#12716 Can We Know God Is Personal Without Revelation? AMA: Dropped Calls - Joe Heschmeyer
Catholic Answers Live
Catholic Answers
4.8 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 14 May 2026
⏱️ 55 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Can human reason alone lead us to the conclusion that God is personal, even without divine revelation? In this episode of Catholic Answers Live, Catholic Answers apologists tackle deep philosophical and theological questions about God, authority, and the Church. The discussion explores whether Eastern Orthodoxy has a singular teaching authority comparable to the papacy, why Catholics often receive only the host and not the chalice at Communion, and whether extraordinary ministers of Holy Communion are sometimes overused. Additional topics include whether Adam was a single historical person or a group, how to evangelize someone immersed in New Age spirituality, and whether the early Church taught any doctrines no longer held today. A thoughtful conversation on Catholic theology, Church practice, and apologetics.
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Questions Covered:
- 12:36 – Is there a way to arrive at the conclusion of the personhood of God without resorting to revelation?
- 21:46 – Does Eastern Orthodoxy have a singular authority like we do?
- 29:07 – How come everyone takes the host for communion but not everyone gets the chalice?
- 32:07 – Are extraordinary ministers of holy communion only to be used in emergency situations? My priest doesn’t always give communion at mass. He lets the EMs do it. Is that an abuse?
- 39:35 – Was Adam one man or a group of men?
- 43:00 – How do you start a conversation with someone who’s kind of a “new age junkie?” Like they’re always looking for a spiritual high or buying the next big self-help book, but can’t be bothered to open the Gospels?
- 48:54 – Is there something that the early church believed in terms of doctrine that isn’t taught today?
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. Welcome back, Kathy Gansel's live. I'm Sykell at your host. Joe Heschmeyer is our guest. |
| 0:36.6 | I always like it when Joe's here. For two reasons. One, Joe's super popular. It's always good to have somebody that's super popular on the show. Two, Joe's really smart. So popular and smart, that's a great combination. You know, with some of these apologies, you just get one, not the other. But with Joe, you get both. Who are you talking about? |
| 0:54.8 | Not Trent Horn. |
| 0:55.7 | Oh, I'm sorry. |
| 0:58.6 | You didn't accuse me of talking about Trent Horn. |
| 1:01.2 | And I must have got really defensive there. |
| 1:04.1 | Yeah, I don't know. |
| 1:05.7 | Trent's super popular and super smart. |
| 1:08.0 | He knows I'm just kidding. |
| 1:29.0 | Joe, you got an angry call from a Trent in Dallas, Texas. Trent in Dallas. You're on the line. Trent used to kill me on the air regularly. They used to keep a scoreboard of how many times Trent's example involved killed. We literally had a scoreboard of how many times Trent's moral example involved killing Cy. The worst one was the time that he asked a woman if it was okay to kill me in a |
| 1:34.3 | certain situation. And her answer was, she answered with a question. Her question was, |
| 1:38.9 | well, what country is it in? I was like, that's never the right answer when someone says, |
| 1:43.5 | can you kill someone? |
| 1:45.2 | But she was a- |
| 1:46.2 | Are we in international waters? |
| 1:47.9 | Yeah, she was a relativist. |
| 1:49.5 | She was a pro-choice relativist, and not all pro-choice people are relativists, but she was. |
| 1:54.8 | She thought, well, you go by whatever the law of the place is. |
| 1:59.0 | So that was one of the unhappiest moments I've had on |
| 2:03.9 | Catholic Answers Live because I can't remember if we've talked oh sorry go ahead I had a thought |
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