Another part of a video series from Wordonfire.org. Bishop Barron will be commenting on subjects from modern day culture. For more visit www.wordonfire.org
The example of sinners toying with evil and keeping some of it for themselves is exactly what happened when the ruling priest class chose to include the old testament in the bible, which served their ability to maintain political control. Then they excluded - and made punishable by death - the gospels in which Yeshua tells the disciples that their Abrahamic god is a false god to be renounced. The old testament god is a demonic demigod of war who served to deceive souls into murder, blood sacrifice, enslaving others, and taking young virgins as spoils of war, and in doing so he delivered countless souls into darkness. Early Christians should have cast out these teachings from the false satanic god as Yeshua commanded in the censored gospels. Instead, modern Christians are still toying with this evil today, and trying to explain away horrific texts that have nothing to do with the true loving God of Christ.
Norm Chouinard true statement. Old Testament is a shadow of God and is made clear with Jesus as in book of John kinda going to heads with Moses. Revelations but in different aspects of the roots of the Revelations. Basically God reaches out to people based on where they are and their culture.
@@admiralmurat2777 Jesus actually make things worse and less moral. In the old testament, there is no concept of hell or "the devil". It's not until Jesus comes around that it makes it a gun to your head proposition: "Declare me your one and only true god or burn eternally in hell". So much better than the old testament, oh but wait, it's not. It's threatening you with eternal damnation if you don't believe in these wild and unfounded myths. Which is worse? God killing a bunch of babies or Jesus condemning you to hell for all of eternity if you don't believe. You decide.
NEITHER. you've missread BOTH. just like bishop Barron said. go back and read them through the eyes of the Savior. it's all metaphorical and allegorical. do you honestly physically think Humanity started from one man and one woman? start a tribe of people from One Man and one woman. go ahead try. bread one type of animal with another of its kind. see how long this line will last before degeneration kills it. physically/genetically Adam and Eve are an impossibility. several colonies of Adams and Eves. now THERE'S a concept. the survivors will breed with survivors that will breed with the survivors that will breed with the survivors. and there you go The "first people" if God literally walked with Adam as it states. then I'm sure he would have did it right. repeatedly. and successfully. over a period of time for the purpose of sustainability. the "adamites" may have been the first people. it never States they weren't. it just never states they are. and if something made you believe that they are then you obviously looked into it a little too deeply. the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence. people are still ultimately missing the point. Adam and Eve are the beginning point of morality. not the first physical people. as it states when Cain left the garden he went into the Land of Nod. now nod had people as that is where cain met his wife. now how can there be people if Adam and Eve are the only people? but if you look at it metaphorically as Adam and Eve being the first "moral" people. we understand that as genetics prove. Homo sapiens existed before this time and after. then the audacity of the claim of Adam and Eve being the first and only people genetically which science proves otherwise creates a kind of contradiction. did evil exist before the garden? or were people just purely immoral prior to this. God seems to be a moral being. it stands to reason he would create the first two moral people. much like Jesus and the apostles walked around teaching others. he wanted Adam and Eve to be the first to walk and teach morality to humanity. this is why he created them a garden in a place called Eden. the most perfect place in nature. where they would walk around pure and innocent ignorant of Good and Evil. but, at the behest of the serpent they partook of the tree of Good and Evil. knowing Good and Evil and destroying their own innocence. think about how you were as a child. innocent of Good and Evil until adults drove it into.. DEEP into your brain. at which point your innocence was lost forever. this is the same dilemma. the Lord doesn't want us to know good and evil. but, once we do he wants us to choose. this is the "moral dilemma" for once we do we have fallen. from an innocent child like mindset. having to now "morally" climb back up to that level. only through the Lord Jesus Christ can we be saved and return to this childlike State of Mind. simply put it's all about the state of mind. I KNOW... I know because I had a similar experience where me and someone I deeply love had a childlike mindset for much of our lives. ignorant of the many disgusting evils that were already deeply engraved into society. and one day we both learned Good and Evil. then, all the sudden we partook of many forbidden fruits and had many forbidden thoughts. putting us on the same Echelon as everybody else. just to be like everybody else if not more so we did things to others and to each other that are truly Unforgivable. and we became truly ignorant and judgemental. looking back on it now. we were no better than anyone. because we aren't. None of us are better than anyone. except for those who've never lost that innocent mindset. some may stay innocent.. for that is the secret to life itself. Others May insist that you need to GROW UP because the world is cold and hard. look at a small child. look at their innocent joyful expression. it is the very nature of God. God blesses his children such as these. but that doesn't mean you can't lose your innocence at a very young age either. all that means is that you're going to have a tough road back. and it IS a tough road. but, not impossible. if you're willing and ready and you accept the atonement. you will be saved. then, all you must do is live in accordance to God's will. live a moral life. obey the Commandments which isn't much. and try to live a pure just life. trust me this isn't hard. I bet many of you never knew that Egypt has like 80 or 90 different Commandments. can you imagine trying to obey these Commandments? just be lucky there's only 10. repent and be forgiven except the atonement and be saved. none of us are Innocent but none of us are also Beyond Redemption. good luck with your path... hope you all make it God bless
@@otherhalf228 How does God seem to be a moral being? He seems to be completely immoral. Ordering the slaughter of thousands of innocent women and children AND animals (WTF did they have to do with anything?!?!) (1st Samuel 15), condoning slavery (Exodus 22), Stoning gay people, etc. On the subject of stoning gay people... So God creates everything, so he makes people born gay. Then he commands them to not act on the instincts HE gave them. The punishment for not abiding by this, according to God himself is to be stoned to death in this world and go to hell for eternity in the next world. Is this even a remotely fair god? Sounds immoral to me. Also, ask yourself... in the garden of Eden, who told the truth? God or the serpent? Hint: God lied and the serpent told the truth.
Jason Tower wow you're mind is totally twisted and corrupted it makes sense though. it's like that part of the first Matrix movie when the agents are trying to get to Morpheus and completely change his thought patterns. agent Smith states once this is accomplished the brain patterns change from one wave to another. once this is done their mindset is completely perverted to the point of total mind control. the devil is controlling your mind son WAKE UP "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off is telling the world that he doesn't exist" one of the saddest things I have to witness repeatedly is people taking the devils side over God side which always ends up in disaster, failure, and further falling from Grace which is all God offers us love and grace. like a ballet dancer if you nurture and love your student they will become as a graceful and coordinated as humanly possible. or you can lie to them. tell them they're good and they could slip and fall on their rear as you continuously laugh at them and feed their ego and tell them that they're actually good when they're not. in this scenario you might as well be honest and just tell someone flat out that they're no good. the devil doesn't want us to get better and improve he wants us to fail he wants us to fall. and he wants you to believe that you could do this you could succeed all on your own. you see.. the devil's ultimate goal is to destroy Humanity because he and the rest of the Fallen Angels were jealous that God chose us over them. once again this is Genesis read the Bible please I know you're trolling and shoot.. I bit.. fine.. but, you're going to hear my two cents. read the Bible before you make any comments. anybody could just take snippets of verses here and there. but, to truly understand these verses that actually takes intelligence. anybody can READ the bible word for word. but, to truly understand it. that's rare. first of all God doesn't make gay people. believe it or not sexual orientation is and always has been a choice. ITS A CHOICE! feelings may be involved but its still a choice. why aren't animals gay answer me this question? why don't you see any gay animals? why aren't any successful species gay? answer:procreation God doesn't make people gay. people CHOOSE to be gay and then blame God. because Society doesn't accept them. blaming them on God or the Bible or their PARENTS. when all the Bible States is how to live a moral just life. its a simple guidebook to abide by. if people were meant to be gay don't you think they could procreate with any gender? and yes this is possible I believe. there was an episode of Star Trek TNG a long time ago that had a race that had both genders and could procreate with any member of their race. so in that way they got to choose who was feminine or masculine dominant or submissive what have you. see this is all about duality. it is one of the moral dilemmas that we all wrestle with. being born a little androgynous I understand this better than anyone. like many I could have gone either way. but, of course this is a choice. and I chose solely based on my own decision. this was long before I sat down and started to read a million religious books and text see I didn't read the Bible until later in life. and I grew up with a lot of gay/lesbian and bisexual friends. who I saw time and time again make the choice. because it is a choice. I also seen a lot of these individuals unfairly judged by humans. not by God but by HUMANS. And they're still judged by humans. God doesn't judge people. PEOPLE DO. People make choices and refuse to face the consequences. believe it or not depending on what you read there is a place for human beings who lead an honorable life but yet reject the gospel. see you don't HAVE to accept the gospel right now. like me and others you may eventually accept it. but it takes a lot of evolution MENTAL evolution to get to this point. but, you will eventually learn that this is the right way to proceed. (we're all here to learn valuable lessons. once you've learned these lessons your not doomed to repeat them again)let me ask you. you think I'm immoral for asking this question what would happen if all the straight people were to die today? who would be left to repopulate society? once you realize this is common-sense you realize how silly it is to even ask this question. people get curious everybody goes through this phase. now I'm not saying you shouldn't explore your Curiosities. we all get curious we all want to do things sexually and try drugs and alcohol and do all kinds of sin. the Amish have a time for this they call it "rumspringa" where they let their youth run wild for a period of time. engaging in all manner of sin. of course this is why they exist to tempt us. and trust me once you've been through it all you realize how silly it all is. and all you really want out of life is what God intends for you. that's when you realize that all these distractions are just slowing down your natural progression your Natural Evolution. God doesn't want us to suffer God doesn't want us to struggle. this is the curse of the Fall. all these quote-unquote morally good and evil things didn't exist Once Upon a Time. the adamites were morally perfect. until they wanted to know good and evil. at which point they could perform both good and evil acts and learn which ones are beneficial to them and which ones are not. the problem is most people don't realize that the guidebook is there right there in plain sight all you have to do is follow this guidebook and you don't have to take the risk of lowering your progress in the evolutionary chart. this is why such things are considered degenerate. and yes before you say anything degeneration does exist in animals. and usually ends up with the extinction of that species. these are all things that need to be bread out in order to have a prosperous people. all the Bible States is that a immoral sinful ways are degenerate and will lead to your extinction. and God does not want that. God created humanity to rise above all other beings. it may not be an issue now because there's 7 billion people. populations have grown way out of control. but, trust me if a catastrophe happened today. supervolcano/ an asteroid impact/ nuclear apocalypse what have you these important factors would become relevant again. and as Revelation states there will be a day of reckoning and the day of judgement. right now. today, if disaster struck the planet? how do you think Humanity would carry on. you think sitting and being immoral and degenerate would help the human race? what about being lazy? it's a fact that only hundred years ago people were harder working more religious and tougher more rigorous people. since then the world's population exploded and today you don't have to leave your house for anything. Shoot you could order whatever food or whatever you want straight to your house and if you're so lazy that you can't work and your body atrophies you can probably go get welfare and live off welfare and live like that and die like that. now, how does that help the future of humanity? Think about it. This is where we are heading this is where humanity is right now. once again it's a moral dilemma. when people are prosperous and high populations roam the Earth we not much worried about Sinful gluttonous lustful slothful ways. just like in the time of the flood and throughout many Aeons populations would grow and people would stop following God. leading to destruction and complete annihilation of whole peoples. this is why the metaphorical "flood" exists because the world had become so corrupt and become so immorally Twisted at one point in the past that let's say a "natural disaster" completely reset humanity. this is where we are heading. Seers have been predicting it for ages. everybody seems to be under the impression that we're living in some kind of crazy golden age where we can do whatever we want and we're not held accountable for anything. but, you see we are. and we will be. and on that day y'all we'll all wake up and realize just how wrong you've really been. I will pray for your souls. But, ultimately it will be up to you guys. the future of humanity can either live or die with us. fix your life now while you still can. trust me you will not regret it later God bless
Most Christians are unaware of these passages, and I think that most religious leaders fear that if they tell their congregations about them and then try to explain them away that not all of their congregation will accept their reasoning that these are metaphors; instead, many will either leave Christianity, have a massive crisis of faith, or develop a really cruel and violent version of Christianity that is okay with war crimes. My guess is that they think it's easier simply to not tell them about these passages.
David Warren, It's your scriptural errors that share the blame for atheism. People are ignorant of God, and your false doctrines exacerbates the problem. Teaching hellfire works to scare kids and stupid people, but mature minds will revolt and rightly so. Teaching a pagan trinity confuses many scriptures that would clarify creation's situation. I'm just a messenger, and the bible contains truth if God opens it up to you. Oh, and the Catholics lied to me while I was growing up. Nuns, priests, Christian brothers, all lied by telling me that God didn't have a name. Then One day I found God's personal name in my Catholic Fireside Family Bible - Jehovah. Right there in black and white in my own Catholic bible. I thought that if they could boldly lie about God's name, what else have they been lying about? Just everything.
Sunil Sunny- I use the bible as my guide, especially the words of Jesus. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth." Lord's prayer: "...thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." So I don't plan on going to heaven, which is reserved only for Jesus and the 'bride' of Jesus. There will be a "new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness is to dwell". Rev. 21, 1,4. So I plan on living forever on a restored earth, starting on the 8th day of creation. How about you?
Sunil Sunny , That question is 2000 years old, and in principle it is answered many ways. Those who are from God never magnify themselves for glory, fame, money, or power. God controlled the canon of the scriptures and their contents in each book. Satan, OTOH, tries to insert spurious books and ideas, but God exposes them in due time. False books, like the Book of Mormon, are just not allowed in. Questionable books like the Book of Enoch, raise more questions and controversy than give bible insight to live by. The Apocryphal books were admitted by the Catholic church to be non-canonical. Since God is judging us by our actions, not just our beliefs, it behooves us to make following the bible straightforward. Now if you want to sell scams, there's plenty to choose from Satan. The first line of Satan's attack is against the bible itself, then its contents. Example: My interlinear bible helped me to get to the truth of God's name. That led right into the trinity falsehood getting exposed. What bible do you read? Should you read? One that contains the unadulterated truth. But that is more of a buying point than a selling point. And that means work and searching first for truth for each individual. Then Prov. 2:1-12 kicks in. In a nutshell, if you want to worship God according to his desires, then it's His responsibility to get the correct bible into your hands. That's only obvious. But God still reserves each for personal judgment. "He who is faithful in little is faithful in much." A good bible needs to be accurate, free from translator interpolation, and free from falsehoods and omissions. It's an easy task to omit all the bibles that have omitted God's name from the text 7000+times. There's no excuse for the fraud, even if one pleads translation difficulties. Use YHWH At each occurrence. The few that are left are the ones to sort seek and find the truth in, which is what God's holy spirit is sent to help out with.
I would recommend that you avoid all or nothing thinking. The Bible is a blend of literary genres, written by a wide variety of authors, to a wide variety of different audiences. Therefore, we have to be careful and discriminating as we determine precisely how to read a given Scriptural text. The Gospels are not in the genre of legend or myth.
