mohler:

We have absolutely no category of a Baptist who doesn’t believe, and a liberal Baptist might, because what do they care about? Any doctrine, but conservative Baptist cannot.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But comes the cost of saying that that person was never a Baptist to begin with, that for 20 years we thought he was a Baptist, and he lived what from the outside, looked like a Baptist. And he gave these great sermons and he wrote these great books. But it was all just an act.

Albert Mohler:

No, we believe in the power of self delusion.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Okay.

Albert Mohler:

We believe very much in the power of self delusion. One can think oneself, a Christian, and then unthink oneself a Christian. That is why this is doctor perseverance. Those who are truly regenerate are those who will persevere to the end, and there may be rebellion in the middle, although, and they may grievously sin and bring grave injury to the witness and testimony.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But so far as the, I mean, you should school me on this because I’m obviously out of my depths on reformed theology. But in so far as perseverance of the saints is actually meant to kind of be like a reassuring doctrine–

Albert Mohler:

It’s not just a reassurance.

Ryan T. Anderson:

It’s not partly because you don’t actually know.

Albert Mohler:

It is a reassurance, but you don’t know you’re self diluted right now. He has begun a good work and you will complete it on that day, but it is all evident at the end, and there will be some who will fall away. Jesus himself warned of vast falling away of false believers. There’s no falling away of genuine believers in the end.

Ryan T. Anderson:

It’s actually interesting that we have a very similar phenomenology of what’s happening, although we’re describing it differently when I say,

Albert Mohler:

Well, it’s a different judgment.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Well, normally I think ultimately we would say that the Andrew Walker of tomorrow who falls away, or the Catholic of me tomorrow who rejects Christ, I would say that I’m currently Christian. I would still be a Christian, but I would not be saved unless I repent of my rejection. And I think that’s where we’re going to.

Albert Mohler:

It’s a fundamentally different category. And when I hear you say you can not be a Christian and still be Catholic–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Well, no, I was using Catholic and Christian interchangeably there. I want to say that once you are baptized into the body of Christ, that’s indelible. That’s forever. But that doesn’t–

Albert Mohler:

So just to be clear about this, this is a form of baptismal regeneration. I get it. And I know Catholic theology, I just rarely get to have this kind of conversation. So a baby baptized will be in heaven?

Ryan T. Anderson:

At what point if they die the next day, eventually, yes. No, but not necessarily. So the baby baptized who reaches the age of reason and then rejects Christ, reaches the age of reason and stops living a Christian life, commits mortal sin, that person will not be in heaven ever unless they repent of those sins. From a Catholic perspective, we believe that baptism is repent is what makes you a Christian possible during purgation. No, the doctrine of purgatory is not about you get a thumbs up or a thumbs down during the individual judgment when you die. Purgatory would be more about a way of thinking that you may not yet be ready to see Christ face to face, but the vote up or down that happens at the moment of individual judgment when you die. It’s not like you can then retroactively somehow try to regain salvation.

Albert Mohler:

Right. I wonder, and I mean this honestly, because there’s tremendous confusion among evangelicals who think themselves to be evangelicals and frankly have a very difficult time articulating basic evangelical doctrine. Yeah, I am familiar with the teaching of the catechism of the Catholic church, but I think widespread in Catholicism is the assertion I tried with you.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Well, that would be unfortunate. Yeah, I mean, I don’t think I’m saying anything innovative here. This is just kind of boilerplate Catholic doctrine–

Albert Mohler:

But as it is, and look, I’m not throwing a stone at Rome without breaking Protestant glass. We have many Protestants as confused about Protestant theology as I think there are many, but it’s not supposed to be. Protestant churches are supposed to be on the basis of confessing the faith. And then Baptists, I think are just the ultimate conclusion of the Protestant Reformation. Regenerate church membership.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But I’ll put it this way, at least on the Catholic side of the aisle, things are getting so much better. And even think about this, the Bible in the year podcasts with Father Mike Schmitz every day reading a section of scripture and then offering some commentary on it. That was the most popular Apple Podcast of the year when it first came out. And it remains people every year they listen through this, the number of catechetical and formation programs out there that simply didn’t exist when I was a child. It’s mind blowing how many more resources my wife and I have to form our kids than my parents had. And so I agree with you. Look, it’s not where it should be, but it’s a lot better and it’s getting better every day.

Albert Mohler:

I’d say it’s better among evangelicals and worse among Protestants.

