Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for your support
of the Logical Bible Study Ministry.
What we want to do in this bonus episode is try to respond to
some of the questions that have come in.
And there have been quite a few questions lately, which is why
we're doing a separate bonus episode.
Thank you to all of those who have benefited from this
podcast, have told other people about it, and have sent your
questions in. So I'm going to have a go at
responding to some of these questions as far as I'm able to.
First thing I want to say is if you ever want to know anything
about the Catholic faith, the first thing you should do is
check the Catechism of the Catholic Church and that is
considered to be an official summary of Church teaching.
It's got a dictionary and a glossary.
Cross references in the back, so you'll often find the answer to
theological questions in there. catholic.com, which is the
ministry of Catholic answers, is also really good on general
Catholic theology. But we've got a few specific
kind of biblical questions that we want to take a look at.
So a question here from Cynthia. She asks, when Jesus is walking
alone in the Garden of Gethsemane or privately talking
to Pontius Pilate, how did the authors of the Gospels know what
he said in order to record it? It's a really good question, and
one that I've wondered. Sometimes too, We can't be sure.
Particularly in the Gospel of John, there's quite a few
conversations that appear to be quite private, and yet somehow
we have the full what appears to be a transcription of the
conversation from the gospel author.
For example, the conversation with the woman at the Well,
supposedly all the other disciples are gone and it's just
Jesus and the woman. So how does that end up in the
gospel? Same with this conversation
between Jesus and Pontius Pilate with the one the conversation
between Jesus and Pontius Pilate.
It's a it's a little bit easier to answer that because in a
so-called private conversation between Jesus and Pilate, it's
likely that Pilate would still have people in the room with
him, servants, guards, some of whom may well have become
Christian later, and who relay the story to to the gospel
authors and. But thinking more generally
about ones that are a bit harder to answer.
For example, Jesus pray in the garden of Gethsemane or Jesus
talking to the woman at the Well, one possibility is Jesus
himself may have told them after his resurrection.
Remember, there's a period of 40 days between his resurrection
and ascension. We don't have most of what he
said recorded in the Gospels, but he was with them in various
forms and in various types of conversations for 40 days.
He may well have given them further information to include
in the Gospels, including private conversations.
We can't rule that out. There's also one possibility
that I think is fairly convincing, which is John
himself in the Gospel of John mentions, or Jesus mentions in
the Gospel of John that the Holy Spirit will come after he's gone
and the Holy Spirit will bring to remembrance all of the things
that he said. So there's this idea that the
Holy Spirit working through the gospel authors will bring to
mind specific things that might include private conversations
that Jesus had with specific people.
So that's a possibility as well. So there's certainly quite a few
things for us to work with. She also asks a specific
question about the parable of the 10 virgins or the 10
bridesmaids, and she wants to know how it's possible that in
the parable. So obviously the parable's a
fictional story, but it should in some way represent a
situation that would be fairly common in Jewish life.
She wants to know how it's possible that the women could go
out at midnight for oil when no oil markets would be open at
that time. Well, firstly, I don't think
that's known for sure. I think that would be
speculation. It's likely that there would be
some oil markets open at that time, particularly because the
time when you're most likely to need oil is at night time.
So certainly there would be some merchants that remained open at
night time. And she also wants to know she
thought that women were not permitted to walk alone at night
in that era. Again, we don't have that
explicitly mentioned. So it could be, and I think it's
it's likely that women couldn't walk alone, but they could walk
in groups. And the way this particular
parable works is that there's a group of women who go back
together and look for oil. So I think that that resolves
most of those questions about that parable.
We have a question here from Gwen about Elijah.
So she says, my question is since Elijah was taken up to
heaven and did not die, and indeed that is what the Old
Testament says, is he in heaven, both body and soul.
So that's her first question. Now again, we can't be 100%
sure, but the way it's depicted in the ascension of Elijah is
that yes, his body and his soul was taken up to heaven.
The same sort of thing is hinted in terms of Enoch, one of the
first people in the Old Testament.
It says that he was taken and did not see death, and the
implication there is that he was also assumed into heaven.
So these two are considered to be prefigurements of the
Assumption of Mary. So they didn't ascend there on
their own power like Jesus did, but their bodies were assumed
into heaven by God. So it does appear that yes,
Elijah's body is in heaven. There's also some speculation
that that might be the case with Moses, although we know that
Moses did die first. But the book of Jude indicates
that something odd happened after Moses died, and there was
some dispute between angels about the body of Moses.
So it may well be that Moses's body itself was taken up to
heaven. Remember that.
And Jesus sees a vision of Elijah and Moses appearing to
him, apparently in their bodies after death.
