Fr. Bill Burton's "Biblicist" DVD Series

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Sirach23v27

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Hello,
If anyone is interested in hearing an excellent CATHOLIC :extrahappy: introduction to the Scriptures, I’d highly recommend “Biblicist: Volume I” by Fr. Bill Burton. It’s a DVD series that conveniently addresses a wealth of historical, cultural, linguistic and political information as context for understanding the Old Testament texts and New Testament texts - again, specifically from a Catholic perspective. This is a resource I wish existed many years earlier in my own journey of faith.

If anyone else has already reviewed this resource, I’d love to hear your thoughts as well. If not, maybe you’ll consider buying a copy for yourself.

An order form for the DVD series (as well as background information on Fr. Burton) is available at www.biblicist.net.
Just click on the “What’s New” link on the website to download the order form.

The DVD series itself contains 6 hour-long presentations on three discs. I hope many of you can come to appreciate this resource as much as I have. To my knowledge, a “Volume II” has not yet been completed, but I’ll eagerly await its release. :bible1:
Sirach23v27
 
lol… :thankyou: I appreciate the feedback and thanks for sharing the Catholic Productions links. I’d welcome you and anyone who has reviewed the Biblicist DVD series to come back to this thread in the future and share your thoughts.
Take care,
Sirach23v27
 
Hello all,
I just finished watching the 24 May 2011 episode of “Threshold of Hope” with Fr. Mitch Pacwa. I believe the last half of this episode (or more accurately the final 15mins) raises quick points which overlap VERY nicely with points reviewed in greater detail by Fr. Bill Burton in his “Biblicist” series. Here’s the EWTN Youtube link to this episode of “Threshold of Hope” which is reviewing JPII’s Apostolic Letter Redemptoris Missio.

“Threshold of Hope” reviewing Redemptoris Missio with Fr. Mitch Pacwa, S.J.
05-24-2011 Episode: youtube.com/ewtn#p/u/10/U4hSXIIi8ng

Again, if/when anyone has had the opportunity to review the 6 hour-long sessions of the “Biblicist” series, I’d welcome you to share your thoughts on this thread.
Sirach23v27

P.S.: Fr. Mitch Pacwa is the “real deal” - a great scholar, theologian and witness. This show - “Threshold of Hope” - has made me a fan of his, but I can’t sing the praises of Fr. Bill Burton’s work on the “Biblicist” enough.
 
I’m now watching the Biblicist Series. I’ve watched the first two disks and part of third. Generally I like it, but I am really troubled by a couple things:

(1) In the first disk, at the very beginning, he states that what he will teach is new, something just developed, and not what was taught to Catholics 50 years ago. This troubles me greatly. As a new Catholic, belief in the Tradition helped give the bible context and a narrative that made sense. Burton seemed to throw out tradition, or so I took it. Note that I read the Magnifact daily and have done so for a year. All the daily meditations, written by Catholics through the ages, seem fit with the Catecism and what I learned as I joined the church. Burton’s suggestion (perhaps unintentional, or perhaps misunderstood by me) that we only recently learned how to interpret and understand the bible troubles me. Did Jesus create the Church on the Rock of St. Peter, or did he leave it to be understood in the year 2007?

(2) Burton says in beginning to talk about the Gospels: “Right off the bat, we don’t know who wrote any of the Gospels.” Then he says, “the ascription of names is simply a tradition.” He continues on in a manner to indicate that naming of the Gospels is pretty much arbitrary in his opinion, sort of like whatever you want to call them. I’m having a hard time with this. Had to stop watching the DVD. I can appreciate that the Gospels are not signed by the author, but had felt that we could believe tradition and scholarship to come to the conclusion, that, for instance, John wrote John. See for instance, Catholic Encyclopedia

I can believe the following narrative: the gospel of John is anonymous, but early church fathers believed it to be authored by John, they had good reason to believe so then, and our subsequent research does not contradict them. Thus, the early church fathers had good reason to incorporate John into the Cannon.

