Posted on 06/08/2010 3:40:36 PM PDT by NYer
One seldom runs into Catholics who like to wade through books like The God Delusion for those valuable nuggets of truth they can glean from the ocean of Augean muck that are the atheistic diatribes of Richard Dawkins. Most Catholics seem to figure out quickly that the signal-to-noise ratio makes the game not worth the candle. If they want an education in science and religion, they realize, they had better apply to people like Fr. Stanley Jaki, who understood both rather well.
But rare is the day when I point out that Glenn Beck is as reliable a guide to matters of faith and the public square as Dawkins is to faith and science that I do not hear the complaining squawk, “But I learn so *much* from him.”
Yes. Right. But you see, that’s the problem. You learn from him. And he’s a crank who doesn’t know what he’s talking about as he spews forth his paranoid fearcasts and quack analyses of history that make people dumber than they were before they listened and “learned”. Case in point, the conversation below, helpfully fisked by yours truly.
22:40: Glenn: “…the Dead Sea Scrolls, you know what they are? Stu, do you know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are?
Stu: Well, of course I do…
Glenn: Now, c’mon, most people don’t.
Stu: Well, I heard of them, I don’t really know
Glenn: You don’t really know. You have no idea why they were there. Sara average person doesn’t know. Any idea, take a guess on why the Dead Sea Scrolls were there, or anything else.
Sara(?): Something religious.
Glenn: Okay, good. Even though I’ve explained this on this program a couple of times, I’m glad to see that even the people that work with me don’t even listen.
So here’s what happened. When Constantine decided that he was going to cobble together an army, he did the Council of Nicea, right, Pat?
Pat: Yea.
Wrong. Although, Constantine had only recently become sole emperor, Constantine had been joint emperor (with armies under his command) for two decades by the time of the Council of Nicaea (in fact, as the Council concluded, he celebrated the twentieth anniversary of his accession to the Empire). It had nothing—absolutely nothing—to do with “cobbling together an army.”
Glenn: The Council of Nicea, and what they did is brought all of the religious figures together, all the Christians and then they said, “Ok, let’s put together the Apostles’ Creed, let’s you know, you guys do it.”
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. The Apostles’ creed dates to nearly two centuries before Nicaea. What Nicaea formulated was the NICENE creed, which was intended to restate the faith of the Church in answer to the Arian claim that Jesus was not God, but merely a creature. Arius conceived of Jesus as a sort of super-archangel. An immensely powerful spiritual being and greater than all other creatures, but not God. Mormons (Beck is a Mormon) are not Arians, but neither are they Christians. They are polytheists who regard the persons of the Trinity as three gods. So they have their own agenda in dismissing Nicaea. However, as Beck shows, such dismissal often results in stunning ignorance about the elementary recorded facts of the history of the Council.
So they brought all their religious scripture together, that’s when the Bible was first bound and everything else.
Wrong. Absolutely wrong. Although the canon of Scripture in 325 largely resembled what we use today, the fact is it did not assume its final shape until almost 70 years after the Council, with the pontificate of Damasus I. Various dioceses still had certain variations in what they used in local liturgies, though more and more western Churches were basically following the practice of Rome. More than that, the canon of Scripture was not given a conciliar and dogmatic definition for another 1200 years (at Florence and Trent). Nicaea had absolutely nothing to do with deciding which books were to be reckoned as part of the Bible. It simply assumed that whatever books were honored by use in the liturgy were inspired books. The Council was about settling the question of the Arian heresy, as well as about various matters of liturgical housekeeping.
And then they said, “Anybody that disagrees with this is a heretic and off with their head!”
Utterly, utterly false. No adjudication of the canon of Scripture occurred there. Fer cryin’ out loud, you can find the canons of Nicaea online and *see* what they talked about. The canon of Scripture was not on the agenda. It’s not like this is a big secret. Moreover, Nicaea prescribed no death penalties (or indeed any sort of civil penalties, as far as I know) for anybody. The union of Church and state had not progressed so far as that yet.
Well, that’s what the Dead Sea Scrolls are. The Dead Sea Scrolls are those scriptures that people had at the time that they said, “They are destroying all of this truth.”
Again, utterly, utterly wrong. The Dead Sea Scrolls are what is left of a library of books belonging to the Qumran community of a Jewish sect called the Essenes. They date from a century or so before Christ to the destruction of the Second Temple (roughly 70 AD) by Rome. This sect was not Christian and the Dead Sea Scrolls contain a combination of Old Testament texts found in the Bible, as well as various Jewish writings having to do with the particular notions of the Essenes. Their particular obsession had to do with hostility to the Temple elite and various theories about how the Jewish calendar should be observed. The Dead Sea Scrolls tell us nothing whatever about Christianity per se (though a tiny thread of speculation argues that a fragment of Mark’s gospel may be among the documents), but they do give us insights into one aspect of Jewish sectarianism that existed just before and concurrent with the birth of the Church. Some scholars speculate that John the Baptist may have been an Essene (since both celebrated ritual washings) but that’s a mighty thin thread of speculation. In any case, the Council of Nicaea knew nothing whatever about the Dead Sea Scrolls since the Essene community had vanished nearly three centuries before. Indeed, nobody knew about the Dead Sea Scrolls till they were discovered in 1948.
