# Nones Rediscovering the Bible - Bishop Barron's Daily

An episode of [Daily Sermons With Bishop Robert Barron](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/6783446284), 16 Jul 2026, 32 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/72733591/nones_rediscovering_the_bible.mp3



## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: We have some of the best evidence for Jesus of
[0:02] Speaker 1: anyone from the ancient world. Do you believe Alexander the
[0:05] Speaker 1: Great was a real historical figure? Well, who doubts it?
[0:08] Speaker 1: Do you believe Julius Caesar was a real historical figure?
[0:10] Speaker 1: Who would doubt it? We have far more historically reliable
[0:15] Speaker 1: information about Jesus than either of those two figures.
[0:25] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I'm Brandon Vatt,
[0:28] Speaker 2: the host and the senior publishing director at Word on Fire.
[0:32] Speaker 2: An exciting group of psychologists, scientists, and thought leaders are
[0:37] Speaker 2: rediscovering the Bible, its beauty, its brilliance, its value. What's
[0:42] Speaker 2: causing so many of them to look at the Bible
[0:45] Speaker 2: with fresh eyes. That's what we're discussing today with Bishop Baron,
[0:48] Speaker 2: who joins us freshly back from Rome in our studio
[0:52] Speaker 2: in Rochester. Bishop, good to see you again.
[0:54] Speaker 1: Back from Rome. Not sure how freshly back I am,
[0:57] Speaker 1: because I got a cold or something at the end
[1:00] Speaker 1: of my time in Wrong. I'm just kind of getting
[1:02] Speaker 1: over it, so you might hear it my voice a bit.
[1:04] Speaker 1: At the end of the Senate everybody was coughing all
[1:07] Speaker 1: around all the table, so there was something there was
[1:09] Speaker 1: something going around that I got.
[1:11] Speaker 2: Now you were there for nearly a month. I know
[1:14] Speaker 2: we can't summarize all of that succinctly here, but give
[1:16] Speaker 2: us a little two minute summary of how was the
[1:19] Speaker 2: synod for you?
[1:20] Speaker 1: You know, the Cenad was good, Brandon, It was also exhausting.
[1:24] Speaker 1: I think my illness is probably the side of that.
[1:27] Speaker 1: They really worked us. Anyone of the thinks we were
[1:29] Speaker 1: over there on a little Roman holiday or something. They
[1:33] Speaker 1: had us going six days a week from morning tonight.
[1:37] Speaker 1: The day ended at seven fifteen or seven thirty every night.
[1:40] Speaker 1: Then you go for a Roman dinner and you'd be
[1:42] Speaker 1: finished at about nine or nine thirty and ready for
[1:45] Speaker 1: bed and start all over again. So it was a workout.
[1:49] Speaker 1: Best thing about it meeting all these people from around
[1:53] Speaker 1: the world. There were about four hundred people in that
[1:56] Speaker 1: space where we were, and you know, English, thank God,
[2:00] Speaker 1: links you to so many people around the world, and
[2:02] Speaker 1: I've got some Spanish and French. I could speak to others.
[2:05] Speaker 1: But the opportunity to see the church in its universality
[2:10] Speaker 1: and to make personal contact with a lot of you know,
[2:13] Speaker 1: key figures. There were fifty five zero cardinals at the
[2:18] Speaker 1: Senate so it was like a little mini conclave. And
[2:21] Speaker 1: I think for a lot of them, there haven't been
[2:24] Speaker 1: a lot of consistories during the last many years. Probably
[2:27] Speaker 1: the best chance for a lot of them to get
[2:28] Speaker 1: to know each other was at the Senate. So that
[2:32] Speaker 1: was probably the best part about it. But I'll say
[2:33] Speaker 1: more about it a little bit later.
[2:35] Speaker 2: On your way back from Rome, you stopped in London
[2:38] Speaker 2: for this ARC conference which featured some of the people
[2:41] Speaker 2: we're going to be discussing in this episode. Tell us
[2:43] Speaker 2: about that conference.
[2:44] Speaker 1: Yeah, I was sponsored by Jordan Peterson and others, and
[2:48] Speaker 1: you know, attempt to bring people together around a positive
[2:52] Speaker 1: vision for the future as nations think through politics and
[2:56] Speaker 1: economics and culture. Is there a positive way for especially
[3:01] Speaker 1: around these issues of meaning? I would say, so, you know,
[3:04] Speaker 1: I've been drawn a bit into that world through Peterson.
[3:06] Speaker 1: He invited me to come and speak. We all speakers
[3:09] Speaker 1: gave like ten or twelve minute interventions, real short, but
[3:12] Speaker 1: I spoke about freedom and responsibility in sort of the
[3:16] Speaker 1: Great Catholic tradition. I was kind of tired out when
[3:19] Speaker 1: I got there, just at the end of the sinate.
[3:21] Speaker 1: I was kind of sick, But you know, I met
[3:23] Speaker 1: a lot of interesting people there too, and I enjoyed.
[3:26] Speaker 2: That Peterson is one of the people featured in this
[3:31] Speaker 2: new book that we've been talking about here in the podcast.