I have trouble with the following, which is what I hear from Burton: The gospel of John is anonymous. Early church fathers may have believed John wrote it, but they had no basis for that belief. Thus they were mistaken as we just don’t know who wrote John. Nevermind this mistake of authorship, they still had good reason to incorporate John into the Cannon.

Anyway, at the moment, I’m agnostic (to say the least) on the Biblicist series. I will keep watching, but am troubled right now.
 
Hello Slowlearner,
Thank you for sharing your comments and concerns after having reflected on Fr. Bill Burton’s statements and conclusions within the “Biblicist” series.

I will attempt to fully address your two primary posted concerns and I would imagine my responses as being fully consistent not only with Fr. Bill Burton’s statements and conclusions but, more importantly, Catholic teaching (which I believe are entirely one and the same in this recorded series – that is to say, I can’t think of a single statement or conclusion made by Fr. Burton in the DVD resources which denies Church teaching or even militates against it).

Should anyone else reading this post, who has also had the opportunity to review and reflect upon Fr. Bill Burton’s “Biblicist: Volume I” DVD series, I would welcome hearing your comments, just as Slowlearner has done in the prior post. Slowlearner, despite your username, I suspect you aren’t “slow” in learning at all :pshaw: Those of you who are new to this thread can review the very first posting for instructions on how to obtain a copy of the Biblicist DVD series.

Addressing Slowlearner’s Concern #1:
Fr. Burton, I believe, is highlighting the fact that many people listening to him speak about Sacred Scripture MIGHT regard his teachings as “new” and subsequently “not in line with” or perhaps contradicting Catholic teaching. He is, in fact, highlighting that the Universal Church has always had robust discussions (perhaps a euphemism for “extremely heated debates”) which serve to clarify the intentions of God our Father in Heaven via the Sacred Scriptures, Sacred Tradition AND the Magisterium. One primary example Fr. Burton highlights is the heated debates among the Apostles and early Church as to whether or not someone following Christ must:
  1. FIRST become a Jew (and adhere to Jewish laws, i.e. Torah, and its hundreds of restrictions in day-to-day living) and THEN become a Christian;
    OR
  2. Enable gentiles to come to Christ DIRECTLY (by way of baptism) and therefore bypass all the restrictions set forth in Jewish laws and traditions.
    Peter and Paul (as I seem to recall) vigorously promoted the 2nd position. James, however, vigorously promoted the 1st.
In my reflecting on your prior post (and please correct me if my interpretation is off), your comments SEEM to NOT allow the Church the opportunity to learn God’s will with greater clarity than previous generations. Your comments suggest that the Catholic Church TODAY is inherently incapable of attaining a greater or superior understanding of God’s will and activity in our lives than Church members 25 years ago, members 250 years ago or even God’s chosen people (prior to Christ incarnate within the Jewish tradition) 2,500 years ago. The Church overtly rejects this assessment each time it identifies and declares new “Doctors of the Church” - Saints for whom their teachings through the centuries have inherently served to further edify and clarify the faith with such GREAT effect that the Universal Church strongly encourages the flock to seek out their respective teachings.

Also, “salvation comes from the Jews” and in saying this I wish to highlight the fact that our salvation history does not uphold the insinuation that God’s people cannot gain a greater understanding of God’s will over time. It is for this very reason, I presume, that Fr. Burton spends significant time discussing the merits of the “deuteronomistic” perspective in crystalizing of the Jews’ understanding God’s will and the consequences for disobedience to the Most High (addressed in either Session #2 or #3).

