Scott Hahn: A Presbyterian Minister Who Became Catholic - The Journey Home (8-18-2008)

good evening and welcome to the journey home program my name is Marcus Grodi your host for this program I've got a special guest tonight he's special for lots of reasons it's always a pleasure to have dr. Scott Hahn back on the journey home you've seen him on many programs EWTN you probably read his books I hope you have but he's also special because you know a classmate of mine from seminary and sometimes it still amazes me I look over there at you I can I'm sure you may be able to see it in my old age but I can still see the young you with the you had a beard or mustache mustache mustache I remember that yeah and but I remember the the enthusiasm and zeal and fervency that you had for Calvin and Calvinism even more than than I did more most people but it's also to see that same deep commitment and zeal and fervency still and your love for the Catholic Church and that's what we're here to talk about but the audience is an important part of the program so I want to remind you of the phone number if you'd like to give us a call we're gonna kind of run this like an open line first Monday since Scott's a returning guest we have a lot to talk about tonight so if you want to give us a call get in there quick 1-800 two two one nine four six Oh outside North America 205 two seven one twenty nine eighty or he could send an email to journey home at ewtn.com it's an old tradition welcome to the journey home it's great to be back Marty back it's great to be back in fact I was just mentioned for the show thirty years ago when I began seminary thirty years ago and you were just about ready yeah we've begun our 30th year of marriage and right after we got back from our honeymoon we packed up the u-haul and drove up the Boston of the North Shore to begin the Gordon Conwell I'd around the same time you know it's funny this is completely off topic is just friends gossip Gordon Connell wasn't my first choice I had actually it was between Princeton and Gordon Conwell and I tried to decide and you chose wisely I chose Gordon Connell because it was the young life school gospel young life was that your first choice corn cotton it was yeah I had a couple other choices but when professors were shuffled around it became pretty clear I wanted to study on her mg Cline Roger Nicole and the line up there was very impressive it just shows the difference you were you were doing the intelligent thing the professor's I made sure they had racquetball courts in a basketball court and yeah that's what I was looking for well every journey home program and this open line format I invite the returning guests to give a little five minute or so summary of the story of what brought you into the church I'll do it you know we were talking before in fact we've been catching up for the whole afternoon a lot of fun it's the year of st. Paul what an amazing time to be together because here is the great example the model convert perhaps the most thoroughly converted man in Christian history and as I was reflecting on his life the last few weeks after the year began in late June I began to notice some parallels between his life and mine because you know he was raised as a Roman citizen in the foremost power of his day and he was cultured and well-educated so that in his early teens they were in Tarsus he made a decision to go and study under arguably the greatest theologian of that century Robin Gamaliel most of them were called rabbis but he was the first rabbi to be called Rabanne which means our teacher there's a saying among the rabbis that when Gamaliel died the glory of the Torah perished and so as a teenager or in his early 20s he went to study under Gamaliel and I look back on my own life because I was converted to Christ through young life in my mid-teens and then for the next several years I pursued Scripture with this holy fervor and I would go to Grove City College I went to Gordon Conwell seminary because as you said I lined it up and I saw these are the men who are going to make the the scriptures come alive and so I had my own Gamaliel but just as Saul the Pharisee who had graduated as a prize pupil under this great great professor came to a sudden decisive turning point in his own life in his mid to late 20s so also I did after graduating top of my class as a an evangelical Christian with strong anti-catholic convictions my love for Scripture was always greater than my my contempt for Catholic ritualism and superstition and so as I found in the father's more connections between the old of the new and their homilies they made the Bible come alive I kept absorbing more and more going deeper and deeper and discovering baptism is a lot more than I realized the Eucharist is more than just symbolism and ritual and so in my late 20s you know with so much coming up Catholic I made a decision that looked and felt a lot like professional suicide losing a job losing family members friendship and you know all kinds of things but discovering that really the fullness of my faith as an evangelical Bible believing Christian was not something that I had to reject but just take to the next level that there was more good news than I thought maybe 10 or 12 years earlier and I think if saw that way to because we call him a convert but he didn't convert from one religion to another he converted from one understanding of Judaism as a Pharisee to a much deeper and higher understanding because he had always waited for the Messiah only later did he find out that he had arrived and that he was persecuting him by persecuting his followers and so for me I wasn't just non Catholic I was anti-catholic and in a loving sort of way I tried to target my Catholic friends and help them to see the error of their ways until I discovered the error of my ways my anti-catholic ways and so in 86 at the Easter Vigil in Milwaukee I was receiving in the church and it's just been ongoing conversion since then as it was for Paul well in case the audience doesn't know the deeper story Rome sweet home came out when 93 93 you and Kimberly will wrote that together we did in three weeks with a lot of Prayer and tears and laughter and editing each other you know something else that I wanted to mention before we go on to these other topics is I remember from your story and this affected me a lot when my own journey is that one of the the key places for you in your journey was the first time you went into Mass and you saw the Bible come alive and I'm thinking that there's an awful lot of people Catholics that go into Mass and they don't see it right and to me that emphasizes our need for catechesis and scripture and knowing their faith so that the mass comes alive that's right the Bible alone is not enough but the mass alone without any biblical