Donald L. Gelpi, S.J.
The Firstborn of Many A Christology for Converting Christians
Volume 3 DOCTRINAL AND PRACTICAL CHRISTOLOGY
Marquette Studies in Theology No. 22 Andrew Tallon, Series Editor Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gelpi, Donald L., 1934The firstborn of many : a christology for converting Christians / Donald L. Gelpi. p. cm. — (Marquette studies in theology ; no. 20, 21, 22) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87462-644-7 (pbk. : alk. paper), Volume 1: To hope in Jesus Christ; ISBN 0-87462-645-5 (pbk. : alk. paper), Volume 2: Synoptic narrative Christology; ISBN 0-87462-646-3 (pbk. : alk. paper). Volume 3: Doctrinal and practical Christology. 1. Jesus Christ—Person and offices. 2. Conversion—Christianity. 3. Catholic Church—Doctrines. I. Title. II. Marquette studies in theology ; #20, #21, #22. BT205 .G37 2001 232—dc21 00-012328 Cover image compliments of St. Isaac of Syria Skete. We gratefully acknowledge the generous support of The New Orleans Province of the Society of Jesus, also known as The Southern Province, in making possible the publication of these three volumes.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the publisher.
For My Mother, Alice, Who Died As She Lived with Great Hope, Faith, Love, Courage, and Dignity
Volume 3 Table of Contents Preface to Volume 3 ............................................................................ 7 Part 1: The Transition to Doctrines: Johannine Narrative Christology ..................................................... 9 Chapter 1: The Beloved Disciple: His Community, His Prologue ...... 9 Chapter 2: John’s Positive Dramatic Linkages ................................... 25 Chapter 3: Negative Dramatic Linkages in John ............................. 101 Chapter 4: Ambiguous Dramatic Linkages in John ......................... 148 Chapter 5: Thematic and Allusive Linkages in John ....................... 192 Part 2: Doctrinal Christology ......................................................... 224 Chapter 6: Issues in Post-Chalcedonian Christology ....................... Chapter 7: Authenticating Chalcedon ............................................ Chapter 8: Reformulating Chalcedon ............................................. Chapter 9: Coordinating Chalcedonian and Trinitarian Doctrine... Chapter 10: How Jesus Saves: Issues in Atonement Christology ..... Chapter 11: Jesus the Savior ........................................................... Chapter 12: Jesus the Prophet ......................................................... Chapter 13: Jesus the Priest ............................................................ Chapter 14: Jesus, Messiah And Judge ............................................
225 272 296 332 355 382 415 428 469
Part 3: Practical Christology ........................................................... 488 Chapter 15: To Love As Jesus Loved ............................................... 488 Chapter 16: To Serve As Jesus Served.............................................. 514 Afterword ....................................................................................... 552 Glossary .......................................................................................... 557 Indices ............................................................................................ 580
Preface to Volume 3 This three-volume study responds to a significant crisis in contemporary Christology: a plethora of so-called “low” Christologies has started an identifiable drift into a form of neo-Arianism. Many “low” Christologies so focus on the humanity of Jesus that they fail to give an adequate account of His divinity. They call Jesus a “human person,” but fail to alert the reader to the fact that a human person cannot qualify as a divine person. They call for a contemporary endorsement of “adoptionism” and portray Jesus as a graced human being rather than as the personal human incarnation of God. This study argues that one should replace the term “low Christology” thus interpreted with “bad Christology.” In these three volumes, I respond to the contemporary Christological crisis by laying systematic theological foundations for Christological faith in Lonergan’s sense of foundational. Lonergan’s method suggests that a strictly normative theology of conversion provides the criteria needed to distinguish between true and false theological doctrines. Volumes one and two have explored the kinds of religious experiences on which doctrinal Christology reflects. In this third and final volume I shall test whether a Christology which examines the kinds of realities encountered within a Christian experience of conversion does in fact allow one to distinguish sound from unsound Christological doctrines. Because this foundational Christology reflects normatively on Christian conversion, it targets the restored catechumenate. I presuppose, however, that a Christology which addresses the faith needs of adult converts will simultaneously address the faith needs of fully initiated Christians who face the life-long process of ongoing conversion. A foundational Christology asks the question: How ought an integrally converted Christian to relate experientially to Jesus Christ? Laying foundations for a catechesis which addresses the needs of catechumens and of adult Christians differs from formulating such a catechesis. Instead of constructing a catechetical program for specific converts, a foundational Christology thinks through systematically the kinds of Christological issues on which a sound catechesis has to build. Those who supervise the restored catechumenate will, then, need to adapt the results of these foundational reflections to the needs of specific catechumens. By the same token, adult Christians will need to ponder prayerfully the relevance of a Christology of conversion to their personal lives and communities. This study also ambitions an inculturated North American Christology. Inculturated religion actualizes a particular religious faith in a spe-
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cific cultural context. Inculturated theology serves the needs of that actualization. Ordinarily, the process of religious inculturation takes generations, even centuries. It begins with an attempt to translate an unfamiliar religion, which derives from one culture, into terms which people living in another culture can understand. Initial translation ordinarily gives rise to a second stage of inculturation, namely, the assimilation of the new religion in some depth. Finally, in the third and last phase of inculturation, the assimilated religion finds itself socially well placed to enter into a transformative dialogue with the host culture. The resulting transformation ordinarily affects both the religion and the culture. All three stages of inculturation can and often do overlap or run simultaneously in different persons and situations. The Christology developed in this study addresses culture in the United States. From a methodological standpoint, it responds to three interrelated challenges. 1) This Christology seeks to speak with a Yankee idiom. It invokes a metaphysics of experience systematically derived from the North American philosophical tradition. 2) This study also challenges the sinfulness of United States culture. As we shall see, practical Christology deals especially with relevant moral and social issues. 3) In a contemporary context, inculturated theological thinking needs also to take into account the internationalization of culture. Accordingly, the Christology developed in these pages seeks to advance the dialogue between the North American church and the world Church. It therefore takes into account both the official pastoral magisterium and the state of Christological thinking in other parts of the world. I owe a considerable debt of gratitude to Joseph Tetlow, S.J., Frank Oppenheim, S.J., Simon Hendry, S.J., Robert Lassalle-Klein, Alejandro Garcia-Ribera, William Spohn, Jay Johnson, and the other members of the John Courtney Murray Group for their many suggestions for improving this volume. I also need to express my gratitude to David Beckman for reading the final chapter and for making very helpful suggestions for improving it. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley
Chapter 1: The Beloved Disciple: His Community, His Prologue
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Part 1 The Transition to Doctrines: Johannine Narrative Christology Chapter 1 The Beloved Disciple: His Community, His Prologue This chapter begins a linkage analysis of the fourth gospel. Linkage analysis examines the literary devices employed by an evangelist in order to stitch together his largely anecdotal account of Jesus into a more or less unified literary whole. As we saw in volume two, the linkage analysis here employed understands a gospel as a narrative whole by examining its dramatic, thematic, and allusive linkages. The application of linkage analysis to all four gospels allows one to compare and contrast them dialectically as narrative frames of reference which make a Christological statement. As we have already seen, every narrative has a narrator and an audience. The first part of this chapter therefore summarizes what historical-critical method has to tell us about the Beloved Disciple, who wrote the fourth gospel, and about the community for whom he wrote it. Part two examines the prologue to the fourth gospel and the themes which it enunciates. (I) John’s gospel gives little internal evidence of direct dependence on the synoptic tradition, although some have argued that the Beloved Disciple at least knew Mark. More likely, the fourth evangelist, like the synoptic writers, drew on the oral and, perhaps, written traditions about Jesus available to him. Those traditions echo on occasion synoptic themes; but on the whole the fourth evangelist seems to have preferred his own sources for telling Jesus’ story. The Community of the Beloved Disciple The fourth gospel gives evidence of having emerged from a community in crisis. The evangelist seems to feel the need to define his position over against a variety of adversaries.They include 1) the disciples of John the Baptizer, 2) the Jewish community, who had already expelled the Johannine Christians from the synagogue, and 3) dissident Christians within the Johannine community who denied several basic Christian beliefs, among them the divinity of Jesus, His presence in the eucharist, and the saving character of His death.
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The Johannine community probably arose in or near Palestine. Its members probably included former followers of John the Baptizer and some eyewitnesses of Jesus’ ministry, among them the Beloved Disciple himself. A second group with Samaritan connections may have merged with the original community. Like the Hellenistic Christians who seem to have first evangelized Samaria, the members of the second group exhibited a strong anti-temple bias. The Johannine community seems also to have contained Gentile converts; and it also seems at least possible that at some point the community moved to the Diaspora. Eventually, the Christian dissidents left the Johannine community and drifted toward Gnosticism, while the rest of the community merged with the larger sub-apostolic Church.1 The Johannine epistles give further evidence that the evangelist wrote his gospel for a Christian community with serious internal divisions. While the letters surely proceed from the community of the Beloved Disciple, scholars debate whether or not they proceed from his pen or from that of some other member of his community, possibly one of the later redactors of the gospel. They also debate whether or not the gospel precedes the epistles. The epistles, however, almost certainly postdate the gospel. The first letter of John seems to presuppose familiarity with the text of the gospel on whose themes it comments. Moreover, the letters give evidence that the schism with the dissidents, which the gospel may have tried to avert, had indeed happened. (1 Jn 2:18-9, 4:1; 2 Jn 7) The letters of John also provide some evidence that his community lacked adequate authority structures to deal with the heresy and schism which divided it. (3 Jn 9-11) The Johannine church seems to have consisted of a fellowship of house churches clustered around the Beloved Disciple and around his teaching; but, initially at least, the Johannine community probably lacked the more formal ecclesial structures of leadership which had begun to characterize the great Church. The Johannine communities did, however, have elders, or presbyters. (3 Jn 1) Traveling missionaries seem to have linked the cluster of Johannine communities.2 (2 Jn 10) 1. Cf. Raymond E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple: The Life, Loves, and Hates of an Individual Church in New Testament Times (New York, NY: Paulist, 1979); “The Gospel According to John—An Overview,” Chicago Studies, 37(1998), pp. 5-15; Oscar Cullmann, The Johannine Circle, translated by John Bowden (London: SCM Press, 1975); Günther Reim, “Zur Lokalisierung der Johanneischen Gemeinde,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 32(1988), pp. 72-86; Stanley B. Marrow, S.J., “Johannine Ecclesiology,” Chicago Studies, 37(1998), pp. 16-26; John F. O’Grady, “The Beloved Disciple, His Community, His Church,” Chicago Studies, 37(1998), pp. 5-15. 2. The first epistle’s author writes that, because the members of the Johannine community have the enlightenment of their Breath-inspired traditions concerning the revelation made in Jesus, they do not need anyone to teach them the truth. As a consequence, the author of the letter seeks not to catechize them, but to warn them “about those who deceive you.” (1 Jn 2:26)
Chapter 1: The Beloved Disciple: His Community, His Prologue
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Some opine that the Diotrephes of the third letter, seems to have refused to choose openly between the Beloved Disciple and his followers, In explaining why he is writing, the author of the first Johannine letter implicitly betrays the one of the problems in the Johannine community: the belief that the divine Breath directly inspires each of its members. While belief in the Breath’s direct inspiration expresses a truth, it could easily lead to a distorted, individualistic, “inner light” mysticism. The first letter names the liars against whom the community needs to guard: 1) anyone who denies that Jesus is the Christ and 2) anyone who denies that Jesus is the Son of God. (1 Jn 2:22) In the gospel of John, faith in Jesus as the incarnate Son of God grounds faith in Him as messiah. The incarnation redefines the meaning of Jewish messianic hope, because when the “Anointed One” appeared, the reality which He embodied went far beyond the best hopes of the Jewish people. The letter warns that those who deny the Son also deny the Father and therefore forfeit all claims to union with both. Those who do confess Father and Son in virtue of that very confession possess both. (1 Jn 2:23) The exhortation which closes the first letter of John also illustrates the problem of discerning the authentic inspiration of the divine Breath. The exhortation makes the following points: 1) The fact that the dissidents claim the inspiration of the Breath of God for their false teaching confronts the Johannine community with a problem in discernment. Not every religious impulse which claims divine inspiration automatically enjoys it. (1 Jn 4:1) 2) In this the final age of salvation, false prophets abound. The multiplication of lying prophetic voices makes the question of discernment all the more important and acute. (1 Jn 4:1) 3) In the problem of discernment facing the Johannine community, a basic doctrinal criterion allows believers to distinguish between the Breath of God and false prophecy: namely, authentic prophecy from God “acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” False prophecy denies this fundamental truth. The Breath who proceeds from the incarnate Christ could never inspire a denial of His incarnation. Those therefore who deny the incarnation speak in the name of Antichrist. (1 Jn 4:2-4) 4) It follows, therefore, that only those who agree with the author of the first letter speak in the name of God. (1 Jn 4:6) 5) The members of the Johannine community by confessing the incarnation of the Son of God have already overcome the world and the false prophets who deceive it. The Johannine community therefore belongs to God and not to the world. (1 Jn 4:4-6) Cf. NJBC, 62: 28; Brown, Epistles, pp. 485-511; Klauch, op. cit., I, pp. 226-245; Ignace de la Potterie, Au service de la parole de Dieu (Gembloux: Éditions J. Dudulot, 1969); H.H. Wendt, “Die Beziehung unseres ersten Johannesbriefes auf den zweiten,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 21(1922), pp. 140-146; C. Spicq, O.P., “La place ou le rôle des jeunes dans certaines communautes néotestamentaires,” Revue Biblique, 76(1969), pp. 508- 527; John H. Elliot, “Ministry and Church Order in the NT: A Traditio-Historical Analysis (1 Pt5, 1 & plls.),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 32(1970), pp. 367-391; J. Michl, “Der Geist als Garant des rechten Glaubens” in Vom Wort des Lebens (Münster: Aschendorf, 1951), pp. 142-151; Beda Rigaux, L’Antichrist et l’opposition au royaume messianique dans l’Ancien et le Nouveau Testament (Gembloux: Éditions J. Duculot, 1932); Pheme Perkins, “John’s Gospel and Gnostic Christologies: The Nag Hammadi Evidence,” Anglican Theological Review, Supplement 11(1990), pp. 68-76; François Vouga, “The Johannine School: A Gnostic Primitive Tradition in Primitive Christianity,” Biblica, 69(1988), pp. 371-385; Hans-Josef Klauk, “Kyria ekklêsia in Bauers Wörterbuch und die Exegese des zweiten
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on the one hand, and the dissident members of the Johannine community, on the other; but the failure of the third letter to mention the dissidents casts doubt on that particular hypothesis. Some hypothesize (on very little hard evidence) that Diotrephes was in fact attempting to establish the more stable leadership structures which eventually enabled the Johannine community to blend into the larger apostolic Church.3 (3 Jn 9-11) One cannot date the fourth gospel with any accuracy. The first version of the gospel could conceivably have appeared sometime between the years 70 and 85 a.d., although the text of John as we possess it gives evidence of subsequent redactional editing and revision. Some date the first gospel text even earlier. Ephesus ranks among the main contenders for place of composition, although we cannot say for certain that the fourth gospel emerged from that community. Nor can one state with any certainty that John, the son of Zebedee, wrote the fourth gospel. Of the four evangelists, however, the Beloved Johannesbriefs,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 81(1990), pp. 135-138; “Zur rhetorischen Analyse der Johannesbriefe,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 81(1990), pp. 205-224; Bernhard Bonsack, “Der Presbyteros des dritten Briefs und der geliebte Jünger des Evangeliums nach Johannes,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 79(1988), pp. 45-62. 3. Cf. Jean Colson, L’énigme du disciple que Jésus aimet (Paris: Beauschense et ses Fils, 1969); M. de Jonge, “The Beloved Disciple and the Date of the Gospel of John” in Text and Interpretation, edited by E. Best and R. McL. Wilson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979) pp. 99-114; Lewis Johnson, “Who Was the Beloved Disciple?” Expository Times, 77(1966), pp. 157-158; Donald G. Rogers, “Who was the Beloved Disciple,” Expository Times, 77(1966), pp. 213-214; Lewis Johnston, “The Beloved Disciple—A Reply,” Expository Times, 77(1966), p. 380; B. Grey Griffith, “The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,” Expository Times, 32(1920-1921), pp. 379-381; H. Mudie Draper, “The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,” Expository Times, 32(1920-1921), pp. 428-429; Floyd V. Vinson, “Who Was the Beloved Disciple?” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 68(1949), pp. 83-88; J. Edgar Bruns, “Ananda: The Fourth Evangelist’s Model for the ‘Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,’” Studies in Religion, 3(1973-1974), pp. 236-243; N.E. Johnson, “The Beloved Disciple and the Fourth Gospel,” Church Quarterly Review, 167(1966), pp. 278-291; Leon Morris, Studies in the Fourth Gospel (Devon: Paternoster Press, 1969), pp. 139-214; G.D. Kilpatrick, “What John Tells Us about John” in Studies in John (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), pp. 75-87; Paul S. Minear, “The Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John,” Novum Testamentum, 19(1977), pp. 105-123; Jürgen Roloff, “Der johanneische ‘Lieblingsjünger’ und der Lehrer der Gerichtigkeit,” New Testament Studies, 15(1968-1969), pp. 129-151; Eric L. Titus, “The Identity of the Beloved Disciple,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 69(1950), pp.323-328; Robert M. Price, “The Sitz-im-leben of Third John: A New Reconstruction,” Evangelical Quarterly, 61(1989), pp. 109-119; David J. Hawkins, “Johannine Christianity and Ideological Commitment,” Expository Times, 102(1990), pp. 74- 77; D.C. Parker, “The International Greek New Testament Project: The Gospel of John,” New Testament Studies, 36(1990), pp. 157-160; Philip W. Comfort, “The Greek Text of the Gospel of John According to Early Papyri,” New Testament Studies, 36(1990), pp. 625-629; John Christopher Thomas, “The Order of the Composition of the Johannine Epistles,” Novum Testamentum, 37(1995), pp. 68-75.
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Disciple shows the most accurate knowledge of first-century Palestinian geography. The accuracy of his geography buttresses his claim to have personally witnessed the events he narrates. Although scholars have tried to identify the Beloved Disciple with specific New Testament figures, like Lazarus or Barnabas, the absence of evidence makes firm identification impossible.4 One may legitimately divide the fourth gospel into four parts: 1) the Prologue (Jn 1:1-18); 2) the Book of Signs, which describes the public ministry of Jesus in terms of a series of six revelatory miracles, each followed, except for the first, second, and last by an explanatory discourse of Jesus (Jn 1:19-12:50) ; 3) the Book of Glory, which narrates the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus as well as His sending of the Breath. (Jn 13:1-20:31); 4) the Epilogue, which appends stories of a post-resurrection appearance in Galilee.5 (Jn 21:1-25) (II) The fourth gospel begins, not with an infancy narrative but with a hymn interlaced with prose commentary. Probably of liturgical origin, the hymn could conceivably have originated in the Johannine community. Either the original evangelist or the final redactor of the gospel clearly intended the hymn to introduce the gospel because two of the prose interpolations refer to the ministry of John the Baptizer, which opens John’s narrative. In addition, verse 11—”He came to his own, yet His own people received Him not”—alludes in part to the Book of Signs; and verse 12— 4. Cf. Floyd V. Filson, “Who Was the Beloved Disciple?” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 68(1949), pp. 83-88; John W. Pryor, “The Great Thanksgiving and the Fourth Gospel,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 35(1991), pp. 157-179; Nicholas G. Timmins, “Variations in Style in the Johannine Literature,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 53(1994), pp. 47-64; Richard Bauckham, “The Beloved Disciple as Ideal Author,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 49(1993), pp. 21-44; Duane F. Watson, “Amplification Techniques in 1 John: The Interaction of Rhetorical Style and Invention,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 51(1993), pp. 99-123; M.C. de Boer, “Narrative Criticism, Historical Criticism, and the Gospel of John,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 47(1992), pp. 35-48; Alastair H.B. Logan, “John and the Gnostics: The Significance of the Apocryphon of John for the Debate about the Origins of the Johannine Tradition,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 43(1991), pp. 41-69; Martin Rese, “Das Selbstzeugnis des Johannesevangeliums über seinen Verfasser,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 72(1996), pp. 75-111; F. Neirynck, “The Anonymous Disciple in John 1,”Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 66(1990), pp. 5-37. 5. For an alternative division, see: Charles H. Giblin, S.J., “The Tripartite Narrative Structure of John’s Gospel,” Biblica, 71(1990), pp. 449-468; see also: Ruth B. Edwards, “Reading the Book 4. The Gospel According to John,” Expository Times, 108(1997), pp. 101-105; Michael Oberweis, “Unbeachtete Lk-Parallelen in Stoffauswahl und -Anordnung des Vierten Evangeliums,” Epehemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 72(1996), pp. 321-337.
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”But to all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God”—alludes to the Book of Glory. The hymn also introduces a number of other themes which the gospel develops in considerable detail: Jesus’ pre-existence; His possession of divine life as a personal prerogative; the fact that He functions as the saving light of the world and of all humans; the conflict between light and darkness; Jesus’ revelation of the divine glory; Jesus’ revelation as the only Son of God. Nevertheless, one also finds significant contrasts between the Prologue and the gospel. The hymn celebrates the “Word (Logos)” of God (Jn 1:1); but nowhere else in the gospel does one find “the Word” applied to Jesus as a Christological title. Other key terms in the hymn also find no echo in the gospel. After the prologue, the evangelist never again uses “charis” as a term for covenant love. The term “fullness (pleroma)” which occurs in verses 14 and 16 never reappears. The term “truth (aletheia),” which in the prologue means “abiding fidelity,” means something quite different in the gospel. Nor does the image of Jesus as having “pitched his tent” among humans recur in the gospel narrative. I shall consider the evangelist’s prose interpolations concerning John and his ministry in the next chapter, which examines the Beloved Disciple’s use of positive dramatic linkages. Here I focus exclusively on the four poetic strophes of the hymn and on the other doctrinal comments which the evangelist appends to the third and fourth strophes (vv. 17-8). The first strophe (vv. 1-2) describes the relationship between the pre-existent Word and God. The second (vv.3-5) explains the Word’s relationship to creation. The third (vv. 10-12b) gives an account of the Word’s relationship to “the world” and to the people in it. The fourth strophe (vv. 14 and 16) asserts the Word’s saving relationship to those who believe in Him. The final doctrinal reflection which the evangelist appends to the hymn functions both as a biblical inclusion (it alludes to the first strophe) and as a reflection on strophes three and four.6 6. Cf. Schyler Brown, “Christology and the History of the Johannine Community in the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament Studies, 30(1984), pp. 446-474; E.L. Miller, “The Logic of the Logos Hymn: A New View,” New Testament Studies, 29(1983), pp. 552- 561; Gerard Rochais, “La formation du Prologue (Jn 1, 1-18),” Science et Esprit, 1(1985), pp. 5-44, 2(1985), pp. 161-187; J.A.T. Robinson, “The Relation of the Prologue to the Gospel of John,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 120-129; Walter Schmithals, “Das Prolog des Johannesevangeliums,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 70(1979), pp. 16- 43; J.C. O’Neill, “The Prologue to St. John’s Gospel,” Journal of Theological Studies, 20(1969), pp. 41-52; Humphrey C. Green, “The Composition of St. John’s Prologue,” Expository Times, 66(1954-1955), pp. 291-294; Michael Theobald, Im Anfang war das Wort (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1983); A. Feuillet, Le prologue du quatrième évangile (Paris: Descleé de Brouwer, 1968); Joachim Jeremias, Der Prolog Johannesevangeliums (Stuttgart: Caliver Verlag, 1967); Thomas H. Tobin, “The Prologue of John and Hellenistic
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The Hymnic Prologue The first strophe proclaims: In the beginning was the Word (ho Logos), And the Word was with God (pros ton Theon), And the Word was God (kai Theos ên ho Logos). He was in the beginning with God (pros ton Theon). (Jn 1:1-2)
What does John mean by “the Word”? Here one needs to avoid reading into the evangelist’s text Platonized, patristic interpretations of the term “Word.” The hymn speaks dispensational rather than metaphysical language: it recapitulates the story of divine salvation from before the creation to the coming of Jesus. As we shall see in part two, one strain of patristic theology interprets “the Word” in the light of middle and Neo-Platonic metaphysics. This particular Platonization of the Johannine Logos (the tradition offers others) views “the Word” as the conceived word of God, i.e. as the divine mind or intelligence. As the dispensational language of the hymn suggests, however. the Beloved Disciple probably understands “the Word” historically, as the spoken word of God, as the one through whom God creates the world and reveals His saving glory. As we shall soon see, other verses in the prologue support such a reading of the Johannine Logos. The phrase “in the beginning” alludes to Gen 1:1: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” When God created, the Word already was. The imperfect tense in the verb “to be” asserts that, when God created all things, the Word already enjoyed existence. One might, then, translate the first verse of the prologue in the following manner: “In the beginning, the Word was already existing.” In the Beloved Disciple’s narrative, Jesus’ frequent use of the divine name, I AM alludes to the Word’s eternal pre-existence. The Word does not come into being, in the way in which creatures do: it simply exists as God does.7 Jewish Speculation,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 52(1990), pp. 252-269; Domingo Muñoz Leon, “Las Fuentes y Estadios de Composicion del Prologo de Juan segun Hofrichter,” Estudios Biblicos, 49(1991), pp. 229-250; Warren Carter, “The Prologue and John’s Gospel: Function, Symbol, and Definitive Word,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 39(1990), pp. 35- 58; Roland Meynet, S.J., “Analyse théologique du prologue de Jean,” Revue Biblique, 96(1989), pp. 481-510; Michael Theobald, “Geist- und Inkarnationstheologie: zur Pragmatik des Johannesprologs,” Zeitschrift für Katolische Theologie, 112(1990), pp. 129-149; Piet Schoonenberg, “A Sapiential Reading of John’s Prologue: Some Reflections on Views of Reginald Fuller and James Dunn,” Theology Digest, 33(1986), pp. 403-421; Simon Ross Valentine, “The Johannine Prologue—a Microcosm of the Gospel,” Evangelical Quarterly, 68(1996), pp. 291- 304. 7. Cf. George Neyrand, “Le sens du ‘logos’ dans le prologue de Jean,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 106(1984), pp. 59-71; David Hill, “The Relevance of Logos Christology,” Expository Times, 78(1967), pp. 136-139; Werner H. Kelber, “In the Beginning Were
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The phrase “with God (pros ton Theon)” suggests that the Word existed “beside God” as a co-eternal reality; but the proposition also connotes relationship. The Word exists “turned toward God.” Moreover, as the hymn proceeds it explicates the character of that relationship. Through the Word God creates the world, effects saving enlightenment, and reveals His own glory. The hymn’s assertion that “the Word was God” also finds an echo in the confession of Thomas—”My Lord and my God”— which closes the gospel as the evangelist originally wrote it. (Jn 20:28) Moreover, as the gospel unfolds the Son’s orientation to the Father expresses itself in His unswerving obedience to the Father’s will. Although John alone of the four evangelists deals with the pre-existence of the Son of God, the idea of pre-existence probably predates Paul and surfaces in the hymns reproduced in Philippians and Colossians. The presence of pre-existence in three different New Testament hymns deriving from two different New Testament traditions suggests that the idea enjoyed early currency in Christian liturgical worship. Only the fourth evangelist tells the story of Jesus in a way which makes His divine pre-existence a central doctrinal point of his gospel narrative. John did not invent the idea of divine pre-existence; but, as we shall see, he did develop it with theological complexity and subtlety. Of the four evangelists, only John develops a language for talking about the Christian God which begins to approximate the more technical philosophical language of the fathers of the Church. John, however, modifies biblical language in order to speak about the trinity instead of replacing it with philosophical terminology, as the fathers would do. John speaks of three distinct divine realities in the Godhead: the Father, the Son, and the Breath [or “other witness (Paraklêtos)” like Jesus]. Moreover, the evangelist uses two other Biblical terms in order to designate what the three divine beings share in common: “God (Theos)” without the article (as here) and “Breath (pneuma)” without the article. “Pneuma,” moreover, designates not only the vital reality common to the three members of the divine triad but also the divine life They share with believers. (Cf. 3:6, 4:24, 6:63) Moreover, as we shall see, John’s gospel also suggests a rubric for understanding the divine unity: namely, the dynamic, mutual indwelling of the divine persons. (Cf. Jn 14:10-1) The fourth verse of the first strophe repeats and underscores both the eternal existence of the Word and His relationship to God. (Jn 1:2a) The following strophes explain the character of that relationship.8 the Words: The Apotheosis and Narrative Displacement of the Logos,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 62(1994), pp. 343-375; Ed. L. Miller, “The Johannine Origins of the Johannine Logos,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 112(1993), pp. 445-457; Burkill, New Light on the Earliest Gospel, pp. 48-120. 8. Cf. NJBC, 61:21-22.
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The second strophe asserts: All things came to exist through Him, And without Him (choris autou) nothing made came to exist. In Him was life, And the life was the light of humans (to phôs tôn anthrôpôn). And the light shines on in the darkness, And the darkness has not suppressed it (ou katelaben). (Jn 1:3-5)
The first two verses of the second strophe portray the Word as the one through whom God creates the world. One finds creation attributed to the Son in other books of the New Testament. (Cf. Col 1:15-20; Heb 1:1-2; Rev 3:14) Moreover, here, as elsewhere in the New Testament, creation through the Word connotes the existence of all things in the Word: nothing exists apart from Him (choris autou). The second verse of the second strophe also finds an echo later in Jesus’ final discourse to His disciples: “Without Me (choris emou) you can do nothing.” (Jn 15:5) There too, the term “choris” not only designates Jesus as the source of the disciples’ activity but also as the one in whom they exist. Moreover, in the Prologue the light exists “in Him”; and, as the gospel will assert, all those who live in the light also live in Him. (Jn 15:4) In portraying the whole of creation as an expression of the Word of God, the hymn underscores its revelatory character. Verse 10 will assert the obscurity of that revelation: the world which came to be through the Word did not acknowledge its divine source. In designating the Word as the source of life, the hymn again alludes to the book of Genesis, which portrays God as the source of all living things and especially of human life. (Gen 1:1-2:7) The hymn’s identification of life and light also recalls the priestly account of creation in Genesis, where God makes light as the first of His creatures. (Gen 1:3) By calling life “the light of humans,” however, the hymn also identifies light with the saving and enlivening enlightenment of the Breath.9 (Jn 4:14, 7:37-9; Gen 3:1-7) The present tense of the verb “shines (phainei)” connotes a continuous activity. Despite the obtuseness and enmity of the darkness, the light continues to shine. In the course of his gospel, moreover, the Beloved Disciple will show how the struggle between the forces of light and darkness, of God and Satan, leads to the ever clearer disclosure of the true character of both antagonists. As it confronts the dark, the light shines 9. Cf. Georg Korting, “Joh 1,3,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 33(1989), pp. 97-104; Peter Cohee, “John 1.3-4,” New Testament Studies, 41(1995), pp. 470-477; Jens W. Täger, “‘Gesiegt! O himmlische Musik des Wortes!: Zur Entfaltung des Siegmotiv für Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft und die Kunde der Alteren Kirche,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 85(1994), pp. 26-46.
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more and more brightly, while the forces of darkness, in their relentless attempt to suppress the light, disclose ever more clearly their violence, malice, and hypocrisy. The term “katêlaben” resists easy translation into English because of the richness of its connotations in Greek. It suggests cognitive obtuseness: the failure of the darkness either to understand or to appreciate the nature of the light. The same verb, however, can also mean to master or to overcome. Given the poetic diction of the hymn, it could conceivably connote all these things simultaneously. The darkness, in its inability to understand and appreciate the light seeks to master and extinguish it, but all to no avail.10 The third strophe announces: It was the true light which enlightens every human who was coming into the world (erchomenon eis ton kosmon). He was in the world And the world came to exist through Him, And the world knew Him not. He came to His own And His own people received Him not. But to all those who received Him He gave power to become children of God (tekna Theou). (Jn 1:9-12)
In designating the Word’s light as “true” the hymn implicitly contrasts true and false enlightenment. “True light” reveals the truth, while false enlightenment deceives. Moreover, “true light” excludes no one from its saving illumination: it seeks to enlighten every human mind and heart. The phrase “was coming into the world (erchomenon eis ton kosmon) would seem to modify the “true light” rather than “every human.” If one takes it as modifying “every human,” the phrase alludes redundantly to the fact of human birth. If, however, one takes it as referring to the Light, then the phrase designates an ongoing process of enlightenment. In that case, the coming of Jesus into the world and to His own people functions as the culmination of an historical process of the divine Word’s revelation. His rejection by the world brings to a climax its failure to recognize creation as a revelation of the Word. By the same token, Jesus’ rejection 10. Cf. NJBC, 61:21-22; Peder Borgen, “Logos Was the True Light,” Novum Testamentum, 14(1972), pp. 115-130; C.K. Barrett, “Katelaben in John i, 5” Expository Times, 53(1941- 1942), p. 297; Herbert Schneider, S.J., “‘The Word Was Made Flesh’: An Analysis of the Theology of Revelation in the Fourth Gospel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 3(1969), pp. 344- 356; Bruce Vawter, “What Came to Be in Him was Life” (Jn 1,3b-4a), Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 25(1963), pp. 401-406; Jürgen Becker, “Beobachtungen zum Dualismus in Johannesevangelium,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentalische Wissenschaft, 65(1974), pp. 71- 87.
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by the chosen people brings to an historical climax their disobedience to the Word of God. The coming of the light into the world has, moreover, messianic connotations.11 (Cf. Is 9:2, 42:6, 60:1-2) The doctrinal comment after the fourth strophe further teases out the historical character of divine revelation. There the evangelist notes: “For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Jn 1:17) The Beloved Disciple regards Moses and the Law as true divine witnesses to the event of Jesus. (Jn 5:46-7) Nevertheless, the full and final manifestation of the “true light” which subsists in the Word happens finally in the incarnation and especially in the final glorification of the Word through His passion, resurrection, and sending of the Breath. That revelation overcomes the insufficiency of the revelation made through creation and through Mosaic religion. Those who accept the “true light” find it empowering: it enables them to live as children (tekna) of God. The fourth evangelist reserves the term “Son (huios)” for Jesus, who enjoys divine sonship in a unique and privileged way. The term “tekna” designates those who enjoy filiation through the action of divine grace. The children of God live in the image of the Word incarnate through the grace of adoption. At this point the evangelist inserts a prose explanation of the kind of gracious empowerment of which he speaks: “those who were born not from blood, nor from the will of the flesh, nor from the human will, but of God.” (Jn 1:13) The evangelist excludes any biological cause of second birth (not from blood). (Cf. Jn 3:4-6) He also excludes sexual craving or human decision as the cause of the second birth which he describes. Only God can transform humans graciously into His children. The evangelist will develop this idea of a second birth in his gospel when Jesus discourses at night with the Pharisee Nichodemus. There Jesus will attribute second birth to Christian baptism and to the action of the Breath of the risen Christ. As we shall also see, the term “children (tekna)” in Johannine vocabulary can serve as the equivalent of “believers.” (Jn 3:1-6) The fourth strophe concludes the hymn: And the Word became flesh (Kai Logos sarx egeneto) And pitched His tent among us. And we have seen His glory, Glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father Full of grace and truth (charitos kai alêtheias). For from His fullness (ek tou plêrômatos autou) we have all received, Grace upon grace (charin anti charitos). (Jn 1:14, 16) 11. Cf. John W. Pryor, “Jesus and Israel in the Fourth Gospel—John 1:11,” Novum Testamentum, 32(1990), pp. 201-218; NJBC, 61:24.
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The Word’s coming into the world reaches its culmination in the incarnation. As the divine Word incarnate, Jesus confronts us as the supreme historical revelation of God. The hymn contrasts the eternal existence of the Logos (vv. 1-2) and His coming to be (egeneto) as flesh, i.e., as fully human and as subjected to the weakness and mortality of human existence. Some prefer to translate “egeneto” as “was born.” We find a second contrast. The Word who dwells eternally in God’s presence dwelt only for a time (set up his tent) among humans. The image of the tent recalls Yahweh’s tenting among the Israelites during the first Exodus (Cf. Ex 25:8-9) as well as the dwelling of Wisdom among mortals (Cf. Sir 24:13). The image, then, points to the humanity of Jesus, in all its limitation and human mortality, as the temple of God and as the glorious dwelling place of divine Wisdom. Finally, the fourth strophe clearly contrasts the divinity of the eternal Word (v. 1) with His fleshy, human existence. Given the fourth evangelist’s stress on the glorious saving power of Jesus’ death, one may detect a polemic intent in the use of the term “flesh” to designate the humanity of Jesus in its weakness and mortality.12 The incarnate Word confronts the believer as one “filled with grace and truth.” The term “grace (charis)” here translates the Hebrew word “hesed,” while the term “truth (alêtheia)” translates the Hebrew term “‘emet.” The term “hesed” designates the mercy of God in gratuitously choosing Israel despite its lack of merit, while “‘emet” designates God’s loving fidelity to His covenant. In other words, the incarnate Word confronts the believer as the supreme expression of God’s faithful covenant love. The fourth gospel will develop this insight in considerable detail. The plentitude of faithful covenant love finds an echo in the fullness of divine grace which overflows from the incarnate and risen Jesus. Although the term “pleroma” occurs only once in the fourth gospel, in verse 16 of the prologue, one can see in the fullness of grace a tacit reference to the eschatological plentitude with which the divine Breath dwells in Jesus. (Cf. Jn 3:34) In that case the inexhaustible mercy which the prologue discovers in the risen Christ coincides with the inexhaustible gift “without measure” of the sanctifying Breath who dwells in Him.13 (cf. Jn 20:22-3) The “we” of verse 14 refers to those who have beheld the glory of the incarnate Word, viz., to the apostolic witnesses of His resurrection, al12. Cf. NJBC, 61:25; Klaus Berger, “Zu ‘Das Wort war Fleisch’ Joh. I, 14a,” Novum Testamentum, 16(1974), pp. 161-166; Etienne Trochme, “La Parole devint chair et dressa sa tente parmi nous: Réflexions sur la théologie du IVe Evangile,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses, 74(1994), pp. 399-409; J.C. O’Neill, “The Word Did not ‘Become’ Flesh,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 82(1991), pp. 125-127. 13. Cf. Ruth B. Edwards, “Charin anti charitos (John 1.16): Grace and the Law in the Johannine Prologue,”Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 32(1988), pp. 3-15.
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though, as we shall see, faith in the risen Christ without confronting Him face-to-race also constitutes an especially blessed way of “seeing” the risen Christ. (Jn 20:29) The glory of the risen One reveals the unique relationship of the Son to the Father. As the “only begotten Son” of God, the Word relates to the Father as His Son in a unique and normative way which both measures and transcends the relationship to the Father of those whom the Word graciously transforms into the “children (tekna)” of God (v. 12). The apostolic witnesses experience the only-begotten Son as [coming] “from the Father.” i.e., as sent into the world by the Father. The phrase “from the Father” refers therefore to the historical mission of the Word rather than to His eternal procession from the Father, although in later patristic trinitarian theology mission will reveal procession. No one has ever seen God; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He opened the way to Him. (Jn 1:18)
Some scripture scholars would include verse 18 in the prologue. Moreover, some manuscripts speak, not of “the only-begotten Son” but of “the only-begotten God,” although “only-begotten Son” provides the better reading. The verse’s diction, however, differs sufficiently from the rest of the prologue (note, for example, the lack of kai’s) to suggest that it comes from the pen of the evangelist rather than from the hymn’s composer. Does the reference to the Son’s presence “in the bosom of the Father” refer to Jesus’ ascension after His resurrection and reflect that pattern of divine descent and ascent which characterizes the fourth gospel’s handling of Jesus’ resurrection appearances? Possibly, but we shall probably never know for certain. Verse 18 closes the gospel’s hymnic introduction with a biblical inclusion which refers back to the first verse of the prologue. The Son’s presence “in the bosom of the Father” echoes the fact that the Word dwells eternally oriented “toward God” (v. 1), the Father. Moreover, together with verse 17, verse 18 again designates the incarnate Word as the supreme, historical revelation of God’s faithful covenant love.14 14. Cf. NJBC, 61:26; Ignace de la Potterie, “C’est lui qui a ouvert la voie: la finale du prologue johannique,” Biblica, 69(1988), pp. 340-370; Otfried Hofius, “‘Der in des Vaters Schoss ist’ Joh 1,18,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 80(1989), pp. 163-171; M.-E. Boismard, O.P., “‘Dans le sein du Père’ (Jo. 1,18),” Revue Biblique, 59(1952), pp. 23-39; Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (2 vols.; New York, NY: Doubleday, 1966), I, pp. 4-37; Ernst Hänchen, A Commentary on the Gospel of John, translated by Robert W. Funk (2 vols.: Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1984), I, pp. 101-140. The first Johannine letter, which may have functioned as a kind of circular letter to all the Johannine house churches (1 Jn 3:9), begins without a formal salutation and clearly echoes themes from the prologue of the gospel.
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Part 1: The Transition to Doctrines: Johannine Narrative Christology
The Analogy of Christological Knowing In studying the synoptic narrative Christology, I frequently reflected on what I called “the analogy of Christological knowing.” By “Christological We are announcing to you something we saw and heard, so that you might have communion with us and communion with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ—something which existed from the beginning (ho ên ap’ archês), something we heard, something we saw with our eyes, something we perceived and touched with our hands concerning the Word of life: this very life appeared and we saw [it] and testify [to it]. And we are writing these things so that our joy may reach fulfillment. (1 Jn 1:4) In translating the above passage, one almost needs to paraphrase its fractured Greek in order to render it into flowing English. Nevertheless, grammatically fractured or not, the passage makes its point with sensate force. The phrase “from the beginning” could conceivably allude to the opening words of the Prologue of the gospel: “In the beginning the Word already was....” (Jn 1:1) Scholars offer a variety of explanations for the shift in pronoun from “in” to “from.” They also offer a variety of explanations of the term “beginning.” In the context of the letter, however, “beginning” probably refers to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, i.e, the beginning of the sensible manifestation of the Word of life. That could suggest that the Beloved Disciple himself, who claims in the gospel to have witnessed Jesus’ ministry personally, wrote the first letter. (Cf. Jn 19:36, 21:24) The “Word of life” would seem to refer to both the person and message of Jesus. The introduction to the letter underscores a truth which the Prologue to the gospel also asserts. The Prologue culminates in the proclamation that the eternal, pre-existent Word of God became flesh. (Jn 1:1-5, 13-4) The introduction to the letter insists on the physical, embodied character of “the Word, who is life.” The letter proclaims a divine revelation which one could see, hear, and physically touch. (1 Jn 1:1) Moreover, belief in the incarnate, physical, sensate character of the self-revelation of the divine Word in Christ defines the basic condition for membership in the Johannine community. At the same time, communion in faith also insures union with the living realities to which faith testifies: namely, union with the Father and with Jesus Christ. (1 Jn 1:3) Finally, communion with the reality of God in a community of faith motivates the shared joy of believers. (1 Jn 1:4) The author of the first epistle regards the Breath of God as the living foundation of that communion (1 Jn 3:23-4, 4:1-6, 5:5-12) The second and third letters do not elaborate a formal Christological doctrine, although the salutation of the second letter and its body make some clear doctrinal assertions: Truly, I love you—and not only I but also those who have come to know the truth, through the truth abiding in us which will remain with us forever. Grace, mercy, and peace will be with you from God the Father, and from Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, in truth and love. (2 Jn 1-3) The author of the second letter greets those who all abide in the same truth as he. Clearly, that truth includes the confession of the creator God as Father and Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The author assures those to whom he writes that, if the truth continues to “abide (menousan)” with them, it will confirm them in the truth forever. Their abiding in the truth expresses their obedience to the Father, who commands just such faith. (2 Jn 4)
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knowing” I mean the knowledge of Jesus which results from practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. By “the analogy of Christological knowing,” I mean the way in which a particular evangelist adapts the story of Jesus to the conversion needs of a particular community with a view to fostering its progress in practical, pneumatically inspired knowledge of Jesus. The adaptations challenge a particular community of believers to face and to transcend specific obstacles to personal and corporate assimilation to Jesus in faith. In analyzing Johannine narrative Christology, I shall also reflect on the analogy of Christological knowing. The Beloved Disciple, as we shall see, like the synoptic evangelists regards the knowledge of Jesus Christ as inherently practical. Because, however, the fourth evangelist writes for a doctrinally divided community, he includes in his understanding of practical assimilation to Jesus “the deed of faith.” (Cf. Jn 6:28-29) Christian practice, for the Beloved Disciple, includes acknowledging fully the divine truth incarnate in Jesus. That knowledge has other moral consequences; but the Beloved Disciple places consent to doctrinal truth about the paschal mystery at the heart of Christological knowing. Focal emphasis on the deed of faith already distinguishes the Beloved Disciple’s mode of telling Jesus’ story from that of the synoptics. The latter presuppose a context of faith as a condition for practical, moral assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. They tend, however, to The author of the letter contrasts this truth with the fundamental error of the dissidents, who “do not confess that Jesus Christ came in the flesh.” (2 Jn 7) In denying the fundamental truth of the incarnation, the dissidents have not only severed connection with the rest of the Johannine community, but they have also forfeited their share in divine life: Everyone who departs and does not remain in the teaching of Christ does not possess God. One who abides in the teaching has both the Father and the Son. (2 Jn 9) Cf. NJBC, 62: 15, 36, 38; Brown, Epistles, pp. 149-188, 645-697; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 53-78; II, pp. 27-63; A. Feuillet, Le prologue du quatrième évangile (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1968), pp. 210-217; H.A. Guy, “1 John i, 1-3,” Expository Times, 62(1959-1951), p. 125; K. Greyston, “‘Logos’ in 1 John 1,1,” Expository Times, 86(1974-1975), p. 279; J.E. Weir, “The Identity of the Logos in the First Epistle of John,” Expository Times, 86(1974-1975), pp. 118-120; M. de Jonge, “An Analysis of 1 John 1. 1-4” Bible Translator, 29(1978), pp. 322-330; Marc-François Lacan, “L’oeuvre de la vie (1 Jo., 1, 4),” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 45(1957), pp. 61-78; Joachim Kügler, “Die Belehrung der Unbelehrbaren: Zu Funktion des Traditionsargument in 1 Joh,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 32(1988), pp. 249-254; Judith M. Lieu, “What Was From the Beginning: Scripture and Tradition in the Johannine Epistles,” New Testament Studies, 39(1993), pp. 458-477; Martinus C. de Boer, “The Death of Jesus Christ and His Coming in the Flesh (1 John 4:2),” Novum Testamentum, 33(1991), pp. 326-346; Bart D. Ehrman, “1 Joh 4.3 and the Orthodox Corruption of Scripture,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 79 (1988), pp. 221-243.
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view obedience to the moral demands of life in the kingdom, rather than doctrinal orthodoxy, as the practical test of faith. The prologue to the fourth gospel reflects the fourth gospel’s doctrinal focus. The prologue performs a literary function somewhat analogous to the infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke but closer to the hymn which serves as the thematic introduction to the letter to the Colossians. Like the infancy narratives, the Johannine prologue introduces themes which the gospel narrative will develop in greater detail. Like the introductory hymn in Colossians, the prologue focuses on doctrinal issues. That the evangelist or a later redcator would prefer a hymn to an infancy gospel as the literary form best suited to introduce the narrative which follows, itself deserves attention and comment. Hymns express the shared faith of a worshipping community. Liturgical in origin, they appeal, when used as literary prefaces, directly to shared worship as the proper context for understanding the text which they introduce. Like the hymn in Colossians, the prologue to John enunciates a common faith expressed in shared prayer, very likely in shared eucharistic worship. Shared faith and worship, therefore, provide an important hermeneutical key to the narrative which follows. When, moreover, one views the three most extended liturgical hymns cited in the New Testament (Phil 2:6-11; Col 1:15-20; Jn 1:1-18) as expressions of shared faith and worship, then the fact that all three assert the pre-existence of the divine reality embodied in Jesus of Nazareth suggests that this particular Christological motif functioned as a significant theme in early Christian liturgical worship. In the case of the Johannine prologue, in affirming the Son of God’s pre-existence with the Father, the hymn enunciates a central doctrinal focus of the fourth gospel. Divine pre-existence also contextualizes the other doctrinal themes which the prologue introduces and which the gospel develops. This chapter has examined the social context from which the fourth gospel probably emerged. It has also analyzed the literary and thematic structure of the fourth gospel’s hymnic prologue. The chapter which follows begins an analysis of the fourth gospel’s narrative structure by pondering its positive dramatic linkages.
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Chapter 2 John’s Positive Dramatic Linkages This chapter examines the Beloved Disciple’s use of positive dramatic linkages in order to structure the story of Jesus. The Johannine Jesus relates positively to John the Baptizer, to the Father, to the Breath. As in the synoptics, all these relationships have revelatory significance. In the fourth gospel, however, Jesus also relates positively to two symbolic individuals: namely, to the Beloved Disciple and to Mary. This chapter divides into four parts. Part one examines Jesus’ relationship to the Baptizer. Part two develops His relationship to the Father. Part three describes how Jesus and the Breath relate. Part four depicts Jesus’ relationship to the symbolic figures of Mary and of the Beloved Disciple. (I) Two prose passages about John the Baptizer comment on the text of the Prologue. Both concern the witness which John gave to Jesus. Both serve the purpose of tying the Prologue to the account of John’s ministry which immediately follows the prologue. The first prose passage about John in the prologue states: There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. He came for testimony (eis martyrian), in order to bear witness to the light, that all might believe through Him. He was not the light; but came to bear witness to the light. (Jn 1:6-8)
Though only human, the Baptizer speaks with a divine authority derived from his prophetic commissioning by God. Although in the synoptic gospels, the Baptizer directs his message of repentance primarily to Israel, the fourth evangelist here interprets the Baptizer’s ministry theologically within the broad sweep of salvation history: since Jesus came to bring a universal salvation, the Baptizer’s witness to the Word ultimately serves that universal salvation, which Jesus alone effects. As the light of the world, only Jesus effects a universal saving enlightenment through His gift of the Breath. The Baptizer testifies to Jesus’ saving act. John the Baptizer Testifies to Jesus In the fourth gospel, God sends the Baptizer primarily in order to testify to Jesus. Some commentators find in this circumscription of the Baptizer’s ministry evidence of a confrontation between the Johannine community and the disciples of the Baptizer. Possibly so.
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Without a doubt, however, in portraying the Baptizer as a witness to Jesus, the Beloved Disciple introduces the forensic metaphor which he will develop extensively in his narrative. By John’s forensic metaphor, I mean that the evangelist portrays Jesus’ entire ministry as a kind of legal trial in which His adversaries cross-examine Him about His own testimony to the Father. Mark uses the messianic secret as an organizing metaphor for Jesus’ ministry. The proclamation of Christian Torah functions as an organizing narrative metaphor for Matthew. The image of the pilgrimage provides an organizing narrative metaphor for Luke. In the same way, the metaphor of the trial textures the gospel of John. The Beloved Disciple portrays the entire ministry of Jesus as His trial by His own people and ultimately by the Roman empire. In the course of that trial, humans pass a false judgment on Him, a judgment which the resurrection and the divine Breath’s witness overturns. In trying God’s Son, they put God to the test. (Jn 16:8-11) The image of the trial also fuels the Beloved Disciple’s theology of judgment which re-enforces the metaphor. The image underscores the crucial importance of commitment in faith to Jesus. Only those who believe escape the judgment. Those who try Him, who put Him to the test in their darkness and unbelief, place themselves by their malice under the divine judgment. (Jn 3:16-21) The first scene of the gospel immediately strikes a forensic note. It describes John’s cross-examination by priests and levites from Jerusalem. In the course of the gospel, Jesus’ enemies will subject Him in turn to similar cross-examinations. Moreover, in responding to His cross-questioners, Jesus will more than once invoke the three corroborating witnesses required by Jewish law to substantiate the truth of His own testimony: namely, the testimony of the Father, the testimony of John the Baptizer, and the testimony of the Jewish scriptures.1 In verse 14 of the Prologue,a redactor of the gospel has inserted a statement of John the Baptizer about Jesus which reappears in Jn 1:30. In His testimony, the Baptizer, testifies to Jesus’ pre-existence prior to His coming in the flesh: John bore witness to Him and cried: “This is He of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, for he was before me.” (Jn 1:15, 30)
1. Cf. NJBC, 61:23; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, 27-28, 35-36; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 131-142; James Montgomery Boice, Witness and Revelation in the Gospel of John (Toronto: Paternoster Press, 1976); M.-E. Boismard, “L’évolution du thème eschatologique dans les traditions johanniques,” Revue Biblique, 68(1961), pp. 518-523; Andrew T. Lincoln, “Trials, Plots and the Narrative of the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 56(1994), pp. 3-30.
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Some commentators have suggested that John the Baptizer here presents himself as preparing the way for the return of Elijah, who had been taken up to heaven and, by popular expectation, would return before the Day of the Lord. In this sense, then, the one who came after the Baptizer would also have existed before him. Perhaps so. In thus summarizing the Baptizer’s witness, the final redactor could also have reworked the Baptizer’s prophecy, recorded in the synoptics, of the coming of the “mightier one.” Certainly, however, the redactor by inserting the Baptizer’s witness into the prologue is explaining theologically the reason why Jesus “ranks before” John: As the pre-existent Logos, the Son of God exists from all eternity. In the synoptics, the Baptizer explains the superiority of the “mightier one,” not by His divine pre-existence, but by his ability to baptize, not just with water, but with a sanctifying Breath and with the fire of divine holiness. Later in the fourth gospel, the Baptizer will testify that Jesus alone will baptize with a Holy Breath; but, on that occasion the Baptizer will fail to describe the Breath Baptizer as the “mightier one” of the synoptic gospels. Some contemporary exegetes find in this initial testimony of the Baptizer and in his subsequent testimony to Jesus evidence of a polemic confrontation between the Beloved Disciple’s community and the disciples of the Baptizer. As we have seen, the synoptic gospels exhibit some embarrassment over the fact that Jesus, the leader of the Christian “way,” submitted to the baptism of John. As a consequence, the synoptics use a variety of narrative strategies in order to assert the superiority of Christian to Johannine baptism. The fourth evangelist, for his part, omits all mention of Jesus’ having submitted to John’s baptism. Instead, the Beloved Disciple summarizes the two men’s relationship to one another by having the Baptizer’s witness to Jesus’ allude, at least implicitly, to the latter’s divine pre-existence.2 “The Jews” send, apparently, two different delegations to cross-examine John the Baptizer in Bethany beyond the Jordan, where he is baptizing: priests and levites from Jerusalem and representatives of the Pharisees. (Jn 1:19, 24, 28) The priests and levites represent the Sanhedrin and confront John as national leaders with the highest ritual authority in Israel. The priests and levites also show themselves most interested in issues of authority: Does John have messianic pretensions? Does he claim to speak as Elijah redivivus, or as the “prophet like Moses” foretold in Dt 18:15-18? In each case John testifies with a negative answer. (Jn 1:19-21) 2. Cf. Georg Richter, “Bist du Elias? (Joh, 1,21)” in Studien zum Johannesevangelium (Regensberg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1977), pp. 1-41; Ernst Hänchen, Gott und Mensch: Gesammelte Aussœtze (Tübingen: Mohr-Seibeck, 1965), pp. 329-332.
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When pressed by the priestly delegation to justify his ministry of preaching and baptism, the Baptizer cites Is 40:3. Both Mark and Matthew assert that the ministry of the Baptizer fulfills this prophecy; but only the fourth evangelist places this Isaian oracle on the lips of the Baptizer himself. The fourth evangelist, also modifies slightly the text of the prophecy as it appears in the synoptics. In the fourth gospel, the Baptizer has come not to “prepare” the way of the Lord but to “make straight” His way. The change in verb probably results from the fact that the text of the fourth gospel deletes the second half of the prophecy as it appears in Isaiah. The second half commands “Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” (Jn 1:22-3; Is 40:3; Mk 1:3; Mt 3:3) In the fourth gospel as in the synoptics, the prophecy in Isaiah, which originally looked forward to the return from the Babylonian exile as a second exodus, takes on new apocalyptic connotations. The Baptizer describes the coming of God to save His people through a culminating, decisive act. The Baptizer’s ministry in the desert has the same symbolic overtones as in the synoptics: Jewish hope located the dawning of final salvation in the desert. In the fourth gospel, that dawning consists primarily in the Baptizer’s testimony to Jesus. Desert symbolism also explains the concern of the Jerusalem authorities with John’s authority: a prophetic voice in the desert announcing the final dawning of salvation offered to popular piety a religious authority distinct from the institutional authority of the levitical priesthood. A second delegation, this one from the Pharisees, then asks John to justify His ministry of baptism, since he eschews messianic authority, on the one hand, and the prophetic authority of either Elijah or the prophet like Moses, on the other. If one reads the passage historically, the Pharisees interrogate John, not as the vested religious authority in Palestine, but as committed Jews seeking a theological clarification of his response to the priests and levites. As in Matthew’s gospel, however, the Beloved Disciple associates the Pharisees with the chief priests as a way of portraying them theologically as the chief priests’ eventual heirs in leading the Jewish community. Later in John’s gospel, for example, the Pharisees exercise high priestly authority anachronistically; and they routinely expel those who confess Jesus from the synagogue. (Jn 9:34, 11:47) Because in the evangelist’s day the Pharisees seem to have led the attack against the disciples of Jesus, the Beloved Disciple, like Matthew, links them in Jesus’ day with the chief priests who opposed both John and Jesus. In Jesus’ day the Pharisees would have had no authority to excommunicate. The delegation from the Pharisees asks John: why, if you eschew an eschatological identity, do you perform an eschatologically symbolic act
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like baptizing? The fourth evangelist’s John answers in a self-deprecating manner: I baptize with water; but among you stands one whom you do not know, the one who is coming after me, the thong of whose sandals I am unworthy to untie. (Jn 1:26)
John’s reply echoes, with significant variations, words of John preserved in Mark and in Matthew. (Mk 1:7-8; Mt 3:11) In this passage the Johannine Baptizer unlike the synoptic Baptizer does not contrast his own baptism with the Breath-baptism of the mightier one, even though, later in the fourth gospel, the Baptizer does testify to Jesus as Breath-baptizer. (Jn 1:33) Instead, the Johannine Baptizer stresses the servile character of his relationship to Jesus. Slaves undid their masters’ sandal straps. Some exegetes see in “the one who is coming” a cryptic reference to Elijah. The Baptizer’s testimony on the following day, however, leaves no doubt that in the evangelist’s estimate Jesus coincides with the one who comes after John.3 (Jn 1:29) The next day, the Baptizer sees Jesus coming toward him and testifies: Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, “After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me, because he was before me.” I myself never recognized Him, though the very reason I came and baptized with water was that He might be revealed to Israel. (Jn 1:29-31)
One can read three different meanings into the phrase “the Lamb of God.” In the first instance, it probably designates Jesus as the victorious Lamb of Jewish apocalyptic who conquers the forces of evil opposed to God. In the second instance, the image probably refers to the servant of God in second Isaiah, who goes to his death like a lamb to the slaughter. By his innocent suffering, the servant atones for the sins of “the many.” (Is 53:7) Finally, the Lamb of God designates Jesus as the passover lamb. The Beloved Disciple’s passion account makes this third reference explicit. (Jn 19:29, 31) As the paschal lamb, Jesus frees those who believe in Him from the slavery of sin. (Cf. Jn 8:44) By sheding His covenant blood, Jesus effects a new exodus, a new liberation. 3. Cf. Pierson Parker, “‘Bethany Beyond Jordan,’” Journal of Biblical Literature, 74(1955), pp. 257-261; Ivor Buse, “St. John and the First Synoptic Pericope,” Novum Testamentum, 3(1959), pp. 57-61; B.M.F. Iersel, “Tradition und Redaktion in Joh. I 19-36,” Novum Testamentum, 5(1962), pp. 245-267; Ernst Bammel, “The Baptist in Early Christian Tradition,” New Testament Studies, 18(1971-1972), pp. 95-128.
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The Baptizer repeats now his earlier testimony to Jesus already cited in the prologue to his gospel. The Baptizer reminds the reader that he has already said: “After me comes a man who has ranked before me (literally: “has come to be before me”), because He was before me.” By reformulating the Baptizer’s witness from the prologue, the final redactor clarifies its meaning. The one who follows the Baptizer temporally has already a greater dignity than the Baptizer in virtue of His eternal existence (“He was before me”). Not only does Jesus’ pre-existence as the Word make Him transcendently superior to the Baptizer; but it also holds the key to Jesus’ threefold ministry as the Lamb of God. As the Word of God incarnate, Jesus triumphs decisively over sin and evil, atones for the wickedness of “the many,” seals a new covenant, and effects a new exodus. In his reply to the Pharisees on the preceding day, the Baptizer described Jesus as one whom the Pharisees do not know. The ignorance of the Pharisees foreshadows the unbelief which they will show toward Jesus once He begins His ministry. Their ignorance also points to Jesus as a “hidden messiah,” as one who grows and develops secretly in the midst of Israel. It also foreshadows the unbelief of the Pharisaical leaders of the hostile synagogue during the evangelist’s own day. After testifying to Jesus as Lamb of God and as pre-existent, the Baptizer underscores the theme of Jesus’ messianic hiddenness. John avows that at the beginning of his own ministry, he himself did not know Jesus’ messianic identity.The Baptizer acknowledges the irony of his ignorance, because his own ministry had only one purpose: namely, the disclosure of the hidden messiah to Israel. Moreover, the evangelist immediately qualifies the Baptizer’s ignorance of Jesus’ messianic identity by having the Baptizer witness to the Holy Breath’s descent on Jesus. She comes in order to transform Him into the Breath-baptizer. The Breath’s descent dispels the Baptizer’s ignorance of Jesus’ messianic identity and reveals Jesus as the chosen one of God.4 The Baptizer in the fourth gospel differs, then, from the Baptizer in Matthew and Luke both in his perception of the Holy Breath’s descent and in his certitude concerning Jesus’ messianic identity. (Mt 11:2-10, Lk 7:18-28) The Beloved Disciple writes:
4. Cf. NJBC, 61:30-32; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 42-54; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 143-156; C.E. Blakeway, “‘Behold the Lamb of God’ (S. John i. 29, 36),” Expository Times, 31(1919-1920), pp. 364-365; E.J. Gilchrist, “‘And I Knew Him Not,’” Expository Times, 19(1907-1908); pp. 379-380; J. Holzmeister, S.J., “Medius vestrum stetit quem vos nescitis,” Verbum Domini, 20(1940), pp. 329-332.
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And John bore witness: “I saw a Breath descend as a dove from heaven, and it remained on Him. I myself did not know Him; but He who sent me to baptize with water said to me: ‘He on whom you see the Breath descend and remain, this is He who baptizes with a Holy Breath.’ And I have seen and have borne witness that this is God’s chosen one.” (Jn 1:32-4)
In portraying the Baptizer as sent for no other purpose than to manifest the hidden messiah to Israel, the fourth evangelist severely circumscribes the providential purpose of the Baptizer’s mission. The fourth evangelist’s Baptizer paradoxically does not come primarily in order to baptize. Instead, He comes primarily in order to testify to Jesus.5 In his account of the Baptizer’s testimony, the fourth evangelist is probably reworking theologically traditions about Jesus’ baptism analogous to those recorded in the synoptics. In both the synoptic and Johannine traditions, the Baptizer predicts the coming of a Breath-baptizer. Both traditions identify Jesus as the Breath-baptizer of whom John spoke. In both traditions the Breath descends on Jesus under the sign of a dove. In the synoptics, the Father’s voice clarifies the dove’s symbolic meaning: the Breath’s descent under the sign of the dove reveals Jesus, among other things, as the specially beloved of God and as the beginning of a new Israel. The Beloved Disciple, however, leaves the dove’s meaning shrouded in obscurity.6 The Johannine account of the Breath’s descent departs from the synoptics in other respects: 1) As we have seen, probably for polemic reasons, the fourth evangelist omits any mention of Jesus’ baptism by John and therefore fails to link the descent of the Breath to that event. 2) In Mark and Matthew, Jesus alone experiences the descent of the Breath under the sign of a dove. Luke makes the descent a semi-public event by having the Breath descend in bodily form. (Mk 1:9-11; Mt 3:16-7; Lk 3:21-2) In the fourth gospel, the Baptizer sees with his own eyes the Breath’s descent. 3) In the fourth gospel the Father promises the Baptizer in advance that he will witness the Breath’s descent on some person. Her descent will 5. The Beloved Disciple recognizes that John baptized (cf. Jn 10:40); but he completely subordinates the Baptizer’s ritual activity to his testimony to Jesus. 6. Cf. Paul Jouon, S.J., “L’agneau de Dieu (Jean 1, 29),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 67(1940-1945), pp. 318-321; A. Negoista and C. Daniel, “L’agneau de Dieu est le Verbe de Dieu,” Novum Testamentum, 13(1971), pp. 24-37; C.K. Barrett, “The Lamb of God,” New Testament Studies, 1(1954-1955), pp. 210-218; John Howton, “Son of God in the Fourth Gospel,” Novum Testamentum, 10(1963-1964), pp.227-233; Joachim Jeremias, “‘Amnos tou Theou—pais Theou,’” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 34(1935), pp. 115-123; A.Feuillet, “Le symbolisme de la colombe dans les récits évangeliques du baptème,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 46(1958), pp. 524-544.
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mark that person out as the Breath-baptizer. The Baptizer subsequently sees the Breath descend “as a dove from heaven and remain” on Jesus. The Johannine Baptizer sees the descent of the Breath so that, in his role as forensic witness to Jesus, he may testify to Jesus’ abiding possession of the divine Breath. (Jn 1:32, 34) 4) The fact that the Breath abides with Jesus has special theological connotations for the fourth evangelist. It suggests that, as Breath-baptizer, Jesus possesses and dispenses the Breath in eschatological plentitude. (Jn 3:34, 7:38-9, 20:22; cf. 3:5) 5) The synoptics underscore the difference between John’s water baptism and Jesus’ Breath-baptism. The fourth evangelist notes the difference but stresses it less than the synoptics, largely because the Beloved Disciple desires to portray the ministry of the Baptizer primarily as forensic testimony to Jesus. 6) In the synoptics, Jesus calls His disciples quite independently of John. In the fourth gospel, the Baptizer’s testimony to Jesus plays a crucial role in the call of the first disciples. The Beloved Disciple’s Baptizer points Jesus out to two of his own disciples as “the Lamb of God.” Out of curiosity they follow Him and immediately recognize Him as the messiah. (Jn 1:35-41) The synoptics all portray John’s ministry as preparing Jesus’ own; but they do not go out of their way, as the fourth evangelist does, to identify Jesus’ first disciples as former disciples of the Baptizer.7 The fourth gospel notes that John suffered imprisonment but makes no mention of his martyrdom at the hands of Herod. (Jn 3:24) Before John’s imprisonment, some of his disciples, envious of the fact that Jesus is baptizing more people than John himself, complain to the Baptizer of Jesus’ greater success. (Jn 3:25-6) This verse in the fourth gospel gives the only textual evidence we possess that Jesus initially claimed his disciples by administering a baptism similar to John’s. A subsequent verse of the fourth gospel, apparently inserted by a scribe, suggests that Jesus Himself subsequently abandoned the ritual even though His disciples continued to administer it. (Jn 4:1-3) The disciples of John complain about Jesus’ baptism because a controversy with “a Jew” over rites of purification has left them troubled. The nature of the controversy remains obscure. (Jn 3:25) The fact, however, that the fourth evangelist situates the complaint of the Baptizer’s disciples in the context of a controversy over ritual cleansing could reflect the Johannine community’s quarrel with the Baptizer’s disciples over the “purifying” merits of Christian and Johannine baptism. In that case the 7. Cf. Francis E. Williams, “The Fourth Gospel and Synoptic Tradition: Two Johannine Passages,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 86(1967), pp. 311-319; Walter Wink, John the Baptist in the New Testament (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968); Georg Richter, “Zur Frage von Tradition und Redaktion in Joh I, 19-34” in Studien zum Johannesevangelium, pp. 288-314.
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Jew in question would have challenged the Baptizer’s disciples to recognize the superiority of Jesus’ baptism on the evidence of its greater success. The fact that the Baptizer’s disciples complain to him that “all are going to Him [Jesus]” tends to support such an interpretation. The disciples’ complaint gives the Baptizer the opportunity to recapitulate and embellish his earlier testimony to Jesus. He reminds his disciples that he acts at God’s behest: “No one can receive anything except what is given one from heaven.” (Jn 3:27) The reminder reasserts that the Baptizer has one providential task to perform: namely, to bear witness to Jesus. The Baptizer’s disciples should, then, feel no surprise that Jesus is in fact supplanting the Baptizer by His greater success. The Baptizer also reminds his disciples that he has denied any messianic authority for himself. You yourselves bear me witness that I said, “I am not the Christ” but that I am sent before Him. He who has the bride is the bridegroom; the friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice; therefore, this joy of mine is now full. It is necessary that He increase and that I decrease. (Jn 3:27-30)
The Baptizer here alludes to his denial of his own messianic identity to the priests and Levites in the fourth gospel’s opening scene. In allowing that he precedes the messiah temporally, the Baptizer probably recalls his earlier citation of Is 40:3. In applying the Isaian text to himself, John avows his role as Jesus’ forerunner. The phrase “I am sent before Him” could also refer to the Baptizer’s subsequent statement that His ministry has no other purpose than to reveal Jesus to Israel. As we have seen, in the synoptic tradition, Jesus applies the metaphor of the bridegroom to Himself as an explanation of His disciples’ failure to imitate the penitential fasting of John’s and of the Pharisees’ disciples. (Mk 2:18-19; Mt 9:14-7; Lk 5:33-9) In both the synoptic and Johannine traditions. the image of the bridegroom points to Jesus as the divine spouse of Israel whose presence fills His disciples with spontaneous joy. The fourth evangelist places this metaphor on the lips of the Baptizer himself. The swelling number of Jesus’ disciples all relate to Him as their spouse, while Jesus relates to them as the divine, messianic bridegroom, the loving, forgiving husband of the new Israel. In the union between Jesus and His disciples, the Baptizer plays a subservient role, analogous to that of the best man.8 8. Cf. T. Francis Glassen, “John the Baptist in the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, 67(1955-1956), pp. 245-246; James Mulenberg, “Literary Form of the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 51(1932), pp. 40-53; M.-E. Boismard, O.P., “Aenon près de Salem,” Revue Biblique, 80(1973), pp. 218-229; Oscar Cullmann, “Der johannische Gebrauch doppeldeutiger Ausdrüke als Schlussel zum Verständnis
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The Baptizer’s final witness clarifies the significance of the first sign which Jesus gives His disciples when He transforms water into wine at Cana. On that occasion, the steward complains to the bridegroom about serving the best wine last. The complaint exemplifies Johannine irony: the steward has come to the wrong bridegroom. Jesus, who gives messianic wine in eschatological plentitude, stands revealed in this first sign as the real bridegroom, as the divine messianic bridegroom. (Jn 2:1-11) The Baptizer, as the bridegroom’s friend, rejoices to hear the bridegroom’s, i.e., Jesus’ voice. In what context does the Baptizer hear Jesus speak? The Baptizer himself leaves the context obscure; but the evangelist supplies it in the commentary which immediately follows the Baptizer’s testimony: He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth belongs to the earth, and of the earth he speaks; he who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what He has seen and heard, yet no one receives His testimony. He who receives His testimony sets his seal on this, that God is true. For He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for it is not by measure that He gives the Breath; the Father loves the Son, and has given all things into His hand; He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who does not obey the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God rests upon Him. (Jn 3:31-6)
Both the Prologue and the Baptizer have alluded to Jesus’ eternal existence with the Father. (Jn 1:1-2a, 30) Here the evangelist probably speaks in his own voice in order to link the Baptizer’s final witness to Jesus’ pre-existence with the Father prior to His incarnation. The evangelist contrasts Jesus, who comes from heaven (above), with one who, like John, has only an earthly origin. He also contrasts the testimony of Jesus, who speaks of heavenly things which He has seen and heard, with the speech of earthlings who, like John, know only the things of this world. To have an earthly origin does not have malicious connotations in the fourth gospel, although to have a worldly origin does, since Satan rules “the world” and sets it in opposition to Jesus. Earthly origin connotes only finitude and creaturely limitation. Only a person of divine, heavenly origin can speak divine, heavenly truths. One whose created, human experience remains earth-bound, can, like John, speak only of things which happen on earth. The evangelist also contrasts two ways of responding to the words of one who speaks with divine, heavenly authority: namely, with either belief or unbelief. Those who believe acknowledge and endorse (“set their des vierten Evangelium,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 4(1948), pp. 360-372; Walter Klaiber, “Der irdische und der himmlische Zeuge: Eine Auslegung von Joh 3.22-36,” New Testament Studies, 36(1990), pp. 205-233.
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seal on”) the truth of the heavenly person’s words. By disclosing transcendent, heavenly realities, those words claim the believer with God’s own authority. One must believe in Jesus as the Son of God sent from heaven both by the Father and with the Father’s authoritative endorsement. Faith in Jesus as the divinely sent Son of God leads to life. Believers recognize that Jesus speaks God’s own words in virtue of the fact that He both possesses and dispenses the Breath with eschatological plentitude. The subject of the phrase “it is not by measure that He gives the Breath” remains, however, ambiguous. It could refer either to Jesus or to the Father. Does the Father send the Breath to Jesus in eschatological plentitude, or does Jesus dispenses the Breath in eschatological plentitude? Given the quasi-poetic diction of the fourth gospel, the evangelist very probably intended both meanings. As we shall see, as life-giving water, the Breath of Jesus quenches human thirst for endless life. Unbelief does not lead to life. Instead, it subjects one to the wrathful judgment of God. Here the evangelist alludes to the theology of divine judgment initially developed in the conversation between Jesus and Nichodemus. In Johannine theology, God judges the world by sending His Son to save it. Those who believe in Him escape judgment, while those who fail to believe stand judged in virtue of their own malicious unbelief. (Jn 3:16-21) As in the synoptics, then, the Johannine Jesus surpasses the Baptizer because He baptizes with a sanctifying Breath, while John does not. Moreover, in the fourth gospel, Jesus dispenses the Breath with eschatological plentitude. Jesus also surpasses the Baptizer because, as the incarnate Son of God, He has existed eternally with God. The Baptizer has no such divine dignity or authority. As the prophetic forerunner of Jesus, the Baptizer plays the strictly minor role in salvation history of announcing Jesus’ arrival. Having done that, when confronted with Jesus’ testimony to the Father, John fades contentedly into historical obscurity.9 In defending His sabbath healings, the Johannine Jesus invokes the Baptizer’s testimony concerning Him. Jesus does so in the course of constructing a forensic argument based on Dt 19:15. The text in Deuteronomy forbids the condemnation of anyone on the basis of the testimony of only a single witness. Jesus then invokes John as someone who, together with the Father and with Moses, has testified to Him and to the truth of 9. Cf. NJBC, 61:54-55; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 151-163; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 209-212; Georg Richter, Studien zum Johannesevangelium, pp. 387-391; Eta Linnemann, “Jesus und der Tœufer,” in Festschrift für Ernst Fuchs, edited by G. Ebeling et al. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1973), pp. 219-236; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Die ‘situationsgelösten’ Redestücke in Joh. 3,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 49(1758), pp. 88-99; Barnabas Lindars, “Two Parables in John,” New Testament Studies, 16(1969-1970), pp. 318-329.
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His ministry (Jn 5:31-3) Even in invoking John’s testimony, however, the Jesus of the fourth gospel claims greater authority for His own testimony and for that of the Father. (Jn 5:34) Jesus describes John as “a lamp, set alight and burning brightly.” (Jn 5:35) The image of the lamp locates John in the realm of light, i.e., in the realm of those who believe. It also assimilates John to the prophet Elijah, whom the wisdom of Ben Sirah calls “a flame like a torch.” (Sir 48:1) Jesus, however, rebukes the ephemeral character of His adversaries’ response to John: “...and for a while you yourselves willingly exulted in his light.” (Jn 5:35) Jesus’ remark underscores the passing character of John’s ministry. It also deplores the superficial religious enthusiasm which it temporarily evoked. Given the divine, transcendent authority of His own and of the Father’s testimony, Jesus does not need the human, prophetic witness of the Baptizer; but He invokes John’s testimony for the sake of forensic argument.10 After the feast of Dedication, as Jesus’ ministry draws to a close, He returns to the place where He began His own ministry: namely, to the Jordan where John used to baptize. The return marks a Biblical inclusion and recalls John’s testimony to Jesus which opened the fourth gospel. While Jesus remains in the region, crowds flock to Him and give spontaneous testimony to the truth of John’s witness to Jesus: “John never performed a sign....but whatever John said about this man was true.” As we shall see, the signs which Jesus performs all find fulfillment in the paschal mystery. In them the Father testifies to Jesus’ divinity and pre-existence, which the paschal mystery discloses. As a mere earth-bound witness to Jesus, the Baptizer performs no such signs. (Jn 10:40-2) The curious crowds avow the truth of everything which John has said about Jesus even though the paschal mystery, which validates the Baptizer’s testimony and reveals the deep significance of Jesus’ miracles, still lies in the future.11 The Analogy of Christological Knowing The Beloved Disciple’s forensic theology of judgment motivates in significant ways his somewhat paradoxical portrait of the Baptizer. The evangelist assigns the Baptizer the relatively minor role of a subordinate witness to Jesus. Humanity’s historical attempt to test God by putting the incarnate Son of God on trial contextualizes theologically the Baptizer’s witness. 10. Cf. NJBC, 61:81-82; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 222-223; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 261-267; Urban von Whalde, “The Witnesses to Jesus in John 5:31-40 and Belief in the Fourth Gospel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 43(1981), pp. 385-404. 11. Cf. NJBC, 61:44; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 413-415; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 43-52; Ernst Bammel, “‘John Did No Miracle,’” in Miracles, edited by C.F.D. Moule (London: A.R. Moubray and Co., Ltd., 1965), pp. 181-202.
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I call the fourth evangelist’s portrait of John paradoxical because it downplays the central thrust of John’s historical ministry: namely, his administration of a baptism of repentance which prepared Israel to face an immanent divine judgment. The fourth gospel acknowledges John’s baptismal activity; but, without any other account of John than the Beloved Disciple’s, one might wonder why people called John “the Baptizer” rather than “the Witness.” Certainly, in the fourth gospel, witnessing to Jesus, rather than baptizing defines the supreme providential purpose of the Baptizer’s ministry. More than polemic confrontation with the Baptizer’s disciples motivates the Beloved Disciple’s redefinition of the Baptizer’s role in salvation history. History forced the Beloved Disciple to acknowledge a relationship between Jesus and the Baptizer; but the narrative centrality which the fourth evangelist assigns to the paschal mystery also forced him to re-conceive their relationship. The fourth evangelist made it clear that the prophetic witness of a human figure like John belongs to a different order of religious authority from the historical testimony of the Son of God incarnate and of the Father who sent Him. The Baptizer spoke for a short time with prophetic authority; Jesus, however, speaks with the authority of the eternal Word of God made flesh. The deviations of the Beloved Disciple’s portrait of the Baptizer from the kind of portrait which the synoptics paint all serve these complex doctrinal ends in the fourth evangelist’s narrative Christology. This section has presented the Beloved Disciple’s account of Jesus’ relationship to John the Baptizer. The section which follows examines Jesus’ relationship to the Father by examining the pertinent Johannine texts. As we shall see, Jesus’ relationship to the Father provides the fourth gospel with one of its most developed doctrinal themes. (II) Jesus’ relationship to the Father constitutes a major doctrinal focus of the fourth gospel. Hence, references to the Father abound there with far greater frequency than they do in the synoptic gospels. As a consequence, the Beloved Disciple elaborates a much more developed doctrine of the Father than do any of the synoptic evangelists. As in the synoptic gospels, the Greek word for “God”—Theos with a definite article—refers to the Father. Hence, I shall once again consider texts which use the term “ho Theos” together with texts which explicitly invoke the Father’s name. The Jesus of the synoptics proclaims the kingdom to crowds and catechizes His disciples in the moral demands of discipleship. The Jesus of the fourth gospel mentions the kingdom on only two occasions: once in secret and a second time during His trial. (Jn 3:3,5, 18:36) Instead, the
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Johannine Jesus during His mortal ministry with dogged determination proclaims His own divinity to unbelieving Jews. Moreover, in describing Jesus’ relationship to the Father, the fourth gospel returns repetitiously to the same themes: Jesus’ privileged knowledge of the Father, His eternal pre-existence with the Father, and His co-equality with the Father. Instead of simply repeating these themes, however, John’s Jesus develops them incrementally. In the struggle of light against darkness, the full implications of Jesus’ doctrinal claims emerge gradually, as the light grows brighter and brighter. Jesus and His Father As we have seen, the Prologue to John’s gospel refers more than once to the Father. The Word exists eternally with God and turned toward God. The Word possesses divinity along with the Father. (Jn 1:1) The Son of God dwells “in the bosom of the Father (eis ton kolpon tou patros).” The phrase suggests the intimacy of Their relationship. (Jn 1:18) It also foreshadows the intimacy with which the Beloved Disciple relates to Jesus. At the last supper, the Beloved Disciple will recline on Jesus’ bosom (En to kolpo tou Jesou). (Jn 13:23) As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple symbolizes every believer. The incarnate Word, as Son of God, reveals the Father’s glory, His divine reality in all its effulgent excellence. (Jn 1:14) The Word does this by sharing some measure of His Sonship with those who believe in Him: He empowers them to become children of God by the grace of rebirth. (Jn 1:12-3, 3:3-5) No mere creature has ever seen God face to face. Only the incarnate Son, the Word made flesh, has the power to reveal Him to humans by transforming them into God’s children. The intimacy of their friendship with Jesus causes them to enter into His own intimate relationship with the Father. (Jn 1:18) As we have also seen, only in the fourth gospel does the Baptizer point Jesus out as “the Lamb of God.” (Jn 1:29-36) When the image of the lamb designates Jesus as the suffering servant, then the phrase “of God” points to the Father as the object of Jesus’ service. When the image of the lamb designates Jesus as the paschal lamb, then the Father provides the lamb of sacrifice by sending Jesus. As a sacrificial lamb, Jesus gives His life in obedience to the Father. The fourth evangelist also calls Jesus “the Son of God.” The title has both messianic and incarnational connotations. (Jn 1:34) In the Johannine account of the call of the disciples, Nathanael calls Jesus “the Son of God” and “the King of Israel.” (Jn 1:49) On Nathanael’s lips both titles have messianic meaning. Jesus, however, immediately assures Nathanael that he has only begun to glimpse the truth about Jesus’ person.
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You believe, do you, just because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see far greater things than that....Truly, I tell you, you will see the sky opened and the angels of God ascending and descending on the Son of Man. (Jn 1:50-1)
As the glorified Son of Man, Jesus in the New Testament normally functions as the one who passes final judgment on a sinful world. Here, however, the Son of Man constitutes the privileged link between heaven and earth. Jesus transforms the Son of Man into Jacob’s ladder. In Jacob’s dream in Gen 28:10-9, the patriarch sees a ladder stretching from heaven to earth with angels ascending and descending on it. Angels function as God’s messengers and make the will of the invisible God known to humans. The apocalyptic rending of the heavens to which Jesus refers symbolizes a revelation of the end time. Soon Jesus, as the glorified Son of Man will mediate between God and those who see Him with the eyes of faith. On that day, Nathanael will realize that all communication between God and humanity passes through Jesus. The fact that Jesus describes the angels as belonging to God designates the Father as the one who rules over the angelic realm. From Him the angels descend to earth and to Him they return. When, therefore, the disciples finally see the full revelation of Jesus’ glory, they will acknowledge Him as their unique mediator with the Father.12 The final redactor of the fourth gospel places the cleansing of the temple toward the beginning of Jesus’ public career, not during his final Jerusalem ministry, as the synoptics do. The Beloved Disciple, however, attributes Jesus’ prophetic action to much the same motives as do the synoptics. Jesus rebukes the priests’ economic exploitation of temple worship as scandalous. As in the synoptics, Jesus all but claims proprietary rights over His Father’s house.13 (Jn 2:13-7) In the confrontation between Jesus and Nicodemus, the fourth evangelist reflects on the Father’s saving purpose in sending Jesus. Some exegetes opine that in the original version of the fourth gospel, this story followed that of the man born blind, in order to contrast Nicodemus’ timidity in avowing any relationship to Jesus with the healed blind man’s open confession of Him. Two arguments support this suggestion. Nicodemus’s reference to the “many signs” Jesus has done. (Jn 3:2) As the gospel now reads, Jesus has in fact performed only one sign, the first miracle at Cana. (Jn 2:1-12) If, however, the encounter with Nicodemus 12. Cf. NJBC, 61:27-39; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 73-96; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 157-168; William O. Walker, Jr., “John 1.43-51 and ‘The Son of Man’ in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 56(1994), pp. 31-42. 13. Cf. NJBC, 61:42-45; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 116-125; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 180-190.
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belongs after Tabernacles, then Jesus would indeed have performed “many signs.” The second argument points out that Jesus’ exchange with Nicodemus develops the baptismal imagery implicit in the story of the blind man’s cure.14 (Jn 9:6-7) At the beginning of the incident, Nicodemus recognizes that Jesus comes from God because of the many signs, or miracles, He has worked in Jerusalem during the first of three Passovers in John’s gospel. (Jn 3:1-21; 2:23-5) Jesus’ responds to Nicodemus’ incipient faith in His mission from God by assuring him that only rebirth through water and the Breath introduces one into the kingdom of God. (Jn 3:3-6) Jesus insists on the mysterious character of this second birth effected by God’s Breath. (Jn 3:7-8) Then, Jesus promises Nicodemus that He, Jesus, is speaking the truth, because He is only describing things which He has seen personally. In speaking of rebirth in water and the Breath, however, Jesus still speaks of an earth-bound event. If Jesus desired, however, He could speak of even more mysterious things, of the things which He has personally witnessed in heaven: Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet do not understand this? I assure you solemnly, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen; but you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you earthly things, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but He who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have life eternal. (Jn 3:9-14)
Here several points need noting. First, Jesus, in virtue of His divine pre-existence, claims the ability to speak of events inaccessible to anyone but Himself, heavenly events which He has personally witnessed. Indeed, throughout the discourse Jesus speaks from an exalted, atemporal standpoint, from the standpoint of one who perceives the paschal mystery in prophetic anticipation as though it has already occurred. Second, Jesus does not reveal to Nicodemus the heavenly events to which he has unique access. He describes only events which happen on 14. Although I personally deem fairly straightforward the sacramental connotations of the dialogue with Nicodemus, some exegetes question those connotations. Cf. Russell Fowler, “Born of Water and Spirit (Jn 3),” Expository Times, 82(1970-1971), p. 159; J. de la Potterie, “Naitre d’eau et naitre de l’Esprit: le texte baptismal de Jn 3,5,” Sciences Ecclesiastiques, 14(1962), pp. 417-443; D.G. Spriggs, “The Meaning of ‘Water’ in John 3.5,” Expository Times, 8(1969-1970), pp. 149-150; Hughes Smith, “houtos estin pas ho gegennômenos ek tou pneumatos,” Expository Times, 81(1969-1970), p. 189; R. Schnackenburg, “Die Sakramente im Johannesevangelium” in Sacra Pagina, edited by J. Coppens et al. (Paris: J. Gabalda, Gembloux, Duculot, 1959), 2:235-254; William C. Giese, “‘Unless One is Born Again’: The Use of a Heavenly Journey in John 3,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 107(1988), pp. 677-693.
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earth. He names two such events, both of them intimately related: namely, rebirth in water and the Holy Breath and His being lifted up on the cross into glory. Indeed, the fourth gospel ends with the crucified and glorified Jesus breathing the divine Breath into His disciples so that they can communicate Her to others. (Jn 7:39, 12:32-3, 20:22-3) Any baptism administered by Jesus or His disciples during His ministry would have resembled Johannine baptism more than Christian baptism. (Cf. Jn 3:22, 4:2) The Johannine Christian would, however, have equated rebirth through water and the Breath with Christian baptism. Third, Jesus describes His ascension into heaven, His return to the Father, as though it has already occurred. (Jn 3:13) Moreover, He uses the perfect tense which connotes past finality. By describing a future event with the perfect tense, the Beloved Disciple transforms it into a fait accompli. Moreover, Jesus’ ascent to the Father will manifests His descent from the Father.15 (Cf. Jn 16:9) Finally, Jesus does not really answer Nicodemus’s question about what makes rebirth in water and the Breath possible until He speaks of His own passion: of His being lifted up in the way in which Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness. (Num 21:4-9) All those stung by the saraph serpents recovered from the bite if they gazed in faith on the bronze serpent which Moses lifted on a pole. In an analogous way, the twice-born will gaze with faith on Jesus lifted up on the cross and into glory. As we shall see, in Johannine theology, Jesus’ lifting up on the cross itself begins the revelation of His divine glory. The Breath of God inspires faith in the glorified Jesus. The Breath, moreover, coincides with the living water which will slake human thirst for eternal life. Baptism will give mortals access to that living water and so will make rebirth to eternal life possible.16 (Jn 4:13-5, 7:37-9; 1 Jn 5:5-8) The passage which follows Jesus’ response to Nicodemus probably appends the evangelist’s own doctrinal reflections on Jesus’ words.17 15. Cf. Wayne E. Meeks, “The Man From Heaven in Johannine Sectarianism,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 91(1972), pp. 44-72; A. Vergote, “L’exaltation du Christ en croix selon le quatrième évangile,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 28(1952), pp. 5-23. 16. Cf. John Bligh, S.J., “Four Studies in St. John II: Nichodemus,” Heythrop Journal, 8(1967), pp. 40-51; Otto Böcker, “Wasser und Geist,” Verborum Veritas, edited by O. Böcker and K. Hänchen (Wuppertal: Theologischer Verlag Rolf Brockhaus, 1970), pp. 197-202; J. de la Potterie, “Jesus et Nicodemus: de necessitate generationis ex Spiritu,” Verbum Domini, 47(1969), pp. 141-150, 257-283; H. Hollis, “The Root of the Johannine Pun—hypsôthênai,” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp. 475-478; Ben Witherington III, “The Waters of Rebirth: John 3.5 and 1 John 5.6-8,” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp. 155-160. 17. Some see this passage as a continuation of Jesus’ own discourse; some, as the evangelist’s reflection on Jesus’ preceding words. If, on the one hand, the evangelist wrote these reflections as a personal meditation on the words of Jesus, the fact that he
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Part 1: The Transition to Doctrines: Johannine Narrative Christology For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten18 Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life. For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. One who believes in Him is not condemned; one who does not believe is condemned already because of not having believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. For every one who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest one’s deeds be exposed. But one who does what is true comes to the light, that it may be seen that one’s deeds have been wrought in God. (Jn 3:16-21)
This passage recapitulates much of the gospel’s prologue.19 It also enunciates clearly the Father’s intentions in sending the Son into a sinful world, subjected to the power of Satan. The Father desires only to save the world, not to condemn it. As we have already seen, this passage foreshadows in its own way the witness of the Baptizer, which follows immediately in the gospel text. (Jn 3:22-30) In Jesus, the divine bridegroom, God reveals that He relates to a sinful world only with a faithful love. That love seeks the world’s good and desires to gift with eternal life those who live in the world.20 God, then, judges the world by revealing to it the absolute and unconditioned character of divine love. Those who reject that revelation stand judged by their own loveless lack of faith. The struggle between light and darkness which the gospel narrative will describe in considerable detail embodies and begins God’s final judgment. In that struggle, God rejects and condemns no one. Instead, sinners condemn themselves by sinning against the light, by rejecting the light of divine love revealed in Jesus. Those who suffer divine judgment do so because in their blindness they cling to the sinful darkness and prefer it to the light. In the course of the judgment two things happen. First, those who love the darkness manifest more and more clearly the malice which motivates appends them without any transition dramatizes the fact that theological concern shapes the Beloved Disciple’s rhetoric. If, on the other hand, one takes the passage as Jesus’ own words, the fact that He speaks of Himself in the third person and discourses about the future conditions necessary for Christian baptism also re-enforces the passage’s atemporal, doctrinal viewpoint. The passage, then, offers evidence that the evangelist wants the reader to understand it as Jesus does: namely, from an atemporal, doctrinal standpoint. 18. Cf. R.L. Roberts, “The Rendering of ‘Only Begotten’ in John 3:16,” Restoration Quarterly, 16(1973), pp. 2-15. 19. Cf. Jerome Neyrey, “John III—A Debate over Johannine Epistemology,” Novum Testamentum, 23(1981), pp. 115-127. 20. Cf. Pablo A. Cavallero, “Alcance teologico de me + Indicativo: A Proposito de Jn 3, 18 y otros loci neotestamenticos,” Estudios Biblicos, 40(1991), pp. 483-495; J.-G. Gourbillon, O.P., “La parabole du serpent d’arain et la ‘lacune’ du Ch. III de l’évangile selon S. Jean,” Revue Biblique, 51(1942), pp. 213-226.
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their actions. Second, those who do believe in Jesus find themselves forced to confess Him publicly. Nicodemus illustrates the second process. He typifies the Jewish Christian who would prefer to confess Jesus secretly and thus avoid expulsion from the synagogue. Nicodemus, therefore, begins by seeking out Jesus secretly under the shelter of darkness. Later, however, Nicodemus defends Jesus publicly to the Sanhedrin (Jn 7:50-1); and, in the end, Nichodemus comes into the light. He declares his allegiance to Jesus publicly by joining Joseph of Aramathea in burying Him with the reverence due to a king. The mode of burial expresses Nicodemus’s public confession of faith in Jesus.21 (Jn 19:39) The evangelist underlines the importance of his theology of divine judgment by putting it later on the lips of Jesus Himself. (Jn 12:46-8) Moreover, the Beloved Disciple develops these same insights further in the theological reflections which he appends to the Baptizer’s final witness to Jesus. (Jn 3:31-6) In the course of these reflections, the evangelist makes the following points: 1) Jesus testifies to heavenly realities which in His pre-existence He has personally witnessed. 2) The Father has sent Him into the world to bear witness to these heavenly realities. 3) Some believe Jesus and some do not. 4) Those who believe endorse and confess the truth which Jesus reveals and embodies. In so doing, they confess the Father’s truthfulness as well, for the Father sends the Son to testify to divine realities. 5) Jesus’ possession and sending of the Breath in eschatological abundance manifests the truth which Jesus embodies and proclaims. 6) Out of love, the Father has given all things into the Son’s hand so that the Son may serve as the Father’s instrument of universal salvation and of universal judgment. 7) Those saved through faith in Jesus will enjoy eternal life. 8) Those who reject Jesus and His testimony call down upon themselves the judgment and wrath of God.22 In his account of the exchange between Jesus and the Samaritan woman, the evangelist develops further the theme of the messianic purification of temple worship which the cleansing of the temple introduces. When the Samaritan woman asks Jesus how He, a Jew, can ask her, a hated Samaritan and a woman, for a drink of water, Jesus replies: “If you had known the gift of God, and who it is who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” (Jn 21. Cf. Max Krenkel, “Joseph von Aramathäa und Nikodemus,” Zeitschrift für Wissenschaftlische Theologie, 8(1965), pp. 438-445. 22. Cf. NJBC, 61:46-55; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 128-149; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 194-207; L. John Topel, “A Note on the Methodology of Structural Analysis in Jn 2:23-3:21,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 33(1971), pp. 211-220; F. Roustang, S.J., “ L’entretien avec Nicodeme,” Nouvelle Revue Theologique, 78(1956), pp. 337- 338; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Samaritan Woman’s Purity (John 4:4-52),” Evangelical Quarterly, 60(1988), pp. 291-298.
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4:10) Some interpret the “gift of God” as Jesus Himself, others as the gift Jesus will give, i.e., the living water of the Breath. (Cf. Jn 7:39) Given the poetic character of John’s diction and the fact that the poetic mind prefers free association to clear logical distinctions, the evangelist probably intended both meanings. Later in the dialogue, when the woman asks Jesus whether one should worship God in the temple on Mount Gerizim or in the temple in Jerusalem, Jesus replies: Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming and is already here when the true worshippers will worship the Father in Breath and in truth (en pneumati kai aletheia). For the Father seeks such people to worship Him. God is Breath (pneuma ho Theos) and those who worship Him, must worship Him in Breath and truth (en pneumati kai aletheia). (Jn 4:21-4)
When Jesus gives the living water, the Breath who slakes human thirst for eternal life, then Breath-inspired worship, wherever it occurs, will replace the temple worship atop both Mount Gerizim and Mount Zion. Breath-inspired worship will acknowledge and disclose the truth incarnate in Jesus. Breath-inspired worship, however, terminates ultimately at the Father whom Jesus reveals. (Jn 8:45, 14:6, 17, 15:26, 18:37) The term “pneuma (Breath)” without the definite article designates the life which the Father possesses and shares with the Son and with the Holy Breath. The gift of “the Breath (to pneuma)”— or Breath with a definite article—communicates this divine life (“pneuma” without the article) to those who believe. Without the article, then, the term “pneuma” designates both the life shared by the members of the divine triad and the divine life which they communicate to those who believe. A share in God’s own life slakes human thirst for life without end. That thirst only the gift of living water, of the Breath Herself, can slake; for She communicates pneuma, a share in imperishable divine life. Authentic worship of the Father must, then, embody divine life just as it must acknowledge Jesus in faith as “truth,” as the unique and privileged revelation of the Father. Later, in the bread-of-life discourse, the evangelist will equate worship in Breath and truth with a eucharistic worship which acknowledges the real presence of Christ in the bread and wine, His eucharistic body and blood.23 (Jn 6:52-65) Jesus’ discourse after the cure of the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida further develops the theme of judgment. (Jn 5:24) In the process of re23. Cf. NJBC, 61:62; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 166-185; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 213-231; Günther Reim “Nordreich-Sudreich: Der vierte Evangelist als
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flecting on the judgmental character of Jesus’ sabbath healings, the fourth evangelist offers his own distinctive theological interpretation of their revelatory meaning: they fulfill the meaning of the sabbath by manifesting that the Father chooses to judge the world through the Son. Jesus in justifying His sabbath healings makes an astonishing claim: “My Father is working still, and I am working.” (Jn 5:17) As we have seen, in the synoptic tradition Jesus gives an ethical justification for His sabbath healings by appealing to the true purpose of the sabbath: the sabbath seeks in Jewish piety to encourage not only worship of God but the cultivation of virtue. Hence, good deeds done on the sabbath do not violate the sabbath rest and do not count as “work.” John’s Jesus, by contrast, does not deny that He is working on the sabbath by performing cures. Instead, He claims to imitate the Father, who also works on the sabbath. In other words, John’s Jesus gives a doctrinal rather than an ethical justification for His sabbath miracles. John’s Jesus is appealing to traditional rabbinic teaching. The rabbis taught that, when God rested from creating the world on the seventh day, God did not cease to act, even though God did terminate His active creation of the world. On the sabbath, the rabbis taught, God retains three keys which He never surrenders: the key of rain, the key of birth, and the key of resurrection. Each “key” in its own way imparts life. By imparting or withholding the gift of unending, risen life, God judges the world. Hence, by constituting Jesus the source of risen life, the Father reveals that He judges the world through the Son whom He has sent into the world in order to save it. In claiming that His sabbath healings imitate God’s action of the sabbath, Jesus portrays them as foreshadowing the gift of risen life which He will impart when He breathes the divine Breath into the disciples. In claiming to have the same right as the Father to work on the sabbath, Jesus, as the evangelist notes, implicitly asserts His equality with God the Father.24 (Jn 5:18-9) Vertreter Christlicher Nordreichstheologie,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 36(1992), pp. 235-240; Tod D. Swanson, “To Prepare a Place: Johannine Christianity and the Collapse of Ethnic Territory,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 62(1994), pp. 241-263; R. Koester, “The Savior of the World (John 4:42),” Journal of Biblical Literature, 109(1990), pp. 665-680; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Die ‘Anbetung in Geist and Warheit’ (Joh 4,23) im Lichte von Quran Texte,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 3(1959), pp. 88-94; William P. Hatch, “An Allusion to the Destruction of Jerusalem in the Fourth Gospel,” Expositor, 17(1919), pp. 194-198; A. F. Wedel, “John 4:5-26(5-42),” Interpretation, 31(1977), pp. 406-412; R. Loewe, “‘Salvation’ is Not of the Jews,” Journal of Theological Studies, 32(1981), pp. 341-368; M. Taylor, Jesus at the Well: John IV, 1-42 (New York, NY: A.D.F. Randolph & Co., 1984); Winsome Munro, “The Pharisee and the Samaritan in John: Polar or Parallel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 57(1995), pp. 710-728. 24. Cf. Henry van den Bussche, “Guérison d’un paralytique à Jerusalem le jour de sabbat: Jean 5, 1-18,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 61(1965), pp. 18-28.
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Jesus’ discourse divides into two parts. Each in its own way develops the theme of judgment and clarifies Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Moreover, the first part of the discourse subdivides into two sections. In the first section of the first part of the discourse, Jesus asserts that in claiming the right to imitate the Father by working on the sabbath, He in no way seeks to set Himself either over the Father or in opposition to the Father. As Son, Jesus does not act “on His own accord (eph heautou).” The Johannine Jesus has already declared that His “food is to do the will of the one who sent me, and to accomplish His work.” (Jn 4:34) Here, acting at the Father’s behest implies two things: 1) the Son never deviates from the Father’s own activity but faithfully imitates whatever He sees the Father doing; and 2) the Father out of love teaches the Son to do the things He does by setting up the Son as an example for imitation. Jesus, moreover, warns His adversaries that the Father intends to show the Son how to do even greater works than curing a paralytic on the sabbath. (Jn 5:19-30) The rest of the discourse reflects on the character of those works. Initially, however, the Son’s obedient imitation of the Father establishes an operational identity between the two. As the gospel unfolds, Jesus will make it clear that this obediential, operational identity flows from a deeper kind of unity: “The Father and I are one.”25 (Jn 10:30) Jesus then names two works which the Father will give Him to perform. Both qualify as greater than the cure He has just effected. 1) The Father, who has the power to raise from the dead and give life, will impart the same power to the Son. (Jn 5:21) Later in John’s gospel, Jesus’ raising of Lazarus will reveal Him in a preliminary way as “the resurrection and the life.” (Jn 9:25-6) Jesus’ full revelation as resurrection and life begins, of course, only with the paschal mystery. 2) The Father will entrust to the Son the task of judgment. Moreover, the Father will do this in order that humans may learn to show to the Son the same reverence which they show the Father. (Jn 5:22-3) At this point, the evangelist reminds the reader of the paradoxical way in which the Father has chosen to judge the world: namely, by sending the Son, not to condemn the world but to save it. (Jn 3:17; cf. 12:47) As a consequence, anyone who accepts Jesus’ testimony not only honors and believes in the Father who sent Him but will also escape judgment by accepting the salvation, the eternal life, which Jesus has come to impart. Paradoxically, then, the Father’s very sending of the Son into the world in order to save it also judges the world, because those who do not believe bring down God’s wrath on themselves. Jesus, then, would seem to function as judge differently for the damned and for the saved. He “judges” 25. Cf. Eduard Lohse, Die Einheit des neuen Testaments (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), pp. 62-72; Herold Weiss, “The Sabbath in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 110(1991), pp. 311-321.
