How to Read the Bible

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0:00 In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Hear my words, O Lord. Listen to my sighing. Hear my cry for help, my King, my God. To you I pray, O Lord. At dawn you will hear my cry. At dawn I will plead before you and wait. You are not a God who delights in evil. No wicked person finds refuge with you. The arrogant cannot stand before you. You hate all who do evil. You destroy all who speak falsely. Murderers and deceivers the Lord abhors.

0:58 But I can enter your house because of your great love. I can worship in your holy temple because of my reverence for you, Lord. Guide me in your justice because of my foes. Make straight your way before me. All who take refuge in you will be glad and forever shout for joy. Protect them that you may be the joy of those who love your name. For you, Lord, bless the just. You surround them with favor like a shield. Lord Jesus Christ, be present now and let your Holy Spirit bow. All hearts and love and truth today to hear your word and keep your way.

1:51 Give us the grace to grasp your word that we may do what we have heard. Instruct us through the scriptures, Lord, as we draw near, O God adored. To God the Father and the Son and Holy Spirit, three in one. To you, O blessed Trinity, be praised throughout eternity. Amen. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Chapter 30, the final chapter. You guys have made it all this way. Yay. Did I think you would? I don't know. I didn't. All right.

2:38 So it's kind of odd that chapter 30, the last chapter, isn't, you know, the book of Revelation, the end of history, or the final book of the canon, or Acts of the Apostles with the church. But it's how to read the Bible. How to read the Bible. Because, you know, it's kind of like you're graduating from this study in a certain sense. And you're going to go on, you're going to continue to read scripture and interpret it and apply it to your lives. And so tonight, we're going to talk about how to read the Bible. Because there is a correct way to read the Bible versus an incorrect way. Today is also the feast day of who? Do you guys know? Athanasius. St. Athanasius. This is also my anniversary, my first Holy Communion. That's always from May 2nd, St. Athanasius.

3:28 And Athanasius battled what great heresy in the early church? I'm sorry? Christology. Christology, whether or not Christ was God? Yes. That's certainly what he encountered and what he had to defend. Does anybody know what the name of the heresy was? It said that Christ was not God. He was not eternally begotten of the Father. He was not divine from all eternity. Arianism, which was spread by Arius. And St. Athanasius was a great defender. And the Arians were very good at knowing their scripture. The Arians knew all of the verses.

4:16 And they would quote them voraciously. And they would stick to them with their interpretation of these verses. And so, and in fact, many bishops of the church became heretics. What's interesting is that never did the Bishop of Rome embrace Arianism. But some, a lot of bishops embraced Arianism. Because there was a political advantage to, also to embracing Arianism. It's kind of like at a certain point, the emperor was an Arian. So, whoever embraced Arianism had favor with the imperial court. What time period? We're talking about the late 200s. I'm sorry, the early 300s. So, like the Council of Nicaea was held in 325. And that was to combat Arianism. And Arianism continued even after the First Council of Nicaea.

5:08 Those people who didn't accept the First Council of Nicaea and what they proclaimed continued. In their disbelief, in their heresy. But the Arians knew scripture, and they quoted it voraciously. And so did Athanasius. And Athanasius would quote scripture back, and they would have these battles. Battles of words, battles of letters. And tonight, I'm going to give you a way to interpret scripture that St. Athanasius used. And that all of the great doctors of the church have used. And which the church calls for us to use today. Because it is the way that scripture is to be interpreted faithfully. Okay, if you guys ever turn to the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

5:58 These criterion are given in the Catechism, CCC, Catechism of the Catholic Church. Paragraphs 109 to 114. So it's right near the beginning of the Catechism. Because the Catechism goes on for almost 3,000 paragraphs. But this is where I'm drawing this from. And the first thing we need to look at whenever we're reading the Bible, whenever we're interpreting it, is not, what does this mean to you? That's not what we're looking for. The first thing, whenever we try and interpret the Bible, is we want to look for, and we want to ascertain, what's called the literal sense. The literal sense.

6:50 And this is the sense of scripture that is intended by the human author when he wrote as he wrote. So I've used this example before. If I say, you know, it sure is raining cats and dogs. I intend to affirm the literal sense is what? There's furry little animals coming down from the sky. What am I, go ahead somebody. What am I intending to affirm? It's raining hard. Okay, good. But I didn't say it's raining hard. I said it's raining cats and dogs. It's raining like cats and dogs. Or it's raining cats and dogs. Well, 2,000 years from now, somebody could read my words and they could say, you know, I'm really convinced.

7:41 I just, I have this feeling that he, that back then, cats and dogs really fell from the sky. And he witnessed it. Because that's what he said. That's what he literally said. Well, no, the literal sense is to look at the way that I wrote. My way of thinking. And so, when we try and find out what the literal sense is, we need to look at three different things that the catechism gives us. And these all come from the Second Vatican Council in its document on divine revelation, Dei Verbum. The first thing that we have to look at is the conditions of time and culture. The conditions of time and culture.

8:34 So, what are some Jewish customs and traditions? You guys remember Mark's Gospel? Mark's talking about how Jesus castigated the Pharisees for elevating human traditions above the Word of God. And Mark is writing to a Roman audience who don't speak Hebrew. And so, he has to explain what the word korban it means. Okay? So, he takes this... He talks about this Hebrew word korban. And then he says, this is what it means. Those things that you set aside for the temple. For the use in the temple. And so, the Pharisees didn't want to support their parents. You know, they were hypocrites. So, he said, well, that's... You know, my money is korban.