Deuteronomy lays the foundation for a “revised” or better “learned” understanding of the significance of Jewish experiences up until the time of the Deuteronomist (by the way, we don’t know ANYTHING about the authorship of Deuteronomy - although I’ll address your concerns with Fr. Burton’s authorship claims momentarily). The Deuteronomist expressly re-edited the deposit of scriptures available at that time and offered an extremely clear framework for the Jews to understand God’s will – “disobey and the nation will be punished; obey and the nation will prosper” to attempt to quote Fr. Burton from memory. Fr. Burton also addressed the alternative perspectives and “editorial hands” of authorship in our Old Testament texts as those of the Yahwist, the Elohist and Priestly authors/editors, all unknown by name, yet their resulting works are in our Catholic Canon. You can web search “JEDP” for greater details on these Old Testament authors/editors.

All people and organizations are capable of maturing in understanding over time; this maturation process is predicated on the fundamental capacity to “learn” and therefore improve a current understanding over a previous understanding. This process does not declare a previous understanding as patently false, but rather declares the previous understanding as severely limited AND, more importantly, can provide a valid/plausible explanation as to why the previous teaching or understanding was in fact limited (i.e. not adequate). Just as you, as an individual, can recognize limitations in your understanding or interpretation of events in your life 5 or 10 years ago, so too the Universal Church has the same right and capacity to both learning and discovery greater insights concerning the faith. Again, the intent is not to say prior teaching is patently false; it is meant to highlight why prior teaching is inherently limited and thus not adequate in maximizing clarity in instruction. The mere existence of the New Testament and Christ’s presence serve the end of providing clarity on the Prophets. Christ himself states (quoting Abraham) “if they will not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if someone should rise from the dead”. Christ’s added clarity is a fulfillment, not a contradiction.

Comments continued on Sirach23v27’s next post…
 
Comments continued from Sirach23v27’s prior post…

Addressing Slowlearner’s Concern #2:
As concerns the matter of authorship within the Sacred Scriptures…

As I noted earlier, we simply - as a matter of fact - do not know who the Deuteronomist was - a person or persons. Likewise, the Book of Isaiah was previously thought to be written (by Church Fathers, no less) by a single person by the name Isaiah. Later scholarship, according to Fr. Burton, proposed a “new” perspective proposing there were three distinct authors who had their hand in the Book of Isaiah (Isaiah of Jerusalem a.k.a. Isaiah 1, and later Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 3). Another example of the failure to identify authorship is the Book of Malachi. The New American Bible informs us that the name “Malachi” means “my messenger” i.e. God’s messenger. He doesn’t cite his lineage as many of the other Prophets do. Subsequently, there’s a significant question as to whether what we know and refer to as the “Book of Malachi” was in fact written by an anonymous author who assumed the pseudonym “Malachi”. The “new” perspective on Isaiah better addresses the fact that the author in verb tense and context is referencing historical events that occur over the span of 200 years.

Realizing this fact of Isaiah, we are forced to ask this question of history:
  1. Is it MORE likely that one human being wrote the Book of Isaiah?
    OR
  2. Is it MORE likely that one Prophet initiated the text we know of in our Canon as the “Book of Isaiah” AND that his disciples later carried on additional writings in the name of “Isaiah” - that is to say, “in the tradition of” the one Prophet Isaiah?
Fr. Burton dispels the notion that prophets are “predictors of the future”. Even IF Isaiah was accurately predicting events covering the span of 200 years (by the way, Isaiah’s reference to the virgin birth could be an entirely different thread), that still fails to account for the “seemingly” inconsistent or contradictory verb tenses and shifted manners of speech through different segments of the Book of Isaiah (those segments which Biblicists now attribute to Isaiah 1, Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 3). Likewise, in the New Testament we simply cannot say with absolute certainty who put pen to paper and transmitted the text we now know as the “Gospel of John”. It was a mere convenience to call it the “Gospel of John”, just as it was a mere convenience to call the “Book of Malachi” that title despite having no knowledge of the author. This amounts to a customary practice and NOT necessarily a dogmatic teaching.

