The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - Should Catholics Attend Protestant Bible Studies? (Part 2)

Episode Date: February 21, 2025

How do we study and interpret Scripture? Jeff explains the different senses of scripture—literal and spiritual—and dives into the origins and differences in the Biblical canons between Protestants and Catholics. Snippet from the Show Understanding the senses of Scripture enriches our study of the Word of God. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 418, should Catholics attend Protestant Bible studies. Number two. Welcome back this week. Wow, what a wonderful week, wonderful week. Every single week, you know, there are opportunities. to share Christ with people and to worship God and to go deeper into His Word, it just gets

better and better. Never been tired of it. I can tell you that. I can't imagine Peter waking up one morning and saying, you know, yawning and going, oh man, I got to follow God again today. I doubt it. And that's what we're hoping to do on this show every week is to give you some tools and some encouragement and insight on how to live as an activated disciple. every single day. There should be a shape to your day. You know that, though, right? You've been around long enough with me. There should be a shape to your day which reveals the love of your life. I'll tell you what? If I follow you around for a week, I'll tell you what you love. It'll either be Jesus, or it'll be winemaking, or it'll be a football, or, you know, it could be your car, bowling. I don't know

anything, but I can tell you what you love by the shape of your day. And so the shape of your day should the shape of a disciples day, and certainly at the heart of that is prayer and scripture study. And that's what we talk about here every week. By the way, I'm looking outside right now. I am deep in the woods of Minnesota right now, and looking at the very, very quiet lake. There's snow on top of it. It's cold still in Minnesota. And there's deer tracks around because every day around 4 o'clock, I get 4 or 5 deer.

And it's just always a delight to look at that and give praise to God every time I'm out here. with you doing this show. Okay, so last week we started the first episode of should Catholics attend Protestant Bible studies. And in that last week, I spoke to you about the nature of the Word of God, that it isn't just scripture alone, but the church has always understood sacred scripture and sacred tradition. As Paul said to the Thessalonians, he said, Second Thessalonians 215, so then brothers stand firm. and hold to the traditions that you were taught by us, either by our spoken word or by our letter.

So you have both there, and that's what's been passed down. Now, the church guards this and protects it and secures this deposit of faith, and that's why we have a lot of confidence in the church. Do we have confidence in the people in the church? Well, that's a different thing, right? I mean, people are fragile, people sin. But when it comes to the Holy Spirit, keeping this whole building project together of the kingdom, I'm quite confident in the ability of

the Holy Spirit to hold it together. Now, last week we talked about faith alone and scripture alone. We talked about three criteria for interpreting scripture. If you're going to be, if you find yourself in one of these studies, you really should be equipped to know what they're going to say to you. You're going to ask a question and they're going to say, what do you believe about Mary? And you're going to tell them. And they're going to say, well, where's that in the Bible? and suddenly the entire scope of reality and revelation is going to have to be in the Bible. And your answer may be, well, man, I don't know. Don't let someone cause the idea of revelation to suddenly shrink to just their Bible.

That's not the way the early church believed. That's not the way Jesus or the early disciples, the super apostles, Peter and Paul. It's not the way they believe. And so this all took place in the 16th century at the Reformation. James says you're not saved by faith alone, and there's not one verse in the Bible that says scripture alone. None. I know. I've been doing this for 40 years. I know. There isn't one. And so I asked the question, how do you know that the Bible is the Word of God? There's only one answer, and it's the answer that St. Augustine gave. He said, I would not know that the Bible is the Word of God, have the Church not told me.

He wouldn't have just stumbled upon a Bible and said, wow, look at this. It's the Word of God. No, he wouldn't it. He would have said this is a book with a lot of different letters in it. It was the church that said this is the word of God. Church. The pillar in the support of truth. Important thing to remember. So this week, I want to move on. I want to talk to you a little bit about what's called the senses of scripture. When we do Bible study, there is a way to go about it. And the church and all of our wisdom and experience passes this on to us in a book that we call the catechism. And the catechism is a bringing together of what we believe as Catholics. And it mentioned scripture and the early church fathers and church documents and so forth. And it's just a really, really great book.

