Called To Communion - 1/4/18- Dr. David Anders

what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic why can't women become priests 1-800 five eight five nine three nine six I don't understand why I have to earn salvation 2805 eight five nine three nine six why do I need to confess my sins to a priest what's stopping you this is called to communion with dr. David Anders on the EWTN global Catholic radio network hey everybody happy Thursday to you welcome again to call the communion this is the program for our non Catholic brothers and sisters if you have a question about the Catholic faith and you're not a Catholic well hey this is your show we also get calls from Catholics just about everyday who have a non Catholic friend or business associate or somebody they met in the grocery who have a question about the Catholic faith and maybe this person didn't quite know how to answer that question this is your show as well here's our phone number 1-800 five eight five nine three nine six one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six you can also text the no excuse me you can also text the letters EWTN to five five zero zero zero wait for the response and then text us your first name and your brief question message and data rates may apply again the phone number 1-800 five eight five nine three nine six Jeff person is our producer today he's also tackling social media questions posted via YouTube and Facebook Matt Kaminsky is our phone screener I'm Tom price along with dr. David Andrews how are you today very good happy New Year to you it is still the Christmas season is it not until Saturday till Saturday which is epiphany Epiphany what is Epiphany David Andrews uh could she yeah there's bright epiphanies plus when the wise men came and visited is this the Feast of the celebration of the Magi who come to visit the infant Christ okay very good we have a couple of folks that are on hold right now they've been watching us on we're gonna flip him over right now here is Karin listening to us in Queens New York on EWTN television hello Karen what's your question today hello merry Christmas to you all thank you my question today is in the Bible I believe it's in the Bible when the Lord comes back there will be a new heaven and a new earth my question is what does it mean a new heaven well I can understand heaven - heaven exists and will always exist but earth what does Lord you think you have some insight as to why why would you need a new earth will it be like for instance I love my arm like that I would love to be able to know that the tent would be there in the earth or does the Lord have some other plan for the earth that's that people will be on the earth but they won't be in heaven or how how do you understand that thank you I appreciate the question so of course a couple places in scripture to talk about the new creation one of them the phrase new heaven and new earth we find in the book of Revelation chapter 21 the Prophet the Apostle John says I saw a new heaven and a new earth for the first heaven in the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea and I saw the holy city the New Jerusalem coming down out of the heaven from God prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband now I think the way we need to understand that passage when the heaven that's in view here it doesn't we're not talking about the abode of God we're talking about the heavens you know like the sky so heaven and earth is all-inclusive of the created order all right because the universe that God created contains the planet Earth but also the heavens the skies and the planets and the stars and all the rest of it there's another passage in in the book of Romans chapter 8 verse 21 where st. Paul says that the creation itself see that word creation is more inclusive it covers everything the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and the glory of the children of God okay and so the promise is is not that God was going to create a new heaven in the sense of a new abode of God in the Angels but the created order the physical order of the universe will be renewed and liberated from its bondage to decay so that the the rational creatures that inhabit that that physical order and that'll be us right the resurrected Saints provided that we die in God's friendship uh-huh well we'll live in a physical world that is that is no law that no longer suffers the decay of sickness and death okay and in fact this is the this is integral to the promise of salvation that that you know the Catholic Church teaches that when we die it's not just that our souls go to heaven and our bodies decay and that's all she wrote no no that's not the Catholic position Catholic position is that your immortal soul can be admitted to the beatific vision to the vision of God now but at the second coming of Christ there will be a resurrection of the dead in our physical body our souls and physical bodies will come back into conjunction and we will enter into eternity in an embodied state in a physical universe all right that is the Catholic position that's what we say in the create I believe in the resurrection from the dead now your question about well what on earth is I gonna look like well we don't know all right st. Paul says eye has not seen nor has ear heard what God has prepared for those who love him but we have a clue we have some clues one of them is that the model of our resurrected body is course the resurrected body of Jesus and when you look at the resurrected body of Jesus and Sacred Scripture it's clear that it is a body but it's different from any body we've ever seen all right this is a luminescent glorious body that passes through walls and presumably doesn't need to eat or sleep you know it's it's a body liberated from all kinds of from from corruption or physical limitation in ways that we are not currently liberated and that's the model of our resurrection will be resurrected like the resurrected and glorified Christ you know we can there are the things we can infer about it if we have bodies then we'll we'll be subject to space time so we'll have we'll have an experience of temporal succession there will be moments of time they pass it's not going to be a just an utterly uniform existence with no change of variation at all all beyond that we don't know I has not seen here has not heard what God has prepared for those who love Him very good Karen thank you so much for your call we appreciate hearing from you today from New York when we come back from our quick break we'll be talking with Rob also in New York we have a line open for you at the moment two