Enough to make the bible next to useless as a governing text for human behavior. Discrimination should be employed all the time in critical thinking including taking a wide angle view of the bible's teachings which seem to contradict themselves at more than a few junctures. I believe in God. I do not believe in a manuscript written by flawed people who say it is the word of God and take their word for it blindly because it was God Himself who told them what to write. The Old Testament is as bad a text ever written supposedly written for people who were illiterate. Really? In fact the clergy, hundreds of years ago, until the invention of the printing press, didn't even allow regular folks to read the bible. Had to go on their interpretations. Make that flawed interpretations. It's one of the ways the clergy held power over politics. I can see why young people turn away from the bible's teachings-- because there is nothing substantial there. It's far removed from reality based mainly on fear of suffering for eternity if one doesn't accept Jesus as one's Lord and savior. I'll pass this belief system up over one that makes sense.
Thank you, father. As a former atheist myself this was how I perceived the bible & God. However, as you explained & a year ago when I heard God's calling, I realized that wasn't the case...& your explanation just confirms such interpretations. God bless & blessings.
I love how you can interpret all the brutal behaviour in the Bibble anyway you want... just ignore all the brutality :D, try doing it with any other book :D. Must be fun living in delusions and beliving in psychopatic God of old Testament (who's personality was obviously made up by people 2000 years ago justifying their inhuman behaviour).
There is a deep, unintentional, intellectual dishonesty in that argument. In your words, it seems that the bloodshed that was celebrated in name of the Yahweh is an allegory and not actual bloodshed. There is no way to go around that. You cannot claim that a change of perspective will make right the passages such as those in Numbers 31, where male children and non-virgin female children are to be slaughtered and virgin female children taken by Yahweh's followers by his supposed order.
Christians: "Slavery is wrong." Bible. "Take the virgen women against their will. Have have them as wives". Christians: "That's not slavery". Me: I'm out of here.
You expect sense from theists? They will always excuse the horrible shit in their book. Secondly, what method do we use to tell what's metaphorical and what's not? These people are full of it.
Father Barron: In complete respect, I would like to say that anybody who wrestles with this issue really deserves some credit. This is not a light intellectual undertaking. The problem of Biblical violence is commensurately difficult with the problem of suffering. Also, when the Holy Spirit worked through biblical authors, it is somewhat open to question how inspiration was revealed to them. Just because passages are difficult, one does not deride them. Perhaps the first element here is that of trust. Trust that the deeper meaning of the passage is available upon proper reflection. Difficulty here might also be due to our level of understanding. Personally, I think a tsunami that ends 200,000 lives is more difficult to understand than biblical violence. Yet, the love of God is not diminished in the world. This is a profound mystery. We are confronted by something that is difficult for us to fathom, let alone resolve. It is quite possible that this mystery may not be unpackable on a human level in this lifetime. I think it is important that a great degree of humility be a foundational starting point here, when attempting to deal with all this. A retreat into Socratic ignorance might be called for. Certainly, one should never forget the culture of the time in ancient Israel. Just because the biblical author felt inspired to lay such violence at God's feet does not necessarily mean that God would sanction a moral compromise that goes against the very spiritual laws layed out for us.
rockhound570 theist ..Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
@@greatmuslim3808 And who was killed by Jesus? Even a 5th grader can see it's a metaphor, especially when the Bible clearly says we have to fight a spiritual war, not a physical one.
Thank you. Fr. Barron those of us who've read our Origen (and Athanasius, Irenaeus, Tertullian) and know how 'old' this criticism it is can feel embarrassed for the New Age atheists (none of whom, by the way, are theologians or scripture scholars). I'm convinced atheists just don't know how to read.
@Taylor Swift is Life I know it's a pretty old comment, but... He spelled it right. Origen is a name of a scholar. But yeah, the comment is pretty hard to read.
All texts are written with agendas, bias and interests, but in hermeneutical theory textual meaning cannot be reduced to this subset of ‘behind the text’ factors. Ricoeur establishes that there are also multiple in-text and in front of the text factors - the latter having to do with issues of reader-response. Also, the later Wittgenstein establishes that at issue is the historical speech-action in view. All language is communicative speech-action, but is not just one thing since the number of possible speech-actions is so variable. So, a key question is indeed how language is being used by an author historically, and then how this relates to the horizons of readers. And this will reflect their agenda, bias and interests, of course, but also factors such as cognitive and historical content, operative function, features such as genre, denotative background meta-language, connotative and conversational implicature, self-involvement and the precise manner in which the text interacts with reader horizons, and so on (the list is big). The point is that to say that all texts reflect agenda, interests, and bias isn’t to say very much about the character of a text, but tends to be a way of ‘binning’ a text in conversation as ‘only this’ or ‘only that’ - with a view to then asserting some supposedly-contrary position. Really, though, it is not to hear the text at all. Many questions need to be asked: What exactly is the author’s agenda? How does the agenda relate to historical situations of the day? Does the content have any historical veracity when compared and contrasted with other independent sources? Is there anything that, against accepted criteria, could constitute an instantiation of Wisdom literature? How could the text be of use today? How does it function in different reading communities? And so on (the list is big).
Conrad DiDiodato atheists will find anything to “prove” themselves right. I find the explanation of Bishop Barron, based on the Church Fathers, totally reasonable and logical. The language of thousands of years ago is not comparable to today.
so this part is a metaphor, this part is literal... by what methodology did he arrive at these conclusions? This may be some the worst apologetics I've heard to date.
We need to view these scriptures also by the language used. Keep in mind that military language in ancient times was historically ultra-exaggeration. Words like "wipe them all out." "Destroy them all down to the last child" was common military exaggeration. We know this from historical studies. It's more than likely that the wars waged were soldier vs soldier...not really counting civilians. We have to be careful not to read literalism into ancient language because in those ancient times language often used symbolism and exaggeration to make a point.
Look for “The Bible Project “ on TH-cam by dr Tim Mackie. It really is helping me understand Old Testament in relation with the New Testament. Here is one on the book of Judges th-cam.com/video/kOYy8iCfIJ4/w-d-xo.html You must see all his videos and you will come out understanding the true righteousness of our GOD and his Son Jesus
You say, “Read these passages in a metaphorical, allegorical, and symbolic way, as about the spiritual struggle.” Are we allowed to read the New Testament that way? Is the New Testament “a poetic evocation of the power and sovereignty of God”?
These just gibberish appologist excuse. It does not make sense, ..it does not explain anything, but our book/god can not be wrong... you are wrong. Nothing here. Those who said they understand this is lying or dellusional.
Thankyou bishop barren always had problems with this God told me be patient the answer will come and here it is .I love my Catholic faith and i appreciate the intellect the good Lord gave you keep up the good work
If you don't understand the difference in Man's orientation to God between the Old and New Testaments than you don't understand the Bible. Old Testament is a fallen mankind trying to hack out a relationship to God. The New Testament is God dying to re-establish His relationship to Man. It's not that God has changed, it's that Man's orientation to Him has changed. (i.e. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, it's the earth that moves around the sun.) Animal sacrifices were necessary to obtain an interaction with God in the Old Testament. Why? Don't know, but they clearly were. That is no longer the case. What changed? Man's orientation toward God thru Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament is the same God, but our relation to Him has changed. Obviously the relationship in the New Testament (God the Savior) is the relationship that ultimately God desired. The final end-state is yet to come, but you see the direction it's headed.
I thought that the animal sacrifice bit was poked into the bible by the holy men so the simple people would bring one of their animals to cook on the altar. Then after the simple people left the holy men would feast on the free food.
Amusing metaphors considering God is not invisible and he doesn't live in the sky. You aren't educated in the slightest. You write like a smug, ignorant fool.
I think your hypothesis David is interesting, though it could have been that both the person who brought up the sacrifice and the priest shared in that sacrifice (in fact, this latter idea reminds me a bit of Mass as a Catholic). Obviously, if the priest is going to be dedicated to doing the sacrifice, which takes time to do things from killing the animal to cooking it, then they won't be able to survive without payment if they don't have time to grow their own food or animals. I heard that there were animal sacrifices precisely because the other religions, like in Egypt, worshipped animals, and that the Christian/Jewish God is against his followers worshipping other gods. This Christian/Jewish God doesn't want anyone to worship other gods, logically, but it is much more scandalous when a Christian/Jew does this because they basically said they were going to follow God and His commands and then they contradict Him.
Are all the Laws of Moses to be seen as metaphors of spiritual battle? How so? They literally and specifically command to kill innocent human beings if they don't fit within the moral code therein described.
@@cathyb7573 1) If commandments are just metaphors, they shouldn't be followed literally. And this concerns all the commandments. 2) If "kill innocent human beings" is a metaphor, what is the "truth too hard to handle" suggested there?
laapasakuna My point is just this . Bishop Barron and many others cherry pick ..They get around the hard questions by claiming they are metaphors ..lts a Cop out . .
So is it real or not? It sounds like you are saying these texts are a metaphor. How much is a metaphor, which parts, who decides, how do you know? That is a big part of the problem. Why are such un-intuitive metaphors being used? If all of it is real and not a metaphor, that is a solid foundation to build on. This explanation throws everything into question for me.
This is 1st Century behavior at its finest, completely justified because the Bible told us so-- in particular the Old Testament. To truly believe the writings you have to be a 1st Century thinker. Good luck with that in trying to correlate it to 21st Century behavior. It doesn't work. You can't justify the slaying of innocents or even what we would call misdemeanors in this particular age. Period. End of story. What you have is a problem you can't fix through rationalization. Thou shall not kill! So says one of the ten commandments. (And throwing them on the rocks doesn't abolish that particular commandment.) Soon thereafter Moses descends from the mountain top only to find half his flock committed the sin of worshiping the Golden Calf and orders the slaying of almost 3,000 of "his" people. Mr. Barron there is no explanation you can convince anyone of its righteousness. There is no righteousness in killing someone over their beliefs or the way they "worship" be they faulty or misguided. Killing is not the way to sort things out. Belief's should have some foundation in commonsense.
@Goku vs The Lord had nothing to do with Moses' behavior. It was Moses' behavior that killed them. He was a mass murderer. Delusional more than likely. In our time he'd be put to death or put away for life for what he did. He's nobody I admire. And by the way it wasn't God that wrote the bible, only by people you or I don't know or ever will. They can write whatever they want and like a good flock of sheep follow the words that for the most part make little sense. Here's a test for you-- you have a child, make that two, and both decided at the age of- let's say 7 and 9- they fall into a group of satanic devil worshipers and everything you try to get them back to fearing the Lord doesn't work. Going to kill them because they wont convert back? Moses did. Was he right? Don't answer.
@Goku vs The Lord didn't kill anybody. The Bible doesn't say a thing about the Lord manifesting on earth and killing the unfaithful. Moses incited his faithful to do the killing. Which is the same as killing and murdering. Manson style.
@J.W. H. You make my point. Find me a bible that says "do not murder." You won't. That's the problem with taking writings from Hebrew and ancient Greek translated from an oral history 300 years after the events occurred. Then much of the writings were missing or destroyed, then translated again to modern day languages, then interpreted differently by every church on the planet so you end up with different sects -- some going to war with each other -- th-cam.com/video/v-63cTYJDCA/w-d-xo.html
@J.W. H. The Hebrew text and Christian Bible (in ancient Greek) were written in 300 AD . . . 300 years after the events of Jesus and Roman Empire took place. Think about it. That means the information was passed down orally for 300 years by people who couldn't write. Or, and this is quite plausible, it was written down in Aramaic (the language of Jesus) then translated to ancient Greek and Hebrew. What was recovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls made up the Bible, then hundreds of years later many parts of the Bible were removed from the original text for political/clerical reasons. In other words the Holy Scriptures were tainted by flawed men and clergy. This is why we know nothing about Jesus' experiences when he was a young man. We only know what happened when he appeared in the Bible at the age of 33. Approximately two decades of his life is missing.
@J.W. H. That's more like it. You have some spirit and some intelligence to come up with a workable argument. Most Christians don't put up much of a fight. Thank you.
Please elaborate, I got a few sentences from 5 minutes of this video, the context which lays within your speech is incredibly thin. Please explain how a literal act of terror is a good way to give a metaphor, how is 200,000 people dying in a tsunami a 'god is mysterious' yet my eczema is cured through my prayers is a 'god is great, god is almighty and god is loving'. This is precisely how you play tennis without the net.
Because you can clearly see that the apostles writing it did not speak or act like it was allegory which means they do not believe it was allegory and they're the ones who wrote the Gospels . The apostles constantly claim to be eyewitnesses to these events in letters that they write , which is in the new testament after the gospels
@@tinman1955 how do you know that I made specific mention of the fact that the apostles were writing letters and the Gospels are referred to as intended to be an accurate record, the writer's intention is never mentioned in the old testament except for specific prophets such as Isaiah. The point here is that if the whole Bible is the word of God everything should now be in the context of the new testament and understood from that point so the message you take from the old testament shouldn't be contradictory to the new. It's based on the premise the whole bible is true if that is true the logic follows and the Bible's truth can be judged on the accuracy of the Gospels as historical records in which Jesus confirms the Old Testament. So that's how you judge the allegory in the Bible combined with hermeneutics
siggymartin ...Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
if a sergeon cuts off your arm to save your life, his he a bad dr? or would he be worse if he allowed the sickness to overtake the entire body and lose the whole patient? God loves humanity so much, that he would destroy ANYTHING that would try to destroy it....understand? if he did not, then the human race will go extinct from the evil spreading one soul at a time until evil has infected the entire race, at that point there would be no one left for God to use to eradicate it and evil would just continue to spawn more evil for eternity. he does not take pleasure in losing anything that he has created. he does it from love of his creation, not from anger. that is the key.
@@greatmuslim3808 Unlike the many Muslims who literally do cut the heads off of people with a sword, the sword you are referencing in the bible is not a literal sword. It's a metaphor for the strife that Christians would endure in this world for telling the truth in a world under the dominion of the father of lies.
@@josieposie9969 Why do you think Christians are innocent? Crusades, Inquisition, Salem witch trials. Islam is a younger religion, its just their turn to be bloody and violent. Once they are done, I think the whole world is done with this barbarism. *Cheers* to the end of organized religion :).
Another great video - thank you. I think there is a legitimate question underlying a few of the comments though: many of us are happy to abandon our obsession with historicity, but on some points of Christian belief, we are told (I think) that historicity is important. Given that these authors used allegory so freely, how are we to distinguish passages that are "just" allegory, from passages that have some claim to historicity? Turning water into wine would be a nice example to work with.
