Franciscan University Presents: Getting to Know the Bible

you may be familiar with the famous quote from saint jerome ignorance of scripture is ignorance of christ this is a call the catholic church has echoed throughout the centuries calling catholics to study scripture but responding to that call isn't always as easy as it seems join us today as we learn how to overcome some of the obstacles to studying scripture and discover what we truly find when we break open the bible with today's special guest dr john bergsma professor of theology here at franciscan university and author of the new book bible basics for catholics a new picture of salvation history i'm michael hernand vice president of advancement at franciscan university in steubenville ohio and you're watching franciscan university presents welcome to franciscan university presents i'm michael hernand vice president of advancement at franciscan university in steubenville ohio and today we'll be discussing discovering god's word in scripture i'm joined here today with our regular panelists dr regis martin professor of systematic theology at franciscan university i'm dr scott hahn the father michael scanlon chair in biblical theology in the new evangelization here at franciscan university and dr john bergsma john is a professor of theology here at the university uh he received his uh doctorate from the university of notre dame his expertise is in the dead sea scrolls and you know the old testament he is a senior fellow at the saint paul center for biblical theology and he's written quite a lot on blogs and articles and his new book is the bible basics for catholics which is really the topic of our show today john welcome to the program it's great to be here yeah so if we start you know i opened the these the uh original introduction for the show about the ignorance of scripture is ignorance of christ but how do we as catholics really enter into studying the bible what's the easiest way as we as we think about it why is it important for our life of faith well it's important for a life of faith because um as uh as the second vatican council said picking up on a statement of the fathers meditation on the sacred page is the soul of theology so the all of our theology comes out of god's word theology means the word of god theo logos so unless we're meditating on scripture we're not getting god's word we're not doing theology so understanding um the plan of salvation god's characteristics the way he wants to interact with us all of this is rooted in the word of god unless we continually go back to that source and kind of draw up from that well we're going to be cut off from that life-giving water that really feeds our spiritual life and so is there is there a difference between reading the scriptures and studying the scriptures is that we use those terms is that interchangeable or is there something distinct there well there's uh there no i wouldn't say they're interchangeable and then there's different kinds of reading of the scripture you know there would be a reading of the scripture where you're trying to get the facts and trying to get the story of scripture down and that might be a quick uh reading where you might take several chapters in a day and try to get through it in a year for example there's also um what we call lexio which is prayerful reading of scripture um where you might take a passage and rather than trying to chew uh three chapters in a day or four chapters in a day you might take a few verses and read them over six times and and pray between each uh each reading so that's a more meditative kind of reading and then there's scripture study which has different aspects and can have different intensity but that would be perhaps where you take a passage and try to get at the original language do a study of of certain words certain themes consult dictionaries and other secondary sources though we distinguish methods though we really want to make sure that they stay united because on the one hand just reading the bible is healthy on the other hand intensive study is and then between the two meditations so that you're taking the fruits of careful study and at the same time you're reading for the purpose of going from the word of the page to the word incarnate you know this is one of the great things about scripture from a catholic perspective is that when we speak of the bible as the word of god it's sort of like a sign that you see on the way to the pittsburgh airport that says airport 14 it's a sign that points beyond itself you know stop at the sign and wait for your plane you go to the airport the word of god written points us to the word of god incarnate yes you know and so the catechism puts it so well that ours is not a religion of the book the way islam describes itself the way judaism often is described in protestant christianity and it doesn't in any way devalue the bible if anything by uniting it to the word incarnate to uniting it to the eternal word that god speaks by which creation comes into existence i think you end up investing scripture with a sacramental quality that enhances the prayer on the one hand as well as the academic and rigorous study on the other you know what strikes me up this apparatus of scholarship that both of you i think are specialists at which we're expected to crank up when we approach uh scripture we never apply that to say a newspaper we just read it or we drink the news for what fred allen called chewing gum for the eye when you're watching cnn but with god's word it's different it's not just that you read it you have to study it you immerse yourself in it and and couldn't you almost argue in the spirit of saint jerome that while ignorance of of scripture is ignorance of christ ignorance of scripture scholarship might be very freeing you have the burden of proof don't you certain kinds yeah yeah we could talk about that later but there's a lot of scripture scholarship out there that uh is done by people who don't have faith let's be quite honest about it and if you pick up the wrong book at walden books or are they still in business but whatever the bookstore might be you pick up something and uh it could derail uh your faith and so there has to be some care about what scholarship you choose there are also people who have faith but only apply reason to the bible you know so that while they will embrace the creed and affirm all the mysteries nevertheless they won't bring their faith to bear upon the study of scripture in order to kind of fit into the academy because it's a natural and that means non-supernatural it's a scientific that means non-spiritual sort of exercise you know it's a kind of schizophrenia that we find not uncommon you know in the uh the professional realm of biblical scholarship absolutely you know i i once knew a guy in rome who who had that mindset he was getting his degree at the biblicum and he had at least as many degrees already as aristotle and he was intimidatingly