one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six it's called communion here on EWTN cheering the fullness of the Catholic faith one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six this is called to communion with dr. David Anders on the EWTN global Catholic radio network this is dr. greg papa and lisa pop check have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year from all of us at ewtn radio [Music] 20-18 has arrived and pope francis's schedule is filling up what's on his agenda this year on register radio this week edward Penton gives us a preview then there are New Year's resolutions will yours help you be holier patty Armstrong offers some holy hacks that's on register radio with me jeanette de mello and my co-host matthew bunsen join us this Saturday at 7 p.m. Eastern and Sunday at 11 a.m. Eastern here on EWTN radio podcasting is an easy way to automatically receive your favorite EWTN programs on your mobile device visit ewtn.com slash podcast and enjoy your favorite EWTN shows on your mobile phone right now 60 on 10 with Monsignor Charles Pope the seventh commandment prevents theft that is unjustly taking or keeping another's property against the reasonable will of the owner it also prohibits deliberate retention of goods Lent or of objects lost they prohibits business fraud paying on just wages forcing a prices and taking advantage of the ignorance or the hardship of another person it prohibits the appropriation and use for private purposes of common goods also work poorly done tax evasion forgery of checks invoices excessive expenses and waste under the seventh commandment has also tucked to our social justice teachings because if I have two coats one of them belongs to the poor and I reasonably ought to give what belongs to them because God gave all the goods this world the people of this world the seventh commandment you shall not steal EWTN live truth live Catholic [Music] what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic this is called to communion with dr. David Angela one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six yeah yeah yeah what is keeping you from becoming a Catholic yourself we'd love to hear from you at one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six back to the phones now for a very patient robbed in New York listening to us on EWTN television hey Rob what's on your mind today yes hey Rob my wife passed away in September the 15th I'm so sorry and a church one of the sisters gave me a couple of prayers to save daily for her and I had I had a question about the way she speaks to us to a poem the deceased did I really just a second so you'll know what I'm talking about is it uh is it a short poem Rob sure yeah sure go ahead I know I am still with you oppress your thoughts and hardened you cannot see me and I will always be a part of life sweet celebrations and then the other player will see each other someday were not spirits of priests until then I'm with you because you remember me that's all can you answer maybe yeah thanks Rob I really appreciate the question I'm so sorry for your loss I'm so sorry for your loss in one of the great comforts of the Catholic faith of course is the promise that God desires the salvation of everyone and if your wife died in the faith and with the sacraments then we have a good hope and confidence that we'll see her again one day in heaven you know we don't know with certainty the salvation of any person except of course the canonized saints that the church has defined for us and we know for sure that they're in heaven but we have hope we have hope we have confidence especially if someone we know died in in the church and with the faith then st. Paul says he says he who began a good work in you will carry it on to come a Shinto the day of Christ Jesus so we have that hope and that confidence in us so you know if you if you yourself keep the faith Jesus said in Matthew chapter 24 he said whoever persevere is to the end whoever persevere is to the end will be saved okay so what you need to do is to be sure to persevere to the end don't lose your own faith make sure you continue to practice the faith receive the sacraments Dyanne God's friendship and and then we'll you'll make it to heaven if you do that all right and if your wife is there then then I think we have another good grounds for believing that we will recognize our loved ones in heaven you know there are instances in the Bible where the souls of the deceased appear to the living on earth and living on earth recognize them they know who they are think about the Mount of Transfiguration Matthew chapter 17 when the Apostles see Moses and Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration with Jesus do you think about it that's kind of amazing because I mean if some guy walked into my office and said hey I'm Moses I wouldn't know if he was Moses or Adams housecat you know I would but but apparently is something in the supernatural order conveyed to the Apostles with certainty this really was Moses and Elijah right I don't have great big luminescent nametags on or what but I mean they were able to recognize them as those as those characters and we there are other instances in scripture also I'm thinking about in second Maccabees chapter 15 the the Prophet Jeremiah appears the Judas Maccabeus also is a former high priest of the temple in Jerusalem named Ananias who appears and they recognize them they know who it is Saul actually this this the spirit of salt appears to the prophet Samuel and the book is saying there are other instances in the Bible where somebody comes back from the dead and is recognizable so I mean that alone I think is pretty good evidence that will recognize the dead in the next life and and also what God would want us to write because God God doesn't desire to save us just as individuals he wants to save us as a people as a family sure right that's why he created the church so it could be the family of God and in all those things that make life sweet to us today the good things about about life things that are not vitiated by sin you know a love for our family our wives our husbands our children these are good things that God would want to preserve he wants to gave them to us for a reason they're not just accidental and so rather than diminishing those pleasures and happiness's and joys in the next life I believe God will grace them and glorify them and make them far more pure and beautiful so we won't we won't have conjugal relations in heaven we're not going to be bearing children in heaven you know and so I won't know my wife in the way that I know our today but I'll certainly remember the life I had