[3:34] Speaker 2: It's by Justin Bryer Lee, and it's titled The Surprising
[3:37] Speaker 2: Rebirth of Belief in God. Why New Atheism grew old
[3:42] Speaker 2: and secular thinkers are considering Christianity again. The first discussion
[3:46] Speaker 2: we had was about the rise in the fall of
[3:48] Speaker 2: the New Atheism, but today I wanted to talk with
[3:51] Speaker 2: you about a chapter in there titled Rediscovering the Bible,
[3:54] Speaker 2: which shows how many of these secular thinkers and influencers
[3:58] Speaker 2: have moved past the new eighthst criticisms of the Bible
[4:01] Speaker 2: and are approaching it in new and intriguing ways. Bradley
[4:06] Speaker 2: starts the chapter by outlining how poorly the new Atheists
[4:10] Speaker 2: engaged the Bible again in the early to mid two thousands.
[4:13] Speaker 2: He says, and I'm quoting him, part of the problem
[4:16] Speaker 2: is that the Bible's fiercest contemporary critics have tried to
[4:20] Speaker 2: dismiss the Bible's credibility by reading it in the same
[4:24] Speaker 2: way as the fundamentalist Christians that they often find themselves
[4:28] Speaker 2: at loggerheads with where do you see the New atheists
[4:32] Speaker 2: having gone wrong in their approach to the Bible.
[4:35] Speaker 1: In almost every way? And it's one of the stupidest
[4:37] Speaker 1: elements of a new atheist movement, full of bad arguments
[4:41] Speaker 1: that they dragged up from Feuerbach and Marx and Freud,
[4:46] Speaker 1: But the way they approached the Bible was especially stupid
[4:49] Speaker 1: and especially unhelpful. They betrayed almost no knowledge of sophisticated
[4:55] Speaker 1: biblical scholarship, and not just in recent years. I mean
[4:58] Speaker 1: go all the way back to the beginn go back
[5:00] Speaker 1: to people like Origin in the end of the second
[5:03] Speaker 1: early third century Augustine, who were reading these texts in
[5:07] Speaker 1: a very sophisticated, layered interpretive manner. The New Atheist approached
[5:14] Speaker 1: them the way someone who has just picked up the
[5:17] Speaker 1: Bible has no knowledge of hermeneutics, of context, of history,
[5:22] Speaker 1: of history, of interpretation of theology, and just read them
[5:27] Speaker 1: the way you'd read a comic book and say, well,
[5:29] Speaker 1: this is obviously ridiculous. You know, it was one of
[5:31] Speaker 1: the stupidest parts, as I say, of the New Atheists critique.
[5:34] Speaker 1: And if one of them had just taken time because
[5:37] Speaker 1: I've said this, Brandon to so many of their disciples
[5:39] Speaker 1: online read an elementary book of Biblical interpretation. Get Bible
[5:45] Speaker 1: Interpretation one oh one would help you get over a
[5:49] Speaker 1: lot of these really infantile objections the new Atheists had
[5:53] Speaker 1: to the Bible. It was a complete caricature at a
[5:57] Speaker 1: construction of a straw man.
[6:00] Speaker 2: One of their main goals was to undermine the credibility
[6:04] Speaker 2: of the Bible. They thought that the Bible falls, Christianity falls,
[6:08] Speaker 2: and so they set these almost impossible tests for the
[6:13] Speaker 2: Bible to meet in order for it to be credible.
[6:16] Speaker 2: Brierley gives one example. He gives a quote from Peter Atkins,
[6:19] Speaker 2: who's a very outspoken atheist scientist from Oxford. He was
[6:23] Speaker 2: once in a debate with a Christian and he said
[6:26] Speaker 2: that the Bible might be able to authenticate its divine
[6:29] Speaker 2: credentials if it contained even just one unmistakable scientific hypothesis,
[6:35] Speaker 2: such as the second law of thermodynamics. And I'm quoting
[6:38] Speaker 2: him here at Peter Atkins, he says, if I were
[6:41] Speaker 2: looking in the Bible, heaven forbid, and I would expect
[6:43] Speaker 2: to see something like increase and entropy is equal to
[6:47] Speaker 2: q reversible divided by temperature. If there was an equation
[6:51] Speaker 2: in the Bible like that, rather than all this wishy
[6:54] Speaker 2: washy elastic writing, I might believe in it. How would
[6:58] Speaker 2: you respond to that, Well.
[6:59] Speaker 1: It's ridiculous, it's stupid. No serious interbret of the Bible
[7:02] Speaker 1: has ever said, from ancient times to the present that
[7:05] Speaker 1: it's a kind of deus ex machina, as though God
[7:08] Speaker 1: is just clearing out all of culture and all of
[7:11] Speaker 1: humanity and all of the human mind and just speaking,
[7:15] Speaker 1: you know, his truth in this direct way. As Vatican
[7:18] Speaker 1: two would say, the Bible is the word of God,
[7:20] Speaker 1: but in the words of men. So God speaks through
[7:25] Speaker 1: these culturally and historically determined figures, speaking to their own
[7:31] Speaker 1: audience in their own way. But God speaks through them
[7:34] Speaker 1: in a non competitive manner. What we should not expect is,
[7:38] Speaker 1: as I say, a kind of deus ex machina that's
[7:40] Speaker 1: clearing all that out. God just comes bursting in. No
[7:45] Speaker 1: serious interbret of the Bible from ancient times to the
[7:47] Speaker 1: present would say that's the way it operates. But rather
[7:50] Speaker 1: it's God non competitively speaking in and through in a
[7:56] Speaker 1: deeply respectful way. You might say, these particular historical and
[8:00] Speaker 1: cultural forms, So to expect a scientific formula such as
[8:05] Speaker 1: that which became apparent to human beings only in the
[8:08] Speaker 1: you know, mint to late that one I suppose earlier.
