← The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
The Word on Fire Show - Catholic Faith and Culture
WOF 534: The Evangelical Power of the Old Testament
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Matthew Petrusyk, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. The Old Testament is about 3/4 of the Bible. It is theologically and morally impossible for Christians to understand God's relationship with the world, the nature and purpose of the human being, original sin, salvation, history, the person of Jesus Christ and the foundation of the church without it. Indeed, as far back as the 2nd century A.D. the church condemned the heresy of Martianism, which sought to dissect, distinguish the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New Testament and to lop off the Old Testament from the biblical canon. There is and never has been, in short, Christianity without the Old Testament. Nevertheless, much of the text remains difficult for the faithful to understand and even more so to explain to others, especially to those who know nothing about it. To make matters more complicated, secular critics of the faith often try to use the Old Testament against it, arguing, like the Marcionites of the past, that belief in the Old Testament is both irrational and immoral. So how should Catholics respond? What are some strategies we can employ not only to make the Old Testament accessible, but also evangelically compelling? Here to help us understand the Old Testament and its enduring evangelical power, especially in a highly secularized culture, is Bishop Robert Barron. Welcome back to the studio, Bishop.
- [01:34]
B
Thanks, Matt. Always good to be with you.
- [01:35]
A
So today we're looking at the enduring evangelical power of the Old Testament, recognizing that even committed Catholics can have a difficult time interpreting and certainly explaining it to others. But before we get to that, what have you been up to recently?
- [01:48]
B
Well, recently I was in Washington for a meeting of the Religious Liberty Commission that I'm on. Maybe eventually, when we're through with that whole process, we could have a show about that.
- [01:57]
A
Absolutely.
- [01:58]
B
It's been very interesting. I've enjoyed it. I've just. I missed one meeting, but I've been at all the other ones, and we looked at healthcare and issues of religious liberty around that, which are interesting and complex. Witnesses come in and then we have a chance to interrogate them. And we're preparing a report to the president. So the whole purpose of the commission is to prepare this set of recommendations to the president, and that'll be delivered in. I'm not quite sure when the show will be aired, but I think early May, we're to deliver that to the president. So that's where I. I'm just back from Washington.
- [02:31]
A
Is that where your work will conclude, then, when the report is delivered.
- [02:34]
B
Yeah, I think it's something in the Rose Garden. We're supposed to, you know, present that formally to the President.
- [02:39]
A
Hopefully not as sunny this time.
- [02:41]
B
Right. Well, believe me, if I'm able to go, I'm going to wear a hat and I'm going to have sunscreen cuz last time I got pulverized by the sun.
- [02:49]
A
Well, that hat now is, is famous. It's.
- [02:51]
B
Yeah. The summer hat that I bought in Rome.
- [02:53]
A
It's a Bishop Veramin.
- [02:54]
B
Yeah.
- [02:55]
A
All right. Well, let's now turn to topic the enduring power, evangelical power of the old testamen. Bishop, you recently gave a lecture at the Maritime center at the University of Notre Dame entitled An Old Testament Theology of God. And we're going to be drawing on things from that talk for today's show. But before we do, let's briefly address the question of how many Catholics are actually reading the Bible, both Old and New Testament. And so I wanted to give you this statistic from a very recent Pew Research poll which is typically very reliable. And it says that only 14% of Catholics say they read the Bible only at least once a week. And at the other end of the spectrum, 67% of Catholics say that they read the Bible seldom or never. Do these numbers surprise you, Bishop?