with her today I'll remember our marriage and our children our family life together but but our experience of spiritual friendship will be what really perjurers into into eternity informed of course and enriched by all those memories of marital life but-but-but-but made even more glorious Rob thank you so much for your call we'll certainly be keeping you in our prayers that opens up a line for you now one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six if you have a question for dr. David Andrews one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six let's go now to Tonya in Las Cruces New Mexico listening to us via Sirius XM 130 hey Tonya what's on your mind today hi I think dr. David just answered the question that I would like more clarification I have a proudest in family member and she is totally against praying to pray to Saint or Mary or anything because she says they're dead there's no biblical reference that says these you know our Saints our loved ones are still alive after they die they they're sleeping until the resurrection until the Second Coming he answered it with Maccabees and at Mount Moses and Elijah but did Jesus ever say that we are you know our loved ones after we die are still alive because she says no there's no preference in the Bible that says they're alive until Jesus comes at the second coming and go ahead and answer I'll just hang on okay thanks honey appreciate it so I've have several things to say about this the first one is anytime I'm talking to a non Catholic Christian a Protestant Christian and they make an argument to me about the Christian faith based on their understanding of the Bible and they said well the Bible does or does not say such-and-such right I will I will deal with them at that level and I'll talk to them about the Bible and the content of the Bible but I can't leave the premise of the question unaddressed because the premise of the question is if I can't find something in the Bible and I don't have to believe it and that's just nonsense because Jesus himself never said the content of Christian faith is to be derived from the Bible alone that's not a biblical idea Jesus didn't say that the Apostles didn't say that Martin Luther said that and he has no divine authority that's just his opinion alright Jesus when Jesus wanted to teach the content at the faith he delivered it orally he didn't write anything down he gave it to the Apostles with a command go into all nations make disciples and teach them everything I have commanded you and I'll be with you to the end of the age so if you don't know what the Christian faith is you don't just look at the Bible you look at the teaching of Christ conveyed by the Apostles through sacred tradition with Christ's promise of divine assistance in other words you listen to what the Catholic Church says Catholic Church is the institution founded by Christ to convey the truth of the gospel to the world not the Bible alone that's the Lutheran idea Luther's 1500 years late to the party yeah okay now but that being said that being said I'm perfectly happy to talk about what the Bible says about the afterlife now that so many places that address this in Sacred Scripture you know st. Paul says st. Paul says we are confident and I'm reading 2nd Corinthians chapter 5 we are confident knowing that while we are at home in the body while we are at home in the body were absent from the Lord we walk by faith and not by sight we're confident I say and willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord absent from the body present with the Lord therefore we labor whether present or absent that we may be accepted of him okay so here st. Paul tells us to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord I asked pretty obvious oh yeah yeah we see that we see Illustrated in Scripture so another place would be Revelation chapter 5 where the souls of the martyrs the faithful dead appear to us in the presence of Christ interceding for the church on earth and offering the prayers of the church on earth to God all right not only are they alive to God but they're in fact involved in the business of intercessory prayer that's what book revelry sighs chapter five verse a revelation 8 3 says same thing about the holy angels that they do that as well ok and you can look at a passage like second Kings 13 to see that even the relics of the saints we're talking about here the relics of Elisha prophet are efficacious for miracles intercessory power that of those of those departed on behalf of the church on earth alright so and then of course you also mentioned passages from second Maccabees chapter 15 so there's plentiful biblical evidence alright and on top of that there's plenty of evidence from sacred tradition which is something founded by Christ he mentions it all right sort of st. Paul that also conveys information to us about the the efficacy of invoking the dead Saints for prayers all right so this has always been a part of the Catholic tradition to venerate the bones to venerate the relics and to NT ask for the intercession of the saints in heaven and as far as Christ's teaching is Jesus who said about about Abraham he says God is not the god of the dead but of the living for him all are alive and that's in the Gospel of Luke chapter 20 verse 38 ok very good Hey thank you so much for your call Tanya this is called a communion here on EWTN a full phone lines at the moment when a line becomes available grab it one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six angela is driving through colorado listening on Sirius XM 130 hi Angela what's on your mind today hi dr. Anders I have a question I was raised at this cotillion and I converted to Catholicism in my early 20s my parents later left the physical church and entered into the Anglican tradition and my dad became a priest and we've had conversations over time the only thing that really is hanging him up from becoming Roman Catholic is the infallibility of the Pope I wondered if you could give maybe some good resources and maybe just say a few words about about that oh absolutely yeah I appreciate that a lot so so the first thing I think the most important thing to deal with on the question of papal infallibility is to say what people infallibility is not okay because a lot of people have a misunderstanding of the doctrine of papal papal infallibility as a Catholic I am bound by divine authority to believe that the Pope makes all kinds of mistakes all right that's that is a requirement of my faith to believe that he is mostly fallible all right and and of course in his personal life there's absolutely no guarantee of his sanctity being