Internet Open Forum

Questions Covered:

• 10:09 - How can we explain the simplicity and unchanging nature of God with the fact that God the Son took on a human nature in real time? This is something that has always stumped me!
• 15:31 - Perhaps deal with the interesting (paradox?) of Judas receiving the morsel (communion) as he contemplated betraying Jesus
• 21:17 - Hello, Jimmy. I was wondering what your take is with regards to the inter-Christian dispute (between two protestant scholars, in particular) about the genre of the Gospels and their use of literary devices (or lack thereof). One scholar says that, because the Gospels are considered ancient biographies, this means that the evangelists felt free to use literary conventions of their day to communicate the story of Christ (event displacement, transferal of info from one character to another, etc.) while another scholar advocates for the “reportage model” genre for the Gospels and says that the contrary view makes the Gospels less reliable as a result. What is your opinion on this dispute and can a Catholic adopt the former view and still be faithful to Vatican II’s proclamation that the Gospel writers were faithful in communicating the story of Christ?
• 38:40 - Is not receiving communion a form of scandal to the congregation? Is judging someone who gets a blessing the sin of assuming someone committed a mortal sin?
• 43:45 - Is the canon of the Bible open? Could the church overtime include more inspired books from the first century as canonical? I heard somebody once say that the language of Trent regarding the canon was not saying THESE are the ONLY inspired books.
• 49:05 - Imagine you were in a bind and you found someone on the brink of death who asked to be baptized. All you have is Gatorade, or coffee, or an energy drink with you. Can you baptize them, since water is contained in these products? Or does it have to be a certain purity?
• 52:50 - What about spit? It’s mostly water. And Jesus used spit to heal some people.