literacy can often fall short you know III think back to when I first converted as a teenager in high school you know fresh out of juvenile court I needed the gospel but I remember going to a Bible study that was tackling the book of Revelation bad idea you know you started the back of the Bible with the hardest book of all but we spent months speculating about the Antichrist the second coming and then I went to a second Bible study about a year later and they were doing the same thing only from a different vantage point you know I gave up after a little while just went back to the Gospels and read the Bible all the way through a couple of times in high school in college I remember taking advanced Greek and being assigned in a tutorial the translation of the entire apocalypse all 22 chapters when I was done I still didn't know what it was talking about but you know I was going on to seminary didn't matter but I remember when I went into Master for the very first time I was a doctoral student I had been studying the fathers I had been going deeper I'd been finding so much truth about the Eucharist about baptism about the Saints and seven sacraments but I never once darkened the door was of the Catholic Church to attend Mass and I didn't want to but I was curious enough you know when I found out that it would be a you know a midday Mass at noon in a basement chapel that sounded safe and so I went with a Bible to notebook but I had no I had no preparation for how scripturally saturated the mass would be I mean from the opening right through the penitential right to the Liturgy of the word it was the old and the new it had been a year or two since I'd heard that much scripture and then in the second half of the mass the Liturgy of the Eucharist was where the Scriptures just took off as soon as I heard Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world I'm flipping to the back of the New Testament looking down in the book of Revelation where Jesus is called lamb 28 times in 22 chapters and there never knew why and as I'm looking at Lamb of God I'm seeing holy holy holy there's the Alleluia the Amen liturgical songs and prayers and you know basically the mass finally made the Apocalypse understandable but for me the apocalypse is what illuminated the mystery won't was taking place in the mass we were going to heaven whether we knew it or not the angels and saints were surrounding us this is the year of saint paul and and in some ways it was a good choice to call your institute st. paul's institute because it you know I really connected everything but you know that wasn't accidental I mean that's really your own desire I think as God's calling you to recognize the beauty of st. Paul and his writings but also his conversion and what we have you come to see st. Paul's conversion itself as truly unique maybe in fact as you were describing it to me in a way that I had not seen well you know st. Paul it's been said that Saint Paul was such a great apostle because Saul was such a great persecutor no God just simply redirected and harnessed that energy in a property right I'm in Amman correction you might no catch that that's the same guy that's right I saw was the Pharisee who hunted Christians down to arrest them and put them to death until he met Jesus on the road to Damascus but Jesus doesn't ask him you know why are you persecuting my followers he says Saul Saul why are you persecuting me you know and and think about the mental gymnastics that this poor Pharisee had to go through even while getting blindness suddenly you know he's like well first of all who are you lord I'm Jesus whom you're persecuting okay and he's thinking well I'm not persecuting I'm persecuting your followers but you're the Lord and you seem to take it pretty personally you know I mean in the first century there's only one Christian author who speaks of the church as quote the body of Christ and guess who it is st. Paul because saw the Pharisee discovered that the followers of Jesus aren't just you know embracing a theory or a group of opinions they have been united to nothing less than the lord of lords and so it is for for Saul to discover that you know he accepts the Word of God he's doing his very best but he's missing something very important I can relate to that because as an anti Catholic I was simply following the Bible or so I thought until the Bible illuminated the mystery of Christ in the Eucharist and at that point I'm like oh wait all bets are off I'm gonna have to go back to the drawing board and rethink all of this you know and you know Saul took three years shortly after becoming a Christian getting back sized to spend time in prayer and study in Arabia I remember spending three years in intensive study in prayer doing doctoral research while I was going through this process of entering the church and I can see the need because suddenly you're rereading passages that you have read and taught sometimes dozens of times only things are jumping off the page and you wonder how could I've missed John 6 how could I have missed Romans 6 about baptism Matthew 16 about Peter and the rock and the keys of the kingdom these these were the sort of things that I I discovered but I can't imagine but that Paul as a newly baptized Christian went back and reread the law and the prophets and just probably wondered how could I have missed Jesus I don't we often think of st. Paul as this creative Angela stand missionary and writer but maybe don't appreciate the fact just like you had mentioned earlier that you were you were doing a you know suicide for your career in Acts chapter 6 verse 7 there's an interesting statement which doesn't desig deal with Paul but the whole the priest the priest where he says and the Word of God increase and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem and a great many of the priests were obedient to the faith and that little line just explodes into men whose lives are just thrown open for what are they gonna do it's so good that you bring that up because you know we read those kinds of verses over and over and never really get it but here is the chief priests labeling Jesus is a false messiah a blasphemer and using Roman authority to have him executed here are the priests who are under the chief priests you know reaching a decision where they're saying no we you know we just murdered the Messiah we didn't just miss him we had him executed we're going to join his cause I mean the chief priest is not going to look at that and say well you know we'll go our separate ways I mean what's implied in the decision as a matter of shirt you belong to you're sincere I'm sure you know the chief priests would have been wondering what are you saying about what we did with Jesus of Nazareth and so it's not surprising that an sex the first priests are described