[8:12] Speaker 1: But that's that violates this this principle of God's non
[8:18] Speaker 1: competitive speaking through human words. So it just it just
[8:24] Speaker 1: betrays an ignorance of the way the Bibles are read
[8:27] Speaker 1: from the beginning.
[8:29] Speaker 2: I think it also betrays an ignorance about the purpose
[8:32] Speaker 2: of the Bible, which is not a scientific textbook meant
[8:35] Speaker 2: to convey scientific facts. That's what you see the new
[8:38] Speaker 2: atheists claiming all the time they criticized the science of genesis, right.
[8:43] Speaker 1: It was not a scientiscredibility. It was you know, George Coyn,
[8:47] Speaker 1: the Jesuit priests and scientists, you know who laid this
[8:51] Speaker 1: out for simply one time by saying, look, the last
[8:53] Speaker 1: book of the Bible, let's say, you know, the Gospel
[8:56] Speaker 1: of Johenre written around the year one hundred AD. First
[8:59] Speaker 1: books of the properly scientific method written sometime in the
[9:04] Speaker 1: sixteenth century. There's the gap. In other words, you're not
[9:07] Speaker 1: going to find scientific literature anywhere in the Bible. It's
[9:11] Speaker 1: not a science book. It's not conditioned by that literary
[9:15] Speaker 1: form or that epistemic purpose. So it's just a stupid
[9:18] Speaker 1: category error to say, oh, the science of the Bible
[9:21] Speaker 1: is bad. It's not science at all that we're dealing with,
[9:24] Speaker 1: but something else, all right.
[9:27] Speaker 2: So, after showcasing how the new atheists missed the mark
[9:30] Speaker 2: and their interpretations of the Bible, Brierley then introduces a
[9:33] Speaker 2: group that he calls the New Thinkers Capital N Capital
[9:37] Speaker 2: T in opposition to the new atheists, who are taking
[9:41] Speaker 2: a far more interesting approach to the Bible. He gives
[9:44] Speaker 2: a few examples I want to talk about them. One
[9:46] Speaker 2: is a man named Jonathan Heit. Height is a social psychologist.
[9:51] Speaker 2: He's the best selling author of several books, including The
[9:54] Speaker 2: Righteous Mind and The Coddling of the American Mind. But
[9:57] Speaker 2: it was while researching his book called The Happiness Hypothesis
[10:01] Speaker 2: that Height came to appreciate the Bible as, in his
[10:05] Speaker 2: own words, among the richest repositories of psychological wisdom ever assembled.
[10:11] Speaker 2: He said this, I was a standard American scientific atheist jew.
[10:16] Speaker 2: I was not predisposed to like religion, but in the
[10:19] Speaker 2: course of writing that book, I came to see that
[10:22] Speaker 2: religion is part of human nature, and America religions as
[10:26] Speaker 2: practiced make people better. They bind them into communities that
[10:30] Speaker 2: try to elevate each other morally. When all the new
[10:33] Speaker 2: atheists were writing nasty books about religion and the Bible
[10:36] Speaker 2: and saying this is false, I was saying, well, actually,
[10:40] Speaker 2: there's a lot of wisdom here. What do you make
[10:42] Speaker 2: of Jonathan Height's approach.
[10:44] Speaker 1: He's getting closer. So you've got these kind of simple
[10:47] Speaker 1: minded dismissals of the Bible that are based upon just
[10:51] Speaker 1: complete misunderstandings of its nature and purpose. Now with someone
[10:54] Speaker 1: like Height, you're getting closer to it. So he's nowhere
[10:58] Speaker 1: near what we would call the revelation of God and
[11:01] Speaker 1: understanding the purposes of God and salvation, history and all that.
[11:04] Speaker 1: But he is indeed seeing what's there to be seen.
[11:08] Speaker 1: The Bible does contain, as he says, accumulated wisdom in
[11:12] Speaker 1: regard to life and human relationships and psychological development. The
[11:18] Speaker 1: Church fathers would have seen this as one of the
[11:20] Speaker 1: senses of scripture they call the tropological or the moral sense.
[11:25] Speaker 1: We today might say the ethical sense or the psychological
[11:30] Speaker 1: sense of the Bible. That you can look at the
[11:32] Speaker 1: great stories of you know, Jonah or Noah, or Abraham
[11:35] Speaker 1: or Moses, and you can distill from them a great
[11:39] Speaker 1: deal of wisdom about human nature, the human mind, human relationships.
