In this week’s episode of the Sunday Show, ardent Roman Catholic and conservative commentator Matt Walsh explained to Ben Shapiro that the Protestant Reformation was essentially one big misunderstanding, while also denying faith alone.
Shapiro: From a religious point of view, when you say that the goal is to get to heaven, are you a belief- based person? I mean, is it that you believe in Christ and therefore you go to heaven, or is it a works-based thing? Because obviously, this is sort of a differentiator between Judaism and Christianity in some iterations.
Walsh: Yeah, I think, well, I don’t mean to dismiss like 500 years of fighting between Protestants and Catholics, but I kind of think that, at least between Protestants and Catholics, the works vs. faith dichotomy, it’s kind of a misunderstanding. Because I think we actually generally agree, in that I certainly don’t believe that the whole point of life is just to intellectually assent to the proposition that Jesus Christ is Lord and there is a God.
So people will say that all you have to do is believe in Jesus, all you have to do is believe in God. I definitely don’t believe that. But if we want to talk about faith, you have to put your faith in God. That is more than an intellectual exercise, that is something that you do with your whole life and your whole mind and soul and body; that you’re investing yourself in this belief.
And that includes works, but it’s not as though you know, you give a certain amount to charity, and you help old ladies across the street, you go to heaven, it’s not as simple as that. So it’s kind of a combination between the two.
The way that I see it is, it’s sort of like you know, if God is a bridge into heaven, into the afterlife, you can’t just walk up to the bridge and say, ‘Yes, I believe that the bridge is there. I assent to the existence of the bridge’, and then just go and sit on the other side of the bridge and not cross it. You actually have to trust the bridge and with your own effort, walk across it over the abyss. And so I think it’s sort of- that’s what faith is.
It’s not the first time that Walsh has commented on the split between Protestants and Roman Catholics, having formerly castigating Protestants for celebrating Reformation Day, which is when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg on October 31, 1517.
For more of this thoughts, Walsh did an hour-long interview with Allie Beth Stuckey in 2019 on “the differing beliefs between Catholics and Protestants, heaven and hell, love and salvation” demonstrating that he doesn’t understand the scriptures, doesn’t know what the gospel is, and that his knowledge of the bible is terminally broken. This is perhaps best seen in his suggestion that because hell is the absence of God and therefore the absence of love, that people who ‘love well’ while on earth are possibly unable to even go to hell, even if they don’t specifically because in Jesus, and therefore will be saved.
Make no mistake, both Ben and Matt are lost and heading to hell, and they need our prayers.
