Father Spitzer’s Universe - 2018-09-12 - Six Questions From The Creator To Jesus - Pt. 2

[Music] [Music] hello and welcome once again to father spitzer's universe where no man has gone before but we go each week with you i'm doug keck your host coming to you live from our ewtn studios in the heart of the mothership irondale alabama where we launch from each week please send us emails check us out on facebook send us a tweet on twitter and for all things related to father spitzer of course there is the matches center website magistcenter.com of course and there's also credible catholic which is what we've been working through and check out that website as well at crediblecatholic.com today we're going to follow up on what we talked a little bit about last week the six questions from the creator to jesus part two and father went through some of that we'll explore a little bit more and some other issues that have to do with christ as seen from outside scriptures and we also wanted to talk about a wonderful book as well besides the scriptures that's mother angelica's answers not promises this is a fantastic book that mother angelica did many many years ago it uh wasn't available for a while in this kind of soft cover it is now through ewtn publishing through ewtn's religious catalogue and you know you think of somebody we need today it's mother angelica so maybe you should read her answers not promises because you'll learn a lot about this trials and tribulations we all face and how she stood up to it and how you can too with that being said i'm going to turn once again to father spitzer at our west coast studios in orange county california and as starting things off as we always do here on this program of prayer from you father spitzer in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen heavenly father we give you thanks for the blessings you give us especially through our church we ask you to bless that church at this time a time of real difficulty crisis and ask that you bring your spirit down upon all of our church leaders and all the faithful so that we might remain unified and gain a a very good resolution to this uh crisis that has befallen us and that we might be purified through it and come out as a better church for uh for all of history to see ask you to bless doug and i as well with that same spirit inspiring us protecting us and guiding us so that everything we say and do will be brought to fruition in your will through jesus christ our lord amen and merry seat of wisdom pray for us name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen okay very good as we always do we kick off the first half of the show answering some of your questions from recent programs this one goes back a little bit further someone wrote to us dear father spitzer i watch your show the other week and you were on fire okay it was an amazing program i also wonder if it's possible for you to feature some who have had near-death experiences so this is going back a little bit when we've talked about that to share their stories with us thanks and i so appreciate how passionately you make the case for christianity and a firm belief in god while debunking atheism god bless you uh ronald and francis so we got a couple there appreciative of that and again we it hasn't been a while unfortunately we've been talking about a lot of other issues uh but uh you know near-death experiences and and the whole idea of debunking atheism yeah well ronald and francis we um don't uh gen generally do uh those kinds of um uh programs or interviews with people who've actually say had a near-death experience or a scientist who's worked on the shroud of turin however um we can certainly send you a lot of quotes um of people who have had that and so uh i have a you know about uh five or six of those that are uh particularly uh interesting um and i can i can send them to you um uh by email i don't send anything by uh surface mail but if you send me your email i'll go ahead and send you some of those good quotes i also can attach maybe a video or two of people who've really had some experiences i have a video of a blind guy blind from birth who during his near-death experience had a particularly significant and by the way uh veritically you know verifiable um um uh you know near-death experience by seeing for the first time when he was blind what was going on and the scenery outside of the hospital wall so i've got a bunch of stuff there i can put it on just send me your email and i'll attach the video and um and some of those quotes right so is it your naval background with surface mail as opposed to snail mail or just [Laughter] yes what churchill always said to uh to president roosevelt your uh your naval friend there you go i i i sense that there okay so as we as we said in some of our recent shows obviously it's been interesting uh kind of the diverse responses we get from dealing with obviously the issues that are out there having to do with uh cardinal mccarrick et cetera the the vigano issue just the some of the concerns that obviously have come and exploded out of the issue in pennsylvania uh that different people have different reactions when we're trying to respond to that here's here's another one one that we get once in a while dear father spitzer in the midst of this recent scandal and cover-up it seems that there is so much condemnation toward the accused and little consideration of withholding judgment jesus loved the sinner but hated the sin where is there any recognition of there being children of god and viewed as such they all seem to be judged and condemned without hesitation or contemplation and this is from dolores and i would say probably that's a minority opinion usually that we hear but what do you think of that well dolores i think you have merit in what you're saying i think um you know the reason for example that pope francis asked cardinal mccarrick to go into a life of prayer and penance was not to punish him but to you know to help him to obtain that forgiveness from the lord in light of his actions wasn't particularly a condemnatory action as it was removing him from