Mystagogy
Mystagogy
On the Word of God (Dei Verbum - Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation)
In this session, guest presenter Dr. André Villeneuve discusses Dei Verbum, the dogmatic constitution on divine revelation issued at the Second Vatican Council. Dr. Villeneuve is Associate Professor of Old Testament & Biblical Languages at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in Detroit.
The music in the introduction and close of this podcast is provided by George Sarah.
This program of mystagogy is hosted by the Adult Faith Programs at Saint Stephen Martyr Church in Chesapeake, Virginia.
Hello, and welcome to the Mystagogy Podcast. Offered as part of the Adult Faith Programs at St. Stephen Martyr Church in Chesapeake, Virginia. In a tradition dating back to the earliest centuries of Christianity, newly initiated believers were prepared for ongoing lives through the Mystagogy, a period of formation designed to deep in their literature and community life. Mystagogy is a Greek word which means leading through the mysteries.
Dr. André Villeneuve:So thank you for having me, and we're going to talk about the Word of God today. And more specifically about the document, the Vatican II document, Dei Verbum. What does Dei Verbum mean, by the way? It's a trick question. I mean it's the Word of God. And so it's the dogmatic constitution on Revelation that came out of uh the Second Vatican Council. And um, well, I'm gonna put you on the spot right away. I know that Barbara sent you the link. So this is your honesty test. How many of you have read Dei Verbum? Wow, Barbara, good job, Barbara. Okay, so your uh first note to jot down your homework assignment for the week. Uh go and read De Verbum. Uh it's uh the dogmatic constitution of divine revelation. It's not a long document. You can read it in an hour or so, and it's really absolutely foundational. It's basically the church's vision for how Catholics understand, read, and interpret sacred scripture. And all I'm gonna do today basically is walk through this document, which is extremely rich. Uh I've known it for a decade since I studied at Franciscan University. And uh I teach it. It's actually, I'm gonna be teaching this in uh in a week because it's the very first class when I teach Method and Pentateuch, which is the very first scripture course that I teach at the seminary. And this is how I begin with this course, kind of the church's vision on divine revelation. And then I zoom in on the Old Testament, and then I zoom in on uh on the Pentateuch, which is gonna be that course, because I teach mostly Old Testament at the seminary. So you can find it online, Vatican website, just search De Verabum, that's how you spell it, which means the Word of God, and you can find on multiple sites. And so that's your assignment as good trained uh educated Catholics. Everybody should uh should read De Verabum, which is a profound document, not particularly difficult. Um, but so hopefully today we'll give you kind of a primer to just start off to see the beautiful vision of the church on sacred scripture and divine revelation and will motivate you to study and enter into the uh wonders and marvels of the word of God. Speaking of word of God, I wanted to begin with a uh scripture this morning from the prophet Amos. So I love teaching the prophets, they have so much to say, both to ancient Israel and to our own days. It's amazing how these ancient-inspired words are still still perennially relevant for us today. And it's kind of an eerie passage that is um really disturbing, and I think it was disturbing at the time of Amos, but also very disturbing at in our own day and age, but it's also a call to conversion and a call to uh to witness and to evangelization. So this is from Amos chapter 8, verse 11, and it goes like this Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will send a famine on the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea and from north to east. They shall run back and forth to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it. The word of the Lord. And so we have had, we're certainly not suffering from a famine this morning in terms of physical food, and hopefully we'll not also famish from the word of God, but it's it's disturbing, isn't it, to say that the Lord will send this famine of the Word of God. And that was the time that Amos lived at a time of, let's see if you can relate to that, a time of of great prosperity in Israel, where people were kind of complacent, and it was actually, it was known politically as a golden age in Israel. It was like a time of prosperity, of peace, of uh things that were going very well, but basically uh the the nation of Israel was rotting at the foundations. It was actually the northern kingdom of Israel, and basically there were dark clouds on the horizon of the Assyrians that were becoming this very serious threat who would within a few generations invade northern Israel and completely devastate the kingdom. And uh and so can we maybe relate to that? A time of wealth, prosperity, and of comfort, of complacency. And uh I I'm thinking I was preparing with all these devices, and and what what a paradox, what irony that on these little devices here we can have as many Bible translations as we want, right? I can pull up De Obram instantly on this and pull up all kinds of apps with prayers and liturgy of the hours and mass readings, and we've never had such an access to the Word of God today, but I wonder whether we've ever had so much ignorance of the Word of God as today. Ironically. Isn't that true? Because we're just so bombarded with so much so many, so much information and so much nonsense, let's be honest, right? With social media and all the news outlets and all the entertainment and all the various addiction to sports and things like that, that even though we have such easy access to the word of God, at the same time we're kind of famishing, including not a few Catholics, right? Of course, not you, because you're here on your Saturday morning to study the Word of God. But uh we know that even in the Catholic Church, there's astounding ignorance of the Word of God, even though the Word of God is so easily so accessible to us. And so hopefully, by studying the Averibum, it's going to rekindle this uh motivation and love to study the Word of God, being uh the source of life. Uh if you any of you were some of you here last year when I talked about the way, the truth, and the life, and we walked through salvation history, and so Jesus was the way, the truth, and the life, and how I talked about how the way, the truth, and the life is revealed throughout all of history. And uh don't we seek the way, the truth, and the life? To live life in abundance, to live knowing who we are, who God is, and the truth of his revelation, and also living the right way, making the right decisions, right moral decisions, right life decisions. And so this is what the word of God guides us to uh to do and to live well. So, De Verabum, this document on the Word of God has six chapters. It's really, really well organized and structured, so it begins with the big picture, God's plan of salvation and divine revelation. And so, how did God speak to us? Okay, and then but God spoke to us primarily in many ways, and we could say essentially in the past, right, through scripture, through the record of his revelation to Israel and the person of Christ. And so what we need to know, we the word of God does not remain in the past, but how is it transmitted? How is it passed down to us? Okay, and that's chapter two, the transmission of divine revelation. And then it zooms in on the primary uh channel of divine revelation, which is sacred scripture and the word of God. So that's what I focus on in my own teaching. And