9:21 It's reserved for the temple. And Jesus said, you're not honoring the fourth commandment to honor thy father and thy mother. And so, Mark has to kind of explain that Hebrew word to his audience. And somewhere else, you know, he's writing to the Romans and the Roman Christians also include a lot of Gentiles. And the Gentiles there in Rome didn't know about Jewish purification rituals because they're not Jews. So, he explains, you know, the Jews wash themselves before they eat and at other times. You know, and so, he's explaining Jewish customs to the people. So, we see Mark as he's writing his gospel, he's including Jewish customs and traditions. We also need to look at... When we're looking at the conditions of time and culture, we also have to look at parallel ancient Near Eastern societies.

10:13 So, remember when we were talking about the Ark of the Covenant, I brought up how other ancient dynasties and kingdoms had arks and they would carry them in procession and they were a throne and the Queen Mother would sit on top of the throne that was the ark. It was a box. That's what ark means. It means box. You guys remember that? So, we looked at a parallel and that helped us understand what the ark was and how it's a throne as well. And so, we also have to look at extra-biblical sources, not just the Bible but also outside of the Bible. So, when we look at apocalyptic literature, we looked at apocalyptic literature that was written around the time of the first century or before, like the book of Jubilees or 4th Ezra. The second thing we have to look at to determine the literal sense is the literary genres in use at the time.

11:09 The literary genres. G-E-N-R-E-S. There you go. And, what's a genre? Classification of literature. There you go. A classification of literature. So, we have classifications of You might listen to pop, country, rock, jazz. Those are genres of Well, we need to look at the literature. We need to look at the Bible and see what type of genre it is. And, roughly, we can divide the Bible into three different kinds of genre. There's prose. Barbara, what's prose? Prose is not imaginative use of literature. Poetry is the imaginative use of literature and prose is everything else.

11:57 Okay, so prose is non-imaginative and roughly, it's pretty straightforward, whereas poetry uses more symbol and more of the imagination. So, prose includes narrative, history, and law. And so, you know, the first five books of the Bible are a lot of this. It's a mixture of law, narrative, and then just straight-out history. Censuses were taken of the people and so we just have a bunch of numbers. You know, they counted the people and this is how many they had. Just flat-out history. And then sometimes we have storytelling and it's not just flat-out history. It's a story that tells history, but the main thing about a story is we need to look at the plot and the main characters. So, we have narrative, history, law.

12:48 Another type of a literary genre is prophecy. Prophecy. And so, we have different types of prophecy. We have oracles of salvation. You know, there's going to be the restoration, the redemption of Jerusalem. Salvation. There's also announcements of judgment. You broke the law. You broke the covenant. Therefore, the covenant curses are coming. Announcements of judgment. There's also apocalyptic prophecy. Prophecies are spoken of in apocalyptic sense. So, when Jesus gave a prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, he spoke with apocalyptic language. So, we have apocalypse, that genre of literature, within the gospel of Matthew, within the gospel of Luke, within the gospel of Mark. We also have poetry, which, as Barbara mentioned, is kind of the opposite of prose.

13:45 And so, we have different types of poetry in the Bible. We have laments. So, we have these in the Psalms, or the Lamentations of Jeremiah, is its own book in the Bible. We have praise. So, the praise Psalms are called the Hillel Psalms, because Hillel is Hebrew for praise. And that's where we get hallelujah from, praise the Lord. Hillel Yah. Praise Yahweh. Hallelujah. We also have proverbs as part of poetry. Okay, so, we have a lot of proverbs within the Bibles, and even one of the books is called Proverbs. And then we have non-proverbial wisdom. So, wisdom that's just given, but it's not in like short proverbs. It's kind of longer, more extended.

14:33 So, these are all different types, and this isn't exhaustive. There's other types of odd little literary genres. And whenever we're trying to determine what did the author mean, we have to look at the literary genre, in addition to the conditions of time and culture. And then finally, last but not least, that's number two, number three, is we need to look at the modes, and this is the catechism word for word, modes words of feeling, speaking, and narrating, then current. So, you know, how did they speak back then?

15:21 What types of idioms did they use? Remember, we talked about what did Jesus do with the apostles for 40 days in Acts chapter 1? What did he do with them? He met with them, but he didn't just meet with them. What did he do with them? He ate. What did he, how did St. Luke talk about that? What Hebrew idiom did he use? No, He broke bread with the disciples on the road to Emmaus at the end of Luke's gospel, in Acts of the Apostles the 40 days, he spoke with them about the kingdom of God and he took salt with them. Remember, he took salt with them. And that's a Hebrew idiom for to eat a meal.

16:10 Because what do you do at a meal? You put salt on your food. So it's a Hebrew idiom. So, you know, when we're reading the Gospels and something really weird comes up, Jesus took salt with them. What does that mean? Well, we have to get back to the culture. That was a manner of speaking. I mean, what did you feel? What was the sense of when you said you take salt with somebody? Well, that meant to eat. We also have to look at rhetorical devices. There are certain ways of speaking and narrating back then. Like, for instance, when Jesus says to Mary at the wedding of Cana, he says, woman, what is this between you and I? Well, us reading our 21st century American version, a lot of us go, wow, you're a little disrespectful of your mom. What about that commandment? You know, respect your father and your mother?

16:56 But that was actually a respectful way of speaking to someone. And calling someone woman was a respectful way of addressing someone. Whereas, if one of your students, Margie, said, hey, woman, what would you, I mean, we're in a different culture. Excuse me? Yeah. And so, we also have to look at structuralism, like parallels. So, sometimes an author writes things to parallel something else. So, for instance, when we saw Noah, and God tells Noah to be fertile and to multiply and to fill the earth, what does that remind us of? Genesis, Adam. And when we have, when we have, I'm trying to remember, when Moses gives, speaks four times about building the, speaks seven times about building the tabernacle, what does that remind us of?