Ryan T. Anderson:

That’s fair.

Albert Mohler:

I think liberal Protestants, it is just nihilism and vapor. There’s just no doctrinal substance. I think the problem among evangelicals is the evangelical pragmatists who just have a big crowd, and frankly, they just have warm feelings towards Jesus, in many cases, very little doctrinal understanding. That’s a part of what makes this institution and the churches related us very different. We had chapel service this morning and filled that big chapel filled with young people, and we sang three classic hymns and they were sung robustly. And those hymns have clear doctrinal content. Now, we sing some modern songs too, but they’ve got to be real thick in doctoral content. And I guess what I want to say is that I’m very thankful that the Lord is not finished. And I see in this generation–and I think secularism–I think you’ll agree with this, the pressure of secularism means there’s no point being a little sea Catholic anymore. No, there’s no cultural Catholicism that really gets you very far, except in the movies. You know what I mean?

Ryan T. Anderson:

Anytime you see a Christian on TV, they’re using a Catholic church because the imagery, it makes a great backdrop. Right, right.

Albert Mohler:

It’s the Godfather. Yeah. I mean, you look at what it is, heavy organ music, latin, stained glass, windows, statues.

Ryan T. Anderson:

They don’t use a Baptist church when they want to do the movie with the church in the backdrop. Right. Well, I’ll say rarely, rarely,

Albert Mohler:

Rarely. Unless they’re making a Protestant point or they’re in the American South, things like that. Or the Midwest. Yeah, the Midwest. But the point I want to make is that there is, in a secular age, there’s no cultural cachet in being mildly Protestant or evangelical. You have to really be all in, and you need deep roots. You need to know where you stand and why you stand there. And look, this gets to where I wanted to go earlier, but we were in fruitful territory. And now, I mean to talk about fruitfulness in a very different way. The book I’m writing right now, I’ll just tell you my first line, and I’m going to have to copyright this line talking about it before the book’s released.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Someone will steal it.

Albert Mohler:

Well, I don’t want them to steal it, but when a society stops believing in God, it stops having babies. And you look at all the phenomenology around this, you look at birth rates so low that it really is an existential threat to human existence. And here we are. And I love, and some of the people you and I both know, including some of our Jewish friends, I was in conversation, Israel’s an outlier from the rest of the it’s conservative, Orthodox Jewish families in Israel who are disproportionately having the babies in New York City. The only reason the Jewish birth rate is not lower than it is, is because you have a renaissance of Orthodox Judaism–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Having between five and ten kids.

Albert Mohler:

That’s right. And the same thing is true among Protestants. One of our Jewish friends, one of our common friends–I was talking to on the phone one day, and I was just talking about how happy I was, and I said, I’m looking out my window and I see all these college students out on the quad on the lawn playing Frisbee, Frisbee, impromptu soccer, all kinds of things. And then all around the periphery, there are couples pushing strollers. And there was one picture, I just saw it before me, and it was a mother and a father, both with one in arms and another one in the stroller. And you just look at that and you go, this is the glory of God. How can you not be happy? You want to know what pushing back against the culture looks like. Flannery O’Connor: it looks like having babies. Babies, yeah. And this is one of your concerns as well. So I wanted to set you up.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, I mean, so on this, we’re in full agreement. My wife and I, we have five kids right now. The oldest just turned seven a couple of weeks ago.

Albert Mohler:

I think the last time you were on campus–

Ryan T. Anderson:

She just had the fourth.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah.

Ryan T. Anderson:

So at one point we had five children, age six and under. Now it’s seven and under. But they’re wonderful. I mean, these are gifts, these are blessings. There’s not a single TV show that I can think of that was popular during my childhood that presented marriage and family in this way. Two things to say there, the TV shows that presented family life presented it as a drag. So it was like Homer Simpson, the doofus father. It was Al Bundy married with children. And then the TV shows that showed what a glamorous lifestyle in your twenties and thirties looked like, Seinfeld, FRIENDS, Sex in the City, Beverly Hills 902, all of that. It made it seem like getting married and having kids would be the worst thing that would ever happen to you because all of the fun would stop.

Albert Mohler:

And it does.

Ryan T. Anderson:

It does and it doesn’t. And so I think one thing is that, and a different type of fun starts. No, of course, of course.