as converting to the way and getting baptized and an act 7 we have our first martyr who is executed in Jerusalem Stephen you know and at the end of that account in acts 7 you have Saul giving consent to Stephens martyrdom which doesn't mean he was just standing by kind of nodding it means that he was probably semi officially sponsoring this sort of listen he was a chief student I mean he was a top student in fact you think about it you know some of these other priests have gone that way and he's probably belittling them exactly he would have been so provoked in his spirit to see priests defecting to that cause you know these men are fishermen from Galilee we've got the experts in the law here how could you you know and so if you were the Lord God Almighty and you were to single out one guy for conversion and given the spectacular grace who better than the greatest student of the greatest rabbi you know because if you're gonna send the gospel out to the Gentiles with fishermen you know you can expect the rabbi's to say well what do you expect they're fishermen from Galilee but when our best rabbis prize pupil goes out claiming that the law and the prophets point to Jesus and the church is the fulfillment of these Messianic prophecies and so on then suddenly everybody are going to set up and take notice and say we have got to take this thing seriously I wonder what happened to the career of get my mail yeah well yeah I mean it gives wise counsel to the Sanhedrin not to persecute the church but it doesn't look like they were altogether convinced yeah there's so many issues we could talk about with st. Paul and this in some ways is just for this year of st. Paul it's just wetting our appetite right but a couple questions that that I haven't encountered in my own journey especially looking back on my Protestant understanding of the faith and now Catholic right talk a bit about the relationship between Paul and the Sermon on the mountain hmm and maybe explain why there's an issue there first of all let me explain the issue first because I think a lot of Catholics approach Paul differently than they approach Jesus in the Gospels Jesus and the Gospels for most cradle Catholics that I've known is like a home game and you win most of those we're a st. Paul is more like an away game and you win a few but you don't win most you know especially if you're a pirate fan from Pittsburgh or stupidly like I am you know the away games are really hard well you know the fact is as a Protestant I felt similarly only the opposite because when I would read the Gospels I'd be like okay there's a lot of emphasis on righteousness and works and obedience and giving alms and fasting and all of that but what no wonder because that all was before Jesus death and resurrection you know and so he was just reminding them of the Mosaic law and the burden it places upon the believer so that you know you end up kind of exchanging that law for this gospel and so as you move from the Gospels to the epistles you're really you're moving from the end of the law to the beginning of the gospel and so for me Paul was the archetype he was the source he was the one you go to to really understand the truth after Jesus death and resurrection but to be honest you know the Gospel according to st. Paul which for years I interpreted as evangelical Bible believing Christian Calvinism you know you know I had been trained to read Romans that way in Galatians that way but when I went deeper when I got the Greek and I could read the original when I studied the Hebrew and I could read the background that Paul was drawing from in the Old Testament the Scriptures ancient Israel that's when suddenly I got beyond the superficial and I began to realize that Paul is thinking like a Catholic in Romans 5 he deals with original sin but in Romans 6 the layout is not to accept Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord but they get baptized because when you're baptized you die and rise with Christ and not just symbolically but somehow spiritually and actually and I thought you know if I were to write Romans I would never have you know he zagged when I would have zigged I would have gone from Romans five into inviting Christ into your heart as Savior and Lord that's language that Paul never once uses anywhere in his epistles and here he is writing half the New Testament you think that the Holy Spirit could have led him to say the way you're saved is inviting Christ into your heart to be your savouring Lord and once saved always saved none of which was found there in his writings so when I went back and thought this that's when I began to realize there is a strange convergence between what Christ is teaching in the Gospels and what Paul is teaching the epistles for example Jesus teaches in the Sermon on the Mount his first public sermon we find in Matthew 5 to 7 all about the Fatherhood of God 17 references to God his father in his first sermon that's more references to God as father than the entire Old Testament well you know if you read Paul's letters it - they they're just filled with references to God his father and Christ the son foresaw the pharisee to write that way would have been unthinkable but only after you encounter the eternal son of the Eternal Father do you realize that all the language of God is far than the Old Testament what it wasn't metaphorical it wasn't figurative it was real but you only come to know it with the coming of the son so the Fatherhood of God the family of the true believers that's one thing jesus also says in the Sermon on the Mount that unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees you want enter the kingdom Saul the Pharisee would have said ouch you're stepping on my toe what do you mean unless your righteousness exceeds the scribes and the Pharisees but Jesus goes on to say you've heard that it was said to men of old don't kill don't commit adultery you know that's the Civic code of Israel that establishes good citizens Jesus is but I say to you and he's not talking about a civic law that establishes good citizenship he's talking about internalizing that law so you don't get angry you don't give him the lust he's talking about becoming Saints that's the righteousness that goes beyond the scribes and the Pharisees and that's exactly what Saul had to kind of wake up to and realize that when the father sends the son to give us the Holy Spirit now it isn't it to promise it is a fulfilled promise that through baptism makes us partakers of the divine nature it draws us into a close relationship with God then even Moses on top of Mount Sinai enjoyed that's dramatic but it also shows the profound convergence the resonance the deep agreement that you find between Jesus on the one hand in the Gospels and Paul in the epistles farce a false dichotomy oh and it's