Pope doesn't send you to heaven all right you know Dante the poet depicted Pope's in Hell and that was perfectly credible claim to make you know I mean though gret the weightier the office the weight er the responsibility there's no guarantee that the sanctity will come along with it okay so you don't have to believe in the holiness of the Pope you don't have to believe in the Prudential judgment of the Pope all right I mean the Pope can make really really stupid decisions and many Pope's down through history have made really wretched decisions Fulton sheen Fulton sheen once said and I've probably quoted this before if the Pope said you need to buy a hundred shares of General Motors don't feel like he's giving you a great inside tip right sure so he can he can't but he can make Prudential errors even about questions of church policy so you know like Pope's and Middle Ages might have decided you know whether or not to go to war with the King of France or make peace with the king of Germany and there's no guarantee there's no reason to presume that those decisions were were guided by the Holy Spirit or not and and and I think there's a lot of evidence from the historical record that sometimes they made some really really dumb you know political moves and that would even be you know that would also cover things like you know just because the point boy but the Pope wants to promote a certain policy agenda or he wants to move a bishop to a particular C or even in the terms of the internal management of the church's own affairs he can make really grotesque errors of judgment that have harmful consequences and there's plenty of evidence from church history that Pope's have done at Rochas things in that regard I mean there was a period of about 80 years where the Pope just got out of Dodge he left Rome went to having y'all spend its time playing cards and Hawking and hanging out with his uh with his nieces and nephews and practicing nepeta and drinking fine French wine I mean nobody is gonna argue that those were good policy decisions in terms of managing the church you know and in fact st. Catherine Siena got over to Avignon gave the Pope what for and tell him to tell him to get his papal backside back to Rome you know I mean you don't have to believe that you don't even have to believe that the Pope is necessarily right in his private theological opinions okay and and the followers of the first Vatican Council that formulated the dogma of papal infallibility they didn't create the dogma they they formulated it in precise language so that people know it there they understood very well the historical evidence for popes that had personally made some pretty lousy decisions and some teaching moves in terms of their own private theology and I'll give you a couple of examples one of them is Pope liberius during the Arian controversy was signed a document that seemed to kind of split the difference between the Aryans in the Orthodox it was it was ambiguously worded in a way that would seem to give cover it wasn't he wasn't signing a heretical document but he signed a document they seemed to give cover to a heretical interpretation and it was widely seen as a political move to try to conciliate both sides and and and he got roundly condemned for that he later announced that that's the kind of example more egregious example would be Inori as' the first all right who actively promoted the the heresy of monotheism because he was trying to he was trying to reconcile the mono fella excuse me he was trying to reconcile the the Monophysite Church of Egypt and the Byzantine Catholics and in the Caledonian Catholics his doctrinal division in the church and he kind of pulled he pulled the liberius he was trying to split the difference between the two and he took a position that was incorrect he was manifestly incorrect and he didn't teach it as a dogmatic fact but he promoted that heresy in his own pontificate to try to reconcile these two parties so much so that a council after the fact after the death of an aureus anathematized him as a heretic Wow all right we're talking about of the sitting Pope and the fathers of the first Vatican Council knew the case John the twenty seconds another case of a pope who was who was absolutely wrong on dogma in his private theology but he promoted a doctrine of the beatific vision or the they're of actually that was then later condemned by I believe is Benedict the 12th in the encyclopedic today decide to go back and kind of say well you know John's when saying got this one wrong and he went way out of his way to promote it and so much that the University of Paris had to stand up and give him what for did he back down okay so believing a papal availability doesn't require you to believe that the Pope doesn't make any mistakes even even when it comes to Christian theology it only requires you to believe that when the Pope stands up and defines a dogma a matter that has to be believed by all the faithful on faith or morals and in the language that uses this extremely precise and it's rarely done that you believe that that action is guaranteed by the Holy Spirit and the logic for that flows clearly from the words of Christ you said to st. Peter you are Peter on this rock I build my church the gates of Hell will not prevail against to give to you the keys of the kingdom of heaven what have you bind on earth is bound and heaven loose on earth loosed in heaven if Peter doesn't have the right to admit or exclude then the promise of Christ fails but that doesn't mean that Peter always gets it right every time he opens his mouth sure Angela we hope that's helpful for you and for your dad when we come back we'll be talking with Emily and Laurie here on EWTN s called a communion do stay with us Raymond Arroyo part of the success we've had on the world over I attribute to the audience my relationship with Mother Angelica and her teaching me that when you sit with someone you talk to them and you create an environment where they will tell you things they wouldn't tell anyone else that ease that humour that warmth she gave me that and that's what I try to impart and make a part of every interview we do on the world over the world over tonight 8 p.m. Eastern on EWTN TV and radio yeah welcome to EWTN bookmark brief I'm Doug Keck I just finished an interview with Jimmy akin on his new book the drama of salvation how God rescues you from your sins and brings you to eternal life give us some highlights of what this book is about Jimmy well basically the drama of salvation covers the most important subject in practical terms that all of us will ever face namely how are we saved it's a