office that's required by the way by the dallas charter he has to be removed from office and secondly uh sending him to prayer and penance for example is a way of of um you know moving him to a deeper relationship with the lord and to forgiveness i don't think anybody is precluding the possibility of forgiveness for the people who've you know initiated the crisis or even you know abused these these poor victims i think what is going on is a three-fold uh requirement in in a way uh the the first thing is is that you do have to remove those individuals from office that that's a requirement under the dallas charter the second thing is we do have to um um even though you know these people are going to become you know sometimes a uh you know a a lightning rod uh to the reforms that are uh going to happen and they are going to happen i know i know that uh archbishop dinardo is right now visiting with uh um you know pope francis and trying to um present a plan of action that that is going to happen and um you know inevitably you know the the people who have committed these offenses are going to be um uh become a lightning rod that's just what happens um and um in in a way they have to um there is fault there no question about it yes they might have been as it were seduced into it yes they might have gotten into terrible habits over the course of time yes there might be all kinds of reasons why they got into it but the fact is when they stepped over a line and harmed a child or harmed an adolescent uh there has to be uh you know some you know reconciliation you know with with the victims both on behalf both by the victimizer and the church herself that recognizes the gravity and and frankly the the almost terror of the problem uh the third thing of course is that um uh you know people who are still uh in orders you know if people are not able to control themselves um uh you know and have stepped across the line and violated minors and and um or adolescents who are minors then no question about it um you know those people um may have to uh give up uh in some sense their their clerical status uh given the gravity of of the offenses and so um you know um they probably would not be allowed in any way to uh to be um holding an office within the church or even to practice their uh priesthood uh in the future and that's just for safety you know if somebody has you know crossed the line once there is a strong possibility right they may do it again and so uh the church has to to make those protections there but i i don't see a lot of condemnation you know on the part of the church i i what i see is trying to rectify the problem by the means we have been given by christ but also the means that people must take to prevent these abuses in the future right so um exactly good question right and again we're dealing with the situation on a spiritual level obviously forgiveness and and trying to understand as being good christians at the same time on a temporal situation to say you know someone has done something horrible or horrendous or against the law they need to face those consequences and as you indicated our priority first should be to protect the children and the young adults and others who we entrust into the hands of the church at times whether they be at seminary or at the local parish at different events and situations like that where people feel like of all places my children and family should be safe it should be there and we cannot allow individuals who have taken advantage of that trust uh to allow to continue to do that because they do in fact then obviously cast appall over all the other good priests who are out there trying to do the right thing and i know even last week when you talked about the young men at the seminaries i think most of us think there's a lot of john paul two-generation young men who want to do the right thing and want to be into orthodoxy and do care about these things and what sometimes we get upset about is when we hear stories that seems like unfortunately when they go out into uh the the church on a larger basis they run into uh an obstacle whether it be uh in the sense of what they're trying to do and and be those loyal sons of the church and people say well let's get rid of that if there's some systematic problem out there which there seems to be at some levels some of which was dealt with in 2002 but maybe some other parts haven't been dealt with let's get that fixed uh we all want it to be fixed we all want it to be so that the good priest can practice and uh you know pat a kid on the head without somebody getting nervous and we want their parents not to get nervous and we want people to know that they can trust the church that jesus christ founded and we all believe that yeah i i think that's good advice very good next up on an earlier episode you addressed a young man who was wrestling with impure thoughts this seems pretty simple now compared to some of the leagues we're talking about he may benefit this person says from the experience of saint jerome who grew more interested in the studies and away from the pleasures of the flesh perhaps this young man who wrote to you could also find a healthy intellectual interest when tempted so i guess one of the things of trying to you know kind of focus yourself on to things that are better off for you than you know and get out of some of the things that might cause you a problem which you've talked about in general yeah and i think sublimation is the the technical word for it that you you try to find something that's a higher purpose thing to to to you know not distract you but to engage in so that you can be contributive uh instead of kind of engaging in a self-destructive kind of behavior so um you know i um i think it's a great idea i think sublimation does work to a certain extent i i also do think though that having that contemplative life as i've said many times is really important the more we are praying the more we want to be with the lord the more we love the lord very palpably in our lives and and love mary very palpably in our lives the more you know we will become as it were uh you know