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Christmas

Getting to the Heart of the Heart of Christmas

Carl Olson

December 20, 2021 7:31 am December 20, 2021

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A hundred years ago this month, G.K. Chesterton wrote about the “new attack” on Christmas, comparing the “old Puritans,” who attacked “Christmas in its totality,” to the “new Puritans,” who attack it “in detail, and bit by bit.” His point, in part, was that while the old attacks came from real (if exaggerated and flawed) religious beliefs, the new attacks are more subtle, as most “modern liberality consists of finding irreligious excuses for religious bigotry.” Certain modern secularists are rabidly religious, even if their religious rites, so to speak, consist only of undermining or attacking the religious beliefs and expressions of others.

There are, as we know, plenty of cases in recent decades involving public and political battles over Christmas trees and Nativity sets and Christian hymns. Many of these cases consist of debates over church-state relations, as in the 2018 case of a Nativity scene in Woodland, Washington being removed from public land because someone complained about violations of “constitutional limits.” Such instances are often classic variations on “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” as most public officials are unwilling to fight a legal battle that is, for all intents and purposes, mostly lost.

Dig a level down and you find that church-state conflict, when it comes to individuals, is usually much more of a private-public divide; that is, almost all Americans are fine with Christmas, but an increasing number no longer connect “the most wonderful time of the year” with religious belief, nor do they care if that unraveling cord is further weakened. A 2017 Pew Research Center research survey found that while 90% of Americans — and 95% of self-identified Christians — say they celebrate Christmas, only “46% of Americans say they celebrate Christmas as primarily a religious (rather than cultural) holiday, down from 51% who said this in 2013…” Almost 60% say that “religious aspects of Christmas are emphasized less in American society today than in the past, ”— and here is another layer to consider — “though relatively few are bothered by this trend.”

All that said, I have little interest here in decrying and analyzing the outside forces — the “new Puritans.” Rather, I want to reflect on how our own good intentions and perceptions of Christmas can sometimes become subtle (or even overt) obstacles to the radical and demanding truth about the Nativity of Jesus Christ. A number of surveys, as well as years of anecdotal observations — not to mention an occasional examination of my own many failings! — indicate that Christmas, for a vast majority of people, are about time with family, expressing love and affection for family and friends, and giving gifts to the same.

These are, I want to emphasize, wonderful things; these are necessary and worthy things. They are not, however, The Thing. Nor, in fact, would they exist or matter without The Greatest Good.

But, you say, isn’t that what we mean when we say, “He is the Reason for the Season?” Well, I would say the difference can be found in the response: “Yes, He is. But He is more. He Is the Season.” Ah, you say, but this is why we fight to “put Christ back into Christmas.” And a worthy battle it is. But I do wonder, leading up to what will be my 50th Christmas, if I myself really grasp that Christ Is Christmas? And that if I am not willing to ponder, contemplate, and grapple with the Heart of Christmas, my own heart will remain lukewarm and comfortably jaded?

The Heart of Christmas can be expressed in various, interwoven ways. Here are three of them, which get right to the heart of the Heart:

• “For this is why the Word became man, and the Son of God became the Son of man: so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God.”

• “For the Son of God became man so that we might become God.”

• “The only-begotten Son of God, wanting to make us sharers in his divinity, assumed our nature, so that he, made man, might make men gods.”

This is why the Word — the Second Persons of the Trinity — became man. This.

But … become God?! Make us sharers in his divinity? Make men gods? What sort of wild language is this? Is this pantheism? Polytheism? Mormonism? Something-other-than-Catholicism?

However, as some of you know, this is the language of Catholicism (and Eastern Orthodoxy). Which is why these three quotes are found in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (No. 460) and are, respectively, taken from St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius and St. Thomas Aquinas. This is the language of Scripture and the Fathers, for as we read in 2 Peter:

His [that is, Jesus Christ’s] divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature. (2 Pet 1:3-4; emphasis added)

This startling, astounding reality is described in various ways in the Eastern and Western traditions: as theosis, deification, divine sonship, divine adoption, and so forth. Thus, St. Paul tells the Galatians:

But when the time had fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Gal 4:4-6).