learned and i remember asking him how many languages do you need to know and he said well about a dozen and one of those languages was aramaic and when i expressed astonishment that he'd be able to speak and read the language that christ spoke because christ didn't speak greek or latin and i don't think he spoke english he spoke aramaic and hebrew and i said what an advantage this gives you you know what a point of entry into the mystery of god and he said you know we never talk about god we bracket those questions of faith we try to pursue a neutral academic scholarship i was horrified by that i think the friendship ended right there on the street corner but are there a lot of people like that uh you are you like that john well i would i would claim not to be no i mean uh that kind of deadens the the joy and the excitement of um of studying god's word of teaching it of being a bible scholar um i've always struggled to to uh unite my faith with my scholarship and um and to to keep uh a focus on on what we're about when we're reading god's word which is to get into contact with god and if we lose sight that that the word is supposed to bring us into contact with god and just becomes an end to itself which is what scott was trying to talk about with the sign analogy then we really get derailed yeah and i think sometimes we can get lost in this picture you're you all have phds in theology i think sometimes when we talk about reading i think people are comfortable even meditating the layman is comfortable with it when we talk about study i think that some people get anxious with that thinking you do have to have a phd in order to go and study scripture um and what really when we look forward particularly as a layman without necessarily the scholarly background what's some of the obstacles that they have when they're going to study scripture because i think that's a big crux of of really breaking open uh the bibles what are those obstacles that we face yeah i think there's you know i can think of three of them uh right off the top of my head one would be a cultural obstacle that that we're still as catholic still getting used to in some ways uh uh reading the bible um personally in our homes um maybe that's something our parents didn't do so there's a little bit of cultural baggage of uh resistance to reading scripture individually personally etc so that's one obstacle another obstacle would just be the the the complexity of uh the bible it's it's a large book it's like trying to eat an elephant so if you if you start reading uh and many people have done this you know genesis is moderately entertaining you can get through that exodus is at least the first half is as well but that's how you hit leviticus all those laws sacrifices what do you do with that and so most people get uh lost in leviticus basically um uh so that's an obstacle and i would think that the third obstacle would be a lack of the proper tools or knowing where to go to get resources it's useful to when you're when you're trying to study scripture to have say a bible dictionary um it's useful to be able to uh get at the the original languages at least a little bit and uh there's actually websites that help even lay people get out the original language of the bible without knowing any greek or or hebrew they'll take you into these words and pronounce them for you and tell you what they what they mean and uh so it's actually possible for the layperson to to get into some serious uh scripture scholarship but they may not know where to go to find that those tools i can think of a fourth obstacle and we already alluded to it and that is professional scripture scholarship i think not only for laity but also for clergy and teachers there's something daunting i think there's an intimidation factor and i don't know if it's entirely unintended you know i think scholars do like to kind of keep this as their exclusive preserve at least some of them do you know when you were talking earlier about that uh scholar that you met in rome you know i i think that was especially common in the last 40 years the 20th century where for the first time we were beginning a kind of ecumenical experiment in joint biblical scholarship with jews protestants and catholics collaborating on such projects as the anchor bible commentary and that sort of thing and so you had to kind of check your distinctive beliefs at the door as jews protestants and catholics and approach this in a way that was supposedly neutral although i'm not sure it was ever really neutral but it's sort of like saying the tone deaf music critic is more objective and more scientific than the one who really knows and loves mozart you know but at the same time i think what we have to do is sort of give a magna carta we have to give uh liberty to lay people to study this thing because not only are there indulgences attached but there are great blessings as well and so much of this is accessible and i remember one of my my hebrew professors saying that about 80 of the bible is meaningful apart from learning the languages and he said so learn them and learn them well but realize that you can get at it and the people you teach can too without mastering greek and hebrew yep in fact i i had a professor in college who who didn't speak greek or hebrew but had mastered english literature and he read the bible he was particularly enamored of the king james version you know those 17th century stately majestic cadences but he treated the bible as literature as a kind of monument over the grave of christianity he didn't credit faith at all it was it was it was uh you know completely beside the point but the literary quality the beauty of the language that's what transported him there's a sense in which he was a kind of parasite he's feeding off a carcass that no longer generates life yeah what possesses people to do that yeah sure i mean you're talking about somebody's highly educated and a piece appreciating the scripture for its aesthetic values you know on the other hand i remember doing urban ministry when there was there's a an elderly man in my congregation who was disabled and couldn't work just lived at home and read scripture constantly he did not even have a a high school diploma and a kind of low reading level but every year he would read through the bible and he would work through different translations so the new international version the rsv the king james every year he would try a new translation and just read through and it was amazing the insight into scripture that he had simply because it was in his head and it was a prayerful continuous meditation on the sacred page and without the scholarly apparatus he still came to profound theological insights and i was really impressed with him and i remember talking to a fella in england when i gave some lectures there in the early 90s his name was leo he was in his 70s and he came just out of curiosity to see this convert you know talk about the