attracted to um you know being um with them to being like them in their chastity and and to just that heavenly kingdom that has you know that that sort of uh innocence and that um you know that fullness of life without the the aberrant sexuality that is really the influence of the evil one the the dark one so um no question about it contemplative life is important but sublimation is a very good technique as well okay very good next up another question uh dear father spitzer dealing in the relativism of our modern world i find it so hard to pursue the perfect truth it's even hard in the church because people who profess the same faith have such radically different views on matters like this person pointed out immigration capital punishment social justice and we could also even talk about to some degree the state of homosexuality surely god has designed an objective truth for these issues so why is it this way so i guess the question is why is there all this confusion if you know the lord was clear about it well um the problem lies in those first two words you gave perfect truth unfortunately that's not gonna happen for us until at least five minutes after we're six feet under we're not going to get the perfect truth in this lifetime nor could we comprehend it here are the three major problems um you know that lead to some of this diversity of theological opinion uh that is confusing you uh the first thing that um you know is sometimes like let's take capital punishment one of the issues you brought up sometimes there is an evolution of um doctrine when circumstances change so for example in the case of capital punishment um you know saint john paul ii he initiated that a change in the view of capital punishment but he put in a clause he said if you know a person right is still going to be a threat to society if that person can't be kept a reasonably off the streets etc there may still be justification for it however in today's culture it is pretty clear that we can keep most of these criminals off the street and so pope francis uh apparently believes that in view of this change of circumstance uh you can go ahead and pretty much say that most cases of capital punishment are no longer warranted and if they're not warranted he prefers to use the same rationale as pope john paul or saint john paul ii and to say that it um should not be done so that happened uh we we saw the same thing with usury uh the church never changed its definition of usury uh in the sense of you know um extracting you know um terrible interest rates with you know force uh you know um to uh to sort of uh enslave people uh by those uh horrible and unjust interest rates um we still condemn that to this very day but it it became the point uh it came to the point where you know at the school of salamanca where there were some jesuits among some dominicans who basically began to put out what's called contemporary economic theory where a just rate of interest could be established by the market now that changed everything the moment you had market theory and the moment you had a market indexing of an interest rate that was considered to be just by all the lender and the buy right uh you know it's out there this is what it is this is uh you know what we all agree to if the market um you know uh suggests it that changed you know the blanket condemnation of usury so we had to make a distinction from that point on now if you still have one of these places where you've got a loan shark or something who's doing something uh then you know that's of course condemned it is usury but just uh getting a loan at the bank is no longer viewed as usury because of course it's a just rate established by the consent of all the parties and the marketplace so that's one reason why things can change or be confusing there's a second thing that's going on in the other issues you mentioned i believe it was immigration and social justice and some other things now there's a wonderful compendium of uh the cat the social teaching of the catholic church and you can get it free of charge it's called i believe it's called the compendium of of the social teaching the catholic church just google it it'll come right up the whole document now in there uh our church fathers especially um the pontifical council for justice and peace establishes a differentiation this is in the 800 section 800 or so in the document i'm not sure the exact one but the the key thing is there's a difference between doctrine and prudential judgment a doctrine is something which depends on the deposit of faith that is what jesus christ revealed to us and it's contained in the new testament and it's declared as as needed by extraordinary magisterium or by the the long process of ordinary magisterium over centuries it's been declared to be necessary for the protection of the deposit of the faith they're consistent with the deposit of the faith you can have what's called a doctrine and that we have to believe in as faithful right as pertains to faith and morals so that would be something we must consent to there's ordinary magisterium which we should consent to but it's not infallible if a doctrine is going to be infallible it must be done by extraordinary magisterium that means by a church council with the approval of the pope or by the pope using his extraordinary power ex-cathedra from the seat of peter and he declares it publicly to be so and of course it concerns a matter of faith and morals necessary for the salvation of people yet there's a third category and this the church fathers say prudential judgments is a matter of us trying to give our ascent to what the teaching of the church is in its social doctrine but it's also saying at the same time these things can change over the course of time these things are not necessarily a matter of your salvation so for example um you know the seven principles of of uh of um uh what the catholic social teaching is the intrinsic dignity of the human person the principle of solidarity the principle of the universal destination of goods the principle of of subsidiarity etc those seven principles they are infallibly taught