Pints With Aquinas - "Jesus Wrote with His Finger on the Ground" | Bible Study w/ Aquinas

Episode Date: August 20, 2020

This is the second in a three-part series we're doing on John 8:1-11 (The woman caught in adultery). 🔴 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd 📖 Here is the text from the ESV: but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives. Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now din the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”   GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show.   LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/   SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pints_w_aquinas/   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx   CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform

Hello, hello, welcome to another Bible study with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd. This channel is called Pints with Aquinas, where we, what do we do? We teach, try to teach the Catholic faith through a Thomistic lens, try to grow closer to our blessed Lord. We have discussions with all sorts of people,

and one of the things we do here are these Bible studies. So if you enjoy this, one very easy way you can support this work and the channel is by clicking subscribe, the bell button, and then if you want to get crazy, click share, share it on Facebook. That really would help us. So if you want to do that, please do. If you don't, you don't have to. Okay, so last week, you'll remember, we started looking at John chapter 8, and that's the story of the woman caught in adultery.

So if you haven't watched last week's Bible study, you might want to go back and do that before you do this. If you don't want to do that, you'll still get a lot out of this, but just if you want to kind of do it chronologically. Anyway, so I won't kind of recap where we've been. Rather, I want to just, you know, begin with where we left off last week, and that had to do with when Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. All right, so if you want to pray this with me, if you want to kind of enter into this Bible study, you might want to turn off your phone and close the other tabs on your browser, and just maybe, yeah, pray with me, you know. in the name of the Father and of the Son

and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. So we read that, but Jesus bending down wrote with his finger on the ground. What does this mean? Well, Aquinas says that Jesus checks his enemies by his wisdom. The Pharisees were testing him on two points, his justice and his mercy, but Jesus preserved both in his answer. So in other words, was he going to choose mercy at the expense of justice or justice at the expense of mercy? You remember, you know, earlier in John 3, he said, God didn't send me into the world to judge the world, right? But the world might be saved through me. So what's he going to do here? Jesus preserved both in his answer. First, the evangelist, that is John, shows how Jesus kept to what was just.

And second, that he did not abandon mercy at he lifted himself up and said to them. As to the first, he does two things. First, he mentions the sentence in accordance with justice. Second, the effect of this sentence at, but hearing this, they left one by one. About the first, he does three things. First, we see Jesus writing his sentence, then pronouncing it. And third, continuing again to write it down. See, I actually haven't read ahead.

Maybe I should do that, right? Like maybe I should do some intense study and then do these Bible studies, but I'm actually reading this with you. I actually don't know what he's about to say. I've heard different theories as to what Jesus was doing when he wrote on the ground. The two that I've heard, the first one I heard was from my bishop back after my conversion, Bishop Eugene Hurley. The idea was that he bent over and started writing the sins of the men who were accusing this woman caught in adultery on the ground, and that this was what explained them leaving. Because when he says, let the one who has not sinned throw the first stone at her, and then he bends down and he writes their sins on the ground. That's sort of one interpretation. Another interpretation I heard from Father Sean Kilcolly was that maybe when

Jesus was bending over and drawing on the ground, what was he doing? Well, think about it. If you are in a place of shame, where do your eyes go? Well, they go down. So it's almost like when Jesus puts his finger on the ground and starts doodling in the dirt, that she looks at his finger and she looks up his arm and she looks into his eyes and he looks at her and shows her his mercy. Maybe that's what he was trying to do. I don't actually know what Aquinas is going to say here. So let's see. Right. Some say that he wrote the words from Jeremiah,

Oh, earth, earth, listen, write down this man as sterile. Never heard that one before. According to others, and this is the better opinion, Jesus wrote down the very words he spoke. That is, he who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. Interesting. So there you go. And there's four different interpretations of what may have been going on there. That Christ bent down and wrote what he was about to say.

He who is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. However, Aquinas says, neither of these opinions are certain right that's good to know you know like we don't we don't need to be certain about every detail in the gospel some of it is open to different interpretations and at the end of the day we say look we may not know that's okay. It may have been one of these things, you know. Jesus, though, Aquinas says, wrote on the earth for three. Don't you love when he does this? For three reasons. Why? First, according to Augustine, to show that those who were testing him would be written on the earth.

Jeremiah 17 says, O Lord, all who leave you will be written on the earth. But those who are just and the disciples who follow him are written in heaven. Luke 10.20 says, Rejoice because your names are written in heaven. Here's the second reason he wrote on the earth. He wrote on earth to show that he would perform signs on earth, for he who writes makes signs. Thus, to write on the earth is to make signs. And so he says that Jesus was bending down.

What does bending down mean? Well, in some sense, in some sort of spiritual sense, we could see it as the mystery of the incarnation, by means of which he performed miracles in the flesh he had assumed. Here's the third reason Aquinas says he wrote on earth. He wrote on the earth because the old law was written on tablets of stone, which signify its harshness. But the earth is soft, and so Jesus wrote on the earth to show the sweetness and the softness of the new law that he gave to us. We can see from this that there are, here we go again, three things to be considered in giving sentences. First, there should be kindness in lowering oneself before those to be punished. And so he says, Jesus bending down.

Let's see, second thing we can learn is that there should be, massive pages here, discretion in determining the judgment. And so he says that Jesus wrote with his finger, which, because of its flexibility, signifies discretion. Third, there should be certitude about the sentence given. And so Jesus, and so he says, Jesus wrote. Okay. It was at their insistence that Jesus gave his sentence. And so the evangelist says, when they continued asking him, he lifted himself up and said to them,

he who is without sin among you, let him cast, let him first cast a stone at her. I can't help but wonder what this woman would have been going through when he said that. Like if I was caught in adultery, I meet this Jesus, he seems different somehow, if I was caught in adultery, I meet this Jesus. He seems different somehow, but I don't really know him. I don't know what he's going to do. I mean, and then he stands up and says, all right, let you without sin cast the first stone.