And if you haven't got your copy of the new catechism from Ascension Press, color-coded, get it. By the way, the Great Adventure Bible 2.0 in the Bible has references in the scriptures to every verse that is in the catechism. The catechism comments on different verses in the Bible, and so now we've got them cross-referencing each other. That's in the new 2.0. What a work. Love it.

I wish I would have had that years ago. Okay, so when we talk about the rules for studying the Bible, we covered these guidelines, I guess you could say, to studying and interpreting the Bible, but there's also something called the senses of scripture. Now, paragraph 115 in the catechism says, according to an ancient tradition, one can distinguish between two senses of Scripture. Now, this originally was called the quadriga.

You have the literal sense, and you have the spiritual sense, the latter being divided into three spiritual senses, or three aspects of the spiritual sense. We'll look at that. And the profound concordance of the four senses guarantees all its richness to the living reading of scripture in the church. So do you want all the richness? Then listen up because I'm about to give you the key to all the richness of studying scripture. So the first thing that we do that the early church did, and this was, by the way, this was really big in the Middle Ages. But the thing that the early church did is, number one, is they looked at the literal sense. You can take a scripture. Let's say,

for example, in the Old Testament, Solomon built the temple. Fair enough. The literal sense is the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture and discovered by exegesis, following the rules of sound interpretation. All other senses of Scripture are based on the literal. Now, what do we mean by the literal sense? Well, I can tell you, we do not mean what does it mean literally. That's not what the literal sense is. The literal sense of Scripture, and we're looking at, for example, the building of the temple in the Old Testament, the literal sense is what was the intended meaning of the author? What was the author trying to convey? When he wrote about a temple, what was he trying to convey?

And so to find that, we look at word studies, we look at culture and tradition of those times, we look at archaeology, we look at the study of words and how they're used, euphemisms, and so forth. We look at family structure. We look at a lot of different things to figure out what did the writer at that time want to convey. We're not looking at deep meaning at this point. We're just asking the question, what is the literal sense? And that takes a little bit of study. But with the Internet these days, you can find it out really pretty easy.

You really can. You can't use that as an excuse for not studying. So that's the first thing that we look at is the literal sense, the meaning conveyed by the words of Scripture. Temple, it's a place of worship. It's a place of sacrifice. Priest dwell there and offer sacrifices for the people. Pretty easy. A lot of cultures had temples. How is Israel's temple different? Well, we can study that too. So the literal sense is number one. Then what we do after we have determined what a temple is in Samuel. We know what a temple is. We know what the sense of this is, the literal sense. The second thing we do is we look at the spiritual sense. Now, this is where it gets really interesting. This is the fun part that people get into in Bible study when they start to see.

how this temple relates to other aspects of life in the church. The literal sense is the meaning conveyed. Remember that. Now, the spiritual sense, thanks to the unity of God's plan, not only the text of Scripture, but also the realities and events about which it speaks can be signs. So when we look at the spiritual sense of Scripture, we're looking at three aspects of the spiritual sense.

We know what the literal sense is. We know what a temple is. Now, let's look at the spiritual sense. And the first is called the allegorical sense. Now, don't be thrown off by these big words. I'll explain what they mean here. But don't be thrown off by that. Just grow and you're getting smarter.

You know, your vocabulary is expanding. That's all good. So we have the allegorical sense. Now, what does that mean? Well, the catechism says, we can acquire a more profound understanding of events by recognizing their significance in Christ. Thus, the crossing of the Red Sea is a sign or type of Christ's victory and also of

Christian baptism. So, succinctly put, the allegorical sense is, how does this relate to Christ? Now, we know that the entire Bible is Christocentric, don't we? So how does this temple that we're reading about in Samuel and Kings, how does that relate to Jesus? Well, we know that Jesus is the new temple, right? He is this new temple. And we are a part of that ourselves. And so we come to Christ and we worship.

We come to the Lord, and that's where the sacrifices and the sacraments. He is the paschal mystery. So the allegorical sense is number one. Number two is the moral sense. and this used to be called, if you read a book from quite a while ago, I'll talk about the tropological sense, but you can just say the moral sense. What does that mean? Well, the moral sense is how it applies to you.