- [03:39]
B
No. And they're depressing, though, at the same time, because, you know, Vatican II called for a revival of the Bible. It was a major theme of Vatican ii. Look at the Constitution DEI Verbum and the Word of God. And throughout the conciliar documents, they're calling the church back to the Bible. It didn't happen and there are a lot of reasons for that. And that could be another show we could do is why the revival didn't happen. It's not lack of will on the part of the council fathers. But I think, for example, the preaching after the council was anything but biblical, it seems to me. And the way I was trained to preach as a young guy, our great stress was on experience. Right. Talk about people's lives, talk about their experiences. And if you want to trace that back theologically, go back to someone like Frieda Frederick Schleiermacher, the founder of modern liberal Protestantism. Come up through something like Paul Tillich or Carl Rahner in our century, the last century, begin with experience and then correlate it to doctrine. That was the game. Well, that's repugnant to a real biblical preaching, which doesn't begin with experience so much. It begins with the Bible and then tries, I put it this way, from a preaching standpoint to draw the world of the listener into the world of the Bible, not vice versa. See, our experience should not be the interpretive key for the Bible, but the other way around. But see, what happened was a lot of Catholic preachers, frankly didn't know the Bible that well, ran from the Bible. Let's get a couple of maybe inspirational ideas from it and then let's talk a lot about experience. So it wasn't lack of will on the part of Vatican ii, but I'm not surprised by those numbers that we've effectively de. Emphasized the Bible.
- [05:28]
A
Now, there's a general perception, usually comes in the form of a critique, that there's something inherent within Catholicism, theologically or doctrinally, that resists the Bible. Certainly the personal reading of the Bible. Is that true?
- [05:42]
B
Well, to be fair, look at those numbers don't speak very well to a Catholic sense of the Bible. But look our great figures. Think of my hero, Thomas Aquinas, deeply, intensely biblical thinker. It becomes after the Reformation then kind of a caricature, you know, from the Protestant side that, well, the Catholics are. You're into liturgy and Mary and the saints, but, you know, the Bible's not your thing. And again, to be fair, in the wake of the Reformation, I think a lot of Catholic leadership tended to deemphasize the Bible because that was a Protestant thing. Vatican II wanted to correct that. It seems to me they wanted to say, no, no, the Bible is our thing too. And in fact, what's the famous phrase in Vatican ii? The Bible is the soul of theology. Quite right. Right. Of Augustine. Absolutely. Rite of origin. Yes. Of Thomas Aquinas. Absolutely. Newman. Absolutely. Pick up John Henry Newman's sermon sometime book though, this thick. Biblical, Biblical, biblical. So I think Vatican II wanted to reemphasize that element which had been probably de emphasized in the post Reformation period. Now that it didn't happen again is a bit of a tragedy. And I've often said one of the great unrealized dreams of Vatican ii.
- [07:03]
A
We'll turn to the Old Testament in just a moment, but Bishop, could you say a few words about why it's important for the laity also to be engaging with the Bible and not just in Mass, not just during.
- [07:12]
B
Yeah, because it's the soul of theology, the soul of spirituality. We're biblical people. We're shaped by a biblical imagination. The whole point is to see the world through biblical eyes. So look, the priesthood of all believers, the universal call to holiness. It's not just for biblical specialists and priests and preachers. It's for every baptized Catholic. You're meant to read the world through biblical eyes. You now, what's supposed to help that? The liturgy and good preaching and good catechesis and all of that. But yeah, I mean, I would strongly encourage Catholics to read the Bible daily. Now, I'll add this little Catholic caveat. I don't think you just pick up the Bible just as you wouldn't pick up Hamlet and like, okay, I got it, you know. No, no, you read Hamlet through interpretive lenses and with the help of a long tradition of interpretation. So we would say the same thing. True of, you know, the Book of Job or of the Gospel of Luke. You read them in the church, which means you read them liturgically, read them theologically, read them through the doctrinal authority of the church and all of that, but read it. You know, Flannery o', Connor, you know, the great Catholic novelist, short story writer, a Southerner and a Catholic from her Southern background, she got the Bible in a big way, right? And she was once asked about that, like, you know, well, you know, Catholics don't read the Bible. What should we do? And her answer was, well, they have two eyes and a brain, don't they? And I was like, pick it up and read it. You know, get going. There's the book. And I would say, again, the caveat, the book with the great interpretive tradition. But open your eyes and read it. Which is why, as you know, word on fire, we've really prioritized the Bible, bringing out a seven volume major project, biblical text, surrounded in a Catholic spirit with all kinds of interpretive material. That's been very important to me.