And St. John tells his readers, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 Jn 3:1). This echoes what he writes in the Prologue to his Gospel, when he explains that the reason “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” was so that “all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God” (Jn 1:14, 12).

This is summed up wonderfully by Father John Saward in Cradle of Redeeming Love: The Theology of the Christmas Mystery (Ignatius Press, 2002), who observes that “the saving purpose for which Christ the Lord is born among would seem to be threefold: … we might say that the Infant Word makes the truth manifest, makes the old new, and makes men divine.” (emphasis in original). Or, again, in the words of St. John: “And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (Jn 1:16-17).

Christmas makes the truth manifest, it makes the old new, it makes men divine. Or, at least it should! If we ponder it just for a moment, we see why Christmas must be dimmed, dented or damaged by the world, for the world — that is, those spiritual forces and those who serve them, unwittingly or otherwise — avoids truth, disdains the new life offered by Christ through the Holy Spirit, and wish to either ignore or warp what is divine.

Now, back to family, love and gifts. Again, these are all good things. But they all, in essential ways, point to the supernatural source and goal of all three, which is the greatest Good of all. Consider the very first paragraph of the Catechism:

God, infinitely perfect and blessed in himself, in a plan of sheer goodness freely created man to make him share in his own blessed life. For this reason, at every time and in every place, God draws close to man. He calls man to seek him, to know him, to love him with all his strength. He calls together all men, scattered and divided by sin, into the unity of his family, the Church. To accomplish this, when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son as Redeemer and Savior. In his Son and through him, he invites men to become, in the Holy Spirit, his adopted children and thus heirs of his blessed life (No. 1).

The Triune God is the source of family; the Three Divine Persons exchange perfect and eternal love — and they call us into the Church, the divine family and household of God (1 Tim 3:15). We are made for both natural and supernatural families because we are made by and for God; we long for love because we are made by and for God, who is love (1 Jn 4:8); we enjoy the giving and getting of gifts because we are made to receive the greatest gift possible, which “is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 6:23).

Finally, having quoted from what I sometimes call “the most shocking paragraph” of the Catechism (No. 460), let’s finish with part of the (surprisingly) short section in the Catechism about Christmas:

To become a child in relation to God is the condition for entering the kingdom. For this, we must humble ourselves and become little. Even more: to become “children of God” we must be “born from above” or “born of God.” Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Christmas is the mystery of this “marvelous exchange”: “O marvelous exchange! Man’s Creator has become man, born of the Virgin. We have been made sharers in the divinity of Christ who humbled himself to share our humanity.”

Only when Christ is formed in us will the mystery of Christmas be fulfilled in us. Yes! There it is. I’m all for fighting political correctness and the dictatorship of relativism and the small-minded zealotry of overly sensitive skeptics. But, first and foremost, we must be partakers of the divine nature. We must embrace the fullness of being a child of God. We must let Christ form in us, so that the truth is manifest in us: “Therefore, if any one is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the new has come” (2 Cor 5:17).

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Sin

Conscience and Truth

Carl Olson

June 14, 2021 8:00 am June 14, 2021

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Years ago I read a most revealing article in a national newspaper that carries the descriptive “Catholic” in its masthead but rarely carries much orthodox Catholic teaching below the masthead….

Years ago I read a most revealing article in a national newspaper that carries the descriptive “Catholic” in its masthead but rarely carries much orthodox Catholic teaching below the masthead.

The article, written by a young woman, was titled, “I Am a Prochoice Catholic.” Her main assertion was simple: “I am a prochoice Catholic because my Catholic faith tells me I can be.” She recounted spending “several years” praying, reading and studying what both the “church hierarchy” and “the Catholic church — the faithful” had to say about the “right to abortion.” The result? “In the end,” she proclaimed, “after months of avoiding my conscience as to not stir up any controversy in my life, I finally discerned that I am a prochoice Catholic.”