In fact, it’s fitting you raise the example of the “Gospel of John” because (as is also addressed in the Biblicist series) it is the one Gospel that reflects the greatest leap in learning compared to the other Gospels. In the other Gospels, especially in Mark, the Apostles and disciples are very “slow” (no pun on your username) 🎉 to come into a full awareness of Christ’s divinity. In the Gospel of John that awareness is readily apparent to the audience IMMEDIATELY and THROUGHOUT the text. So the “Gospel of John” when compared to the other gospels, inherently reflects a significant learning process that occurred in the first-century Church.

A facetious or comical response, but, an inherently true response to the matter of authorship (and you seemed to acknowledge this reality in your prior posting), is that the identity of human authorship simply “doesn’t matter” in the sense that the Church, with the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was and is FULLY capable of discerning the merits of these respective texts for inclusion in our Catholic Canon (which are NOT the same as “Protestant Canons” thanks to Martin Luther’s individual interpretation apart from and in protest against the Magisterium). This, we as Catholics certainly agree on, if that is indeed your contention. That said, authorship is certainly a “nice to know” but it’s in no way a prerequisite for inclusion in our Canon (be it the Septuagint texts which Christ and the Apostles cited or our New Testament texts written by the Apostles AND their disciples). As a quick side comment, the Protestant “Bible Alone” contention fails to acknowledge that it is BY TRADITION that the various Protestant churches can speak of a “Gospel of John” and a “Book of Malachi” because NOWHERE in the Bible do the authors identify themselves or even grant suggested titles for their respective works.

I hope my reply is clear and understandable. Again, for anyone who would like to join this thread, please feel free to review the very first post; I provided instructions on how to acquire the “Biblicist: Volume I” DVD series and the statements of Fr. Bill Burton therein which are the focus of this thread.
Iron sharpens iron,
Sirach23v27
 
Below are additional resources pertinent to Sirach23v27’s prior two posts…

Some additional resources apart from the Biblicist series that confirm the points I asserted in my prior two posts:
  1. “Threshold of Hope” on EWTN w/ Fr. Mitch Pacwa
    This time segment of the August 23rd show addresses the Church’s designation “Doctor of the Church”
    youtube.com/ewtn#p/u/8/_BHOJtFbJOQ (skip to 30mins:20secs thru 32mins:25secs)
  2. “The Prophets and You” on CatholicTV w/ Dr. John Clabeaux
    Each episode linked below is less than 28mins in length; I’m very much a fan of this series.
Background on 1st Isaiah - catholictv.com/Prophet-Isaiah.aspx (specifically 3mins:15secs thru 6mins:40secs addresses differences between Isaiah 1, Isaiah 2 and Isaiah 3)

Background on 2nd Isaiah - catholictv.com/shows/default.aspx?seriesID=50&videoID=342

Background on 3rd Isaiah and Malachi - catholictv.com/shows/default.aspx?seriesID=50&videoID=521

Dr. Clabeaux has initiated a new series reviewing the Gospel of Matthew. I have yet to review those episodes but I look forward to doing so at some point. Go to CatholicTV.com for more info.
 
S23:27, thank you for your reply. It is helpful and I agree with you about some things. After a couple disclaimers I will add a few comments to your points.

Disclaimer: When I viewed the Biblicist series, my perception may have been colored by personal spiritual issues as I am facing some challenges in my life. Having said that, I still tend to believe that Fr. Burton could be a bit more careful of avoiding the implication that teaching has changed. I note that Fr. Pacwa, whom you mention above, has never, ever given me the feeling that I felt while watching Father Burton. Father Pacwa is very careful in his presentation to remember his purpose – provide knowledge that increases the faith and understanding.

Second Disclaimer: I am a slowlearner in the sense, for example, that I am 48 y/o and am just now reading the book of Sirach (so coincidence or providence that you have replied to me? forums.catholic-questions.org/images/smilies/smile.gif). Recent Christian, and recent Catholic. I have read the protestant cannon and am now catching the deuteros, and have limited reading of Christian works. (BTW, so far Sirach is so beautiful, it is nearly sufficient reason to become Catholic.) Thus, my observations need to be taken with a grain of salt.