it's very common maybe a simple way to summarize how I used to think of it and then addresses is that I used to think of that before the cross he was about my righteousness and after the cross it was about the righteousness of Christ I was saved before by my righteousness afterwards I pointed to his righteousness you just paraphrase Philippians 3 because there really is a true sense in which you know in the Old Testament the ancient Israelites properly treasured the Word of God especially the law of God written with the finger of the Lord on these tablets of stone I mean what more could you want well the Word made flesh dwelling among us he's assuming what is ours human nature to give us what is his divine nature divine sonship and so Saul now Paul says in Philippians whatever I counted as gain I now count as loss refuse in comparison to having Christ so it is no longer I who lives he says of the Galatians but Christ who lives in me and to me that is another breakthrough because Christ didn't come you know in order to obey the law suffer die and rise in order to get us off the hook so we don't have to obey although it's a great thing to do we don't have to suffer but we will if we don't have enough faith know Christ doesn't come as a substitute in the Catholic tradition following Paul he comes as a representative he you know Christ comes and assumes what is our as human nature to give us what is his divine nature so that he obeys not in order to get us off the hook to exempt us from obedience but to empower us with his spirit to reproduce in us nothing less than his own divine sonship his own love his own willingness to suffer die and rise that notion of Christ the representative is much closer to Paul than Christ the substitute we participate through the spirit in Christ and so the Spirit comes to us and especially in the church through the sacraments as Paul taught me we end up receiving nothing less than Christ's own divine sonship that's I mean that that's cool yeah scratching the surface too I mean you're you're getting into in many ways sort of thinking that maybe our average viewer is not used to thinking in terms of the depth of what you're talking about but Paul's writings do that because on the one hand he's very practical he's very personal and yet suddenly he's very profound and very passionate I can relate because you know sometimes people who are passionate aren't very profound and people who are profound or boring you know but if the truth gription how can you not be passionate about the truth and what is more passionate what is worth getting more passionate about then there's a divine grace I want to throw an idea and see what your thought on this is Paul's emphasis on the law yeah often I've found in the 15 years I've been a Catholic and I unexpectedly have spent most of those years dealing with converts that wasn't necessary my choice but that's what God is God's choice okay and what I've often found is that often converts after they come to the church often the focus of what they emphasize is because it is either a counter action to what they used to focus on it's compensatory you know so you have in James focusing on one thing maybe because of where he came from right is that why Paul focused on the law because the issue of the law because he came from such a high level Pharisee I think you're right I think the reason why Paul focuses on how we are not under law but under grace is because he more than any any other contemporary of his saw himself under law and that was his that was the source of his identity that was the source of his righteousness and that's how he understood grace I mean we didn't deserve God giving us the law and yet he he spoke the word he wrote the word he's delivered his will to us I mean this is undeserved favor that's grace in the Old Testament but when you discovered that the word is now made flesh that the father sends the son to give us the spirit to adopt us and make us members of a divine family then suddenly the graciousness of a law that we didn't deserve is exceeded by infinity by the graciousness of the son who comes the servant in order to make us servants nothing less than divine sons it would seem then that you know those that put such an emphasis on really Paul is all about the law that really did see that in its context is to look at it from the where he came from that's right and you know in in the book of Romans in Chapter seven he speaks of the law as holy just and good and in Romans eight were suddenly he just turns in the fire hydrant there you find more references to the Holy Spirit than anywhere else in the New Testament I think it's 17 or 18 references of the Holy Spirit in Romans 8 but the Spirit comes to us why in order that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who walk not according to the flesh bound just to the law but to the spirit so the Holy Spirit comes to us to empower us to do what we could never do in the Old Testament on our own keep the law and fulfill our father's will talking also a bit about the importance of man so many things when you interpret Paul's letters how important it is to be looking at him through Catholic eyes and particularly I'm thinking about like for example understanding Ephesians as a document about baptism I mean the importance of understanding Catholic things from his Catholic early church background right and for your in my background when we interpreted those letters without that oh I tell you you know I'm getting ready to go off to Dallas and Fort Worth this weekend to join Brant Petrie and Steve Ray and Michael barber we're gonna be doing the Gospel according to st. Paul but it's the Catholic ospa we're gonna be going through Romans and Ephesians I know that I mentioned I should say yeah it's a googol fullness of truth dot or fullness of truth I shouldn't have said it without mentions am it yeah all right Paul it's a wonderful time but the the exciting part of it is you don't have to look very far well oh here's a Catholic element oh here's another fragment that is Catholic I mean when you really begin to get the inner logic of Romans or Galatians or Ephesians or 1 and 2 Corinthians you realize that the reasoning that Paul is exemplifying holds together according to a logic that is Catholic at times it's not just implicit at times I mean he just comes right out and says things that I wondered how would I affirm that sort of thing as you know 1st Corinthians 11 where he speaks of how you profane not a symbol of Christ's body you profane the actual body of Christ when you receive the Eucharist unworthily without too discerning the Lord's body I mean I know I had a clever response but I would never written those words the way Paul did you know sometimes I find myself just as I said before is a convert for example on my deep