Transcript

Have you ever been in a discussion with someone about theology or the Bible and the other person just rattled off dozens of memorized Bible verses to try to show that you're wrong?

Or have you engaged in a comment thread and one person just listed dozens and dozens of Bible verses after a claim they make and it makes the debate seem overwhelming?

I call this the Bible blitzkrieg, and it often makes conversations about the faith much more difficult than they need to be.

So if you feel overwhelmed by the blitzkrieg or if you see other people 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 is not bad to memorize Scripture.

In fact, it's awesome if you're able to do that.

While some Catholics do do this, I notice Protestants tend to be more adept at it, especially Evangelicals who were raised in environments that promoted memorizing Scripture 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's one thing to know what the Bible says and it's another thing to know what the Bible means.

St. Jerome said of a heretical group called the Luciferians that, quote, 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.

St. Jerome shows that anyone can string along Bible citations and say they're correct, but that doesn't mean they're correct.

St. Irenaeus 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 St. 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 Scriptures really well.

For example, you can find Jehovah's Witnesses who can cite dozens of passages that, according to them, show Jesus as 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 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 by faith alone, and then cite a bunch of Bible verses about the role of works and salvation.

That really doesn't help move the conversation forward though 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 G.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 could I be wrong when all these Bible verses say that 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 merely by accepting God's grace through the sacrament of baptism.

A baby does nothing, not a single work to be saved.

He just receives this gift from God.

As the catechism puts it, Since the initiative belongs to God in the order of grace, no one can merit the initial grace of forgiveness and justification.

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 or Muslims, should, in the spirit of intellectual honesty, avoid the Bible blitzkrieg.

If you're faced with it, just say you need time to go through all the evidence that was presented.

Eventually, after enough time, you will get through all of the verses that are presented, and in many cases you'll see the cited verses aren't just incorrect interpretations, they're irrelevant interpretations.

The verse being cited has nothing to do with the topic being discussed, but that can be missed if you're 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's not endorsing or commanding it.

For more on that, check out my episode When Atheists Misread the Bible, linked in the description below.

When you're faced with a Bible blitzkrieg, remember it's not an actual war.

You're allowed to ask for a break so you can look up these verses and get back to the person you're talking to.

You can remind him that studying Bible verses, it's 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.

So you might tell the person you want to consult authoritative sources to find out what these verses might say or at least what they absolutely do not 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.

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 biblical text 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, because the Church has infallibly taught those are false doctrines and because of that, the Scriptures cannot teach them.

Finally, don't get discouraged.

If you're a Catholic and your Protestant friend knows more biblical citations than you do, don't be discouraged.

The chapters and verses in the Bible are not original to the Bible.

The chapter divisions come from Archbishop Stephen Langton in the 13th century, and the verse systems in most modern Bibles come from Robert Estienne in the 16th century.

When Jesus showed the Sadducees that the Old Testament does refer to a resurrection of the dead, Jesus said, But that the dead are raised even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.

So 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, it 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 Street, 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 the biblical passages exactly by chapter and verse.

Catholics, on the other hand, know the Bible like kids know a neighborhood.

The kids may not know the Johnsons live at 123 Maplewood Street, 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 every exact location where it's found in the Bible.

So they might 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 systematic knowledge of it.

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.

We can all apply ourselves to having a mature knowledge of God's Word in Sacred Scripture.

You could 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's familiar, such as by listening to the Bible: An Ear Podcast, and then practice reading the same chapter that you were listening to so the chapters and verses stay in your mind more.

I like to use the Truth in 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.

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 every 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 for interpreting it.

So thank you all so much for watching, and I hope you have a very blessed day.