Also those were ancient times. It’s either killed or be killed. Some events needed to happen (ie Israel needed to survive and thrive) so that the Lord’s will can be done. Now in the new covenant, we are commanded to love God and love one another. No more blood shed for Christ has shed His for all humanity in the past, present, and future.
@P Ciprian What do you mean by 'if I read the entire answer'?! Your answer was, and I quote verbatim, 'is not allegorical. the issue is of repentance. God is merciful to those that repent, but he is unmerciful to those that refuse to repent. And God gives every one every chance to repent and a lot of time.'!!
@P Ciprian what if, instead your concept of what god is is mistaken? How confident are you that there is a god who created us and personally judges us for our sins?
Dear bishop Barron, although the spiritual allegoric reading is indeed valid, and of course the most fruitful for our personal reading and meditation of the Bible, it is not true that the Church interprets those passages as only poetic and non historical. You are siriously in contradiction with the Tradition in that way. The explanation given by the Church to those passages is, for example, the one given by saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Teologiae: «God is Lord of death and life, for by His decree both the sinful and the righteous die. Hence he who at God's command kills an innocent man does not sin, as neither does God Whose behest he executes: indeed his obedience to God's commands is a proof that he fears Him.» Best regards.
+Feri del Carpio-Marek The problem with St. Thomas's interpretation is it doesn't work at all in a moral sense. All one has to believe is that God is commanding murder, then the murder one is contemplating is justified.
Yeah, You go and commit violence, not self defense as the law recognizes it, I want your butt in jail-no matter who you thought told you to do it. Period
In terms of the non-combatants, women, slaves and children who died, they were killed by the sins of their husbands, masters and fathers. Many of them are surely with Christ.
You may have just committed a fallacy called denying the antecedent. God, as Creator, has the sovereign right to speak law into, and do as He pleases with, Creation. Additionally, Jesus Christ is resurrected from the dead and promises the same to all, either for vindication or condemnation. In light of those presuppositions, how do we understand these passages?
Right?? This makes no sense, so you can read the violent & disturbing passages that clearly point to Gods inconsistent character as “metaphor” but not ANYTHING else in the Bible If all of the violence/murder/genocide/destruction/sexual violence against women in the OT is a metaphor HOW is the crucifixion & resurrection of Christ not?? Also the earth has to be 6,000 years old because it says so in the OT, ok so that means you also condone God saying it’s “all good” to kill babies, children and taking virgins (meaning 12 yr old girls) as sex slaves?? I’m sorry but WTF IM HAVING some serious ISSUES HERE
No one wants to accept that look the God in the OT Bible quite frankly has some serious issues & if the NT backs the OT by saying everything in it is 100% true, well then WHAT is any of this??
The reason Jesus’ public ministry lasted only 3 years is because he gave us thousands of years old Old Testament to reference what happens to disobedient behavior. The Lamb references the short time on earth and God’s mercy only if we recognize, even at the last moments, the narrow path is the way to salvation…………
Would it help you to know that historians and spiritual masters (who have been at work on such passages for thousands of years) would tell you these aren't historical accounts? most of them are stories.
One can interpret & justify these Bible violent verses in any way. No such problem in Buddhism, no violence but love & compassion (in all living things including even animals, sealife etc) taught in all the sutras!
So what verses are "metaphor, allegory and symbolism" and which are to be taken literally? I take this to mean that verses you don't like or agree with 'well those are just a metaphor', whereas other things should be taken literally. This seem to open the Bible up to interpretation....each person will have a different perspective. There are thousands of sects, whose is the "right" interpretation? Is it possible the Bible is NOT the infallible word of god, but the selfish and dire musings of primitive man?
+John B Good point, but to be clear, it is Catholic dogma that the Bible is "inerrant". The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph #107 quotes from Dei Verbum: The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that 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.”72
"If you take the biblical stories of the New Testament about the resurrection as true, that also means the violence that took place in the bible has to be true as well. " Well no actually, it really doesn't. You're only lying here.
Thank you Fr. Barron for your wonderful and enlightening commentary. I'm a recent revert and I have found your work extremely helpful in understanding the Catholic Faith and Tradition. Please continue your work and may God richly bless you!
Interesting, just a couple of questions/thoughts. You state that we should look through the lens of the New Testament and Christ crucified when dealing with the Old Testament. But what about that long period of time prior to the creation of the New Testament what were people suppose to do? people must have viewed The Jewish God as any of the other Gods, a self loving angry spiteful being. Now the Old Testament shouldn’t be viewed as a true historical document, that leads to a series of problems as to what did or didn’t happen not only via Israel’s interactions with other people’s but God himself. Did he lead the Jews out of Egypt or is that hyperbole on Israel’s part to make their God seem greater? Did he actually command death of every man, woman, child, and domesticated beast. Or was that the desires of a angry evil group of elitist Jews who didn’t want to share the land. This sort of opens the bible to be seen as not Godly inspired but rather contrived by men for their own desires.
I agree with Father Barron. The new atheists seem to think that these issues are new, but they have been talked about by theologians for thousands of years. It is a fallacy of atheism that it spots a tricky issue in religion, then claims that this makes said religion false without bothering to think about it from a theological perspective. It's no better than the God of the gaps fallacy, just from the opposite perspective.
False teaching in order to placate an anti Christian world, and a deeply hypocritical one too as it slaughters the innocents on the altar of selfish convenience. The reason God gave the order to wipe out the enemies of Israel was to establish the nation of Israel unhindered from corrupt and evil pagan influence, so that there be no memory of them or remnant of their ways in the land that God chose to give to his people. It was also an execution of judgement on these peoples whos practices were evil in the sight of the Lord, such as infant sacrifice in the most horrific ways. If today, in Afghanistan it was discovered that the taliban were sacrificing babies by placing them on red hot bowls that melted the flesh off their bones, the US would immediately fly in and wipe them out, and there wouldn't be a person in the west with an ounce of morality in them that would oppose them being wiped out. Moreover, God sees things that we do not. He understands things that we do not. If he allowed these peoples to be spared, it is quite possible that their offspring would remember their ways and at a later date revert back to these vile practices, and as a result also corrupt Israel. God also punished them severely for these vile practices to serve as a reminder to his people how he feels about them. In short, God has the right to execute justice on wicked practices in any way he chooses, either by flood, fire from the heavens, or by the swords of his chosen people. God demonstrates his justice as well as his mercy, and he does so righteously at his own discretion. Do not allegorize historical events to placate a world that has largely rejected him, and which has become the kind of world that God in the past destroyed, and will destroy in the not too distant future. God save us from false teachers in our church.
There are no extra biblical historical contemporaries writings about Herod's baby killings, zombies walking around after the crucifixion, Jesus' miracles, Jesus walking around for weeks after his death. These would not go un-noticed. More evidence of allegory and legend and fables.
+To Ny Ya, that is cool! It is also cool that in the same genre of symbolic literature called apocalyptic, there is a scroll that could not be opened until the end. In Daniel 12:8-10 it is written, I heard but could not understand; so I said, “My lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be purified, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked shall continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand. In contrast, Jesus, the Lamb of God, in Revelations 5 has the power and authority to reveal God's purposes and to illuminate the meaning of the Old Testament because he is worthy to open the scroll.
To Ny ...Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
@@greatmuslim3808 No need to project Islam into Christianity. False prophet Muhammad is the only one to spread his beliefs with the sword, not Jesus Christ.
We should believe in God on bad evidence and vague interpretation by your peers, all while reassuring ourselves of his existence through our own subjective experiences? The legitimacy needed to accept this ignorance is astounding.
This is father Barron's interpretation of scripture. Who's version are we to believe? The text says what it says. Hes just trying to make it sound nice. If that part is allegory,metaphor or whatever then why not the rest? Is it just the ugly stuff we should take symbolically? What if Jesus is a metaphor? What if him walking on water,rising from the dead is just a metaphor? Many people believe it to be true history. Christians can't agree on scripture, there's pretty well as many different versions of Christianity as there is followers. If God knew before the bible was written that people would take it literally and kill others over it then surely he is responsible for that for he could foresee it.He should have made it very clear.
Hey Fr. Barron, I just want to let you know how awesome it is that God has blessed you with the ability to transmit the Gospel to a mass audience in a smart and accessible way. I just wanted to let you know that you have inspired me to go to seminary. God Bless!
By this reasoning, a Muslim could argue that in order to understand the Old and New Testaments you have you also read the Qur'an, and then you must read the Old and New Testaments in a Qur'an light. Thus, a Muslim could argue that the New Testament does not claim that Jesus is the messiah, because we know from the Qur'an that there is no messiah. So, what's going on when the Bible talks about Jesus as the son of God? Well, perhaps Jesus was very pious, and so he was the one that the New Testament chose to use as a metaphor for God.
Thank you, Fr. Barron! This video answered some big questions that I've been thinking about for a while now. I wish more priests had the courage to go directly after some of the "tough" issues more head on like you do.
if you told this to a child he would not believe it. Metaphors, allegory ...all this bloodshed was a dream, an invention of an insane writer...do you believe yourself really?
First of all, I really enjoy your videos; they were a great aid in my conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. In this case, though, I'd like to offer a "middle way". First, some objections: 1. The lamb who was slain opened the scroll, and the immediate result was alot of violence upon the earth. 2. Unless we are willing to say that YHWH didn't actually historically establish, command, and guide the ancient Israelites, we must at least be able to accept that what was present in the OT scriptures is in accord with the nature of the true God. If we say that YHWH didn't really lead Israel in the direct way described, than we come close to denying that the Jews received any kind of direct revelation from God. Whatever we may read into the scriptures after the fact, it is clear that those who wrote it believed that God actually ordered, and willed, certain violent acts. In the style of CS Lewis, either the Jews, in some sense, experienced real revelations of God to their culture, or they are liars, or they are insane. They explicitly claimed that YHWH came down historically and interacted with them; these aren't the vague, abstracted myths of the pagans. It is easy for us to look back, from a post-christian/christian world, and declare that violence, even severe violence (Agag, etc) is always wrong. There is, however, one rather significant difference between the time of the OT and the time of the NT, which is Christ and his Gospel. To clear up any confusion, I don't mean that Jesus taught the world (and the God the Father) nonviolence. It is possible to arrive at the idea of nonviolence without the revelation of Christ; ie, Buddhism, etc. What I mean is that violence in and of itself isn't necessarily bad; violence is only bad if there is a real hope of the conversion of a soul, or a culture. Is it wrong for God to destroy a culture which promotes child sacrifice? No, but it would be better if they repented and turned to righteousness. Would it be wrong to use violence (and kill, if necessary) a man who is about to slaughter his baby? No, but it would be better to change his heart. "If only there were briers and thorns confronting me! I would march against them in battle; I would set them all on fire. Or else let them come to me for refuge; let them make peace with me, yes, let them make peace with me." Isaiah 27:4-5 We see this pattern a number of times in the OT; God threatens to destroy Nineveh, Israel, etc, but doesn't, because they turn back from the wicked things they were doing. Of course, the spirit of the nations were never changed by these threats. They repented for a while, then turned back to evil, at which point God sent another wave of violence and distress to get them to turn back. The most evangelical action of God in the OT was the torment and destruction of Egypt during the time of Moses. Everyone heard about it, and gave glory to the God of Israel. When Christ came, he opened up a way, through his body, the Church, to make men truly righteous, in their hearts. Previously, the only way to end the child sacrifices, torturing, and general evil of the pagan nations was to threaten and destroy them. Now, through Christ, the Church can appeal to them through their reason, and through the deep common longings of their hearts for God. The Jews could merely say,"YHWH says...." to which the Pagans could say,"Marduk says..."; the only way the conflict could be resolved was either through war or through a complete removal of God and religion from the equation (Atheism, Buddhism). The only Pagan way to resolve religious violence is either to say that life has no meaning (Atheism), or earthly/bodily existence is suffering, and ought to be escaped (Buddhism). In Christianity (Catholicism), we find, for the first and only time, a thing which is so Rational that it can appeal to the mind of anyone, and so beautiful and meaningful that it can appeal to their hearts as well. Imagine trying to convert the Philistines to Judaism; how would you even begin? Now remember how the Church converted the invading barbarian tribes after the fall of Rome. The gist is that responding to true evil with violence is only considered a lesser way because we have a higher way through Christ. Before the higher way, the lower way of physical violence was the highest way; far higher than apathy or acceptance. Thanks for your time, and God bless!
Hi Hunter, Thanks for making this comment. The notion that the only reason we see the violent way as lesser because of the revelation of Christ and His forgiveness is absolutely beautiful- thank you for sharing it!
I always interpreted it as the Bible is the story of Humanity and our historical evolution. The Bronze/Iron age was insanely cruel in every part of the world (not just Israel), and yet here we are today where (of the whole) things are much friendlier. There is no doubt in my mind god didnt have a hand in that evolution even after the Bible was written.
Thank you for your explanation, Your Eminence. To be honest, I'm still struggling with the violence in the bible even after hearing your explanation. I pray that, with time, God will help me digest the truth of it. God bless!
Actually the 5th commandment has always been interpreted as unjust killing, such as murder, so the Church has a double effect theory of self defence and a just war theory. The Church also allows for execution in cases of necessity because of this.
Am a christian and I struggle with this everyday, but I still find your thesis /interpretation inadequate in a way, that the violence or military depiction was a metaphorical way to depict the war of good vs evil or yahweh fighting for his people, honestly, it still doesn't answer the question, and it leaves alot more unanswered
@Batkov Read the Bible and see what kind of a nations Israeli people killed. Wicked nations that were sexually immoral, child killers by sacrificing them to their gods etc. God did not want Israeli to take part of that kind of practices and He ordered them to kill them to the last one. It's cruel, it's history, it was a common practice when some nation conquered another nation. This is a very complex issue. God has promised those lands to Abraham and on the other hand you can almost say that God judged those nations using Israel as a tool. The main take away is that God hates sin and the wage of sin is death. We don't know what would've happen if those nations were not destroyed. Israel failed God so many times by worshiping other gods, the gods of the foreign nations despite the fact that most of the nations were destroyed. Jesus came as a sacrifice for us all so we don't have to pay the death penalty, that's why every person in this world can be saved through Jesus, thus violence is unnecessary and forbidden by Jesus in His second commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
If such is the way we are to read these passages then is it pretty clear these events, along with many others in the Old Testament, are merely legends of the ancient world like the Iliad. It's always the hardest thing for me to believe the Bible is the word of God if it is mostly fables. And if it is mostly fables, like Adam and Moses and Noah, then why does Christ speak of them as if they are real when he is God and should know they are fables. Why would he come to die to erase Adams sin if it never really happened? I would appreciate your input and help. Thanks
+Brendan M Thanks for your reply. It helps to always study any literature in its true context and understand why it was written with an unbiased approach. Seeing and researching this history makes sense given the influences the Torahs authors used from Mesopatamia and to keep the Israelites faithful to God while in captivity. One then wonders the historicity of the gospels and New Testament. It seems some like Matthew are targeted toward the Jews while Luke and Acts are for a gentile audience. It's an interesting book but it's lack of accuracy, multiple interpretations, and lack of fulfillment leaves me skeptical if it is really divine authorship as well.
