Saturday, February 16, 2013

Garry Wills on the Priesthood

I have always believed that Gary Wills should stop being Roman Catholic for the simple fact that he's running out of good reasons to remain RC.  Perhaps I should read his book Why I Am A Catholic.  Or perhaps I can just assume he enjoys living in a dichotomy between what he says he believes and what he actually believes.  That's what is interesting about RC.  One does not necessarily have to believe in its dogmas as long as she is willing to formally agree with the Papacy.

On that note.  What was that rather strange discussion of Hebrews? From my understanding of Hebrews the author (Wills is correct, while we have some good candidates of who might have written Hebrews we don't really know for sure) is addressing a problem of apostacy within that Church.  It seems that many joined the Church but for some reason regressed back in to their previous religion which happened to be a Hellenistic informed Judaism.  So the author sets out to explain that Jesus is superior to Moses and the way to salvation, hence His priesthood.  Where did Colbert get the idea that this was a proof text for human priests?

Let me know if you know the answer to this.



  

1 comment:

Denny Fusek said...

Colbert grew up Catholic and obviously has a decent familiarity with the Bible. I agree with you. His comment about the priesthood of Melchizedek did not prove his point. Previous to that, Wills stated that the Bible never mentions priests.

I understood what Wills meant - that the Bible doesn't mention priests in the Roman Catholic sense of the usage. But Colbert saw that as an "aha" moment to show that Wills was wrong. He wasn't trying to prove that he understood what Hebrews 7 said. He was just trying to prove that the previous statement was technically incorrect.

Of course, I'm sure that you and I have both run into this over and over again - you make one little slip of the tongue because you figure the interlocutor knows what you mean, and then he takes your slip-up as proof positive that he has won the argument.

With that being said, Colbert knows more Bible than I thought he did, so I'll cut him a break.