bible and at the end he asked this question about you know the medieval peasants who were illiterate who couldn't read the bible were they unsavable you know and i said well of course not besides the gospel being in stone and in stained glass and all of the rest you know but i said leo if you're using the medieval peasant as an excuse not to read the bible i said you know i would exhume that peasant from the grave and that peasant would look at you and say you're using me as an excuse not to read the bible when you have literacy when you have computers when you have all these tools shame on you you know and he was like good point one year later he contacted me he had read the bible all the way through in his 70s and had begun leading a bible study in his parents he said old dogs can learn new tricks that's amazing that's amazing well he's probably talking to god in the flesh you know having read these letters on planet earth i mean isn't that really the connection this is god's word he's speaking to us and if we're interested we we we tune in that's right that's right and so in your your book that we're going to kind of break open really in the next chapter you kind of point out and it's a real tool for people to to open scripture to see it in a new way because i think there are we talked about some of the obstacles we talked about some of the importances of it but essentially we need to understand the big picture sometimes and in our next segment uh what we'll be discussing is that big picture looking at the old testament giving a frame of reference you're watching franciscan university presents stay with us scripture says that jesus is the lord of god he is the word made flesh and when you when you open up that bible and you dive into the scriptures you get a chance to hear his voice and it's not just you talking to god it's what he wants to say to you scripture in hebrews it also says that the word of god is living and effective and it is it's not just a book that was written thousands of years ago and it's completely irrelevant to us today it's something that can change your life when you open up the when you open up the bible christ speaks to you um so i'm in love with the scriptures because i'm in love with jesus i read the bible many times but one day i recognize i am in the bible middle of the celebration history i am in there my name is michael villanueva i'm majoring in philosophy and theology last semester i had sacraments with dr han and i'll tell you right now it was the best class in my entire life at every class i'm just knocked out of my chair it hits me like a ton of bricks the beauty of the truth that you're speaking to us something so simple but so beautiful and so profound and so powerful franciscan university is academically excellent and passionately today we're getting to know the bible with our special guest dr john bergsma author and professor john is there an overarching story or a big picture to scripture and if so what is it yeah absolutely there is a big picture and i think it's important to get the big picture so we can understand actually what we're reading when we go to mass if we go to mass and don't have the big picture scripture then these three readings that we do they seem to be without context and how they relate et cetera so there is a big picture and it's a picture focused on covenant and what is a covenant a covenant is to use a little bit of technical language the extension of kinship by an oath to unpack that a little bit it's god making us a family by swearing us into the family okay that's what a covenant is and one of the best ways of summing up the whole story of scripture really comes from one of the prayers that we use in mass the fourth eucharistic prayer i'm still familiar with the old old translation but the old translation was again and again you offered a covenant to man and through the prophets you taught them to hope for salvation that pretty much sums up the old testament and then the only thing we need to add to that really is the coming of christ he fulfilled the the prophets promised and brought salvation in the form of a new and eternal covenant so that story of a sequence of covenants really is the big picture of salvation history and so that big picture gives us a frame of reference i almost see it as that kind of a map you know we were talking earlier about the signs that go uh to the airport but this is showing us where we're heading throughout time as the hound of heaven is coming after the human race i mean the presumption here is that god has spoken into the world he has spoken his word right i mean how does hebrews put it in in free in many and varied ways he has communicated himself you know through the prophets in a partial way but in the sending of his son in a def in a definitive way i mean that's sort of consoling isn't it i mean that's an exciting piece of news and and it it breaks up it departs i think decisively from the other two uh world-class religions the other two biblical partners you know the children of israel and the children of islam i mean they're also people of the book but the the fulfillment the definitive self-expression can only be found in christianity where the word himself enters into time i mean with with islam you have an angel communicating this fullness which is intrinsically impossible only god can speak god's word only god can exhaust the depths of the godhead so islam falls short and as we certainly know from the experience of israel they give us a law that we cannot keep we require some remedy an escape a deliverance which comes in the form of of christ so we leave those two uh monotheistic peoples completely in the dust and there's there's a sense in which israel's prophets testify to what you just said because the prophets of israel are the ones who announced it to their own people you have not kept the law so the old testament ends with so many of the israelites in exile it's a sort of story in search of an ending which the new testament completes in a way that sort of surpasses even the highest hopes of the pious israelites it's a fulfillment that god brings about by revealing a plan that sort of surpasses their their wildest dreams you know yeah and so if we we talked earlier you'd i thought it could be a title of a book lost in leviticus right but but that is a a stumbling block for for many people finding all those things and so when we talk about covenant uh give me some of the reference points for those covenants you know where do they start and and what are there any that are more important than others and what are we drawing looking at the old testament yeah absolutely i mean the whole purpose of writing the book was to convey to uh you know people that are just starting out with scripture the big picture that i wish i had started with rather than waiting for 12 years almost of post-graduate education to finally get it you know so why can't we have started with the big picture and then