Whether it’s truth or not is up to the individual, but at that time those people thought that this was something that needed to be preserved and so they rolled up the scrolls and put them in clay pots and they put them in the back of caves where no one could find them.
“Those people” were Qumran Essenes and the scrolls were “hidden” almost three centuries before Nicaea. However, by “hidden” what we really mean is that the books were basically abandoned. They were “hidden” in much the same way that the books in a library in a war torn city are “hidden”. The people fled, and left the books behind. It happens in the face of advancing Roman legions. Those legions, however, were not under the command of Constantine, because he would not born for two more centuries.
They were hidden scripture because everything was being destroyed that disagreed with the Council of Nicea and Constantine. That’s what those things are.”
No. That’s not what those things are. Constantine was a smattering of DNA material in the loins and uteruses of a large number of his ancestors when the Dead Sea Scrolls were abandoned to their fate by the Essenes of Qumran two centuries before his birth. So were all the bishops of the Council of Nicaea. None would be born for two more centuries.
Also, just to be clear: Constantine did not agree with the Council of Nicaea. As Caesar in charge of an Empire that was being rocked by controversy over the Arian heresy, he demanded the Council meet and settle the question for the sake of keeping peace in his dominions, but when the time came for him to be be baptized (people often delayed baptism till the end of their lives at this time), he chose to be baptized by an Arian priest. In fact, after the Council of Nicaea, the Catholics who had carried the day at the Council found themselves continually harrassed and persecuted by the Imperial Court, which tended to prefer Arianism and semi-Arianism as the sensible compromise position and to view Trinitarian Catholics as extremists. Athanasius, the champion of the Council’s teaching, was exiled five times and falsely accused of murder in an attempt to shut him down. (He dramatically produced the supposed victim of his murder, alive and well, in one of the great courtroom scenes of antiquity). The notion that the winners wrote the history after Nicaea is something only a person utterly ignorant of history—somebody like Glenn Beck, for instance—could believe.
It’s little things like this that prompt me to advise Catholics who “learn so much” from Glenn Beck to consider the possibility of getting their education in history, civics and religion from somebody who actually knows what they are talking about and not from Talking Hairdos who, as Paul warns, tell us what our itching ears want to hear.
Audio at the above link.
Heads up! There are 78 comments (that I have not read) at the above link.
I’m happy just listening to Rush or reading FR and Drudge, fortunately.
I like Beck. I also like Limbaugh, Graham, Severin, and McPhee.
Beck is not perfect and sometimes I cringe at what he says. I can say the same for Mark Shea. Both of them also share some excellent insights.
We must all keep an open mind, continually asking God for the gift of discernment. Thus, our open minds will not allow our brains to fall out....
;-/
Heh. :)
I listen to the Jesse Lee Peterson show sometimes, in the mornings, or the Jerry Doyle show in the afternoon when I’m working on supper.
I’m glad we have a free market in radio news, so that a listener of whatever taste can find a broadcaster who is edifying. My husband likes Sean Hannity, but I think he’s a twink.
Beck isn’t right about everything, but one thing he does that most people who like to pontificate don’t is he challenges people to read it for themselves. Hence books he talks about that were seemingly going nowhere end up on Amazon’s top 10 list and have to be back ordered.
It takes a lot of courage to do what he does because there’s always people looking for one mistake who will try to nail him to the wall with it. I’ve got to hand it to him for trying to wake people up and at least raise the question about whether America was intended to a bastion of socialism when it could mean losing his career. Helen Thomas showed us that one false move, one moment of carelessness can end it and it’s really no different for him.
Self-righteousness leads to all kinds of hypocrisy.
Shea puffed up.
No, Shea setting the historical record straight. Whether or not Beck knowing presented a false historical setting is between him and the mormon polytheistic realm.
Beck is neither a Biblical scholar, nor a Christian. I take his comments on Biblical matters as uninformed twattle.
Those looking for accurate Church history from conservative talk radio would be better off listening to Flapp Jackson in the Morning this Morning, he’s the real Church history scholar DJ.
Freegards
Which is too bad because he is hilarious and quite sharp.
But I guess we all have our Achille's Heels.
When Catholic Communists Attack!
Many of the comments were clearly made by the “social justice” nutjobs.
The most wicked collectivist is the religious collectivist.
They tend to burn people alive, hang them on crosses, and basically raise up hell...always in the name of God, of course.
Abandon all hope ye who enters this “church.”
The radio show has lost some edge since the TV shows started up. I get the impression that most of the new fans only know him from the TV stuff, and have no idea of how funny/edgy the radio show used to be.
Now that he has Pat and Stu sitting in with him he rarely sobs like he was doing for a while there, the shows are better too.
I do think the TV shows are good for conservatism.
Freegards
Be careful. Rush is a showman, just like Beck, and his true loyalties are not what they seem. Drudge is a guy who looks for what is interesting and what will lead. Both are good sources, but should not be trusted to give the complete story.
ping!
As I have said before, if Beck is this sloppy on something so easily researched (read Goggle), then how can people trust him on things are are harder to research?
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