17:54 The seven times God said, you know, he said, let it, you know, the seven times God spoke in creation. So, we can look back at creation, we can say, well, that's probably a primordial tabernacle. If Moses is doing the same thing with the building of the tabernacle, it's what God did with creation. Or the tabernacle is supposed to be, somehow is supposed to represent the cosmos. So that's parallelism. Another way of narrating would be chiasms. Are you guys familiar with chiasms? At all? A chiasm goes like this. A, B, C, B, A. So, I have a dog. He's really fluffy. My dog is the cutest.

18:41 My dog has really fluffy hair. And so, I love having a dog. Well, I spoke about having a dog at the beginning and the end. I spoke about the dog being fluffy, you know, in between that, kind of like parentheses or captions. And then in the middle, I said, my dog is the cutest ever. Is that what I said? I actually don't have a dog, so I have to make this up. So, I'm placing emphasis on what I put in the middle. It's like a way of underlining what you're saying. It's called a chiasm. C-H-I-A-S-M. Not chasm, but C-H-I-A-S-M. Chiasm. And that's a way of writing.

19:28 And that happens a lot, actually, within Scripture. There's a lot of chiasms, but we can totally miss them. You know, we're just reading, we just think that they're just writing what they're writing. We don't get, when we read it for the first time, we don't get all the cool things that are included. Because back then, they really took their time when they wrote Scripture, or anything. You know, when they wrote documents, it wasn't like, oh, they just wrote off an email, or spouted something off, but they really took their time, and they put care, and they crafted their letters. They crafted what they were writing. Can you give us an example of a biblical chiasm? Example of a biblical chiasm? I don't have any off the top of my head. I know what happens in the book of Genesis. Now, we have to look at the conditions of time and culture, the literary genres, and the modes of feeling, speaking,

20:20 and narrating, then current. Now, I want to introduce you guys to a wonderful, brand new Bible study resource that is being published by Ignatius Press. And that's called the Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. The Ignatius Catholic Study Bible. So it's going to be like the NIV for Catholics. And right now they're publishing them book by book, so you can buy them in pamphlet form like this, and then when they're finished with all the books, they're going to put it into one big Bible on that really thin type of paper with all the footnotes. And so, for instance, here's Paul's epistle to the Romans, the Acts of the Apostles, the Gospel of John, first and second letters of St.

21:13 Paul to the Corinthians, Gospel of Luke, Gospel of Mark, letters of St. Paul to the Galatians and Ephesians, letters of St. Paul, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon, the Gospel of Matthew. These are great. And they have cool little topical essays in them, like, for instance, in the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus in the Old Testament is Matthew's infancy narrative historical. Comes with several maps. The end of the world, talking about Matthew 24, the mini apocalypse, Jesus on marriage and divorce, a word study on Peter, a word study on parables, word study on blessed, word study on righteousness. even has a map of the appearances of the risen Christ.

21:59 Really great stuff. But in the beginning of these study Bibles, it tells you basically what I'm telling you tonight. So you guys can all leave tonight and go buy one of these and read it. And this is what it says with regard to the reading of the Bible and its interpretation. Okay, it says because the Bible has both divine and human authors, we are required to master a different sort of reading than we are used to. First, we must read scripture according to its literal sense, as we read any other human literature. At this initial stage, we strive to discover the meaning of the words and expressions used by the biblical writers as they were understood in their original setting and by their original recipients.

22:50 This means, among other things, that we do not interpret everything we read literalistically. Everybody repeat after me. Literalistically. Okay, there we go. That's the word of the day. As though scripture never speaks in a figurative or symbolic way. It often does. Rather, we read it according to the rules that govern its different literary forms of writing, depending upon whether we are reading a narrative, a poem, a letter, a parable, or an apocalyptic vision. The church calls us to read the divine books in this way to ensure that we understand what the human authors were laboring to explain to God's people. Now it continues, the text I'm reading. The literal sense, however, is not the only sense of scripture.

23:40 Since we interpret its sacred pages according to the spiritual senses as well, in this way, we search out what the Holy Spirit is trying to tell us beyond even what the human authors have consciously asserted. Whereas the literal sense of scripture describes a historical reality, a fact, precept, or event, the spiritual senses disclose deeper mysteries revealed through the historical realities. Okay, so the literal sense talks about a historical reality, talks about events. The book of Exodus talks about what? The Exodus, and what was the Exodus?

24:33 Israel came out of Egypt, and what else happened in the book of Exodus? They got the law, Israel became a nation, was water involved at all? Plagues, the Nile being turned into blood. What else? Yeah, the opening of the Red Sea, going between it. But what have we found out from St. Paul? St. Paul interprets these events in 1 Corinthians spiritually. He says they were all baptized into Moses. They all passed through the Red Sea. And they all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink. And so he's using these events which point forward to later events.

25:21 They point forward to Christ. And this is where we get the spiritual senses. Because God, remember, writes history like men write words. So when I write the word Margie, that is a real entity in and of itself. M-A-R-G-I-E. I can write it down. I can speak it. I can shout it. I can sing it. Margie! You know? But is that really what I'm, is that the end for which I have these six letters? Why do I have these six letters? Why do I have the name Margie? Because those letters point forward to that wonderful lady who's sitting right back there in the second pew.

26:14 We'll use church terminology here. And so my words point forward to like a sign. And so God has been writing the history of creation in Israel in order to point forward to and to be fulfilled in Christ. And this is where we get the spiritual sense of scripture. And this is how our Lord and the apostles interpreted scripture. And it's also how the prophets interpreted scripture. The prophets would talk about what's to come using the first exodus. So remember we saw in some prophets they would talk about the restoration of Israel as a new exodus. Just as God brought his people out of Egypt, so he's going to bring his people out of exile, out of the nations.