- [09:10]
A
Let's now turn to that interpretive tradition as it applies to the Old Testament, going back to your talk that you gave at Notre Dame and Old Testament theology of God. So, Bishop, you start your lecture by lamenting the severing of theology and spirituality and preaching from biblical exegesis or interpretation in contemporary scholarship. So say a little bit about what you mean here. Why is it a problem to make that divorce? And why is it important to keep all of those together in interpreting the Old Testament?
- [09:38]
B
They were together in the ancient church. So the point I made in the beginning of that lecture was go back to the first centuries and, you know, a John Chrysostom and a Jerome and an Ambrose and Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine. Well, who were those figures? Jerome wasn't a bishop, but the others were all bishop theologians and they were the ones who read the Bible. What I lamented at the Beginning of the talk was when I undertook my two volume commentary on the Old Testament, which was feeding the Word on Fire Bible. There were people that said to me, well, you have no business writing a commentary in the Bible. Yeah. I mean, you're a bishop and you're a theologian. I'm like, well, yeah, like Gregory of Nyssa and Augustine and Chrysostom and Ambrose. The falling apart of first of all, ecclesial authority. So a bishop's job is to embody in some ways the authority of the Church. The theological enterprise and Bible. When those fall apart is to the detriment of all three. Right. The best readers of the Bible are those who do it through a theological lens and under the discipline of the Church. I think it's precisely a bishop theologian who is well positioned. You know. Now it doesn't denigrate for a second the specialty of biblical exegesis. I don't specialize in that, in the ancient langu and all the linguistic tools and so on and so forth, but let's keep them together. That was my point. The falling apart has been deleterious for the Church.
- [11:06]
A
What is the historical critical method and what's your view of how it should be used, especially with regards to interpreting the Old Testament?
- [11:14]
B
The roots of that are in the early modern period. It goes back quite a ways. Historical critique. The stated purpose of it is to uncover through a series of of analyses, the intention of the human author of the text. So I'm going to analyze the book of the prophet Isaiah. What am I going to do? I'll use redaction criticism, source criticism, literary criticism, historical criticism. Those are various disciplines, but all of them are designed to reveal what was in the mind and what was according to the intention of the human being who wrote the book of the prophet Isaiah. Famously, there were three Isaiahs and all that. But the stated purpose is to get to the human author's intention. Good thing. Yeah, sure. Interesting. And are the tools proposed helpful in that regard? Yeah. What's the danger? Well, if the focus is almost exclusively on the intention of the human authority, what happens to the intention of the divine author? So we say the Bible is indeed authored by a whole congeries of different figures, writing to different audiences with different purposes and so on. Fine. But through it all and under it all, or directing it all, we say, is the great divine author of the Bible who is working out his purposes in the events of history and in the words of Scripture. The limitation of historical criticism is it so focuses our attention on the purpose of the human Author that you miss these other, I would say, more mystical and properly theological dimensions.
- [12:59]
A
You also note in the framing of your whole talk the influence that Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict xvi, had on your own approach to the Scripture. Say a little bit about how he helped you to engage with scripture as a whole and the Old Testament in particular.
- [13:12]
B
I've been reading him for years. In 1988, so I was only, what, two years ordained at that point. I'm a young priest. He delivers a lecture in New York under the aegis of, I think it was the Erasmus lecture. Richard John Newhouse. And it was called, I think, Biblical Interpretation in Crisis. And what it was was a hymn of praise to the historical critical method. In fact, many of the great practitioners of that method were there for the talk, including Raymond E. Brown, the greatest of them. And he said yes to it. Yes, helpful, important, necessary, but insufficient for a proper reading. And what he proposed was a kind of neopatristic, I would call it, the way the church fathers tended to read the Bible, which put a great stress on typology, on analogy, on the relation between the Old and New Testament, on the totality of the Bible. See? So again, a danger of historical criticism if the purpose is to uncover the intention of the human author. Okay, I'm an Isaiah specialist. I'm gonna tell you what Isaiah's got in mind. Well, I'm a Jeremiah specialist. I'm a specialist in the book of the prophet Jonah. Okay, well, how are these people talking to each other? And they're across centuries of time and different audiences and different literary genre. Well, how are they all about, in some sense, the same thing? Well, you have to go beyond historical criticism to get to that. So Ratzinger, in this famous lecture, was urging not the repudiation of historical critique, but a amplification of it through these more neopatristic methods. Well, you know, I read that again when I was probably 28 years old. And there's a whole generation of us, I would say, who are deeply impacted by that lecture. As I mentioned in my Notre Dame lecture, it was pooh, poohed at the time, I remember that, by the biblical establishment. It was like. Well, you know, no one thinks that. Oh, of course. You know, of course we all believe that. Well, there's no of course about it. I mean, Ratzinger was seeing something very real. And I think it just took a little bit of time. But a generation that took in that critique began to practice what he preached. And, I mean, I would say humbly that, you know, the word on fire efforts are very much along the lines that Ratzinger suggested.