Dude... THANK YOU! Thank you for putting this here, and I encourage you to spread this talk by Scott Hahn even MORE so. Because of your recommendation, I have just listened to this talk for the first time. I call myself an avid Catholic, but I have been SOOO EDIFIED by this talk, and my eyes have been opened to an amazing understanding of Christ's sacrifice which i had never known before. Thank you thank you thank you for making your comment.
It strikes me that simple genre analysis of the text seems to show this "interpretive strategy" is special pleading. It also seems to gloss over the judgment imagery of the New Testament that shows a side of Christ the speaker seems to willfully ignore.
The problem is that this priest just basically said to ignore the violence and change the original context of the bible to an allegory, but if it's that open to interpretation that means the entire bible can't possible be empirically true.
I am really anti violence. so I had a hard time with the violence in passages you speak of... however I am not willing to live without God , so I continue to reflect on this issue. In the end , regardless of what I feel, I cannot stand up to God. In the end, opinions of others will also have to fade away as I am going to have to answer for myself , not to them, but to God. I feel I will never really "get it" in this life..
+Liz Loria Um, lol. You can still believe in God and still disregard the Bible. In fact you will experience more spirituality this way by having a direct relationship with God. No need for a church.
It isn't a matter of needing one or not. We all come from some place. And whether we like it or not,whether we believe or not, we were created. For me it wasn't so much a matter of believing or not, but having experiences that I could not ignore or rationalize away by science.
I'm curious as to what the ancients used to interpret the Old Testament/Torah/whatever they had. I know that you said Christ is the interpretive lens with which to read the whole bible, but how do you explain what the ancients used to interpret the truth before Christ came?
If the nice ideas of the New Testament (love, mercy, etc.) were present in Judaism originally, then surely the Bible could have told us that God conquered his enemies not by the sword, but with love and compassion, winning over their hearts and minds with his infinite mercy. Instead, we're told that he slaughtered them.
@Stefan Urban I think that is a phenomenal reality check on people living otherwise cushion-y lives at home, away from violence and wars in places like the Middle East. America could actually use that realism of God's might and power today, so I can see why the Old Testament has so many moments where God makes his authority clear again and again. If they had no reality check, they would never learn how powerful God is nor learn to fear him as they should.
I enjoy your videos, but I disagree with you on this point. To simply take what was written and say "it was poetry or allegory" is to minimize the Bible itself, or to simply dodge the argument. You may be comfortable with that, but any person who follows logic will see that as misdirection if you cannot definitively prove what you say. I apologize for any offense, I don't mean any - but it sounds like you're just evading the conflict we face.
Almost everything Jesus taught was in the Old Testament; Jesus went ballistic with a whip in the temple; and the Holy Spirit struck Aninias down. Lesson is: be good and don’t tick off Jehova.
The bible is a spiritual book. It is meant to be understood, not only in historical context, but in a spiritual context with wisdom given by the Holy Spirit. One can look at the Old Testament as a literal attestation of spiritual truth. The New Testament ushers in the deeper understanding of that spiritual truth by demystifying mysteries of the past, by the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
I can't get enough of these videos. He speaks plainly with common sense and excellent logic. The way to truth is often intellectual, but another thing I love about Catholicism/Christianity is it's core message of compassion and mercy. There is no other religion or ideology that penetrates these concepts so deeply.
why is the bible so difficult to interpret, like why does someone have to study it, why cudnt it be straight forward so that anyone can read he bible and fully understand gods words.
@@lihaz8890 true, but im jus sayin.... if it was easier to read maybe we wudve had less problems over the past centuries. Problems which lead to a lot of violence and death. The bible is a very powerful tool but it can be a weapon wen misinterpreted or if its in the hands of the wrong people.
The Bible is intended to get down to the very CORE truths of life and existence. Of God, of the human condition, and of the entire universe. It is a blessing that here in the 21st Century we could still unlock truths from the passages of the Bible. Its one thing to discover and believe in the truth. It's another to live it out for the rest of your life. Things get complex. It would help you to know that God, however, by His very nature is the ULTIMATE simple. That is how we find peace in Him. You are wise to search for simplicity in that sense my friend :)
Unfortunately, there are people, and there were in the past, who will pretend that they understood what you just said. Fortunately, there others who will keep their fight against this kind of stupidity, violence and extortion.
Many church fathers and doctors of the church (e.g. Sts. Augustine, Aquinas etc.) taught that the conquest narratives in the OT really happened. They also taught that it was a matter of divine justice, and that God was justified in commanding the Canaanites, Amalekites, etc., to be killed. With all due respect to Bp. Barron, responding with allegory when a skeptic asks why God would allow these things is more of a cop-out than a real answer.
Fr. Barron thanks for your wonderful commentaries. I appreciate how, in many of your commentaries and in almost all of your audio sermons, you challenge us to read the stories for ourselves in the Bible, and to seek the sacraments to deepen our understanding and love of our Lord. Your commentaries are always very apropos. Thank you for your great gift of speaking. We're blessed to have you!
Origen was a little too vauge in his allegory as were many Alexandrian theologians in the early church. I like how you balanced this with a more literal readng Fr. Baron. It's important to remember that God is the same always and forever. Much of the violence in scripture is contextual to the time with some hyberbole, God acts out of love eliminating evil. The nations that surrounded Israel were very evil frequently sacrificing children and needed to be dealt with to establish God's people.
Even in the Old Testament we see a very patient God with our sin. His plan from Abraham and the story of Noah was never to destroy us but to redeem us. Seeing the Bible through the knowledge of power of a weak and humble Lamb helps me understand many of these hard texts. Thanks Bishop :)
Well said. The main problem I have with Fr Barron's explanation is that it requires a switching of genres within a single book of scripture often from one sentence to the next, which is quite inconsistent and messy as well as likely to undermine the author's intention (since they were probably writing a consistent genre within a particular book). Due to this the atheists will view it as cherry picking the Bible, and such an argument will not likely win them over.
This also proof that the ancient fathers of the Church hid nothing or suppressed nothing even the most distasteful passages. This only adds to their credibility.
Fr. Barron, thank you! I do have a question, however. With the argument that some sections of the Bible are meant to be taken as metaphorical, couldn't one argue, for instance, that Moses was metaphorical or even Jesus was metaphorical? Of course, I don't believe this, but how does one decipher between literal and metaphorical scripture?
Pls tell the truth to the world . God of the Old Testament . That God was cruel . This same God created the lion to eat the lamb . It represents balance . God is God . We must not euphemistically and metaphorically hide the true balanced nature of God . God created both negative and positive energy. It is this truth that will set you free .
I really want to understand this but I'm still confused. Are we to believe that Joshua didn't really kill the Canaanites? That it is just an allegorical story? It seems so specific and historical. I am Catholic and I really want to understand this but I just don't get it. I'm left to believe that the God of the OT is quite different from Jesus in the NT.
It could be both. We do not know the exact historical circumstances as the Old Testament is not first a historical work. The argument in the video is that the reason the violence is mentioned is primarily for allegorical purposes - not historical. Does that help?
wiggbuggie1 But isn't the fact that we experience death and pain the result of original sin? In other words, death and pain is the result of human flaw. God allows it to happen because He gave us free will but I didn't think He would order it to happen.
Yes, but the authors of the texts which we call the Old Testament certainly would not have included the violence simply to include violence. It had to have some allegorical meaning as Fr.Barron says - victory over evil. Perhaps similar are early Christian images of things like St. George slaying the dragon (a representation of evil).
I wish there'll be a televised debate between Fr. Barron and Richard Dawkins so that the good father can hoist all of so-called "new" atheists in their own petard...
And the use of violent imagery by believers against those who think differently lives on. Thankfully we no longer live in times when they can actually carry out their wicked thoughts out in the world. Such fine morality you guys have, why don't you just admit its your own and stop hiding behind a poor work of fiction?
I'm not your friend. I would expect a better retort from an certified apologist. This is akin to a kid definding his bad school grades because some other kids are failing.
Smar Mosaur I feel like you are showing the same hatred that you hate seeing shown to others. How can you stop the cycle? Without violence or hatred...
J Morales If you think that me pointing the violent BS that Brent Tanjuetco and the kindergarten apologist logic Fr. Robert Barron are espousing is the same, you need to have your head checked. I'm not part of any cycle, I haven't carried out violence against those who believe, nor do I plan to. And I don't hide behind the actions of others like Fr. Robert Barron to justify my own. And just because he passively aggressively calls me friend while doing so doesn't make him friendly.
Apply this video to the current Israeli - Hamas situation - what is Israel supposed to do? I’m truly interested in feedback here. I’d like to see how Bishop Barron’s teaching of scripture on this video translates to the current situation in the Middle East.
Those passages cannot be read in a metaphorical, symbolical, bla bla ways; they have to be read in a historical realist way and understood that those things really happened, those horrific sermons were really uttered, even child sacrifices were given, human sacrifices were made, homosexuality was despised and punished with death, etc. but gradually the liberals grew aversion to it and symbolically Jesus resisted all this barbarity and preached non-violence, compassion, mercy and peace and love of all human beings. Islam seems to have imbibed more all the worst in the Old Testament and less of the New Testament.
From where do we know Socrates's existence, the Crossing of the Rubicon, or the existence of the Kingdom of Israel? From Plato, from Suetonius, and from the Books of Kings. One source, each. We don't contend that Caesar never crossed the Rubicon, nor that Socrates was a myth, nor that the Kingdom of Israel did not exist. The Apostles's revelation have not only four of Jesus's followers to testify to it directly, but also a man who once hated Christians - Paul - to testify to it as well.
So all of the portions of the bible containing atrocity are suppose to be read as a metaphor(of the struggle between "moral and immoral", because a passage in the final book of the new testament implies such? How does something written hundreds of years after the fact render the atrocities of the old testament as simple metaphors? Your explanation in no way proves that this is how the old testament was written or that ancient hebrews interpreted their scripture in such a way. How can one passage retroactively decide the meaning of a people that lived hundreds of year prior? How does it disprove the idea that these passages are exactly how they look? That is, a warlike, bronze age people who view the world around in terms of their God, and so they excuse and justify their behavior as the will of said God. None of your arguments here explain away the passages condoning the rape of women(as well their treatment as chattel), slavery, the murder of heretics et cetera. There are plenty of other atrocities within the bible besides the conquest of the promised land.
Expert1911 There is no religion. The Religion is that which is in Jesus Christ brother. Christ came and one of the things he did was Question the Church and the Government of his day! Because they were extremely corrupt.
Just because someone is wrong about one thing doesn't mean he's wrong about everything.
Except that means he's not all knowing
But it means he is not perfect
Sorry can i Ask you a question?If Jesus resurrected with the body what happened to him next?
The example of sinners toying with evil and keeping some of it for themselves is exactly what happened when the ruling priest class chose to include the old testament in the bible, which served their ability to maintain political control. Then they excluded - and made punishable by death - the gospels in which Yeshua tells the disciples that their Abrahamic god is a false god to be renounced. The old testament god is a demonic demigod of war who served to deceive souls into murder, blood sacrifice, enslaving others, and taking young virgins as spoils of war, and in doing so he delivered countless souls into darkness. Early Christians should have cast out these teachings from the false satanic god as Yeshua commanded in the censored gospels. Instead, modern Christians are still toying with this evil today, and trying to explain away horrific texts that have nothing to do with the true loving God of Christ.
@@NewEarthAwakening so you saying that these events that happen in The English bible, didn't happen in the Hebrew(Torah) Atall ?
St. Augustine: "The New Testament lies hidden in the Old, and the Old becomes clear in the New."
Norm Chouinard true statement. Old Testament is a shadow of God and is made clear with Jesus as in book of John kinda going to heads with Moses. Revelations but in different aspects of the roots of the Revelations. Basically God reaches out to people based on where they are and their culture.
@@admiralmurat2777 Jesus actually make things worse and less moral. In the old testament, there is no concept of hell or "the devil". It's not until Jesus comes around that it makes it a gun to your head proposition: "Declare me your one and only true god or burn eternally in hell". So much better than the old testament, oh but wait, it's not. It's threatening you with eternal damnation if you don't believe in these wild and unfounded myths. Which is worse? God killing a bunch of babies or Jesus condemning you to hell for all of eternity if you don't believe. You decide.
NEITHER. you've missread BOTH. just like bishop Barron said. go back and read them through the eyes of the Savior.
it's all metaphorical and allegorical.
do you honestly physically think Humanity started from one man and one woman?
start a tribe of people from One Man and one woman. go ahead try. bread one type of animal with another of its kind. see how long this line will last before degeneration kills it. physically/genetically Adam and Eve are an impossibility. several colonies of Adams and Eves. now THERE'S a concept.
the survivors will breed with survivors that will breed with the survivors that will breed with the survivors. and there you go The "first people" if God literally walked with Adam as it states. then I'm sure he would have did it right. repeatedly. and successfully. over a period of time for the purpose of sustainability.
the "adamites" may have been the first people. it never States they weren't. it just never states they are. and if something made you believe that they are then you obviously looked into it a little too deeply. the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
people are still ultimately missing the point. Adam and Eve are the beginning point of morality. not the first physical people. as it states when Cain left the garden he went into the Land of Nod. now nod had people as that is where cain met his wife. now how can there be people if Adam and Eve are the only people? but if you look at it metaphorically as Adam and Eve being the first "moral" people. we understand that as genetics prove. Homo sapiens existed before this time and after. then the audacity of the claim of Adam and Eve being the first and only people genetically which science proves otherwise creates a kind of contradiction. did evil exist before the garden? or were people just purely immoral prior to this. God seems to be a moral being.
it stands to reason he would create the first two moral people. much like Jesus and the apostles walked around teaching others. he wanted Adam and Eve to be the first to walk and teach morality to humanity. this is why he created them a garden in a place called Eden. the most perfect place in nature. where they would walk around pure and innocent ignorant of Good and Evil. but, at the behest of the serpent they partook of the tree of Good and Evil. knowing Good and Evil and destroying their own innocence. think about how you were as a child. innocent of Good and Evil until adults drove it into.. DEEP into your brain. at which point your innocence was lost forever. this is the same dilemma. the Lord doesn't want us to know good and evil. but, once we do he wants us to choose. this is the "moral dilemma" for once we do we have fallen. from an innocent child like mindset. having to now "morally" climb back up to that level. only through the Lord Jesus Christ can we be saved and return to this childlike State of Mind. simply put it's all about the state of mind.