Three quick, initial observations. First, the language she used, especially regarding the seemingly infallible nature of conscience and the vehicle of discernment, echoes what some have been saying about persons in “irregular unions” — that is, adultery. Second, this appeal to the conscience as the final word on one’s choices and actions has been a key playing card for the past 50 years or so for those who oppose the Church’s clear teaching about abortion, contraception and other evils related to sexuality. Third, I never cease to be amused and annoyed by the glaring internal contradiction that exists in appealing to Church authority in order to dismiss that same authority!

Consider the supposed logic: 1) “I am opposed to the Church’s teaching about abortion”; 2) “I am obligated to oppose that teaching because of my conscience”; 3) “And I must follow my conscience, because the Church says I must!” In other words, such folks find it convenient to follow apparent Church teaching when they desire to deny other, inconvenient teachings of the Church. Yes, it’s moderately clever, quite superficial and entirely misleading.

If we follow the logic used above, we arrive at a singular conclusion: that one’s conscience is supreme — even greater than God, truth, good and evil (though few are willing to put it that way). And, of course, this infallible supremacy of the individual conscience is not just acceptable, but is gospel truth for far too many people, including a great number of Catholics.

Yes, it’s true the Church teaches that man’s conscience holds a special place in his person, describing it as man’s “most secret core and his sanctuary. There he is alone with God whose voice echoes in his depths” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1776). Unfortunately, many people ignore the fine print — or, in this case, the print period. The three essentials to keep in mind here are:

1) The conscience is not man’s creation, but “a law which he has not laid upon himself but which he must obey” (No. 1776). Conscience is not involved in creating truth, but rather in recognizing truth. In other words, conscience is a guide, not a god.

2) Conscience must be formed and informed. “A well-formed conscience is upright and truthful”; it forms judgments that conform “with the true good willed by the wisdom of the Creator.” It must be educated and formed because humans “are subjected to negative influences and tempted by sin to prefer their own judgment and to reject authoritative teachings” (No. 1783).

This education is a lifelong work involving virtue and humility. But it is worth it because “education of the conscience guarantees freedom and engenders peace of heart” (No. 1784).

3) A conscience can be bad, poorly formed and warped by sin. Many factors can contribute to a deeply flawed conscience: “Ignorance of Christ and his Gospel, bad example given by others, enslavement to one’s passions, assertion of a mistaken notion of autonomy of conscience, rejection of the Church’s authority and her teaching, lack of conversion and of charity: these can be at the source of errors of judgment in moral conduct” (No. 1792).

Alas, many people have it upside down, insisting that their conscience provides a unique moral code, rather than seeing how conscience guides one’s judgments about particular situations in light of universal and objective — that is, God-given — truth and goodness.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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Mary

Don’t Catholics Worship Mary?

Carl Olson

May 4, 2021 7:00 am May 4, 2021

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There is something about Mary that drives many fundamentalists and some evangelicals nuts. Of course, they will insist Mary doesn’t bother them, but they claim the “fact” that Catholics exalt…

There is something about Mary that drives many fundamentalists and some evangelicals nuts.

Of course, they will insist Mary doesn’t bother them, but they claim the “fact” that Catholics exalt her so much she is apparently worshipped, or even — as you can read in the most extreme anti-Catholic literature — promoted to the fourth person of the Trinity. When I was a fundamentalist, I knew that Catholics worshipped Mary. Why else did they have statues of her, pray the Rosary to her and call her the “Mother of God”? Didn’t they know that God has no mother? How ridiculous!

It is hard to overstate the reactionary stance of fundamentalists toward any positive teaching about Mary. For example, in my years attending a small fundamentalist “Bible chapel” as a boy, I recall at least three sermons praising Rahab the harlot (see Jos 2 and 6:17-25), but just one about Mary, the mother of Jesus. And in that sermon, Mary was described as a “good mother” (true, of course) who was no different than anyone else.