subject that's going to determine where we spend eternity whether we spend eternity with God in heaven or banished from his presence in Hell it's a subject that has eternal consequences and that's what this book is about it goes through the teaching of the Bible it goes through the teaching of the church fathers and it talks about the different perspectives on this subject that you find in American Protestantism and how to respond to those from a Catholic point of view thank you so much the one and only Jimmy akin from Catholic Answers fame the book is the drama of salvation look for the book on ewtn our c-calm and thank you for joining us here on EWTN is bookmark brief this is John Martin honey host of EWTN open line Monday and just a quick reflection on my Christmases in the past from my mom's Polish heritage all the kids and parents and everybody would all give each other their presents on Christmas Eve and we'd get our big present from Santa Claus Christmas morning and I just remember all the family time together Christmas Eve what a wonderful time it was and I've tried to pass that tradition along to my kids as well what's stopping you from becoming a Catholic this is called to communion with dr. David Andrews one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six they were about thirty minutes away from father Larry Richards taking your questions on the New Evangelization it is a fast moving show and that is EWTN is open line Thursday beginning at 3:00 p.m. Eastern here on many of these EWTN stations today at 4:00 on Cresta in the afternoon got a bunch of stories West Smith talks about the top bioethics stories of the year Matthew Bunsen will be along to talk about the top Catholic stories of 2017 Stacy três anos talks about the top science stories of 2017 and Paul Ken Gore will be along to talk about that pot top political stories of 2017 what a year wrap up that is for al Kresta today that begins at 4:00 p.m. Eastern here on EWTN radio and then tonight at 6:00 it's Catholic Answers live an open forum Q&A with Jimmy akin and Mark Bromley a lot of great radio straight ahead for you here on EWTN back to the phones now at one eight hundred five eight five nine three nine six and we do have a couple lines open now if you want to grab one of those Lori is in Coconut Creek Florida listening to us via podcasting hey Lori what's on your mind today uh hi good afternoon my goodness uh I'm Canadian and I've never heard of this before but down here in Florida where I'm spending the winter there are a lot of people going around talking about right division so as best as I can tell the King James Bible which they call that the authorized Bible in 2 Timothy 15 talks about rightly dividing the word of truth so I went around looking at other Bibles and I can't find a single other Bible that talks about rightly dividing the word of truth the any BRE Bible is imparting the word of truth without deviation the NRSV says rightly explaining the word of truth etc etc and many many Protestant Bibles also talk about sharing or imparting the word of truth not splitting it up or breaking it up into pieces and I believe if I understand these people correctly that they're using that verse as the premise for dividing the petram by parts of the Bible verses the Pauline parts of the Bible and that the petram Bible portions are really for the Jews and the poem portions of the Bible are really for Gentiles okay and I just don't know what to do with this I've been researching it for two years and I'm going around in circles trying to figure out how how to get around us and how to defend myself because I get bitterly bitterly accused and put down you know what Steve we're really really excited about this write division business are you familiar with this yes I know what you're talking about I appreciate the question a lot so the the fact that you have not encountered this anywhere in your travels except for South Florida is illustrative okay this is not a Catholic belief and I'm using Catholic here with a small C to mean Universal all right so the the particular position that you are confronted with is something that's called dispensationalism all right it's a theological movement that began in the 19th century associated with the name of John Nelson Darby who was from the Plymouth Brethren movement it it got a lot of traction in the southern United States and the fundamentalist movement especially through a publication called the Scofield reference Bible and and it became characteristic of the of the theology of Dallas Theological Seminary Moody Bible Institute among other other other institutions but it's particularly prominent in in fundamentalist Protestantism in the southeastern United States okay and so the first thing you need to know about dispensationalism is I I think that st. Agustin who lived in of course fourth century North Africa dealt not with dispensationalists but he dealt with with a heretical group eschews met a group called the Donatists and the Donatists claimed that they were the Catholic Church and everybody else had got me wrong and and agustín's answer to the Donatists is is applicable to your problem with southern fundamentalist dispensationalists san agustin said to the Dominus done as he said he said the verdict of the whole world is conclusive securest eudicot orbiter Arum you can't be the Catholic Church because you're just in North Africa all right if you follow the logic of it you can't be the universal Church if you're just in North half right dispensationalist cannot possibly cannot possibly lay claim to the mantle of authentic Christianity given that their movement is is sectarian isolated in a very recent derivation all right there's nothing like this in the history of the Christian tradition for the first 1,900 years all right you don't even see it in the writings of Luther Calvin Cranmer Zwingli the earliest Protestant theologians and of course mainline Protestantism mainstream I should say mainstream Protestant Orthodox he doesn't recognize this as a legitimate expression of Christian theology at all and your typical Presbyterian our Lutheran theologian just gets it gets the same kind of goosebumps from this that you're getting okay and and the proof texts that you that they've they're alleging to you from this you know this passage in in in second Timothy two is just one Greek word or Fatah moons I'm reading it right now it's the only occurrence in the entire Bible in the context of course of that passage has nothing at all to do with some sort of extended hermeneutical theory about the relationship of the Testaments I mean this is just talking about handle the