I KNOW... I know because I had a similar experience where me and someone I deeply love had a childlike mindset for much of our lives. ignorant of the many disgusting evils that were already deeply engraved into society. and one day we both learned Good and Evil. then, all the sudden we partook of many forbidden fruits and had many forbidden thoughts. putting us on the same Echelon as everybody else. just to be like everybody else if not more so we did things to others and to each other that are truly Unforgivable. and we became truly ignorant and judgemental. looking back on it now. we were no better than anyone. because we aren't. None of us are better than anyone. except for those who've never lost that innocent mindset. some may stay innocent.. for that is the secret to life itself. Others May insist that you need to GROW UP because the world is cold and hard. look at a small child. look at their innocent joyful expression. it is the very nature of God. God blesses his children such as these. but that doesn't mean you can't lose your innocence at a very young age either. all that means is that you're going to have a tough road back. and it IS a tough road. but, not impossible. if you're willing and ready and you accept the atonement. you will be saved. then, all you must do is live in accordance to God's will. live a moral life. obey the Commandments which isn't much. and try to live a pure just life. trust me this isn't hard. I bet many of you never knew that Egypt has like 80 or 90 different Commandments. can you imagine trying to obey these Commandments? just be lucky there's only 10. repent and be forgiven except the atonement and be saved. none of us are Innocent but none of us are also Beyond Redemption. good luck with your path... hope you all make it
God bless
@@otherhalf228 How does God seem to be a moral being? He seems to be completely immoral. Ordering the slaughter of thousands of innocent women and children AND animals (WTF did they have to do with anything?!?!) (1st Samuel 15), condoning slavery (Exodus 22), Stoning gay people, etc. On the subject of stoning gay people... So God creates everything, so he makes people born gay. Then he commands them to not act on the instincts HE gave them. The punishment for not abiding by this, according to God himself is to be stoned to death in this world and go to hell for eternity in the next world. Is this even a remotely fair god? Sounds immoral to me. Also, ask yourself... in the garden of Eden, who told the truth? God or the serpent? Hint: God lied and the serpent told the truth.
Jason Tower wow you're mind is totally twisted and corrupted it makes sense though. it's like that part of the first Matrix movie when the agents are trying to get to Morpheus and completely change his thought patterns. agent Smith states once this is accomplished the brain patterns change from one wave to another. once this is done their mindset is completely perverted to the point of total mind control.
the devil is controlling your mind son
WAKE UP
"the greatest trick the devil ever pulled off is telling the world that he doesn't exist"
one of the saddest things I have to witness repeatedly is people taking the devils side over God side which always ends up in disaster, failure, and further falling from Grace which is all God offers us love and grace. like a ballet dancer if you nurture and love your student they will become as a graceful and coordinated as humanly possible. or you can lie to them. tell them they're good and they could slip and fall on their rear
as you continuously laugh at them and feed their ego and tell them that they're actually good when they're not. in this scenario you might as well be honest and just tell someone flat out that they're no good. the devil doesn't want us to get better and improve he wants us to fail he wants us to fall. and he wants you to believe that you could do this you could succeed all on your own. you see.. the devil's ultimate goal is to destroy Humanity because he and the rest of the Fallen Angels were jealous that God chose us over them. once again this is Genesis read the Bible please I know you're trolling and shoot.. I bit.. fine.. but, you're going to hear my two cents.
read the Bible before you make any comments. anybody could just take snippets of verses here and there. but, to truly understand these verses that actually takes intelligence. anybody can READ the bible word for word. but, to truly understand it. that's rare. first of all God doesn't make gay people. believe it or not sexual orientation is and always has been a choice. ITS A CHOICE! feelings may be involved but its still a choice. why aren't animals gay answer me this question? why don't you see any gay animals? why aren't any successful species gay? answer:procreation
God doesn't make people gay. people CHOOSE to be gay and then blame God. because Society doesn't accept them. blaming them on God or the Bible or their PARENTS. when all the Bible States is how to live a moral just life. its a simple guidebook to abide by. if people were meant to be gay don't you think they could procreate with any gender? and yes this is possible I believe. there was an episode of Star Trek TNG a long time ago that had a race that had both genders and could procreate with any member of their race. so in that way they got to choose who was feminine or masculine dominant or submissive what have you. see this is all about duality. it is one of the moral dilemmas that we all wrestle with. being born a little androgynous I understand this better than anyone. like many I could have gone either way. but, of course this is a choice. and I chose solely based on my own decision. this was long before I sat down and started to read a million religious books and text see I didn't read the Bible until later in life. and I grew up with a lot of gay/lesbian and bisexual friends. who I saw time and time again make the choice. because it is a choice. I also seen a lot of these individuals unfairly judged by humans. not by God but by HUMANS. And they're still judged by humans. God doesn't judge people. PEOPLE DO. People make choices and refuse to face the consequences. believe it or not depending on what you read there is a place for human beings who lead an honorable life but yet reject the gospel. see you don't HAVE to accept the gospel right now. like me and others you may eventually accept it. but it takes a lot of evolution MENTAL evolution to get to this point. but, you will eventually learn that this is the right way to proceed. (we're all here to learn valuable lessons. once you've learned these lessons your not doomed to repeat them again)let me ask you. you think I'm immoral for asking this question what would happen if all the straight people were to die today? who would be left to repopulate society? once you realize this is common-sense you realize how silly it is to even ask this question. people get curious everybody goes through this phase. now I'm not saying you shouldn't explore your Curiosities. we all get curious we all want to do things sexually and try drugs and alcohol and do all kinds of sin. the Amish have a time for this they call it "rumspringa" where they let their youth run wild for a period of time. engaging in all manner of sin. of course this is why they exist to tempt us. and trust me once you've been through it all you realize how silly it all is. and all you really want out of life is what God intends for you. that's when you realize that all these distractions are just slowing down your natural progression your Natural Evolution. God doesn't want us to suffer God doesn't want us to struggle. this is the curse of the Fall. all these quote-unquote morally good and evil things didn't exist Once Upon a Time. the adamites were morally perfect. until they wanted to know good and evil. at which point they could perform both good and evil acts and learn which ones are beneficial to them and which ones are not. the problem is most people don't realize that the guidebook is there right there in plain sight all you have to do is follow this guidebook and you don't have to take the risk of lowering your progress in the evolutionary chart. this is why such things are considered degenerate. and yes before you say anything degeneration does exist in animals. and usually ends up with the extinction of that species. these are all things that need to be bread out in order to have a prosperous people. all the Bible States is that a immoral sinful ways are degenerate and will lead to your extinction. and God does not want that. God created humanity to rise above all other beings. it may not be an issue now because there's 7 billion people. populations have grown way out of control. but, trust me if a catastrophe happened today. supervolcano/ an asteroid impact/ nuclear apocalypse what have you these important factors would become relevant again. and as Revelation states there will be a day of reckoning and the day of judgement. right now. today, if disaster struck the planet? how do you think Humanity would carry on. you think sitting and being immoral and degenerate would help the human race?
what about being lazy? it's a fact that only hundred years ago people were harder working more religious and tougher more rigorous people. since then the world's population exploded and today you don't have to leave your house for anything. Shoot you could order whatever food or whatever you want straight to your house and if you're so lazy that you can't work and your body atrophies you can probably go get welfare and live off welfare and live like that and die like that. now, how does that help the future of humanity? Think about it. This is where we are heading this is where humanity is right now. once again it's a moral dilemma. when people are prosperous and high populations roam the Earth we not much worried about Sinful gluttonous lustful slothful ways. just like in the time of the flood and throughout many Aeons populations would grow and people would stop following God. leading to destruction and complete annihilation of whole peoples. this is why the metaphorical "flood" exists because the world had become so corrupt and become so immorally Twisted at one point in the past that let's say a "natural disaster" completely reset humanity.
this is where we are heading. Seers have been predicting it for ages. everybody seems to be under the impression that we're living in some kind of crazy golden age where we can do whatever we want and we're not held accountable for anything. but, you see we are. and we will be. and on that day y'all we'll all wake up and realize just how wrong you've really been. I will pray for your souls. But, ultimately it will be up to you guys. the future of humanity can either live or die with us.
fix your life now while you still can. trust me you will not regret it later
God bless
As an Eastern Orthodox scholar, I of course agree completely. I wish this was considered Christianity 101 - foundational.
Most Christians are unaware of these passages, and I think that most religious leaders fear that if they tell their congregations about them and then try to explain them away that not all of their congregation will accept their reasoning that these are metaphors; instead, many will either leave Christianity, have a massive crisis of faith, or develop a really cruel and violent version of Christianity that is okay with war crimes. My guess is that they think it's easier simply to not tell them about these passages.
David Warren, It's your scriptural errors that share the blame for atheism. People are ignorant of God, and your false doctrines exacerbates the problem. Teaching hellfire works to scare kids and stupid people, but mature minds will revolt and rightly so.
Teaching a pagan trinity confuses many scriptures that would clarify creation's situation.
I'm just a messenger, and the bible contains truth if God opens it up to you.
Oh, and the Catholics lied to me while I was growing up. Nuns, priests, Christian brothers, all lied by telling me that God didn't have a name. Then One day I found God's personal name in my Catholic Fireside Family Bible - Jehovah. Right there in black and white in my own Catholic bible.
I thought that if they could boldly lie about God's name, what else have they been lying about? Just everything.
Sunil Sunny- I use the bible as my guide, especially the words of
Jesus. "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
Lord's prayer: "...thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
So I don't plan on going to heaven, which is reserved only for Jesus and the 'bride' of Jesus.
There will be a "new heaven and a new earth, in which righteousness is to dwell". Rev. 21, 1,4.
So I plan on living forever on a restored earth, starting on the 8th day of creation.
How about you?
Sunil Sunny , That question is 2000 years old, and in principle it is answered many ways.
Those who are from God never magnify themselves for glory, fame, money, or power.
God controlled the canon of the scriptures and their contents in each book.
Satan, OTOH, tries to insert spurious books and ideas, but God exposes them in due time.
False books, like the Book of Mormon, are just not allowed in.
Questionable books like the Book of Enoch, raise more questions and controversy than give bible insight to live by.
The Apocryphal books were admitted by the Catholic church to be non-canonical.
Since God is judging us by our actions, not just our beliefs, it behooves us to make following the bible straightforward.
Now if you want to sell scams, there's plenty to choose from Satan. The first line of Satan's attack is against the bible itself, then its contents.
Example: My interlinear bible helped me to get to the truth of God's name. That led right into the trinity falsehood getting exposed.
What bible do you read? Should you read? One that contains the unadulterated truth. But that is more of a buying point than a selling point. And that means work and searching first for truth for each individual. Then Prov. 2:1-12 kicks in.
In a nutshell, if you want to worship God according to his desires, then it's His responsibility to get the correct bible into your hands. That's only obvious. But God still reserves each for personal judgment. "He who is faithful in little is faithful in much."
A good bible needs to be accurate, free from translator interpolation, and free from falsehoods and omissions.
It's an easy task to omit all the bibles that have omitted God's name from the text 7000+times. There's no excuse for the fraud, even if one pleads translation difficulties. Use YHWH At each occurrence.
The few that are left are the ones to sort seek and find the truth in, which is what God's holy spirit is sent to help out with.
flymasterA
So I guess you’re just going to ignore John 1 1C then.
I would recommend that you avoid all or nothing thinking. The Bible is a blend of literary genres, written by a wide variety of authors, to a wide variety of different audiences. Therefore, we have to be careful and discriminating as we determine precisely how to read a given Scriptural text. The Gospels are not in the genre of legend or myth.
Enough to make the bible next to useless as a governing text for human behavior. Discrimination should be employed all the time in critical thinking including taking a wide angle view of the bible's teachings which seem to contradict themselves at more than a few junctures. I believe in God. I do not believe in a manuscript written by flawed people who say it is the word of God and take their word for it blindly because it was God Himself who told them what to write. The Old Testament is as bad a text ever written supposedly written for people who were illiterate. Really? In fact the clergy, hundreds of years ago, until the invention of the printing press, didn't even allow regular folks to read the bible. Had to go on their interpretations. Make that flawed interpretations. It's one of the ways the clergy held power over politics. I can see why young people turn away from the bible's teachings-- because there is nothing substantial there. It's far removed from reality based mainly on fear of suffering for eternity if one doesn't accept Jesus as one's Lord and savior. I'll pass this belief system up over one that makes sense.
Thank you, father. As a former atheist myself this was how I perceived the bible & God. However, as you explained & a year ago when I heard God's calling, I realized that wasn't the case...& your explanation just confirms such interpretations. God bless & blessings.
I love how you can interpret all the brutal behaviour in the Bibble anyway you want... just ignore all the brutality :D, try doing it with any other book :D. Must be fun living in delusions and beliving in psychopatic God of old Testament (who's personality was obviously made up by people 2000 years ago justifying their inhuman behaviour).
There is a deep, unintentional, intellectual dishonesty in that argument. In your words, it seems that the bloodshed that was celebrated in name of the Yahweh is an allegory and not actual bloodshed. There is no way to go around that. You cannot claim that a change of perspective will make right the passages such as those in Numbers 31, where male children and non-virgin female children are to be slaughtered and virgin female children taken by Yahweh's followers by his supposed order.
The friar would make a good lawyer. Spin, spin and more spin.
Christians: "Slavery is wrong."
Bible. "Take the virgen women against their will. Have have them as wives".
Christians: "That's not slavery".
Me: I'm out of here.
Weak rebuttal.
@@patrickdixon7202 th3 Christians, the bible or mine?
@@Eman-wj8gq Yours.
@Patrick Dixon really? I thought it was the only one that made sense. Alright, thanks for clarifying.
You expect sense from theists? They will always excuse the horrible shit in their book. Secondly, what method do we use to tell what's metaphorical and what's not? These people are full of it.
Father Barron: In complete respect, I would like to say that anybody who wrestles with this issue really deserves some credit. This is not a light intellectual undertaking. The problem of Biblical violence is commensurately difficult with the problem of suffering. Also, when the Holy Spirit worked through biblical authors, it is somewhat open to question how inspiration was revealed to them. Just because passages are difficult, one does not deride them. Perhaps the first element here is that of trust. Trust that the deeper meaning of the passage is available upon proper reflection. Difficulty here might also be due to our level of understanding. Personally, I think a tsunami that ends 200,000 lives is more difficult to understand than biblical violence. Yet, the love of God is not diminished in the world. This is a profound mystery. We are confronted by something that is difficult for us to fathom, let alone resolve. It is quite possible that this mystery may not be unpackable on a human level in this lifetime. I think it is important that a great degree of humility be a foundational starting point here, when attempting to deal with all this. A retreat into Socratic ignorance might be called for. Certainly, one should never forget the culture of the time in ancient Israel. Just because the biblical author felt inspired to lay such violence at God's feet does not necessarily mean that God would sanction a moral compromise that goes against the very spiritual laws layed out for us.
rockhound, best comment here. Thank you. And thank you to Fr. Barron for doing the deep thinking, so all of us can benefit.