A close relative once described the Blessed Mother as “a biological vessel” used by God — the sort of remark that would be rightly considered insulting if directed to any other mother. And a close friend from my Bible college days asked me, upon learning that I was becoming Catholic (in 1997), “But what are you going to do about having to worship Mary?”

What exists, then, is a double-pronged problem: Fundamentalists hold to a very lacking, even insulting, view of Mary because they have a deeply distorted understanding of what the Catholic Church teaches and believes about Mary. Their doctrine is almost completely negative in character, shaped in reactionary fear rather than in receptive faith.

If that sounds unduly harsh, consider that fundamentalists are loathe to admit that Mary is indeed the Mother of God. This is an essential point in addressing the accusation that Catholics “worship” Mary. Simply put, if a person refuses to admit the truth about Mary being Theotokos (“God bearer,” or Mother of God), he will not understand authentic Catholic devotion to Mary. James McCarthy, a former Catholic who operates a ministry meant to “save” Catholics, writes in “The Gospel According to Rome” (Harvest House, 1995) that “the Bible . . . never calls Mary the Mother of God for a very simple reason: God has no mother. As someone has rightly said, just as Christ’s human nature had no father, so His divine nature had no mother. This Bible, therefore, rightly calls Mary the ‘mother of Jesus’ (John 2:1; Acts 1:14) but never the Mother of God.” Like Nestorius (d. 451), who made the same basic error in the fifth century, McCarthy overlooks that mothers do not give birth to natures, but to persons. Jesus Christ has two natures, but he is one Person. While Jesus’ human nature comes from Mary and His divine nature from the Father (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 503), he is not partially divine and partially human, as McCarthy’s statement implies.

Fundamentalists claim they believe that Jesus is one person, true God and true man. But they fail to reach logical conclusions fixed upon that foundational fact. Prior to the Incarnation, God not only didn’t have a mother, He also never wore clothing, ate food, took naps or went fishing! But the Incarnation, the central event in salvation history, radically changed the relationship between God and man precisely because God became man — and He did so by being born of the Virgin Mary. Every devotion shown to Mary by Catholics (and the Eastern Orthodox) is based in the belief she is the Mother of God. But this devotion is not worship; that is for God alone. Besides, if Jesus loves His mother — and we know He does — shouldn’t we also express the same sort of familial love?

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com).

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Jesus

Did Jesus Really Exist?

Carl Olson

October 5, 2020 7:15 am October 5, 2020

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Scouring in a used-book store a few years ago, I came upon an impressive volume of Catholic apologetics titled “God, Man, and the Universe,” originally published in 1950 in French,…

Scouring in a used-book store a few years ago, I came upon an impressive volume of Catholic apologetics titled “God, Man, and the Universe,” originally published in 1950 in French, then published in English in 1953 by P.J. Kenedy and Sons (apparently the first Catholic publishing house established in the United States). Subtitled “A Christian Answer to Modern Materialism,” the volume featured chapters by an impressive array of mostly French academics, including the great Jesuit scholar Henri de Lubac and the prolific Dominican theologian Yves M.J. Congar.

The chapter titled “The Problem of Christ” (and subtitled “The Myth of Jesus”), written by Henri Fehner, opens with this: “Did Christ ever exist? is the question so many materialists ask; and their way of framing it is a virtual anticipation of the answer.” Fehner then quotes from a work of Soviet propaganda, which contains the humorous claim that many “western European scholars” have “long ago been convinced that the Christ of the Gospel never existed.” As Fehner dryly observes, the specific time frame of “long ago” dates to the “end of the eighteenth century! Before this, nowhere at any time had there ever been any doubt about the historical existence of Christ.”