Preliminary Observation: As we get into the area of bible study, I think there is a danger of which we need to be aware: Academic Pride. In all fields of academics, we can see the phenomena or behavior of academic gamesmanship. Learned scholars form schools of thought and become engaged in debates for the sake either of the fun of debate or the upholding of personal pride. You see examples of this phenomena all over this forum and others. The great teachers (in my limited reading and listening my favorites are Pope Benedict XVI and Fr. Mitch Pacwa) have humility and a manner of constantly reminding us that the purpose of all this study is to bring people closer to Christ. While everything that Fr. Burton said may be consistent with the Church’s teaching, he presented history with little reference to faith, not much different from what we might find on the History Channel. I’d suggest that each of the six sessions conclude with some comments about growing in faith and/or end with a prayer. Perhaps there was a concluding prayer but it was edited out of the CDs, but if so, get it back in there.

New teachings and understandings: I have some discomfort with the things you stated in response to my first concern. In general, I could take many of your statements and work them up into a “new christian” creed. Many of the things you say could be said, and are said, by supposed christian churches that, for instance, have gay ministers. I hope you will not take offense at this as I do not mean to imply that you are teaching such things. I am only saying that in our communication – your words and my understanding – that is how I process what I read.

Here are some thoughts that I have, which may help you understand my thinking and allow you or someone else to respond.

First, with regard to the Old Testament. Certainly the understanding of God changed over time. I think that is one of the main purposes of the Old Testament. God purposefully revealed himself over time in a manner to allow greater understanding in such a manner that we be prepared to receive final revelation in the form of Christ.

(continued next post)
 
(continued from previous post)

Second, in Christ we have the fullness of revelation: Christ said he is the truth, the light, and the way. Period. I think we need to be careful when talking about evolution in understanding of Christ. I watched the segment you linked where Father Pacwa explained what is Doctor of the Church. A Doctor is latin for teacher. Teachers are communicators, they take a truth, put it into combinations of words that allow the truth to be understood by by the student. Thus, it seems to me that we could say that the Doctors of the Church had no new understanding of Christ, rather they had new methods of communicating, or teaching, the age old news of Christ. I think that some of this confusion may be related to the tendency to use the word “teaching” as a noun rather than a verb. I am much more comfortable with idea of “new teaching” as a verb, than with “new teaching” as a noun, since that seems to imply new truth.

Thus, to my way of thinking, a person who listens to our Pope today and then works to take up his cross and follow Christ is the same as the person taught by St. Peter. Both have faith in Christ and attempt to align their hearts with his. I am not suggesting that you disagree with this (I don’t know), but I am making the point because I sense a danger in talking about greater understanding or greater clarity as this ultimately becomes a slippery slope to rejection of orthodoxy and acceptance of various heresies.

In a way it is misleading to talk about the Church having greater understanding or clarity of the will of God. To the extent the Church – its members being the body of the Church – has greater understanding of God, it is because person by person, soul by soul, we have aligned our hearts with Christ. We do this on not on the level of some great collective intellectual understanding, but on a day-to-day individual level, by following Christ and loving our neighbors.

Third, in terms of the Church, I acknowledge the authority of the Church to establish doctrine. While my understanding of this is somewhat limited, from what I have read and heard, I believe we have an Orthodox Church, one with very limited addition (and perhaps no change) to doctrine over 2000 years. This ties to my points above about talking about new understandings (i.e. new doctrine) or new teachings (n). I think it is fair to say that we have a Church that is quite fixed in its doctrine. And tying this all back to my original criticism of the Biblicist DVDs, I just did not like the way “new” was presented without any link to the Gospel to put in in context.