[11:44] Speaker 1: Think of someone like Thomas Mahn that writes, you know,
[11:47] Speaker 1: this fifteen hundred page novel based on the story of
[11:50] Speaker 1: Joseph and his brothers. Well, there's a twentieth century novelists
[11:54] Speaker 1: deeply attuned to psychological dimension and finding all of this
[11:59] Speaker 1: richness in the Bible. Good. It's there to be found.
[12:03] Speaker 1: And you're getting closer now to reading the literature properly
[12:08] Speaker 1: because I think it does to some degree fit in
[12:10] Speaker 1: that genre of psychology, of humanism, of even spirituality in
[12:19] Speaker 1: a broad sense. I think someone approaching Christianity not ready
[12:22] Speaker 1: for the high octane stuff yet, but can still sense, oh,
[12:26] Speaker 1: some perennial spiritual themes. Sure, sure, all that's there, And
[12:31] Speaker 1: it's he's getting into the courtyard of the Gentiles, if
[12:35] Speaker 1: you want to put it that way. He's he's not
[12:36] Speaker 1: just throwing rocks at the temple. He's gotten into the
[12:38] Speaker 1: temple and has seen things that are there to be seen.
[12:42] Speaker 1: I would now say to him, We'll keep coming, keep going,
[12:45] Speaker 1: you'll find out more and more about the Bible.
[12:48] Speaker 2: Well, similar to Jonathan Heite, our friend, Jordan Peterson, the
[12:51] Speaker 2: well known psychologist and lecturer, sees the Bible as a
[12:54] Speaker 2: source of psychological brilliance, especially in how it describes the
[12:58] Speaker 2: human condition evil suffering. Now, Jordan is not a committed Christian,
[13:04] Speaker 2: although we just heard the wonderful news that his wife, Tammy,
[13:07] Speaker 2: will be entering the church soon. Yeah, praise be to God.
[13:11] Speaker 2: But Jordan's wonder and enthusiasm for the Bible seems to
[13:16] Speaker 2: grow with each passing year, and he's helping millions of
[13:19] Speaker 2: other people discover the Bible for the first time. In fact,
[13:22] Speaker 2: I love this little anecdote from Brierly's book. He cites
[13:26] Speaker 2: a young man named Daniel James. Daniel described himself in
[13:29] Speaker 2: his teenage years as a hardened anarchist atheist, but he
[13:34] Speaker 2: was recently baptized in the Catholic Church. Daniel said that
[13:37] Speaker 2: as a young man, he thought the Bible was a
[13:40] Speaker 2: silly book. He took his cues from Lawrence Kraus's description
[13:43] Speaker 2: of the Bible as a book written by ignorant Bronze
[13:46] Speaker 2: age peasants. However, he says, when he started watching Peterson's
[13:50] Speaker 2: biblical lectures, he found himself blown away and I'm quoting
[13:54] Speaker 2: him here, he said, I've never heard the Bible spoken
[13:56] Speaker 2: about in that way. Jordan really just opened the door
[13:59] Speaker 2: for me to understand that, yes, it was written by
[14:02] Speaker 2: people who lived in an era before science, but they
[14:05] Speaker 2: were by no means ignorant. What I love about this
[14:08] Speaker 2: bishop is it illustrates how the Bible itself is becoming
[14:13] Speaker 2: a new vehicle for evangelization. We're seeing people come to
[14:16] Speaker 2: the faith through the Bible, and that hasn't always been
[14:19] Speaker 2: the case.
[14:20] Speaker 1: No, this song is to say there at first, you
[14:21] Speaker 1: know Kraus's remark, which has always struck me as incredibly patronizing,
[14:26] Speaker 1: stupid and incredibly patronizing, as though we're the only people
[14:30] Speaker 1: that have this thing figured out, We're the only ones
[14:32] Speaker 1: who have legitimate knowledge. So what Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Michelangelo,
[14:40] Speaker 1: none of Shakespeare, none of these pre scientific people knew
[14:44] Speaker 1: anything about anything. I mean, give me a break. It's
[14:48] Speaker 1: breathtaking cultural arrogance, this thing about the Bronze Age and
[14:52] Speaker 1: so on. Who cares when it was written? If you
[14:55] Speaker 1: can discern in this text tremendous truth and wisdom, which
[15:00] Speaker 1: obviously the Western tradition has partly every major figure up
[15:05] Speaker 1: until very contemporary times drew from the Bible enormous inspiration, insight,
[15:10] Speaker 1: and so on. So just the breathtaking cultural arrogance to
[15:15] Speaker 1: just you know, dismiss that as old, you know, bronze
[15:17] Speaker 1: age whatever. I have a visceral reaction when I come
[15:21] Speaker 1: across that little phrase bronze age, because they all picked
[15:24] Speaker 1: up on that, all the epigons and disciples of these guys,
[15:27] Speaker 1: and it just infuriates me with its stupidity. So that's
[15:31] Speaker 1: my that's my first remark. What was the next thing, Brandon?
[15:37] Speaker 1: Because I got caught up in my poemic there.
[15:40] Speaker 2: The Bible serving as this new vehicle people. Yeah, I've
[15:43] Speaker 2: heard this pattern from so many people, Jordan Peterson to
[15:47] Speaker 2: the Bible to now I'm being baptized.