so we're gonna talk about inspiration and inerrancy, and then we're gonna follow a little kind of mnemonic device of one, two, three, four, looking at scripture. So we're gonna look at, when we read scripture, we're gonna look at how there is just one canon and one overarching economy of salvation that is communicated to us through two testaments. We know that, right? The Old Testament and the New Testament. And how do Catholics interpret scripture? How should we interpret Scripture through three criteria for interpreting Scripture? And then we're going to see how in the whole history of the church there's always been this idea of four senses of scripture. That anytime we read a passage of scripture, especially the Old Testament, we're going to see how there are layers of meaning, and that that's what the church knows as the four senses of scripture. So I'm going to talk a little bit about that probably in the second session. Then chapter four talks about the Old Testament, treasury of wisdom that remains always relevant for us. It's not superseded by the New Testament. Chapter 5, the New Testament and the Gospels, and then Chapter 6, Sacred Scripture in the Life of the Church. How do we uh appropriate the sacred scripture and uh make it relevant and life-giving to us in our own day and age? So that's the whole roadmap of this document, Dev Arabum. As I said, you can read it probably during your lunch break and come back this afternoon and say, yeah, yeah, we've now all read it. I know that's what you're all longing to do at this point. So let's uh at least begin. God's plan of salvation and uh divine revelation. So I have the text right here and going to highlight a few things. So it begins with this, uh so the Second Vatican Council wishes to set forth authentic doctrine on divine revelation, so that by hearing the message of salvation, the whole world may believe. By believing it may hope, and by hoping it may love. So, what's the goal of all this? Is that so that we may believe, so that we may hope, for the hope of being with God forever in heaven, and so void by that hope we may love and live in the fullness of charity that Christ has revealed to us. And so you're gonna see quotes from D.V. Dev Erebun, which are the catechism really follows Dev Arabum quite closely, the beginning of the catechism, which has a section on divine revelation. And so it says this it pleased God in his goodness and wisdom to reveal himself and make known the mystery of his will. Isn't that an amazing thing that God loves us so much he speaks to us and he wants to communicate his purpose? The transcendent, eternal God who is completely really separate and distinct from creation. He wants us to know the mystery of his will. What he's up to, what is important to him, what is uh how much he loves us, and he truly wants us to know who he is. And why does he want to do this? So that man, we might in the Holy Spirit, so that we may have access to the Father through Christ, the Word made flesh, in the Holy Spirit, and thus become sharers in the divine nature. We could talk for a long time just about this sentence. So, what do you notice about this this sentence? First, we see there is a already there is the heart of God who is triune, right? Do you see that? So, what's the goal of the divine revelation? That we may have access to the Father and to his plans for humanity. How do we have access through it? Through Christ, the word made flesh. And so God became, took on flesh through the incarnation, so that we may have access to God's plans. And how do we do this today in the Holy Spirit, which is sent, who is sent us to the church, and thus become sharers in the divine nature? From 2 Peter 1, 4. So there are many conceptions of salvation. Sometimes we have reduced the idea of salvation as just being forgiveness of sins. Right? It's a bit the Protestant influence, but we know that salvation is much more than the forgiveness of sins, isn't it? Is that we may actually share in God's very nature. That even in the poverty of our humanity here, and our frail bodies and the idea of declining and getting sick and dying, it's not just being forgiven, but that God wants to actually share his very being with us. And what he did by nature in Christ, he's doing by adoption with us. And so he's adopting us, but asking for a collaboration. We have to say yes to that. Where we always remain free to say uh to say no to God. So he wants us to become shares in the divine nature. And so how is he going to do this? Well, Deverbum says, by revealing himself, God wishes to make men capable of responding to him, of knowing him, and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity. Do we ever feel limited in our ability to love? I feel it all the time, right? We have our limits, sometimes we reach our limits pretty quickly. We know we're called to love, but uh when uh the children get on our nerves, or even the person driving in front of you, or we find our patience that uh reaches its limits pretty quickly. And so the word of God tells us that, and that obviously God knows that, that because of the fall and of sin, that we are all very weak and we have very limited capacity to love. And through the grace of God that He gives us in Christ through the Holy Spirit, he elevates our ability to love far beyond our natural capacity. But we have to believe that, we have to be aware of that, that uh he is calling us to surpass what is humanly possible. He's kind of calling us to be little superheroes, right? Not on our own, but through the mystery and working of grace. So, how is he going to do this? The De Verbum continues by saying that God reveals himself gradually. So everyone notice when Adam and Eve fell after original sin, it's not like God delivered the entire Bible to them and then they said, Here is your plan for uh for uh for redemption, right? No, he had very little to say to Adam and Eve, and then so gradually he revealed himself through the economy of salvation, through salvation history, or through that we see uh in Scripture. So he reveals himself gradually, it took millennia, right, until the coming of Christ, and we're still unpacking the mystery of God's salvation in Christ. And how does he do this? In deeds and words, which shed light on each other. So if God is teaching us to love, how do we express love? If you think, how do you love your spouse? How do you love your children? How do you love your parents? So you might say, I love you, right? You might say things, so the husband may say, I love you. I'm I'm just not very much into helping in the kitchen or helping around the house. And uh, you know, I love you, I'm telling you that, but I'm, you know, um I have my own life and you do your own thing, and that's it, right? That's gonna ring pretty hollow pretty quickly, right? And so, on the other hand, uh you have to prove your love by doing things. And so maybe another husband would say uh nothing. He would take out the trash and mow the lawn and take care of the house, but you know, I love you, I show it to you all the time. I don't need to say it. It's also kind of not really satisfactory, right? We need to hear and we need to know that we are loved. And that's how God acts, doesn't he, in Scripture? That he constantly has a lot of things to say. Just pull out your Bible and look at the number of pages. He has much to say to us, but he also acts in salvation history, and that's what we see from the fall, from before the fall, from creation uh until the book of Revelation. God is constantly acting in human history. So may He give us eyes to be able to see His deeds both in Scripture, in the history of the church, but also in our own lives, because these words and deeds, they shed light upon each other. We can't do just with