So yes, I think we have a reasonable case to say that
Elijah and Enoch are exceptions to the rule in that.
And the same with Mary and Jesus in that their bodies are already
in heaven. They're the first fruits of what
will happen to all Christians later.
So it's not that it's impossible to have your body in heaven,
it's just that most people don't.
But there are some exceptions, she then says.
Will there be a time when he will be appointed to die the
same as all mortal men do? I don't think Elijah and Mary
and Enoch do need to die because their body and soul has already
been taken up to heaven. There's possibly a question
about whether their bodies need to be transformed again when the
new heavens and new earth comes. But again, we could say that
it's possible that it's already happened to them as a
prefigurement of the Transfiguration that will happen
to all of our bodies at the end of time.
It seems likely that Enoch and Elijah's bodies have already
been transfigured in that way. So yeah, often we assume that
it's only Jesus and Mary. But the Old Testament indicate
that at least Enoch and Elijah also have their bodies in
heaven, so there is certainly a precedent for what happens to
Mary in her Assumption. I've also received a few
questions about this phrase of John the Baptist when he says to
Jesus or says about Jesus, I'm not worthy to untie this strap
of his sandal. A few people have sent in the
same question here because there are some other popular Catholic
biblical scholars who have a different interpretation of this
passage. So the interpretation that I've
offered using the commentaries that I tap into when I'm doing
these exegesis episodes is that when John the Baptist says I'm
not worthy to untie the strap of the sandals, what is basically
means there is that I'm not worthy even to touch his feet as
and in that culture the foot was considered to be the the least
pleasant part of the body to touch.
Or perhaps even you've considered it the least wholly,
almost. But John the Baptist says I'm
not even worthy to touch, that. I'm not even worthy to go near
his feet. Is is sort of the way that a lot
of these commentaries take it, and I think it makes sense.
But there were some in church tradition, and as I said, some
Catholic scholars today who advocate that this is actually a
reference to the bridegroom theology of the Old Testament,
particularly present in the book of Ruth and the Levarite law,
which was that if a man died and left a wife without children,
then his brother was obligated under the law to take that wife
and to give her children. And there's this whole ritual
that goes along with it where if the brother, the surviving
brother, doesn't want to take up this obligation, then what he
had to do was to take off his sandal and give it to the person
who is going to be the new hospital.
It was sort of a visible way of saying I am willing to
relinquish the right that I have to take this wife and give it to
someone else. And in fact, it was considered
shameful for a man to do that, for a man not to take his
brother's wife. That was considered to be quite
shameful. And there's also a version of of
this law where the woman herself can take the sandal off the man
and kind of shake it at him as a way of saying, I disapprove that
you would not take me as your wife.
So there's this whole interesting theology of the
sandal in terms of the Levarite law.
So some in church history have said that when John the Baptist
says I'm not worthy to untie the strap of his sandals, what he
means there is that I'm not worthy to take away Jesus
prerogative as the bridegroom. Indeed, we know from other
passages that John the Baptist does call Jesus the bridegroom,
and he says I'm merely the friend of the bridegroom,
whereas Jesus is the true bridegroom.
So we do have a precedent here for thinking that John the
Baptist thinks in terms of bridegroom theology, so possibly
this might be the right interpretation.
I do think it's a little bit convoluted because it requires
us to think that when John the Baptist says I'm not worthy to
untie this strap of his sandal, it's he'd have to be saying I'm
not worthy to take Jesus right as Messiah and appropriate it
for myself. That's a bit of a strange
interpretation, but but it might fit because it is true that John
the Baptist has to repeatedly remind people I'm not the
Messiah. Jesus is the Messiah.
So perhaps there's something to that.
As I said, the particular commentaries that I use haven't
particularly tapped into that, but perhaps that is the right
interpretation. And as Catholics, we should
certainly be open to that, particularly when there's a
tradition of the Church fathers interpreting it that particular
way. I've got a question here from
Joe, who wants to ask about the pregnancy of Mary and in
particular, what did Joseph think about it?
So one of the comments that we've made in the exegesis in
these episodes is that initially it seems that Joseph thought
that Mary had become pregnant by someone else, and that was why
he wanted to divorce her quietly.
Now, then the Angel appeared to Joseph and said do not be afraid
to take her because she's become pregnant by the Holy Spirit.
So his question is, does this perspective imply that God and
Mary have engaged in sinful action against the marriage vows
that Mary and Joseph made to each other?
And the answer to that would be no.
So the Gospels themselves indicate that the Holy Spirit
will over shadow Mary. Now, that doesn't imply any sort
of sexual relationship between God and Mary, so there's no
sinful action on the part of Mary in her pregnancy.