gone deeper rather than having to piece it together after so much so much time so um and really the the picture that i'm trying to communicate in the book you can you can find in the catechism it's it's there quietly in the catechism it's also in some of the church fathers going back to irenaeus this idea of the sequence of covenants but anyway let's talk about those covenants uh the covenants form these these big stepping stones if you imagine the bible as as crossing a river uh you know each covenant would be a major stepping stone that you would hop to across and you start with adam and then proceed to noah and then to abraham to moses to king david and then you go through a time of turmoil where the prophets are predicting the coming of a new covenant and then that new covenant is ultimately brought to us in christ so the basic outline of salvation history in terms of its backbone or stepping stones would be adam noah abraham moses david the prophets and christ that pretty much sums up the canonical scripture are there some that are more important less important um yeah we might say that although although all are important i mean we could say that the adamic is foundational it's a covenant with all creation it was broken and then renewed in a lower form with noah but our our salvation our redemption really starts with the promises and the covenant that were given to abraham and the covenants that follow from the covenant of abraham really are a a growth or an outworking or a fulfilling of all those promises that were packed into uh the covenant with abraham so you can see the covenant of abraham is kind of an acorn that grows into the oak tree of salvation and that's why when you read saint paul he's constantly referring to the story of abraham and unpacking it seeing that the gospel is already present there and truly it is well john you make everything sound tight as a tick really very neat and what what i would want to know is this big picture this this overarching view which strikes me as very comprehensive complete uh compelling even why wasn't this communicated to you when you began your your graduate studies oh for a variety of reasons i think that we get lost in the in the forest for the trees as they say and biblical scholars tend to be specialists that's our educational system you're putting basically locked up in in the library for two years to write a dissertation on one chapter of a single book and and that becomes your whole world and so you get out and that's all you want to teach and so on so our educational system kind of uh specializes in in specialties well did any of your colleagues feel that way about leviticus that's what i did my dissertation actually i'm a leviticus expert is that right yeah it is it is how did you move from leviticus to the big sky part of it was being being forced to have to teach at the undergraduate level and having to cover the whole old testament in a semester and then that forced you to step back and think how am i going to summarize what are the highlights what are the points and and in that process uh you know some of these ideas and uh and i want to give credit to dr han here i get a lot of my seminal stuff uh from some of his work and uh that was a big we were both robbing the father's blood and other people that we could both mention that's right that's true i think in reading this book though i i saw your teacher experience come shining through the way that you make it very easy to read it is clearly not written necessarily for a scholar it's a a priest or a layman who is looking to to really go deeper and understand what this means and what each of those do but you also even take it very pictorially you talk about big picture you're you're making that very literally a big picture uh a lot of stick pictures yeah the line drawing from the is a great didactic tool but chalkboard and i showed it to my kids and they were like it's funny and i want to see it i want to know more it makes it easy to understand and memorable so that we can kind of have that big picture with us and here i thought you wrote the book for the money that's you you know there's one other thing i think that makes it hard to get the big picture you know and why it is that so many specialists specialize in parts of the bible but don't see the whole and that is the notion of covenant itself because you know not only in the english language does covenant have a juridical connotation but in german bunt and other other languages too alliance in french and allianza in italian covenant in ancient israel really communicated communion kinship on the one hand it had family relations as the foundation on the other hand it had liturgical celebrations as the climax so if you're fixing your gaze on the midpoint of law commandments missing the commitment and the relations fixating on the obligations and forgetting about the celebrations you're really missing something that is going to draw you in and then all of a sudden show you what the whole thing is about so you know as you look at the covenants as we have seen over the years you know adam is a marriage aboard the ark noah had three sons who were all married they formed one household abraham was a tribal chieftain there are 12 tribes becoming a national family at mount sinai under moses david witnesses israel being elevated over all the other nations as a kingdom family and then finally jesus establishes a catholic a universal an international family and so looking at it through jewish eyes as it were the way you do you can see that the mountains and the mediators lead to the fulfillment of a fatherly plan that is precisely the family we know as the catholic church and for both of us this was sort of how we backed ourselves in as calvinists into the catholic church as god's family and at the same time discovering at every single point sacramental liturgy is precisely the high point not just the commandments the ten commandments or the additional juridical statutes and that sort of approach in your book just makes it come alive in a really vivid way yeah yeah yeah i remember my one of my daughters saying as we were looking at abraham and isaac saying how can you understand this story without understanding christ i mean there's so much that when you read the old testament covenants you see that plan you see it begin to unfold and and i think that that changes everything it changes who we are in our daily lives but only if we go in and we really study and see that bigger picture that's a great example because so often we look at it just like the way kierkegaard did you know it's like the teleological suspension of the ethical god commands abraham to kill his son you know would you do it and then we debate it in kind of abstract philosophical terms the point is a covenant sacrifice a liturgy that god the father knew was necessary so he takes a father figure abraham and doesn't say hey tonight murder your son it's a sacrificial liturgy