- [15:29]
A
Absolutely. So one of the foundational themes in your talk is that the God of the Old Testament is, in your words, and I'm quoting the talk here, not simply the greatest being or the supreme God among gods, but totally other, qualitatively different from anything in the realm of finite being. So, Bishop, say more about what you mean here and why it's so important not only for understanding the nature of God in the Old Testament as seeing God as totally other, but also why that's important for giving a whole hermeneutic or interpretive lens for interpreting what's going on in the Old Testament.
- [16:02]
B
Yeah, if I want something carved on my tombstone, it might be that. Because, I mean, it's been such a theme for me in all of my writings. I learned it as a young man, a Catholic, you, under Robert Sokolowski. And I've spent a lot of my life developing that theme and pulling out the implications of it. I begin my lecture at Notre Dame with deutero, Isaiah. So what they call second Isaiah, chapters 40 through 55, they often say there's a first Isaiah, right? And then a second Isaiah, writing around the time of the exile. Well, in those chapters, in the 40s and 50s of that book, and I rehearsed a lot of it almost to purposely comic effect, the number of times that author says, channeling God, I'm God, there is no other. I'm God, there's no one like me, there's none like me, over and over and over and over again. I read about 12 of them, I think, in a row, just to make the point that he really wants us to get something here, that the God he's talking about is not a being in the world to whom I could compare other beings. Oh, God, sure, he's the most impressive of all beings. No, no. Then he wouldn't be incomparable. And what Isaiah's insisting upon is the incomparability of God. Now, why? Because God is the Creator of all things, which means he's not ingredient as an item in the world that he's made. He's transcendent to the totality of finitude in such a way that he can't be circumscribed by finitude. He can't be compared and contrasted to finite things. This incomparability, see, in Isaiah's language is reflected, I argued, in the famous self designation in Exodus. Right. What's your name? Who are you? See, he's Asking a very sensible question within a categorical framework. What's your name? Who are you? Oh, you're Matt Petruzyk. Oh, that differentiates you from all other people that I know. Who's your mom and dad? And you're related to whom and who's your wife? And what I'm doing there is. I'm comparing, contrasting, categorizing finite items using conventional categories. So Moses is doing something similar. All right, you're obviously a divinity of some kind, a deity. So what's your. So when they ask me, are you the God of the mountain, you, God of this place, you, God of Israel and not Egypt, are you? What are you? Who are you? Right, good question. Within a categorical framework, God's answer, I am who I am, see, is in a way repudiating the question. It's saying it's just the wrong question to ask. I'm not this or that. I'm not here or there. I'm not a God of this place rather than that place. I am who I am. Now take one more step. My hero, Thomas Aquinas. In God, essence and existence coincide. Meaning God's very nature. His essence is his existence is to be. See, where any finite thing, I'd say, well, no, your essence is to be a human being. The essence of this is to be a table. This is to be a microphone. Okay, so what's the essence of God? What does it mean to be God? To be God is to be. To be. I am who I am. There's nobody like me. See, I'm going to. What I did in the lecture is draw a kind of golden thread between two Isaiah, Exodus 3:14, Thomas Aquinas, essence and existence are all making the same point about God. And only when you get that seem just based on many years of thinking and writing and teaching. Only when you get that do the mysteries of the faith open up in a way that's deeply coherent and liberating. That a lot of our trouble comes from a misconstrual of God as a supreme being.