So there's no no contradiction of the vows that Mary and Joseph
would make to each other. In terms of sexual fidelity,
it's important that we maintain that as Catholics, it's not that
God impregnated Mary in that very physical sense.
It's that there is a miraculous overshadowing by the Holy Spirit
that brought about the pregnancy.
And Joseph seems to have understood that after the Angel
explained it to him. So we're moving through the
questions well here. This next one is a bit more
challenging from David, and it's more of a broader theological
question, and I can only really have a go at this one.
So David says if Jesus is divine, fully God and fully man.
In the Old Testament, we learn the bad things happen when human
sin comes into the presence of holiness.
And presumably, David, there is referring to the occasions where
the Israelite people don't follow the ritual law and
something bad happens to them. For example, when they're
carrying the ark of the Covenant and it slips, and the person
carrying the Ark of the Covenant touches a part of the covenant
of the Ark that he's not supposed to touch, he ends up
being killed on the spot. So we do have examples of that
where God actually strikes people with some sort of illness
or death if they are not ritually clean or if they're
sinful in some way. So he says if that's the case,
Jesus being God, is obviously holy and yet he walked around
and talked with and touched many people.
How is this possible? Was he forgiving the sin of
everyone around him so that they could be with him?
I guess my question is, given our understanding of holiness
from the Old Testament and the reverence and ceremony around
entering into God's presence, how is it then possible for
sinners to be around Jesus before his atoning death?
It's a really good question that is really asking how it's
possible for Jesus as God to be in close proximity to sin.
Given that God and sin are very much opposed, I think part of
the answer here would be we shouldn't really think of sin.
Thinking in terms of personal sin here as as an actual thing
that exists in and of itself as like an evil force.
Perhaps one of the best ways, and the catechism does sort of
point in this direction, is that sin, particularly when we're
thinking of the individual actions a person makes, is
really a deprivation of something that should be there.
It's a lack. So when Jesus is walking among
sinners, it's not that he's repelled by this evil force
called sin that's sort of emanating from people, it's that
they they lack something. So in that sense, sin is not a
challenge to Jesus. It's not going to put him off in
that. In that sense, I think that
might be part of the answer. And we also need to remember
that Jesus mission here is to reach sinners.
He wants to impart his goodness and holiness to sinners and he
doesn't contract their sinfulness.
And a good example of this is when Jesus interacts with the
lepers. The prevailing wisdom at the
time was if you touch a leper, their leprosy will go into you.
But we see Jesus touching the lepers, and His Holiness and
healing goes into the leper. That's probably the way we
should think about Jesus. Interactions with sinners in
general is that His Holiness moves into their sinfulness, and
he overpowers the sinfulness. So there's certainly not some
sort of equivalent here of the sinfulness is equal in power to
God's holiness. That's not the case at all, and
in Catholic theology we see sinfulness as more of a lack of
something. Also, when you think about the
Old Testament sacrifices and what Jesus was trying and what
God was trying to teach the Israelites about holiness, it's
mostly that it's mostly God trying to teach them things
about God's holiness. Rather than there being this
strict war going on between God and sin, it's mostly God giving
them specific laws to teach them about their sinfulness and if
they break those laws God has consequences in place.
I hope that helps answer the question, but it is a really
good theological question. We've got a question here on
Patreon from God. First, he wants to know how to
reconcile two different verses here.
One of the verses is Romans 9 verse 13 as it is written Jacob
I loved but Esau I hated. And then the other verse is from
Wisdom chapter 1124 to 26 which is an extended section where God
says I where the author says God would not have made anything if
he had hated it. He goes on to say you spare all
things for they are yours, You who love the living.
So how can we reconcile these verses?
Wisdom says God doesn't hate anything, he loves all the
living. But the Romans passage says he
hates the person called Esau. I think one key way of answering
this is that God doesn't hate anything that he creates and
it's created form. But humans in particular can
later then sin through their free choice, which can then put
that person in a negative relationship with God, and in
this case Esau. There is a sense in which God
hated Esau after Esau did that particular sin, still loves God,
still loves him in terms of his existence.
He wills Esau's existence, but he hates the choice that Esau
made. So I think when we're dealing
with humans there is a sense in which through the humans free
choice and particularly you need to study the theology of Romans
a bit more to get this in terms of the point that Paul wants to
make here. But it is possible through free
choice for then for God to be displeased with someone.
So I hope that helps resolve the those two verses there.
