Assorted retorts from yahoo boards and elsewhere: Doug Wilson Trying to Square the Circle · Great Bishop of Geneva! Historic Christianity is Not Derivatives in Mathematics
Ryan from Need God Net met Trent Horn.
- Trent Horn
- ... there there are people today whose names you do know who agree with you.
- Ryan
- Sure. In terms of people I personally know. Yeah.
- Trent Horn
- And or not personally you know their names. You know their public position.
- Ryan
- Okay. Yes.
- Trent Horn
- But but there is no such person like that from the second to the 15th century that you can name a position.
- Ryan
- No. I do not grant that.
- Trent Horn
- Okay. What are their names?
- Ryan
- That's not something that
- Trent Horn
- What are their names?
- Ryan
- But that's not something but that's not that's not what I'm come prepared for this debate for. I'm not here to debate what does church father say this or church father over there
say. It's what does scripture say on this topic.
- Trent Horn
- You can't name anyone.
- Ryan
- If just like this even if you can't define what a derivative is for example someone hasn't studied mathematics it doesn't mean derivatives don't exist.
I'm taking this excerpt from before 1:27 to just before 2:03 in a video by JD:
Catholic Apologist SHUTS DOWN Protestant YouTuber on Faith
JD Catholic Engage | 6 July 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP4Mq24kk3o
It is from a longer video on either of the channels:
DEBATE: Can a Christian Lose Salvation? (with NeedGod.net)
The Counsel of Trent | 1 July 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vH3DbAjsNcs
[FULL DEBATE] Trent Horn vs NeedGod.net on Salvation
NeedGod․net | 2 July 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWLIQrTYmBE
Now, let's first deal briefly with Ryan saying he came to debate what the Bible says. I've already answered Doug Wilson on this one. A man who is elect cannot finally lose his salvation. This does not mean that a man who is justified cannot.
But this is to deal with the idea of "people who agreed with me existed, I just don't know their names" ... just like derivatives do.
If you are really a beginner in history, this may help a bit. But if you have done your homework and haven't found any OSAS fathers, you must ask if this is Biblical. Can an idea be absent from an entire century and still belong to the Christian faith? I mean absent from what's now traceable.
The answer would be no.
First, truth as such cannot be lost:
Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.
[Matthew 28:20]
But second, it cannot remain hidden from sight:
You are the light of the world. A city seated on a mountain cannot be hid Neither do men light a candle and put it under a bushel, but upon a candlestick, that it may shine to all that are in the house
[Matthew 5:14-15]
The very minimum is, it cannot be a truth that is visibly contradicted all over what remains to us from a point in the past, without being affirmed in it. Prior to Pope Michael I, Solange Herz, Fernand Crombette, and a priest who collected nine papal condemnations of Heliocentrism (his book was reedited by Pope Michael I) had maintained Geocentrism. Young Earth Creationism or at least a total rejection of Theistic Evolution I found before myself among Catholics in Tom Zimmer, the pilgrim of Loreto, whom I met in Rome in 1986, just before Pentecost I think.
But for a century where Trent Horn can name people contradicting OSAS, it won't do for a man defending it to refer to "I've not studied mathematics, but I know derivatives exist" ...even if he's Ryan and correctly named a ministry "need God" (though he isn't carrying it out or wasn't starting it correctly).
Derivatives may or may not be a thing in mathematical nature, like logarithms probably are. But if they are, they can be there even if they are undiscovered from 5200 BC to 1700's AD. Discovering them isn't a problem. Jesus never promised to be with Mathematicians all days, and He never called them the light of the world. Basel, St. Petersburg, Berlin, none of these are even "cities on hills", but even if they were, Jesus never told Euler "thou are Pious and on this π I will build mathematics, and the powers of ignorance shall never prevail" ... there really and truly is no problem for the mathematic community if derivatives are more than just a neat tool and yet were, for long, undiscovered.
There is a very definite problem for the Church if people believing OSAS in the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th centuries on the one hand existed but on the other cannot be discovered, if at the same time you discover loads of people who didn't believe in OSAS. Or at least not that it applies on the individual level, from the pov of the person justified. God knows who His elect are. The elect who are justified but not yet glorified do not know if they are elect, unless God choses to reveal it.
People believing the right thing in all centuries are like the multiplication table, not like derivatives. They are easy to discover at least with modern historic tools, like 3 * 5 = 15. Matthew 5:15, remember.
This also precludes Theistic Evolution or Old Earth Creationism from being correct positions. Or even Heliocentrism. Karl Keating on this issue did wrong to quote Providentissimus Deus "The unshrinking defence of the Holy Scripture, however, does not require that we should equally uphold all the opinions which each of the Fathers or the more recent interpreters have put forth in explaining it" since Geostasis is not just the position of some individual Church Fathers, but of all who have spoken on the matter.
Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Bonaventura
14.VII.2026
15.VII Lugduni, in Gallia, depositio sancti Bonaventurae, Cardinalis et Episcopi Albanensis, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris, ex Ordine Minorum, doctrina et vitae sanctitate celeberrimi. Ipsius tamen festivitas pridie hujus diei recolitur.
14.VII Sancti Bonaventurae, ex Ordine Minorum, Cardinalis et Episcopi Albanensis, Confessoris et Ecclesiae Doctoris; qui sequenti die migravit ad Dominum.
