CBB Media Review: Reading the Bible

Reading the Bible can be a daunting task. Even though we know the stories and have heard them time after time we read the Bible sometimes and understand the word but at other times we encounter areas that are confusing. When you sit and ponder about what the Bible is, a recorded history spanning hundreds of thousands of years, you cannot help but go ….wow. To properly read, interpret the Bible and apply it to our daily lives we need some help. In this 3 CD set Dr. Scott Hahn guides listeners through an intense journey showing how the Church interprets the Bible. In addition he offers truths about scripture directly from the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The talks cover typology, divine economy and mystagogy. In the first you learn that typology shows how the New Testament is concealed in the Old Testament and that the Old is revealed in the New. You also hear how Jesus explained his own work and how it was the fulfillment of the Passover.

In the second CD you learn about God’s fatherly plan that gives unity to both testaments otherwise known as divine economy. This talk accomplishes this through a deep dive of the book of Genesis that is well worth listening to. This divine economy shows how God is willing to stoop to our level, no matter how low we are, simply to bring us back to His level.

In the final CD is on mystagogy defined as adult education in the ancient Church…in essence adult catechisis.  The early Church put emphasis on the fact the continuing education on the Faith allowed one to grow in their relationship with God. “Mystagogy shows us how typology Still works because the economy of salvation history, God’s fatherly plan for his family, didn’t end with Christ’s Ascension or the death of the last apostle it is going on right up to this very moment.. That is what mystagogy is intended to show us.”

One point to make here is that Scott ties all this together with the teachings pulled directly from the Catechism. He states in the third CD that he believes the “Catholic biblical renewal will not really get started until Catholics get over their fear of the Catechism, until they plunge themselves into close and careful analysis of all four sections of the Catechism.” Specifically he pulls from sections 101 to 141 which provide the framework, from the Church herself, on how to study Scripture. “If you study this Catechism, you will be better equipped to study Scripture than if you had Old Testament 101, New Testament with me and Jeff Cavins’ Timeline.”

From the publisher:

On three remarkable CDs, Dr. Scott Hahn relates that as trusting children of God and of our Mother, the Church, Catholics read the Bible within a community that is larger than the local Bible-study group, parish or diocese. As you listen, you’ll begin to experience how the authentic Catholic “Bible study group” is the Communion of Saints, the voices of Catholic Tradition, the great cloud of witnesses from all of history. Learn how your most important guide to understanding the Bible is the Holy Spirit, working through the Church’s Magisterium.

Perhaps most importantly, you’ll discover that “to read the Bible from the heart of the Church” means to read the Bible in its natural (and supernatural!) habitat. In other words, to read the Bible in light of the liturgy. You’ll be inspired and enlightened as Dr. Hahn relates how the scriptural texts themselves presume the context of the Mass. You’ll come to see how the apostles and evangelists seem to be writing with liturgical proclamation in mind. And how if you read the Bible as they wrote it, you’ll be reading it from the heart of the Church which is Eucharistic. It is the very heart of Jesus. In this powerful and practical presentation, you’ll experience the heart-to-heart encounter that Jesus’ disciples experienced on that first Easter night, when they knew Him in the breaking of the bread: “Did not our hearts burn within us while He talked to us…while He opened to us the Scriptures?” (cf. Luke 24:13-37)

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

Get your own copy of Reading the Bible from the Heart of the Church at Saint Joseph Communications website here.