Bishop Barron doesn't discredit Christians or others who struggle with the "dark passages" of the Bible.
rockhound570 theist ..Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
He was talking about spiritual war, not literally killing people.
@@greatmuslim3808 And who was killed by Jesus? Even a 5th grader can see it's a metaphor, especially when the Bible clearly says we have to fight a spiritual war, not a physical one.
Thank you. Fr. Barron
those of us who've read our Origen (and Athanasius, Irenaeus, Tertullian) and know how 'old' this criticism it is can feel embarrassed for the New Age atheists (none of whom, by the way, are theologians or scripture scholars). I'm convinced atheists just don't know how to read.
@Taylor Swift is Life I know it's a pretty old comment, but... He spelled it right. Origen is a name of a scholar. But yeah, the comment is pretty hard to read.
@Taylor Swift is Life He spelt it right lol.
@Taylor Swift is Life maybe you should read a bit more, lol, starting with Origen
All texts are written with agendas, bias and interests, but in hermeneutical theory textual meaning cannot be reduced to this subset of ‘behind the text’ factors. Ricoeur establishes that there are also multiple in-text and in front of the text factors - the latter having to do with issues of reader-response.
Also, the later Wittgenstein establishes that at issue is the historical speech-action in view. All language is communicative speech-action, but is not just one thing since the number of possible speech-actions is so variable.
So, a key question is indeed how language is being used by an author historically, and then how this relates to the horizons of readers. And this will reflect their agenda, bias and interests, of course, but also factors such as cognitive and historical content, operative function, features such as genre, denotative background meta-language, connotative and conversational implicature, self-involvement and the precise manner in which the text interacts with reader horizons, and so on (the list is big).
The point is that to say that all texts reflect agenda, interests, and bias isn’t to say very much about the character of a text, but tends to be a way of ‘binning’ a text in conversation as ‘only this’ or ‘only that’ - with a view to then asserting some supposedly-contrary position. Really, though, it is not to hear the text at all.
Many questions need to be asked: What exactly is the author’s agenda? How does the agenda relate to historical situations of the day? Does the content have any historical veracity when compared and contrasted with other independent sources? Is there anything that, against accepted criteria, could constitute an instantiation of Wisdom literature? How could the text be of use today? How does it function in different reading communities? And so on (the list is big).
Conrad DiDiodato atheists will find anything to “prove” themselves right.
I find the explanation of Bishop Barron, based on the Church Fathers, totally reasonable and logical. The language of thousands of years ago is not comparable to today.
so this part is a metaphor, this part is literal... by what methodology did he arrive at these conclusions? This may be some the worst apologetics I've heard to date.
We need to view these scriptures also by the language used. Keep in mind that military language in ancient times was historically ultra-exaggeration. Words like "wipe them all out." "Destroy them all down to the last child" was common military exaggeration. We know this from historical studies. It's more than likely that the wars waged were soldier vs soldier...not really counting civilians. We have to be careful not to read literalism into ancient language because in those ancient times language often used symbolism and exaggeration to make a point.
*GOD is statistically killed more humans than ANYBODY IN THE HISTORY OF TEXT*
Accept it.
be careful with that justification cuz the muslims also say that they don't kill civilians. XDD
Look for “The Bible Project “ on TH-cam by dr Tim Mackie. It really is helping me understand Old Testament in relation with the New Testament. Here is one on the book of Judges th-cam.com/video/kOYy8iCfIJ4/w-d-xo.html You must see all his videos and you will come out understanding the true righteousness of our GOD and his Son Jesus
@@Sapioso What's your point?
bob polo It’s a sadistic, terrifying fairytale😉
You say, “Read these passages in a metaphorical, allegorical, and symbolic way, as about the spiritual struggle.” Are we allowed to read the New Testament that way? Is the New Testament “a poetic evocation of the power and sovereignty of God”?
God bless you too!
I have a question
These just gibberish appologist excuse. It does not make sense, ..it does not explain anything, but our book/god can not be wrong... you are wrong.
Nothing here.
Those who said they understand this is lying or dellusional.
Thankyou bishop barren always had problems with this God told me be patient the answer will come and here it is .I love my Catholic faith and i appreciate the intellect the good Lord gave you keep up the good work
If you don't understand the difference in Man's orientation to God between the Old and New Testaments than you don't understand the Bible. Old Testament is a fallen mankind trying to hack out a relationship to God. The New Testament is God dying to re-establish His relationship to Man. It's not that God has changed, it's that Man's orientation to Him has changed. (i.e. The sun doesn't revolve around the earth, it's the earth that moves around the sun.) Animal sacrifices were necessary to obtain an interaction with God in the Old Testament. Why? Don't know, but they clearly were. That is no longer the case. What changed? Man's orientation toward God thru Jesus Christ. The God of the Old Testament is the same God, but our relation to Him has changed. Obviously the relationship in the New Testament (God the Savior) is the relationship that ultimately God desired. The final end-state is yet to come, but you see the direction it's headed.
I thought that the animal sacrifice bit was poked into the bible by the holy men so the simple people would bring one of their animals to cook on the altar. Then after the simple people left the holy men would feast on the free food.
Brilliant, David. Absolutely brilliant... sheesh. There are specialists today who can help people with your brain condition. They're called teachers.
Jersey2tall86 I don't have a brain condition. And I spent a childhood having teachers tell me about the invisible man in the sky
Amusing metaphors considering God is not invisible and he doesn't live in the sky.
You aren't educated in the slightest. You write like a smug, ignorant fool.
I think your hypothesis David is interesting, though it could have been that both the person who brought up the sacrifice and the priest shared in that sacrifice (in fact, this latter idea reminds me a bit of Mass as a Catholic). Obviously, if the priest is going to be dedicated to doing the sacrifice, which takes time to do things from killing the animal to cooking it, then they won't be able to survive without payment if they don't have time to grow their own food or animals.
I heard that there were animal sacrifices precisely because the other religions, like in Egypt, worshipped animals, and that the Christian/Jewish God is against his followers worshipping other gods. This Christian/Jewish God doesn't want anyone to worship other gods, logically, but it is much more scandalous when a Christian/Jew does this because they basically said they were going to follow God and His commands and then they contradict Him.
Are all the Laws of Moses to be seen as metaphors of spiritual battle? How so? They literally and specifically command to kill innocent human beings if they don't fit within the moral code therein described.
laapasakuna
They are metaphors when the truth is too hard to handle .
@@cathyb7573 1) If commandments are just metaphors, they shouldn't be followed literally. And this concerns all the commandments. 2) If "kill innocent human beings" is a metaphor, what is the "truth too hard to handle" suggested there?
laapasakuna
My point is just this .
Bishop Barron and many others cherry pick ..They get around the hard questions by claiming they are metaphors ..lts a Cop out . .
@@cathyb7573 Thank you, I got it now.
laapasakuna
Youre welcome .😊
So is it real or not? It sounds like you are saying these texts are a metaphor. How much is a metaphor, which parts, who decides, how do you know? That is a big part of the problem. Why are such un-intuitive metaphors being used?
If all of it is real and not a metaphor, that is a solid foundation to build on. This explanation throws everything into question for me.
This is 1st Century behavior at its finest, completely justified because the Bible told us so-- in particular the Old Testament. To truly believe the writings you have to be a 1st Century thinker. Good luck with that in trying to correlate it to 21st Century behavior. It doesn't work. You can't justify the slaying of innocents or even what we would call misdemeanors in this particular age. Period. End of story. What you have is a problem you can't fix through rationalization. Thou shall not kill! So says one of the ten commandments. (And throwing them on the rocks doesn't abolish that particular commandment.) Soon thereafter Moses descends from the mountain top only to find half his flock committed the sin of worshiping the Golden Calf and orders the slaying of almost 3,000 of "his" people. Mr. Barron there is no explanation you can convince anyone of its righteousness. There is no righteousness in killing someone over their beliefs or the way they "worship" be they faulty or misguided. Killing is not the way to sort things out. Belief's should have some foundation in commonsense.
@Goku vs The Lord had nothing to do with Moses' behavior. It was Moses' behavior that killed them. He was a mass murderer. Delusional more than likely. In our time he'd be put to death or put away for life for what he did. He's nobody I admire. And by the way it wasn't God that wrote the bible, only by people you or I don't know or ever will. They can write whatever they want and like a good flock of sheep follow the words that for the most part make little sense. Here's a test for you-- you have a child, make that two, and both decided at the age of- let's say 7 and 9- they fall into a group of satanic devil worshipers and everything you try to get them back to fearing the Lord doesn't work. Going to kill them because they wont convert back? Moses did. Was he right? Don't answer.
@Goku vs The Lord didn't kill anybody. The Bible doesn't say a thing about the Lord manifesting on earth and killing the unfaithful. Moses incited his faithful to do the killing. Which is the same as killing and murdering. Manson style.
@J.W. H. You make my point. Find me a bible that says "do not murder." You won't. That's the problem with taking writings from Hebrew and ancient Greek translated from an oral history 300 years after the events occurred. Then much of the writings were missing or destroyed, then translated again to modern day languages, then interpreted differently by every church on the planet so you end up with different sects -- some going to war with each other -- th-cam.com/video/v-63cTYJDCA/w-d-xo.html
@J.W. H. The Hebrew text and Christian Bible (in ancient Greek) were written in 300 AD . . . 300 years after the events of Jesus and Roman Empire took place. Think about it. That means the information was passed down orally for 300 years by people who couldn't write. Or, and this is quite plausible, it was written down in Aramaic (the language of Jesus) then translated to ancient Greek and Hebrew. What was recovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls made up the Bible, then hundreds of years later many parts of the Bible were removed from the original text for political/clerical reasons. In other words the Holy Scriptures were tainted by flawed men and clergy. This is why we know nothing about Jesus' experiences when he was a young man. We only know what happened when he appeared in the Bible at the age of 33. Approximately two decades of his life is missing.
@J.W. H. That's more like it. You have some spirit and some intelligence to come up with a workable argument. Most Christians don't put up much of a fight. Thank you.
Please elaborate, I got a few sentences from 5 minutes of this video, the context which lays within your speech is incredibly thin. Please explain how a literal act of terror is a good way to give a metaphor, how is 200,000 people dying in a tsunami a 'god is mysterious' yet my eczema is cured through my prayers is a 'god is great, god is almighty and god is loving'. This is precisely how you play tennis without the net.
Then why not believe that Christ crucified is poetical allegory?
Because you can clearly see that the apostles writing it did not speak or act like it was allegory which means they do not believe it was allegory and they're the ones who wrote the Gospels . The apostles constantly claim to be eyewitnesses to these events in letters that they write , which is in the new testament after the gospels
@@amaokoro7000
Right. Likewise it doesn't seem likely that the Old Testament writers thought their bloody takes were poetic allegory.
@@tinman1955 how do you know that I made specific mention of the fact that the apostles were writing letters and the Gospels are referred to as intended to be an accurate record, the writer's intention is never mentioned in the old testament except for specific prophets such as Isaiah. The point here is that if the whole Bible is the word of God everything should now be in the context of the new testament and understood from that point so the message you take from the old testament shouldn't be contradictory to the new. It's based on the premise the whole bible is true if that is true the logic follows and the Bible's truth can be judged on the accuracy of the Gospels as historical records in which Jesus confirms the Old Testament. So that's how you judge the allegory in the Bible combined with hermeneutics
Dear Father,
I have watched a LOT of your videos, but this may one of the top ten most beautiful. Thank you and prayers.
siggymartin ...Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
if a sergeon cuts off your arm to save your life, his he a bad dr? or would he be worse if he allowed the sickness to overtake the entire body and lose the whole patient? God loves humanity so much, that he would destroy ANYTHING that would try to destroy it....understand? if he did not, then the human race will go extinct from the evil spreading one soul at a time until evil has infected the entire race, at that point there would be no one left for God to use to eradicate it and evil would just continue to spawn more evil for eternity. he does not take pleasure in losing anything that he has created. he does it from love of his creation, not from anger. that is the key.
@@greatmuslim3808 Unlike the many Muslims who literally do cut the heads off of people with a sword, the sword you are referencing in the bible is not a literal sword. It's a metaphor for the strife that Christians would endure in this world for telling the truth in a world under the dominion of the father of lies.
Great Muslim Become am even greater interpreter. You miss the point entirely.
@@josieposie9969 Why do you think Christians are innocent? Crusades, Inquisition, Salem witch trials. Islam is a younger religion, its just their turn to be bloody and violent. Once they are done, I think the whole world is done with this barbarism. *Cheers* to the end of organized religion :).
Another great video - thank you.
I think there is a legitimate question underlying a few of the comments though: many of us are happy to abandon our obsession with historicity, but on some points of Christian belief, we are told (I think) that historicity is important. Given that these authors used allegory so freely, how are we to distinguish passages that are "just" allegory, from passages that have some claim to historicity? Turning water into wine would be a nice example to work with.
Also those were ancient times. It’s either killed or be killed. Some events needed to happen (ie Israel needed to survive and thrive) so that the Lord’s will can be done. Now in the new covenant, we are commanded to love God and love one another. No more blood shed for Christ has shed His for all humanity in the past, present, and future.
Here is the problem: when you start reading the OT allegorically, when do you stop. Maybe the cross itself is allegorical? Very problematic.
@P Ciprian Children don't get much time to repent, yet God orders the slaying of children. 1 Samuel 15:3
@P Ciprian What do you mean by 'if I read the entire answer'?! Your answer was, and I quote verbatim, 'is not allegorical. the issue is of repentance. God is merciful to those that repent, but he is unmerciful to those that refuse to repent. And God gives every one every chance to repent and a lot of time.'!!
@P Ciprian OK, well I can't find that because TH-cam is shite! :-)
@P Ciprian what if, instead your concept of what god is is mistaken? How confident are you that there is a god who created us and personally judges us for our sins?
@P Ciprian why are you at 100%?
Father, what does your idol god say about lying and being hypocritical? 🤨 Like father, like son, your idol.
Dear bishop Barron, although the spiritual allegoric reading is indeed valid, and of course the most fruitful for our personal reading and meditation of the Bible, it is not true that the Church interprets those passages as only poetic and non historical. You are siriously in contradiction with the Tradition in that way. The explanation given by the Church to those passages is, for example, the one given by saint Thomas Aquinas in his Summa Teologiae:
«God is Lord of death and life, for by His decree both the sinful and the righteous die. Hence he who at God's command kills an innocent man does not sin, as neither does God Whose behest he executes: indeed his obedience to God's commands is a proof that he fears Him.»
Best regards.
