Is Sirach Scripture? Understanding the Deuterocanonical Debate

Episode 119: Year C – 8th Sunday of Ordinary Time

In today’s episode, there are four details that we focus on, each of which has some relevance to apologetical discussions. The first one comes from the second reading, which is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:54-58. The relevant apologetical topic is the bodily nature of Jesus’ resurrection. The other three details all come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from Luke 6:39-45. However, one detail directly corresponds to the first reading, which is taken from Sirach 27:4-7. The relevant topics for apologetics are the question of what we can and cannot judge, the role good works play in relation to our salvation, and the Deuterocanonical status of Sirach.

Hey everyone,

 

Welcome to The Sunday Catholic Word, a podcast where we reflect on the upcoming Sunday Mass readings and pick out the details that are relevant for explaining and defending our Catholic faith.

 

I’m Dr. Karlo Broussard, staff apologist and speaker for Catholic Answers, and the host for this podcast.

 

In today’s episode, there are four details that we will focus on, each of which has some relevance to apologetical discussions. The first one comes from the second reading, which is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:54-58. The relevant apologetical topic is the bodily nature of Jesus’ resurrection. The other three details all come from the Gospel reading, which is taken from Luke 6:39-45. However, one detail directly corresponds to the first reading, which is taken from Sirach 27:4-7. The relevant topics for apologetics are the question of what we can and cannot judge, the role good works play in relation to our salvation, and the Deuterocanonical status of Sirach.

 

Let’s start with the first detail found in the second reading, which, again, is taken from 1 Corinthians 15:54-58. St. Paul writes,

 

When this which is corruptible clothes itself with incorruptibility
and this which is mortal clothes itself with immortality,
then the word that is written shall come about:
Death is swallowed up in victory.
Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
The sting of death is sin,
and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God who gives us the victory
through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Therefore, my beloved brothers and sisters,
be firm, steadfast, always fully devoted to the work of the Lord,
knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

 

The detail that I want to highlight is Paul’s teaching that our corruptible bodies will take on incorruptibility in the final resurrection. Theologically, this is significant because it reveals that we will not simply rise from the dead back to this life, like Lazarus. Rather, we will rise in glory and forever exist in our bodies.

 

Now, apologetically, this is significant because it reveals that Paul understood Jesus’ resurrected body to be bodily. Recall, in 1 Corinthians 15:49 Paul says that we will image the heavenly man in our resurrected bodies, which means our resurrected bodies will be modeled off of Jesus’ resurrected body. Since Paul says that our resurrected bodies will be incorruptible, it follows that Jesus’ resurrected body was incorruptible.

 

But it makes no sense for Paul to speak of Jesus’ being “incorruptible” unless it were a real body. Thus, implied in Paul’s teaching is the bodily nature of Jesus’ resurrected body, along with ours.

 

“How is this apologetically significant?” you ask. Well, as I mentioned in a previous episode, there are some who argue Jesus’ resurrection was not bodily in nature but merely a spiritual resurrection. Jesus “resurrected,” so it’s argued, in the sense that Jesus’ spirit lived on in the afterlife with the Father.

 

John Shelby Spong makes this argument in his Jesus for the Non-Religious. Others have joined the ranks. The Jehovah Witnesses, for example, teach on their website jw.org in the article entitled “After Jesus’ Resurrection, Was His Body Flesh or Spirit?” that Jesus was a “spirit creature” who only appeared in, or took on, bodily form.

 

But Paul’s teaching proves otherwise. Therefore, we have grounds to reject this spiritual resurrection thesis.

 

Let’s now move to the Gospel reading, which, again, is taken from Luke 6:39-45. Luke records,

 

Jesus told his disciples a parable,
“Can a blind person guide a blind person?
Will not both fall into a pit?
No disciple is superior to the teacher;
but when fully trained,
every disciple will be like his teacher.
Why do you notice the splinter in your brother’s eye,
but do not perceive the wooden beam in your own?
How can you say to your brother,
‘Brother, let me remove that splinter in your eye,’
when you do not even notice the wooden beam in your own eye?
You hypocrite!  Remove the wooden beam from your eye first;
then you will see clearly
to remove the splinter in your brother’s eye.

“A good tree does not bear rotten fruit,
nor does a rotten tree bear good fruit.
For every tree is known by its own fruit.
For people do not pick figs from thornbushes,
nor do they gather grapes from brambles.
A good person out of the store of goodness in his heart produces good,
but an evil person out of a store of evil produces evil;
for from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.”

 

There are three details to highlight here. The first is Jesus’ teaching in verses 41-42 about taking the beam from your own eye to remove the splinter out of your brother’s eye. What’s the apologetical significance?

 

As Christians, we’re often labeled as being “judgmental,” the implied moral imperative being that we shouldn’t judge others, especially Christians. But such charges are often flung around without making the proper distinctions.

 

If by “judge” someone means we shouldn’t judge someone’s culpability or motivations for a particular behavior, then we agree, “we shouldn’t judge.” But if by “judge” someone means that we shouldn’t judge the behavior itself, then we must disagree.

 

Not only would we know this is false from reason alone (see my book The New Relativism for more on this), but we know it’s false as a Christian. And here is where Jesus’ teaching in our Gospel reading comes into play. Notice, Jesus says that we must remove the splinter out of our brother’s eye. This means that we Christians have a mandate to help lead others from their sinful ways. Jesus just warns us that we must make sure we’re a credible witness first before we do such a thing; otherwise, we’d be a hypocrite.