precisely where the temple will be and as you point out you know that's the key that unlocks this because it also explains why god suspends the sacrifice because he knows that no earthly father no beloved son no human beings can fulfill this sacrifice and create the covenant that will really fulfill god's plan so abraham pre-enacts what god the father will do isaac is the beloved son prefiguring jesus and it's suspended precisely so later on golgotha which is where they were will be where god the father shows his love by giving his son and i mean liturgy again it's a sacrifice it isn't just well would you kill your son if god told you the element of freedom here i think is really uh indispensable just as in the order of nature you can't ask a father to kill his son so too in the order of supernature we don't we don't think of the father as sort of inflicting this this cruelty upon his son it it's a sacrifice that the son voluntarily shoulders he takes it on out of the depth of incomprehensible love and and the rabbis all were aware of this because if you read the story in genesis 22 it's isaac that carries the heavier load up the mountain he's got this little this is sacrifice that's right he's a strapping young man who could have overpowered abraham right so this wasn't a forcible yeah at the top of the mountain and the rabbis all saw that so this was a cooperative act between father and son and that makes it even more direct and powerful image of the cooperative act of father and son on calvary the sacrifice of the only begotten son it's still a difficult you know it's a difficult story to explain but i think you see that god is having abraham and isaac pre-enact would god the father and god the son are going to do you know human sacrifice could never effect right what a life-giving act of love will do by god it's it's beautifully wrought only if you know the outcome right right right that's exactly i mean the presupposition is that the father loves the son the son loves the father and that becomes sort of an antic ground or given for this other gesture of love this donation of the father to the world the son to the world uh in the sacrifice of of of calvary yeah and it's all familial and that's really what i'm trying to communicate in the book that these sequence of covenants are god again and again inviting us into his family we turn away finally he sends christ an offer we can't refuse as it were yeah i mean how odd of god to choose the jew well because he wanted to start a family that's right this is how he does and these covenants lead us to that understanding and i think that's a key although not the only uh obviously covenant that that is speaking to christ uh and leading us forward uh in our next segment i'd like to continue our discussion of covenants and that understanding and how that leads us to a deeper understanding in the new testament you're watching franciscan university presents stay with us the bible is the pinnacle in the pillar of the catholic faith and without which we have nowhere to stand you know through philosophy we can understand the what god is you know what god is does god exist that can be answered to philosophy but with scripture you find out who god is and who god is and how he reveals himself to us a question that can only be answered through the scriptures explore the treasures of your catholic heritage on a franciscan university pilgrimage led by inspiring spiritual directors you'll walk in the footsteps of saints and martyrs in the holy land poland france and italy and you'll deepen your love for jesus christ through daily mass confession prayer and the joy of christian fellowship let franciscan university lead you on a pilgrimage of faith find out more at franciscan.edu pilgrimages i'm glad you joined us for franciscan university presents this entire program is taped right here at franciscan university's communication arts studio our students are operating the cameras and equipment here our panelists regis and scott are members of the faculty here at franciscan university this entire program comes forth from the heart of franciscan university uh today we're continuing to discuss the bible basics with dr john bergsma john we talked about the importance of covenants and their role in the old testament and now let's see what what do they point forward to how does that help us understand the new testament and really the new covenants then yeah absolutely well you know the word testament is simply a latin translation of the word covenant so when we talk about the new testament uh we're talking about the new covenant anna scott has pointed out many many times before the before the new testament was a book it was the eucharist i mean the new covenant was the eucharist that's what our lord says in luke 22 20 when he speaks over the cup and he says this cup is the new covenant in my blood which i take to mean consisting of my blood so the greatest we talked in the last segment about you know is any covenant more important well in a sense we should immediately say well yes the new and eternal covenant that comes at the end that is the most important it comes to us through the eucharist jesus establishes it in the upper room with the disciples he says this cup is the new covenant consisting of my blood and we talked about how a covenant is the extension of kinship by an oath or god inviting us into his family and we see that in a very graphic form at the institution of the eucharist at the last supper where he where christ calls his body and blood the covenant and then gives it to them to eat well you are what you eat and so as they're eating the body and the blood they are becoming blood to christ you know we talk about blood brothers and he's blood to me et cetera well now they are the family of christ they're the family of god and so that family status is being given to them through this sacrament that's the most profound way of making a covenant that i can imagine so really you know every time we go to mass we're being invited into the family of god we're taking god's body and blood into us and being united to him this is the new covenant that's never going to pass away because there's nothing better than this and it's so significant that jesus never utters the word covenant on any other occasion in all four gospels except in the upper room when he's instituting the eucharist precisely as the new covenant or the new testament that that it's a sacrament many many many years before it starts to become a document and that's what the document itself testifies to but even the language of testament i mean even if it's not the most ideal translation at least it captures the familial quality because typically you write a testament as a last will for your beneficiaries your heirs who are typically your children you know so in the old testament you and i both know there are these four major episodes where you know israel gathers his twelve sons at his deathbed and blesses