Word of God accurately as you're teaching the gospel that's all the text actually is speaking about there's nothing about this crazy hermeneutical theory about Jews and Gentiles and all that okay right so you know to unpack the doctrine where does this all come from well Darby was a literalist a really really wooden literalist when it came to interpreting the Bible and what motivated two things are that motivated dispensational theology one of them was that he to be a literalist and so if he read Old Testament passages that suggested things like God was gonna rebuild the temple all right and the word of the Lord was gonna go forth from Jerusalem and there was going to be a you know great messianic king reigning from Jerusalem he wasn't content with the traditional Christian interpretation of those passages which is to see them fulfilled in the kingdom of God in the Ministry of Jesus Christ and in the church which is the natural Reed that you would take on that from the New Testament he said no if God says is going to be a temple in Jerusalem and there's gonna be streams of water running out of it and so forth then there really has to be an actual physical you know brick and mortar temple in Jerusalem and and but that poses the difficulty because the New Testament doesn't have any vision like that so you read Jesus on the he says tear down this temple and I'll build again in three days in the temple I'm talking about is my body New Testament is looking at these very spiritual fulfillment of these Old Testament prophecies sadar he realizes that Jesus poses a problem to his theory so he comes up with this really radical idea and he just pulls it out of whole cloth right that the Bible is divided into these sort of radically distinct dispensations and each one is applied to a different historical period and and he thinks that the prophecies of the Old Testament somehow another have to be literally fulfilled in the future but to do that we have to get the church out of the way right because the church doesn't there's there's no concept in in the New Testament of all these literally fulfilled prophecies they're more figurative so what he does is he actually uses the language some dispensations will use the language of the church as a parenthesis in the divine plan hmm all right and then they further divide the dispensations up and another problem for for this is a problem for Lutheran's too is that you know if you have a radical doctrine of salvation by faith alone through grace without any conception of the moral life playing into your salvation Jesus poses a problem for you because that's not how Jesus talks Jesus doesn't use the word grace effer he didn't talk about great was this adjustable John says grace and truth come through Jesus Christ but Christ Himself doesn't speak in terms of grace it's just not the paradigm of his ministry most of Jesus's language is pretty heavily ethical and in hortatory do this do this do this do this all right if you don't do this you're gonna go to hell if you do this you'll be saved and that doesn't sit well if you're a certain kind of Protestant who wants to remove the moral life from from spirituality like you know if you're saved by faith alone not by works and Jesus doesn't seem to fit with that paradigm so again darby takes a kind of really radical position he just says well let's just take Jesus out of the equation let's Jesus's ministry apply to the Jews all right now so that so literally let's look at what he's arguing he says Jesus Christ is really not central to Christianity that's the position wow that's the position all right I mean in one sense yes of course they acknowledge the death of Christ as the grounds for the atonement all right but in terms of the actual teaching ministry of Christ there's a nice night relevant crit for Christians at all right now here's the thing about interpreting texts and this is true of any text I could pick up Shakespeare I could pick up the New Testament I can pick up the Quran I could pick up you know the user's manual on my Toyota Camry all right you can pick up any text of literature select some passage arbitrarily impose some kind of radical interpretation say well these words in this context actually mean X and that becomes the interpretative paradigm for reading the rest of it hmm all right you can you can artificially impose any interpretation on any text you want you can just say well I I just stipulate that this part is literal and this part is figurative you can just stipulate that all right and I can't gain say you right I can't contradict that if I tell you that you know the repair manual on my car that the first half of that document is actually an allegory for the invasion of space aliens and each one of those terms stands for a different planetary intervention well I can't argue that point that's just a stipulation that you're making right and that's the way dispensation was handled the Bible they just stipulate well this portion has to be interpreted this way because I say so because it's that I need that to happen to fit in my theological paradigm which goes to the fundamental problem of the interpretation of texts all right the only way to get around that problem right is to embed the within within a living interpretive tradition all right just like if I picked up a love letter between Tom and his wife Adrienne over there they're gonna be all kinds of hints and illusions and nods and winks that are unintelligible to me but if I ask the people who wrote the letters and I learned their story and I see where the text fell in that history now in light of that interpretive tradition the text makes sense that's the only way you can take a credibly rich and diverse body of texts like the Bible and and treat them in any kind of coherent fashion as having a unified story is if I place them in that larger interpretive tradition guess what we call that larger interpretive tradition the Catholic Church yes absolutely once you step outside of that you're gonna get all kinds of insane moves yeah so there you go Laurie be not afraid and thank you so much for your call we do know she ate there's a there's a yes for resources on yeah yeah there are a lot of books on dispensationalism and answering dispensationalists there's one that i think is is interesting it's actually not by a Catholic it's by a Protestant historian who's not a fan of dispensationalism and it's not on just on dispensationalism but it's on the kind of crisis of the intellect that emerges with this when you drat achill ii divorce yourself from tradition the kind of crazy moves that people make and it's the author's name is Mark