in Scripture radio program emphasizing those things yes against what I used to be but we Catholics need to read the Bible too I mean I'm being a little facetious here because Ephesians 4 that talks about the that the apostles and the teachers and the evangelists are for the equipping of the Saints for the work of the ministry I mean there we see the structure in the church so that it isn't just the leaders in the church it's not just their job that's right it's us too and that's why it isn't like well we emphasize a sacramental bond as opposed to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ I mean the sacramental bond that we we we celebrate in the Holy Eucharist should lead us to the deepest conceivable personal relationship with Jesus the lover of our souls who feeds us with his body blood soul and divinity and so it isn't like well you have the Bible we have tradition we have traditions so we can go into the scriptures with greater freedom and greater confidence and just really find the truth in its fullness likewise faith and works we have faith in order to really trust God's Word and his spirit to reproduce Christ works in us the the scripture that was gonna grab here real quick which I wanted to kind of bring to a a thought is this to me which is one of the most powerful summaries is Ephesians 4:22 through 24 which you talk about intimate relationship put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and it's corrupt through deceitful lusts we renewed in the spirit of your minds and put on the new nature created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holy right I mean the sense of that summary of all that he wants to do to make us truly there I use this word divine yeah I mean you can use it because the parties may may be shocked that we use that word they may understand what we mean by Saints doctors of the church they do I mean right the whole point as non gods but children of God yes and not just in name but in reality as one as 2 Peter 1:4 says we have been made partakers of the divine nature our adoption is not a legal fiction you know the God becomes human so that humans can partake of this divine nature I mean this sounds so speculative almost philosophical and yet for Paul as you point out in Ephesians 4 20 and following this is the most practical and the most demanding for our personal lives but he wouldn't have gotten to those verses in Ephesians 4 unless he had laid the foundation in the first half of the chapter where he says there's one Lord one faith one God and Father one baptism one church one body and so it's the unity of the church which doesn't institutionalize our experience of Christ it actually deepens how much of a person relationship we as individuals can have with the lord of lords yeah I remember when I was a Protestant minister I used to say that chapters 1 2 3 described in Ephesians they describe what happens after you accept Jesus your Lord and Savior and then Sampras four or five and six are what you have to do now that you've accepted Jesus our Lord and Savior when you understand historically chapters 1 2 & 3 are what happens in Baptism that's right that is what baptism does to you and it's a reality yeah he doesn't say we will be seated with Christ in the heavenly places in Ephesians 2 he says we are you know we can't see it because we walk by faith not by sight but what the Holy Spirit does in uniting us to Christ through baptism if we could see what our guardian angels do see we would fall over I mean the the glory of the grace of God that Paul discovered through baptism in the Eucharist in the life of this mystical body of Christ it exceeds all words I mean he did his level best to put into words the truth but he says in Ephesians 3 when you read this realize the revelation of the mystery that was given to me and he says I'm the least deserving of all yeah and I think we both can relate that's true and then this this issue of baptism you know in many ways I think chapters four or five and six are especially for us Catholics because there's some Catholics that think well I was baptized I've arrived because everything that's in chapters one two and three is true but now we've got to live it out that's right and every time we do this with the holy water we're renewing our covenant bond yeah you know there John Paul has made this comment Pope Benedict as well there are a lot of Catholics who are sacrament alized but not evangelized just like there are not a lot of non Catholics were evangelized but they haven't been led to discover the truth and the power the beauty of the sacraments it's not either/or you know that they're really mutually reinforcing if we could only grasp the the gift of God in the sacraments we would say person relationship you want a intimate relationship this is the bond all right it's cotton let's take a break come back with your questions for dr. off see if it welcome back to the journey home our guest tonight is dr. Scott Hahn and we've got a lot of questions before I do that Scott didn't come to the show to promote a book but I really wanted to take the chance to mention one of his many was what was newer books or as many books though reasons to believe how to understand explain and defend the Catholic faith and I'm not just saying this because he slipped me any money because he didn't but I think this is when it Scott's best and I made sure all my sons have read this book and I passed it on because it's not just defense of the Catholic faith it starts from scratch I mean the reality of God it really deals with the whole issue in a very winsome way and I the reason I wanted my sons who are good strong Catholics but my oldest son is studying at a secular university so I wanted to make sure he's prepared because they're gonna get in fact you the other book which I read of yours recently with Ben wicker yes answering the new atheist awesome - you know that book grew out of this book because you know you could only deal with so much and so I try to show the classical arguments for the existence of God miracles prophecy the Bible and then the Catholic Church the sacraments but with the aggressive forms of the new atheism in Richard Dawkins The God Delusion and other sources you realize that the next generation is now faced with a kind of fundamentalist atheism that is shouting and and and it's really shrill but it needs to be answered in a way that is really patient and penetrating and so I couldn't do it in this book and so dr. ben Weicker a good friend of mine i sat down he's been on this show yeah he's incredible he's great and again I had my son's read that because I remember the motive for that book was not just that that our students are encountering these at sick Uhler campuses but I mean we had students who graduated from our school who went off read