[15:49] Speaker 1: Yeah. Well see, I think with Peterson, and I love
[15:52] Speaker 1: this is and I mean this as a compliment. It
[15:54] Speaker 1: is kind of innocence. You know. He approached the Bible,
[15:57] Speaker 1: I think, without knowing that much about it. But he
[16:00] Speaker 1: didn't have these terrible prejudices that the new atheist types
[16:04] Speaker 1: have in place. He went into it with a kind
[16:06] Speaker 1: of innocence and with his finely tuned psychological mind shaped
[16:10] Speaker 1: by Jung and others, you know. And what he found was,
[16:13] Speaker 1: I think again a version of the tropological sense of
[16:16] Speaker 1: the Bible. He found the tremendous psychological and human wisdom
[16:22] Speaker 1: within it. Just recently I saw him with Bill Maher
[16:26] Speaker 1: and he was talking about the Book of Jonah, which
[16:28] Speaker 1: is one of my favorites, and he made a very
[16:31] Speaker 1: simple observation about it, but it got mars attention, I
[16:33] Speaker 1: can tell. He said, the stories about what happens when
[16:37] Speaker 1: you don't obey the voice of your conscience. So what
[16:41] Speaker 1: the Book of John would call the call of God. Fine,
[16:44] Speaker 1: I agree with that that comes often through the conscience,
[16:49] Speaker 1: which Newman called the aboriginal vicar of Christ and the soul.
[16:52] Speaker 1: So when your conscience says you need to do something
[16:56] Speaker 1: and you don't do it, you run the other way.
[16:59] Speaker 1: What happens disaster for you, yes, but also disaster for
[17:04] Speaker 1: everybody around you. And Peterson was reflecting on what happens
[17:09] Speaker 1: to a society when all Moss people are not following
[17:13] Speaker 1: their conscience. What's gonna happen is a cultural disaster and breakdown. Now,
[17:19] Speaker 1: when Jonah finally gets back on beam and he follows
[17:24] Speaker 1: the prompting of the Lord, he does what his conscience tells.
[17:27] Speaker 1: Then you know, salvation comes to this city of Nineveh. Well,
[17:31] Speaker 1: I remember MA was taking this holl and he said,
[17:33] Speaker 1: I just thought it was a stupid story about a guy,
[17:36] Speaker 1: a fish that swallowed this guy up. But see, there's
[17:39] Speaker 1: the whole problem is mar was he got very bad
[17:42] Speaker 1: formation in his Catholicism. He was raised in a Catholic school,
[17:46] Speaker 1: but got very bad formation, obviously, and then you just
[17:50] Speaker 1: wrote that silly, old Bronze age crazy story. But Peterson,
[17:54] Speaker 1: with his sort of more innocent eyes saw this great
[18:00] Speaker 1: call it psychological and ultimately spiritual depths within that story.
[18:04] Speaker 1: Now take some more steps. The Lord Jesus saying, the
[18:08] Speaker 1: only sign I will give you is the sign of Jonah,
[18:11] Speaker 1: you know, who spend three days in the belly of
[18:13] Speaker 1: the fish, and the Son of Man three days in
[18:15] Speaker 1: the belly of the earth. Now we'll start following that
[18:18] Speaker 1: story all the way, accepting what Peterson saw. I think
[18:21] Speaker 1: that's absolutely right. Now, keep going, keep going through all
[18:25] Speaker 1: the senses of scripture.
[18:27] Speaker 2: I know we've talked a lot about Jordan Peterson, in
[18:30] Speaker 2: part because he represents this new generation of thinkers who
[18:34] Speaker 2: are approaching the Bible with fresh eyes with astonishment. Brierley
[18:38] Speaker 2: includes a section of an interview that Peterson did on
[18:42] Speaker 2: a podcast where he covered Christ's passion in the Gospels.
[18:46] Speaker 2: I think this illustrates his approach to the Bible. Here's
[18:49] Speaker 2: what Peterson says, you cannot write a more tragic story.
[18:52] Speaker 2: It's impossible. The injustices that Christ experienced were the aggregation
[18:57] Speaker 2: of everything that people are afraid of, and that each
[19:01] Speaker 2: character in this story, Mary, Pilot, Judas, Barabbus, the mob,
[19:07] Speaker 2: they all speak to an aspect of our own human
[19:09] Speaker 2: condition as we face death, destruction, and despair. And yet
[19:14] Speaker 2: Peterson says, when we look harder, we see death and resurrection.
[19:20] Speaker 2: How would you again describe this reading of the Gospels,
[19:24] Speaker 2: Jordan Peterson's reading of the Gospels, And why do you
[19:26] Speaker 2: think so many people find it attractive?
[19:28] Speaker 1: I would say, he's not far from the Kingdom of Heaven.
[19:31] Speaker 1: I think he's seen something very profound and he's done.
