Ethics and Public Policy Center: A Lifetime of Learning

re: George Weigel writes, "...In that elegiac passage, written almost forty years ago, Potok defined precisely the problem that Joseph Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI, addresses in his new book, Jesus of Nazareth. "Everything" in Christianity, the Pope writes, depends on building an "intimate friendship with Jesus." That was true in first-century Galilee; it is just as true in the twenty-first century. But twenty-first century believers have a problem that their forebears didn't face: the many issues posed by modern methods of reading ancient texts. Now, after two centuries of reading the Bible according to the historical-critical method-"dissecting" the biblical text, as the fictional Abraham Gordon might put it-many Christians are "in danger of clutching at thin air" in seeking this friendship with their Lord. Or so the Pope worries. /And not without good reason..."...

hat tip: NRO Web Briefing