 

I think we can sum up this line of thinking with the old saying, “hate the sin, love the sinner.”

 

The second detail in this Gospel reading that I want to highlight is Jesus’ teaching on the correspondence between good fruit and a good tree, and bad fruit and a bad tree. Some Christians might appeal to this text as biblical support for the belief that our good works merely are a manifestation of our salvation rather than causative.

 

In response, we can agree that good works can manifest our saving relationship with Christ. Anyone who truly loves the Lord is going to behave in a way that manifest such love. That’s just part and parcel of love.

 

But what we deny is that Jesus’ teaching here proves our good works are merely a manifestation of our saving relationship with Christ. First, to make such a conclusion is fallacious. Affirming that our good works manifest our saving relationship with Christ doesn’t logically entail that our good works can’t also be causative of our salvation, at least regarding the ongoing dimension of our salvation and our final salvation. The two are not logically exclusive of each other.

 

Secondly, we have evidence from scripture that our good works are causative of our salvation, again, at least when it comes to our ongoing salvation and our final salvation. For our ongoing salvation, James 2:24 is the key text. We don’t have time to exegete this text here. But, in sum, James parallels our justification by works with Abraham’s justification by the work of offering his son Isaac, which happened after he was initially justified in Genesis 12. The author of Hebrews in Hebrews 11:6-8 reveals that Abraham was justified when he first obeyed God to leave his homeland.

 

Concerning the causative role of good works for our final salvation, we can appeal Jesus’ teaching on the sheep receiving eternal life because of their performance of the corporeal works of mercy in Matthew 25:31-46, and Paul’s teaching in Romans 2:6-7 that God will reward those with eternal life for doing good and seeking honor, glory, and immortality.

 

So, although it’s true that our good works serve as a witness to our saving relationship with Christ, they are not merely a manifestation because they also are causative of our salvation once we’re initially saved.

 

The last detail that I want to draw your attention to is Jesus’ teaching in verse 45, “from the fullness of the heart the mouth speaks.” This seems to be an allusion to what we find in the first reading, taken from Sirach 27:4-7. We read, “The fruit of a tree shows the care it has had;so too does one’s speech disclose the bent of one’s mind.”

 

Jesus emphasizes our speech manifesting what’s in our heart. Sirach emphasizes what’s in the mind. Even with the difference, the allusion is pretty strong.

 

Now, the apologetical significance is that Sirach is one of the seven books that Protestants deny as inspired, and thus belong in the Canon of Scripture. And some Catholics might be inclined to appeal to such an allusion as the one we’re discussing as evidence that Jesus believed Sirach was inspired. But there is need for caution with this line of reasoning.

 

Just because Jesus, or a New Testament author, alludes to a book doesn’t necessarily mean they believed it was inspired. For example, Jude, in verses 14-15 of the epistle, quotes the ancient pseudepigraphal Book of Enoch, yet he didn’t believe it was inspired. In Luke 20:27-40, the Sadducees allude to Tobit 3:8-17, which tells the story of Sarah who had seven husbands and they all died. Yet, the Sadducees didn’t believe Tobit was inspired.

 

Now, this doesn’t mean Jesus’ allusion to Sirach is useless. It does at least show that Jesus was aware of the book and felt it was worth drawing from for his teaching. Such awareness of the Deuterocanonicals in the New Testament is helpful in shedding light on some of Jesus’ teachings.

 

For example, Judas Maccabeus prays that the dead would have their sins remitted in 2 Maccabees 12:46. Such a Jewish theological milieu helps explain why Jesus says the sin against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven “in this age or the age to come.” He says this to preempt a natural question that his Jewish audience would have had: “Well, if the Holy Spirit can’t be forgiven in this age, maybe it could be forgiven in the next?”

 

So, even though a mere allusion to a Deuterocanonical book doesn’t prove Jesus and the apostles believed it to be inspired, it does help shed light on certain teachings in the New Testament.

 

Conclusion

 

Well, my friends, that brings us to the end of this episode of the Sunday Catholic Word. The readings for this upcoming 8^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C, don’t sell us short when it comes to material for apologetical discussions:

 

• We have material to help us refute the spiritual resurrection theory,
• We have material to help us respond to the common “Thou Shalt Not Judge” charge,
• We have material that prompts us to reflect on the causal role that our good works have in our salvation, particularly the ongoing and final stages, and
• We have material to discuss the New Testament use of the Deuterocanonical books.

 

As always, I want to thank you for subscribing to the podcast. And please be sure to tell your friends about it and invite them to subscribe as well through any podcast platform that they use. You can also access the archived episodes of the Sunday Catholic Word at sundaycatholicword.com.

 

You might also want to check out the other great podcasts in our Catholic Answers podcast network: Trent Horn’s The Counsel of Trent, Joe Heschmeyer’s Shameless Popery, Jimmy Akin’s The Jimmy Akin podcast, and Tim Staples “1 on 1 with Tim,” all of which can be found at catholic.com. And if you want to follow more of my own work, check out my website at karlobroussard.com

 

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I hope you have a blessed 8^th Sunday of Ordinary Time, Year C. Until next time, God Bless.