- [20:11]
A
So this establishes many other important themes. One of them is how we understand God in relationship to creation. Specifically understood as independent, as self sufficient, as not needing anything in creation. Unpacking a little bit of that for us of why that is also a fundamental prism for interpreting the Old Testament.
- [20:30]
B
Well, it's important to get this straight, that the world is utterly dependent upon God. So we talk about creation from nothing. Well, that's not just an abstract statement. That's saying there's literally nothing that comes between the creature and God. It's not as though there's something the creature has, and then there's a kind of quasi dependence. Like, right now, you and I are dependent upon each other in a very limited way, right? So for this time, for this purpose, we're kind of in this interdependent relationship. But, you know, you'll go your way, I'll go mine eventually. But that's the way it goes with creatures. But a creature vis a vis God, there's nothing that doesn't come in its totality from God to the creature. And so there's an utter dependency. Now, flip it around. God has no dependency vis a vis the world. But in so many of the mythologies and religions and philosophies, there is a dependent relationship, even though I'm a mighty God. But boy, oh, boy, do I need that sacrifice. And if I don't get your sacrifice, I'm gonna be really mad. Or, you know, is it. In what story is it where even the gods themselves in the underworld are kind of sucking the blood of a sacrifice? Cause they need it. See, that's repugnant to the Bible. The God who has made everything from nothing couldn't possibly need anything from the world. Boom. That is the most liberating thing, See, because the God that needs us will manipulate us and will use us and will subjugate us, but the God who has no need of us whatsoever can truly love us. What's love to will the good of the other. That's what God is able to do utterly, in the fullest possible way. Right? God can love me utterly because he doesn't need me. And, see, I think that is. You have to draw some implications, but is implied throughout the Bible. That's basic to a biblical understanding of God.
- [22:31]
A
So you've described God in terms that we see him as radically other, as independent, as categorically transcendent. But you also note that the same God, I'm quoting you here again, is thoroughly, intimately, unavoidably, and personally involved in the affairs of the world that he's made. So how do we square these two conceptions of God? Both God is radically transcendent and God as actively involved, not only as a principle of creation, but also personally involved in time and space and history.
- [22:59]
B
I still think the best analogy, because it sheds light in every direction, is author vis a vis text. JRR Tolkien is utterly transcendent to the text of Lord of the Rings. In other words, he's not in it. He's not a character. There's all these characters. There's Gandalf and there's Gimli, and there's Orcs and Dwarves, and there's Bil and Frodo, and there's all of it. Well, where's Tolkien? Where does Tolkien show up in the story? He's nowhere in the story. He's not in the story. He's not a character in the story. Okay? That's the transcendence of Tolkien to the book. By the same token, where's Tolkien in the story? He's everywhere in the story. There's not one little detail that he's not utterly responsible for. Every comma, every period, every plot, every subplot, every character, every development, everything depends upon Tolkien, even as he is radically transcendent to the book. That's the right way to think about God. God's like a great storyteller, and we're the story. Now all analogies limp. And where that one limps is we're real subjects with freedom in mind and so on. And so God is not just, you know, utterly, like, manipulating us in that sort of puppeteer way. But the basic truth of that analogy, I think, is really illuminating. Not in the story, therefore, utterly present to the story. See, I mean, Gandalf is a great character in that story, but he can't be. He's not present to every part of it. There are large sections. He's not even involved. And even when he's there, he might be dealing with one figure at a time. Tolkien is intimately involved with every single figure, the most important figures and the most inconsequential figure. But Tolkien invented that figure and sketched his character and gave him every word he said, right? Put every comma, every semicolon, every period in that part of the story. That's the providential God vis a vis the world.
- [25:05]
A
Some more biblical or theologically specific way of framing a very similar question is how do we conceive of God as the creator of the world and of all human beings or the Father of all? And yet, as we see in the biblical text, in a particular covenantal relationship with the Hebrew people, the people of Israel. How do we combine those two visions of God?