[19:34] Speaker 1: I know this, and it's from a psychological perspective. As
[19:38] Speaker 1: the Son of Man is lifted up the way the
[19:40] Speaker 1: bronze serpent in the desert was lifted up, same idea
[19:43] Speaker 1: in the Old Testament. Take that which has bitten you
[19:47] Speaker 1: and threatens you and look at it, and when you
[19:50] Speaker 1: do that, you disempower it. And that's a psychological strategy often,
[19:56] Speaker 1: isn't it? Is it? Okay, what's frightening you? We got
[19:58] Speaker 1: to find a way for you to look at that
[20:01] Speaker 1: is to move into that space. You're afraid of heights, Okay,
[20:04] Speaker 1: we got to get you up to heights gradually. It'll
[20:07] Speaker 1: take some time, but you've got to face that fear
[20:10] Speaker 1: and you disempower it. It's the old Buddhist trope about
[20:14] Speaker 1: invite your fears in for tea, and the idea there
[20:18] Speaker 1: is you've now distanced yourself from your fears, because when
[20:22] Speaker 1: you're caught in anxiety, you become your fear. You know
[20:26] Speaker 1: what I'm saying, You are your fear. Well, invite them
[20:29] Speaker 1: in for tea means okay, yes, there's my fear of death.
[20:32] Speaker 1: Yes there's my fear of failure, there's my fear of sickness,
[20:36] Speaker 1: and I'm going to serve tea to them. You know,
[20:38] Speaker 1: I've now distanced myself from that. He's seeing that now
[20:42] Speaker 1: in the passion narratives is that we are compelled to
[20:46] Speaker 1: look at what frightens us. And I think he's dead
[20:49] Speaker 1: right about that. You look at Jesus christfight failure, physical suffering,
[20:53] Speaker 1: psychological suffering, abandonment by your friends, institutional injustice. I've often
[20:58] Speaker 1: spoken about that is, all the forms of dysfunction are
[21:02] Speaker 1: kind of on display. But then what happens when you
[21:05] Speaker 1: look at those. Now here's what I would do. I'd
[21:09] Speaker 1: say yes to all of that. Now, let's keep going.
[21:13] Speaker 1: Let's keep going, because Jesus is not just a literary trope,
[21:19] Speaker 1: not just an archetype of the collective unconscious. He lived,
[21:24] Speaker 1: you know, he was crucified, indeed under Punch his pilot
[21:27] Speaker 1: whom we can identify historically, and he rose from the dead.
[21:33] Speaker 1: In other words, there's a very powerful, divinely sanctioned warrant
[21:39] Speaker 1: for our freedom from fear. So as we look at
[21:42] Speaker 1: the suffering of Jesus, yes, indeed there's a kind of
[21:46] Speaker 1: psychological liberation you might say, that comes from that. But
[21:50] Speaker 1: keep going. Is God, through his graceful intervention, through raising
[21:55] Speaker 1: Jesus from the dead, has definitively liberated us from all
[21:59] Speaker 1: those fear, so that now we can I've got to
[22:03] Speaker 1: I can wear this cross, this awful sign, this awful
[22:08] Speaker 1: instrument of torture. But I can wear it as this
[22:10] Speaker 1: beautiful religious symbol. But it happened because of the grace
[22:14] Speaker 1: of God. So again I would say to Jordan, terrific.
[22:19] Speaker 1: Now let's keep going.
[22:22] Speaker 2: So Justin Brierley celebrates a lot of these developments in
[22:26] Speaker 2: regards to the Bible, but he also points out there's
[22:28] Speaker 2: still a lot of work to do. He cites a
[22:31] Speaker 2: survey from the UK, which is his home area, that
[22:35] Speaker 2: found that forty percent of the population of adults either
[22:38] Speaker 2: believe that Jesus is a mythical character or they're uncertain
[22:43] Speaker 2: whether he was a real person. So, in other words,
[22:45] Speaker 2: nearly half of adults in the UK think that Jesus
[22:48] Speaker 2: was either a myth or a legend. What would you
[22:51] Speaker 2: say to people who find the Bible interesting? Maybe helpful
[22:54] Speaker 2: from a psychological perspective, but doubt it's historical reliability.
[22:58] Speaker 1: Read the scholars. There's an absolute consensus scholars left to right,
[23:04] Speaker 1: skeptical to devout, affirming the real historical existence of Jesus.
[23:09] Speaker 1: I don't think that's seriously disputed. Go back to the
[23:12] Speaker 1: nineteenth century there was a greater skepticism about it. But
[23:16] Speaker 1: I think in the course of the twentieth century and
[23:18] Speaker 1: even in very recent years, it's been affirmed by the
[23:22] Speaker 1: whole range of scholarship that we have some of the
[23:25] Speaker 1: best evidence for Jesus of anyone from the ancient world.
[23:28] Speaker 1: Do you believe Alexander the Great was a real historical figure? Well,
[23:31] Speaker 1: who doubts it. Do you believe Julius Caesar was a
[23:34] Speaker 1: real historical figure? Who would doubt it? We have far
[23:37] Speaker 1: more historically reliable information about Jesus than either of those
[23:41] Speaker 1: two figures. But it's born branded of a deep prejudice
[23:45] Speaker 1: against religion. So we want to debunk and kind of
[23:48] Speaker 1: re mythologize Jesus, but it's just not faithful at all
[23:53] Speaker 1: to the serious scholarship. The Gospels would fit into the
[23:57] Speaker 1: genre of ancient biography. Look at biographies from the ancient world.