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the saved by raising them to eternal life. He judges the unbeliever by provoking the choice for unbelief instead of the obedience of faith. That choice effects a judgment of perdition which the Father acting through the Son will ratify on the last day. (Jn 5:21-4; cf. 9:39) The evangelist describes the manner in which final judgment will occur in the second section of the first part of this discourse: I solemnly assure you, the hour is coming, and now is, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. For as the Father has life in Himself, so He has granted the Son also to have life in Himself, and has given Him authority to execute judgment, because He is the Son of man. Do not marvel at this; for the hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear His voice and come forth, those who have done good, to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil, to the resurrection of judgment. (Jn 5:25-29)
The fourth gospel espouses a realized eschatology analogous to that presented in the synoptics. Already in the ministry of Jesus, the final judgment is taking place. Those who hear Him in faith receive the kind of life which will culminate in resurrection, while those who reject Him place themselves under the judgment of ultimate divine rejection. The life which the Son in His role as Son of Man imparts to the dead comes to Him from the Father. Both Father and Son possess eternal life in themselves, i.e., as a personal prerogative. The life in question consists of the divine “breath (pneuma without the article)” which the Holy Breath, whom Father and Son will together send, will impart to those who believe. (Jn 3:6, 14:15-24, 16:7) The Father, then, establishes the Son as judge by empowering Him to impart divine life to those who believe in Him and to withhold it from those who reject Him. The full extent of this judicial authority will appear at the final resurrection when the dead will rise at Jesus’ voice. The good will rise as a consequence of the saving gift of life He imparts to them. The evil will rise to judgment.26 The first section of the discourse closes with a Biblical inclusion, as Jesus repeats the same idea which opened the discourse: namely, Jesus protests again that He does nothing of Himself but only what He sees the Father doing. By the end of the first section of the discourse, however, 26. Cf. Joachim Wanke, “Die Zukunft des Glaubenden: Theologische Erwägungen zur Johannischen Eschatologie,” Theologie und Glaube, 71(1981), pp. 129-139; Ray Summers, “The Johannine View of Future Life,” Review and Expositor, 58(1961), pp. 331-347; Gustav Stählin, “Zum Problem der johanneischen Eschatologie,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 33(1934), pp. 225-259; C.F.D. Moule, “A Neglected Factor in the Interpretation of Johannine Eschatology” in Studies in John (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970), pp. 155-160; M.-E. Boismard, O.P., “Evolution du thème eschatologique dans les traditions johanniques,” Revue Biblique, 68(1961), pp. 507-524.
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Jesus has made it clear that His obedient imitation of the Father includes not only His sabbath cures but also the greater works of raising the dead and judging the world. As the fourth gospel unfolds, the preceding theological themes surface again and again in Jesus’ teachings concerning His relationship to the Father. The Johannine Jesus never tires of repeating that His obediential relationship to the Father reveals His real identity with the Father and empowers Him, in the Father’s name, to judge the world and raise the dead, even though in His first coming—i.e., in His incarnation—He comes to save, not to judge, the world. (Cf. Jn 6:36-40; 7:16-7; 8:26, 28-9, 48-51, 55-58; 13:27-28; 12:44-50) The second section of Jesus’ discourse on His sabbath healing also divides into two parts. In the first subsection, Jesus constructs a forensic argument to justify the truth of what He has just said. In the second subsection, Jesus attacks the persistent unbelief of His adversaries by appealing to three witnesses whose testimony by Mosaic law establishes juridically the truth of His testimony: John the Baptizer, the Father, and Moses. The second part of the discourse relates to the first by naming the witnesses who will testify against unbelievers on the last day just as they have testified on Jesus’ behalf during His ministry. Jesus concedes that if He alone were to make the claims He has just made, His adversaries could legitimately question the truth of what He says. Citing Dt 19:15, however, Jesus argues forensically that the concordant testimony of three witnesses suffices to establish its truth. Jesus then names the three other witnesses who testify to Him. Jesus first appeals to the witness of John the Baptizer and then to the Father’s witness. The Father witnesses to Jesus by empowering the signs He does. The fact that Jesus’ enemies fail to credit the Father’s testimony manifests that they have neither heard the Father’s voice nor seen what He looks like; nor do they possess His word in their hearts. Again the book of Deuteronomy provides the background for Jesus’ words. (Dt 4:12-15) Deuteronomy states that in the revelation at Sinai the people heard God’s voice even though they did not see Him. Jesus, however, charges that His adversaries neither hear nor see God, because they give no sign of cherishing His word in their hearts. If they had heard God speaking, they would now acknowledge that Jesus speaks in the Father’s name; and they would put faith in both Jesus and His word. (Jn 5:31-8) Finally, Jesus explicitly cites the word of the Scriptures as the third witness which testifies in His behalf. The Jews cling to the Scriptures, especially to the Mosaic Law, as the life-giving word of God; but, if they really believed the testimony of the Torah, they would recognize that it gives life by pointing to Jesus as the source of that life. The fact that “the
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Jews” refuse to come to Him in faith to receive the gift of life shows that they do not in fact believe the testimony of the Scriptures. (Jn 5:39-40) The second part of the second section of the discourse expands the charge against Jesus’ enemies. They lack not only faith but love in their hearts. The love in question has two possible meanings, probably both intended. Jesus’ enemies neither imitate God’s love for humans, nor do they love God in His own right. If they did love God, they would recognize that Jesus shares in the very glory of the Father. Ironically, they accept readily enough the teachings of famous rabbis whom mere humans praise; but they ignore the divine glory present in Jesus. They believe in teachers who speak only in their own names and with human authority; but they refuse to heed Jesus who speaks in the Father’s name and with divine authority. Jesus, however, does not seek their approbation for Himself but for the Father in whose name He speaks. The discourse ends with the warning that the Father will have no need to accuse His unbelieving adversaries of their lack of faith and love. Moses, the lawgiver, in whom they place their religious hopes, will himself repudiate them and accuse them before God. Moses, who testifies to Jesus in the Scriptures, will testify at the last judgment that Jesus’ enemies never believed in the things which he, Moses, wrote, because in his writings Moses foretold the coming of Jesus. When, however, Jesus came, His fellow countrymen failed to believe Him. This condemnation of “the Jews” goes beyond anything one finds in the synoptic tradition. As we shall see, however, the term “the Jews” takes on negative connotations in John only when it connotes unbelief. In the end, unbelief, not Jewishness, makes one an adversary of God.27 The bread-of-life discourse continues the diatribe against “the Jews’” unbelief; but the bread-of-life discourse focuses on their refusal to accept the life-giving bread of wisdom Jesus offers them. They also refuse to acknowledge the eucharist as His body and blood. Moreover, as the discourse develops, it becomes clear that “the Jews” on this occasion include also some of Jesus’ unbelieving disciples.
27. Cf. NJBC, 61:72-84; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 205-230; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 239-267; John Bligh, S.J., “Jesus in Jerusalem,” Heythrop Journal, 4(1963), pp. 115-134. In Jn 7:22-23 the evangelist again returns to Jesus’ sabbath healing. In the arguments which heat up during the feast of Tabernacles, Jesus justifies His right to heal on the sabbath by appealing to the fact that circumcision could occur on the sabbath. Circumcision in Jewish tradition makes the male child perfect and whole by conforming him to Abraham, whom God urged to perfection. Despite circumcision, the crippled man whom Jesus healed lacked wholeness. Jesus argues that in healing him, He, Jesus, made the cripple whole in a way which parallels but even goes beyond circumcision. See: J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Circumcision and Perfection: A Johannine Equation (Jn 7:22-23),” Evangelical Quarterly, 63(1991), pp. 211-224.
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The discourse opens with a dialogue between Jesus and the crowds whom He fed in the desert. They had responded inappropriately to the miracle by seeking to make Jesus king. When they seek Jesus out after the miracle, He chides them once again for their unbelief: I solemnly assure you, you seek me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you; for on Him God the Father has set His seal. (Jn 6:26-27)
Jesus’ sealing by the Father has received three different interpretations. Some see it as an act of divine consecration, perhaps for sacrifice. Other’s see the seal as a reference to the fact that Jesus images the Father: a seal impresses upon wax the image which it bears. A seal on a letter or document, however, also certifies the origin or source of the document, its official sender. Jesus’ sealing by the Father, in this sense, probably refers to the Father’s authentication of Jesus’ ministry by testifying in the signs which Jesus works. Once again, the evangelist might well have intended all three meanings; but the crowd’s subsequent request that Jesus work a sign to move them to faith favors the third interpretation. (Jn 6:30-1) So does Jesus’ insistence that the crowds recognize Him as sent by God. (Jn 6:29) Moreover, since Jesus’ sealing by the Father marks Him out as the source of eternal life, Jesus’ sealing by the Father would also seem to include the fact that He possesses and sends the Breath of God in eschatological abundance.28 (Jn 1:33, 3:34-35) When the crowd asks Jesus what “works of God” they should do as a sign of their faith, Jesus replies: “This is the work of God: that you believe in Him whom He has sent.” (Jn 6:29) In the dispute between Pauline and Jewish Christians on the relationship between faith and works, John the evangelist claims the middle ground. The act of faith itself constitutes a work pleasing to God. Like both Paul and James, the Beloved Disciple sees faith as inherently practical. Hence, Johannine faith and Christological knowing coincide, since practical faith assimilates one to Jesus. The Beloved Disciple, however, develops the synoptic understanding of Christological knowing in significant ways. The synoptics, as we have seen, tend to focus on the moral consequences of commitment in faith to Jesus Christ, while assuming a creedal and liturgical context for Christian moral striving. Heterodoxy in the Johannine community, however, forced the Beloved Dis28. Cf. A. Feuillet, “Les thèmes bibliques majeurs du discours sur le pain de vie (Jn 6),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 82(1960), pp. 803-822; B.J. Mahna, The Palestinian Manna Tradition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968).
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ciple to realize that doctrinal beliefs and beliefs about the meaning of Christian worship give definitive shape to religious practice. As a consequence, in the Johannine tradition, the deed of faith, what I have called Christological knowing, encompasses not just Christian moral striving but doctrinal assent as well. In Johannine theology, Christian orthopraxis expands to include Christian orthodoxy. The deed of faith includes both moral assimilation to Jesus and commitment to sound doctrinal interpretations of both Jesus’ person and of the eucharistic worship which nourishes Christian faith. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple insists on interpreting both in thoroughly incarnational terms.29 The crowds react to this challenge with increasing hostility. They demand that Jesus perform some sign which will justify their putting faith in Him. They remind Jesus of the rabbinic belief that at the return of the messiah, the manna, the heaven-sent bread which sustained the Israelites in their desert wanderings and which ceased as soon as the Hebrews had eaten the fruits of the promised land, would once again fall from heaven. (Cf. Ex 16:4-36; Jos 5:12-13) In effect, then, the crowds are saying that, if Jesus can make manna fall from the sky, they will consider believing in His messianic identity. By making this demand, the crowds sin by “testing God,” by setting the conditions which God must meet before they will believe.30 (Jn 6:30-1) Jesus replies by questioning the presupposition which underlies the crowd’s request. In expecting that the messiah will cause bread to rain from heaven, they misinterpret the Scripture. The messiah will not make bread rain from heaven any more than Moses did. Only the Father gives the true bread from heaven; and it gives life to the world. (Jn 6:32-3) When the crowds ask Jesus for the gift of this life-giving bread, He replies: I am the bread of life; the one who comes to Me shall not hunger, and the one who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I have said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me; and the one who comes to me I will not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of everything which He has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that every one who sees the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day. (Jn 6:35-40)
29. Cf. Roland Bergmeier, “Glaube und Werk: die ‘Werke Gottes’ in Damaskusschrift II, 14-15 und Johannes 6, 28-29,” Revue de Qumran, 6(1967-1969), pp. 251-260. 30. Cf. M.J.J. Menken, “The Provenance and Meaning of the Old Testament Quotation in John 6:31,” Novum Testamentum, 30(1988), pp. 39-56.
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The bread of life gives life. In claiming to embody that bread and to have the power to slake every human thirst, Jesus in His own way echoes the words of divine Wisdom in the book of Ben Sirah. (Si 24:21) His words also recall Is 49:10, which predicts that in the second exodus, in the return from exile in Babylon, the people of God will know neither hunger or thirst. Jesus, then, is claiming to embody at one and the same time both the bread of divine wisdom and the way-bread of a new exodus. In the bread-of-life discourse, Jesus’ obedience to the Father expands to include His willingness to welcome all those whom the Father gives Him. In portraying the Father as the ultimate efficacious source of faith in Jesus, the fourth evangelist explains what it means for the Father to dispense bread from heaven: through the enlightenment of faith the Father teaches believers to feed on Jesus as the bread of wisdom. When the Jews murmur against Jesus in unbelief, He rebukes them and repeats what He has just said: “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him. And I shall raise him up on the last day.” (Jn 6:44) Jesus then goes on to contrast knowledge of the Father through faith with His own knowledge of the Father which results from face-to-face vision: It is written in the prophets, “And they shall be taught of God.” Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me. Not that anyone has seen the Father except Him who is from God; He has seen the Father. I solemnly assure you, the one who believes in Me has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the desert and died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that one may eat it and not die. (Jn 6:41-9)
Jesus interprets the Father’s action in leading believers to consent to Him in faith as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Deutero-Isaiah that, in the new Jerusalem, God would instruct the people personally. (Is 54:13) Then Jesus immediately contrasts the knowledge of God which faith yields with His own immediate and privileged knowledge of the Father. The Father functions as the ultimate source of Jesus’ mission to save the world. Jesus’ mission from the Father connotes His pre-existence with the Father. The Son enjoys privileged, immediate knowledge of the Father because prior to His incarnation He lived in the immediate presence of the Father.31 Jesus then returns to the theme of manna: to feed on Him in faith as the bread of wisdom provides a messianic bread far superior to the kind of manna which the crowds had demanded, more than a mere renewal of 31. Cf. A. Feuillet, “Les thèmes bibliques majeurs du discours sur le pain de vie,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 82(1960), pp. 918-939.
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the ancient manna. The ancient manna had no power to impart immortality. Those who feed on Jesus in faith will never die because the Father has appointed Him as the unique channel of imperishable, risen life. This passage provides a rhetorical transition to the second, eucharistic section of the Bread-of-life discourse. In the first part of the discourse, to eat the bread of wisdom means to acknowledge Jesus’ mission from the Father and eternal co-existence with Him. In the second part of the discourse, the bread of wisdom transforms itself into the eucharistic bread. In the second part of the discourse, eating the bread of wisdom means to “eat the flesh of the Son of Man and to drink His blood.” Eucharistic faith defines the condition for final resurrection, and the acceptance of Jesus as the personal incarnation of divine Wisdom defines the content of eucharistic faith. In other words, a thoroughly incarnational faith in Jesus also affirms His real eucharistic presence. (Jn 6:52-4) Jesus concludes: The one who eats My flesh and drinks My blood abides in Me and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so the one who eats Me will live because of Me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; the one who eats this bread will live for ever. (Jn 6:56-58)
The eucharist imparts unending life because it causes the mutual indwelling of Jesus and those who feed upon Him eucharistically in faith. That indwelling creates a bond between Jesus and those who feed on Him, a bond which imitates the bond between Jesus and the Father. Jesus’ very mission into the world by the Father reveals that He draws His life from the Father. In an analogous way those who feed on Him eucharistically in faith will draw their life from Him. In the Bread-of-life discourse, unending life means transforming, risen life. (Jn 6:44) Those, then, who live with the life which eucharistic communion with Jesus imparts will live forever because they will one day share in His resurrection. Eucharistic communion imparts, then, a down-payment on resurrection. Finally, verse 65 makes it clear that, just as the Father teaches people to feed on Jesus as the Bread of wisdom, so too the Father functions as the ultimate source of eucharistic faith in Jesus.32 (Jn 6:65) 32. Cf. NJBC, 61:85-103; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 231-304; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 269-308; Peder Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965); A. Feuillet, “Les thèmes bibliques majeurs du discours sur le pain de vie (Jn 6),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 82(1960), pp. 1039-1062; Edward Kilmartin, S.J., “Liturgical Influence in John 6,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 22(1960), pp. 183-191; Xavier Leon-Dufour, S.J., “Le mystère du pain de vie,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 46(1958), pp. 481-523; Ulrich Wilckens, “Der eucharistische Abschnitt der Johanneischen Rede von Lebensbrot (Joh 6:51-58)” in Neues Testament und Kirche,
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In the fourth gospel, during the feasts of Tabernacles and Dedication, the struggle between the light and the darkness intensifies. Tabernacles celebrated the harvest; Dedication recalled the reconsecration of the temple by Judas Maccabaeus. The Beloved Disciple situates the intensified struggle between light an darkness during Tabernacles because its ceremonials included, among other things, the illumination of the streets of Jerusalem at night with flaming torches. As they close in combat, the forces of light and the forces of darkness reveal their true identities with greater clarity. Early in the embittered debates which mark Tabernacles, Jesus claims that His teaching comes to Him directly from the Father. When Jesus’ adversaries marvel at His learning even though He has never had the benefit of formal rabbinic training, Jesus replies: My teaching is not Mine, but His who sent Me; if any one’s will is to do His will, he shall know whether the teaching is from God or whether I am speaking on My own authority. One who speaks on His own authority seeks his own glory; but one who seeks the glory of him who sent him is true, and in him there is no falsehood. Did not Moses give you the Law? Yet none of you keeps the Law. Why do you seek to kill Me? (Jn 7:16-19)
Once again we find ourselves on familiar ground (Cf Jn 5:41-47). Jesus derives His teaching, not from rabbis, but directly from the Father who sent Him. In teaching as He does, Jesus obeys the Father. Those then who desire to obey the Father will spontaneously recognize that Jesus’ teaching comes from God. Far from obeying the Law of God, however, Jesus’ enemies betray their malice of will by plotting His murder. The evangelist strikes a new note, however, when he observes that Jesus does not seek praise, approval, or adulation for Himself but only for the Father whose message He brings. Jesus’ self-effacement in seeking the Father’s glory at the risk of His own life manifests that in claiming divine Sonship He does not teach out of motives of selfish self-glorification. On the contrary, in bearing witness to the Father Jesus risks violent death at the hands of His enemies. That Jesus would continue to speak at such personal risk manifests the selflessness with which He teaches and invites edited by Joachim Glinka (Herder: Freiburg, 1974), pp. 220-248; Raymond E. Brown, S.S., “The Eucharist and Baptism in John” in New Testament Essays (Milwaukee, WI: Bruce, 1965), pp. 77-95; G.H.C. Macgregor, “The Eucharist in the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 111-119; Oscar S. Brooks, “The Johannine Eucharist: Another Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 82(1963), pp. 293-300; J.M. Thompson, “The Interpretation of John VI,” The Expositor, 11(1916), pp. 337- 348; Barnabas Lindars, S.S.F., “Word and Sacrament in the Fourth Gospel,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 29(1976), 49-63; John M. Perry, “The Evolution of the Johannine Eucharist,” New Testament Studies, 39(1993), pp. 22-35; Eduard Schweizer, “Joh 6, 51c-58—vom Evangelisten übernommene Tradition?” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 82(1991), p. 274.
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faith in those to whom He preaches. By the same token, Jesus’ actual death embodies the ultimate certification of the selfless truth with which He speaks. Jesus’ teachings at Tabernacles repeat themes from the discourse following the cure of the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida. Now, however, they begin to reveal Jesus as the light of the world by developing and deepening earlier themes. The light is growing. As the light shines more brightly, the darkness simultaneously intensifies, exposed in all of its destructive malice by the light. The enemies of Jesus begin to betray their violence of heart, even though they hypocritically deny it. Despite lip service to Moses and the Law, their sinful disobedience to God makes them lust for Jesus’ blood. Their malice contrasts with the selflessness with which Jesus obediently proclaims His relationship to the Father. While Jesus’ enemies plot His death, He willingly puts His life on the line for the sake of the Father and in order to reveal the Father’s glory. As the struggle between light and darkness intensifies, the two begin to separate.33 As in the discourse after His sabbath healing, Jesus, during the feast of Tabernacles, again appeals to the Father’s testimony: Even if I do bear witness to Myself, my testimony is true, for I know where I have come from and to where I am going, but you do not know where I come from or to where I am going. You judge according to the flesh, I judge no one. Yet even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for it is not I alone who judge, but I and He who sent me. In your Law it is written that the testimony of two men is true; I bear witness to Myself, and the Father who sent Me bears witness to Me. (Jn 8:14-17)
The passage repeats some familiar themes: 1) The truth of Jesus’ testimony roots itself ultimately in His pre-existence with the Father from whom He comes and to whom He returns. 2) His adversaries fail to receive His testimony about His relationship to the Father because they judge according to the flesh, by weak and fallible human standards. 3) Jesus does not come to pass judgment on anyone. As we have seen, He seeks instead to save the world. The same passage also says something new: even were Jesus to judge the world, He would judge truly because the Father ratifies His judgment on human sinfulness.34 As the struggle between light and darkness intensifies, the adversaries of Jesus betray the fact that they do not know the Father. They do so by asking Jesus, “Where is your Father?” Their question only dramatizes the truth of what Jesus has just said, namely, that His adversaries have no clue 33. Cf. Johannes Mehlmann, O.S.B., “Propheta a Moyse promissus in Jo 7, 52 citatus,” Verbum Domini, 44(1966), pp. 79-88. 34. Cf. Jean Pierre Charlier, O.P., “L’exegèse johannique d’un précepte légal, Jean VIII, 17,” Revue Biblique, 67(1960), pp. 503-515.
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about where He comes from or where He is going. If they did, they would know the Father who sends Jesus and recognize where to find the Father. With the intensified struggle, the Light too shines more brightly. Jesus begins His final testimony on the feast of Tabernacles by declaring: “I am the light of the world. No follower of mine shall ever walk in darkness; no, he will possess the light of life.” (Jn 8:12) This declaration clearly alludes to the prologue of the gospel and begins in earnest to describe how the light succeeds in shining despite darkness’s attempt to quench it. (Jn 1:4-5) Moreover, as the dispute with the unbelieving “Jews” unfolds, Jesus makes it clear that those who walk in the light confess His divinity. Jesus has already alluded once to His return to the Father. He does so a second time by saying: “I am going away and you will look for Me; but you will die in your sin. Where I am going, you cannot come.” (Jn 8:21) Hypocritically, His adversaries suggest that Jesus must be contemplating suicide to talk about “going away.” (Jn 8:22) In fact, they themselves desire to kill Him. Jesus, for His part, is alluding to His approaching martyrdom. Deceit and incomprehension force Jesus to clarify the nature of His relationship to the Father: You belong to what is below, I belong to what is above, you belong to this world—this world to which I do not belong. That is why I have told you that you would die in your sins. Unless you believe that I AM, you will surely die in your sins. (Jn 8:23-24)
As we have seen, in their account of Jesus’ walking on the water after the second multiplication of loaves, both Mark and Matthew have Jesus invoke the divine name—“I AM (ego eimi)”—as a narrative strategy for transforming the miracle into a theophany which manifests His divinity. (Mk 6:30; Mt 14:27) The fourth evangelist uses the same event as one of the “signs” which precede the bread-of-life discourse. (Jn 6:19) In the fourth gospel, Jesus has, then, already manifested His divinity to His disciples. Now as the struggle between light and dark intensifies, He proclaims it boldly to the His adversaries. Jesus, however, expects no response of faith to this proclamation. (Cf. Jn 2:23-25) He recognizes the gulf which separates Him from unbelievers. They belong not simply to the realm of flesh, which the incarnate Son of God has freely entered (Jn 1:14), but also to “the world,” to the realm dominated and ruled by Satan. Jesus’ adversaries have already manifested their Satanic affiliations by their murderous intent, by their unbelief, and by their hypocritical lack of repentance. Jesus, for His part, even though He comes to save the world, distances Himself utterly from the world in its sinfulness. At the same time, He names the condition which His Adversaries must meet if they hope to pass from the realm of darkness to the realm of light: they must confess His divinity.
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The warning, however, meets only with incomprehension. Jesus’ hostile interlocutors ask Jesus, “Who, then, are you?” (Jn 8:25) Jesus replies: Even what I told you from the beginning. I have many things to say about you and condemn. But the one who sent me is true; and I speak to the world the things which I have heard from Him. (Jn 8:26)
By their stubborn unbelief Jesus’ adversaries stand under the divine judgment for their refusal to see the light shining in their midst. Jesus could, then, pass judgment on them but refrains, since the Father has sent Him to save rather than to condemn. He keeps repeating His message obediently to the world, despite its sinfulness and unbelief. The crowds, however, persist in missing Jesus’ point.They do not even understand that, when Jesus speaks of “the one who sent me,” He is actually talking about the Father. The obtuseness of the crowds manifests that they ignore utterly Jesus’ heavenly origin. Jesus, realizing their lack of faith, then says: When you will have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will realize that I AM and that I do nothing on My own initiative. No, I say only those things which the Father taught Me. And the One who sent Me is with Me. He has not left me alone, since I always do what pleases Him. (Jn 8:28-29)
In the final redaction of the fourth gospel, Jesus, in His conversation with Nichodemus, has already alluded to His being “lifted up.”35 (Jn 3:14-5) On that occasion, Jesus had indicated its purpose: His elevation in suffering and in glory would happen so that people could look to Him with the eyes of faith and believe. Jesus now supplies the content of that saving faith: it must acknowledge Jesus’ divinity, His identity with the Father whose divine name He shares. Jesus also asserts here with greater clarity than heretofore that his obediential relationship to the Father to which He has repeatedly alluded actually manifests His divinity, His divine identity with the Father.36 This time Jesus’ words seem to evoke a measure of consent from His hearers. It will, however, soon become clear that the “believers” also refuse to confess Jesus’ divinity. These half-believing disciples probably envisage a faction among the evangelist’s adversaries who acknowledged Jesus as a teacher or even as a prophetic teacher but drew the line at confessing His 35. In the original gospel, the Nichodemus incident probably followed the debates at Tabernacles. 36. Cf. Geraldo Morujao, “A Unidade de Jesús com o pai em Jo 10,30,”Estudios Biblicos, 47(1989), pp. 47-64; Johannes Reidl, “Wehn ihr den Menschensohn erhoht habt, werdet ihr erkennen (Joh 8, 28)” in Jesus und der Menschensohn (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), pp. 355-370.
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divinity. Their lack of faith joins them to other unbelievers who reject Jesus’ divinity. The separation of the light from the darkness now deepens the division within the Johannine community which the bread-of-life discourse began. Jesus begins to instruct those who profess to believe in Him by setting down the conditions for authentic discipleship: If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and truth will set you free. (Jn 8:31-2)
Those who abide in Jesus not only believe in Him but obey His commandments as well. As we shall see, in the last discourse, those who abide in Jesus bear abundant fruit. They draw their life from Him as branches from the vine. They escape judgment. They live in the assurance that the Father will hear and answer their prayers. (Cf. Jn 15:1-8) The “believing” Jews, however, immediately make it clear that they have no intention of abiding in Jesus. They do so by taking immediate issue with what He has just said. They protest that they descend from Abraham and have never lived as slaves to anyone. Their response suggests that racial pride prevents them from hearing Jesus’ message of repentance. The false disciples also confuse the slavery to sin of which Jesus speaks with political and economic slavery. Hence, they fail to grasp what Jesus means by abiding in His word: namely, that those who abide in His word eschew sin. (Cf. Mt 3:8-9; Lk 3:7-8) Jesus clarifies the kind of enslavement of which He speaks. He replies that all those who sin suffer sin’s enslavement, an enslavement from which only the Son of God can free them. Moreover, in freeing them He can empower them to live as legitimate children of the Father, something a slave of sin cannot do. Jesus can do this because He enjoys a privileged kind of Sonship, a privileged relationship to the Father. (Jn 8:34-6) Instead of rejecting their racial pride, Jesus’ interlocutors cling stubbornly to it. Their refusal to hear Jesus’ summons to repentance focuses the rest of the dialogue on the question of fatherhood: the unbelieving Jews claim first Abraham, then God Himself, as their Father; but they cannot recognize in Jesus the one who reveals God as Father. Hence, by their unrepentant lack of faith they finally reveal themselves as the children, not of God, but of Satan.37 37. Cf. Henri van den Bussche, “Leur écriture et son enseignement: Jean 7.14-36,” Revue Biblique, 72(1966), pp. 21-30; C.W.F. Smith, “Tabernacles in the Fourth Gospel and Mark,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 130-146; Erich Grasser, “Die Juden als Teufelssohne in Johannes 8, 37-47” in Antijüdaismus im Neuen Testament?, edited by W. Eckert et al. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1967), pp. 157-170; Nils Dahl, “Der Erstgeborene Satans und der Vater des Teufels” in Apophorata, edited by W. Eltester (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1964), pp. 69-84; Theo Preiss, “Aramasches in Joh. 8, 30-36,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 3(1947), pp. 78-80.
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In this final exchange during the feast of Tabernacles, the reposts occur with greater and greater rapidity and hostility. In the course of the rapid-fire exchange, Jesus’ enemies move from verbal hostility to attempted murder. First, Jesus challenges His hearers’ racial pride by insisting that true descent from Abraham must transcend mere physical generation. True children of Abraham live by faith as Abraham did. Instead, Jesus’ enemies refuse to consent to the word of God, a word which Jesus has received from God Himself. Abraham by contrast heeded God’s word and did not seek to murder those who proclaim it. By imitating their father, the false disciples reveal their and his true identity, much as Jesus reveals His Father by imitating Him obediently. The false disciples descend from Satan, who from the beginning murdered and lied. Satan lied in tempting Adam and Eve to sin. He murdered in bringing death into the world. (Gen 2:15-17, 3:1-19) Jesus’ enemies slander Him and seek His death. Jesus, for His part, reveals His true origin by the perfection of His obedience to the Father. The way one lives, then, reveals one’s true origin. (Jn 8:39-44) While boasting of having both Abraham and God as their father, Jesus’ enemies reject, revile, and insult Him. They ridicule His claim to have God as His Father by questioning the legitimacy of His own birth. (Jn 8:41) Then they call Him a Samaritan and question His sanity. (Jn 8:48) The epithet “Samaritan” not only expresses contempt but implies heterodoxy as well. (Jn 8:41) These accusations may well echo debates between the Johannine community and its adversaries concerning Jesus’ identity. Jesus replies: I am not demented, but I do honor my Father while you fail to honor Me. I do not seek glory for Myself; there is One who does seek it and He passes judgment. I solemnly assure you, if anyone keeps my word, he shall never see death. (Jn 8:48-51)
Jesus has already proclaimed repeatedly that He seeks not His glory but the Father’s. He has repeatedly warned His adversaries that persistent unbelief and sin will place them under God’s judgment. Here, however, He sounds a new note. If Jesus does not seek His own glory, the Father does. If then the Father seeks to glorify the Son, His enemies only betray their ignorance of the Father by insulting and vilifying His Son. Jesus therefore warns His adversaries to reflect that the Father will in this dispute have the final word and will ensure the Son’s ultimate glorification. (Cf. Jn 13:31) When, however, Jesus promises that those who keep His word will never see death, His enemies ridicule His claim as proof of His insanity. Since Abraham and the prophets all died, Jesus in claiming to liberate His dis-
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ciples from death must lay claim to a greater importance and dignity than they. (Jn 8:52-53) Jesus replies: If I glorify Myself, My glory amounts to nothing. The One who glorifies Me is the Father, whom you claim as “our God,” even though you do not know Him. But I do know Him; and, if I say I do not know Him, I will be like you: a liar. But I do know Him, and I keep His word. Your father Abraham rejoiced at the prospect of seeing my day. When he saw it, he was glad. (Jn 8:54-56)
The opposition between Jesus and His adversaries has reached a climax. The Father seeks to glorify the Son, who alone knows Him and speaks the truth about Him; but Jesus’ enemies reject and revile Him. Their rejection of the Son whom the Father sent demonstrates their ignorance of the Father Himself, whom they hypocritically claim to worship as God. Were Jesus for His part to deny the truth of His message about the Father, He would have to deny the Father, lie, and claim Satan as His Father. Instead Jesus abides in His knowledge of the Father and obediently keeps His word. How did Abraham see Jesus’ day? In Jn 12:41, the evangelist, referring to the prophet Isaiah’s inaugural vision, says that the prophet witnessed the glory of Jesus. In other words, the Beloved Disciple views all manifestations of the divine glory in the history of Israel as proleptic revelations of the glory of the risen Christ. A similar notion probably grounds the assertion that Abraham saw Jesus’ day. Rabbinic teaching transformed into a laugh of joy Abraham’s scornful laugh in Genesis at the idea of his becoming a father in his and Sarah’s old age. (Cf. Gen 17:17) Moreover, the book of Jubilees (xvi 17-9) portrays both Abraham and Sarah rejoicing at the divine promise that the chosen people will descend from Isaac. The miraculous birth of Isaac foreshadows the full revelation of God’s saving power in Jesus. Abraham’s joy at Isaac’s birth perceives, then, in anticipation the “day” of Jesus and the salvation which He brings. When Jesus’ adversaries object: “You are not even fifty years old. How can you have seen Abraham?” Jesus replies with a third solemn proclamation of His divinity: “I solemnly assure you, before Abraham even came to exist I AM.” (Jn 8:57) Jesus’ enemies finally realize that, in invoking the divine name, He is claiming equal and eternal coexistence with God. (Cf. Jn 1:1) Suddenly, the murderous violence in their hearts erupts and they pick up stones to execute Him for blasphemy. Jesus, however, eludes them. From the evangelist’s standpoint, the violent attack on Jesus reveals His adversaries’ true identity. They belong to the forces of darkness, the forces
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of violence and of unbelief. The light, however, continues to shine in the darkness; for Jesus, undaunted, boldly proclaims His divinity and co-equality with the Father. Moreover, the darkness cannot quench the light, because Jesus escapes from His murderers’ hands. In the resurrection He will also confound those who kill Him when He returns in risen glory.38 The embittered debates at the feast of Tabernacles culminate in Jesus’ cure of the man born blind as a sign that He is indeed the light of the world, as he has just claimed. (Cf. Jn 8:12) In the story of the cure one finds several references to “God” which in their own way underscore some of the points made about Jesus’ relationship to God the Father in the course of the debates which precede the miracle. When the disciples see the man born blind they ask Jesus whether the man’s blindness results from a sin of his parents or from his own sinfulness. Jesus rejects the notion that physical suffering always results from sin. Jesus says: It was no sin on this man’s part, nor on his parents’ part. Rather, it was to let God’s works be revealed in him. We must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world. (Jn 9:1-5)
Instead of resulting from sin, the man’s blindness has a saving purpose. It will allow God to perform “works” in him. Jesus has already made it clear that all who come to Him in faith do so because the Father draws them. In consequence of His cure at Jesus hands, the blind man will grow in the enlightenment of faith. He will see deeper and deeper into the person of Jesus. In speaking of the works the Father intends to accomplish in the blind man, Jesus refers, then, not only to his physical cure but also and especially to the work of faith which the Father will accomplish in Him. These works which the Father performs in and through Jesus manifest that the Father has sent the Son into the world as its saving light. Jesus’ own approaching passion will bring on the night when no one can work. (Cf. Jn 13:30) Before darkness falls, however, Jesus must reveal His identity as Light of the world by healing the blind man and drawing Him to faith. 38. Cf. NJBC, 61:104-126; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 305-368; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 5-32; Johannes Schneider, “Zum Komposition von Joh 7,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 45(1954), pp. 108-119; J. Blank, Schriftanlegung in Theorie und Praxis (Munich: Kösel Verlag, 1969), pp. 207-220; Horacio E. Lona, Abraham in Johannes 8: Ein Beitrag zur Methodenfrage (Bern:Herbert Lang, 1976); M.J. Edwards, “‘Not Yet Fifty Years Old: John 8:57,” New Testament Studies, 40(1994), pp. 449-454.
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The divine origin of Jesus’ power to heal constitutes the central issue between the cured blind man and the Pharisees who cross examine him. The Pharisees begin by insisting that no one who violates the sabbath as Jesus has in curing the cripple at the pool of Bethsaida can come “from God.” (Jn 9:16) Jesus’ sabbath cure of the cripple also surfaced as an issue in the debate between Him and “the Jews” which has just concluded. (Jn 7:21-24) As we have seen, in the fourth gospel Jesus’ sabbath cures in John reveal Him as the Father’s chosen instrument for judging the unbelieving. The Pharisees who cross-examine the blind man remain themselves blind to the meaning of Jesus’ sabbath healings. Their unbelief places them under the judgment of God because in their intransigence they persist in passing false judgment on Jesus. (Cf. Jn 7:24) Like Pilate and the chief priests in Jesus’ trial, the Pharisees in judging the blind man find themselves judged by Jesus in virtue of their unbelief. The blind man, however, knows better. He makes his first step in faith when he acknowledges Jesus as a prophet, as one who does indeed come from God.39 (Jn 9:17) In their second examination of the blind man, the Pharisees challenge the cured blind man to “give glory to God” by confessing that Jesus is in fact a sinner. The blind man at first professes ignorance of whether or not Jesus is a sinner and repeats doggedly that he knows only that though born blind he now sees. (Jn 9:24-5) As the cross examination proceeds, however, the Pharisees accuse the cured blind man of being a disciple of Jesus. At this the blind man confesses that, if Jesus had sinned, God would not have worked the blind man’s cure through Him. At this confession of faith, the Pharisees (anachronistically) expel the blind man from the synagogue. (Jn 9:30-34) Prior to passing judgment on the blind man, the Pharisees make their own profession of faith: “We are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken through Moses, but we don’t even know where this man comes from.” (Jn 9:28b-29) We find here another tacit reference to the cure of the cripple at Bethsaida and to the discourse which follows it. In that discourse, Jesus invoked Moses as one of those who testify to Him and to the truth of what He teaches. Jesus also insisted that those who believe Moses will also believe in Him. (Jn 5:45-47) Now the Pharisees manifest their hypocrisy by invoking the authority of Moses while refusing to believe in Jesus. They ironically confess their lack of faith by admitting their ignorance of Jesus’ origins. The reader, of course, knows that Jesus comes from God. As in the debate during Tabernacles which has just concluded (Jn 18:12-59), the discussion between the Pharisees and the cured blind man 39. Cf. Ernst Bammel, “Johannes 9.17,” New Testament Studies, 40(1994), pp. 455-456.
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focuses on Jesus’ origin. In acknowledging Jesus as one who proceeds from God, the cured blind man functions in the story as a type of the disciple of Jesus who confesses Him fearlessly even though it means expulsion from the synagogue. (Cf. Jn 16:1-2) Other images transform the cured blind man into a type of the disciple. At the end of John’s gospel, Jesus will send His disciples to testify to Him in the power of the Breath. (Jn 20:19-23) That commissioning event will reveal Jesus as Breath-baptizer. The fact, then, that Jesus cures the blind man by sending Him to wash in the pool of Siloam, which means “sent,” probably foreshadows Christian baptism, which incorporates believers into the apostles’ mission to bear witness to the risen Christ. In some manuscripts, the encounter between Jesus and the blind man after his expulsion from the synagogue culminates in the blind man confessing faith in Jesus as the Son of Man. The blind man then bows down to worship Him. (Jn 9:38) It seems likely, however, that some later redactor added this verse to the story as a way of explicating the cured blind man’s complete faith in Jesus. Even without the added verse, however, the blind man clearly functions in the story as a type of the believing disciple who escapes divine judgment by his faith in Jesus. The Pharisees, by contrast, fall under God’s judgment by hypocritically professing to believe in God at the same time that they refuse to put faith in Jesus. Because of their unbelief they remain in their sins and will die in them.40 (Jn 9:39-41, cf. 8:24) A discourse of Jesus in which He presents Himself as the good shepherd marks the transition from Tabernacles to the feast of Dedication. The feast of Dedication celebrated the consecration of all the temples of God in Israel’s history. Some evidence suggests that readings with pastoral imagery marked the synagogue celebration of Dedication. During Dedication, Jesus’ discourse develops the image of shepherd and applies it to Himself. In the fourth gospel, the events surrounding the feast of Dedication call attention to the consequences of Israel’s rejecting Jesus as the light of 40. Cf. NJBC, 61:127-133; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 269-382; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 33-42; J. Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (New York, NY: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 3-41; Calvin L. Porter, “John IX. 38, 39a: A Liturgical Addition to the Text,” New Testament Studies, 13(1966-1967), pp. 387-394; Donatien Mollat, S.J., “Le guérison de l’aveugle-né,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 23(1958), pp. 22- 31; John Bligh, “Four Studies in St. John, I: The Man Born Blind,” Heythrop Journal, 7(1966), pp. 129-144; D. Bornhaeuser, “Meister, wer hat gesuendight, dieser oder seine Eltern, dass he ist blind geboren? Joh. 9.2,” Neue Kirchlische Zeitschrift, 38(1927), pp. 433-437; Mogens Mueller, “‘Have you Faith in the Son of Man?’ (John 9.35),” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 291-294; J.M. Lieu, “Blunders in the Johannine Tradition,” New Testament Studies, 34(1988), pp. 83-95.
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the world: in repudiating Jesus, one repudiates the divine shepherd of Israel Himself. In presenting Himself as the good shepherd, Jesus makes several references to His relationship to the Father. The image of the good shepherd interweaves the themes of knowledge, obedience, and love. As the good shepherd, Jesus knows His sheep and they Him with the same intimacy as He and the Father know one another. (Jn 10:14-15) As we have seen, however, Jesus knows the Father actively by imitating Him with perfect obedience. Jesus’ obedience to the Father, therefore, also includes the way He relates to His sheep: He lays down His life for them in obedience to the Father, and takes it up again for their sake. As we shall see, in the last discourse, Jesus will refer to His death for His disciples as the supreme expression of His love for them. (Jn 15:12-13) His death simultaneously expresses His perfect love and obedience toward the Father. (Jn 14:31) The disciples will obey Jesus if they love one another as He has loved them and willingly die for one another. (Jn 15:12-17) The universality of the Father’s saving love appears in this, that Jesus seeks ultimately to gather all people into His flock. (Jn 10:16) Moreover, the Father endows Jesus’ death and resurrection with its universal saving power and significance. (Jn 10:15, 17-18) In the synoptic tradition, the Father raises Jesus from the dead. The fourth evangelist, however, underscores the unity of Father and Son by having the Father empower the Son to lay His own life down and take it up again. As we have seen, in John, the operational unity of Father and Son manifest their unity in being.41 Jesus’ speech on the feast of the Dedication interweaves the pastoral image of the good shepherd with themes from the debate during the feast of Tabernacles. Asked by the crowds to say plainly whether or not He claims messianic identity, Jesus answers: I did tell you, but you do not believe. The works which I am doing in My Father’s name give testimony for me, but you refuse to believe because you are not my sheep. My sheep hear my voice; and I know them, and they follow Me. I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. No one can snatch them from my hand. My Father who gave them to me is greater than all, and no one can wrest from My Father’s hand. I and the Father are One. (Jn 10:25-30)
41. Cf. NJBC, 61:134-139; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 383-400; Louis T. Brodie, “Creative Writing: Key to a New Methodology,” SBL Seminar Papers, edited by Paul J. Achtmeier (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1978), vol. II, pp. 261-267; Jerome H. Neyrey, “I Said: You are Gods: Ps 82:6 and John 10,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 108(1989), pp. 647- 663.
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Familiar echoes from the discourse during Tabernacles include: 1) the Father’s testimony to Jesus in the works He performs, 2) the persistent unbelief of His adversaries, and 3) Jesus’ complete identity with the Father. Entwined with these themes, however, we find the following pastoral images, which develop the parable of the good shepherd: 1) The intimate cognitive relationship between shepherd and sheep manifests itself in the sheep’s obedience to the shepherd. 2) The gift of eternal life demands such obedience. 3) The unbreakable bond between shepherd and sheep resists all hostility and opposition. 4) Jesus’ complete identity with the Father whom no one ever overpowers or bests makes the bond between shepherd and sheep unbreakable.42 Jesus’ claim to unity with God provokes the same reaction it did during Tabernacles: the Jews pick up stones to execute Him for the sin of blasphemy. (Jn 10:31-3) Jesus refuses, however, to back down and again appeals to the works the Father accomplishes through Him: Is it not written in your Law, “I have said, ‘You are gods’?” If it calls “gods” those to whom God’s word was directed, and Scripture cannot be annulled, do you claim that I, whom the Father consecrated and sent into the world, am blaspheming because I said: “I am Son of God”? If I do not do the works of the Father, even if you do not believe Me, believe the works so that you may come to know and understand that the Father is in Me and I am in the Father. (Jn 10:34-38)
Jesus cites, not the Pentateuch, but the book of Psalms. Psalm 82:6 assimilates to God humans given power to pass judgment over other persons. The psalm in fact castigates false judges by reminding them of their mortality. In citing Psalm 82, Jesus seems on first reading to gloss over the difference between the psalm’s metaphorical use of the word “gods” and the literal sense in which He claims divine Sonship through His identity with the Father. In fact, however, Jesus is arguing from the lesser to the greater. If the psalm can call even fallible human judges “gods” in a metaphorical sense, then the one through whom God has chosen to execute judgment over the entire world can claim the title “Son of God” in a transcendent sense. 42. Cf. J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Good Shepherd: St. John’s Use of Jewish Halakah and Haggadah,” Studia Theologica, 27(1973), pp. 25-50; Otfried Hofius, “Die Sammlung der Herden zum Herde Israels (Joh 10.16-11.51f),” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentalische Wissenschaft, 58(1967), pp. 289-291; Gilbert Becquent, “Jésus, bon pasteur, donne vie à une nouvelle communauté,” Esprit et Vie, 16(1970), pp. 241-242; J. Edgar Burns, “The Discourse on the Good Shepherd and the Rite of Ordination,” American Ecclesiastical Review, 149(1963), pp. 386-391.
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The Father’s consecration of Jesus fulfills the meaning of the feast of Dedication, which commemorated the reconsecration of the Temple by Judas Maccabeus after its profanation by the Syrians. The term “consecrated” also alludes to Jesus’ priestly consecration as Temple and victim in His own passion.43 (Jn 17:19) The book of signs ends as Jesus moves inexorably toward His “hour.” The raising of Lazarus sets the stage for the final confrontation between Jesus and His enemies by consolidating the hatred of the chief priests against Him. The raising of Lazarus reveals Jesus as the resurrection and the life. (Jn 11:25-26) The chief priests in condemning the source of resurrection illegally to death refuse to acknowledge the truth which the raising of Lazarus reveals. (Jn 11:26) Jesus proclaims that Lazarus’s sickness will not end in death but will instead glorify both God and God’s Son. (Jn 11:4) Still Jesus delays going to Lazarus’s bedside, with the result that Lazarus dies before He arrives in Bethany. (Jn 11:11-15) When Martha comes out to greet Jesus on His arrival, she says: “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. Even now, I am sure that whatever you ask of God, God will give you.” (Jn 11:22) Throughout the incident Martha functions as the woman of imperfect faith who recognizes Jesus’ special relationship to the Father and confesses His messianic authority but fails to grasp the full mystery of His person. Despite her messianic faith in Jesus, for example, Martha fails to comprehend the full extent of Jesus’ power to raise people from the dead. (Jn 11:25) When Jesus orders the stone which closes Lazarus’s tomb rolled back, Martha objects that, with the decomposition of the body after four days, there will be a stench. Martha’s remark betrays the imperfection of her faith, but it also draws dramatic attention to the full scope of the miracle Jesus will soon perform. As a sign of His power to raise the dead, Jesus will even restore life to a rotting corpse. Jesus assures Martha: “Didn’t I assure you that if you believed, you would see the glory of God?” (Jn 11:38b-40) As we have seen, the account of the raising of Lazarus begins with Jesus’ promise to the disciples that Lazarus’s illness will in the end glorify God. The two references to God’s glory function as a Biblical inclusion. They also underscore the 43. Cf. NJBC, 61:140-143; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 401-412; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 43-52; James S. Ackerman, “The Rabbinic Interpretation of Psalm 82 and the Gospel of John,” Harvard Theological Review, 59(1966), pp. 186-191; J.A. Emerton, “Melchizedek and the God: Fresh Evidence for the Jewish Background of John x. 34-36,” Journal of Theological Studies, 17(1966), pp. 399-401; Anthony Hansen, “John’s Citation of Psalm LXXXII,” New Testament Studies, 11(1964-1965), pp. 158-162; “John’s Citation of Psalm LXXXII Reconsidered,” New Testament Studies, 13(1966-1967), pp. 363-367.
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purpose of the miracle. The raising of Lazarus glorifies God by revealing the Son of God as “the resurrection and life.” (Jn 11:25-26) Jesus ensures that the Father will receive glory from the raising of Lazarus by praying publicly to the Father before He performs the miracle: Father, I thank you because You heard Me. Of course, I knew that you always hear me, but I say it because of the crowd standing by, that they may believe that You sent Me. (Jn 11:41-42)
The prayer also clarifies further the way in which the miracle will glorify both God and Jesus: namely, by evoking from those who witness the miracle a faith which recognizes in the raising of Lazarus the Father’s testimony to the Son. The miracle testifies that He has constituted the Son the privileged source of risen life to those who put their faith in Him. The fact that the Father has already heard Jesus’ prayer endows the miracle with inevitability.44 In the synoptic tradition, the Father testifies verbally to Jesus in His baptismal commissioning and in the transfiguration. In the fourth gospel, the Father, as we have seen, testifies to Jesus principally by empowering His miracles, the signs which reveal the full reality of His person. During Jesus’ final Jerusalem ministry, however, the Father also testifies to Jesus verbally. During Jesus’ final Jerusalem ministry, some Greek pilgrims to the feast ask to see Jesus. We are dealing here with “God fearers,” or Gentiles who had converted to Judaism. Jesus takes their request as a sign of the saving efficacy of the death He will soon die. The desire of the Greeks to “see” Jesus foreshadows the faith of the Gentiles who will believe in Him. The incident probably alludes to Is 52:15 and implicitly portrays Jesus as the suffering servant of Duetero-Isaiah.45 Jesus does not respond directly to the request of the Greeks. Instead, He comments on the deeper meaning of their desire to “see” Him: 44. Cf. NJBC, 61:145-152; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 420-437; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 53-72; Max Wilcox, “The ‘Prayer’ of Jesus in John XI.41b-42,” New Testament Studies, 24(1977-1978), pp. 128-132; James P. Martin, “History and Eschatology in the Lazarus Narrative,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 17(1964), pp. 332-343; W.H. Cadman, “The Raising of Lazarus,” Studia Evangelica, I, (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1959), pp. 423-424; Brain McNeil, “The Raising of Lazarus,” Downside Review, 92(1974), pp. 269-275; Francis J.Moloney, “The Faith of Martha and Mary: A Narrative Approach to John,” Biblica, 75(1994), pp. 471-493; Manuel Rodríguez-Ruiz, “Significado Christológico y Soteriológico de Jn 11, 25-27,” Estudios Biblicos, 55(1997), pp. 199-222. 45. Cf. H.B. Kossen, “Who Were the Greeks of John XII, 20?” in Studies in John (Leiden: Brill, 1970), pp. 97-110; W.E. Moore, “Sir, We Wish to See Jesus: Was This a Temptation?” Scottish Journal of Theology, 20(1967), pp. 75-95; Johannes Beutler, S.J., “Greeks Come to See Jesus,” Biblica, 71(1990), pp. 333-347.
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Part 1: The Transition to Doctrines: Johannine Narrative Christology The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. I solemnly assure you, unless the grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains only a single grain; but, if it dies, it bears much fruit. The one who loves his life destroys it; while the one who hates his life in this world preserves it to live eternally. If anyone would serve Me, let him follow Me, and where I am, my servant will also be. The Father will honor anyone who serves me. (Jn 12:23-26)
In referring to His “hour,” Jesus alludes to the paschal mystery, the time for His being lifted upon in suffering and in glory. Jesus foresees the enormous fruit which will result from His death and glorification: namely, the conversion of the Gentiles, the gathering into His fold of the “other sheep” for whom He yearns. Jesus also contrasts a life lived in egotistical self-love with His own willingness to lay down His life in selfless obedience to the Father. The selfish egotist ends by destroying the life he so jealously seeks to foster and protect. Jesus by contrast in dying will indeed preserve eternally not only His own life but will also empower all those who believe in Him to do the same. The disciples will manifest that they possesses eternal life just as Jesus does, if they exhibit the willingness to live and die with the same kind of selfless love as Jesus exemplifies. (Cf. Jn 15:12-17) Those who serve Jesus imitate Him as He imitates the Father: they stand by Him and share in His passion so that they can also join Him in His glory. (Jn 14:1-3, 15:13-16:4) The Father honors those who truly serve Jesus by imitating Him. The Father does so by insuring that they share in Jesus’ risen glory.46 Jesus, however, suddenly experiences dismay at the ordeal of suffering which faces Him: Now my soul is troubled. Yet what should I say: “Father, save me from this hour?” No, this is just the reason why I came into the world. Father glorify Your name!” (Jn 12:27-28)
The fourth gospel makes no mention of Jesus’ agony in Gethsemane, although, as we shall see, Jesus’ question to Peter in the garden, “Shall I not drink the cup the Father has given me?” does echo Jesus’ prayer in the garden which the synoptic evangelists record. (Mt 26:39; Mk 14:36; Lk 22:42) Jesus’ expression of dismay at His approaching ordeal marks the fourth evangelist’s closest approach to the synoptic Jesus’ prayer in Gethsemane. In voicing His dismay, the Johannine Jesus insists once again that the incarnation happened for no other reason than that Jesus be lifted up in both suffering and glory. Jesus’ insistence places the paschal 46. Cf. Aemelius Rasco, S.J., “Christus, granum frumenti,” Verbum Domini, 37(1959), pp. 12- 35, 65-77.
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mystery at the heart of the incarnation. Moreover, Jesus overcomes His dismay by surrendering in obedience to the Father. “Father, glorify Your name!” means the same as “Your will be done.”47 (Mt 26:42) The Father responds to Jesus’ prayer by publicly testifying to the Son. A voice from heaven proclaims: “I have glorified it and will glorify it again.” (Jn 12:28) The first personal pronoun in the voice’s statement identifies it as the Father’s voice. As we have seen, in the synoptics, the Father’s voice proclaims Jesus messianic Son of God in the image of the suffering servant. In the fourth gospel, the voice insists on the typically Johannine theme that both the passion and resurrection count as a single saving act which reveals the divine glory. The Father’s voice alludes both to Jesus’ exalted dignity and to His approaching passion. In the synoptic tradition the Father’s voice designates Jesus as beloved Son of God, messiah, and suffering servant. In an analogous manner, the Father’s voice in the fourth gospel first responds to Jesus’ dismay by assuring Him that He, the Father, has already glorified the Son’s name. This the Father has accomplished in the signs through which He has testified to the truth of Jesus’ message. The Father then assures the Son that He will also glorify Him in the future: both in His passion and in His resurrection, which will bring to its culmination the revelation of divine glory already disclosed in Jesus’ ministry.48 (Cf. Jn 13:31-32) The unbelieving crowds, misunderstand the voice. Some dismiss it as thunder, while others think that an angel has spoken to Jesus.49 (Jn 12:29) The Book of Signs ends with a summary evaluation of Jesus’ ministry to His own people and with a summary proclamation of His message to them. In it the Beloved Disciple ponders the reasons for Jesus’ rejection by His people and the saving significance of His person and message. The evangelist cites two Old Testament texts in order to explain the unbelief which greeted Jesus’ testimony to the Jews: Is 53:1 and Is 6:9-10. The first citation asks why the chosen people as a whole failed to put faith in Jesus. The second assimilates Him to the prophet Isaiah, whose 47. Cf. Xavier Léon-Dufour, “‘Père, fais-moi passer sain et soif à travers cette heure’ (Jn 12, 27)” in Neues Testament und Geschichte, edited by H. Ballensweiler and Bo Reicke (Zürich: Theologische Verlag, 1972), pp. 157-165; Henri van den Bussce, “Si, le grain de blé ne tombe en terre....(Jean 12, 20-39),” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 5(1954), pp. 53-67. 48. Cf. Charles C.Torrey, “‘When I am Lifted Up from the Earth’ John 12,32,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 51(1932), pp. 320-322; Ignace de la Potterie, S.J., “L’exaltation du Fils de l’homme (Jn 12, 31-36),” Gergorianum, 49(1968), pp. 460-478; George B. Caird, “Judgment and Salvation: An Exposition of John 12:31-32,” Canadian Journal of Theology, 2 (1956), pp. 231-237. 49. Cf. NJBC, 61:161-166; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 465-480; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 95-99.
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message too was destined to go unheeded until divine retribution destroyed the kingdom of Judah. (Jn 12:37-42) One finds Is 6:9-10 cited in all the gospels as an explanation of the failure of the Jewish people as a whole to respond to Jesus and His message. (Cf. Mk 4:12; Mt 13:13-5; Lk 8:10) The synoptic tradition, following Mark, uses the text to explain why Jesus spoke in parables. Instead of using parables, the Johannine Jesus talks constantly and explicitly to the vacillating and unbelieving crowds about His relationship to the Father. Moreover, the fourth evangelist attributes the unbelief which Jesus’ teaching receives to His enemies’ violence of heart and hypocrisy. The evangelist ends the book of signs by lamenting the fact that many Jews, even members of the ruling class, believed in Jesus secretly; but, for fear of being expelled from the synagogue by the Pharisees, they failed to confess their faith openly. The evangelist’s lament indulges in anachronism. The Beloved Disciple retrojects his community’s expulsion from the synagogue back to the time of Jesus’ ministry. At the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had no authority to expel anyone from the synagogue. Even less could they have expelled those “in authority.” Here, the Beloved Disciple rebukes crypto-Christians in the Jewish community of his own day who refused to profess Jesus publicly for fear of expulsion from the synagogue. (Cf. Jn 9:22) In assessing the reluctance of crypto-Christians to acknowledge openly their faith in Jesus, the evangelist notes ruefully: “They preferred the praise (doxa) of humans more than the glory (doxa) of God.” (Jn 12:42-43) The evangelist puns on the Greek word “doxa.” Instead of confessing the divine glory (doxa) revealed in Jesus, those who refuse to profess their faith in Him openly settle for mere human approval (doxa).50 After the evangelist’s assessment of Jewish unbelief, the Johannine Jesus recapitulates the divinely revealed doctrines which will save those who openly confess them. The same doctrines will stand in judgment over those who refuse to believe. (Jn 12:44-50) Jesus makes the following doctrinal points: 1) Those who believe in Him believe in the Father who sent Him. (Jn 13:20; cf. Mt 10:41) 2) Anyone who sees Jesus with the eyes of faith sees the Father also. (Jn 8:19; 14:7-9) 3) Jesus comes into the world in order to dispel its darkness and in order to save the world. One need only confess Jesus as the light of the world in order to escape the darkness of unbelief and sin. (Jn 1:3-9, 8:12-26) 4) Anyone who does put faith in Jesus escapes the judgment of God. (Jn 3:16-8) 5) Those who refuse to put faith in Jesus stand condemned by the word He has spoken to them and by their own refusal to believe. (Jn 3:18-21, 8:37-47) 6) Jesus speaks with perfect obedience only 50. Cf. M.J.J. Menken, “Die Form des Zitats aus Jes 6,10 in Joh 12,40,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 32(1988), pp. 189-209.
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what the Father tells Him to speak. (Jn 14:10) 7) Jesus obeys the Father’s command by speaking what the Father tells Him to speak because He knows that the Father’s message brings eternal life to those who hear it. (Jn 6:63) Jesus’ reference to the Father’s commandment alludes to the book of Deuteronomy 18:18-19, which prophesies the coming of a prophet like Moses who will tell Israel whatever God commands Him. The summary repetition of these familiar Johannine themes illustrates the central place which Jesus’ relationship to the Father occupies in the Beloved Disciple’s theological vision.51 The Father in Jesus “Hour” In the fourth gospel, the Book of Glory narrates the story of Jesus’ “hour,” the process by which He passes “from this world to the Father.” The passion belongs in the Book of Glory because in Johannine theology it too reveals the glory of God by disclosing Jesus finally and fully as the divine bridegroom whose love leads him to lay down His very life for His disciples in obedience to the Father’s will. (Jn 13:1-2) Luke as we have seen records a brief discourse of Jesus at the last supper. It numbers among the shorter discourses in Luke and pales by comparison with the journey discourse. Nothing in the synoptic tradition, however, resembles the prolonged discourse to the disciples which John records. The synoptic gospels all testify that Jesus during His public ministry gave instructions to His disciples about the moral demands of life in the kingdom. The synoptics even suggest that He may have concentrated His attention on them as He saw death approach. In the fourth gospel, however, Jesus spends most of His public ministry upbraiding unbelieving Jews for refusing to acknowledge His pre-existence and equality with the Father. John’s Jesus makes occasional remarks to His disciples during His public ministry; but He addresses only one major discourse to the disciples as such, namely, His last discourse. That Jesus would have waited until He stood on the threshold of death in order to catechize His own disciples lacks historical verisimilitude. The fact, however that the fourth evangelist locates most of Jesus’ instructions to His disciples within the Book of Glory underscores the eschatological character of discipleship. We shall reflect on these issues in more detail in a subsequent chapter. In its present form the last discourse gives internal evidence of considerable redaction. In its original form the discourse probably ended with Jesus’ command to leave the cenacle. (Jn 14:31) In its present form, however, the discourse continues for three more chapters. Later redactors have expanded the original discourse itself with other sayings of Jesus. In the course of the enitre discourse, Jesus speaks frequently of the Father. 51. Cf. NJBC, 61:167-168; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 483-493; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 100-101.
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At the beginning of the discourse, Jesus enunciates the fundamental theme of the Book of Glory: Now has the Son of Man been glorified, and God has been glorified in Him. [If God has been glorified in Him,] God will in turn glorify Him in Himself and will glorify Him immediately. (Jn 13:31-32)
Jesus announces that His passion marks the hour of His and of the Father’s glorification. God in the passion reveals His glory in the Son through the Son’s obedient death on the cross out of love for the Father. Jesus speaks of His own passion in the past (aorist) tense and of the resurrection and His eschatological glorification “in Himself ” in the future tense. (Cf. Jn 12:28) The tense shift sharpens the distinction between the revelation of Jesus’ glory in His ministry and passion, on the one hand, and its full revelation in His resurrection. The use of the past tense also transforms the passion into a fait accompli. Later in the last discourse, Jesus will enjoin the disciples to keep the commands which He has given them. (Jn 14:15) Those commands include the disciples’ willingness to trust in the Father despite Jesus’ departure from them. They must have faith in the Father just as they have placed their faith in Jesus Himself. (Jn 14:1; cf. Mk 11:22-24) The trust which the disciples must place in Jesus has a strong eschatological flavor. They must trust that, in leaving them, Jesus is actually going to prepare a “dwelling place (mone)” for them in His Father’s house. The disciples must believe that the Father’s house has ample room for all believers. (Jn 14:2-4) In describing heaven as a house with ample room for all those who believe in Him, Jesus endows heaven with a certain intimacy. To dwell with Jesus in the Father’s house also connotes, of course, life without end. In addition, the disciples must trust in Jesus’ eventual return in order to take them to dwell with Him in the Father’s house. In speaking of His return, Jesus refers to the parousia, to His final coming as eschatological judge. Dwelling with Jesus in the Father’s house also alludes to the evangelist’s theology of mutual indwelling. When Jesus assures the disciples that they know the way by which He is going, the puzzled Thomas objects that they know neither where He is going nor the way which leads there. (Jn 14:5) Thomas’s obtuseness forces Jesus to respond: I am the way and the truth and the life: no one comes to the Father except through Me. If you knew me, you would recognize my Father too. From now on you do know Him and have seen Him. (Jn 14:6-7; cf. Jn 10:1-5)
The first Christians, as we have already seen, originally called Christianity “the way.” Here Jesus embodies the way to the Father, because, in
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virtue of His identity with the Father, He reveals the Father in a privileged manner. “The truth” and “the life” clarify the manner in which Jesus functions as “the way.” Jesus incarnates the truth about God, saving truth. He does so both because of His identification with the Father and because of His perfect obedience in teaching and doing everything which the Father has commanded Him. The disciples will know the truth Jesus reveals by assimilation to Him as the way. In other words, the Johannine tradition, like the synoptic tradition, regards practical assimilation to Jesus as the only genuine “way” to know Him in faith. Truth and life coincide in Johannine theology. (Jn 1:4) In other words, the life which Jesus communicates includes saving enlightenment. Moreover, in virtue of His identity with the Father, Jesus embodies divine life, life itself. Hence, as we have seen, the life which He gives, the living water of the Breath, slakes human thirst for eternal life. (Jn 3:14, 7:18-19, 20:22-23) The Breath’s enlightenment also inspires and empowers practical knowledge of the Father through assimilation to Jesus.52 Philip misses the point of Jesus’ statement that the disciples have already seen the Father and tells Jesus that, if He will only show them the Father, they will rest content. (Jn 14:8) Jesus replies with the reproachful question: “Philip, am I with you all this time, and you still do not know me?” Jesus now repeats for the disciples’ benefit many of the things He has already said in His final summary statement at the end of the Book of Signs. (Jn 12:44-50) 1) Anyone who sees Jesus sees the Father because He and the Father exist in one another. (Jn 14:9-10; cf. 1:18, 12:45) 2) The Father’s existence in Jesus manifests itself in the fact that He speaks to them the words which the Father causes Him to speak. (Jn 14:10; cf. 12:49) 3) The disciples must believe in the mutual inexistence of Son and Father, if not on the basis of the Son’s words then on the basis of the works, the signs, which the Father accomplishes in the Son. (Jn 14:11; cf. 10:38) Jesus’ works manifest the dynamic, mutual indwelling of Father and Son. As this point, however, Jesus strikes a new note. He promises that, because He is going to the Father, one who believes in Him will perform even greater works than Jesus Himself. Prayer to Jesus and the invocation of His name will effect the signs which the disciples will work. In other words, Jesus’ presence with the Father in heaven will manifest the fact that He shares personally the Father’s power to work miracles by empowering the manifold signs which His disciples will work in their turn. By 52. Cf. Ignace de la Potterie, “‘Je suis la Voie, la Verité et la Vie’ (Jn 14,6),” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 88(1966), pp. 907-942; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Johannes 14:7” in Studies in New Testament Language and Text (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), pp. 345-356.
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answering prayers made in the Son’s name, the Father too will manifest His own glory, but “in the Son” through whom He acts. The diffusion of Jesus’ miraculous powers throughout the community could conceivably make their witness “greater” than His.53 Once again, the fourth evangelist conceives the mutual indwelling of Son and Father in efficacious, dynamic terms. The Son has the power to do whatever the disciples ask and will in fact answer any prayer they make. The fact that the Son empowers the disciples to do what the Father empowers Him to do manifests the mutual indwelling of the Father and Son. It does so because Father and Son act simultaneously and efficaciously in responding to the disciples’ prayers which they offer in Jesus’ name. Jesus’ promise testifies to the revelatory significance which answered prayer in Jesus’ name enjoyed in the Johannine community. (Jn 14:12-13) Jesus makes another momentous promise: If the disciples obey His commandments, He will ask the Father to send them “another witness (allon parakleton)” like Jesus Himself. We shall reflect on the meaning of the term “parakletos” in reflecting on Jesus’ relationship to the divine Breath. Here it suffices to note that after Jesus returns to the Father, the “other witness,” whom the Father will send the disciples, will abide thereafter with them. Because the Father sends the “other witness” in response to the Son’s prayer, Father and Son function as Her co-senders. (Jn 14:15-16) Jesus then assures the disciples that, even if at present they do not fully understand what Jesus means when He speaks of the mutual inexistence of the Father and the Son, they will understand when He returns to them in risen glory. (Jn 14:18-20) When the risen Christ confronts the disciples on Easter day, He will in fact impart to them the “other witness,” the Holy Breath. (Jn 20:22-23) The risen glory of Jesus’ resurrection manifests His divinity. It therefore reveals that the Father dwells in the Son and He in the Father. In Johannine theology that mutual indwelling expresses the identity of life which the Father and Son share. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple sees an important link between resurrection and mutual indwelling. The resurrection will manifest that the Father acts efficaciously through the risen Jesus in order to impart the Breath to the disciples. Because only God sends God, Jesus’ co-sending of the Breath manifests Jesus’ divinity, His oneness with the Father. Hence, the resurrection also reveals the perfect mutual indwelling of Father and Son. The gift of the Breath will, in addition, also enable the disciples to understand the mutual inexistence of Father and Son because possession of the Breath will cause the disciples to exist in the Son and Him in them. By experiencing their own existence in the Son and His presence in them 53. Cf. Victor Manuel Fernandez, “Hacer ‘Obras Mayores’ que las de Cristo (Juan 14:12-14),” Revista Biblica, 58(1995), pp. 65-91.
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through the Breath’s indwelling, the disciples will begin to experience personally how Father and Son dwell in one another. Jesus, however, puts a condition on the sending of the “other witness”: only those who live in faithful obedience to His commands by imitating His own obedience to the Father will experience the coming of the “other witness.” The disciples’ obedience will manifest their love of Jesus. The Father will respond to such love on the disciples’ part by loving them in turn. Jesus too promises to love the disciples for loving Him. Jesus will reveal His love finally and fully to the disciples when He rises and communicates the Breath to them; for that gift will express the fullness of that love. (Jn 14:20-21) Since Father and Son dwell in one another, the existence of the disciples in the Son through the action of the Breath will also cause the Father to exist in the disciples as well. Since the Breath abides as a permanent gift, both Father and Son will dwell permanently in the disciples. They will make their home in those who believe and whose faith manifests itself practically in obedience to Jesus’ commands. (Jn 14:13) In obeying the Son, the disciples also obey the Father, because the commands the Son speaks have been communicated to Him by the Father. Hence, obedience to the Son’s commands will please the Father and motivate His gift of the Breath to the disciples. (Jn 14:24) As the last discourse in its original form draws to a close, Jesus reverts to the theme of His return to the Father. Instead of feeling sadness because Jesus goes to the Father, the disciples ought to rejoice “because the Father is greater than I (meizon mou).” (Jn 14:28) The term “greater” envisages the Son’s obediential relationship to the Father. Hence, the fact that the Son regards the Father as “greater” presupposes rather than denies their perfect unity with one another, because, as we have seen, the perfect indwelling of Father and Son manifests itself in the perfection of the Son’s obedience to the Father.54 (Jn 14:31) In the extended form of the last discourse as we now possess it, Jesus compares the mutual indwelling of the Son and of His believing disciples to the organic unity between a vine and its branches. The disciples must dwell in Jesus as the branch unites itself to the vine. The vine animates the branch. Hence, only by dwelling obediently in Jesus can the disciple hope to bear any fruit. Without Jesus the vine, the branches, the disciples, wither and die. (Jn 15:4-5) Since the vine in prophetic preaching and psalms symbolizes Israel, Jesus in claiming to be “the true vine” identifies all those who dwell in 54. Cf. NJBC, 61:177-187; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 581-657; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 115-128; Charles Kingsley Barrett, “The Father is Greater Than I” in Neues Testament und Kirche für Rudolf Schnackenburg, edited by J. Glinka (Freiburg: Herder, 1974), pp. 144-159.
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Him through faith as members of the true Israel, of the faithful remnant who believe. (Jn 15:1; cf. Is 5:1-7; Jr 2:21; Ps 80:8-18) In this context Jesus imagines the Father as the gardener who tends the vine. He cuts off fruitless branches and burns them; and He prunes fruitful branches to make them even more fruitful. (Jn 15:1-2) One bears fruit by faith in Jesus and by fidelity to His commands. Those who fail to believe and to obey place themselves, as we have seen, under the judgment of God. Branches severed from the life-giving vine, they wither. The flames into which the vine dresser casts the faithless and disobedient symbolizes the holiness of God as a judgmental force which consumes God’s enemies. The Father prunes the branches which remain on the vine. He does so by sending Jesus to instruct the disciples in the truth. Fidelity to Jesus’ teachings will therefore render the disciples fruitful.55 (Jn 15:2-3) The disciples reveal the Father’s glory. They do so in three ways. First, they manifest the Father’s glory when they abide in Jesus through faith and through obedience to His commands. Mutual love in obedience to Jesus’ commandments more than anything else reveals the mutual indwelling of Jesus and His disciples. At the same time, Jesus’ obedient love for the disciples manifests the Father’s own love for them, since all Jesus does expresses His obediential relationship to the Father. The loving mutual indwelling of Father and Son models for the disciples how they should relate to one another by living in obedient union with the Son. The disciples’ obedient love of the Son will, then, cause the Father’s love to bear fruit in their own lives and thus manifest the divine glory. (Jn 15:8-10) Second, the Father receives glory from the faith and obedient love of the disciples in yet another way. In obeying Jesus’ commands, the disciples actually obey the Father because Jesus commands nothing He has not learned from the Father. The disciples live as friends of Jesus when they heed His commands. Through their faith and obedient love, they prolong in space and time Jesus’ own mission by the Father. As Jesus’ obedient fulfillment of that mission glorified God, so too will theirs. (Jn 15:15-16) Third, the Father also receives glory in the disciples by answering any prayer made in Jesus’ name. The answered prayer manifests that the Father and Son act as one. (Jn 15:16-17) In summary then, love, obedience, and answered prayer all manifest the Father’s glory in the disciples. The fact, then, that Jesus has called and chosen the disciples to serve as the medium through which the Father’s 55. Cf. Jan G. Van der Watt, “‘Metaphorik’ in Joh 15,1-8,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 38(1994), pp. 67-80.
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glory becomes historically manifest ought to fill them with the fullness of joy. (Jn 15:11) As branches on the vine of Christ pruned by His teachings, the disciples can expect to meet with hatred and hostility from the world, the Satanic realm which hates both Jesus and the Father. The perfect mutual indwelling of the Father and Son transforms hatred for the Son into hatred for the Father. The world hates Jesus because He has proclaimed His identity with the Father. The world, therefore, will also hate the disciples for repeating that testimony. (Jn 15:22-24) The risen Christ will send the Holy Breath, the “other witness,” in order to empower the disciples to bear witness to Jesus in the midst of a hostile world. She will come to them from both Jesus and the Father and will therefore manifest Their joint presence in the disciples. The fact, then, that the Holy Breath issues from the Father as Her ultimate source means that She makes the Father present in the disciples in a manner analogous to His presence in Jesus. The disciples must therefore anticipate that their witness to the indwelling of God will subject them to the same hatred and hostility which the world has shown Jesus Himself. As in the Jesus’ case, the violent persecution of His followers will manifest the unbelief and murderous malice of the dark powers. (Jn 15:18-20, 26-7) Despite the hostility of the world, the Holy Breath’s action in the disciples will manifest Jesus’ presence in them and the righteousness of His cause by inspiring their fearless testimony to His unity with the Father. (Jn 16:10) The “other witness” will ensure that the disciples’ testimony expresses faithful obedience to Jesus, the same kind of obedience as Jesus exhibited to the Father. In testifying to Jesus, then, the disciples will obey both Son and Father; and that sinless obedience will vindicate the justice (dikaiosounês) both of Jesus and of His cause. (Jn 16:14-15) Like the first part of the last discourse, the second returns as it closes to the theme of Jesus’ return to the Father. In treating of Jesus’ return, the second part of the last discourse both repeats things already said and embellishes them with new insights. The disciples want to ask Jesus to clarify the meaning both of His immanent separation from them for a short time and of His return to the Father; but the disciples fear exposing their own ignorance. (Jn 16:17-19) Jesus answers their unspoken question by assuring them that they face a time of extreme sorrow but that it will not last long. (Jn 16:20-21) Jesus also assures them that the joy which they will experience when He returns to them will give them full satisfaction. When that day comes, they will know the Father with a new immediacy which will make it unnecessary for Jesus to speak about the Father in metaphors and figures of speech. Their new intimacy with the Father will express itself in petitionary prayer;
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and the Father’s unceasing response to prayers offered to Him in Jesus’ name will manifest the intimate love which the Father has for all those who love the Son. This intimate experience of the Father’s generous love will bring the disciples’ joy to its fullness. Indeed, efficacious use of petitionary prayer will draw the disciples into Jesus’ own Abba experience. (Jn 16:23-27) As for His return to the Father, Jesus asserts that He is simply returning to the same state of existence He had before He came into the world. (Jn 16:28) Moreover, Jesus assures the disciples that, even though they will abandon Him in the ordeal He is about to face, the Father will not abandon Him. No suffering or trial should, then, cause the disciples to doubt that even in His passion Jesus triumphs over the world.56 (Jn 16:31-32) The last discourse closes with Jesus’ priestly prayer. In the prayer, Jesus models for the disciples the kind of intimate relationship to the Father which they will experience after Jesus’ resurrection and after the coming of the Breath. At the same time, the prayer expresses the abiding love and concern for the disciples which Jesus will continue to have for them after He has left them. The priestly prayer also recapitulates many of the themes which Jesus has developed during the last discourse: the Son’s glorification in Himself, His revelation to the disciples of the truth the Father has entrusted to Him, the world’s abiding hostility to Jesus and to His disciples. Finally, the evangelist names Jesus’ motive in praying the prayer: as He moves on to the full revelation of His glory through His passion and resurrection, Jesus desires to share with the disciples the fullness of His joy. (Jn 17:3) Jesus begins the prayer by begging the Father to reveal His glory in the Son so that the Son in turn can glorify the Father by imparting to the disciples eternal life. As we have seen, this He will do by communicating to them the living water of the divine Breath. That gift will manifest itself in the disciples’ faith and confession of Jesus as the one who reveals the Father and thus makes the one true God present. (Jn 17:1-3) The Son’s glory does not differ, then, from the Father’s but itself manifests the Father’s glory in and through the gift of the Breath. Moreover, the manifestation of the divine glory unites the disciples to God and so ensures their life with God after death. Through His obedient fulfillment of His mission from the Father, Jesus has already glorified the Father on earth. The full revelation of His divine glory in the paschal mystery develops, therefore, in continuity with the divine glory already revealed in Jesus’ life, in His ministry, in His teaching, and in the signs He has performed. During His ministry, Jesus has glorified the Father by teaching the disciples to name the one true God as 56. Cf. NJBC, 61:188-198; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 658-738; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 129-146.
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their Father. This Jesus has accomplished by revealing His own identity with the Father, by revealing that He shares the same divine name (“I AM”) as the Father. The revelation of the Son’s divinity coincides, therefore, with the revelation of the creator God as Father. (Cf. Jn 8:28) In Jesus’ revelation as Son, the Father takes an active role. He draws the disciples to Jesus and gives them to Him as a gift. Through faith in Jesus they have come to know the Father in two ways: 1) they recognize that Jesus comes to them from the Father, and 2) they have accepted all He has taught and revealed to them as also coming from the Father. (Jn 17:4-8) Moreover, having glorified the Father in all these ways, Jesus now begs the Father to manifest the glory which He possessed before He became incarnate. (Jn 17:5) That manifestation includes not only Jesus’ resurrection but the disciple’s testimony to Him in the power of the Breath. Jesus, therefore, prays to the Father for His disciples, because they will continue to manifest the Son’s glory on earth after He departs from them. Indeed, the Father has given the disciples to Jesus for the express purpose that they prolong historically the revelation of the Son’s glory on earth. The disciples belong to the Father; and for that reason the Father has the power to give the disciples to the Son as His own. The disciples will manifest the glory of Jesus by their fidelity to the God Jesus reveals and by their faith in God as Father. They will also reveal Jesus’ glory by their union with one another in faith, obedience, and love.57 (Jn 17:10-12) The fact that the disciples belong to the Father and to Jesus sets them apart from the world by translating them into the realm of obedient faith and love. (Jn 17:9, 14, 16) Among the disciples only Judas has fallen victim to Satan’s wiles and thrown his lot in with the world by betraying Jesus; and even this happened in order to fulfill the scriptures. (Jn 17:12, cf. 13:27) Having kept the rest of the disciples safe from the hostile world, Jesus, as he departs, commends the disciples to the Father’s care, because they must continue to live in the world and suffer its hostility. (Jn 17:13-16) John’s Jesus, then, anticipates an abiding hostility between His disciples and the world; but even though the hostile world will resist them in hatred, the disciples, like Jesus, need to persist in challenging it to repentance and to faith in Him. Jesus asks the Father to “consecrate” the disciples “in truth.” Consecration sanctifies: it sets aside created realities for God and for divine purposes. The disciples will experience that sanctification only if they cling to the truth of the word which Jesus embodies and proclaims. Indeed, 57. Cf. Wilhelm Thüsing, Die Erhöhung und Verherrlichung Jesu in Johannesevangelium (Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970); Joseph Huby, “Un double problème de critique textuelle et d’intepretation: Saint Jean XVII 11, 12,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 27(1937), pp. 408- 421.
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that very truth sanctifies them and so consecrates them to God by drawing them into Jesus’ passion. (Jn 17:17) Having asked the Father to consecrate the disciples, Jesus then “consecrates Himself.” In what does this self-consecration consist? As the bearer and embodiment of God’s sanctifying word, Jesus incarnates the holiness He communicates to the disciples and in this sense enjoys a consecration “in truth” similar to the consecration He begs for the disciples, though superior to it. Jesus, however, also says that He consecrates Himself for the sake of the disciples (hyper autôn). (Jn 17:18) He consecrates Himself in the same way in which sacrificial victims underwent consecration prior to their ritual slaughter. Jesus is, then, looking forward to His own death as a redemptive sacrifice for the sake of the disciples. The revelation of His glory on the cross, in His resurrection, and in sending of the Breath will all consecrate the disciples in truth. The two consecrations have, as a consequence, an intimate connection with one another. Jesus’ loving sacrifice of Himself for the disciples will reach its culmination when, as risen Lord, He commissions them to bear witness in the Breath’s power to the same truth to which Jesus Himself testified. The disciples will, then, experience their own consecration in truth by witnessing to Jesus. Then, through the world’s hostile opposition to their testimony, they will find themselves drawn into Jesus’ atoning death.58 (Jn 17:18-19) Having described the mission of the disciples as their consecration “in truth,” Jesus closes the priestly prayer by commending to the Father all those who will believe because of the disciples’ witness of faith. More specifically, Jesus prays that all those who come to believe in Him will participate in the unity which results from the mutual indwelling of the divine persons. Father and Son dwell in one another within the Godhead and so share the same divinity and life. The unity of Christians with one another in obedient faith and love, their mutual indwelling in community, will, then, manifest that they also dwell in God and God in them. (Jn 17:20-21) The unity of the disciples with one another and with Father and Son through the action of the indwelling Breath will challenge the world to believe in Jesus and in His mission by the Father. It will do so because it will make the divine glory visible. The disciples’ love for one another will also reflect and manifest Jesus’ love for them, just as Jesus’ love for His disciples manifests the Father’s own love in sending the Son. (Jn 17:22-23) 58. Cf. Andre Feuillet, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, translated by Matthew J. O’Connell (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975); Jean Delorme, “Sacerdoce du Christ et ministère: (à propos de Jean 17) semantique et théologie biblique,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 62(1974), pp. 199-219; Jean Giblet, “Sanctifie-les dans la verité— Jean 17:1-26,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 19(1957), pp. 58-73.
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Finally, Jesus prays to the Father that all those who believe will one day behold His divine glory face to face in heaven, the same glory which the Son enjoys eternally as the Father’s gift. (Jn 17:24-25) Clearly, for the fourth evangelist, the divine triad provides the prototype of all communal unity on earth. The mutual bond of love uniting Christians causes them to dwell in one another in such a way as to unite them perfectly and endow them with divine life and glory. The unity of the Christian community in mutual love approximates the divine unity because it results from God’s action in the community and imitates the divine love and mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Breath. While the priestly prayer does not address the question of the institutional unity of the visible Church, it does rule out any institutional divisions incompatible with the perfection of love to which faith in Jesus summons believers. Moreover, the evangelist clearly regards union with Jesus in heaven as a direct result of the union the disciples have had with Him on earth. The face-to-face vision of His glory will bring the inchoate union with Him which believers enjoy in this life to its culmination and perfection.59 The priestly prayer ends with the following promise: Righteous Father, the world has not known you; but I have known you and these have known that you have sent me. I have made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love with which you loved me may be in them, and so that I may be in them. (Jn 17:25-26)
In the first letter of John, the righteousness of God stands revealed in His power to forgive sin and to purify human conduct of any trace of moral or religious defilement. (1 Jn 1:9) The righteousness of the Father contrasts, then, with the sinful unbelief of the world. It also grounds the obedient faith of the disciples. In bringing the disciples to faith and in separating them from a sinful world through divine forgiveness, the Father holds the initiative. In accepting Jesus as sent by the Father, the disciples both acknowledge His divinity and confess that the Son’s revelation as Son simultaneously reveals the Father as Father. Jesus promises that He will continue to reveal the Father’s name to the disciples. As we have already seen, the Holy Breath in Her function as “another witness” like Jesus makes the risen Christ present in the community. The community will then continue to know the Father to the extent that the activity of the indwelling, divine Breath causes them to embody the same kind of filial relationship to the Father as Jesus did. 59. Cf. Mark L. Appold, The Oneness Motif in the Fourth Gospel (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1976); Jean Cadier, “The Unity of the Church: An Exposition of John 17,” Interpretation, 11(1957), pp. 166-176.
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When they do that, then Jesus will indeed dwell in them and they in Him. Moreover, just as the Son’s love for the Father responds to the Father’s prior love, so too the community’s love for the Father will respond to the Father’s prior gift of love in the Son and Breath. The same love which binds the members of the divine triad to one another will bind the disciples to the Father by teaching them to incarnate Jesus’ own love. In Johannine theology, love provides the key to Christological knowing.60 The Father in the Passion Although Jesus has assured the disciples that the Father will remain with Him in His passion, we find only one reference to the Father in the fourth evangelist’s passion narrative. In the garden after Jesus’ arrest Peter cuts off the right ear of Malchus, the servant of the high priest. Jesus rebukes him: “Sheath your sword. Am I not to drink the cup the Father has given me?” (Jn 18:11; cf. Mk 14:47, Mt 26:515; Lk 22:49-50) As we have seen, the fourth evangelist in his concern to portray Jesus’ passion as the saving manifestation of His divine glory omits any shameful details from his narrative which might derogate from that revelation. After Jesus’ scourging, for example, the soldiers strike but do not degrade Him with mockery and spittle. (Jn 19:1-3) The fourth evangelist seems to have omitted the agony in the garden for similar reasons. Any sign of weakness on Jesus’ part would call attention to His humanity rather than to the divine glory His suffering manifests. As we have seen, however, Jesus’ words to Peter do echo His prayer to the Father as we find it recorded in the synoptic tradition. In all four gospels Jesus speaks of the cup of suffering which the Father asks Him to drain. (Cf. Mk 14:36, Mt 26:39; Lk 22:42) Like Jesus’ prayer in the synoptics, Jesus’ rebuke to Peter points to His death as the ultimate expression of His obedience to the Father.61 (Jn 18:1-12) The Father in the Resurrection When Jesus appears to the ten disciples in the upper room on the evening of Easter Sunday, He invokes the Father’s name in imparting to the disciples the gift of the divine Breath. “Peace to you,” he said to them again; “As the Father has sent Me, so I send you.” And when He had said this, He breathed upon them with the words: “Receive a sanctifying Breath. If you forgive others’ sins, their sins are forgiven; if you hold them bound, they are held bound.” (Jn 19:21-23) 60. Cf. NJBC, 61:199-205; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 739-783; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 147-159. 61. Cf. NJBC, 61:208; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 805-818; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 160-174.
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During the last discourse, Jesus has, as we have seen, promised to impart to His disciples an abiding peace which transcends anything which the world can give. (Jn 14:27) Now as the risen Christ He fulfills that promise through the gift of the sanctifying, sin-forgiving Breath. The fact that the Breath comes in sanctification and in order to effect the forgiveness of sins, manifests the righteousness of the Father. (Jn 18:25) Ultimately, the Breath comes from the Father since She comes to the disciples through the Son whom the Father sends. (Jn 14:25-26, 16:7, 13) Moreover, Jesus’ words make it clear that He sends the sin-forgiving Breath to the disciples in order that they might prolong His own mission from the Father. The risen Christ retains the wounds of His passion, (Jn 20:20) His death, resurrection, and mission of the Breath in other words, stand historically revealed as a single, saving event which effects the forgiveness of sins. A sinful humanity will, however, experience that forgiveness only through faith in Jesus and through obedience to His commands. Unbelievers and sinners remain bound by the judgment of God.62 The Analogy of Christological Knowing The synoptic Jesus proclaims the reign of God; the Johannine Jesus mentions the kingdom only once during His public ministry, and then only in private discourse. (Jn 3:3) In Johannine theology, the paschal mystery reveals the kingdom and the full scope of Jesus’ divine messianic kingship. Focus on the paschal mystery and on the divine truths which it discloses also colors the Beloved Disciple’s account of Jesus’ relationship to the Father. As we saw in volume two, the synoptic evangelists use a variety of narrative and rhetorical strategies in order to assert Jesus’ divinity. In their portrait of Jesus’ relationship to the Father, however, the synoptic gospels stress the moral attitudes toward the Father which Jesus exemplifies for the disciples’ imitation. In all three synoptics, Jesus relates to the Father in perfect obedience, unconditioned trust, and all-consuming love. Moreover, the synoptic Jesus typically effaces Himself before the Father. Obedience, trust, and love also characterize the Johannine Jesus’ relationship to the Father; but, unlike the Jesus of the synoptics, the Johannine Jesus constantly harangues unbelieving Jews about His co-equality with the Father. In virtue of His divine pre-existence with the Father, the Jesus of the fourth gospel claims unique knowledge of the inner life of God and of other heavenly goings-on. The atemporal viewpoint from which the Johannine Jesus discourses about His relationship to the Father enables the fourth evangelist to clarify 62. Cf. NJBC, 61:234; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 1018-1052; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 206-217.
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the ontological character of that relationship in much greater detail than the synoptics. Even in discoursing about Jesus’ eternal relationship to the Father, however, the Beloved Disciple appeals to the shared faith experience of his community rather than to metaphysical a prioris, in the manner of some of the fathers of the Church. The Johannine doctrine of the mutual indwelling of the divine persons illustrates what I mean. The Beloved Disciple appeals to the Christian community’s experience of the indwelling of the risen Christ in them through the power of His Breath in order to validate his claim that within the Godhead Father and Son dwell in one another. In both cases, obedience and co-activity provide the key to understanding the meaning of indwelling rather than abstract metaphysical concepts. Moreover, the experience of the disciples’ dwelling in the Son through the power of His Breath engages the Johannine community’s confession of Jesus’ real eucharistic presence. The obedience of faith and the experience of shared eucharistic worship, therefore, provide the experiential keys which unlock the Johannine notion of mutual indwelling. In the same way, a Johannine theology of the divine glory appeals directly to the faith experience of the Johannine community. The community participates in the glory of the risen Christ through proclaiming His oneness to the Father. At least, the community does so when it makes that proclamation with the same selfless dedication to revealed Truth as Jesus Himself exemplified. The Father’s glorification of the Son for the fidelity of His testimony to the Father transforms the Son into the Breath-baptizer; and the Breath whom He imparts reveals Jesus’ glory by inspiring the disciples’ faith-witness to His divinity. In other words, despite the Beloved Disciple’s insistence on doctrinal aspects of Jesus’ relationship to the Father, the evangelist, like the synoptics, vindicates the inherently practical character of Christological knowing. Jesus knows the Father lovingly and obedientially. The disciples must learn in their turn to know both Jesus and the Father lovingly and obedientially. The disciples know the Father through loving, obediential assimilation to Jesus, especially in His witness to the Father. The beleaguered state of the Johannine community: its expulsion from the synagogue for heresy, its polemic confrontation with the Baptizer’s disciples, its internal debate with the Christian dissidents all color the dualistic rhetoric of Johannine soteriology. Crisis precludes compromise. Hence, the Beloved Disciple describes his community’s confrontation with hostile unbelief and with internal doctrinal dissension as the conflict between two irreconcilables: the light and the darkness. In that conflict, however, the Father’s universal saving will mutes somewhat the soteriological dualism. Despite the world’s sinful self-alliance with the
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forces of darkness, the Father desires only to save it and reveals in Jesus the universal scope of His saving intentions. With all its doctrinal sophistication, therefore, the Beloved Disciple’s theological account of Jesus’ relationship to the Father roots itself in the experience of Christological knowing. One comes to know who Jesus is and the nature of His relationship to the Father through practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. That assimilation transforms one into a child of God in His image. In the fourth gospel, such practical assimilation also includes the deed of faith. Those who respond to the Breath of the risen Christ prolong Jesus’ saving mission to a sinful world and like Him serve paradoxically as instruments of God’s judgment. That negative judgment falls, however, only on those who stubbornly sin against the light. By glorifying God in their faithful witness to Jesus’ divinity, the disciples come to know who Jesus is by imitating Jesus’ own faithful witness to the Father in obedience, trust, and love. This section has dealt with the Beloved Disciple’s perception of the relationship between Jesus and the Father. The section which follows examines His relationship to the divine Breath. (III) The fourth gospel refers more frequently to the Father than to the divine Breath. Still, the Beloved Disciple develops a rich pneumatology. Jesus and the Holy Breath As in the synoptic gospels, John the Baptizer insists on Jesus’ superiority to himself and on the superiority of Christian baptism to Johannine. (Jn 1:24-27) As we have seen, however, the forensic tone of the Johannine narrative transforms the Baptizer into one of the witnesses whose testimony helps establish legally the truth of Jesus’ own proclamation of the Father. In the fourth gospel the Baptizer actually witnesses the descent of the Breath on Jesus and testifies to it. The fourth evangelist insists characteristically on the permanence with which the Holy Breath dwells in Jesus. She descends upon Him to remain (menein) with Him. The permanence of Her presence develops a theology of divine indwelling. (Jn 1:32-34) The Johannine Jesus fulfills the Baptizer’s promise that He will baptize with a sanctifying Breath when on Easter He breathes Her into the disciples. She will dwell permanently in them and empower them to prolong Jesus’ own mission on earth by proclaiming the forgiveness of sins.63 (Jn 20:19-23; 14:27, 16:33) 63. Cf. NJBC, 61:32; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 55-72; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 150-156.
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In His conversation with Nicodemus, Jesus reveals more about the nature of Christian baptism: it effects rebirth in water and the Breath. The Breath begets a share in divine life, pneuma without the definite article. This heavenly, pneumatic begetting of life differs in kind from physical begetting, which gives rise only to death-bound life, to flesh. The Breath communicates by contrast Pneuma, or imperishable risen life. (Jn 5:5-6; cf. 1 Jn 3:9, 5:1, 18) Moreover, the gift of “Breath” makes possible authentic eucharistic worship by inspiring faith in Christ’s real presence in the eucharistic elements. (Jn 6:52-65) As we have already seen, in the fourth gospel the kingdom does not occupy the central place in Jesus’ preaching which it holds in the synoptics. Still, by portraying Christian baptism as the door which leads into the kingdom, The Beloved Disciple implicitly points to the Christian community as the incipient realization of the divine reign on earth. Those begotten of the Breath derive their life from above (anôthen). (Jn 3:7) Jesus describes this heavenly begetting as a mysterious event. Like the wind its origin and ultimate destiny remain mysterious; but the baptized do experience the Breath in this life. They experience Her as a powerful and mysterious force which draws them into the mystery of Her origin and of their destiny. As we have seen, She comes from God, the gift of Father and Son, and leads to risen life. The disciples can no more control the Breath than they can control the wind. They must, then, submit to the pneumatic impulse which Breath-baptism brings. This account of pneumatic begetting clarifies what the prologue means by being born of God.64 (Jn 1:13) In His final testimony to Jesus, the Baptizer makes it clear that Jesus imparts the Breath in eschatological abundance. John says: “He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for without measure does He give the Breath.” (Jn 3:34) The antecedent of the subject of the verb “give” remains ambiguous. Does it refer to the Father who gives the Breath without measure to the Son? Or does it refer to the Son who gives the Breath without measure to the disciples? The evangelist probably intends both meanings because He immediately adds that the Father gives all things to the Son. In other words, the Father sends the Breath to dwell in the Son in eschatological abundance so that the Son can breathe Her forth with the same inexhaustible abundance. (Jn 3:35) A similar ambiguity attends the Baptizer’s words: “He whom God has sent utters the words of God.” (Jn 3:34) They could refer either to the 64. Cf. NJBC, 61:46-52; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 128-149; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 194-207; Ignace de la Potterie, “Jesus et Nicodemus: de revelatione Jesus et vera fide in eum (Jo 3:11-21),” Verbum Domini, 47(1969), pp. 141-150, 257- 283; Linda Bellville, “‘Born of Water and the Spirit’: John 3:5,” Trinity Journal,1(1980), pp. 125-141.
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Baptizer or to Jesus. John speaks with prophetic authority and therefore derives His mission from God. Jesus speaks as the Son of God sent by the Father to save the world. Again the evangelist probably intends the ambiguity: the Baptizer’s witness to Jesus helps validate the truth which Jesus’ speaks in the Father’s name, even though as Son of God incarnate Jesus speaks with an even greater authority than the Baptizer.65 As we have already seen, in His conversation with the Samaritan woman, Jesus offers to give “living water” which slakes human thirst for everlasting life. (Jn 4:10-14) Living water means flowing, potable water, water which causes plants to grow, relieves thirst, and animates living things. Living water contrasts with the saline waters of the Dead Sea: unpotable and death dealing. Jesus also promises the Samaritan woman that the Breath will resemble a “spring of water welling up to eternal life.” (Jn 4:14) Later in the same conversation, Jesus foretells the day when people will worship God “in breath and truth.” As we have seen, Jesus identifies “breath” (pneuma without the definite article) with the life common to Father, Son, and Breath. (Jn 4:23-24) The Breath begets Breath. Moreover, as we have also seen, since the risen Christ functions as Her source, the Breath also acts as a principle of risen life.66 (Jn 20:22-23) During the feast of Tabernacles, the evangelist identifies the living water which Jesus will give with the gift of the Holy Breath: On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood up and cried out: “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me; let whoever believes in Me drink. Scripture has it: ‘From within Him rivers of living water shall flow.’” Now He said this about the Breath, which those who believed in Him were to receive; for as yet the Breath was not [given], for Jesus was not yet glorified. (Jn 7:37-39)
The Feast of Tabernacles celebrated the harvest. Every day of the week-long celebration a priest scooped water with a golden pitcher from the stream which supplied water to the pool of Siloam saying: “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” The priest then carried the pitcher in procession into the temple accompanied by the people carrying myrtle and lemon branches. In the temple the priest poured the water onto the ground through a silver funnel. On the last day, a seven-fold 65. Cf. NJBC, 61:54-55; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 150-163; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 208-212; John W. Pryor, “John 3.3,5: A Study in the Relation of John’s Gospel to the Synoptic Tradition,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 41(1991), pp. 71-95. 66. Cf. NJBC, 61:56-62; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 166-185; G.J. van der Watt, “The Use of ‘Aionios’ in the Concept Zoê Aionios in John’s Gospel,” Novum Testamentum, 31(1989), pp. 217-228; J.-L. Ska, S.J., “Jésus et la Samaritaine (Jn 4): Utilité de l’ancien testament,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 118(1996), pp. 641-652 .
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circumambulation of the altar in the temple accompanied the pouring of the water. These rituals provide the symbolic background of Jesus’ renewed promise of the living water.67 Jesus speaks in the preceding text as divine wisdom personified. In the book of Proverbs, divine Wisdom invites people to come to her to eat and drink. (Pr 9:3) The gift of living water will, then, impart divine wisdom to those who receive it. As we have also seen, it will in addition communicate imperishable risen life; for, as the prologue has made clear, in God life and light coincide. (Jn 1:4-5) The Scripture text Jesus cites in verse 38 has no parallel in the Old Testament. Some have suggested that it blends several texts (for example, Zech 14:8 and Ez 47:1ff.). Whatever its source, the text contains another grammatical ambiguity. To whose heart does the evangelist refer: to Jesus’ heart or to the believer’s? Once again the Beloved Disciples probably intends both meanings. John has already referred to Jesus as Breath-baptizer and source of the Breath. (Jn 1:33) At the same time, Jesus will communicate the Breath to the disciples to share with others in forgiving sins. Scholars continue to debate both the punctuation and meaning of this difficult passage.68 (Jn 20:21-23) 67. Cf. David Michael Stanley, S.J. “The Feast of Tents: Jesus’ Self-Revelation,” Worship, 34(1959-1960), pp. 20-27. 68. Cf. NJBC, 61:111-112; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 319-331; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 9-20; C.F. Burney, “The Lord’s Old Testament Reference in St. John VII. 37,38,” The Expositor, 20(1920), pp. 385-388; T. Herbert Bindley, “John VII, 37, 38,” The Expositor, 20(1920), pp. 443-447; M.-E. Boismard, “De son ventre couleront des fleuves d’eau,” Revue Biblique, 65(1958), pp. 522-546; Jean-Paul Audet, “Les citations targumiques dans le quatrième évangile,” Revue Biblique, 66(1959), pp. 374-386; J. Blenkensopp, “John VII. 37-9: Another Note on a Notorious Crux,” New Testament Studies, 6(1959-1960), pp. 95-98; Juan B. Cortes, S.J., “Yet Another Look at Jn 7:37-38,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 29(1967), pp. 75-86; “‘Torrentes de agua viva,’ Una Nueva Interpretation de Jn 7, 37-38, Estudios Biblicos, 16(1957), pp. 279-306; Gordon D. Fee, “Once More—John 7, 37-39,” Expository Times, 89(1977-1978), pp. 116-118; A.-M. Dubarle, “Les fleuves d’eau vive (S. Jean vii, 37-39),” Revue Biblique, 52(1945), pp. 238-241; Pierre Grelot, “‘De son ventre couleront des fleuves d’eau’: La citation scripturaire de Jean VII, 38,” Revue Biblique, 66(1959), pp. 369-374; “A propos de Jean VII, 38,” Revue Biblique, 67(1960), pp. 224-225; “Jean VII, 38: Eau du rocher ou source du temple,” Revue Biblique, 70(1963), pp. 43-51; S.H. Hooke, “‘The Spirit Was Not Yet,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 372-380; G.D. Kilpatrick, “The Punctuation of John VII. 37-38,” Journal of Theological Studies, 11(1960) pp. 340-398; C.H. Turner, “On the Punctuation of St. John VII, 37, 38,” Journal of Theological Studies, 11(1960), pp. 340-342; M. Miguens, “El Agua y el Espiritu en Jn 7, 37-39,” Estudios Biblicos, 31(1972), pp. 369-398; C.H. Turner, “On the Punctuation of St. John VII, 37, 38,” Journal of Theological Studies, 24(1923), pp. 66-70; H.D. Woodhouse, “Hard Sayings—IX ‘The Holy Ghost was not yet given’ John 7. 39,” Theology, 67(1964), pp. 310-312; K.H. Kuhn, “John VII. 37-8,” New Testament Studies, 4(1957-1958), PP. 63-65; Mariette Canevet, “Une fausse symetrie: La venue du Christ chez les parfaits dans l”Ancien et le Nouveau Testaments selon Origène, in Joh I, VII, 37-40,”
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As we have already seen, Jesus in His last discourse promises to send the disciples “another witness (parakleton),” whom He identifies as the Breath of truth and as the Holy Breath with which He will baptize. (Jn 14:16-7, 26) No other New Testament writer uses the term “parakletos.” Its use in John reflects the forensic tone of His gospel. “Parakletos” in Greek can mean an advocate, or attorney-at-law. It can also mean a spokesperson, or intercessor. It can mean a comforter, or consoler. Finally, it can mean a witness, or teacher. Of the possible meanings “witness” seems the one most likely intended by the evangelist. Although translators frequently render “parakletos” as comforter, in the fourth gospel the Breath comes, not so much as a source of comfort, but as the inspiration of the disciples’ witness, or testimony, to Jesus. As She inspired Jesus’ testimony to the Father, so She will inspire the disciple’s testimony to Him. The Breath of truth will come to the disciples and abide in them as She abides in Jesus. As we have seen, this insistence on the abiding character of the Breath typifies the fourth evangelist’s understanding of our relationship to God. The Breath comes only to those who respond to Jesus in faith. Hence, She cannot come to a world trapped in sinful unbelief. (Jn 14:17) As the Breath of truth, the second witness will enable the disciples to testify to the divine truth incarnate in Jesus. This She will accomplish by instructing them and reminding them of everything which Jesus taught. The term “witness” accords well with the Beloved Disciple’s forensic theology. (Jn 14:26) It would appear that the Breath will instruct the disciples differently from the way in which Jesus did. She will enable them to appropriate in a new, vivid, and immediate way whatever Jesus has said to them. In other words, She will bring a wise enlightenment which endows Jesus’ verbal instructions with new meaning. More than an angelic presence, the Breath of truth teaches the disciples to grasp through obedient imitation the very truth which Jesus embodies. As we have already seen, in the fourth gospel as in the synoptics, the disciples know the truth Jesus embodies by practical assimilation to Him, by entering into His own filial relationship to the Father. The enlightenment of the Breath will empower the disciples to prolong Jesus’ testimony to the Father. Both Son and Father send the Breath to the disciples. (Jn 14:26, 15:26-27) As a consequence, She makes Them present to the disciples and the disciples to Them. Her testimony about Jesus to the disciples will find expression in the disciples’ own testimony to Jesus and to the Father He reveals. The testimonies of the Breath and of the disciples coincide: the Breath testifies in the disciples’ testimony. Moreover, the fact that the disciples have been Gregorianum, 75(1994), pp. 743-749; Marten J.J. Menken, “The Origin of the Old Testament Quotation in John 7:38,” Novum Testamentum, 38(1996), pp. 160-175.
