Episode Details

Dr. Matthew Petrusek

Welcome back to the Word on Fire Show. I’m Matthew Petrusek, senior director of the Word on Fire Institute and the host of the Word on Fire Show. Thank you for joining us. The Old Testament is about three-quarters of the Bible. It is theologically and morally impossible for Christians to understand God’s relationship with the world, the nature and purpose of human beings, original sin, salvation history, the person of Jesus Christ, and the foundation of the Church without it. Indeed, as far back as the second century AD, the Church condemned the heresy of Marcionism, which sought to distinguish the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New Testament and to lop off the Old Testament from the biblical canon. There is and never has been, in short, Christianity without the Old Testament. Nevertheless, much of the text remains difficult for the faithful to understand and, even more so, to explain to others, especially to those who know nothing about it. To make matters more complicated, secular critics of the faith often try to use the Old Testament against it, arguing—like the Marcionites of the past—that belief in the Old Testament is both irrational and immoral. So how should Catholics respond? What are some strategies we can employ not only to make the Old Testament accessible but also evangelically compelling? Here to help us understand the Old Testament and its enduring evangelical power, especially in a highly secularized culture, is Bishop Robert Barron.

Topics Covered

00:00 | Introduction
01:32 | Bishop Barron visits Washington
02:54 | How many Catholics read the Bible?
09:09 | The unity of theology, biblical exegesis, and scriptural interpretation
11:05 | The historical critical method and the Old Testament
12:58 | The influence of Joseph Ratzinger on Bishop Barron’s biblical approach
15:29 | The otherness of God
20:09 | Why God’s self-sufficiency matters for reading the Old Testament
22:30 | God as radically transcendent and personally involved
25:04 | God as father of all and of Israel, his chosen people<