that book and lost their faith thanks be to God you're gonna read the Dawkins book Dawkins book The God Delusion yeah thanks for that little clarification yeah I don't know of anybody who's lost their faith let's take our first email Linda from Wisconsin thank you for your excellent programs your show is the highlight of our week thank you I'd appreciate your explanation of why the gospel of st. Peter was rejected from the Canon scriptures since we believe him to be the first pope I don't understand why his gospel was not included thank you both for your excellent ministries and your examples to many of us conference Thank You Linda you know this is an example of the secular propaganda that's out there you know in a lot of different sources public television National Geographic what about the Gospel of Thomas what about the Gospel of Judas and what about the gospel of Peter well if it had been written by Peter you can be sure the church would have accepted it but it wasn't it's a forgery that's why it was rejected you know likewise the Gospel of Thomas was not written by the Apostle Thomas it was a Gnostic gospel it was a forgery and was used to kind of you know present truths present errors Gnostic beliefs as truths to get Christians to accept this and so the church had to really use a great deal of spiritual discernment in recognizing authentic apostolic writings from those that really were in fact in the early days of the church there were some of what later were not in the Gospels or not in the New Testament that for a while were included that's right candidates the separate Monsieur Barnabas the document right and so you had those that were really welcomed and read and authentic right and even encouraged to be read by believers right and you also had some of the books that were included in the New Testament 2nd Peter for example James Hebrews they were anti La Gomera in some circles people questioned whether those were authentic and the church said yes these are authentic they will be included and then you have things like the gospel of Thekla Paul Peter Thomas Judas and so on and universally the church recognized that these were fraudulent Gospels all right let's take our first call sandy from Florida hello what's your question for us tonight hi I'm sandy from Illinois oh sorry okay no I wanted to make sure I was the right sandy I am a former Catholic and I'm evangelical so I know you understand where I'm coming from sure could you please explain the Catholic teaching in light of the New Testament regarding purgatory all right sandy thank you for that fine question yeah I would say this first of all Jews have always prayed for their dead before Christ and up to this present day you know in a CS lewis who was a believer in purgatory though he was not a Catholic you know he and others have pointed out that if you're praying for your dad you know if they're in heaven they don't need prayer if they're in hell prayer is not going to do them any good so you know where are they well in Hebrew there's a term shell that is not the same as what we would call Gehenna Jesus speaks of Hellfire as Gehenna shell is the place where the righteous and the unrighteous went and that's why the Jews have always prayed for them so even if you don't have second Maccabees in your Bible if you read second Maccabees 12 and you discover that the the prayers of the for the dead are being offered then and by Jews today you can see why because they really believed that there were people who could benefit well why well what was shell in Hebrew becomes Hades in Greek again it's not to be confused with Gehenna hades is an intermediate state when it's translated into Latin it's called purgatorial because it's a place of purgation it's a place of purging cleansing you know Hebrews 12 29 describes God as a consuming fire now we often associate fire with Hell but actually the imagery of fire is more commonly used in the descriptions of heaven because that's where the the Seraphim the burning ones who are the closest angels to God Seraphim literally means in Hebrew the burning ones they're burning with the pure love of God and so it is we have to be filled with the spirit to have that love purify us and in this life we have our chance to really follow Christ but you'll notice that Paul states in 1st Corinthians 3 that there are some people who build on the foundation of Christ with gold silver and precious stones through works that really represent the Holy Spirit reproducing Christ in us other people Paul describes as building with wood hay and straw that work he says will be burned up but goes on to say this and it's so important the work which any man has built on the foundation survives he will receive a reward if if any man's work is burned up he will suffer loss though he himself will be saved but only as through fire so he will suffer and he will suffer and lose as he passes through the fire of the Spirit who will purify all of these false good works now if time flies when you're having fun time slows down when you're not when you pass through the fire of judgment which exposes the false you know the inadequate or the superficial good deeds that you've done when you pass for the fire of God's love as judgment you know that might might take you know five minutes but it might feel like a lot longer but Paul is describing people who are going to be saved but only as they pass through fire and they will suffer loss but they will be saved on the day of the Lord Jesus what struck me as a Protestant was if I had a thousand epistles to write I would never have penned those verses I would never describe someone who's passing through fire suffering and yet they're going to be saved and yet Paul as a good Jew and a good Catholic Christian can write this sort of thing in a matter-of-fact way just by way of reminder to kind of jog the Corinthian memory that we ought to be careful how we allow the Holy Spirit to build in our lives gold silver and precious stones not the counterfeit works that those who are saved but are going to end up having to suffer a great deal as they pass through this fire and we're are evangelical brothers and sisters often miss the point of that is their emphasis is often merely on saved or not that's right you're saved or not in fact a good portion of those look back to a time in the past when I was irretrievably saved or not because I was once saved always saved and so this whole concept doesn't fit their categories because they have that emphasis right and it's also a different view of sin what sin does yes indeed because sin is not just broken laws sin as a broken life a broken heart a broken home and so the Holy Spirit comes as the fire to restore that love but we often say yes and don't mean it or we often say yes and then end up kind of turning our backs