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with Jesus from the beginning of His ministry means that they can with the Breath’s inspiration hand on faithfully everything which Jesus taught.69 Through Her testimony to Jesus in the disciples, the other witness will also serve as an instrument of divine judgment. The unbelief of many who heard Jesus and rejected Him has placed them under the divine judgment. In the same way, the world’s hostility to Jesus, its refusal to believe the Breath-inspired witness of His disciples, will cause it and those who belong to it to stand before God condemned by their stubborn refusal to believe. (Jn 16:7-11) Specifically, the Breath will unmask the lies and errors of the world. She will prove the world wrong on three issues. First, She will prove the world wrong about sin. (Jn 16:9) The world condemned Jesus as a sinner; and those guilty of the crime hypocritically protested their own faith in God while murdering Him. When the Breath comes, She will make it clear that Jesus’ murderers passed false judgment on Him precisely because they refused to believe in Him. Their violence and unbelief marks them, not Him, as the real sinners. Second, the other witness will, as we have seen, also show that the world erred about justice. In condemning Jesus the world pretended to act justly. The second witness will make it clear that His glorification and return to the Father in heaven reverses the world’s judgment and unmasks its injustice. (Jn 16:10) This the Breath will do by revealing the justice of God in the forgiveness of sins. (Jn 20:19-23) Finally, the other witness will prove the world wrong about condemnation. The world condemned Jesus; but the other witness will make it clear that in condemning Jesus the world through its sinful unbelief placed itself under Jesus’ own judgment as eschatological judge. The Father, as we have seen, sanctions Jesus’ condemnation of unbelief. The Breath of truth, for Her part, manifests the truth in part by revealing that the world stands under the dominion of Satan, not of God, and that God in the paschal mystery has already condemned Satan. (Jn 16:11) In summary, then, the Holy Breath, a witness for Jesus in the drama of cosmic judgment, will confound the world by unmasking its lies and falsehood. Without the cover of deceit, the world will stand clearly and justly condemned by God and by His incarnate Son.70 Jesus must depart before the Breath can come, for She proceeds from the risen Christ and therefore mediates risen life. Jesus’ glorification by the Father in His passion and resurrection mediates the gift of the Breath to the disciples. (Jn 16:7, 19:30, 20:22-23) Jesus’ departure should not, 69. Cf. NJBC, 61:183-185; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 649-657; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 119-128. 70. Cf. M.F. Boismard, O.P., “Le paraklet, défenseur du Christ devant la conscience du croyant (Jo. XVI, 8-11),” Revue des Sciences Philosophiques et Théologiques, 33(1949), pp. 361-389.
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however, cause the disciples concern or anxiety, because the Holy Breath of truth will enable them to appropriate the truth about Jesus. She will also reveal to them truths which He, because of their weakness and obtuseness, could not reveal to them while He lived among them. She will instruct the disciples about the shape of the eschatological future which is in process of dawning. (Jn 16:12-13) The Beloved Disciple, using dispensational rather than metaphysical language, characterizes the Breath’s relationship to the Son as obediential. Just as Jesus obeyed perfectly the Father who sent Him, so too the Breath will obey Jesus who sends Her. Moreover, in virtue of Jesus’ obediential relationship to the Father, the Father sanctions everything the Son says and does. Hence, the Father like the Son will sanction the new truths to which the Breath in obedience to the Son will lead the Christian community. (Jn 16:14-15) The Beloved Disciple espouses an open-ended understanding of divine revelation. The self-disclosure of God begun in the incarnation reaches its completion with the coming of the Breath who guides the Christian community to “all truth,” even to truths which Jesus Himself never spoke. (Jn 16:13) The perfect co-activity which discloses the mutual indwelling of the divine persons ensures that both Father and Son endorse the Holy Breath’s revelations about the future. The truth disclosed as revelation unfolds enjoys, then, the authoritative sanction of all three members of the divine triad.71 As we have seen, when the risen Christ appears to the disciples on Easter, after a greeting of peace, He breathes on them and says: As the Father has sent me, so I also send you. Receive a sanctifying Breath. Whoever’s sins you forgive are forgiven them. Whoever’s sin you retain are retained. (Jn 20:19-23) 71. Cf. NJBC, 61:194-198; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 703-717; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 140-148; Otto Betz, Der Paraklet (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963); Raymond E. Brown, “The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel,” New Testament Studies, 13(1966- 1967), pp. 113-122; C.K. Barrett, “The Holy Spirit in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 1(1950), pp. 1-15; B.W. Brown, “The ‘Other’ Comforter,” The Expositor, 8th ser., 14(1917), pp. 273-282; George Johnston, The Spirit-Paraclete in the Gospel of John (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970); Sr. John Mary Hurley, C.S.N., “The Paraclete in the Fourth Gospel,” Bible Today, 36(1968), pp. 2485-2488; J.G. Davies, “The Primary Meaning of PARAKLETOS,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 4(1953), pp. 35-38; Franz Mussner, Praesentia Salutis (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1967), pp. 146-158; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Die johanneische Gemeinde und ihre Geisterfahrung” in Die Kirche des Anfangs, edited by R. Schnackenburg et al. (Leipzig: St. Benno Verlag, 1977), pp. 277-304; George Montague, The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition (New York, NY: Paulist, 1976), pp. 333-365; Bernard Guillieron, Le Saint-Esprit: Actualité du Christ (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1978), pp. 79-105; Kurt Niederwimmer, “Zure Eschatologie im Corpus Johanneum,” Novum Testamentum, 39(1997), pp. 105-116.
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The Holy Breath comes to fulfill Jesus’ promise of a peace other than the peace which the world gives. (Jn 14:27) The Breath creates peace by forgiving sins and by revealing the justice of God. Moreover, as the source of imperishable risen life, She creates a permanent peace which reconciles humans to God and to one another. As the other witness, the Holy Breath also comes to commission the disciples. Jesus sends them forth to testify to Him in Her power. As She inspired His witness to the Father, so She will now inspire their witness to Jesus. Jesus sends the disciples forth to mediate the sanctifying Breath to others by forgiving their sins. One accepts divine forgiveness by believing the disciples’ witness to Jesus as the divine bridegroom who loved a sinful humanity enough to atone for their sins by His death, resurrection, and mission of the Breath. That atonement reconciles sinners to God through the action of the sin-forgiving Breath.72 The Analogy of Christological Knowing Johannine pneumatology echoes a number of synoptic themes. Only Jesus baptizes with the divine Breath. Breath-baptism draws one into Jesus’ own mission. The Breath conforms to Jesus those in whom She dwells. The Breath inspires willingness to testify to Jesus even at the risk of one’s life. Like Luke, the fourth evangelist stresses the judgmental character of the Church’s proclamation of the risen Christ. One also finds, however, important contrasts between synoptic and Johannine pneumatology. While the synoptics tend to portray practical obedience to life in the kingdom as the decisive sign of Breath-baptism, Johannine pneumatology focuses more on the Breath’s inspiration of the disciples’ testimony to Jesus’ divinity. Concern with belief in Jesus’ eucharistic presence also causes the Beloved Disciple to stress more than the synoptics the Breath-inspired character of eucharistic worship. Sharp theological focus on the revelatory centrality of the paschal mystery also leads the Beloved Disciple to develop through narrative and imagery the Pauline theme that the Breath confers a share in risen life. In Johannine theology, moreover, the image of living water which imparts 72. Cf. NJBC, 61:234; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 1018-1045; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 203-217; Ernest C. Colwell and Eric L. Titus, The Gospel of the Spirit: A Study in the Fourth Gospel (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1953); W. Bartlett, “The Coming of the Holy Spirit According to the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, 37(1925- 1926), pp. 71-75; Max Turner and Gary M. Burge, “The Anointed Community: A Review and Response,” Evangelical Quarterly, 62(1990), pp. 253-268; Udo Schnelle, “Johannes als Geisttheologie,” Novum Testamentum, 49(1998), pp. 17-31; Miguel Rodríguez-Ruiz, “Estructura del Evangelio de San Juan desde Punto de Vista Cristológico y Ecclesiológico,” Estudios Biblicos, 56(1998), pp. 75-96.
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endless risen life links this aspect of the Breath’s saving presence both to baptism and to Jesus’ redemptive death. Finally, the Beloved Disciple stresses more than the synoptics the role of the abiding, indwelling Breath in developing doctrine and in revealing the eschatological future. This stress may reflect another aspect of the situation in which the Beloved Disciple’s community found itself. With the death of the apostolic witnesses to the risen Christ, the community may have wondered who would insure the Church’s fidelity to their testimony. The Beloved Disciple looks to the Breath of the risen Christ as the Church’s link to its risen Lord. Not only will She teach Jesus’ followers to assimilate His teachings in a new and vivid way; but She will also reveal to them things of which Jesus could not discourse prior to Her arrival. Since She proceeds from the risen Christ, the divine Breath will faithfully lead the Church into the eschatological future which He defines. This section has examined the Johannine Jesus’ positive relationship to the Breath. The section which follows meditates His positive relationship to two historical but symbolic individuals: namely, to Mary, His mother, and to the Beloved Disciple. (V) In the fourth gospel Jesus stands in a completely positive relationship to two historical individuals: to His mother, Mary, and to the Beloved Disciple. Jesus, the Beloved Disciple, and the New Eve “The disciple whom Jesus loved” appears only in the Book of Glory, which narrates the paschal mystery. The Beloved Disciple makes an entrance at the last supper, where he reclines “close to the breast of Jesus,” a phrase which expresses a personal intimacy analogous to Jesus’ intimacy with the Father. (Cf. Jn 1:18) At Jesus’ announcement of the impending treachery of one of the disciples, Peter signals to the Beloved Disciple to ask Jesus to identify the traitor. The Beloved Disciple complies with the request. (Jn 13:21-25) The Beloved Disciple joins Peter in following Jesus after His arrest; and he also stands at the foot of Jesus’ cross on Calvary. The Beloved Disciple’s presence at the beginning and at the end of the passion suggests his willingness to accompany Jesus throughout the ordeal. (Jn 18:15, 19:25-27) The Beloved Disciple also witnesses the sign of the blood and water which flows from Jesus’ pierced side on the cross. Although the evangelist seems to regard this event as another miraculous sign, the water he witnessed could conceivably have consisted of bodily fluid. The evangelist, however, sees revelatory significance in the fact that water as well as blood flowed from Jesus’ side.
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The blood symbolizes Jesus’ eucharistic blood which when drunk in faith insures resurrection. (Jn 6:23) The water foreshadows the gift of the Breath, the life-giving water imparted in Breath-baptism. (Jn 19:31-37) The sign of water also refers to John 7:38-39, where Jesus prophesies that living water will flow from His breast. The flow of water symbolizes the Breath He will soon pour out on the disciples. With the blood, the water testifies to the saving character of His death. So too does the fact that in dying, Jesus “handed over the breath (paredoken to pneuma).” (Jn 19:30) Jesus’ dying breath foreshadows His eschatological gift of the divine Breath on Easter. (Jn 20:21-23) Finally, the water flowing from the side of the crucified Christ reveals Him as the true temple of God from whom living waters flow to give life to all the land.73 (Ez 47:1-12) The preparation of the paschal lamb requires that its legs remain unbroken. (Ex 12:46) The fact that the soldiers did not break Jesus’ legs as He hung on the cross reveals Jesus as the paschal lamb, the lamb of God to whom the Baptizer testified. By recalling the Baptizer’s prophecy, the evangelist also implicitly recalls its other levels of meaning. The allusion to the paschal lamb thus implicitly compares Jesus both to the suffering servant, who dies as docilely as a lamb, and to the victorious lamb of Jewish and Christian apocalyptic. The fact that the soldiers leave Jesus’ legs unbroken probably alludes as well to Ps 34:21. There God insures that the just who suffer persecution will yet preserve their limbs intact. If so, then Jesus’ unbroken legs testify to His innocent suffering. The Beloved Disciple also notes that the piercing of Jesus’ side fulfills another Old Testament prophecy: “They shall look on Him whom they have pierced.” This prophecy offers a variant reading of Zech 12:10. The full text of Zechariah describes the day of the Lord when He will in judgment destroy all the enemies of Jerusalem. On that day the House of David and the citizens of Jerusalem will look on the pierced one and mourn for him as for a first-born son or only child. The death of the pierced one resembles that of the suffering servant in second Isaiah in that it brings redemption: it seems to lift the siege of Jerusalem and cause Her vindication. (Zech 12:9-14) 73. Cf. Georg Richter, Studien zum Johannesevangelium, edited by Josef Hainz (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1977), pp. 120-142; John Wilkenson, “The Incident of Blood and Water in John 19.34,” Scottish Journal of Theology, 28(1975), pp. 149-172; A.F. Sava, “The Wound in the Side of Christ,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 19(1957), pp. 343-346; J. Massingberd Ford, “‘Mingled Blood’ from the Side of Christ (John XIX, 34),” New Testament Studies, 15(1968-1969), pp. 337-338; Martinus J.J. Menkin, “The Textual Form and Meaning of the Quotation from Zechariah 12:10 in John 19:37,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 55(1993), pp. 494-511; Martinus C. De Boer, “Jesus the Baptizer: 1 John 5:5-8 and the Gospel of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 107(1988), pp. 87-106.
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The passage in Zechariah concludes; “When that day comes, a fountain will be opened for the house of David and for the citizens of Jerusalem.” (Zech 13:1) For the evangelist, then, the prophecy of Zechariah calls attention to the Easter gift of the living water: the gift of the Holy Breath and of the forgiveness of sins which She will effect. In other words, the water flowing from the side of the pierced Christ foreshadows that Jesus is about to fulfill the text: “from within Him shall flow rivers of living water.” (Jn 7:37-38) This Jesus will do when on Easter He pours forth the divine Breath as the living water which slakes human thirst for immortality. Even though it seems historically unlikely that the Roman executioners would have allowed people sympathetic to Jesus to stand at the foot of the cross, the fourth gospel clearly portrays the Beloved Disciple as an historical personage who witnessed Jesus’ death and the events which accompanied it. The appendix to the gospel also identifies the Beloved Disciple with the person of the evangelist. (Jn 21:24) Like other historical figures in the fourth gospel, however, the Beloved Disciple also takes on symbolic meaning. The Book of Glory transforms the Beloved Disciple into a type of the believing Christian. Let us reflect on the narrative strategies which the evangelist employs in endowing the figure of the Beloved Disciple with symbolic meaning.74 As we have seen, the Beloved Disciple relates to Jesus with special intimacy. The fourth gospel invites the reader to enjoy a similar intimacy. The Beloved Disciple testifies to the saving significance of Jesus’ death. The evangelist clearly expects every disciple to share that faith and to endorse that witness publicly. The Beloved Disciple also models the way in which the believing Christian ought to relate to the risen Jesus. As we shall see when we reflect on Jesus’ relationship to the disciples, the story of Jesus’ apparition to the disciples parallels their call. The call of the disciples begins with Jesus’ invitation to them to “Come and see.” (Jn 1:39) The invitation summons them to more than physical sight. Instead, Jesus is inviting the disciples to see deeply into the reality He incarnates and to do so with the eyes of faith. As the disciples begin to gather around Jesus, they recognize Him first as the Lamb of God, then as the messiah. As we have also seen, Jesus then promises them that, when the eschatological age dawns, they will “see” in Him their privileged link to the Father. (Jn 1:35-51) The disciples finally reach that culminating insight when they encounter the risen Christ. As a consequence, the fourth evangelist makes com74. Cf. NJBC, 61:227; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 932-962; Antonio Vincent Cernuda, “El desviado Lazaro y el delumbrador Discipulo amado,” Estudios Biblicos, 52(1994), pp. 453-516.
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ing to the vision of faith the motif of his resurrection narrative. In his account of Jesus’ resurrection appearances, the Beloved Disciple repeatedly plays the terms “seeing” and “believing” off against one another. In each encounter with the risen Christ, each disciple learns to “see” the risen Christ through a different process of personal transformation in faith. Among the disciples, however, only the Beloved Disciple comes to resurrection faith without laying eyes on the risen Christ. When Mary Magdalene informs the disciples about the empty tomb, both Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to the tomb. The latter arrives first but waits for Peter to catch up before entering the tomb. Peter sees its emptiness and the burial cloths but does not come to resurrection faith until he encounters the risen Christ that evening in the upper room. The Beloved Disciple, by contrast, believes in the risen Christ only on the evidence of the empty tomb and of the now useless burial cloths. (Jn 20:1-10) The deeper faith of the Beloved Disciple also appears in the fact that he recognizes Jesus instantly in His apparition on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. Peter does not recognize Jesus until the Beloved Disciple names Him. (Jn 21:7-8) The Beloved Disciple’s ability to believe in the resurrection without even seeing the risen Christ transforms him into a type of all those believers for whom the fourth evangelist wrote his gospel. (Jn 20:29-31) The symbolic meaning surrounding the Beloved Disciple helps endow another historical personage with analogous symbolism: namely, Mary, the mother of Jesus. In the synoptic gospels, only the women witness Jesus’ death; and Jesus’ mother does not number among them. In the fourth gospel, Mary stands at the foot of the cross together with the Beloved Disciple. (Jn 19:26) The Beloved Disciple’s presence at the foot of the cross exemplifies another ideal which all believers should imitate: the willingness to stand by Jesus in His passion, even at the risk of one’s own life. Moreover, only in the fourth gospel does the dying Jesus give the Beloved Disciple to His mother as her own son: When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom He loved standing near, He said to His mother: “Woman, behold your son!” Then He said to the disciple, “Behold your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.75 (Jn 19:26-27)
75. Cf. NJBC, 61:224; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 897-931; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 189-202; Thorwald Lorenzen, Der Lieblingsjünger in Johannesevangelium (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk Verlag, 1971); Ralph Russell, O.S.B., The Beloved Disciple and the Resurrection,” Scripture, 8(1956), pp. 41-50; Martin Rese, “Das Selbstzeugnis des Johannesevangeliums über seiner Verfasser,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 72(1996), pp. 75-111.
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Mary appears only twice in John’s gospel. She persuades Jesus to work His first sign at Cana; and she stands at the foot of His cross. The two appearances, one at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry and another at its end, both occur on the last day of a symbolic week of events. They function, therefore, as a biblical inclusion. Mary at Cana also foreshadows Mary on Calvary because the sign which she causes Jesus to work at Cana anticipates His “hour,” the hour of His exaltation in suffering and in glory. (Jn 2:4, 19:26) In her first appearance at the marriage at Cana, Mary informs Jesus that the wine provided for the wedding has run out. Jesus replies to her enigmatically: “What to Me and to you, woman? My hour is not yet come.” (Jn 2:5) The phrase “what to me and to you?” translates literally a Semitic idiom. The idiom expresses mild disagreement with something just said. By following the question “What to Me and to You?” with a further statement—namely, “My hour is not yet come”—the evangelist endows the idiomatic question with symbolic meaning. In effect, Jesus is saying that the time has not come for Him to provide the wine He most desires to provide. That gift must await the hour when He is lifted up in suffering and in glory. Jesus is, of course, referring to the wine of the eucharist which He will give as His blood when His hour comes. The eucharistic wine will recall His saving death; but it will also foreshadow in turn the messianic wine which the victorious Jesus will share with His disciples at His second coming. These eschatological, eucharistic allusions endow the question “What to Me and to you?” with deeper symbolic meaning. Jesus is equivalently saying: “To what kind of wine are you referring? My hour is not yet come.”76 76. The first letter of John both alludes to Jesus’ “hour” and develops its theological meaning. The letter associates the coming of the Antichrist (1 Jn 2:18) with the second coming. (1 Jn 2:28) The arrival of the “many Antichrists (antichristoi polloi)” makes it certain that the second coming cannot lie far in the future. (1 Jn 2:18) By “many Antichrists” the author of the letter probably means the dissident Christians who left the Johannine community. The author brands them as false prophets. (1 Jn 2:19, 4:1) Instead of yielding to the false blandishments of these Antichrists, the Johannine community must recognize the true meaning of righteousness, the righteousness revealed by God in Christ, so that when the Son of God returns they may welcome Him in all confidence and not in shame. (1 Jn 2:28-9) The author of the letter describes the eschatological situation of the Johannine community as “the last hour (eschate hora)” approaches. (1 Jn 2:18) We find here a tacit reference to “the hour” of Jesus in the gospel of John, the time of His lifting up in glory, which includes not only His passion and resurrection but also the sending of the Holy Breath. The hour of Jesus begins the last age of salvation which will culminate in the second coming. The disciples continue to live that “hour,” namely, in the time of the Breath. In the first letter’s allusion to the second coming and final judgment, we also find a tacit reference to the theology of judgment developed in the fourth gospel. Those who live righteously in the light escape the judgment of God and need not fear the second
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Mary apparently senses that the question “What to Me and to you?” has a double meaning. She does not take Jesus’ reply as a refusal to do anything to alleviate the embarrassing predicament of the bride and groom. Instead, she senses the opposite and tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them. Jesus then transforms fifteen to twenty-five gallons of water into a wine more excellent that the one the married couple had provided. (Jn 2:5-10) The abundance and excellence of the wine Jesus provides also has symbolic significance: it foreshadows the abundance and excellence of the messianic wine which Jesus will one day provide and which the eucharist foreshadows.77 Both at Cana and on the cross, Jesus addresses Mary as “woman.” Jesus uses the same title in addressing Martha. (Jn 19:26) The title has no negative connotations in the fourth gospel and functions merely as a polite way of addressing a mature person of the feminine gender. Ordinarily, however, a son would not have addressed his mother with this title. In the fourth gospel, Jesus does so for symbolic reasons. In Mary’s appearance at the foot of the cross, the evangelist endows the title “woman” with symbolic significance. The Beloved Disciple, as we have seen, functions as a symbol of all those who believe in Jesus without having seen Him in His risen glory. In giving the Beloved Disciple to Mary as her own son, Jesus therefore transforms her into the mother of all who believe, into the new Eve of the new creation which He begins. The first Eve mothered all humans in the flesh, the second Eve mothers coming. Only those who disobey God and the commands which He has revealed through His incarnate Son need fear judgment. Cf. NJBC, 62: 22-24; Brown, Epistles, pp. 329-376; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 145-177; W. Bosset, Der Antichrist in der Überlieferung des Judentums, des Neuen Testaments und der alter Kirche (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1895); Ignace de la Potterie, “Anointing of the Christian by Faith” in The Christian Lives by the Spirit, edited by I. de la Potterie and S. Lyonnet (Staten Island, NY: Alba, 1971), pp. 79-143; H. Hanse, “Gott Haben” in der antike und im frühen Christentum (Berlin: Töpelmann, 1939), pp. 104-108; J. Michl, “Der Geist als Garant des rechten Glaubens” in Vom Wort des Lebens, edited by N. Adler (Münster: Aschendorf, 1951), pp. 142-151; R. Yates, “The Antichrist,” Evangelical Quarterly, 46(1974), pp. 42-50. 77. Cf. NJBC, 61:41; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 97-111; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 169-179; A. Feuillet, “L’heure de Jésus et le signe de Cana: Contribution a l’étude de la structure de quatrième evangile,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 36(1960), pp. 5- 22; “La signification fondamentale du premier miracle de Cana (Jn II, 1-11) et le symbolisme Johannique,” Revue Thomiste, 65(1965), pp. 517-535; Johannine Studies, translated by Thomas E. Crane (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1964), pp. 17-34; F.J. Braun, O.P., Mother of God’s People, translated by John Clarke, O.C.P. (Staten Island, NY: Alba House, 1967), pp. 48- 73; Jean Zumsteen, “Johannes 19,25-27,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 94(1997), pp. 131-154; Jidith M. Lieu, “The Mother of the Son in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 117(1998), pp. 61-77.
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all the children of God reborn through faith and Breath-baptism. (Cf. Gen 3:20) The evangelist re-enforces this allusion to Genesis with hebdomadal imagery. As we shall see, the events which begin and end Jesus’ ministry both transpire within the compass of a week. (Cf. Jn 1:19, 35, 43, 2:1) Jesus also dies on the seventh day after His anointing at Bethany. (Cf. Jn 12:1) In the priestly account of creation in Genesis, it happens in a week. (Gen 1:1-2:4) These two weeks which begin and end Jesus’ ministry symbolize the new creation. In that new creation, Jesus, as we shall see below in greater detail, functions as the new Adam, while Mary, by accepting the Beloved Disciple as her son stands revealed as the new Eve, as the mother of all those who believe in Jesus, even without seeing Him.78 The Analogy of Christological Knowing Luke’s infancy gospel, as we saw in volume two, transforms Mary into a type of the believing disciple. The Beloved Disciple, however, develops a much more extensive personal typology than Luke. As in the case of Luke’s Mary, Johannine typology endows historical individuals with revelatory significance. The evangelist, who did not see the risen Christ, even transforms himself into a type of any other true believer. Through the quality of his faith and through his witness to the sign of blood and water, the Beloved Disciple models for the reader the kind of graced response of faith which the fourth gospel seeks to evoke. Moreover, Johannine typology endows the figure of Mary with a more exalted typological dignity than does Luke’s infancy gospel. As mother of the Beloved Disciple, the Johannine Mary confronts the reader, not simply as a model for all believers, but as their mother in faith, as the new Eve of the new creation which Jesus begins. In a doctrinally divided community in bitter conflict with the local synagogue over issues of faith, the Beloved Disciple recommends to Jesus’ faithful disciples two strategies for responding to such conflict. 1) They must cultivate a special relationship of intimate love of the person of Jesus. 2) They must testify to the full saving reality incarnate in the pas78. Cf. A. Feuillet, L’heure de la mère de Jésus. Étude de théologie johannique (Paris: Franjeux-Prouille, 1969); “L’heure de la femme (Jn 16,21) et l’heure de la Mère de Jésus (Jn 19:25-27), Biblica, 47(1966), pp. 169-184, 361-380, 557-573; Hugolinus Langkammer, O.F.M., “Christ ‘Last Will and Testament’ (Jn 19, 26.27) in the Interpretation of the Fathers of the Church and the Scholastics,” Antonianum, 43(1968), pp. 99-109; Anton Dauer, “Das Wort des Gekreuzigten an seine Mutter und den ‘Jünger den er liebte,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 11(1967), pp. 222-239; 12(1968), pp. 89-93; Braun, op. cit., pp. 77-124; Raymond E. Brown, S.S., “The Mother of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel” in L’évangile de Jean, edited by M. de Jonge (Leuven: University Press, 1975), pp. 307-310.
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chal mystery. These activities will transform them into Jesus’ sisters and brothers whose faith imitates that of Mary, the new Eve of the new creation. This chapter has reflected on the Beloved Disciple’s distinctive handling of the positive dramatic linkages which structure His gospel. The chapter which follows ponders his equally distinctive development of the negative dramatic linkages.
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Chapter 3 Negative Dramatic Linkages in John In the fourth gospel Jesus relates negatively to Satan, to “the Jews,” to the Pharisees, to the chief priests, to Pilate and the Roman empire. This chapter divides, then, into five parts. Part one examines the Johannine Jesus’ relationship to Satan. Part two ponders how He relates to “the Jews.” Part three treats his conflict with the Pharisees. Part four analyzes his relationship to the chief priests. Part five describes how Jesus relates to Pilate and the Roman empire. (I) The fourth evangelist handles the figure of Satan very differently from the synoptics. The Beloved Disciple describes no face-to-face confrontation between Jesus and Satan in the desert. Indeed, we find the name “Satan” in only one verse of the fourth gospel. At the last supper, Satan takes possession of Judas after he eats the morsel of food Jesus gives him. (Jn 13:27) Judas, now a creature of the dark powers, departs into the night to work his treachery. (Jn 13: 30) Nevertheless, the fourth gospel does develop a distinctive Satanology. Jesus and Satan The Johannine Jesus does not confront Satan personally in the desert; but He does undergo temptations which echo His desert temptations in the synoptics. Outside the Samaritan village of Sichar, the disciples urge the hungry Jesus to eat. Jesus, however, refuses food protesting that “Doing the will of Him who sent Me and bringing His work to completion—that is my food.” (Jn 4:31-3) In refusing the food offered to Him by His disciples, Jesus makes substantially the same point as He does in His first temptation in Matthew and in Luke. Humans draw their life ultimately from obedience to God and not from bread or from the other physical supports of survival.1 (Mt 4:1-4; Lk 4:1-4) After the multiplication of the loaves, the crowds try to take the Johannine Jesus by force and make Him king. Jesus, however, eludes the king-makers and flees to the mountain alone. (Jn 6:14-15) This incident echoes in its own way Satan’s offer in the synoptics to give Jesus the kingdoms of this world. (Mt 4:8-11; Lk 4:5-8) As His passion draws near, Jesus finds Himself tempted to ask the Father to spare Him this ordeal but rejects the temptation. (Jn 12:27-28) This third temptation corresponds in its own way to the synoptic temptation to test God by setting conditions on personal willingness to trust the Father. (Mt 4:5-7; Lk 4:9-12) 1. Cf. Alton F. Wedel, “John 4:5-26(5-42),” Interpretation, 31(1977), pp. 406-412.
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The fourth evangelist portrays Jesus’ passion as Satan’s supreme effort to put Him to the test. (Jn 14:30; Lk 4:13) Only Jesus’ last temptation in John has, then overt Satanic connotations. Nevertheless, it fits the demonology of the fourth gospel that human agents should serve as Satan’s instruments in putting Jesus to His final test. At the end of the first part of the last discourse, Jesus tells His disciples that “the ruler (archon) of this world” is drawing near but that “He has no hold on Me (en emoi echei ouden).” (Jn 14:30) Jesus is referring to the fact that He will soon confront Satan in the person of Judas in the garden, just as the first Adam confronted Satan in Eden. (Jn 18:5) In arresting Jesus, the chief priests, temple guards, and Roman soldiers all function as Satan’s minions. John the evangelist is, then, portraying the passion of Jesus as Satan’s supreme attempt to put Him to the test. In the fourth gospel, Satan uses Judas as his special instrument. One cannot, however, understand the identity of “the ruler of this world” in John without understanding “the world,” which constitutes Satan’s special realm. The fourth evangelist distinguishes two senses of “the world,” one positive (or at least morally neutral), the other negative (and morally pejorative). Only in its negative sense does the world belong to Satan, and then entirely by its own choice. Viewed positively, the world simply means creation: the realm of space and time in which history transpires. God creates the world through His Son. (Jn 1:10, 13:1) As a morally neutral term, “the world” in the fourth gospel can also function as a synonym for “everybody.” (Jn 12:19, 14:22) Even viewed negatively, however, the world remains an object of God’s love. God sends His Son into a sinful world in order to take away its sinfulness. God does not even send the Son to pass judgment on the world’s wickedness. Instead, God sends the Son in order to save the world. (Jn 1:9-10, 29, 3:16-17, 10:36) Jesus, therefore, relates to the world as its light who seeks to put it in a life-giving relationship with God. (Jn 3:19, 4:42, 8:12, 9:5, 11:9-10, 12:46-47) Jesus also offers to the world the enlivening bread of divine wisdom and life-giving eucharistic bread. (Jn 6:33-51) He openly proclaims to the world the saving message which the Father wants it to hear. (Jn 8:26, 18:19) Nevertheless, the world vitiated by sin hates Jesus because His testimony lays bare its sinfulness. (Jn 7:7) The sinful world has closed its heart to the gift of Jesus’ Breath and therefore does not respond to Him in faith. (Jn 14:17) Because it ignores the Son, this wicked world also ignores the Father who sent Him. (Jn 17:25) A sinful world passes false judgment on Jesus and casts Him out as a sinner. (Jn 16:8-11) This world even rejoices over Jesus’ passion and death. (Jn 16:20) The evil world hates Jesus because He does not belong to it. (Jn 8:23) Jesus does not belong to a world of sin because He takes His origin from
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the Father before the creation of the world. (Jn 8:23, 17:5, 16) When, therefore, Jesus leaves the world, He returns to the Father. (Jn 16:28, 17:11) The world, for its part, by its sinful refusal to believe in Jesus transforms itself into the realm of darkness and of evil. (Jn 3:19-21) The world’s resistance to Jesus’ saving message makes it morally inevitable that He will pronounce over it a judgment of condemnation, even though He has come, not to condemn the world, but to save it. (Jn 9:39, 12:31) The world, for its part, stands judged by its own choice, by its refusal to accept Jesus’ testimony to divine truth. (Jn 12:31, 16:8-11) In the end therefore, Jesus relates lovingly to His own disciples, but stands in a negative, adversarial relationship to an unrepentant, sinful world because of its unrepentant sinfulness. In His priestly prayer, Jesus prays to the Father for His disciples; but He does not pray for the world. (Jn 9:39, 12:31, 15:18, 17:9) The obedience of faith translates one from a world of darkness into the realm of light. (Jn 17:6, 9) God holds the initiative in separating sinners from the world. Jesus’ choice and the Father’s saving gift cause one to belong to God and not to the world. (Jn 15:19, 17:6, 9) Those who have left the sinful, skeptical world know the abiding peace which Jesus brings, a peace which flows from the forgiveness of sin and from the reconciliation of humans to one another and to God. The empowering gift of the Breath effects that peace. (Jn 17:14-27, 20:19-23) Although the disciples cease to belong to the world once they believe in Jesus, they nevertheless remain in a hostile world after He returns to the Father. (Jn 13:1, 14:19, 17:11) Faith in Jesus and in the Father whom He reveals transforms one into the world’s enemy and demands that one assume the same kind of adversarial prophetic stance toward the world as Jesus did. (Jn 15:18-9) As long as they live in the world, the disciples will, then, experience trouble and persecution. Nevertheless, they should draw comfort from the fact that Jesus by His sinless witness to divine truth has in fact overcome both the world and its Satanic prince. Jesus’ own witness culminates in the paschal mystery. (Jn 16:33) Jesus, then, on leaving the disciples in a hostile world, places them under the tutelage of the “other witness,” the Breath whom He sends them. Jesus also entrusts the disciples to the Father to protect from the evil one; for Satan will seek to put them to the test just as he put Jesus to the test. (Jn 17:14-16) Jesus leaves the disciples in the world because, despite the world’s hostility, violence, and sinfulness, He still desires its salvation. He therefore entrusts His disciples with the prolongation of His own mission to the world. Just as He has testified to the world concerning the truth about God, so too He sends the disciples into the world to testify to Him, so that all might believe that the Father sent Him. (Jn 17:18-23, 18:37) As
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members of the kingdom of light which Jesus creates, however, the disciples look for the fulfillment of their hopes, not in the world, but with Jesus in heaven. (Jn 18:36) Clearly, then, a good or morally neutral world becomes morally evil and subject to Satan by its own stubborn resistance to the action of divine grace, by its lack of repentance and of faith. As an embodied force of evil and unbelief, the world in the fourth gospel numbers among its members the hostile Jews, the Pharisees, the chief priests, Pilate, the Roman empire, and everything which they symbolize. As in the synoptic gospels, those who oppose Jesus and refuse to believe in Him accuse Him of being possessed by the devil, although the fourth evangelist does not transform this slander into the sin against the Holy Breath as Mark and Matthew do. (Jn 7:20, 8:48-49, 52, 10:20-21; cf. Mk 3:22-30, Mt 12:24-32) Rather for John, the devil, the father of lies, uses his evil children to oppose and slander Jesus.2 (Jn 8:44) 2. Cf. Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 508-509; Elizabeth R. Achtemeier, “Jesus Christ, the Light of the World,” Interpretation, 17(1963), pp. 439-449; Takashi Onuki, Gemeinde und Welt: Ein Beitrag zur Frage nach theologischen und praktschen Funktion des Johannischen Dualismus (Düsseldorf: Neukirchlicher Verlag, 1984); Erich Grässer, “Die Juden as Teufelssohne in Johannes 8:37-47” in Antijudaismus im Neuen Testament, edited by W. Eckert et al. (Munich: Chr. Kaiser, 1967), pp. 157-170; Nils Dahl, “Die Erstgeborene Satans und der Vater des Teufels” in Apophorata, edited by W. Eltester (Berlin: Alfred Topelmann, 1964), pp. 69-84; Heinz Kruse, S.J., “Das Reich Satans,” Biblica, 58(1977), pp. 29-64. Like the fourth gospel, the first Johannine letter reminds the believing community that the faith and love to which they dedicate their lives sets them apart from “the world.” The same ethical dualism between the world and the community of disciples, between darkness and light as characterizes the forth gospel surfaces in the Johannine letters as well. Membership in the Johannine community demands the renunciation of the world and everything which it embodies. One cannot simultaneously love the world and the Father of Jesus Christ. (1 Jn 2:15-6) The world offers three illusory goods which corrupt the heart: “the desires of the flesh (hê epithumia tês sarkos), the desires of the eyes (hê epithumia tôn ophthalmôn), and the pride of life (hê alazoneia tou biou).” (1 Jn 2:16) The author of the first Johannine letter dismisses the world and it desires as doomed to perish. (1 Jn 2:17) In what then, do these ephemeral, corrupting desires consist? In speaking of “the desires of the flesh” the author of the letter probably has more in mind than illegitimate sexual desires and other purely carnal cravings. The term probably includes all selfish sinful desires, whether closely tied to sins of the flesh or not. “The desire of the eyes” probably means the human tendency to yield to the allure of outward show, without asking about or understanding what constitutes true and lasting value. “The pride of life” probably means all boastfulness, arrogance, and sinful self-reliance which springs from the possession of things which support only biological life, i.e., life in this world. To these illusory and corrupting values, the first letter opposes the desire for what lasts and has incorruptible value: namely, doing the will of God. “And the world is passing away with its desires; but the one who does the will of God abides for eternity (eis ton aiona).” (1 Jn 2:17)
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Long before His betrayal by Judas, Jesus calls the disciple a devil; for in the fourth gospel Jesus with preternatural prescience knows from the beginning which of the Twelve will betray Him. (Jn 6:70-71) The devil sows the seed of treachery in Judas’s heart. (Jn 13:2) When the moment of betrayal comes, Satan, as we have seen, actually enters into Judas. (Jn 13:27) As a result, the confrontation between Jesus and Judas in the garden of betrayal recalls, as we have also seen, the confrontation of the first Adam with Satan in the garden of Eden. By the Christian era, the figures of Satan and of the serpent had fused. Jesus, the new Adam, triumphs in the garden over Satan and the forces of darkness to which the first Adam succumbed. (Jn 18:1-12) In the fourth gospel, then, Satan does not act directly on Jesus but always uses human instruments. John’s Jesus does not even exorcise demoniacs. Moreover, the evangelist names the created forces of evil which conspired to nail Jesus to the cross: hypocritical lack of repentance, lack of faith, violence of heart, treachery, and institutionalized oppression, whether secular or ecclesiastical. (Jn 7:19, 25-30, 8:12-59, 10:31-39, 11:45-53, 19:1-16) The same Satanic forces which conspired to crucify Jesus, continue to conspire to oppress His disciples.3 (Jn 15:18-16:4) The Analogy of Christological Knowing The fourth evangelist differs most obviously from the synoptics’ account of Jesus’ adversarial relationship to Satan in his omission of any mention of Jesus’ desert temptations. The fourth evangelist also makes no mention of the controversy over Beelzebul, although during the feast of Tabernacles, the Johannine Jesus’ enemies call Him demon-possessed. (Jn 8:48) Read in context, the repudiation of the world and its desires distinguishes the Johannine community of genuine believers from the dissidents, who have chosen not to do the will of God but to follow the world and its desires. The author of the letter makes this point more explicitly by paralleling the admonition to repudiate the world and its cravings with a warning against the Antichrist, whom the dissidents follow and proclaim. Moreover, in dedicating themselves to the shallow, passing values of the world, the dissidents have forfeited their access to eternal life with God in Christ. Cf. NJBC, 62: 21; Brown, Epistles, pp. 293-328; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 136-145; K.G. Kuhn, “New Light on Temptation, Sin and the Flesh in the New Testament” in The Scrolls and the New Testament, edited by K. Stehdahl (New York, NY: Harper, 1957), pp. 94-113; Eduard Schweize, “Die hellenistische Komponent im neutestamentlische Sarx-Begriff,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 48(1957), pp. 237-253; John Pryke, “‘Spirit’ and ‘Flesh’ in the Qumran Documents and Some New Testament Parallels,” Revue de Qumran, 5(1964-1965), pp. 345-360; Hans Josef Klauck, “In der Welt—aus der Welt (1 Joh 2, 15-17): Beoboachtungen zur Ambivalenz der Johanneischen Kosmosbegriffs,” Franziskanische Studien, 71(1989), pp. 58-68. 3. Cf. Eric Plummer, “The Absence of Exorcisms in the Fourth Gospel,” Biblica, 78(1997), pp. 350-368.
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The absence from the fourth gospel of any personal confrontation between Jesus and Satan reflects the Beloved Disciple’s conviction that the forces of anti-Christ take concrete embodiment in the world: i.e, in persons and institutions who by their free choice prefer the darkness of hypocrisy, unbelief, and violence to the light of God. In this respect, Johannine Satanology bears a clear analogy to the Satanology of the book of Revelation. In Revelation, Satan takes embodied form in the Roman empire and in the blasphemous emperor Domitian and his minions. In an analogous way, the Beloved Disciple’s account of Jesus’ confrontation with Satan culminates in His trial before the Roman governor. This section has reflected on the Johannine Jesus’ negative relationship to Satan. The section which follows ponders His negative relation to “the Jews.” (II) The term “the Jews (hoi Judaioi)” has more than one meaning in the fourth gospel, not all of them pejorative. First, “the Jews” designates the Jewish people as a nation with particular ethnic customs. (Cf. Jn 2:6, 13; 4:9, 22; 5:1; 7:2; 11:55; 18:33, 35; 19:3, 20-21, 40) In this first use the term has no negative connotations. Second, in chapters eleven and twelve of the gospel, the term means “Judaeans” and refers to the people who lived in the province of Judaea whether they supported or opposed Jesus. In its second sense, therefore, “the Jews” can have either positive or negative connotations. Most frequently, however, “the Jews” in the fourth gospel designates the enemies of Jesus. In its negative, purely pejorative sense, the term “the Jews” refers to any who oppose Jesus. As a result, “the Jews” refers often, though not exclusively, to the high priestly authorities in Jerusalem. As in the case of “the world,” unbelief, not Jewishness as such, endows the term “the Jews” with negative connotations. In this sense, the Beloved disciple avoids anti-semitism; but his rhetorical use of the term “the Jews” unfortunately invites an anti-semitic interpretation. In what follows, I shall include the term “the Jews” in quotation marks whenever in Johannine theology it refers restrictively and negatively to those who resist faith in Jesus. The quotation marks seek to remind the reader that the term does not designate all Jewish people.4
4. Cf. John Christopher Thomas, “The Fourth Gospel and Rabbinic Judaism,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 82(1991), pp. 159-182; Ingo Broer, “ Die Juden im Johannesevangelium,” Diakonia: Internationale Zeitschrift für die Praxis der Kirche, 14(1983), pp. 332-341; John Pawlikowski, “A Faith Without Shadow: Liberating Christian Faith from Anti-Semitism,” Theology Digest, 43(1996), pp. 203-217, see especially: pp. 206-208.
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Jesus and “the Jews” Only the fourth gospel repeatedly calls the enemies of Jesus “the Jews.” The evangelist’s pejorative designation of the enemies of Jesus as “the Jews” reflects his own historical situation. The community of the Beloved Disciple certainly stood in an adversarial relationship with the synagogue, which had expelled the Johannine Christians for confessing Jesus’ divinity. From a Jewish standpoint to attribute the divine name to any creature amounted to idolatry and blasphemy. The Beloved Disciple, of course, saw things differently. Since Christianity in the first century had no status as an official religion of the empire, the expulsion of Christians from the synagogue had serious political consequences and made Christians vulnerable to Roman persecution. Under Roman law those who attended unauthorized public gatherings could suffer arrest and interrogation under suspicion of conspiracy. The evangelist and his community had, then, suffered at the hands of “the Jews” and could suffer more. The hostility between the synagogue and Johannine Christians had, moreover, reached such a pitch that the evangelist had ceased to hope for reconciliation with the local Jewish community. His ethical dualism therefore caused him frequently to identify “the Jews” with the world, with those who stubbornly refuse to believe in Jesus. In its pejorative uses, the term “the Jews,” has, then, both an historical and a symbolic meaning in the fourth gospel. It designates especially the hostile religious leaders of Palestinian Judaism. Symbolically, however, those leaders symbolize the hostile synagogue of the evangelist’s own time, especially the Pharisees. Moreover, as we shall see, on occasion in its pejorative connotations the term “the Jews” refers also to dissident “Christians” who refused to confess the divinity of Jesus or to acknowledge His real eucharistic presence. In what follows, I shall examine those passages in which the term “the Jews” refers to anyone who refuses to believe in Jesus. As we shall see, in this context, the Beloved Disciples identifies “the Jews” both with those Jews who reject faith in Jesus and with the Johannine dissidents. Significantly, in his account of the bread-of-life discourse, the evangelist does not refer to Jesus’ interlocutors as “the Jews” until they turn hostile. “The Jews” refuse to believe that Jesus is the bread of divine wisdom who has descended from heaven. (Jn 6:35-41) The fourth evangelist places on the lips of the unbelieving Jews an objection which resembles in some ways the reaction of the unbelieving Nazarenes in the synoptics; but the fourth evangelist gives the objection his own theological slant. “The Jews” object: “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph? Don’t we know His father and mother? How can He claim to have come down from heaven?” (Jn 6:41-42; cf. Mk 6:1-6, Mt 13:53-58)
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In the synoptic gospels, familiarity breeds contempt. The fact that the people of Nazareth know well both Jesus and His family makes them skeptical of His message and of His power to heal. The fourth evangelist, however, transforms the fact that Jesus had human parents known to the crowds into an objection against His existence in heaven prior to His human birth. This denial of Jesus’ pre-existence amounts to a denial of His divinity. “The Jews” next find incredible Jesus’ promise to give them His body and blood as food and drink. Moreover, despite Jesus’ warning that, unless they eat His flesh and drink His blood, they will never share in the resurrection from the dead, large numbers abandon Him in disbelief. The fourth evangelist identifies these “Jews” as disciples of Jesus. (Jn 6:52-66) Although the fourth evangelist insists on the crucial importance of eucharistic worship and of faith in Jesus’ real presence in the eucharist, the fourth gospel has, paradoxically, no account of the institution of the eucharist. It seems at least plausible, even probable, that the gospel’s redactor adapted the eucharistic section of the Bread of Life discourse from the gospel’s original institution narrative. The fact that the Bread of Life discourse takes place near the second Passover would have made it a suitable liturgical reading for Easter; and liturgical motives could conceivably have motivated our putative redactor’s editorial changes. We cannot know for certain if this hypothesis explains the absence of an institution narrative in John or not; but it enjoys genuine plausibility. In any case it seems, at the very least, historically extremely improbable that Jesus during His lifetime would have debated His contemporaries about His real presence in the eucharist. More likely, the evangelist is attributing anachronistically to Jesus’ contemporaries beliefs and attitudes which divided the Johannine community itself. These references to “the Jews” suggest that some members of the community of the Beloved Disciple, probably proto-Docetists, denied not only the divinity of Jesus and His eternal existence with the Father but also His ability to dwell in anything as material as bread and wine. The evangelist’s adversaries in the synagogue would, no doubt, have also denied both of these doctrines. In the Bread of Life discourse, then, the evangelist apparently lumps together as “the Jews” both anti-Christian Jews and heretical Christians.5 At Tabernacles, the evangelist again calls the crowds hostile to Jesus “the Jews.” Even though some of the people in Jerusalem begin to regard Jesus as the messiah, those hostile to Him come up with one rationaliza5. Cf. NJBC, 61:94-103; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 268-294; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 284-308; Roger Le Deant “Une aggadah targumique et les murmurs de Jean 6,” Biblica, 51(1970), pp. 80-83.
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tion after another for not believing Him. Initially, people express astonishment at Jesus’ teaching because He has not studied under one of the outstanding rabbis in Jerusalem. (Jn 7:15) When Jesus charges the hostile crowds with wanting His blood, they call Him a lunatic. (Jn 7:20) Some of the people in the crowds wonder that the authorities in Jerusalem have not taken action against Jesus and speculate whether even the leaders have come to accept Jesus as the messiah; but they dismiss Jesus’ claims to messianic authority because they know His origins, that He comes from Nazareth and not from Bethlehem. (Jn 7:25-28, 40-44) At Tabernacles, therefore, after vacillation on the part of some of the crowds, in the end “the Jews” turn against Jesus and seek His death. Here, “the Jews” designates the chief priests, the Sanhedrin, and Pharisees; but it also includes all those whose lack of faith in Jesus makes them hostile to Him. As we shall soon see, the Beloved Disciple associates the Pharisees with the chief priests because in his eyes the Pharisaical leaders of a hostile synagogue perpetuated in his day the same unrepentant lack of faith and violence of heart which the chief priests had exhibited in Jesus’ day. In the course of His exchange with the crowds, Jesus Himself names the reasons why His enemies refuse to believe in Him: 1) His cure of the cripple on the sabbath (Jn 7:21-22); 2) the fact that they belong to the world and not to God (Jn 8:23-24); 3) the fact that His hour has not yet arrived for the full revelation of His divinity (Jn 8:28); 4) racial pride (Jn 8:39); 5) the fact that they are children of Satan. (Jn 8:44) As Jesus foretold in His conversation with His brothers, His testimony to the truth and to the world’s malice turns “the Jews” against Him.6 6. The first letter of John calls its adversaries Antichrists. Having made this charge, the letter identifies the fundamental norm which allows one to distinguish the children of light from the children of darkness, the children of God from the children of Satan: namely, living practical faith: Everyone who acts justly has been begotten by God....Everyone who acts sinfully is really working lawlessness, for sin is lawlessness. And you know well that Christ was revealed to take away sins, and there is nothing sinful in Him. Everyone who abides in Him does not commit sin. Everyone who sins, has never seen Him nor come to know Him. (1 Jn 2:29, 3:4-6) We find here another echo of a fundamental theme in the gospel of John: God requires of sinful mortals the deed of faith, which includes obedience to the divine commands. (Jn 6:29, 15:7-12) For John the commands of Jesus replace the Torah as the fundamental law of the Christian community. Those who disobey the commands of God proclaimed by Jesus manifest by their disobedience their lack of faith. In claiming their sinlessness and denying the saving efficacy of Jesus’ death, the dissidents in fact manifest their sinful disobedience to the command of faith. They thus reveal that they never knew or understood the divine revelation embodied in Jesus. Tacitly recalling the confrontation in the fourth gospel between Jesus and His adversaries during the feast of Tabernacles, the author of the first letter equates sinners with the children of the devil and believers with the children of God. Those who live
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The designation of the hostile crowds as “children of the devil” casts an important light on the Beloved Disciple’s demonology. Any individual, with the holiness of Christ live as God’s children, while all who sin against the obedience of faith belong to the devil, since the devil functions as the source of sin just as Jesus functions as the source of divine life. (1 Jn 3:3-8) The author of the letter concludes: And you know that That One appeared in order to take away sin, and that sin is not in Him. Anyone abiding in Him does not sin; all who sin have never seen or known Him. (1 Jn 3:5-6) In effect, the author of the letter summarizes and sharpens the issue dividing him from the dissidents. 1) In denying the saving character of Jesus’ death, the dissidents deny the whole purpose of the incarnation. 2) Jesus, the incarnate Son of God, defines the meaning of sinless living; hence, anyone who professes living, practical faith in Him avoids sin. 3) In denying Him and His saving mission, the dissidents sin through their very lack of faith. In a brief aside, the author of the letter underscores the saving consequences of authentic belief in Jesus Christ: Look how much love the Father has shown us so that we may be called children of God, as we are. On account of that the world does not know you, just as it did not know Him. Beloved, we are now children of God, and what we shall be has not yet appeared. We know that whenever He may appear, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is. And everyone having that hope purifies himself, just as He is pure. (1 Jn 3:1-3) One finds here a significant development of some traditional Johannine Christological themes, although several themes strike a familiar note. The latter include: 1) The incarnate Son of God embodies the love of the Father. 2) He came to transform those who believe in Him into children of God. 3) The world fails to acknowledge those who believe in Jesus just as it repudiated Him. Moreover, the world’s failure to recognize God’s incarnate Son makes it impossible for the world to acknowledge God’s children by grace. Interwoven with these familiar themes, however, one finds some significant new emphases. 1) The author of the letter contrasts the disciples’ present state and dignity as children of God with what they shall become. What the disciples shall become when they share fully in the glory of the risen Christ remains, however, shrouded in the eschatological future. 2) The final appearance of Christ in glory will simultaneously disclose to them the fullness of glory to which their present faith in Christ now destines them. 3) What the disciples will be when they share fully in risen glory exists on a continuum with their present experience of faith. Even though the agnostic stance which the author of the letter takes toward the concrete form which risen glory will take in the case of the disciples leaves the meaning of glorification in Christ shrouded in the mystery of the dawning eschatological future, nevertheless, glorification will bring to perfection the knowledge of Christ which faith presently yields, since glorification will yield face-to-face vision of the glorified Son of God. Nowhere in the gospel of John do we find as strong a statement of the mysterious character of risen life with Christ, although one could find here a development of Jn 3:8. There Jesus assures Nicodemus that the future into which the Breath draws the believer remains shrouded in mystery.
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any group of individuals, any institution opposed to Jesus in hostile unbelief belongs to the sinful world and serves as a demonic instrument of the forces of darkness in an evil parody of graced, divine filiation. The stories of the cure of the blind man and of the raising of Lazarus make it clear that “the Jews” intend to treat Jesus’ disciples with the same violence which they showed toward Him. The man born blind serves, as we have seen, as a type of the believing, persecuted Christian cast out of the synagogue for confessing Jesus. (Jn 9:22, 34) Similarly, when the raising of Lazarus causes many to believe in Jesus, the chief priests add Lazarus’s name to their death list.7 (Jn 12:9-11) The Analogy of Christological Knowing Johannine polemic against “the Jews” finds no parallel in the synoptic gospels. It has earned the Beloved Disciple the charge of disseminating 4) The desire to share in the fullness of risen glory motivates the believing Christian’s present avoidance of all sinful defilement. The true believer’s repentant concern to avoid sin contrasts with the dissidents self-deceptive claims to impeccability. The author of the letter would seem to be arguing at least implicitly that the present distinction between the children of God and the children of the devil will reach full revelatory clarity in the second coming and final judgment. Then the true children of God will share fully in the glory of the risen Christ. Supply that the children of the devil will share in the ultimate destruction of Satan and of His minions. Cf. NJBC, 62: 25-26; Brown, Epistles, pp, 378-345; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 160-171; S. Lyonnet, “The Notion of Sin in the Johannine Writings” in Sin, Redemption, and Sacrifice, by S. Lyonnet and L. Sabourin (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970), pp. 38-45; I. de la Potterie, “The Impeccability of the Christian According to 1 Jn 3, 6-9” in The Christian Lives by the Spirit, by I. de la Potterie and S. Lyonnet (Staten Island, NY: Alba, 1971), pp. 175-196; J. du Preez, “‘Sperma autou’ in 1 Jn 3:9,” Neotestamentica, 9(1975), pp. 105-112; Antonio Vincent Cernuda, “La filiacion divina segun kai en 1 Jn 2, 29 y 3, 1,” Estudios Biblicos, 36(1977), pp. 85-90. 7. Cf. NJBC, 61:104-126; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. lxvii-lxxix, 305-368; Robert G. Brachter, “‘The Jews in the Gospel of John,” Bible Translator, 26(1975), pp. 401-409; C.K. Barrett, The Gospel of John and Judaism, translated by D.M. Smith (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1975); J. Jorz, “Die Juden im Johannesevangelium,” Judaica, 3(1953), pp. 129-142; Malcolm Lowe, “Who are the IOUDAIOI?” Novum Testamentum, 18(1976), pp. 101-130; Ephrem Florival, O.S.B., “Les seins ne l’ont pas recu (Jn 1, 11), Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 89(1967), pp. 43-66; Reginald Fuller, “The ‘Jews’ in the Fourth Gospel,” Dialog, 16(1977), pp. 31-37; Philip Kaufmann, O.S.B., The Beloved Disciple: Witness Against Anti-Semitism (Collegeville, MI: The Liturgical Press, 1991); Erich Grässer, “Die Antijüdische Polemik im Johannesevangelium, New Testament Studies, 11(1964-1965), pp. 74-90; Severino Pancaro, “The Church and Israel in the Gospel of John,” New Testament Studies, 21(1974-1975), pp. 396-405; Walter W. Sikes, “The Antisemitism of the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Religion, 21(1941), pp. 23-30; G.A.F. Knight, “Antisemitismin the fourth Gospel,” Reformed Theological Review, 27(1968), pp. 81-88; C. Dekker, “Grundschrift und Redaktion im Johannesevangelium,” New Testament Studies, 13(1966-1967), pp. 66-80; Ludger Schenke, “Der Dialog Jesu mit den ‘Juden’ im Johannesevangelium: eine Rekonstruktionsversuch,” New Testament Studies, 34(1988), pp. 573-603.
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anti-Semitic bigotry. Certainly, over the centuries those who called themselves Christians too often quoted the fourth gospel in order to justify their own sinful, bigoted, anti-Semitic attitudes. Within the synoptic tradition, this strain in Johannine rhetoric finds its closest narrative parallel in Luke’s account of Paul’s Gentile mission. There Israel’s refusal to recognize that God chose it, not just for itself, but for the sake of a universal salvation motivates repeated Jewish resistance to the gospel. The conflict between the Johannine community and the synagogue helps contextualize historically the pejorative connotations which the Beloved Disciple frequently ascribes to the term “the Jews.” Careful attention to the different meanings with which the evangelist endows the term suggests, however, that not Jewishness as such but unbelieving hostility to his own community and its religious faith motivates the Beloved Disciple’s negative use of the term. The evangelist’s extension of the term to the Christian dissidents illustrates this point. This section has examined how the Beloved Disciple employs the term “the Jews.” The two sections which follow examine Jesus’ negative relationship to two groups among “the Jews”: namely, to the Pharisees and to the chief priests. As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple regards both groups as embodiments of the same dark powers. (III) Only one reference to scribes occurs in John’s gospel. Some scribes join the Pharisees in bringing the woman caught in adultery to Jesus for judgment. (Jn 8:3) Since the style of this story could suggest that someone other than the original evangelist wrote it, it seems likely that a subsequent editor of the gospel inserted it into the events surrounding the feast of Tabernacles. In other words, the original evangelist apparently showed no interest at all in the scribal class at Jesus’ time. Jesus and the Pharisees The Beloved Disciple did, however, have definite opinions about Pharisees. The Pharisee Nicodemus, as we have seen, typifies one kind of Jew, probably Jewish Christian members of the Beloved Disciple’s own community, who would have preferred to keep their faith in Jesus a secret but who found themselves forced by persecution to come out into the open. (Jn 3:1-9, 7:50, 19:39). As we have seen, in the unedited version of the fourth gospel, Nicodemus probably made his appearance after the story of the man born blind. If so, the juxtaposition contrasted his fearful approach to Jesus under the cover of darkness with the bold faith of the healed blind man.
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The Pharisees in the fourth gospel number among the enemies of Jesus who refuse to believe in Him. In their relationship to John the Baptizer and Jesus, the Johannine Pharisees, as we have seen, move from suspicion to overt hostility. Representatives of the Pharisees join the chief priests and Levites in cross-examining John the Baptizer. (Jn 1:24) The Pharisees also keep a weather eye cocked on Jesus and note that He is soon making even more disciples than John the Baptizer. (Jn 4:1) Finally, the Pharisees turn overtly hostile to Jesus during the feast of Tabernacles. When they recognize that some of the people are beginning to put faith in Jesus, they (anachronistically) attempt to arrest Him. (Jn 7:32, 45-48) At one point, in a scribal gloss, the fourth gospel asserts that the Pharisees sent the temple police to effect Jesus’ arrest. The Pharisees of Jesus’ day would, of course, have had no jurisdiction over the temple police. The scribe, however, desires to portray the Pharisees of his own day as sharing the chief priests’ hostility toward Jesus.8 (Jn 7:30-32) When the temple police return from the attempted arrest empty handed, they explain their failure by saying: “Never has a man spoken like this.” (Jn 7:46) The Pharisees reject their explanation with self-righteous contempt. They point out that none of the right people believe in Jesus: neither they, nor the Sanhedrin. Only the masses of the people believe who know “nothing of the Law—and they are damned!” (Jn 7:48-49) During the feast of Tabernacles, scribes and Pharisees bring a woman caught in adultery to Jesus for judgment. (Jn 7:2-6) (As we have seen, a later redactor added this scene to the gospel.) These men of the Law have contrived a neat legal trap for Jesus. If Jesus absolves the woman, He will violate Mosaic law. If He orders her execution as Mosaic Law demands, He will be in trouble with the Romans for ordering an execution without jurisdiction. Jesus, however, eludes the trap by refusing to do anything. He doodles on the ground and remains silent until pressed. Then He responds, “Let the one among you who has no sin cast the first stone.” (Jn 7:6-8) Jesus recognizes that the scribes and Pharisees are simply using the woman to trap Him legally. He acknowledges that Mosaic Law requires 8. Cf. NJBC, 61:109; Some have suggested that the original evangelist in referring to “the Pharisees” here means the Sanhedrin; but that body did not consist exclusively of Pharisees, although it may have contained some. The priestly Sadducees probably dominated the Sanhedrin. Moreover, the evangelist understood well the difference between the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin. It seems more likely, then, that the text is anachronistically attributing to the Pharisees of Jesus’ day more authority than they actually possessed. The fourth evangelist certainly portrays the Pharisees as co-conspirators with the chief priests against Jesus. (Jn 7:45) Here the text attributes to them an authority on a par with the priests, an authority they never wielded in Jesus’ day.
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her execution by stoning; but He also censures the self-righteousness with which His enemies have judged the woman. Their condemnation follows the letter of the Law but fails to embody the Law’s true intent: compassion, understanding, and mercy. When one by one, beginning with the oldest, the scribes and Pharisees retire in confusion, Jesus asks the woman whether anyone has condemned her. She replies that no one has. Then Jesus says: “Nor do I condemn you. You may go. But from now on avoid this sin.” (Jn 7:8-11) Jesus’ merciful refusal to condemn the woman accords with the Johannine doctrine that He has come not to condemn the world but to save it. Indeed, the fact that immediately after the story of the adulterous woman, Jesus reminds the Pharisees that He has not come to pass judgment on the world may have motivated the editorial insertion of the story of the adulterous woman as its preface. (Jn 8:15) Jesus reasserts the non-judgmental character of His mission in another discussion with a group of Pharisees. The legalistic Pharisees object to Jesus that what He says carries no legal weight because He acts as His own witness. (Jn 8:13) Their legalism cloaks a deeper lack of faith, which Jesus quickly points out to them. They fail to recognize that He comes from God and is returning to God. They fail to see that His Father stands by Him and testifies to the truth of what He says in the signs He works. If therefore the Pharisees judged with the eyes of faith, they would recognize that even by strict legal standards Jesus’ word stands; for two witnesses—He and the Father—testify to the truth of what Jesus teaches.9 (Jn 8:13-20) After Jesus cures the man born blind, the Pharisees engineer his expulsion from the synagogue. When neighbors take the cured man to the Pharisees, the latter first argue that Jesus could not come from God because He heals on the sabbath. (Jn 9:13-16) In fact, the Pharisees by rejecting the miracle verify what Jesus has just said to them: namely, they fail to recognize that the Father testifies to the Son by empowering Him to do what only God can do. (Jn 9:17) The fact that the miracle occurs on the sabbath recalls the sabbath cure of the paralytic at the pool of Bethsaida. (Jn 5:1-47) Jesus’ discourse on 9. Cf. NJBC, 61:115; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 332-338; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 21-22; John Paul Heil, “The Story of Jesus and the Adulteress (John 7.53-8.11) Reconsidered,” Biblica, 72(1991), pp. 182-191; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Exercitations on John 8,” Estudios Biblicos, 52(1994), pp. 439-451; Gail O’Day, “John 7:53-8:11: A Study in Misreading,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 111(1992), pp. 631-640; Bart D. Ehrman, “Jesus and the Adulteress,” New Testament Studies, 34(1988), pp. 24-44; Dieter Lührmann, “Die Geschichte von einer Sünderin und andere Apokryphe Jesusüberlieferungen by Didymos von Alexandria,” Novum Testamentum, 32(1990), pp. 291-316; Harald Shondorf, “Jesus schreibt mit dem Finger auf die Erde, Joh 8, 6b-8,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 40(1996), pp. 91-93.
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that occasion provides, therefore, the theological context for interpreting the cure of the man born blind. As we have seen, Jesus’ first sabbath cure reveals the signs which he performs as acts of divine judgment in the Johannine sense of judgment. The signs reveal in a proleptic way the divine truth which the paschal mystery will disclose in its fullness. In the fourth gospel, divine truth and divine love coincide. The Father effects judgment by sending the Son in order to incarnate divine truth and love and in order to demand that people choose in the face of that revelation. The judgment begun in the cure of the paralytic now continues in the cure of the man born blind. The cure of the blind man also reproduces the forensic tone of Jesus’ first sabbath miracle. In His defence of His cure of the cripple, Jesus, as we have seen, appeals for legal justification to the testimony of three witnesses: the Father, John the Baptizer, and Moses. The legal trial of the cured blind man prior to his expulsion from the synagogue prolongs the same forensic metaphor. The blind man’s legal trial prior to expulsion invokes explicitly a Johannine theology of judgment. The Pharisees who put the blind man on trial and who pass negative judgment on both him and Jesus themselves stand judged by their blindness to the Light which Jesus embodied. As we shall see, Pilate and the chief priests will experience a similar judgment when they condemn Jesus. (Jn 9:38-41) At first, the Pharisees refuse to believe that, in the case of the blind man, a miracle has in fact occurred. They summon the man’s parents to testify to the fact that he suffered from blindness since birth. The parents do so testify but will not discuss his cure for fear of expulsion from the synagogue. (Jn 9:18-22) Obstinate in their unbelief to the end, the Pharisees repudiate both Jesus and the man born blind as sinners; and they expel the man from the synagogue when he refuses to denounce Jesus. They also contradict Jesus’ statement that sin did not cause the man’s blindness. Instead, the Pharisees count his physical disability as proof of his sin. (Jn 9:1-5, 24-34) The story identifies the Pharisees with the unbelieving “Jews.” It also points to them as those chiefly concerned to expel the disciples of Jesus from the synagogue.10 The raising of Lazarus causes many to believe in Jesus. Witnesses of the event inform the Pharisees about what Jesus has done and, presumably, about the popular faith which His action has evoked. Alarmed, the Pharisees join the chief priests in plotting Jesus’ death. (Jn 11:45-7) The Pharisees also anachronistically join the chief priests in ordering Jesus’ arrest, should He come to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. (Jn 11:57) 10. Cf. J. Warren Holleran, “Seeing the Light: A Narrative Reading of John 9,”Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 69(1993), pp. 354-382.
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When Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph, the Pharisees lament in discouragement that the whole world is running after Jesus. (Jn 12:19) The Pharisees’ own day arrives, however, when they join the chief priests in sending the temple guards to arrest Jesus. (Jn 18:3) Like Matthew, John makes the Pharisees directly responsible for Jesus’ death, although historically the chief priests and the Sanhedrin almost certainly functioned as the principal agents of Jesus’ arrest and condemnation. Both evangelists are, however, projecting onto the Pharisees of Jesus’ day the hostility which they themselves encountered in the Pharisees of their own generation. As in Matthew’s gospel, the anachronism portrays the Pharisaical adversaries of the Johannine community as the heirs to the priests’ leadership of the Jewish community. One with the priests in wielding religious authority, they also inherit the priests’ unrepentant blindness and violence of heart. Both priests and Pharisees, therefore, serve as the instruments of the same dark powers.11 The Analogy of Christological Knowing All four gospels describe conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees. In all four gospels, these stories of conflict recall real confrontations during Jesus’ ministry; but they also target “Pharisaical” tendencies in the Christian community. The synoptic evangelists identify those tendencies with unbelief, legalism, formalism, judgmentalism, hypocrisy, and, on occasion, greed. The Beloved Disciple’s treatment of the Pharisees finds its closest analogue among the synoptic evangelists in Matthew. The analogy springs from an analogous cause: both communities found themselves in conflict with a synagogue led by hostile Pharisees. Both evangelists portray an alliance between the Pharisees and the chief priests to destroy Jesus. This alliance almost certainly has theological rather than historical motives. Although some Pharisees may have belonged to the Sanhedrin, the Pharisees of Jesus’ day lacked both the authority and the political clout which both Matthew and John ascribe to them. In associating the Pharisees with the chief priests in their opposition to Jesus, both evangelists seek to portray the Pharisees of their own day as the religious heirs of the priestly aristocracy who engineered Jesus’ crucifixion. The Pharisees have inherited the de facto leadership of the Jewish community which the chief priests exercised in Palestine. Moreover, Pharisaical opposition to Jesus’ disciples proves them heirs to the unbelief and hostility with which the 11. Cf. NJBC, 61:127-133; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 369-382; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 33-42; Kenneth L. Carroll, “The Fourth Gospel and the Exclusion of Christians from the Synagogues,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester, 40(1957-1958), pp. 19-32; Felix Gryglewicz, “Die Pharisäer und die Johanneskirche” in Probleme der Forschung, edited by A. Fuchs (Munich: Verlag Harold Wien, 1978), pp. 144-158.
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chief priests greeted Jesus and His message. In the mind of both evangelists, Pharisaical persecution of Jesus’ disciples continues the work of the chief priests. It embodies the same kinds of religious hypocrisy and unbelief. Both evangelists make this point through narrative by linking the Pharisees to the sacerdotal plot against Jesus. Conflict between Church and synagogue, in other words, led both evangelists to demonize their Pharisaical adversaries. Even though the Matthean community seems not to have suffered as yet the formal expulsion which confronted the Johannine community, Matthew paints an even more negative portrait of the Pharisees than does the Beloved Disciple. In the fourth gospel, the Pharisees clearly embody the forces of darkness, hypocrisy, unrepentance, unbelief, and violence of heart as the chief priests; but nowhere in John does one find anything resembling the bitter woes against the scribes and Pharisees which the Matthean Jesus thunders. Paradoxically, the fact that the Matthean community seems to have preserved still some ties to the synagogue may help explain the virulence of Matthew’s anti-Pharisaical rhetoric in comparison with John’s. Matthew seems to have feared that Pharisaical influence upon Christian leaders would cause them to ape all the Pharisaical vices which, in the evangelist’s eyes, contradict the fundamental demands of Christian leadership. The expelled leaders of the Johannine community probably felt no such temptation. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple seems to have despaired of reconciliation with the synagogue. As a consequence, the fourth evangelist contents himself with associating the Pharisees hand-in-glove with the chief priests as institutional embodiments of the dark powers. This section has reflected on the Beloved Disciple’s inclusion of the Pharisees among the unbelieving Jews. The section which follows reflects on the conflict between Jesus and the chief priests. (IV) The fourth evangelist frequently uses the term “the Jews” as a synonym for “chief priests.” When, for example, “the Jews” send priests and Levites to question John the Baptizer, the delegation clearly comes from the chief priests in Jerusalem. (Jn 1:19) Jesus and the Priests The cleansing of the temple, as we have seen, occurs early in John’s gospel. In his account of this incident, the fourth evangelist includes an interesting narrative detail. John’s Jesus in driving out the sellers and money changers distinguishes between the rich and the poor. He deals with the richer merchants more violently: with a whip of cords He drives out those selling sheep and oxen together with their animals, and He overturns the tables of the money changers. The poor vendors of doves, however, He
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simply orders from the temple precincts with a command: “Get out of here! Stop turning My Father’s house into a market place!” (Jn 2:13-16) As in the synoptic gospels, Jesus by a prophetic act denounces the commercialization of temple worship as a means of enriching an aristocratic priesthood, whose members already belonged to the rich landed class. Moreover, as in the synoptics, the temple officials challenge Jesus’ authority to do what He is doing. With a typically Johannine twist, however, “the Jews” ask Jesus for a “sign” authorizing Him to take charge of the temple. John’s Jesus replies: “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn 2:18-19) Here we find a major discrepancy between the synoptics and the fourth evangelist. In the synoptic tradition we find the charge that Jesus will destroy the temple and rebuild it on the lips of his adversaries. In Mark and Matthew the false witnesses at Jesus’ trial charge Him with making the boast. (Mk 14:58; Mt 26:61) The same two gospels place the charge on the lips of those who taunt Jesus as He hangs on the cross. (Mk 25:9 Mt 27:40) In Acts Luke has the enemies of Stephen charge him with saying that Jesus will destroy the temple. (Acts 4:14) The fourth evangelist, however, puts this promise of rebuilding the temple on the lips of Jesus Himself. If one reads John’s account as an historical statement, Jesus charges the chief priests with destroying the temple. He does not promise to destroy it Himself. Taken historically, then, Jesus’ words assert that the commercial corruption of worship over which the temple priests preside will one day lead to the destruction of the Herodian temple, just as the sinfulness of Israel had led to the destruction of Solomon’s temple. Viewed as an historical statement, Jesus’ allusion to rebuilding the temple could, then, signify the messianic act of rebuilding the temple and purifying its worship. The evangelist interprets the temple’s rebuilding as Jesus’ bodily resurrection. Like the synoptics, the fourth evangelist states that the cleansing of the temple took place at Passover time; but in contrast to the synoptics it does not happen at the Passover when Jesus died. John, as we have seen, speaks of three Passovers in all: this one, the one which followed Jesus’ Bread of Life discourse, and the one at which He died. The first two Passovers foreshadow the third. Moreover, as we have also seen, the first two Passovers both allude to the purification of worship. The first Passover begins the messianic purification of the temple by condemning the commercialization of its worship, while the second promises the eucharist which will embody authentic, pneumatically inspired worship of God when people cease to worship either on Mount Gerizim or in Jerusalem. (Jn 2:13-22, 4:21-23, 6:1-59, 13:1 ff.) Viewed theologi-
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cally, the three Passovers reveal cumulatively that the paschal mystery abolishes and supersedes both the Passover rite and temple worship.12 The cure of the cripple at the pool of Bethsaida again brings Jesus into conflict with the hostile Jerusalem leaders, whom the evangelist again calls “the Jews.” “The Jews” accuse the cured cripple of violating the sabbath by carrying the mat on which he had lain beside the pool. The man replies that he is simply following the order of the one who cured him; but, when pressed to disclose Jesus’ name, the cured cripple confesses that he does not know it. (Jn 5:9b-13) Later, however, when Jesus confronts the man and tells him not to sin again lest worse befall him, the cured cripple informs the Jerusalem authorities that Jesus in fact performed the miracle. (Jn 5:14-15) In the synoptics, Jesus’ enemies object to His sabbath cures as violations of the sabbath rest. “The Jews” make the same objection in the fourth gospel but add another objection: namely, that Jesus justifies His sabbath cures by claiming the divine right to work on the sabbath, thus making Himself equal to God. (Jn 5:15-18) In citing the second reason for the hostility of the Jerusalem leaders to Jesus, the evangelist is probably projecting anachronistically onto the historical enemies of Jesus issues which divided the Johannine community and the synagogue. John begins the account of Tabernacles by noting that Jesus remained in Galilee because “the Jews” desired to kill him. (Jn 7:1) Here the term “the Jews” refers especially to the temple priesthood and to the Sanhedrin; but, as the debates between Jesus and His adversaries unfold during Tabernacles, He also charges the hostile crowds with seeking His blood. The exchange between Jesus and His brothers before the feast makes it clear that those who seek Jesus’ life belong to the world. Jesus’ brothers urge Him to leave Galilee and go to Jerusalem during the feast as a way of publicizing His miracles. The evangelist notes, however, that Jesus’ brothers themselves did not in fact believe in Him. Conceivably, the Beloved Dis12. Cf. NJBC, 61:42-45; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 114-125; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 180-190; see also, Ernst Hänchen, Gott und Mensch: Gesammelte Aufsätze (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1965), pp. 93-105; F.-M. Braun, O.P., “L’expulsion des vendeurs du temple,” Revue Biblique, 38(1929), pp. 178-200; “In Spiritu et Veritate,” Revue Thomiste, 52(1952), pp. 245-274; Henri van den Bussche, “Le Signe du temple (Jean 2, 13-22),” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 20(1957-1958),) pp. 92-101; Ocsar Cullmann, “L’opposition contre le temple de Jerusalem, motif commun de la théologie Johannique et du monde ambiant,” New Testament Studies, 5(1958-1959), pp. 157-173; Victor Eppstein, “The Historicity of the Gospel Account of the Cleansing of the Temple,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 55(1964), pp. 42-58; Siegfried Mendner, “Die Tempelreinigung und Golgotha (Joh 2:19-22),” Biblische Zeitschrift, 6(1962), pp. 102-107; Xavier Léon-Dufour, “Le signe du temple selon Saint Jean,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 39(1951-1952), pp. 155-175; Udo Schnelle, “Die Tempelreinigung unde die Christologie des Johnnesevangeliums,” New Testament Studies, 42(1996), pp. 359-373.
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ciple desires the reader to contrast the unbelief of these brothers in the flesh with the faith of the Beloved Disciple who becomes Jesus’ brother in faith at the foot of the cross. The advice of Jesus’ natural brothers seems to spring from their false perception of Jesus as aspiring to secular messianism. (Jn 7:1-4) Jesus replies: My time (kairos) is not yet come; but the time (kairos) is always suitable for you. The world cannot possibly hate you, but it does hate Me because I bear witness concerning it that its deeds are wicked. Go up to the feast yourselves. I am not going up to this feast because my time (kairos) is not yet ripe. (Jn 7: 6-8)
The term “kairos” designates a decisive moment of salvation. Jesus, of course, is referring to His “hour,” to the time when He will be lifted up in suffering and in glory. He is telling His brothers that He will make the kind of public display for which they are calling when His hour comes. Jesus fulfills this promise when He enters Jerusalem in triumph prior to His passion. (Jn 12:12-19) In fact, Jesus goes to the feast of Tabernacles, but secretly and not in the ostentatious way His brothers suggest (Jn 7:10) Jesus recognizes that His brothers’ suggestion does not proceed from faith in Him. His brothers, because of their unbelief and commitment to secular messianism belong to the world. The world, therefore, looks fondly upon them. Moreover, unlike Jesus, they have no need to wait the hour appointed by the Father. By the world’s standards, any time suits for grasping power. Finally, in His exchange with His brothers, Jesus enunciates a central theme which the evangelist will dramatize during His account of Tabernacles: the world hates Jesus for speaking the truth about it and for unmasking its hypocrisy and violence. “The Jews”—namely, the chief priests and Sanhedrin—also expect Jesus to engage in the kind of public display to which His brothers urge him. (Jn 7:11) The crowds at Tabernacles divide into those who approve of what Jesus is doing and those who regard Him as a charlatan. In their fear of the Jerusalem authorities, the crowds fear to speak openly about Jesus.13 (Jn 7:11-13) During the feast of Tabernacles, the evangelist speaks of two different attempts to arrest Jesus. Although the evangelist leaves vague the identity of those who initiate the first arrest, the context points to the temple priesthood. After noting twice that Jesus was teaching in the temple, the 13. Cf. NJBC, 61:104-106; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 304-309; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 5-8; Christian Dietzfelbinger, “Der ungeliebte Bruder: Der Herrenbruder Jakobus im Johannesevangelium,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 89(1992), pp. 377-403.
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evangelist says: “Then they tried to arrest Him, but no one laid a finger on Him because His hour had not yet come.”14 (Jn 7:30, cf.14, 28) The attempt fails because the temple police find themselves spellbound by Jesus’ words and return empty-handed. (Jn 7:46) The second attempt also fails because the temple police once again find themselves hard put to resist Jesus’ words. (Jn 7:46) When Jesus responds to the attempted arrest with the warning that He will soon depart and return to the Father, a place to which the unbelieving crowds have no access, “the Jews” systematically distort what He has said by imagining that He intends to take His ministry to Jews of the Diaspora. (Jn 7:35-36) Later, when Jesus repeats the same warning, “the Jews” suggest in disbelief that Jesus must be contemplating suicide when He suggests that He is going where others cannot follow. (Jn 8:22) In both cases, “the Jews” probably designates both the unbelieving crowds and Jesus’ priestly adversaries. Both slanderous suggestions point to an ironic truth. After Jesus’ resurrection, His disciples will spread His ministry not only to Jews of the Diaspora but to Gentiles as well. Jesus will not, of course, commit suicide; but He will freely lay does His life for those whom He seeks to save. Disagreement about Jesus also surfaces in the Sanhedrin when Nichodemus attempts to defend Jesus against the Pharisees. (Jn 7:47-52) Nevertheless, “the Jews”—here, members of the Sanhedrin—fail to grasp Jesus’ true identity or to understand that He is speaking to them about the Father. (Jn 8:25, 27) At the feast of Dedication, the hostile “Jews” in Jerusalem—most likely, the priestly leaders or their representatives—challenge Jesus to declare openly His messianic pretensions. Jesus replies that He has already told them what they ask; but that they do not believe Him. (Jn 10:22-25) Once again they seek to stone Jesus for claiming identity with the Father (Jn 10:31-34, 11:8); and they make another unsuccessful attempt to arrest Jesus. (Jn 10:39) After the raising of Lazarus causes many to believe in Jesus, the Sanhedrin conspires with the Pharisees to do away with Him. They do so to protect the political hegemony of the client priesthood and the Jewish client aristocracy. “What are we to do,” they said, “now that this man is performing many signs? If we let Him go on like this, everybody will believe in Him; and the Romans will come and take away our holy place and our nation.” (Jn 11:47-48) 14. Only the chief priests would have had jurisdiction to initiate an arrest within the temple itself. As we have seen, the fourth evangelist portrays the Pharisees as joining the attempt to arrest Jesus because he assimilates theologically priestly unbelief and hostility to the unbelief and hostility of the Pharisaical leaders in the synagogue of his own day. (Jn 7:32)
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These two verses also teem with ironies. In the signs Jesus performs, the Father testifies to Him. The crowds, whom the Pharisees have already dismissed as ignorant of the Law and therefore damned, recognize the signs and believe in them; but the religious leaders and the Pharisees do not. Their dismay at the faith of the crowds springs from their own lack of faith. In addition, the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees fear that, if everyone believes in Jesus, then the Romans will destroy Jerusalem and raze the temple. That destruction will happen; but, from the evangelist’s standpoint, it will follow from the stubborn unbelief of the chief priests and Pharisees, not from faith in Jesus. The evangelist adds to these ironies another. Caiphas, the high priest replies to his co-conspirators’ cry of dismay with an abrupt rebuke: “You know nothing; and you do not realize that it profits you that one man die [for the people (hyper tou laou)] rather than have the whole nation perish.” (Jn 11:49) The term “laos” designates Israel as a theocratic nation. The phrase “for the people” does not, however, appear in some of the early Latin patristic writers, and it sounds strange on the lips of Caiphas. It makes his statement into something like a profession of faith, while its omission turns it into a cynical political calculation. A later redactor may, then, have added the phrase to the text. The evangelist, however, calls attention to an ironic double meaning in the high priest’s advice, a double meaning which the scribe who probably inserted “for the people” clearly understood. The evangelist does so by interpreting Caiphas’s words as a “prophecy.” Caiphas is talking about murdering Jesus in order to avoid Roman reprisals and to maintain the status quo. In fact Jesus’ death will save the people, though not from the Roman reprisals which will, in the evangelist’s estimate, punish the obstinate unbelief of Jesus’ enemies. Rather, Jesus will save the people when He dies, rises, and sends the sin-forgiving Breath to effect the universal reconciliation of humanity with God and with one another through the gift of endless messianic peace. The evangelist interprets ironically the deeper, saving meaning of the high priest’s cynical advice as a “prophecy.” (Jn 11:51) Calling the murderous words of the high priest a prophecy contains yet another irony. No matter what the chief priests do to prevent Jesus from succeeding, their malice remains doomed to fail. God will use the very murder of Jesus in order to insure His triumph; for Jesus by His love will transform His murder into the supreme expression of divine love for a sinful humanity. As the story of Jesus’ conflict with the temple priesthood unfolds, the evangelist will develop this irony further, especially in the trial of Jesus before Pilate.15 15. Cf. NJBC, 61:153-155; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 438-444; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 73-81; J.T. Ensfelder, “Die Weissagung des Hohenpriesters
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In the fourth gospel, the Sanhedrin’s secret plot against Jesus replaces His public trial by that body. As we shall see, in his passion narrative the fourth evangelist alone describes Jesus’ informal interrogation by Annas, the father-in-law of Caiphas, the real high priest for that year. No other gospel records this incident. In the fourth gospel, moreover, the interrogation comes as close as Jesus gets to a formal trial before the Sanhedrin. The Beloved Disciple may offer the most historically plausible account of Jesus’ legal encounter with the Sanhedrin. The absence of any formal trial before the Sanhedrin also serves important narrative and theological purposes in the fourth gospel. From the standpoint of narrative structure, the lack of a trial before the Sanhedrin focuses dramatic attention on the trial before Pilate. As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple will portray Jesus’ trial before the Roman governor as the judgmental confrontation between the heavenly kingdom which Jesus embodies and the Roman empire, which typifies the kingdoms of this world. Jesus’ unofficial condemnation by the Sanhedrin without a trial causes Him to withdraw temporarily in order to avoid direct confrontation with the chief priests and Pharisees until His hour comes. (Jn 11:54) His enemies, for their part, stand ready to act against Him when He finally makes His move. They have ordered anyone who knows Jesus’ whereabouts to report it to them so that the temple police can arrest Him. (Jn 11:57) Moreover, as we have seen, since the raising of Lazarus has caused the people to turn to Jesus in faith, the chief priests decide to include Lazarus on their hit list as well. (Jn 12:10) By including this detail, the evangelist makes it clear that those whom Jesus has raised to life through baptismal faith must stand ready to die with Him, if necessary. The Chief Priests in the Passion As we have already seen, the chief priests and Pharisees act in concert to send the detachment which arrests Jesus. (Jn 18:2-3) In John, moreover, the arresting band includes Roman soldiers as well as temple police. (Jn Kaiphas—Eine exegetische Versuch über Joh XI, 50-51,” Theologische Jahrbücher 1(Tübingen, 1942), pp. 792-800; Werner Grimm, “Preisgabe einer Menschen zur Rettung des Volkes” in Josepus Studien, edited by Otto Betz et al. (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1974), pp. 133-146; Prosper Shecpens, “‘Pontifex anni illius’ (Ev. de saint Jean, XI, 49, 51; XVIII, 14,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 11(1921), pp. 372-374; Severeno Pancaro, “‘People of God’ in St. John’s Gospel,” New Testament Studies, 16(1969-1970), pp. 114-129; Ernst Bammel, “John 11, 45-47” in The Trial of Jesus: Cambridge Studies in Honor of C.F.D. Moule, edited by E. Bammel, SBT13 (Napierville, IL: Allenson, 1970), pp. 11-40; Margaret Barker, “Caiphas’ Words in Jn 11, 50 refer to Messiah ben Joseph,” Ibid., pp. 41-46; James Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1979), pp. 64-100; Johannes Buetler, S.J., “Two Ways of Gathering: The Plot to Kill Jesus in John 11:47-53,” New Testament Studies, 40(1994), pp. 399-406.
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18:12) Temple and empire, as embodiments of the dark powers (Jn 14:3-31), conspire to put the Son of God on trial. As we have also seen, for the fourth evangelist, Jesus’ passion begins the full revelation of His glory. Narrative emphasis on the divine glory explains the Beloved Disciple’s omission of the agony in the garden; and Jesus manifests His glory in a positive way by conquering His enemies with a final proclamation of His divinity. Jesus, fully aware of everything about to happen to Him, asks the arresting band: “For whom are you looking?” The question recalls Jesus’ question to His first disciples and His subsequent invitation to them to come and see. It also foreshadows the risen Christ’s question to Mary Magdalene: “Whom are your seeking?” (Jn 20:15) John’s Jesus follows His question to His disciples with the invitation to “come and see.” Soon after hearing the question of the risen Christ, Mary Magdalene “sees” Him in His risen glory. The Beloved Disciple also desires the reader to “see” deeply into the events which follow Jesus’ question to His enemies.16 When Jesus’ enemies reply, “Jesus, the Nazorean,” Jesus responds by saying, “I AM (ego eimi).” (Jn 18:4-5) Translators often render the words “ego eimi” as “I am He,” but the Greek text has no “He” in it. The words “ego eimi” identify Jesus as the one the cohort seeks; but they also proclaim the divine name “I AM” which He shares with the Father. When the temple police and soldiers hear Jesus pronounce the divine name they draw back and fall to the ground. (Jn 18:6) The Beloved Disciple thus transforms Jesus’ very arrest into a theophany. By merely pronouncing the divine name which He shares with the Father, Jesus renders those who have come to arrest Him powerless. Only after Jesus has demonstrated that He remains in complete control of the situation does He freely surrender Himself to the soldiers. (Jn 18:18) In the very moment of His arrest, Jesus speaks and acts with a divine authority which manifests His glory. In surrendering Himself Jesus also makes sure that the soldiers allow the disciples to depart. The act expresses His advance forgiveness of their abandonment of Him in His passion. (Jn 13:38, 16:32-33) It also insures the fulfillment of the promise which He made to the disciples in His priestly prayer. In His priestly prayer Jesus had assured the disciples that, from among their number, only Judas would know perdition, and then only to fulfill the Scriptures.17 (Jn 17:12) 16. Cf. Raymond E. Brown, S.S., The Death of the Messiah (2 vols.; New York, NY: Doubleday, 1994), I, pp. 259-262. 17. Cf. Gottfried Schulle, “Das Leiden des Herrn: Die evangelistische Passionstradition und ihr ‘Sitz im Leben,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 52(1955), pp. 161-205; Sebastian Bartina, S.J., “‘Jo soy Yahweh’ Nota exegetica a Jo 18, 4-8,” Estudios Ecclesiasticos, 32(1958), pp. 403-426; John Monro Gibson, “The Gethsemane of the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, 30(1918-1919), pp. 76-79; Paul Winter, The Trial
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Peter cuts off the ear of the servant of the high priest, possibly the high ranking official who has accompanied the cohort which arrests Jesus. Only the fourth evangelist names both the aggressive disciple and the maimed servant. That a Hellenizing Jewish priest would have adopted a Gentile name like Malchus has the ring of plausibility. Peter wields the sword, the ear of Malchus falls to the ground. Luke as we have seen, has Jesus heal the ear and rebuke any use of violence in His defence. (Lk 22:51) John makes no mention of a healing. Instead he gives the rebuke to Peter a different twist. The Johannine Jesus says: “Put that sword back! Shall I not drink the cup my Father has given Me?” (Jn 18:11) Jesus’ question, as we have seen, echoes the prayer which the synoptic Jesus makes during His agony in the garden. (Mk 14:32-46; Mt 26:36-46; Lk 22:41-2) One finds, however, no hint in John of conflict or of agony. Instead, Jesus’ words express the same total and sovereign submission to the Father as one finds in His last discourse. Jesus’ words reveal that the world has finally no power over Jesus. He for His part freely submits to the world’s violence in obedience to the Father.18 (Jn 14:30-31) Only the fourth evangelist records the informal interrogation of Jesus by Annas, the father-in-law of Caiphas, the high priest. (Jn 18:13-14) The evangelist portrays this interrogation as a pure formality by reminding the reader that the high priestly caste has already condemned Jesus to death.19 (Jn 18:14) As we shall see in considering Jesus’ relationship to His disciples, the Beloved Disciple focuses the point of the interrogation on Jesus’ relationship to His disciples. When Annas asks Jesus about His disciples and doctrine, Jesus tells the high priest to question those He has taught, since He has said nothing in secret. One of the temple police then slaps Jesus in the face for speaking insolently. Jesus rebukes the guard with the words: “If I spoke evil, bear witness to the evil; if rightly, why do you strike Me?” (Jn 18:19-23) The guard in striking Jesus suggests that He has violated Ex. 22:28, “You shall not revile God nor curse a ruler of your people.” Jesus in replying takes note of that law but denies any culpability. He challenges the temple guard to justify both his accusation and his violent act. Jesus’ of Jesus (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co., 1961), pp. 44-50; Dieter Dormeyer, “Joh 18.1-14 par Mk 14.43-53: Methodologische Überlegungen zur Rekonstruktion einer vorsynoptischen Passionsgeschichte,” New Testament Studies, 41(1995), pp. 218-239. 18. Cf. NJBC, 61: 207-208; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 805-818. 19. Having indicated that Caiphas, not Annas, presided as high priest that year, the evangelist nevertheless designates Annas in the interrogation as “the high priest.” Exegetes have puzzled over this apparent contradiction; but the evangelist could be designating Annas as a member of the high priestly caste from whose number the presiding high priest came. (Jn 18:19)
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response also alludes to an incident during the feast of Tabernacles. On that occasion Jesus countered the hatred of the crowd by challenging them to convict Him of any sin or wrongdoing. (Jn 15:25) The policeman’s violence now reproduces the same kind of unjust disbelief. His action also reminds one of Jn 15:25: “They have hated Me without cause.” Annas sends Jesus bound to Caiphas.20 (Jn 18:24) The next morning, without a formal trial before the Sanhedrin, the high priests take Jesus to Pilate for judgment; but they refuse to enter the praetorium lest they incur ritual defilement. (Jn 18:28) This priestly concern for ritual niceties at the very moment when they are engaged in legalized murder strikes a bitterly ironic note by dramatizing the high priests’ hypocrisy and shallow legalism.21 The priests’ legal scruple also provides the literary conceit which structures John’s account of the trial before Pilate; for the priests’ refusal to enter the Praetorium forces Pilate to leave the building in order to confront the priests and to re-enter it in order to interrogate Jesus. His entrances and exits divide Jesus’ trial into scenes. In the first scene, the high priests explain why they have not tried Jesus according to Jewish law: they desire His crucifixion but have no authority to order it. (Jn 18:31) Pilate asks what specific charge the chief priests bring against Jesus. They reply that, if Jesus were not a criminal, they would not have brought Him to Pilate for judgment. (Jn 18:29-30) When Pilate tells the priests to judge Jesus by Mosaic law, the chief priests remind Pilate that they cannot execute anyone and that the Romans must handle capital punishment.22 (Jn 18:31-32) Jesus’ enemies have already judged Him guilty of blasphemy. A charge of blasphemy rooted in Jewish religious beliefs would, however, have car20. Cf. NJBC, 61:209-213; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 818-842; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 16-174; Robert T. Fortna, “Jesus and Peter at the High Priest’s House: A Test Case for the Question of the Relation between Mark’s and John’s Gospel,” New Testament Studies, 24(1977-1978), pp. 371-383; Max Alain Chevallier, “La comparution de Jésus devant Hanne et devant Caiphe” in Neues Testament und Geschichte, edited by H.B. Weiler and Bo Reicke (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1972), pp. 179-185; W. Randoph Church, “The Dislocation in the Eighteenth Chapter of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 49(1930), pp. 375-383; Johannes Schneider, “Zur Komposition von Joh 18, 12-27,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 48(1951), pp. 111-119; Paul Winter, The Trial of Jesus, pp. 1-50; “Marginal Notes on the Trial of Jesus,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 50(1959), pp. 221-251; Patrick Valentin, “Les Comparution de Jésus devant le sanhedrin,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 59(1971), pp. 230-236; Frank J. Matera, “Jesus before Annas: John 18, 13-14. 19-24,” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 66(1990), pp. 38-55. 21. Cf. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, I, pp. 744-747. 22. Scholars debate the extent of the Sanhedrin’s authority to carry out death sentences under Roman law. Some of the evidence does, however, support the fourth evangelist’s statement that in Jesus’ time the Romans had in fact forbidden formal executions by the Jewish authorities. (Jn 18:31)
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ried no weight under Roman law. The chief priests, therefore, assure Pilate that Jesus has committed a crime deserving capital punishment, but they fail to name the crime in question. Eventually, as the trial unfolds, Pilate will force them to confess their duplicity. The evangelist observes at this point that in bringing about Jesus’ crucifixion, the chief priests are in fact fulfilling Jesus’ own prediction of how He would die. In speaking to Nicodemus, Jesus, as we have seen, had predicted that He must be lifted up just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert. (Jn 3:13-14) His lifting up will draw all to Himself. In other words, it will accomplish the universal salvation which Jesus has come to accomplish. (Jn 12:32) The first phase of Jesus’ trial ends with Pilate exonerating the accused. The governor declares that he finds the criminal charges against Jesus without foundation. Pilate’s preliminary judgment suggests that he recognizes the religious character of the dispute between Jesus and the chief priests. Accordingly, the governor refuses to involve the empire in deciding the private religious disputes of its subjects. As in the synoptics, however, Pilate waffles. He reminds “the Jews” that at the feast of Passover he customarily releases a prisoner; and he offers to release Jesus rather than the bandit Barabbas. “The Jews,” however, call for Barabbas’s release instead. (Jn 18:38b-40) Here the term “the Jews” refers to the high priests. (Cf. Jn 18:24, 35; 19:6) As in the synoptics, the priests’ preference for the wrong “son of the father” foreshadows their final repudiation of the Son of God incarnate. As a sop for the priests, Pilate has Jesus scourged. (Jn 19:1-3) Pilate, though balked, has not yet played out his hand. When the chief priests and temple police see the scourged Jesus cloaked in purple and crowned with thorns, they again demand His crucifixion. Pilate tells them scornfully to execute Jesus on their own authority. For his part, he finds no reason to require Jesus’ death. (Jn 19:4-6) This rebuke causes the chief priests to say: “We have our own Law and according to that Law He must die because He pretended to be God’s Son.” (Jn 19:7) In other words, Pilate’s stubbornness forces the chief priests to confess that they are in fact seeking a civil execution for the religious crime of blasphemy. In the fourth evangelist’s vision of the struggle between light and darkness, the conflict, as we have seen, makes the light to shine more brightly and the darkness to grow deeper. Both happen when the chief priests confess their true motives for desiring Jesus’ death. They reveal their malice and hypocrisy in having trumped up criminal charges against Jesus, when in fact they seek His execution on religious grounds. At the same time, in revealing the real reason why they want Him dead, they willy-nilly proclaim His divine Sonship to the Roman governor. In the process they draw Pilate deeper into guilt. They force the skeptical pagan governor (Jn
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18:38) to face the religious implications of what they are demanding of him. Pilate reacts with dread. What motivates the dread? The realization that by meddling in religious matters he could bring himself under the censure of Rome? Superstitious dread of Jesus as a divine man? (Jn 19:8) In John’s passion narrative, both motives could in fact motivate Pilate’s fear. In the final scene of Jesus’ trial, the chief priests threaten Pilate by saying: “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend; every one who makes himself a king sets himself against Caesar.” (Jn 19:12) A group of senators together with some invited members of equestrian rank who surrounded both Augustus and Tiberius bore the name “amici,” or “friends” of Caesar. One has no way of knowing, however, whether the phrase bore those connotations on the lips of the Johannine high priests.23 Some commentators see in the threat an implicit reference to the political downfall of Sejanus in Rome in the year 31 a.d. Under such an interpretation, the priests warn Pilate that he could suffer the same fate as Sejanus unless he takes a hard line against Jewish secular messianism. Other commentators find the allusion to Sejanus contrived. In any case, the invocation of Caesar’s name persuades Pilate to condemn Jesus as a messianic pretender, even though Pilate has already judged that the legal evidence does not support such a charge. (Jn 19:12) Pilate, however, has not yet done with the priests. He forces them to declare how they themselves view Jesus’ messianic status. He presents Jesus to the priests as their king. The priests reply “We have no king but Caesar.” (Jn 19:14-15) In other words, having been manipulated by the priests to condemn Jesus unjustly, Pilate forces the chief priests to replace allegiance to their true king and messiah with political allegiance to the dark powers.24 In the fourth gospel, the chief priests do not mock the crucified Jesus as they do in the synoptic gospels. Instead, they attempt to get Pilate to revise the official inscription nailed to Jesus’ cross. The inscription publicizes the crime which justifies Jesus’ condemnation and execution. Pilate had written “Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews.” The chief priests urge the governor to revise the text to read: “This man said, ‘I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate refuses. The chief priests have chosen Caesar as their king; now they must suffer the curt rebuff of Caesar’s representative. (Jn 10:19-22) The priests began by accusing Jesus of criminal activity, then confessed that they really wanted Him executed for blasphemy. The priests next 23. Cf. Ernst Bammel, “Philos tou Kaisaros,” Theologische Literaturzeitung, 4(1952), pp. 205-210. 24. Cf. NJBC, 61:214-221; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 842-896; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 175-188.
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manipulated the governor’s political anxieties until Pilate condemned Jesus as a secular messiah. Now they try to get Pilate to say that Jesus only pretended to have royal messianic authority. Pilate refuses; and his refusal means that Jesus, even as He hangs on the cross, still confronts the world as its true messiah. At the very moment when the powers of darkness seem to have triumphed decisively, the light continues to shine. The darkness cannot overcome it. (Jn 1:5) Moreover, Pilate has the inscription written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin in order to insure that anyone can understand the charge against Jesus. In fact, the public execution near to Jerusalem causes many who pass by to read and understand the charge. (Jn 19:20) The public publication of Jesus as the real king of the Jews, not only in Hebrew but in the more universal languages of Latin and Greek, foreshadows ironically Jesus’ successful proclamation to the Gentiles as messiah and Lord. That proclamation will follow upon His glorification.25 The chief priests make their final appearance in John when, under the ambiguous designation “the Jews,” they ask Pilate to remove the crucified bodies from the crosses before the solemn sabbath. The priests’ shallow concern with ritual propriety after an act of legalized murder recalls their hypocritical concern at the beginning of Jesus’ trial to avoid legal impurity by refusing to enter the Praetorium. (Jn 19:31; cf. 18:28) The Analogy of Christological Knowing Like the synoptic evangelists, the Beloved Disciple regards the chief priests as the principal agents of Jesus’ crucifixion. Like the synoptics, John portrays the priests as cynical, politically ambitious, calculating, hypocritical, religiously skeptical, and oppressive. Two theological motives color the Beloved Disciple’s distinctive handling of the chief priests: his understanding of the providentially predetermined outcome of the struggle between light and darkness and his forensic theology of judgment. The conflict between Jesus and the chief priests which intensifies during the feast of Tabernacles brings the theme of the struggle between light and darkness to front and center stage. That struggle in a sense culminates in the chief priests’ frustrated attempt to keep Pilate from proclaiming the crucified Jesus the king of the Jews. Despite its worst efforts, the darkness lacks the power to quench or to hide the divine Light embodied in Jesus. The Beloved Disciple’s account of the conflict between the chief priests and Jesus reaches a climax in Jesus’ trial before Pilate. Here the struggle of the darkness against the light blends with the theme of judgment. In condemning Jesus and in hypocritically forcing Pilate to condemn Him, 25. Cf. NJBC, 61:223; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 918-920; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 192-193.
