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The third heresy I would identify is
biblical fundamentalism. The view that
the Bible simply read literally on the
surface is the word of God. Period. In a
literalistic way. Fundamentalism I've
discovered through YouTube is not simply
the preserve of um Christians of a
certain stripe. It's the preserve of
many of the critics of the church.
People assume that the Bible is simply
literally on the surface, unambiguously,
straightforwardly the word of God. Well,
that's fundamentalism. You know what's
interesting to me about that is I think
the fundamentalist view is out there. I
think fundamentalist Christianity is out
there, but the Catholic view of the
Bible is not out there. It's very clear
to me from these YouTube uh pieces. It's
not there. Some will listen to me and
say, "Well, that's a peculiar
perspective of this priest. I, you know,
he's he's uh in his own world." I said,
"No, that's the standard Catholic
approach, but people don't know it.
People don't know it." And so, in some
ways, it is a failure on our part that
we've not gotten our subtle, complex
approach to the Bible out there. Now,
I've said many times on the forum, the
Bible is not a book. It's a collection
of books from a wide variety of
different genre. Some are more
straightforwardly historical, should be
read in a more literal way, but many are
not. Some are uh more along the lines of
of saga or legend. Some are poetic, some
are more philosophical. Well, part of
the the art and science of biblical
interpretation is to know those uh
differences in genre. I've been
continually impressed by the fact that
the critics of the church come at the
Bible in such a ham-handed way, in such
an awkward way, not even exercising the
basic uh discipline that we'd use in
reading secular texts. So, you pick up a
whole range of books. You have uh Winnie
the Pooh and you have Dante's Divine
Comedy and you have a Faulner novel and
you have Carl Samberg's uh biography of
Lincoln. They're from a wide variety of
genre. you're not going to read them all
the same way. Well, that same discipline
that we bring to our ordinary reading,
we must bring to the complexity of the
biblical text. I found that over and
over again, that's a problem on YouTube
is people just don't come at the Bible
with that um interpretive subtlety. And
the result is, okay, the Bible says the
world's 5,000 years old. The Bible says
they're talking snakes. The Bible says
Jonah lives in the belly of the whale.
Isn't that all preodern nonsense? a
bronze age mythology. So why do I take
it seriously? And I always say, look,
you've got to give this book the same
respect you'd give to a set of secular
texts that you're reading. We need this
long interpretive tradition of the
church, which involves the liturgy. It
involves theology. It involves biblical
interpretation all preserved in the
great common conversation of the
church's life. You need that to read the
Bible effectively. And see the breakdown
of that to me is evident everywhere on
YouTube that people don't have the right
interpretive uh millure to read the
Bible properly. The fourth uh heresy I
noticed and it brings us right back to
Irenaeus because he fought the same one
is called Marcianism. Back in the second
century there was a heretic named
Marcian who claimed this. He said the
god of the old testament is a false god.
It's a fallen god because he's cruel and
he's petty and he's violent and he's
ignorant. And the New Testament reveals
the true God. And so what Christianity
must do is it must the Old Testament. It
must set that aside as a fallen
revelation and embrace uh the New
Testament. St. Erynaeus took as one of
his major opponents Marcian and he said
no we can't read the Bible that way. The
Bible is the integrated revelation of
the one God. Well, see, I see Marcenism
everywhere on the YouTube forum. Again
and again, people say, you know, the God
of the Old Testament is hateful,
violent, uh wants to dash the heads of
babies against stones. He's putting the
ban on cities, you know, kill every man,
woman, child, and animal in the city.
The cruel, capriccious, violent God of
the Old Testament. And and that's why I
can't take the Bible seriously. That's
why I can't take religion seriously.
over and again I see that
well I respond really in the way of
Irenaeus I say look if you're a
Christian you read the whole Bible in
light of one great interpretive key
namely Jesus Christ in the book of
revelation we find this great scene of
the lamb in the heavenly court and it's
the lamb who symbolizes Christ crucified
and risen who alone is able to open the
scroll with with the seven seals
The scroll symbolizes history. It
symbolizes the great story. Who can
interpret this for us? Who can who can
help us understand it? No one but the
lamb. The lamb opens the seals. The
point of that is we read all of history
and all of the Bible in light of Christ
crucified and risen from the dead. Where
is God fully revealed? In him. God of
violence, hatred. No, no, no, no, no. On
the contrary, it's the humble Christ
crucified who allowed the powers of the
world to wash over him, who responded in
nonviolent love, forgiveness,
compassion. The risen Christ who came
back to those who killed him, who
betrayed him, who denied him, and said,
"Shalom, peace." That is the logos, to
use John's language, the word. That is
the full manifestation of who God is.
Now the Christians realize in light of
that we look back at the whole Bible and
we read it through that lens. That's why
as I suggested in one of the uh pieces
on YouTube that when the early church
fathers people like Irenaeus origin
early early figures when they read
stories from the Old Testament that
seemed very violent they read them in a
allegorizing way in a spiritual way as
about the spiritual struggle. for
example that God says put the ban on the
city. It means put the ban on what's
dysfunctional in you. The certain types
of evil you can't fool around with. You
can't leave a little bit behind. You
know, well, I I basically took care of
that. No, no, you must put the ban on
it. So, they read that in an
allegorizing way. Here's a second
perspective on it also from
Irenaeus. God is fully disclosed in
Christ. He speaks as it were to his
mature children this full word of
truth. How does a parent deal with a
little kid, a little kid just starting
out who's doing something wrong? He's
not going to sit down in a sort of
carefully nuanced way and make an
argument. He's going to say, "No, stop
it." Right? That's why you talk to a
child. Irenaeus said the Bible is the
account of God's steady fatherhip of
this people over many, many centuries.
Does he roar at times? Does he thunder
at times in a frightening way? Yeah. The
same way that that a a parent might
thunder to a child. Imagine how the
child receives that message. So,
Irenaeus said that's the Bible is we can
see God's parenting of of Israel over
the centuries. Another observation is
there in the Bible a steady evolution of
a people's perception of God. See, to
some degree, the Bible, as Vatican 2
said, is the word of God, but in the
words of men. It's coming through these
very human um experiences and and
expressions. Might they be growing in
their perception of who God is and what
God is like? So, the God, let's say, of
of certain parts of the Bible is
different, it seems, than the God of
later parts of the Bible. Might that
represent Israel coming to a richer,
deeper perception of God? Not so much
God changing but the people's perception
of God deepening and changing.
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