+Feri del Carpio-Marek The problem with St. Thomas's interpretation is it doesn't work at all in a moral sense. All one has to believe is that God is commanding murder, then the murder one is contemplating is justified.
@@jonathanbrumley murder.. Isn't that a legal therefore human word whish means unlawful homicide with intent.
@@Kitiwake you don't need a legal system for murder to be murder.
Yeah, You go and commit violence, not self defense as the law recognizes it, I want your butt in jail-no matter who you thought told you to do it. Period
Where did you get that passage from? Seriously.
In terms of the non-combatants, women, slaves and children who died, they were killed by the sins of their husbands, masters and fathers. Many of them are surely with Christ.
What I learned: If something in the bible doesn't seem right, just read it as allegory and metaphor.
Bingo! Why bother questioning your beliefs when you can twist scripture to make it more agreeable with your beliefs.
You may have just committed a fallacy called denying the antecedent. God, as Creator, has the sovereign right to speak law into, and do as He pleases with, Creation. Additionally, Jesus Christ is resurrected from the dead and promises the same to all, either for vindication or condemnation. In light of those presuppositions, how do we understand these passages?
Right?? This makes no sense, so you can read the violent & disturbing passages that clearly point to Gods inconsistent character as “metaphor” but not ANYTHING else in the Bible
If all of the violence/murder/genocide/destruction/sexual violence against women in the OT is a metaphor HOW is the crucifixion & resurrection of Christ not??
Also the earth has to be 6,000 years old because it says so in the OT, ok so that means you also condone God saying it’s “all good” to kill babies, children and taking virgins (meaning 12 yr old girls) as sex slaves??
I’m sorry but WTF IM HAVING some serious ISSUES HERE
No one wants to accept that look the God in the OT Bible quite frankly has some serious issues
& if the NT backs the OT by saying everything in it is 100% true, well then WHAT is any of this??
*that the God in the OT
The reason Jesus’ public ministry lasted only 3 years is because he gave us thousands of years old Old Testament to reference what happens to disobedient behavior. The Lamb references the short time on earth and God’s mercy only if we recognize, even at the last moments, the narrow path is the way to salvation…………
I don’t know...that is saying you can twist anything you want into a positive. That is quite the stretch.
Would it help you to know that historians and spiritual masters (who have been at work on such passages for thousands of years) would tell you these aren't historical accounts? most of them are stories.
One can interpret & justify these Bible violent verses in any way. No such problem in Buddhism, no violence but love & compassion (in all living things including even animals, sealife etc) taught in all the sutras!
Good for you
So what verses are "metaphor, allegory and symbolism" and which are to be taken literally? I take this to mean that verses you don't like or agree with 'well those are just a metaphor', whereas other things should be taken literally. This seem to open the Bible up to interpretation....each person will have a different perspective. There are thousands of sects, whose is the "right" interpretation? Is it possible the Bible is NOT the infallible word of god, but the selfish and dire musings of primitive man?
+John B Good point, but to be clear, it is Catholic dogma that the Bible is "inerrant". The Catechism of the Catholic Church in paragraph #107 quotes from Dei Verbum:
The inspired books teach the truth. “Since therefore all that the inspired authors or sacred writers affirm should be regarded as affirmed by the Holy Spirit, we must acknowledge that 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.”72
th-cam.com/video/6hb7nSL1gKU/w-d-xo.html
"If you take the biblical stories of the New Testament about the resurrection as true, that also means the violence that took place in the bible has to be true as well. "
Well no actually, it really doesn't. You're only lying here.
Thank you Fr. Barron for your wonderful and enlightening commentary. I'm a recent revert and I have found your work extremely helpful in understanding the Catholic Faith and Tradition. Please continue your work and may God richly bless you!
Interesting, just a couple of questions/thoughts. You state that we should look through the lens of the New Testament and Christ crucified when dealing with the Old Testament. But what about that long period of time prior to the creation of the New Testament what were people suppose to do? people must have viewed The Jewish God as any of the other Gods, a self loving angry spiteful being.
Now the Old Testament shouldn’t be viewed as a true historical document, that leads to a series of problems as to what did or didn’t happen not only via Israel’s interactions with other people’s but God himself. Did he lead the Jews out of Egypt or is that hyperbole on Israel’s part to make their God seem greater? Did he actually command death of every man, woman, child, and domesticated beast. Or was that the desires of a angry evil group of elitist Jews who didn’t want to share the land. This sort of opens the bible to be seen as not Godly inspired but rather contrived by men for their own desires.
@Stefan Urban agree
Exactly right! Too bad the bishop hasn't responded to you.
I thought this too man or what about before the Bible was written? What were all those living before that time supposed to do?
I agree with Father Barron. The new atheists seem to think that these issues are new, but they have been talked about by theologians for thousands of years. It is a fallacy of atheism that it spots a tricky issue in religion, then claims that this makes said religion false without bothering to think about it from a theological perspective. It's no better than the God of the gaps fallacy, just from the opposite perspective.
Absolutely Amazing. Thank you for this clarification. God Bless you Bishop Barron.
False teaching in order to placate an anti Christian world, and a deeply hypocritical one too as it slaughters the innocents on the altar of selfish convenience.
The reason God gave the order to wipe out the enemies of Israel was to establish the nation of Israel unhindered from corrupt and evil pagan influence, so that there be no memory of them or remnant of their ways in the land that God chose to give to his people.
It was also an execution of judgement on these peoples whos practices were evil in the sight of the Lord, such as infant sacrifice in the most horrific ways.
If today, in Afghanistan it was discovered that the taliban were sacrificing babies by placing them on red hot bowls that melted the flesh off their bones, the US would immediately fly in and wipe them out, and there wouldn't be a person in the west with an ounce of morality in them that would oppose them being wiped out.
Moreover, God sees things that we do not. He understands things that we do not. If he allowed these peoples to be spared, it is quite possible that their offspring would remember their ways and at a later date revert back to these vile practices, and as a result also corrupt Israel.
God also punished them severely for these vile practices to serve as a reminder to his people how he feels about them.
In short, God has the right to execute justice on wicked practices in any way he chooses, either by flood, fire from the heavens, or by the swords of his chosen people.
God demonstrates his justice as well as his mercy, and he does so righteously at his own discretion. Do not allegorize historical events to placate a world that has largely rejected him, and which has become the kind of world that God in the past destroyed, and will destroy in the not too distant future.
God save us from false teachers in our church.
There are no extra biblical historical contemporaries writings about Herod's baby killings, zombies walking around after the crucifixion, Jesus' miracles, Jesus walking around for weeks after his death. These would not go un-noticed. More evidence of allegory and legend and fables.
wow, that part about the scroll blew my mind.
+To Ny Ya, that is cool! It is also cool that in the same genre of symbolic literature called apocalyptic, there is a scroll that could not be opened until the end. In Daniel 12:8-10 it is written,
I heard but could not understand; so I said, “My lord, what shall be the outcome of these things?” He said, “Go your way, Daniel, for the words are to remain secret and sealed until the time of the end. Many shall be purified, cleansed, and refined, but the wicked shall continue to act wickedly. None of the wicked shall understand, but those who are wise shall understand.
In contrast, Jesus, the Lamb of God, in Revelations 5 has the power and authority to reveal God's purposes and to illuminate the meaning of the Old Testament because he is worthy to open the scroll.
Steven Strnad That's really, really cool. Thanks for sharing
To Ny ...Bible. Jesus Christ says, "I did not come in peace. I came with the sword to sell your coat, and I bought a sword. This is your religion of violence, killing and hatred. And you are called good people.
@@greatmuslim3808 No need to project Islam into Christianity. False prophet Muhammad is the only one to spread his beliefs with the sword, not Jesus Christ.
@@chitownkidd33 ☝️
We should believe in God on bad evidence and vague interpretation by your peers, all while reassuring ourselves of his existence through our own subjective experiences? The legitimacy needed to accept this ignorance is astounding.
This is father Barron's interpretation of scripture. Who's version are we to believe? The text says what it says. Hes just trying to make it sound nice. If that part is allegory,metaphor or whatever then why not the rest? Is it just the ugly stuff we should take symbolically? What if Jesus is a metaphor? What if him walking on water,rising from the dead is just a metaphor? Many people believe it to be true history. Christians can't agree on scripture, there's pretty well as many different versions of Christianity as there is followers. If God knew before the bible was written that people would take it literally and kill others over it then surely he is responsible for that for he could foresee it.He should have made it very clear.
I asked the same question. Glad someone else sees this
But where's the allegory in the slave passages? And once you start introducing allegory how much of the Bible remains inerrant?
Hey Fr. Barron, I just want to let you know how awesome it is that God has blessed you with the ability to transmit the Gospel to a mass audience in a smart and accessible way. I just wanted to let you know that you have inspired me to go to seminary. God Bless!
It really would have made things a lot easier if the authors of the Bible had just said what they meant, especially for those of us with Asperger's.
This video inspired me to put the BAN on Fundamentalism.
By this reasoning, a Muslim could argue that in order to understand the Old and New Testaments you have you also read the Qur'an, and then you must read the Old and New Testaments in a Qur'an light. Thus, a Muslim could argue that the New Testament does not claim that Jesus is the messiah, because we know from the Qur'an that there is no messiah. So, what's going on when the Bible talks about Jesus as the son of God? Well, perhaps Jesus was very pious, and so he was the one that the New Testament chose to use as a metaphor for God.
Thank you, Fr. Barron! This video answered some big questions that I've been thinking about for a while now. I wish more priests had the courage to go directly after some of the "tough" issues more head on like you do.
if you told this to a child he would not believe it. Metaphors, allegory ...all this bloodshed was a dream, an invention of an insane writer...do you believe yourself really?
First of all, I really enjoy your videos; they were a great aid in my conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism. In this case, though, I'd like to offer a "middle way".
First, some objections:
1. The lamb who was slain opened the scroll, and the immediate result was alot of violence upon the earth.
2. Unless we are willing to say that YHWH didn't actually historically establish, command, and guide the ancient Israelites, we must at least be able to accept that what was present in the OT scriptures is in accord with the nature of the true God. If we say that YHWH didn't really lead Israel in the direct way described, than we come close to denying that the Jews received any kind of direct revelation from God. Whatever we may read into the scriptures after the fact, it is clear that those who wrote it believed that God actually ordered, and willed, certain violent acts. In the style of CS Lewis, either the Jews, in some sense, experienced real revelations of God to their culture, or they are liars, or they are insane. They explicitly claimed that YHWH came down historically and interacted with them; these aren't the vague, abstracted myths of the pagans.
It is easy for us to look back, from a post-christian/christian world, and declare that violence, even severe violence (Agag, etc) is always wrong. There is, however, one rather significant difference between the time of the OT and the time of the NT, which is Christ and his Gospel.
To clear up any confusion, I don't mean that Jesus taught the world (and the God the Father) nonviolence. It is possible to arrive at the idea of nonviolence without the revelation of Christ; ie, Buddhism, etc. What I mean is that violence in and of itself isn't necessarily bad; violence is only bad if there is a real hope of the conversion of a soul, or a culture.
Is it wrong for God to destroy a culture which promotes child sacrifice? No, but it would be better if they repented and turned to righteousness. Would it be wrong to use violence (and kill, if necessary) a man who is about to slaughter his baby? No, but it would be better to change his heart. "If only there were briers and thorns confronting me! I would march against them in battle; I would set them all on fire. Or else let them come to me for refuge; let them make peace with me, yes, let them make peace with me." Isaiah 27:4-5
We see this pattern a number of times in the OT; God threatens to destroy Nineveh, Israel, etc, but doesn't, because they turn back from the wicked things they were doing. Of course, the spirit of the nations were never changed by these threats. They repented for a while, then turned back to evil, at which point God sent another wave of violence and distress to get them to turn back. The most evangelical action of God in the OT was the torment and destruction of Egypt during the time of Moses. Everyone heard about it, and gave glory to the God of Israel.
When Christ came, he opened up a way, through his body, the Church, to make men truly righteous, in their hearts. Previously, the only way to end the child sacrifices, torturing, and general evil of the pagan nations was to threaten and destroy them. Now, through Christ, the Church can appeal to them through their reason, and through the deep common longings of their hearts for God. The Jews could merely say,"YHWH says...." to which the Pagans could say,"Marduk says..."; the only way the conflict could be resolved was either through war or through a complete removal of God and religion from the equation (Atheism, Buddhism). The only Pagan way to resolve religious violence is either to say that life has no meaning (Atheism), or earthly/bodily existence is suffering, and ought to be escaped (Buddhism). In Christianity (Catholicism), we find, for the first and only time, a thing which is so Rational that it can appeal to the mind of anyone, and so beautiful and meaningful that it can appeal to their hearts as well.
Imagine trying to convert the Philistines to Judaism; how would you even begin? Now remember how the Church converted the invading barbarian tribes after the fall of Rome.
The gist is that responding to true evil with violence is only considered a lesser way because we have a higher way through Christ. Before the higher way, the lower way of physical violence was the highest way; far higher than apathy or acceptance.
Thanks for your time, and God bless!
Hi Hunter, Thanks for making this comment. The notion that the only reason we see the violent way as lesser because of the revelation of Christ and His forgiveness is absolutely beautiful- thank you for sharing it!
I always interpreted it as the Bible is the story of Humanity and our historical evolution. The Bronze/Iron age was insanely cruel in every part of the world (not just Israel), and yet here we are today where (of the whole) things are much friendlier. There is no doubt in my mind god didnt have a hand in that evolution even after the Bible was written.
Thank you for your explanation, Your Eminence. To be honest, I'm still struggling with the violence in the bible even after hearing your explanation. I pray that, with time, God will help me digest the truth of it. God bless!
So why use poetic metaphors if it all just lead to mass confusion (and the senseless violence along with it)?
Actually the 5th commandment has always been interpreted as unjust killing, such as murder, so the Church has a double effect theory of self defence and a just war theory. The Church also allows for execution in cases of necessity because of this.
Am a christian and I struggle with this everyday, but I still find your thesis /interpretation inadequate in a way, that the violence or military depiction was a metaphorical way to depict the war of good vs evil or yahweh fighting for his people, honestly, it still doesn't answer the question, and it leaves alot more unanswered
@Batkov Read the Bible and see what kind of a nations Israeli people killed. Wicked nations that were sexually immoral, child killers by sacrificing them to their gods etc. God did not want Israeli to take part of that kind of practices and He ordered them to kill them to the last one. It's cruel, it's history, it was a common practice when some nation conquered another nation.
This is a very complex issue. God has promised those lands to Abraham and on the other hand you can almost say that God judged those nations using Israel as a tool. The main take away is that God hates sin and the wage of sin is death. We don't know what would've happen if those nations were not destroyed. Israel failed God so many times by worshiping other gods, the gods of the foreign nations despite the fact that most of the nations were destroyed.