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the chief priests together with Pilate stand judged before the one who will condemn their action on the last day. Ironically the very struggle between darkness and light also insures the chief priests’ condemnation in the eyes of God. They stand condemned, not by divine vindictiveness, but by their own choice. God seeks only to save them in Christ; but, as a direct result of their successful attempt to force Pilate to condemn Jesus, the chief priests find themselves forced to confess publicly that they believe more in the Roman empire than in the kingdom of God which Jesus embodies and which the pachal mystery proclaims. The Beloved Disciple’s vision of the struggle between light and darkness offered the Johannine community comfort. It assured a beleaguered community expelled for heresy from the synagogue and divided in its own faith that no matter how hard the darkness seeks to quench the light, the dark powers will fail. The chief priests had failed to quench the light even on Calvary. Beside the crucifixion of God, the trials of the Johannine community paled by comparison. A Johannine theology of judgment also posed a challenge to Johannine Christians. In Jesus God has revealed His absolute will to save; but everything depends on human choice. Those who sin against the light choose divine judgment. Johannine Christians must, then, choose wisely, or else find themselves, side by side with the dissidents, the Pharisees, and the chief priests, dominated by the forces of darkness. That warning would have targeted especially the Johannine dissidents. Only one negative dramatic linkage requires examination: namely, Jesus’ relationship to Pilate and to the Roman empire. The following section ponders that relationship. (V) In contrast to the synoptics, the fourth gospel never mentions any of the Herods. Instead, only Pilate, the Roman governor, stands as the personification of the rulers of this world. Pilate also symbolizes the skeptical, unbelieving Gentile. (Jn 18:38) In the Beloved Disciple’s passion narrative, therefore, the confrontation between Jesus and Pilate embodies a face off between the heavenly kingdom which Jesus incarnates and the dark powers of violence and unbelief which the Roman empire incarnates. Jesus and Pilate The evangelist structures the seven scenes of Jesus’ trial before Pilate chiastically. The first scene and final scene correspond to one another. In the first scene, the chief priests demand Jesus’ death (Jn 18:28-32); in the seventh and last scene, they obtain it. (Jn 19:12-16a) The second and sixth scenes also correspond. In both, Pilate interrogates Jesus. (Jn 18:33-8a, 19:9-11) The third and fifth scenes correspond. In both Pilate
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declares Jesus innocent and gives His enemies a chance to choose for rather than against Him. (Jn 18:38b-40, 19:4-8) In the central scene of Jesus’ trial before Pilate, the Roman soldiers scourge Jesus and then mock Him as King of the Jews. (Jn 19:1-3) As we shall see in greater detail later, the Beloved Disciple will have none of Mark’s messianic secret. The Johannine Jesus practices an open messianism. He publicly acknowledges and proclaims His messianic dignity. (Jn 4:26, 10:25-26) Moreover, in the course of telling Jesus’ story, the evangelist has already portrayed others acknowledging Him as the messiah. Andrew has called Jesus messiah. (Jn 1:41) Nathanael has proclaimed Him messianic Son of God and King of Israel. (Jn 1:49) After the miracle of the loaves before the Bread of Life discourse, the people come to make Jesus messianic king. (Jn 6:15) The crowds greet Jesus in His triumphal entry as King of Israel. (Jn 12:13) On that occasion, the evangelist interprets the triumphal entry as a fulfillment of a messianic prophecy. (Jn 12:15) As I have already indicated, the Johannine Jesus speaks only once about the kingdom during his ministry, in a private conversation with Nichodemus. (Jn 3:3, 5) Both the kingdom of God and Jesus’ royal dignity function, however, as a central focus of Jesus’ trial before Pilate. That the evangelist would center the proclamation of the kingdom primarily in the paschal mystery rather than in Jesus’ public ministry reflects consistently the movement of His Christological thought. As we shall see below in considering the signs Jesus works, the fourth evangelist focuses Jesus’ entire story on the paschal mystery, on “the hour” of His final and full revelation in glory. When “the hour” comes, Pilate, the Roman governor, serves ironically as the instrument providentially chosen by God to proclaim publicly and officially that Jesus reigns as king of the Jews. In its focus on the paschal mystery, Johannine narrative Christology resembles Pauline kerygmatic Christology. Pilate makes his first appearance in the first scene of Jesus’ trial. The drama of the trial lies in the interaction between Pilate with the chief priests, on the one hand, and between Pilate and Jesus, on the other. As we have seen, the refusal of the chief priests to enter the Praetorium lest they incur legal impurity creates the literary convention which separates the different scenes in John’s account of Jesus’ trial. Moreover, Pilate’s toing and froing cause him to oscillate between the powers of darkness, represented by the chief priests, and Jesus, the light of the world. Pilate’s physical movement dramatizes the governor’s moral vacillation.26 26. Cf. Cf. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, I, p. 744; Gerard S. Sloyan, Jesus on Trial (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1973), pp. 110-125; J. Ramsey Michaels, “John 18.31 and the ‘Trial’ of Jesus,” New Testament Studies, 36(1990), pp. 474-479.
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As we have seen, in the first scene of Jesus’ trial the chief priests accuse Jesus of criminal activity and indicate their intention to have Him crucified. In reflecting on the first scene the evangelist reminds the reader that Jesus’ crucifixion will in fact “lift Him up” in suffering and in glory and will transform Him into an instrument of universal salvation. (Jn 18:28-32) Despite all the machinations of the high priests, God has already determined the victorious outcome of Jesus’ confrontation with the empire and with all the dark powers of this world.27 In the second scene of the trial Pilate confronts Jesus face to face for the first time. He begins by asking Jesus: “Are you the King of the Jews?” (Jn 18:33) Here “the Jews” refers to the Jewish nation as a whole and has no pejorative connotations. Pilate does not beat around the bush; he wants to know whether Jesus claims secular, messianic authority and stands in rebellion against Rome. Josephus’s history of the Jewish wars indicates that in the decades before the destruction of Jerusalem more than one messianic claimant to royal authority arose from the peasant class. Before entering into open insurrection against Rome, these peasant messiahs not infrequently functioned as bandit chieftains, just as David had before replacing Saul on the throne. Pilate wants to know whether Jesus stands in insurrection against Roman authority in the manner of these bandit chiefs. Jesus answers with a question of His own: “Do you speak for yourself, or did others say it to you about me?” (Jn 18:34) Jesus asks Pilate whether he as governor has reasons to ask Him about His messianic pretensions or whether the question flows from the accusations of the chief priests. Pilate responds: I’m not a Jew, am I? Your nation and chief priests handed you over to me. What have you done? (Jn 18:35)
Pilate responds sarcastically to Jesus’ question: “Do you speak for yourself?” He takes Jesus’ question to mean, “Do you yourself believe Me the messiah?” He also seems to take the question to imply that he, Pilate, takes messianism seriously. Pilate’s question: “I’m not a Jew, am I?” makes it clear that he has no truck with Jewish messianic hopes and pretensions. At the same time he confesses that he would not be interrogating Jesus unless the chief priests had pressed criminal charges against Him. As gov27. Cf. Paul Winter, The Trial of Jesus, pp. 51-110; Donatien Mollat, S.J., “Jésus devant Pilate,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 39(1961), pp. 23-31; Jacques Esiande, “Jésus devant Pilate,” Foi et Vie, 73(1974), pp. 66-81; Josef Blank, “Die Verhandlung vor Pilatus, Joh 18, 28-19, 16 im licht Johanneischer Theologie,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 3(1953), pp. 60-81; J.E. Allen, “Why Pilate?” in The Trial of Jesus, edited by E. Bammel, (Napierville, IL: Alec R. Allenson, Inc., 1970), 78-83.
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ernor, Pilate wants to know how Jesus pleads to the charges laid against Him: “What have your done?” Jesus replies by stating that the kingdom of God which He proclaims has nothing in common with the kingdoms of the world: My kingdom is not of this world; if my kingdom were of this world my subjects would be fighting to prevent my being handed over to the Jews; now my kingdom does not belong here. (Jn 18:36)
In fact, Peter, as we have seen, fought in the garden to keep Jesus from being arrested; but Jesus rebuked him and told him to sheath his sword. (Jn 18:11) In the fourth gospel, the arresting party included Roman soldiers. According to the Beloved Disciple’s story line, therefore, Pilate could quite possibly have received a report of the arrest. In the context of John’s narrative, then, Jesus could conceivably be reminding Pilate that, at the moment of His arrest, He had forbidden His disciples to take up arms against the chief priests and the Romans. If so, then Jesus is adducing His non-violent response to His own arrest as evidence that the kingdom of God which He embodies belongs to a different order from the Roman empire and from any other worldly kingdom. The Beloved Disciple espouses, however, a realized eschatology. In the incarnation of God’s only Son, the kingdom is already present, has already begun. The fact that the kingdom of God does not come from the world implicitly designates heaven as its source. The fact that it does not belong in the world designates heaven as the place where Jesus’ kingdom will come to full and final realization.28 As we shall see in more detail below, however, the separation of “the world” from the kingdom of God asserts a moral rather than a strict metaphysical dualism. The two kingdoms rest on contradictory ethical and religious presuppositions which demand a radical choice between them. Pilate has twice asked Jesus if He claims the title “king of the Jews.” Jesus now responds by pointing out that “the Jews,” acting in the person of their official leaders, have delivered Him over to Pilate. They do not in fact relate to Him as king but as their mortal enemy. Jesus, in other words, also adduces the hostility of the Jewish leaders as evidence that the kingdom of God which He proclaims has nothing to do with secular messianism. Pilate seems to accept the fact that the hostility of Jesus’ own people argues against His being king of the Jews; but the governor remains unsatisfied. Jesus has spoken of a kingdom and of subjects. Pilate wants to know, therefore, whether Jesus lays claim to any royal title which opposes the authority of Caesar. The governor therefore asks: “So you are a king?” 28. Cf. Brown, The Death of the Messiah, I, pp. 749-751.
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In effect, Pilate is asking: “Even if you do not claim secular royal authority over the Jewish people, do you in fact claim any kind of royal authority?” (Jn 18:37a) Jesus replies: “You are saying that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I have come into the world, to bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice.” (Jn 18:37b) Jesus notes first of all that he, Pilate, is attributing to Jesus a secular kingship which He Himself does not claim. Jesus then states the authentic nature and scope of His religious mission: to bear witness to “the truth.” As we have seen, “the truth” in John means the saving truth about Jesus’ identity with the Father together with everything which that truth implies. Taken in context Jesus’ words suggest that His testimony to the truth will culminate in His own death. During the feast of Tabernacles, as we have seen, Jesus argued from His selfless willingness to risk death, to the truth of His testimony to the Father. By actually dying for the message He proclaims, Jesus will now give His ultimate testimony to its truth. Having explained the true nature of His mission, Jesus then clarifies for Pilate His relationship to His disciples: they do not relate to Him in the way in which subjects relate to a secular king. Instead, they simply accept the truth which He proclaims and incarnates. Pilate replies to this proclamation of divine truth with the skeptical question: “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38) The reply has no deep philosophical implications. Instead, it places Pilate outside the pale of those who belong to “the truth.” Far from assenting to the truth which Jesus incarnates, Pilate does not even know what the term means. As we have seen, failure to believe in the truth which Jesus proclaims and embodies places one under the judgment of God. Pilate’s skeptical unbelief foreshadows that despite his vacillation he, like the chief priests, will take his stand finally with the forces of darkness and under divine judgment.29 Despite his mocking skepticism toward Jesus’ religious claims, Pilate, on returning to the high priests, professes himself convinced by Jesus’ testimony that He poses no political threat to the empire. (Jn 18:38b) As we have seen, Pilate then offers the chief priests their first opportunity to repent of their enmity against Jesus. Pilate asks them to choose between Jesus and Barabbas. They, of course, choose Barabbas, the bandit chief and false “son of the father.” (Jn 18:39-40) Despite their professed zeal for the Roman law, the priests, with Johannine irony, hypocritically prefer to Jesus, whom a Roman judge has just exonerated, a bandit chief already convicted of criminal and subversive activity.30 29. Cf. Benedict Schwank, “Was ist Wahrheit? (Joh 18, 38), Erbe und Auftrage, 47(1971), pp. 487-496; Antonio Vincent Cernuda, “Nacimiento y Verdad de Jesús ante Pilato,” Estudios Biblicos, 50(1992), pp. 537-551. 30. Cf. Mariano Herranz Marco, “Un problema de critica historica en el relato de la Pasion: la liberacion de Barrabbas,” Estudios Biblicos, 30(1971), pp. 137-160; Alois
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Pilate then orders Jesus scourged. (Jn 19:1) In Mark and Matthew the scourging follows Jesus’ condemnation. The chiastic structure of the trial narrative in the fourth gospel transforms the scourging into the central event of the trial. As a consequence, the Johannine Jesus suffers scourging before His condemnation. The centrality of the scourging in John also reflects the fact that Jesus’ trial before Pilate proclaims the kingdom. In mocking the scourged Jesus as king of the Jews, the soldiers proclaim a deeper truth than they themselves realize. The fact that the Johannine Pilate later declares that he finds Jesus innocent of any crime (Jn 19:4) suggests that Pilate orders the scourging, not as the preliminary to crucifixion, but, possibly, as a corrective punishment. Pilate also seems to hope that the chief priests will rest content with the scourging. The fact that Pilate has ordered Jesus scourged despite the fact that he finds Jesus guilty of no crime dramatizes the violence with which Roman legal “justice” dealt with difficult peasants like Jesus. In the central scene of Jesus’ trial, the soldiers, after the scourging, mock Jesus as a false messiah. They put a purple cloak on Him, crown Him with a crown of thorns, and for a prolonged period of time offer Him mock reverence as king, while striking Him. (Jn 19:2-3) As we have seen, the evangelist omits the degrading detail that the soldiers also spat on Jesus. The scene’s situation at the heart and center of Jesus’ trial endows the mockery with ironic revelatory significance. In mocking Jesus as King of the Jews, the soldiers, in the evangelist’s mind, ironically proclaim a deeper truth than they realize. Jesus in fact reigns as messiah, but not for the reasons which the soldiers contemn by their mockery. For the fourth evangelist, Jesus’ messianic authority derives from the fact that He confronts humanity as God incarnate and ultimately as humanity’s eschatological judge. In mocking and abusing Jesus the soldiers unwittingly proclaim His kingship at the same time that they place themselves by their violence and unbelief under His divine judgment. Pilate displays the scourged Jesus, crowned with thorns and clothed in royal purple, before the chief priests with the words: “See, I am bringing Him out to you, that you may know that I find no crime in Him.” When Jesus appears wearing the cloak and crown of thorns, Pilate says with apparent contempt: “Look at the fellow! (idou ho anthrôpos)” (Jn 19:4-5) Commentators on John’s gospel have found different symbolic meanings in Pilate’s words: “idou ho anthropos.” One finds them frequently translated as “Behold the man!” Some scholars believe that “the man” Bajsic, “Pilatus, Jesus, und Barabbas,” Biblica, 48(1967), pp. 7-28; Johannes Merkel, “Die Begnadigung am Passahfeste,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 6(1905), pp. 293-316.
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refers to Jewish Hellenistic myths of the primal man. Others see in Pilate’s words an unbelieving reference to Jesus as “mere man,” i.e., not the incarnate Son of God. Others equate “the man” with “the man of sorrows,” the suffering servant of second Isaiah. Others find in “the man” an eschatological title. Others still see in Pilate’s words a reference to 1 Sam 8:9 and a proclamation of Jesus as the divine king of Israel. If one attends to the symbolic structure of John’s passion narrative, however, one senses that the evangelist may well desire to parallel Jesus, “the man,” with Mary, “the woman.” As we have seen, in Jesus’ passion Mary by accepting the Beloved Disciple as her child becomes the mother of all believers, the new Eve, “the woman” par excellence in the new creation. As we shall see, this occurs in the central scene of John’s crucifixion narrative, a position which underscores its importance. Even on Calvary Jesus begins the new creation by making Mary its Eve, the mother of all who believe. I find it at least plausible, then, that in having Pilate call Jesus “the man” the evangelist designates Him symbolically as the new Adam, as “the man” par excellence in the new creation which He begins. This interpretation finds textual support in the other Adamic imagery present in the Johannine passion account. The passion narrative begins in a garden. The image of the garden recalls the garden of Eden. In His arrest Jesus confronts Satan in the person of Judas, just as Adam in the garden of Eden confronted the serpent, which Jewish tradition later conflated with Satan. (Jn 18:1-2, 5) Jesus’ burial in a garden functions within John’s passion narrative as a biblical inclusion. This second allusion to Eden suggests that the evangelist desires the reader to interpret the entire passion narrative as a revelation of Jesus as the new Adam. (Jn 19:41-42) Finally, the fact that “anthrôpos” can designate any human, male or female, fits in with Adamic symbolism. In the biblical account of human origins, Adam would seem to have been created androgynous, since Eve proceeds from him.31 (Gen 2:21-23) As we have seen, the chief priests reject absolutely Pilate’s attempt to save Jesus. At the sight of Him, the chief priests and temple police cry out: “Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Pilate replies: “Take Him yourselves and crucify Him, for I find no crime in Him.” (Jn 19:6-7) As we have seen, Pilate’s second proclamation of Jesus’ innocence forces the chief priests to admit the deceit which led them to accuse Jesus of having violated Roman law. Nevertheless, they continue to press for Jesus’ 31. Cf. Dieter Bohler, “‘Ecce Homo!’ (Jn 19,5): ein Zitat aus dem Alten Testament,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 39(1995), pp. 104-108; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Die Ecce-Homo-Szene und der Menschensohn” in Jesus und der Menschensohn für Anton Vötgle, edited by R. Pesch and R. Schnackenburg (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), pp. 371-386.
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death on the cross on theological grounds: Jesus must die on the cross, not because He claims secular messianic authority, but because He has violated Jewish law by blasphemously claiming equality with God. This claim implicitly portrays Jesus as a false charismatic prophet whose deceptions merit death.32 (Jn 19:4-8) As we have seen, this shift in the charges brought against Jesus quite possibly inspires in Pilate a double fear. On the one hand, he recognizes that the chief priests are pressuring Him to crucify Jesus on religious grounds, an act which could jeopardize his own political career. On the other hand, Pilate begins to suspect that he is confronting a genuine religious reality; and that possibility inspires in him a superstitious religious fear. In other words, by their religious hatred for Jesus, the chief priests force Pilate beyond the mocking cynicism which he exhibited in his first interrogation of Jesus. Disturbed by these fears, Pilate tries to get to the bottom of Jesus’ religious claims. He brings Jesus back inside the Praetorium for a second interrogation and asks Him: “Where are you from?” (Jn 19:9) The question echoes the debates concerning Jesus’ origin which took place between Jesus and “the Jews” on the feast of Tabernacles. (Jn 7:41, 8:14-19, 23-4) In asking Jesus to name His origins, Pilate shows himself as ignorant of the Father as the unbelieving “Jews.” (Jn 8:14-19) Despite his ignorance, however, Pilate nevertheless seems to fear that in Jesus he confronts a noumenal divine presence. Jesus responds to Pilate’s question about His origins with the same silence as in the synoptic gospels. (Mk 14:61, Mt 26:62, Lk 23:9) Jesus answered Pilate when the governor questioned Him concerning Roman law. To this theological question, however, Jesus has nothing to say to the pagan governor. By dabbling in religious matters, the Roman governor has exceeded his jurisdiction. Pilate warns the silent Jesus: “You will not speak to me? Don’t you know that I have the power to release you, and the power to crucify you?” (Jn 19:9) Jesus responds to this threat by confronting Pilate with the guilt which he will incur by conspiring with the high priests in His execution: You would have no power over Me unless it had been give you from above; therefore (dia touto) the one who delivered Me to you has the greater sin. (Jn 19:11)
Jesus reminds the governor that all authority, including secular authority derives from God. Implicitly, then, Jesus warns Pilate that he must 32. Cf. David W. Wead, “We Have a Law,” Novum Testamentum, 11(1969), pp. 185-189.
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answer to God for the way in which he exercises that authority. As we have already seen, in Johannine theology the Father has handed over all judgment to the Son. Jesus’ statement about the origin of Pilate’s authority, therefore, counters Pilate’s threat with a different kind of warning. One day, Jesus, as eschatological judge, will stand in judgment over Pilate.33 Jesus, however, seems to indulge in a non sequitur. Even if all authority derives from God, why should it follow that those who have delivered Him to Pilate, namely, the chief priests, stand convicted of a greater sin? If one sees in Jesus’ statement about the origin of authority an implicit warning to Pilate that he will one day face Jesus as the eschatological judge, then that warning endows the “therefore (dia touto)” with a kind of meaning. The fact that Pilate must face Jesus as eschatological judge implies that so must the chief priests. In that context, Jesus assures Pilate that the priests stand convicted of greater guilt than he. One need not, in my judgment, read into Jesus’ statement about the greater guilt of the chief priests an exoneration of Pilate as the secular instrument of “the world” which he represents, although some exegetes have done so. For one thing, one belongs to the world by choice. Moreover, in the evangelist’s judgment both Pilate and the chief priests belong to “the world.” Instead, Jesus seems to refer to exonerating circumstances which mitigate Pilate’s guilt, circumstances already mentioned by the evangelist in the course of his narrative. Those circumstances include the following: 1)The chief priests claim to worship the one, true God and ought, therefore, by rights to recognize His Son when He confronts them. Pilate, the skeptical pagan, makes no such claim. His ignorance mitigates his failure to recognize Jesus. 2) Pilate, the pagan skeptic, is seeking to release Jesus rather than to condemn Him, while the chief priests, who should know better, press relentlessly for His crucifixion. 3) Pilate will eventually yield to the priests but only under pressure. Jesus’ response leaves Pilate all the more eager to seek His release. (Jn 19:12) At this point, however, the chief priests, as we have seen, play their trump card. They challenge Pilate’s allegiance to Caesar unless he condemns Jesus as an insurrectionist. Jesus has made Himself into a king and set himself in opposition to Caesar; if Pilate releases Him, the governor will support Jesus’ messianic claims against Caesar. (Jn 19:12) Pilate has already made it quite clear that he does not look upon Jesus as making secular, messianic claims. Confronted, however, with the possibility of having to answer to Caesar for having abetted rebellion, the governor decides to condemn Jesus to crucifixion, but on civil, not on religious grounds. 33. Cf. Dieter Zeller, “Jesus und die Philosophen vor dem Richter,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 37(1993), pp. 88-92.
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The conflict between Pilate and the chief priests now reaches its ironic climax. The chief priests have successfully manipulated the Roman governor into violating his conscience by condemning Jesus for a crime which Pilate does not believe Jesus has committed. The chief priests have also forced the skeptical Pilate to face the religious implications of his condemnation of Jesus. In the process, however, they also caused the governor to proclaim Jesus publicly as king of the Jews. In doing so, Pilate confers on Jesus the messianic title which befits Him, but not for the reasons Pilate asserts. Pilate presents Jesus as a secular messiah, whereas the evangelist has made it clear that Jesus’ messianic dignity flows from His union with the Father. Moreover, Pilate in passing judgment on Jesus forces the chief priests to choose between Him and Caesar. The chief priests opt, as we have seen, for Caesar over Jesus, thus revealing that they do indeed belong to this world, to the kingdom of Satan, and to the forces of darkness. Ironically, then, at the very moment when Jesus finds Himself judged, the forces of darkness which pass judgment on Him make the choices which place them under the judgment of God, a judgment which Jesus Himself, as eschatological judge, will one day pronounce over them. In other words, from the evangelist’s theological perspective, the judges, by condemning Jesus, themselves stand condemned in the sight of God. (Jn 19:13-6) The evangelist writes: Pilate “brought Jesus (êgagan exô Iêsoun) out and sat down on the judgment seat (kai ekathisen epi biêmatos)....” (Jn 19:13a) Unfortunately the English language cannot reproduce the grammatical ambiguities of the Greek verb “ekathisen.” It can mean either to sit down or to seat someone. If it means to seat someone, the verb “kathizein” has a direct object. In principle, the noun “Iêsoun” could function as the object of both the verb “brought out (êgagen exô)” and “sat down (kathisen).” In other words, one could grammatically translate the passage in either of the following ways: 1) “He [Pilate] sat on the judgment seat,” or 2) “He [Pilate] made Jesus sit on the judgment seat.” As we have seen, the evangelist has on other occasions taken advantage of grammatical ambiguities in order to assert more than one truth simultaneously. One finds here another instance of the same stylistic ploy. If one takes “ekathisen” literally and historically, then Pilate mounts the seat of judgment to condemn Jesus; but, if one understands the judgment of Pilate in the light of the evangelist’s theology of judgment, then Pilate enthrones Jesus as eschatological judge. As a consequence, Pilate himself and the chief priests become the ones judged in virtue of the very condemnation of Jesus which Pilate now pronounces at the chief priests’ insistence.
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The evangelist identifies the precise place where the judgment occurred: at a place called “the Pavement: “lithostrotos” in Greek, “Gabbatha” in Hebrew. (Jn 19:13b) Scholars have to date failed to identify the place with archeological certitude; but the evangelist’s reference to the precise place of judgment forms a piece with his knowledge of first-century Palestinian topography. John also notes that Pilate pronounced judgment on Jesus at noon of the Day of Preparation which preceded Passover. At noon of the Day of Preparation, the slaughter of the paschal lambs began in the temple. At that very moment, Pilate sets in motion the process which will kill the Lamb of God, whose death, glorification, and sending of the Breath will take away the sins of the world.34 As in narrating Jesus’ trial, the fourth evangelist endows his account of Jesus’ crucifixion with a chiastic structure. The introduction (Jn 19:16b-18) and the conclusion (Jn 19:38-42) correspond. In the introduction Jesus is raised on the cross, in the conclusion He is taken down from the cross and buried. Between the introduction and conclusion, the evangelist describes five scenes. The first and the fifth correspond. In the first (Jn 19:19-22) Pilate denies the request of the chief priests to reword the charge nailed to Jesus’ cross; in the fifth (Jn 19:31-37) Pilate grants their request to have the bodies removed from the crosses before Passover. The second and fourth episodes also correspond. In them Jesus’ executioners do something. In the second scene (Jn 19:23-24) they divide Jesus’ clothes among them by lot; in the fourth (Jn 19:28-30) they offer Jesus wine. The third scene lies at the heart of John’s crucifixion narrative. In it Jesus gives the Beloved Disciple to His mother to take as her son. As in the trial of Jesus, the scene at the heart of the chiasm defines its focus. Besides endowing his narrative with a chiastic structure, the evangelist sets off each scene with a Biblical inclusion. Each scene begins and ends with the same word or phrase. The verb “to write” sets off the first scene. The noun “the soldiers” sets off the second scene. A reference to Jesus “mother” sets off the third scene. The verb “to finish” sets off the fourth scene. The final scene, the piercing of Jesus side, begins and ends with a reference to the soldiers. 34. Cf. NJBC, 61:314-221; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 843-876; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, p. 175-188; Ignace de la Potterie, “Jésus roi et juge d’apres Jn 19, 13: Ekathisen epi bêmatos,” Biblica, 41(1960), pp. 217-247; L.-H. Vincent, O.P., “Le lithrostos evangelique,” Revue Biblique, 59(1952), pp. 513-530; Pierre Benoit, O.P., “Prétoire, Lithostrotos et Gabbatha,” Revue Biblique, 59(1952), pp. 531-550; Joseph Bonsirven, “Hora talmudica,” Biblica, 33(1952), pp. 511-515; L. Pujol, C.M.F., “In loco qui dicitur Lithostrotos,” Verbum Domini, 15(1935), pp. 180-186; John J. O’Rourke,” Two Notes on St. John’s Gospel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 25(1963), pp. 124-128; A. Kurfess, “Ekathisen epi bêmatos (Io 19, 13),” Biblica, 34(1953), p. 271.
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The introduction to the passion states with stark detachment that the soldiers led Jesus out of the Jerusalem to a place called Golgotha and there crucified Him between two bandits. (Jn 19:16b-18) The rest of John’s account of the crucifixion probes the saving significance of Jesus’ horrible death on the cross.35 As we have seen in reflecting on Jesus’ relationship to the chief priests, Pilate’s refusal to change the wording of the charge nailed to Jesus’ cross has the effect of proclaiming Him to Jew, Greek, and Roman as the messianic King of the Jews. In effect, Pilate proclaims to the world what he has already proclaimed to the chief priests in Jesus’ trial. (Jn 19:19-22) That universal proclamation in Hebrew, Latin, and Greek foreshadows, as we have seen, the universal proclamation of Jesus not only as messianic king but as risen Lord and God. It also dramatizes the inability of the dark powers to quench the Light of the world. In the second scene of the crucifixion, the soldiers divide Jesus’ clothes among themselves. When, however, they come to His tunic (ton chitona), they discover that it has no seams. Rather than rend it, the soldiers cast lots in order to determine which of them gets to keep it. (Jn 19:23-24) The Jewish high priest wore a garment called a “chiton.” (Ex 39:27) Moreover, Josephus tells us that this vestment consisted of a single woven cloth. (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities, III, vii, 4; #161) The evangelist, then, uses the incident of the division of Jesus’ garments in order to remind the reader of the priestly character of Jesus’ sacrificial death. At the end of His high priestly prayer, Jesus had consecrated Himself for this sacrifice so that His disciples might in turn be consecrated in truth: i.e., dedicated to the divine service and worship by their consent to the truth which Jesus embodies. (Jn 17:18) Now as Jesus dies in sacrifice, the priestly character of His death reminds the disciples that the truth which consecrates them to God includes faith in the saving, sacrificial character of Jesus’ death.36 The evangelist also points to this incident as the fulfillment of Ps 22:18: “They divided my garments among them and for my raiment they cast lots.” This verse occurs in the same psalm which Mark and Matthew place on the lips of the dying Jesus. The psalm begins with the verse: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” As we have seen, in this psalm the innocent poor man bereft of all support but God prays in the midst of suffering and persecution for vin35. Cf. Martin Hengel, “Mors turpissima crucis: Die Kreuzigung in der antiken Welt und die ‘Torheit’ des ‘Wortes des Kreuz’” in Rechtfertigung: Festschrift für Ernst Käsemann, edited by J. Friedrich et al. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1976), pp. 125-184. 36. Cf. Michel Aubineau, “La tunique sans couture du Christ; Exegèse patristique de Jean 19: 23-24” in KYRIAKON: Festschrift für Johannes Quasten, Edited by P. Granfield and J.A. Jungmann (2 vols.; Münster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1970), I, pp. 100-127.
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dication at God’s hand. He receives it. As in the synoptics, the fourth gospel in citing Ps 22 portrays Jesus as the innocent poor man who clings to God in the face of torture and death, while looking to God for ultimate vindication. By alluding to Ps 22, the evangelist also implicitly reminds the reader of Jesus’ assertion that despite His abandonment by His disciples, the Father stands with Him in His passion. (Jn 16:32) As we have seen, Jesus’ gift of the Beloved Disciple to Mary as her son also has saving significance. The disciple symbolizes any believer; and Jesus’ gift of the Beloved Disciple to Mary transforms her into the new Eve, “the woman” par excellence of the new creation, the mother of all who believe. As we have also seen, that gift implicitly reveals Jesus as the new Adam. (Jn 19:25-27) Here, however, we need to reflect on the centrality of this scene in the Beloved Disciple’s crucifixion narrative. Its central location in the chiastic structure of that narrative endows it with central significance for the understanding of Jesus’ passion. The gift of the Beloved Disciple to Mary points to the saving consequences of Jesus’ sacrificial death. His elevation in suffering and in glory will transform Him into the last Adam, into the universal savior and head of the new humanity which His glorification begins. Moreover, the last Adam relates to all who believe in Him as brother and sister. They share the same mother as He and in the new creation remain bonded to one another with a special bond of intimacy. Moreover, the last Adam reveals the saving power of His death by creating a new humanity on the very hill of Calvary. After giving the Beloved Disciple to His mother as her son, Jesus realizes that the end is at hand. Having begun the new creation, Jesus has completed His saving work in this life. The evangelist observes that, in order to fulfill the scripture, Jesus at this point said, “I thirst.” (Jn 19:28) Both Matthew and Mark record that the soldiers offered Jesus some common wine to drink before He died.37 (Mk 15:36; Mt 27:48) The fourth evangelist now records a similar incident; but he gives it his own theological interpretation. In the fourth gospel Jesus initiates the soldier’s action by asking for something to drink. Some see in His request another instance of Johannine irony: the source of the living water dies in thirst. The suggestion has some textual foundation; for, as we have seen, in the sign of the blood and water which follows immediately upon this incident, the evangelist calls attention to the fact that Jesus will soon give the living water of the Breath. Which scriptures does Jesus fulfill? Some scholars point to Ps 69:22 as the only Old Testament prophecy which some action of Jesus has yet to fulfill. Ps 69:22 reads: “For my food they gave me gall, and for my thirst 37. Cf. Eb. Nestle, “Zum Ysop ben Johannes, Josephus, und Philo,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 14(1913), pp. 263-265.
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they gave me vinegar to drink.”. Having fulfilled this prophetic text, Jesus will have completed the work given Him by the Father. One can, however, take the evangelist to refer to the same obscure scripture text which Jesus cited at the feast of Tabernacles: namely, “From within him shall flow rivers of living water.” (Jn 7:38) The fact that the Johannine Jesus in dying hands over His Breath as a foreshadowing of the Breath-baptism which He will effect on Easter morning lends plausibility to the latter interpretation. Thus understood, “I thirst” means that Jesus thirsts for those whom the living water will claim as God’s children and as members of the new creation. The soldiers offer Jesus a wine-soaked sponge on a sprig of hyssop. A small shrub, the hyssop would not have produced a branch capable of sustaining the weight of a wine-soaked sponge. The allusion to hyssop has, however, symbolic meaning. The passover ritual required the use of hyssop to sprinkle Jewish doorposts with the blood of the paschal lamb. (Ex 12:22) The Beloved Disciple’s allusion to hyssop as Jesus dies recalls the blood of the paschal lamb as a way of reminding the reader that the “Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” is shedding His blood in loving forgiveness. Jesus drinks the sour wine, says, “It is finished,” bows His head, and dies. (Jn 19:29-30) Jesus’ final words express resignation and trust in the Father. They also suggest that He must declare His mission complete before death can claim Him. In that sense, Jesus’ dying words also recall the Johannine notion that the Father has given Jesus power to lay down His life and to take it up. John’s Jesus decides with sovereign authority when the time has come for Him to die; but He does so only after having completed the mission entrusted to Him by the Father. Moreover, instead of saying that in dying Jesus gave up the ghost, the fourth evangelist says that He “handed over the Breath (paredoken to pneuma).” Jesus’ final breath on the cross prepares and foreshadows His gift of the Breath on Easter morning. She will come to take away the sins for which His death has atoned. Easter and Calvary coalesce into a single saving event.38 38. Cf. G. Bampfylde, “John xix 28: A Case for a Different Translation,” Novum Testamentum, 11(1969), pp. 247-260; Robert L. Brawley, “An Absent Complement and Intertextuality in John 19:28-29,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 112(1993), pp. 427-443; Bruce Longenecker, “The Unbroken Messiah: A Johannine Feature and its Social Functions,” New Testament Studies, 41(1995), pp. 428-441; Roland Bergmeier, “Tetelestai, Joh 19.30,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 79(1988), pp. 221-243; Ulrich B. Müller, “Zur eigentumlichkeit des Johannesevangeliums. Das Probelm des Todes Jesu,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 88(1997), pp. 24-55; Y. Simoens, S.J., “La mort de Jésus selon Jn 19,28-30,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 119(1994), pp. 3-19; Donald Senior, C.S.P., “The Eloquent Meaning of Jesus’ Death in the Gospel of John,” Chicago Studies, 37(1998), pp. 37-46.
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In considering Jesus’ relationship to the Beloved Disciple, I have already reflected on the significance of the sign of blood and water. Here one need only recall the major points of that analysis. 1) The blood and the water which flow from Jesus’ side foreshadow Christian baptism and eucharist. They also link both rituals to the saving death of Christ. 2) The water flowing from the side of the dead Savior reveals Him as the temple of God from whom the living water of the Holy Breath will soon flow in order to give life to the land through the forgiveness of sins. 3) The rubrics for preparing the paschal lamb forbade the breaking of its legs. The fact that the soldiers pierce Jesus’ side rather than break His legs, reveals Him as the paschal lamb whose blood seals a new covenant. The assimilation of Jesus to the paschal lamb also recalls that He is “the lamb of God.” As the lamb of God, Jesus in His death confronts the reader as both the suffering servant and as the victorious lamb of Jewish apocalyptic. The former atones for sin; the latter triumphs over it. 4) The evangelist also underscores the saving character of Jesus’ death by assimilating Him to the “pierced one” of Zech 12:10, whose death brings about the salvation of Jerusalem. For the fourth evangelist, then, the sign of blood and water combines with other prophetic texts from the Old Testament in order to reveal the saving significance of Jesus’ physical death on the cross.39 39. Cf. Laurence Dunlop, M.S.C., “The Pierced Side: Focal Point of Johannine Theology,” Bible Today, 86(1976), pp. 960-965; Gustaf Dalman, D.D., Jesus-Jeshua: Studies in the Gospels, translated by P.P. Levertoff, (New Yori, NY: Ktav Publishing House, 1971), pp. 211- 222; J. Ramsey Michaels, “The Centurion’s Confession and the Spear Thrust,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 29(1967), p. 102-109; Hartwig Thyen, “Aus der Literatur zum Johannesevangelium,” Theologische Rundschau, 44( 1979), pp. 97-134, esp. 118-127; Eduard Schweizer, “Dan Johanneische Zeugnis zum Herrenmahl,” Evangelische Theologie, 12(1952-1953), pp. 341-363. A passage in the first Johannine letter further illumines the meaning of the sign of blood and water. The passage in question teaches that the threefold witness of Breath, water, and blood inspire an authentic faith which overcomes the world: Who then is it who conquers the world if not the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? Jesus Christ is that one who came through the water and the blood and the Breath; not in the water only but also in the water and in the blood; and the Breath is the witness, for the Breath is the truth. Three then are testifying: the Breath and the water and the blood, and the three are in agreement. (1 Jn 5:5-9) We find here a clear allusion to the testimony of the Beloved Disciple to the sign of the water and blood which flowed from the pierced side of the crucified Christ. (Jn 19:31-5) The author of the letter regards that testimony as Breath-inspired. As we have just seen, the water which flowed from Jesus’ pierced side not only revealed His physical body as the temple of God but foreshadowed the outpouring of the Breath on Easter which His dying Breath presaged. The same Breath, therefore, as inspired the Beloved Disciple’s testimony to Jesus also inspires the baptismal faith of Christians, whose
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Pilate makes one last appearance in the passion of Jesus, when, as in the synoptics, he gives permission for Joseph of Aramathea to bury Jesus’ body. (Jn 19:38b) John, in contrast to Mark and Luke describes Joseph as a secret disciple of Jesus. The description assimilates Joseph to Nicodemus, who only in the fourth gospel assists Joseph in burying Jesus. John also differs from the synoptics in omitting any reference to women witnesses of the burial. Moreover, instead of describing the burial as hastily accomplished in the manner of the synoptics, John depicts it as reverentially and thoroughly done. As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple assimilates Jesus’ burial to the interment of kings.40 confession of Jesus includes not only pneumatic enlightenment but also faith in the saving efficacy of His blood. The author of the letter is contrasting the orthodox faith of his own community with the heterodox “faith” of the dissidents. They presumably baptized and seemingly claimed the enlightenment of the Breath; but they did not acknowledge the saving character of Jesus’ death. The only testimony of faith which qualifies as true must confess both the enlightening presence of the baptismal Breath and the atoning efficacy of Jesus’ physical death. As a final buttress to his community’s faith, the author of the letter stresses the divine authority which resides in the Breath’s testimony to the saving character of Jesus’ death. Divine authority takes clear precedence over any human authority. (1 Jn 5:8-9) Moreover, the author of the letter repeats the same argument which he used in attacking the dissidents in the opening of his letter: whoever denies the saving efficacy of Jesus’ death makes God into a liar, since God Himself has testified to the contrary. God’s testimony assures us that He gives us life through His Son. Implicitly, the author of the letter is asserting that risen life proceeds from the whole paschal mystery: from the death as well as from the resurrection of Jesus. Those who accept the divine testimony have eternal life; those who deny it do not. (1 Jn 5:9-12) The letter concludes with a reassertion of the author’s purpose in writing: “I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” (1 Jn 5:13) Cf. NJBC, 62: 30; Brown, Epistles, pp. 569-603; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 283-317; F.-M. Braun, O.P., “L’eau et l’Esprit,” Revue Thomiste, 49(1949), pp. 5-30; Oscar S. Brooks, “The Johannine Eucharist: Another Interpretation,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 82(1963), pp. 293-300; Georg Richter, “Blut und Wasser aus der durchbohrten Seite Jesu (Joh 19, 34b),” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 21(1970), pp. 1-21; Manuel Miguens, O.F.M., “Tres Testigos: Espiritu, Agua, Sangre,” Studii Biblici Franciscani Liber Annuus, 22(1972), pp. 74- 94; M. del Alamo, “Los ‘Tres Testificantes’ de la primera Epistola de San Juan, V.7,” Cultura Biblica, 4(1947), pp. 11-14; A. Jaubert, “O Espiritu, e Agua e o Sangre (1 Jo 5,7-8)” in Acutalidades Biblicas, edited by S. Voigt and F. Vier (Petropolis, Brazil: Voyes, 1971), pp. 616- 620. 40. The fact that the risen Jesus, unlike Lazarus, leaves behind Him the burial cloths in which Joseph and Nicodemus bound Him could suggest that the resurrection made their ministry to His corpse superfluous. Cf. NJBC, 61:222-228; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 897-931; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 188-202; Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., “Crucifixion in Ancient Palestine, Qumran Literature, and the New Testament,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 40(1978), pp. 493-513; Maurits Sabbe, “The Johannine Account of the Death of Jesus and its Synoptic Parallels (Jn 19, 16b-42),” Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 70(1994), pp. 34- 64.
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The Analogy of Christological Knowing As in the case of the chief priests, the struggle between light and darkness and a Johannine theology of judgment color the Beloved Disciple’s handling of the figure of Pilate. By eliminating Herod from his narrative, the Beloved Disciple transforms Pilate into the sole symbol of secular oppression in his gospel. By replacing Jesus’ formal trial by the Sanhedrin with a decision prior to the passion to kill Him, the evangelist focuses narrative attention dramatically and symbolically on Jesus’ trial by the governor. Read in the light of a Johannine forensic theology of judgment, Jesus’ trial and condemnation by Pilate functions in John as the culmination of the struggle between light and darkness. They also exemplify ironically God’s judgment on the dark powers. John goes out of his way to blame the chief priests for Jesus’ death; but he does not exonerate Pilate, who condemns Jesus with full knowledge that he could indeed be unjustly condemning the incarnate Son of God. The fact, moreover, that both Pilate and the chief priests drag one another down into the pit of guilt during Jesus’ trial also dramatizes the victory of light over darkness. By portraying Jesus’ trial as God’s judgment on Pilate and on the empire whose oppressive power crucified Jesus, the Beloved Disciple includes both in the host of dark powers over which Jesus has already triumphed. Though expulsion from the synagogue made the Johannine community vulnerable to persecution under Roman law, the divine judgment pronounced over Roman oppression in Jesus’ trial exhorts the Johannine community to stand firm in their commitment to divine truth. Each of the four evangelists views Jesus’ passion from a different theological angle. Mark portrays Jesus’ crucifixion as the culminating conflict between God and the eschatological forces of evil, although his narrative also endows Jesus’ suffering and death with saving significance. Matthew’s crucifixion narrative dramatizes the saving power of Jesus’ death with cosmic, apocalyptic signs and with the multiple resurrections which follow upon it. Luke portrays the crucifixion as the supreme embodiment of divine forgiveness. Only the Beloved Disciple explicitly portrays the crucifixion itself as a revelation of divine glory. The Beloved Disciple’s theological interpretation of Jesus’ death almost certainly targets the Johannine dissidents, who could apparently find no saving significance in physical death. In response to such dualistic skepticism, the Beloved Disciple uses rich imagery as well as chiastic ordering in order to proclaim that the divine glory and saving power fully revealed in Jesus’ resurrection already stands proleptically revealed on Calvary itself. This chapter has examined the distinctive way in which the Beloved Disciple describes Jesus’ conflict with the forces of evil. The chapter which
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follows ponders the fourth evangelist’s account of Jesus’ ambiguous dramatic relationships. As in the synoptic gospels, the Johannine Jesus enjoys an ambiguous relationship with both the crowds and the disciples.
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Chapter 4 Ambiguous Dramatic Linkages in John As in the synoptic gospels, the Johannine Jesus stands in a positive relationship to the crowds and to His own disciples. They, however, relate ambivalently to Him. This chapter divides, then, into two parts. Part one examines Jesus’ relationship with the crowds. Part two ponders His relationship with His disciples. (I) In the fourth gospel the crowds tend on the whole to react more negatively to Jesus than they do in the synoptics. In the end, however, their relationship to Him remains an ambiguous one. Jesus and the Crowds In the cure of the cripple at the pool of Bethsaida, the crowds do not interact with Jesus but allow Jesus to slip away from the cured man in anonymity. (Jn 5:13) In the bread-of-life discourse, however, the crowds become more active. Impressed by His miracles, crowds follow Jesus to the other side of the Sea of Galilee. (Jn 6:1-2) After He feeds the crowds miraculously by multiplying the loaves and fishes, the crowds proclaim Him the promised prophet like Moses and seek by force to crown Him messiah. (Jn 6:14-5; cf. Dt 18:15-8) The crowd’s attempt to transform Jesus into a Davidic king betrays the superficiality of their response to His miracles. As in the synoptics, after the miracle of the loaves, Jesus walks on the water, invokes the divine name, and crosses to the other side of the Sea of Galilee with the disciples. The abandoned crowds puzzle over Jesus’ disappearance, since He had no boat. Eventually, they too recross the lake in boats and discover Jesus in the synagogue in Capernaum.1 (Jn 6:22-6) When the puzzled crowds ask Jesus at what time He returned to Capernaum, Jesus rebukes their lack of faith in Him. He suggests that they have followed Him to Capernaum because they want their bellies filled again. The crowds, Jesus warns, have not “seen” the signs He has performed. (Jn 6:26) The crowds have indeed seen Jesus’ signs with their eyes; but here as elsewhere the evangelist intends a deeper meaning for the word “see.” The crowds have not seen deeply into their significance. If the crowds had, they would do the one work pleasing to God: namely, believe in Jesus. (Jn 6:28-9) 1. Cf. NJBC, 61: 86-87; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 231-256; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 269-283.
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As the bread-of-life discourse proceeds, many in the crowds make it clear that they in fact have no intention of believing Jesus’ testimony. Their persistent failure to “see” appears at once in their demand that Jesus renew the gift of the manna as a proof of His messianic mission. (Jn 6:30-31) Had the crowds truly “seen” the multiplication of the loaves for what it signified, they would have recognized in it a sign of the eucharistic bread and wine which Jesus will give as His body and blood. They would also have recognized its superiority to the original manna, which lacked the power to give everlasting life. The eucharistic bread, by contrast, offers food which endures to eternal life. (Jn 6:11, 27) It does so by embodying pneumatic worship. (Jn 6:62-63; cf. 4:31) The crowds ask Jesus to give them always life-giving bread, but some immediately show their lack of faith in Him when He claims to have descended from heaven. They point to Jesus’ human father and mother as proof that He did not in fact descend from heaven. By their unbelief, the skeptics show themselves as “the Jews,” unbelieving and hostile. (Jn 6:41-2) In their hostile unbelief the crowds reject outright Jesus’ promise to give them His body to eat and His blood to drink. (Jn 6:52) The skeptics, as we have seen, include many of Jesus’ disciples. (Jn 6:59-60) Jesus rebukes the crowds’ lack of eucharistic faith as a sign that they do not possess the Breath of God or share in the life, the divine pneuma, which She imparts. (Jn 6:63) As a consequence, they cannot worship in “pneuma and in truth.” (Jn 4:24) Jesus assures the unbelievers, however, that His coming glorification will embody an ever greater mystery than the eucharist. (Jn 6:62) The crowds’ unbelief also betrays the fact that they do not number among those whom the Father has drawn to Jesus and gives to Him. (Jn 6:65) The ultimately skeptical crowds in the Bread of Life discourse probably symbolize, then, two hostile constituencies: 1) heterodox Christians who denied Jesus’ real presence in the eucharist and whose lack of faith made them indistinguishable from 2) the unbelieving and hostile synagogue.2 At the feast of Tabernacles the crowds stand divided for and against Jesus. The hostility of the Jewish authorities endows the crowds’ debates about Jesus with a guarded character. Some recognize His goodness, others reject Him as a charlatan. (Jn 7:12-13) As the conflict between the 2. Cf. NJBC, 61: 90-103; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 260-304; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 284-308; B.J. Molina, The Palestinian Manna Tradition (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1968), esp. 94-106; Bertil Gärtner, John 6 and the Jewish Passover (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1959); Roger Le Déaut, “Une aggadah targumique et les ‘murmures’ de John 6,” Biblica, 51(1970), pp. 80-83; Roland Bergmeier, “Glaube als Werk? Die ‘Werk Gottes’ in Damaskusschrift II, 14-15 un Johannes 6, 28-29,” Revue de Qumran, 6(1967), pp. 253-260; John Painter, “Tradition and the Interpretation in John 6,” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp. 421-450.
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light and dark intensifies, the crowds find themselves forced to choose either for Jesus or against Him. Some of the crowds regard Jesus as the promised prophet like Moses, while others name Him messiah. Those opposed to Him reject His messianic claims on the basis of His Galilean origins. (Jn 7:40-42) Some view Jesus as a lunatic. (Jn 7:20) In the end the crowds cannot agree whether to put faith in Jesus or not. (Jn 7:43) Jesus, for His part, accuses some of the crowds of wanting His death. By the end of the feast of Tabernacles, Jesus proves Himself correct on this point. Unbelieving disciples join “the Jews” in seeking to stone Jesus.3 (Jn 7:19, 8:59) Despite these hostile encounters, the Johannine crowds eventually begin to put faith in Jesus. The chief priests, like the Pharisees, begin to fear that the crowds are beginning to take Jesus seriously. In their heart of hearts, the priests have no regard for the truth of what the people may or may not think. They regard the masses and their opinions with contempt. (Jn 7:49) The raising of Lazarus only intensifies that fear. Jesus prays before restoring Lazarus to life in order to inspire faith in the crowds. (Jn 11:42) When many begin to believe in Jesus because of Lazarus, the chief priests decide that the time has come to destroy both Jesus and the man whom He has raised from the dead. (Jn 11:45, 12:9-10) The raising of Lazarus also causes the crowds to gather for Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Those who have heard of the miracle want to see Jesus, while those who have seen the miracle keep testifying to it. Moreover, their testimony inspires dismay in the Pharisees.4 (Jn 12:10, 17-19) Not all in the crowds, however, put their faith in Jesus. Some dismiss as a thunderclap the Father’s testimony to Jesus during His Jerusalem ministry. Others call it an angelic voice. (Jn 12:29) Finally, however, when Jesus promises that His lifting up in suffering and glory will draw all people to Himself, the crowds respond in skepticism and derision. They object that the messiah must remain forever. If, then, Jesus faces crucifixion, He cannot be the messiah. (Jn 12:34) The crowd’s objection exemplifies another bit of Johannine irony: Jesus’ “lifting up” will in fact insure that He abides forever as messianic Lord. In 3. Cf. NJBC, 61: 104-126; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 304-368; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 5-32; David M. Stanley, S.J., “The Feast of Tents: Jesus’ Self- Revelation,” Worship, 34(1964), pp. 20-27; C.W.F. Smith, “Tabernacles in the Fourth Gospel and Mark,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 130-146. 4. Cf. NJBC, 61: 127-160 passim; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 419-464 passim; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, 33-94 passim. Edwin D. Freed, “The Entry into Jerusalem in the Gospel of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 80(1961), pp.329-338; D. Moody Smith, “John 12;12 ff. and the Question of John’s Use of the Synoptics,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 82(1963), pp. 58-64.
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addition, the skeptics among the crowds challenge Jesus to explain to them who the Son of Man is. (Jn 12:34) The challenge, of course, only reveals their lack of faith. The Analogy of Christological Knowing Like the synoptic evangelists, the Beloved Disciple uses the crowds as backdrop to Jesus’ ministry. The Johannine crowds, however, also serve the evangelist’s theological ends. In the bread-of-life discourse, the crowds probably symbolize both the Johannine dissidents who reject Jesus’ real eucharistic presence and the hostile synagogue. During the feast of Tabernacles, the crowds dramatize the struggle between light and darkness in their debates about Jesus’ identity. Unbelieving disciples join “the Jews” in seeking to murder Jesus for blasphemously claiming oneness with the Father. Those who begin to put faith in Jesus after He raises Lazarus foreshadow those who will eventually believe in Him. The absence of the crowds from Jesus’ trial heightens the conflict between Jesus, on the one hand, and Pilate and the chief priests, on the other. This section has reflected on Jesus’ relationship to the crowds in John. The section which follows meditates His ambiguous relationship to His disciples. (II) In the synoptic gospels Jesus calls His first disciples from their fishing nets and promises to make them fishers of men. (Mk 1:16-26; Mt 4:18-22; Lk 5:1-11) Nothing of the sort happens in the fourth gospel. Except for Philip, Jesus issues no prophetic call to the first disciples. Instead, they gather spontaneously around Him, drawn first by the witness of John the Baptizer, then by their own enthusiasm for Jesus. In the synoptics, Peter at midpoint in Jesus’ ministry confesses faith in Him as messiah. (Mk 8:27-30; Mt 16:13-20; Lk 9:18-21) In the fourth gospel, the disciples have no doubt from the beginning about Jesus’ messianic identity. Jesus and His Disciples In dealing with the Johannine Jesus’ relationship to His disciples, I have tried as much as possible not to repeat materials already covered in my discussion of the Johannine Jesus’ relationship to the Father and to the Breath. Since, however, both relationships engage the disciples relationship to Jesus and through Him to the other members of the divine triad, the reader would do well to recall some of the more important themes developed in that earlier analysis before perusing the reflections which follow. True disciples abide in Jesus and in His words. (Jn 8:31-32) This abiding communion ensures that they will never die (Jn 8:48-51) because through faith in Jesus they have access to the divine Breath, the living
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water which slakes human thirst for endless life. The living water slakes that thirst by communicating a share in Jesus’ resurrection. (Jn 4:10-14) The Breath dwells in Jesus in eschatological abundance because, as risen Christ, He imparts Her in eschatological abundance to all who believe. (Jn 1:32-34; 3:34) The Breath of Jesus illumines His teachings and allows the disciples to appropriate it. (Jn 14:26) She reveals to the disciples the meaning of the Father and Son’s mutual indwelling by giving the disciples an experience of dwelling in the risen Christ as branches on the vine of the new Israel. The disciples’ obedience to Jesus, the shepherd of the new Israel, insures that they abide always in Him. (Jn 10:14-15) Moreover, the disciples’ mutual indwelling in faith and love also draws them into communion with all three members of the divine triad. (Jn 15:1-2) Rebirth in water and the Breath introduces the disciples into the kingdom of Jesus. (Jn 3:3-6) It also inspires authentic eucharistic worship in Breath and truth, a worship which acknowledges Jesus’ real eucharistic presence. (Jn 6:29) Such worship purifies and replaces temple worship. (Jn 4:21-24) Faith consecrates the disciples to the Father as His children in Jesus’ image. (Jn 17: 9, 14, 16) Faith teaches the disciples to recognize Jesus as the way to the Father because He alone incarnates in His own person divine truth and divine life. (Jn 14:16-17) Indeed, those who see with the eyes of faith see the Father in seeing Jesus (Jn 14:6-7), because the perfection of His obedience to the Father reveals the latter truly. (Jn 14:6-7) The Breath with which Jesus baptizes His disciples sends them forth in His image to proclaim the forgiveness of sins (Jn 19:21-23); but, because Breath-baptism consecrates the disciples to the Father in Jesus’ image, it simultaneously separates them from a sinful and unbelieving world. While the disciples remain in the world, they nevertheless belong, not to the world, but to Jesus and to the Father through the indwelling Breath. (Jn 17:9, 14, 16) The disciples’ fearless confession of Jesus in the image of the healed blind man consecrates them to God even in this world by drawing them into Jesus’ passion. (Jn 17:17) The Father who judges the world through the mission, death, and resurrection of His Son (Jn 5:25-29) will prolong that judgment in the disciples’ witness to Jesus. The divine Breath, the “other witness” like Jesus, will testify in the disciples’ testimony to Him. (Jn 14:16-17) In fulfilling their mission, the disciples must trust in the Father as Jesus did (Jn 14:1); and that trust will teach them to yearn for the heavenly mansions to which Jesus has preceded them in order to prepare a dwelling place for them. (Jn 14:2-4) Finally, just as Jesus revealed the Father’s glory in the world through the perfection of His obedient witness, so too
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will the disciples by their testimony to the risen Christ. They will do so by abiding in Jesus through faith (Jn 15:8-12) and through mutual love. (Jn 15:15-16) They will also manifest the Father’s glory through the efficacy of their prayers made to the Father in Jesus’ name. (Jn 15:16-17) All these insights into the disciples’ relationship to Jesus derive from meditation on those texts which describe His relationship to the Father and to the Breath. As one ponders them, one wonders what the Beloved Disciple might have to add to them, given their richness and depth of insight. Nevertheless, the fourth evangelist has much more to say on the subject of discipleship. The reflections which follow examine those texts which dramatize the relationship between Jesus and His disciples more immediately and directly. In the priestly account of creation, it takes God a week to create the heavens and the earth. (Gen 1:1-2:4) In the fourth gospel, it takes a week for the first disciples to gather around Jesus. In other words, the call of the first disciples occupies the first week of the new creation. This first week, moreover, foreshadows the final week of Jesus’ ministry, which culminates in the Paschal mystery. (Jn 12:1) On Calvary Jesus will inaugurate the new creation proleptically by giving the Beloved Disciple, the type of those who believe in Jesus without seeing Him in His risen glory, to Mary, to new Eve and mother of all believers, in order to cherish as her son. The first week of the new creation which opens John’s gospel also foreshadows the week of apparitions of the risen Christ which culminates in Jesus’ confrontation with the doubting Thomas.5 (Jn 20:1, 19) On the first day, the Baptizer testifies to Jesus. (Jn 1:19-28); and on the second day John points Jesus out as the Lamb of God and Breath-baptizer. (Jn 1:29-34) On the third day, Jesus begins to gather His disciples. (Jn 1:35-49) On the fourth day, Jesus calls Philip and Nathanael and proclaims Himself the saving link between heaven and earth. (Jn 1:43-51) On the seventh day, Jesus turns water into wine at Cana. (Jn 2:1-11) The fourth evangelist links the beginning and the end of Jesus’ ministry in other symbolic ways. The first two disciples, one of them Andrew, the brother of Simon, follow Jesus out of curiosity, when, on the third day of the first week, the Baptizer for a second time points Him out to 5. Not everyone who divides the opening events of the Johannine Jesus’ ministry into seven days does it in the same way. Given the disagreement, some also question the textual justification of a hebdomadal division. The division suggested here rests on the evangelist’s explicit textual references to the passage of time. Cf. M.-E. Boismard, Du baptème à Cana (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1956); Thomas Barrosse, C.S.C., “The Seven Days of the New Creation in St. John’s Gospel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 21(1959), pp. 507-516; L. Paul Trudinger, “The Seven Days of the New Creation in St. John’s Gospel: Some Further Reflections,” Evangelical Quarterly, 44(1972), pp. 154-158; Harold Saxby, “The Time Scheme in the Gospel of John,” Expository Times, 104(1992), pp. 9-13.
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them as “the Lamb of God.” (Jn 1:35-6) They follow Jesus at a distance. When Jesus asks them what they are looking for, they respond: “Rabbi, where do you dwell (pou meneis)?” Jesus replies: “Come and see.” (Jn 1:38-9) Both the question and the answer have double meanings. The prologue has already informed the reader that the incarnate Word “set up His tent” among humans. (Jn 1:14) The Son of God dwells only temporarily on earth but dwells permanently in His Father’s heavenly mansion. (Jn 14:1-2) In asking Jesus where He dwells, the disciples ask for more than they realize. The verb “meneis” also endows the question of the disciples with other suggestive connotations. The fourth evangelist stresses the indwelling of God. The Breath comes to Jesus to dwell in Him. (Jn 1:33) Jesus, the Father, and Breath all dwell in one another and in the believing disciples. (Jn 15:1-10, 17:20-3) The disciples will know fully where Jesus dwells when they experience Him dwelling in them through the power of His Breath. Then they too will dwell in Him. (Jn 16:12-15) Jesus’ simple invitation to “come and see” also conceals depths of meaning. His invitation will find its fulfillment when the disciples behold His risen glory. After the disciples have gathered around Him, Jesus promises them, as we have seen, that one day they will behold in Him the privileged link between heaven and earth. They will see the heavens rent in an apocalyptic manner and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man whose simultaneous possession of heavenly and human characteristics makes him an apt mediator between God and humanity. (Jn 1:51) The final and full revelation of Jesus as apocalyptic Son of Man, as final judge of the living and dead, and as the privileged link between heaven and earth comes, of course, with the full revelation of His divinity in the resurrection. (Jn 20:28) When, therefore, the fourth evangelist describes the disciples’ encounter with the risen Christ, he focuses his narrative on the different ways in which each disciple comes to “see” the risen Christ with the eyes of faith.6 (Jn 20:1-29) The evangelist mentions that the first two disciples encountered Jesus at “the tenth hour,” or about four o’clock. Some think that the Beloved Disciple is referring to the onset of the Sabbath rest and that the disciples stayed with Him from Friday to Saturday evening. The gospel text, however, makes no mention of the sabbath rest; and it portrays the disciples 6. Cf. Friedrich Wulf, S.J., “Meister, wo wohnst du? (Jo 1.38),” Geist und Leben, 31(1958), pp. 241-244; Heinrich Zimmermann, “Meister, wo wohnst du? (Jo 1.38),” Lebendiges Zeugnis (1962), pp. 49-57; Craig Kœster, “Hearing, Seeing, and Believing in the Gospel of John,”,” Biblica, 70(1989), pp. 327-348; Klaus Scholtissek, “‘Mitten unter euch steht er, den ihr micht kennt,’” Münchener Theologische Zeitschrift, 48(1997), pp. 103-121.
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as active the following day. John’s reference to the setting sun could, as others have suggested, possibly symbolize that the day of the Baptizer is ending and that the day of Jesus is about to dawn. Certainly, however, the reference to sunset marks the end of one day and puts the events which follow on the next day, the third of the first week of Jesus’ ministry. The following day, one of the two who had followed Jesus, Andrew, brings his brother Simon to Jesus. In Matthew’s gospel, Simon does not acquire the name Peter until he confesses Jesus as the messiah. (Mt 16:18; cf. Mk 3:16) In John’s account, Jesus changes Simon’s name to Peter at their first encounter. Moreover, while in Matthew, Peter acquires his new name as a reward for confessing Jesus as the messiah and Son of God before any of the other disciples, in the fourth gospel, Andrew informs Peter that he has found the messiah even before Peter confronts Jesus. (Jn 1:40-2) Peter’s association with Jesus comes on the third day of the new creation. The following day, Jesus calls Philip, who informs a skeptical Nathanael that he and the other disciples have found “him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth.” (Jn 1:43-4) Even before they witness the Father’s testimony to Jesus in the signs He works, the disciples put their faith in the testimony of the witnesses who support the truth of Jesus’ own testimony to the Father: namely, Moses and the prophets. They have already heard and apparently accepted the Baptizer’s witness that Jesus is “the lamb of God.” Their ability to believe in these witnesses to Jesus will soon contrast with the unbelief of Jesus’ adversaries. (Cf. Jn 5:46) Nathanael, like doubting Thomas at the end of the gospel, proves initially skeptical. He asks: “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (Jn 1:47) Philip’s confession of Jesus as the one who fulfills the Old Testament implicitly points to Him as the messiah. As we have seen, later on Jesus’ enemies will use his origins in Nazareth to discredit His messianic authority. (Jn 7:52) Nathanael here anticipates the objection. Philip counters Nathanael’s skepticism with the same invitation which Jesus has given to the first two disciples: “Come and see.” (Jn 1:46) The invitation has the same symbolic meaning on Philip’s lips that it had on Jesus’, as the encounter between Jesus and Nathanael will soon make plain. When Philip presents Nathanael to Jesus, He calls Nathanael an “Israelite without guile.” Jesus then proves his messianic identity to Nathanael by displaying preternatural knowledge of someone he has never met. Jesus tells Nathanael that he saw him “under a fig tree.” Jesus’ reply could allude to Zech 3:10, which also involves a calling and a fig tree. If so, the evangelist is implicitly pointing to Jesus as the messianic “Branch” who reigns as king. (Jn 1:49-50; Cf. Zech 3:10 and 6:12) Nathanael’s response
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to Jesus tends to confirm this interpretation. Nathanael immediately confesses Jesus as “Son of God” and “King of Israel.” (Jn 1:49) Nathanael has begun to “see.” He now recognizes Jesus as messiah and names Him with two messianic titles. Jesus, however, assures Nathanael that he hasn’t “seen” anything yet. One day he will behold in Jesus the apocalyptic link between humanity and the Father.7 (Jn 1:50-1) Three days later, on the last day of the first week of the new creation, the disciples witness Jesus’ first sign, the transformation of water into wine at Cana. In the following chapter I shall consider in greater detail the meaning of each of the signs. Here it suffices to note that the presence of Mary at Cana links this miracle to Jesus’ death on the cross and to the sign of blood and water which follows His death. (Jn 2:1-6, 19:25-37) As we have already seen, Jesus’ death, glorification, and sending of the Breath fulfills the meaning of the first sign; for it reveals Him as the divine bridegroom faithful in love to a sinful humanity despite rejection, humiliation, and a cruel death. The disciples, moreover, recognize in this first sign a revelation of the divine glory which the paschal mystery will manifest in its fullness. (Jn 2:11) Cana completes the call of the disciples and closes the first week of the new creation by foreshadowing the paschal mystery which will enable the disciples finally to “see” Jesus. The disciples also witness the cleansing of the temple. Moreover, the redactor uses their presence there in order to make it clear that this first Passover event will also derive its full meaning from the third and final Passover when Jesus is lifted up in suffering and in glory.8 When Jesus drives out the money changers and merchants, the disciples recall Ps 69:9. The evangelist, however, changes the tense of the verb in the verse of Ps 69:9 from past to future and has it read: “Zeal for your house will consume me.” The change in tense points, of course, to the passion and names the cleansing of the temple as one of the important reasons why the chief priests decided on Jesus’ death. (Jn 2:1-17) The evangelist, as we have also seen, links the cleansing of the temple to the resurrection by having Jesus justify His authority to purify the temple with the promise: “Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up.” (Jn 2:18) The future faith of the disciples plays a significant 7. Cf. NJBC, 61: 27-39; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 73-92; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 157-168; Amos B. Hulen, “The Call of the Four Disciples in John 1,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 66(1948), pp. 153-157; F. Lamar Cribbs, “St. Luke and the Johannine Tradition,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 90(1970), pp. 422-450, esp. 433-435; Craig R. Koester, “Messianic Exegesis and the Call of Nathanael (John 1.45-51),” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 39(1990), pp. 23-34; C.E. Hill, “The Identity of John’s Nathanael,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 67(1997), pp. 45-61. 8. In the original gospel, the cleansing of the temple probably occurred after the triumphal entry during Jesus’ final Passover.
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part in John’s narrative. The evangelist notes that the disciples did not understand the meaning of Jesus’ words until His death and resurrection. The sign of water flowing from Jesus’ pierced side as He hangs on the cross will reveal Him as the temple of God from which flows the living water of God’s sanctifying Breath. (Jn 19:34-37) Moreover, John notes that the cleansing of the temple not only illumines the meaning of this teaching of Jesus but that it also makes sense out of the whole of the Old Testament. Resurrection faith understands both the Old Testament and the cleansing of the temple from the standpoint of the paschal mystery.9 (Jn 2:18-22) The fourth evangelist portrays Jesus as conferring a baptism on His early followers, much in the manner of John the Baptizer. Moreover, the disciples join Jesus in conferring the ritual and apparently persist in it even after Jesus abandons the rite. (Jn 3:22, 4:1) A redactor or scribe seems to have inserted into the text of the gospel the observation that Jesus Himself at some point stopped baptizing. The redactor, possibly for polemic reasons, wanted to make it clear that Jesus did not simply mimic John the Baptizer. The redactor could also have desired to call attention to an historical fact: namely, that during most of His own Galilean ministry Jesus did not in fact baptize His followers. Certainly, the synoptic gospels never describe Jesus baptizing anyone. In its final form, then, the text of the fourth gospel gives the impression that Jesus began by baptizing but then abandoned the practice, although the disciples continued to administer the rite.10 9. Cf. NJBC, 61:42-45; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 114-125; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 181-193; A.M. Dubarle, “Le signe du temple (Jo II, 19),” Revue Biblique, 48(1939), pp. 21-44; Cecil Roth, “The Cleansing of the Temple and Zechariah XIV 21,” Novum Testamentum, 4(1960), pp. 174-181; Jean Giblet, “Le temple et l’ éternelle alliance,” Égilse Vivante, 9(1957), pp. 122-125; Simon Marcel, “Retour du Christ et reconstruction du Temple dans la pensee chrétienne primitive” in Aux sources de la tradition chrétienne (Paris: Delachaux & Nestle, 1950), pp. 247-257; Xavier Léon-Dufour, “Le signe du temple selon saint Jean (Jn. 2:13-22),” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 39(1951-1952), pp. 155-175; François-Marie Braun, “In spritu et veritate,” Revue Thomiste, 52(1952), pp. 245-247; Francis J. Maloney, S.B.D., “Reading John 2:13-22: The Purification of the Temple,” Revue Biblique, 97(1990), pp. 432-452; Odo Schnelle, “Die Tempelreinigung und die Christologie des Johannesevangelium,” New Testament Studies, 42(1996), pp. 359-373. 10. Cf. NJBC, 61: 54; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 150-156; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 208-212; Michel Cambe, “Jésus baptise et cesse de baptiser en Judeé (Jean 3, 22- 4, 3),” Études Théologiques et Religieuses, 53(1978), pp. 97-102; Marie-Émile Boismard, “Aenon près de Salem: Jean III, 23,” Revue Biblique, 80(1973), pp. 218-229. The fourth evangelist may have included information about Jesus’ use of the ritual as a way of alluding to the origins of Christian baptism. If so, however, the fact that Jesus seems to have abandoned the practice at best transforms His institution of it into a half-hearted one.
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As Jesus returns to Galilee after the first Passover, He stops exhausted at Jacob’s well while the disciples go to the nearby Samaritan town of Sychar in order to purchase food. (Jn 4:8) On their return the disciples experience shock on discovering Jesus in deep conversation with a Samaritan woman; but they fear to rebuke Jesus for what they perceive as a serious impropriety. In their own minds, however, they wonder why Jesus is speaking to a woman and a Samaritan and what He hopes to accomplish by such strange, even shocking, behavior. (Jn 4:27) The evangelist notes specifically that the woman’s sex especially offended the disciples. Rabbis never took women disciples, and some of them even counseled against speaking to a woman in public. Jesus breaks this taboo as a way of dramatizing the inclusiveness of His mission and message. It embraces men and women alike. The inclusion of women in the kingdom seems to have preoccupied the fourth evangelist; women play a particularly important role in his gospel. Mary, Jesus’ mother, as we have seen, appears as the new Eve. (Jn 2:1-5, 19:25-27) The Samaritan woman evangelizes the Samaritan people, an act which foreshadows their future Christianization. (Jn 4:39) Martha confesses Jesus as messiah, although, like Peter in the synoptics, with imperfect insight. (Jn 11:21-27) Mary Magdalene functions as the apostle to the apostles. (Jn 20:17-18) The disciples also take umbrage at the fact that Jesus feels no qualms about conversing with a Samaritan. (Jn 4:9) Jesus has escaped the hatred which traditionally divided Jews and Samaritans. Just before the disciples return, He tells the woman that one day the kingdom will embrace both ethnic groups. (Jn 4:21-22) Jesus further demonstrates His lack of prejudice by staying at Sychar and catechizing the Samaritans for two days. Moreover, at the end of those days the Samaritans acknowledge Jesus as “the savior of the world.” (Jn 4:39-42) One finds no traditions about Jesus’ ministry to Samaritans in the synoptics. The fact that such traditions seem to have existed in the Johannine community suggests the presence in it of a Samaritan contingent. The Samaritans’ confession of Jesus as “savior” smacks of post-resurrection Christian faith and foreshadows its universality.11 11. Cf. Margaret Pamment, “Is There Convincing Evidence of Samaritan Influence on the Fourth Gospel?” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 73(1982), pp. 221-230; John Bowman, “The Fourth Gospel and the Samaritans,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library Manchester, 40(1957-1958), pp. 298-329; Normand R. Bonneau, O.M.I., “The Woman at the Well, John 4 and Genesis 24,” Bible Today, 67(1973), pp. 1252-1259; David Daube, “Jesus and the Samaritan Woman: The Meaning of sygchraomai,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 69(1950), pp. 136-147; D.R. Hall, “The Meaning of sygchraomai in John 4.9,” Expository Times, 83(1971-1972), pp. 56-57; Robert Gordon Maccini, “A Reassessment of the Woman at the Well in John 4 in the Light of the Samaritan Context,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 53(1994), pp. 35-46.
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The disciples make no mention of their shock and disapproval. Instead, they urge Jesus to eat the food which they have brought from the village. Jesus replies: “I have food to eat of which you do not know.” (Jn 4:31) In speaking to the Samaritan woman, Jesus has just endowed the image of drink with deep religious meaning by promising the living water which quenches the human thirst for immortality. (Jn 4:7-15, 7:37-38) Now in speaking to the disciples, he does the same with the image of food. Symbolic food and drink foreshadow the bread-of-life discourse. Typically, the disciples misunderstand Jesus’ remark about food and wonder if someone has brought Jesus something to eat in their absence. (Jn 4:33) Like the synoptic evangelists, the Beloved Disciple often uses the obtuseness of Jesus’ audience as a literary device for getting Him to explain the deep meaning of what He says. Moreover, on this occasion in explaining the symbolic meaning of the “other food” which nourishes Him, Jesus addresses the disciples’ unspoken disapproval of His social contact with the Samaritan woman. Jesus tells the disciples: My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work. Do you not say, “There are yet four months, then comes the harvest.” I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see how the fields are already white for harvest. He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life. For here the saying holds true, “One sows and another reaps.” I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor; others have labored, and you have entered into their labor. (Jn 4:34-8)
John’s Jesus seems to have preternatural foreknowledge of the response of faith which He will soon elicit from the Samaritans. He therefore uses two peasant proverbs in order to catechize the disciples about the universal scope of their apostolic mission. The first proverb asserts: “There are four months yet, then comes the harvest.” After citing the proverb, Jesus contradicts it. The disciples need not wait the four months traditionally needed for the harvest to ripen. The grain stands already ripe for the sickle. (Jn 4:35-36) Jesus assimilates the immanent evangelization of the Samaritans to a harvest. He also links the mission He has received from the Father with that evangelization. In effect, then, Jesus is asserting that the Father has sent Him to work a universal salvation which breaks down the sinful barriers traditionally dividing people from one another. In so speaking, Jesus rebukes His disciples’ ethnic and sexist bigotry. Jesus promises the disciples that their own ministry to enemies and to outcasts, to men and to women, will earn them the rich wage of eternal life. Indeed, they will share in the same reward of eternal life as Jesus
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Himself; and they will celebrate with Him an eternal harvest festival. (Jn 4:35) Jesus sees the involvement of the disciples in His own mission from the Father as an illustration of a second peasant proverb: “One sows, another reaps.” (Jn 4:37) Quite possibly, the proverb in its original meaning alludes to the heavy taxes which the Palestinian peasantry paid to both the empire and the temple. Those taxes probably gobbled up two-thirds of every peasant income. Jesus, however, transforms the proverb into a description of the disciples’ involvement in a work which “others” have begun. “Others” refers most obviously to Jesus and to the Father. Some have argued, however, that the antecedent of “others” also includes the Baptizer or even the Old Testament prophets who prepared the coming of Jesus; but Jesus and the Father provide the only antecedents explicitly mentioned in the text. (Jn 4:34) The disciples find themselves engaged in the same mission of universal salvation as the Father has entrusted to the incarnate Son. Jesus uses the aorist tense (egô apesteila) to speak of His commissioning of the disciples. (Jn 4:38) In fact, He does not send the disciples until He rises from the dead and breathes into them a sanctifying Breath. Once again, the evangelist, by using a past tense in order to describe a future event, endows that event with inevitability of a fait accompli. The same tense usage also exemplifies the Johannine Jesus’ tendency to speak from the standpoint of the paschal mystery.12 (Jn 20:19-23) We find no mention of the disciples in the healing of the man at the pool of Bethsaida; but, as in the synoptic accounts of the multiplication of the loaves and fish, in John, the disciples play an active role in this miracle. The fourth evangelist names the disciples initially involved: Philip and Andrew. The same two disciples will play an active role during Jesus’ Jerusalem ministry when they report to Jesus that “Greeks” desire to see Him. (Jn 12:20-22) In the fourth evangelist’s account of the miracle of the loaves, Jesus knows that He is about to perform a miracle, but He tests Philip’s reaction by asking him where they shall buy food to feed the multitude. (Jn 6:1-6) As in Matthew, Jesus’ question recalls the dismay of Moses at having to feed a multitude of people in a deserted place. (Cf. Num 11:1, 7-9, 13, 22) The question therefore suggests the parallel between Jesus’ miracle and the gift of manna in the desert, a theme which the bread-of-life discourse immediately develops in detail. The evangelist notes that Jesus asks the question in order to test Philip because, in his telling of the story 12. Cf. NJBC, 61: 57-65; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 166-168 passim; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 213-237 passim; John Bligh, “Jesus in Samaria,” Heythrop Journal, 3(1962), pp. 327-346; Elian Cuvillier, “La figure des disciples en Jean 4,” New Testament Studies, 42(1996), pp. 245-259.
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the Beloved Disciple avoids any hint of ignorance on Jesus’ part concerning what will soon happen. Andrew informs Jesus that a boy in the crowd has five barley loaves and two fish; but Andrew despairs of feeding the crowd with such skimpy fare. (Jn 6:8-9) Jesus takes the food, blesses it, and distributes it to the people seated on the plentiful grass. In the synoptics Jesus gives the food to the disciples to distribute. In the fourth gospel he seems to do it personally. (Jn 6:10-1; cf. Mk 6:41, 8:6; Mt 14:19, 15:36; Lk 9:16) The fourth evangelist does not say that Jesus broke the bread; but Jesus’ action has eucharistic overtones which the bread-of-life discourse will expound. After all have eaten, Jesus sends the Twelve to collect the left-overs. Each apparently carries a basket for that purpose; and each fills the basket. (Jn 6:13) The bread-of-life discourse closes with a reference to the Twelve. (Jn 6:71) Their participation in the miracle of the loaves marks their first appearance in the gospel of John.13 The crowds, as we have seen, convinced by the miraculous multiplication that Jesus is a prophet like Moses, try to crown Him king by force. Jesus, however, eludes them and retires to the mountain alone. (Jn 6:15) Jesus will have nothing to do with secular messianism. For no clear reason, the disciples decide to depart without Jesus. As in the synoptic accounts, they find themselves beset by a fierce storm which slows their progress. They then see Jesus walking on the water. The sight fills them with terror. John, like the synoptics, treats this event as a theophany. Jesus calms the disciples’ fears by saying: “I AM. Do not fear.” (Jn 6:16-20) As we have seen, in the fourth gospel Jesus invokes the divine name many times as a way of asserting His unity with the Father. Here He manifests His divinity to His disciples. During the feast of Tabernacles, which follows, He will proclaim it to the unbelieving “Jews.” The more public proclamation of Jesus’ divinity causes the light which Jesus embodies to spread. Although Jesus initially directs the bread-of-life discourse to the skeptical and unbelieving crowds, when He reaches the eucharistic section of the discourse, some of the disciples repudiate His promise to give them His body to eat and His blood to drink. The dissident disciples complain: “This is a hard saying. Who can hear it?” (Jn 6:60) As we have seen, the defecting disciples probably symbolize the Johannine dissidents. (1 Jn 2:18-22) Jesus rebukes their unbelief and challenges them to recognize that His words offer pneuma and life itself. (Jn 6:61-62) Those who worship God in pneuma and truth will understand the meaning of what He is saying. (Jn 4:23) Jesus explains to the faithful disciples that those who abandoned Him for proclaiming His real eucha13. Cf. L. Th. Witkamp, “Some Specific Johannine Features in John 6.1-21,”Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 40(1990), pp. 43-59.
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ristic presence had attached themselves to Him without the Father calling or drawing them. (Jn 6:65; cf. 1 Jn 2:19) By implication, had the Father drawn them to Jesus, they would never have defected from Him. Moreover, John’s Jesus once again shows preternatural prescience by knowing in advance not only who believes in Him and who does not but also which of the Twelve will betray Him. (Jn 6:64, 71) Peter speaks for the orthodox disciples by confessing in their name faith in Jesus’ words. When Jesus asks the Twelve if they too desire to abandon Him, Peter says: “Lord (Kyrie), to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life; and we believe and have come to know that you are the Holy One of God.” (Jn 6:66) In the fourth gospel this confession of faith in the truth of Jesus’ life-giving eucharistic doctrine corresponds to Peter’s confession of Jesus as messiah in the synoptic tradition. The title “Lord” has post-resurrection connotations. The title “Holy One of God” has messianic connotations and designates Jesus as one specially consecrated by God. Hence, the second title foreshadows Jesus’ priestly prayer in which He will consecrate Himself as a sacrificial victim so that His disciples might themselves know consecration to God through faith in the truth Jesus incarnates. (Cf. Jn 17:19) Jesus replies reproachfully to Peter’s confession of faith, “Did I not choose you, the Twelve, and one of you is a devil?” As we have seen, when the time comes for Judas to betray Jesus, Satan will enter into him. Now Jesus in virtue of His extraordinary prescience, foresees Judas’s treachery.14 (Jn 2:25) During the feast of Tabernacles, false disciples play a significant role in the struggle between light and darkness. As the struggle intensifies, it causes those who profess hypocritically to believe in Jesus to reveal that in fact they would rather see Him dead than accept His identity with the Father. Racially proud, the false disciples claim the freedom and dignity of the Abraham’s children; but they lack Abraham’s faith. Their actual conduct reveals them as children of Satan by betraying the unrepented violence in their hearts. That violence blinds them to the truth which Jesus incarnates and causes them to reject utterly Jesus’ divinity. (Jn 8:31-59) Having rejected Jesus’ real eucharistic presence, the false disciples now reject the incarnation as well. In this polemic passage, the evangelist targets in part dissident members of his community who professed to believe in Jesus at some level, perhaps as a prophetic figure, but who refused to acknowledge Him as divine. The struggle between light and darkness forces these false disciples to reveal their murderous malice and unbelief. They show them14. Cf. Ludger Schenke, “Das Johanneische Schisma und die Zwölf (Johannes 6.60-71)” New Testament Studies, 38(1992), pp. 105-121.
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selves indistinguishable from unbelieving “Jews” who also repudiate Jesus’ divinity.15 (Cf. 2 Jn 7-10; 1 Jn 2:18-22) The disciples witness the cure of the man born blind. Moreover, they assume that either the man himself or his parents must have sinned for him to suffer the affliction of blindness from birth. Jesus, however, corrects this popular misconception. Disease and suffering need not result from sin. In the case of the man born blind, his blindness has a providential purpose: namely, “that the works of God might be made manifest in him.” (Jn 9:1-3) As we have seen, “the works of God” about to occur include not only the physical healing of the man born blind but his coming to faith in Jesus. In virtue of his faith and fearless confession of Jesus despite his expulsion from the synagogue, the man born blind functions, as we have also seen, as a type of the believing disciple. Like the trial of Jesus before Pilate, the trial of the man born blind before the Pharisees unfolds chiastically. In the preface to the trial Jesus cures the blind man to the astonishment of the man’s neighbors. (Jn 9:1-7) In the conclusion, Jesus evokes an act of faith from the man born blind and rebukes the unbelief of the Pharisees. The trial itself proceeds in three scenes. In scenes one and three, the Pharisees cross examine the cured blind man. (Jn 9:13-17, 24-34) In the central scene of the trial the Pharisees cross-examine the former blind man’s parents. As we have seen, in structuring Jesus’ trial and execution chiastically, the Beloved Disciple endows the central scene with special revelatory significance. One would expect him to do the same in structuring the trial of the cured blind man. In fact, the central scene contrasts the timidity of the man’s parents and with his courage in testifying to Jesus. The parents identify the man and confirm his blindness from birth; but, out of fear that the Pharisees will expel them from the synagogue, they refuse to say anything about Jesus. Their timidity contrasts with their son’s boldness of faith. The contrast rebukes those members of the Johannine community who fear to confess Jesus publicly lest they incur excommunication by the Pharisaical leaders of the local synagogue. By situating this scene at the heart of the former blind man’s trial, the Beloved Disciple dramatizes an important dimension of discipleship. It demands the fearless confession of Jesus, no matter what the consequences. Only by courageously joining Jesus in His opposition to the dark powers 15. Cf. NJBC, 61: 85-103; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 230-304 passim; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 268-308 passim; Roger Le Deant, op. cit.; Peder Borgen, “Observations on the Midrashic Character of John 6,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 54(1963), pp. 232-240; Andre Feuillet, Le discours sur le pain de vie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1967); B. Gärtner, John 6 and the Jewish Passover (Lund: C.W. Gleerup, 1959).
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which the Pharisees embody, does the blind man come to faith. Jesus’ disciples will also “come into the light” by fearless testimony to Jesus under persecution. The blind man sees more and more deeply into the person of Jesus as he testifies fearlessly to Him. He first confesses Jesus a prophet. (Jn 9:17) When he ironically asks the Pharisees: “Do you too want to become his disciple?” the former blind man as much as confesses his own disicpleship. (Jn 9:27) Moreover, when accused by the Pharisees of discipleship, the man does not deny it. Then the man confesses Jesus’ true origin: Jesus comes “from God.” (Jn 9:32) In the end, the man suffers expulsion from the synagogue for his faith which he eventually professes to Jesus Himself.16 (Jn 9:34-38) In the synoptics Jesus instructs His disciples about His coming martyrdom during His final journey to Jerusalem. The Johannine disciples begin to glimpse the inevitability of the passion in the raising of Lazarus. When Jesus decides to respond to the appeal of Martha and Mary and go to Lazarus, the disciples remind Him of the danger He is risking, since He has twice barely escaped death by stoning. (Jn 11:7; cf. 8:59, 10:31) When Jesus persists in His decision to approach Jerusalem again, Thomas bravely exhorts the other disciples: “Let us go, that we may die with Him.” (Jn 11:16) This brave protest exemplifies Johannine irony; for, when push comes to shove, Thomas, like all the other disciples except the Beloved Disciple, will abandon Jesus. (Jn 16:32, 18:15, 19:25-27) In the wake of Lazarus’s resurrection, the high priests decide on Jesus’ death. Jesus therefore withdraws temporarily from Jerusalem with the disciples. (Jn 11:54) The Disciples in the Jerusalem Ministry The final week of Jesus’ ministry begins with his anointing at Bethany. The fourth evangelist identifies the woman who anoints Jesus as Mary, the sister of Lazarus. Moreover, unlike the unnamed woman in the synoptics who anoints Jesus on the head in a gesture which proclaims His messianic dignity, Mary, like the woman who was a sinner in Luke, anoints Jesus’ feet and dries them with her hair. (Jn 12:3; cf. Mk 14:3-9; Mt 16. Cf. NJBC, 61: 127-133; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 369-382; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 33-42; G. Bornkamm, Geschichte und Glaube (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), pp. 65-73; James Louis Martyn, History and Theology in the Fourth Gospel (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1979), pp. 3-62; Karlheinz Müller, “Joh 9,7 und das Jüdische Verständnis des Siloh-Spruchs,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 13(1969), pp. 251-256; John P. Comiskey, “‘Rabbi Who Has Sinned?’ (John 9.2),” Bible Today, 26(1966), pp. 1808-1814; Donatien Mollat, S.J., “Le guérison de l’aveurgle-né,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 23(1958), pp. 22-31; John Bligh, “Four Studies in the Man Born Blind: I,” Heythrop Journal, 7(1966), pp. 129-144; D. Bornkauser, “Meister, wer hat gesündigt, dieser oder seine Eltern, dass er ist blind geboren? Joh 9,2,” Neue Kirchliche Zeitschrift, 38(1927), pp. 433-437.
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26:6-13; Lk 7:39-50) The fourth evangelist says that she used a pound of extremely expensive ointment, called nard, in order to anoint Jesus. Its smell fills the house.17 (Jn 12:3) The Beloved Disciple could conceivably have conflated the two stories. In the conflated version, however, one finds no hint that Mary has sinned. Instead, the story focuses on the opulence of her gift. In recounting this event, only the fourth evangelist names the person who objects to the woman’s gesture: Judas the traitor. Judas asks: “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” (Jn 12:4-5) The evangelist also notes that Judas, who managed the disciples’ and Jesus’ finances had no concern for the poor and in fact stole from the common purse. (Jn 12:6) As we have seen, in the synoptic tradition, practical faith in the Father’s providential care frees the true disciple to share the physical supports of life with the poor and needy. Although, as we have also seen, the fourth evangelist does not stress this dimension of Jesus’ teaching as much as the synoptics do, the Johannine letters offer evidence that care for the poor had high priority in the Johannine community. (1 Jn 3:17-22) The cupidity of Judas suggests that he had failed to absorb this central teaching of Jesus. His clandestine thievery also suggests that as Jesus’ death approached, the unfaithful apostle set himself to feather his own nest at the expense of the poor. Jesus rebukes Judas in the fourth gospel in much the same way as he rebukes the critics of the unnamed woman in the synoptics: “Let her alone, let her keep it for the day of my burial. The poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.” (Jn 12:7) Instead of saying that Mary has anointed Him for burial as He does in the synoptics, John’s Jesus says that Mary can use the rest of the ointment for his interment. In both the synoptic and Johannine traditions, however, Jesus on this occasion foresees his immanent demise. As in the synoptic tradition, Jesus alludes to Deut 15:1-11, which teaches that poverty would not plague Israel if people cared for the needy as the Law requires. Since, however, with moral inevitability, poverty will dog the lives of some, those with greater means should always show the poor an open hand. Far from endorsing or justifying poverty, the phrase “the poor you always have with you” reminds the disciples that they must always give the poor a special place in their practical concern.18 17. Some see in the good odor which emanates from Jesus, who will rise from the dead, a contrast with the stench which emanates from Lazarus’s rotting corpse. Cf. Nuria Calduch Benages, M.N., “La Fragrancia des Perfume en Jn 12,3,” Estudios Biblicos, 48(1990), pp. 243- 265. 18. Cf. NJBC, 61: 157-159; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 447-454; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 82-89; Edward F. Glusman, Jr., “The Cleansing of the Temple and the Anointing at Bethany: The Order of Events in Mark 11/John 11-12,”
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When Jesus enters Jerusalem in triumph mounted on a young ass, the fourth evangelist cites the same Old Testament text as Matthew: namely, Zech 9:9. Like Matthew, the Beloved Disciple interprets the text as a prophecy of the entry. The evangelist modifies the original text to read: “Fear not, daughter of Zion; behold, your king is coming, sitting on an ass’s colt.” (Jn 12:15) As we have seen elsewhere, Zechariah prophecies the coming of a peaceful king who will banish violence from the land. His riding on an ass rather than on a war horse, symbolizes not so much His lowliness as His irenic reign. The fourth evangelist notes that at the time of the triumphal entry the disciples did not realize that Jesus was (perhaps quite deliberately) fulfilling this messianic prophecy. Only after His resurrection did they realize what Jesus had done. One finds an analogous reflection in John’s account of the cleansing of the temple, which prior to the gospel’s redaction probably followed the triumphal entry, as it does in the synoptics. (Jn 12:16) The evangelist is in effect saying that the full revelation of Jesus as the king of peace prophesied by Zechariah arrived with the paschal mystery when Jesus established His peaceable kingdom by suffering the violence of others in forgiving love and by rising and sending the Holy Breath to forgive sins. That forgiveness establishes His peace by reconciling people to one another and to God.19 (Jn 18:33-8, 20:19-23) SBL Seminar Papers, 1(1979), pp. 113-117; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “The Anointing at Bethany,” Studia Evangelica, 2(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1964), pp. 174-182; Antoine Lemonnyer, O.P., “L’onction de Bethanie: Note d’exegèse sur Jean XII, 1-8,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 18(1928), pp. 105-117; Manfried Weise, “Passionswoche und Epiphanie Woche im Johannes-Evangelium: Ihre Bedeutung für Komposition und Konzeption des vierten Evangeliums,” Kerigma und Dogma, 12(1966), pp. 48-62; T.W. Bevan, “The Four Anointings (Mt xxvi. 6-13; Mark xiv. 3-9; Luke vii.36-50; John xii. 1-11),” Expository Times, 39(1927-1928), pp. 137-139; J. Edgar Burns, “A Note on Jn 12,13,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 28(1966), pp. 219-222; André Legault, C.S.C., “An application of the Form-Critique Method to the Anointing in Galilee (Lk 7, 36-50) and Bethany (Jn 12, 1-8),” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 16(1954), pp. 131-145; Charles H. Giblin, “Mary’s Anointing for Jesus’ Burial-Resurrection (Jn 12:1-8),” Biblica, 73(1992), pp. 560-564; J.F. Coakley, “The Anointing and the Priority of John,”Journal of Biblical Literature, 107(1988) pp. 241-256; Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, “Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala: Two Female Characters in the Johannine Passion Narrative: A Feminist, Narrative-Critical Reader-Response,” New Testament Studies, 41(1995), pp. 564-586; Cullen Story, “The Mental Attitude of Jesus at Bethany: John 11/33-38,” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 51-66. 19. Cf. NJBC, 61: 160; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 455-464; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 82-91; Edward O. Freed, “The Entry into Jerusalem in the Gospel of John,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 80(1961), pp. 329-338; D. Moody Smith, Jr., “John 12.12ff. and the Question of John’s Use of the Synoptics,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 83(1963), pp. 58- 64; Hermann Patsch, “Der Einzug Jesu in Jerusalem: Eine historische Versuch,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 68(1971), pp. 1-26; Francis J. Moloney, S.B.D., “A Sacramental Reading of John 13:1-38,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 53(1991), pp. 237-256; M.J.J. Menken, “Die Redaktion des Zitates
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The Disciples at the Last Supper Apart from his instruction in Samaria about the bountiful harvest, John’s Jesus directs only one major discourse exclusively to His faithful disciples: namely, His last discourse. As we have seen, Luke’s gospel contains a brief final discourse at the last supper (Lk 22:21-38); but we find nothing in the synoptics comparable to the extended instruction which the Johannine Jesus gives the disciples at their last meal together. That Jesus would have postponed catechizing His disciples in any significant way until the night before He died lacks any historical plausibility. By situating most of Jesus’ instructions to His disciples in the last discourse, however, the Beloved Disciple makes it theologically clear that one must understand the practical demands of discipleship in the context of the paschal mystery. As we have seen, the disciples who abandon Jesus in the bread-of-life discourse and who turn on Him at Tabernacles never really put their faith in Him. The last discourse targets the faithful disciples exclusively. I have reflected about Jesus’ relationship to the Father in the last discourse. Here I focus on those sections of the last discourse which deal with the demands of discipleship. The evangelist marks the beginning of the Book of Glory with a solemn preface. The preface insists on Jesus’ foreknowledge of His passion and glorification. It also presents both as the supreme expression of His love for His disciples. (Jn 13:1-2) The foot washing which begins the last supper exemplifies the total self-forgetfulness which the divine love incarnate in Jesus embodies. Fully aware of His equality and identity with the Father and fully aware of His immanent betrayal by Judas, Jesus nevertheless performs a menial service normally reserved for slaves: He washes His disciples’ feet, including, apparently, the feet of Judas. (Jn 13:2-5, 11) When Jesus reaches Peter, the disciple protests: “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?” The title “Lord” underscores the extreme condescension of Jesus’ action and has, of course, post-resurrection connotations. Jesus replies that Peter does not presently understand why Jesus is acting in this way but that he will understand “later.” This “later” has a double meaning. “Later” refers to Jesus’ explanation of His action which follows immediately in the Johannine account; but “later” also connotes the new knowledge of Jesus which the paschal mystery will work in Peter, even by conforming Him to Jesus’ passion. (Jn 21: 18-19) When Peter replies that Jesus will never wash his feet, Jesus demands that Peter submit to the libation: “If I do not wash you, you will have no heritage with Me.” (Jn 13:6-8) Jesus’ demand has both literal and symbolic meaning. Literally, Jesus is telling Peter that, if he refuses submit to aus Sach 9:9 in Joh 12:15,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 80(1989), pp. 193-202.
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the foot-washing, then Peter must renounce his discipleship, since as Jesus will soon explain, He is giving the disciples an example of how they should relate to one another. In other words, Jesus’ response to Peter makes mutual service in His image a fundamental condition for discipleship. Taken symbolically, however, Jesus’ words “If I do not wash you” allude to Christian baptism, to rebirth through water and the Breath. So understood, the “heritage” to which Jesus refers means a share in risen glory. (Jn 3:3-15) Since baptism conforms one morally to Jesus through the empowering illumination of His Breath, I find nothing to choose among a sacramental, a soteriological, and an ethical reading of this text. Exegetes have defended all three interpretations.20 Peter replies over-enthusiastically to Jesus’ warning: “Lord, not just my feet, but my hands and head.” Jesus replies ironically to this bit of excess: “One who has bathed does not have to wash anything but his feet and he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all.” (Jn 13:9-10) Again Jesus’ words have both a literal and symbolic meaning. Taken literally, Jesus is saying that one who has bathed on entering the house needs only to wash the dust from the unpaved road from his feet. No need therefore for Jesus to wash Peter’s head and hands. The sentence “You are clean, but not all” taken literally simply repeats the same idea. The evangelist, however, calls attention to Jesus’ deeper symbolic intent. Jesus is alluding to the treachery in Judas’ heart which excludes him from the ranks of those cleansed, just as “deadly sin” will in the Johannine community exclude one from the ranks of the baptized.21 (Jn 13:11; cf. 1 Jn 5:16-17) 20. Cf. M. Sabbe, “The Footwashing in Jn 13 and its Relations to the Synoptic Gospels,”Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 58(1982), pp. 279-308. 21. Cf. NJBC, 61: 172-178; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 549-580; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 102-114; N.M. Haring, “Historical Notes on the Interpretation of Jn 13:10,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 13(1951), pp. 355-375; W.K. Grossouw, “A Note on John XIII 1-3,” Novum Testamentum, 8(1966), pp. 124-131; M.-E. Boismard, O.P., “Le lavement des pieds (Jn XIII, 1-17),” Revue Biblique, 44(1935), pp. 22-23; B.W. Bacon, “The Sacrament of Footwashing,” Expository Times, 43(1931-1932), pp. 218-221; Edouard Cothenet, “Gestes et actes symboliques du Christ dans the IVe évangile” in Gestes et paroles dans les diverses familles liturgiques (Rome: Centro Liturgico Vincentiano, 1978), pp. 95-116; Robert Eisler, “Zum Fusswaschung am Tage vor dem Passah,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 38(1939), pp. 94-96; Ernst Lohmeyer, “Die Fusswaschung,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 38(1939), pp. 74-94; Georg Richter, Die Fusswaschung im Johannesevangelium (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1967); Johann Michl, “Der Sinn der Fusswaschung,” Biblica, 40(1959), pp. 697-708; Herold Weiss, “Footwashing in the Johannine Community,” Novum Testamentum, 21(1977), pp. 298-325; P.Aelfrid Kassing, “Das Evangelium der Fusswaschung,” Erbe und Auftrage, 36(1960), pp. 83- 93; M.J.J. Menken, “The Translation of Psalm 41.10 in John 13.18,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 40(1990) pp. 61-79; Michal
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Jesus then resumes His outer garments and explains to the disciples the significance of what He has done. If He, their teacher and Lord, condescends to serve His own disciples like a slave, they should take His example and similarly serve one another in His image. (Jn 13:12-5) This admonition counts as the first of several “commandments” which Jesus will give the disciples in the course of the last discourse. Later, Jesus will make keeping His commandments the condition for loving Him. Jesus appends three arguments for obeying this initial command. First of all, the difference in dignity which separates Him from the disciples remains much greater than the difference which separates the disciples Wojciechowski, “La source de Jean 13. 1-20,” New Testament Studies, 34(1988), pp. 135-141; J.C. O’Neill, “John 13:10 Again,” Revue Biblique, 101(1994), pp. 67-74. The postscript to the first Johannine letter makes the following points. The first letter has insisted that the true children of God do not sin. (1 Jn 3:5-6, 9) In the postscript, the author of the letter makes it clear, however, that he recognizes that even believers occasionally commit minor offenses. When that happens, the community needs only beg that God will forgive the lapse; and the efficacy which attends the prayer of the believing community will insure divine forgiveness. In insisting that true believers do not sin, therefore, the author means that they avoid what he calls “deadly sin.” Deadly sin, serious violation of the commands of God, precludes reconciliation with the community. Hence, the community should not pray for the reconciliation of those guilty of such heinous offenses. They should, however, pray for the forgiveness of peccadillos, with the confident expectation that God will answer such a prayer uttered in faith. (1 Jn 5:14-7) With this qualification, however, the strict moral dualism which separates those who belong to God from “the world” still obtains. God protects those who belong to Him from serious sin; for serious sin entails domination by the Evil One and by the world. Such sinless lives embody the knowledge of the true God and insure that those who live such lives also live in His Son. Living in the Son means present possession of eternal life. (1 Jn 5:18-21) The postscript, then, does little more than repeat and clarify a point which the author already made at the beginning of the letter, when he asserted that Jesus intercedes with the Father for the forgiveness of minor offenses committed by those who believe in Him. (cf. 1 Jn 2:1) Cf. NJBC, 62: 32-34; Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (The Anchor Bible: New York, NY: Doubleday, 1982), pp. 607-641 [I shall hereafter refer to this work as Epistles.]; Hans Josef Klauck, Die Erste, Zweite, und Dritte Johannesbrief (2 vols.; Zürich: Benziger, 1992), I, pp. 321-347; O. Bauernfeind, “Die Fürbitte angesichts der ‘Sünde zum Tode’” in Von der Antike zum Christentum (Settin: Fischer & Schmidt, 1931), pp. 43-54; A.H. Dammers, “Hard Sayings—II: 1 John 5: 16ff.,” Theology, 66(1963), pp. 370-372; S.M. Reynolds, “The Sin unto Death and Prayers for the Dead,” Reformation Review, 20(1973), pp. 130-139; D.M. Scholer, “Sins Within and Sins Without: An Interpretation of 1 John 5:16-17” in Current Issues in Biblical Interpretation, edited by G.F. Hawthorne (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 230-246; J.-L. Ska, “‘Petits enfants, prenez garde aux idoles’ 1 Jn 5,21,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 101(1979), pp. 860-874; P. Trudinger, “Concerning Sins, Mortal and Otherwise. A Note on 1 John 5, 16-17,” Biblica, 52(1971), pp. 541-542; Julian Hills, “Little children, keep yourselves from idols: 1 John 5:21 Reconsidered,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 37(1989), pp. 285-310; M.J. Edwards, “Martyrdom and the First Epistle of John,” Novum Testamentum, 31(1989), pp. 164-171.
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from one another. They relate to Jesus as subordinates: as servant to master, as one sent to the sender. Their diminished dignity should, then, make it easier for them to serve one another. In other words, mutual service among the disciples should flow from the humble recognition of one’s subordinate status. (Jn 13:16) Second, the disciples will find a life of mutual service a source of real blessing. (Jn 13:17) Third, in welcoming one another in obedience to Jesus and in imitation of His humble service, the disciples will in fact welcome both Jesus Himself and the Father who sent Him; for both Jesus and the Father identify with each person to such an extent, that They take what is done to any individual as done to themselves. (Jn 13:20) Jesus’ willingness, despite His divine status, to serve the disciples as a slave stands in continuity with His willingness to lay down His life freely for their sakes. One finds analogous insights in the synoptics. (Mk 10: 41-45; Mt 20: 24-28; cf. Lk 22:24-27) In a parenthetical remark, Jesus acknowledges that what He is saying about the blessedness of service does not apply to Judas, who has already betrayed Jesus in his heart. Jesus assures the disciples, however, that the treachery of Judas fits into a providential plan foretold by the Scriptures. (Cf. Ps 41:9) That fact plus Jesus’ own foreknowledge of His betrayal should enable the disciples to continue to believe in His divinity in spite of what He is about to endure. (Jn 13:18-19) Jesus then announces that one of the Twelve will betray Him, and reveals to the Beloved Disciple and to Peter the identity of the traitor by giving him a morsel of food to eat. Jesus even covers Judas’s exit by saying to Judas as he leaves: “Do quickly what you are about to do.” The remark makes the other disciples believe that Jesus is sending Judas, the keeper of the purse, either to purchase something needed for their supper or to give money to the poor. On Judas’s consumption of the morsel, Satan enters into him. Judas breaks bread with Jesus but experiences no saving consequences. Instead, he disappears into the night. The forces of darkness are massing for their final attempt to quench the light which Jesus embodies.22 (Jn 13:21-30) Having given the disciples a commandment to serve one another as slaves serve their masters, Jesus now gives a second related command. As He prepares to leave the disciples and return to the Father, He gives them the “new commandment” to love one another just as He has loved them. Indeed, mutual love in Jesus’ image will mark His true disciples. (Jn 13:33-35) 22. Cf. NJBC, 61:179-180; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 605-616; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 115-118; Wilfred L. Knox, “John 13.1-30,” Harvard Theological Review, 43(1950), pp. 161-163; Antonio Garcia-Moreno, “Agapê (Amor Christiano) en los Escritos Joanicos,” Estudios Biblicos, 51(1993), pp. 353-392.