[24:01] Speaker 1: They're not written like ours. You know what you're meant
[24:04] Speaker 1: to be like as close to journalistic reality as possible,
[24:08] Speaker 1: and with ten thousand footnotes. But nevertheless, no one in
[24:12] Speaker 1: the ancient world writing a biography of a great figure
[24:15] Speaker 1: was presenting this figure as a myth or a legend.
[24:19] Speaker 1: They're told in stylized ways, to be sure, but that
[24:23] Speaker 1: we're dealing with a real figure. And look at the
[24:25] Speaker 1: prologue to Luke. You know, Luke is announcing I'm writing
[24:29] Speaker 1: basically what we call today an ancient biography, and I've
[24:33] Speaker 1: consulted the sources and I put them together and here's
[24:35] Speaker 1: my picture. So no, I think it's incredibly naive and
[24:41] Speaker 1: opposed to the clear academic consensus to hold that Jesus
[24:46] Speaker 1: didn't really exist.
[24:47] Speaker 2: Let me close with this question. It's really exciting, undeniably
[24:51] Speaker 2: to see all of these new thinkers such as Jonathan
[24:54] Speaker 2: Hyde and Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland finding new beauty
[24:57] Speaker 2: and meaning and wisdom in the Bible. It shows that
[25:00] Speaker 2: even many non Christians can recognize how the Bible helps
[25:04] Speaker 2: us to lead better, more meaningful lives. But it comes
[25:10] Speaker 2: back to the question of whether the Bible is true.
[25:14] Speaker 2: Does it really matter whether the Bible, whether the stories
[25:17] Speaker 2: in the Bible are true, as long as they're helpful
[25:20] Speaker 2: and inspiring.
[25:21] Speaker 1: What would you say, Well, see, the Bible is a
[25:24] Speaker 1: collection of books, right Tabiblia means the books. It's a
[25:28] Speaker 1: plural now, and so you do have Indeed, I think
[25:32] Speaker 1: in the Bible things that are closer to what we
[25:34] Speaker 1: would call straight history. You've got proverbial literature. You have
[25:39] Speaker 1: the psalms, which our poems or songs. You have epistolatory
[25:45] Speaker 1: literature like the Pauline letters. You have apocalypse, which is
[25:49] Speaker 1: its own kind of genre. You have a tall tale.
[25:53] Speaker 1: I think like Jonah would fit into that category of
[25:55] Speaker 1: a tall tale. So it's a hodgepod of different literary
[26:02] Speaker 1: styles and genres. One of the key things Vertica Too
[26:04] Speaker 1: taught us was when approaching the Bible, the first question
[26:07] Speaker 1: to ask is what genre am I dealing with? What
[26:10] Speaker 1: kind of text is this? Don't go at the Bible
[26:13] Speaker 1: with one clunky set of interpretive lenses on it's all
[26:17] Speaker 1: straightforward history. Well, no, it's a range of different genres.
[26:24] Speaker 1: You know, everything the Bible says is literally true? Well,
[26:26] Speaker 1: how about God is the Rock? There's all kinds of
[26:29] Speaker 1: metaphorical poetic language used for God. How about God, you
[26:32] Speaker 1: know walking on the wings of the wind and all
[26:34] Speaker 1: that God walking through the garden. Well, no one thinks
[26:36] Speaker 1: those are literal descriptions of God having a body and
[26:39] Speaker 1: so on. So we have to be attentive to and
[26:42] Speaker 1: then brandon even within a Biblical book. Take Genesis for example,
[26:46] Speaker 1: there are a variety of genre within the Book of Genesis,
[26:50] Speaker 1: and we have to be sensitive to that. So that,
[26:54] Speaker 1: I think is maybe one of the most important points
[26:56] Speaker 1: to make about biblical interpretation. You're dealing with a library,
[27:00] Speaker 1: not a single book written in one genre.
[27:04] Speaker 2: If I can press that question a little further though,
[27:06] Speaker 2: and narrow it down to the Gospels, because I think
[27:09] Speaker 2: this is where I find it most intriguing is and
[27:12] Speaker 2: you have people like Heighten Peterson fascinated by the person
[27:15] Speaker 2: of Jesus as a psychological symbol or archetype for Jesus,
[27:21] Speaker 2: does it matter whether Jesus actually existed, he actually rose
[27:25] Speaker 2: from the.
[27:25] Speaker 1: Dead, absolutely, because again go to the genre question, what's
[27:29] Speaker 1: the genre of the Gospels. It's ancient biography, and ancient
[27:33] Speaker 1: biographies were not trading in legendary mythic material, and there's
[27:38] Speaker 1: all kinds of clues interior to the text itself. And
[27:41] Speaker 1: then in the witness of the first Christians that they're
[27:44] Speaker 1: dealing of course with a real figure and things that
[27:48] Speaker 1: happened to him and so on. So you know what
[27:50] Speaker 1: matters immensely if Jesus becomes simply an archetype the way
[27:54] Speaker 1: he does for example in Kant And I always thought
[27:57] Speaker 1: with Jordan Peterson I've written about this. There's a sort
[28:00] Speaker 1: of Kantean tendency in him to reduce Jesus to the
[28:04] Speaker 1: archetype of the person perfectly pleasing to God. That's constant language.