one. And so we're also called to imitate that, right? We're called to love others both in words and deeds. One is not enough. Were you aware of that? And so we must we have to ask, we have to act, we have to play the part, not just be Christians who speak of words, because you know what we call that, of course. The number one accusations are against Christians for non-believers, being hypocrites, right? Kind of not really living the talk, and so that's a really it's a summons to us to actually live a life of integrity, to actually live out what we we talk about. And so this is what we call God's pedagogy. What's a pedagogue? It's uh it's someone who, it's an educator, but someone who forms, right? In the ancient world, it was not just a teacher, but it was a tutor who also had a stick, right, to discipline uh the recalcitrant children. And so God has a pedagogy. God is the master teacher, as we see fully revealed in Christ. And he prepares us to welcome by stages the supernatural revelation culminating in the incarnate word. So notice I have in the picture here the example of the Exodus, right? So God reveals himself in deeds by opening the Red Sea in the living Israel, but also in words by uh by giving the Ten Commandments and the Torah or the law to Moses. So that's a good example of words and deeds. So God's pedagogy, God teaches us, and if we want to learn how to be good teachers, you don't need to be formally have a position as teacher, but we're all called to be teachers, right? And our families and then the people around us. And so to learn good pedagogy, you learn from the master teachers, and who's the best teacher? It's obviously God and as fully revealed in Christ. So in paragraphs three and four of De Verbum, you see the council fathers unpack this Trinitarian dimension of revelation. How do we learn from the master teacher? Well, these two paragraphs say that first, God, who through the word creates all things and keeps them in existence, gives an enduring witness to himself and created realities. And he manifested himself to our first parents, to Adam and Eve, and then after their fall, he reached out to give them the hope of being saved. He ceaselessly kept the human race in his care to give eternal life to those who perseveringly do good in search of salvation. Then he called Abraham, the patriarchs, Moses, and the prophets, and so on, prepared the way of the gospel, for the gospel down through the centuries. So this paragraph three speaks about God the Father, who prepared the people of Israel for the fullness culmination of his revelation. Paragraph four says, Then, after speaking in many ways, now at last in these days God has spoken to us in his son. Quoting the epistle to the Hebrews. He sent his son, the eternal word, who enlightens all men, so that he might dwell among men. So Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, is the one who actualizes the plan of the Father and gives us access to it by sending the Spirit of truth. So there we have it, Father who sends the Son, who sends the Holy Spirit, and we are going to have access to this incredible plan of God through the Holy Spirit who is revealed in the church. And that is why we await no further new public revelation, says Dave Verbal. And that separates us from, for example, the Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and for that matter from Muslims, right, who think that God somehow spoke, had still something to say publicly, whether through Muhammad and the Quran or through the Book of Mormon or whatever it is, and so as Catholics we reject that. We know that God has fully spoken in Christ. And yes, there may be still private revelations, which we do believe in, but we know that private revelations never really add anything substantial, right, to what we know as already revealed in Scripture and in tradition. So this is all wonderful. God has a lot of things to say and to show us, but there is a catch. What does this require of us? This little thing called the obedience of faith. The obedience of faith, which is an important thing that's mentioned often in the New Testament. And so it's a responsibility and it's a call to respond to God's revelation. So what's the obedience of faith? It's an obedience by which man commits his whole self freely to God, offering the full submission of intellect and will to God who receives, who reveals, and freely assenting to the truth revealed by him. So we have that choice, don't we? We have that choice that God speaks to us, and every day we can choose to accept or to say, ah, thanks, but no, but no, thanks. Uh not today, God. And so this puts the onus of responsibility on us. It also says that basically atheism is not just an innocent or even skepticism. It's not just an innocent, just, oh, I can't really believe, I just don't have the gift of faith, I don't feel it really. It's actually saying, uh, actually not, right? That God has has had a lot of things to say, and He is calling us to make a full submission of intellect. So there's an element of the will there that's that, okay, I might have some questions, I might have some trouble with certain doctrines or certain things revealed in Scripture, but I'm still going to somehow submit to what God says and hopefully find answers to my questions. But so what does this presuppose? An attitude of humility, right? Of saying, I'm going to accept the word of God and uh and and respond to it and live according to it. So this obedience of faith is uh says that the onus is on us to um uh to discover what God has said, because God has told us everything he needs to tell us. Alright, so the divine revelation, the end of this first chapter of De Verbums says that it's through his revelation that those religious truths, which are by their nature accessible to human reason, can be known by all men with ease, with solid certitude, and with no trace of error in even in the present state of the human race. Okay, what do they mean by that? So there are all kinds of religious truths that God has revealed to us. Can we figure them out by just thinking through them? Not on our own, right? We need the gift of grace, we need the gift of God's help through the Holy Spirit. But by revealing Himself, we can know with ease, with certitude, and with no trace of error. So we can actually know with confidence what God has told us. And isn't that a crisis of our own day and age? This kind of constant doubt and skepticism and uncertainty and everything we seem to be just on shifting sands all the time, right? And when Jesus says that he's the way, the truth, and the life, focus on the truth, we can actually know with certainty what is good for us, what God has said, who we are in Christ, that we are loved, that there is a solution to sin, that there is a solution to suffering. And we can know that. And doesn't that change everything? We still suffer and we still struggle with sin, but we know that there is actually a solution. So do you see that this really raises up towards this theological virtue of hope? That it doesn't take away all problems, but we know there is a meaning and there is actually a solution to that. Now we don't need to be constantly wobbling on, oh, is this really true? And is this really uh something that works for me? You know, I'm not really sure. So God has really spoken firmly and has revealed that He is true, especially in the resurrection of Christ, by uh by giving us this certainty of uh of salvation, a revelation. Okay, does that make sense? So that's the first uh chapter that God has spoken. So it's kind of like it's really pointing us towards scripture, right? Basically, uh this document is saying, well, go and read scripture and uh find out about God's plan of salvation. So now how do we uh how do we go from what