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The newness of the command flows from the fact that Jesus as the unique way to the Father embodies the love which He enjoins on His disciples. (Jn 14:6) The newness also flows from the paschal mystery which gives ultimate expression to Jesus’ love through His willingness to lay down His very life for His friends. (Jn 15:12-15) Obedient love of Jesus transforms the disciple into a friend of Jesus who appropriates and therefore reincarnates in turn the love and truth which Jesus embodies. (Jn 15:13-15) In a sense, the “new commandment” circumscribes the love commandment as one finds it in the synoptics. It circumscribes it by focusing Christian love on the members of the Christian community: “Love one another.” Nowhere in the fourth gospel do we find Jesus counseling His disciples to love their enemies. The radical ethical division which separates believers from the world, the light from the dark, diverts the Beloved Disciple’s concern from the radical inclusiveness of the love command which the synoptic tradition stresses. The “new commandment,” however, also intensifies the love commandment by focusing it on the paschal mystery. In his death for sinners, Jesus embodies the fullness of divine love and provides the disciples with the pattern of self-sacrifice they should show toward one another. John’s Jesus also makes it clear that His love embraces the disciples even in their sinfulness. When Peter protests that he will follow Jesus anywhere, even to the point of dying for Him, Jesus predicts the rash disciple’s triple denial. (Jn 13:36-38) By implication, then, the love which the new commandment enjoins on the disciples cannot make sinlessness in another disciple the condition for loving that person. Rather Jesus is commanding the disciples to love one another with the same kind of forgiving, atoning love as He Himself embodies.23 23. Cf. Frank Stagg, “The Farewell Discourses,” Review and Expositor, 62(1965), pp. 459472; L. Cerfaux, “La charité fraternelle et le retour du Christ,” Ephemerides Theologiae Lovaniensis, 24(1948), pp. 321-332. The second part of the first letter of John portrays the Christian life as a life of love: “This is the message you heard from the beginning (ap’ archês), that we love one another.” (1 Jn 3:11) In the context of the letter, “from the beginning” probably refers to the Johannine community’s first evangelization; but it also refers implicitly to the beginning of Jesus’ proclamation of the gospel. The author of the first epistle formulates the love command in the same way as the author of the gospel. Both formulations focus love primarily on the members of one’s own faith community. The author of the letter, however, explains in considerable detail the implications of the Jesus’ command in the fourth gospel: “Love one another as I have loved You.” (Jn 15:12) The explanation clusters a variety of moral and doctrinal themes from the gospel as a way of drawing out its meaning. At the same time, the author of the letter introduces new insights of his own.
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In his own way, however, the Beloved Disciple does inculcate love of enemies. Jesus’ love for a sinful world exemplifies such love; and in the paschal mystery Jesus models for the disciples the perfection of love. The fact remains, however, that in speaking of the demands of discipleship the fourth evangelist does not assert love’s universality as explicitly as the synoptic tradition does. Besides ethical dualism, concern with internal divisions in the Johannine church no doubt motivates the Beloved Disciple’s stress on mutual love in community. Jesus has given the disciples two commands: mutual service in His image and the new commandment of atoning love. To these two commandments He now adds a third: belief in Him and in the Father He reveals. Johannine orthopraxis, as we have seen, includes orthodoxy. (Jn 14:1) Faith in Jesus has an eschatological dimension; for it includes the conviction that in departing from the disciples, Jesus actually goes to prepare a place for them in the Father’s house and will one day return to welcome The familiar themes which echo the gospel include the following: 1) A life of love distinguishes those who belong to God from those who belong to Satan. (1 Jn 3:12) 2) It gives assurance of the ultimate possession of risen life with Christ by translating those who love in the present from the realm of death to the realm of life. (1 Jn 3:13-4) 3) In what concerns eternal life, those who refuse to love remain dead. (1 Jn 3:13-5) 4) The world’s hatred for those who obey the love command imitates and prolongs historically the murderous hatred of the enemies of divine truth which the gospel proclaimed. The first letter compares those enemies to Cain, the child of the Evil One. Cain hated his brother Abel because of the very goodness of his brother’s actions. (1 Jn 3:12-4) Persecution for the sake of love ought, then, only to confirm one’s determination to live the love command which transforms one into a true child of God. 5) God will certainly hear the prayers of those who live the love command. (1 Jn 3:21-2) 6) The love command goes hand in hand with authentic faith in Jesus as the Son of God. (1 Jn 3:23) 7) For the believing Christian, the saving death of Jesus for sinners offers the ultimate motive for mutual love in community. That Jesus gave His life for His disciples must teach them to give their lives for one another. (1 Jn 3:16) 8) Faith and love together ensure the divine indwelling. (1 Jn 3:24) 9) The Breath of the risen Christ inspires both faith and love. (1 Jn 3:24) Developed insights peculiar to the first letter include the following: 1) Love must spring from the heart, for hatred kills love as effectively as an overt act of murder. Those who love must, therefore, do more than avoid physical acts of violence. Rather they must purify their hearts of all hatred. (1 Jn 3:15) 2) Genuine love demands the concrete sharing of the physical supports of life. When the more affluent refuse to share with those more needy then themselves, the affluent simply manifest that they do not in fact love God. (1 Jn 3:17) 3) Practical love for the needy rectifies the conscience before an omniscient God and absolves those who practice it of any fear of divine judgment. (1 Jn 3:19-21) Cf. NJBC, 62: 26-27; Brown, Epistles, pp. 439-484; I. de la Potterie, “Aimer ses frères et croire en Jesus Christ,” Assemblées du Seigneur, 2nd ser.; 26(1973), pp. 39-45; J. Dupont, “Comment aimer ses frères (1 Jn 3, 13-18),” Assemblées du Seigneur, 1st ser., 55(1962), pp. 24- 31; C. Spicq, “La Justification du Charitable (1 Jo 3, 19-21),” Biblica, 40(1959), pp. 915-927; H.H. Wendt, “Zum ersten Johannesbrief,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 22(1923), pp. 57-79.
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them into that extensive heavenly dwelling place. (Jn 14:1-3) Faith also has an inherently incarnational character because it recognizes Jesus as the embodied revelation of the Father. The co-equality and mutual indwelling of Father and Son manifest themselves historically in Jesus’ testimony to the Father and in the Father’s testimony to Jesus. The Father, as we have seen, testifies to Jesus in two practical ways: 1) by teaching Him to do the miracles which manifest the truth of what He teaches and 2) by empowering Him to rise from the dead. (Jn 14:4-11) Christian faith also has a practical, expectant character: the disciples should expect that whatever they ask the Father in Jesus’ name He will give them. The disciples can then expect to do in Jesus’ name even greater miracles than Jesus Himself, miracles which will manifest the Son’s divine glory. (Jn 12:29-30, 13:31-32, 14:12-13) These dimensions of faith all re-enforce one another. The expectation of answered prayer buttresses the expectation of God’s final answer to prayer in the second coming and vice versa. Similarly, incarnational faith requires faith that God has in fact entered history in a radical, new way and therefore has the power to transform history through answered prayer. Moreover, as we have also seen, Jesus’ incarnation grounds His authority as final eschatological judge.24 24. Cf. B.W. Bacon, “‘In my Father’s house are many mansions’ (Jn xiv. 2),” Expository Times, 43(1931-1932), pp. 477-478; Robert H. Gundry, “In My Father’s House are Many Monai (Jn 14:2),” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 58(1967), pp. 68-72; Rudolf Schanckenburg, “Johannes 14:7” in Studies in New Testament Language and Text, edited by J.K. Elliot (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1976), pp. 345-356. The author of the first Johannine letter proposes three concrete tests for discerning true from false religious beliefs. 1) One cannot claim truly to know God while living a life which violates the commandments of God. (1 Jn 2:3-5) This first norm of discernment makes it clear that the author of the letter regards Christian faith as inherently practical. Authentic faith recognizes the practical consequences of belief in Jesus Christ and lives out those consequences. 2) One cannot claim to abide in God unless one lives as God incarnate lived: “Whoever claims to abide in Him [God] must himself walk as He (autos) walked.” (1 Jn 2:6) In the first epistle, the term “That One (autos)” repeatedly designates the figure of Jesus. (Cf. 1 Jn 3:3, 5, 7, 16; 4:17; Jn 2:21, 19:35) The author of the letter justifies this second principle by appealing to the “new commandment” which Jesus gave His disciples in His last discourse. (Jn 13:34-5) Because the “new commandment” simply repeats the authentic Christian tradition, it may strike the true believer as “old hat,” as something proclaimed “from the beginning.” (1 Jn 2:7) “From the beginning” means here the same as it did in 1 Jn 1:1. “The beginning” refers to the beginning of the self-revelation of God in Jesus, especially in His ministry, death, and resurrection. Implicitly, therefore, the author asserts that Jesus’ entire ministry embodied the love command. Nevertheless, the love command enjoys a perpetual “newness” which derives from the paschal mystery and its consequences. For any human life to conform in love to the
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Jesus has given His disciples three interrelated commandments: believe in the Father and in Me, serve one another as I have served you, love one another as I have loved you. He now sums them up under the love command: “If you love Me you will keep My commandments.” (Jn 14:14) Faith in Jesus and in the Father as well as mutual service must always express and embody love. Moreover, those whose obedience to Jesus’ commands manifests their love of Him will find themselves the objects of Jesus’ and of the Father’s love.25 (Jn 14:21) divine love incarnate in Jesus endows it with a newness which reveals the decisive victory of light over darkness accomplished in the paschal mystery. (1 Jn 2:8; cf. 2 Jn 4-6) 3) No one can claim authentic enlightenment while hating another believer. Hatred breeds scandal by leading another down the false path which leads into darkness. It therefore reveals the darkness and the blindness of heart from which it proceeds. Love, by contrast, never causes scandal and never causes one to sin. (1 Jn 2:9-11) The author of the letter cites the enmity of the dissidents toward the orthodox as a refutation of their claim to religious enlightenment. The letter will assert later that the fact that the dissidents broke fellowship with the orthodox by leaving the community proves that from the beginning they never functioned as real members of the community. (1 Jn 2:19) Once again the criteria for discerning authentic religious enlightenment build cumulatively upon one another. If faith proves itself in Christian practice, then anyone who fails to love with the forgiving, atoning love of Christ acts from some other motive than faith. Hence, the hostility of the dissidents toward the orthodox and their violation of communion (koinonia) demonstrates that some other motive than genuine faith inspires their lives. Cf. NJBC, 62: 18; Brown, Epistles, pp. 246-377; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 111-129; Paul Jouon, “1 Jean 2,16: hê alazoneia tou biou: La présomption des richesses,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 28(1938), pp. 479-481; J. Edgar Burns, “A Note on John 16, 33 and 1 John 2, 13-14,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 86(1967), pp. 451-453; Antonio Vincent Cernuda, “Enganan la oscuridad en el mundo: la luz era y manifesto lo verdadero,” Estudios Biblicos, 27(1968), pp. 153-175, 215-232; Noel Lazure, “La convoitise de la chair en 1 Jean II, 16,” Revue Biblique, 76(1969), pp. 161-205; Duane F. Watson, “Rhetorical Analysis of 2 John According to Greco-Roman Convention,” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp.104-130. 25. In his final exhortation to mutual love, the author of the first Johannine letter bases his argument on the fact that “God is love” just as “God is light.” (1 Jn 4:8; cf. 1:5) Because love defines the very reality of God, all love comes from God. Hence, all those who love one another in the very act of loving know God and manifest the divine origin of their love. (1 Jn 4:7-8) The incarnation of the Son of God and His death for sin reveals historically the fact that “God is love.” The supreme historical revelation of divine love in the incarnation and death of God’s own Son embodies the utter gratuity of divine love. The author of the letter explicitates an idea implicit in the gospel when he insists that God’s love for us in Christ takes saving precedence over our love of God. The love of God revealed in Christ creates our love for God and for one another. Indeed, mutual love in community embodies authentic love for God; for one cannot love a God one has never seen if one refuses to love a brother or sister with manifest needs. Even more, mutual love in community brings to perfection the love which God revealed in sending His Son to save us; for the saving love of God revealed in Christ
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As we have seen, obedient love of Jesus will cause both the Father and Son to dwell in the disciples. (Jn 14:23) As Jesus begins to speak of the Breath’s action in the disciples, He develops the notion of mutual indwelling in considerable theological detail. To faith in the Father and Son, Jesus now adds faith in the Holy Breath, the “other witness” whom He will send the disciples. She will dwell forever with and in the disciples. (Jn 14:15-17) She will communicate to them the life of the risen Christ and empower them to “see” the risen seeks to evoke in us a similar mutual, Christlike love. The Breath of the risen Christ comes, in fact, to inspire that love. (1 Jn 4:9-12) The idea that Breath-inspired Christian love “perfects” the revelation of divine love in Christ goes beyond anything which one finds explicitly stated in the fourth gospel. Moreover, the author of the letter stresses even more than the evangelist the intimate connection between faith in the incarnation and Christian love. The incarnational character of Christian love makes love and authentic faith inseparable, since the divine love incarnate in Jesus ultimately motivates the mutual love of Christians. One must, then, profess faith in the incarnation and in the saving death of Jesus in order to love authentically as a Christian. In other words, Christological knowing includes the “deed of faith,” heartfelt assent to the divine reality incarnate in Jesus. Authentic faith and love coalesce and together manifest the divine indwelling which the Breath of God, who inspires both, effects. (1 Jn 4:13-6) Incarnational faith inspires mutual love in community by teaching one to recognize that faith in Jesus Christ transforms one into a child of God. Those who truly love God will, then, also love God’s children, as God does. In the end, therefore, the victory of faith and the victory of love coincide. (1 Jn 5:1-4) The author of the first letter offers two practical criteria for authenticating Christian love: 1) Those who love face the day of final judgment without fear, because divine love drives out all fear. Those, therefore, who fear the punishment of God, betray by their fear their own lack of love. (1 Jn 4:17-9) 2) Authentic love of God manifests itself in the practical care of the needs of one’s fellow believers. Anyone who claims to love God without loving one’s fellow believers simply lies. (1 Jn 4:20-1) The author of the letters like the author of the gospel stresses mutual love in community more than universal love and probably does so for the same reasons. Both the second and the third letters of John also take the same practical view of faith as one finds in the gospel. The dissidents, in their denial of the incarnation, have violated not only the truth but the love command as well, which demands that one live according to the commands of God. (2 Jn 5-6) As we have just seen, in the gospel of John, the love command functions as an omnibus command which includes among other things the command to believe in Father, Son, and Breath. Those who destroy the communion of faith manifest by that very evil act that they never really knew God. (3 Jn 11) Cf. NJBC, 62: 29; Brown, Epistles, pp. 512-568; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 245-264; Celestin Charlier, “L’amour en esprit (1 Jean 4, 7-13),” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 10(1955), pp. 57-72; D. Dideberg, S.J., “Esprit Saint et charité: L’exegèse augustinienne de 1 Jn 8 et 16,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 97(1975), pp. 97-109, 229-250; C. Spicq, O.P., “Notes d’exegèse johannique: La charité est amour manifesté,” Revue Biblique, 65(1958), pp. 358-370; M. de Jonge, Jesus: Inspiring and Disturbing Presence, translated by J. E. Steely (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1971), pp. 110-127; Roland Sheutz, Die Vorgischichte der johanneische Formel: ho Theos agapê estin (Göttingen: von Hubert & Co., 1917).
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Jesus truly with the eyes of faith. (Jn 14:19) Through Her indwelling in the disciples they will come to understand the mutual indwelling of Father and Son because the Breath will effect the mutual indwelling of the risen Christ and His disciples. (Jn 14:23) Presumably, the disciples’ indwelling in the risen Jesus will yield an analogous insight into His indwelling in the Father.26 The Holy Breath of truth will empower the disciples to appropriate in a new and intimate way the truth which Jesus embodies. She will remind the disciples of Jesus’ teachings and disclose to them its meaning. (Jn 14:26) The indwelling of the Breath in the disciples will transform their witness to the risen Christ into the Breath’s own witness. (Jn 15:26) That witness will draw the disciples into conflict with the same dark forces as crucified Jesus. Like Jesus, the disciples will find themselves persecuted, expelled from synagogues. Their enemies will imagine it their duty before God to exterminate them. (Jn 15:20-23, 16:1-4) By Her testimony in the disciples, the Other Witness will despite all opposition prove the world guilty of sin and of unrepentant self-righteousness. (Jn 16:7-11) The divine Breath will also disclose to the disciples the dawning eschatological future. She will teach them new truths which Jesus never spoke to them. In doing so, She will act in obedience to the risen Christ just as His teachings embodied His obedience to the Father. (Jn 16:12-15) In other words, the enlightenment of the Breath will encompass the whole of history: past, present, and future. It encompasses the past: She will enable the disciples to recall Jesus and all His teachings. It encompasses the present: through their witness She gives ongoing witness in an unbelieving world. It encompasses the future: She will call the world to 26. Cf. M.E. Boring, “The Influence of Christian Prophecy on the Johannine Portrayal of the Paraclete and Jesus,” New Testament Studies, 25(1978-1979), pp. 113-123; C.K. Barrett, “The Holy Spirit in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s.1(1950), pp. 1-15; Otto Betz, Der Paraklet: Fürsprecher in häretischen Spätjüdentum, im Johannes-Evangelium in neu gefundenen Gnostischer Schriften (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1963), pp. 117-124; W. Bartlett, “The Coming of the Holy Ghost According to the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, 37(1925-1926), pp. 72-75. In describing Jesus’ intercession for sins the author of the first Johannine letter calls Him a “paraklêtos with the Father.” (1 Jn 2:1) Curiously, then, the first letter applies the term “paraklêtos” to Jesus, but not to the Breath. In the gospel, as we have seen, both Jesus and the Breath function as witnesses who testify to the divine truth. In the gospel, both testimonies occur on earth. After Jesus departs to the Father, the Breath comes to testify to Him and to the Father in the testimony of the disciples. The first letter uses the term “paraklêtos” in a different sense in order to depict Jesus’ perpetual intercessory office in heaven. The author of the letter suggests that by testifying to the Father perpetually about His atoning sacrifice for sins, Jesus ensures that the prayers for minor offeneses committed by Christians will in fact receive the Father’s forgiveness. (cf. I Jn 5:14-21)
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judgment and will disclose the shape of the future by revealing the fullness of divine truth.27 The Breath will glorify the risen Christ by empowering the disciples to do in Jesus’ name even greater works than Jesus Himself. (Jn 14:12-13) 27. Cf. Kurt Niederwimmer, “Zur Eschatologie im Corpus Johanneum,” Novum Testamentum, 39(1997), pp. 105-116. The author of the first Johannine letter looks to “the anointing of the Holy One” to give every member of the Johannine community knowledge. (1 Jn 2:20) The author of the letter parallels the knowledge yielded by this anointing with the truths handed down within the community of the orthodox. If the truths handed down to them abide in them, then they will abide in the Father and the Son. (1 Jn 2:24) To whom does the title “the Holy One” refer? The anointing of which the letter speaks suggests that the “Holy One” refers to the sanctifying, sin-forgiving Breath who proceeds from the risen Christ. (Jn 20:21-23) Since, however, the Breath also comes to the disciples from the Father through the Son, the term “Holy One” could also designate either the Breath or all three. (Jn 14:15-16) Scholars with univocal minds who do not understand the workings of the intuitive imagination seem to imagine that “the Holy One” can only designate a single referent. Given the propensity of Johannine rhetoric to read multiple meanings into the same phrase, however, it seems entirely possible that “the Holy One” refers in the first instance to the sanctifying Breath of the risen Christ, in the second instance to the risen Christ from whom this sanctifying Breath proceeds, and ultimately to the Father who sends both Son and Breath. Every member of the community of believers “knows” through the enlightening anointing of the Breath who proceeds from both Father and Son. That “the Holy One” refers in the first instance to the Breath of the risen Christ finds re-enforcement from the kind of enlightenment to which the author of letter refers. He characterizes the anointing in question as “abiding” and as yielding knowledge of “all things.” (1 Jn 2:17) In the gospel of John the same traits characterize the enlightenment of the Holy Breath. (Jn 14:16-7, 16:13) In claiming that faith discloses all things, the author of the letter does not claim omniscience for believers but only that they live in permanent possession of the font of all enlightenment and of all saving truth. Since the enlightenment of the Breath gives them access to the truth incarnate in Jesus and in the Johannine tradition, they “have no need for anyone to teach you.” (1 Jn 2:27) The truth which abides in the Johannine community has roots not only in the Breath’s enlightenment but in the historical revelation of God’s incarnate Son. That truth coincides with what they heard “from the beginning.” (1 Jn 2:24) Here “from the beginning” would seem to refer to the Johannine community’s first encounter with the gospel. “Initial,” however, also probably refers also to the first proclamation ever of the good news, namely, to Jesus’ own proclamation of the gospel. The author of the letter also alludes to a promise (epaggêlia) made to the community that those who have the truth proclaimed by Jesus abiding in them will abide in the Father and in the Son. This promise, the author notes, coincides with “eternal life.” (1 Jn 2:24-5) Some see in the promise a present reality; some, a future, eschatological reality. I find no reason in principle why the promise in question, which clearly roots itself in the promises of Jesus in the fourth gospel, might not encompass past, present, and future. Cf. NJBC, 62: 22-24; Brown, Epistles, pp. 329-377; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 160-177; Ignace de la Potterie, “Anointing of the Christian Faith” in The Christian Lives by the Spirit, edited by I. de la Potterie and S. Lyonnet (Staten Island, NY: Alba, 1971), pp. 79-143.
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She will impart the abiding gift of eschatological peace by effecting the forgiveness of sins which reconciles humanity to God and to one another. (Jn 14:27, 20:19-23) The disciples’ commissioning by the risen Christ in the power of the Breath expresses their prior call and election by Him.28 (Jn 15:16, 20:19-23) The paschal mystery involves, then, both the absence and presence of Jesus. His death and glorification will put an end to His physical presence among the disciples; and that will cause them sorrow. (Jn 13:33, 14:18-9, 28-31, 16:4b-5) Yet, despite His temporary separation from the disciples, Jesus will return to them in a way which fills them with joy, a joy born of the knowledge of Him in His risen glory. (Jn 16:20-2, 20:20b) They will rejoice too at answered prayers made in Jesus name. (Jn 16:23-24) Answered prayers manifest in their own way the presence of the risen Christ in the midst of His disciples. Despite His physical absence, the risen Christ will nevertheless abide with His disciples through the indwelling of the Breath. He will dwell in them and they in Him. They will draw their life from Him as branches from a vine; and that mutual indwelling will cause the disciples to bear much fruit. (Jn 15:1-5) Even the purification of suffering, the pruning of the branches by the Father, will cause the disciples to bear even more fruit. (Jn 15:2) Paradoxically, then, the paschal mystery will make the absent Jesus mysteriously but really and intimately present in His disciples through the mutual indwelling which the divine Breath will effect.29 In His priestly prayer, Jesus acknowledges each of His disciples as a personal gift to Him from the Father. They have put their faith in Him and accepted Him and His testimony to the Father. (Jn 17:6-8) Jesus prays that after His death and glorification the Father will keep the disciples true to Himself by their abiding in the words which Jesus has spoken to them. (Jn 15:6-8, 14, 18:25-26) Given a Johannine interpretation of mutual indwelling, for the disciples to abide in Jesus’ words, the words must abide in them. Fidelity to Jesus’ words will “consecrate them in truth” by dedicating the disciples to God through their possession of divine truth. (Jn 17:17-19) Jesus does not pray that the disciples leave the world. Instead, He prays that, in the midst of the world’s wickedness and hostility, the disciples 28. Cf. Chr. Dietzfelbinger, “Die grösseren Werke, (Joh 14.12f),” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp. 27-47. 29. Cf. NJBC, 61:188-198; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, 658-738; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 129-146; M.-E. Boismard, “L’évolution du thème eschatologique dans les traditions johanniques,” Revue Biblique, 68(1961), pp. 518-523; Richard Kugelman, C.P., “The Gospel for Pentecost,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 6(1944), pp. 259-275.
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will not yield to the temptations of the Satan. (Jn 15:14-5) Jesus also prays for the perfect union of His disciples with one another, from generation to generation. That loving union among them will make manifest the indwelling of Father and Son in them. It will also manifest the risen Christ’s love for His disciples. (Jn 17:21-3) By implication, those pseudo-disciples who break Christian communion belong, not to Christ, but to the Evil One. Finally, Jesus prays that the disciples’ present share in divine glory through the indwelling of the Breath will one day culminate in risen glory with Him in heaven.30 (Jn 18:24; cf. 14:1-4) The Disciples in the Passion Judas appears in the passion only at Jesus’ arrest; but the reader already knows that he will come to no good end. (Jn 17:12) In the arrest, Judas, as we have seen, personifies Satan, who has already taken possession of the unfortunate disciple. (Jn 13:27) Paradoxically, then, through his very participation in the arrest, Judas helps reveal Jesus as the last Adam who conquers the prince of this world by His faithful obedience to the Father. (Jn 17:1-3, 5; cf. 14:29-31) As we have seen, when Peter cuts off Malchus’s ear Jesus rebukes him for his violence. Instead of resisting violently, Jesus obediently accepts the cup of suffering which the Father has given Him to drink. (Jn 18:10-1) Peter and “another disciple” follow the arrested Jesus to the house of Annas. (Jn 18:15) In all likelihood, the reader should recognize in the other disciple the Beloved Disciple whom the evangelist habitually associates with Peter. (Jn 13:23-24, 20:2-9, 21:7) The Beloved Disciple’s presence at the foot of Jesus’ cross also suggests that he followed Jesus throughout His passion. The fidelity of the Beloved Disciple in following Jesus even to the end implicitly contrasts with the infidelity of Peter, who in fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction will soon deny His master three times. (Jn 13:36-8) The fourth evangelist tells the story of Jesus’ interrogation by Annas with an irony which highlights Peter’s infidelity. The Beloved Disciple knows the high priest personally and gets Peter admitted into the court30. Cf. NJBC, 61: 199-205; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 738-782; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 147-160; Mark L. Appold, The Oneness Motif in the Fourth Gospel: Motif Analysis and Exegetical Probe in the Theology of John (Freiburg: Mohr, 1976); Jean Delorme, “Sacerdoce du Christ et ministère (à propos de Jean 17): Semantique et theology biblique,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 62(1974), pp. 199-219; Clinton D. Morrison, “Mission and Ethic: An Interpretation of John 17,” Interpretation, 19(1965), pp. 259- 273; Jean Cadier, “The Unity of the Church: An Exposition of John 17,” translated by Collette Preis, Interpretation, 11(1957), pp. 166-176; Jean Giblet, “Sanctifie-les dans la verité,: Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 19(1957), pp. 58-73; Rudolf Schnackenburg, “Strukturanalyse von Joh 17,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 17(1973), pp. 67-78, 196-202; Boris Bobrinsckoy, “Die theologischen Grundlagen des gemeinsamen Gebetes für die Einheit,” Una Sancta, 22(1967), pp. 25-37.
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yard. As the maid admits him, Peter denies for the first time that he belongs to the number of the disciples. (Jn 18:16-7) Peter joins those warming themselves in the courtyard around a charcoal fire. A similar fire will burn when, after the resurrection, Peter atones for his triple denial by a triple avowal of love. (Jn 21:9) In the meantime, the high priest questions Jesus about His teaching and disciples. Jesus assures the high priests that His disciples will testify to everything which He has said publicly if only the high priest will question them. (Jn 18:19-21) At the very moment when Jesus is placing full confidence in His disciples’ courageous willingness to testify on His behalf, Peter with narrative irony publicly repudiates Jesus for the third consecutive time.31 (Jn 18:25-27) As we have seen, the fourth evangelist, like the synoptic writers, testifies to the fact that Joseph of Aramathea secured Jesus’ body from Pilate and buried it. (Jn 19:38; Mk 15:42-43; Mt 27:57; Lk 23:50) The fourth evangelist, however, embellishes the story of Jesus’ burial with a number of symbolic details. In the fourth gospel, Nicodemus joins Joseph of Aramathea. His presence transforms him into a symbol of the secret Jewish Christian whose dedication to doing the truth finally forces him to come out into the light and confess Jesus openly. (Jn 19:39; cf. 3:21) Nicodemus began to abandon the darkness of night for the public proclamation of Jesus when he rebuked the Sanhedrin for passing judgment on Jesus without trying Him. (Jn 7:50-52) Now, at the height of the conflict between the light and darkness, Nicodemus publicly testifies to his faith in Jesus by a symbolic gesture. Nicodemus shows up with the equivalent of seventy-five pounds of myrrh and aloes for use in Jesus’ burial. (Jn 19:39) Some commentators on John have wondered, whether the huge amount results from a scribal error; but it probably exemplifies the evangelist’s penchant for using exaggerated numbers in order to symbolize messianic plentitude. If so, then, the abundance of myrrh and aloes parallels the abundance of the messianic wine which Jesus provided at Cana and the abundant catch of fish which will occur after His resurrection. (Jn 2:6, 21:11) One can see in the huge 31. Cf. NJBC, 61:209-211; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 819-842; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 160-174; Robert Tomson Fortna, “Jesus and Peter in the High Priest’s House: A Test Case for the Question of the Relation between Mark’s and John’s Gospels,” New Testament Studies, 24(1977-1978), pp. 371-383; Maurice Goguel, “Did Peter Deny his Lord? A Conjecture,” Harvard Theological Review, 25(1932), pp. 1-28; Eta Linnemann, “Die Verleugnung des Petrus” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 63(1966), pp. 1-32; Günther Klein, “Die Verleugnung des Petrus,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, 58(1961), pp. 285- 328; Charles Masson, “Le reniement de Pierre: Quelques aspects de la formation d’une tradition,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuse, 37(1957), pp. 24-35.
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catch of fish of all kinds a foreshadowing of the large numbers of people, both Jew and Gentile, who will respond to the apostles’ testimony to the risen Christ. The huge outlay of spices has its own symbolism. It ensures that the crucified Jesus receives a royal burial. Even in death, Jesus enjoys royal, messianic homage. Joseph and Nicodemus bury Jesus in a garden. (Jn 19:41-42) Jesus’ burial in the garden serves as a biblical inclusion and recalls His arrest in a garden. As we have seen, the garden imagery implicitly designates Jesus as the last Adam. (Jn 18:1-12) The two men also lay Jesus in a new tomb, where no other body had ever rested. (Jn 19:41) When linked to the garden imagery, the newness of the tomb suggests the newness of the creation which the risen Christ will begin.32 The Disciples “See” the Risen Jesus Mary Magdalene first discovers the empty tomb and informs Peter and the Beloved Disciple. They run to see what Mary has discovered. The Beloved Disciple outraces Peter but waits deferentially for Peter to arrive before entering the tomb. The Beloved Disciple looks into the tomb, however, and spots the linens used to wrap Jesus. When the Beloved Disciple sees the linen cloth which had been bound around Jesus’ head lying there, he “sees” the risen Christ with resurrection faith. (Jn 20:1-8) As we have seen, his ability to believe without actually encountering the risen Jesus transforms him into the type of every Christian who believes without seeing the risen Jesus face to face. (Jn 20:29) Once again, the Beloved Disciples shows Peter up. Peter sees the empty tomb but can make nothing of it. He will have to encounter the risen Christ before he can see in the same way as the Beloved Disciple.33 (Jn 20:19-23) After Peter and the Beloved Disciple depart from the tomb, Mary Magdalene remains outside the entrance weeping. She looks into the burial chamber and sees two angles, one at the head of the tomb and one at the 32. Cf. NJBC, 61: 226-228; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 932-962; The Death of the Messiah, II, pp. 1258-1278; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, p. 196; J. Spencer Kennard, “The Burial of Jesus,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 74(1955), pp. 227-238; Jeffrey L. Staley, “Subversive Narrator/Victimized Reader: A Reader Response Assessment of a Text Critical Problem, John 18:12-24,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 51(1993), pp. 79-98; Dennis D. Sylva, “Nicodemus and His Spices (John 19.39),” New Testament Studies, 34(1988), pp. 148-151; Jean-Marie Auwers, “La nuit de Nicodème (Jean 3.2; 19.39) ou l’ombre du langage,” Revue Biblique, 97(1990), pp. 481-503; Jouette M. Bassett, “Mixed Signals: Nicodemus in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 108(1989), pp. 635-646. 33. Cf. William E. Reiser, S.J., “The Case of the Tidy Tomb: The Place of Napkins of John 11:44 and 20:7,” Heythrop Journal, 14(1973), pp. 47-57; Basil Osborne, “A Folded Napkin in an Empty Tomb: John 11:44 and 20:7 Again,” Heythrop Journal, 14(1973), pp. 437-440; Robert Mahoney, Two Disciples at the Tomb: The Background and Message of John 20. 10 (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1974).
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foot. (Jn 20:11-12) The positioning of the angels has symbolic meaning. Two angels also flanked the mercy seat of the altar in the Jerusalem temple. The mercy seat symbolized the presence of Yahweh. During the rite of atonement the chief priest sprinkled it with blood as a sign of the restored bond of life uniting God and His people. Now Jesus’ tomb has become the new mercy seat. The temple has ceased to function as the center of worship, just as Jesus had promised the Samaritan woman at the well.34 (Jn 4:21-22; Ex 37:9; Lev 16:1-16) Mary Magdalene learns to “see” Jesus differently from the other disciples. When the angels ask Mary why she is weeping, she replies that she grieves the theft of Jesus’ body. Mary turns and sees the risen Jesus in the garden, but at first she cannot “see” Him in faith because of her preoccupation with His cadaver. She will truly “see” Jesus when she learns that resurrection involves the transformation of His physical body in a way which changes radically Mary’s former relationship to Him. (Jn 20:11-15) Mary recognizes Jesus in His risen glory when He pronounces her name. (Jn 20:16) This touching scene reveals Mary as one of the true disciples of Jesus, one of His sheep who hears the good shepherd’s voice and, on hearing it, recognizes Him. (Jn 10:3, 14, 16) The risen Christ tells Mary not to cling to Him. (Jn 20:17) The mild rebuke suggests that Mary has either grasped at Jesus’ body or is trying to do so. Jesus warns Mary not to preoccupy herself with His body. Nor must she try to relate to Him as she had prior to the resurrection. His transformation in glory requires a new kind of relationship in faith.35 Jesus then commissions Magdalene as the apostle to the apostles: Do not cling to Me; for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brethren and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” (Jn 20:17)
Jesus’ glorification in the resurrection has already begun His ascent to the Father. That suggests that the fourth evangelist may have imagined each resurrection appearance as a descent from heaven and a return to the Father. The phrase “My Father and your Father, My God and your God” also has interesting theological connotations; for it suggests that Jesus’ relationship to the Father, while analogous to the disciples’ relationship, nevertheless differs from it profoundly. As Son of God Jesus shares in the Father’s very being and name, while He makes His disciples into the chil34. Cf. Philippe Simenel, “Les 2 anges de Jean 20/11-12,” Études Théologiques et Religieuses, 67(1992), pp. 71-76. 35. Cf. Carmen Bernabe, “Transfondo derasico de Jn 20,” Estudios Biblicos, 49(1991), pp. 209-228; Edouard Delebecque, “Retour sur Jean XX, 9,” Revue Biblique, 96(1989), pp. 81-94.
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dren of God by an act of gratuitous grace, as the prologue to John’s gospel teaches. (Jn 1:14-8) The risen Jesus therefore refers analogously to the disciples as “brethren.” The paschal mystery transforms them into adopted children of God in Jesus’ image. (Cf. Jn 1:12) Mary becomes the apostle to the apostles when she testifies to them: “I have seen the Lord.” (Jn 20:18) She formulates her testimony in a way which suggests an official apostolic witness to the risen Christ. Moreover, Mary announces her encounter with the risen Christ to the apostles (aggellousa) as a formally commissioned messenger. In other words, the fourth evangelist seems to have regarded Mary as one of the apostolic witnesses to Jesus.36 The Beloved Disciple believed in the risen Christ without seeing Him. Mary Magdalene had to learn to see the risen Christ by recognizing that resurrection transforms the disciples’ former relationship to Jesus. On the evening of Easter day, ten apostles (the Eleven minus Thomas) come to resurrection faith by confronting the risen Jesus face to face. They have locked themselves indoors out of fear of “the Jews,” but suddenly the risen Christ stands in their midst. The person who confronts them retains the wounds of His crucifixion. That fact not only proves His identity but also reveals the passion and the resurrection as a single saving event. (Jn 20:19) Jesus then confers on the Ten the gift of abiding eschatological peace which He had promised His disciples in His last discourse. The gift, as we have seen, takes the form of the sin-forgiving Breath. Her descent upon the Ten plus Jesus’ formal commissioning transforms them into official witnesses to His resurrection.37 (Jn 20:19-23, cf. 14:27-28) The appearance of the risen Christ to Thomas exemplifies yet another way in which a disciple can come to the vision of faith. In the case of Mary Magdalene misunderstanding has blocked vision. In the case of 36. Cf. NJBC, 61: 229-233; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 979-1017; Edward Lynn Bode, The First Easter Morning (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1970), pp. 72-86; Paul S. Minear, “We don’t know where....John 20,2,” Interpretation, 30(1976), pp. 125-139; A. Feuillet, “L’apparition du Christ à Marie-Madeleine (Jean 20, 11-18): Comparaison avec l’apparition aux disciples d’Emmaeus (Luc 24, 13-35), Esprit et Vie, 88(1970), pp. 193-204, 209- 223; Bruno Violet, “Ein Versuch zu Joh 20.17,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 24(1925), pp. 78-80; Ingrid Rosa Kitzberger, “Mary of Bethany and Mary of Magdala: Two Female Characters in the Johannine Passion Narrative: A Feminist Narrative-Critical Reader-Response,” New Testament Studies, 41(1995), pp. 564-586; Gerald O’Collins, S.J. and Daniel Kendall, S.J., “Mary Magdalene as a Major Witness to Jesus’ Resurrection,” Theological Studies, 48(1987), pp. 631-646. 37. Cf. A. Feuillet, “La communication de l’Esprit Saint aus apôtres (Jn XX, 19-23) et le ministère sacerdotale de la réconciliation des hommes avec Dieu,” Esprit et Vie, 82(1977), pp. 2- 7.
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Thomas, stubborn unbelief at first prevents him from seeing as the Beloved Disciple had. Thomas commits the sin of testing God, of personally setting the conditions for believing in the deity. Absent at the appearance to the Ten, Thomas refuses to believe that they have seen the Lord until he probes the nail wounds in Jesus’ hands with his own finger and puts his own hand into the wound in Jesus’ side. (Jn 20:24-25) A week later, the risen Christ compassionately meets doubting Thomas’s conditions and calls him to faith. Thomas responds with the confession: “My Lord and my God.” (Jn 20:27-28) The confession brings us back to the prologue of the gospel, which had informed us that the Word who exists eternally with God is Himself “God.” (Jn 1:1) Thomas’s confession also provides a clear narrative affirmation that those who saw the risen Christ experienced the vision as a theophany, as an encounter with God. The gospel closes with Jesus’ blessing on all those who, like the Beloved Disciple, will believe in Him without seeing Him face to face. The words of Jesus play upon the notions of seeing and believing. He tells Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” (Jn 20:29) Face to face encounter has brought Thomas to the vision of faith; but those who, like the Beloved Disciple, believe without seeing the risen Christ nevertheless see Him with the eyes of faith through practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath.38 Although the disciples come to the vision of faith differently, in the end they all nevertheless “see.” The appearance narratives which close John’s gospel disclose therefore the deeper meaning in Jesus’ invitation to the disciples at the beginning of John’s gospel: “Come and see.” (Jn 1:39) The narrative order of the fourth gospel also suggests a pattern in the disciple’s graced progress in John. Discipleship begins with a call from 38. Cf. NJBC, 61:234-235; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 1018-1052; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 203-217; Reginald Fuller, The Formation of the Resurrection Narratives (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1971); A. Feuillet, “Les christophanies paschales du quatrième évangile sont-ils des signes?” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 97(1975), pp. 577-592; M. McNamara, M.S.C., “The Ascension and Exaltation of Christ in the Fourth Gospel,” Scripture, 19(1967), pp. 65-73; Lihane Lupont, Christopher Lash, and Georges Levesque, “Recherche sur la structure de Jean 20,” Biblica, 54(1973), pp. 482-498; J.R. Mantey, “The Mistranslation of the Perfect Tense in John 20.23, Mt 16.19, and Mt 18.18,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 58(1939), pp. 243-249; Léon Vaganay, “La finale du quatrième évangile,” Revue Biblique, 45(1936), pp. 512-528; Thomas Matus, O.S.B., “First and Last Encounter,” Bible Today, 42(1969), pp. 2893-2897; Thomas Suriano, “Doubting Thomas: An Invitation to Belief,” Bible Today, 53(1971), pp. 309-315; Felix Perles, “Noch einmal Mt 8.22, Lk 9.60, sowie Joh 20.17,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 25(1926), pp. 286-287; Gert Hartmann, “Die Vorlage des Osterberichte in Joh 20,”Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 55(1964), pp. 197-220; Barnabas Lindars, “The Composition of John XX,” New Testament Studies, 7(1960-1961), pp. 142-147.
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Jesus. (Jn 1:35-51) Call culminates in incorporation into the kingdom through baptism in water and the Holy Breath. (Jn 3:3) That incorporation empowers one to worship God eucharistically in Breath and truth. (Jn 4:23, 6:1-59) The conflict between light and darkness draws the disciples into the passion of Jesus. (Jn 7:1-9:42) The passion, however, culminates in vision, in seeing God.39 (Jn 20:1-29) The fourth gospel in its original form ended with Jn 20:30-31. In these concluding verses, the evangelist acknowledges that he has not recorded everything Jesus did. What he has written, however, has a single purpose: “that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.”40 Chapter 21, however, narrates a third apparition of the risen Christ to several disciples. It functions as an appendix to the gospel. As we have seen, the fourth evangelist links the figure of Peter to the Beloved Disciple, but to Peter’s disadvantage. The appendix to the gospel rehabilitates the figure of Peter and asserts his pastoral responsibilities in the apostolic Church. The appendix situates the third apparition on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John decide at Peter’s suggestion to go fishing. As in the call of Peter in the gospel of Luke, they fish all night without catching anything. (Jn 21:1-3; Lk 5:1-11) Luke’s narrative, of course, happens during Jesus’ ministry, while the story in the appendix happens after the resurrection. As we have seen, however, in other respects, it resembles analogously the Lukan narrative. The risen Christ appears on the shore at daybreak, with the dawning of the light. Jesus addresses the disciples familiarly as “(paidia).” One could translate “paidia” as slang, as roughly the equivalent of “lads.” Since, however, in the Johannine letters the same term designates believers as “children” of the Church, the term probably points symbolically to the disciples as believers.41 (1 Jn 2:14, 18; 2 Jn 1-2) 39. Cf. Scott Gambrill Sinclair, The Road and the Truth: The Editing of John’s Gospel (Berkeley, CA: Bibal Press, 1994); Raymond F. Collins, “Characters Proclaim the Good News,” Chicago Studies, 37(1992), pp. 47-57. 40. Cf. L. Cardellino, “Testimoni che Gesu il Cristo (Gv 20,31) affinche tutti credano di’autou,” Rivista Biblica, 45(1997), pp. 79-85. 41. The first Johannine letter calls the members of the orthodox community “children (teknia, paidia),” “fathers (pateres),” and “young people (neaniskoi).” (1 Jn 2:12-14) Some commentators interpret these terms as referring to three distinct groups in the Johannine community. It probably makes sense, however, to take the first term “children” as a designation of the community as a whole, whom the author of the Johannine letters regards as the children of the “elect Lady,” the Church. (2 Jn 1; cf. 1 Jn 5:21) In that case, “fathers” and “young people” would designate two sub-groups within the community. In the epistles the author uses “paidia,” “teknoi,” and “teknia” interchangeably. (Cf. 1 Jn 2:12, 14, 18; 3:1-2; 5:21; 2 Jn 1-2) If one accepts this interpretation of the letter’s terms of address, then in the mind of its author the members of the Johannine community as a whole derive their identity
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Jesus asks the disciples if they have caught anything. When they say that they have caught nothing, he tells them to cast on the other side of the boat. (In Luke’s account of the miraculous catch, they launch the boats a second time at Jesus’ behest.) The disciples cast on the left and pull in a huge quantity of fish. (Jn 21:4-6) At this point John’s narrative takes a different turn from Luke’s. The Beloved Disciple, always more perceptive than Peter, recognizes the risen Lord and informs Peter of that fact. Peter puts on his outer garment, apparently in order to prepare himself to greet Jesus with greater propriety, jumps into the water, and makes his way to the shore which lies about a hundred yards away. (Jn 21:7-8) The other disciples eventually recognize the risen Lord even though His glorification has changed Him. (Jn 21:12-13) Jesus’ changed appearance suggests both the reality of the change which resurrection makes in Him and the changed character of the disciples’ relationship to Him. On the shore the disciples find Jesus with a charcoal fire which recalls the charcoal fire at which Peter stood when he denied Jesus. (Jn 21:9; cf. 18:18) They also find bread and two fish roasting on the fire. Jesus invites them to breakfast and tells them to bring some fish from the enorfrom two sources: 1) They (in contrast to the dissidents) acknowledge that their sins have been forgiven in the name of Jesus. (1 Jn 2:12) The Johannine tradition, as we have seen, links the forgiveness of sins with the gift of the divine Breath. (Jn 20:22-3) It also links the gift of the Breath with the rebirth effected by Christian baptism. (Jn 3:5) 2) The members of the Johannine community (in contrast to the dissidents) know the Father. (1 Jn 2:14) Moreover, as we have seen in reflecting on the gospel of John, one cannot know the Father without acknowledging His incarnate Son as the one who reveals the creator God as Father. The term “fathers” probably refers to the “elders” in faith who led the Johannine community. (3 Jn 1) In that case, the author of the first letter characterizes authentic Christian leadership as inspired by faith in “the One from the beginning (ton ap’ arches).” (1 Jn 2:13-4) The phrase “the One from the beginning” almost certainly refers to the eternal Son of God who took flesh. Faith in the Son’s eternity, however, implies both His co-existence with the Father and, therefore, the Father’s existence “from the beginning” as well. Hence, the phrase, “the One from the beginning” probably designates both Father and Son. In other words, authentic Church leadership must conform to the norm of orthodoxy and confess the eternal co-existence of Son and Father. (Cf. 1 Jn 2:22) “Young people” would then designate the other members of the community who are making progress in faith and love. The author of the letter characterizes them as endowed with a strength which enables them to triumph over “the Evil One,” i.e., over Satan and his minions. (1 Jn 2:13-4) In other words, they live in communion with authentic Church leaders and make progress in the faith by resisting the Antichrist, whom the author of the first letter will soon identify with the dissidents. (1 Jn 2:18-20) Cf. NJBC, 62: 20-23; Brown, Epistles, pp. 329-377; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 130-164; Duane F. Watson, “1 John 2.12-14 as Distributio, Conduplicatio, and Expolitio,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 35(1989), pp. 97-110.
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mous catch they have made, one hundred and fifty three fish in all. (Jn 21:10-1) As we have seen the size of the catch could symbolize the fruitful apostolate of the witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection; but some scholars who invoke rabbinic gemetria 42 in order to interpret the number 153 suggest that the number computes to signify “the church of love.” Some see in the meal which Jesus shares with the disciples a foreshadowing of the Christian eucharistic love feast. Others invoke gemetria to have the number read “the children of God.” In this reading the number alludes to the rich harvest which will result from the apostolic preaching and which the abundant catch of fish symbolizes. Still others scholars discover in the number 153 a gemetriacal allusion to the Greek letters iota, chi, and theta. In that case the number symbolizes very cryptically indeed Jesus Christ God, since the letter iota starts the name Jesus in Greek, chi starts Christ, and theta starts the Greek word for God (Theos). The fact that the nets do not tear despite the enormous number of fish caught underscores the extraordinary character of the catch.43 (Jn 21:11) In a gesture which recalls the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, Jesus breaks the bread and gives it to the disciples. (Jn 21:13; 6:1-15) The association of that miracle with the eucharist endows the present meal with eucharistic symbolism. That symbolism has ecclesial connotations and re-enforces a symbolic reading of the term “paidia.” After breakfast Jesus asks Peter three times whether or not he, Peter, loves Him. The evangelist uses two different verbs for love: agapan and philein. Some exegetes argue that the two verbs mean fundamentally the same thing: “to love.” Others argue etymologically and find different connotations in each verb. They trace “agapan” to “agapê,” the Greek word for charity, the highest form of love. They trace “philein” to “philia,” or friendship. They then argue that friendship constitutes a noble but lesser love by comparison with charity. If one accepts this distinction of meaning, in His first two questions to Peter, Jesus asks Peter if he loves him with the love of charity: “agapas me.” Peter replies that he loves Jesus with the love of friendship: “philô se.” (Jn 21:15-16) In such a reading of the two verbs, Peter at first protests a more modest love than the one Jesus requires of him. 42. Gemetria signifies the rabbinic equivalent of ancient numerology. Like its pagan counterpart it assigned numerical values to the letters of the alphabet. 43. This bewildering variety of interpretations leaves one somewhat skeptical of the accuracy of readings based in gemetria. Cf. Antonio Pitta, “Ichthys ed opsarion in Gv 21,1-14: semplice variazone lessicale o differenza con valore simbolico,” Biblica, 71(1990), pp. 348-364; Paul Trudinger, “The 153 Fishes: A Response and a Further Suggestion (John 21:11),” Expository Times, 102(1990), pp. 11-12; Kenneth Cardwell, F.S.C., “The Fish on the Fire: Jn 21:9,” Expository Times, 102(1990), pp. 12-14; O.T. Owen, “One Hundred and Fifty Three Fishes,” Expository Times, 100(1988), pp. 52-54.
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In the third question and answer, however, the verbs switch. Jesus uses “philein,” while Peter uses “agapan.” In other words, Jesus seems to call into question whether Peter loves Him even with the love of friendship. The doubt saddens Peter and forces him to up the ante by protesting that he loves Jesus with the highest form of love, with the love of charity. (Jn 21:17) The first time Jesus asks: “Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?” (Jn 21:15) Exegetes debate to what or to whom the phrase “than these” refers. Does it designate Peter’s possessions: his boat and nets? Does it designate the other disciples? If the latter, then the question makes an ironic reference to Peter’s protestation of special devotion to Jesus at the last supper. (Jn 13:37) In that case, Peter’s claim to offer Jesus friendship only would reveal a chastened disciple. The repentant Peter makes no boast of special devotion. His weakness has taught him better. After each protestation of love on Peter’s part, Jesus gives Peter a commission. First, Jesus says “Feed my lambs (boske ta arnia mou).” (Jn 21:15) The second time He says, “Tend my sheep (poimaine ta probata mou) (Jn 21:16) The third time He says, “Feed my sheep (boske ta probata mou).” (Jn 21:17) Despite the difference in the Greek words used to designate Peter’s flock, the three commands probably mean fundamentally the same thing. Jesus is handing over to Peter the responsibility of shepherding His Church in the image of Jesus, the good shepherd, who gives His life for His sheep; but the Johannine text does not justify attributing to Peter any special juridical power over Jesus’ flock. (Jn 10:11-13) Presumably, the sheep to which Jesus alludes include those “other sheep” whom He also desires to include in His flock. (Jn 10: 16) As Jesus’ encounter with some “Greeks” in Jerusalem has suggested, those “others” include Gentile Christians. (Jn 12:20-36) The image of fishing which opens the story could connote apostolic outreach; the image of pastoring which closes it could connote Church building. The fact that Jesus asks Peter three times whether he loves Him saddens Peter. (Jn 21:17) The number of times seems to provide the chief motive for Peter’s hurt, since it recalls his triple denial of Jesus. If, however, one accepts the difference in meaning between agapan and philein, then Peter would also feel hurt that Jesus seems to question even his friendship. Jesus, however, is giving Peter the opportunity to undo his three denials with a triple protestation of love. Jesus underscores the fact that Peter, as a true shepherd, must in imitation of Jesus Himself lay down his life for his sheep. (Jn 10:11-3) Jesus makes this point by prophesying Peter’s martyrdom after the third commission:
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Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, you girded yourself and walked where you would; but when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will gird you and carry you where you do not wish to go. (Jn 21:18)
The evangelist explains that Jesus is cryptically foretelling Peter’s death, possibly by crucifixion. (Jn 21:19) Jesus then charges Peter, “Follow Me.” (Jn 21:19) It would seem that Jesus wishes to draw Peter aside; but the command also has deeper prophetic meaning. In exercising pastoral leadership, Peter must imitate Jesus and walk the way both of discipleship and of martyrdom. Peter then asks Jesus what will happen to the Beloved Disciple, who as usual is accompanying Peter. Jesus replies: “If it is my will that he remain till I come, what is that to you? Follow Me.” (Jn 21:22) The final redactor adds this detail as a way of countering a rumor in his community that Jesus said that the Beloved Disciple would live until the second coming. The redactor insists that Jesus made no such prediction. (Jn 21:23) The passage treats the Beloved Disciple as an historical individual rather than as a type of all believers. The gospel closes by naming the Beloved Disciple as its author and by protesting that, if anyone attempted to write all that Jesus did, the world could not contain all the books. (Jn 21:24-25) The rehabilitation of Peter in the appendix makes it clear that the Beloved Disciple claims no superiority to the great apostle to whom Jesus entrusted pastoral responsibilities and who followed Jesus even to martyrdom. The triple commissioning of Peter bears an analogous resemblance to Jesus’ promise in Matthew that He would build His church on the rock of Peter (Mt 16:18-19). In the fourth gospel, however, Jesus confers no “keys” on Peter. In Matthew, the keys, as we have seen, make Peter into the chief rabbi in the new Israel. The Johannine Peter functions more as a shepherd who proves his pastoral care by dying for his sheep.44 44. Cf. NJBC, 61: 237-244; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 1066-1132; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 218-238; Savas Agourdes, “The Purpose of John 21” in Studies in the History and Text of the New Testament in Honor of Kenneth Willis Clark, Ph.D. (Salt Lake City, UT: University of Utah Press, 1967), pp. 127-132; J.B. Bauer, “‘Oves meae’ quaenam sunt?” Verbum Domini, 32(1954), pp. 321-324; Bishop Cassien, “John XXI,” New Testament Studies, 3(1956-1957), pp. 132-136; B.W. Bacon, “The Motivation of John 21. 15- 25,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 50(1931), pp. 71-80; Peter R. Ackroyd, “The 153 Fishes in John XXI. 11—A Further Note,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s. 10(1959), p. 94; Robert S. Grant, “‘One Hundred Fifty-Three Large Fish’ (John 21:11),” Harvard Theological Review, 42(1949), pp. 273-275; Lionel S.K. Ford, “St. John xxi. 23-25,” Theology, 20(1930), p. 229; Henry Kruse S.J., “Magni Pisces Centum Quinquaginta Tres,” Verbum Domini, 38(1960), pp. 129-148; M.-E. Boismard, O.P., “Le chapitre XXI de saint Jean: Essai critique litteraire,” Revue Biblique, 54(1947), pp. 473-501; Otto Glombitza, “Petrus—der Freund Jesu,” Novum Testamentum, 6(1963), pp. 277-285; Mathias Rissi, “Voll
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The Analogy of Christological Knowing The disciples play an important part in the fourth gospel; but they function there very differently from the disciples of the synoptic tradition. In the synoptic gospels, Jesus spends a significant part of His public ministry catechizing the disciples in the moral demands of life in the kingdom. The Johannine Jesus remains virtually silent about the kingdom during His public ministry. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple locates most of Jesus’ instructions to the disciples in the last discourse. Had no other gospel but the fourth survived, one would have the impression that Jesus spent most of His public ministry proclaiming His divinity to unbelieving Jews and that He turned to the disciples almost as an afterthought prior to His own death. Theological concerns explain the historical implausibility with which the Beloved Disciple handles the disciples. During Jesus’ ministry they chiefly witness the signs He performs. They also hear the discourses which Jesus addresses to the confused and faithless crowds. As we shall see in greater detail in the next chapter, Jesus’ discourses in John develop the meaning of the signs, which in turn derive their ultimate meaning from the paschal mystery. In other words, the Beloved Disciple focuses on the paschal mystery because he regards it as the key to understanding Jesus’ person. That focus also explains why the evangelist locates virtually all His instructions to the disciples in the Book of Glory. Discipleship roots itself in the paschal mystery and has an inherently eschatological character. In Johannine theology, the paschal mystery also provides the correct lens for understanding the practical demands of disicpleship. The Begrosser Fische, hunderteinundfünfizig, Joh 21,1-14,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 35(1979), pp.73-89; Joseph A. Romeo, “Gematria and John 21:11—The Children of God,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 97(1978), pp. 263-264; Alan Shaw, “The Breakfast on the Shore and the Mary Magdelene Encounter as Eucharistic Narratives,” Journal of Theological Studies, 25(1974), pp. 12-26; John F.X. Sheean, S.J., “Feed My Lambs,” Scripture, 16(1964), pp. 21-27; Stephen S. Smalley, “The Sign of John xxi,” New Testament Studies, 20(1973-1974), pp. 275-288; J.M. Thompson, “Is John XXI an Appendix?” The Expositor, 8th ser., 10(1915), pp. 139-147; Alan Shaw, “Image and Symbol in John 21,” Expository Times, 86(1975), p. 311; William J. Tobin, “The Petrine Primacy: Evidence of the Gospels,” Lumen Vitae, 23(1968), pp. 27-70; Arthur J. Droge, “The Status of Peter in the Fourth Gospel,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 109(1990), pp. 307-311; Timothy Wiarda, “John 21:1-23: Narrative Unity and Its Implications,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 46(1992), pp. 53-71; W. Schenk, “Interne Sturkturierungen im Schluss- Segment Johannes 21: Syggraphe + Satyrikon/Epilogos,” New Testament Studies, 38(1992), pp. 507-530; Udo Schnelle, “Johanneische Ekklesiologie,” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 37-50; Frans Neirynck, “John 21,” New Testament Studies, 36(1990), pp. 321-336; J. Neville Birdsall, “The Source of Catena Comments on Jn 21:25,” Novum Testamentum, 36(1994), pp. 271-279.
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loved Disciple boils down gospel living to three basic commands: believe in the Father, Son, and Breath; serve one another in Jesus’ image; love one another as Jesus has loved you. All three commands derive their meaning directly from the paschal mystery. The passion, resurrection, and sending of the Breath reveal the divinity of Jesus. Moreover, Jesus’ love in dying for His friends exemplifies Christian service and love. The Beloved Disciple summarizes all three commands in the omnibus command of love, which incorporates orthodoxy into orthopraxis. The last discourse develops all three commands at some length, and it illustrates how they all coalesce into the love command. During the last discourse Jesus instructs the disciples at length concerning His relationship to the Father and the new relationship which the disciples will have toward Him when the Breath of truth, the “other witness” arrives. Their witness to Jesus will draw them into His passion and thus teach them how to love and serve in the image of the Crucified. In both Johannine and synoptic theology, faith, then, remains inherently practical. The synoptics interpret the practical demands of faith by recalling Jesus’ historical proclamation of the kingdom. The Beloved Disciple interprets the demands of faith in the light of the paschal mystery which radicalizes faith, love, and service. The paschal mystery radicalizes the gospel by demanding that one practice it even unto death. The synoptics also recognize that the confession of Jesus may lead to martyrdom. In the end, therefore, the synoptic and the Johannine traditions offer complementary rather than contradictory accounts of Christological knowing. In both traditions, one comes to know Jesus through practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. The synoptic account of the practical demands of life in the kingdom do not contradict the more abstract Johannine commandments of faith, love, and service. Rather, those demands render the four Johannine commandments morally specific. This chapter has examined the ambiguous dramatic linkages in John’s gospel. The chapter which follows ponders the special way in which the Beloved Disciple develops his thematic and allusive linkages.
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Chapter 5 Thematic and Allusive Linkages in John As we have already seen, in the course of describing Jesus’ relationship to the other actors in His story, the fourth evangelist develops a variety of doctrinal themes: Jesus’ pre-existence and equality with the Father, mutual indwelling, the living water of the Breath, the role of the Breath as the “other witness” to Jesus, etc. These doctrinal developments provide important thematic linkages which tie together the story of Jesus. This chapter examines three other sets of Johannine thematic linkages: the signs which Jesus works, the discourses which comment on the signs, Jesus’ last discourse to His disciples, and the theme of open messianism. As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple makes his most characteristic use of literary allusion by developing doctrinal themes incrementally across the discourses. This chapter divides into four parts. Part one examines the “signs” which Jesus works in John. In part one I shall argue that the signs unify John’s gospel by deriving their ultimate significance from the paschal mystery. Part two reflects on the narrative purpose of the Johannine discourses. In part two, I shall argue that the Beloved Disciple weaves together the message of the discourses by using allusion in order to develop important doctrinal themes in his gospel. As we shall see, the fourth evangelist subordinates allusion to doctrinal development more systematically than the synoptic writers. Part two deals simultaneously, therefore, with two kinds of linkages: the thematic linkage of the discourses and the way in which allusive linkages develop doctrinal themes across the discourses.1 Part three contrasts the open messianism of the fourth gospel with Mark’s messianic secret. Part four ponders the doctrinal challenge of Johannine Christology. (I) As we have seen, the narrative of the fourth gospel divides into the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. While all the evangelists endow the miracles of Jesus with a symbolic significance derived from the paschal mystery, the fourth evangelist develops the symbolic meaning of Jesus’ signs differently from the synoptics. John narrates fewer miracles than Matthew, Mark, and Luke; but the ones which the Beloved Disciple narrates all develop important doctrinal themes.
1. Cf. R.H. Strachan, “The Development of Thought within the Fourth Gospel,” Expository Times, 34(1922-1923), pp. 228-232.
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The Six Signs In the fourth gospel, Jesus works six signs in all: 1) He transforms water into wine at the wedding at Cana. (Jn 2:1-12) 2) He cures the royal official’s son at Cana. (Jn 4:46-54) 3) On a sabbath He heals a cripple at the pool of Bethsaida in Jerusalem. (Jn 5:1-14) 4) At Passover time, He multiplies the loaves and fish and walks on the water. (Jn 6:16-24) As in the synoptics, these two miracles cast light on one another and function as a single, complex sign. 5) Between Tabernacles and Dedication, Jesus cures the man born blind. (Jn 9:1-41) 6) Before His own death and resurrection, Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead. (Jn 11:1-44) The signs (semeia) in John have an explicit revelatory purpose. They motivate faith by revealing Jesus’ divine glory. John’s Jesus therefore works miracles in order to evoke faith in the divinity of His person and in the divine origin of His ministry. Moreover, in the fourth gospel only faith allows one to recognize the revelatory significance of Jesus’ signs. Jesus’ enemies throughout the gospel miss the revelatory significance of His miracles because their unbelief blinds them, keeps them from “seeing” the deep significance of His mighty works. The synoptic Jesus, by comparison, makes somewhat more modest claims. The synoptic Jesus, as we have seen, regards His miracles as evidence that the kingdom which He is proclaiming has already arrived in a preliminary fashion in His person and ministry.2 Three of the Johannine signs fulfill and replace important feasts of the Jewish liturgical calendar. The cure at Bethsaida reveals Jesus as the one who fulfills the Jewish sabbath by disclosing His divine, eschatological, judicial authority. (Cf. Jn 5:15-8) The sign of the loaves and fishes and the sign of walking on water together reveal Jesus as the one who fulfills the meaning of the Passover. (Jn 6:4) The cure of the man born blind fulfills the meaning of the feast of Tabernacles by revealing Jesus as the light of the world. (Jn 7:2, 10:22) Moreover, extensive discourses of Jesus accompany these signs and elucidate their meaning. Three of the signs, however, have no elucidating discourses: the two miracles at Cana and the raising of Lazarus. The book of glory spells out the meaning of the raising of Lazarus, which reveals Jesus as “the resurrection and the life.” (Jn 11:25) In other words, everything described in the Book of Glory, including the last discourse, clarifies the meaning of the final sign which Jesus gives.
2. Cf. Robert T. Fortna, “Source and Redaction in the Fourth Gospel’s Portrayal of Jesus’ Signs,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 89(1970), pp. 151-166; Loren L. Johns and Douglas B. Miller, “The Signs as Witnesses in the Fourth Gospel: Reexamining the Evidence,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 56(1994), pp. 519-535; Allan Mayer, “Elijah and Elisha in John’s Signs Source,” Expository Times, 99(1988), pp. 171-173.
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Events also clarify the meaning of the first sign: the transformation of water into wine at Cana. Because this miracle anticipates Jesus’ “hour” when He will be lifted up in suffering and in glory, like the last sign, the first also looks explicitly to the events of the passion and resurrection in order to fulfill its meaning. (Jn 2:4) In addition, however, other events clarify the meaning of this first sign. The final redactor brackets these elucidating events between the two miracles performed at Cana. Let us then begin to reflect on the signs and on the events and discourses which interpret them. As we have seen, the transformation of water into wine at Cana occurs on the last day of the first week of Jesus’ ministry. We have also seen that the hebdomadal imagery connotes the new creation which Jesus, as the second Adam, begins. The first week of Jesus’ ministry, therefore, foreshadows and anticipates the week-long events which surround the passion and the week of resurrection apparitions which close the gospel in its original form. These associations plus the reference to Jesus’ “hour” in His conversation with Mary at Cana make it clear that one cannot interpret the meaning of this first sign without taking into account the saving significance of both Jesus’ passion, resurrection, and mission of the Breath. The sign which begins Jesus’ ministry, therefore, already signifies its ending and consummation in the Book of Glory. Johannine irony holds the key to the significance of this first sign. Jesus, Mary, and the disciples all attend a wedding at Cana in Galilee; but in the course of the festivities the wine gives out, to the intense embarrassment of the young couple and their families. Mary calls Jesus’ attention to the lack of wine. (Jn 2: 1-3) As we have seen, Jesus in calling Mary “Woman” anticipates her revelation as the new Eve, when she accepts the Beloved Disciple as her son at the foot of the cross. At Cana Jesus says: “Woman, what to me and to you? My hour is not yet come.” (Jn 2:4) As we have also seen, one might legitimately translate Jesus’ colloquial response as: “Woman, of what kind of wine do you speak? My hour is not yet come.” In effect, then, Jesus sees a double meaning in Mary’s compassionate remark: “They have no wine.” The crisis facing the married couple (and implicitly all Jews) does indeed lie in the fact that they have no wine. They lack the messianic wine of Jesus’ blood which He will give them in the eucharist. Moreover, that eucharistic wine foreshadows the wine of messianic victory, the superabundance of messianic wine which Jesus will supply in the final, eschatological banquet which celebrates His ultimate victory over the powers of darkness. Mary, as we have also seen, seems to sense that Jesus is expressing reservations about the symbolic meaning of her request, without denying the request outright. Hence, she tells the servants: “Do whatever He tells
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you.” Jesus tells the servants to fill six stone jars with water. The jars provide water for ritual washings of purification and contain twenty to thirty gallons each. Jesus, then, proposes to provide miraculously from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and eighty gallons of wine for a modest provincial wedding celebration. The superabundance of the miraculous wine foreshadows the abundance of the messianic wine which He will provide eucharistically when His hour of suffering and glorification arrives. It also foreshadows the final messianic banquet. (Jn 2:6-7) Finally, the evangelist underscores the miracle’s special link to Jesus’ own glorification. The Beloved Disciple does so by insisting at the end of the story that in performing this miracle Jesus manifested His glory in a preliminary fashion to His believing disciples. (Jn 2:11) At Jesus’ command the servants take the miraculous wine to the steward for tasting. The story reaches its climax when the steward complains to the bridegroom that they should have served this more excellent wine first and kept the inferior wines they had actually served until the guests had gotten tipsy. (Jn 2:8-11) Ironically, the steward complains to the wrong bridegroom; for the miracle anticipates Jesus’ revelation in the paschal mystery as the true bridegroom, as the divine bridegroom who loves Israel and humanity as a whole with an unshakable love despite their malice and sinfulness. As the story of the sign indicates, Jesus will bring that revelation to completion when His “hour” of suffering and of glorification comes.3 The redactor follows the first miracle at Cana with a series of incidents which cast further light on its meaning. He links these incidents to the first miracle at Cana by bracketing them between it and a second Cana miracle: namely, the cure of the official’s son. The bracketed events, including the second cure, illumine the first miracle at Cana by introducing important themes which develop its theological significance. These themes and incidents, like the first sign itself, all derive their ultimate significance from the paschal mystery. As a consequence, they also cast light on one another. The themes all undergo theological development as the Beloved Disciple’s narrative unfolds. The final testimony of John the Baptizer to Jesus relates most obviously to the first sign because it explicitly presents Jesus as the true bridegroom. John, the friend of the bridegroom, plays second fiddle to Jesus 3. Cf. NJBC, 61: 40-41; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 97-111; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 169-179; Jean-Paul Michaud, Le signe de Cana (Jean 2, 1-11) dans son contexte johannique (Montréal: Les Éditions Montfontaines, 1963); W. Nicol, The Semeia in the Fourth Gospel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1972); A Feuillet, “La signification fondamentale du premier miracle de Cana (Jo. II, 1-11) et le symbolisme johannique,” Revue Thomiste, 65(1965), pp. 517-535; A. Geyser, “The Sêmeion at Cana of Galilee” in Studies in John Presented to Professor J.N. Sevenster on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1920), pp. 12-21.
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and rejoices to hear His voice. (Jn 3:22-30) The Baptizer’s final testimony underscores the ironic truth which endows the sign at Cana with its revelatory significance: namely, that Jesus is the divine bridegroom faithful in His love despite the worst which human sinfulness can do to Him. The cleansing of the temple which follows the first sign, focuses further attention on the paschal mystery. Jesus’ initial cleansing of the temple foreshadows His death and resurrection (Jn 2:17, 19-22). It also foreshadows His revelation in His “hour” as the living temple of God. (Jn 2:21) As we have seen, the sign of blood and water on Calvary foreshadows Jesus’ full revelation as the temple of God from whom the living, life-giving water of the divine Breath flows. (Jn 19:33-6) That water Jesus bestows when, as risen Christ, He communicates the sin-forgiving Breath, the living water, to the disciples on Easter. (Jn 7:39, 20:19-23) The encounter between Jesus and the Samaritan woman further explains how Jesus purifies the temple. Jesus foretells the coming of the day when both Jew and Samaritan will worship, not in temples, but in Breath and in truth. (Jn 4:19-25) Eucharistic worship will finally effect the promised purification. (Jn 6:63-4) Eucharistic worship also fulfills the gift of messianic wine which the first sign at Cana promised. In other words, eucharistic worship completes the purification of worship which the cleansing of the temple begins. The exchange with Nichodemus introduces two other themes whose ultimate meaning the paschal mystery illumines: 1) rebirth in water and the Breath and 2) judgment. Both themes also cast light on faith in Jesus as the divine bridegroom. Let us reflect on how this occurs. When at the end of John’s gospel the risen Christ breathes the sin-forgiving Breath into the apostles, He fulfills the Baptizer’s prophecy of a Breath-baptizer. (Jn 1:33-4, 20:19-23) The encounter with Nichodemus, however, makes it clear that Christian initiation effects Breath-baptism. Through ritual washing with water one is “reborn through water and Breath.” (Jn 3:1-8) One could develop these insights in greater detail. Here it suffices to note the connection between the encounter with Nichodemus and the first sign which Jesus gives His disciples at Cana. After His own rejection by Jew and Gentile alike and after His desertion by most of the disciples, the risen Jesus will respond by sending the sin-forgiving Breath. That act reveals Him finally and fully as the divine bridegroom who loves humanity faithfully and unconditionally despite its sinfulness. In other words, in Johannine theology, Jesus’ complete revelation as divine Bridegroom and as Breath-baptizer coincide. Moreover, Christian initiation gives access to Breath-baptism by effecting rebirth in water and in Breath. The redactor introduces the theme of judgment in his comment on the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. The judgment which Jesus
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effects also reaches revelatory fullness in the paschal mystery. (Jn 3:16-21) The paschal mystery, as we have seen, brings to a culmination the struggle of light and of darkness. In that culminating struggle, the forces of darkness condemn Jesus only to find themselves judged by God for their sin against the light which Jesus embodies. (Jn 7:1-10:42) Paradoxically, then, the revelation of Jesus as the divine bridegroom in his passion and resurrection also coincides with divine judgment upon the dark powers. (Jn 19:12-6) Only those who accept the revelation of God’s forgiving love in Christ escape judgment by welcoming the gift of the sin-forgiving Breath. (Jn 20:21-23) Jesus’ conversation with the Samaritan woman and His evangelization of the Samaritans introduce still other themes and ideas which the paschal mystery fulfills. Jesus’ promise of the living water to the woman at the well finds its fulfillment in the paschal gift of the divine Breath (Jn 4:7-15; 20:19-23), and the fulfillment of Jesus’ promise to the woman to replace temple worship with worship in Breath and truth foreshadows Breath-filled eucharistic worship. (Jn 4:16-26; 6:60-71) The universal salvation foreshadowed in the evangelization of the Samaritans finds its fulfillment in the disciples’ commissioning to proclaim a universal forgiveness to sins in the power of the Breath. (Jn 20:19-23) Moreover, all these events also reveal Jesus as the divine bridegroom, as the God who loves the world even in its sinfulness and seeks to bestow upon it the eschatological gift of peace. The second miracle at Cana, the second sign which Jesus gives the disciples, also finds it fulfillment in the paschal mystery. The fourth evangelist transforms the healing of the official’s son into a polemic against the need to see signs as a condition for faith. (Jn 4:46-54) This miracle story bears an analogous resemblance to the healing of the centurion’s servant in Matthew and in Luke. (Mt 8:5-13; Lk 7:1-10) In the synoptic accounts of this distant healing, Jesus shows immediate readiness to heal the ailing man. In the fourth gospel He greets the request for healing with the rebuke: “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” (Jn 4:48) When the official begs Jesus earnestly to come heal his son, Jesus demands of the official faith without sight: the man must believe that Jesus has in fact healed his son without seeing the cure. He must rely on Jesus’ word alone that the cure has occurred. When the father hears that his son began to improve at the very moment that Jesus pronounced him cured, “he believed, and all of his household.” (Jn 4:49-54) The second sign anticipates the blessing with which the evangelist ends the gospel in its original redaction. Jesus says to the converted Thomas: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.” The Beloved Disciple functions, as we
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have seen, as the prototype of all those who believe without seeing the risen Christ. (Jn 20:29) The faith without sight demanded of the official anticipates, then, the faith of the Beloved Disciple. (Jn 20:8) Faith without a direct encounter with the risen Christ also enables God’s children to see and acknowledge Jesus as the divine bridegroom. One can, then, read the events in the Cana-to-Cana section of the book of signs as an elucidation by event of the symbolic significance of the first sign. That elucidation requires, however, that one read both the first sign and the events which follow it in the light of the paschal mystery to which the first sign clearly alludes and to which the subsequent elucidating events more or less explicitly allude.4 (Jn 2:4) In His third sign, Jesus cures the man at the pool of Bethsaida. The cure occurs on the occasion of an unnamed feast. (Jn 5:1) The cure, however, derives its liturgical and theological significance from the fact that it occurs on a sabbath. (Jn 5:15-8) As we have seen above, in the fourth gospel Jesus’ sabbath healings signify that, as Son of God, Jesus judges the world on the sabbath just as the Father does. Even more they reveal that the Father has placed all judgment in the Son’s hands and has bestowed on Him the key of life which only God wields, the power to grant risen life to whomever He chooses. (Jn 5:19-30) Moreover, in Jesus’ sabbath healings, the Father witnesses, along with John the Baptizer, Moses, and the prophets, to the truth of Jesus’ message. (Jn 5:31-47) Because Jesus’ sabbath healing discloses in a preliminary fashion Jesus’ union with the Father (Jn 5:18), its full significance will appear only with the paschal mystery. Only Jesus’ lifting up in suffering and in glory will disclose His divinity finally and fully. (Jn 8:28) Through His suffering and glorification Jesus will finally draw all to Himself. (Jn 12:23-32) The paschal mystery also reveals Jesus as eschatological judge. (Jn 19:12-6) By revealing both Jesus’ saving power and judicial authority, the paschal mystery manifests fully the significance of Jesus’ sabbath healings.5 The three Passovers in the fourth gospel link the fourth sign, the multiplication of the loaves and walking on the water, to the paschal mystery. On the first Passover, Jesus cleanses the temple. (Jn 2:13-22) On the second, he performs the fourth sign: the miracle of multiplication and of walking on the water. (Jn 6:1-21) Both of these earlier Passovers, however, look to the third Passover, the Passover of Jesus’ “hour.” (Jn 13:1) As 4. Cf. NJBC, 61: 42-64; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 112-198; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 180-238; Francis J. Moloney, S.D.B., “From Cana to Cana (Jn 21- 4:54) and the Fourth Evangelist’s Concept of Correct and Incorrect Faith,” Salesianum, 40(1978), pp. 817-843. 5. Cf. NJBC, 61: 72-77; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 204-211; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 239-260; A. Duprez, Jésus et les deux guérisseurs: A propos de Jean V (Paris: J. Galbalda, 1970).
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a consequence, the events of all three Passovers illumine one another. In the first, Jesus begins the purification of worship. In the second, He advances it by the promise of the eucharist. In the third, He completes the purification of worship by dying, rising, and sending the sin-forgiving Breath who inspires authentic worship in Breath and in truth. As in the synoptics, Jesus’ walking on the water and invocation of the divine name symbolizes Jesus’ victory over the forces of chaos which threaten His disciples. This preliminary disclosure of His possession of the divine name will also find its fulfillment in the full disclosure of His divinity to His disciples in His resurrection. (Jn 8:28, 20:28-9) Together the two miracles of multiplication and of walking on the water foreshadow the scope of authentic eucharistic worship, which demands faith both in Jesus’ divinity and in His real eucharistic presence.6 The cure of the man born blind, the fifth sign, reveals Jesus as the light of the world. That revelation fulfills the liturgical symbolism of the feast of Tabernacles with its nocturnal illumination of the streets of Jerusalem by flaming torches. The miracle discloses Jesus as the light of truth shining in a world darkened by sin and unbelief. As we have seen, the story of the healing of the man born blind has a chiastic structure. The interrogation of the cured blind man’s parents lies at the heart of the story. (Jn 9:18-23) During their interrogation by the Pharisees, the beggar’s parents confirm his identity and his blindness from birth; but they refuse to say anything about his cure for fear lest “the Jews” expel them from the synagogue. Their fearful reticence contrasts with the increasingly fearless testimony of the cured blind man. That testimony leads in fact to the former beggar’s expulsion from the synagogue. The trial of the man born blind by the Pharisees foreshadows Jesus’ trial by Pilate. Both trials advance the gospel’s unifying forensic metaphor. (Jn 9:24-39) The cure of the man born blind reproduces the same dynamic as marks the events during Tabernacles, which it terminates. In the struggle between light and darkness, the revelation of the truth which Jesus incarnates and divine judgment on sinful unbelief coincide. As the blind man 6. Cf. NJBC, 61:85-89; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 231-256; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 268-283; M.-F. Merrouard, “La multiplication des pain et le discours du pain de vie (Jean 6),” Lumière et Vie, 18(1969), pp. 63-75; Bertil Gœrtner, John 6 and the Jewish Passover (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1959), Francois Quievreux, “Le récit de la multiplication des pains dans le quatrième évangile,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 41(1967), pp. 97-108; G.H. Boobyer, “The Eucharistic Interpretation of the Miracles of the Loaves in Mark’s Gospel,” Journal of Theological Studies, 3(1952), pp. 161-171; John Paul Heil, Jesus Walking on the Sea (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981), pp. 144-170; Cullen I.K. Story, “The Bearing of Old Testament Terminology on the Johannine Chronology of the Final Passover of Jesus,” Novum Testamentum, 31(1989), pp. 316-324.
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comes into the light of faith, the Pharisees incriminate themselves by their stubborn unbelief. Like the other signs, this fifth sign also finds its fulfillment in the paschal mystery when those the dark powers stand finally revealed in their sinful unbelief and when those who relate to Jesus in faith finally “see” Him for what He is. (Jn 19:13-16, 20:1-31) Both Tabernacles and Dedication intensify the struggle between light and darkness. By situating the fifth sign between the two feasts, the Beloved Disciple suggests that it fulfills the liturgical significance of both. The feast of Dedication develops pastoral imagery. In rejecting Jesus as the light of the world, Israel also repudiates it divine shepherd.7 7. Cf. NJBC, 61:127-133; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 369-382; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 33-42; Günther Bornkamm, Geschichte und Glaube: Gesammelte Aufsätze (4 vols.; Munich: Chris Kaiser Verlag, 1971), IV, pp. 65-72; John Bligh, “Four Studies in John: The Man Born Blind,” Heythrop Journal, 7(1966), pp. 129-144; Donatien Mollat, “La guérison de l’averugle-né,” Bible et Vie Chrétienne, 23(1958), pp. 22-31; J. Duncan M. Derrett, “John 9:6 Read with Is 6:10, 20:9,” Evangelical Quarterly, 66(1994), pp. 251-254. The first part of the first epistle of John develops the theme that “God is light; there is no darkness in Him at all.” (1 Jn 1:5) As the author of the letter develops this theme, it becomes clear that both he and the dissidents lay claim to divine enlightenment. In the judgment of the letter’s author, however, the dissidents claim something which they do not in fact possess. They propound false doctrine and therefore confuse the light with the darkness. The author of the letter first examines three false claims of the dissidents and contrasts them with true and authentic doctrine. 1) The dissidents claim to live in union with God; but in fact they dwell in darkness. (1 Jn 1:6) 2) The dissidents claim to exist in a sinless state; but in fact they live in sin. 3) In the very act of claiming never to have sinned, the dissidents sin by calling a liar the God who sent His Son to purify from sin those who believe in Him. It would appear, then, that the dissidents claimed an enlightenment which manifests their righteousness in the eyes of God, a righteousness which absolves them from the need of redemption through the blood of Christ. The three false boasts of the dissidents cast light upon one another. The dissidents claim to live in union with God; but they ground that claim in an illusory sense of innocence which leads them to deny a fundamental fact of divine revelation: namely, the saving, atoning death of Jesus Christ. To claim an enlightenment which sets one in opposition to the truth revealed in the paschal mystery only manifests that one walks, not in the light of Christ, but in the darkness of unbelief. The dissidents’ claim to impeccability seems to have taken the moral dualism of the gospel in directions which the author of the first letter regards as extreme and heterodox. The epistle’s author himself teaches that in Christ “there is no sin.” (1 Jn 3:5) The phrase asserts not only the sinlessness of Christ but the liberation from sin which possession of His Breath effects. (1 Jn 3:6) The dissidents may well have decided to move this doctrine in deterministic directions which claimed an impeccability grounded in the possession of the Breath rather than in Christ’s atoning death. In that sense, they would have recognized that Christ came in water only, i.e., with a baptism which guarantees subsequent sinlessness. They would, however, have simultaneously denied that Jesus came in both “water and blood.” (1 Jn 5:3-8) In other words, they would have dissociated the resurrection and the gift of the Breath from the saving death. The gospel of John, as we have seen, goes out of its way to assert their inseparable unity.
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The raising of Lazarus, as we have seen, discloses Jesus as “the resurrection and the life.” (Jn 9:25) This culminating sign alludes to the cure of the blind man, since in Johannine theology life and light coincide. The blind man’s illness has resulted from no sin but has as its purpose the revelation of God’s saving action in him. (Jn 9:3) In the same way, Lazarus’s sickness unto death brings about “the glorification of God.” (Jn 11:4) In the case of the man born blind, the work God accomplished in him included, as we have seen, both his physical cure and his coming to the light of faith. In the case of Lazarus, his participation in the risen glory of Christ includes a share in Jesus’ passion. (Jn 12:10-1) The evangelist links symbols of light and of life in another way. Before raising Lazarus from the dead, Jesus indicates that this miracle also reveals Him as light of the world. When Jesus suggests that He and the disciples return to Judea to come to Lazarus’s aid, the disciples remind Him that His enemies in Judea were just trying to stone Him. Jesus replies: Are there not twelve hours of daylight? If a man goes walking by day, he does not stumble because he can see the light of this world. But if he goes walking at night, he will stumble because he has no light in him. (Jn 11:9-10)
The light of this world refers most obviously to the sun, which, in ancient Jewish optometry, filled the eye with light and thus enabled it to see. Jesus’ allusion to the light of the world, however, also clearly points to His own person. It recalls as well, what Jesus said before curing the man born blind: namely, “We must work the works of Him who sent me The author of the letter, for his part, not only insists that the death of Christ effects the forgiveness of sin; but, both in the text of the letter and in its postscript, he makes it clear that even the possession of the Breath does not guarantee the believer total freedom from minor offenses. Even after baptism, one may, then, need to claim the forgiveness effected by Jesus’ atoning death. (1 Jn 2:1, 5:14-21) To these false boasts of the dissidents, the author of the first epistle contrasts authentic Christian faith: 1) Those who truly live in the light share a fellowship which flows directly from the atoning death of Jesus. (1 Jn 1:7) 2) Far from claiming a false innocence, the true believer acknowledges the fact of personal and collective sinfulness and claims the forgiveness of God revealed in Christ. Moreover, true believers look to God to purify them from sin. (1 Jn 1:9) 3) Authentic faith trusts in the saving, atoning death of Jesus as the source and revelation of divine forgiveness. His sacrificial death takes away the sin of the world and reveals that He abides now eternally in heaven, in the presence of the Father, interceding for sinners for whom He gave His life. The true believer, therefore, clings to the Crucified as the source of forgiveness for sins committed before and after one has achieved the light of faith. (1 Jn 2:1-2) Cf. NJBC, 62: 15-17; Brown, Epistles, pp. 191-246; Klauck, op. cit., I, pp. 53-110; Zane C. Hodges, “Fellowship and Confession in I John 1:5-10,” Bibliotheca Sacra, 129(1972), pp. 48- 60; O. Schäffere, “‘Gott ist Licht’ (1 Joh 1, 5),” Theologische Studien und Kritiken, 105(1933), pp. 467-476.
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while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” (Jn 9:5) Both the cure of the man born blind and the raising of Lazarus allude to the passion of Jesus as a temporary eclipse of the light. As Jesus prepares to go to Lazarus’s aid, He assures the disciples that, as long as He remains among them as the light of the world, they have nothing to fear. That assurance itself has a double meaning. Most obviously it means that while Jesus remains physically with the disciples, they have no cause for fear; but John’s Jesus’ also alludes to His presence among the disciples after His glorification through the illumination of the Breath. The Breath makes the risen Christ present, and that presence too will dissipate the disciple’s fears.8 (Jn 16:13-4) These allusions to Jesus as the light of the world at the beginning of the story of the raising of Lazarus make it clear that Jesus’ revelation as the light of the world and His revelation as the resurrection and the life coincide. In fact, they coincide in the paschal mystery when the risen Christ imparts the enlightening gift of the divine Breath, the Breath of truth, who will lead the disciples into the fullness of truth by imparting the living water of imperishable divine life. As we have seen, no clarifying discourse accompanies this sixth and culminating sign. Instead, it foreshadows the Book of Glory as a whole from which it derives its ultimate significance. The fact that all six signs foreshadow the paschal mystery means that they each call attention to a different facet of that mystery. The paschal mystery reveals Jesus as the divine bridegroom of the first sign. The paschal mystery requires a faith which consents to the person of Jesus as risen Lord, even though one has not seen the risen Christ face-to-face. In other words, one must believe, not only like the Beloved Disciple, but also like the official of the second sign, who foreshadows the Beloved Disciple’s faith. The third sign reveals Jesus as eschatological judge, and the paschal mystery both begins and prolongs the final judgment by demanding that humanity choose in the face of this final and full revelation of divine love in Jesus. The paschal mystery also completes the purification of temple worship begun on the first Passover of John’s gospel by empowering authentic eucharistic worship in Breath and truth, the wor8. Cf. NJBC, 61: 145-152; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 420-437; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 53-72; Brian McNeil, “The Raising of Lazarus,” Downside Review, 92(1974), pp. 269-275; Léopold Sabourin, “Resurrectio Lazari (Jo 11, 1-44),” Verbum Domini, 46(1968), pp. 350-360; Gerhard Lass, Die Auferweckung des Lazarus: Eine Auslegung von Johannes 11 (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1967); Wilhelm Wilkin, “Die Erweckung des Lazarus,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 15(1959), pp. 22-39; Mark W.G. Stubbe, “A Tomb with a View: John 11.1-44 in Narrative-Critical Perspective,” New Testament Studies, 90(1994), pp. 38-54; Delbert Burkett, “Two Accounts of Lazarus’ Resurrection in John 11,” Novum Testamentum, 36(1994), pp. 209-232.
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ship foreshadowed by sign four. Finally, the paschal mystery reveals Jesus as simultaneously the light and life of the world, as the fifth and sixth signs signify. Because each of the signs highlights a facet of the paschal mystery, each of them provides only a partial, proleptic disclosure of that saving event. By focusing all the signs on the paschal mystery, the evangelist endows them ultimately with a unity of meaning which makes it almost irrelevant which sign one chooses to contemplate first. Because every sign points to the paschal mystery, every sign also illumines every other.9 This section has considered the signs and their significance. The section which follows ponders the unique narrative use which the Beloved Disciple makes both of Jesus’ discourses and of the literary device of allusion. (II) This section examines how Jesus’ discourses develop the revelatory significance of the signs. In the Book of Signs discourses expatiate on the significance of three of Jesus’ signs: 1) the healing of the cripple on the sabbath, 2) the multiplication of the loaves and fish and walking on water, and 3) the cure of the man born blind. This section first reflects on the correlation between sign and discourse. Next, it analyzes the incremental development of basic themes across the discourses. In the course of that analysis, I also examine the way in which the Beloved Disciple uses allusion in order to develop Christological doctrine. Because I have already considered the text of Jesus’ discourses in some detail in the preceding chapters, I content myself here with summarizing the results of that earlier analysis. The Discourses As we have seen, the discourse following the healing of the cripple on the sabbath develops the theology of judgment enunciated in Jesus’ encounter with Nicodemus. It interprets Jesus’ power to heal on the sabbath as His wielding the divine keys of life and of judgment. Jesus’ ability to impart life through physical healing also reveals proleptically His divine power on the day of judgment to raise from the dead those who put faith in Him. The discourse divides into two parts. In the first part, Jesus proclaims that His sabbath healings manifest His authority to give life and to judge on the sabbath. The judgment which Jesus’ sabbath healing effects prepares the final judgment when, on the last day, He as Son of God will impart risen life to those who believe in Him. (Jn 5:19-31) The second 9. Cf. Robert T. Fortna, “Source and Redaction in the Fourth Gospel’s Portrayal of Jesus’ Signs,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 89(1970), pp. 151-166.
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part of the discourse, as we have also seen, develops Johannine forensic imagery and links it to the theme of judgment. In the second part of the discourse, Jesus defends His right to heal on the sabbath by appealing to three legal witnesses: the Father, who empowers the signs Jesus performs, John the Baptizer who testifies to Him prophetically; and the Mosaic scriptures which foretell His coming. Those who refuse to respond in faith to this triple testimony stand under divine judgment.10 (Jn 5:31-47) With the bread-of-life discourse, the light and the darkness begin to separate. In the course of this discourse, Jesus’ faithless disciples refuse, as we have seen, to recognize that feeding on the bread of divine wisdom means acknowledging Jesus’ real eucharistic presence. The discourse interprets the miracle of multiplication as a sign that Jesus embodies the bread of divine wisdom and that He will one day give the eucharistic bread of wisdom to those who believe in Him. Jesus’ identity with divine Wisdom descended from heaven also makes sense of His power to walk on water, as only God can do, and to invoke the divine name as His own. His gift of the eucharist reveals the revelatory significance of the miracle of multiplication and requires incarnational faith for its authentic celebration. The bread-of-life discourse also divides into two parts. In part one, Jesus first promises to give bread from heaven. Then He presents Himself as the bread of divine wisdom which has already descended from heaven. When unbelieving “Jews” question that Jesus has a heavenly origin, Jesus rebukes their unbelief in the light of the theology of judgment developed both in His conversation with Nichodemus and in His first discourse. (Jn 6:32-50; cf. 3:17-21, 5:19-30) Verse 51 of the bread-of-life discourse marks the transition to the second part of the discourse. In verse 51, Jesus announces: “....the bread which I shall give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” This causes “the Jews” to question Jesus’ power to give them His flesh and blood as food and drink. Later the reader learns that these “Jews” include Jesus’ own disciples. (Jn 6:59-66) The second part of the bread-of-life discourse equates the divine wisdom with faith in Jesus’ real eucharistic presence. 10. Cf. NJBC, 61: 78-84; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 212-230; Hänchen, Commentary on John, I, pp. 239-267; Feliks Gryglewicz, “Die Ausssagen Jesu und irher Rolle in Joh 5, 16-30” in Studien zum Neuen Testament und seiner Umwelt, 5, edited by Albert Fuchs (1980), pp. 5-17; Eduard Lohse, Die Einheit des Neuen Testament (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), pp. 62-72; M.J. Moreton, “Feast, Sign, and Discourse in John 5,” Studia Evangelica, 4, (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1968), pp. 209-213; Urban C. von Wahlde, “The Witnesses to Jesus in John 5: 31-40 and Belief in the Fourth Gospel,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 43(1981), pp. 385-404;Wolfgang Kraus, “Johannes und das Alte Testament: Überlegungen zum Umgag mit der Schrift im Johannesevangelium im Horizont biblischer.Theologie,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlsiche Wissenschaft, 88 (1997), pp. 1-23.
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(Jn 6:51-58) Eucharistic worship which incarnates such faith exemplifies worship in Breath and truth. It communicates risen life. It will one day replace all forms of temple worship.11 (Jn 6:63; cf. 4:21-24) As we have already seen, during the feast of Tabernacles, the division between the light and the darkness which began in the bread-of-life discourse intensifies. The dialogic character of the discourse at Tabernacles causes it to resemble a legal cross-examination as Jesus’ enemies pose objection after objection to His teaching. The cross-examination culminates in the dark powers’ decision to quench the light by stoning Jesus. The discourse at Tabernacles originally divided into two parts. Part one spanned the feast’s week-long celebration. (Jn 7:10-36) Part two took place on the final day of the feast. (Jn 7:37-53, 8:12-52) In the gospel’s final redaction, the story of the woman caught in adultery divides the second part of the discourse into two subsections. As in the case of the bread-of-life discourse, the discourse at Tabernacles begins dialogically but expands into longer speeches of Jesus to his adversaries. The first part of the discourse advances through a series of increasingly bitter exchanges between Jesus and unbelieving “Jews.” Jesus once again insists that He teaches only what the Father tells Him to teach. He argues that the selflessness of His testimony vindicates the truth of what He says; and He traces the unbelief of His adversaries to their refusal to obey the Law of Moses. (Jn 7:16-19) The reference to Moses links the discourse to the theme of judgment which Jesus’ discourse after His sabbath healing developed. Those at Tabernacles who refuse to hear Moses’s testimony to Jesus fall under the divine judgment. (Jn 5:45-47) As the first part of the discourse at Tabernacles comes to a close, Jesus rejects His adversaries’ claim to know His origins. (Jn 7:28-29) He warns them that time is getting short. The day is fast approaching when Jesus will go where His enemies cannot follow. (Jn 7:33-36) Jesus, of course, refers to His return to the Father, as He explains to the disciples in the last discourse. (Jn 13:33-14:3) His enemies cannot follow Him to the Father 11. Cf. NJBC, 61: 90-100; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 260-294; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 487-303; Peder Borgen, “The Unity of the Discourse of John 6,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 50(1959), pp. 277-278; Jean Noel Aletti, “Le discours sur le pain de vie (Jean 6): Problems de composition et fonction des citations de l’Ancien Testament,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 62(1974), pp. 169-197; G. Bornkamm, Geschicht und Glaube 2 (Munich: Chr. Kaiser Verlag, 1971), pp. 51-64; Peder Borgen, Bread from Heaven: An Exegetical Study of the Concept of Manna in the Gospel of John and the Writings of Philo (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1965); “The Unity of the Discourse in John 6,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 50(1959), pp. 277-278; Andre Feuillet, Le discours sur le pain de vie (Jean, chapitre 6), (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1967); Bertil Gärtner, John 6 and the Jewish Passover (Lund: C.W.K. Gleerup, 1959); N. Mondula, La puissance vivicatrice de la chair du Christ selon l’évangile de S. Jean (Rome: 1978); F.L. Steinmeyer, Die Rede Jesu in der Schule von Capernaum (Berlin: Wiegandt & Grieben, 1892).
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because they refuse to recognize that He comes to them from the Father.12 The final section of the discourse at Tabernacles opens with Jesus’ promise of the living water whose gift will reveal Him as the promised Breath-baptizer. The living water of the Breath will slake human thirst for everlasting life. (Jn 7:37-39; cf. 1:33, 3:32-36, 4:13-14) Jesus then proclaims Himself the light of the world. (Jn 8:12) Jesus’ promise and proclamation disclose different facets of the same mystery, since in Johannine Christology life and light coincide. (Jn 1:4) The divine Breath who confers risen life will also function as a principle of enlightenment; and the enlightenment of faith gives access to risen life. (Jn 14:15-21) The promise of the living water and the proclamation of Jesus as the light of the world therefore illumine one another. Jesus becomes the light of the world when He breathes His divine Breath into His disciples. She in turn functions both as a principle of enlightenment and as a source of risen life. Since the same divine reality functions simultaneously as the source of resurrection and enlightenment, it would appear that resurrection brings the enlightenment of faith to its culmination and completion. The section of the discourse at Tabernacles which follows the story of the adulterous woman takes the literary form of an embittered argument between Jesus and His enemies. Jesus begins by recapitulating themes from His earlier debates during the feast: His origin from the Father, His selfless witness to the truth, His divine authority to pronounce judgement, the forensic testimony of other witnesses (the Father and the Baptizer) to the truth of His message. (Jn 8:14-18) The rest of the discourse develops into a debate over origins. Jesus not only reasserts that He takes His origin from God; but He also spells out the soteriological implications of faith in His heavenly origin. That origin sets Him apart from His enemies whose sinful unbelief makes them citizens of the world over which Satan presides. The time for them to face judgment will arrive when Jesus is lifted up in suffering and glory. Unless His adversaries judge correctly about Jesus, they will find themselves powerless to follow Him in His return to the Father. (Jn 8:21-29) The debate about origins takes a new turn when “the Jews” claim the freedom of the children of Abraham. Jesus counters this claim with the charge that His adversaries’ sinful hostility and unbelief manifest that Satan has sired them, not Abraham. (Jn 8:34-47) The crowds then accuse Jesus of demon possession. (Jn 8:48-54) Jesus claims instead that He
12. Cf. Gerard Rochais, “Jean 7: une construction litteraire dramatique, at la manière d’un scenario,” New Testament Studies, 39(1993), pp. 355-378.
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possesses the divine name. “The Jews” anticipate the judgement soon to be passed on Jesus’ in His passion by seeking to stone Him.13 (Jn 8:54-58) Jesus’ discourse during Dedication develops further the debates during Tabernacles. The discourse at Dedication divides into two parts. In the first part Jesus, in response to a challenge that He avow His messianic pretensions, proclaims the parable of the sheep and the shepherd. In explaining this pastoral metaphor, Jesus announces that His unity with the Father transforms Him into the divine shepherd of Israel. (Jn 8:25-30) This claim leads to a second stoning attempt. In the second part of the discourse, Jesus again invokes the forensic argument of the Father’s testimony in sanctioning the works which He performs. Jesus also proclaims the dynamic, mutual indwelling which makes Him one with the Father. Jesus’ fearless reaffirmation of His divinity triggers a futile attempt to arrest Him.14 (Jn 10:25-39) The story of the man born blind follows the discourse and further dramatizes the separation of light and darkness during Tabernacles and Dedication. The blind man sees Jesus with the eyes of faith, while the Pharisees, who expel the man from the synagogue, persist in the darkness of unbelief. The expulsion foreshadows, of course, the Johannine community’s excommunication by the Pharisaical leaders of the local synagogue as well as Jesus’ own condemnation by the dark powers. Except for the last discourse, I have summarized each of the Johannine discourses. In what follows, I shall argue that the discourses relate to one another in a manner analogous to the way in which the signs do. The Johannine Use of Allusion As the discourses unfold, the Beloved Disciple repeatedly uses allusion in the service of doctrinal development. This narrative strategy especially characterizes the last evangelist’s narrative style. As we saw in the last volume, among the synoptics, Mark clusters most of his literary allusions around the two miracles of the loaves. Matthew characteristically uses literary allusion in order to focus the story of Jesus on the Great Commission which terminates his gospel. Luke most characteristically uses literary allusion in order to tie together his two-volume study of Christian 13. Cf. NJBC, 61: 108-114; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 310-331, 339-368; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 9-20, 32-32; David M. Stanley, “The Feast of Tents: Jesus’ Self- Revelation,” Worship, 34(1964), pp. 20-27; Charles W.F. Smith, “Tabernacles in the Fourth Gospel and Mark,” New Testament Studies, 9(1962-1963), pp. 130-146. 14. Cf. NJBC, 61: 134-144; Brown, The Gospel of John, I, pp. 383-412; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 43-52; Wilhelm Jost, “Poimên”: Das Bild vom Hirter in der biblschen Überlieferung und seine christologische Bedeutung (Giessen: Kindt, 1939); Otto Kiefer, Die Hirtenrede: Analyse und Deutung von Joh 10, 1-18 (Stuttgart: Katholisches Bibelwerk, 1967).
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origins. In the process, Luke assimilates Peter to Jesus and Paul to Peter. The Beloved Disciple uses allusion very differently. In the fourth gospel, as we have seen, all of Jesus’ signs anticipate the paschal mystery, while the discourses endow the signs with their doctrinal meaning. Literary allusion links passages in the discourses which develop incrementally the same doctrinal theme. Typically, the Beloved Disciple repeats in a later discourse ideas enunciated in an earlier discourse and then appends to them new ideas which advance doctrinally beyond the earlier discourse. In Johannine narrative theology, this gradual exposition of the truth about Jesus dramatizes the incremental dawning of the divine light which He incarnates. It also explains the repetitiousness of Johannine narrative style. The I AM passages in John illustrate the incremental use of allusion which the evangelist employs more systematically in the discourses. Jesus first proclaims the divine name to the disciples while doing something only the God of the Bible can do: namely, He walks on the waters and claims the divine name, I AM, as His own. (Jn 6:20-21) The first part of the bread-of-life discourse explains this miraculous sign when it portrays Jesus as the incarnation of divine wisdom.15 In the discourse at Tabernacles, the Beloved Disciple links Jesus’ use of the divine name to the theme of judgment. By claiming the name I AM, Jesus proclaims His divine pre-existence and identity with the Father to His unbelieving adversaries and faithless disciples. He simultaneously warns His enemies that, unless they recognize His right to claim the divine name, they will die in their sins. (Jn 8:23-24) His enemies dramatize their intransigent lack of repentance by seeking to stone Him. (Jn 8:57-59) Finally, in the garden where Jesus is arrested, He invokes the divine name once again. He does so in order to vanquish His enemies before freely submitting to the ordeal of the passion. (Jn 18:5-9) In the garden Jesus enemies include both Jews and Gentiles. (Jn 18:3, 12) Each time Jesus invokes the divine name, the struggle between light and darkness intensifies. After Jesus proclaims Himself I AM to the disciples, the faithless among them refuse to recognize that assent to Him as divine wisdom incarnate includes confessing His real eucharistic presence as well. During Tabernacles, Jesus’ use of the divine name consolidates His enemies’ opposition to Him. Finally, Jesus invokes the divine name at the beginning of His “hour,” in order to vanquish the dark powers gathered for their final futile attempt to quench the light. Each time Jesus claims the divine name the light spreads. Jesus first announces to His disciples His right to use the sacred name of God. Then at Tabernacles He proclaims it to the Jewish people. Finally, in the garden He extends its proclamation to Jew and Gentile alike. (Jn 18:3) 15. Cf. Bruce Grigsby, “The Reworking of the Lake Walking Account in the Johannine Tradition,” Expository Times, 100(1989), pp. 295-297.