but here is the point the application of those principles to particular situations at particular times is not taught infallibly and may not be necessary for salvation these are matters of prudential judgment and so there is a there's room for a wide variety of opinion on these matters and so over now we of course give our ascent to what's in the social teaching because we believe that our church leaders have the authority to give a good opinion a good judgment a good prudential judgment on the application of the principles of social teaching of the church however we can disagree respectfully with that teaching and say no i i think you know maybe you know more market is not necessarily a bad thing or and i do think that there is room for some uh uh diversity and application of environmental principles or whatever it may be there is room for a differentiation of opinion and that's without any problem of sin our obligation though as catholics is to study the the social teacher catholic church look at those applications try to give our ascent to it but if we have some reason for uh dissenting from it say in the case of what interest rate is appropriate or you know whether this uh application of environmental theory or social theory or labor theory or whatever it is if if you feel like you know this this is not a great application or other matters you are free to disagree with those applications and that causes your confusion as well but let's put it this way to just wind up the whole answer to your question some things can change by the good graces of the church because the pope has the authority uh to to do that they're not changing the actual original doctrine because an infallible doctrine is an infallible doctrine but the definition like of usury or the situation in which capital punishment occurs can change and therefore change the moral restriction or non-restriction of it and similarly there are a lot of prudential judges in fact i would say that about 90 percent of the catholic encyclical social encyclicals that we have in the catholic church are prudential judgments and about you know 10 is is uh you know um ordinary or extraordinary magisterium of the church which of course should be followed uh as faith and morals right exactly we're not talking here about things that are intrinsic like abortion and euthanasia okay oh no that's not up ever for uh for uh application okay very good thank you so much father father spitzer we'll be back shortly after this quick break stay with us here in the heart of father spitzer's universe at the intersection of faith and reason we'll see you there [Music] and we're back and so are you it's great to see you and thank you for staying with us here in father spitzer's universe as we move into the second part of our hour and we joined father spitzer let me ask you a quick question father spitzer off the last answer you gave let's say in in let's say we always have these apocalyptic films where you know road warrior or something so let's say a a situation wasn't in a particular area where the civilization fell apart and so it's ability let's say in the capital punishment thing was no longer quite there the ability to isolate and keep people would it be possible then in this time period of the future where even though in the past it had been seen as something we don't want to do that because the situation had changed that that application then might become useful again yes uh theoretically it's absolutely possible yeah okay um could could uh return to that but um you know i'm not so sure about road warrior but but uh yeah it's it's theoretically possible yes well he had a conversion he went from road warrior to making the passion of the christ so uh we have to yeah right that's right okay here's another question that a lot of people and maybe with some of the stuff going on in the church these days and we're talking about forgiveness and things and also uh heaven and hell and what we've talked about in the past about the devil wanting to deny that he exists here's a question uh father when jesus said enter through the narrow gate does that mean most of humanity will go to hell i love the show best regards brian from washington dc now he's very close to a lot of people who are have some concerns here but you know that is one that a lot of people wonder because it seems to be at some times uh what you hear it sounds like you know everybody's probably going to heaven maybe adolf hitler maybe you know didn't make it until the hunt or somebody like that but otherwise us basically okay folks are going to get there but then there's this narrow gate story what does that mean well here's the the thing um first of all uh brian you can't infer that most people are going to hell from the narrow gate story this is a fundamental question of biblical hermeneutics right you have to be really careful about taking a parable or what's called you know you know a rabbinical expression right it's an image right it's like the camel going through the eye of a needle i mean i mean does that mean that all rich people since no camels will ever be able to get through the eye of a needle does that mean no rich people will ever get into heaven no no you have to look at these rabbinical metaphorical examples which are typically hyperbolic for effect right i mean that's that's how they are understood at the time okay uh we are the literalistic culture in this case we're the ones who are trying to interpret it this way but you can't just take out chunks of of a parable or chunks of of an image what jesus is trying to tell us here as he's trying to tell the rich people of you know with the the camel through the eye of a needle he's telling them the same thing this is a really really dangerous course of action now our job is to ask well why why is the gate so narrow why is it you know that there are you know why is he warning us that there's so many ways that we could choose to go to hell and that's jesus's point that we can actually choose to go to hell we could actually choose to say i would prefer to dominate rather than respect others i prefer to worship myself