God has revealed in scripture to today? Well, this is where uh De Verbum starts talking about apostolic tradition that we're well familiar in uh in uh as Catholics, right? So Christ commissioned the apostles, he called the apostles to preach to all men, and then these apostles left bishops as successors. So we're talking about apostolic preaching that before the New Testament was written, the apostles preached. They went around, they traveled, and they taught the word of God, they to they uh they taught about Jesus, and eventually they put all these things down in writing. And the apostles, of course, eventually died, and so they appointed successors, which we now know as bishops, and so that's one way by which we have certainty also that we can trust in the word of God, because this is passed on passed on through what we know as apostolic tradition or sacred tradition. So, what does that mean? Does that mean that we have two different channels of revelation? Not really. The church or Dave Arabun calls us one sacred deposit of the Word of God. So God speaks, he has revealed himself in Scripture, and then how do we interpret Scripture? We interpret Scripture through tradition. That makes sense? So it's not an extra channel of revelation, but the two are really closely connected in how we have access to the wellspring of God's salvation. So sacred scripture is the word of God consigned to writing on the inspiration of the divine spirit, and so we actually have three three pillars of divine revelation, right? What's the third one? We have sacred scripture, we have sacred tradition, and what we know as the living teaching office of the church. And so this chapter, really, you could read it in five minutes, this second chapter of Death Arabum. So it says the task of authentically interpreting the Word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the church. And that in Latin, living teaching office is magisterium whose authority is exercised in the name of Jesus Christ. So here we have our triangle of divine revelation, the transmission of divine revelation. So if you want to understand what, how does God speak to us, and if you were here last year, you may remember a little bit this triangle. I had a lot of them. So the Father makes this plan for us to share in his very life. And how does he bring this plan down to earth? By sending the Son. And so God becomes man so that we may share in God's very nature, so that we may become sons of God. And after the Son completes his mission on earth, he goes back up to the Father and sends the Holy Spirit, who comes and dwells in and within the church, not just in individuals, but he dwells within us as part of the church. And so the Holy Spirit is communicated to us through the church. And how does God speak to us now in and through the church? Through the sacred scriptures. So the Holy Spirit is the inspirator of sacred scripture, and what does this give us? If the Holy Spirit inspires sacred scripture, we're going to have inerrancy, right? We're going to have a canon that we can truly trust, that when we read scripture, we know truly it's the word of God, which is free from error. As we hear from 2 Timothy 3.16. And the Holy Spirit also is the animator of sacred tradition. Where do we especially find sacred tradition in the life of the church? Some would say in the liturgy, because in the liturgy, we hear the sacred tradition that has been passed on through the ages. Jesus promised when the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all truth. And so what do we have in sacred tradition? We have the efficacy of the sacraments. What do we mean by efficacy? When you go and receive the Eucharist or when you go to confession, you need to check first if the priest is in a state of sin or if he's okay with God. Hopefully not, right? You don't. We know that we can trust that the sacraments will be effective even if the priest, God forbid, we hope they are holy and living a good life close to God. But we know that the sacraments transcend the person and holiness of the priest, right? And so in the liturgy, in the sacraments, we receive truly the life of God no matter what. So they're always efficacious, they're always powerful. And the Holy Spirit is also the guarantor of the magisterium. And that's what that's from where we get the infallibility of the teachings of the church, which does not have to do with everything everything the Pope says on a whim, right? Example, airplane interviews and things like that, but has to do with the official teachings of the Holy Father in continuity with the Holy Father's predecessors and in continuity with what is communicated to us in the catechism. So this is based on Jesus' promise to Peter, right? You are this, you are the rock, and on this rock I will build my church. Church. And so you see how here we can really see kind of this thing of the way, the truth, and the life that I talked about last year. That we can know really with certainty what God has to tell us. We have the infallibility of the teaching of the magisterium. We see we receive the life through the church's liturgy and sacraments and the truth in sacred scripture. Okay, so kind of you should burn that into your brains, this idea, because this is the whole vision of the church in terms of what is how God speaks to us in terms of revelation. Alright. We have until what time?
unknown:We have like 15 more minutes.
Dr. André Villeneuve:15, okay, good. Alright. Okay, so what Dave Everwoman is doing, it's really focusing especially on scripture, but it starts with a big picture. How does God speak to us? Divine revelation. Then it goes, chapter two, how is revelation passed on to us? How do we have access to it? And then chapter three, it zooms in on scripture. So you're familiar with this expression in Latin, sola scriptura? Sola scriptura, scripture alone. It's like the the the uh the creed of the reformers, right, of Martin Luther, because he wanted to uh form, you know, they they believe that God speaks to us only through scripture, and so they wanted to dismiss the teaching of the magisterium and tradition. So do we believe in sola scriptura? As Catholics, we do not. We, as we saw, the that threefold pillar of revelation, scripture, tradition, magisterium, but we might say that we do believe in prima scriptura, and so a certain primacy of scripture, scripture first, because only in scripture does God really actually speak to us through his words, right? At Mount Sinai, I am the Lord your God, who took you out of Egypt and through the person of Jesus Christ in the New Testament. And so you might say it's okay for us as Catholics to say, well, sacred tradition, the teaching of the church fathers or even of the popes, they're not really the word of God spoken like God speaks in Scripture. And so certainly we can concede that to Protestants that it's true that we must have scripture first in our lives. Yes, we do read it in light of the tradition of the church and the magisterium. We certainly do, but we know that our life should be driven by Scripture. And it's really a problem that sometimes we have Catholics who, okay, it's like I go to I go to Mass, I go to church, but I pray my rosary, but I mean, you know, this whole thing of Bible studies, that's kind of for Protestants, right? No, no, it's not. If we want to compete with Protestants, then we we should be the best students of Scripture and show them that we absolutely love and revere scripture and our life is fed by the Word of God. Okay, so what does Dave Erbaum have to say about sacred scripture? Well, this is actually not from Dave Arabum and just a adding a little bit. Yes, sir.
unknown:Yeah, I was only going to say that uh I guess Luther believed in solo scripture as long as he was the editor.