We have a question here from Celeste and she's asking a good
question about Luke chapter 2 verse 26 which says and this is
the interaction with Simeon in the temple and Luke here says it
had been revealed to Simeon by the Holy Spirit that he would
not see death until he had set eyes on the Christ of the Lord.
So Celestia is asking about what's this phrase the Christ of
the Lord? Are the Bible translations have
this as the Lord's Christ and she wants to know what does that
mean? Well, it helps if we think about
what does Christ, What does the word Christ mean?
It basically means Messiah. In fact, that's that is what it
means. The Jews in the time of Jesus
were looking forward to the Messiah.
In other words, they were looking forward to the Christ
whom God would send. So when Luke 2 verse 26 talks
about it, it's just saying this is the Messiah, this is the
Lord's Christ, the Messiah that God has sent.
This is the one Simeon has been waiting for.
And Luke is telling his readers that Simeon received a vision or
some sort of information from God that he would not see death
until he had seen the Messiah. So the Lord's Christ is just a
way of saying the Messiah that God would send.
It's a good question, Celeste. We've had a few questions about
why the lectionary jumps around a bit and also why the
lectionary doesn't include all of the Gospels.
As you know, if you've been listening for a while, if you go
to mass everyday for the whole 3 year cycle, you'll hear about
80% of the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
But there's still 20% that isn't read.
And particularly CJ here wants to know why is that?
Why is why is it that not all of the gospels are read as part of
the lectionary? There's a few reasons.
One is if you add up, well, if you think about the small
chunks, the Goss, the Mass wants to read the Gospel in small
chunks, there's actually still not quite enough days across a
whole one year weekday cycle plus the Sunday cycle to include
the text of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
In terms of small chunks, there's just not quite enough
time in the year to do that. That's one reason.
Secondly, there's a few passages which is seen as a bit too
controversial to read it Mass or a bit too strong from the
Gospels. For example, some of Jesus
interactions with the Pharisees in the Gospel of Matthew,
particularly towards the end of the Gospel of Matthew where
Jesus says to the Pharisees you will be sent down to hell.
I think the lectionary editors felt that that was too strong to
have Reddit mass and so that might be one of the reasons why
some passages are left out. The Sunday readings are very
carefully chosen because we, the lectionary editors, want to make
sure that they really. Good solid stories or good solid
parts of the Gospels that the priest or the preacher can do a
really good homily from, so they're very carefully chosen.
The weekday readings typically do move through pretty
continuously through the gospels, but there are parts
that have to be read out largely due to time constraints.
That would be my understanding of why the lectionary editors
have set things up the way that they did when they worked out
which gospel readings would go on which day.
And by the way, many of you would know this already, but you
can actually get access to that missing 20% of the gospels.
We have done an exegesis on the missing 20% of Matthew, Mark,
Luke, and John that is available to you through the Patreon page.
If you're willing to support the ministry at $10 a month or more,
you can get access to all the bonus exegesis episodes so that
you can eventually hear all of all four Gospels.
We also have available entire verse by verse, chronological
audio commentaries of the Gospels, which are slowly being
released. So if you want to study a
particular gospel in depth from start to finish, that is
available to you as an audio package, and you can see more
information about both of those things in the episode
description here. We've got a great question here
from Vivian who wants to know a bit more about the link between
Satan's influence and illness. This is something the Catechism
itself mentions, and it's something that we've brought up
in the episodes relating to when Jesus is healing people.
So Vivian's question is, can you please explain what you mean by
in a way, all sickness or illness is a result of Satan's
influence on the world? So firstly I'll refer to the
Catechism paragraphs from the Catechism of the Catholic Church
which talk about this. SO paragraph 1502 says it is the
experience of Israel that illness is mysteriously linked
to sin and evil. And then a few paragraphs later
1505 says Jesus healings were signs of the coming of the
Kingdom of God. They announced a more radical
healing, the victory over sin and death.
Through his Passover on the cross.
Christ took upon himself the whole weight of evil and took
away the sin of the world, of which illness is only a
consequence. So you can hear there that the
Church pretty clearly teaches that illness is a consequence of
the sin that is in the world now.
It's not a direct one to one relationship where if an
individual sins, they then receive an illness.
It's this more kind of cosmic influence of sin on the world
has led to illness. And this would go back to Adam
and Eve. Had Adam and Eve not sinned,
there would not be illness in the world, particularly because
they would have access to the Tree of life.
We can't exactly explain how this works because a lot of what
happened in the Garden of Eden is mysterious.
But the imagery we get is that as Adam and Eve were taking from
the Tree of life, that was preventing them from death and
probably preventing them from illness.