We know how it applies to Jesus, the temple, but how does it apply to you? The events reported in Scripture ought to lead us to act justly. As St. Paul says, they were written for our instruction. So what is the moral sense of the text? temple in the Old Testament. Well, certain writers are really big on certain senses, like St. Augustine is really good with the allegorical sense. But when it comes to the moral sense, I'll tell you what, Paul is just a champion. Paul, when he writes to the Corinthians or the Ephesians, Colossians, Galatians, and Timothy, Romans, he really has a way of showing you how the scriptures

apply to you. So how in the world could a temple apply to you? Well, very easy. He wrote to the Corinthians, and the Corinthians had a lot of cult prostitution. They're in Corinth. They had wild lifestyle. They worshipped their gods, the Greek gods, and it was very much licentuous, and it was involved cult prostitutes. And so what did Paul say to them? Well, he gave them the moral sense of a temple when he said, don't join yourself with

prostitutes. Now, you and I would say, duh, but they needed more than duh. the Corinthians, they needed to know why. Why shouldn't I? I grew up this way. This is normal. I waited until 16, no, I could go to one of these places. Now, you're telling me I can't do this? Why?

Well, I'll tell you why. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. You don't join yourself to a harlot and become one. You join yourself to Christ. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit. That's the spiritual sense. The aspect is the moral sense. how it relates to you.

And then the third is the anagogical sense. And the analogical sense speaks of leading or the future, heaven. And so every scripture that we run across, we ask, how does this, what's the allegorical sense? How does it relate to Christ? What's the moral sense? How does it relate to me? And the analogical sense, how does it relate to the future?

Heaven. So we can view realities and events in terms of their eternal significance, leading us toward our true homeland. Thus the church on earth is a sign of the heavenly Jerusalem. And if you read the book of Revelation, especially the last couple chapters, you'll get what I mean there real quick. And so the temple, there's going to be a new temple. And that's what John sees really in the book of Revelation. So that is important. So if you're going to be a part of a Bible study outside of the Catholic Church, you've got to know that there are some guidelines, which we went over last week, if you want to get the most out of scripture, and you have to know how the church has

typically looked at scripture, the literal sense and the spiritual sense, subdivided into three. That's the quadriga. That is the best way to squeeze everything, all the juice out of the Bible. That's the way to do it. Not to just sit down and say, oh, God speak to me, which I'm not saying you can't. but it's not the preferred way to initially approach the Bible. So let's turn our attention now after the break here to the canon of Scripture, shall we? That's always a hot one.

Why do we have 74 books? Why do Protestants have 66? Did we add seven? Did they take away seven? Let's get to the bottom of it right after this. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Hey, guys, my name's Father Mike Schmitz. I am excited to announce that I'll be launching the Parables tour this spring.

we'll come together and we'll see what the Lord wants to share with us in his word through the parables and then we'll follow that with a live Q&A so if you're interested go to ascensionpress com slash father mike tour to find out dates and locations that's ascensionpress.com slash f r m ikee tour god bless and we'll see you there welcome back good to have you isn't it fun talking about the Bible and learning not just learning the Bible learning how to approach it and learning how to study it. We're talking today about should Catholics attend Protestant Bible studies. I said to you last week, that's really not for me to determine for you.

If you're young in the faith and you're vulnerable and you are easily influenced, I would make sure you get grounded in the Bible as a Catholic. I was a pastor of a non-denominational church for 12 years. I know how easy it is to pick people off. I know. I can do it with questions. I can confuse you. I can get you feeling like a fool.

And come on to my church. We'll straighten this out. Not everybody's like that, and I wasn't exactly like that. But I do know how people are influenced, you know, in this area. So what about the Bible? You know, if you go to a Bible study and they say, hey, your Bible looks thicker than mine. Why is that? I'll say, because it is.

I got 73 books in this here Bible. You all have 66. Did you guys go wrong or did I go wrong? What's going on here? Well, here's the deal, okay? Here's the deal. It was, I'm going to read you something from the catechism, and then we'll go a little deeper into this. In paragraph 120, it says it was by the apostolic tradition, that's the tradition from the very beginning, that the church discerned which writings are to be included in the list of the sacred books.

