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In this episode, Trent gives advice on how to overcome a common rhetorical technique in discussions over the Bible.
When Atheists Misread The Bible
Transcription:
Have you ever been in a discussion with someone about theology and the other person rattled off dozens of memorized Bible verses to try to show you’re wrong? Or have you engaged in a comment thread and one person just lists dozens of Bible verses after their claim in a way that makes the debate overwhelming.
I call this the Bible Blitzkrieg and it often makes conversations about the Faith much more difficult than they need to be. If you feel overwhelmed by the blitzkrieg, or if you see others being the victim of it, or if you’re tempted to use it yourself, today’s episode should give you a helpful shield against this rhetorical onslaught.
Now, at the outset I want to say it isn’t bad to memorize scripture. In fact, it’s awesome to do that. While some Catholics do this well, I notice Protestants tend to be more adept at it, especially Evangelicals raised in environments that promote memorization through programs like Awana for children.
St. Jerome famously said that “ignorance of scripture is ignorance of Christ.” so we should always commend a person’s intimate knowledge of scripture. But it is one thing to know what the Bible says and another thing to know what it means. St. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians “let them not flatter themselves if they think they have Scripture authority for their assertions, since the devil himself quoted Scripture, and the essence of the Scriptures is not the letter, but the meaning.” (Dialogue with Luciferians)
As St. Jerome shows that anyone can string along biblical citations and say they are correct, but that doesn’t mean they are correct. The second century Church father Irenaeus of Lyon said the following about how heretics distort scripture to support their false doctrines:
By transferring passages, and dressing them up anew, and making one thing out of another, they succeed in deluding many through their wicked art in adapting the oracles of the Lord to their opinions. Their manner of acting is just as if one, when a beautiful image of a king has been constructed by some skillful artist out of precious jewels, should then take this likeness of the man all to pieces, should rearrange the gems, and so fit them together as to make them into the form of a dog or of a fox . . .
So according to Irenaeus, a heretic can take scripture and make it say something completely different just as a counterfeit artist can take gemstones that form a king’s image and rearrange them to make the stones “say” something else. The same materials are used in each case, but they are presented in different ways in order to get true or false results.
A Protestant should admit that extremely heretical people can know the letter of the scripture very well. For example, you can find Jehovah’s Witness, for example, who can cite dozens of passages that, according to them, show Jesus is not equal in divinity with the Father. A Christian who isn’t prepared might be overwhelmed at all this data that seems to conflict with what the Church teaches. But a well-studied Protestant would rightly tell them the Witnesses that, when each of those verses is reviewed one at a time, you can see that none of them disprove the deity of Christ. And the same is true when one goes through the dozens of Bible verses that can sometimes be cited in a Protestant Bible Blitzkrieg.
And to be fair, I’ve seen Catholics do the same thing. It’s not uncommon for Catholics to say something like “We are not saved faith alone” and then cite a bunch of Bible verses about the role of works in salvation. That doesn’t help move the conversation forward because a Protestant can do the same thing and just cite verses that he says prove we are not saved by works.
That’s why the Protestant scholar D.A. Carson once said “A text without a context is a pretext for a proof text.” Making a statement and then defending it with only a dozen Bible citations is nothing more than grandstanding or a mild form of intimidation. It’s like saying “How can I be wrong when all these Bible verses say I’m right?”
A better approach would be to show how all the verses fit together. Verses that say we aren’t saved by works show how we are initially saved by merely accepting God’s grace through the sacrament of baptism. A baby does nothing to be saved, he just receives this gift from God. As the Catechism says “Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification.” (CCC 2010)
But after we are saved good works increase our holiness and bad works damage our relationship with God. Unrepentant grave evil can even cause us to be separated from God forever.
Everyone who cites the Bible in defense of their views, including non-Christians like Jehovah’s Witnesses and even Muslims should, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, avoid the blitzkrieg. If you are faced with it, just say you need time to go through the presented evidence. Eventually, after enough time, you will get through all of it. And in many cases you’ll see the cited verses aren’t just incorrect interpretations, they are irrelevant interpretations. The verse being cited has nothing to do with the topic being discussed. But that can be missed if you are just impressed by a mountain of Bible verses.