Albert Mohler:

But we have to recognize that if that’s what you want out of life–the glittering lights and nightlife and all the rest. You’re not going to have kids. You’re also going to die lonely and empty, and there is no heritage from you whatsoever. You are a blip on the human horizon. And again, the movies have celebrated this. The television scripts, they celebrate this. And here’s the amazing thing. And so I’m going to be talking about this even as we’re at this event, and I’m going to be talking about the fact that there’s this radical distinction right now because young women in this generation, generation Z, young women, are overwhelmingly buying that script. And young men are overwhelmingly not. It’s a remarkable moment to be alive.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And that’s a change from a generation ago.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely. Absolutely. Young men aged 19 to 29 or so. They want to be married and they want to have children. They want to be fathers. And I think that there’s a lot of influence coming from different directions. They help to bring that about. But I think someone like Charlie Kirk actually did really encourage so many of these young men to have that vision. And he lived it out with Erica and then having the babies–

Ryan T. Anderson:

And you see it in his own life trajectory from, he started turning Points USA when he was 18 years old, The first five or so years, he’s not nearly as outspoken about his faith or about his faith or about his social–

 

Albert Mohler:

No it’s more than that. When I met him, I don’t know, seven years ago or so, he really didn’t want anything to do with conservative Christian leaders.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, because he was in his Tea party stage where he thought we were a drag on the movement and on the party,

Albert Mohler:

We were bringing all kinds of issues that were complicating his simple political plan.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But between marriage and fatherhood, and maybe it’s his wife’s influence, maybe it’s obviously it’s God’s influence working through him.

Albert Mohler:

I have a very dear friend who knew him very, very well and just said the fruits of regeneration were very evident that his desires and affections were realigned. It’s very biblical.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And you see how he spoke about it. And in that sense, he was very much like an anti Andrew Tate.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And if you think about for the young high school student, college student, young adult who’s kind of wandering aimlessly, you want someone like Charlie being the person who shapes their worldview.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Rather than so many of the other influencer voices on the right in the manosphere, I worried they’re quite destructive.

Albert Mohler:

I’m worried most particularly in terms of influence here, women too, and especially since I just raised the issue that so many of them, but the young women who are here are the young women who want to be wives and mothers. So it’s the people not on this campus that reflect that other phenomena. But Ryan, my theory of the case is that there are only two conservative possibilities. One is a theistic, basically Christian conservatism, and the other is Nietzschean. I don’t think there is any real option in between long-term, especially when you’re down to brass tacks about how do you live life, how do you order society?

Ryan T. Anderson:

The idea that you could have a purely secular conservatism strikes me as something that would die within a generation because it can’t pass itself on to future generations beacuse it can’t pass itself on to future generations.

Albert Mohler:

Or do so accidentally that they still managed to have some sex and have some babies here and there, but without any, but it can’t sustain a culture. No, no, no. But the Nietzsche and vision isn’t really about sustaining a culture. It’s about exercising power, ego, ambition, articulation, force, argument–

 

Ryan T. Anderson:

And you see that on some of the–I mean, this was Ross Douthat’s point, that if you don’t like the religious right, wait till you see the post religious right or the irreligious right.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah, no, that’s really the point I’m making in a different way. I think there are only two conservative options. I think the array of conservatism in terms of different positions that can show up in elections, it can show up in policy proposals, but at the end of the day, you’re either constrained by and obligated to a theistic vision, and that means right and wrong as established by and judged by a holy God, or it’s nothing more than power. And in this case, I wouldn’t say it’s really conservative. It’s the right just asserting power in order to achieve order. And there’s the only distinction I see between Nietzschean left and Nietzschean right, the Nietzschean left is entirely Dionysian. The Nietzschean, right, is well, it’s more fascist.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Which are scary possibilities. Yeah. I mean, partly because if you look at some of the demographic trends, it’s not at all obvious what the next 20, 30, 40 years will look like in terms of the percentage of Americans who both identify as Christian, but who actually believe it, who actually are–

Albert Mohler:

Well, I don’t think there is going to be any cultural gain, traction, advantage in claiming to be Christian. In fact, I look at these young people on my campus, so thankful for them, and I look at the young people around you, and in your circles being a little bit Catholic or a little bit Christian, a little bit process. It doesn’t work. First of all, no one pat you on the head and says, good, now you can be a member of our golf club. Now you can be a partner in a law firm. Now, I mean, quite frankly, we know we are in a Arian position and we know we are in an adversary culture. And so I do think that’s very clarifying.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Very much so. All I’m getting at by asking the demographic question, and to a certain extent, look, I mean, there might be a third Great Awakening right around the corner. To a certain extent, it’s going to depend on what people like you and I do. It’s even possible that there’ll be a revival as a result of Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Already we’re seeing more people return to church.