This complete list is called the canon of scripture. It includes 46 books for the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. You might have a Bible that has Jeremiah in Lamentations as one. Then you'd say instead of 46 books in the Old Testament, it'd be 45. But generally speaking, it's 46 books in the old, 27 in the new, that is 73. Right there, 73 books. So what went on? What happened?

Well, you know, when you look at this question, you approach the question of, did Catholics add seven books? The answer is no, they did not? And you ask the question, did Protestants subtract seven books? The answer is, kind of. Now, I say kind of there because it's not like they took our canon and then with a magic marker or something, they just, you know, etched out seven of them and said, this is what we're going to go with. But clearly, in the reference, in the 16th century, there were theological problems and that the reformers did not want to include in what they believe. Like, we have the praying for asking the saints to pray for us, those that have gone on, the Blessed Mother, and the great saints like Augustine and Jerome and, you know, so many others. A lot of those texts were in, like, for example, Maccabees. They were in Maccabees. And they were problematic. right? Now, let me just mention these seven books that are in the Catholic Bible. We call them the Deutero-canonical books. We do not call it, you know, something like the apocryphal books,

false writings. We don't label them that way. We call them the Deutero-canonical books. And it's Tobit, Judith, first and second, Maccabees, wisdom. Oh, that's so good. Ecclesiasticus, and Baruch. If you haven't read Baruch, oh. if you're a Protestant friend of mine and you're listening right now, fine, stick with your Bible for now, but read Baruch. You're in for a treat. Now, some say that portions of these books contradict elements of Protestant doctrine, and that's one of the reasons that we wanted to kind of get away from them. And when Luther was on the scene, he tried to get rid of James. He called it an epistle of straw because it said, you are not saved by faith alone. That's a problem on this whole movement.

you what, we got to do something about that. He wanted revelation taken out. Of course, the church wouldn't let him do it. And he actually changed in Romans. You are saved by faith. He put the word alone in there. And that got yanked out later. He said, you can't do that. You can't just stick words in there, Luther? Here's what happened, okay? The early church used those 46 books in the Old Testament. Those were the books that they used. including Judith and Tobit in First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom, Ecclesiastikas, and Baruch, they used those in there. That was considered sacred scripture because that version of the Old Testament that the Jews were using was called the Septuagint. That's the Greek translation of the Hebrew scriptures.

And it was a Greek translation because the world was speaking Greek in the road system of the Romans. And so it's like we want this Bible in the languages of the world. So you have the Greek Old Testament. Now, from the very beginning, this is important, from the very beginning, the church used the Septuagint. That was considered sacred scripture. Sacred scripture. All Christians believe that.

All of them for 1,500 years. Then comes the Reformation. Now, what the reformers did is they didn't yank seven books out. But there was another canon, a different canon, that they chose. to use that did not have those seven. So they chose not to go with the subduigent, but with a different canon. It was convenient. It was easier.

And so the answer to that question, did Catholics add seven books? No, we're still the same as Peter and Paul and Cyril of Jerusalem and the rest of them. We're still using the same book that the church believed was the word of God, the inspired word of God. and then in the councils of Hippo and Carthage, in 393 and 37, the church finally said that these 73 books, this is the canon. Again, what did Augustine say? He said, I wouldn't believe that these books were the Word of God if the church had not told me. Honestly, how could Augustine come to the conclusion that this book he found with 73 smaller books than it was the Word of God?

How in the world would he come to that conclusion? You don't just pick up a book. I deem this, the word of God. No, the church determined that. And if the church determined that, then what does the church have to say about communion? What does the church have to say about sacraments, marriage, sin, heaven, hell, purgatory, mortal, venal. What does the church have to say about those who have gone before us?

Hmm, something to think about. So the Catholic Church did not add books to the Bible. The Deutero canonical books were considered inspired scripture by the first century Christians. Protestant reformers of the 16th century. They labeled the Deutero-canonical books, unscriptural. They put a name on those seven books. They called it the Apocrypha. But did you know that even the King James was originally published with those seven books in it?