Dr. André Villeneuve:As long as he was the editor, yeah.
unknown:Because if the boot supports uh the supports all the two others, the deuteral canon, yeah. Decided whether he could believe it, perhaps.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah, yeah, he even uh he wasn't a big fan of the Epistle of James because it says you're not saved by faith alone, but by your works, and so yeah, that's that would be a big can of worm when he starts speaking about the reformers. But we do see that the tragic fruit of the Reformation, right, in thousands and of denominations now, because once you separate Scripture from its tradition, then who's gonna stop you from saying, well, Scripture's telling me this, but the next pastor over there uh understands scripture differently, so we don't agree, therefore we're gonna start our own uh our own new gospel of uh you know, gospel church, full gospel church. And so we see all the problems that this has caused. Okay, so what do we mean by script by sacred scripture, the Bible? Uh when we look at beginning with the Old Testament, uh it's an authorized collection of Jewish scriptures that we know as the Hebrew Bible, and Christians call it the Old Testament, or Christian scriptures, considered authoritative, foundational, and sacred. So they give us, they speak with authority, they give us a foundation, a basis for our life, and they're also sacred, spoken by God. Is the Bible really a book? It's kind of more like a library, isn't it? We have what, 73 books in the Catholic Bible, written over centuries and even millennia, uh compilation of many books of various literary genres, different authors, we have how many languages is the Bible written in? Three. Three. Hebrew, Greek, and Aramaic. Mostly uh Hebrew and Greek, so the Old Testament and Hebrew. Uh a little a few passages in the Old Testament in Aramaic. So a book of Daniel, half of the book of Daniel, half of the book of Ezra are written in Aramaic. Really close cousins. Uh if you've seen the Passion of the Christ, right? No, that's mostly spoken in Aramaic. Um, and uh so Hebrew became still the sacred language in Judaism, but it was not so much spoken at the time of Christ. So it's a compilation of many books. In Greek, uh we have tabiblia, which means the books. Tabiblia, that's where we get the Bible, and it really it's really in the plural, the books. And uh so we have it in one volume today, but we know that it's actually a complete library. So coming back to De Verbum, what is scripture? I've already mentioned it is the speech of God. Just that is incredible, right? The eternal God who has something to say to us. His speech put down in writing under the breath of the Holy Spirit. So, right there we have this idea of divine inspiration, right? That even though people, men wrote the books of Scripture, they were inspired by the uh by the Holy Spirit. So in sacred scripture we have this idea of divine condescension. That sounds a bit strange, right? In modern terms, what do we mean what do we mean by condescension? It's not a good thing. If someone is condescending to you, what does that mean? They're looking down at you, right? But in theological language, condescension is actually a good thing. Because what it is condescend descend, con actually means with. Right? So what does it mean that God descends with, meaning he comes down at our level. Right? So if you speak like to a five-year-old, are you gonna speak the same way as you speak to your friends here as you speak to me? Hopefully not, right? Hopefully there's gonna be a difference. You're gonna change the way you speak and really simplify and use baby talk if you're speaking to a baby or to a two or three or four or five-year-old. And so this is what God does. Does God really speak English or Aramaic or Hebrew? Uh he's he's beyond language, right? But he speaks to us in a way that we can understand. And so he speaks in human words. He descends with to speak with us at a level that we can understand. So this eternal word, eternal sex self-expression of God, uh, he speaks to us through the law, the prophets, the writings, and then through in the person of Christ, actually becoming man. So if you would want to talk to an ant, for example, not like ant and uncle, but like an ant, the insects, right? That would be, you would be hard-pressed. Like, I don't really speak ant or however they communicate. So, what would be the way to somehow communicate with ants if they communicate? Somehow they must um in some way, right? You'd have to become an ant. Right? And so think about it. This is kind of what God did. How does the transcendent God speak to us? He becomes one of us to actually really speak our language. So, as Americans, we still need to have some translation from Hebrew and Greek to English, but it's uh it's close enough. So, this is why Christ is God's unique word, where he recapitulates and brings together everything that he had to say in the um in the Old Testament. So that's why the church venerates the sacred scriptures as she venerates the Lord's body. Do we do that? So we're gonna have a time of adoration today. Uh sitting and uh kneeling before the Lord in the blessed sacrament, and that's wonderful. Do we venerate sacred scripture as we venerate the Lord's body? Yes, and when we hear when we hear the word of God, yeah. Yeah. So it's a good question, right, that we all need to ask ourselves in our own uh hearts, in our own lives, how's that look in my life? Well, first do I venerate the Lord's body? Do I spend time with the Lord's uh with the Lord's body, you know, in in adoration? But do I venerate the word of God not but just by half-listening, the readings at mass, but actually having the word of God uh a major thing in my life throughout the week, right? Being fed by the word of God. And so that's why the church finds nourishment and strength in sacred scripture, the word of God. So I'll come back to that uh in a bit. Because all scripture is given by inspiration of God, it's profitable for doctrine, reproof, correction, for instruction in righteousness. There's St. Paul who tells us it is truly given by God's inspiration, and so it's profitable for doctrine, for knowing truth, for for reproof, for correcting us when we do some stupid things, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. So if you want to really grow into the man or woman of God that God is calling you to be, we must be driven by scripture. We have we have to think uh the word of God. We have to not just have some vague, cloudy idea of what's in the Bible, but actually be uh kind of permeated by the word of God, and the only way of doing that is by frequent contact, reading, reflecting, and meditating on sacred scripture. Dave, everyone talks about now this chapter three is on sacred scripture, it's inspiration and interpretation. So, what do we mean by inspiration that God is truly the author of sacred scripture? Isn't that incredible? This book, I mean, I'm giving a terrible example because I have several Bibles electronically, but I should have had at least an actual physical Bible. So that's the curse of the technological age. I can't I can only blame it on myself. So I have it here, I have it here, and I have it here, but I should probably travel with an actual physical Bible. So God is their author. God is the one who has inspired the uh the sacred scriptures, and so uh they've been handed on to the church such uh uh to the church uh uh uh herself. So God at the same time he inspired human authors of the Bible, making full use of their faculties and powers so that God acted in them and by them. So this is really important for understanding how scripture works. And that's a big difference in how we see the Bible, and for example, Muslims see the Quran. Anyone know what the major difference is, kind of like philosophically, and how how the two books work? So how the big difference, and there are many differences, but how we view inspiration and interpretation of the Bible and the Quran. So Muslims believe, yes, ma'am.
