#12390 Is Faith a Gift or a Choice? Relics, Conversion, and Art - Jimmy Akin
Catholic Answers Live
Catholic Answers
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 27 September 2025
⏱️ 55 minutes
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Summary
“Is Faith a Gift or a Choice?” This episode explores the intersection of faith and popular culture, while also addressing questions about the power of relics in 2 Kings 13:21, the implications of AI-generated art, and the complexities of faith as a gift. Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on these diverse topics.
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Questions Covered:
- 01:20 – Is Billy Batson sinning by using the powers of Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury?
- 06:43 – Do you think 2 Kings 13:21 could be used as proof for the power of relics?
- 10:00 – In a past AMA, you said that if someone were assimilated by the Borg, the state of their soul adjacent to confession would remain unchanged. If someone were assimilated, could they conceivably receive the anointing of the sick?
- 15:57 – Can AI generated images be considered art?
- 21:44 – If faith is a gift, how can someone be culpable for not having faith?
- 29:06 – As it pertains to the dating of the Gospel of John, I think there’s good internal evidence that it’s written before 70 AD, but I’ve heard people say that Irenaeus teaches that it’s dated in the 90-95 AD range. Is there any perspective out there that can hold that both Irenaeus is correct, and a pre-70 AD Gospel of John is correct? (For example, are people just misreading Irenaeus to make it seem like he’s saying it’s in the 90s but in reality he might not even be saying that?)
- 37:53 – Why is Catholicism a better option than Oriental Orthodoxy?
- 45:55 – As a Protestant converting to Catholicism, what duty does one have to inform family, friends, and former pastors/church members of one’s conversion to Catholicism? How should conversation be done? Any advice? Thanks!
- 52:42 – Has Catholic Answers thought of making a list of the De Fide statement found in Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma? I know this is a resource used by Catholic Answers and it would be great to have a bullet point list
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Buying or selling your home, real estate for life can connect you with a pro-life real estate agent. |
| 0:05.2 | When Real Estate for Life receives a referral fee, they donate 65% to Catholic Answers. |
| 0:11.5 | Learn more at realestateforlife.org. Hello and welcome back to Catholic Answers Live, a pre-recorded episode for you today on Friday. |
| 0:36.6 | My name is Thomas Graff, filling in for |
| 0:38.6 | Cy Kellett, who is sick today. God willing, he is better by the time you hear this, and we are at |
| 0:43.9 | the Catholic Cancer's Conference in San Diego, having a grand old time, Sykelet emceeing. |
| 0:49.2 | I, as I run the social media, my normal job, running all over the place, frantically gathering |
| 0:53.6 | footage to show you all what a great time we're having at the Catholic Cancer's Conference in the I run the social media in my normal job, running all over the place, frantically gathering footage |
| 0:54.1 | to show you all what a great time we're having at the Catholic Answers Conference. In the meantime, |
| 0:58.9 | if you are not at the conference today, then you are hopefully enjoying this two hours of Ask Me Anything |
| 1:04.4 | YouTube Mailbag edition with our very special guest, Jimmy Aiken, joining us again from his home |
| 1:10.7 | in Arkansas and doing |
| 1:12.1 | a great job running through all these questions. Jimmy, are you ready to continue going through |
| 1:16.0 | this great mail bag that we have? Oh, yeah. All right. Let's roll right along to this question |
| 1:22.4 | from Jason M. Broils. And okay, I'm going to need some story on this one. No problem. He says, is Billy Batson |
| 1:30.0 | sinning by using the powers of Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles, and Mercury? Jimmy, my question |
| 1:36.3 | for you first, who in the world is Billy Batson? Billy Batson is a, depending on the version of |
| 1:42.8 | him you're looking at, is a young man, a boy who in his |
| 1:47.9 | original portrayal was a newspaper boy, who went down into the subway of a major city and encountered a wizard. |
| 2:02.5 | The wizard's name was Shazam. |
| 2:05.6 | And he gave Billy Batson the power to transform himself into the world's mightiest mortal Captain Marvel. |
| 2:15.7 | And the way he would do that is by saying the wizard's name, Shazam, which was an |
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