27:00 And just as he brought them out of Egypt and formed them into a people, so he's going to regather Israel in the restoration. It's going to be a new exodus. So the prophets themselves use this spiritual way of interpreting scripture. And so there are three spiritual senses. The first one is called the allegorical. And this is where the literal sense of the Old Testament is fulfilled in Christ. So there really was a Passover lamb that really had to be sacrificed in order to redeem the firstborn Israelites. It really had to be eaten. It really had to have its blood be put on the doorposts and the lintel so that the angel of death would pass over the houses of the Israelites to save them from natural death.

27:56 Now that Passover lamb is the spiritual sense of when we read Exodus 12 we read about the Passover that can be interpreted spiritually allegorically in Christ. Christ our new Passover lamb. So we can look back to that event and we can see Christ in the Passover lamb. We can see the New Testament hidden in the old and the old unveiled and fully revealed in the new. That's the allegorical sense. So that's where the literal sense of the Old Testament is fulfilled in Christ. Let's look at John chapter 2 verse 19. John chapter 2 verse 19. And we see Jesus interpreting the Old Testament with this allegorical sense.

28:55 So as we read scripture we use Jesus as our model. Would someone please read John 2 verse 19. Go ahead Barbara. Jesus answered and said to them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said, this temple has been under construction for 46 years and you will raise it up in three days. But he was speaking about the temple of his body. Therefore, when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this and they came to believe the scripture and the word Jesus had spoken. Why did Jesus refer to himself as a temple?

29:43 Why not just say, kill me and in three days I will come back to life? Why did he use the temple to point to himself? Because he is the temple, but what does that mean? That's what the Jews expected in the exile? He would rebuild the temple, there would be a new temple with the Davidic king. Right. He knew what the temple meant to the Jews, and what did the temple mean to the Jews? The temple was everything. But what was so great about the temple?

30:29 God's spirit. God dwelt among his people in a special way, and God didn't just do that because he wants to have a temple with his people forever. We don't have a big building, a big temple, where God dwells among us in the new covenant. So if God didn't want the temple to go on in Jerusalem for eternity or forever, why did he have it? Why did he have it built in the Old Testament? Because it's a sign that he wanted to use to teach Israel about what he's going to do in the new covenant. And so when Jesus comes, there's no need for the sign anymore because the reality has fulfilled it. So Jesus uses the temple in the Old Testament and interprets everything that it meant to the Jews as a sign that's fulfilled in him.

31:23 I'm your center of worship. I'm God dwelling among you. I'm the Davidic king with the temple. I'm going to be, I'm the center of the universe because that's what the temple was to the Jews. The second spiritual sense of scripture is the moral. The moral. and this is where the literal sense of scripture is fulfilled in the church and in Christian life. In the church and Christian life. So it pertains not to Christ himself but it pertains more to us. And so I want to read from St. Thomas Aquinas for you guys.

32:15 St. Thomas Aquinas. In the new law whatever our head has done is a type of what we ought to do. You know when he says head he's speaking about Christ. therefore so far as the things of the old law signify the things of the new law there is the allegorical sense. So far as the things done in Christ or so far as the things which signify Christ are types of what we ought to do there is the moral sense. So when Jesus you know stays up all night and spends a lot of time in prayer before choosing the twelve apostles or before offering himself over to the Gentiles to be crucified when he spends his time in prayer what does that mean for us?

33:16 We need to do that before major decisions in our life. And so when Jesus prays in the garden of Gethsemane Lord not my will be done but your will be done what does that mean for us? That's the way we pray. We're supposed to seek the will of God just like Jesus did. And so when Jesus says when Jesus crucifies himself upon the cross are we now exempted from suffering? Has he taken away all of our suffering and now we suffer no more here as Christians? What are we to do with our suffering? Offer it up as a spiritual sacrifice acceptable to God. That's what St. Peter says in 1 Peter. Romans chapter 12 verse 1 Offer your bodies as a living sacrifice acceptable to God your father and this is your spiritual worship.

34:13 So we are as we talked about last time we are priests. We are here use because we are offering we are sacrificing but are we sacrificing bulls and goats and lambs? No because that's not what Christ offered. Christ offered the perfect offering which is what? But not just not just him. And what is that when you offer yourself? What is that? What do we call that? It's a theological virtue. Sacrifice. Yes. But if I if I have if I sound like angels but if I have not blank I am a clanging gong.

35:06 Charity. Love. Authentic love. And so Christ's supreme sacrifice is love. Not eros but agape. Actually takes up eros into agape and transforms eros in Christian marriage. So love is what we do as priests. We are offering ourselves as priests in love doing the will of God sacrificing ourselves for the love of God and the love of others. So Jesus says at the Last Supper you know this commandment I give to you love one another as I have loved you. This radical self-giving love. And so there's the moral interpretation of scripture. What Christ did so we are to do and not just that but if the Old Testament is an allegory of the New Testament in Christ that also can speak about us because we are part of the mystical body of Christ we are members of Christ so it can be said about Christ can be said about us so when the Old Testament temple spoke out each one of us and we become what when the Holy

36:14 Spirit indwells our souls we become temples as Paul says in 1st Corinthians let's turn to 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16 and this is Paul again using the moral sense with regard to the first chapter the second chapter of Genesis 1st Corinthians chapter 6 verse 16 go ahead Barbara or do you know that anyone who joins himself to a prostitute becomes one body with her for the two it says will become one flesh but whoever is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him avoid immorality every other sin a person commits is outside the body but the immoral person sins against his own body do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you whom you have from God and that you are not your own for you have been purchased at a price therefore glorify God in your body wow so was Jesus purchased at a price you betcha thirty pieces of silver