[28:08] Speaker 1: So it's he's a literary trope and archetype, and we
[28:12] Speaker 1: can derive all kinds of important moral truths in otherwise
[28:14] Speaker 1: from that. But no, it matters immensely that Jesus was
[28:19] Speaker 1: and indeed is a real person.
[28:29] Speaker 2: Well, it's time now for our question from one of
[28:31] Speaker 2: our listeners. Every episode we share one question for Bishop Baron.
[28:34] Speaker 2: If you have one, you can send it in to
[28:36] Speaker 2: us at the website Askbishop Baron dot com. Today we
[28:40] Speaker 2: have one from the other side of the world. A
[28:41] Speaker 2: young woman named Marissa from Vietnam has a good question
[28:45] Speaker 2: about God's nature. Here's Marissa.
[28:50] Speaker 3: Hi, Bishop, I'm Marissa from Ho City, or Vietnam, and
[28:55] Speaker 3: I'm sixteen. You so and Bishop of been wondering how
[28:59] Speaker 3: can Jesus at the same time a god and a
[29:04] Speaker 3: human being?
[29:06] Speaker 1: Like?
[29:07] Speaker 3: By my research, I found that God's nature and human
[29:11] Speaker 3: nature have many differences. Thank you for your time and
[29:15] Speaker 3: have a good day.
[29:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks for the question. You're perfectly in line with
[29:19] Speaker 1: the instincts of the fathers at the Council of Kelceeden,
[29:23] Speaker 1: who said famously, in Jesus two natures come together, divine
[29:27] Speaker 1: and human, but without mixing, mingling or confusion. They knew,
[29:33] Speaker 1: as you correctly know that divine nature and human nature
[29:36] Speaker 1: are incompatible. We say God is infinitely, human beings are finite.
[29:40] Speaker 1: God is immaterial. We're material. God is eternable. We're in time,
[29:45] Speaker 1: so they are. And that's why the incarnation does not
[29:48] Speaker 1: mean that God turns into a creature, that he stops
[29:52] Speaker 1: being God and turns into a creature, or that a
[29:54] Speaker 1: creature just turns into God, you know, leaving its creatureliness behind. No,
[30:00] Speaker 1: we would say, rather God takes to himself a human
[30:04] Speaker 1: nature so as to use for his I would say
[30:08] Speaker 1: iconic purposes. That's to say that the human nature of Jesus,
[30:11] Speaker 1: which is distinct from his divine nature, but is used
[30:15] Speaker 1: by that divine, by the divine person as an expression,
[30:19] Speaker 1: as an iconic representation in the world. So you don't
[30:23] Speaker 1: have to violate the laws of logic. You don't have
[30:26] Speaker 1: to say God turns into a creature or a creature
[30:29] Speaker 1: stops being a creature and turns into God. But the
[30:32] Speaker 1: two natures come together in their distinctiveness now in the
[30:36] Speaker 1: unity of the divine person. And that just means that
[30:40] Speaker 1: metaphysical principle that instantiates the two natures. So your instinct
[30:46] Speaker 1: is really good. And the Church never asks us to
[30:49] Speaker 1: abandon our minds, our logical intuitions when accepting the dogmas
[30:55] Speaker 1: of the faith.
[30:56] Speaker 2: Well, as we wrap up here, we are excited to
[30:59] Speaker 2: share with you in new book from our Word on
[31:00] Speaker 2: Fire Spark imprint of books for young readers. This new
[31:04] Speaker 2: one is called The Golden Key and Other Fairy Tales
[31:07] Speaker 2: by George McDonald. Beautifully designed shout out to Nick Frederickson
[31:11] Speaker 2: and our design team inter what GK. Chesterton called the
[31:15] Speaker 2: Glorious Fairyland of George McDonald. This delightful collection of stories
[31:20] Speaker 2: will introduce the reader to the forgotten father of fantasy fiction.
[31:24] Speaker 2: According to C. S. Lewis, there is hardly any other
[31:27] Speaker 2: writer who seems to be closer or more continuously close
[31:30] Speaker 2: to the Spirit of Christ himself than George McDonald, and
[31:34] Speaker 2: McDonald deeply influenced the Christian fantasy writers after him, including J. R. R.
[31:39] Speaker 2: Tolkien and Madeline Lingle. This book includes three of McDonald's
[31:44] Speaker 2: fairy stories, The Golden Key, The Light Princess, and Little Daylight.
[31:48] Speaker 2: It's a beautiful cloth bound edition that features stunning full
[31:51] Speaker 2: color illustrations and an introduction by the editor of Word
[31:55] Speaker 2: on Fire Spark Hailey Stewart. So you can find this
[31:58] Speaker 2: book at wordonfire dot org's slash key and again it's
[32:01] Speaker 2: titled The Golden Key and Other Fairy Tales by George McDonald. Well,
[32:06] Speaker 2: thanks so much for watching and listening. We'll see you
[32:08] Speaker 2: next time on the Word on Fire Show.

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