This basic bit of data will likely surprise some readers. But the “mythicist” school — that is, those who claim that the story of Jesus is entirely mythical in nature, for he never existed — is not only young, it often exhibits all of the hasty brashness and sneering insolence of youth. All of these qualities were taken up recently by the agnostic New Testament scholar (and former fundamentalist Christian) Dr. Bart D. Ehrman in his book “Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth” (HarperOne, 2013), which begins exactly where the Catholic Fehner did many decades ago:

“The first author to deny the existence of Jesus appears to have been the eighteenth-century Frenchman Constanin Francois Volney, a member of the Constituent Assembly during the French Revolution. … Several years later [after 1791] a much more substantial and influential book was published by another Frenchman, Charles-Francois Dupuis, who secretary of the revolutionary National Convention.”

Dupuis’ book, titled “The Origin of All Religions” (1795), was over 2,000 pages long and argued — as did Volney’s earlier essay — that all religions are essentially the same, each being variations on a mythology of a “solar deity.” Thus, as Ehrman summarizes, “Jesus too was originally invented as another embodiment of the sun-god.” It wasn’t until the 1850s that a biblical scholar, the “idiosyncratic” German philosopher and historian Bruno Bauer (d. 1882), a student of philosopher Friedrich Hegel, wrote a series of books arguing that the Jesus as an invention of the Gospels writers, heavily indebted to Greek mythology and Roman Stoicism. Another German, Arthur Drews, built on the work of Bauer, and his 1909 book “The Christ Myth” was quite influential, being taken up and used by Vladimir Lenin in his particular variation of atheistic Marxism.

And, coming full circle, it was this Marxist belief that inspired Catholic books such as “God, Man, and the Universe.” But, of course, not all mythicists are Marxists. But mythicists today still rely on some basic arguments used throughout the relatively short history of mythicism; these include three key claims:

1. Everything we know about Jesus comes from the books of the New Testament — and they cannot be taken seriously as works of history as they were written many decades after the facts by authors who were not eyewitnesses.

2. Jesus is not mentioned outside of the New Testament in works by Jewish or pagan authors, further substantiating the first point.

3. The stories of Jesus are based upon pagan legends and myths about dying gods and their resurrections; they have little or nothing to do with first-century Judaism.

These claims are rooted in a combination of anti-Christian bias — especially anti-Catholic prejudice, as found in the writings of supporters of the French Revolution — and hyper-Enlightenment assumptions, which have little regard for ancient sources and place a tremendous amount of faith in supposedly “scientific” evidence. And such an approach, not surprisingly, is based on the premise that anything supernatural or miraculous is, by definition, contrary to reason, logic or evidence.

There is, then, a certain built-in circularity to the mythicist project. This can be seen in a Washington Post opinion piece, titled “Did historical Jesus really exist? The evidence just doesn’t add up”, written by Raphael Lataster, a lecturer in religious studies at the University of Sydney, and first posted in December 2014 before being retweeted by the newspaper in December 2017. Lataster writes:

“The first problem we encounter when trying to discover more about the Historical Jesus is the lack of early sources. The earliest sources only reference the clearly fictional Christ of Faith. These early sources, compiled decades after the alleged events, all stem from Christian authors eager to promote Christianity — which gives us reason to question them.”

The blithe sloppiness here is partially due to big assumptions and sweeping judgments — all without any evidence. So, for instance, how is it that four lengthy biographical works written between 25 and 50 years after the death of Jesus, all containing claims to being based on direct witness and firsthand testimony, does not fall under the category of “early sources”? Because, as Lataster states, he assumes the Jesus being described is the “Christ of Faith,” not the “Historical Jesus.” How so? Because, as his essay indicates, they describe supernatural (or “celestial”) characteristics. Lataster further doubles down by essentially saying that the Christian authors cannot be taken seriously because, well, they believe in Jesus Christ. As is so often the case, the elephant in the room is metaphysical assumptions, which throw up a smoke screen when it comes to the historical veracity of the Gospels and the other New Testament texts.