37:39 was Jesus the new temple of the new covenant yes was Jesus the new Adam who has a marriage with his bride the church yes and Paul takes these three things that have happened and applies them morally to us so scripture reading scripture interpreting scripture isn't just a big you know head job where we're just you know learning lots of things but it can be applied to our lives remember when we read in in first corinthians i believe it's in chapter 10 let's turn there right now first corinthians chapter 10 verse 5 he's talking about the israelites in the desert god was not pleased with most of them for they were struck down in the desert these things happened as examples for us so that we may not desire evil things as they did okay so he says in verse 11 these things happened to them as an example and they had been written down as a warning to us so old testament events weren't just about the

38:56 israelites they have a moral application to us okay let's get to the third sense of scripture the third spiritual sense which is the anagogical the anagogical sorry I'm going to use a black marker here and let's see here and that means that the literal sense is fulfilled in heaven in the afterlife in the afterlife so Jesus for instance goes around and heals people he's a healer and so we read at the end of James that we have the anointing of the sick the church through the ministry of the presbyters the priests has the goes around and heals people with the anointing of the sick we see Peter and Paul Peter's shadow heals people Paul's handkerchiefs heal people so we have healing happening with people and so the church is to continue this ministry of healing not just sacramentally through the anointing of the sick not just morally and naturally through the corporal works of mercy but also we're

40:11 supposed to heal people spiritually through the corporal works of mercy and the spiritual works of mercy but then ultimately this healing points forward to the ultimate healing that we're going to receive in heaven when there will no longer be suffering there no longer will be tears so it points forward in a certain way remember the city of Jerusalem what does the book of Revelation call the church the new Jerusalem the Jerusalem from above the Jerusalem in heaven Saint Paul also calls that or the epistle I believe it's in the epistle of Hebrews note Paul does say that the church is the new Jerusalem somewhere I can't remember where it is and so the Jerusalem points to heaven the earthly Jerusalem points to the eternal Jerusalem also like for instance in the Sermon on the Mount let's turn there right now Matthew 5 Matthew chapter 5 Matthew chapter 5 verse 48 Matthew chapter 5 verse 48 what

41:37 does Jesus command us in the new law of the new covenant from upon the mount Barbara okay wait just a minute I can't find it verse 48 it's at the very end oh okay so be perfect just as your heavenly father is perfect so remember Mark Twain said that some of the most difficult passages of scripture to interpret are those which are the most plain but are hard to keep so does Jesus mean for us to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect yeah but are we really going to become perfect in this earthly life to where we can't sin anymore no you always have the possibility of sinning so Jesus wants us to grow in holiness he wants us to be conformed to his image as Paul says in Romans chapter 8 to be conformed to the image of Jesus the image of the first born that's our goal but it's not going to happen until when the anagogical in heaven at the end when we reach eternal paradise then we'll be

42:46 perfect then this passage will be fully completed and fully fulfilled so there's an anagogical interpretation of Matthew 5 48 let's look at 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1 for we know that if our earthly dwelling a tent should be destroyed we have a building from God a dwelling not made with hands eternal in heaven so Paul is speaking about not just houses but he also uses the word skenu which means tabernacle in this passage so he's talking about the tabernacle that the Israelites used but now that we become temples remember he's been telling the Corinthians that we're temples now we're tabernacles well if this one should be destroyed we have a tabernacle dwelling in heaven not made with hands eternal in heaven so he takes the literal sense of what was the tabernacle and not only does it point to Jesus in John 2 19 and not only does it

44:07 point to the Christian in 1st Corinthians chapter 6 16 17 but it points forward to the Christian in heaven as we're told in 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 verse 1 so these are the three spiritual senses the allegorical the moral and the anagogical and these three spiritual senses are always to be based upon the literal sense always had to be based upon the literal sense now I'm going to open back up this Ignatius Catholic study Bible the one to the Romans and there's a great quote in here it says in searching out the full sense of a text we should always avoid the extreme tendency to over spiritual lies in a way that minimizes or denies the Bible's literal truth St.

45:02 Thomas Aquinas was well aware of this danger and asserted that quote all other senses of sacred scripture are based on the literal unquote and that's quoted in the catechism paragraph 116 quote St. Thomas Aquinas on the other hand we should never confine the meaning of a text to the literal intended sense of its human author as if the divine author did not intend the passage to be read in the light of Christ's coming fortunately the church has given us guidelines in our study of scripture the unique character and divine authorship of the Bible calls us to read it quote in the spirit unquote Vatican 2 outlines this teaching in a practical way by directing us to read the scriptures according to three specific criteria okay so so we have the literal sense we know we can interpret it spiritually but we don't want to over spiritualize it so the church gives us some guidelines to stay you know

46:07 within bounds so that we can our interpretation can be can be correct and we won't just be either limiting the text just to the human author and excluding the divine author and his intentions and also so that we don't over spiritualize and neglect the literal and these are the three criteria for interpreting sacred scripture according to the catechism three criterion three criteria is the plural for interpretation and you'll notice that as I give you these you're going to see that this is that these criteria have been followed this year by this textbook and whenever I interpret text you know apart from the textbook you'll see that I follow these three criteria and I brought them up quite a bit in this Bible study I'll always be speaking of these three criteria I just haven't outlined it for you as I'm going to do right now okay the first thing is to be attentive what's really funny is you

47:18 guys are all writing these down and they're in your textbook they're all written down for you nice and pretty be attentive to the content to the content and unity of the whole scripture of the whole scripture of the whole Bible so there's a unity Genesis is not to be separated like for instance when we interpreted Genesis 1 we didn't interpret it at odds with Genesis 2 and 3 we saw that there was a unity there even there are two creation stories it's not like there were two disparate creation stories and somebody later on along just happened to put them together in Genesis and so we're like okay great there are two conflicting creation stories and some later redactor just happened to put them together no we look at the unity and we find out that in the first creation story in Genesis 1 God is referred to by the generic non-covenantal term Elohim in Genesis 2 in the second creation story God