And since Adam and Eve can no longer access the Tree of life
as a result of their sin. And remember, sin is the result
of Satan's influence on them. Therefore, humans are not
protected from illness and death anymore.
It's broadly that kind of link. Hopefully that kind of gets to
what you're asking and Vivian says, But by that inference, is
it logical to conclude that if illness is not healed or demons
not exercised, the Kingdom of God has not come to that person,
or Satan still has a hold on that person?
There's two different things we need to distinguish here.
If illness is not healed in a particular case, it doesn't
necessarily mean Satan has a hold on that individual on an
individual level. Not every individual is due to
Satan's, not in every individual.
Illness is due to Satan's direct influence.
So it's not as simple as saying if they're not healed, then
Satan has power over them. But in the case of an exorcism,
if an exorcism is not successful, then there is a
sense in which Satan does still have a hold on that person, but
often through multiple exorcisms that hold can be weakened, and
it's worth studying what contemporary exorcists have to
say about the influence of Satan over people and how that can be
broken down slowly. I hope that helps answer your
really good question there, Vivian, another really great
question here from Matthew, and this is one that I've wondered
about sometimes too, he says. My question relates to the
demons calling Jesus son of God, and Jesus silencing them.
It seems that most of these encounters are public.
As such, I would expect that some people heard what the
demons said about our Lord. If people heard what the demons
said, how is it that no one seemed to know that Jesus was
the Son of God until later? It's a great question, Matthew,
and I think the Gospel of Mark is a really good one to study
here because there's quite a few encounters early in the Gospel
of Mark where the demons call Jesus the Son of God, or at
least a similar title to that, and Jesus immediately silences
them and says don't tell anyone. Presumably you're right that
some people would hear the demons calling Jesus the son of
God, and particularly because remember, Peter is likely the
source of Mark's Gospel, so certainly Peter would have heard
it and others who were nearby Jesus at the time.
Maybe part of the answer here is remember there's often huge
crowds here. The crowds can't always hear
exactly what's done, particularly if Jesus
immediately silences the demon, and then you know, the rest of
the day Jesus moves around with the crowd.
Not going by that title, I suppose just in terms of
percentage amount of time that people are with Jesus, they're
unlikely to hear Jesus being called the Son of God.
There's really only rare occurrences where he's briefly
called the Son of God and then Jesus immediately silences them.
Maybe that's enough for this title, Son of God, not to enter
into the consciousness of the people who are in the crowd.
Another possibility is that some people did actually think he was
the Son of God, but it was not the dominant theory.
It was more likely that people would think he's a prophet or
Elijah returned from the dead, as we see in that conversation
between Jesus and the and the key apostles.
I hope that helps answer the question.
It's not an entire answer, but I suppose we just have to think
about the dynamics that would be in place with huge crowds
constantly following Jesus around and different opinions
that are circulating amongst the crowd.
Last question we'll look at today is from Jessica on
Patreon. She says Was Mary at the Last
Supper? It seems clear from the Gospels
that she was in Jerusalem, probably for the Passover, as
any observant Jew would be. If not at the Last Supper, then
where was she on Holy Thursday? It's a good question.
Was Mary present at the Last Supper?
Some theologians have thought she might be.
The gospel seemed to indicate that it is only Jesus and the
apostles in the upper room. Now that's not 100% certain, but
in terms of the way the narration goes, in terms of the
instructions Jesus gives the apostles to prepare the room, it
does sound like he's deliberately choosing to just be
there with his apostles, and therefore it's likely that Mary
and other disciples were not with Jesus at the Last Supper.
Now you will find some scholars and theologians who think that's
not the case and that they were present.
But if we assume that Mary was not present at the Last Supper,
we can say that she would be celebrating the Passover with
some of her own relatives. Remember, for the great feasts
of Jerusalem, like the Passover, people would travel in crowds
and in families from where they lived up to Jerusalem.
So Mary would have travelled with people from her hometown of
Nazareth and they would have shared some sort of Passover
together. That's just speculation, we
can't be sure, but I hope that kind of gives you an option to
think about when we consider what Mary was up to in Jerusalem
in the last week of Jesus life. So I hope these attempts at
responding to the questions were helpful.
There've been so many recently that I thought it was worth
doing. As a additional bonus episode,
if you've got another biblical question that you'd like
answered, feel free to send it through either to
logical.biblestudy@gmail.com or you can even leave a voice
message, and there's a link for that in the episode description.
Thanks so much for your support of the Logical Bible Study
Ministry. I'm so glad to hear that this
approach to Scripture is opening up the Bible for so many of you.
Please keep telling other people about it, keep the ministry in
your prayers, and please keep tuning in.
We'll see you for the next episode.