unknown:Well, I'm just gonna say the Quran is not his master.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah.
unknown:We are uh certain, we are not a deadline where God is our Savior, He is our Father, we are not the same. Yes, and that is my speech of this.
Dr. André Villeneuve:There's a big difference in the relationship, uh that which is absolutely true. I'm speaking more specifically how we see the books, how we see the Bible, how Muslims see the Quran. And what is the difference that for Muslims uh uh Allah dictated his word directly to Muhammad, who was supposed to be illiterate. And so he did not really, his what was in his brain did not really matter. It's like basically God just dictated it and he was just like a passive instrument, kind of like a pen, right? You see, the the pen didn't really participate in me writing this letter. It's it's just an instrument in my hand. And so they see as Muhammad's humanity as not really being that relevant because God just kind of dictated it and he said, This is exactly what I want to say. And so it basically bypasses human agency. And we don't believe that, right? We believe that actually Matthew was a real person who had a real personality, had certain grammatical quirks, and he had a certain way of writing Hebrew, translated into Greek, and the same thing with Isaiah was a certain person, and Jeremiah had lots of complaining to do, and he was a very emotional person. And some of them were more sarcastic, and some of them were more um melancholic, and some of them were more kind of aggressive, and some of them were more weird with all kinds of strange visions. And so God really inspired human authors and made use of their humanity, right? Including their grammar. I mean, Mark's grammar is really not that great. Mark was a Jew who who was writing in Greek, which was his second language, and his his Greek is kind of like rough in contrast to Luke. Luke's Greek is really excellent. So Luke is probably a Gentile. So God acted through this, and when we study Scripture, that's why we have to take in account their humanity and how, you know, what kind of guys these people were. So the books of Scripture, firmly, faithfully, and without error, teach that truth which God, for the sake of our salvation, wished to see confided to the sacred scriptures. That's really loaded right there, which also gives us confidence, hopefully motivation to study scripture. What do they teach? Firmly, faithfully, and without error. So there's your inerrancy of sacred scripture. What? The truth which God wanted to see confided to the sacred scriptures. And so do we believe that scripture truly is without error? You know, it's very much under attack today by all kinds of scripture scholars, we're the worst, right? Who have these new theories and who question did Jesus really say that? And how confident can we be that maybe this is just an invention of the early church, and maybe the church just made this up. And uh we know that uh actually there's uh there's really good foundations for for believing that uh scripture really communicates faithfully what God has revealed. Are we familiar with any books? There's a lot of apologetics books that that are, for example, Brandt Petrie. Are you familiar with Brand Petrie? He's written a book called The Case for Jesus. And that's a book I definitely recommend. And there's a lot of good things. So The Case for Jesus, uh, Brant Petrie. That's really focusing obviously on the person of Jesus. But we have a lot of good apologetics books showing, for example, the reliability of the Old Testament. We have a lot of scholars who question did the exodus actually happen? Maybe, you know, was there really a Joshua and a conquest of the promised land? And so much scholarship is just undermining the reliability of Scripture, and we know that the church has always affirmed that we can actually truly trust in uh in God's word. So Christianity is not a religion of the book, and so we don't read the Bible like the Quran, like just the direct uh dictated word of God, but of the living and incarnate word of God. And so who is the ultimate word of God for us? It's not the word written on the page, but it's the word made flesh, and so it's Jesus Christ Himself, all right? So it's a religion of the incarnate word. So now we come to our one, two, three, four, and I think we're gonna end pretty quick, though Barbara's gone, so I can just do whatever I want. Yeah, yeah, something. Too bad I didn't bring my saxophone. So I'll just start us off with reading and interpreting scripture. So I said we talked about the one, two, three, four, so let's see if you were paying attention. What do we have in the Bible? One, what? Uh one canon, one economy of salvation, one big plan of salvation, right? We have two testaments, the old and the new. We have three uh languages. Uh yeah, languages, but that's not it. We have three criteria for interpreting scripture, how we read and interpret scripture, and we have four senses of scripture. Very good. Some of you are paying attention. So, what do we mean by one can of scripture? Canon, what is a can? Is it the thing you shoot with in wars? Now that has two N's. So canon has just one N. It comes from the Hebrew can, which means like a read or a measuring stick. So it's something that we measure, uh truth. And so when uh when we speak of canon, this is an official list or collection of writings considered as core scriptures or authorized books. It's a basis for our religious beliefs, moral precepts, and communal practices. So that's how we measure our faith, right? How do we know we're living well when we have this measuring stick, which is the canon of scripture? So what's when we talk about canonization, it's the process by which books are included in this uh list of core scriptures. And a canon is typically fixed or closed, so it's not like this year we can say, oh, why don't we add these books to the Bible, right? So it's fixed and uh and sealed. And that's how we have one divine economy or plan of salvation from Genesis to Revelation. Yes, sir?