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As the light shines more brightly, it simultaneously reveals with proportionately greater clarity the hypocrisy and violence of unbelief. The I AM passages in John illustrate how the evangelist uses literary allusion in order to develop the same doctrine incrementally over a series of texts. In what follows I shall reflect on how the Beloved Disciple uses literary allusion incrementally in order to tie the discourses together doctrinally.16 As we shall see, the Beloved Disciple develops incrementally the following theological themes across the discourses: 1) judgment, 2) Jesus’ relationship to the Father, 3) pneumatic rebirth, 4) universal salvation, and 5) the revelation of divine glory. Let us reflect on each of these themes in turn. The theme of judgment enhances and develops the fourth gospel’s forensic metaphor for Jesus’ ministry. In Jesus’ dialogue with Nicodemus, the evangelist explains that God judges the world by revealing His unconditioned love of sinners and by demanding simultaneously that they choose in the face of that revelation. Only those who refuse to accept 16. The Prologue announces a number of fundamental Johannine themes which the discourses subsequently develop. Those themes include the following: 1) Jesus exists with the Father before the beginning of the world. (Jn 1:1-3) 2) Jesus enjoys a unique relationship to the Father. (Jn 1:1) 3) Jesus is God. (Jn 1:1) 4) Jesus embodies a life-giving light which the forces of darkness struggle ineffectually to suppress. (Jn 1:9-11) 5) Jesus transforms those who believe in Him into God’s children through their pneumatic rebirth. (Jn 1:12-13) 6) The incarnation of the Son of God manifests the divine glory. (Jn 1:13-14) The testimony of John the Evangelist and the call of the first disciples introduces other themes which later discourses develop in greater detail. 1) Jesus alone baptizes with the divine Breath. His power to do so manifests His divine, messianic identity. (Jn 1:24-34) 2) Jesus is the “lamb of God”: the lamb of the paschal sacrifice, the lamb-like suffering servant, and the victorious messianic lamb of apocalyptic literature. (Jn 1:36) 3) One can “see” Jesus fully only with the eyes of faith and by dwelling with Him. (Jn 1:31-55) As we saw above, the Cana-to-Cana section of John functions as a commentary by event on the first sign. It introduces new themes for subsequent commentary in the discourses. It also develops themes already introduced. 1) The cleansing of the temple introduces and the conversation with the Samaritan woman develop the theme of the purification of temple worship. (Jn 2:13-22, 4:22-24) 2) The conversation with Nichodemus introduces the theme of pneumatic rebirth through water and Breath and enunciates the Johannine understanding of judgment. (Jn 3;1-21) It also introduces the theme of Jesus’ “lifting up.” (Jn 2:13) 3) The final testimony of the Baptizer develops the symbolic image of the bridegroom introduced in the first sign. It also associates receptivity to the gift of the divine Breath with the theme of judgment. Those who accept the Breath escape judgment, those who refuse Her stand judged by their unbelief. (Jn 3:27-36) 4) The conversation with the Samaritan woman introduces the theme of living water and develops the theme of the purification of temple worship. (Jn 4:9-17) 5) The conversation with the disciples in Samaria introduces the theme of universal salvation. (Jn 4:31-42) 6) The cure of the nobleman’s son introduces the theme of the importance of believing in Jesus without seeing the risen Christ with one’s own eyes. (Jn 4:43-54)
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God’s offer of salvation and forgiveness fall under divine judgment. (Jn 3:14-21) The first discourse, which follows Jesus’ sabbath cure of a cripple, asserts that the Father, although possessed of the divine authority to judge, has entrusted all judgment into the hands of His incarnate Son by sending Him to proclaim the truth to the world. (Jn 5:24, 27) Jesus’ proclamation of divine truth effects judgment because one stands judged by the way in which one chooses to respond to Him. (Jn 5:22) Moreover, those who assent to the truth to which Jesus testifies also consent to the witnesses who corroborate Jesus’ testimony: 1) the Father who sanctions, Jesus’ testimony by the works He performs, 2) the Baptizer, and 3) the Mosaic scriptures. (Jn 5:31-47) The bread-of-life discourse, delivered at the second Johannine Passover, dramatizes Johannine judgment as Jesus’ faithless disciples reject Him message of wisdom and real eucharistic presence. Their rejection of the truth which Jesus incarnates places them under divine judgment. (Jn 6:41-66) The discourse at Tabernacles prolongs that judgment as “the Jews,” who again include Jesus’ faithless disciples, repudiate Jesus’ divinity. (Jn 7:31-36, 8:12-58) The discourse at Tabernacles recalls a forensic theme from the discourse on the sabbath: namely, that those who consent to the testimony of those witnesses who corroborate Jesus’ witness will consent to Jesus’ own testimony as well. (Jn 7:19, 8:16-19) The discourse then embellishes the theme of judgment with new insights. It proclaims that those who refuse to believe in Jesus judge by appearances and by human standards only. As a consequence, they fail to see deeply into the mystery which He embodies. (Jn 7:24, 8:15) [The Sanhedrin exemplifies this kind of obtuseness when it unjustly condemns Jesus. (Jn 7:45-52, 9:39)] The discourse at Tabernacles also asserts that Jesus could pass judgment on His adversaries but that He refrains from doing so at present in obedience to His Father, since He comes to save, not to judge, the world. (Jn 8:15-16; cf. Jn 3:14-21) The Father, however, who cares for Jesus’ glory, pronounces ultimate judgment on Jesus. Jesus’ enemies do not, then, pass final judgment on Him. The Father “judges” Jesus by empowering Him to lay down His life and to take it up again. The Father’s judgment reverses the judgment of Jesus’ adversaries. (Jn 10:17-18) The discourse after Jesus’ sabbath miracle enunciates another theme to which the Beloved Disciple gives incremental doctrinal development: namely, Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Jesus’ sabbath miracles manifest the perfection of His obedience to the Father. They reveal that the Father has entrusted the Son with the keys of judgment and of life. The perfection of Jesus’ obedience to the Father ensures the justice of the final judgment He will pass on those who reject Him. (Jn 5:19-30)
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The discourse on the bread-of-life embellishes these same themes with the following four points. 1) The Father, who seals the Son’s testimony by empowering the signs which Jesus performs, sends the Son as the bread of life and as the embodiment of divine wisdom. Consent to that wisdom frees one from a final judgment of repudiation and guarantees a share in risen life. (Jn 6:35-40) 2) Jesus’ testimony to the Father expresses His unique knowledge of heavenly events which in His divine pre-existence He Himself personally witnessed. (Jn 6:46-47) 3) Jesus’ power to impart risen life reveals the fact that He himself draws His own life from the Father. (Jn 6:57) 4) The Father draws to the Son all those who consent to Him in faith. (Jn 6:44) The discourse at Tabernacles further develops the theme of Jesus’ relationship to the Father. The discourse first reasserts that Jesus’ mission by the Father manifests that Jesus draws His life from the Father and knows the Father with a privileged intimacy. (Jn 7:28-29) The discourse then develops Jesus’ relationship to the Father in the following new ways. The selflessness of Jesus’ obediential testimony to the Father manifests the truth of what He says. Jesus risks His very life for the truth which He proclaims. (Jn 7:16-19) Jesus’ return to the Father will also manifest the truth of His testimony to the Father. (Jn 7:33-36, 8:14-15) Jesus’ origin from and with the Father sanctions His personal invocation of the divine name I AM. (Jn 8:23-24, 58) So does His “lifting up” on the cross and in glory. (Jn 8:23-24) The Father glorifies the Son. (Jn 8:54) The discourse at the feast of Dedication adds the following insights into Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Jesus’ unique obediential knowledge of the Father empowers Him to die for His sheep and therefore reveals Him as the divine shepherd of Israel. (Jn 10:7-16) The Father loves Jesus, the good shepherd, for His willingness to die for His sheep. (Jn 10:17) The Father raises Jesus by empowering Him both to lay down His life freely and to take it up again freely. (Jn 10:17-18) The mutual indwelling of Father and Son, which Jesus’ selfless obedience to the Father manifests, guarantees the truth of the judgment accomplished in the Son’s proclamation of divine truth. (Jn 10:36-38) The discourse at Tabernacles also illumines Jesus’ relationship to the Father by introducing the theme of Jesus’ return to the Father. The discourse links faith in Jesus’ origin from the Father to the theme of His return to the Father. It does so in the following ways. 1) Only those who consent to Jesus’ origin from the Father and consequent unity with the Father will be able to follow Him in His return to the Father. (Jn 7:28-36, 8:23-24) 2) Unbelief blinds one simultaneously to Jesus’ divine origins and to the destiny of union with God which His return to the Father reveals. (Jn 8:14-15) 3) Those who refuse to believe in Jesus’ divine origin (and, therefore by implication, in His divine destiny) have Satan as their father. (Jn 8:42-47)
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The Beloved Disciple also develops the theme of pneumatic rebirth incrementally and allusively across the discourses. As we saw above, the idea of baptism through water and the Breath develops the theme of adoptive sonship introduced in the Prologue. One becomes a child of God through rebirth in water and the Breath. That same Breath-baptism also fulfills Jesus’ promise of the living water. (Jn 1:12-13, 24-34, 4:9-17) The other two discourses develop these themes further. The bread-of-life discourse links the gift of the Breath to the purification of temple worship by pointing to eucharistic worship as the Breath-inspired prayer which replaces temple liturgy. Breath-inspired eucharistic prayer also consents to Jesus’ real eucharistic presence. (6:59-63) The discourse at Tabernacles links the gift of the living water to the outpouring of the Breath effected by the risen Christ. (Jn 7:37-39, 20:21-23) As we shall see, the last discourse will portray Her as the presence of the risen Christ. The discourse at Tabernacles develops slightly the theme of universal salvation. As we saw above, Jesus’ instructions to the disciples in Samaria introduce the theme of universal salvation. The discourse at Tabernacles develops this theme ironically. The discourse hints that, after Jesus’ return to the Father, He will “teach the Greeks.” In fact, He will do so by pouring out upon them the enlightening Breath of God. (Jn 7:35-36) This cryptic hint foreshadows the attempt of “Greeks” see Jesus during His final Jerusalem ministry. (Jn 12:21-22) The discourse at Tabernacles also proclaims that the universality of the salvation which Jesus brings also results from the fact the He has come in order to illumine the whole world. (Jn 8:12) Finally, two Johannine discourses give incremental allusive development to a Johannine theology of glory. In John’s prologue, the incarnation makes the divine glory (doxa) manifest. (Jn 1:14) The first sign begins the public revelation of that same divine glory. (Jn 2:11) The raising of Lazarus prolongs its initial revelation. (Jn 11:4-40) By implication, so do all of Jesus’ signs. Two discourses in the Book of Signs develop the theme of glory: the bread-of-life discourse and the discourse at Tabernacles. The bread-of-life discourse contrasts human approval (doxa) with the glory (doxa) which comes from God. One must prefer the glory of God to human approval. (Jn 7:18) The discourse during Tabernacles makes the following three points. 1) Jesus seeks only the glory of the Father. (Jn 7:18, 8:54) 2) The Father for His part glorifies the Son. (Jn 8:54) 3) When Jesus Himself experiences glorification, He fulfills His promise of the living water by pouring forth the divine Breath. (Jn 7:37-39) I have traced five doctrinal themes developed across the discourses in the Book of Signs: 1) judgment, 2) Jesus’ relationship to the Father, 3) pneumatic rebirth, 4) universal salvation, and 5) the revelation of divine
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glory. Allusion links these themes to one another. It also links them to the last discourse, which develops them still further and applies them specifically to the disciples. Moreover, as one might expect, the last discourse, which occurs in the Book of Glory, develops at some length a Johannine theology of glory. In what follows, I shall first consider the structure of the last discourse. Then I shall reflect on its use of literary allusion in order to develop specific doctrinal themes. Allusive Linkages in the Last Discourse The last discourse, as we have seen, underwent redactional amplification. In its original form, the last discourse fell into two distinct but interrelated parts. In part one, Jesus reflected on the saving significance of His departure. In part two, He promised the “other witness” who would guide the disciples in His absence. Part two also described the activity of the “other witness” in the disciples and ended with the promise of the eschatological gift of peace. (Jn 15:1-16:33) The supplement to the last discourse endows the entire discourse with a rough chiastic structure. The final section of the supplement (Jn 16:16-33) develops the same theme as the first part of the original discourse (Jn 13:31-14:14): namely, Jesus’ departure and eventual return to the disciples. The supplement’s second section (Jn 15:18-16:15) develops the same themes as the second part of the original discourse (Jn 14:15-31): namely, the coming of the “other witness” and Her activity in the disciples. At the heart of the chiasm lies the parable of the vine and the branches and the importance of mutual indwelling through love. (Jn 15:1-17) The expanded discourse concludes with Jesus’ priestly prayer. The prayer divides into three parts. In part one, Jesus beseeches the Father to reveal His Son’s divine glory and to do so as a reward for Jesus’ own glorification of the Father in the course of His ministry. (Jn 17:1-5) In part two, Jesus asks the Father to protect His disciples as they confront a hostile world. Jesus also consecrates the disciples to share in the priestly sacrifice of His own passion. (Jn 17:9-19) In part three, Jesus then prays for all of those who will believe in Him because of the disciples’ witness. Confronted with a badly divided community, the Beloved Disciple has Jesus pray especially that future believers will live united to one another in a way which manifests the loving union of Father and Son. Finally, Jesus prays that, by reverencing the divine name which both He and the Father share, the disciples will one day also share in His risen glory.17 (Jn 17:20-26) 17. Cf. NJBC, 61: 170-205; Brown, The Gospel of John, II, pp. 605-782; Hänchen, Commentary on John, II, pp. 115-159; John L. Boyle, “The Last Discourse (Jn 13, 31-16:33) and Prayer (Jn 17): Some Observations on Their Unity and Development,” Biblica, 56(1975), pp. 210-222; Henri van den Bussche, Le discours d’adieu de Jésus: Commentaire des chapitres 13 à 17 de l’évangile selon saint Jean, translated by C. Charlier
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The last discourse embellishes four themes already developed across the preceding discourses: namely, judgment, Jesus’ relationship to the Father, pneumatic enlightenment, and especially the revelation of divine glory. Let us ponder each of these doctrinal themes in turn. I begin with the theme of judgment. The book of signs concludes with a brief account of Jesus’ final Jerusalem ministry. It includes Jesus’ triumphal entry (without a concomitant cleansing of the temple) and the story of the Father’s verbal testimony to Jesus. In explaining the Father’s testimony to the crowds, Jesus announces that His lifting up on the cross and in risen glory will pass judgment on the world and its sinfulness. That announcement links the revelation of divine glory to the theme of judgment. (Jn 12:31-32) The doctrinal appendix to the last discourse also reflects on the theme of judgment. The parable of the vine and the branches, which, as we have seen, provides the total discourse with its chiastic center, discloses the fate of those who stand under divine judgment: namely, they will be consumed when confronted with the fire of divine holiness. (Jn 15:5-6) The supplement also names the Breath of the risen Christ as the one who will carry on the judgment begun in Jesus’ ministry. By inspiring the disciples’ testimony to Jesus, She will reverse the false judgment which the world pronounced on Him. She will proclaim the world’s sinfulness in condemning Jesus as a sinner. She will unmask the world’s injustice when it passed false judgment on God’s Son. Instead, the divine Breath of truth will reveal Jesus as the source of divine justice. Finally, in reversing the world’s judgment on Jesus, the “other witness” will make it clear that in God’s eyes the world itself stands condemned before the judgment seat of God for its violence and unbelief. (Jn 16:8-11) The parable of the vine and the branches develops a second theme: namely, the theme of the mutual indwelling of Jesus and His disciples. That mutual indwelling engages Jesus’ relationship to the Father. Jesus’ obedient love of the Father manifests the perfect, mutual indwelling of Father and Son. In like manner, the disciples’ loving fidelity to all of and P. Goidts (Tournai: Castermann, 1959); Charles Hauret, “Les adieux du Seigneur (Jean XIII-XVII): Charte de vie apostolique (Paris: J. Gablada, 1952); Joseph Huby, Le discours de Jesus après le Cène; suivi d’une étude sur la connaissance de foi dans Saint Jean (Paris: Beauschene, 1933); Wilhelm Oehler, Das Wort des Johannes an die Gemeinde: Evangelium Johannes 15-17; Johannes Briefe und Offenbarung des Johannes (Gütersloh: C. Bertelsman, 1938); H. Leonard Pass, The Glory of the Father: A Study of S. John XIII-XVII (London: A.R. Mowbray, 1935), Henry Barclay Swete, The Last Discourse and Prayer of our Lord: A Study of John XIV- XVII (London: Macmillan, 1914); Jürgen Becke, “Die Abscheidsreden Jesu im Johannesevangelium,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 61(1970), pp. 215-246; Odo Schnelle, “Die Abschiedsreden im Johannesevangelium,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 80(1989), pp. 64-79.
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Jesus’ commandments insures that Jesus dwells in them and they in Him. (Jn 15:5-13) The fruitfulness of the disciples’ lives glorifies the Father, as did Jesus’ own testimony to the Father. (Jn 15:8, 17:4-5) The Father for His part has already pruned the disciples through the words which Jesus has already spoken to them. That pruning ensures their fruitful witness to Him and to His divine glory. (Jn 15:1-5, 16-17) Loving obedience to all of Jesus’ commands will, then, draw the disciples into the experience of mutual indwelling which Jesus and the Father share. That mutual indwelling will also reveal the Father’s glory and will express itself in answered prayer. (Jn 15:7-8; cf. 14:11-13) The first and last sections of the expanded discourse deal with Jesus return to the Father. Jesus’ return engages another important dimension of Jesus’ relationship to the Father. The first and last sections of the last discourse develop the following doctrinal points. 1) Jesus’ return to the Father will effect His own glorification at the Father’s hands. (Jn 13:31-32) 2)Jesus’ return to the Father does not threaten the disciples with judgment; but it does threaten His unbelieving adversaries. (Jn 8:21) 3) As for the disciples, Jesus’ return makes imperative their obedience to the new commandment of love; for mutual love makes them disciples. (Jn 13:33-35) Jesus’ return to the Father has very different consequences for believers and for unbelievers. Jesus’ departure will sever His connection with those who do not believe in Him. (Jn 21:8) Those, however, who do believe in Him will suffer only a temporary separation, because Jesus goes to prepare a place for them in the Father’s heavenly mansion and will return to conduct them there. (Jn 14:1-4) Jesus’ return to the disciples after a brief separation will, moreover, more than make up for the sorrow which His temporary departure and absence caused. In fact, Jesus’ return will reverse the positions of the disciples and the world. The world which rejoiced at Jesus’ death will find itself grief-stricken, while the disciples will recognize in the grief they suffered at Jesus’ temporary disappearance the birthing of new and indestructible life. Jesus’ return in risen glory will therefore suffuse the disciples with a joy which nothing can take from them. (Jn 16:16-22) Jesus Himself embodies the disciples’ way to the Father because He both incarnates divine truth and functions as the source of divine life. (Jn 14:6-8) The theme of Jesus’ return to the Father also blends with the theme of pneumatic enlightenment. Jesus’ departure to the Father prepares the coming of the “other witness.” Indeed, unless Jesus departs, She cannot come because Jesus’ resurrection effects the mission of the divine Breath in eschatological plentitude as the Breath of the risen Christ. (Jn 16:4b-7) In other words, Jesus’ return to the Father transforms Him into the Breath-baptizer and effects pneumatic enlightenment.
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The last discourse describes the action of the Breath in the following terms. As the “Breath of truth,” the “other witness” will teach the disciples to appropriate Jesus’ teachings. Hence, Jesus’ return to the Father will inaugurate a time of more perfect instruction for the disciples. (Jn 16:23-25; cf. 14:16) Knowledge of the divine Breath will result from receiving Her in faith and from Her divine indwelling in the disciples. (Jn 14:17) That indwelling will cause the disciples to dwell in one another through love and will reveal to them the mutual indwelling of Father and Son. (Jn 14:20-21) The Breath’s indwelling will also inspire the obedience of faith and will thus cause both Father and Son to dwell in the disciples. (Jn 14:23-24) Only dwelling in Jesus through obedience to His word insures the disciples’ fruitfulness. Cut off from Jesus and therefore from His words and from His Breath, the disciples can only wither and die. (Jn 15:1-6) Dwelling in Jesus will bear fruit, among other things, in answered prayer. (Jn 15:7-8) The fruitfulness of the disciples which manifests the divine indwelling also reveals their prior divine election in Christ. (Jn 15:16-17) The “other witness” will enliven the disciples by the gift of risen life. (Jn 14:19; cf. 3:13-14, 7:37-39) She will also impart an eschatological peace which the hostility of the world will have no power to disturb. (Jn 14:27-31) Finally, besides inspiring the disciples’ testimony before the world, the “other witness” will also disclose to them the eschatological future. She will speak only what the risen Christ tells Her to speak, just as Jesus Himself spoke only what the Father told Him to speak. (Jn 16:12-15) In its original form, the last discourse focused on the relationship of the “other witness” to the disciples. Those sections of the expanded discourse which deal with the “other witness” focus more on Her confrontation with the world. That confrontation, however, involves the disciples, since She confronts the world by inspiring the disciples’ witness to Jesus. She witnesses in their witness. In this context, the expanded discourse makes the following doctrinal points. Because discipleship unites one to Jesus, it attracts the world’s violent hostility. The world persecuted Jesus unjustly and without reason. Hence, His disciples can expect no better treatment. (Jn 15:18-27) The “other witness” will, however, confirm the disciples’ faithful witness to Jesus in the face of hostility, ostracism, and persecution, even unto death. (Jn 15:25-16:4) By setting the disciples in opposition to a violent and hostile world, their Breath-inspired testimony to Jesus causes them to share in His passion and sacrificial death. (Jn 17:15-19) Finally, the last discourse develops at some length a theology of divine glory as the historical manifestation of divine splendor. The Beloved Disciple introduces the theme of glory in the preface to the last discourse. The “hour” of Jesus’ return to the Father coincides with the Father’s glo-
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rification of the Son “in Himself.” (Jn 13:1, 31-32) The appendix to the original discourse further develops the same theme. The fruitfulness of the disciples which results from their dwelling in Jesus gives glory to the Father. (Jn 15:8) The testimony of the “other witness” in and through the disciples’ own testimony to Jesus will also manifest His divine glory. (Jn 16:14) The theology of glory developed in the last discourse also makes the following additional doctrinal points. The Father glorifies the Son in the resurrection so that the Son can continue to glorify the Father through the mission of the divine Breath. (Jn 17:1-2) The risen life which the Breath will impart communicates a share in the divine glory. (Jn 17:1-2) Risen life takes the form of an empowering enlightenment which enables people to recognize the divine glory embodied in Jesus and in His testimony to the Father. (Jn 17:2-4) The paschal mystery brings the historical revelation of divine glory to its culmination. Jesus’ glorification of the Father on earth took two forms: a) His proclamation of the Father’s words to the disciples and b) their acceptance of that word in faith. Jesus’ words glorify God by manifesting that He comes from the Father and speaks in the Father’s name. (Jn 17:4-8) The divine glory revealed in the resurrection manifests Jesus’ heavenly glory which He possessed with the Father even before the creation of the world. (Jn 17:4-5) The coming of the “other witness” prolongs the revelation of the divine glory begun in Jesus. Moreover, the Breath-inspired disciples will do greater works than Jesus Himself. Those works, their faith, and their testimony to the risen Christ will all manifest His glory, just as His teaching and performance of the works given Him by the Father manifested the Father’s glory. (Jn 14:12-16, 16:14-17, 17:9-11) The mutual indwelling in love of all believers manifests the glory which Jesus ever possessed in heaven before the creation of the world. (Jn 17:20-23) The gospel of John abounds in other allusive linkages. In this section, however, I have focused on the Beloved Disciple’s most distinctive use of literary allusion: namely, in order to develop the same doctrine incrementally across the discourses. I have argued that such incremental doctrinal development dramatizes the waxing of the light in its struggle against the forces of darkness. I have also suggested that it exemplifies the Beloved Disciple’s most characteristic use of literary allusion. The section which follows ponders another important thematic linkage in the fourth gospel: namely, the theme of “open messianism.”
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(III) As we have seen, the theme of the messianic secret plays an important role in Markan narrative Christology. It repeatedly reminds the reader that through the gift of faith, he or she is really in the know about Jesus’ true identity as Son of God, messiah, and suffering servant. The revelation of the messianic secret also dramatizes the inevitable disclosure of the full truth about Jesus: namely, His identity as both Son of God and suffering servant. The other synoptic evangelists, as we have seen, assimilate, attenuate, and reinterpret the Markan messianic secret. In none of the synoptic gospels, however, does one find the kind of open messianism which characterizes the fourth gospel. In the fourth gospel, the Baptizer’s failure to recognize Jesus depicts the latter initially as a hidden messiah. (Jn 1:31) Once, however, the Baptizer sees the Breath of God descend on Jesus and testifies to its significance, the messianic character of Jesus’ mission enters the public record. (Jn 1:32-34) The disciples acknowledge Jesus as the messiah from their very first contact with Him. (Jn 1:35-51) Jesus in talking to the Samaritan woman tells her explicitly that He is the messiah. (Jn 4:26) After Jesus’ sojourn in their midst the Samaritans have no doubt about His messianic identity. (Jn 4:29, 42) The Johannine Jesus proclaims His messianic identity and authority publicly and openly. (Jn 10:24-5) During the feast of Tabernacles and in His final Jerusalem ministry, Jesus’ adversaries debate whether or not He is the messiah; but their refusal to acknowledge it clearly places them on the side of the forces of darkness. (Jn 7:26-31, 41-2; 12:34) During the trial of the man born blind, his confession of Jesus as messiah merits the former beggar’s expulsion from the synagogue. (Jn 9:22) In the course of the gospel narrative, three people—Nathanael, Peter, and Martha—confess publicly Jesus’ messianic identity. (Jn 1:49, 6:68-9, 11:27) Finally, the Beloved Disciple narrates the trial of Jesus before Pilate in such a way as to transform it into the ironic, public avowal by His enemies of His royal messianic claims. (Jn 18:28-19:22) In both the synoptic and Johannine traditions, Jesus possesses a special gift of discernment, an uncanny ability to read human hearts accurately. (Mk 2:8; Mt 9:4; Lk 5:22; Jn 2:23-25) Moreover, on one occasion in the synoptic gospels—namely, when He gives His disciples instructions for preparing the passover meal—Jesus exhibits something like ESP. He shows an extraordinary and accurate knowledge of events before they happen. (Mk 14:12-16; Mt 26:1-5; Lk 22:1-6) The Beloved Disciple, however, gives even more narrative prominence to Jesus’ foreknowledge of events. In the Johannine tradition, Jesus’ not only unusual but almost preternatural knowledge of future events reveals His messianic identity. (Jn 1:47-51; 4:15-9, 39; 6:70-1) That foreknowledge includes Jesus’ advance
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knowledge of the “hour” of His passion and glorification. (Jn 2:4; 7:30; 8:20; 12:23-7; 13:32; 17:1) In this context, I find it interesting that for all his open proclamation of Jesus as the messiah, even the Beloved Disciple feels compelled to make it clear that Jesus Himself repudiated secular, Davidic messianism. To Nathanael’s profession of messianic faith, Jesus replies that the disciples have only begun to see into the mystery of His own person. That mystery embodies depths of truth which utterly transcend Davidic messianism. (Jn 1:51) After the multiplication of the loaves and fish, Jesus refuses to allow the enthusiastic crowds to make Him king. (Jn 6:15) When the Johannine Jesus enters Jerusalem, as in the synoptics, He orchestrates the event in a way which dramatizes the fact that He comes, not as a bone-crushing, warlike Davidic messiah, but as a humble prince of peace. (Jn 12:14-5) Finally, in His exchange with Pilate, the Johannine Jesus makes it quite clear that the kingdom He proclaims has nothing to do with either worldly kingdoms or power politics. His kingdom rests instead on the proclamation of the divine truth incarnate in His person. (Jn 18:33-38a) Paradoxically, then, in its own narrative fashion the fourth evangelist’s open messianism makes many of the same points about Jesus’ messianic identity as does the Markan messianic secret. Jesus confronts the reader of the fourth gospel as messiah, but not as a Davidic messiah. His messianic dignity flows rather from the divine truth which He incarnates and to which He bears witness. As in the synoptics, in Jesus’ person the figures of messiah and suffering servant blend. The kingdom Jesus establishes has nothing to do with worldly kingdoms founded on coercion and violence. Instead, Jesus confronts the reader as prince of peace who establishes His peaceable kingdom by sending the sin-forgiving Breath to reconcile humans to God and to one another.18 (IV) This first section of volume three has argued that the gospel of John marks a significant shift in New Testament narrative Christology: the shift from moral to doctrinal concerns. Both John and the synoptics see faith and practice as intimately linked. Both narrative traditions seek to advance Christological knowing through moral assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. The synoptic writers, however, tend to present doctrinal beliefs as the given context for moral transformation in Jesus’ 18. Cf. M.W.G. Stibbe, “The Elusive Christ: A New Reading of the Fourth Gospel,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 44(1991), pp. 19-38; John Painter, “Quest in John 1-4,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 41(1991), pp. 33-70; “Quest and Rejection Stories in John,” Journal for the Study of the New Testament, 36(1988), pp.17-46.
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image through baptism in His Breath. In the synoptic narratives, therefore, rhetorical emphasis falls on moral transformation in faith rather than on the faith which contextualizes that transformation. The fourth gospel switches rhetorical emphasis to doctrine. Doctrinal orthodoxy preoccupies the Beloved Disciple. Orthopraxis in Johannine theology expands to include orthodoxy much more explicitly than in the synoptics. One must do the deed of faith. The Johannine Jesus harangues his unbelieving adversaries again and again about His unity with the Father, His divine pre-existence, and His right to use the divine name I AM. His disciples assent to that truth and thus perform the deed of faith. In the Johannine letters, the dissidents’ violation of the law of love by departure from the community of orthodox faith proves their heterodoxy and lack of faith. Had they believed the truth Jesus incarnates from the beginning, they would never have departed. Do the doctrinal preoccupations of the fourth evangelist cause him to write a “higher” Christology than the synoptics? In the first volume of this study I suggested that Christologists should replace the terms “high Christology” and “low Christology” with “good Christology” and “bad Christology.” Good Christology takes into account all the pertinent revelatory evidence in formulating a Christology. Bad Christology does not. Hence, a “high” Christology which fails finally to do justice to Jesus’ humanity qualifies as bad Christology. So does a “low” Christology which fails to do justice to His divinity. We need to abandon the terms “high” and “low” Christology for another reason: their vagueness. Popular usage of both terms has transformed them into “weasel words” which blur a spectrum of different meanings. Vague terms betray the human mind into badly muddled thinking, because one cannot verify or falsify a vague hypothesis until one clarifies what it means. All too often, however, contemporary Christologists rest content with vagueness. If by a “high” Christology one means a Christology which affirms the divinity of Jesus, then Johannine Christology ranks no “higher” than synoptic Christology. The two traditions use a variety of narrative strategies in order to assert Jesus’ divinity; but both make the assertion, including the gospels of Mark and of Luke. If, however, by a “high” Christology one means a narrative Christology which insists explicitly and strongly on Jesus’ divine pre-existence prior to becoming human, then Johannine Christology obviously ranks “higher” than synoptic Christology. As we saw in volume one, the encounter with the risen Christ revealed Him as Breath-baptizer and therefore as divine. Those who saw the risen Christ experienced His divinity directly, through a graced and empowering enlightenment. The first Christian theologians had, however, to infer his pre-existence from His divinity. The synoptic tradition did not make
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that inference explicitly; the Johannine did. So does any “good” contemporary Christology. If, moreover, by “high” Christology one means a Christology which projects into Jesus’ humanity traits which would seem to belong properly only to God, then Johannine Christology again ranks “higher” than synoptic Christology. This aspect of Johannine Christology causes, however, more problems than it solves. In both the synoptic and Johannine traditions the humanity of Jesus reveals His divinity. In the synoptics, Jesus in his cosmological miracles does what only God can do: He calms the waters of chaos and walks upon the waves. Jesus does the same in the Johannine tradition; but, in addition, the Johannine Jesus throughout His ministry displays an extraordinary human awareness of His personal divinity and of His pre-existence with the Father. The Jesus of the fourth gospels speaks habitually from the atemporal standpoint of the paschal mystery. He also exhibits a more detailed knowledge of the future than does the Jesus of the synoptics. These shifts in narrative rhetoric reflect the Beloved Disciple’s passionate concern to vindicate Jesus’ divinity. I shall consider these doctrinal issues in the following section when I examine the question of Jesus’ human consciousness. Here it suffices to note that the fourth gospel raises in a narrative context a speculative question which narrative theology itself cannot solve: namely, the question of “the communication of traits (communicatio idiomatum).” The question of the “communication of traits” asks: Can one predicate of the humanity of Jesus traits which belong properly only to the divinity? By the same token, can one predicate of the divinity traits which belong properly to the humanity? It would take generations for the fathers of the Church even to formulate this question with any logical clarity. It would take theologians even longer to come up with a plausible answer. Narrative Christology cannot answer the question of the communication of traits because the question raises a logical issue. Narrative Christology, however, eschews logical thinking for intuitive thinking. It therefore lacks the speculative tools to answer a very vexing question which Johannine Christology by its narrative structure begins inchoately to raise. When narrative patterns of thinking raise logical questions which they themselves cannot answer, then they have reached the theological limits of what narrative can accomplish. Appropriately, then, the fourth gospel brings this consideration of New Testament narrative Christology to a close. In the following section, I shall reflect inferentially on Christological doctrine. There I shall address the issue of the communication of traits. Its satisfactory resolution, however, presupposes the prior satisfactory reso-
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lution of a host of other doctrinal issues of extraordinary complexity. Chief among them, of course, ranks the question of the hypostatic union and what it might mean in a contemporary context. Here perhaps it suffices to note what the Beloved Disciple’s doctrinal preoccupations have done to gospel narrative. The synoptic Jesus with considerable historical plausibility calls people to repentance and to submission to the practical demands of life under God’s reign. The Johannine Jesus, by contrast, spends His entire public career discoursing to unbelieving “Jews” about the doctrinal issues which divided the Johannine community and which caused its expulsion from the synagogue. As a consequence, the Johannine portrait of Jesus loses historical credibility through anachronism. The historical implausibility of the Johannine portrait of Jesus dramatizes, as a consequence, the awkwardness of using gospel narrative in order to resolve post-resurrection doctrinal debates. The same awkwardness nudges the theological mind to abandon intuitive forms of thinking for inferential reflection on Christological and trinitarian doctrine. The fourth gospel brings one to the threshold of patristic theology in yet another way. It dramatizes the intimate connection between Christological and trinitarian thinking. In the first volume of this study I suggested that the current Christological crisis results in part from theologians’ failure to pursue Christology and trinitarian theology simultaneously. These two doctrinal strains developed in tandem during the patristic era. As a consequence, no reformulation of either does justice to the Christian tradition unless it successfully coordinates both doctrines. In the doctrinal section of this study which follows, I shall attempt to overcome this particular deficiency in contemporary Christological thinking. Nor can one do justice to Johannine theology unless one coordinates Christological with trinitarian doctrine. Johannine narrative deals brilliantly with both. The Christomonism of contemporary theological thinking has focused far too narrowly on the alleged “highness” of Johannine Christology. Commentators have misinterpreted that “highness” to mean that among the four gospels only the last asserts the divinity of Jesus unambiguously. In fact, all four evangelists assert the divinity of Jesus clearly to anyone attuned to intuitive, narrative forms of expression. The Beloved Disciple differs from the synoptic evangelists, not in asserting Jesus’ divinity, but in insisting that Jesus’ divinity necessarily implies His divine pre-existence. Anyone who equates these two statements needs to study logic because they confuse a premise with its conclusion. The divinity of Jesus functions as the premise. That divinity entails as its logical consequence Jesus’ divine pre-existence. The apostles experienced Jesus as a divine reality in
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His resurrection appearances; but the apostolic Church had to infer Jesus’ pre-existence because in this world one has no experiential access to it. As I have already indicated, the Beloved Disciple insisted on Jesus’ pre-existence because he recognized the need to co-ordinate Christological and trinitarian faith. Besides vindicating Jesus’ divine pre-existence, however, the fourth evangelist also hammered out terminology for talking about the unity and trinity of God which anticipated some of the best insights of patristic trinitarian theology. The Beloved Disciple recognized the presence in the Christian Godhead of three distinct personal realities: the Father, the Son, and the Breath, whom he also called “the other Witness.” The fourth evangelist also developed a language for speaking about the unity of the members of the divine triad. They all qualify as “God”. They share an identity of life which John calls “Breath (pneuma).” One becomes a child of God when the indwelling Breath communicates to one a share in that same divine pneuma. The fathers of the Church will replace these Johannine terms with more abstract philosophical categories. They will call Father, Son, and Breath “hypostaseis,” and they will replace the terms “God” and “Breath” with “ousia.”The fourth evangelist, however, first made these theological distinctions, even though he used Biblical language in order to do so. Moreover, in what concerns trinitarian theology, the Beloved Disciple did more than recognize the need to find a way of talking both about three distinct realities in the Christian God. He also formulated a theological explanation for the divine unity. Divine unity results from the mutual indwelling of Father, Son, and Breath. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple seems to have derived this explanation from reflection on the indwelling of the risen Christ in the Christian community through His mission of the “other witness.” Maximus the Confessor and John of Damascus would call that indwelling “perichoresis.” The council of Ferrara-Florence would canonize it as a legitimate way of conceiving the unity of the trinity. (DS 1331) Nevertheless, the fourth evangelist first thought up the idea. Substance philosophy finds the idea of mutual indwelling virtually unintelligible, since substances by definition cannot exist in one another as in a subject of inhesion. Nevertheless, in what follows I shall argue that “mutual indwelling” provides the best way of conceiving the unity of the trinity. As we shall see, the mutual existence of the divine persons in one another effects in them an identity rather than a mere similarity of life. Moreover, I shall show that mutual indwelling becomes thinkable when one shifts from a metaphysics of substance to a relational metaphysics of experience.
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I shall return to these doctrinal considerations in the section which follows. Here it suffices to note that the Beloved Disciple recognized before any other Christian thinker the need to coordinate Christological and trinitarian thinking. He also effected that coordination with genuine brilliance. In Johannine theology, the incarnation reveals the trinity at the same time that the trinity contextualizes the incarnation. Moreover, the Beloved Disciple articulated a Biblical language for speaking consistently about both mysteries. These Johannine insights mark a significant doctrinal advance over synoptic Christology. As a consequence, Johannine narrative Christology forces doctrinal Christologists to face at an inferential level the insights which the Beloved Disciple reached intuitively. Doctrinal Christology must find a logically consistent way of speaking both about the Word made flesh and about the divine, triune reality which He reveals. To these complex issues I turn in the section which follows.
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Part 2 Doctrinal Christology Chapter 6 Issues in Post-Chalcedonian Christology In the third chapter of volume one, I proposed testing the capacity of foundational theology to provide an adequate speculative basis for resolving the current Christological crisis. Foundational theology derives its criteria for doctrinal orthodoxy from a strictly normative insight into the forms and dynamics of conversion. Conversion, as we have seen, comes in five forms. Affective conversion seeks to make intuitive beliefs psychologically responsible by promoting healthy emotional development. Intellectual conversion measures the truth or falsity of both intuitive and inferential judgments about reality as well as the adequacy or inadequacy of the frames of reference in which the mind reaches those judgments. Personal moral conversion measures the extent to which decisions about interpersonal relationships respect human rights and duties. Socio-political conversion measures the decisions which shape institutional policy by the extent to which they promote the common good. Religious conversion measures human responses to the historical self-revelation of God by their conformity to the demands of that self-revelation. Christian conversion finds the reality of God normatively but not exhaustively revealed in Jesus and in the Breath He sends. Both a metaphysics of experience and the five forms of conversion structure the argument of the foundational Christology developed in these three volumes. Foundational Christology asks: How does commitment to Jesus Christ as the normative historical self-revelation of God transvalue in faith the other four forms of conversion? One form of conversion transvalues another by causing one to re-evaluate it in the light of a novel frame of reference. Christian conversion transvalues the other forms of conversion in the frame of reference created by faith in the God historically revealed in Jesus Christ and in His Holy Breath. As Christian conversion transforms an initial global commitment of religious faith into a psychologically responsible, intuitive perception of the future, Christian conversion infuses into human experience the theological virtue of hope. Volume one derived a normative insight into Christological hope from Pauline theology and from the book of Revelation.
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As Christian conversion transforms an initial global faith into the intuitive and inferential beliefs which intellectual conversion renders methodologically responsible, Christian conversion infuses into human experience the theological virtue of faith. The narrative Christology developed in volume two and in the first part of this volume studied the intuitive dimensions of Christological faith. The doctrinal Christology developed in this section endows Christological hope and faith with inferential precision. Like narrative Christology, therefore, doctrinal Christology deals with religious beliefs. Doctrinal Christology, however, advances beyond intuitive expressions of Christological faith by coordinating felt intuitive judgments about the God revealed in Jesus Christ with logically formulated inferential judgments about the same divine reality. Traditionally, doctrinal Christology treats two interrelated issues: the person of Jesus and His saving work. Doctrinal reflection on the person of Jesus must deal one way or the other with Chalcedonian Christology. Doctrinal Christology must also coordinate its account of Jesus’ person with its account of the triune God whom Jesus and the paschal mystery reveal. The first three chapters of this section deal with the doctrine of Jesus’ person. The remaining chapters deal with the doctrine of His saving work. As we shall see, when one approaches the work of Jesus with pragmatic logic, it clarifies the doctrine of His person and renders it practical. Any fallible, rational Christological hypothesis requires validation. Before one can verify or falsify any hypothesis, one needs to clarify it by explicitating its operational consequences. A Christological hypothesis seeks to interpret rationally and inferentially the proper object of all foundational Christological reflections: namely, the nature of Christological of knowing. By “Christological knowing” I mean the insight into Jesus Christ which results from practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. The logical, inferential interpretation of Christological knowing requires two kinds of verification. One must verify such a theological hypothesis both historically and morally. Let us try to understand why. Christological knowing assimilates one to an historically revealed religious reality. Hence, logical Christological doctrines must find scholarly verification in the historical and eschatological reality of Jesus and of the paschal mystery. This section of volume three deals primarily with the historical and eschatological verification of doctrinal Christology. Christological doctrine, however, interprets a unique kind of knowing. One knows Jesus Christ with Christological faith through practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. An historically verified Christological doctrine insures that one has correctly interpreted the his-
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torical, personal, eschatological, religious norm to which Christological knowing assimilates believers practically. The ultimate verification of a Christological hypothesis consists, however, in the lived embodiment of the practical consequences of this or that Christological doctrine. The third and final section of this volume examines how one ought to go about verifying Christological faith practically, through moral assimilation to Jesus in faith and in the power of His Breath. The historical verification of any Christological doctrine requires the logical explicitation of its operational consequences. Its lived verification requires putting those consequences into practice. As a consequence, the historical verification and the practical verification of Christological doctrines both have an intimate relationship to one another. The historical verification clarifies the doctrine’s operational consequences and makes it liveable. The living of those consequences, however, provides foundational Christological doctrine with its ultimate justification when it proves that the doctrine in question does indeed foster Christological knowing. The intimate connection between these two forms of verification dramatizes the inseparability of doctrinal from practical Christology. As a consequence, one can interpret Christological doctrine adequately only when one employs a sound pragmatic and relational logic of consequences. I summarize here the Jesusology developed in volume one for two reasons. First of all, having used these three volumes as Christological texts, I know well that by the time most people reach this point in a lengthy argument, they have largely forgotten the methodological presupposition and philosophical components of the account of Jesus’ humanity which I developed in volume one. Second, that method and metaphysics form an integral and constitutive part of the doctrinal argument about to unfold. Those readers who feel that they have mastered the method and metaphysics to which I refer may, then, prefer to skip the section which follows. Others, I expect, will find it helpful. This chapter, then, prepares the way for the experiential construct of the hypostatic union developed in the following chapter. It does so in two ways. First, it summarizes the Jesusology developed in volume one. Second, it analyzes dialectically issues in post-Chalcedonian Christology with which any systematic Christological doctrine must deal. The Jesusology formulated in volume one proposes a scientifically plausible, philosophical construct of Jesus’ humanity. No other Christology in the entire history of Christian thought has ever invoked a scientifically plausible, philosophical construct of Jesus’ humanity. That fact alone speaks volumes about the reasons for the contemporary Christological crisis. The Jesusology developed in volume one marks, then, an important first in the evolution of Christological thinking. Moreover, even though it deals with Jesusology rather than with Christology as such, a
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scientifically plausible, experiential, philosophical construct of Jesus’ humanity makes an important contribution to Christological doctrine: namely, it supplies doctrinal Christology with a fallibilistically verified understanding of Jesus’ human reality. That reality doctrinal Christology must re-interpret inferentially in the light of the paschal mystery. This chapter prepares the inferential formulation of an experiential Christology in a second way: namely, it analyzes dialectically historical issues with which an inferential interpretation of Christological knowing must deal. In what follows, I shall examine four sets of issues: 1) those raised by theological attempts to explain Chalcedon; 2) those raised by rationalistic, Enlightenment Christologies; 3) those raised by neo-orthodox Christologies and by contemporary New Testament Christology; and 4) those raised by contemporary philosophical Christologies. This chapter’s argument, then, divides into five parts. Part one summarizes the Jesusology developed in volume one. Part two examines dialectically issues in the development of post-Chalcedonian Christology. Part three reflects on questions posed by Enlightenment Christologies. Part four ponders the Christological issues which Protestant neo-orthodoxy and contemporary New Testament theology raise. Part five analyzes the philosophical Christologies of Karl Rahner and of Edward Schillebeeckx. The chapter which follows this one invokes criteria derived from a strictly normative account of conversion in order to authenticate Chalcedonian Christological doctrine. In a subsequent chapter, I propose an experiential construct of the hypostatic union coordinate with the Jesusology developed in volume one. That construct will argue that in Jesus one encounters the finite human experience of being a divine person. Since the incarnation reveals the trinity, chapter nine in this section coordinates the construct of incarnation proposed in chapter eight with an experiential construct of the trinity. Subsequent chapters in this section deal with different aspects of Jesus’ saving work viewed as the historical revelation of His person and mission. (I) I begin this chapter by summarizing the Jesusology developed in volume one. I contextualized that Jesusology by pondering the issues raised by Logos-anthropos Christology. Logos-anthropos Christology insisted that the incarnate Son of God possesses a complete humanity. It responded to a heterodox Logos-sarx Christology in which the divine Logos replaced Jesus’ human soul. As a result, in Logos-sarx Christology, Jesus’ humanity consisted only of a physical body. As we saw, Arius endorsed a heterodox, Logos-sarx understanding of the incarnation. In response, the Logos-anthropos Christology developed by the Cappadocian fathers and by other patristic thinkers reappropriated
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and developed Origen’s insight that Jesus possessed a complete human nature: a human soul as well as a human body. Among the Latin fathers, Hilary of Poitiers, Jerome, and Gaius Marius Victorinus developed similar doctrines. Hilary, however, began the doctrinal divinization of Jesus’ humanity which would one day culminate in the inflated Christologies of the middle ages. The council of Chalcedon, as we saw, endorsed the general thrust of Logos-anthropos Christology. It taught that Jesus has a complete human nature (physis). In the incarnate Son of God’s person (hypostasis) the human nature co-exists with the divine nature (physis) without blending into some kind of third reality. The council of Chalcedon was groping for a creedal formula which would heal the rupture in the Church which resulted from the excommunication of Nestorius, the patriarch of Antioch. At the council of Ephesus, Cyril, patriarch of Alexandria, led the attack upon Nestorius. A council of reconciliation, Chalcedon deliberately avoided endorsing any particular philosophical understanding of the key terms of its Christological creed: namely, hypostasis and physis. Nor did the council explain how the hypostasis brings together divinity and humanity without blending them into a third reality. The council’s vagueness invited further speculation on the precise significance of its teachings. Chalcedon, then, contented itself with setting general linguistic parameters for future discourse about the incarnation. It demanded that, however one may choose to define “hypostasis” and “physis,” Christologists who claim to express the shared faith of the Church must speak of only one subsistent divine reality in the Word made flesh. The council also required that orthodox Christology portray that subsistent reality as both fully divine and fully human. Finally, Chalcedon prescribed that Christologists in the future avoid blending divinity and humanity into some fictive “theandric” reality, as indeed the monophysites had. Chalcedon, in other words, left it to subsequent theological speculation to clarify the meaning of the catechetical formulas it endorsed.1 Some of the theologians who propounded a Logos-anthrôpos Christology displayed more philosophical ambition. I suggested in volume one 1. Cf. R.V. Sellers, The Council of Chalcedon: A Historical and Doctrinal Survey (London: S.P.C.K., 1953); Marcelo Merino, “El Articulo Christologico del Simbolo Constantinopolitano en los Credos Orientales de Siglo IV” in Christo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 477-498. For the post-Chalcedonian theological reflection which culminated in Constantinople II, see: Eugene M. Ludwig, O.F.M., Neo-Chalcedonism and the Council of 553 (Berkeley, CA: Doctoral Dissertation/The Graduate Theological Union, 1983). Constantinople II asserted more explicitly than Chalcedon the identity of the hypostatic reality incarnate in Jesus and the second person of the trinity. See also: G.L.C. Frank, “The Council of Constantinople II as a Model Reconciliation Council,” Theological Studies, 52(1991), pp. 636-650.
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that the Platonic account of human nature toward which patristic Logosanthrôpos Christology gravitated endorsed five philosophical fallacies which any contemporary account of the human must avoid: 1) Logos-anthrôpos Christology tended to acquiesce in substantial dualism. Like good Platonists, patristic theologians tended to understand humanity as two essentially distinct kinds of substance mysteriously united into a single subsistent reality: a spiritual substance, or soul, and a material substance or body. A credible contemporary account of Jesus’ humanity must avoid this and all other dualistic patterns of thinking. Dualism exemplifies a logical fallacy because it so conceives of interrelated realities as to render their relationship to one another unintelligible. 2) The defenders of Logos-anthrôpos Christology understood Christological doctrine soteriologically. They saw that the historical incarnation of God reveals simultaneously two things: the reality of God and the way humans must live if they hope to experience saving union with the divine reality. Unfortunately, however, the fathers in question tended to interpret the reality of God in the light of the cosmic dualism which Platonic thinking popularized. They conceived of God as essentially spiritual and immaterial. They therefore tended to perceive saving union with God as the spiritualization of human nature. In volume one, I argued that a credible contemporary account of Jesus’ humanity must avoid sundering spirit dualistically from matter. In the account of Jesus’ humanity, therefore, I avoided altogether the terms “spirit” and “matter.” 3) The philosophical conception of the human which the proponents of Logos-anthrôpos Christology popularized lapsed into yet a third kind of dualism: namely, operational dualism. This third form of dualism implied the other two. Having divided humanity into a spiritual soul and a material body and having defined the reality of God as essentially spiritual, Platonizing patristic theologians tended to endow the essentially spiritual powers of the soul, the intellect and the will, with privileged access to God. I argued that a plausible, contemporary understanding of humanity needs to avoid operational dualism along with cosmic and substantial dualism. With hints from the North American philosophical tradition, I sidestepped dualism by conceiving the humanity of Jesus in relational philosophical categories; and, as I just indicated, I also deliberately avoided using the terms “spirit” and “matter” in describing human experience. In what follows, I shall also avoid them in describing the reality of the triune God. 4) The proponents of Logos-anthrôpos Christology failed to develop an adequate understanding of the meaning of “person.” They used the term “hypostasis” in order to designate the particular subsisting reality we call
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Jesus, the Son of God and second member of the divine triad; but they left the term deliberately vague. The vagueness reflected in part a profound suspicion of the rationalizing tendencies which had produced the Arian heresy and which marked Arian polemic. Orthodox theology, even when informed by philosophical presuppositions, tended by contrast to insist on the ultimately mysterious character of the central realities of Christian faith. Such insistence demanded that theologians approach Christian doctrine contemplatively and reverently, not rationally and arrogantly. Any sound Christology needs, of course, to approach the mystery of the Word made flesh reverently and prayerfully. In the end, however, any adequate, contemporary, doctrinal Christology needs to come up with a plausible inferential account of the meaning of “humanity” and of “divinity.” It must also propose a credible descriptive definition of “person”; for until one clarifies the meaning of these key Christological terms, one cannot even begin to formulate an account of how humanity and divinity relate to one another in the person of Jesus. As we have already seen, much of the muddle in contemporary Christological thinking results from the lack of such terminological precision. It also flows from logical muddle: namely, from half-baked hypotheses whose unacceptable consequences go unexplored by those who formulate them. 5) Finally, the authors of Logos-anthropos Christology all tended to endorse the philosophical fallacy called “essentialism.” They did so because they thought like Greeks and because Greek philosophy, especially Platonism and Aristotelianism, projected a world-view which assumed that reality must resemble an unchanging idea, or essence. I argued in volume one that an adequate contemporary understanding of humanity must avoid all forms of philosophical essentialism. The construct of human experience which I developed recognized the existence of essences but refused to confuse them with principles of being. Rather an “essence” means an evaluation abstracted from the reality evaluated and the one doing the evaluation. Essences, in other words, function in the way in which one perceives reality; they do not constitute the “what” of perceived reality. Tendencies and decisions do. I also proposed in volume one that, besides avoiding the fallacies of Logos-anthropos Christology, any contemporary reformulation of the meaning of humanity needs to avoid the extreme pessimism of classical Protestant interpretations of human nature. It also needs to repudiate the extreme optimism of a neo-Thomistic construct of the human. Classical Protestantism erred in endorsing Augustine’s pessimistic doctrine of human nature. According to Augustine, sin so vitiates human choice that one lacks the freedom to desire anything good or virtuous without divine grace. Augustine insisted on the liberating effects of grace.
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By that he meant that grace alone empowers one to choose the good; but he left it vague whether or not a human nature determined to vice by its corruption or to virtue by grace still enjoys freedom of choice. Systematizing Augustinians, both Luther and Calvin insisted that an Augustinian understanding of human nature in fact ruled out in principle all freedom of choice. In classical Protestantism, either grace or the devil rides the will and determines its choices. Moreover, Calvin made the total depravity of human nature into the only legitimate lens for viewing theologically the incarnation of the Son of God. Only an incarnation of God could undo the ravages of sin and purify through the action of divine grace a fallen and completely polluted world. During the Reformation, Catholics and Protestants agreed on the utter necessity of grace; but they conceived human nature very differently. They therefore also disagreed about how nature and grace relate. The council of Trent eschewed Augustinian pessimism and endorsed the more moderate medieval view that human nature, left to itself, can, despite its sinfulness, nevertheless perform some morally good acts. As we saw in volume one, for a variety of historical reasons, Catholic theology has tended to endorse a Thomistic formulation of medieval anthropological optimism. Transcendental Thomism especially has developed that optimism to indefensible extremes. Transcendental Thomism finds in the spiritual power of the active intellect an insatiable craving for Being, for Goodness, for Truth. As a consequence, the human intellect allegedly enjoys a virtual infinity which endows it with an “unrestricted desire to know.” Transcendental Thomism interprets theologically the virtual infinity of the spiritual intellect and will either as “a natural desire for the beatific vision” or as “a supernatural existential.” In volume one, I argued that any adequate philosophical construct of humanity needs to interpret the results of contemporary scientific investigations of the human. Those results belie virtual intellectual infinity. Instead, they tend to substantiate the radical finitude of all human cognition. Ego inertia rather than an insatiable thirst for Truth and Being typifies human cognitive behavior. A Thomistic portrait of humanity also endorses two indefensible dualisms: operational and cosmic dualism. Operational dualism characterizes some human powers as essentially spiritual and others as essentially organic and material. As a consequence, operational dualism cannot explain the sensory origins of spiritual knowledge. Cosmic dualism defines eternity and time in such a way as to make their relationship to one another inconceivable. Moreover, despite Thomistic metaphysical insistence on the act of being, a Thomistic metaphysical anthropology still subscribes to an indefensible Aristotelian essentialism.
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In what concerns Christology, the inflated understanding of human nature promoted by Thomism gave rise in the middle ages to a correspondingly inflated Christology in which grace “divinized” the humanity of Jesus in unacceptable ways. In a Thomistic account of the incarnation, the human intellect of Jesus, like all other human intellects, has a natural desire for perfect union with God. Aquinas also fallaciously endorsed the Augustinian identification of the second person of the trinity with the mind or intellect of God. He therefore concluded that the immediate personal union of Jesus’ human intellect with the subsisting divine intellect meant that from the first moment of His conception Jesus enjoyed the beatific vision. As I have already indicated in the first volume, contemporary theologians generally reject this inflated account of Jesus’ graced human experience.In my judgment, a defensible contemporary account of human nature needs in addition to claim the middle ground between classical Protestant pessimism and classical Thomistic optimism. I found a genuine, if flawed, insight in the theological understanding of human nature defended by Jonathan Edwards. This American theological genius distanced himself from classical Protestant pessimism by arguing that human nature, left to itself, can indeed choose naturally good things; but he also argued that without the assistance of God’s Breath, human nature, left to its own resources cannot love in fact with the universality which the gospel requires, even if it aspires to the ideal of universal human benevolence. While I disagree with the logical terms on which Edwards argued this position and with its deterministic, predestinationist, and rigoristic connotations, such an understanding of human nature and of the practical workings of divine grace nevertheless rings true to my experience and accords with results of social psychology. Humans tend spontaneously to care for their own; but they do not spontaneously reach out to the alien and the stranger. Nor do they spontaneously love and forgive their enemies. They do not spontaneously welcome the suffering demanded by embracing the atoning love of Christ. The violence in the streets of the United States, the contempt of right-wing conservatives for the suffering of the poor, the genocide in Bosnia-Herzogovina, the tribal massacres in Rwanda, the prevalence of racism, classism, sexism, and other such perennial human follies in every human culture tend, to my thinking, to bear out the truth of Edwards’s suggestion. Accordingly in volume one, I proposed that we understand human nature, not as virtually infinite, but as radically finite. The human heart can indeed love limited natural goods; but it cannot love with the universal love of charity without the help of divine grace. Contemporary children of Adam and Eve forgive their enemies, real or imagined, no more spontaneously than Cain.
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Toward an Experiential Christology Foundational Christological method requires a contemporary Christology to advance in an inculturated manner. Inculturated thinking promotes the enactment of Christianity in the symbol systems derived from the particular culture which Christianity addresses. Inculturated theology uses the gospel to challenge the sinfulness of that culture. Finally, a balanced inculturated theology acknowledges the contemporary internationalization of culture and enters into dialogue with other cultural expressions of the faith propounded elsewhere in the Church universal. I responded to the need to develop an inculturated Christology by proposing a construct of human nature broadly derived from the North American philosophical tradition. In the development of classical North American philosophy, “experience” functions as a central, unifying category. I therefore proposed that we understand Jesus’ humanity in the broader philosophical context of a fallibilistic metaphysics of experience. The American philosophical tradition has produced two irreconcilable philosophical constructs of experience: one di-polar, subjectivistic, and nominalistic; the other, triadic, social, and realistic. The “turn to experience” in contemporary theology tends to endorse di-polar nominalism. Di-polar nominalism cannot, however, account for human religious experience because it reduces the object of all knowledge to concrete sensibles. Because of its subjectivism, experiential nominalism also fails finally to account for the social dimensions of experience. These inadequacies point to another fallacy which any sound philosophical anthropology must avoid: namely, nominalism in all of its speculative expressions. In what concerns Jesus of Nazareth, volume one argued for the legitimacy of invoking a triadic, realistic, social construct of experience in order to interpret His humanity. I defined experience as a process composed of relational elements called feelings. I suggested that in the higher forms of experience one can detect three kinds of feelings, or relationships: evaluations, or particular intentional relationships; decisions, or concrete, social and environmental relationships, and tendencies, or the continuously spreading, general, habitual inclinations to decide or to evaluate in a particular manner. Habitual tendencies orient the acting self toward its future at the same time that decisive environmental impact constitutes its immediate past. I then developed a descriptive, philosophical phenomenology of human experience. First I explored the realm of evaluation. Human evaluative responses begin in sensations, which by their emotive coloring, give evidence of grasping, however vaguely, the vectoral tendencies present in things. Evaluation becomes conscious when humans distinguish between their own bodies and their surrounding environments. When that distinction fades from consciousness, we go to sleep. Conscious evaluation focuses
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finite human awareness; but it also shades into pre-conscious and unconscious perceptions. As human evaluative response to reality develops, the emotive dimensions of experience disclose more adequately the nature of perceived tendencies. They do so in an initial way in cognitive emotional responses like fear, joy, anger, love, affection. They do so eventually in judgments of feeling which terminate imaginative and deliberative forms of thinking. Memories, images, and creative fantasy endow intuitive thinking with greater scope and clarity. The lyric voice communicates personal responses to reality. The narrative voice grasps reality through story. Intentional continuity links intuitive, imaginative perceptions and inferential thinking. Inferential thinking begins with constructing hypotheses; and hypothetical thinking advances imaginatively and intuitively even though it concludes to the initial logical classification of data in need of rational explanation. That classification assumes that the behavior of the data in question obeys certain laws which justify the definitions one assigns when one hypothesizes. Columbus, for example, allegedly inferred the roundness of the world from the way in which masted ships appeared on the horizon. Deductive inference reasons that, if one has classified the data in question correctly, then other facts, not yet in evidence will appear if the law which grounds one’s initial hypothesis holds true in reality. Hypothesis, then, concludes to a way of classifying things. Deduction concludes to predicted facts. Columbus, for example, inferred deductively that, if the laws of nature had made the world round, then he could reach the “orient” by sailing west. Inductive inference argues that the appearance of deductively predicted evidence justifies belief in the reality of the laws which grounded one’s original hypothesis. Induction, then, concludes to the reality of a tendency in the nature of things. Those, for example, who first circumnavigated the globe finally proved that, in conceiving the world as round, Columbus had correctly understood how the laws of nature operate in shaping planet earth. Deliberative reasoning takes aesthetic, practical, and prudential forms. One deliberates about possible decisions. Those decisions can fix either intuitive or inferential beliefs. Then the mind deliberates aesthetically (and intuitively) or speculatively (and inferentially). Decisions can also and often do respond physically to some decisive environmental stimulus. Then the mind deliberates either practically or prudentially. Deliberation can engage both inferential and intuitive beliefs; but in the end it reaches a felt, intuitive judgment of feeling about the best way to deal with a concrete situation.
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The creative imagination holds the key to human evaluative response. Imaginative creativity inspires healthy, flexible living, art, and literature. It creates new speculative hypotheses. It brings confused or conflicted situations to satisfactory, creative resolution. Human evaluation exhibits, therefore, a continuum of human intentional responses which expand from sensation, to emotion, to imaginative thinking, to the three forms of rational inference, to deliberation. Evaluation also endows experience with presentational immediacy. By that I mean that evaluation defines the way in which the mind become experientially present to its world and the world to it. As a consequence, evaluation grounds the human experience of real time. Sensations make the impact of the world upon the human organism initially present to it and the human organism present to its world. Emotional response perceives more or less clearly, more or less vaguely, the tendencies present in things. They therefore endow intuitive forms of thought with a perceived, possible future. Imagination clarifies intuitively what emotions perceive vaguely. Memories make the past present. Hypothetical inference endows intuitive perceptions with initial logical precision; and in the process hypothetical thinking makes one present to reality in a new way. In deductive thinking the hypothetical present becomes a predicted future. In the verification or falsification of a deductive prediction, the anticipated future either itself becomes present or yields to a different kind of present reality. Deliberation makes possible futures real and actual. Having explored the realm of evaluation descriptively, I next attempted to describe the realm of fact, or of decisive activity. I argued that decisions express the evaluations they terminate. Hence, evaluation defines the character of a decision. In the experiences of living things, which exhibit habit-taking powers, decisions also either create new habits of behavior or re-enforce old habits. Decisions also link experiences environmentally and socially. Decisions exhibit a transactional, collaborative, or coercive character. Transactions involve decisive give and take. Collaboration focuses the decisions of a group on a common goal. Coercion forces decisions on others irrespective of their own desires. Decisions, then, reshape the world either in life-enhancing or in oppressive ways. Habit, the generalized tendency to act in a specific way, defines the reality of the emerging self viewed philosophically as a developing experience. Autonomously functioning tendencies qualify as selves. By “autonomy” I mean the capacity to initiate one’s own activity. Selves, however, do not have habits; they consist of a developing, continuously spreading complex of habitual tendencies. In other words, each finite self exemplifies an historically and environmentally conditioned complex of ten-
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dencies to react or to respond in identifiable ways. Living, habitual complexes grow incrementally and continuously through decision, which either creates a new habit or re-enforces an old one. Persons have the capacity to act with self-conscious responsibility. Things do not. One reacts to things. One ought to respond to persons as persons. Evaluations enjoy particularity, since every evaluative response simply is what it is; but evaluations become individual, partially generalized, or universal through intentional use. Actions endow experience with concreteness. They make it this rather than that. Tendencies endow experience with real generality. They orient it toward a future. Since particularity, concreteness, and real generality defy descriptive reduction to one another, the three modes of experiencing exemplify irreducible but interrelated realms of experience. Different kinds of experiencing selves exhibit different kinds of habitual behavior. Emerging, finite selves which act with self-conscious responsibility experience conversion. We call such selves “human persons.” I define a person as a specific kind of autonomously functioning reality. “Autonomy” is an adverb metaphorically transformed into a noun. “Autonomy” describes, not a thing, but the way a habit or tendency operates. A tendency functions autonomously if it initiates its own behavior. The possession of autonomy transforms a tendency into a self. Dogs, cats, minerals, and trees all qualify as selves because they initiate their own activity. The chemicals which make up the bodies of dogs, cats, and trees do not, however, function autonomously. Instead, they function as integral parts of the autonomous reality we call a dog, a cat, or a tree. Dogs, cats, and trees qualify as selves; but they do not qualify as persons because they do not act with the kind of self-conscious responsibility which characterizes converted personal behavior. Autonomy qualifies the realm of tendency. Moreover, autonomy remains incommunicable. No one can decide or evaluate for me. No one can do my physical growing or learning for me. I must make my own deliberative choices and live with their consequences. I need to do these things, otherwise they will not happen. The incommunicability of autonomy will become extremely important when we try to understand the hypostatic union. The tendencies which constitute a personal human self endow it with real and vital continuity within development. The habits learned in childhood continue to condition the way in which the adult behaves. Besides autonomous functioning and vital continuity, human persons also manifest a capacity for critical, self-conscious activity. They can reflect on what they have done and measure their actions by norms, principles, and ideals which they have interiorized. The five forms of conversion mediate such an interiorization.
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Humans become fully personal only through relationship with other persons. Children must grow to personal, adult maturity in families which nurture them. We tend to learn mimetically, by imitating others although we learn in other ways as well. Interpersonal relationships exemplify the relational character of experience. The irreducibly social character of experience makes the institutionalization of experience inevitable. Institutions consist of groups of people habitually acting in socially sanctioned ways. Through social interaction, institutions exist within personal experience and condition the way in which people respond to reality. They therefore help create and constitute the emerging person. Conversion perfects the personalization of experience. One converts when one passes from irresponsible to responsible behavior in some realm of experience. In volume one I described five forms of conversion: affective, intellectual, personal moral, socio-political, and religious. Christian conversion exemplifies one kind of religious conversion. In each form of conversion one takes responsibility for a different realm of experience and measures it by different norms. Affective conversion measures intuitive perception by psychological and aesthetic norms. Intellectual conversion measures intuitive as well as inferential beliefs by methodological norms of truth and adequacy. Personal moral conversion measures human interpersonal relationships by respect for rights and duties in community. Socio-political conversion measures public policy and practice by the common good. I have identified seven dynamics within the total process of conversion. Affective conversion animates the other forms of conversion. Intellectual conversion informs and orders them. The two forms of moral conversion help orient the other forms of conversion to realities and values which make ultimate and absolute claims. Socio-political conversion deprivatizes the other forms of conversion at the same time that the other four forms of conversion help authenticate socio-political conversion by providing it with norms for measuring institutionalized justice and injustice. Initial Christian conversion mediates between affective and moral conversion by putting them in a new relationship with one another. Ongoing Christian conversion transvalues the other forms of conversion in faith. The existence of seven dynamics within conversion implies the existence of seven counterdynamics. Each counterdynamic negates the positive fruits of the dynamic which it contradicts. On the basis of the preceding descriptive analysis of personal experience, one can hazard a descriptive definition of the term “person.” I define a person as a dynamic, relational, autonomous reality imbued with vital continuity and with the capacity for responsible self-understanding, for
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making decisions which flow from that self-understanding, and for entering into responsible social relationships with entities like itself.2 In volume one I distinguished between personal and communal awareness. Individual human persons come to initial consciousness when they distinguish between their own bodies and the surrounding environment in which they act. Individual consciousness grows by distinguishing things and seeing their relationship to one another. Unconscious human responses fail to distinguish between the responding self and its world. The unconscious mind helps organize, therefore, an interiorized world. Communities of persons grow in consciousness by much more complex processes of interpretation. When communities reach a consensus concerning the event which founds them and the history which links them to that event, they reach an initial sense of self-identity. Then on the basis of that shared self-understanding communities need to decide the ultimate and proximate goals which they want to realize together. Having done so they must then mobilize all the gifts of those who belong to the community in order to achieve those corporate goals. Communities will achieve such self-awareness only if they agree in advance to forgive those members who betray it; for the refusal to forgive fragments society and therefore destroys community. Finally, the presence or absence of conversion in a community and in the institutions which express its shared life will also condition its level of responsible self-awareness. Besides personal and communal awareness one must also distinguish between autonomy and freedom. “Autonomy,” as we have seen, means the bare capacity to initiate one’s own activity. Freedom means the ability to act or not to act, to do this rather than that. “Freedom” like “autonomy” exemplifies an adverb transformed into a noun. Just as autonomy qualifies the realm of tendency, so too freedom qualifies the way in which the realm of evaluation develops. Most fundamentally freedom results from the ability to distinguish consciously and realistically among alternative modes of acting. Evaluation specifies decision; and decision specifies in turn the tendencies which it creates. Hence, the capacity to distinguish realistic alternative options determines the degree of freedom with which decisions and tendencies develop. In other words, the kind of freedom one enjoys and exercises derives causally from the modality of one’s evaluative response just as autonomy, the ultimate capacity to act at all, exemplifies the way in which tendencies shape an experience causally. A cause gives rise to some particularity, actuality, or reality. 2. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit (Lanham, MD: University Press of American, 1984), pp. 103-123; A. Grillmeier, “Nature-Person-Hypostasis,” Theologia, 51(1980), pp. 734-738.
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Like consciousness, on which it depends, freedom flickers. It also comes in different kinds, depending on the specific habits one has chosen to cultivate. One can distinguish three generic kinds of freedom. In its most elementary exemplification freedom consists in the ability to act or not to act, to do this rather than that. Personal conversion at an affective, intellectual, moral, and religious level transforms elementary human freedom into responsible personal liberty by enabling one to live for the beautiful, the good, and the true, including transcendent goodness, beauty, and truth. Socio-political conversion further enhances human freedom by creating environments which foster conversion at every level. Since environments condition freedom, socio-political conversion seeks therefore to create social institutions which maximize responsible freedom for both communities and individuals by institutionalizing conversion. A finite created reality necessarily enjoys only conditioned freedom. Environmental variables condition freedom by limiting or enhancing the number of things among which one may choose. Conceptual variables condition freedom because one must distinguish options evaluatively before one can choose them freely. Perspectival variables condition freedom because the ability to see things from a variety of points of view enhances one’s ability to deal with reality in a variety of ways. Habitual variables condition freedom because one cannot choose to do something without first learning how. Decisive variables condition freedom because they determine the kind of satisfactions one chooses to cultivate and therefore the kind of freedom one opts to have. The distinction between freedom and autonomy and their ultimate grounding in different realms of experience will also function in an extremely important way in the explanation of the hypostatic union which I shall soon develop. The reader should, then, keep these distinctions carefully in mind in assessing the consistency and validity of the Christological argument developed in the following chapter. In a metaphysics of experience, experience defines the nature of the real and divides into what is experienced and the way in which one experiences what is experienced. “Experience” transforms itself from a psychological to a metaphysical category when one allows that experienced realities stand within experience and not outside it. What is experienced includes both decisive actions and the tendencies which ground them. Those tendencies include both selves and persons. One’s evaluative response to the decisive acts of experienced selves endows an experience with its “how.” Understood metaphysically, all experience has a symbolic structure. By a “symbol” I mean whatever mediates the evaluative grasp of significance. Events signify. By that I mean that they consist in actions and the tendencies, the selves, which they disclose. Those selves have a dynamic rela-
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tional constitution which the mind can grasp evaluatively if the mind takes to trouble to think clearly about them. Events qualify as expressive symbols because one can by endowing them with meaning through interpretation grasp what they signify. Symbolic events, in other words, provide the significant reality which other kinds of symbols interpret evaluatively. Evaluative responses by interpreting events endow them with meaning. Evaluations engage the whole realm of conceptual relationships from sensation, to feeling, to imagination, to inference, to practical and prudential reasoning. Unexpressed evaluations qualify as interpretative symbols. Decision functions within interpretative symbols by fixing beliefs and attitudes but without expressing them to other minds. Interpretative symbols make no attempt to communicate to others one’s evaluative grasp of significance. Communications seek to express in ways which others will understand how one responds evaluatively to events. Decision functions within communication as a physical act which seeks to influence some other mind through the intentional shaping of some kind of medium. The way we communicate also conditions socially the way we evaluate. The symbolic structure of experience renders it potentially social. Decisive acts link selves to their environment and persons to one another. Communication makes experience actually social. Communication also creates culture. By culture I mean all human behavior conditioned by symbolic communication. Institutions result from human cultural development. An institution comes into existence when groups of persons behave habitually in socially sanctioned ways. Testing the Construct of Experience In volume one, I proposed the preceding account of experience not as a self-evident truth but as an hypothesis in need of testing and of verification. I tested it philosophically in an initial way by arguing that it avoids all the of the fallacies which have in the past led to confused thinking about Jesus’ humanity. Specifically, it avoids substantial dualism, operational dualism, essentialism, and nominalism. When the time comes to reflect on the trinity as a divine experience, I shall argue that this same construct of experience also avoids cosmic dualism.3 I attempted to verify initially the construct of experience which I had proposed by testing its ability to interpret and contextualize the results of 3. This metaphysical construct also avoids subjectivism and individualism. It avoids subjectivism by including the object of experience within experience and by espousing a perspectival realism. It avoids individualism by conceiving the self, its activities, and its relationships as environmentally grounded, social, and inherently symbolic.
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close scientific and clinical studies of human experience. I concluded that the construct could do both. Moreover, in the process of verifying the construct I was able to amplify it descriptively and reach some tentative conclusions about Jesus’ human development.4 I drew the following conclusions about the way in which the human experience we call “Jesus of Nazareth” plausibly developed. Among the following numbered conclusions, one through five describe Jesus’ personal development. Numbers six through ten describe His social development. 1) The same biological processes which underpin human development in other persons certainly grounded and limited Jesus human development. 2) Jesus’ human mind probably developed through the cognitive stages described by Jean Piaget. He therefore probably advanced from sensorymotor thinking to transductive, or imaginative, thinking, and finally to concrete operations. The results of developmental psychology make it harder to say whether or not Jesus developed a fully operational human mind in Piaget’s technical sense of that term. By that I mean that on the basis of present evidence we find it very hard to know whether or not Jesus would have been able to solve the kinds of rational puzzles which in Piaget’s psychology exemplify operational thinking. 3) One can plausibly suppose that Jesus would have passed through the first five stages of emotional development described by Erik Erickson. By the time of Jesus’ public ministry, it also seems plausible to suppose that He was living at stage six and was wrestling with issues of intimacy vs. isolation. As death approached, he may well have had to struggle with emotional issues surrounding the integrity and meaning of His life. 4) In what concerns Jesus’ moral development, one can plausibly suppose that the rules of children’s games functioned for Him in His childhood as a symbol of larger social relationships. One can also plausibly suppose that as He developed morally He acquired greater sensitivity to the complexity of human moral situations. 5) One can plausibly assert that Jesus in the course of His human development would have passed through the six stages of faith development described by James Fowler. In other words, in early infancy, His relationship to Mary and Joseph would have shaped his religious attitudes unconsciously. Between three and seven He would have exhibited intuitive-projective faith. Between seven and the onset of adolescence, he would have advanced to mythic-literal faith. During adolescence He would have advanced to synthetic, conventional faith. 4. In summarizing the results of the analysis of Jesus’ humanity, I shall not in this volume repeat the documentation which I provided in volume one.
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At some point before the start of His ministry, Jesus would have advanced through the other cognitive stages of faith; for, when we encounter Jesus in the gospels, He seems to have reached the highest cognitive stage which Fowler describes, namely, universalizing faith. At some point prior to the events of the gospel, Jesus would have experienced religious conversion in the sense that he would have taken full adult responsibility for His relationship with God. In volume one, I argued that Jesus’ conversion, His personal transition to fully adult responsibility in every realm of experience, need not have presupposed His sinfulness. 6) One can plausibly suppose that the infant Jesus developed something like the human self-awareness described by Daniel Stern. In other words, He would have advanced from a vague sense of Himself as a developing neonate, to core self-awareness, and finally to linguistic self-awareness. One can also plausibly suppose that affect attunement between Jesus and Mary mediated His first stammering efforts to speak Aramaic. 7) One can plausibly suppose that Jesus, like other children, learned to interiorize the language patterns of His culture. One can also assert with some probability that he interiorized the oral patterns of thinking of His fellow Palestinian peasants. 8) One can suppose with very high probability that in His social maturation Jesus started as a lap child, graduated to the status of a knee child, and advanced to playing like a yard child. One can also plausibly assert that Jesus as a school-age child received some schooling in Torah, possibly at the synagogue in Nazareth and that he probably learned as an apprentice his human father’s trade. 9) As he matured socially, one can plausibly suppose that Jesus advanced through something like the stages of social development described by R.L. Selman. In other words, Jesus would have advanced from a innocent, infantile egocentrism to a realization, reached between the ages of four to nine, that others saw things from a different perspective from His own. Between six and twelve, He would have begun to understand how His own perspective appeared to others. Between the ages of nine and fifteen, He would have shown the ability to view His interpersonal relationships from the standpoint of a third party. After twelve, He would have developed the capacity to cultivate deep interpersonal relationships. 10) One can imagine with some plausibility that the male crisis of the early thirties in part motivated Jesus’ decision to abandon His father’s trade in Nazareth in order to listen to the preaching of John the Baptizer. Having verified in a preliminary fashion and having expanded my construct of experience by invoking the conclusions of developmental and social psychology, I proposed a strategy for demonstrating the Christological relevance of a triadic, realistic, social construct of experience. I
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tested that construct’s ability to interpret the results of the new quests for the historical Jesus. When successful, those quests endow an experiential understanding of Jesus’ humanity with an environmental context and with historical concreteness. I first examined the world Jesus entered. Then I reflected on the way in which He responded to that world. In the first century the Roman empire cultivated a largely agrarian economy. The aristocratic elite class and scribes could read and write; but one would have encountered a literate peasant, like Jesus, much more rarely. The ruling class stood at the top of the hierarchical social system which the Roman empire enforced. Perhaps as few as five per percent of the population, the ruling class controlled most of the imperial income. The retainer class included imperial bureaucrats, scribes, and the army. The retainer class as a whole guaranteed and perpetuated the power of the ruling elite. So did the priestly class which may have accounted for about fifteen percent of the population. Priests endowed imperial authority with divine sanction. The empire seems to have contained a small merchant class; but the peasantry constituted the vast majority of the population. While some peasants owned small plots of land, the majority probably farmed the estates of rich landowners. Both classes of peasant carried brutal, insupportable tax burdens, and scratched out a precarious survival with the little left them after the ruling class had taken the lion’s share of what they produced. The artisan class to which Jesus belonged developed from the peasantry and probably languished in even greater poverty than the peasant farmers. Slaves ranked below artisans and on the whole dragged out lives of misery, brutality, and degradation, although some household slaves with kindly masters enjoyed a somewhat more humane existence. The degraded class consisted of prostitutes and unskilled workers, on the one hand, and of the expendables, on the other: beggars, petty criminals, outlaws, pariahs, and lepers. The degraded class occupied the bottom rung of the imperial social hierarchy. First century Palestine seethed increasingly with social unrest. The Jewish Herodian aristocracy and the aristocratic high priestly class aided and abetted the Roman occupation of their homeland and sought to Hellenize Jewish faith and worship. The majority of Palestinian Jews, however, remembered Judas Maccabeus’s successful battles against the Seleucids and against their Hellenizing Jewish sympathizers. Most Jews longed for liberation from Roman oppression. That longing took literary shape in Jewish apocalyptic writings. The Essenes and Pharisees both reacted against the Hellenizing laxism of the Jewish priests and aristocrats with a form of religious rigorism. The establishment of the Essene community predated Jesus. The Essenes or-
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ganized themselves into communities which promoted a stringent reading of the Law, practiced regular ritual baths, embraced celibacy, cultivated apocalyptic dreams of messianic revolution, and despised Jews less rigoristic than themselves. The Pharisees sought to shore up the piety of ordinary lay people by demanding that, in addition to the explicit moral demands of the Torah, people adopt a variety of other traditional pious practices which sought to guarantee the religious observances explicitly required by the Law. Most of the aristocratic priestly caste in Jerusalem belonged to the party of the Sadducees. The Sadducees recognized the binding force of the Torah, but they resisted the rigorism of both the Pharisees and Essenes. They denied the resurrection; and some of them yielded to Hellenizing tendencies. Peasant bandits roved the Palestinian countryside like wolf packs, preying on the rich with the connivance of the peasant poor. Some bandits developed messianic aspirations. Apocalyptic peasant prophets arose from time to time proclaiming religious messages to the oppressed masses. Pilate, the Roman governor during’ Jesus public ministry, displayed an administrative tendency to vacillate, although he could respond to popular unrest with acts of extreme violence and brutality. Eventually, his slaughter of his own subjects cost him his job. The application of historical critical method to the New Testament allows one to draw a somewhat detailed portrait of the founder of Christianity. Born into the artisan class probably about the year 6 or 7 b.c., Jesus probably learned His father’s trade of general handyman and practiced it in Nazareth until he left that city in order to listen to John the Baptizer. Some evidence suggests that His parents would have inculcated in Him a piety which scorned Hellenizing laxity. He almost certainly spoke Aramaic as a first language; and, given the social demands of His trade as an artisan, He could probably have gotten by in koine Greek. He also probably learned to read the Torah in Hebrew, possibly in the synagogue in Nazareth. Hasidic influences could conceivably have helped teach Him to call God “Abba.” Drawn to the preaching of John the Baptizer, Jesus certainly at some point submitted to John’s baptism. Until His death Jesus seems to have regarded John as a prophet. It would appear that John never returned the compliment. We may take it as at least plausible that, as Luke indicates, John denounced Herod Antipas’s many acts of oppression as well as his adulterous marriage. At the time of Jesus’ baptism by John or shortly thereafter, Jesus’ Abba experience began to mature into a personal sense of religious mission. Until the arrest, imprisonment, and assassination of the Baptizer by Herod, Jesus may have engaged in a parallel baptismal ministry; but, if He did,
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He seems to have abandoned it when He returned to Galilee to begin proclaiming God’s reign. Jesus’ public endorsement of John the Baptizer probably earned Him King Herod’s antipathy and could have caused Him at times to live something like a fugitive existence. Jesus probably believed that the reign of God which He was proclaiming had already arrived in His own person, teaching, and ministry of exorcism and faith healing. Entry into God’s reign demanded repentance and the acceptance of the divine forgiveness which Jesus announced and embodied. Jesus reached actively out to sinners and certainly practiced table fellowship with them. The practice put Him on a collision course with the Pharisees, whose rigorism He rejected. We do not know if Jesus knew the Essenes; but given His rejection of Pharisaical rigorism and elitism, it seems virtually certain that He would have also rejected their more extreme embodiment in Essene piety. Jesus, in contrast to other rabbis, almost certainly called some of His disciples to follow Him. Unlike other rabbis, Jesus accepted woman disciples. Close disciples of Jesus had to renounce their possessions and distribute them to the poor. Close disciples also shared with Jesus from a common purse which rich women disciples, who seem to have traveled about with Him, regularly replenished. Jesus’ acceptance of women disciples and especially the presence of women followers in His personal entourage would have scandalized His Jewish contemporaries. Jesus chose twelve disciples as His close associates. His choice exemplifies a symbolic, prophetic act, not an ordination. A lay prophet, rather than a levitical priest, Jesus never functioned as an ordained priest during His mortal ministry. Nor does the historical evidence suggest that He ever ordained anybody. Jesus’ choice of twelve men defined the purpose of the renewal movement within Israel which He headed. It communicated symbolically the fact that He was seeking to bring into existence a new Israel, obediently submissive to God’s reign. The Twelve symbolized the patriarchs of Jesus’ new Israel. Israel had no matriarchs. As a consequence, the prophetic recall of history dictated the gender of the Twelve, not the desire to exclude women from the Christian clergy, which, needless to say, did not even exist during Jesus’ lifetime. Jesus seems to have involved the Twelve in a special way in His public ministry. He appears also to have had a special relationship to Simon, James, and John, to whom He probably gave ironic nicknames. He called the impetuous Simon “the Rock (Peter)” and James and John “the sons of thunder.” The reign of God which Jesus announced also demanded the restructuring of Palestinian society on radically egalitarian lines. The reign of God required that the weakest, most marginal, most oppressed members of society receive preferential honor and advantage.
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Jesus demanded of His disciples a radical trust in God which freed them to share the physical supports of their lives with others, especially with those in greatest need. The kingdom ruled out the selfish amassing of wealth. It sought to bring into existence an open and completely inclusive community whose mutual sharing expressed its members’ mutual forgiveness. That forgiveness imitated the Father’s forgiveness of sinners and authenticated the disciples’ prayer. Jesus used parables, or stories which sought to subvert the familiar world in which people lived in order to open them to the new possibilities dawning in the arrival of God’s reign. Jesus almost certainly cultivated personal prayer, although He also probably refrained from praying ostentatiously in public. He attended synagogue worship and used such worship at times as the context for proclaiming God’s reign. He also taught outdoors and in private homes where women and where people excluded from synagogue worship for their sinfulness could hear Him. Jesus, who saw John as a prophet, was Himself perceived as a prophet and probably claimed prophetic authority for Himself and His ministry. He seems to have seen His own ministry of proclamation, healing, and exorcism as an assault on the kingdom of Satan. As prophet of God’s reign, He seems to have expected to meet a violent death. Jesus certainly restricted His ministry for the most part to Palestinian Jews, especially the poorest and most marginal. Nevertheless, occasional contact with sympathetic Gentiles and Samaritans of faith seems to have led Jesus to envision the day when God’s reign would expand to include Gentiles as well. Jesus rejected secular, Davidic messianism with its sanction of military violence. He seems to have believed that God’s reign must arrive non-violently, and He sanctioned non-violent resistance to oppression. Though perceived by some as a Davidic messiah, Jesus seems to have resisted all pressure to become one. Jesus did, however, work miracles and exorcise. Moreover, He probably interpreted both as signs that the messianic age was already arriving in His own prophetic ministry. Toward the end of His brief ministry, Jesus decided to confront Israel’s religious leaders, the high priests in Jerusalem. He summoned them and the people of Jerusalem to repentance and to submission to God’s reign. He probably orchestrated His final entry into Jerusalem in order to portray Himself ironically as a messiah with a difference: as a humble, peasant prince of peace rather than as a warrior king. By driving the vendors from the temple precincts, Jesus protested against the high priest’s exploitation of the temple in order to line their already rich pockets at the expense of the poor. He almost certainly at some time, possibly during this final period of His ministry, prophesied the destruc-
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tion of the temple because of the unrepentant religious intransigence of Israel and especially of its priestly leaders. Jesus seems to have foreseen that His final confrontation with the high priests would end in His own death. At a final meal with His disciples in Jerusalem, He gave them bread and wine as a prophetic sign of His body and covenant blood. By that gesture He seems to have intended to portray His impending death as His final self-gift to His disciples. He seems also to have wanted to communicate to them His trust in the Father to transform His dying into a life-giving event for them, an event which would deepen within them their covenant commitment to God, as did the sacrificial rite of atonement. Jesus expected, then, that His movement would continue after His death. As the fourth gospel suggests, the Sanhedrin quite plausibly reached a decision about the need to get rid of Jesus prior to arresting Him. After the arrest, the temple priests handed Him over to Pilate who crucified Him as a messianic pretender. Jesus probably died in 30 a.d. He probably lived into His middle thirties. His public ministry had probably lasted a little over two years. The preceding multi-disciplinary portrait of the humanity of Jesus as a finite, developing human social experience deals in a systematic way with two of the doctrinal issues which contribute to the contemporary Christological crisis. It approaches Christology in a way which takes fully into account the historical character of Christian revelation by interpreting history as experiential development. It also offers an historically concrete understanding of Jesus’ humanity by incorporating the results of the new quests for the historical Jesus into one’s understanding of that humanity.5 In this section, I have summarized the Jesusology developed in volume one. The time as come to reflect upon the doctrinal issues raised by the development of Chalcedonian Christology. To this dialectical analysis I turn in the section which follows. (II) Until the emergence of rationalistic Enlightenment Christologies, the teachings of the council of Chalcedon defined the fundamental doctrinal presupposition of all Christological thinking. Chalcedon even conditions Enlightenment Christologies despite the fact that they either deny the personal divinity of Jesus or fail to give an adequate account of His divinity; for even Enlightenment Christologies ordinarily offer an account of how the divine and the human relate in Jesus. In what follows, I shall first ponder the issues raised by the historical development of orthodox Chalcedonian Christology. Next, I shall reflect on the issues raised by Enlightenment Christologies. Finally, I shall argue 5. Cf. Wolfgang Beiler, “Der Weg Jesu: Der Verkündiger und der Verkündigte” in Die Frage nach Jesus, pp. 69-150.
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that contemporary orthodox alternatives to Enlightenment Christology fail to deal adequately both with the issues which the latter raises and with the issues posed by the development of Chalcedonian Christology. Having reflected dialectically on the issues which a contemporary re-thinking of Chalcedon requires, I shall in subsequent chapters first authenticate Chalcedonian Christological doctrine and then propose an experiential construct of the hypostatic union which reformulates Chalecedon in a contemporary philosophical idiom. That reformulation will deal with the issues raised by the development of Chalcedonian theology and will correct the deficiencies in Enlightenment Christology. In yet another chapter, I shall then coordinate an experiential Christology with trinitarian doctrine. Issues in Post-Chalcedonian Christology As we have seen, Chalcedon requires that one make the divine person of Jesus into the principle which unites His divinity and humanity without transforming them into a third reality. Chalcedon, however, left vague the technical definition of its key terms including the union of divinity and humanity in Jesus. Patristic and medieval theologians offered a variety of explanations of how divinity and humanity unite in the person of Jesus without blending into a third reality. The principal explanations consist of the following: 1) Enhypostasis and anhypostasis; 2) the blending of hypostaseis; 3) reduction to mystery; 4) perichoresis, or mutual indwelling; 5) union by grace; 6) the substitution of divine for human dignity; 7) the actualization of humanity by divinity; 8) the incommunicability of personal existence; 9) the symbolic self-expression of the Logos in history. Let us consider each of these solutions in turn. 1) Enhypostasis and Anhypostasis. Until recently, scholars credited Leontius of Byzantium (485-543 a.d.) with formulating an enhypostatic Christology. Enhypostatic Christology asserts that Jesus’ humanity derives its hypostatic character from its existence in the second person of the trinity. Scholars also attributed to Leontius the notion that the humanity of Jesus has no human hypostasis and therefore, viewed in itself, qualifies an anhypostatic. In fact, both ideas derive from a misinterpretation of Leontius put forward by a Protestant theologian named Friedrich Loofs in 1887.6 Loofs’s misreading of Leontius has, however, received 6. See: Friedrich Loofs, “Leontius von Byzanz und die gleichnamigen Schriftsteller der griechischen Kirche” in Texte und Untersuchungen 3, edited by Oskar von Gebhardt and Adolf von Harnack (Leipzig, 1887), pp. 1-317.
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widespread scholarly acceptance. Karl Barth, as we shall see, endorsed Loofs’s flawed interpretation of Leontius; and with less enthusiasm so did Edward Schillebeeckx. Loofs’s exegetical blunder also motivates many of Piet Schoonenberg’s objections to Chalcedonian Christology. Given its extensive influence, a contemporary Christology needs to come to terms with the issues Loofs has raised, without, however, attributing the position to Leontius. By “enhypostatos”,7 Leontius meant subsistence pure and simple, not subsistence in something else. Moreover, despite Loofs’s assertion to the contrary, neither “anhypostatos” nor “anhypostasis” occur in Leontius’s writings. Leontius defended Chalcedon against attacks by Nestorians and Monophysites. The latter both objected that since, on Aristotelian presuppositions, no nature exists without an hypostasis, then Chalcedonian Christology logically entails the presence in Christ of two hypostases, one for the divine nature and another for the human nature. Leontius replied that all reality manifests unity in diversity. Leontius recognized two kinds of complex unity: 1) things united by species (or nature) but distinguished by hypostases and 2) things distinguished by species (or nature) but united by hypostasis. The fact that individual dogs all share the same nature illustrates the first kind of unity in diversity. The fact that a human person has a spiritual soul and an essentially different material body illustrates the second kind of union. In other words, Leontius denied the presupposition of his adversaries that every nature requires its own corresponding hypostasis; and he cited the presence in humans of two different natural essences—one spiritual, the other material—as proof of his point. (Cf. PG, 86, 1277C- 1280B) Loofs erroneously interpreted Leontius as denying that Jesus’ humanity had a human hypostasis. Using the alpha privitive, Loofs accordingly characterized Jesus’ human nature as anhypostatic. On Aristotelian presuppositions, however, no nature exists without an hypostasis. Loofs misread Leontius as saying that Jesus’ human nature acquires its hypostatic character by subsisting in the hypostasis of the Logos. In other words, Loofs erroneously interpreted Leontius’s “enhypostatos” to mean “subsisting in,” when in fact it only meant “subsisting.”8 7. Leontius used the adjectival form rather than the more common “enhypostasis.” Cf. John McIntyre, The Shape of Christology (London: SCM Press, 1966), pp. 95-96. 8. Cf. F. Leron Shults, “A Dubious Christological Formula: From Leontius of Byzantium to Karl Barth,” Theological Studies, 57(1996), pp. 431-446; Aloys Grillmeier, “Die anthropologisch-christologische Sprache des Leontius von Byzanz und ihre Bedeutung zu den Symmikta Zetemata des Neuplatonikers Porphyrius,” in Hermeneumata: Festschrift für Hadwig Hörner, edited by Herbert Eisenberger (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1990), pp. 61-72; “The Understanding of the Christological Definitions of Both (Oriental Orthodox and Roman Catholic) Traditions in the Light of the Post-Chalcedonian Theology (Analysis of Terminologies in a Conceptual Framework)” in Christ in East and West, edited by Paul Fries and Tiran Nersoyan (Macon,
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Subsequent theological reflection has raised a number of objections to the position put forward by Loofs. Moreover, theologians have tended to assume that Chalcedonian Christology logically implies the position which Loofs mistakenly attributed to Leontius. Those objections include the following: 1) Hypostasis means substance. Within the context of an Aristotelian philosophy of substance, one who denies the hypostatic character of Jesus’ humanity renders it insubstantial. 2) Since hypostasis implies particularity, within the context of Aristotelian essentialism, anhypostasis seems to deprive the humanity of Jesus of any particularity. That would seem to transform it into an insubstantial abstraction. 3) Aristotelian substance philosophy requires that every physis have a hypostasis. Anhypostasis violates that principle. 4) On the other hand, if one asserts the hypostatic character of Jesus’ humanity, it would seem to compete with the hypostasis of the Word. To these objections, Loofs might have replied that the humanity derives its hypostatic character from existence in the hypostasis of the divine Logos. The hypostatic character of the Logos, therefore, endows the humanity with both its substantial and its particular character. Hence, the incarnation illustrates the principle that every physis has an hypostasis rather than violates that principle. Not all theologians find such explanations satisfactory. The Enlightenment Christologies we shall examine below would, of course, deny the presence in Jesus of any divine hypostatic reality. Nevertheless, some modern Christologists continue to endorse Loofs’s misrepresentation of Leontius’s position. Among them we find, as I have indicated, major figures like Karl Barth9 and, somewhat less enthusiastiGA: Mercer University, 1987), pp. 65-82; Brian E. Daley, S.J., “A Richer Union: Leontius of Byzantium and the Relationship of the Human and Divine in Christ” Studia Patristica, 24(1993), pp. 239-265. 9. Barth rejected the position taken by nineteenth-century Lutheran kenotic Christology by insisting that the Word’s assumption of flesh in no way implied His abandonment of His divinity. Moreover, not only did Barth regard Chalcedonian Christology as a sound interpretation of the New Testament witness to Christ; but he also held that the Chalcedonian settlement implied both an anhypostatic and an enhypostatic interpretation of the hypostatic union. Anhypostasis and enhypostasis, he argued, imply one another: anhypostasis correctly denies that Jesus’ human nature subsists in itself, and enhypostasis correctly asserts that His humanity subsists in the Word and only in the Word. Barth conceded, however, that Chalcedonian Christology forces the believer to struggle with the tension which it creates between the incarnation as an event and the incarnation as a fully revealed divine reality. Barth, moreover, in contrast to Emil Brunner, not only accepted Jesus’ virginal conception but insisted on its utterly miraculous character. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, translated by G.W. Bromily and F.T. Torrence (New York, NY: Scribner’s Sons, 1956), I, ii, pp. 147-159. Cf. Emil Brunner, Dogmatics, translated by Olive Whon (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1952), II, pp.322-334; Hans Stickelburger, Ipse assumptione creatur: Karl Barths Rückgriff aus die klassische Christologie und die Frage nach der Selbständigkeit des Menschen (Bern: Peter Lang, 1979).
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cally, Edward Schillebeeckx.10 In what follows, I shall argue that when one shifts from a metaphysics of substance to a metaphysics of experience, one can avoid the objectionable connotations of Loofs’s language while affirming the apparent intent of his position. I shall also argue that an experiential construct of the hypostatic union avoids the essentialism which Leontius’s position tacitly endorses. 2) The Blending of Hypostaseis. Ephraim of Antioch defended Chalcedonian Christology by proposing the blending of hypostaseis. Ephraim pointed out that, while Chalcedon denies the blending of the divine and human natures in Jesus, it does not forbid saying that hypostaseis can blend. In the hypostatic union, the human hypostasis and the divine hypostasis blend into a single reality.11 Unfortunately, however, Ephraim left unexplained exactly how one hypostasis, or substance, goes about blending with another in order to produce a single subsisting reality. The position which I shall develop below avoids altogether the category “substance” because of its essentialist connotations. Nor does it endorse even a modified version of Ephraim’s position. 3) Reduction to Mystery. As I have already explained in volume one, the rationalizing tendencies of the Arians led some subsequent orthodox thinkers to stress the fundamentally mysterious character of the incarnation. If, of course, one pushes this line of thinking to its extreme formulation, then one holds in effect that the incarnation defies all rational explanation. One must simply assent to it in faith. Among twelfth century essentialist Christologists, Alexander of Hales (d. 1245 a.d.) insisted on the mysterious and incomprehensible character 10. Schillebeeckx argues that, out of His Abba experience, Jesus assured humanity of a future with and from God. One can claim that He lived a religious illusion; but Christians claim otherwise. In the risen Christ, God reveals Himself as a power against evil. Schillebeeckx holds that one cannot finally separate the objective from the subjective elements in the resurrection. One needs to overcome empiricism by dealing with the resurrection; but one also needs to overcome fideism through empiricism. Unfortunately, Schillebeeckx interprets empiricism in nominalistic, quasi-Kantian terms by reducing the objects of knowledge to concrete, sensible facts. In my judgment, Schillebeeckx finally confesses the theological bankruptcy of his philosophical nominalism when he concedes that theology has finally no over-arching language to relate the empirical Jesus and the Jesus of faith. As for his own theological interpretation of the incarnation, Schillebeeckx concedes that no one can be two persons simultaneously. In this sense, “we accept the human-cum-personalistic character of Jesus’ being-as-man and starting from enhypostasis ascribe to him a more or less nominal anhypostasis, since nothing is lost to Jesus of his real being-as-human.” Schillebeeckx Edward Schillebeeckx, Jesus: An Experiment in Christology, translated by Hubert Hoskins (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1981), pp. 626-674; Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology, pp. 9-23. 11. Cf. McIntyre, op. cit., pp. 96-101. McIntyre himself prefers the position of Ephraim to Loofs’s reading of Leontius.
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of the incarnation.12 The mature Martin Luther (1483-1546 a.d.) took an analogous position. For Luther, the incarnation reveals the transcendence and utter freedom of God. One can know it only through faith; reason avails nothing.13 In a sense, Neo-orthodoxy endorses a similar position when it excludes metaphysics from the doing of theology.14 The position which I shall develop below cheerfully concedes the mysterious character of the incarnation and that we know it only in faith. One should not, however, confuse mystery with complete unintelligibility. The finite human mind finds any reality which it cannot comprehend mysterious. Theists, therefore, correctly characterize God as supremely mysterious, since God comprehends all things and is comprehended by no one except Himself. In other words, even a reality supremely mysterious to peanut-brains like us exemplifies a supremely intelligible reality which both understands and comprehends itself perfectly. Nor would anything prevent in principle that such a God would choose to communicate some of that intelligibility to finite human minds. In what follows, I shall propose a philosophical interpretation of the hypostatic union which I would hope the reader would find both intelligible and consonant with the revelation which we have in fact received. 4) Mutual Indwelling. As we have seen, the gospel of John speaks of the mutual indwelling of the Son in the Father and vice versa. Gregory of Nazianzus (330-390 a.d.) first coined a technical theological term for this idea: namely, “perichorêsis.” For Gregory, however, the term implied principally the mutual predication of divine and human traits in Jesus. (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oration 18, 42) Maximus the Confessor (c. 580-662 a.d.) gave the same term a very different twist. Maximus, as we shall see, played a major role in the monothelite controversy. The monothelites denied the presence of a human will in Jesus. Maximus in defending the presence of both divine and human wills in Jesus, used the term “perichorêsis,” or mutual indwelling, to describe the synergy, the dynamic blending, of the divine and human wills in Christ. (Maximus the Confessor, Epistle 4, 8) I shall examine Maximus’s position in greater detail below and use it as the starting point for constructing an experiential Christology. 12. Cf. Walter S. Principe, Alexander of Hales’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1967), pp. 82 ff. 13. Cf. Marc Lienhard, Martin Luthers christlisches Zeugnis: Entwicklung und Grundzeuge seiner Christologie (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), pp. 108-114. 14. Barth grounded the objective possibility of revelation in the fact that it had actually occurred. His Christology, like the rest of his theology, insisted that one approach the incarnation in faith and with the a prioris of philosophical reason. Revelation discloses the otherness of God and with it the fact and extent of rational blindness. (Barth, Church Dogmatics, I, ii, 1-44).