Knoll you know ll he happens to teach at Notre Dame even though he's not Catholic he's Presbyterian huh and the book is called the scandal of the evangelical mind and it's about the collapse of the intellectual integrity of conservative Protestantism in America in the 20th century I think you might find it illustrative Laurie thank you so much for your call this is called a communion here on EWTN we are so glad that you're joining us today no matter how you're listening you might be listening on satellite radio you might be listening on AM and FM or you might be listening via the EWTN app which is absolutely fantastic you can listen to live EWTN radio watch live EWTN television pull up programs on demand maybe you'd like to hear called a communion that aired a couple of days ago you can do that all you have to do is go to EWTN apps comm and that is EWTN apps dot-com downloaded for your own phone and you will be good to go as they say called communion here on EWTN let's go to Matt who is driving through Texas listening on Guadalupe radio hello Matt what's on your mind today okay hear me yeah yeah go go right ahead so uh I'm an atheist and I heard that you guys were looking for reasons why you're not a Catholic yet okay so I'm just presenting those reasons all right now I'm not really convinced that a God exists and my reasons are that I have a fear of confirmation bias given the limited evidence that I have and starting is that I grew up as a Christian and that was the evidence now was the information that I was around and therefore I believed it but going through high school and college I was around more scientific evidence and I did not or I believed that a God did not exist and now I've come to a point where really I'm not sure and I'm just trying to reconcile without being presented with information and getting myself into a situation where I confirm my biases Matt I think this is a fantastic call and I applaud your open-mindedness and your critical reason and those are Catholic virtues by the way okay so I'd say a couple things to you first of all the scientific view of the world that you're confronted with in college is overwhelmingly positive istic in its epistemology epistemology of course is the philosophy of knowledge positivism is the doctrine it's a philosophical doctrine that we will admit into evidence only the kind of information that is accessible through mathematics in the Natural Sciences that's that's the overwhelming philosophical bias of the scientific enterprise today okay it's not necessarily the bias of 17th century scientists but that's the way we approach it today okay now is that bias itself a rational one all right because if you begin with the premise that I'm only going to admit into evidence data that can be derived from analysis from from quantitative imperio metric analysis of physical matter alright which is an abstract description of physical matter and the Natural Sciences is that is that the kind of evidence that would that would bring you into confrontation with an immaterial God the answer is no right so whether or not God exists the methods of natural science are not adequate to answer the question given the terms of positivism are you with me so far so I'm just getting started I'm not I'm digging started I'm not getting information my information wasn't presented to me quantitatively it was presented to me through the people that I was around and though I don't exactly remember what information they gave me I mean the information okay oh yeah he was in quantitation no no no no no your information about christian 'is not quantitative i understand that all right that's historical and qualitative and philosophical and theological i'm saying when you're contrasting a Christian upbringing with the worldview of Natural Science that you encountered in college I'm saying the worldview of Natural Science is is positivistic is positivistic and so it's a kind of a false dichotomy alright it's kind of like that that you know the drunk guy who's who's looking for his keys under the under the street lamp because there's light even though he lost them down the street you know you're using the wrong kind of data to look you know the the russian cosmonaut who boasted that he went out into outer space and didn't see god I mean that's not worrisome what would be really worrisome as if he did see God you know I mean the kind of God that would be visible in outer space which is not the kind of God the Catholic Church is interested in so that that's just by way of introduction now let me back up and raise a couple other questions first of all what a catholics mean when we use the word god what does that word mean to us okay the best definition when my favorite definition I should say of God in the Catholic paradigm comes from the fourth Lateran Council in the 12:15 in that in that document God is simply defined as the first principle Primo principio well principle is that from which things proceed all right that's its if we're in one point if it's a pretty thin definition all right in other words do I believe that reality is the kind of thing that proceeds intelligible from a cause that it that it has a sufficient explanation all right that's pretty thin all right and if I say yes yeah reality is the kind of thing that proceeds intelligibly from our calls I can give a rational intelligible account of the existence of the universe all right if if you think that much that the universe is intelligible you're a long way towards confessing what Catholics mean by God the the principle of the intelligibility of the universe all right we ourselves confess as Catholics that we don't know God's essence all right so committing yourself to belief in God doesn't it doesn't commit you to a really metaphysically thick conception about I know everything there is to know about God it just means I think that there is a something there there's an intelligible principle from which reality proceeds alright now I can infer some things about the nature of that intelligible principle there must be something something in that that thing that is at least analogous to wisdom or intelligence or goodness because wisdom intelligence and goodness are real features of the world that I encounter so they also stand in need of explanation and you can't get something out of nothing so you know the the the the effect has to be represented in the calls to some extent all right even if remotely right so I can infer some things like that about the existence of God all right and and so you know the the philosophical you talk about coming up with in a within a Christian theological paradigm that definition