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Following Paul’s Footsteps

Following Paul’s Footsteps

Armed only with the word of God, the apostle Paul traveled more than six thousand miles to spread the gospel and establish local churches throughout Asia Minor. In Paul: Contending for the Faith, the fifth video in the award-winning Ignatius Press Footprints of God series, Stephen Ray dons his trademark canvas hat and vest and retraces Paul’s steps.

Ray is an able guide. Beginning in Tarsus, Saul’s birthplace, he introduces us to the early life of the “Hebrew of Hebrews.” He takes us inside a seamer’s shop and a goat-hair tent the likes of which Saul might have made with his father. From there, Ray brings us to Jerusalem, where Saul studied under the Rabbi Gamaliel and became “set apart” as a Pharisee.

The video is wonderful for armchair travelers who may never be able to visit all of the countries the apostle Paul and host Ray visit. Acting as a Catholic “Rick Steves,” Ray gives us a tour of the places Paul walked and many of the beautiful churches commemorating events in the apostle’s life. Outside Damascus, he brings us into the Abbey of St. Paul’s Vision, where the Lord spoke to Paul. In Antioch, he leads us into the Church of St. Peter, a cave where the first Christians gathered and from whence Paul was commissioned by the Holy Spirit for his missionary journeys. He shows us the cave in Philippi where Paul and Silas were held prisoner and even descends into Rome’s Mamertine Prison, where Paul spent his final days.

Of course, no Steve Ray documentary would be complete without his attempts to put the viewer in his subject’s place. The video shows Ray falling from a horse, being lowered from a roof in a basket, and clinging to a piece of driftwood in the Mediterranean Sea. Such theatrics help the video to work well for children as well as adults. We were able to watch the video with all five of our children, and it provoked questions regarding Paul’s conversion and martyrdom.

Given his thirty-nine years as a Protestant, Ray is at his best when he’s handling apologetics. Standing inside the Abbey of St. Paul’s Vision, for example, he demonstrates how Saul’s attack on Christ’s followers was also an attack on the Son of God. In another scene, he suddenly disappears as he is describing the novelty and falsehood of the “Rapture” teaching. It is at moments such as these that the viewer is struck by Ray’s sincerity, belief, and depth of knowledge.

Both the video and the DVD also contain a study guide, useful for discussing the film with a group. The DVD version also includes extras not found on the video, including a brief interview with a Jewish convert to Catholicism, Roy Schoeman, about Paul’s identity as a Jew. There are also bloopers and a behind-the-scenes feature with Steve and his wife Janet talking about the difficulties they encountered obtaining permits and filming in such places as Syria and Turkey.

The video does a superb job of explaining how Paul was flogged, stoned, beaten, shipwrecked, imprisoned, and eventually martyred for his faith. In so doing, the documentary shows how Paul provides a most worthy and challenging example for the rest of us to follow in bringing the gospel to the world. Like Ray, we would all do well to follow in Paul’s footsteps. 
—Tim Drake

Paul: Contending for the Faith
Hosted by Stephen Ray
Ignatius Press
DVD: 120 minutes, $29.95 
VHS: 90 minutes, $24.95


Genesis to Apocalypse

 

Written in a popular style by a Yale-trained Bible scholar, this book combines both exegetical skill and spiritual wisdom. Fr. William Kurz, S.J., who teaches at Marquette University, specializes in New Testament studies, and his areas of expertise include Luke-Acts; Johannine writings; narrative, rhetorical, and canonical criticism; biblical intertextuality; contemporary application of the canonical text; and spiritual exegesis. These skills, especially the last, are evident in this book, a fine introduction to a complex and often bewildering topic.

Kurz takes readers on a brisk eschatological journey from Genesis to the book of Revelation, showing how the latter draws on the former and how the new creation depicted by John fulfills the promise of the original creation. There is a German expression for this pattern, he writes, which is that “the Endzeit (end time) is portrayed by analogy to the Urzeit (time of the beginning); that is, the final or eschatological times are portrayed by analogy to the primeval creation of the world” (2). This overarching theme, among others, reoccurs throughout.

Although Kurz occasionally rebuffs suspect Protestant end times beliefs, his work is not primarily apologetic. (I should disclose that Kurz kindly refers readers to my book Will Catholics Be “Left Behind”? [Ignatius Press, 2003] on the acknowledgements page.) His book has been written as “a personal consultation as a Catholic Scripture scholar of what the Bible reveals about the end times” (vii). So while it does draw upon the work of other Bible scholars, the book is first and foremost his commentary on key passages of Scripture combined with straightforward explanations of how those passages relate to one another and to the whole of salvation history.

