Joining us online is Bishop Robert Barron. He's Bishop of the Diocese of Winona, Rochester,

Minnesota, and the founder of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries through Word on Fire. Bishop Barron reaches millions of people every year. He's one of the world's most followed Catholics on social media. Bishop Barron, great to talk to you. Ben, good to see you. So let's talk a little bit about something that you've talked about a lot in recent years, and that is what you call the re-judiizing of the church.

What exactly... So let's talk a little bit about something that you've talked about a lot in recent years,

and that is what you call the re-judiizing of the church. What exactly does that mean?

Because obviously there are fairly significant differences between Judaism and Christianity,

but what do you mean by re-judiizing the church?

Well, it's exceptionally important because the first Christians read Jesus thoroughly in light of what we'd call the Old Testament. If you try to

interpret Jesus apart from the Old Testament, you'll get necessarily a distorted Jesus. So St. Paul

is a good example. Rabbi Shaul becomes Paul the apostle. And he says, Jesus is the yes to all the

promises made to Israel, which means you can't understand him apart from what's anticipated in Israel.

When we de-Judaize Christianity, it turns into kind of a Gnostic philosophy.

You see, by the way, a lot of that on display today, Whenever Jesus is presented as a kind of teacher of

timeless moral truths, or he's like a great sage from the ancient world, you know you've misread him.

He's the yes to all the promises made to Israel, and only against that background will you

properly understand him. So let's talk more formally about what exactly the distinction is between those two views

of Jesus. One as not just, you know, God in the Catholic worldview, but also as a Jewish figure,

as born as a Jew, lived as a Jew, you know, what exactly would that mean as opposed to the sort of

thing that we've been told by the media, the sort of almost

Buddha-esque figure who just is there to say pithy statements and then get out of your way.

Yeah, I would say looking at the sweep of biblical history, you see a kind of five-act drama,

beginning with creation, followed by the fall, followed by the formation of a

people Israel, which is God's great rescue operation, God's attempt to restore his creation.

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