and so you know the Catholic doctrine was not something that I could understand but I remember wrestling with this text going back to the Jewish tradition of prayers for the dead the Jewish notion of shale the New Testament notion of Hades which is not the same as alguna and then suddenly I could see why the early fathers would speak of a place like purgatory Oh as a place where the spirit purges the the leftover dross to purify the gold so that we can enter in 9 a second chance that's right you know these people are going to be saved but only passing through fire and only after suffering loss how could Paul write this apart from believing in what the Catholic Church explains later on in terms of purgatory well I think makes I can't remember which verses I think is in first John where it's and maybe who's Paul that talks about us our desires to stand before him without embarrassment right well that's what half so does first John yeah I mean that's what happens that's why purgatory you know if we haven't lived perfectly in this life well then purgatory so that we can stand before him without embarrassment without hesitation purely cleansed in the right clothing nothing a wedding fine a holy can enter the presence of God and yet when we die we sometimes have that lack of holiness left that the Holy Spirit has not yet completely uprooted all right let's take the sex email from Melissa New Jersey hi Marcus and dr. Hahn I returned home to the church a year ago welcome home and I am truly living my faith for the first time unfortunately I found myself faith-based with a great deal of misunderstanding and at times anti-catholic arguments and comments did you ever face this kind of reaction in your conversion I know you didn't Scott but I did up and I'll let you come up with some idea because I know you've never really faced any opposition but go on how did you best handle these disagreements both personally and in apologetics Melissa thank you for your email I would say back in 86 when I first decided to become a Catholic I faced a tsunami tidal waves in the plural of Opposition you know and the first thing I would do was to remind my evangelical bible-believing friends that I too was anti-catholic and probably much more anti-catholic than they were and I would try to restate their arguments against the Catholic Church as well as I could which was often better than they could because I used to hold them with such vehemence and then I would try to kind of not refute them in the sense of of just beating them in an argument but I would try to show how as a Catholic I'm not an X even Jellicle I feel more evangelical than ever I'm not an X Bible Christian I feel like a whole new depth to scripture has been has been shown to me and so I would I would usually try to say look here's the common ground we share as Protestants and Catholics it's much greater than our differences let's begin and end with the common ground with the Bible and let's move into those areas of disagreement and I'll try to address your differences from my beliefs in terms of what we share in common because so often I found in conversations this not only fosters friendship and keeps ties from being broken but it also shows them that it isn't something that requires the abandonment of all of the truths that you came to cherish as a Christian it means that you're just taking them and it's not subtraction but addition you're just discovering that they lead to even deeper truths about Jesus and the sacraments and the church is the family of God and so on alright thank you and for those that are dealing with some of those issues I would recommend reasons to believe because that's exactly what you deal with in that book indeed all right let's take our next caller Diana from Massachusetts hello Diana what's your question my question is why does God or why did God change names in the Bible like when he changed Saul to Paul or Abram to Abraham thank you thank you very much thank you very much Danna good question I mean you have Abram getting his name changed in Genesis 17 to a bran there's a whole new calling and a whole new identity you have Simon being renamed at Peter because of a whole new identity and a whole new vocation in the case of Paul it actually isn't a divine name change though because Saul was his Jewish name being a citizen of Tarsus automatically conferred Roman citizenship upon him and so saul is a jewish name in hebrew but Paulus is the Roman name that reflects his own Roman citizenship and even though God didn't use God didn't changed his name from one of the other God most certainly did use his Roman citizenship as well as this Roman name to launch this man to be the apostle to the Gentiles not to the Jews and so you know even while there isn't the same kind of name change I think we can recognize in the book of Acts as we move from Saul to Paul we move from someone who's really clinging to the Old Covenant to someone who's discovered that the fulfillment of this has just opened God's family now to all the nations all right looks like for a second we may have drained all these are an email okay there we go I didn't have one there I know there's a ton of them I know we can't get them all but I was wondering while anyway this comes from Farah in North Carolina she raced your Marcus and Scott how can I explain to seventh-day adventists the reason why we Catholics worship on Sunday they seem to excuse us accuse us of know of not following God's commandment of observing the Sabbath by changing the Sabbath day from Saturday to Sunday please help me explain this because I can't seem to find any biblical explanation for this thanks and God bless Thank You Farrah first I want to recommend a book by a cardinal named the Jean Daniel ooh his first name looks like Jean JEA and the last name Danya Lou is simply Daniel that the with an O you at the end it was published 50 years ago by Notre Dame press it's still in print I just checked last week on Amazon it's called the Bible and the liturgy and what Daniel who does is he goes back to the Old and New Testaments and then the early church fathers and shows the significance of the seventh day and of the first day of the week the resurrection day and how the Sabbath is transformed to Sunday as the Lord's Day and just to summarize what I learned from rereading him recently you know as circumcision in the old gave way to baptism in the new you have a bloody ritual leading to a cleansing ritual so Passover an annual festival slaughtering the lamb and eating that is giving way to the Eucharist which is the new Passover so in the old covenant you worked and worked and waited until the Lord would send the rest the eternal rest of salvation and so how appropriate was for the first six days to be work days and then the seventh day to be the day of rest