#12619 What If We’re Misunderstanding the Bible? AMA Dropped Calls - Jimmy Akin
Catholic Answers Live
Catholic Answers
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 6 March 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if Christians today are misunderstanding what God really meant in Scripture? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists address a thoughtful concern about biblical translation and interpretation, explaining how the Church safeguards authentic teaching across centuries. The discussion also covers how to discern and use your God-given talents responsibly, why there isn’t a simple official Vatican list of all dogmas, and whether belief in Marian dogmas is required for justification. Additional questions explore the nature of election and free will, whether artificial intelligence could ever possess consciousness, and whether uncertainty around ex cathedra statements challenges papal infallibility. A wide-ranging and intellectually engaging conversation on faith, reason, and modern questions.
Questions Covered:
- 01:47 – Knowing that the Bible and other texts have been translated over the centuries… what if how they’re understood now, by any faith, is wrong? What if God is sitting in heaven, looking down and thinking, “that’s not what I meant at all”? If it matters, I’m a convert to Catholicism from the Baptist church (and it’s been the best decision I’ve ever made by the way), I just think about weird stuff like this from time to time watching the debates about who’s right and who’s wrong or the meaning of things we now read in translated texts.
- 12:00 – When you have more than 1 talent and competing basic life priorities, what’s the most prudent way to act in a pleasing manner to God so as to not be at fault for neglecting a gift from God.
- 17:33 – Why is there no official Vatican list of Catholic Dogmas? Google has its own searchable list of 255 dogmas. But, you would think….
- 30:27 – Is justification predicated upon belief on your four Marian dogmas.
- 35:46 – Would it be fair to say there are two steps to being considered elect? That is to say God elects everyone (calls them to salvation and has a plan for them in place) but that our cooperation with his grace makes that initial unconditional election conditional on our acceptance and continued faithfulness?
- 43:18 – Can something like AI ever gain consciousness and what should we make of it if it does or doesn’t and on what grounds?
- 51:20 – Isn’t the fact that we can’t precisely define how many Papal statements have been made “ex cathedra” a problem for Papal Infallibility?
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 to Catholic Answers live. I'm Sykelet, your host. Thanks so much for being here with us on this Friday afternoon. Maybe it's Friday evening or even a |
| 0:38.1 | Saturday morning where you are, but thanks for being here with us. Wherever you are, whatever day it is, |
| 0:42.9 | or whatever time it is, we've got Jimmy Aiken both hours. So take it easy. Maybe kick back, |
| 0:49.7 | put your feet up and enjoy. We got lots of questions, about a million questions in. I think I counted |
| 0:54.7 | just short of one million questions in for Jimmy. Jimmy, of course, senior apologist here at Catholic |
| 1:00.2 | Answers. The author of many books, including the Bible, is a Catholic book. And he's the podcaster |
| 1:05.9 | behind Jimmy Aiken's Mysterious World and the Jimmy Aiken podcast, Jimmy Aiken. Happy Friday to you. |
| 1:12.6 | Hello, Cycallet. How are you doing? I'm doing very well. I'm doing very well. Thank you |
| 1:16.8 | very much. Good. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say, you know, we're halfway through Lent, |
| 1:24.7 | and here we are, but actually we pre-recorded this a couple weeks ago, |
| 1:27.8 | so I don't actually know how I'm doing today. |
| 1:29.7 | Maybe I'm white-knuckling it through Lent at this point. |
| 1:32.7 | I don't know. |
| 1:33.8 | Well, here's hoping it's all going well for you in the current time frame. |
| 1:38.2 | Yeah, right. |
| 1:39.1 | I do get displaced in time when we do this sometimes. |
| 1:50.5 | Our first question, Jimmy, is it's kind of a how can I trust scripture question, but it has to do with translation. |
| 1:51.9 | It comes from Travis, and Travis says, knowing that the Bible and other texts have been translated |
| 1:59.3 | over the centuries, what if how they're understood now by |
| 2:03.3 | any faith is wrong? What if God is sitting in heaven looking down and thinking that's not what I meant at all? |
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