It took a little while to finally get that completely out of there. In fact, it came out kind of permanently with the British and the Foreign Bible Society. The British and Foreign Bible Society removed the seven books from the Bible in 1826. So the Catholic Church accepts the same Old Testament canon as did the apostles. The same Old Testament canon as Jesus believed. And that's what we believe. And so a couple things that if you get into a group of people who start talking about what they would call the apocryphal readings, those seven books,

you know, you can stop them lovingly and say, wait a minute, we don't think that they're apocryphal. We believe that it is the Word of God. And they'll say, well, how do you believe that? Because the early church did, it was the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. And the church unanimously agreed on this from the very beginning. And it wasn't until the 16th century that the reformers decided not to go with it. Now, that's a long time to go and then suddenly decide that it's not. Hmm.

Something to think about. Now, you know, I don't get into arguments with people about all this. And my point is never to win an argument. I mean, that's not the point. I'm not opposed to arguing with someone about it, but it's not the goal to argue with people. The goal is that people will come to understand what the word of God is, then study it, and then do it.

And so it just so happens that we as Catholics believe what the early church believed and reformers don't. And that's something that you don't have to defend. The responsibility on proving something is not upon you as a Catholic. It is upon people who have moved away from what the church always believed. They're the ones that are responsible

for some kind of explanation, not me, not you, and don't feel like you owe it. If you can repeat what I just told you, yay, but just because you can't articulate it, perhaps at the beginning doesn't mean that you are wrong. Simply put, you know, I read this article from Catholic Answers online is a really good article by Joe Heschmer. And it was really good.

What he said in there made so much sense. You know, he said, it's historically illiterate to insist that Catholics added seven books to the Bible. We didn't. Prior to the Reformation, the Bible, particularly in the West, had 73 books, and it was Protestants who removed them. At first, it was a matter of treating them as inferior books, which were nevertheless included in the Bible. eventually, as the Mennonite scholar David Ewert explains, these seven books were removed from the Bible entirely in 1826, okay? And he goes on and says, simply put, and I think this is well put,

there's no logical reason to assume Protestantism is true and then put the burden of proof on Catholics and Orthodox. Protestantism is the innovation, and it's the responsibility of the innovator to show how their innovation isn't an alteration of the faith, which was once for all delivered to the saints. Well, put Joe, hope we can meet sometime. And you can look up Jude chapter 1 and verse 3 on that one.

So when it comes to being involved in a Bible study, go in with love, go in with an open heart. Don't go in defensive. Don't go in scared. If you don't know the answer to a question, then you don't know it. Don't be defeated. Don't make up excuses. Tell them, you know what?

I need to look that up. That's a good question. And then you got your homework to do. But when you go to a Bible study, don't be cocky and don't make it all about destroying people's, you know, people's arguments and putting people down. Walk in love. Let your words be, you know, salted with grace, spiced up with grace and love. And may your hunger for Christ be real. see it. And don't be afraid to share some of the good things that you have found in the church

and what they do for you. When you go to a Bible study, know this. There's nobody there that knows it all. There's nobody there that has it all figured out. There's nobody there that is a world expert. They're all searching to. You just have more. You know, you just have more good stuff. And when the time is appropriate, you can share it with them. So I hope that these last two weeks have been somewhat helpful in distinguishing the difference between a Protestant Bible study and a Catholic Bible study, particularly the non-denominational churches, which is kind of anything goes. If you can think of it, maybe God is speaking to you. And the Bible is there really to, boy, it's just used in all kinds of different ways. And some of them are inappropriate.

And then sometimes people stumble on to things that we know as Catholics. We know them because we follow the guidelines the church has always taught us. But walk in love, study in love, and more important than anything, live out the faith. Do the word of God. That's the most important thing. All right. If you want the show notes today, just text me. My name, Jeff Kaven's one word, text it to the number 3377.

That's 3377. We'll get you on board and get you those notes. Let's pray. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, amen. Lord, Jesus, we love you so much. We thank you, Lord, for giving us your word. And we thank you for giving us the church to guide us and direct us and correct us. Lord, I pray for all of my friends who are thinking of going to a study

or find themselves in the midst of a study outside the church. I pray that you will give them a spirit of love and wisdom and that you will use them as an example of a disciple who is hungry for your word. And I pray this in your name. Name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen. God bless. I love you.

We'll see you next week.