Looking back over your post, I guess I have to disagree with the following:

In my reflecting on your prior post (and please correct me if my interpretation is off), your comments SEEM to NOT allow the Church the opportunity to learn God’s will with greater clarity than previous generations. Your comments suggest that the Catholic Church TODAY is inherently incapable of attaining a greater or superior understanding of God’s will and activity in our lives than Church members 25 years ago, members 250 years ago or even God’s chosen people (prior to Christ incarnate within the Jewish tradition) 2,500 years ago. The Church overtly rejects this assessment each time it identifies and declares new “Doctors of the Church” - Saints for whom their teachings through the centuries have inherently served to further edify and clarify the faith with such GREAT effect that the Universal Church strongly encourages the flock to seek out their respective teachings.

I believe that a common error of man is to try to discover something new, and then to feel that we are smarter or more advanced than our predecessors. I see a danger of pride in these endeavors. I believe that there is nothing new about the Truth. (Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.) What is new are the souls present on the earth today and perhaps our methods and rubrics for communicating with those souls and bringing them to accept Christ into their hearts. I think this is consistent with what I found on wikipedia about Pope Benedict:

“Friendship with Jesus Christ” is a frequent theme of his preaching.[45][46] He stressed that on this intimate friendship, “everything depends.”[47] He has also said: “We are all called to open ourselves to this friendship with God… speaking to him as to a friend, the only One who can make the world both good and happy… That is all we have to do is put ourselves at his disposal…is an extremely important message. It is a message that helps to overcome what can be considered the great temptation of our time: the claim, that after the Big Bang, God withdrew from history.”[48] Thus, in his book Jesus of Nazareth, his main purpose was “to help foster [in the reader] the growth of a living relationship” with Jesus Christ.

I’m reading Jesus of Nazareth now. Is there anything new in it? Maybe the Pope makes some new connections that have not been thought of before by some man reflecting upon God. Most certainly his particular combination and collection of words is new. But is there any news in the book? No. The Pope is just doing what Jesus said, “Go out to the whole world; proclaim the gospel to all creation.” Mark 16:15 The news is now 2000 years old, but it is new in our hearts each day when we turn to Christ.

Finally, I love the rich history we have in the Church, with the writings of the many Church Doctors and Saints. So great is our history that we have too much for any one person to know and thus have followers of particular Saints or Doctors. They all had individual and different ways, but they all did the same thing: proclaim the gospel.
 
Slowlearner,
My apologies for an extremely delayed response to your last posting. Numerous life events :juggle: have placed demands on my time (all very positive). In any case, reflecting on your prior post and the details you shared about yourself, I suspect our different impressions of the “Biblicist” series are largely driven EITHER by our separate journeys of faith OR simply a difference in the set of external resources we rely on for further growth in and understanding of our faith. The Biblicist series is an introduction to the Bible and scriptural matters of importance for understanding the scriptures from a distinctly Catholic perspective.

Your point about “new” teachings is understood; the Scriptures tell us “there is nothing new under the Sun”. It is merely our human (i.e. limited) understanding of the objective Truth which is “new” to us, but forever was, is and shall be. Also, I agree 100% with your comment about the Book of Sirach. If I could only choose one book out of the scriptures which could do the best job of teaching me how to be a Catholic day in and day out, the Book of Sirach would be that book. There’s great practical knowledge and wisdom contained in that book. If anyone else reading this post has not read the Book of Sirach, I would highly encourage you to do so.

I’d still be interested in hearing others comment on the Biblicist series if you’ve had an opportunity to review it. You can see the first post for instructions on obtaining a copy of the “Biblicist” DVD series.
Thanks again,
Sirach23v27

P.S.: I was also reviewing the Book of Wisdom recently and I think the best lines in the Book of Wisdom are Chapter 17v11-13: “For wickedness, of its nature cowardly, testifies in its own condemnation, and because of a distressed conscience, always magnifies misfortunes. For fear is nought but the surrender of the helps that come from reason; and the more one’s expectation is of itself uncertain, the more one makes of not knowing the cause that brings on torment.”
 
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