of God that I have given you all right basically the first principle that's not something unique to Christianity okay so philosophical theism like the belief that there is an intelligible order to the universe all right and that I can have some rational access to it that's something that you're gonna find across philosophical and wisdom traditions the world over you're going to find that in Aristotle you're gonna find that in Plato you're gonna find that in the Dell teaching you're going to find that in certain formulations of Mahayana Buddhism you're going to find that in Maimonides the Jewish philosophy you're gonna find that in in Avicenna and a very ways an Islamic philosophy you're gonna find it in traditional Christian theology as well you're going to find it in Platonists the you're gonna find it in in late Hellenistic philosophy so you're you it's this is not simply it's not simply a Christian doctrine all right it really boils down to do I think reality is intelligible all right and and and does it stand in need of an explanation now to explore those kinds of questions with deep philosophical rigor I mean this is really what you're talking about doing is beyond the scope of this show because we're running long but I want to give you some resources I want to point you to some places to go that will start orienting you towards the right way of raising this question and in a way that it's that answers your your concern about confirmation bias I want to get you outside of a Christian philosophical paradigm so you're not you're not worried about Christian confirmation bias and give you some good resources in natural philosophy in natural theology where you can see this is this these are questions that I have to deal with whether I'm a Christian or not Christian atheist or not atheist Buddhist Hindu you name it all right the first one is a book by David Bentley Hart David Bentley Hart he's not a Catholic and it's called the experience of God and it's a it's an essay it's an extended essay in definition what what do theistic believers mean by the term god okay the other one is a book by edward fazer fe ser and it's called five proofs for the existence of god and these are not that the the classic two mystic five proofs these different proofs all right some of them are Aristotelian some of them are two mystic you know there are others some of them are Augustinian edward phasors five proofs for the existence of god and then it might be interesting to you to read a book by David Conway this one's a little hard to get ahold of you might have to go to your local library let me see if I can come up with the title real quick hang on it's on the tip of my tongue well I'll tell you where I'll tell you where you can get it the the late atheist Anthony flue no okay Anthony flew it was one of the most famous atheist of the 20th century who died early in the 21st was convert converted to theism but not to Christianity to theism and not to Christianity late in his life he renounced his atheism became a believer in God basically kind of a deist he wrote a book about it called there is a God and you might you might find flues book interesting although he doesn't really detail the rich philosophical arguments that brought him there's more of a kind of a personal narrative but he he in that book he talks about his confronting David Conway's work and it's oh it's a tip it's on the tip of my tongue I have to think of it I've come up with the name of Conway's book but cutaway for the Conway gives a detailed explanation for the Aristotelian concept of God differentiating it from the Christian God Conway himself is not a Christian believer doesn't believe in the Christian God and he says I'm in this book I'm not trying to prove the existence of the Christian God but of the Aristotelian God all right so it's that that in that I think it's helpful to you because again I'm sensitive to you're concerned about confirmation bias so if you don't look at Conway's book flues book phasors book in David Bentley's Hart Hart's book I think all of those will help you approach this in a rigorous philosophical way while answering your concern about confirmation bias a lot of great resources for you there Matt if you want to check that out the podcast is up well it'll be up as soon as the program is over go to youtube.com slash EWTN and look for called to Communion thanks so much rediscovery of wisdom you found it rediscovery of wisdom there you go real quick now let's go to Emily driving through California listening on Sirius XM Emily what's your question today Emily Emily yeah yay go right ahead we have about one minute left accessories prayer where in the Bible can we fight energetic okay oh sure thank you well there are about 500 references in Sacred Scripture to prayer well at least 500 and exhortations to pray so so you know to pick a few out of the Hat is just you know really at random but one classic text of course would be the fifth chapter of the book of James where st. James exhorts us to pray to pray for one another and he talks about the prayer of a righteous man being very effective of course revelation in chapter 5 is a wonderful picture of the saints in heaven who pray for us and offer our prayers before the throne of God Jesus in his teaching of course exhorts us to pray many many many times yeah and of course he disciples come to Christ and the Sermon on the Mount you find that you know between in Revelation not Revelation book of Matthew chapter five to eight you know they say how teachers how to pray no Jesus says very like this our Father who art in heaven you know so but again there are there are like over 500 references and exhortations to pray throughout Sacred Scripture but James is good revelation 5 is good teaching the Jesus is good alright Emily thank you so much for your call I'm so sorry we couldn't get to Melissa in New York City she has a great question about surprising God with our actions can that be done well hopefully you can get all this back no no surprises to God okay very good dr. David Andrews thank you my friend thank you Tom thank you also to Jeff person and matka been ski doing a super job behind the glass we do the program each and every Monday through Friday 2 p.m. Eastern with an encore at 11:00 p.m. Eastern and then the best of the week on Sundays 2:00 p.m. Eastern I'm Tom price we'll see you tomorrow right here on call to communion god bless

Channel: EWTN

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Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: ZSQzWnol-0k

Length: 54min 15sec (3255 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 04 2018