Albert Mohler:

Yeah,  I want to be careful and say that I’m going to reserve revival for a massive sovereign act of God that brings authenticity to the church, clarity to the gospel, exalts Christ, and has decades of influence. And I hope and pray it may be so. I just think we’re only going to recognize it when it reaches a certain point, and so I don’t want my Christian students and friends, I don’t want them to believe that if God doesn’t send revival that all hope is lost.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No.

Albert Mohler:

But I do think it’s a longer Augustinian understanding trajectory. We pray the Lord will send a revival, but in the meantime, we’ve got to raise children, have to have children, raise them in nurture and admission of the Lord, gather together in congregations, establish communities, work for human good, contend if for righteousness, and we pray for revival. But in American history, the first great awakening had massive cultural power for good. The second less the third, if it was the Jesus movement, as some people would claim in the 1970s and eighties, not much.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But when you say that there’s no lasting conservative movement apart from a theistic politics, I guess what I’m getting at here is

Albert Mohler:

I will stake my reputation on that.

Ryan T. Anderson:

No, and I think that is true. It raises the question of, well, one possible outcome here is just that there won’t be a sustainable conservative movement.

Albert Mohler:

But I’ll tell you why. I don’t think that’s true.

Ryan T. Anderson:

That Nietzschean right might be a live possibility. I mean, I see it even just right now. And that’s why I say maybe we’re on, there’ll be a third Great Awakening. There’ll be a revival, but maybe the tech bros and the Silicon Valley, I see this divide in the person of JD Vance himself–

Albert Mohler:

Yes

Ryan T. Anderson:

There is JD Vance, the serious devout Catholic. There’s also JD Vance, the Peter Thiel influence Silicon Valley guy. And so you can say, when Sol Eaton says, the line between good and evil runs through the heart of every man. I mean, soja, you can see the line between the two competing visions that you’ve sketched of a theistic conservatism or of a more Nietzschean right. And that’s a little unfair to the Silicon Valley tech, bro. I don’t think they’re all Nietzschean right. But you can see that is some options are alive–

Albert Mohler:

Well some are pretty openly there, and others less so–but at least if I’m detecting anything right now, that at least some of those Silicon Valley profits, some of them are scared of where they have been and are looking for something more serious. And I’ll just simply say, I’ve had some, I’ve been invited into some conversations I’ve been surprised to have, and I don’t know what the effect of them is, but there’s some conversations that wouldn’t have taken place in those circles just a few years ago. And I think because some of them, I mean, let’s face it, you and I both been invited to speak where they’re paying the bills. And so I have to think that’s a sign of hope. At least they’re looking for something. I want to press back on another thing though, by being faithful and for instance, raising young men and young women who are going to get married and have babies, established families, and flourish, and by definition we have a continuity that the more nihilistic people on the right just don’t have.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Well, so it’s interesting. If you disagree, go at it. Well, I think of a protist like Elon Musk. He has a lot of children.

Albert Mohler:

He’s an exception. And even some of those babies. So let me just, I don’t want to get too deep into this, but he is not an example of a Christian family ordered by, and those babies are not the result of any conventional conjugal union. Correct?

Ryan T. Anderson:

They are for the most part, as far as we know

Albert Mohler:

I mean, the way he describes it, they’re transhumanist experiments or not, but they’re artificial sorting at least, and I don’t claim to be a specialist in Elon Musk’s family, but by his own self description, this is a post-Christian, post technological family.

Ryan T. Anderson:

But it strikes me that that’s one of the options.

Albert Mohler:

Lemme put it this way. Most people don’t have even the money. Let’s just forget morality for a minute. Most people don’t have the money to go at family that way. That is not at this point going to be a widespread problem.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Not yet. But I mean, you saw, I would imagine the interview that Ross Douthat did with the CEO of Orchid. I mean, the thought here is that with AI technology plus embryo screening, plus this will be affordable for everyone. Well, the way that the first iPhones were luxury goods, but now homeless people have iPhones. They’ve been able to reduce the costs.