- [25:26]
B
Because it's always one for the sake of the other. The biblical logic is never, I choose you over and against the rest, rather, I choose you for the rest. That's the biblical logic. So there is a choice involved, for sure. You're my special people, Israel. You're my priestly people. I've chosen, shaped you, given you my mind, my law you know now why that you might now become the bearer of that presence to the whole world. So again, it's not choice over and against. Hey, look at me, I'm chosen, you're not. It's chosen for the sake of the other. Hey, look at the choice God's made, which gives me this awesome responsibility now to be the bearer of that grace to the world. That's the right way to think about it. That's biblical logic.
- [26:14]
A
So many other really central themes to your talk. In the interest of time and keeping in mind the topic of the show, we're trying to help evangelists be able to employ the Old Testament for evangelical purposes. Let's take the conception of God that you've laid out and apply it to some very common critiques that we especially get from seculars about Christianity in general, but specifically the Old Testament. So one common criticism is that the God of the Old Testament is, well, violent himself and advocates violence on his behalf, including genocidal violence. How should we respond to that claim?
- [26:46]
B
Yeah, and in itself we could do several shows on the complexity of that stuff. Let me give you one take on it, which is from Origen. It's from the ancient church is the Christian must read the entire Bible from the standpoint of the last book of the Bible, Book of Revelation, when the Lamb standing as though slain, it's a strange formulation in Greek appears and he alone is able to open the seven seals that seal the scroll. And what's the scroll? You could say all of history or you could say it's the whole of scripture. And well, who will open it for us? Like who will interpret it for us? Well, the Lamb standing as though slain means the Lamb of God, Jesus slain on the cross. So Origen says that's it. It's the crucified Jesus that allows us to read the entire Bible. So what's the crucified Jesus represent but the self emptying love of God? God's forgiving love, God's nonviolence in the face of the world's violence. Well, with that hermeneutical lens in place, we look back at these stories of, you know, kill all these people and wipe them out and so on. Well, now we should read them allegorically. And that's how the church fathers read them. Think of, you know, putting the ban on a people, you know, kill every man, woman, child in the city. Think of the command to Saul that he doesn't obey to kill all the Amalekites, including their king. And when Samuel sees that, he goes, what the heck? And then he hacks the king to pieces, Right? That's the story. All right. How do we read that? In light of the lamb standing as though slain? Well, it's the call now to battle evil all the way down. So Jesus on the cross does battle with all of human sin, and he battles it all the way down. Sin and death. And the devil, he enters into close quarters with them and battles them completely. So it's the elimination of wickedness and sin utterly. And then I think those stories become very illuminating because we sinners all do what Saul did. Hey, I took care of that problem. I took care of the Amalekites. I just kept a little bit for myself and, you know, the king and what's. What we all do with our own sin, right? Oh, yeah. I think I've eliminated that problem from my life. Have you? All the way down. Did you hack ag gag gag to pieces, say? Well, no, no, no. I'm keeping a little bit here. Whether it's my pride, my envy, my anger, my lust, my gluttony, name the sin, I tend to sort of pussyfoot around. I play with it, I get rid of it to some degree. Or think of, you know, the 12 step stuff, I think is illuminating someone who's addicted to booze, you know. Oh, yeah. I mean, I've eliminated, I mean, 90% of my drinking for my life. Is that going to work? No, man. You gotta hack ag gag to pieces. You gotta battle this thing all the way down. You never take a drink ever, ever in your life. You can't compromise with it. Well, sin is like that. And that's how I tend. That's origin. There's nothing newfangled about that reading. That's from the third century, that reading. That's how I read those texts.
- [30:00]
A
Another criticism is that the God of the Old Testament is moody and mercurial and jealous and eager to punish anyone who does not do what he says. Kind of divine diva. How do we respond to that claim?