rather than to worship the true god i prefer to be a narcissist egocentric all the way rather than have to share anything with anybody else i prefer you get the point to hate rather than to love i prefer to never forgive rather than to forgive i just that's what i prefer now of course you think i would never say such a thing well maybe most of us wouldn't but what jesus is trying to say is oh don't be so sure it's easy to get seduced into it it's easy to become complacent it's easy to be seduced into just egocentricity to the max easy to be seduced into the condemnation of others easy to be seduced into a non-forgiving personality easy to be seduced into you know just an almost an obsession with worshiping myself easy to be seduced into just never praying easy and asking for the grace and the help we need easy to be seduced into so many of these things and once you start getting a few of these things underway don't think that your enemy the devil is just going to stand by and just go oh boy look at what's happening to him he's of course going to stoke those fires of course he's going to say once you're on that road the wide gate of non-vigilance right once you're on it he's going to start saying you know there's really no need to pray and you know god's not going to forgive you anyway so why avail yourself of it and by the way you know you know as well as i do brian that the minute you know you start failing in your moral uh standards and your spiritual commitments what does the devil do the devil becomes the accuser he begins to say brian you rotten bum here's the thing or i'll just use myself spitzer you rotten bum now see what you've done you don't even deserve to be you know god's disgusted with you don't even approach him who do you think you are and once he's got you and he's pushing you it's hard it's hard to get back through the narrow gate again so what is our lord asking of us what's he telling us without you know you don't want to pull remember the biblical hermeneutics don't pull parables apart they're meant to be a single unity don't pull rabbinical images apart they're meant to be a single unity what he's telling us is you've got to be careful the one the path is wide to go down the eight deadly sins route i mean it's so easy to go down the vanity path the greed pat the lost path the the envy path the anger path the pride path etc it's so easy and it's so easy to just keep going down the path and don't you think your your enemy the devil will boot you the minute you start going down that path become the accuser obfuscate everything you once knew try to get you to justify things you thought were sinful as not being sinful get you to go down the dark way and then try to get through the narrow path again then just try to ask for forgiveness it's really really tough so that's really what it's about brian he's just trying to give us a warning that we could actually choose to go down this dark everett path that would be so lonely and so empty and so alienating yet we could actually choose it because we think oh this would be much better you know and uh like i said that the seven eight deadly sins they're they're there uh you know and they're they're they're seductive and boy i mean i guess the the other message to get the real message to get from the parable is struggle against those eight deadly sins with everything you can avail yourself of of the lord's mercy through the sacrament of reconciliation and through spontaneous prayers of forgiveness asking for forgiveness and just keep struggling because if you do that god's going you know you're going to weaken the power of the evil spirit and god's going to help you to get right through that narrow gate but it will take struggle and that's what the lord's saying he's a truth and advertising guy it'll take a struggle but i can see that you are struggling and so just keep struggling keep going reconciliation keep uh you know asking for forgiveness keep trying to pray uh you know every morning or whenever you do that you'll get there you're going to get through the narrow gate the struggle is why it's narrow well do you think sometimes the problem some of us have is that because we're struggling we think we're not succeeding yes i think that is a problem and you know i i said a quote i guess it was about three four weeks ago you know that that wonderful quote of c.s lewis sometimes when you think you're the most unvirtuous that's when you're the most virtuous and sometimes when you think you're the most virtuous that's when you're the most unvirtuous and what's lewis meant and i think there's great wisdom here what he meant was sometimes when you're struggling and struggling with those eight deadly sins and you're falling on your face and you're going to confession and you're same old same old and you're struggling and struggling and you don't seem to be making much progress but you're staying on the road with the lord you're getting back to confession you're asking for forgiveness you're going to prayer you're going to the whole eucharist you're trying to get to met you know you're trying to do it you think i'm so unvirtuous i'm not making any progress and lewis is saying but look all that struggle you're going with this is a huge part of your moral conversion and your spiritual conversion don't you worry you're incorporating virtue because you're loving god with every single moment of your struggle and you're loving your neighbor as yourself because who's the victim of sin but your neighbor and so of course you're loving your neighbor as yourself with every moment of that struggle so that's when you're the most virtuous alternatively says louis sometimes you think when you're the most uh you know virtuous that's when overweening spiritual pride is coming right into the picture boy haven't i saved myself exactly what the pharisees thought you know i'm obeying all the laws i'm doing everything according to the prescripts most of which i invented myself and therefore i think for all intents and purposes i've saved myself thank you very much and now all the rest of the bums in the world i don't know why you