48:29 is referred to by the personal covenant name of God Yahweh and so we see how there was a covenant formed with creation at the end of chapter 1 and that changed God's creation because God rested on the seventh day so we see unity happening that the original author wasn't like two separate creation stories but they go together because he's talking about how creation is meant not just to be a big bunch of galaxies but it's supposed to be a macro temple okay so that's just one example the unity of scripture so we've been interpreting this is what gives us the basis for typology why we're able to use typology we're able to interpret Jesus in light of Adam Mary in light of Eve Paul in light of Saul John the Baptist in light of Elijah the Last Supper in light of the Passover the content unity of scripture always be looking not only for the immediate context just around the verse but also the proximate

49:45 context throughout the book of what's being read and not only that book but the corpus of that author so for instance 1st chronicles should be interpreted in light of Ezra because it was all put into the Bible by the chronicler so it's one corpus of work but then not only that but we should look to the remote context which are other books of the Bible written by another person or another community and we see that there's an inherent unity of scripture because the books of the Bible use other books of the Bible when writing so and we saw this with the book of Revelation it's using Daniel 17% of the time so there's a unity between Daniel and the book of Revelation you can't split them up you have to look at Daniel to understand Revelation okay the second criteria is to read scripture read scripture within the church so I want for you guys to don't dare read the Bible I want for you guys to

50:54 go up through the no I'm just kidding that's not what it says don't read it within the church read it within the living tradition the living tradition of the church and I'll give you an example John 3 5 John 3 5 says it's Jesus speaking with Nicodemus and Jesus says in John 3 5 amen I say to you no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the spirit if you go back and you look at St.

51:48 Justin martyr Tertullian Cyprian of Carthage Augustine Jerome look at the look at these witnesses of the living tradition of the church not once is that verse ever quoted by anybody to refer to anything other than baptism and not only that not only do the early church fathers witness to the use of scripture in the church but also what have we been doing for 2,000 years baptizing the liturgy the liturgy Pope Benedict the 16th when he was Cardinal Ratzinger wrote that liturgy is the high point of tradition because we've been doing liturgy for 2,000 years there was no week when the Eucharist was not celebrated in the church there was no week when baptism was not being celebrated or administered there was no week when the sacrament of penance was not being administered these sacraments have been practiced for 2,000 years so we should look to the liturgy and to the early church fathers and their

52:57 witness you know we're not the first ones to pick up the Bible you know we've had I told you about Victorinus remember who wrote the earliest existing commentary on the book of revelation so we should look to Victorinus commentary and use his wisdom and not think that somehow i the what's that what's that new series of books la hay tim la hay and jenkins or however you say his last name what is it called left behind series maybe we should go look at Victorinus and not tim la hay for our interpretation of the book of revelation maybe we might get some better insight okay later doesn't necessarily mean better more contemporary you know the 20th century has been the most bloody century in all the history of humankind and yet the most technologically advanced just because we go further in time doesn't mean we're smarter and better than the old people we're standing on the shoulders of giants

54:03 we should be using their wisdom and their interpretation and what I'm going to do is if you guys want to get I've spoken about this before it's called the faith of the early fathers by William Juergens J-U-R-G-E-N-S and it's a three volume set has a little fishy on the front one fishy two fishies three fishies red blue and green and these are indispensable for studying how the Christians have been interpreting scripture throughout the life of the church and I want to read for you from Origen in the early church Origen is an absolutely amazing homilist and biblical scholar in the early church now he didn't get everything right he taught some heresy because the church hadn't defined certain points so it's not like he had the light of those definitions and I'm going to read I had the dollar bill keeping my place I'm going to read from Origen is writing between the year 220 and 230 it's called

55:08 the fundamental by the way if Origen didn't have these heresies within his writing that he didn't know any better but if he wouldn't have these heresies he would be a saint but the church has never canonized him for that reason but Origen was an amazing he really lived the Christian life and don't let people tell you that he castrated himself that's a rumor we don't know whether that actually happened okay because he took Jesus because some people you know said that he took Jesus command literally in Matthew 19 that someone made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of God and that he made himself a eunuch don't that's just rumor okay good thing I took historical foundations in my graduate class you know I can share this information with you okay here we go he writes in the fundamental doctrines although there are many who believe that they themselves hold to the teachings of Christ

56:09 there are yet some among them who think differently from their predecessors the teaching of the church has indeed been handed down through an order of succession from the apostles and remains in the churches even to the present time that alone is to be believed as the truth which is in no way at variance with ecclesiastical and apostolic tradition it ought to be known however that the holy apostles in preaching the faith of Christ treated with the utmost clarity of certain matters which they believe to be of absolute necessity to all believers even to those who seem somewhat dull in regard to the investigation of divine knowledge and this is great I could just keep reading on forever and ever but origin says we should look to the living tradition of the church and ecclesiastical discipline and apostolic tradition when we're interpreting scripture and so the church has looked to how John 3

57:17 and John 3 5 has been interpreted for all these centuries it's the same thing with other interpretations of scripture here's a great way to read scripture within the living tradition of the whole church for the first 15 centuries of Christianity no printing press no Gutenberg how did the faithful know the word of God they listened it was oral tradition but how would they listen where would they go to listen mass yeah this is how the Jews learned the Jews went to synagogue where it was read they went to the temple where they had the liturgy of the hours the Christians continued this in the liturgy of the word this is how Christians have been fed scripture outside the new old and new old and new and then having it expounded by people who study you know who have studied you know Jewish culture and the time and et cetera and so every mass in a certain sense is a bible study or it should be you know