- [30:11]
B
Yeah, Keep in mind, all language about God, even the most refined sort of philosophical language, but especially narrative language, all of it is analogical. So, you know, Aquinas says whatever can be known or understood is less than God himself. Augustine says, if you understand, that isn't God. Right. So there's this great caution that our language is gesturing in the direction of God. It's never a univocal description. Like I can describe you right at this moment with some accuracy. I can use pretty univocal language to do it, but I can never do that with God. So I use analogical language again at the conceptual level and the narrative level, the poetic level. So God's angry. Well, do I mean that God is falling into an emotional snit? Well, no, God doesn't have emotions and God doesn't change. So what do I mean when I say that? Well, here's Newman. How do you experience God when you're in alienation from him? When you're in sin, how do you experience him? You experience him as angry. That's the language I'd reach for. Now, if I parse it further, I might say my conscience is really bothering me. I realize I'm alienated from God. I'm not where I'm supposed to be. Well, I will project that legitimately as poetic language of God's angry with me. God is making these demands upon me. Well, does that mean God needs something from me and he's like this petulant pasha or something? No, it's my way of saying what it feels like when I'm not living the way I'm supposed to be living. And I'll express that poetically as God is making demands on me. Well, I know that's how the conscience feels. Appropriately. Right. I'm living a bad life. My conscience is saying, no, no, get back on the right track. Come on, come on, come on. All right, that's God making demands on me, but I'm using highly charged analogical language to do it. The Bible trades in that all the time. Look, the Bible talks about God is a rock. I don't think God's a big piece of granite or something. It's a God walked through the garden with Adam and Eve. I don't think God has legs and arms. So they're all highly analogical poetic language. And so we have to be sensitive to that.
- [32:34]
A
Along the same lines, there's the critique that. And this actually goes back to a very early heresy in the second century Marcianism, that look, there's just no way to square the God of the Old Testament and the peaceful, loving Jesus Christ that you have to make a choice. They're mutually exclusive. How do we respond to that?
- [32:55]
B
Yeah, first of all, you're really right in naming that as one of the very earliest major heresies. Named for Marcion, who was a 2nd century Roman theologian and claimed to love the New Testament, at least most of it. Hated the Old Testament, it was a fallen testament. And he kept the parts of the New Testament that had nothing to do with the Old. Well, led by people like Saint Irenaeus. Of Lyon, the Church said, no, no, no, you understand the New Testament without the Old, they're not witnessing to separate gods. In fact, what you find in Jesus, we say the incarnation of the Logos. Put that in more Jewish language. He's like a portrait of Yahweh sprung to life. If you want to see Yahweh as described in the Old Testament now in human form, you look at Jesus. Can you find the God of. Of tender compassion in the Old Testament? Of course. Could a mother forget her child? Even if she forgets, I will never forget you. I've carved you in the palm of my hand. Beautiful. The God of compassion. Reading the prophets and so on. Do you also find in the Old Testament a strong sense of God's demand and anger? Uh huh. Do you see it in Jesus? Yeah. Read his diatribes against the Pharisees. Jesus, anger at the crowds, his frustration with them. Do you find high moral demand in the Old Testament? Uh huh. Do you find higher moral demand in the New Testament? Yes. Compare the Ten Commandments to the eight Beatitudes. So no, no, it's simply not the case that, you know, they're witnessing to different gods or there's no. No, you have to read it deeply and perceptively and with a sense of the trajectory from beginning to end of the entire Bible. And then you see them in their unity.
- [34:46]
A
And finally, what about the claim that the Old Testament is just a collection of myths like any other old collection of ancient myths?
- [34:55]
B
Yeah. Well, first of all, you know, genre sensitivity is extremely important in biblical interpretation. So I've often argued the Bible's not so much a book, it's a library. Tabiblia in Greek means the books, plural. And we get the Scriptures from that plural. Right. Well, the point there is you walk into a library, you'll see a whole variety of books. Different genre, different authors, different audiences, different chronology. You know, what's the trick? Well, partially knowing what genre you're dealing with. So I go to the library, I pick up a straightforward history book, right? I'm going to read it with a certain set of eyes. I pick up a Shakespeare play. Now, it might be a fantastic one like Midsummer Night's Dream or maybe one like Julius Caesar. And you say, okay, well, the first one's really kind of a. It's a fantasy. The second one, there's a lot of history in it, but it's not exactly history. It's this sort of literarily amplified history. Then I pick up a biography of some famous person. Then I pick up a Science fiction book. Well, I kind of know the difference in genre between all these books. Same with the Bible. The Bible is congeries of books from different eras, different authors, different purposes and different genre. So are you dealing with some texts that are more poetic? Of course. Look at the Psalms. You're looking at a text like Proverbs. You're not dealing with history, you're dealing with, you know, kind of philosophical musings. The Book of Wisdom. Are there books that are quasi historical? Yeah, look at 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles. Look at the Gospels. What are those? I'd say the genre there is ancient biography. Now, an ancient biography is different than a modern biography, just as ancient history is different than the way we write history today. I'm just making the point that genre sensitivity is indispensable to make. Look, there's a fundamentalist version of this. The Bible's all historically journalistically true. Well, that's naive. By the same token, it's all Bronze Age mythology. That's naive too. The Bible is a library collection of books and we've got to be sensitive to the genre when we try to
- [37:14]
A
interpret them before transitioning into our listener question. Can you offer some advice for evangelists on how to frame the Old Testament when they're engaging with people in this sort of highly secularized space?