them in a testamentary act to renew the covenant to keep the family going after he dies moses gathers the twelve elders and the twelve tribes at the end of deuteronomy for the same reason joshua at the end of joshua gathers the 12 tribes and the 12 elders samuel does before he dies so when jesus gathers the 12 before he dies to bless them knowing that he will rise but he's giving to them the sacrament that is going to make us a family in a way that surpasses anything that israel or moses joshua or samuel realized but it's precisely the fulfillment of all of those testimony acts whereby a covenant is renewed so the family can continue even after this illustrious father figure has died yeah you know i've often wished that the communication that went on between christ and those uh privileged disciples on the road to emmaus could be made available yeah well it is he drew on the ground with a stick his little stick figures he went through the whole map what a breakthrough you need to write a sequel i think but in fact the summary that the two of you just presented i i think is is a fair approximation of what jesus must have said you know he unburdens himself and the scriptures of their meaning he unpacks what the whole thrust of of of this uh self-revealing word is and it it couldn't be more thrilling i mean it's an inconceivable intimacy that god forges through his son with the world the same world that conspired to kill him i mean he couldn't get any closer to us than to allow us to take hold of him and slowly torture him to death and then he breaks himself to become our bread more people i think need to know this yeah and i suspect a lot of people who go routinely to mass don't know this that's right i don't think any catholics sitting in the pews on sunday one understands very very few probably understand the covenant in that sense but also i mean that's that's the perfect paradigm for the liturgy here is christ unfolding salvation history and it ends with the eucharist and they i mean that there's a tie in between this when we look at the old how does that point forward i mean how does some of those covenants are get revealed in the new covenant i mean absolutely i mean and i try to show this in the book but uh you know christ begins a whole new human race a human race characterized by the gift of the holy spirit so he's like a new adam okay he saves us through water and wood okay he saves us by the waters of baptism he saves us through the wood of the cross there was somebody in the old testament did that too noah you know you know save the world through the waters and the wood of the ark okay so our lord is a new uh noah figure um our lord in his earthly ministry led his followers up onto a mountain and gave them a new law from heaven well we know there was a guy who did that in the old testament as well moses who walked up on a mountain sign i gave them the law from heaven our lord is the son of david every time he uh exercises someone and casts out a demon the people say can this be the son of david why do they say that because back in uh first samuel 16 when david was anointed he was given the power of exorcism and so he would go into king saul's court play on the liar which is the ancient guitar he would play praise music you know blessed be the name of the lord he's strumming that out and as he's playing that praise music the demons are fleeing so when people see the demons fleeing from christ they say this is a new david that's come so in all these ways we you know if we read the new testament understanding the history the story of israel that we see in the old testament we see wow it's deja vu again and again as all the characteristics of the great figures of the old testament the great mediators of the old covenants are being fulfilled in christ it's all coming to a grand finale yes you know clopis and his companion on the road to emmaus you know we're relating to this stranger what they took to be an abject failure and the stranger turned it around and showed no this is a divine fulfillment you know how do you move from failure to fulfillment well you know we do that in our own lives in our brokenness god's mercy reaches down but in the same way i think when we discover in the sacred scriptures that that adam's catastrophic transgression becomes this occasion for an upward fall because the new adam comes and he ends up in a garden just like adam being tested only he goes to the right tree and not the wrong tree and the fruit of the tree of life is what the eucharist is according to the early church fathers because they got this trajectory they got the the similarities and the dissimilarities the promises that god made after the failures and then the fulfillment but when the fulfillment comes it isn't a ticker tape parade you know it's a crucifixion it's a roman execution but even that is transformed when you see that he is giving his life when he institutes the eucharist before the soldiers can take it they're at calvary and so while we have to lose our life through the eucharist we realize no it can also become a gift that we can receive the gift of his life and transform the loss of life into a gift of love it's like this makes sense out of family failures and at the same time it creates this sense that divine fulfillment didn't end back in the first century it's still going on in the 21st every time we go to mass specialist and i think that if people through my book or someone else's book get a feel for uh the flow of the story of scripture when you go into mass you you start to see oh whoever set up these readings with this first reading the song second they knew what they were doing there's like a method to this madness and you start to get excited about it you start to get interest and you start you know you know looking for the themes i assign my boys when we go to mass i say okay look for the theme try to figure out why this has been put together and so if you know the big story uh then then these snippets that we get in mass start to be uh meaningful because you you know the context and every mass you know every sunday mass every um feast day mass is set up so we can see that what the scriptures are talking about come to fulfillment when we come forward and commune with god through that sacrament naturally what comes down to is the communion isn't covenant ending with communion the new testament fulfills the old the new testament is not primarily a document it's the sacrament we're about to receive and the new is not reducible to the old it it does in a sense transcend it it completes it this orchestration is so perfect that you're right you you might almost imagine it had been divinely inspired there was a celestial conductor in charge here i mean this is the catholic principle of grace not obliterating nature but somehow consummating it perfecting it making it making it complete and and all of this is anticipated if i may say so in aristotle if you read the poetics he