That is one reason (but hardly the only one) that the vast majority of scholars of the New Testament, ancient history, and theology don’t take the mythicists seriously. Yet that scholarly disinterest is a problem, precisely because the mythicists’ audience is not scholarly, even if some mythicists want to be taken seriously by scholars. In my next column, I’ll show how the agnostic Ehrman, the Catholic scholar Brant Pitre, and the evangelical scholar Larry W. Hurtado each offer substantial responses to the basic premises of mythicism.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com).

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4 min read

Saints

Do Catholics Worship Saints?

Carl Olson

October 10, 2019 7:44 am October 10, 2019

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A few years ago I gave a Theology on Tap talk about the Communion of Saints. Afterward, an evangelical Protestant attending the talk asked, “But isn’t that just another form…

A few years ago I gave a Theology on Tap talk about the Communion of Saints. Afterward, an evangelical Protestant attending the talk asked, “But isn’t that just another form of necromancy?”

“No,” I replied, “because necromancy is an attempt to manipulate the spirit world in order to find out about the future.” Praying to a saint, I explained, isn’t a manipulation of the dead, nor is it aimed at foretelling the future, but rather it is about having a real relationship with our brothers and sisters in Christ who are now in the presence of God.

“Then why even bother to pray to saints?” he asked. “Why not just pray to God directly?” “If I were to ask you to pray for me,” I said, “would you do it?” “Yes, I would,” he admitted. As a former evangelical myself, I know how committed many Protestants are to praying for one another. After all, the apostle James exhorted his readers to “pray for one another, that you may be healed. The fervent prayer of a righteous person is very powerful” (Jas 5:16).

That brief exchange pointed to some of the key, underlying issues when discussing the Catholic approach to saints with Protestants — usually, evangelicals or fundamentalists who dismiss the Communion of Saints. These issues are summarized well by Father Josef Neuner, S.J., and Father Heinrich Roos, S.J., in their book “The Teaching of the Catholic Church” (Alba House, 1967). It is a “historical fact,” they wrote, “that the loss of sense of ecclesiality, the dissolution as it were of the Communion of Saints, and the preaching of a purely interior religion have always led to a protest against the Church’s veneration of the saints.”

In other words, those who hold an anemic understanding of the nature of the Church will end up misunderstanding the devotion and veneration shown to the saints by Catholics and Eastern Orthodox (as well as some Anglicans and other Protestants). The Church, rightly understood, is a Communion of Saints — not just here on earth, but also in heaven and purgatory. The Church is not only earthly, but also divine, just as Jesus is fully human and fully God. And while those who make up the Body of Christ, the Church, are individuals, they are also members (see 1 Cor 12:27), having a relationship with the Head of the Church, and also with one another. The saints are, wrote Father Hans Urs von Balthasar, like “open treasure-houses accessible to all, like flowing fountains at which everyone can drink. Nothing in the Communion of Saints is private, although everything is personal.”

Put another way, the saints in heaven are just as real and immediate to us as those sitting beside us at Mass. In fact, they are even closer, as they are able to relate to us perfectly, being holy and complete, freed from sin and the distractions of this world. They are alive — truly alive, filled with divine life and enjoying perfect union with God. They are, in the words of the Letter to the Hebrews, “a cloud of witnesses” (12:1) surrounding us, helping us and encouraging us.

Many Protestants reject outward (and even inward) expressions of devotion to saints because they fear it smacks of idolatry. But the Church has always been very mindful of this concern. For example, the Second Council of Nicaea, in 787, carefully distinguished between “respectful veneration” shown to saints and “true adoration” which, “according to our faith, is due to God alone.” It also noted that veneration shown to an image (or statue) is veneration given to “the person represented by it.” The author of Hebrews wrote of running the race — that is, living the Christian life — by looking to “Jesus, the leader and perfecter of faith” (12:2). Likewise, the Second Vatican Council noted that by “celebrating the passage of these saints from earth to heaven the Church proclaims the paschal mystery” and “proposes them to the faithful as examples drawing all to the Father through Christ” (Sacrosanctum Concilium, No. 104). United in Christ, we are siblings by grace, the life of God (see Catechism of the Catholic Church, Nos. 1997-98). Yes, worship is due to God alone. But admiring, respecting and loving those who are true disciples of Christ is not worship. Rather, it is befitting among brothers and sisters, which we are in Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, according to the will of the Father.