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Eventually, John of Damascus (690-760 a.d.) appealed to the mutual indwelling of humanity and divinity in Jesus as a way of explaining the hypostatic union. In John’s Christology, the mutual interpenetration of the divine and human in Jesus meant that, while the divine operations do not originate from the humanity, they do proceed through it as heat flows through a metal held in a flame. The metaphor of heat penetrating metal absolved John’s use of “perichorêsis” of the charge of monophysitism, since in the physics of his day, despite their mutual interpenetration, the heat and iron each retains its own proper nature. Nor do the two blend into a third thing. The heated sword does not become the heat which suffuses it; nor does the heat become the sword. (John of Damascus, De Fide Orthodoxa, II, vii-ix) The Damascene also argued that idea of mutual indwelling gives concrete meaning to the idea of “enhypostasis.”15 (John of Damascus, Capitula Philosophica, 44) In dealing with the hypostatic union, I shall argue that a triadic, realistic, social construct of experience makes the positions of Maximus and of the Damascene philosophically thinkable. 5) Union by Divine Grace. The twelfth century produced, as I indicated in volume one, a spate of essentialist Christologies. Though flawed by its acquiescence in the fallacy of essentialism, essentialist Christology produced two different ways of trying to explain the hypostatic union: namely, union by supernatural grace and substitution of dignity. Alexander of Hales, for example, who, as we have seen stressed the mysterious character of the incarnation, refused to compare it to any union in nature. One can call it neither predicamental nor accidental. It differs utterly from the union of a substance with its accidents. Alexander underscored the uniqueness of the hypostatic union by calling it a “union through grace (unitas per gratiam).” Moreover, Alexander interpreted the grace of union in vigorous, efficacious terms. The efficacy with which the deity unites itself to the humanity of Jesus sanctifies it.16 All orthodox theologians endorse the gratuitous, gracious character of the union of the divine and of the human in Jesus. In the position which I shall develop, I shall assert the graced character of the incarnation, but I shall also argue that the historical revelation we have received yields some insight into how that union comes about. Moreover, the explanation I shall offer, like Alexander’s, invokes a divine and sanctifying efficacy. 6) The Substitution of Dignity Other medieval essentialists explained the hypostatic union differently from Alexander of Hales. William of 15. Cf. Leonard Prestige, “Perichoreô and Perichorêsis in the Fathers,” The Journal of Theological Studies, 29(April, 1928), pp. 242-252. 16. Cf. Principe, op.cit., pp. 58-119.
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Auxerre, for example, appealed to the concept of “dignity” in order to explain why one does not find a human person in Jesus, only a human essence or nature. Like Alexander of Hales, William appealed to the action of divine grace in order to explain how divinity and humanity unite in Jesus. The Son of God acts in and through Jesus; but Jesus does not act through Himself (per se). As a consequence, Jesus acts with a divine rather than with a human dignity. Since dignity belongs to the essence of personhood, the replacement in Jesus of human dignity with a divine dignity explains why in Jesus we encounter a divine rather than a human person.17 Philip the Chancellor espoused a similar position.18 In my judgment, the essentialist presuppositions on which both positions rest renders them philosophically implausible as explanations, even though Christian faith does discover in Jesus a divine dignity. In what follows, I shall invoke a metaphysics of experience in order to explain why. 7) Union by Actualization. As scholastic Christology evolved, one finds a growing consensus that the concept of “subsistence” holds the key to the hypostatic union.19 Of all the scholastics thinkers, however, Thomas Aquinas probably offered the most innovative account of subsistence. In the Summa theologiae, Thomas Aquinas contrasted Chalcedonian orthodoxy with the Gnostic notion that Jesus possessed only an illusory humanity, not a real one. He also rejected the “Nestorian” doctrine that the incarnation requires the presence of more than one hypostasis in Christ. Rather, the Son of God who existed in the Godhead from all eternity became human in time. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q. xvi, aa. 1-6) Aquinas not only endorsed Chalcedon but also advanced Chalcedonian Christology by suggesting a novel explanation for how the hypostatic union comes about. Aquinas endorsed Aristotelian hylemorphic theory. He held that the human soul functions as the form of the body, which he portrayed as quantified matter. In informing the body the soul makes it into a human body and endows it with substantial intelligibility. The soul also animates the body. (Ibid., I, lxxv, 1-7) Aristotelian substances act and suffer through accidental powers which qualify the substance. These powers together with the habits which modify them and the actions which flow from them endow the human substance with accidental intelligibility. (Ibid., I, lxxvi, 1-8) 17. Cf. Walter S. Principe, William of Auxerre’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1963), pp. 58-119. 18. Cf. Walter S. Principe, Philip the Chancellor’s Theology of the Hypostatic Union (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1975), pp. 52-68. 19. Cf. Wilhelm Breuning, Die hypostatische Union in der Theologie Wilhelms von Auxerre, Hugo von St. Cher, und Rolands von Cremona (Trier: Paulinus Verlag, 1962).
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Aquinas, however, advanced beyond Aristotle in his account of human nature by distinguishing clearly between being and essence. Being designates something’s actuality, that it exists. Essence makes it into what it is. Substance and the accidents which define the way something exists define the realm of essence. The act of being gives that essence actuality. (Ibid., I, iii, 4) The distinction between being and essence also allowed Aquinas to distinguish clearly between supposit and nature. “Nature” designates an essence as something which acts and is acted upon. “Supposit” designates something as actually existing through the act of being which endows its essence with actuality. A person, Aquinas argued, is a supposit with an intelligent nature. In explaining the hypostatic union, therefore, Aquinas argued that the eternal act of being of the second person of the trinity gives actuality to Jesus’ human essence or nature. Jesus therefore possesses a complete human nature, a substance endowed with accidental powers to act and be acted upon; but, the divine act of Being which actualizes that human nature also personalizes it by transforming it into a subsisting reality. In the incarnation, therefore, only one supposit (person, hypostasis) speaks and acts. That person has, however, two natures. He possesses divinity from all eternity; He acquires humanity when He actualizes the humanity of Jesus in history. (Summa theologiae, III, q. xvi, a. 6-q. xvii, a. 2) In discussing the way in which the hypostatic union unites two distinct natures in the person of the Son, Aquinas also showed a care to avoid predicating of one another the essential traits proper to each nature. Christ’s human nature acts in a manner which expresses His human essence. The second person of the trinity did use that human nature to work miracles and to exorcise. Miraculous acts revealed the Son of God’s divine omnipotence; but Jesus’ human nature remained essentially finite. In His humanity, therefore, Jesus lacked the power to create or to annihilate. As human, He did not therefore enjoy omnipotence. Omnipotence belongs to Him in virtue of His divine nature.20 (Summa theologiae, III, q. xiii, aa. 1-4) 20. As we saw in volume one, Aquinas did in a sense “divinize” Jesus’ human intellect by granting it the beatific vision from the first moment of its existence in the womb and by attributing to it infused knowledge which readied it for Jesus messianic work. In so doing, however, Aquinas did not violate his doctrine of the communication of traits (communicatio idiomatum) in the sense that the quasi-omniscience which Jesus’ intellect possesses in virtue of the beatific vision results from the action of divine grace rather than from human nature as such. That fact, however, does not render Aquinas’s position any more psychologically plausible. Cf. Elisabeth Reinhardt, “El Verbo-Imagen y la Asuncion de la Naturaleza Humana, Creada ad Imaginem Dei, en la Doctrina de Santo Tomas da Aquino” and Jose Ignacio Saranyana, “La Doctrina sobre el ‘Esse’ de Christo en los Teologos de la Segun Mitad del Siglo XIII” in Cristo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 627-635, 637-647.
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In assuming a human body, the Son of God also submitted to all its physical limitations and defects. By His sufferings He satisfied for sin. His sufferings manifested the reality of His humanity. (Summa theologiae, III, q. xiv, a.1) Divine filiation, however, belongs properly only to the person of the Son through His eternal generation by the Father. As a consequence, Jesus’ filial relationship to the Father differs from ours. His divine Sonship results from the divinity which the Father communicates to Him from all eternity. Because we share in Jesus’ filial relationship to the Father by grace, we qualify only as God’s adopted children, not as His natural children.21 (Summa theologiae, III, q. xxiii, aa.1-4) Aquinas’s metaphysical account of the hypostatic union illustrates the subtlety and creative fertility of his mind. It labors, however, under some inconsistency. In Aristotelian metaphysics, potency always limits the act which specifies it. Matter, for example, individuates the human soul which animates it. Essence limits the act of being which actualizes it by making it into a specific kind of being. According to strict Aristotelian principles, then, the humanity of Jesus ought to limit the divine act of being which actualizes it. In ceasing to enjoy infinite Being, however, the incarnate Son of God would have forfeited His divine essence. Aquinas, of course, denied that anything of the sort happened. In his Christology, the humanity of Jesus does not limit the divine Being which specifies it. Aquinas, however, failed, in my judgment, to explain adequately from a philosophical standpoint why it does not. In what follows, I shall also invoke the notion of actualization in speaking of the hypostatic union; but I shall define that philosophical term very differently from Aquinas. 8) Incommunicability. John Duns Scotus (1274-1308) rejected Aquinas’s distinction between being and essence. Accordingly, Scotus denied that the human nature of Christ existed through the act of being (esse) of the Word. In the case of living things, he also equated being and life. He therefore held that Christ’s human nature had its own proper being, or vital reality (John Duns Scotus, In III Sent., d.6, q.1). Scotus therefore proposed a very different explanation of the hypostatic union, one which I find theologically extremely suggestive. Instead of appealing to metaphysics in order to provide the “how” of the hypostatic union, as Aquinas had, Scotus probed more deeply into the notion 21. Aquinas also stands out among medieval systematic theologians for his doctrinal concern to incorporate into his Christology reflection on the mysteries of the life of Christ. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, qq. xxxi-xlv) The quaestio method, however, caused him to deal with those mysteries under the somewhat artificial rubric of suitability. The comparative literary analysis of the gospels contained in volume two of this study and in the present volume provides, in my judgment, a more adequate way of dealing with those mysteries.
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of “person.” Scotus regarded personal existence as the ultimate actuality of a rational nature. Unlike Aquinas, however, Scotus did not derive his explanation of the meaning of person, from Boethius. Boethius defined “person” as “the individual substance of a rational nature.” (Boethius, Against Eutyches, II, 1-5, 28-37) In the twelfth century, Richard of St. Victor subjected Boethius’s definition of “person” to a telling speculative critique. Richard did so in the course of writing his De Trinitate, perhaps the most creative systematic trinitarian treatise to emerge from the middle ages. Richard saw that if one defines “person” with Boethius as “the individual substance of a rational nature,” then anyone who espouses an Augustinian theology of the trinity (as Richard together with most medieval theologians did) must logically discover four substances in the triune God; for, Richard argued, if the divine persons differ as substances, they would have to do so in the manner of substances, which differ qualitatively. That would mean that a Boethian definition of “person” when applied within a trinitarian context demands the presence within the triune God of four, qualitatively distinct realities. Such a conclusion, however, equivalently denies the co-equality of the divine persons and leads to a quaternity of substance in God (Richard of St. Victor, De Trinitate, IV, viii, xiii-xv). Richard, taking his cue from Augustine, viewed persons as relational entities; but he developed this fundamental Augustinian insight in interesting and suggestive ways. He viewed persons not only as relational but as ecstatic, social realities. Persons exist (ex-sistere) in the sense that they not only derive their being from one another but relate socially in a communion of love. Finally, Richard discovered another trait which characterizes personal existence, namely, its incommunicability. Accordingly, Richard defined a divine person as the “incommunicable existence of the divine nature (existentia naturae divinae incommunicabilis) (Ibid., III, ii-vii, xi-xvii, xxi). Scotus endorsed all these insights of the Victorine including his definition of “person.” Accordingly, Scotus argued that an adequate definition of person must include not only positive traits (like intelligence) but also the negative trait of incommunicability. Scotus looked to the incommunicability of personal existence in order to explain how the hypostatic union occurred. The notion of “incommunicability” implied for him a unique singularity of existence as well as the negation of all dependence on another person. Given the divine will to become incarnate as human, therefore, the human nature of Christ through its existence in the person of the Son ceded its personal incommunicability to the transcendent incommunicability of the person of the divine Son.
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Because Scotus conceived the grace of union in dynamic terms, he denied a distinction which earlier essentialist Christologists had defended: namely, the distinction between the active assumption of human nature and the grace of union itself. In addition, Scotus argued that the grace of union differs from habitual grace as cause differs from effect (Scotus, Opus oxoniensis, d.1, q.1, nn. 1-5, 7, 13, 16). In the experiential construct of the hypostatic union which I shall develop, I shall argue for the fundamental soundness of the preceding Scotistic insights. 9) Incarnation as Divine Symbolic Self-Expression. In his early theological essays, Karl Rahner explained the incarnation as divine symbolic self-expression. The early Rahner deplored what he called a dangerous Christological myth: namely, that the humanity of Jesus symbolizes the reality of God only extrinsically. Extrinsic relationship implies for Rahner that the humanity reveals nothing to us about the divine reality itself. Rahner found this myth exemplified in the Thomistic doctrine than any person of the trinity could have taken flesh. Citing the Cappadocian fathers as authorities, Rahner argued that only the second person of the trinity could have become flesh; but he went beyond the Cappadocians when he suggested an ontological correlation between human nature and the second person of the trinity. Rahner’s metaphysics of symbol attempted to explain the precise character of this correlation. Rahner distinguished real from artificially created symbols. Real symbols express the symbolic character of reality itself. A real symbol comes into being, according to the early Rahner, when one reality posits within itself another reality which functions as part of itself without being the whole of itself. Human actions, for example, function as real symbols of the persons who originate them. Invoking this definition of a “real symbol,” Rahner discovered a symbolic structure in the inner life of the trinity. When from all eternity the Father generates the Son, He posits within Himself a reality both distinct from Himself and essentially one with Himself. As a consequence, the Son of God confronts us as a real symbol of the Father. Similarly, when Father and Son from all eternity spirate the Holy Spirit, they posit within themselves a reality distinct from themselves but essentially one with themselves. As a consequence, the Holy Spirit confronts us in Her historical revelation as a real symbol of both Father and Son in their relationship to one another. When the second person of the trinity took flesh, He also posited within Himself a human nature distinct from His own divine person and nature but a human nature united to His person. As a consequence, that human nature confronts us as a real symbol of the second person of the trinity.
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In an analogous manner the sending of the Holy Spirit posits the church within Her as a real symbol of Her divine person, even though the union of Church and Spirit does not qualify as hypostatic in the way the incarnation does. Moreover, the early Rahner also conceived the relationship between human nature and the Son of God in dialectical terms which required a theological re-definition of the term “human nature.” The early Rahner rejected as “ontic” the traditional Aristotelian definition of human nature as a rational animal. Viewed theologically, Rahner argued, “human nature” means that reality which comes into existence when the second person of the trinity expresses Himself in what is not-God, i.e., in space and time. Rahner’s dialectical reading of the incarnation would, however, seem to imply that, if the Father and the Spirit had chosen to express their persons in space and time, in each case a nature different from human nature would have come into being, one which would express the specific character of each of the other divine persons.22 In the experiential construct of the incarnation which I shall propose, like Rahner, I shall portray the incarnation as the symbolic self-expression of the Son of God in history. I shall, however, rest my argument, not on his metaphysics of symbol, but on the symbolic structure of experience. Nor shall I correlate human nature closely with the second person of the trinity as he does; for, if one posits qualitative differences among the divine persons, as Rahner’s theology of the incarnation would seem to imply, then, as Richard of St. Victor correctly saw, one would seem to compromise the divine persons’ essential equality. In this section, I have pondered some of the significant developments in post-Chalcedonian Christology to which the experiential construct of the incarnation which I shall present attempts to respond. Not every post-Chalcedonian Christology, however, endorses the creed of Chalcedon. A number of contemporary “low” Christologies call that creed into question and replace it with another account of the relation of the divine and human in Jesus. The “low” Christologies to which I refer seem to me to acquiesce all too uncritically in the presuppositions of an Enlightenment rationalism which seeks to force Christian revelation into the procrustean bed of some pet philosophical system. To an examination of these so-called “low” Christologies, I turn in the section which follows. (III) Nineteenth century Protestant kenotic Christology provides the prototype of contemporary “low” Christologies. The kenotic theologians developed different kinds of Christology; but, in one way or another, they 22. Ibid., 3-14. Cf. Joseph H.P. Wong, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiano, 1984).
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portrayed the incarnation as negating Jesus’ divinity. As a consequence, they moved Protestant Christological thinking away from a Christology of identity, which asserts that Jesus is God, to a Christology of relationship, which asserts that God is somehow present in the human person called Jesus of Nazareth. Kenotic Christology reflects Enlightenment presuppositions by making the dialectical logic of German romantic philosophy the measure of Christian faith. That logic led kenotic theologians to portray the kenosis to which Paul refers in Philippians as the negation of the Son of God’s divinity. Kenotic Christology Gottfried Thomasius (1802-1875) created nineteenth-century kenotic Christology. For Thomasius, in becoming incarnate, the Son of God ceases to share in the divine creative activity. The incarnation negates the Son’s eternal likeness to the Father and replaces it with historical dissimilarity. In the incarnation, Jesus’ sonship expresses itself instead in his human obedience to the Father. Through his kenosis, then, the Son of God ceases to function and act as God’s natural Son, so that the Godhead can express itself in an unfolding history and in an unfolding human consciousness. The Son retains, however, some divine traits, because he continues to share in the divine saving activity. Through His sinless obedience to the Father, He restores communion between a sinful humanity and God.23 Thomasius claimed to have written a Christology compatible with Lutheran orthodoxy. In the end, however, his incarnate God sounds less like true God and true human and more like half God and half human. Wolfgang Friedrich Gess (1819-1891), however, made no pretense at orthodoxy. In becoming incarnate, he contended, the Logos gave up all divine characteristics and replaced divine omniscience with a finite human consciousness.24 Johann Friedrich von Hoffman (1810-1877) taught that the eternal “I” who became incarnate lost His divine nature and 23. Cf. Martin Breidert, Die kenotische Christologie des 19. Jahnhunderts (Gütersloh: Guetersloh Verlaghaus Gerd Mohn, 1977), pp. 52-72; Joseph Francis Hall, The Kenotic Theory: With Reference to its Anglican Forms and Arguments (New York, NY: Longmans Green, 1898). 24. In contrast to Thomasius, Gess showed no interest in reconciling kenotic Christology with Chalcedonian faith. Instead, he focused on attempting to explain how the pre-existent Son can have the same “I” as the earthly Jesus. In becoming incarnate, the Logos gave up all divine characteristics and replaced divine omniscience with a finite human consciousness. By doing so, the Logos transformed himself into Jesus’ human soul and thus knew with a developing human self-awareness. Paradoxically, Gess also held that even during his earthly sojourn, Jesus’ soul remained an eternal Spirit which rules both humans and angels. In the end, however, Gess could vindicate neither the complete divinity nor the complete humanity of the incarnate Word. (Cf. Breidert, op. cit., pp. 115-160.)
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acquired a human nature instead, even though as a person he remained divine. The acquisition of a developing human nature inaugurates a new historical mode of existence in the eternal reality of God.25 Johann Heinrich August Ebrard (1818-1888) seems to have held that in the incarnation the Logos functioned as a human soul and therefore ceased to be the eternal reality it had been.26 Karl Theodor August Liebner (1806-1871) and F.H.R. Frank (1827-1894) also developed accounts of the kenôsis in which the second person of the trinity would seem to forfeit His divinity by becoming human.27 In a German romantic version of the kenôsis, therefore, the Son of God loses either all or some of His divine nature. This paradoxical and ulti25. Von Hoffman grounded his kenotic Christology neither in trinitarian theology nor in the human experience of Jesus but in the present faith experience of the believing Christian. Faith establishes the present relationship of the believing Christian with God. Christ mediates that relationship by making an eternal reality historically present. Von Hoffman, however, repudiated Chalcedonian Christology and tried to portray the incarnation as an historical-trinitarian event. The incarnation of God in a medium other than God gives God a new shape. Von Hoffman questioned whether the Son proceeds eternally from the Father, since Scripture says nothing about God’s internal relationships. Rather, in the incarnation, the eternal becomes temporal. Since the Son’s divinity consists in a relationship to the Father, the Son does not abandon divinity in the incarnation. The eternal “I” which is Christ before the incarnation becomes a person like other human persons through entering history. In Jesus we do not encounter a divine person with two natures but the union of a divine person with a human nature. After Jesus’ glorification, the Spirit makes Him present and inaugurates a new phase in trinitarian life by inaugurating a new historical mode of existence of the divine reality. (Ibid., pp. 161-184.) 26. Ebrard brought kenotic theology into the reformed tradition. He held that by His kenôsis the Son of God gave up His divine essence as well as His divine existence. By “existence” Ebrard meant eternity, lack of conditioning, absoluteness. By “divine essence” Ebrard meant qualities like divine holiness, wisdom, blessedness, etc. as well as metaphysical traits like omnipotence, omnipresence, and a divine relationship to the world. In the incarnation the Son of God exchanged a temporal for an eternal mode of being; but He turned Himself into a man whose qualities manifested His divinity. The Logos functioned as Jesus’ human soul. His soul enjoyed supernatural, but not superhuman powers. Moreover, the human soul of Christ retained a consciousness of being Son of God even though He had ceased to be the eternal Logos. Ebrard never explained what happened to the world-ruling Logos, after the incarnation. Ibid., pp. 215- 231. 27. Liebner found in the notion of God as absolute love the key to every theological riddle. He sought to replace substance philosophy with an ethic of love. Each “I” in the trinity gives itself to a “not-I.” In the process, the divine persons alienate themselves from themselves in the absoluteness of their gift. Liebner remained vague on the role of the Spirit in the trinity. The incarnation reveals the Son’s absolute self-effacement before the Father, a self-effacement which renders Him insubstantial. Since the trinity is an eternal process, the incarnation reveals the Son’s role in that process. In the incarnation, however, the Son loses the Father’s divine infilling. (Ibid., pp. 192-214) Frank held that in Christ divine consciousness transforms itself into a developing human consciousness. In His human consciousness, however, Christ knows His divine consciousness only through faith. (Ibid., pp. 232-277)
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mately heterodox account of the incarnation results in no small measure from the fascination of kenotic theologians with the philosophical confusions of German dialectical logic. In the end dialectical logic prefers paradox and speculative groping to inferential precision. A method of thinking that flawed could not help but breed confusion and error; but, in the spirit of the Enlightenment, the kenotic theologians preferred to depart from traditional Christian faith rather than to subject their logical assumptions to the kind of rigorous criticism they deserve. Process Christology As we saw in volume one, both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Paul Tillich espoused some version of the Unitarian Christ. The reader may examine their positions in more detail by returning to the first volume of this study.28 The Unitarian Christ confronts one as a human being of genuine wisdom and even of prophetic insight, but not as a divine person incarnate.29 Contemporary Protestant process theology also develops “Christologies” which promote a kind of philosophical unitarianism. Protestant process theology ends in unitarianism when it tries to make the nominalistic cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead normative for Christian faith. In The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology, I examined some of the philosophical contradictions which result from Whitehead’s endorsement of a nominalistic, di-polar construct of experience.30 I will not repeat 28. Schleiermacher offered a highly rationalized, highly subjectivistic portrait of Jesus and of the redemption he effected. One finds in his Christology an extreme form of Arianism. Jesus confronts sinful humanity as a creature like themselves, even more like them, indeed, than the super-creature whom Arius proclaimed. Schleiermacher’s Jesus saves sinners by the perfection of the grace which he possesses as a creature. Moreover, Schleiermacher’s romanticism blended with his pietism in order to transform into a purely subjective event the work of grace present in Jesus and in those who believe in him. [Cf. Friedrich Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith, translated by R.H. Mackintosh and J.S. Stewart (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1928), pp. 355-473.] Tillich presented Jesus as a model of religious faith, which the former renamed and reinterpreted existentially as the “New Being.” The gulf between the infinite Being of God and finite being which Tillich postulates on philosophical grounds opens such a gulf between the creator and creation that God can never come to symbolic expression in any finite reality. Tillich therefore denied the incarnation, the hypostatic union, and the trinity which the incarnation reveals. One finds a rational consistency in his thought even though it bears little resemblance to the shared faith of Christians. [Cf. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (3 vols.; Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1967), II, pp. 86-94; see also: “The Religious Symbol” in Symbolism in Religion and Literature, edited by Rollo May (New York, NY: George Braziller, 1960), pp. 75-77] 29. For a survey of Unitarian reflection on Jesus in the United States, see: Prescott B.Wintersteen, Christology in American Unitarianism: An Anthology of Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Unitarian Theologians (Boston, MA: The Unitarian Universalist Christian Fellowship, 1977). 30. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1994), pp. 52-89; Gerald O’Collins, “the Incarnation under Fire,” Gregorianum, 76(1995), pp. 263-280.
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those arguments here; but a brief survey of Protestant process Christology will illustrate the way in which much of it tacitly endorses an Enlightenment rationalism. W. Norman Pittenger set the tone for subsequent Protestant essays in Whiteheadean Christology. Pittenger reacted to the fideistic methods of Protestant Neo-orthodoxy by replacing it with Whiteheadean rationalism. Whitehead’s philosophical method requires that philosophy supply religious faith with its content. Pittenger decided that Whitehead’s cosmology should do the same for Christology. Pittenger rejected as contradictory Loofs’s interpretation of Leontius of Byzantium which Karl Barth had endorsed. Instead, Pittenger reduced Jesus to a society of overlapping, actual occasions of experience. In doing so, he also reduced the presence of God in Jesus to “reversion.” In Whitehead’s cosmology, reversion explains a novel process. Reversion happens when a process “prehends,” or experiences, directly and immediately a novel conceptual possibility in the mind of God. The novel possibility has not yet become ingredient in the prehension in question. In other words, Pittenger endorsed the questionable ontologism in Whitehead’s account of process. Whiteheadean ontologism requires that novelty in the universe result from the immediate “prehension” (i.e., experience) of one of the “eternal objects” (i.e., particular concepts of possibility) present in the mind of God. In Whitehead, reversion advances the ongoing creation of the world. Pittenger, however, equated reversion with the working of supernatural grace. In the process, he confused the order of grace with the order of creation. In thus naturalizing “grace” Pittenger demoted the presence of God in Jesus to just one more instance of finite creative processing. Pittenger’s Jesus confronts one, therefore as just one more human person created by God. God’s presence in Jesus exemplifies “reversion,” nothing more.31 Like Pittenger, David Griffin prefers Whiteheadean rationalism to Neo-orthodox fideism. Like Pittenger, he ignores the fact that a more nuanced theological method provides a middle ground between the two. Griffin, however, cheerfully endorses the Enlightenment view that theology and metaphysics coincide. Griffin regards the whole universe as a revelation of God and recognizes a “subjective” element in revelation, the “reversion” which exemplifies God’s creative action. Accordingly, Griffin sees no reason in principle why some other person could not surpass the revelation of God which took place in Jesus.32 31. Cf. W. Norman Pittenger, The Word Incarnate: A Study of the Doctrine of the Person of Christ (London: James Nisbet, l959). 32. Cf. David R. Griffin, A Process Christology (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1973).
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John B. Cobb’s process Christology shows more creativity than Griffin’s. Cobb seeks to reinterpret the Platonizing Logos Christologies of Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, and Athanasius in the light of Whitehead’s process Platonism. Whitehead endorsed the main lines of Platonic philosophy, but reversed the direction of love. In Plato love drives toward transcendence; in Whitehead, love (the lure of process) drives to physical concreteness. Cobb reinterprets the Logos of both the fathers and of the fourth gospel as Whitehead’s “creativity/reversion.” He endorses, therefore, the main lines of Pittenger’s account of the presence of God in Jesus but stresses its cosmic dimension. Cobb’s Logos grounds creative advance throughout the universe. Cobb’s Jesus dons the robes of a philosophe and proclaims, in an utterly incredible historical anachronism, Whitehead’s doctrine of creativity. Cobb regards Jesus as the supreme human incarnation of the divine creativity present in everything; but Cobb never justifies that claim. I personally find Griffin more logically consistent when he recognizes that on Whiteheadean presuppositions one ought to regard Jesus as a surpassable revelation of God.33 In her attempt to elaborate a systematic process theology, Marjorie Suchocki also reduces the presence of God in Jesus to just another instance of Whitehead’s ontologized account of creativity.34 Other “Low” Christologies In the first volume of this study, I argued that Rudolf Bultmann’s demythologization of the gospel also exemplifies an acquiescence in Enlightenment rationalism. For Bultmann, modern science provides the measure of gospel credibility and renders Jesus’ miracles unacceptable to “the modern mind,” whatever that might be. Bultmann’s existential re-interpretation of the gospel also indulges in philosophical reductionism.35 Among Catholic theologians, the “low” Christologies of Hans Küng, of Piet Schoonenberg, and of Roger Haight also offer, in my judgment, an inadequate and finally false account of the relationship of the divine and human in Jesus. Hans Küng endorses Bultmann’s call for a demythologized gospel and makes historical critical method the measure of Christian belief. He asserts that the resurrection showed that Jesus was right and His enemies wrong. The resurrection effects a breakthrough in human history. Küng concedes that the honorific titles applied to Jesus in the New Testament 33. Cf. John B. Cobb, Christ in a Pluralistic Age (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1975). 34. Cf. Marjorie Hewett Suchocki, God, Christ, Church: A Practical Guide to Process Theology (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1982). 35. Cf. Morris Ashcroft, Rudolf Bultmann (Waco, TX: Word Incorporated, 1972).
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terminate at his person, but Küng denies that these titles define the scope of Christian faith. Küng believes that trinitarian faith must espouse monotheism, but he fails to make it clear whether it must espouse trinitarianism. He questions whether “modern” Christians need to assert Jesus’ divine pre-existence and settles for asserting merely that Jesus’ relationship to God existed from the beginning and had a foundation in God Himself. Küng leaves it vague, however, whether the relation in question qualifies as real and personal or only conceptual. He explains the divinity of Jesus by asserting that God proclaimed Jesus as His delegate and as the crucified one raised to life.36 Küng’s minimalistic reformulation of traditional faith leaves it vague, to say the least, whether or not Christological faith terminates at a divine person. By what he fails to assert Küng seems to imply that faith in Jesus’ personal divinity has become optional because no longer acceptable to “the modern mind,” whatever that vaguest and most useless of vague phrases might mean. Schoonenberg rejects Chalcedonian Christology as contradictory and indefensible. He seeks to replace it with a neo-adoptionist reading of the incarnation. Schoonenberg also dismisses the “high” Christologies of the middle ages as no longer believable. He finds in Jesus Christ a human person with whom God has identified totally. Schoonenberg believes in Jesus’ resurrection; but he finally leaves woefully vague what God’s identification with Jesus implies. Schoonenberg seems to endorse a vaguely Kantian epistemology when he describes the resurrection as “unobjectifiable.” He does not naturalize the divine presence in Jesus as do Protestant process theologians; as a result, Schoonenberg’s position would seem open to the position developed by Haight.37 Franz Josef Van Beeck’s rhetorical Christology endorses Schoonenberg’s position. In so doing, it betrays, in my judgment, its methodological inability to deal adequately with doctrinal issues.38 Roger Haight’s “low” Spirit Christology has the virtue of drawing attention to the failure of most modern Christologies to attend to the role of the Holy Breath in Christological revelation. Haight, however, leaves the personal character of the divine Breath obscure and settles for defining Her as a Biblical metaphor for the divine immanence. The Spirit was 36. Cf. Hans Küng, On Being a Christian, translated by Edward Quinn (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Co., 1974). 37. Cf. Piet Schoonenberg, The Christ: A Study of the God-Man Relationship in the Whole of Creation and in Jesus Christ, translated by Della Couling (New York, NY: Seabury, 1971). In responding later to Schoonenberg’s position, I shall attempt to answer in detail all the objections to Chalcedonian Christology which he raises. 38. Cf. Franz Josef Van Beeck, Christ Proclaimed (New York, NY: Paulist, 1979).
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present in Jesus and inspired both his ministry and his Abba awareness. Haight also finds the Spirit immanent in the early Christian community. He eschews, unfortunately, repeating what the New Testament has to say about the Spirit and tries instead to formulate a pneumatology “for today.” Haight misreads the council of Nicea as a Christological council. As I indicated in volume one, the conciliar tradition failed to discover Christology as such until the council of Ephesus. Nicea concerned itself, not so much with the presence of God in Jesus as with the divine co-equality of Father and Son within the Godhead. For Haight, moreover, Jesus qualifies as a human person, not as a divine person. In this respect, Haight’s thought echoes Schoonenberg. It also recalls one strain in Protestant kenotic theology, even though one finds no indication that the kenotic theologians influenced Haight’s thinking directly. Haight discovers divinity present in Jesus only adverbially, “not ontologically but functionally.” Jesus then embodies the Spirit as a human person. Haight concedes that one can assert a greater presence of the Spirit in Jesus than in us; but he questions any qualitative distinction between the Spirit’s presence in Jesus and in other human persons. Haight’ Spirit Christology completely ignores the Pauline witness. It never mentions the resurrection or how that experience might have changed Christian perceptions of the human reality of Jesus. Haight’s Christology differs from that of process theologians in that it refuses to naturalize the presence of God in Jesus and acknowledges instead its supernatural, gifted character. In distinguishing nature from grace, Haight moves more in the direction of Christian orthodoxy than Protestant process Christology; but he never quite reaches it. In the end Haight’s Jesus confronts us as just another human being, but more fully graced than we.39 While Schoonenberg, Küng, and Haight write theology rather than philosophy, one can nevertheless legitimately classify them as Enlightenment Christologists because their “low” Christologies remain so low that they transform Jesus into just another graced human person. Typically, Enlightenment Christology sacrifices Jesus’ divinity to His humanity. Neo-orthodoxy Among modern Protestant Christologies, the Neo-orthodoxy of Karl Barth and Emil Brunner offers a Protestant alternative to Enlightenment Christology. Barth, in my judgment makes his most significant contribution to Christology when he uses it in order to reformulate a Calvinistic doctrine 39. Cf. Roger Haight, “The Case for Spirit Christology,” Theological Studies 53(1992), pp. 257-287; Jesus the Symbol of God (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1999).
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of predestination. Instead of portraying God predestining individuals to heaven or hell, Barth portrays Jesus as the sole object of divine election. Jesus in Barth’s Christology confronts the believer as the elect one in whom God also elects the rest of humanity. Those elected by God in Christ experience themselves as chosen to believe in Him, to love Him, and to have His prayer and His resurrection ever in their minds and hearts. God’s election of humanity in Christ confronts one, therefore, with divine omnipotence, righteousness, and mercy. It demands a response of faith.40 I find Barth’s theology of the cross less acceptable; but I shall postpone reflecting on it until a subsequent chapter, when I shall consider the development of atonement Christology. As we shall see, in handling the meaning of atonement, Brunner does somewhat better than Barth. In the end, however, Neo-orthodoxy’s expulsion of the philosophers from its theological republic leaves it bereft of the intellectual tools it needs to deal with the challenge posed by Enlightenment Christologies. Nor can it deal adequately with the development of Chalcedonian Christology. Both problems demand the willingness to think through philosophical questions clearly, cogently, and validly. That, however, Neo-orthodoxy refuses to do. New Testament Christologies Many New Testament Christologies suffer from an analogous deficiency, in fact if not in principle. Wolfhart Pannenberg correctly insists on the centrality of the resurrection in Christological thinking.41 Walter Kasper’s New Testament Christology correctly characterizes the resurrection appearances of Jesus as a theophany. He also correctly calls for the development of a Spirit Christology, even though he does so almost as an afterthought.42 Both of these Christologies give insightful summaries of New Testament Christology. While they do not rule out philosophical thinking in principle as Barth and Brunner do, neither do they employ it in any systematic way. When, however, theology eschews critical philosophical thinking, it always runs the risk of falling into a dogmatism of taste. When all is said and done, doctrinal Christological thinking needs to invoke metaphysical categories because it must offer an inferential account of both created reality and of the reality of God. One does not find 40. Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, translated by G.W. Bromiley and F.T. Torrence (New York, NY: Scribner’s Sons, 1956), II, pp. 94-194. 41. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, translated by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (London: SCM Press, 1968). 42. Cf. Walter Kasper, Jesus the Christ, translated by V. Green (New York, NY: Paulist/ Burns & Oates, (1984); L. Renwart, S.J., “Portraits du Christ: Chronique de Christology,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 118(1996), pp. 890-897; “Que dit-on de Jésus? Chronique de Christologie,” Nouvelle Revue Théologique, 119(1997), pp. 573-585.
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such an account in the New Testament or in scholarly summaries of New Testament thinking. Philosophical Christologies I recognize that during this time of fin-du-siècle intellectual decadence, post-modernist skepticism proclaims metaphysics impossible. Of course, when one proclaims that reality defies all metaphysical generalizations, one makes a metaphysical statement about the nature of reality in general and of the human mind’s ability to know it. Like universal skepticism, such self-contradictory thinking inevitably deconstructs itself. Theology cannot abandon metaphysics because it must give an inferential account of God, of the world, of humanity, and of how the three relate. To formulate such a speculative account requires philosophical thinking. A logically consistent account of reality in general requires a systematic philosophical theory of the whole: in other words, a metaphysics. Instead of abandoning metaphysics, contemporary theologians need, in my judgment, to teach it modesty. As I argued in volume one, a sound insight into the logical structure of human inference requires that any metaphysical theory of the whole aspire to universal applicability at the same time that it renounces any claims to a priori necessity. Why does the structure of inference deprive metaphysics of any a priori necessity? Because one must formulate an hypothesis before one knows for certain whether or not one has taken into account all the relevant data. Even an inductively verified hypothesis can require revision if subsequently facts turn up which call it into question or if someone thinks of a better frame of reference for dealing with the relevant data. Deductive inference enjoys logical, but not psychological, necessity. Deductive thinking, however, only concludes to a possible future. The inferential mind touches reality at two points: when it formulates an hypothesis and when it verifies or falsifies one. At both points, fallibility dogs human thought. It especially dogs theories about reality in general. Metaphysical theories need verification in lived human experience, in the results of scientific investigations of reality, and in the historical and eschatological data furnished by divine revelation. By failing to invoke metaphysical categories, New Testament theologies throw away the very tool they need in order to construct a systematic account of the Word made flesh. Both Karl Rahner and Edward Schillebeeckx recognize the need to provide philosophical grounding for Christological thinking; but they invoke different philosophical presuppositions from those I have endorsed. I find both philosophies demonstrably flawed and finally indefensible.
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As I indicated in volume one, Rahner fallaciously believes that one can use Kantian logic in order to formulate a classical metaphysics. Classical metaphysics claims not only universal applicability but a priori necessity. Kantian logic can guarantee neither because it recognizes only deductive inference; and deductive inference, as we have seen, concludes only to a result, to a possible, but unverified, set of facts. In other words, Kantian transcendental logic presents a fallible hypothesis as a verified conclusion at the same time that it calls it a deduction. Rahner’s invocation of this muddled logic in order to make inflated metaphysical claims of necessity as well as universality for his metaphysical anthropology leaves him finally blinded to the fact that close scientific studies of human nature call into very serious question the dated Thomistic anthropology which lies at the basis of his entire theology.43 In Foundations of Christian Faith, Rahner cheerfully concedes that his Christology rests on an a priori understanding of human nature. His a priori Christology also presupposes an a classical, priori understanding of God: the divine Word cannot change in Himself, only in His humanity.44 Schillebeeckx, on the other hand, grounds his New Testament theology in an indefensible, nominalistic, di-polar construct of experience. Such a philosophy portrays experience as the subjective interrelation of particular concepts with concrete percepts. Because it restricts thinking to what goes on between one’s ears, such a construct of experience cannot account for the social dimensions of experience. Because it equates reality with concrete sense data, such a construct of experience cannot account adequately for religious experience; for, while we do experience the divine touch, we do not perceive it in the same way in which we sense rocks, chairs, plants, and mountains. A di-polar nominalism leaves Schillebeeckx unable to account for the religious encounter with the risen Christ. As a consequence, he searches for God in the conceptual pole of experience and claims to find him in a subjective experience of graced salvation. That experience allegedly warrants inferring that Jesus must have risen from the dead. The New Testament, however, describes the experience of the risen Christ as an astonishing interpersonal encounter, not as the conclusion of a rational inference based on a purely subjective experience of salvation. Nominalism not only skews Schillebeeckx’s reading of the New Testament; but, in a work which seeks to lay Biblical foundations for Christo43. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., “Thematic Grace vs. Transmuting Grace: Two Spiritual Paths” in Grace as Transmuted Experience and Social Process: and Other Essays in North American Theology (Lanham,MD: University Press of America, 1988), pp. 67-95. 44. Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity, translated by William V. Dych (New York, NY: Seabury, 1978), pp. 1-176.
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logical thinking, it leads him, paradoxically to avoid almost completely any discussion of New Testament Christology. Schillebeeckx’s Jesus deals with Jesusology, not with Christology. His second volume deals with New Testament theologies of grace, although it pays occasional attention to Christological themes. His third volume summarizes the first two and appends some wise reflections on democratizing the Church.45 Both Rahner and Schillebeeckx recognize the unavoidability of invoking philosophical categories in constructing a doctrinal Christology; but a successful doctrinal Christology needs to build on more solid methodological and metaphysical foundations than either of these giants of contemporary theology has laid. This chapter has undertaken a dialectical examination of issues in post-Chalcedonian theology. By dialectic, I do not mean a Romantic conceptual logic of position, contradiction, and sublation. Instead, I mean the deliberative weighing of the advantages and disadvantages of different interpretations of reality and of the frames of reference in which one formulates those interpretations. The chapter which follows abandons dialectical for foundational thinking. It begins to answer the question: How ought a fully converted contemporary Christian to respond doctrinally to Chalcedonian Christology?
45. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1994), pp. 1-23.
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Chapter 7 Authenticating Chalcedon In the preceding chapter, I have summarized some of the major problems and issues facing anyone who attempts in this day and age to lay systematic foundations for a doctrinal Christology. The present chapter argues that a theology of conversion rooted in a sound metaphysics of experience allows one to deal adequately and inferentially with these issues. The foundational Christology which follows avoids the philosophical blunders which in the past have skewed Christological doctrine: dualism, the extremes of anthropological optimism and pessimism, nominalism. A sound foundational Christology eschews the fideism of Neo-orthodoxy at the same time that it acknowledges the need to verify theological language in the historical data of revelation. In invokes a fallibilistic metaphysics of experience and occupies the middle ground between neo-orthodox fideism and Enlightenment rationalism. A sound foundational Christology also avoids the logical fallacies of Kantian transcendental method. It replaces Rahner’s flawed metaphysical anthropology with an understanding of the human supported by contemporary scientific studies of human nature. Finally, it replaces a di-polar, experiential nominalism with a realistic, triadic, social construct of experience. The foundational Christology which I shall propose endorses many of the legitimate insights summarized in the preceding chapter. Like Haight, I shall propose a “Spirit Christology.” Unlike Haight, however, I shall endorse Panneberg’s insistence that the resurrection offers the only adequate standpoint for understanding the personal reality embodied in Jesus of Nazareth. The foundational theology which follows also refuses to replace doctrinal theology with a summary of New Testament Christology. Instead, it endorses a systematic metaphysics of experience. That metaphysics allows one to formulate a testable doctrinal hypothesis about the New Testament witness to Jesus Christ. Finally, the foundational Christology which follows offers a defensible re-interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology. It also deals in a systematic way with the issues raised by the development of post-Chalcedonian Christological speculation. This chapter divides into two parts. Part one analyzes the aesthetic Christology of Jonathan Edwards. It argues that Edwards identified the method needed in order to formulate a sound, foundational, Christological doctrine. Part two invokes a contemporary theology of conver-
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sion in order to flesh out Edwards’s seminal insights. In the process of doing so, it authenticates Chalcedonian Christology. The next chapter will invoke the Christological insights of Maximus the confessor in order to propose a experiential construct of the hypostatic union. It will then test the speculative adequacy of that construct by its ability to deal with the issues in post-Chalcedonian Christology analyzed in chapter seven. (I) How does one go about formulating a doctrinal Christology in the context of conversion? The Christological thinking of Jonathan Edwards anticipates in an extraordinary way the methods of contemporary foundational Christology. In this section, therefore, I shall summarize Edwards’s creative approach to Christological thinking as a way of easing the reader into the foundational Christological hypothesis which this chapter begins to develop. Aesthetic Christology: The Case of Jonathan Edwards English Puritanism attenuated somewhat the extreme Augustinian pessimism about human nature which both Luther and Calvin had defended. Puritan divines continued to use the language of depravity in their pulpit rhetoric and theological tracts; but the Puritan tradition moved closer to the position taken at the council of Trent when it acknowledged that human nature can in fact perform some naturally good acts.1 American Puritanism further modified classical Calvinism by nurturing the genius of Jonathan Edwards (1703-58 a.d.). Puritan pastor, evangelist of the First Great Awakening, and defender of the Calvinist faith against the skepticism of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, Edwards put together a fresh theological synthesis which emphasized the aesthetic dimensions of Christological faith.2 Edwards’s aesthetic Christological vision reflected the conversion experience which he himself underwent as a young man. Troubled by the Calvinist doctrine of predestination, as a young adult he passed through a personal crisis of religious faith which culminated finally in a renewed religious recommitment. He described his conversion in the following terms: The first that I remember that ever I found any thing of that sort of inward, sweet delight in God and divine things, that I have lived much in since, was on reading those words, 1 Tim. i. 17. “Now unto the king eter1. Cf. Perry Miller, The New England Mind (2 vols.; Boston, MA: Beacon, 1961), I, pp. 3- 280. 2. See especially: Roland Dellatre, Beauty and Sensibility in the Thought of Jonathan Edwards (New Haven, CT: Yale, 1968).
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nal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and ever, Amen.” As I read the words, there came into my soul and was as it were diffused thro’ it, a sense of the glory of the Divine Being; a new sense, quite different from any thing I ever experienced before. Never any words of scripture seemed to me as these words did. I thought with myself, how excellent a being that was; and how happy I should be, if I might enjoy that God, and be wrapt up to God in Heaven, and be as it were swallowed up in Him. I kept saying, and as it were singing over these words of scripture to myself; and went to prayer, to pray to God that I might enjoy him; and prayed in a manner quite different from what I used to do; with a new sort of affection. But it never came into my thought, that there was any thing spiritual, or of a saving nature in this. From about this time I began to have a new kind of apprehensions and ideas of Christ and the work of redemption, and the glorious way of salvation by Him. I had an inward, sweet sense of these things, that at times came into my heart; and my soul was led away in pleasant views and contemplations of them. And my mind was greatly engaged, to spend my time in reading and meditating on Christ; and the beauty and excellency of His person, and the lovely way of salvation, by free grace in Him. I found no books so delightful to me, as those that treated these subjects....And found, from time to time, an inward sweetness, that used as it were to carry me away in my contemplations; in what I know not how to express otherwise, than by a calm, sweet abstraction of soul from all the concerns of this world, a kind of vision, of fix’d ideas and imaginations, of being alone in the mountains, or some solitary wilderness, far from mankind sweetly conversing with Christ, and wrapt and swallowed up in God. The sense I had of divine things, would often of a sudden as it were, kindle up a sweet burning in my heart; an ardor of soul, that I know not how to express. Not long after I first began to experience these things, I gave an account to my father, of some things that had pass’d in my mind. I was pretty much affected by the discourse we had together. And when the discourse was ended, I walked abroad alone, in a solitary place in my father’s pasture for contemplation. And as I was walking there, and looked up on the sky and clouds; there came into my mind, a sweet sense of the glorious majesty and grace of God, that I know not how to express. I seemed to see them both in sweet conjunction: majesty and meekness join’d together: it was a sweet and gentle, and holy majesty; and also a majestic meekness; an awful sweetness; a high, and great, and holy gentleness. After this my sense of divine things gradually increased, and became more and more lively, and had more of that inward sweetness. The appearance of every thing was altered: there seemed to be, as it were, a calm sweet cast, or appearance of divine glory, in almost every thing. God’s excellency, his wisdom, his purity and love, seemed to appear in every thing; in the sun, moon and stars; in the clouds, and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, trees; in the water, and in all nature; which used greatly to fix my mind.3 3. Jonathan Edwards, Personal Narrative, cited in Jonathan Edwards: A Profile, edited by David Levin (New York: Hill and Wang, 1969), 26-7.
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Intense religious experiences such as these—enrapturing glimpses of the divine “excellence”—profoundly shaped Edwards’s Christological vision. The term “excellence” had special significance for him. Already as a young student at Yale College, the young Edwards had endowed the term with technical meaning. In his “Notes on the Mind,” which he wrote partly in response to John Locke’s Treatise Concerning Human Understanding, Edwards found excellence in harmony, symmetry, and proportion. He defined proportion as equality, or likeness, and deemed that it resulted from the mutual consent of the parts to the whole and of the whole to the parts. He found physical consent in graceful bodily proportion; but he discovered the highest forms of excellence in mutual, interpersonal consent among humans and especially between humans and God.4 For Edwards, the God who is love and who both created and redeemed the world exemplifies the highest form of excellence, since God alone of His very nature consents in love to the whole of the creation He has made. Moreover, only consent to God finally rectifies and orders properly our finite human consents. As a consequence, only when consent to God measures and transforms our natural consents do they qualify as “true virtue”; for consent to God reorders our natural longings by teaching us to desire created goods only in the manner and proportion which God wills of us. Moreover, consent to God universalizes our natural loves and expands our hearts to embrace not only God but all created things in God.5 As I have already indicated in the course of this study, I do not endorse every aspect of Edwards’s account of the workings of divine grace. I reject the determinism, predestinationism, and rigorism of his thought. I also repudiate the flawed Ramist logic which allowed him to espouse these flawed and ultimately heterodox theological beliefs. I do, however, agree that, given the radical finitude of human nature and of its aspirations, humans find it for all practical purposes impossible to love with the uni4. Cf. Harold P. Simonson, Jonathan Edwards: Theologian of the Heart (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1974); Robert W. Jenson, America’s Theologian: A Recommendation of Jonathan Edwards (New York, NY: Oxford, 1988); Clyde A Holbrook, The Ethics of Jonathan Edwards: Morality and Aesthetics (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1973); Stephen H. Daniel, The Philosophy of Jonathan Edwards: A Study in Divine Semeiotics (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Terrence Erde, Jonathan Edwards, Art, and the Sense of the Heart (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980). 5. Cf. Leon Howard, ed., “The Mind” of Jonathan Edwards (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1963), 39-47, 71-8, 101, 113; Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue, edited by William K. Frankena (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969). I am aware that Stoics espoused the ideal of universal benevolence toward humanity. Edwards, however, is speaking not about conceiving such an ideal but about actually living it.
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versality to which the gospel calls us. I also endorse Edwards’s assimilation of religious and aesthetic experience as well as his distinction between the two. I also believe that the aesthetic dimensions of Christian religious experience help motivate the consent of justifying faith. Finally, I believe that such an understanding of justifying faith offers a fruitful context within which to develop a foundational Christology. Edwards, as we have seen in other contexts, held that we experience beauty in the conscious consent to excellence and that we perceive the beauty of God ultimately in the “cordial consent of being to Being in general.” Edwards understood aesthetic experience as the simultaneous affective perception of the goodness and truth of being. When we encounter excellence, it enraptures the heart most of all and yields a synthetic insight into the mutual consent of created realities to one another and, ultimately, into the mutual consent of all things in God.6 In Edwards’s theological vision, the revelation of the divine excellence provided God with His “chief end” in creating the universe. By a “chief end” Edwards meant that aim on which an agent places greatest importance. Clearly, if an agent has only one ultimate end in acting, that ultimate end functions also as the agent’s chief end. Echoing ideas in the thought of Scotus which he found reproduced in the work of Nicolas de Malebranche (1638-1715),7 Edwards argued that the divine goodness itself provides God with the only object adequately proportioned to the divine will. He concluded, therefore, that even in His dealings with creation God must have Himself as the ultimate object of what He loves and seeks. If, in creating, God must seek His own excellence, then God must have also created in order to manifest that same excellence in the world which He made. The self-manifestation of the divine glory, or excellence, constitutes, therefore, God’s chief end in creating the universe.8 In writing God’s Chief End, Edwards qualified in some ways the Calvinist doctrine of predestination at least in this sense: he sought in this posthumously published treatise to reply to the charges of Deists and of liberal Protestant ministers that in a Calvinist world view, God had created the world primarily to serve as a scaffold for His avenging justice. 6. Cf. Delattre, op. cit. 7. Cf. Jean Vethey, Jean Duns Scot: Pensée Théologique (Paris: Éditions Franciscaines, 1967), pp. 77-103; Norman Fiering, Jonathan Edwards’s Moral Thought and Its British Context (Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press, 1981), pp. 1-47, 154, 322- 361. 8. Cf. Jonathan Edwards, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, edited by John E. Smith et al. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), VIII, pp. 405-463 Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., “Conversion: Beyond the Impasses of Individualism,” in Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Discourse in America, edited by Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, pp.1-30.
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Not so, Edwards replied: God could have created the universe only for one reason, namely, to manifest His divine excellence, His glorious reality, in creation in such a way that it left creatures rapt in a graced vision of beauty. I personally find Barth’s Christological reformulation of a New Testament doctrine of predestination more convincing than Edwards’s; and, as the argument of subsequent chapters will make clear, I reject the atonement Christology which Edwards inherited from the Protestant reformers. Still, I deem Edwards’s account of the purpose of creation supported by human religious experience: the grandeur and sublimity, the very excellence, of natural beauty tends to open the human heart to belief in the reality of God. Edwards also argued that, if excellence finds its supreme created embodiment in consent to the divine beauty, then sin, dissent from God, mars creation and obscures the divine glory. Sin, dissent, fragments the world. If, Edwards further contended, God had a single ultimate purpose in creating the world, God has four fundamental purposes in mind in saving us: two negative purposes and two positive purposes, although the positive purposes simply express the flip side of the negative. In the work of redemption, God seeks negatively: 1) to triumph over His enemies and 2) to undo the ravages of sin. God seeks positively: 3) to unify all things in Christ and 4) to glorify the elect. God achieves victory over Satan, his demonic minions, and over human sinfulness while simultaneously restoring the ravages of sin by unifying all things in Christ. Moreover, the process of unification culminates in the glorification of the elect.9 The history of sin narrates the fragmentation of the human race and the sinful marring of the natural excellence of creation as it proceeds from God’s hand. God undoes sin through His covenants; for covenanted consent to God and to the world in ways which conform human wills to God’s will reverses the dissent of sin. The new covenant in Christ fulfills everything which the ancient covenants narrated in the Old Testament typified. Indeed, each of the covenants—with Noah, with Abraham, with Moses at Sinai, with the house of David—manifests the eternal covenant between the Father and the Son in which the latter freely took upon Himself to atone for human sinfulness.10 In the incarnate Son of God, therefore, we encounter the perfect embodiment of created and uncreated excellence: the perfect consent of God to creature and of creature to God. As simultaneously divine and human, 9. Cf. Edwards, Works of President Edwards, (8 vols.; New York, NY: Burt Franklin, 1968) V, pp. 13-20. 10. Ibid., pp. 20-192.
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Jesus reveals to us “infinite highness and infinite condescension.” As God He has no need for anything beyond Himself, and yet He condescends to embrace and to befriend the smallest, the least, the most outcast and abandoned. In the incarnate Word, we find the blend of “infinite justice, and infinite grace.” The Son of God incarnate reveals to us the full extent of God’s detestation for sin at the same time that He manifests the supreme victory of gratuitous divine forgiveness. Jesus Christ combines, then, the most diverse excellencies: infinite glory and deepest humility, infinite majesty and transcendent meekness, deepest reverence for God with perfect equality with God, infinite worthiness of good and infinite patience of suffering, perfect obedience and supreme dominion over creation, absolute sovereignty and total resignation, complete self-sufficiency and total reliance on another. All these excellencies express the conjunction of divinity and humanity in Jesus. In addition, Edwards found in Christ “such diverse excellencies” toward humans, that they defied cataloguing or description. Three such “excellencies,” however, stood out in Edwards’s eyes: Christ’s justice in judging sin, His mercy toward the repentant, and the truth He lived and proclaimed.11 Edwards found the revelation of these excellencies in both the actions and sufferings of Jesus: in the poverty of His incarnation, in the humility of the hidden life, in His miracles of healing and in His cosmic miracles, in His exorcisms, and in the special manifestations of His glory in His baptism and transfiguration. Christ’s glory appears more clearly the more abjectly He suffers humiliation, so that the cross, His self-sacrifice on Calvary, stands forth as the supreme expression of His love. His holiness reveals itself best in the very moment of his condemnation before the Law. His worthiness stands forth in His suffering to be treated as worthless. Christ’s extremest sufferings express His greatest love. He triumphs in victory by submitting to defeat; and His exaltation in glory reveals the fullness of His divine excellence.12 The excellence revealed in Christ suffuses nature with saving significance, as we use symbols from nature to name the excellencies we discover in Him. Moreover, the excellence of Christ has the power to touch even hearts corrupted by sin and to teach them to claim the grace and forgiveness which He came to bring. One appropriates that grace by choosing Jesus Christ as one’s friend and as one’s portion.13 Christ has no more excellency in his person, since his incarnation, than he had before; for divine excellency is infinite, and cannot be added to. Yet 11. Cf. Edwards, Works of President Edwards, VI, pp. 398-409. 12. Ibid., pp. 409-18. 13. Ibid., pp. 419-26.
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his human excellencies are additional manifestations of his glory and excellency to us, and are additional recommendations of him to our esteem and love, who are of finite comprehension.14
Moreover, claiming as one’s own the excellence revealed in Christ enhances the excellence of those who believe by drawing them into an ever more intimate commitment to the incarnate God. That God saves them through their ever increasing participation through graced commitment in the very love of God itself.15 Conversion, inspired by the Spirit of Christ, empowers a heartfelt response to the Son of God’s incarnation of the fullness of divine and human excellence. Edwards gave initial shape to his theology of conversion in an early sermon entitled “A Divine and Supernatural Light, Immediately Imparted to the Soul by the Spirit of God, Shewn to Be Both a Scriptural and Rational Doctrine.” In it he argued for the utterly supernatural character of the light of faith which motivates conversion. Graced understanding cannot result from any natural impulse; justifying faith differs from the common grace which God imparts to unbelievers in order to move them to achieve His historical purposes. The consent of justifying faith requires by contrast that God act on the natural powers of the mind in order to transform and sensitize them to the excellence revealed in the gospel and in the things of religion. The divine touch manifests to the heart both the truth and the attractiveness of divine things. This light of faith results from the indwelling of God himself in the human soul. Moreover, Edwards argued, the supernatural character of such an enlightenment should appear reasonable to any reflective mind.16 Edwards brought these insights into the dynamics of Christian conversion to systematic expression in his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections. That work stands to this day as a classic treatise in discernment. Having argued that affections constitute the major part of human religious experience, Edwards characterized genuine religious affections in the following terms: 1) As supernatural, gracious affections flow from the Spirit of Christ whose immediate indwelling in the soul lays a new foundation in the natural faculties of the mind to perceive the excellence of God revealed in creation and especially incarnate in Christ. 14. Ibid., p. 426. 15. Ibid., pp. 427-30. 16. Ibid., VIII, pp. 3-20. Hans Urs von Balthasar has developed a theological aesthetic different from that of Edwards but in some ways convergent with it. Cf. Louis Dupré, “Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Theology of Aesthetic Form,” Theological Studies, 49(1988), pp.299- 318; Paul E. Ritt, “The Lordship of Jesus Christ: Balthasar and Sobrino,” Theological Studies, 49(1988), pp. 709-729.
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2) Genuine religious affections express selfless love of the divine excellence, since cordial consent to God puts right order into human self-love by coordinating it with God’s love for His creatures. 3) Graced affections focus on God’s moral beauty, because falling in love with the divine excellence inspires the desire to imitate it. 4) Graced affections mediate insight into divine things, since genuine religious affections express not mindless emotion but a heartfelt grasp of the truth as well as of the attractiveness of the divine excellence. 5) Graced affections ground a conviction of the certainty and reality of divine things, since through conversion one begins to commune immediately in divine realities. 6) Graced affections inspire evangelical humiliation by teaching one the full extent of one’s sinfulness. 7) Graced affections change human nature by inspiring an habitual love of God and desire for divine things. 8) Graced affections conform one morally to Christ through the cultivation of love, meekness, peace, humility, forgiveness, and mercy in the image of Jesus. 9) Graced affections enhance spiritual sensitivity by an ever increasing responsiveness to the movements of the Spirit. 10) Graced affections produce balance of character through imitation of the excellence of God revealed in Christ. 11) Graced affections deepen one’s desire for divine things, since the taste of God, to which the natural person remains blind, increases as one deepens in divine love; 12) Graced affections inspire Christian practice, since the final and decisive test of the authenticity of any conversion consists in the willingness to live according to the law of Christ.17 I have summarized Edwards’s aesthetic Christology in some detail in part because by its originality it deserves retrieving in its own right. I have, however, other motives for summarizing Edwards’s experiential approach to Christological thinking: namely, Edwards’s aesthetic Christology exemplifies in its own way how one goes about formulating a foundational Christology. By that I mean that anyone who seeks to develop a de-objectified, relational Christology, must situate it within a theology of conversion. Moreover, one needs to show how consent to the person of Jesus in faith gives practical shape to the kind of commitment which Christian conversion demands. This section has summarized Edwards’s aesthetic Christology. In the section which follows I shall show how a contemporary foundational Christology can, with proper theological and philosophical qualification, 17. Cf. Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, edited by John E. Smith (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1959), pp. 84-126, 193-461.
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build constructively on Edwards’s seminal insights in order to authenticate Chalcedonian Christology. (II) I shall argue in this section of the present chapter that when, building on Edwards’s insights, one situates Christology in the context of a contemporary theology of conversion, then that theology authenticates the orthodoxy of Chalcedonian Christology. Completing Edwards’s Project When one reads Edwards’s theology in the light of the five forms and seven dynamics of conversion already presented in this study, one realizes that, far from describing every aspect of conversion, Edwards has in fact correctly described an experience of initial Christian conversion and the normative conversion dynamic which corresponds to it. Initial conversion begins with initial repentance. Initial repentance engages the heart. One repents initially by facing conscious and unconscious negative emotions which blind one to the excellence incarnate in Jesus and in people whose lives resemble His. By negative emotions, I mean shame, guilt, fear, rage, despair. As one brings such negative emotions to healing through conscious ego-integration, the positive emotions have more scope to play. By the positive emotions I mean love, affection, friendship, sympathy, aesthetic sensitivity. One converts initially as a Christian when one acknowledges in Jesus the human embodiment of divine excellence. The beauty of His life makes one desire to follow Him. Christian conversion culminates, then, in a life of discipleship; and the practical, moral demands of discipleship require the conscience to submit to the religious norms and ideals which Jesus embodied and proclaimed. In other words, repentance and practical commitment to Jesus in faith describe the first dynamic of Christian conversion on which Edwards’s theology focused. The first dynamic of Christian conversion, as we have also seen, exemplifies faith in the broadest sense of that term. We call such faith justifying because it initially rectifies the conscience and puts one in an obediential relationship to a self-revealing God. Justifying faith opens the whole of the person to the transforming action of the divine Breath. It therefore requires the subsequent transvaluation through ongoing conversion of the four natural, or secular, forms of conversion: namely, affective, intellectual, personal moral, and socio-political conversion. Edwards implicitly recognized this when he correctly made Christian practice the supreme test of the authenticity of an initial Christian conversion. In transvaluing the other forms of conversion, Christian practice demands, as we have also seen elsewhere, practical progress in hope, faith, charity, and the Christian search for social justice. I have called the religious aware-
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ness which results from the ongoing transvaluation of the four natural forms of conversion “Christological knowing” because it assimilates one to Jesus in the power of His Breath. Besides contextualizing Edwards’s theology of conversion, the foundational theology developed in this study amplifies it as well. Edwards correctly perceived that affections play a prominent role in human religious experience. He also correctly perceived that religious faith expresses cordial consent to the excellence embodied in Christ. He correctly characterized graced knowledge of Christ as ethical and practical. A sound foundational theology of conversion endorses all these insights; but it amplifies Edwards’s aesthetic Christology by taking into more explicit account the second dynamic which Christian conversion contributes to the total process of conversion: namely, the dynamic transvaluation in faith of the other four forms of conversion. The first two volumes of this study as well as the first section of this present volume dramatize by their sheer heft the dominant role of intuitive religious perceptions within an experience of Christian conversion. Those intuitive perceptions do not consist of a concatenation of subjective feelings, as a decadent, nominalistic Enlightenment philosophy would have one suppose. Aesthetic experience grasps reality, perceives excellence, judges and grasps with the heart reality, beauty, truth, and goodness. The intuitive dimensions of Christian faith perceive religious realities in the same way. As we have seen in the preceding sections of this study, as a global consent in justifying faith transforms intuitive perceptions of the future, it gradually over the course of a lifetime infuses into the human heart the theological virtue of hope. As that same justifying faith transvalues intuitive perceptions of religious realities, it infuses over the course of a lifetime the imaginative dimensions of theological faith. Both Christian hope and intuitive Christian faith grasp realities. Christian hope grasps the onrush of the divine Breath as the dawning eschatological future. Intuitive Christian faith explores every aspect of the paschal mystery. When, moreover, one understands Christian hope and narrative Christian faith in the light of the epistemology which undergirds an integral, five-fold conversion, that epistemology clarifies the way in which foundational theology verifies doctrines historically. Christian hope and narrative faith perceive the paschal mystery intuitively but really. The paschal mystery, however, creates a new kind of experience and therefore a new kind of history, a new kind of future. In the last age of salvation, the future ceases to consist just in a naturally conceived set of possibilities derived from remembered and reconstructed past experiences. In the eschaton, the future becomes the onrushing Breath of the risen Christ.
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In other words, through the historical missions of the Son and of His Breath, the eternal God reaches into human history by actively transforming human experience in the divine reality itself. That gratuitous act of divine self-revelation falsifies cosmic dualism—the essentialistic split between time and eternity—which has distorted human religious perceptions in the west since the fourth century b.c. Those who live by faith in the Breath of the risen Christ already possess risen life in this world because here and now they experience their personal and ecclesial transformation in the eternal reality of God. Because it blends time and eternity, the eschaton actively engages human history, but it does so by transforming it in God. The graced transformation of human experience has, then, an historical dimension; but it differs from natural, secular history by exemplifying sacramental religious events which both reveal and conceal the saving reality of God. In a metaphysics of experience, history and the development of inter-penetrating, interdependent finite experiences coincide. The spatio-temporal character of experience demands the coincidence; for, in a metaphysics of experience, Being is experience, and history is the development of a particular kind of being, namely, spatio-temporal experience. Christian religious experience, therefore, reshapes and transforms history not in spite of but in virtue of its present engagement with the eternal reality of a saving God. By faith one experiences God. In a triadic construct of experience, one experiences God as “Breath,” as a personal vector which transforms experience persuasively and graciously by drawing it into the transcendent realm of the divine. In the crucified and risen Christ, one confronts the historical transformation of a concrete human experience in such a way as to transform it into a conduit of the living Breath of God. In His resurrection, as Paul insists, Jesus became a “life-giving Breath.” One experiences the divine Breath as an empowering enlightenment which conforms one practically and morally to Jesus’ human experience. The human experience of the incarnate Son of God functions as the human paradigm for responding graciously to God. Human hope and the intuitive forms of Christian faith perceive these complex religious realities aesthetically. By that I mean that they discover in an eschatologically transformed history the embodiment of a divine excellence which spontaneously draws and claims any human heart open to the possibility of perceiving that excellence. In this sense, the eschaton has as public a character as any other event in need of human evaluative assimilation. Moreover, when interpreted in the light of a sound experiential epistemology, these intuitive forms of religious knowing yield a more fundamental lived insight into religious realities than do abstract,
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rational religious doctrines. Let us reflect in more detail on the cognitive limitations of doctrinal theological thinking. One finds the same relationship between intuition and inference in the natural and secular forms of experience as in religious reflection. We live life largely at the level of intuition and of intuitive deliberation and only rarely on the basis of logical inference alone. As C.S. Peirce saw clearly and correctly, only the insane would ever try to live life on the basis of abstract reason alone.18 Common sense includes the concrete reasoning which Lonergan describes; but it includes much more than that. It also includes intuitive insights into reality. Moreover, whenever we humans understand anything abstractly and rationally, we simply endow with logical precision realities which we have already perceived and judged imaginatively and intuitively. Logical inference enhances the precision and conscious control within which we understand and judge reality; but logical thought exacts a price. Precise definitions focus consciousness. In the process, they exclude from awareness more than they reveal. In a metaphysics of experience, history defines every emerging reality. In order to understand any historical person or thing exhaustively, one would have to recapitulate conceptually its entire spatio-temporal development. No abstract inferential conception can do that. It can at best enable one to deal more efficiently with extremely limited aspects of the world one inhabits. In other words, in rendering human perceptions more precise, inferential thinking, like a view through a microscope, acts like a set a blinders. Through the lenses of a microscope, we see a few things with enhanced precision; but we see a broader spectrum of reality when we lift our eyes. Because intuitive, imaginative thinking prefers spontaneous association and synchronicity to precise definition and logical rigor, the intuitive grasp of reality yields a more global perception of the real than does inferential thinking, although, as we have seen, the rational mind can construct fallible metaphysical hypotheses. Both intuitive judgments of feeling and verified logical inferences grasp reality within a fallible, perspectival realism. Intuition, however, ambles through the world wherever fancy leads it. Inference, by contrast, advances like a locomotive on tracks laid down in advance by hypothetical definition and by the rules of logical thinking. As we have seen, metaphysical theories of the whole do attempt to construct logical maps of the expansive terrain of reality which intuitive perception discloses imaginatively; but like other forms of inference, metaphysical thinking also develops under the constraints of definition and of logic. So too, does the metaphysics developed in this study. It can 18. Cf. Charles Sanders Peirce, Collected Papers, 1.616-675.
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blind as well as illumine. As a consequence, the metaphysical mind needs to cultivate a constantly contrite fallibilism which makes it ready to acknowledge any legitimate factual or logical challenge to its abstract schematization of the real. Scientific and scholarly thinking focus experience even more narrowly than do philosophy and metaphysics. The philosophical mind, after all, thinks macroscopically. It deals with experience as lived on a day-to-day basis. Science and scholarship, however, delimit restricted realms of experience for detailed investigation. Their predefined objects and prescribed methods sharpen experience like lenses of a telescope. The sharpness and enhanced control can produce spectacular results; but the balanced mind resists equating the focused results of science and of scholarship with reality in general. For dealing with the macroscopic world, intuition, enhanced and supplemented by fallible, inferential metaphysical insights, offers the more efficient and realistic cognitive avenue to lived reality. Doctrinal theology seeks to endow the historical perception of religious realities with logical precision and with some measure of rational control. Christological doctrines offer an inferential account of the realities disclosed to Christian hope and to the intuitive dimensions of Christological faith. In other words, because lived, intuitive experience yields initial cognitive access to religious realities, theological doctrines need to find their verification in the correct inferential interpretation of lived, religious intuitions. Doctrinal theologians need, therefore, to practice the humility which logical fallibilism and the limitations of abstract, inferential thinking impose upon them. Fallibilism reminds the doctrinal mind that it has a better chance of formulating sound doctrine if it admits it might err than if denies its own fallibility and finitude. The limitations of abstract, inferential thought remind doctrinal thinkers that, in formulating doctrinal theories, they in fact employ a focused mode of thinking ill-suited to deal with the complexities of the lived, macroscopic religious experiences which those very theories seek to interpret. These insights cast light on the relationship between theological doctrines and the New Testament witness. Christian doctrines do not find verification in the texts of the New Testament alone. Instead, they find verification in the religious realities to which the New Testament testifies: in intuitive religious experiences of realities illumined by the Biblical witness and especially in the kind of shared hope and faith to which the New Testament testifies. As we have seen, however, Christian hope and the intuitive dimensions of Christian faith exemplify Christological knowing. Christological knowing yields a cognitive grasp of the person of Jesus which results from practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. That assimila-
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tion has both an historical and a practical, ethical dimension. Because it conforms believers to an historical human paradigm, Christological knowing engages our historical interpretations of Jesus’ person and mission. Because, however, Christological knowing advances through practical assimilation to Jesus in faith, it has, of necessity a practical ethical dimension. Both aspects of Christological knowing contribute to the authentication of Christological doctrine. The practical character of Christological knowing places very real logical constraints on doctrinal Christology. It requires doctrinal theologians to explicate inferentially the ethical consequences of Christological doctrines as an unavoidable condition for understanding what those doctrines assert speculatively and theoretically. As a consequence, only a pragmatic logic of consequences provides an adequate method for rescuing Christology from doctrinal vagueness. Such a logic simultaneously overcomes any dualistic opposition between theory and practice. It does so by insisting that the practical, ethical consequences of any given Christological doctrine clarify a doctrine’s speculative meaning. The practical character of Christological knowing also requires that lived faith experience serve as the laboratory for testing the authenticity of Christian doctrine. By that I mean that a Christological doctrine whose ethical consequences subvert the kind of faith experience which Christological hope and the intuitive dimensions of Christological faith exemplify stands revealed as fallacious and unauthentic. By the same token, a doctrine whose ethical consequences enhance the intuitive forms of Christological knowing qualify as authentic. In the verification of Christological doctrines, moreover, the practical, ethical testing of doctrines in lived religious experience and the scholarly, historical testing of doctrines must of necessity interact. Any doctrinal rendering of Christology whose ethical consequences tend to subvert the intuitive dimensions of Christological hope and faith becomes by that very fact both historically and theologically suspect. The doctrine’s questionability derives from the fact that it fails to interpret adequately the eschatological dimensions of Christian religious experience. By the same token, one can expect any historical or theological doctrine formulated on speculative presuppositions which abstract from the eschatological character of Christian religious experience to lead to ethical consequences which subvert lived assimilation to Jesus Christ in intuitive hope and faith.19 The preceding reflections endow two familiar theological maxims with greater operational and therefore with greater methodological precision. 19. Cf. Gerald O’Collins, Christology: A Biblical, Historical, and Systematic Study of Jesus (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1995).
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The first maxim asserts that theology consists in faith seeking understanding. If doctrinal theology exemplifies faith seeking rational self-understanding, then the human mind must have cognitive access the realities on which doctrinal theology reflects prior to their inferential, doctrinal elaboration. The epistemology which undergirds this foundational Christology argues that Christian religious experience first grasps those realities intuitively and aesthetically and that such perceptions yield more fundamental cognitive access to lived reality than abstract, inferential modes of thinking. The second maxim derives from the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. It asserts that any aspect of humanity which the Son of God in His incarnation failed to assume would thereby lie outside the realm of God’s saving action. I shall return in another context to the Christological maxim that “what is not assumed in the incarnation is not saved.” Here is suffices to note its methodological soundness. The maxim implicitly acknowledges Christological knowing as the only adequate context for authenticating Christological doctrines. The maxim asserts in effect that the practical soteriological consequences of Christological beliefs verify or falsify their speculative truth. Such a principle accords with pragmatic logic, which bridges the traditional dualistic gulf separating theory from practice. Pragmatic logic clarifies the speculative meaning of any hypothesis by deducing its operational consequences. Christological hypotheses have soteriological consequences which concretize and clarify their meaning. So far, I have spoken only of the norms which the two dynamics of Christian conversion provide for verifying or falsifying Christological doctrines. The other four forms of natural conversion also provide norms relevant to Christological thinking. Since, however, in and of themselves the four forms of natural conversion abstract from the realities disclosed to eschatological Christian faith, in and of themselves they offer only negative norms for calling into question or invalidating doctrines. Affective conversion, for example, teaches us that if a particular Christological doctrine fosters neurosis or psychosis it probably springs from a naturally disordered psyche and not from a sound insight into the saving realities disclosed to eschatological religious experience. Any interpretation of the kingship of Christ, for example, which would foster in Christian leaders obsessive, anxiety-ridden attachment to rational control and to coercive power fails to qualify as Christologically and theologically authentic. By the same token, affective conversion also enhances the human capacity for aesthetic experience. Hence, any Christological doctrine which blinds one to the divine beauty incarnate in Jesus would fail the test of
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doctrinal authenticity. As we shall see, the evolution of medieval atonement Christology illustrates well this particular doctrinal fallacy. Intellectual conversion teaches one to call into question any Christological doctrine which invokes logical and methodological presuppositions which blind the inferential mind to the very religious realities which it seeks to understand. Enlightenment Christology, for example, and other forms of theological rationalism fail this negative test. Personal moral conversion teaches the doctrinal thinker that any Christological doctrine which inculcates personally irresponsible moral and religious practice fails to qualify as authentic. The restriction of Christological faith to religious sentimentalism exemplifies this particular doctrinal fallacy. A Christology which never discourses of anything besides “me and Jesus” has failed to understand both Jesus and the practical consequences of faith in the paschal mystery. Similarly, a privatized rendering of Christological doctrine which fails to acknowledge the way in which Christological faith challenges institutional injustice also fails the test of doctrinal authenticity. Any Christology which lacks a social gospel would, then, fail this negative doctrinal test. I am suggesting that the four natural, secular forms of conversion in and of themselves enhance eschatological, historical, and ethical norms for judging Christian doctrine with negative pragmatism. Negative pragmatism invokes the destructive consequences of a doctrine in order to reject it as false; but negative pragmatism alone lacks the norms for authenticating a particular doctrine as true. The natural forms of conversion offer negative norms for invalidating theological doctrines because they prescind from the realities of faith. At best, therefore, they provide criteria for judging when a doctrine expresses misleading habits of interpretation which blind one to eschatological reality. When transvalued in faith, however, the natural forms of conversion can make a more positive contribution to the authentication of theological doctrines. The normative, aesthetic character of affective conversion, for example, sanctions approaching Christological thinking initially in the context of a normative theological aesthetics. Similarly, intellectual conversion, when transvalued in faith eanbles one to distinguish between sound and unsound theological methods. The two forms of moral conversion enable moral theologians to deliberate prudently and discerningly about ethical issues which the Bible completely ignores. The preceding reflections cast light about the way in which doctrinal theology ought to go about assessing the authenticity of Chalcedonian Christological doctrine. First, doctrinal theology needs to reach an initial judgment about the ability of the Chalcedonian creed to interpret the realities disclosed intuitively to Christological hope and to the intuitive
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dimensions of Christological faith. Second, doctrinal theology needs to clarify the meaning of Chalcedonian Christology by explicating its practical, lived consequences. That clarification will prepare the way for a judgment concerning the ability of Chalcedonian Christology to foster Christological knowing. Does, then, Chalcedonian Christology actually interpret the eschatological realities disclosed to Christian hope and to the intuitive dimensions of Christian faith? The answer to that question lies in reviewing the relevant conclusions reached in the earlier Christological sections of this study. In the paschal mystery, Jesus rises from the dead. He experiences resurrection as the culmination of His own personal transformation in God. Jesus, however, does not just rise as an individual. Instead, He rises as the last Adam, as “a life-giving Breath” who communicated divine life to those who saw Him and who continues to communicate it to those who call upon Him in faith. The communication of divine life as Breath transforms Jesus into the last Adam because it establishes Him as the unique, eschatological source of risen life, of total human transformation in the Breath of God. His communication of the divine Breath undoes human sin and its consequences, redefines the destiny of humanity, and so begins the new creation. Jesus rises with unique efficacy because only His resurrection effects resurrection in others. Those rise with Jesus who experience the efficacy of His resurrection in the gift of His Breath. Jesus’ resurrection therefore stands as an absolutely unique eschatological event which bridges by blending this world and the world to come. As the sole efficacious, eschatological source of resurrection in others, Jesus’ resurrection and it alone serves as the prototype of all other resurrections. Other religious founders have left behind books or doctrines; only Jesus begins the eschatological age with everything which that new beginning implies. Only Jesus baptizes in a divine, sanctifying Breath. The Biblical term “the Breath of God” designates the experience of God’s active presence in human history. That active presence takes the form of an empowering enlightenment which enables one to speak and act in the name of God. The reality of the Breath and the reality of God coincide. Moreover, only God commands or sends God. The fact, then, that those who encountered the risen Christ experienced Him as “a life-giving Breath,” as Her efficacious source, reveals historically and eschatologically His divinity. Moreover, the revelation of Jesus’ divinity discloses simultaneously the eschatological future. Through the Breath of Christ’s enlightenment of believers the God revealed in the paschal mystery becomes their future.
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Those who saw the risen Christ experienced a theophany to which others have cognitive access through the empowering faith which the Breath of Christ inspires. The Breath of Christ reveals Him to believers by drawing them actively into His Abba experience. Though He now dwells with God, the fact that the risen Christ continues to send His Breath into human hearts prolongs the historical revelation of His resurrection.20 As the efficacious source of divine life, the personal reality revealed in the risen Christ had to exist in the eternal Godhead before taking flesh; and, by assuming humanity in all its frailty and by freely and obediently submitting to death on the cross, the Son of God revealed God’s unshakable love for a sinful world. The cross also reveals the perfection of Jesus’ obedience to the Father, just as the resurrection reveals both His oneness with the Father and the Father’s love for Jesus. Together both events demand that Jesus, as the obedient Son of God, must have lived a sinless life, since God cannot sin. Because the resurrection reveals Jesus’ personal divinity and the identity of life He shares with the Father, Jesus stands historically and eschatologically revealed as the divine reality through which the creator God acts to save us. If the Father acts through the Son, then the Son relates to the Father with obediential efficacy. With the Father, therefore, the risen Christ exercises universal obediential sway over creation and possesses divine authority to pass judgment upon all creatures. Because those who saw the risen Christ experienced Him as the personal source of God’s Breath, Jesus and the divine Breath share a functional identity. Wherever, therefore, the Breath acts, the risen Christ acts; and by Her action She makes the risen Christ present in those who believe. Because the risen Christ’s mission of the divine Breath reveals His personal divinity, it also reveals that He and the Breath share an identity of divine life. Breath-baptism communicates a share in that life. The experience of Breath-baptism gives one access to the mind of God and of Christ because it enables one to perceive the world in the way in which Jesus did. If Jesus’ transformation in the Breath culminated in His resurrection, then our present share in the Breath begins our share in His risen, divine life and destines us for resurrection in His image when we experience total transformation in God after death. Because the resurrection transformed Jesus bodily, our total transformation in God will also transform us bodily, even though the exact nature of the risen body remains mysterious. Nevertheless, desire for personal and ecclesial trans20. Cf. Josef Finkenzeller, “Die Aufstehung Christi und unsere Hoffnung” in Die Frage nach Jesus, pp. 181-270; Leo Elders, “Resurrexit tertia die secundum Scripturas” in Cristo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 909-916; Francisco Ocariz, “Estudio de la Resurreccion de Cristo en Cuanto Causo de la Resurreccion de los Hombres, Segun la Doctrina de Santo Tomás de Aquino,” Ibid., pp. 969-984.
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formation in Jesus’ image makes Christian hope immediately practical and orients those who believe toward final resurrection. Breath-baptism begins the experience of “Christological knowing,” which yields that understanding of Jesus which results from converted transformation in His image through the empowering enlightenment of His Breath. Only the apostles saw the risen Christ, but they too came to know Him most deeply through the subsequent experience of Christological knowing. The apostles’ encounters with the risen Christ therefore begin historically and eschatologically the transformation of humanity through graced conversion in their and especially in His image. Moreover, Christological knowing, knowledge of Christ through pneumatic assimilation to Him, yields a higher form of knowing than just seeing the risen Christ. Even in the case of the apostles, Christological knowing brought the converted knowledge acquired in their original resurrection encounters to conscious perfection. As a consequence, the apostles founded the Christian Church, not primarily by leaving beside a “deposit” of abstract, propositional doctrines but primarily by modeling for others and explaining to them the historical and eschatological grounds of Christian conversion and of the Christological knowing which it embodies. Christological knowing seals the new covenant in the heart of all believers by drawing them into the paschal mystery. By that I mean, Christological knowing teaches believers to enter practically into the atonement of Christ by suffering the effects of sin, as Jesus did, without sinning. Human willingness to enter into the atonement of Christ manifests His victory over the Satan and over the evil principalities and powers which rule this world. The Breath whom the risen Christ sends dwelt in Him personally with eschatological fullness, since He functions as Her divine, efficacious source. She comes to the Christian community first of all corporately, communally, and ecclesially and only then personally and individually. Both the letters of Paul and the Acts of the Apostles leave no doubt on that point. In other words, individual believers share in the divine life which Breath-baptism communicates by participating through baptismal faith in the eucharistic community of faith which She creates by dispensing the charisms. Because sin takes embodied form in the world in ways which corrupt human hearts, salvation must ultimately extend to the world itself. It must undo all the embodied effects of sin. Christians therefore look forward to a new heaven and a new earth purified of sin and injustice. That world will stand finally and fully revealed when all rise corporately with Christ from the dead. The incarnation of the Son of God therefore binds God permanently not just to humanity but to the entire physical universe in a new, unique, and saving way.
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Apocalyptic Christian hope discerns the ultimate shape of the dawning eschatological future. Such a hope bases its perceptions of the future on the realities disclosed in the paschal mystery. Put dispensationally, the God who acted through Jesus to save the world also acted through Jesus to create it and will act through Him in order to judge it. Hence, Jesus’ divinity reveals Him not only as the Alpha, as the one through whom God made all things, but also as the Omega, as the world’s final judge. Jesus’ divine judicial authority makes Him the Lord of history and empowers Him to reveal through the prophetic Breath the shape of the future. As divine apocalyptic judge, Jesus presides over the whole course of human history. Jesus shares His messianic and judicial authority with those who believe in Him by empowering them through His gift of the Breath to testify to His resurrection and to the divine realities which it discloses. In forcing a choice for or against Jesus, that testimony prepares and in a sense predetermines God’s final judgment on the world. As one chooses, so one stands judged. The woes of the end time result from humanity’s sinful refusal to respond in faith to the Breath of the risen Jesus. Human unbelief therefore also makes inevitable the conflict between the victorious Lamb of God and Satanic incarnations of blasphemy, sin, and evil like the Roman empire and contemporary global capitalism. The sufferings of persecuted Christians during the end time prolong the passion of Jesus by drawing them into His atoning, priestly sacrifice. One atones for sin by suffering its consequences without sinning. The innocent sufferings of Christians reveal Jesus’ eschatological victory over sin, suffering, and death by empowering them to defy all three. Resurrection with Christ incorporates one into the heavenly Jerusalem, the new creation which God alone can bring about. In the new creation, citizens of the new Jerusalem will one day see God face to face in the knowledge born of perfect mutual love.21 21. The writings of the New Testament which deal principally with Christian hope— namely, the letters of Paul and the book of Revelation agree on many fundamental points: 1) The resurrection reveals the divinity of Jesus. 2) The fact that God acts through Jesus to save us reveals the Son of God as the one through whom the Father acts efficaciously upon the world no matter what He does. The Father therefore also creates the world through the Son and will judge it through the Son. 3) The revelation of Jesus’ divinity establishes His messianic authority. 4) Jesus’ death reconciles a sinful humanity to God by atoning for sin. His death and resurrection also seal a new covenant between God and humanity. 5) The innocent sufferings of Christians prolong the passion of Christ in space and time. Jesus does not save us from suffering but in the midst of suffering and through suffering.
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One needs to measure Christological doctrine not only against the eschatological future which the paschal mystery makes manifest to Christian hope but also against the intuitive perceptions of Christian faith. As we have seen, the four gospels reveal God by using narrative in order to promote Christological knowing in those who believe. All four gospels use narrative strategies to assert the divinity of Jesus. In portraying Him as the Breath-baptizer, for example, the four gospels all implicitly assert His divinity, since only God can function as the efficacious source of the divine Breath. Matthew and John especially link the full revelation of Jesus’ divinity to His resurrection and to the divine Breath’s eschatological mission. The gospels also assert Jesus’ divinity by having Him do things which only God can do and then by calling attention to the divine character of His actions. In the synoptics, for example, Jesus’ sabbath healing and forgiveness of the paralytic illustrate this particular narrative strategy. All four gospels use Jesus’ cosmological miracles in order to assert His divinity. Jesus calms the watery forces of chaos with a word, a power which only God possesses. He walks on the waters of chaos, as God does in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus proclaims His divinity by claiming the divine name as His own in Mark, Matthew, and John. The fourth gospel has Jesus invoke the divine name repeatedly. The Beloved Disciple insists not only on Jesus’ divinity but on His eternal dwelling with the Father before He took flesh. In addition, the fourth evangelist begins the coordination of Christological and trinitarian faith by anticipating in Biblical language the trinitarian doctrine of the early councils. The Beloved Disciple has a name for each member of the divine 6) Discipleship commits one to active opposition to the Satanic principalities and powers of this world. 7) Resurrection culminates in face-to-face vision of God. The Christologies of hope which one finds in Paul and in the book of Revelation also contrast in significant ways: 1) The book of Revelation stresses the priesthood of Christ more than Paul. 2) It characterizes the book of Revelation to portray Jesus as the victorious Lamb of God. 3) The book of Revelation makes it clearer than Paul does that Christian hope has an overtly political and economic dimension. Commitment to Christ demands that one long for the final destruction of oppressive and blasphemous human institutions. Both the prophet John and Paul, however, expected the opposition to Christ to intensify before the arrival of the end time. Moreover, the book of Revelation insists even more than Paul does on the non-violent character of Christian prophetic opposition to the forces of evil. 4) Paul insists more than the book of Revelation on the universality of the salvation accomplished in Christ. 5) In a Pauline Christology of hope, the Holy Breath plays a much more central role than in the book of Revelation.
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triad: Father, Son, and Breath. He also has two names for the divinity which They share in common: namely, Theos and pneuma without the article. Finally, John has a way of describing the unity of the trinity: namely, mutual indwelling. If doctrinal Christology must clarify rationally the divine realities disclosed to eschatological Christian hope and faith, then those revealed realities make the creed of Chalcedon inevitable. A Christology which correctly interprets the shared hope and intuitive faith of Christians must find a way of talking about the single, subsistent reality we call Jesus of Nazareth. It must also find a way of talking about His divinity and His humanity without blending them into a fictive theandric reality neither fully divine nor fully human. Finally, one must, as Chalcedon did, coordinate one’s account of an incarnate God with trinitarian faith. In other words, the doctrinal interpretation of the New Testament enunciated at Chalcedon correctly prescribed the linguistic parameters of any sound Christological doctrine. In reducing the incarnation to a doctrine, Chalcedon did not, of course, deal with every aspect of New Testament Christology. Nor did it intend to do so. Chalcedon, moreover, did not endorse any particular philosophical way of formulating its Christological creed. As a consequence, far from ending Christological speculation on the incarnation, Chalcedon, in answering the question which the council of Ephesus raised, invited the historical development of Christology; for anyone who endorses Chalcedonian Christology must face the daunting task of expressing Chalcedonian doctrine with greater logical, inferential consistency than Chalcedon itself. The very terminological vagueness of Chalcedon forces subsequent systematizing Christologists to define Christological doctrine with greater logical precision that Chalcedon itself. Doctrinal Christology needs to define rationally what it means by the reality of God, by human reality, and by the reality of the world which Jesus saves. A contemporary Christology also needs to test its fallible, hypothetical theory of the whole against the realities revealed in Jesus and in the mission of His Breath. It needs therefore to find a consistent way of talking about a person possessed simultaneously of both divinity and humanity. It also needs to formulate a coordinated doctrinal account of the social reality of the triune God. Inevitably, then, any doctrinal interpretation of the meaning of Chalcedon challenges Christologists to formulate an inferentially consistent, philosophical metaphysics. Most contemporary Christological confusion results from the failure of Christologists to rise to that speculative challenge.22 22. Cf. John P. Galvin, “I Believe...in Jesus Christ, His Only Son, Our Lord,” Interpretation, 50(1996), pp. 373-382.
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In what follows I shall test the ability of a metaphysics of experience to interpret the historical and eschatological realities disclosed to Christological hope and to intuitive Christological faith. Moreover, in reformulating Chalcedon, I shall attempt to overcome somewhat its impoverishing abstractness by deducing the saving practical consequences of Chalcedonian Christological faith. Finally, I shall offer an interpretation of the trinity which coheres logically with the experiential construct of the incarnation which I shall propose. In this chapter, I have been arguing that a sound insight into the realities disclosed intuitively to Christian hope and to the intuitive dimensions of Christian faith authenticate Chalcedonian Christology. In the course of the argument, I have invoked historical and eschatological evidence. In later chapters, I shall also invoke ethical criteria for the same methodological purpose. In shall do so in the course of considering the saving consequences of the hypostatic union. For the moment, however, I am focusing on the ontological reality historically and eschatologically embodied in the incarnation.23 In the chapter which follows, I shall urge that the monothelite controversy holds the doctrinal key to formulating an experiential, metaphysical construct of the hypostatic union.
23. Anthony Tyrell Hanson constructs, it seem to me, an argument analogous to the one presented in this chapter. See: Anthony Tyrell Hanson, The Image of the Invisible God (London: SCM Press, 1982).
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Chapter 8 Reformulating Chalcedon This chapter begins to construct an experiential understanding of the hypostatic union. In elaborating that experiential construct, I shall develop seminal insights of Maximus the Confessor, the principal defender of Christian orthodoxy during the monothelite controversy. In order, however, to grasp the point of Maximus’s Christology, one must first recall how the monothelite controversy arose and the relevant issues which it raised. This chapter divides into three parts. Part one retrieves the issues raised by the monothelite controversy. It focuses on the Christology of Maximus the Confessor, one of the most suasive defenders of orthodoxy in that dispute. Part two argues that when one re-interprets Maximus’s Christology in the light of a triadic metaphysics of experience, that metaphysics provides the key for understanding the hypostatic union. Part three begins to test the adequacy of an experiential construct of the hypostatic union by assessing its ability to deal with the issues raised by the development of post-Chalcedonian Christology. I begin, then, with an examination of the monothelite controversy. (I) The monothelite controversy resulted from the good intentions of the Emperor Heraclius (575-641 a.d.). In the fifth and sixth centuries, the Christian emperor who ruled in the east played a much more active administrative role in the inner life of the Church than did the Roman emperor in the west. Heraclius, for example, felt called to bring about a reconciliation of the heretical monophysite church with the orthodox church. In that laudable enterprise, the emperor groped for a theological formula which would reunite the two divided communions. He devised a formula from elements which he discovered in the writings of Cyril of Alexandria and Severus of Antioch. As we saw in volume one, Cyril used the term “mia physis” in order to designate the person of Christ. For Cyril the term connoted the dynamic way in which the divine and human blend in Jesus. Unfortunately, the term also caused Nestorius, the patriarch of Antioch, to suspect Cyril of endorsing the monophysite heresy. The council of Ephesus had vindicated Cyril’s orthodoxy, but without endorsing his use of the term “mia physis.” Heraclius hoped that, by resurrecting the term and by reinterpreting it in the light of the theology of Severus of Antioch, he could lure the monophysites back into the church.
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With Severus, the emperor argued that the dynamic unity of divinity and humanity of which Cyril had spoken could take place only if the incarnate Word possesses a single will and a single action. Unfortunately, Heraclius interpreted Severus’s position in a way which suggested to some at least that the incarnate Word possesses a divine but not a human will. The emperor interested Cyrus, the metropolitan of Sebastepol, in his ideas and in 631 a.d. saw him consecrated patriarch of Alexandria. Heraclius commissioned Cyrus to use Alexandrian theology in order to lure the monophysites back into the great Church. The act of union, which attempted to serve as the basis for reconciliation with the monophysites professed “one Christ as Son, performing things attributable to God and man in one theandric operation.” Sergius I, the patriarch of Constantinople (610-638 a.d.) also sympathized with the emperor’s efforts and communicated his reflections on the notion of a single will in Christ to Pope Honorius I (625-638 a.d.) Honorius replied that one could speak of one will in Christ if one meant by that to deny any conflict between the divine and human wills in Christ. In 634 a.d., Sophronius, the patriarch of Jerusalem, further clarified the terms of the controversy soon to erupt when he sent to the pope his Epistola synodica. In it Sophronius clearly distinguished the divine and human wills in Christ and suggested that “theandric acts” must proceed from both sides simultaneously. The monothelite controversy erupted in 638 a.d., when emperor Heraclius published his Ekthesis in which he stressed the unity of will in Christ. Many thought that the emperor had either suppressed altogether Christ’s human will or that he had so fused it with the divine as to eliminate it for all practical purposes. Pope John IV in union with a Roman synod condemned this doctrine as the heresy of monothelitism. This initial papal condemnation led to others. In 647 a.d., Pope Theodore I condemned Paul, the patriarch of Constantinople, when the latter refused to repudiate monothelitism. In 647 a.d. emperor Constans II (641-668 a.d.) issued a decree prohibiting all discussion of the presence of two wills in Christ. This prohibition earned condemnation by Pope Martin I. Maximus the Confessor emerged as the most articulate of the orthodox opponents of the monothelite heresy. In defending the presence of two wills in Christ, one divine and the other human, Maximus advanced Chalcedonian Christology in a number of significant ways. First, Maximus saw clearly that Christ’s possession of a human nature demanded that He also possess all the powers of activity proper to that nature. Hence, if humans possess wills, then Christ too has to have had a finite human will.
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Second, Maximus realized that Chalcedonian Christology inevitably raises psychological questions about the incarnation. Specifically, Maximus argued that unless Jesus possessed both a human will and a divine will, one could not explain the agony in the garden. Jesus’ prayer in the garden, “Not my will but your will be done” reveals that in His human will He experienced repugnance to submitting to death in fidelity to His mission from the Father. (Maximus the Confessor, Opusc. theol. et pol., PG 91, 65AB) At the same time Jesus’ complete submission to the Father manifested the perfection of His obedience to the Father’s will. (Ibid. 68A) Maximus argued, therefore, that the duality of wills reveals the duality of natures in Christ, while the perfect unity of Jesus’ will with the Father’s divine will, the dynamic synergy of the two wills, manifests the unity of His person. Third, Maximus developed the soteriological implications of the two wills united in perfect harmony. Jesus, by His natural human repugnance in the face of death, revealed His saving solidarity with the rest of humanity. In the perfection of His obedience to the Father, however, He transformed His humanity into the graced pattern to which other humans must conform. Like Jesus, every adopted child of God must learn to say, “Not my will but Yours be done.” (Ibid., 68BCD) The fusion of the divine and human wills in Christ, the synergy present in His incarnate, theandric life recreates human nature in the divine image. (Epist. ad Thalass., 60, PG 90, 624BC) It constitutes the incarnate Word supreme mediator between God and humanity. It transforms Him into the new head of the new creation. Finally, the fact that the passion and death of Jesus put His obedience to the Father to the supreme test means that the incarnation culminates in the paschal mystery and that the cross of Christ stands at the heart of human redemption.1 The Lateran council (649 a.d.) condemned monothelitism. (DS 500) So did the third council of Constantinople (680-681 a.d.). The latter taught that the incarnate Son of God had two wills “undivided (adiairetos), unexchangeable (atrepotôs), unmixed (ameristos), unconfused (asygchtos).” Constantinople III also asserted the complete submission of the human will to the divine. (DS 553-559) This section has examined issues raised by the monothelite controversy. The section which follows will show that, when one interprets the Christology of Maximus the Confessor in the light of a realistic, social, 1. Cf. Pierre Piret, Le Christ et la trinité selon Maxime le Confesseur (Paris: Beauchesne, 1983); Dom Julian Stead, O.S.B., “The Meaning of Hypostasis in Some Texts of the ‘Ambigua’ of Saint Maximos the Confessor,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 8(1989), pp. 25-33.
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triadic metaphysics of experience, Maximus’s doctrine holds the key to explaining the hypostatic union doctrinally.2 (II) This section begins to formulate an experiential construct of the hypostatic union by invoking a metaphysics of experience. It first recalls the broad outlines of such a metaphysics. It then argues that such a metaphysics can interpret consistently the reality of an incarnate God. A metaphysics of experience takes experience as its root metaphor for reality in general. This fallible philosophical hypothesis defends the legitimacy of imagining all reality as experience in some form. Having made the suggestion the metaphysician of experience has then to clarify the philosophical meaning of experience by defining it rationally and philosophically. The metaphysics of experience which I am proposing defines “experience” as a process made up of relational elements called feelings. It finds three generic kinds of feelings in the higher forms of experience: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies. Whitehead’s philosophy of organism postulates that even the most primitive physical process has an evaluative component. The metaphysics of experience which I am proposing rejects, however, Whitehead’s di-polar, nominalistic construct of experience which makes such a suggestion necessary. A triadic metaphysics of experience leaves open the question whether or not pre-protoplasmic realities feel one another evaluatively. I find it plausible that unconscious evaluation plays some role in organic life. Both conscious and unconscious evaluations certainly play a role in sensate life; but a metaphysics of experience leaves it finally to the positive sciences to determine through close investigation of nature whether or not evaluative response characterizes both primitive organic processes and even more primitive physical processes. In the metaphysics of experience which I am proposing, therefore, I leave it an open question whether in the lowest forms of experience two or three variables function. At present, I do not think that the evidence allows one to rule out the possibility that in purely physical reactions like chemical change only two variables function: namely, decisive action and tendency. Among living organisms, the emergence of conscious evaluation seems to depend on the development of a nervous system. Interpreting Chalcedon Experientially The council of Chalcedon, as we have seen, did not define the technical Christological terms it popularized. It left it to theologians to determine with philosophical precision what “hypostasis” and “physis” mean. A tri2. Cf. Nicolas Lopez-Martinez, “Magisterio Cristologico de los Concilios I y III de Constantinopla” in Cristo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 393-409.