describes a story the progression the momentum of a narrative there's always a point which he calls the periphery which is a kind of reversal something unexpected unforeseen this stunning unforeseen unscheduled seemingly eruption of god into the story i mean the road to emmaus you're right they set out thinking that this was just an ignominious day how can anything be salvaged from this this is a watch out perfectly abject and by the end of the journey what was it about seven miles they sit down they have a happy meal and jesus figures everything out this is the way it was supposed to be a triumph the whole time their hearts are burning but they can't see it right and then suddenly when they see him he disappears and not because he's doing some vanishing act but because in the breaking of the eucharistic bread you are now trained and conditioned to perceive to discern the resurrected lord of lords and also the fulfillment of a plan that sure felt like a failure a few hours ago right you know and that's the sort of thing where you know one book that consists of 73 books one book that consists of the old and the new 46 and 27. ah it's overwhelming until you get the story then the plot unfolds and then that unexpected turning point comes just the same way our lives are scripted right right and why don't our hearts burn more often well when you read the book they will yeah well and i have to say just just that simple thing just as a non-scholar reading a book like this helping to unlock kind of that code it makes the liturgy that much more like you said before why are they saying oh is this the son of david why do we understand that all of these things are fulfilled in christ why do we understand you know if we don't take the time to understand that we will not fully appreciate what is happening in the mass why we have certain things uh you know whether it be uh you know whether it be in revelation uh and how the revelation is seen in the mass to genesis all the way through with with moses what a comfort it must be to you john to know that your your book can produce heartburn in your readers well you know i think when we when we go to mass we know that objectively god's grace is always there and appealing to you it's a fullness as much as you want is available in the sacrament yeah but there is a real sense in which it's limited by our capacity to receive it and i think that when we understand intellectually what's going on and even more so emotionally we understand as well what's going on we can dispose ourselves we can be bigger vats to receive the grace that's available in the eucharist and so one of my intentions in the book really was to help people understand so that they can receive more every time they partake in the sacrament yeah the sacramental participation is the key you know i i can't help but think that this is going to be a breakthrough as it was in the early church in the early church as you've pointed out you know the new testament is a sacrament and they start calling the new testament books the books of the new testament at the end of the second century the earliest references the books of the new testament well the books of the new testament that's not the same thing as the new testament the books of the eucharistic sacrament these are the books that are read in preparation to celebrate that you know then suddenly the new testament becomes not just literature but liturgy and life for that matter and i think that you do a great job of making that come alive in our final segment we'll make some really high points and sum up our conversation of getting to know the bible you're watching franciscan university presents stay with us i absolutely think that the bible plays plays a role education wise i think the role the bible plays a role theologically but just in the daily life of oh you know i really need to make a decision about whether to do this or that you know you can turn to the bible in prayer with the guidance of the holy spirit and really find incredible wisdom to apply to any aspect of your life in the bible god speaks to us and he speaks to our hearts when we study scripture we enter into a conversation with the lord and entering by entering into that conversation with him in scripture it makes it easier to enter into that same kind of conversation in everyday life so that we can hear his voice more clearly in all that we do my name is kelly butler and i'm a communication arts major i took independent digital filmmaking definitely intense many all-nighters in the editing lab getting things done pope john paul ii has a quote do not be afraid to go out into the streets and into public places to preach christ like the first apostles that's what we're called to as catholics and as christians you have that responsibility that every work you create should reflect christ franciscan university is academically excellent and passionately catholic we've come to our final segment on franciscan university presents and it's our time to wrap up our discussion of getting to know the bible uh with dr john bergsma um regis would you like to start us off do i have a choice you don't i'm i'm so enthralled really by by what you uh have been saying and by your book uh that uh i'll try to keep my my remarks uh to a minimum uh besides i've shot my wad i can't think of anything fresh to say but i'm i'm not a convert and that's why it's so intoxicating uh to talk to converts about scripture particularly if they've made a study of it and not just a study but have sort of consecrated their lives to this study i mean it's it's enriching it's exhilarating to sit at your feet i wish i could take one of your courses but i'm already committed to taking all of scott's most catholics i i think don't read the bible we're subjected to it in the liturgy thank god but i i think there's an indifference really which is a kind of scandal and we'll have to answer uh to god for that uh but most scripture scholars i i suspect don't reverence what they read and you two are a happy exception to that you you read the scriptures and more importantly you have a profound and pronounced lively reverence for what you read this is god's word this is correspondence from god it's as if you were eavesdropping on a conversation that has been taking place within the trinity from all eternity i think that's why the council of trent enshrined enthroned the scriptures alongside the eucharist on the altar as they commenced their deliberations i mean protestantism does not have an edge over against us we have the scriptures we wrote the book and we also have the word made flesh and that i i think is what what any lively interest in scripture should uh should bring us to an intense confrontation with the living god in the eucharist well said i said scott you know if the last 30 or 40 years of the 20th century were spent with this sort of ecumenical approach to the bible where you suppress your own distinctives i think the the next 30 or 40 