58:27 and sometimes are really bad bible studies and sometimes their bible studies will put you to sleep but nonetheless what are we doing at every mass we're reading scripture and so if liturgy is the high point of tradition and if we've been doing liturgy for 2000 years et cetera and if the bible was canonized these books of the bible are not books of the bible and these books are to be considered scripture why did the church canonize scripture the councils of Hippo Carthage and Rome in the late 300s why did you have the canonization of scripture those are the ones to be read in church it was a liturgical decision so the bible was canonized to know what do we read in church it's a community book it's a family book it's an heirloom and so going and reading in mass is one of the prime places where we should be reading the bible now this doesn't exclude personal reading of the bible you know now we

59:23 live in the 21st century and now we have you know i have like you know 15 bibles on my shelves and i can read very well i have lexicons and concordances and scripture commentaries and so i can do this great wonderful but does this mean that i should no longer go to mass because i can make up my own homilies and i can pray but no we're still meant to come together as an ecclesia those called together the third criteria for interpreting scripture is to be attentive be attentive to the analogy of faith be attentive to the analogy what does that mean well this is an ancient a very ancient maxim where do we get this term the analogy of faith from we get it from romans let's turn to romans chapter 12 verse 6 and paul is giving criteria by which to handle prophecy roman the charismatic gift of prophecy which still occurs today we still have the charismatic gift of prophecy believe me i've seen it

1:00:50 i've experienced it myself romans 12 verse 4 i'm sorry romans 12 verse what did i tell you 6 thank you since we have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us let us exercise them if prophecy in proportion to the faith he actually says in greek let's get back to the greek so let's look at the original language he says kata analogia pistis remember kataholos catholic according to the whole so kata means according to analogia this is where we get analogy from pistis which means faith according to the analogy of faith analogia can be split up into analogos ana means upon or above and then logos can mean word it can mean reason it can also mean like ratio or to reason so we're going to say ratio here upon the ratio so an analogy is like upon a ratio to something else it's in proportion to something else it's in proportion to the pistis the faith so if someone comes along and he's a

1:02:16 prophet and he says Jesus Christ is an exalted angel I can see him in the heavens he's not eternally is that a true prophecy no it's not in it's not attentive to the analogy of faith it's not kata analogia pistis it's against that it's not kata it's against and so the church over the centuries the fathers of the church have used this to say when we're interpreting scripture Arians when Jesus says the father is greater than I why do you call me good God alone is good when Jesus says these things the Arians would say see he's not God he says why you call me good God alone is good don't call me good God is good or the father is greater than I how could how could if you know if Jesus is God then the father couldn't be greater than him because then he can't be co-equal to the father huh Arians well the Arians were interpreting scripture not according to the analogy of faith which was the received

1:03:29 tradition that what does Saint Ignatius of Antioch tell us about Jesus what's the tradition he received from John the apostle that Jesus is God that's what Saint Ignatius tells us verbatum Jesus is God and so Arians you can't interpret those passages as if Jesus is not God you have to interpret those passages as if Jesus is speaking about his humanity his humanity the father is greater than I in the sense that you know I'm going to do the father's will my human will is going to do the father's will which is greater than my human will guys see where I'm coming from here the analogy of faith so we can't interpret scripture because God does not reveal mutually exclusive things he doesn't say you know an orange one plus one equals two and one plus one equals one you can't have both you can't have duplex veritas double truth it's not a possibility so God cannot reveal two mutually contradictory

1:04:28 things so this is where the catechism says that dogmas such as the divinity of Christ are lights along the path of faith dogmas are lights along the path of faith kind of like you know your word is a lamp unto my feet dogmas are lights along the path of faith so here we are we're walking on the path of faith and we're like woohoo I want to go off over here but the thing is that there's a drop dead cliff going 600 feet straight down so if you have a light a fence something to keep you from going off of the path that's a good thing it's not a bad thing because what does Jesus tell us about the way to eternal life it's narrow it's straight and narrow it's not broad and wide and easy and so dogmas keep us on the path is a great example of an early church person he's actually called an ecclesiastical writer he's not called an early church father because Tertullian interpreted scripture according to

1:05:42 the analogy of faith in accord with the received tradition of the apostles and the doctrine of the faith but then he became a montanist following montanist later on in life and so he became Tertullian the montanist he embraced this heresy and he left the analogy of faith so Tertullian has great writings in his pre montanist days and he starts getting semi montanist and then he's full blown montanist because he's left the sea of Rome he's left Peter and even says whoever he does exactly what he says not to do and Tertullian runs off because he's captivated by these charismatic prophecies of montanist who claim that Jesus was going to come back in his own day in a particular town I believe it was an Asia minor and Tertullian and all these people followed this guy he didn't follow Romans 12 verse 6 to be to interpret it according to the analogy of the faith okay we're almost out of time I want

1:06:46 to introduce you guys to two more books you guys have the whole summer right these are great books this book I read a long time ago when I was at Texas A&M I actually knew him over the internet and did I hear someone whoop back there yeah A&M I said A&M so you whooped okay and so I was talking to him over the internet and I said can I have one of your books and can you autograph it and send it to me so he did so I it's autographed and so I'm just showing this off to you guys and it's called making senses out of scripture so this book tells you how to become a millionaire from scripture making senses out of scripture right making and he talks about these senses and he goes through and he interprets like Noah and all these cool things this is an awesome book incredible and it's subtitled reading the bible as the first christians did and it's by mark shay m-a-r-k shay he's also a blogger he blogs

1:07:55 a lot and if you go to mark shay dot blog spot dot com you can read his blog making senses out of scripture mark shay the second book i want to show you guys is a new one and it's by peter kreft peter kreft peter k-r-e-e p-f-t so you pronounce a kreft like beethoven you know two e's sounds like an a peter kreft and it's called you can understand the bible a practical and illuminating guide to each book in the bible he did making sense out of suffering and i always have a copy on our parish book rack it's always available for ten dollars even on our parish book rack making sense out of suffering he's a philosopher and he goes through he uses philosophy then he shows the supreme revelation of christ and how everything that christ reveals is an answer to the problem of suffering and so that's a very popular one but you can understand the bible by peter kreft a practical and illuminating guide to