because you were still waiting in anticipation for God to fulfill the promise of salvation or rest but in the New Covenant before we're working before we're even born God has achieved our salvation in Christ who has as Hebrews four puts that achieved our eternal Sabbath rest and so how appropriate it is that on the first day of the week and all the resurrection appearances that are identified as to what day of the week they occurred on all occurred on Sunday not only was he raised on Sunday but his appearances are all on Sunday so in the early church as you move from circumcision to baptism from the Passover to the Eucharist so it was in acts 20 they gather on the Lord's Day the first day of the week in revelation 1:10 I was in the spirit on the Lord's Day these casual references show us that there was a certain transition that was done pretty easily with the power of the Spirit guiding the Apostles for the early church didn't circumcise but they sure baptized they didn't sacrifice the lamb but they celebrated the the lamb in the Eucharist and likewise it's not the seventh day at the end of our work but the first day because Christ has achieved our rest before we even pick up a hammer or shovel all right let's check it one more call or at least Bob and Wisconsin hello Bob what's your question for us hello my question is for dr. Horne what I would like to ask is that in your book Rome sweet home in a chapter written by Kimberly she's talking to a former classmate of and they're addressing John 6:63 where it says the spirit gives life the flesh profits nothing and Kimberley explains that it's not the cannibalism as the people who walked away apparently took it to be but rather than it's the resurrected glorified body of Christ that we receive I wondered if you're in agreement with that he has been at the Catholic understanding and a second question which I don't mean it to be a stupid question but it may sound that way but I'm curious what what translation of the Bible is it that you're using there what what Bible do you use thank you okay thank you second question is easier it's the RSV C it's the Revised Standard Version Catholic edition the the first question I would say in John 6 when Jesus has eat my flesh and drink my blood and I'll raise you up and then he goes on to say that the flesh of a lot nothing it's the spirit that gives life his point is not to negate what he had previously said when he says the flesh of a lot nothing he doesn't say my flesh availeth nothing he's speaking about the flesh that is our flesh and so when he says you know my flesh is food indeed my flesh my blood is drink indeed he eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me and I on him what he's going on to say in verse 63 is what makes his flesh so different than our flesh our flesh which is so weak his flesh of which is so strong it's the spirit the flesh of a loved nothing it's the spirit that gives life but the spirit uses the instrument of Christ's flesh and blood to give us this divine life so that he abides in us and we abide in him precisely through this flesh which communicates nothing less than the Holy Spirit who helps thank you I've got a couple minutes left and I ask you a final question sure to our audience what difference does it make whether we're Catholic or not well you know in this year of st. Paul I think what we can celebrate as Catholic Christians is not only the ecumenical common ground that we share which is substantial and we tend to neglect that but how it is that the truths of Scripture in general and especially the truths of st. Paul's the epistles lead us to recognize that when he says in Galatians 3:28 there's no longer Jew or Greek slave or free male or see well what he's talking about is that you know there's no second-class citizenship any longer because God is fathering a family that is worldwide international the early fathers had a word for that khatola cos one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church it's the catholicity of the church that is the newness of the New Covenant up until Christ he was fathering a family that was national now it's international it's worldwide and we as Catholics in the year of st. Paul can just come to a whole much a much greater appreciation for this birthright that we have in Baptism this incredible grace that we have by having God as our Father Christ as their brother Mary as a mother the Saints as older brothers and sisters in Rome as a kind of place that reminds us of our international unity and I might say this is the theme we're going to do a pilgrimage to celebrate st. Paul the the st. Paul Center March 14 through 22 just to celebrate what it means to join this Catholic family this international household I hope that gets at it but I mean to me that is what is really so awesome about being cast well something with it also just tagged on again another minute is it seems to me that one of the the largest heresies of at least the 20th century and on into this one is this idea that all that's necessary is Jesus and me yeah and it would seem to me that at least as Catholics we emphasize that Christ intended there to be a church as the channel through which we receive the graces of salvation that's right an art isn't just Jesus is steeped in individualism and so easily and so frequently we just kind of project that yeah yeah and I think this vision of God's fatherhood and of the church as this worldwide family not only counter accent but it just Trump's it it's sort of like why were we just settling for a personal relationship when we can enter into this glorious communion as we close Scott what's the place they can get in touch with you on the Internet Salvation history calm is our website for the st. Paul Center we also have a phone number that they might be putting up on the screen I'm not sure but that is where we can find all kinds of tools and resources for Catholic biblical study and theology all right god it's always great to have you on the journey home and I haven't said this before I also am very grateful to God that you're witness and Kimberley's came into my life because it's what started my journey home to the Catholic Church so grateful for your friendship but also for the Amazing Grace as God is doing through well well thank you very much God thank you for joining us on this episode special episode of the journey home and I want you to always watch us because we pray that through our witness we also can help you discover and enjoy the beauty of our Lord Jesus Christ

Channel: EWTN

Views: 112,093

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television, Presbyterianism (Religion), Scott Hahn (Author), Minister Of Religion (Profession), Pastor

Id: XilzGLfgd7A

Length: 56min 25sec (3385 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 30 2015