- [37:26]
B
You know, I guess, man, I would say know the fundamental story. So I've been stressing just a few minutes ago the sort of variety of texts in the Bible. But the Bible is also, in a very important way a book because it's the great story that God is telling. I've said this five act drama, it's like a Shakespeare play that way. It's five Acts. There's Creation, there's the Fall, there's the formation of a people, Israel, there's the coming of the Messiah and then there's the age of the Church. And that's a great arc, a great trajectory. God makes the world good. Act one. We fall and the world is compromised by sin. Act 2, Act 3, long act is the formation of a people, a chosen people whom God is forming so as to bring his salvation to the whole world. That choice reaches a climax. Act four, the coming of the Mashiach, the Anointed One. And now the Anointed One. Crucified and risen from the dead is the Lord who directs his work in the final act, which is the age of the Church. Now read the Acts of the Apostles or read the Book of Revelation. I think for an evangelist to be aware of that great trajectory of the biblical story. And then you see, well, where do I fit in that story? How do I know who I am? Biblical people would say, well, you have to know the story, right? And I'm doing something that is in continuity with this great story. That's the story I belong to. See, I think that would help the
- [38:57]
A
evangelist that's so compelling. All right, it's now time for our listener question. Today we have James, a Protestant considering a conversion to Catholicism, asking about the Bible's role within Catholic thought.
- [39:12]
B
Our topic today. Yeah,
- [39:15]
A
hi, Bishop Barron.
- [39:16]
B
Thanks for taking my question.
- [39:19]
A
I am a Protestant considering a conversion to Catholicism.
- [39:23]
B
And one of the questions that comes
- [39:24]
A
up often with that is what is the role of the Bible within Catholic thought?
- [39:31]
B
I know there's an acceptance, but could you put a little bit more fine detail on that? Thank you. Yeah, thanks for the question because it sums up our whole show. I would say watch this show. But you know what I'd say to you, though, and I really mean this is bring the best of your Protestantism to the Catholic Church. I always cite my mentor, Cardinal George, that he said the Catholic Church has all the gifts Christ wants his people to have, but it doesn't mean that there aren't real gifts of Christ in other churches and that in some cases they're better exercised in those other churches. So, you know, heck, I've learned so much from Protestant theologians and preachers over the years as they delve into the Bible. They've opened up the Bible to me in so many ways. So I would say bring the best of your Protestantism to the faith if you become a Catholic.
- [40:20]
A
Well, thanks so much, James, for reaching out to us. If you would like to ask Bishop Barron a question for a future Word on Fire show, please visit askbishopbarron.com Again, that's askbishopbarron.com we always love to hear from you. And please also keep in mind that you can watch the whole lecture we've been discussing today, easily findable online. Well, thanks, Bishop.
- [40:41]
B
Thanks, Matt.
- [40:42]
A
Another very enlightening conversation.
- [40:44]
B
All right. God bless you.
- [40:45]
A
That does it for us today. Thanks for joining us on the Word on Fire Show. If you're interested in learning more about how Word on Fire can help you grow closer to Christ, become a better evangelist with and for others, and work for the common good, consider joining the Word on Fire Institute. Check us out at institute.WordPress.org that's institute.WordPress.org and we'll see you next time.