For example, atheists might present a long list of atrocities to show the Bible is evil but you can show that in many of these cases the Bible is just describing human evil, it isn’t endorsing or commanding it. (For more on that, see my episode “When Atheists Misread the Bible” – linked below)
When you are faced with a “Bible blitzkrieg”, remember that this isn’t an actual war. You’re allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to your interlocutor. You can remind him that studying Bible verses is always better than slinging Bible verses. In addition, St. Peter reminds us that scripture contains difficult passages that people can misunderstand to their own destruction (2 Peter 3:16) so you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might say and, at the least, what they absolutely cannot say.
This can be helpful because some Protestants operate under the mistaken assumption that Catholics are prohibited from reading or interpreting the Bible for themselves. They might cite the Second Vatican Council which said “the task of authentically interpreting the word of God, whether written or handed on, has been entrusted exclusively to the living teaching office of the Church” (Dei Verbum, 10).
But the Church has only infallibly defined the meaning of a handful of biblical passages. The Church gives biblical scholars a wide degree of latitude in determining the literal and spiritual meaning of biblical texts, provided that they follow the council’s direction to be attentive to the “analogy of faith” and interpret the texts in light of all divine revelation. So, for example, a biblical interpreter could not assert that a particular Bible passage taught that Mary gave birth to other children or that Christ is not fully divine since the Church has infallibly taught those are false doctrines and so scripture can’t teach them.
Finally, don’t get discouraged if you are a Catholic and your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do. The chapters and verses aren’t original to the Bible. The chapter divisions come from Archbishop Stephen Langton in the 13th century and the verse systems in most modern Bible comes from Robert Estienne in the 16th century. When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, he said, “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush [emphasis added], where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Luke 20:37)
If Jesus can give an approximate citation of scripture, like “the passage about X” you and I can do the same. And if you are a Catholic that doesn’t know chapters and verses well, that doesn’t mean you’re biblically illiterate. Scott Hahn, a professor of theology at the Franciscan University of Steubenville, once said that Protestants know the Bible like a mailman knows the neighborhood.
For example, the mailman knows the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St. and so if he needs to get the mail to them he knows which streets to follow to get there. In the same way, Protestants who have a deep passion for understanding the Bible can cite a biblical passages exact chapter and verse. Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible like kids know a neighborhood. They may not know the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood St., but they do know the Johnsons live on the top of the hill next to the house with the old green fence and the barking dog. They can get you to the same place, but in a more indirect way.
In the same way, Catholics know a lot of scripture even if they don’t remember everywhere it’s found in scripture. For example, they hear the Bible at mass or read biblical passages in Catholic devotionals and prayer books. They have an intuitive knowledge of scripture more than a formal knowledge.
But we should remember what St. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways.” (1 Cor. 13:11)
We can all apply ourselves to having a mature knowledge of God’s word in sacred scripture. You can also post a favorite Bible verse at your desk or on the refrigerator each week. Another great method is listening to the Bible so that it is familiar, such as by listening to the Bible in a Year podcast. You can also practice listening to a chapter and then reading that same chapter of scripture. I like to use the truth and life audio bible for this. If you just spend 15 minutes reading and listening to one chapter a day, you’ll finish the New Testament in less than a year.
Finally, praying the liturgy of the hours or lectio divina is a great way to be immersed in scripture and memorize it as, after just a few weeks, you’ll find yourself memorizing entire prayers from scripture like Mary’s Magnificat.
So, don’t feel like you can’t talk about the Bible just because you may not remember the chapter and verse where a passage is located. Even our Lord didn’t cite the Bible in this way! You can survive the “Bible Blitzkrieg” by humbly leading the person through different parts of scripture with the light of the Church’s teaching as a helpful guide to interpreting it.
Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.