years are going to kind of adjust where we're going to recognize not just distinctives to impose upon the text but the distinctives that emerge from the text the eucharistic and the sacramental the liturgical the ecclesial that the church is the fulfillment of god's fatherly plan all of the rest and john you know well that you know there are a lot of others among us we're not the only two maybe here in the studio we are but there's a rising number of young scholars men and women and that's exciting but at the same time it's down to the grassroots level as well i mean parish-based bible study programs are taking off journey through scripture and other things too but you know the fact is your book is an empowering tool because you never really learn something just by studying it or even taking tests and getting good grades you learn it by teaching it but then you're always kind of wondering how can i teach it i don't know it well enough well when you get a tool like that book bible basics you know then you not only can understand it but through the stick figures and you know the progression of the chapters you're like i could teach this to my junior high kids i could i could do this with my high school kids i could turn around and give them the book and have them teach their own younger siblings that's empowering that's exciting and i think that's precisely what happens when people are reading this they're not like oh now i understand it better whew it's now anybody can understand it better and now i have no excuse for not getting involved in teaching the word of god as well as studying it for myself and again i just want to underscore the fact that you don't need a phd sometimes a phd is a major impediment you know but this really is a kind of license to go study and teach and i thank you yeah thank you scott john you know i my hope for the book is that it becomes part of our effort at the new evangelization um i love what father robert baron said about the new evangelization among other things he said that christ will not be understood for his compelling message unless he's understood as the end of a long story of god's working with the people of israel and the reason why father baron said that is because story creates identity story creates personality who you are is shaped by your story and we we know that because if we think of a person with amnesia what goes is their personality if they can't remember where they've been and what they've done they're not really who they were and in the same way if we don't read the scriptures which are the story of god and the story of his people then we're like persons with amnesia who've lost our personality because we we don't know the story that makes us who we are so as we as catholics and we're interested in this a new evangelization of sharing the gospel in order for people to understand who jesus is we need to tell his story and not just the story of his earthly life but the longer story of which he's the fulfillment and the conclusion and my hope is that with this little book in about three hours people can see the big outline of that story and say aha you know at least at least i made a start in understanding why this god man is is so significant why his story uh uh should we should change my personal story right that's great that is great john thank you for being with us on the program for sharing your insight um your book really has made it simple and accessible i think to a lot of people this this book bible basics for catholics i would highly recommend it it is one of those books that is easy to read it's very simple to go and as scott said it makes it easy to teach it to others i'm going to be using this with my kids my wife has already asked for it to help go into things further if you've enjoyed today's subject i'll have a special treat here for you just for asking uh in uh you are able to get a a free diagram that really is is some of the beautiful artwork that we talked about earlier this stick figuring um but it's not that rembrandt you got a degree in theology not necessarily art but but it is a perfect didactic tool for kids and adults to see the seven covenants laid out in this book that's free available at faithandreason.com or just by contacting us this book really really will change the way you approach scripture i think if we're all honest with ourselves we all want to go deeper in scripture but there are many obstacles many fears many wondering if we if we have what it takes do we need the degree do i have the energy to really plow through this i would suggest not plowing through the whole scripture in one sitting but really get this book it will help make sense of the big picture i know it really comes down for for me is i need a map i need to understand where i'm going without a map the whole world is confusing it's it's a formless void in some ways you know without that map to see how it all goes forward and as we see how the uh the old in the old testament the new is is hidden there it's that the seeds of the new testament are planted there but then in the new testament how it's fulfilled how it's brought to new life how it's revealed in a greater greater sense of that glory and to me that is the beauty of this whether it be at the mass or whether it be studying and discussing with our families our grandchildren in our parishes and so as we look at this we are in very difficult times here in in this world and saint ambrose said that in uh in praying we speak to god but in reading scripture we are listening to him and i think we just need to listen to him so much more in our daily lives thank you for watching franciscan university presents today franciscan university's mission is to change the world through the students that we're forming they're going out to change the world and i invite you to be a part of that mission by getting your degree here on campus or by our distance education join us at one of our conferences or our uh holy land pilgrimages or other pilgrimages to holy shrines or visit us at faithandreason.com there's great videos there's daily commentaries on the sunday readings from scott and john bergsma and others join us there and stay engaged thank you for watching franciscan university presents and until the next time may the lord bless you and keep you thank you to download the free handout on today's topic go to faithandreason.com email your request for the handout to presents at franciscan.edu at faithandreason.com you can also purchase past episodes of franciscan university presents or request today's free handout and purchase past programs by calling 888-333-0381 888-333-0381 or call 740-283-6357 you

Channel: Franciscan University of Steubenville

Views: 15,385

Rating: 4.9411764 out of 5

Keywords: Franciscan University, Steubenville, Ohio, Catholic, college, Michael Hernon, Dr. Regis Martin, Dr. Scott Hahn, Dr. John Bergsma

Id: H0AwcQxUhi8

Length: 58min 30sec (3510 seconds)

Published: Wed Mar 06 2013