lord are interested in them because they're sinners and they just haven't saved themselves and jesus is going so you think you're so virtuous you better look at the overweening spiritual pride and the alto de cayo sunni the self-righteousness that you exemplify because i tell you this now you think you've saved yourself but you haven't saved yourself you need god and the worst sin you're committing is the very one of thinking you don't need to call upon the lord for forgiveness and mercy for healing for redemption and salvation and that's that's he you know you fools you blind guys so you're not being very virtuous so there's a lot of stuff there um you know uh in in lewis's remark that i think is is really salutary okay very good let's hit in the closing moments here uh touch base on the six questions from creator to jesus you talked about it last week kind of like that young man that you were spoken speaking to and getting into that now in in this this part here the evidence for jesus outside of christian scripture you've got tacitus flavius josephus and the babylonian talmud let me ask you a question are there still lots of people who think that jesus himself didn't exist well not real scholars i mean anybody who's a real scholar knows that jesus existed however i have to say this doug there are people there's a propaganda campaign out there which is called non-scholarly history where they're trying to say there's no source for jesus's existence outside of the scriptures well you know first and foremost there is i mean tacitus i mean you're not going to get a better source than tacitus a roman historian writing for emperors you know he doesn't have a good opinion of christianity but he does say well there was this guy christus and and you know he he uh um you know uh uh was crucified and suffered the extreme penalty under the procurator pontius pilot you know and and then of course he goes on to say and of course his doctrine has spread through all kinds of venom and uh rome you know which has the road to every evil has embraced it or something like that well now this is tacitus's opinion but does he give a reliable extra testamental witness to jesus absolutely he does that's a first-class testimony particularly because he doesn't like the christians secondly flavius josephus let's face facts he's jewish you know and he's and he's a jewish historian writing for the romans i mean that's like two absolutely diverse uh dimensions to christianity that are part and par parcel of this guy's life so i mean flavius josephus goes much further than tacitus he not only says that jesus existed but he actually attests to the fact that he did have words of wisdom and also that he did miraculous deeds deeds of power now some people have shown that there are interpolations that is to say later christian editors added some things to flavius josephus's statement and that is true however very good reliable scholars like luke timothy johnson and john p meyer show that this part of flavius josephus's statement is very probably part of the original not an interpolation when he's talking about jesus's words of wisdom jesus's deeds of power that's a miracle right and then of course he goes on to talk about the crucifixion of jesus etc so these are very reliable sources the same thing holds true with the babylonian talmud and the reason again it's obviously a jewish source and in it of course they're trying to explain jesus's remarkable popularity not only because of jesus's miracles but that jesus's disciples have the same miraculous power in the name of jesus so of course what did they do they blame it on the babylonian talmud on sorcery so they're calling jesus a sorcerer now this sounds very familiar to me because of course we see it in the new testament writ large it is by the power of elizabeth that he casts out demons and so what happened here why did the jewish authorities make recourse to you know the power of be eligible because jesus's popularity and his miracles were so well known at the time they were so prolific his exorcisms raising of the dead healings of people were so prolific they couldn't deny it anymore his adversaries couldn't deny it so they had to do something else they had to come up with a reason why he could do all these things namely he's doing it by the power be eligible and we see the same thing in the babylonian talmud he's a sorcerer but that just attests to the fact that he does have miraculous power that no one can doubt and his disciples have miraculous power that no one can doubt it's so prolific it's everywhere known so you have to blame it on another thing he's a sorcerer he's using you know demonic powers etc etc uh and and you explain it away but really doesn't explain it away it helps the case for christianity because it's clearly a point of admitting uh to the prolific nature of jesus's and the disciples miraculous uh you know uh ministry uh ministry of exorcisms healing and raising the dead now in in your take on josephus sometimes the arguments are well josephus wrote a lot of these things because he was kind of in the pay of the romans so his goal was to make the jews of the day not look so good uh yeah but that's uh that that may be the case but the fact is that jesus uh uh was a a jewish person all right um but um um you know uh he was in the pay of the of the of of the romans but it not to make uh jesus was jewish and so of course you know he was taking this jewish prophet and to be honest he was actually making him look pretty good so so you know i don't think you can just explain away the josephus passage as being something that you know um you know is intrinsic to uh uh his desire to uh you know to as they say uh uh you know play up to the romans romans right the other of course argument which luke timothy johnson i believe it's luke timothy johnson gives i hope i'm right but anyway that someone a good exegete gives is hey listen the romans executed him i mean you're not playing up to the romans by making jesus look good since the romans executed him under extreme penalty with of course the consent of the procurator pontius pilate so