unknown:You know, with this tenet and the previous discussion about inheritance of the Bible, yeah. I'm I'm mindful of the many councils of the early church in which they argued amongst themselves and basically have challenges pinning down which book was real, which book wasn't. I mean, can you talk again to the criteria perhaps?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah.
unknown:And maybe you'll get that on point three, but yeah, I mean, I'm always mindful that we're human and that they were human, and that they had maybe they were divinely inspired, maybe some weren't. I mean, can you talk to the history of how we get to this one canon and this one?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah, that's a really good question. It's a difficult question, and actually, this is a major point to point out how solar scriptura doesn't work, because you're right, it took about four centuries for the New Testament canon to be sealed and finalized. And there were some alternate canons, so we have different lists where, to be fair, most of the books where there was a consensus, the four gospels where there was an early consensus, most of the epistles of Paul, uh, there was some dispute about the book of Revelation, about Jude's, second and third John. So there was some dispute about that. So what came first? Tradition or the Bible? Really, tradition came first, right? So they accepted the Old Testament and they taught and preached about Jesus, and they knew they could refer to certain documents, but ultimately they had to make a decision at these church councils. So it shows that if you accept the Bible as the Word of God, well, how can you accept the Bible without the tradition of the authority that actually decided the table of contents of what would be in the scripture and what would not be? So it shows that though we uh we love and we accept scripture as the canon, we still see that tradition preceded it. That there was a living church, an apostolic church driven, uh led by the apostles and their successors that taught about the word of God, and it's on the basis of their judgment, guided by the Holy Spirit, that we accept their decision on which books to accept in the canon. But there were criteria, for example, antiquity. I mean, it's really complex questions because the Jews did the same thing to close the Old Testament canon, right? So you had these books had to be uh they had to be antiquity, that they knew they went back to Christ. There had to be a consensus. We kind of know that they really reflect what Christ taught. There are other gospels that are not reliable, for example, the Gospel of Thomas. They knew, no, this is sketchy. We don't we we've never taught about this about Christ, those who knew the apostles. We know this is kind of like uh dodgy teachings that don't really reflect him. So there had to be orthodoxy, there had to be a consensus around all the major churches, there had to be antiquity, and kind of like in a nutshell, that's what what I can tell you. But many books have been written about this. Okay, so that's the one canon, and then we have the two testaments, as we know, the two major parts of the Bible. So my major love, I mean I love both, but I teach the Old Testament, which is really two-thirds of the Bible, or almost three-quarters of the Bible. So it's a major part of your Bible. If you want to really be a full Bible Christian as a Catholic, we need to read the Old Testament, not be scared off by it. So we have 46 books, including what we know as the Deuterocanonical books, the three major parts, the Torah or the law, five books of Moses, the prophets, and then the writings. And then the Deuterocanonical books, and that's the part that the Protestants have uh excluded, because they're not actually not part of the Jewish canon. So the Protestant canon is the same as the Jewish canon. So ours is uh more, is a wider canon. Okay, and then we have the New Testament, just 27 books, and there is consensus in Christianity. All Christian denominations accept the 27 books of the New Testament. So the four Gospels, the book of Acts, the early church, and then the Pauline epistles. Why 13 plus 1? The epistle to the Hebrews is debated whether it's actually Pauline. It does not claim to be Pauline. Some say it's kind of Pauline style, but we're not sure. Seven Catholic epistles, so the epistles of James, the three of John, the two epistles of Peter, my Jude, exactly, right, and then we have the Apocalypse of the Book of Revelation. So what do we mean by uh 1054? I should probably stop. Uh unless she comes back and catches me still talking. Okay, yeah, I think I'm gonna stop here and pick it up uh afterwards. So any questions? What's going on now? Do we oh you have discussion, right? Do you do you want to just start the discussion like this if you have any questions, or do you want to sit around your tables? Okay, let's let's just take questions, sure.
unknown:Uh so how did the Catholics decide to add to the uh Jewish Torah to make it a larger uh yeah, it's not exactly that they added it.
Dr. André Villeneuve:So at the time of Christ, right, we had Jesus who worked in Israel, in Judea and Israel, and then for example, Paul, who was from Tarsus, which is modern-day Turkey, right? So at the time you had Jews who were scattered across the Mediterranean, you had some in Egypt and Syria and Turkey. And so these Jews did, many of them forgot how to speak Hebrew after a few generations, so they had to have the Bible translated into Greek, which we know as a Septuagint. And the Septuagint, in the centuries before Christ, there were just still more books that were being written. For example, the books of Maccabees, right, um, Sirach, which I'm writing a commentary on, the wisdom of Solomon. So they were written kind of late. We're talking second, first century before Christ. So it's actually the Jews had two different canons. In Judea, they had the smaller Hebrew canon, and then in the Greek world, they had these other books where they started accepting them as part of the Septuagint. So there was not really a full consensus even among the Jews on what is the full canon up until about 100 AD, so after Christ, where the Jews decide we're just gonna go with a narrower canon because these other books haven't been written too late.
unknown:Right?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Sirach, Wisdom of Solomon may have been written like 100 years before Christ, so it's kind of late for the Old Testament. So what happened? The Jews said we're gonna just stick with the Hebrew canon, and then the Christians said we're gonna stick with the Septuagint, which is the broader canon. You see that? So it's like you had, it was still in the process of going, so it's not exactly the just Catholics decide to add those books. It was part of the Greek Bible at the time. And then Luther said, we're gonna go with the Jews, and we're just gonna follow the smaller Hebrew canon. Uh-huh. Yes.
unknown:I was just going to suggest it. Um even besides the uh tradition preceding the Bible. Didn't Magisterium precede it too? Because it wasn't the magisterium? Would you say that's what the council's word?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Uh-huh. Yeah. Yeah, you can say the magisterium. Right. Yeah. I find that the line between tradition and magisterium a little bit fuzzy because what's what's the difference between the two, right? The magisterium is like the acting teaching body of the church, but then the teaching of the magisterium become tradition. Right? So if you look at the council of Nicaea, you could say, yeah, there's your magisterium in operation, but is the council of Nicaea now tradition or magisterium? It's like kind of more tradition, but at the time it was the magisterium who were making those decisions.