Kurz rightly notes that when people think of the Bible and the end times, they think of the book of Revelation, but it appears at the end of the Bible (and of this book) for good reason: “The Apocalypse is so thoroughly grounded in the rest of Scripture that the perspective of the rest of the Bible is needed to understand and appreciate its imagery and message” (137)

Although not primarily apologetic, some of the book’s best passages are apologetic—and spiritual. Commenting on those obsessed with escaping the final tribulation, Kurz states: “Living with the Spirit as God’s children frees Christians from fear and fills them with hope that they will share in Jesus’ sonship for all eternity (in heaven). However, part of living as sons and daughters of the Father and as brothers and sisters of Jesus is the provision that ‘we suffer with him in order that we may be glorified with him’ (Romans 8:17b). The Pauline hope does not remotely sound like an expectation that Christians will be ‘raptured’ to heaven so they can escape the suffering of the ‘great tribulation’” (120) Kurz emphasizes that Christians are called to share not only in the glory of Christ but in the sufferings of Christ: “We are to hope to share in Christ’s glory and victory,” he writes, “after willingly and courageously sharing his rejection by the world and his suffering” (121).

What Does the Bible Say About the End Times? is hampered occasionally by curt, clipped writing, and some sections could benefit from fuller definitions of terms. But this is a commendable and helpful work that outlines the big picture of biblical eschatology, explains the major themes, and shows how God’s work of salvation can be seen from the opening to closing pages of the Bible. 
—Carl E. Olson

What Does the Bible Say About the End Times? A Catholic View
By William Kurz, S.J.
Servant Books 
191 pages
$11.99
ISBN: 0867166061 


Australian for Faith

 

George Cardinal Pell works at the episcopacy like he once played Australian-rules football: hard, with his mind on the goal. That is one reason the archbishop of Sydney, Australia, is controversial. The other is that he takes unpopular stands, meaning ones that are consistent with the Gospels and the two-thousand-year-old teachings of the Church.

In essence that’s what we learn from Tess Livingstone in her new biography called George Pell: Defender of the Faith Down Under. Livingstone did her homework, gathering information about Pell from a number of different sources, including some of his enemies. What she discovered is that playing hard and being willing to confront problems was part of his character early in life.

After high school, he was offered a professional contract to play football, and he was considered a good candidate for a career in law or medicine. But “a small cloud” that had been “on the horizon for some time” (33) kept bothering him, and much to his father’s chagrin, he decided to pursue the priesthood. 

While in his third year of seminary, he was named the prefect for the first-year class. “In the atmosphere of intellectual upheaval and social experimentation that began permeating the Church during the Second Vatican Council,” Livingstone writes, “some of those in the first year did not take kindly to his style, and, even today, do not hesitate to say so.” Fr. Martin Dixon, who was in that first-year class, complained that “George has always been a big bully on and off the field; he’s a tall, strong man, and he loves a fight and will do anything to get his own way” (43). But another member of that class remembered Pell differently: “George thought men had to be men and that pansies belonged in the garden,” said Paul Bongiorno, adding that Pell didn’t hesitate to enforce the rules. “But that was his job,” he explained (43).

Livingstone’s biography fails in some respects. While we certainly get an insight into the Cardinal’s character—somewhat rough-and-tumble, an intellectual and a reader, a man deeply concerned about others and willing to confront things head-on—what we don’t get is a sense of what brought about certain changes in his life. 

Perhaps the greater question concerns his interior life. We are told that he is faithful to prayer despite the heavy demands of his schedule and that his prayer is directed primarily to the Lord with a devotion to Mary. (After he was falsely accused of sexual molestation, a close friend “spotted him walking around the cathedral presbytery grounds early one morning praying the rosary with an intensity not seen before” [378]). But I was left wanting to know more about how this “man’s man” relates to his Creator and Redeemer. Is his style simply part of his character, a style he would have if he had chosen law or medicine? Or is there something about his relationship with God that makes him the way he is? I daresay it’s the latter, but this biography does not venture into that territory. 
—Thomas A. Szyszkiewicz

George Pell: Defender of the Faith Down Under
By Tess Livingstone
Ignatius 
491 pages
$15.95
ISBN: 0898709849

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