that argument doesn't work right it's contradictory right okay let me ask you another question in relation to that because you were talking about let's say the pharisees and even let's say the town babylonian talmud so when when when the first century jews like this of the temple would see him do these things did they really believe it was beelzebub or did they say that because they had to convince the people that his power came from some place and it couldn't be from god as you were kind of alluding to well i think it's both i think in one sense yes there is a lot of self-interest in the pharisees statement but i also think honestly these poor guys were trying to say how can this be he's talking about god as loving sinners this just cannot be i mean our whole reading of the text is god doesn't love them and now he's coming along and he's contradicting this so he can't be from god therefore he's got to be doing this under the power of baltimore so i think a lot of them uh were sort of in some sense had convinced themselves of this because a priori they just thought he couldn't be right because he was disagreeing with their interpretation of the prophets and the torah so i mean and by the way a lot of other people disagreed with the pharisees views of of the prophets and the torahs right the essenes uh in particular and and uh you know of course the sadducees themselves etc so there's all kinds of things going on there but definitely i do think a lot of them talk themselves into it by sort of a you know just a a priori refusal to believe them but other ones yeah definitely were probably disingenuous saw their livelihoods being threatened by an alternative you know jewish sect that would replace them and definitely you know the miracles were a big threat because they were showing up the pharisees to be without the power of the divine but the problem is though um you know i can't help but believe that jesus is prolific acts of exorcism you know casting out the devil and jesus's own rationale uh back to the pharisees hey how can satan be casting out satan how can you know satan be undermining his own household if satan against is against satan if satan's casting out satan then his whole house is going to just fall i mean and so i think there is something that just goes right to the heart of authenticity there and i gotta believe that's why a lot of uh pharisees converted to christianity and make no mistake about it there are a lot of uh jewish scribes and pharisees who became christian not just joseph verimonthier or nicodemus i mean we're talking a lot of them so many of our our uh hymns in the new testament etc are are produced by people with a remarkable jewish background and you start looking at you know some of these guys uh you know the evangelists just had you know sources that that certainly knew uh you know aramaic and hebrew in in the most precise ways i mean just all over the place uh you know they're jewish scribes uh in the early converts to christianity so i guess my main point would be a lot of them really were convinced by jesus's argument didn't go for the beltable uh argument and and basically became believers in jesus what about the sadducees because you mentioned them and we hear about the pharisees all the time the sadducees now they didn't even believe in an afterlife so what did they care what jesus had to say about things well see here's the thing is again jesus's miracles and exorcisms threaten the sadducees as much as the pharisees now remember the sadducee party did not accept the prophets or uh any kind of wisdom literature they were were restricted to the torah that is to say the first five books of the old testament the law alone so they by restricting themselves to the law all the the the the uh psalms that that basically talk about the resurrection could be discounted and all of the prophetic uh words on the resurrection could be discounted and so a lot of these things where the resurrection does pop up in the old testament which the pharisees by the way did believe in because they believed in the book of the prophets in all of the psalms the major psalter because they believed that of course they believed in a resurrection whereas the sadducees did not but the the miracles threatened the sadducees here's my major point right and so they have to come up and challenge jesus too you know hey we got a question for you teacher now if a man's um um dies leaving uh his wife childless and he has seven brothers but i mean you know and you get the rest of it but the key thing is is is yeah jesus has to respond to it but he does and he responds with you know god is the god of the living so he's god of abraham the god of isaac and the god of jacob well he's the god of the living not of the dead so abraham isaac and jacob hey they're alive and you better think about that right and of course you know he confronted the challenge really to their whole belief system exactly and we are just out of time unbelievably and so if you give us your closing blessing absolutely and may the lord bless and keep you all and may he send his spirit of wisdom down upon you to inform you of all of the beautiful testimony to his son throughout the history of the church and throughout the scriptures and all the extra testamental sources and all of the relics that manifest his presence and miraculous power to this day so that you might know in your heart of hearts the beauty the truth the love of jesus christ your redemption in the name of the father and of the son and of the holy spirit amen amen thank you father we shall see you next week of course we will see you next week as well hopefully we'll see you at our ewtn family celebration coming up november 3rd in jacksonville florida go to our website find out all about it we'd love to see you next time extra testamental witness to jesus is our topic and i'm doug thank you for joining us at the intersection of faith and reason see you next time [Music] you

Channel: EWTN

Views: 2,903

Keywords: ytsync-en, fsu, fsu15116

Id: 1q1vyrpI3UA

Length: 53min 26sec (3206 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 12 2018