unknown:At what point do we say this saint was a church father, but at this time in history, this saint wasn't. You know what I mean? Is it by year that we decide that we call some of the church father, or they can't be told the church father?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah. Well, we know that any single church father is not, that that is a difference. Any church father is not the magisterum, right? The magisterum is the successor of Peter in a council. So for example, uh, some church fathers had kind of questionable teachings. Origin, he's not a saint, right? He had some things that are actually heretical, but he's still considered a great teacher of the early church. So um, so they usually speak of the consensus. When you have a consensus of the church fathers, this becomes tradition. But yeah, it's definitely a little bit fuzzy. Uh when I was an evangelical, when I became Catholics, like when you're an evangelical, you have your Bible, you have from cover to cover, this is really clear. Where are the boundaries of the Bible? When you say, okay, where are the boundaries of tradition? Like, uh, I mean, I'm not so sure is it, you know, all the church fathers and and who's a church father, right? And which scholastics and which doctors, like, where do you find those boundaries? It's just a bit confusing. Yes.
unknown:This might be a crazy question, but so the the word magisterium, how did that even come about? I mean, I'm assuming it's Latin.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah, it is. Yeah, it means teaching office.
unknown:Yeah, so how did that old word you know obviously that doesn't exist first?
Dr. André Villeneuve:Sure. The the the the term magisterium is actually kind of a recent thing. I mean, I um I've actually never researched that in itself, but it's kind of like scripture traditional magisterium, it's like a 20th century thing to formulate it in that way. But I mean, you see it acting uh in the Bible itself. You look at the book of Acts, the Acts of the Apostles, right? Acts 15, what are we gonna do with the Gentiles who are entering into the church? While Peter and James they get together and start discussing and they decide the Holy Spirit, it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to not impose circumcision and the law on the Gentiles. So you could say there's a magisterium acting right there in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, before Acts was written, right? So, in terms of that the actual term, how when was that used like that? I think it's kind of recent, 19th, 20th century. But when you see the office, the teaching office, you see it working already in the New Testament. Yes, ma'am?
unknown:Tradition. I was had to teach. I always thought the issue was word of mouth, that these were things that are cast down, not in the Bible, but cast down word of mouth.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah.
unknown:And now, what else? Where is it written? This is tradition, because we had the Bible, but we're being these word means written out.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah, that's again where those boundaries of tradition. And is it like what you just said, it's not exactly like that. It's like, okay, here we have the Bible, and then we have kind of this secret channel of revelation, which is, hey, I know it's not written in the Bible, but this is actually what we also believe, and just pass it on, okay? Until until 2023, where we're just like, oh yeah, I heard this from my priest from his secret archives, and he just passed it on from his bishop. So it's not, it's not like that. And some uh Catholic theologians and apologists say, yes, every doctrine that we believe, you can find at least a hint or like a seed of this doctrine in the Bible. Right? Some are really tough. For example, the assumption of Mary, okay? There's really nothing in the Bible, but you might say, okay, there's a hint in Revelation 12, you see the woman in heaven, right, crowned the stars with the moon under her feet. Um tradition is like a it's more like a type of unpacking of what we have in Scripture. That, yeah, it does go beyond what Scripture says literally, but you can always find everything that we teach in uh in the Catholic Church really has a certain foundation in Scripture, like the Assumption or the Immaculate Conception. The Marian doctrines are the best example. So it's not like there's this secret teaching that's actually not in the Bible that we're just passing on from word of mouth, right?
unknown:But it's something that is always then believed from the get-go and the children.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Yeah. Yeah, some use this analogy of like a kernel that becomes into a tree. Like if you look at the early church, actually there was not a whole lot of emphasis on the Marian doctrines. Like they were really dealing with Christology at first and Trinity, right? So there was not a whole lot of focus on devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, a little bit, but not like we have today. The rosary is a later invention, right? The rosary did not exist for the first centuries of the church. So yeah, so that's why we call it development of doctrine. But you would say we never just invent something out of thin air. It's usually something that was there, and then it starts sprouting and then becomes something bigger. But that's why we always need to be anchored in scripture. And that's why the church cautions against private revelation, that private revelation always must be really grounded in scripture and not just kind of some far-fetched idea that is completely out there. Basically, which is what the Mormons do and the Jehovah's Witnesses, right? They just start something that's actually not grounded in Revelation in the early church.
unknown:Well, then kind of was the, I think, in William basis, that the Holy Spirit was involved in all of this. But like you said, Christopher Jesus and the Trinity, and then the you know, then eventuality where people were with our lesson mother and her important in all of this. So it was kind of to me what you're saying, and from the Holy Spirit really as the gospel are what was your question, exactly? The Holy Spirit, what the Holy Spirit was high with traditional.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Right. Yeah. Yeah, it for example goes back to what I quoted already, I think, when Jesus says the Spirit of truth will lead you into all truth. At the Last Supper in the Gospel of John, he says there are many more things I want to tell you, but you're not able to grasp them now yet. So he's hinting that there's going to be this unfolding of revelation, this unpacking of revelation.
unknown:And John also ordered the book of John, not all the focus of that. That could have been.
Dr. André Villeneuve:Right, right. But we still want things to be anchored in sacred scripture and not have this totally novel teaching. So there's a difference. You know, an acorn can turn into an oak tree, but it's not going to turn into a giraffe. Alright? So we want to see something that that we call organic growth. It's going to turn into something that's. Okay, good. And my computer just crashed, so it's perfect timing and it's like easy from me.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Mystic Oji Podcast. The music for the podcast is provided by George Sarah. Learn more about his music over at George Sarah Music.com or by following the link in the show notes. Until next time, be well and God bless.