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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4 min read

Scripture

Biblical Scholarship and Faith

Carl Olson

March 7, 2019 1:06 pm March 7, 2019

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I’ve long thought that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has never received full (if any) credit for something that shines through in his many splendid writings: a keen, dry sense of…

I’ve long thought that Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has never received full (if any) credit for something that shines through in his many splendid writings: a keen, dry sense of humor.

One of my favorite examples is found in his first “Jesus of Nazareth” book (Doubleday, 2007) in the chapter on the temptations of Jesus. Remarking on the second temptation proffered by the devil to Jesus, Pope Benedict notes how the devil “cites Holy Scripture in order to lure Jesus into his trap.” He points out that the “devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly,” and then wryly observes, “The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars.” What a great image!

Rather unexpectly, he refers to the short story “The Antichrist” by the Russian philosopher Vladimir Soloviev, which describes the Antichrist receiving an honorary degree in theology from the University of Tübingen and being “a great Scripture scholar.” Readers familiar with Pope Benedict’s personal history know that in 1966, after serving as a theological expert at the Second Vatican Council, then-Father Joseph Ratzinger accepted a position teaching theology at Tübingen — the epicenter of the historical-critical movement of the 19th century. Historical criticism is an approach to studying Scripture with roots in the Protestant Reformation that emerged in full force in the 17th and 18th centuries; it uses various scholarly and scientific tools (source criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, etc.) to ascertain the original, or “primitive,” meaning of an ancient text — especially biblical texts. Father Ratzinger, then, was well acquainted with scholars who used historical-critical methods. He also knows how many scholars used these methods to undermine, question and even directly attack Christianity. “The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis,” he wrote, “have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith.”

For example, in 1835, the polemical liberal Protestant writer David Strauss (1808-74), drawing upon the Tübingen school’s work, wrote Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet(“The Life of Jesus, Critically Examined”), the most influential “life of Jesus” of the 19th century. He presented Jesus as a fanatical Jewish preacher with delusions of messianic grandeur and insisted the Gospels were mostly legend and folklore. The influence of his bare-bones story of an itinerate preacher who proclaimed the Kingdom can be seen in the work of the modern-day Jesus Seminar, which has rejected as unhistorical or wildly exaggerated nearly every narrative in the Gospels.

Pope Benedict gets right to the heart of the matter: “The common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history — that everything to do with God is to be relegated to the domain of subjectivity.”

A perfect poster theologian for this dogmatic subjectivity is the former episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong, who has authored numerous books explaining that nothing in the Gospels can be taken literally or at face value, and that Protestant and Catholic understandings of God as Triune are “heretical.” For Spong, echoing Strauss, everything is about subjective, mystical experience. Oddly enough, this doesn’t stop him from uttering endless judgments on orthodox Christianity with an authoritative arrogance that would make a pope cringe in shame. Spong insists that orthodox Christianity is, in fact, “fundamentalist.” I don’t know if Pope Benedict has read Spong, but he does state that the Antichrist, “with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to listen to what God has to say, is fundamentalism.” This entire dispute over interpreting Scripture, he notes, is really “about who God is.” Scholarship is a good thing, of course, but reason without humble faith in the living God can lead to serious error, or ruin. After all, the devil is a Bible scholar — and “he is a liar and the father of lies” (Jn 8:44).

Carl E. Olson is the editor of Ignatius Insight (www.ignatiusinsight.com). He and his family live in Eugene, Ore.

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