1:09:03 each book in the bible so there's two great resources now what i'm going to do is by the way if you guys really want to do your own personal scripture study i really suggest these ignatious catholic study bibles i've been using them a lot to prepare for this course what it does is it interprets according to these senses of scripture it'll go through and it'll maybe quote an early church father how he interpreted this passage how he interpreted that passage just great stuff okay we are going to look at some practical tips to take home some practical tips to take home guys ready for some let's do a practicum let's take this stuff home what should we do well you should read the whole bible you know god inspired all of the bible not just the really uplifting parts or just the gospels you know all of the bible is written for you and if you can read it if you are literate you should read the entire

1:10:07 bible you really should we just did you read all of leviticus okay you read all of job oh job was a hard one for me read regularly carefully or actually thoughtfully don't just read it because you're trying to get through a book read it regularly father Larry richard says no bible no breakfast no bible no bed read it regularly thoughtfully and prayerfully remember reading the bible not to become smart but to become saints and you want to know better the one whom you love and you love him more and when you love him you want to get to know him better or guys know her better this is a love story secondly a bible in the hand is worth two three or ten on the shelf I grew up in a family where we had a big family bible way up there on a custom made shelf way up there and when I was confirmed I told my parents I said I want you guys to buy me a Bible I don't want to buy it I want you to buy it for

1:11:33 me I want to be a gift and I want for you to write in it we present this Bible to Carson Weber and I made them take me to St. Albert's it's a Benedictine monastery where I went to preschool in first grade and I took my mom to this bookstore I said buy me a Bible and I didn't read it through all of high school and when I finally got to college I started reading it in the library at Texas A&M and then seven years later I finally finished it right gotta have your Bible so make sure you have it in your hand it's not just collecting dust buying and using study tools is a great use of time and money don't do it on your own get some study tools buying and these study tools are great ten bucks a piece these are invaluable when I was in graduate school I got the one on Matthew and I went through the entire Gospel of Matthew and everything that was in this I wrote in my Bible so if you look at my Gospel

1:12:28 of Matthew the entire Ignatius Catholic study Bible is written in my notes that's the way how I got to learn Matthew it's a great use of time and money don't be afraid to share what you've learned with others don't hide it don't be afraid to share what you've learned with others have you guys have any of you shared what you've learned with others let me see some hands Don you've been keeping it under your bushel basket good I mean the Bible is a treasure and we are called to give to be great stewards to be generous of what has been given to us and so don't hoard it don't become a little brainiac and just store it all up in here but share it and when you share it you're going to know it better okay they say that teachers teach so that they can be students eternally because you have to continually learn in order to teach and it's a great exchange because when you tell somebody something they're

1:13:27 like well what about this I mean Don for instance told me about Luke and how there was you know Jesus said I will not eat of it before the why Luke had done that there was because he was trying to say that later on in Luke in Corpus when Jesus eats therefore the kingdom of God has been fulfilled in his calm there's a reason why Luke put that there in his last supper narrative and so this is good to share it with people was it iron sharpens iron difficult passages are a test of patience humility and desire difficult passages are put there so that you may become more patient and more humble and may desire to know God and his truth better because you will spend more time trying to figure out those difficult passages Dr.

1:14:34 Hahn one time ran across Colossians 124 I fill up in my in my sufferings what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the good of the church what is lacking in Christ sufferings Paul are you nuts no that can't be what is he taught well it took saint I mean Dr. Hahn had a couple sleepless nights and he had to rummage over that passage and so it will test your patience it will give you humility and will prove your desire and you know how most top ten lists you know have ten or they'll have seven or five some some odd or perfectly even number well I'm going to end on six the sixth practical tip to take home is to begin reading today don't put off your reading of the Bible begin today and if you've never read the whole Bible before you don't know where to start where do I start start with the gospels start with the gospels read the gospels start with Matthew Mark Luke and John read them and

1:15:38 read one of the gospels in an entire sitting don't split it up because you're meant to be read together and then some people and I like this idea go to the wisdom literature read Proverbs Ecclesiasticus also known as Sirach Wisdom of Solomon the Psalms and if you're if you pray the liturgy the hours you pray this altar all the time every four weeks I think you pray all 150 Psalms and you can use there are lots of guides out there to reading the Bible and use them I've given you two I've given you the one by Demacus Winsen and this one by Peter Kreeft so there's your six practical tips to take home okay let's close in prayer it's over with guys this is it I mean next week we're going to have a social but this is it you're finished you did it you did it all right no we got to pray first remember that one session when I didn't pray and you guys said we haven't prayed the prayer yet and you're

1:16:50 all going crazy okay let's pray in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen oh lord thank you tremendously for all of this hard work for all of these hours spent reading this textbook and reading your holy word thank you for the gift of perseverance the gift of being tenacious thank you for the gift the seven fold gift of your spirit thank you for giving us wisdom giving us that understanding and knowledge for counseling us thank you for giving us courage and that filial fear of you Lord and the gift of piety and long suffering and patience Lord I ask for a special grace upon all of those who are participating in this study I ask for a special grace and that is the grace to be faithful in their reading of scripture and that by reading and contemplating over the divine pages they may become more selfless more loving more like unto Christ we know Lord as Saint Paul

1:18:12 has said that to live is Christ and to die is gain first Philippians I'm sorry Philippians 121 to live is Christ and to die is gain allow our lives to be Christ allow us to desire nothing but Christ as Saint Benedict tells us and when we die let it not be a sorrowful event but a joyous one help us do your will help us love you most especially in those whom we despise amen in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit amen to the Son of the Son of Son