Albert Mohler:

But let me do it the other way. Mathematics is against surrogacy becoming a replacement for natural motherhood–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Unless artificial wombs.

Albert Mohler:

Well then you’re outside the–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes.

Albert Mohler:

I’m not dismissing what you think, but I’m talking about physical human being, surrogate mothers. That’s an extremely, first of all, I think it’s absolutely immoral. But it’s also limited by biology of who’s willing to do it. Well, I mean, just even the number of wombs that are rentable, I mean, there’s a finite number under finite circumstances. It’s not an accident that when Russia invaded Ukraine, one of the most urgent issues was how many surrogates in Ukraine had babies that were contracted with Americans. And all this press about Americans, including same-sex couples, et cetera, trying to get them out: it exposed, in other words, an entire underground, but legal market in surrogacy. But it also pointed to the cost. But you’re right, the transhumanist dream, however, is to be free from sperm and egg and womb. You can make it all through skin skulls–

Ryan T. Anderson:

Which is simply to say that I think things could get worse.

Albert Mohler:

Oh, I think they will before get better. We’re both Augustinian, right?

Ryan T. Anderson:

In that sense. Yes.

Albert Mohler:

So we’re expecting, that’s the s other thing. I have to fight against the evangelical side, believing that a great cultural turn is right around the corner.

Ryan T. Anderson:

And I think that’s the fear that I have in some people saying that because the only sustainable path forward is a theistic conservatism, therefore a to conservatism will prevail. I agree with the first part of that sentence the only sustainable way forward is thesis conservatism.

Albert Mohler:

All I can tell you is look at mainline Protestantism. Just here’s my proof. Look at mainline Protestantism.

Ryan T. Anderson:

It’s not going to exist in a couple generations.

Albert Mohler:

It may not exist Tuesday. I mean, you just look at it, they at these hulking buildings with six people inside and the rainbow flag out front. And by definition, there are no babies in there. And so honestly, I’ve been in this job long enough that when I became president here, the liberals argued that they were going to win. I think they actually thought they were going to win, but now they don’t even show up. We don’t even have debates anymore because there’s no one on the other side to debate.

Ryan T. Anderson:

You see this in liberals.

Albert Mohler:

I’m reduced to having a conversation with a Roman Catholic.

Ryan T. Anderson:

I mean, you see this in liberal Catholicism as well, that the people who thought Vatican II was going to usher in Vatican III. And what way is the spirit of Vatican II blowing? They thought they were the right side of history and the future of history.

Albert Mohler:

Absolutely.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Demographically, it did not play out that way.

 

Albert Mohler:

The protest liberal one gives their life, they thought they were saving Catholicism.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes, by watering it down. But no one wants to stake their life on kumbaya. I just think that’s the reality. Look at, I had mentioned earlier that you should–

 

Albert Mohler:

You should copyright that–that’s very good.

Ryan T. Anderson:

The priests that we have in the American church today are so much better than when I was growing up, simply because no one in our culture studies for the priesthood and becomes an ordained priest unless they really believe it. And I think that’s true for people of my situation as a lay person.

Albert Mohler:

It’s the same thing on this campus with the young evangelicals. They believe it all.

Ryan T. Anderson:

The only people who they believe it all have come into studying here because they’re going to stake their life on it because it’s worth staking their life on. And I think the liberal Protestantism, liberal Catholicism, it’s not worth staking your life on, which means you can go from being an Orthodox family, and then the next generation might be going to a mainline Protestant service. But the generation after that, why do those kids go to church anymore?

Albert Mohler:

What’s the point? They don’t.

Ryan T. Anderson:

They don’t. And that’s why they’re dying out.

Albert Mohler:

We can see this family by family around us. You’ll look at the names on some of these buildings, and it just, where are they? And I mean, some of them are dead, but you know what I mean–

Ryan T. Anderson:

In terms of the family lineage–

Albert Mohler:

And you just wonder where are they? And I don’t say that with any triumphalism, one side or the other. Here, I say it with great grief, but it’s lived out before. Eyes. Theology has consequences, and the consequences are very visible. Ryan, it’s always a delight to be with you.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Thanks for having me.

Albert Mohler:

This is a lot of fun. I respect you so much and so appreciate your work and the work of EPPC. I think it’s good for folks to know there’s some substantial relationships behind all of this.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Very much so.

Albert Mohler:

We are very glad to be together, and thank you for joining me in the library.

Ryan T. Anderson:

Yes, thank you.