Jesus came as a sacrifice for us all so we don't have to pay the death penalty, that's why every person in this world can be saved through Jesus, thus violence is unnecessary and forbidden by Jesus in His second commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
If such is the way we are to read these passages then is it pretty clear these events, along with many others in the Old Testament, are merely legends of the ancient world like the Iliad. It's always the hardest thing for me to believe the Bible is the word of God if it is mostly fables. And if it is mostly fables, like Adam and Moses and Noah, then why does Christ speak of them as if they are real when he is God and should know they are fables. Why would he come to die to erase Adams sin if it never really happened? I would appreciate your input and help. Thanks
+Ben Abajian All of those people are historical people. They aren't made up.
+WinningEdge101 Lol. No they did not exist. There is no historical proof that they existed.
There is also no historical evidence for Homer either then if we apply that same logic.
+Brendan M that would make sense except they didn't just make up the first five books of Moses xD
+Brendan M Thanks for your reply. It helps to always study any literature in its true context and understand why it was written with an unbiased approach. Seeing and researching this history makes sense given the influences the Torahs authors used from Mesopatamia and to keep the Israelites faithful to God while in captivity. One then wonders the historicity of the gospels and New Testament. It seems some like Matthew are targeted toward the Jews while Luke and Acts are for a gentile audience. It's an interesting book but it's lack of accuracy, multiple interpretations, and lack of fulfillment leaves me skeptical if it is really divine authorship as well.
The problem with the allegorical approach is that the writers of the OT certainly believed they were writing history
Dude... THANK YOU!
Thank you for putting this here, and I encourage you to spread this talk by Scott Hahn even MORE so. Because of your recommendation, I have just listened to this talk for the first time. I call myself an avid Catholic, but I have been SOOO EDIFIED by this talk, and my eyes have been opened to an amazing understanding of Christ's sacrifice which i had never known before.
Thank you thank you thank you for making your comment.
It strikes me that simple genre analysis of the text seems to show this "interpretive strategy" is special pleading. It also seems to gloss over the judgment imagery of the New Testament that shows a side of Christ the speaker seems to willfully ignore.
Por favor, permítanme subtitular este vídeo al español. Quedo a sus órdenes, sin costo alguno. Mis amigos tienen que ver al Obispo Barron :D
The problem is that this priest just basically said to ignore the violence and change the original context of the bible to an allegory, but if it's that open to interpretation that means the entire bible can't possible be empirically true.
Thank you, Your Excellency! Beautiful explanation!
Excellency? Wtf?
Chris Brooks Chris, “Your Excellency” is how you formally address a Bishop in the Roman Catholic Church
The biblical God is, on the one hand, a God of nonviolent distributive justice and, on the other hand, a God of violent retributive justice.
I am really anti violence. so I had a hard time with the violence in passages you speak of... however I am not willing to live without God , so I continue to reflect on this issue. In the end , regardless of what I feel, I cannot stand up to God. In the end, opinions of others will also have to fade away as I am going to have to answer for myself , not to them, but to God. I feel I will never really "get it" in this life..
Well, the video was meant to give you a way of interpreting those passages in a non-violent way.
+Bishop Robert Barron "meant to give you a way" yup, here is a convenient out, don't look too hard and go back to your stupor.
+Liz Loria Um, lol. You can still believe in God and still disregard the Bible. In fact you will experience more spirituality this way by having a direct relationship with God. No need for a church.
No need for a god, why not just go that one step further?
It isn't a matter of needing one or not. We all come from some place. And whether we like it or not,whether we believe or not, we were created. For me it wasn't so much a matter of believing or not, but having experiences that I could not ignore or rationalize away by science.
Protestant Christians (especially in the US, Evangelicals) read the OT literally.
I'm curious as to what the ancients used to interpret the Old Testament/Torah/whatever they had. I know that you said Christ is the interpretive lens with which to read the whole bible, but how do you explain what the ancients used to interpret the truth before Christ came?
the truth of their texts
Kevin Brown
It just seems like the picture is that people where in chaos for understanding texts until Christ the Lamb came.
They used a variety of methods, but spiritual allegorization was common.
Fr. Robert Barron hello father. greetings from you're fellow catholic. just one question what do you mean by spiritual allegorization?
Dann858 thanks
Is the rampant misogyny also “just a metaphor”?
If the nice ideas of the New Testament (love, mercy, etc.) were present in Judaism originally, then surely the Bible could have told us that God conquered his enemies not by the sword, but with love and compassion, winning over their hearts and minds with his infinite mercy. Instead, we're told that he slaughtered them.
@Stefan Urban Yeah, that's the sort of stuff we get in the Bible, which doesn't look very loving.
@Stefan Urban I think that is a phenomenal reality check on people living otherwise cushion-y lives at home, away from violence and wars in places like the Middle East. America could actually use that realism of God's might and power today, so I can see why the Old Testament has so many moments where God makes his authority clear again and again. If they had no reality check, they would never learn how powerful God is nor learn to fear him as they should.
I enjoy your videos, but I disagree with you on this point. To simply take what was written and say "it was poetry or allegory" is to minimize the Bible itself, or to simply dodge the argument.
You may be comfortable with that, but any person who follows logic will see that as misdirection if you cannot definitively prove what you say. I apologize for any offense, I don't mean any - but it sounds like you're just evading the conflict we face.
This is a proper way because we know Jesus rose from the dead so we try to harmonise what we know from the ot with what we know Jesus in the nt
I still wish the Old Testament didn't exist!
Almost everything Jesus taught was in the Old Testament; Jesus went ballistic with a whip in the temple; and the Holy Spirit struck Aninias down. Lesson is: be good and don’t tick off Jehova.
Excellent Teaching! It helped me see the OT differently!
So it’s not the exact history, but it’s a poetic and exaggeration of what the Old Testament is trying to do. That makes much more sense, tbh.
The bible is a spiritual book. It is meant to be understood, not only in historical context, but in a spiritual context with wisdom given by the Holy Spirit. One can look at the Old Testament as a literal attestation of spiritual truth. The New Testament ushers in the deeper understanding of that spiritual truth by demystifying mysteries of the past, by the Word of God, Jesus Christ.
How convenient, let’s interpret things the way we want it to fit our narrative. Utter bullshit.
It's funny, because you atheists are upset that we catholics don't interpret the Bible the way you say in order to fit in your caricature.
I can't get enough of these videos. He speaks plainly with common sense and excellent logic. The way to truth is often intellectual, but another thing I love about Catholicism/Christianity is it's core message of compassion and mercy. There is no other religion or ideology that penetrates these concepts so deeply.
why is the bible so difficult to interpret, like why does someone have to study it, why cudnt it be straight forward so that anyone can read he bible and fully understand gods words.
John Liava'a because it is difficult to interpret LIFE. Nothing is easy come easy go
@@lihaz8890 true, but im jus sayin.... if it was easier to read maybe we wudve had less problems over the past centuries. Problems which lead to a lot of violence and death. The bible is a very powerful tool but it can be a weapon wen misinterpreted or if its in the hands of the wrong people.
The Bible is intended to get down to the very CORE truths of life and existence. Of God, of the human condition, and of the entire universe. It is a blessing that here in the 21st Century we could still unlock truths from the passages of the Bible. Its one thing to discover and believe in the truth. It's another to live it out for the rest of your life. Things get complex. It would help you to know that God, however, by His very nature is the ULTIMATE simple. That is how we find peace in Him. You are wise to search for simplicity in that sense my friend :)
Save you ten minutes: “I dont take all of the bible literally.” Fr barron
Neither did Saint Augustine...grow up
Unfortunately, there are people, and there were in the past, who will pretend that they understood what you just said. Fortunately, there others who will keep their fight against this kind of stupidity, violence and extortion.
It never fails. Every time I watch one of your videos I think "Bishop Robert Barron has a nice ring to it...."
Many church fathers and doctors of the church (e.g. Sts. Augustine, Aquinas etc.) taught that the conquest narratives in the OT really happened. They also taught that it was a matter of divine justice, and that God was justified in commanding the Canaanites, Amalekites, etc., to be killed. With all due respect to Bp. Barron, responding with allegory when a skeptic asks why God would allow these things is more of a cop-out than a real answer.
Fr. Barron thanks for your wonderful commentaries. I appreciate how, in many of your commentaries and in almost all of your audio sermons, you challenge us to read the stories for ourselves in the Bible, and to seek the sacraments to deepen our understanding and love of our Lord. Your commentaries are always very apropos. Thank you for your great gift of speaking. We're blessed to have you!
Origen was a little too vauge in his allegory as were many Alexandrian theologians in the early church. I like how you balanced this with a more literal readng Fr. Baron. It's important to remember that God is the same always and forever. Much of the violence in scripture is contextual to the time with some hyberbole, God acts out of love eliminating evil. The nations that surrounded Israel were very evil frequently sacrificing children and needed to be dealt with to establish God's people.
Even in the Old Testament we see a very patient God with our sin. His plan from Abraham and the story of Noah was never to destroy us but to redeem us. Seeing the Bible through the knowledge of power of a weak and humble Lamb helps me understand many of these hard texts. Thanks Bishop :)
Well said. The main problem I have with Fr Barron's explanation is that it requires a switching of genres within a single book of scripture often from one sentence to the next, which is quite inconsistent and messy as well as likely to undermine the author's intention (since they were probably writing a consistent genre within a particular book). Due to this the atheists will view it as cherry picking the Bible, and such an argument will not likely win them over.
This also proof that the ancient fathers of the Church hid nothing or suppressed nothing even the most distasteful passages. This only adds to their credibility.
@Kyle J Hartman what dose islam has to do with bible bullshit ?????? u christians are obsessed
Fr. Barron, thank you! I do have a question, however. With the argument that some sections of the Bible are meant to be taken as metaphorical, couldn't one argue, for instance, that Moses was metaphorical or even Jesus was metaphorical? Of course, I don't believe this, but how does one decipher between literal and metaphorical scripture?
Before Fr. Barron I learned it in a hard way.. And now he confirmed my conclusion was right
Pls tell the truth to the world . God of the Old Testament . That God was cruel . This same God created the lion to eat the lamb . It represents balance . God is God . We must not euphemistically and metaphorically hide the true balanced nature of God . God created both negative and positive energy. It is this truth that will set you free .
I really want to understand this but I'm still confused. Are we to believe that Joshua didn't really kill the Canaanites? That it is just an allegorical story? It seems so specific and historical. I am Catholic and I really want to understand this but I just don't get it. I'm left to believe that the God of the OT is quite different from Jesus in the NT.
It could be both. We do not know the exact historical circumstances as the Old Testament is not first a historical work. The argument in the video is that the reason the violence is mentioned is primarily for allegorical purposes - not historical. Does that help?
***** Thank you. This is a tough one for me!
wiggbuggie1 But isn't the fact that we experience death and pain the result of original sin? In other words, death and pain is the result of human flaw. God allows it to happen because He gave us free will but I didn't think He would order it to happen.
Yes, but the authors of the texts which we call the Old Testament certainly would not have included the violence simply to include violence. It had to have some allegorical meaning as Fr.Barron says - victory over evil. Perhaps similar are early Christian images of things like St. George slaying the dragon (a representation of evil).
Why does god need you to explain what he is or what he does
Well, he doesn’t..,But people might benefit from the clarification.
I wish there'll be a televised debate between Fr. Barron and Richard Dawkins so that the good father can hoist all of so-called "new" atheists in their own petard...
And the use of violent imagery by believers against those who think differently lives on. Thankfully we no longer live in times when they can actually carry out their wicked thoughts out in the world.
Such fine morality you guys have, why don't you just admit its your own and stop hiding behind a poor work of fiction?
Smar Mosaur Friend far more violence and mayhem have been unleashed by secularist ideologues than by religious people.
I'm not your friend.
I would expect a better retort from an certified apologist. This is akin to a kid definding his bad school grades because some other kids are failing.
Smar Mosaur I feel like you are showing the same hatred that you hate seeing shown to others. How can you stop the cycle? Without violence or hatred...
J Morales If you think that me pointing the violent BS that Brent Tanjuetco and the kindergarten apologist logic Fr. Robert Barron are espousing is the same, you need to have your head checked.
I'm not part of any cycle, I haven't carried out violence against those who believe, nor do I plan to. And I don't hide behind the actions of others like Fr. Robert Barron to justify my own.
And just because he passively aggressively calls me friend while doing so doesn't make him friendly.
1. God is God
2. God is Holy
3. We're Not
Yeah...traditionally: 4 senses of Scripture: one of those four would be the litteral sense. I think you're going out a stretch there, Father.
Apply this video to the current Israeli - Hamas situation - what is Israel supposed to do? I’m truly interested in feedback here. I’d like to see how Bishop Barron’s teaching of scripture on this video translates to the current situation in the Middle East.
Those passages cannot be read in a metaphorical, symbolical, bla bla ways; they have to be read in a historical realist way and understood that those things really happened, those horrific sermons were really uttered, even child sacrifices were given, human sacrifices were made, homosexuality was despised and punished with death, etc. but gradually the liberals grew aversion to it and symbolically Jesus resisted all this barbarity and preached non-violence, compassion, mercy and peace and love of all human beings. Islam seems to have imbibed more all the worst in the Old Testament and less of the New Testament.
From where do we know Socrates's existence, the Crossing of the Rubicon, or the existence of the Kingdom of Israel? From Plato, from Suetonius, and from the Books of Kings. One source, each. We don't contend that Caesar never crossed the Rubicon, nor that Socrates was a myth, nor that the Kingdom of Israel did not exist.
The Apostles's revelation have not only four of Jesus's followers to testify to it directly, but also a man who once hated Christians - Paul - to testify to it as well.
So all of the portions of the bible containing atrocity are suppose to be read as a metaphor(of the struggle between "moral and immoral", because a passage in the final book of the new testament implies such?
How does something written hundreds of years after the fact render the atrocities of the old testament as simple metaphors? Your explanation in no way proves that this is how the old testament was written or that ancient hebrews interpreted their scripture in such a way. How can one passage retroactively decide the meaning of a people that lived hundreds of year prior? How does it disprove the idea that these passages are exactly how they look? That is, a warlike, bronze age people who view the world around in terms of their God, and so they excuse and justify their behavior as the will of said God.
None of your arguments here explain away the passages condoning the rape of women(as well their treatment as chattel), slavery, the murder of heretics et cetera. There are plenty of other atrocities within the bible besides the conquest of the promised land.
yarpen800 Have you ever even read the Bible before?????
I'm going to go with a No?
yarpen800 Then you should be fully aware to the fact that as much Love God has for Man, he has just as much Wrath.
yarpen800 God did, in Egypt...
Expert1911 There is no religion. The Religion is that which is in Jesus Christ brother. Christ came and one of the things he did was Question the Church and the Government of his day! Because they were extremely corrupt.