I'd be nervous. Like, all right, they're about to start stoning me. Let's see what happens. The Pharisees were violators of the law, and yet they tried to accuse Christ of violating the law and were attempting to make him condemn the woman. So Christ proposes a sentence in accord with justice, saying, he who is without sin. He is saying, in effect, let the sinner be punished, but not by sinners. Let the law be accomplished, but not by those who break it. be accomplished, but not by those who break it. Because, and this comes from Romans 2.1, that beautiful line, when you judge another, you condemn yourself. Therefore, either let this woman go, he's saying with those words, or suffer the penalty of the law with her. Boom. Remember that YouTube video, Boom Goes the Dynamite? That's really powerful stuff there.

I love that. So Christ is essentially saying, Okay, when he says, you know, let he who is without sin cast the first stone at her, he's saying, all right, you got two options, boys. Either let this woman go, or you can suffer the penalty of the law with her, since you have also broken it.

Here the question arises as to whether a sinful judge sins by passing sentenced against another person who has committed the same sin. Interesting point, right? Okay, so if everybody, if in judging you condemn yourself, is it the case then that we shouldn't have judges? Or if we are to have judges, they can only be people who have never sinned? Aquinas says, it is obvious that if the judge who passes sentence in a public sinner, sorry, if the judge who passes sentence is a public sinner, he sins by giving scandal. All right, fair enough. Yet this seems to be true also if his sin is hidden. However, it is clear that no one condemns himself except by sinning, and thus it seems that he sins by judging another. My answer to this is that two

distinctions have to be made. For the judge is either continuing in his determination to sin, or he has repented of his sins, and again, he is either punishing as a minister of the law, or on his own initiative. Now, if he has repented of his sin, he is no longer a sinner. And so he can pass sentence without sinning. But if he continues inented of his sin, he is no longer a sinner. And so he can pass sentence without sinning. But if he continues in his determination to sin, he does not sin in passing sentence if he does this as a minister of the law. Although he would be sinning by doing the very thing for which he deserves a similar sentence.

But if he passes sentence on his own authority, then I say that he sins injustice, but from some evil root. Otherwise, he would first punish in himself what he noticed in someone else, because a just person is the first to accuse himself. All right, fair enough. So a minister of the law can appropriately judge somebody for breaking the law, whether or not he himself breaks the law. But if I am to judge another person for breaking the law when I do the same thing or something similar, then this is what Romans is talking about there. When you judge another, you condemn yourself.

This is a really interesting thing, I think, because I think sometimes as a parent, I think parents sometimes have this quandary where they think, gosh, should I be telling my kids not to do this when I did the same thing? Or a priest might think to himself, here I am up here preaching against this thing, this sin that I just committed last night. Am I a hypocrite? So maybe we should say a word about that because a hypocrite is not somebody

who fails to live up to their own moral standards, because we all fail in that way. Unless we have no moral standards, I suppose. Rather, a hypocrite is somebody who expects the law, be that the law of God or the law of man, to apply to everybody but himself. So if I'm here telling you, pornography is evil, repent of it, and I view pornography and presumably I repent of it, I'm not a hypocrite. I'm not even a hypocrite if I don't admit that to you, because that might cause scandal, as Aquinas says here. And so if you're talking to your children, say about pornography, do I tell them everything? No, you don't need to tell them this. And you're not lying and you're not being a hypocrite in saying don't look at pornography. I mean, there might be an instance where you think, okay, it'll be appropriate at this point. Maybe my child's a little older and I can tell them, look, I went down this road and it really messed me up and I don't want that for you. I think that's appropriate, but I don't think you need to do that. I think that's appropriate, but I don't think you need to do that. Similarly, with a priest who gets up and he speaks against theft, and maybe he just committed theft or backbiting, and he just committed the sin of backbiting. Presumably, he repents of this, but the idea that, well, I cannot preach against something unless I'm perfected in that virtue, like I can't preach against pornography unless I'm perfected in purity. I cannot preach, you know, against stealing unless I'm perfected in charity.

I cannot preach against pride unless I am perfected in humility. Well, then we'd just never preach. We would never actually proclaim the gospel, you know? So I think that's important to remember. A hypocrite isn't somebody who never fails to live up to their own moral standards. A hypocrite is somebody who expects standards to apply to everybody else but not to him. So if I thought to myself, these people shouldn't be stealing, but it's okay for me to do it because, you know, like I have whatever, special privilege for this or that reason. Yeah, then I'm an absolute hypocrite. But if I said to you, do not steal, it's wrong, and I just stole last night, well, I need to repent of that, but that doesn't make me a hypocrite. But if I said to you, do not steal, it's wrong. And I just stole last night. Well, I need to repent of that, but that doesn't make me a hypocrite. It would, if I didn't repent of it and thought it was okay in my situation. Does that make sense?

Holy moly. All right. I want to wrap this up here because I'm trying to keep these to 15 minutes so that we can kind of, I want this to be a realistic amount of time for you so that we can like sit, we can pray together, we can read the word of God, we can see what Thomas Aquinas has to say. I don't want to kind of overwhelm you with like an hour and a half Bible study podcast. But okay, so we'll leave it there. We'll leave it there and let's see. And then next week,

we'll finish off the rest of this beautiful chapter from John chapter eight. Thank you very much for watching and tuning into this Bible study. If you want, like I said earlier, if you'd like to support the podcast, you could do it on Patreon, patreon.com slash Matt Fradd. But if you're like, dude, I don't have any money, that's okay too. One way you could support the podcast would be by clicking subscribe and the bell button and just sharing it.

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