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adic metaphysics of experience equates “hypostasis” with “person” and “physis” with experience. It discovers two kinds of experiences in the second person of the trinity: one divine, the other human. By an “hypostasis” I mean a person. Moreover, as I have already explained, by a “person” I mean a dynamic, relational, autonomous reality imbued with vital continuity and with the capacity for responsible self-understanding, for making decisions which flow from that self-understanding, and for entering into responsible social relationship with entities like itself. Jesus of Nazareth confronts us a person. The person of Jesus confronts us historically as a finite developing human experience. Were one to base Christology exclusively on the mortal ministry of Jesus while simultaneously ignoring the paschal mystery, one would have to agree with Schoonenberg, van Beeck, and Haight that in Jesus one encounters a human person as well as a human experience. Were one to base Christology only on Jesus’ mortal ministry, however, one would formulate a Jesusology, not a Christology. When, however, one takes the paschal mystery into account, as one must in order to pursue Christology as such, then one must also confess Jesus’ divinity. On this point Pannenberg has the right of it: Christology makes the paschal mystery central to understanding the full reality of Jesus. Pannenberg, however, lacks the metaphysical tools he needs in order to endow this fundamental insight with adequate inferential precision. In the paschal mystery, Jesus confronts one as the autonomously functioning, efficacious source of a divine reality, namely, the Breath of God. Only God can command or send God. As the Breath-baptizer, the risen Christ confronts us as just such a reality and therefore as an autonomously functioning divine person and a facet of the divine experience. If that divine person also lived and died as human, then, within the paschal mystery, the person named Jesus confronts one as a divine person with a finite, developing human experience. I shall postpone any consideration of the role which the person of Jesus plays within the reality of God until I have dealt doctrinally with the incarnation; for the incarnation reveals the inner life of the trinity. Here it suffices to note that, in an experiential construct of the hypostatic union, one defines the Chalcedonian term “physis” as “an experience.” One also discovers two experiences in Jesus: one finite, human, and spatio-temporal and the other infinite, eternal, and divine. When one interprets Maximus’s synergy of the divine and human wills in Jesus in the light of a realistic, triadic metaphysics of experience, volitional synergy unites the divine and the human in Jesus. In order to understand, however, how a metaphysics of experience makes thinkable both this synergy and the personal unity which it effects, one needs to examine
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in closer detail how the New Testament perceives the relationship between the Father and His incarnate Son.3 The New Testament repeatedly describes the God revealed in Jesus as acting efficaciously. God chooses freely. (Act 1:7, Rom 8:11, Gal 1:15, Eph 1:3-4, Col 12:13, 1 Th 1:4, 2 Th 2:13-14, James 2:5, Tit 1:1) God speaks. (Mt 4:1-4, 10:33, 17:5; Mk 1:12-13, 9:7-8; Lk 3:2, 4:1-13, 9:16; Jn 3:34, 5:28, 8:18, 9:3, 10:25; Heb 1:1, 5-14, 3:8, 12, 11:17) God legislates norms of human conduct. (Mk 7:8-13, 12:28-34, 5:36-37; Mt 22:34-40; Lk 2:25-28; 1 Th 4:1-8) God wills the salvation of all people. (Mt 18:14, 35; Act 28:28; 1 Th 2:4) God expresses love and acts lovingly. (Jn 3:15-16, 5:9, 13:49-50; Rom 5:5; Col 3:12-13; 2 Th 2:13-14) God decides the course of history. (Lk 8:7; Act 1:7, 13:36, 3:18-21, 28:20; Jn 11:52-53; 2 Cor 5:18; Eph 1:3-14; 1 Pet 3:17) God executes judgment decisively. (Mt 6:1, 4, 6, 18, 10:28; Lk 12:5-6, 16:15; Act 23:3; Rom 2:2, 8, 3:6, 19-20, 8:34; 1 Cor 4:5, 5:13; 2 Th 1:1-2, 8:2; 1 Tim 4:1; Rev 14:17, 16:17) God not only hears prayers and responds to good works; but God also forgives sins and acts mercifully. (Mt 18:19-20; Lk 1:78; Act 10:4, 27:24; Mk 2:7-12, 6:14-15, 12:25; Jn 9:45; Rom 12:7) God makes promises and keeps them. (Tit 1:1; Heb 6:13) The New Testament also describes the relationship between the Father and the Son as efficacious and decisive. Father and Son speak with one another. (Mt 10:33; Lk 12:8; Rom 8:33) The Father entrusts all things to the Son, while the Son returns everything to the Father. (Mt 11:25-27, 13:43; Lk 1:32, 10:21-22, 22:28-30) The Son imitates the Father, says only what the Father says. (Jn 5:19, 10:38, 14:10-11, 12) In the New Testament the Father always inaugurates each new saving impulse which advances salvation history. The Father long ago gave the Law to Moses. (Rom 3:21, 7:24, 8:7; Mt 15:3-4; Act 7:1-53, 22:14, 24:14-15) The Father proclaims Jesus His Son and also commissions Him as messiah and suffering servant. (Mt 9:8; Mk 1:11; Lk 3:22; Act 2:22) The Father raises Jesus from the dead and exalts Him to His right hand where the Son reigns in power. (Mt 23:22, 29-33; Mk 12:24-27; Lk 22:44-45; Act 2:23, 32, 3:15, 5:31-33, 13:30, 34, 17:31, 26:8; Rom 6:4, Phil 2:9-10, 1 Pet 1:21) In exalting the Son, the Father establishes Him as the beginning of a new creation. (Mk 10:6-9, 13:19; Gal 6:15; Eph 1:3-14, 2:10; 1 Cor 15:21, 45; Rom 1:20, 15:13, 6:14; Act 17:24-29; Heb 2:10, 3:4) The Father and the Son act decisively together. The Son’s words and deeds establish the Father’s reign on earth. (Mt 12:28, 13:43; Lk 7:13, 18:39, 19:42-44; Jn 3:10) The Father acts in and through the Son in order to effect the miracles He performs. (Jn 3:34, 5:20, 10:17, 13:49-50, 3. Cf. Michael Slusser, “The Exegetical Roots of Trinitarian Theology,” Theological Studies, 49(1988), pp. 461-476.
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14:10-11, 20; 15:9, Heb 2:4) Father and Son act together in sending the divine Breath. (Lk 11:13; Act 33-34, 5:32, 10:38, 11:23, 15:9, 14, 19; Jn 6:23, 14:6, 26, 20:21; Rom 8:3; 1 Cor 1:4, 3:10, 7:7, 12:6; Gal 3:5; 1 Pet 4:6-11) The Son makes the Father efficaciously present. (Jn 14:8-9; Heb 9:24) In the fourth gospel, as we have seen, the Father empowers the Son to raise Himself from the dead. (Jn 10:17-18) Johannine rhetoric, therefore, suggests that even in the resurrection, the Father acts efficaciously through the Son. The Son does not relate to the Father mechanically. Instead, the Son responds to the Father’s decisive initiatives freely and autonomously. (Mk 4:1-11, 26:36; Lk 4:1-13, 21-25; Mk 8:33, 12:11, 14:37) Luke portrays the boy Jesus already busy in the things of His Father. (Lk 3:50) Jesus proclaims doing the Father’s will His very food and drink. (Mt 4:1-3; Lk 4:1-4; Jn 4:34) In the fourth gospel, the Son acts and speaks in perfect submission to the Father and in faithful imitation of what the Father does. (Jn 5:19, 30, 10:38) Finally, the Son passes the supreme test of His obedience to the Father by submitting to death on the cross. (Mt 26:36-46; Mk 14:32-42; Lk 22:40-46; Jn 10:18, 29; Heb 2:8; Rom 8:11; Eph 2:16-17; Phil 2:6-11; 1 Pet 3:18) In other words, the New Testament consistently interprets Jesus’ relationship to the Father as a free, responsible, efficacious, interpersonal collaboration. The fact that Jesus responds to the Father with self-conscious human responsibility makes Him both human and a person. Because the resurrection reveals Jesus as Breath-baptizer, as source of a divine reality, it reveals Him as a divine person also possessed of a human experience. Because the person of the Son obeys the Father in all things, that divine person confronts one as a personal source of obediential efficacy within the Godhead. As Maximus the Confessor saw clearly and correctly, the conflict in Gethsemane between Jesus’ human preferences and the divine will requires the presence within Him of a finite, human capacity for decision distinct from the divine will to which it must submit. One discovers, then, two principles of decisive efficacy in the incarnate Son of God: one finite and human, the other divine and therefore infinite.4 The two types of decisions in Jesus together with the corresponding tendencies which ground them constitute what an earlier philosophy called His divine and human “wills.” In a metaphysics of experience, however, “will” does not mean a power of the spiritual soul with a fixed formal object, as it does in Thomistic Aristotelianism. It means instead a developing, autonomous tendency to decide in specific ways. 4. I shall define and clarify the meaning of the term “divine infinity” in the next chapter.
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A metaphysics of experience views each human experience as emergent and developmental. The character of every decision results from the kind of evaluative responses which it terminates. Hence, each decision redefines incrementally one’s “will,” one’s developing tendency to respond decisively to the decisions of others. The specific character of one’s “will” results, then, from the kinds of decisions which have shaped it historically. The same holds true of Jesus’ human “will.” Ordinary humans are born into a sinful world. Because our environment shapes us in all kinds of subtle ways, it corrupts both our consciences and our choices. Children raised in a racist, sexist, militaristic, capitalistic culture like ours will, without the help of graced counterinfluences, grow up with moral inevitability racist, sexist, militaristic, and greedily capitalistic. Such children experience the corrosive power of “original sin” American style. Even baptized Christians who experience the help of divine grace and the graced moral support of fellow believers still succumb, often unconsciously, to the corrupting influences of a sinful culture. Those Christians experience the corrosive power of “concupiscence.” In order, then, to grasp the implications of the preceding doctrinal statement, one needs to probe more deeply the meaning of original sin and of concupiscence. The terms “original sin” and “concupiscence” derive from sacramental theology; but they have Christological relevance; for, if the risen Christ confronts us as divine and as therefore sinless, He must somehow have avoided the corrupting influences of original sin and of concupiscence. “Sin” divides into personal sin and original sin. “Personal sin” designates one’s own sins as opposed to the sins of others. “Original sin” designates all other forms of sin in the experience of those born without supernatural grace, except for their own personal sins. Original sin, therefore includes not only the sins of individuals but also the human institutionalizations of sin. By “concupiscence” I mean sinful forces in the experience of the baptized, forces distinct from their own personal sin which nevertheless come from sin and lead to sin. (DS 1515) In a metaphysics of experience, any experienced reality stands within experience, not outside of it. Hence, both institutionalized sin and the personal sins of others shape one as an experience. Often enough without reflecting on what one is doing, one appropriates the vicious personal example of others, for the simple reason that humans tend to learn mimetically: through imitation.5 One also interiorizes unreflectively and with moral inevitability the sinful attitudes and values which human institu5. As I use the term mimetic it does not necessarily imply René Girard’s theory of mimetic desire. Cf. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
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tions systematically inculcate with social sanctions. Institutions can, of course, also inculcate virtuous attitudes; but they also can and do inculcate vice and sin. Left to its natural resources alone, human nature cannot resist the corrupting influences of a sinful culture. With moral inevitability, those evil influences poison the deepest center of our hearts.6 Such an understanding of original sin requires one to view it perspectivally. Each individual experiences original sin from a different angle of vision, from a different point in space and time. My personal sins contribute to your experience of original sin, just as your personal sins contribute to my experience of original sin. Original sin designates, therefore, the environment of sin into which humans are born and to which they will succumb with moral inevitability when left to their natural resources alone. Since original sin designates environmental sin, Christian initiation takes away original sin by changing one’s situation, by introducing one through a process of conversion into a graced environment which equips one to name all sin, both personal and original, as sin and to resist it. Christian initiation does not, however, abolish the sinfulness of a converted Christian’s environment. After initiation, one still experiences sinful environmental influences other than one’s personal sins, influences which come from sin and lead to sin. Sacramental theology calls such sinful influences “concupiscence,”7 In corrupting us, original sin does not abolish our humanity; but it does make us less perfectly human than we might otherwise have been. Left to ourselves, then, we have no experience of sinless humanity. The New Testament proclaims Jesus sinless. That proclamation makes sense if one also accepts Jesus’ personal divinity. Otherwise it does not. Jesus of Nazareth grew up in first century Palestine. He too lived in a thoroughly sinful world. As a consequence, original sin and concupiscence would have corrupted Him with the same moral inevitably with which they corrupt the rest of us, unless the will of God shaped His every human choice. In other words, as Maximus the Confessor saw correctly and clearly, in Jesus only a perfect synergy of the sinless divine will and otherwise peccable human will could have guaranteed His sinlessness. Enlightenment theologians who deny the divinity of Jesus and yet assert his sinlessness have, in my judgment, failed to think deeply and accu6. Cf. Ugo Bianchi, “Augustin sobre la Concupiscencia,” Augustinus, 36(1991), pp. 39-51; Michael Azkoul, “Peccatum Originale: The Pelagian Controversy,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 3(1984), pp. 39-53. 7. This argument presupposes the doctrine of original sin developed in Committed Worship. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., Committed Worship: A Sacramental Theology for Converting Christians (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 1993, pp. 240-245. See also: Stephen J. Duffy, “Our Hearts of Darkness: Original Sin Revisited,” Theological Studies, 49(1988), pp. 597-622.
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rately about the corrupting power of environmental sin. Only Jesus’ personal divinity allows one to infer plausibly the sinlessness of His human decisions. If, however, Jesus had sinned, then the so-called redeemer of humanity would need as much redemption as anyone else.8 In Jesus the same experiential variables which constitute other human experiences constituted His. Jesus responded to reality both evaluatively and decisively. As His human personality took shape, His human will consisted in a finite, developing complex of general tendencies to respond decisively to reality. In a metaphysics of experience, all experiences can resemble one another only analogously. The same generic variables define the shape of every human experience: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies. But each human experience views the universe from a different point in space and time. Nurture, culture, and temperament all cause people to develop different ways of habitually perceiving reality, different skills for reshaping reality decisively. Experiences which develop in different physical and cultural environments differ correspondingly. In order to experience original sin and concupiscence as such, one must acquiesce in their sinfulness. Jesus experienced the forces of sin as sin; but in His case they did not cause Him to sin. In other words, if the divine will shaped Jesus’ human will to sinless ends, Jesus experienced the sinfulness of His environment without, however, experiencing either original sin or concupiscence as such. Understood as human experiences, the rest of humanity can, then, resemble Jesus at best only analogously. The fact, moreover, that Jesus embodies a sinless human experience and we a sinful one increases the dissimilarity between Him and the rest of us without, however, completely abolishing the analogy. By that I mean that Jesus’ sinlessness heightens the contrast between His human experience and ours, without, however, making it wholly other. On the contrary, sinlessness makes Jesus more perfectly human than we are. In the late sixteenth century, Bianism taught that when Adam and Eve fell they did not lose supernatural grace but lost their humanity instead. The official pastoral magisterium correctly condemned Bianism as heresy (DS 1901-1980); but every heresy usually contains some kernel of truth. Bianism correctly calls attention to the fact that sin dehumanizes us; but it overstates the case when it suggests that sin obliterates our humanity altogether. Sin does not destroy humanity; but it does diminish it. It leaves us less perfectly human than we otherwise might have become. If Jesus confronts us as both human and sinless, then He, not the rest of us, defines the meaning of humanness concretely and paradigmatically. 8. Cf. Berthold W. Köber, Sündlosigkeit und Menchsein Jesu Christi (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1995).
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I am not suggesting, as Rahner does, that Jesus defines the meaning of humanness because human nature corresponds qualitatively to the person of the Son. Rahner’s position, in my judgment, makes the co-equality of the divine persons finally unthinkable. Rather, I am arguing that, if the eschatological revelation of Jesus’ divinity through His efficacious mission of the divine Breath entails His sinlessness (and it necessarily does), then only the efficacious transformation of Jesus’ finite human experience in the obediential reality of the second person of the trinity could have created the sinless human experience we call Jesus of Nazareth. Without efficacious transformation in God, Jesus would, like any other ordinary human experience, have acquiesced with moral inevitability in the corrupting, deforming, disgraceful influences of original sin and concupiscence. The letter to the Hebrews grasped this truth. The author of the letter taught that sin destroys human relationships and divides humans from one another. Hence, the fact that Jesus confronts us as both human and sinless makes Him into the only perfectly accessible human. (Heb 4:15-16) Jesus’ sinlessness means that nothing divides Him from us. His accessibility, moreover, enhances His humanity in reverse proportion to the way in which sinful divisions make the rest of humanity less fully human than it might otherwise have been. An anecdote may illustrate the point which I am trying to make here. Several years ago, a painfully serious student in the throes of a crisis of faith once told me, “Unless Jesus is like me in every way I cannot believe in him.” I thought ironically, but did not say aloud, “If Jesus really is like you in every way, then I cannot believe in Him.” I have since heard others repeat that student’s narcissistic demand more than once. Unfortunately, anyone who persists in such an attitude succumbs to Jesus’ desert temptation to test God, to set personally the conditions under which one is willing to relate to God instead of accepting the conditions which God’s historical self-revelation demands. The Bible correctly equates the sin of testing God with unbelief. This particular form of Christological unbelief replaces the salvation historically offered to humanity by an incarnate God with a form of shallow narcissism. In a culture as narcissistic as ours, contemporary Christians may find the allure of Christological narcissism powerful. Their salvation, however, requires them to resist it. Jesus’ divinity insures, then, that His every choice avoids the taint of sin. That sinlessness makes Him not only more human than the rest of us; it makes Him uniquely and perfectly human. Moreover, the synergy of Jesus’ divine and human wills explains both His sinlessness and the paradigmatic perfection of His humanity. The same synergy also explains the hypostatic union. Let us try to understand why.
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If one interprets the synergy of the divine and human decisions which created Jesus of Nazareth in the context of a philosophy of substance, then that synergy qualifies as only an accidental union between two distinct substances with fixed essences, one divine, the other human. In substance philosophy both Jesus’ human will and its activities qualify as accidents. As a consequence, the synergy of wills in Jesus has psychological, but not metaphysical significance. If, however, one interprets that same synergy in the context of a metaphysics of experience, then volitional synergy assumes metaphysical meaning. By that I mean that the fact that the Son’s infinite divine will ruled His every finite human choice means that the human experience we call Jesus of Nazareth developed with a divine rather than with a human autonomy. To put the same insight concretely, whenever Jesus spoke, God spoke. Whenever Jesus acted, God acted. Both the speaking and acting transpired within the finite compass of human experience. Hence, they embodied divine decisions to act and to suffer within the compass of a finite human experience. In creating, the deity freely circumscribed divine freedom and divine omnipotence because the act of creation required that God subsequently take autonomous created choices into account in His dealings with the universe. In other words, in creating the world God freely chose vulnerability to the consequences of created choices, since what we do makes a difference to a loving and saving God. In effecting the eternal Son’s incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth, the deity freely chose to circumscribe divine freedom and omnipotence even more radically. The incarnate Word freely undertook to act and to suffer within the limits of a single human experience. His miracles manifested the divine source of His decisions, even though their full revelatory significance did not become historically clear until Jesus’ rose and sent His illuminating Breath to teach us what they signify.9 In a metaphysics of experience, as we have also seen already, autonomy describes the way some, though not all, tendencies function naturally. Autonomous functioning creates a self. Tendencies which do not function autonomously do not qualify as selves but as integral facets of an autonomously functioning self. The chemicals of the human body, for example, do not qualify as selves because the human self which they help constitute rules them with vital efficacy. As a consequence, chemicals 9. Besides building on the insights of Maximus the Confessor, the position suggested here develops in an experiential frame of reference the instrumental understanding of the incarnation proposed by Thomas Aquinas. See. Paul C. Crowley, S.J., “Instrumentum Divinitatis in Thomas Aquinas: Recovering the Divinity of Christ,” Theological Studies, 52(1991), pp. 451- 475. See also: Constantine N. Tsirpanlis, “Natural Will and Gnomic Will in Saint Photius’ Christology,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 21(1983), pp. 156-161.
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both function and behave differently when they make up a human body and when they do not. When organic chemicals function autonomously in the human body, they turn into pathologies: tumors and cancers. Within the context of a metaphysics of experience, human persons exemplify a particular kind of self. Since autonomous functioning makes a tendency into a self, its absence prevents any tendency from qualifying as a self in its own right. A tendency which does not qualify as a self in its own right also cannot qualify as a person in its own right. Because the Son of God rules His human experience efficaciously with His divine will, that experience grows and develops with a divine rather than with a human autonomy. The sinlessness of the divine decisions insures the integral humanity of Jesus’ finite, developing experience; and that sinlessness also transforms Jesus’ unique human experience into the paradigmatic human experience by recreating humanity in its original sinless integrity. As the New Testament proclaims, the hypostatic union transforms Jesus of Nazareth into the last Adam, into the beginning of the new creation, which redeems the sinfulness of the old. Because Jesus’ sinless human experience develops with a divine autonomy, it does not qualify as a human person in its own right. It functions instead as an integral facet of the divine self, the divine person, to whom it belongs. The experience we call Jesus of Nazareth belongs to the Son of God because the second person of the trinity owns it by initiating all its decisive actions in response to the finite forces which impinge upon it. In other words, when understood in the context of a metaphysics of experience, the synergy of the divine and human wills in Jesus transforms Him and Him alone into the finite, developing human experience of being a divine person.10 No mere human person could ever function as the paradigm of the kind of transformation which Jesus models for us. Jesus models the supernatural, graced transformation of human experience in the living reality of God. Only the divine Word incarnate can function as the paradigm for such a transformation. Only He could have effected the kind of efficacious transformation of human experience which purifies it of the distortions of sin because only He functions as a source of decisive obediential efficacy within the Christian Godhead. Only He could empower His 10. One reviewer of The Divine Mother objected to my saying that the Son of God gave decisive shape to His human experience. The reviewer said he preferred to look upon Jesus’ humanity as both autonomous and free. The remark illustrates the perverse tendency of theologians to remain satisfied with fixing their belief on the basis of personal taste. If one applies a logic of consequences to the proposition that Jesus’ humanity enjoyed autonomy in its own right, then it follows necessarily that Jesus confronts us as a human person in His own right. If so, then, one must either posit two persons in Jesus, one divine and the other human or deny Jesus’ personal divinity. I find both conclusions heretical.
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fellow humans to imitate Him through the gift of His Breath. Human persons left to their own resources can serve as natural paradigms for natural growth processes. But human persons left to their own resources cannot model perfectly sinless behavior, nor can they impart the supernatural means for graced assimilation into God. Even the saints function as paradigms of Christian behavior only in so far as they help us by their example to understand the alluring divine excellence incarnate in Jesus. As Paul the apostle correctly urged his congregations, “Imitate me insofar as I imitate Christ.” Paul knew well that only Jesus offers the ultimate and perfect paradigm of graced transformation in God.11 An experiential construct of the hypostatic union in no way compromises the account of Jesus as a finite, developing human experience which I proposed in volume one and summarized earlier in this volume. Instead, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union situates Jesus’ finite, developing, human awareness within the divine experience. Even more, that same metaphysics allows one to explain His human freedom of choice. Finally, a metaphysics of experience allows one to understand how the Son of God experienced temptation. Let us consider in turn each of these interrelated points. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union endorses Karl Rahner’s criticism of the three levels of consciousness which an inflated Thomistic Christology ascribed to Jesus.12 It agrees with Rahner that Jesus’ scientia beata, the special awareness He possessed in virtue of the hypostatic union, consisted in His finite, developing, human awareness of His own divine person. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union, however, replaces a dated Thomistic account of human self-awareness with a realistic, triadic, social construct of experience. The gospels give us no detailed information about Jesus’ unique personal self-awareness. We can, however, assert with historical certitude that His human self-awareness included His Abba experience, His sense of relating to the creator God reverentially, yet intimately, as Father. It included His passion to obey the Father in all things. Did Jesus’ religious experience also include, as the gospel of John suggests, consciousness of 11. Much of Mariology systematizes popular devotional beliefs about Mary, many of which have no foundation in the surviving historical evidence. Her personal sinlessness numbers among those beliefs; but even in traditional Mariology that sinlessness results from a special privilege of grace. Not even the sinless Mary can, then, function for her fellow humans as the ultimate paradigm of graced transformation in God because as a graced creature she cannot function as the empowering source of divine grace as the risen Christ does. The ultimate paradigm of a supernatural transformation needs to function as the efficacious source of God’s Breath. Mary does not. Only the risen Jesus does. 12. Cf. Karl Rahner, Schriften zur Theologie (Cologne: Benziger, 1962), V, pp. 223-243; cf. also, Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., Life and Light: A Guide to the Theology of Karl Rahner (New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1966), pp. 15-19.
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His divine pre-existence and of other events within the eternal life of the Godhead? When one applies the norms of the new quests for the historical Jesus to this aspect of Johannine theology, then the Beloved Disciple’s portrait of Jesus’ personal self-awareness takes on the character of a theologoumenon rather than of an historical description of Jesus’ psyche. In simpler language, it would appear that the Beloved Disciple portrays Jesus discoursing about His divine pre-existence with the Father as a way of dealing theologically with the issues dividing his community from the synagogue and from the Johannine dissidents. What the Johannine Jesus says about His divine pre-existence enjoys theological truth; but, in my judgment, it lacks historical plausibility. In an experiential construct of the incarnation, the fact that Jesus’ human mind would of itself have no immediate access to the mind of God does not rule out the possibility that He experienced, when He needed them, special graced illuminations of the Breath of God. He enjoyed, for example, the charism of prophecy and seems to have exhibited an extraordinary capacity for discernment. Indeed, the Jesus of the gospels gives evidence of having enjoyed every kind of charismatic empowerment, including the gift of miracles. Indeed, the synergy of the divine and human wills in Jesus explains His capacity of working miracles in the striking manner in which He very probably did, by a simple command. Such pneumatic empowerment need not, however, have yielded His personal realization of His divine pre-existence with God from all eternity and probably did not. Since, moreover, as we have seen, resurrection and graced enlightenment coincide, Jesus’ human mind would not have reached a full grasp of His personal relationship with God until He rose from the dead. During His lifetime, Jesus ‘scientia beata, the privileged self-awareness which flowed from the hypostatic union, need not have contained anything more than an ever subtler and more nuanced, loving insight into His relationship to the Father. That developing insight the Breath of God worked persuasively in Him. As we have seen, the Breath of God functions within graced human experience simultaneously as a source of empowering illumination and as a principle of resurrection. These two graced functions describe different facets of a single experiential transformation. If, however, resurrection and graced illumination go hand in hand, then Jesus need not have reached a full understanding of His personal relationship with God until He rose from the dead. The Jesus of the Beloved Disciple, as we have seen, habitually speaks from the ahistorical standpoint of the paschal mystery. Maximus the Confessor correctly recognized that Chalcedonian Christology raises questions about Jesus’ psychological development. An experi-
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ential construct of the hypostatic union endorses that insight. It also allows one to flesh out in scientifically plausible detail how Jesus’ human experience developed. As we saw in volume one, when one verifies a triadic philosophical construct of experience in the results of contemporary psychology, those results amplify one’s philosophical understanding of experience with the verified results of detailed studies of normal human development. I reviewed those results at the beginning of this volume; but in order to appreciate the Christological significance of these philosophical and psychological insights, we need to recall them here. The same biological processes which shape other human experiences shaped Jesus’ human experience. As an infant, Jesus quite plausibly advanced from core self-awareness, to subjective self-awareness, and finally to linguistic self-awareness. He interiorized the linguistic patterns of His culture, including, it would appear, the oral modes of thinking prevalent among the peasantry of Palestine. As He grew, the infant Jesus developed from a lap child, to a knee child, to a yard child. He also had to deal with questions of gender identity and with peer relationships. Jesus very probably went through the same stages of cognitive development as other humans. Hence, at year one, Jesus would have had the sensory-motor consciousness of a one-year-old. As a small child He would have viewed the world imaginatively, or “transductively.” He would then have advanced to the stage of concrete operational thinking. At this point in the evolution of developmental psychology, however, the evidence leaves it an open question whether or not Jesus ever advanced to fully operational thinking. By the time of His public ministry, Jesus may have been wrestling with emotional issues of intimacy vs. isolation. One may even imagine with some degree of plausibility that the male emotional crisis of the early thirties partially motivated Jesus’ decision to abandon Joseph’s trade in Nazareth in order to hear the preaching of John the Baptizer. As Jesus approached death, He may have found Himself wrestling with the emotional conflicts involved in the crisis of integrity vs. despair. In what concerns Jesus human moral development, one can plausibly suppose that, as in the case of other children, the child Jesus viewed the rules of children’s games as symbolic of larger social relationships. It also appears at least plausible, if not highly probable, that as Jesus developed morally, He acquired greater human sensitivity to the complexity of human moral decisions. As Jesus developed socially, it would appear at least plausible that He gradually acquired a more nuanced sense of human social relationships. Jesus’ human experience would, then, have advanced from the spontaneous and innocent egocentrism of infants to a greater and greater appre-
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ciation of human friendship. Certainly, in His relationship to His disciples, Jesus exhibits, especially in His passion, a breathtaking capacity for sustained friendship. In His religious development, Jesus would, quite plausibly, have passed through all the stages of human religious consciousness: from the chaotic religious awareness of the infant, to the mythic-literal religious consciousness of the small child, to the conventional religion of the early teenager, to the responsible religion of the fully converted adult. Here the reader should recall that in volume one I argued that the passage through conversion from innocently irresponsible to responsible behavior need not involve the passage from sin to repentance, only the passage from infantile and adolescent immaturity to adult maturity. In all of these developing experiences, Jesus would have also grown in His self-understanding as a person through self-reflection, prayer, and interaction with other persons. The finitude of His human experience would, however, have deprived the Son of God’s human experience of any direct access to the mind of God. Here too He became like us in all things.13 Even as a mature adult, then, Jesus’ human self-awareness probably consisted only in His consciousness of standing in a special filial relationship with God. As He grew and advanced through the events of His public ministry He would have understood with greater and greater depth the implications of that relationship. In that growing self-understanding, however, Jesus would have had no more direct access to the ideas in God’s mind than any other human experience does. The Breath of God, would have presided persuasively over His developing personal self-understanding; but He could honestly say that He did not know things which the Father did. The gospels tell us that He did in fact so speak. If the radical finitude of Jesus’ human experience requires that it would have advanced through expanding stages of consciousness in all the different finite realms of human experience, then, that same finitude deprives it of any claim to graced quasi-omniscience. On this point, Scotus had the right of it and Aquinas did not. During His lifetime, Jesus did not enjoy an objective vision of universal truth. Like other humans, he experienced God’s Breath as an immanent principle of divine enlightenment; but His religious consciousness developed in a manner analogous to other finite human religious experiences. Nevertheless, Jesus experienced the divine Breath differently from us, as both Matthew and Luke make clear. In both gospels, as we have seen, the divine Breath comes to Jesus under the sign of the dove. She comes 13. As we have seen, a triadic philosophical construct of experience, in contrast to Whitehead’s di-polar theism, rejects ontologism. As a consequence, in a triadic experiential construct of Jesus’ human experience, He would have enjoyed no more direct access to the ideas in God’s mind than any other human experience enjoys.
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therefore to disclose to Him His identity as the specially beloved Son of God and as messiah in the image of the suffering servant. She comes to reveal Him to us as Breath-baptizer and therefore as divine. She comes to us under the sign of fire because she confronts us in our sinfulness as a sanctifying principle of purification and of judgment. When one reads these New Testament images in the light of a metaphysics of experience, that metaphysics entails that we experience the Breath of God only persuasively because we develop as morally vulnerable autonomous human experiences who retain the ability of sin. Jesus however experienced the Breath of God and the enlightenment which She brings in the course of His sinless, efficacious, obediential transformation in the second person of the trinity. Moreover, Her enlightenment of His human experience reveals Her historically as the cognitive link within the divine experience between the Father and the Son and therefore as the mind of God. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union also corrects kenotic theology’s attempt to replace the divine consciousness of the second person of the trinity with a finite historical human consciousness. We need to identify two kinds of consciousness in the incarnate Word: one divine and omniscient, the other human and developing. Medieval Christology erred in a different direction from kenotic Christology when it projected as many divine traits into Jesus’ graced human consciousness as possible. In almost divinizing Jesus’ human awareness through the action of divine grace, medieval Christologists mislocated the mystery of the incarnate Son of God’s double consciousness. By the mystery of Jesus’ double consciousness, I mean that the incarnation requires that one situate Jesus’ finite developing human awareness within His divine omniscience. The quasi-divinization of Jesus’ graced human awareness mislocates the mystery in Jesus’ human experience, whereas the mystery properly belongs in the divine omniscience. As we shall see in greater detail in the next chapter, God, as the supreme exemplification of experience, experiences everything experienceable. The incarnation, however, caused the second person of the trinity to experience the human experience called Jesus of Nazareth differently from all other created experiences. The fact that Jesus’ human experience developed with a divine autonomy caused the second person of the trinity to own it personally. Through the incarnation, the Son of God experienced a particular, finite, developing, historically conditioned human experience as His own finite, developing, historically conditioned, human experience. God’s efficacious owning of a human experience in the incarnation makes that human experience utterly unique in the history of the world.
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In the incarnation therefore the Son of God experienced Jesus’ ignorance as His human ignorance, Jesus’ sensations as His sensations, Jesus emotions as His emotions, Jesus’ finite human dreams and imaginings as His human dreams and imaginings, Jesus’ thought processes as His finite human thought processes, Jesus’ suffering as His suffering, Jesus’ human temptations as His own human temptations. The incarnate Son of God’s finite, developing human experience had, however, no special, direct access to the divine omniscience. Jesus of Nazareth knew only those realities to which His finite habits of cognitive response and the graced illumination of the divine Breath gave Him access. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union provides, then, an orthodox interpretation of the kenôsis of which the Christological hymn in Philippians speaks. The kenôsis of the Son of God means that in everything which concerns Jesus of Nazareth, the Word of God freely chose to act and to suffer strictly within the limits of His finite, developing human experience. This the Son of God did in order to reveal to us the full extent of God’s love for us. He also did it in order to save us.14 Jesus’ Freedom An experiential construct of the hypostatic union allows one to vindicate the flickering, finite freedom of Jesus’ human choices. Let us try to understand why. In the preceding chapter, I summarized the triadic construct of experience which this study endorses. I indicated at that time that the distinction between autonomy and freedom would function significantly in an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. The time has come to explore that distinction’s Christological significance and importance. In a metaphysics of experience autonomy and freedom qualify different realms of experience. Autonomy means the bare capacity to initiate either evaluation or decision. Autonomy qualifies the realm of tendency. By that I mean that tendencies function either autonomously or not. Tendencies which do not function autonomously function instead as integral elements in some larger self or person. Inorganic chemicals, for example, function autonomously. Organic chemicals do not. Instead, organic chemicals function as integral facets of a larger, more or less complex, living self. Elementary freedom means the ability to act or not to act, to do this rather than that. Converted liberty means freedom to live for the beauti14. Cf. Philip Kaiser, Das Wissen Jesu Christi in der lateinischen (westlichen) Theologie (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1981). Kaiser correctly insists on the developmental and dialogic character of Jesus’ human self-awareness. He also argues correctly that Jesus’ self- awareness had both a revelatory dimension and a trinitarian structure.
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ful, the true and the good, in both their natural and supernatural manifestations. Both forms of personal freedom qualify the realm of evaluation because humans can choose freely only to the extent that they can distinguish realistically practicable options. In order to do that, the human mind needs first to grasp those options evaluatively. Since, moreover, personal consciousness grows through making distinctions and seeing relationships, both freedom and consciousness flicker; and, in practical deliberation, they flicker together. Autonomy displays no degrees; it exhibits an either-or character. You cannot do my growing for me; either I grow or remain stunted. Freedom by contrast does have a more or less. It waxes and wanes in different social, environmental, and psychological contexts. Freedom also comes in different kinds depending on the kinds of cognitive and practical skills a given individual cultivates. I have described above the environmental, conceptual, perspectival, decisive, and habitual variables which condition freedom. By conditioning human awareness of possible realistic options, those variables cause human freedom to flicker. If a divine person ruled all Jesus’ human decisions efficaciously, then that divine person found Himself more or less humanly free at different moments in His historical career. Jesus at age two experienced more human constraints on His freedom than Jesus at age thirty. Jesus teaching beside the Sea of Galilee faced more realistic options than when He hung on the cross. In virtue of the synergy which characterized Jesus’ divine and human choices, the Son of God made finite human decisions and made them freely. Those decisions enjoyed human freedom only to the extent that Jesus’ finite human mind could at any given point distinguish realistic alternative modes of acting. Hence, the same variables which condition any exercise of human freedom conditioned Jesus’ finite human freedom and caused it to flicker. By the same token, after He came of age fully in every realm of His human experience, the Son of God enjoyed liberty in the sense defined above. By that I mean that He enjoyed an enhanced human capacity to desire the good, the true, and the beautiful, a capacity rooted in an integral, five-fold conversion. The essentialism of substance philosophy sets Jesus’ divine and human decisions in conflict. To say, in the context of substance philosophy, that the second person of the trinity decides efficaciously the choices of a human will which by its very essential constitution enjoys freedom seems to violate that will’s created nature. A metaphysics of experience, however, eschews all forms of essentialism, including this one. In dealing with the hypostatic union, that metaphysics also avoids seeming to assert any irreconcilable competition between Jesus’ divine and human wills. In an experiential construct of the hypostatic union, the synergy between the incarnate Word’s divine and
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human wills does not abolish the freedom of His free and finite human choices. It only causes the second person of the trinity to experience those free and flickering choices as His own. In the exercise of free choice, Jesus experienced the temptation to sin, to disobey the will of God as He perceived it. The New Testament leaves no doubt on that score. Indeed, Jesus’ agony in the garden dramatizes all too vividly His capacity to experience even acute human repugnance to doing and suffering what the Father asked of Him. The gospels mention three specific temptations which Jesus endured. As death approached He probably felt the fallacious allure of all three temptations more and more powerfully. Jesus experienced the temptation to self-reliance, to trust in Himself rather than in the Father. He experienced the temptation to test God, to set conditions on His willingness to trust the Father. Finally, Jesus felt the all-too-common human impulse to counter violence with violence and to found the kingdom of God on force rather than on the forgiving worship of a forgiving Father and on non-violent resistance to evil. In His finite human experience, the Son of God felt the allure of all three temptations. Because His human experience grew with divine autonomy, the incarnate Word experienced them as His very own temptations. He also felt them as temptations to sin, to do something which contradicted the divine will; but He did not yield to them. Indeed, as God He could not. That does not mean, however, that from a human standpoint the incarnate Word did not acknowledge the human attractiveness of the sinful alternatives which He freely rejected. He freely rejected them because He distinguished within His human consciousness between trusting in oneself and trusting in God, between testing God and trusting God unconditionally, between the vision of God’s peaceable kingdom and the violence of worldly kingdoms. Autonomy qualifies the realm of tendency adverbially. Freedom and liberty qualify the realm of evaluation adverbially at the same time that they specify the decisions which terminate human evaluations. Jesus’ finite developing human experience could, therefore, grow with a divine autonomy and yet remain not only humanly free but also humanly tempted in the same way as any other finite, developing human experience. In Jesus’ case, however, a divine autonomy ultimately decided whether to yield to a temptation or to reject it. In every temptation and in every circumstance, He opted to do the divine will as He understood it with His human mind.15 15. Cf. Johannes Stöhr, “Reflecciones teologicas en Torno a la Libertad de Christo en su Pasion y Muerte” in Cristo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 805-849.
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In this section, I have presented in a preliminary manner an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. In the next section and in the chapters which follow this one, I shall test the adequacy of this Christological hypothesis by clarifying its operational consequences deductively and by testing its adequacy to resolve debated issues in the historical development of Christology. (III) In the preceding section, I presented an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. If that construct can deal successfully with the issues raised by the development of Chalcedonian Christology, by Enlightenment Christology, and by contemporary orthodox alternatives to Enlightenment Christology, then it will give fair promise of theological adequacy. This section begins to test that adequacy. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Friedrich Loofs first formulated an “anhypostatic” interpretation of Chalcedonian Christology and erroneously attributed the position to Leontius of Byzantium. The objections to Loofs’s use of the term “anhypostasis” argue that: 1) it deprives Jesus’ humanity of substantial reality, 2) it denies its particularity, and 3) it violates the Aristotelian principle that every physis subsists in its own hypostasis. Those same definitions and presuppositions seemed to set Jesus’ human hypostasis, if He had one, in competition with His divine hypostasis. These objections tacitly presuppose the truth and adequacy of an essentialistic substance philosophy. The shift from substance philosophy to a metaphysics of experience demands the philosophical redefinition of physis and hypostasis. In a metaphysics of experience subsistence, hypostatic reality, results from autonomous functioning. Read in the light of a metaphysics of experience the Son of God’s human nature becomes a finite, developing human experience whose specific character, like that of every other human experience, derives from its total history: from the totality of interactions, evaluations, decisions, and habitual tendencies which constitute it. Its history, therefore, rather than its substantial individuality endows it with its particularity. The fact that Jesus’ human experience develops with a divine autonomy does not, then render that experience insubstantial. Instead, divine autonomy transforms that historically unique human experience into the perfectly human experience of being a divine person. In a metaphysics of experience, the term “autonomy” functions, as we have seen, not as a noun but as an adverb. By that I mean that “autonomy” designates the way in which a particular tendency or set of tendencies develops. The hypostatic union does not, therefore, cause Jesus’ human experience to lose anything substantial. It simply changes the way in which the tendencies which constitute Jesus’ human experience function.
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Finally, because a metaphysics of experience defines both physis and hypostasis differently from classical Greek philosophy, it violates no principles of that philosophy. By the same token, by equating hypostatic subsistence not with a thing but with a way of functioning, a metaphysics of experience avoids any apparent competition between Jesus’ divine and human substances. A metaphysics of experience can also make better sense of the theological term “enhypostasis” than classical substance philosophy. “Experience” becomes a metaphysical term as soon as one admits that experienced realities stand within experience and not outside it. Then reality divides into what is experienced and the way in which experienced realities are experienced.Experienced realities stand within experience and help define its specific character. When we experience another person, that person truly becomes a part of us. The person does not become an integral part of us because he or she continues to function autonomously. Still, personal experiences do blend into one another, as we know all too poignantly when we grieve for the death of a loved one. This blending of experiences exemplifies their mutual existence in one another. Jesus’ human experience, however, existed within the divine experience of the Son of God with even greater intimacy than that with which other human experiences exist socially in one another. The fact that the Son of God’s human experience grew and developed with a divine autonomy transforms it into an integral facet of His divine person. Jesus of Nazareth confronts us as the thoroughly finite human experience of being a divine person. As a consequence, the Son of God’s human experience exists in the divine experience in a manner which endows it with a personal divine identity.16 As we saw in the preceding chapter, Ephraim of Antioch defended the blending of divine and human hypostaseis in Jesus as a way of explaining the hypostatic union. Within the context of substance philosophy, I find the notion of the blending of substances logically self-contradictory. Substances by definition subsist in themselves and not in another as in a principle of inhesion. In such a philosophical universe, that two substances would blend remains philosophically unthinkable. Even in the context of a metaphysics of experience, the fact that Jesus’ human experience develops with a divine autonomy does not mean that divine and human autonomy blend in Him. The either-or character of autonomy precludes such an interpretation of the hypostatic union. If in Jesus we confront an acting human person, then we cannot simultaneously confront an acting divine person and vice versa, any more than your saying something causes me to speak. If Jesus’ human experience developed with a divine autonomy, then His human actions confront us as the hu16. Cf. Michael Azkoul, “Perichorêsis: The Christology of the Icon,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 7(1988), pp. 67-85.
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man actions of a divine person. If he functioned with only human autonomy, then those same acts would not confront us as the actions of a divine person but only as actions of a human person indistinguishable from any other human person. A metaphysics of experience makes the hypostatic union thinkable. A metaphysics of experience allows one to think philosophically without contradiction the mutual inexistence of two experiences, one divine and the other human without their blending into a third reality. In that metaphysics realities which experience one another exist in one another, since what one experiences stands within one’s experience not outside it. The two experiences do not blend into a third subsistent reality because they remain experientially distinct, one finite and the other infinite. In an experiential construct of the hypostatic union, the divine Word’s divine experience remains fully divine; and His human experience remains a thoroughly finite human experience. Jesus has a finite human experience of His personal reality and of the reality of God. At the same time, the divine experience remains uncreated, infinite, and eternal. Since, moreover, the efficacious transformation of one experience in another occurs in the course of natural organic growth and assimilation, it violates no philosophical principle to suggest the efficacious transformation of Jesus’ human experience in the personal reality of the Son of God. Hence, it also makes philosophical sense in the context of a metaphysics of experience to describe Jesus as the human experience of being a divine person. Still, the philosophical thinkablility of the hypostatic union does not deprive it of its uniqueness, of its gracious character, or of its mystery. Only in Jesus Christ do we encounter the human experience of being a divine person. Having created us, nothing compelled God to become human in order to save us from our own sinful folly. We therefore experience the incarnation as pure and gratuitous gift, as the supreme embodiment of divine grace. Finally, in the incarnate Son of God we confront the unfathomable mystery of divine compassion, condescension, forgiveness, and love. Within the context of a metaphysics of experience, however, the reduction of the incarnation to mystery does not imply its rational unintelligibility. A metaphysics of experience also makes mutual indwelling (perichoresis) philosophically thinkable. As we saw, different Greek fathers of the Church endowed this term with a variety of meanings. Gregory of Nazianzus used the term “perichoresis” to describe the mutual predicability of the divine and human in Jesus. The predicability of divine and human traits in the hypostatic union raises the question of the “communication of traits (communicatio idiomatum).” An experiential construct of the hypostatic union requires, with Aquinas, that one predicate both divine and human traits of person of the Son. It also forbids
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that one ever predicate them of one another. Jesus’ human experience remains thoroughly human; His divine experience remains thoroughly divine. It therefore violates the principles of logic to attribute divine traits to Jesus’ human experience or human traits to Jesus’ divine experience.17 Maximus the Confessor used the term “perichoresis” in order to describe the synergy of divine and human wills in the hypostatic union. As I have already explained, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union endorses Maximus’s doctrine of synergy and finds in it the key to understanding the hypostatic union. That metaphysics also makes his use of “perichoresis” philosophically thinkable, since Jesus’ human experience exists in His divine person and is encompassed by His divine experience, but as The Son of God’s own finite, developing, human experience. John of Damascus used “perichoresis” in order to explain both the unity of the trinity and the unity of the divine and the human in the incarnate Word. As we shall see in more detail in the following chapters a metaphysics of experience endorses the Damascene’s trinitarian use of the term.18 It also endorses his Christological use of “perichoresis.” The divine and human experiences exist in one another in the incarnation without blending. Jesus experiences God within a finite, developing, human perspective. In His divinity the second person of the trinity experiences His finite, developing, human experience from the standpoint of divine omniscience. Because the Son of God’s human experience develops with a divine autonomy, that experience dwells in the second person of the blessed trinity as an integral facet of His personal reality. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union therefore endows the rhetorical metaphors which John of Damascus used to explain perichoresis with inferential and philosophical content. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union also endorses the position that the union of the divine and human in the person of Jesus 17. The later Luther’s theology contrasts with Aquinas’s sound interpretation of the communication of traits. In his commentary on the councils of the Church, the aging Luther sought to vindicate the orthodoxy of the Protestant position. He endorsed the Nicene homoousios and questioned whether Ephesus dealt fairly with Nestorius. At the same time, he faulted Nestorius for denying the communicatio idiomatum. He also criticized Eutyches for confounding the traits of divinity and humanity. In his own handling of the communicatio idiomatum, however, Luther stressed what he called the genus majestaticum and attempted to attribute to the humanity as many divine traits as he could, apart from immortality and creative power. In addition, Luther insisted on the suffering of God in the incarnate Christ. Critics of his rhetorical use of the genus majestaticum have suggested that it leads to Docetism and that Luther’s insistence on the suffering of God leads to monopysitism. That latter objection presupposes, of course, a classical philosophical conception of the divine immutability. (Lienhard, Martin Luthers christologisches Zeugnis, pp. 228-264) 18. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 132-143.
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expresses the working of gratuitous divine grace and differs from any merely natural union. Things in nature do cease to function autonomously on occasion. Think of the chemicals ingested into the human body. The Son of God did not, however, ingest His human experience in the same way in which we digest food. Moreover, only in Jesus do we encounter the human experience of being a divine person. Hence, Alexander of Hales did well to insist on the uniqueness of the gracious union of the divine and human in Jesus. That union also differs from the way in which God dwells graciously in us, for, as human experiences, we retain our human autonomy. As a result, the Breath of God must transform us persuasively as human persons. In His humanity the incarnate Son of God also experienced the Breath’s persuasive illumination; but, in contrast to us, that illumination advanced the efficacious transformation of His human experience in such a way as to make it the human experience of being a divine person. The graciousness of the hypostatic union derives from the fact that in it God freely gives Himself to a sinful humanity in a manner which utterly exceeds anything which sinful humanity has a right to claim to deserve of God. Grace transforms human nature in three ways: grace heals, perfects, and elevates sinful humanity. The incarnation effects all three gracious results efficaciously and prototypically. In all the gospels, Jesus’ healing miracles foreshadow the deeper healing which the paschal mystery effects. Jesus’ power to heal physical blindness foreshadows His power as risen Lord to heal the blindness of sin and unbelief. Like Bartimaeus, the blind whom Jesus heals follow Him on “the way.” Jesus’ power to heal the deaf and dumb foreshadows the gracious illumination which the Breath of Christ will effect when She empowers believers to hear the gospel and to proclaim it. Jesus’ exorcisms foreshadow the deliverance from the Satanic principalities and powers of this world which His resurrection and sending of the Breath effect. The sacramental rite of anointing institutionalizes the Christian community’s faith in the risen Christ’s power to heal humanity physically, morally, and religiously. The incarnate Son of God, however, heals humanity not only efficaciously but prototypically. He does so by dying to sin in His flesh. That death to sin (together with His resurrection and sending of the Breath) transforms Him into the last Adam. The efficacious gracing of Jesus’ human experience which the incarnation effects recreates humanity in its primordial innocence and freedom from sin. By His sinlessness, therefore, Jesus models for a sinful humanity the kind of human religious commitment which heals humanity’s sinfulness. The incarnate Word also perfects humanity prototypically and efficaciously. Given the finitude of human nature, its vulnerability to original
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sin and concupiscence, and its spontaneous and instinctive egocentrism, we humans left to ourselves lack the capacity for universal love. We love our own spontaneously: our friends, our families, and the members of other social groups with which we identify. We do not, however, spontaneously love our enemies. Nor do we love spontaneously the stranger and the alien. We spontaneously tend instead to view them with fear, suspicion, and hostility. We humans divide society spontaneously into in groups and out groups; and we tend to respond to the members of out groups with suspicion, fear, and hostility. Jesus perfects human nature by incarnating within the limitations of human experience a universal, divine love. Only God loves all things by His very nature. By embodying the universality of divine love Jesus graciously elevates human nature to a new level of perfection. Love, of course, always operates in the concrete. We must love, not the abstract essence of humanity, but concrete persons in concrete acts of benevolence. Jesus universalizes human love by insisting that it exclude no one in principle and that it include even one’s enemies, even those one tends spontaneously to despise and to hate. Jesus’ preferential concern for the poor, for the marginal, for sinners, for outcasts, and for the expendable dregs of human society gives human shape to the universality of divine love and in the process models it prototypically for the rest of humanity. Jesus effects that love in sinful human hearts by the gift of the divine Breath. The Breath of the risen Christ relates to sinful Christians in three ways: through justifying faith, through sanctification, and through charismatic empowerment. By justifying faith She converts human hearts to Christ-like living. By sanctifying human experience She teaches us to hope, to believe, and especially to love in Jesus’ image. By Her charismatic empowerment She transforms sanctification into concrete deeds of service for the Church and for humanity. The risen Christ perfects human nature by the gift of His Breath. The universal Christ-like love which She inspires makes Christian hope, faith, love, and charismatic service authentic and practical. By teaching the human heart to love universally, Christ’s Breath makes humanity more authentically human than it could ever become left to its own natural resources. The incarnation elevates human experience by uniting it personally and eternally to the Godhead. Jesus does this prototypically by exemplifying the human experience of being a divine person. His transformation in the Breath of God from conception to resurrection embodies for the rest of humanity what human experience looks like when perfectly and efficaciously united to God. Jesus elevates humanity efficaciously by creating the eschaton: by dying in sinless obedience to God and by rising as a “life-giving Breath,” as
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source of one’s own decisions about thinking and about acting physically. An autonomously functioning reality cannot communicate its autonomy to anybody or anything else. You cannot do my growing for me. You cannot decide what I believe or do. Nor can I do the same things for you. As we have seen, for Scotus the term “incommunicability” implied the unique singularity of existence as well as the negation of dependence on another. A metaphysics of experience would endorse both insights. The exercise of autonomy decides the development of an experience and makes it into the unique kind of experience which it becomes. Moreover, in a world in which experiences exist in one another, the exercise of autonomy makes them both relationally distinct and mutually independent at the same time that they exist in one another. In the chapter which follows, I shall coordinate an experiential construct of the hypostatic union with an experiential understanding of the trinity. In the course of doing so, I shall endorse Rahner’s suggestion that in the incarnation one encounters the Son of God’s symbolic self-expression, although I shall explain that self-expression and self-communication in different philosophical terms from Rahner. I must, however, postpone any discussion of Rahner’s position until I have first sketched an experiential construct of the trinity. The preceding reflections suggest, however, that an experiential construct of the hypostatic union has the ability to deal philosophically with some of the important issues raised by the development of Chalcedonian Christology. It also promises to deal adequately with the issues raised by different Enlightenment Christologies. To this second set of issues I turn in the paragraphs which follow. Enlightenment Christology has engendered two interrelated approaches to Christology. One approach espouses a frank rationalism which confines religious faith strictly within the bounds of reason. This version of Enlightenment “theology” betrays liberal theologians into mouthing Christian words while denying the fundamental content of Christian faith. A second approach seeks to reconcile reason with faith but tends, even in what concerns the historical self-disclosure of God, to value purely rational categories more than those derived from the experience of faith. The second form of Enlightenment “theology” offers a rationally watered-down account of divine revelation. In the first chapter of this section, I included under the category “Enlightenment Christology” Protestant kenotic Christology, Process Christology, and the so-called “low” Christologies defended by some contemporary theologians. An experiential approach to Christology replaces the flawed Romantic dialectical logic of nineteenth-century kenotic theologians with a sound inferential and relational logic of consequences. Moreover, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union refuses to make the incarnation of
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the Son of God contingent on His abdication either of divinity or of some measure of divinity. Such thinking leads inevitably in one of two directions. Either it endorses monophysitism by portraying a Jesus who qualifies as neither fully divine or fully human; or it endorses some modified expression of Arianism by portraying Jesus as a human person pretty much like everyone else. An experiential Christology also avoids identifying the Logos with Jesus’ human soul, in the manner of Johann Ebrard. Instead, as a consequence of the incarnation, the divine person of the Word begins to experience finite, living, organic, developing human evaluations, decisions, and tendencies as His own human experience. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union rejects process theology’s invocation of a Whiteheadean ontologism in order to explain the divine presence in Jesus. In Whiteheadean cosmology, reversion, or the prehension of an eternal object in the mind of God, seeks unsuccessfully to explain process. Process Christologists invoke the same flawed philosophical concept in order to explain the “divine presence” in the human person called Jesus. In a triadic, realistic, social construct of experience, developing tendencies successfully explain process. In Protestant process Christology the creation of a finite experience and its gracing coincide. The experiential construct of the hypostatic union proposed above refuses to join process Christologists in naturalizing the grace embodied in the incarnation by identifying it with God’s creation of the world through “reversion.” In fact, the events which reveal the incarnation make it clear that divine grace functions as a supernatural gift over and above the gift of creation. The experiential construct of the incarnation presented above views Jesus as a divine person incarnate and not just as the supreme exemplification of human creativity. That same experiential Christology also repudiates the attempt of process theology to portray Jesus anachronistically as a Whiteheadean philosophe. Instead, an experiential Christology seeks to incorporate into its account of Jesus’ humanity a historically verified account of His actual religious message. Finally, in contrast to Griffin’s Christ, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union discovers in the spoken Word made flesh a unique human embodiment of God. Jesus’ humanity also qualifies as unsurpassable in the perfection of its personal union with God and in its utter sinlessness. I shall reflect in a later chapter on the normative claims which Jesus’ uniqueness entails. Here it suffices to note that when one replaces Whitehead’s nominalistic di-polar construct of experience with a triadic, relational, social construct of experience one does not need to force Christian faith into a badly constructed, procrustean philosophical bed, as Protestant process Christology unfortunately and repeatedly does.
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As we saw above, Piet Schoonenberg attempted to replace Chalcedonian Christology with a refurbished adoptionism because he deemed the objections to Chalcedon overwhelming and, apparently, irrefutable. In presenting Schoonenberg’s position in an earlier chapter, I promised to consider in greater detail the difficulties with Chalcedon which he raised. The time has come to keep that promise. In criticizing Chalcedon Schoonenberg argued that Chalcedonian Christology cannot account for the incommensurability between divine infinity and human finitude. Schoonenberg leaves the definition of “infinity” vague but seems to take for granted that it means the infinite act of Thomism. A metaphysics of experience, as we shall see, concedes the infinity of God but defines it differently from Aquinas. Instead of endorsing Aquinas’s view of God as infinite act, a metaphysics of experience adopts Hilary of Poitier’s more functional and more philosophically defensible19 definition of divine infinity. Viewed functionally, an infinite reality encompasses all things and is encompassed by no other reality. Moreover, as we shall also see in greater detail in the next chapter, an experiential approach to the trinity discovers an analogy between human social experience and the divine society of the trinity. Far from characterizing divine and human experiences as incommensurable, therefore, a metaphysics of experience discovers an analogous resemblance between the social reality of God and human social reality. That analogy makes the incarnation and the sending of the divine Breath entirely appropriate ways for God to reveal Himself in human social history. That same analogy establishes a measure of commensurability between divine and human social experience, because, while they differ, they also resemble one another. I shall deal with these issues in greater detail in the course of coordinating an experiential Christology with an experiential construct of the trinity. Schoonenberg faulted Chalcedonian Christology for reifying Jesus’ humanity as a metaphysical essence. Schoonenberg’s objection applies to essentialist elaborations of Chalcedonian Christology but not to the council of Chalcedon itself, which endorsed no particular philosophical interpretation of its key theological terms. The metaphysics of experience which subtends an experiential construct of the hypostatic union rejects all forms of philosophical essentialism. It therefore avoids as well Schoonenberg’s censure. Schoonenberg criticized Chalcedonian Christology for using ahistorical language in describing Jesus’ humanity. This objection does apply to the Chalcedonian Christological creed and to some essentialist post-Chalce19. In my judgment the philosophical notion of infinite act leads logically to Spinozistic modalism.
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donian Christologies. It does not, however, apply to the multi-disciplinary construct of Jesus’ humanity which an experiential rendering of Chalcedonian Christological doctrine invokes. That construct makes the notion of Jesus’ humanity concrete by approaching it in a multi-disciplinary context. Insights from developmental psychology into Jesus’ plausible human development concretize it. So do the verified results of the new quests for the historical Jesus. Schoonenberg also rejected Chalcedon because it poses for him an unacceptable theological dilemma: namely, it forces one to absorb Jesus’ human personality into the reality of the Word or else put the individual center of Jesus’ human reality in competition with the Word. The preceding experiential account of the hypostatic union does neither. As Jesus’ human experience developed with divine autonomy it acquired a distinctive human personality. The gospel portraits echo aspects of that personality even though they do not provide a detailed psychological portrait of Jesus. Jesus’ teaching, for example, certainly gravitated toward parable and proverb. Those teaching patterns reflect the influence of oral culture and suggest a possible psychological bias toward intuitive patterns of thinking. The gospels also gives us some sense of Jesus’ approachability, compassion, mercy, courage. By endorsing and developing philosophically Maximus’s doctrine of volitional synergy as the key to the hypostatic union, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union does not put Jesus’ human reality in competition with His divine reality. They act in perfect collaboration. Moreover, as we shall see in the next chapter, Jesus’ human experience functions as a perfect iconic communication of His person. By answering all of Schoonenberg’s objections, an experiential Christology undercuts any motive for replacing Chalcedonian Christology with Schoonenberg’s adoptionism.20 It suggests rather that Schoonenberg’s problems with Chalcedon stem from a failure to think things through philosophically. An experiential construct of the incarnation also shows up some of the more obvious inadequacies in Schoonenberg’s position. Schoonenberg fails to explain how an ordinary graced human being could have avoided the morally inevitable corruption of original sin and of concupiscence. Schoonenberg’s account of the resurrection ignores Pauline, Matthean, and Johannine Christology. It therefore also fails to grasp the relationship of the resurrection to the sending the Breath. As a consequence, it fails to validate the role which the mission of the Breath by the risen Christ plays in revealing His divinity. Schoonenberg clearly wants to make Christological faith credible in a secularizing, rationalistic, post-Christian Europe. In the end, however, 20. For Schoonenberg’s objections to Chalcedon, see: Piet Schoonenberg, The Christ, translated by Della Couling (New York, NY: Seabury, 1969), pp. 50-65.
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his “low” Christology degenerates into bad Christology and betrays the shared faith of the Church. Hans Küng’s minimalist reading of Christological doctrine also proceeds from an understandable pastoral concern to communicate with “the modern mind.” A term like “the modern mind” labors, of course, under lamentable vagueness and can mean almost anything. Moreover, by canonizing historical-critical method as the tacit norm of Christian faith, Küng so understates the shared Christological faith of the Church that he leaves both the hypostatic union and the trinity in serious doubt. An experiential Christology clearly endorses both Chalcedonian orthodoxy and the shared trinitarian faith of the Church. Haight’s Spirit Christology correctly calls attention to the need to make the divine Breath more central to Christological thinking. Unfortunately, however, Haight mistakes Jesusology for Christology because he fails to root his “Spirit Christology” in the paschal mystery. By ignoring the paschal mystery, Haight fails to recognize that the resurrection and sending of the Breath transform one’s graced perceptions in faith of the way in which She relates to Jesus during His mortal ministry. Haight, as a consequence, assumes that the divine Breath graces Jesus in much the same way in which She graces other humans. Hence, Haight’s Christ resembles more the Mary of classical Catholic Mariology than the traditional object of Christological faith. Haight’s Spirit-filled Jesus confronts one as the most perfectly redeemed of all creatures. How that redemption occurred remains, however, unexplained and on Haight’s terms unexplainable. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union also proposes a Breath Christology; but, unlike Haight, it makes the paschal mystery normative for Christological thinking. In the paschal mystery, Jesus stands revealed not as a perfectly graced human person but as personally divine because in His resurrection He functions as the efficacious source of the divine Breath and therefore as the source of divine life itself. In an experiential Christology, Jesus confronts the world as the human experience of being a divine person. Haight, however, correctly recognizes that any adequate Christology needs to take into account the divine Breath’s presence in Jesus during His mortal ministry. I shall do that presently in reflecting on the soteriological consequences of the hypostatic union. Still, in portraying Jesus as just a human person in whom the Breath dwells more fully than in other human persons, Haight finally makes it impossible for Jesus to save anyone. In the New Testament, Jesus saves us by putting us in a life-giving relationship with God. That He does by sending the Breath. If Jesus only receives the Breath like anyone else, He cannot function as Her source. If He does send Her, as the New Testament manifestly testi-
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the efficacious, mediating source of the Breath whose enlightenment creates the last age of salvation by drawing sinful humans persuasively into the mystery of God and of risen life with Christ. As we have seen, some medieval essentialist theologians explained the hypostatic union by appealing to the substitution of divine for human dignity. Since medieval essentialists fallaciously reified essences, they thought of that substitution as the removal of one essence, “human dignity,” and the insertion of another, “divine dignity.” A metaphysics of experience avoids the essence fallacy by refusing to reify essences. In a metaphysics of experience, essences belong to the how of experience, not to its what. The term essence designates an evaluative response abstracted from the reality it presents and from the one who evaluates. As a consequence, in the context of a metaphysics of experience, the essentialist notion of the substitution of one essence for another in the metaphysical constitution of some reality makes no sense. Nevertheless, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union does discover in the Word made flesh a divine dignity. It explains that dignity, however, in functional rather in than in essentialistic terms by asserting that Jesus’ human experience develops with a divine autonomy and therefore confronts us as the human experience of being a divine person. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union rests on different metaphysical presuppositions from those endorsed by Thomas Aquinas. It therefore does not endorse his metaphysical explanation of the hypostatic union in the philosophical terms in which he presented it. Aquinas, as I indicated above, explained that union as the actualization of Jesus’ human essence by the act of Being of the second person of the trinity. If, however, one redefines the meaning of actualization in terms compatible with a metaphysics of experience, then in an experiential construct of the incarnation the grace of union does in a sense consist in the actualization of Jesus’ humanity. In a metaphysics of experience, evaluation exemplifies possibility, tendency exemplifies reality, and decision exemplifies actuality. Hence, in portraying the hypostatic union as the decisive, obediential transformation of a human experience in a divine person, an experiential construct of the hypostatic union does understand the grace of union as actualization. Here, however, actualization means decisive transformation. A metaphysics of experience endorses Scotus’s insistence on the incommunicability of personal existence. Moreover, a metaphysics of experience equates that incommunicability with human autonomy adverbially conceived. The adverbial character of autonomy means that the noun “autonomy” does not designates a thing; instead, it describes the way a tendency functions. Autonomy always remains irreducibly one’s own and therefore incommunicable because it designates one as the efficacious
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fies, then in His risen glory He confronts us as the efficacious source of divine life and therefore as God. I have been pondering the varieties of Enlightenment Christology in the light of an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. Not every modern or contemporary Christology, however, qualifies as an “Enlightenment Christology.” Only those Christologies do which either espouse a straightforward rationalism or which justify a bad Christology by calling it a “low” Christology. One finds, moreover, theological alternatives to Enlightenment Christology: both Protestant neo-orthodoxy and philosophical Christologies which remain within the parameters of Christian orthodoxy. In the final paragraphs of this section, I shall compare both kinds of Christology with the experiential Christology developed in this volume.21 As we saw in reviewing the issues raised by post-Chalcedonian Christology, neo-orthodoxy overreacts to Enlightenment rationalism by refusing to think metaphysically. The same flaw mars much contemporary New Testament theology. Unfortunately, when theologians refuse to think philosophically and metaphysically, they tend, in the course of fixing their religious beliefs and their uncritically held philosophical beliefs, to fall into the dogmatism of taste. All other things being equal, the attractiveness of a doctrinal hypothesis justifies adopting it in a tentative way; but it does not establish the hypothesis’s truth. The experiential Christology here proposed endorses a fallibilistic approach to philosophical metaphysics. By that I mean that a metaphysical theory of the whole needs verification not only in lived human experience but also in the verified results of more focused sciences. In other words, an experiential Christology discovers both a critical and a constructive role for philosophy in the formulation of Christological doctrine. Nevertheless, an experiential Christology honors the insights of neo-orthodoxy to the extent that it makes the historical self-revelation of God in Jesus and in the mission of His Breath the measure of all philosophical God-talk. In other words, in what concerns the reality of God, revelation judges philosophy, not philosophy revelation. Among recent attempts to reformulate Christological doctrine, both Rahner and Schillebeeckx stand out for their concern to vindicate a place for philosophy in the formulation of Christian doctrine. Their Christologies rest, however, on philosophically questionable assumptions. In his mature Christology, Rahner distinguishes between a priori and a posteriori Christology. Rahner’s a priori Christology seeks to update Anselm 21. For an orthodox approach to Spirit Christology, see: Ralph Del Colle, Christ and Spirit: Spirit Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). See also: Antonio Aranda, “Christologia y Pneumatologia” in Christo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 649-669.
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of Canterbury’s Cur Deus Homo by grounding it in transcendental method and in a Maréchalean metaphysical anthropology. Transcendental method posits in the human spirit an a priori orientation to God as absolute mystery. In the supernatural existential Rahner discovers an a priori, graced orientation to Christ. As a consequence, Rahner argues, Jesus Christ confronts us as the absolute savior, as the only one who fulfills the a priori yearning of the human spirit for God.22 By a posteriori Christology Rahner means the objectification of our graced a priori orientation to Christ as absolute savior. We objectify that orientation by conceptual confrontation with the historical reality of Jesus.23 The experiential Christology developed above rejects all a priori reasoning as logically unjustifiable. Moreover, an experiential Christology replaces Rahner’s dated Thomistic anthropology with a philosophical construct of human nature which interprets and contextualizes the results of contemporary scientific studies of the human. Those studies tend to call into question fundamental assumptions of Maréchalean Thomism. Among the discredited assumptions I would include both faculty psychology and the virtual infinity of the human intellect. The preceding construct of the hypostatic union also corrects the philosophical presuppositions which mar Schillebeeckx’s New Testament Christology. The construct I have developed replaces his di-polar nominalism with a realistic, triadic, social construct of experience. As we saw in volume one, philosophical nominalism fails to explain both the religious and the social dimensions of experience. It also fails to give an adequate account of scientific knowing since its denial of real generality deprives science of its object: namely, the laws operative in things. Di-polar nominalism gives short shrift to the social dimensions of experience by reducing cognition to the subjective interrelation of concrete percepts and abstract concepts. As a consequence, all cognition happens between one’s ears. Nominalism renders religious experience unintelligible by reducing the objects of knowledge to concrete sense data. A triadic construct of experience corrects the philosophical blunders of nominalism by endorsing a Peircean realism. Such a realism makes both the social and religious aspects of experience thinkable. One conceives experience in social, relational, realistic terms rather than as a subjective event. One experiences the reality of God as a vectoral reality leading experience to the transcendence of all created realities. Scientists perceive the laws of nature inferentially. 22. Cf. Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith (New York, NY: Seabury, 1978), pp. 1- 202; Joseph H.P. Wong, Logos-Symbol in the Christology of Karl Rahner (Rome: Libreria Ateneo Salesiana, 1984). 23. Ibid., pp. 203-244.
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In contrast to Schillebeeckx, therefore, the experiential Christology I have developed makes thinkable an encounter with the risen Christ as the cause of resurrection faith. Moreover, as I shall soon show, the position which I have developed makes soteriology integral to Christology, not its premise, as Schillebeeckx fallaciously suggests. Retrospect and Prospect In the preceding chapter I argued that the aesthetic Christology of Jonathan Edwards points the way toward a sound foundational approach to Christological thinking. By situating Christological faith solidly in the context of conversion, Edwards’s Christology helps clarify how one ought to go about verifying Christological doctrines: namely, by their ability to advance Christological knowing. In this chapter, I have argued that the Christology of Maximus the Confessor holds the key to a sound doctrinal understanding of the hypostatic union when one interprets the volitional synergy of which Maximus speaks in the light of a triadic, realistic, metaphysics of experience. So far, however, I have only proposed an initial hypothesis for interpreting philosophically the person of Jesus. Two formidable doctrinal tasks still need completion. The theoretical credibility of an experiential construct of the hypostatic union hinges on one’s ability to co-ordinate it with a sound doctrinal interpretation of the reality of the trinity which it reveals. The chapter which follows undertakes that coordination. An experiential Christology faces, however, yet a second doctrinal challenge. Because it reflects on the lived experience of Christological knowing, i.e., of practical assimilation of Jesus in the power of His Breath, an experiential Christology needs to clarify the theoretical meaning of its philosophical understanding of the hypostatic union by exploring its practical consequences. Those consequences do not function as mere practical corollaries to purely speculative religious beliefs. A sound logic of consequences abolishes the dualistic separation of theory from practice and requires that one view the operational consequences of any hypothesis as the clarification of its theoretical meaning. Theological hypotheses have moral and religious operational consequences. The doctrinal chapters which follow the next one will explicate the consequences for Christological knowing which an experiential construct of the hypostatic union entails. The exploration of those consequences will force a doctrinal examination of the saving scope of Jesus’ ministry, death, resurrection, and mission of the divine Breath. First, however, I shall coordinate an experiential construct of the hypostatic union with an experiential construct of the trinity.
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Chapter 9 Coordinating Chalcedonian and Trinitarian Doctrine This chapter explores the trinitarian implications of an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. Needless to say, one cannot deal adequately with trinitarian theology in the narrow compass of a single chapter. In what follows, I shall do little more than summarize the construct of the trinity which I developed in The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit. In The Divine Mother, I argued that one must coordinate trinitarian and Christological doctrine because the incarnation reveals the trinity at the same time that the trinity contextualizes the incarnation. Accordingly, after dealing in that volume with trinitarian issues in some detail, I sketched initially and in outline the experiential construct of the hypostatic union developed in the preceding chapters. At that time I acknowledged the need to argue for that construct’s theological adequacy at greater length and promised to do so. This study keeps that promise. In this chapter, I can no more deal in detail with the issues of trinitarian theology than I could deal with the details of Christology in writing The Divine Mother. Anyone who desires to ponder at greater length the issues implicit in the experiential construct of the trinity which I am about to sketch should meditate the argument developed at greater leisure in the pages of The Divine Mother. This chapter divides into five parts. Part one examines the experiential foundations of trinitarian faith. Part two argues that one may legitimately conceive the triune God as the supreme exemplification of experience. Part three discusses the way in which a triadic, realistic, social, experiential construct of the Christian deity understands both the unity and the tri-personal character of the Christian Godhead. Part four addresses a complex of issues whose discussion I postponed in the last chapter. I refer to the need to assess foundationally Rahner’s suggestion that the incarnation effects the symbolic self-revelation and self-communication of the triune God. Part five argues that an experiential construct of the trinity responds to the challenge issued by Johannine narrative Christology to coordinate incarnational with trinitarian doctrine. An experiential understanding of both trinity and incarnation also provides a doctrinal language for interpreting Johannine narrative Christology’s best incarnational and trinitarian insights. (I) Before trinitarian faith found doctrinal formulation, it took the form of a religious experience. In what, then, did that experience consist?
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Jesus called God “Abba.” He also summoned His disciples to enter into His filial relationship with God. The paschal mystery, however, endowed Jesus’ Abba awareness with new revelatory significance. In His mission of the divine Breath, the risen Christ stands historically and eschatologically revealed as divine; and His humanity stands revealed as the human experience of being a divine person distinct from the Father. As a consequence, the paschal mystery also opens a unique and privileged window on the inner, social life of God. If Jesus confronts us as a divine person sent by the Father and therefore distinct from Him, then the characterization of Jesus’ relationship to God as filial tells us something important about the immanent, social life of the Deity. The paschal mystery has, then, important metaphysical consequences for understanding the transcendent reality of God. Karl Rahner advanced trinitarian thinking when he suggested that we need to blur somewhat the traditional theological distinction between the immanent and economic trinities. The term “immanent trinity” refers to the mystery of the triune God in its eternal transcendence. The term “the economic trinity” refers to the trinity’s historical revelation.1 In my judgment, we can never dispense altogether with the distinction between the immanent and the economic trinity. The historical mission of the Son and Breath do reveal the trinity; but they do not reveal the divine reality exhaustively. No finite, historical, spatio-temporal revelation can, then, ever fully reveal the infinite reality of God. Rather, the missions of Son and Breath reveal the trinity sacramentally, in the broadest sense of the term “sacrament.” Broadly defined, “sacrament” designates an event which simultaneously reveals and conceals the reality of God. Both the incarnation and the sending of the Breath qualify as such sacramental events. The incarnation reveals to us something both true and important about the Son of God; but it does not reveal His person exhaustively. The mystery of the Church reveals to us something both true and important about the action of God’s Breath; but it does not reveal Her exhaustively. The sacramental character of Christian revelation makes the distinction between immanent and economic trinity doctrinally inevitable. We need dispensational theological terms in order to describe the limited revelation of God which we have received in the unfolding historical missions of the Son and of the Breath. We also need metaphysical terms to talk about the infinite transcendent reality of God which manifests itself only partially, but really and truly, in that revelation. 1. Catherine LaCugna’s God for Us attempts to put Rahner’s position in an historical context. Cf. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God For Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1992).
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Metaphysics supplies theology with the doctrinal language it needs to speak about the reality of God in its transcendence. A metaphysical theory of the whole aspires, as we have seen, to universal applicability but cannot guarantee it. Metaphysics proposes only a fallible hypothesis about the nature of the real. It elaborates that hypothesis by exploring the logical implications of a root metaphor for reality. A metaphysics of experience takes “experience” as its root metaphor and attempts to define the meaning of that metaphor with philosophical precision. A metaphysics of experience like any other metaphysics needs verification both in lived human experience and in the results of the positive and scholarly sciences. Since, however, reality includes the reality of God, metaphysics also needs to verify its God-talk theologically in eschatological experience. It does so in the events which reveal God to us historically and eschatologically. When one elevates an hypothesis to metaphysical status, one predicts that it will interpret as defined philosophically any reality whatever. Metaphysics, therefore, finds verification if it enjoys both applicability and adequacy. Metaphysical categories enjoy applicability if they interpret some realities in the sense in which one has defined them philosophically. They enjoy adequacy if one fails to encounter in experience anything which they cannot interpret in the philosophical sense in which one has defined them. An applicable and adequate metaphysical hypothesis qualifies as a working but revisable philosophical hypothesis. In inferential thinking about the historical and eschatological self-revelation of God in Jesus and in His Breath, the economic trinity verifies or falsifies doctrinal discourse about the immanent trinity. By that I mean that any account of the transcendent reality of God must interpret the historical self-revelation of God which we have in fact received. For example, a metaphysics which portrays God as essentially simple and as unrelated to the world, in my judgment, fails to interpret the de facto historical revelation of the triune, covenanting God revealed in the paschal mystery. The Christian God stands revealed historically in the missions of the Son of God and of His Breath. We experience the mission of the Son of God in the person and mission of Jesus, the Word of God made flesh. We experience the mission of the divine Breath as the gracing of human personal and social experience. That gracing discloses within experience a divine dynamic tendency, a thrust from and toward God present and operative within salvation history; for we experience God’s Breath as a transcendent source of graced illumination which draws us into the mystery of God by conforming us to the image of His incarnate Son. Within the context of a metaphysics of experience, one may legitimately describe the mission of a divine person as the gracious and purposeive
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transformation of human experience which reveals sacramentally the reality of the person sent, the character of the relation of that person to the other divine persons who function in the sending, and the conditions one must meet in order to experience the sending.2 If the missions of Son and Breath reveal the trinity, then one must verify any metaphysical assertion about the reality of the triune God in a sound dispensational account of those missions. In this section, I have reflected on the experiential verification of trinitarian doctrine. The section which follows argues that one may legitimately characterize the triune God as an experience. (II) In the preceding chapter, I have suggested that a realistic, social, triadic metaphysics of experience can interpret the reality of the hypostatic union. Can it also interpret the reality of the triune God as it stands historically revealed in the paschal mystery? In a metaphysics of experience three kinds of variables lend dynamic structure to the higher forms of experience: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies. We discover all three variables revealed in the historical missions of Son and Breath. As we saw in reflecting on Jesus’ mortal ministry, it seems highly probable that people perceived Jesus of Nazareth as a Breath-filled prophet. Jesus probably viewed Himself in the same way. If so, then Jesus reached His understanding both of His filial relationship to the Father and of His prophetic mission by the Father through the illumination of the divine Breath. In the paschal mystery Jesus stands revealed as a divine person. His glorified humanity reveals that person to us sacramentally, but really and truly. If Jesus understood His relationship to the Father through the illumination of the Breath, then She confronts one historically as the cognitive link between Father and Son. In other words, Paul the apostle correctly described Her as the mind of God. He also called Her the mind of Christ because She who inspired Jesus’ religious vision teaches the Christian community to view the world through His eyes.3 (1 Cor 2:11-16) 2. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 17-82. 3. One reviewer of The Divine Mother suggested that in calling the divine Breath “the mind of Christ” that I was flirting with Apollinarism. If so, then, Paul the apostle was an Apollinarist. If by Christ one means the divine person of Jesus, then, the divine Breath does indeed function as the mind of God. If by Christ one means His humanity, then the divine Breath obviously differs from His finite human mind although She certainly inspires His religious vision and shaped the way His human mind perceived things. In this sense she confronts us, as the apostle Paul correctly asserts, as the mind of Christ. She also teaches faltering humans to perceive things as Jesus did. In other words, She gives them access to His mind by inspiring Christological knowing. You will find similar affirmations in The Divine Mother. They have nothing to do with Apollinarism.
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If the Holy Breath stands historically revealed as the mind of God, then She functions within the Godhead as a divine principle of evaluative response. In other words, Christian revelation justifies saying that God perceives reality evaluatively. The Christian God also acts decisively. As we saw in reflecting on the hypostatic union, the New Testament consistently describes both Father and Son as acting decisively, efficaciously, and collaboratively. The Father by originating the Son’s mission into the world stands historically revealed as an aboriginal principle of creative and of saving efficacy within the Godhead. The Son through His faithful accomplishment of His efficacious mission from the Father stands revealed as an autonomous source of obediential efficacy within the Godhead. Moreover, as we saw, the Son’s obediential relationship to Father and Breath reveals Him as God’s spoken Word, as the one through whom the Father and Breath act upon creation. The efficacious acts of God reveal, then, that decisions also function within the divine reality. Tendencies also function within the triune God. The historical mission of the Son by the Father reveals His distinction from the Father. The historical mission of the Breath by the Father through the Son reveals Her distinction from both of them. Mission reveals the distinction of divine persons by manifesting historically their procession from one another in the Godhead. The historical missions of Son and Breath therefore disclose the existence within the Godhead of three distinct selves, of three autonomous tendencies, to act and to respond. In a metaphysics of experience, the higher forms of experience exhibit three variables: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies. If, then, evaluations, decisions, and tendencies all function within the Deity, then one may legitimately interpret the reality of Christian God as an experience. Thomas Aquinas correctly rejected the a priori reasoning of Anselm of Canterbury’s ontological argument. Anselm, however, had keen insight when he defined God as that reality than which one can conceive none greater. In the Proslogion Anselm used his definition of the divine supremacy in order to lure one contemplatively from pondering one divine attribute after another; for, in describing a supremely perfect God, one cannot affirm any one divine perfection without simultaneously insisting that the full reality of God surpasses it. Anselm’s definition of God speaks directly to religious experience. Within religious experience, the infinite, all-encompassing reality of God resists corralling by finite concepts and images. No facet of the Godhead analogously interpreted by an image or concept exhausts the divine reality. Deus semper major: God is always more. As soon as the human mind has named one divine perfection, it knows that it can continue naming God indefinitely without ever exhausting the divine excellence.
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Aquinas correctly argued that analogy holds the key to metaphysical discourse about the transcendent reality of God. As we have seen, analogical God-talk advances in three steps. First, one affirms that some created reality resembles God. Jesus, for example, said that our relationship to God resembles our relationship to a human father. By that He meant, among other things, that our relationship to God in trust animates us and incorporates us into God’s egalitarian family. Second, in analogical thinking about God one next denies that the divine reality can ever coincide with the finite created reality it resembles. The reality of God does not resemble in every respect our relationship to our human fathers. God, for example, did not beget us sexually. Third, one asserts that finite created perfections which in some way reveal God to us exist within the Godhead in an utterly transcendent manner. The gift of divine life, for example, utterly transcends the gift of natural, mortal human life. Moreover, entering Abba’s family sets us into a sibling relationship with every other person. I have just argued that one can legitimately conceive God as an experience. I have asserted, therefore, that human social experience triadically interpreted resembles the divine reality in some way. The two realities, however, do not simply coincide. Divine social experience differs in significant ways from human social experience; for the divine transcendence requires that one conceive the reality of God as the supreme exemplification of social experience. Charles Hartshorne has written clearly and eloquently about the supremacy of the God of Alfred North Whitehead.4 The metaphysics of experience which I am defending agrees with Hartshorne endorsement of the divine supremacy, but it conceives the reality of God in realistic, triadic terms rather than in the categories of Whitehead’s di-polar nominalism. That same metaphysics does not join Hartshorne in endorsing Anselm’s ontological argument.5 As the supreme exemplification of experience God exceeds the comprehension of every other finite, created experience because His supremacy causes Him to experience every experienceable reality including the divine reality. As we have seen, moreover, in a metaphysics of experience, experienced realities stand within experience, not outside of it. Hence, the all-encompassing character of an infinite divine experience logically entails panentheism. Panentheism differs from pantheism. Pantheism identifies all reality, even created reality, with the reality of God. Panentheism distinguishes 4. Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1948). 5. Cf. Charles Hartshorne, Anselm’s Discovery: A Re-Examination of the Ontological Proof for God’s Existence (Lasalle, IL: Open Court Press, 1965).
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between the reality of God and created reality; but it asserts that created reality exists relationally within the reality of God. Both the New Testament and Christian tradition support a panentheistic understanding of the relationship between God and creation. A realistic, social, triadic metaphysics of experience makes panentheism philosophically thinkable. In a world of experiences, autonomy creates real distinction among functioning selves and persons. Autonomously functioning experiences exist within one another to the extent that they experience one another. They differ, however, as distinct selves in virtue of their autonomous functioning. As the creator of all things, God knows all created reality both actively and causally. God also knows the divine reality. If the divine reality experiences all things, then they must exist in the divine reality. God encompasses them; but they do not encompass God.6 As the supreme exemplification of experience, the reality of God both resembles and differs from spatio-temporal experiences in a number of significant ways. 1) Spatio-temporal experiences exhibit finitude.Every finite experience finds itself surrounded by other experiences with which it must interact in order to become what it will become. The divine experience, however, enjoys infinity because it encompasses all other experiences and is encompassed by no other reality. 2) Spatio-temporal experiences exhibit a dynamic relational structure. A triadic metaphysics of experience discovers in the higher forms of finite experience three kinds of relationship: conceptual, decisive, and general, habitual relationships. The same relational realities constitute the divine experience; but, as the supreme exemplification of experience, the divine reality in contrast to finite experiences confronts us as supremely relational. Heightened relationship in a metaphysics of experience implies perfection, not imperfection, because reality and relationship coincide.7 3) Finite experiences develop transactionally. Decisive actions link selves to one another. Among persons they forge the social links among them. As we shall soon see, the triune character of the divine experience endows it with a social character analogous to human experience. Finite experiences, however, only relate positively to a limited number of other experiences. As the supremely relational reality, God would also qualify as the supremely social reality. 6. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Divine Mother: A Trinitarian Theology of the Holy Spirit (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1984), pp. 95-100. 7. Cf. Earl Muller, S.J., “Real Relations and the Divine,” Theological Studies, 56(1995), pp. 673-695.
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4) As we saw in reflecting on the dynamic structure of human experience, finite experiences have both a spatial and a temporal character. The other autonomously functioning selves and persons with whom a finite experience interacts constitute its spatial environment. Moreover, as we have also seen, the evaluative structure of experience endows a finite experience with a real temporal structure. As the all-encompassing experience, the divine reality environs all other things but constitutes its own environment because nothing can encompass it and therefore environ it. In other words, the divine experience transcends the limits of space and time, even as the deity intervenes within space and time. 5) The supremacy of the divine experience also implies its eternity. Created beings come into existence and therefore cannot exist eternally. Creation in turn implies the dependence of created reality on the creator; and causal dependence implies the superiority of the creator to the creature. If God enjoyed created existence, then God would depend on some reality greater than Himself and lose His supremacy. In losing His supremacy, however, God would then cease to be God. Since therefore God cannot come into being as creatures do, God enjoys eternal existence.8 Supremacy entails other distinguishing characteristics which cause it to transcend finite, spatio-temporal experiences. 1) The divine supremacy requires logically that nothing else can rival God in perfection. As the supreme exemplification of reality, God can lack no conceivable perfection without forfeiting supremacy and therefore divinity. 2) Divine supremacy necessarily entails divine uniqueness. Every experience enjoys a unique perspective on reality. Only God, however, encompasses all reality within the scope of the divine experience. As the only all-encompassing reality and as the only reality unrivaled in perfection, the divine experience exhibits a special quality of uniqueness. 3) Supreme perfection necessarily implies the divine desirability. As the experience of all experienceable perfection, the divine experience exemplifies the plentitude of truth, goodness, and excellence, as Jonathan Edwards saw. Because we experience the supremely excellent reality of God as supremely beautiful, we also experience it as supremely desirable. 4) Supremacy also necessarily requires God’s ontological priority to all created reality. Unique, all-encompassing, and underived, God stands as the source of every other finite, created reality. 5) Supremacy necessarily entails omniscience. The experience of every experienceable reality knows everything knowable: the totality of possibility, of probability, and of actuality. 6) Supremacy necessarily entails omnipotence. God’s power to act must express the supremacy of the divine experience. God therefore can do 8. Ibid., pp. 40-43, 83-100.
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anything compatible with His reality and supremacy, including acts of free self-limitation. God limits Himself when He freely decides not to exercise His omnipotence.9 The supremacy of the divine experience demands that all things exist in God in the way in which they are. Error mars experience. If, therefore, the divine experience ever erred in its grasp of creation, it would forfeit both supremacy and divinity. Hence, God experiences all things as they are; and they exist in God in the same way. The relational character of experience entails the relational distinction of God from all creatures and they from God. In a metaphysics of experience autonomous functioning makes things distinct. Humans may exist in God in one of three ways. They exist in God only naturally when they develop autonomously in complete abstraction from the divine reality. They exist in God graciously when they respond in faith to some historical self-manifestation of God. They exist in God sinfully when they set themselves in opposition to God by disobeying the divine will. The way humans choose to exist in God makes a difference to God. God did not have to create. Having created, God did not have to choose to enter into covenant with humans. Nor did God have to inaugurate the new covenant by becoming human, dying, rising, and sending the divine Breath. Nothing creatures do can ever make God cease to be God. Nevertheless, by freely choosing to enter into a loving relationship with humans, God also freely chose to suffer vulnerability in those relationships. The crucified Son of God reveals the full extent of the divine vulnerability. It follows that we quite literally please God when we respond to the divine reality and to one another lovingly. We also displease and dishonor God when we do the opposite. The way humans choose to exist in God makes a difference in the way in which God exists in them. When we consent to God, we deepen in a unitive relationship of love. When we choose to exist only naturally we fail to grow in graced union with God. When we sin seriously, we exclude God’s gracious presence from our lives.10 In this section I have argued to the legitimacy of conceiving the triune God as the supreme exemplification of experience. The section which follows ponders the tripersonal character of the Christian deity. (III) Western theologians have traditionally spoken analogously of three persons in God. Both Karl Barth and Karl Rahner have, however, questioned the legitimacy of calling the three members of the divine triad “persons.”
9. Ibid., pp. 92-94.
10. Ibid., pp. 96-100.
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Both wanted to replace the term person with the term “mode,” which has some foundation in the Christian tradition. Barth argued that in a contemporary context “person” connotes personality. Since Barth found it misleading to speak of three personalities in God, he preferred modal to personal language for designating the three members of the divine triad, even though he claimed to mean by “mode” what theologians have traditionally meant by a divine person: namely, a special, distinct, individual, relational way of existing.11 Rahner’s insistence on the utterly mysterious character of God left him loathe to predicate the term “person” of both finite humans and of the three members of the divine triad. He also defines “person” as an autonomous center of consciousness and freedom.He therefore feared that postulating three such centers in God leads to tritheism.12 In my judgment, to speak of three modes in God rather than three persons does not interpret the historical revelation we have in fact received. I have described a person as a subsistent, autonomously functioning self capable of self-understanding, of acting out of that self-understanding, and of entering into responsible relationship with realities like itself. When we understand Jesus’ Abba experience in the light of the paschal mystery which reveals His divinity, it discloses the presence within God of an interpersonal relationship between the Father and the Son. The Father sends the Son out of saving love. The incarnate Son of God responds to the Father autonomously, self-consciously, and with a perfectly responsible, sinless obedience. Despite the attempt of both Barth and Rahner to replace the term “person” with the term “mode” in speaking of the members of the divine triad, only the term “interpersonal” interprets the relationship between Jesus and the Father. It makes no sense to call that relationship a deep, intermodal experience. In other words, the historical revelation which we have in fact received does not verify Rahner’s and Barth’s trinitarian terminology.13 If Jesus relates as one person to another in dealing with the Father, then the Son of God must also enjoy an interpersonal relationship with the divine Breath. The co-equality of the divine persons demands it. That same co-equality demands that Father and Breath respond to the divine Son as persons.14
11. Barth, Church Dogmatics, I-I, pp. 405-418. 12. Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith, pp. 71-75. 13. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 103-124. 14. Ibid., pp. 103-119. Cf. Petro B.T. Bilaniuk, “The Holy Spirit in Eastern Christian Iconography,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 1(1982), pp. 101-116.
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If we find more than one personal reality in the Godhead, then the divine experience enjoys an inherently social character. If so, however, then we can, perhaps, understand the social relationships of the divine persons to one another on an analogy with human social experience. Love binds human persons together in such a way that they begin to share a similarity of life. Mutual loving consent unifies and integrates personal experience. Dissent, as Edwards saw, fragments it with hatred, violence, exclusion, persecution, dissolution. Mutual consent blends two experiences and unites persons in love. It also assimilates human experiences to one another. Loved and loving children resemble their parents. Friends and spouses learn to share the same hopes, aspirations, ideals. Teachers and students share common interests, viewpoints, and enthusiasms. While the mutual consent of love among human persons creates a similarity of life among them, it never creates an identity of life, because finite persons remain physically separated. A finite, developing human self puts together a body as a life-support system from nurturing elements in the surrounding environment. Physical distinction ensures that each human person do his or her own living and dying, however much the mutual blending of their lives unites them and makes them similar. The divine persons, however, do not labor under the same physical constraints as human persons. Transcendence of space and time endows the divine persons with a real but disembodied existence. In addition, the paschal mystery reveals the free, total, and mutual self-donations of the divine persons to one another in selfless love. In His self-donation to the Father in the passion, the Son simultaneously gives Himself to the divine Breath who inspires His obedience. The resurrection reveals the Father’s self-gift to the Son by manifesting Jesus’ Lordship. The resurrection also reveals the Breath’s self-gift to the Son by transforming Him into a life-giving Breath who shares with the divine Breath an identity of life. Moreover, among disembodied divine persons, mutual self-donation creates, not a similarity, but an identity of life. The Father in giving Himself in love to the Son and Breath communicates to them the fullness of His creative omnipotence. The Breath in giving Herself totally to Father and Son becomes their very mind and endows them with personalizing self-consciousness. The Son in giving Himself totally to the Father and Breath by His obediential self-gift transforms Himself into the one through whom they act on any created reality. In other words, each divine person contributes something distinctive to the shared life of the Godhead by functioning as its eternal source. Moreover, besides creating the identity of life which makes them into a single divine reality, the eternal mutual self-donation of all three divine
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persons also effects their perfect mutual inexistence. Let us try to understand why. One cannot unify a complex reality by identifying it with a perfectly simple substance, as Augustinian trinitarian theology suggests. Besides invoking the fallacy of essentialism, essential simplicity makes complexity within God by definition impossible. Nevertheless, the historical missions of Son and Breath reveal to us the distinction of the divine persons from one another within the Godhead; and, by definition, distinction entails complexity. In medieval theology, a “notion” refers to a predicate which describes a real relationship of distinction among the divine persons. Medieval trinitarian theology correctly discovered in the Godhead the four notional relations of active and passive generation and active and passive spiration. Active generation describes the Father’s eternal relationship to the Son. Passive generation describes the Son’s eternal relationship to the Father. Active spiration describes the Father and Son’s simultaneous causal relationship to the Breath. Passive spiration describes Her relationship to them. If, with the medieval schoolmen, one also views the Father’s inability to be generated as a notional predicate, one would also have to concede that the Father’s innacebility denies rather than asserts a relationship. In my judgment, medieval theology correctly acknowledged relationships of distinction within the trinity. The fact that the Father sends the Son reveals that the Father begets the Son from all eternity. The fact that Father and Son send the Breath reveals that She proceeds efficaciously from them from all eternity. They “spirate” Her. Medieval trinitarian speculation failed, however, to develop an adequate doctrine of unifying relationships within the Godhead. Contemporary trinitarian theology needs, therefore to compensate for that failure; for in the last analysis one can only make sense out of the unity of a complex reality by its internal relational structure. Jesus exemplifies most clearly within space and time how divine persons relate to one another; and, as the Beloved Disciple correctly realized, Jesus does so most perfectly in the paschal mystery. On Calvary Jesus gave Himself in perfect obedience to the Father’s will and to the Breath’s illumination. In other words, free and mutual self-donation in love describes how three distinct persons within the Godhead relate unitively to one another. They give themselves to one another lovingly, freely, and totally. The resurrection completes the revelation begun on Calvary by disclosing that the Son of God shares an identity of life with the Father and the Breath. That identity of life requires that They give themselves lovingly to the Son as totally as He gives Himself to Them.
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The co-equality of the divine persons also requires that they all give themselves to one another. The reason should be clear: any divine person who refused the gift of self to the other divine persons would fall short of the perfection of divine love and by that act of selfishness forfeit divinity. Moreover, the revealed, kenotic character of the Son’s self-gift to the Father and Breath, the totality of His self-emptying into Them, prepares the totality of His infilling by their perfectly kenotic self-gift to Him. In other words, the kenotic character of the divine persons’ mututal selfdonation makes possible the totality of their self-gift to one another as well as the identity of life which they share. The mutual, loving, self-gift of the divine persons to one another holds the key to the immanent social life of the trinity. In giving Himself to Son and Breath the Father endows them with creative efficacy while nevertheless remaining eternally the source of creative efficacy in the Godhead. In giving Herself to Father and Son, the divine Breath becomes their mind and personalizes them; but She remains eternally the source of conceptual enlightenment within the Godhead. She inspires the Father’s creative wisdom and conceives the Word spoken to us in the incarnation. Her eternal conception of the Son allows us to imagine Her as the divine Mother.15 In giving Himself obedientially to Father and Breath the Son transforms Himself into the one through whom they act in creating the world and in saving and judging it. The Son, however, remains eternally the source of obediential efficacy within the Godhead.16 15. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 215-238. 16. One reviewer of The Divine Mother accused me of holding that the divine Breath begets the Son even though I explicitly denied that She does on more than one occasion in that book. The reviewer spoke of “the efficacy of conceptions.” Anyone who talks about the efficacy of conceptions cannot tell the difference between thinking about ice cream and eating it. I did say that in giving Herself to the Son the divine Breath conceives the Word which He embodies. I distinguished, however, between the efficacious relationship of begetting which characterizes the Father’s relationship to the Son and the unitive relationship of conception which characterizes the Breath’s relationship to Him. In other words, the reviewer chose to ignore the expanded doctrine of notions which I had developed as well as the distinction between relations of distinction and unitive relations which it expounds. The reviewer also asserted that the Christian tradition offers no precedent for such an understanding of the relationship of Son and Breath. Again he erred. In taking such a position I merely endorsed a suggestion made by the Latin father Gaius Marius Victorinus. (Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 217-218) The same reviewer suggested that in speaking of unitive relationships within the Godhead, I endorsed the same position as Moltmann. To the best of my knowledge Moltmann has never spoken of unitive relationships in God. Like Moltmann I do believe that one must begin trinitarian theology with the persons and not with the divine substance as Augustine did. In other words, Moltmann endorses, as I do, the approach to the trinity taken by the Greek fathers generally. I find other aspects of Moltmann’s trinitarian theology unacceptable, particularly his dialectical reading of Jesus’ death.
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The perfection with which the divine persons give themselves to one another creates the identity of divine life which unites them. The fact that their infinity17 frees them from the limitations of embodiment enables them to give themselves to one another with a totality denied to humans. Human persons share, not an identity, but only an analogous similarity of life. Identity of life entails that the divine persons exist in one another totally and perfectly. Like Gaius Marius Victorinus, an experiential construct of the trinity explains the unity of the divine persons by the identity of life they share. (Gaius Marius Victorinus, To Candidus, VII, 1-X, 37; Against Arius, I, 2. 1-4, 51. 19-15; 9, II, 1. 57. 28-29) Like John of Damascus and the council of Ferrara-Florence (DS 1331), that same construct also explains their unity by their perfect and total mutual inexistence.18 This section has argued that a metaphysics of experience can plausibly account for the tripersonal character of the Christian God and can offer a plausible account of the unity of the trinity. The section which follows reflects on the revealability of the divine experience. (IV) In reviewing some of the major historical issues with which a contemporary doctrinal account of the hypostatic union must deal, I noted that Karl Rahner conceives the hypostatic union as the symbolic self-revelation of the Son of God and that he discovers a symbolic structure within the trinity. An experiential construct of the incarnation agrees with both suggestions. A metaphysics of experience defends, however, a different metaphysics of symbol from the one proposed by Rahner. As we have seen, experience exhibits three kinds of symbols: expressive symbols, interpretative symbols, and communications. Viewed experientially, a symbol mediates the evaluative grasp of significance. Moreover, if one approaches the trinity experientially, one has no other choice than to begin with the divine persons. We experience two divine persons historically and eschatologically. We experience the second person of the trinity directly in the incarnation; we experience the divine Breath only through His mediation. We experience the Son of God as an divine person incarnate. We experience the divine Breath as a personal, immanent, illuminating, divine vector within history which lures it to the transcendent ends which God desires by conforming humans to the incarnate Word. We have no direct experiential access to God’s essential reality. The divine essence, by which I mean the infinite divine experience in its transcendence of space and time, provides no experiential ground for thinking about God. Those, therefore, who prefer to begin trinitarian thinking with the divine essence need to study logic. Cf. J.S. Grabowski, “Mutual Submission and Trinitarian Self-giving,”Angelicum,74(1997), pp. 489-513. 17. The reader should recall that by “the divine infinity” I do not mean infinite act. I mean that the divine reality encompasses everything and is encompassed by nothing. 18. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 125-149.
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By an expressive symbol, I mean a physical event, like a chemical reaction or an earthquake, an event whose dynamic relational structure the human mind can grasp. Events signify because they have a dynamic relational structure which the mind can grasp evaluatively and interpretatively, if the mind takes the trouble to think clearly about events. Expressive symbols engage decisive acts and the general tendencies which ground them. By interpretative symbols I mean the evaluations which disclose to us the significant structure of events and endow them with meaning prior to any overt act of communication. Interpretative symbols engage conceptions and the habitual ways of evaluating which ground them but without communicating them. Decisions which fix intuitive, inferential, and prudential beliefs create interpretative symbols by creating habits of evaluation. By a communication I mean a physical act which seeks to express to one mind the evaluative responses of another. All speech acts—significant gestures, art, language—exemplify communications. All three symbols function transcendently in the triune God. Transcendent divine symbols differ from finite created symbols in virtue of their supreme significance and of their supreme meaningfulness. The eternal efficacious generation of the Son by the Father exemplifies a transcendent expressive symbol. So does the Father and Son’s eternal co-spiration of the divine Breath. As the mind of God, the divine Breath exemplifies a transcendent interpretative symbol. As the one through whom God speaks to and acts upon the world, the Son exemplifies a transcendent, divine communication. Expressive symbols signify because they have a dynamic relational structure which a mind can endow with meaning. Interpretative symbols endow expressive symbols with felt but unexpressed meaning. Communications transform interpretative symbols into socially expressed meaning. Human experience and divine experience have, then, an analogous dynamic symbolic structure. Human and divine symbols resemble one another by the way in which they mediate the evaluative grasp of significance. Divine symbols differ from human symbols by the supremacy of their perfection. Hence, a divine experience which contains all three kinds of symbols must logically exemplify supreme intelligibility, supreme intelligence, and supreme communicability. The incarnation confronts us as the efficacious transformation of one symbolic reality in another. The humanity of Jesus embodies for us a divine communication, a divine word; for it confronts us as God’s symbolic self-expression and self-communication to a sinful humanity. One grasps that communication in faith through the empowering enlighten-
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ment of the risen Christ’s Breath. The triune God’s historical and eschatological self-communication advances in two stages. First, Jesus embodied a human reality which expresses and communicates to humanity how God relates to a sinful world and how that world ought to relate to God. Second, as the risen Christ, Jesus sends His Breath in order to empower sinful humans to grasp by living in His image the reality which He embodies.19 The preceding account of the incarnation as divine self-revelation and self-communication grounds the notion of symbol more explicitly in experience than Rahner’s metaphysics of symbol does. It also avoids invoking a confusing Hegelian dialectic in explaining the incarnation. By that I mean that the account of the incarnation which I am proposing does not find a unique correlation between humanity and the person of the Son as Rahner’s Christology does. This section has argued that a metaphysics of experience allows one to express doctrinally the fact that in the incarnation one encounters the historical self-revelation and self-communication of God. The section which follows shows that an experiential understanding of both the incarnation and the trinity can interpret doctrinally the best incarnational and trinitarian insights of Johannine narrative Christology. (V) The preceding doctrinal account of the hypostatic union and of the trinity responds to the doctrinal challenge of Johannine narrative Christology that one coordinate inferentially one’s understanding of these two intimately interrelated mysteries. It also provides an inferential frame of reference for rethinking the Beloved Disciple’s intuitive rendering of Christian revelation. In pondering the reflections which follow, the reader should recall that a doctrinal interpretation of Johannine incarnational and trinitarian theology differs from an exegesis of the Johannine text. A doctrinal interpretation of a Biblical text like the gospel of John attempts rather to contextualize the best insights of a particular biblical author within a systematic, inferential view of divine revelation. The coordination of intuitive and inferential expressions of faith concerns us here rather than exegesis. That coordination and contextualization frequently requires going beyond what the text of John itself has to say since the inferential mind speaks in a different symbolic idiom from the narrative mind. Like the Beloved Disciple, an experiential construct of the trinity endorses the Son of God’s divine pre-existence. As a facet of the divine experience, the second person of the trinity exists eternally with both the Father and the Breath. Moreover, the second person of the trinity con19. Ibid., pp. 151-215
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fronts us unambiguously as God’s spoken Word, as the one through whom the Father and the Breath speak and act efficaciously upon the world.20 A experiential trinitarian theology also interprets inferentially a Johannine account of the relationship of the Son to the Father. In the fourth gospel, the Son relates obedientially to the Father at the same time that the Father creates and judges the world efficaciously through the Son. An experiential trinitarian theology takes account of these insights and contextualizes them when it asserts that the Son’s obediential relationship to both the Father and the Breath within the trinity transforms Him into that eternal principle through whom both the Father and the Breath accomplish whatever they do in creation. In other words, the second person of the trinity mediates efficaciously and obedientially Their action upon the created universe. An experiential trinitarian theology also interprets inferentially the Johannine doctrine that prior to His incarnation, the second person of the trinity possesses divine life in His own right and does so from all eternity. An experiential construct of the trinity also goes beyond Johannine theology by allowing one to name the source of the Son’s divine life: namely, the mutual loving self-donation of the divine persons; for all three divine persons enliven one another eternally. An experiential construct of the trinity also interprets the perfect co-action of Father and Son of which the fourth gospel speaks. Whenever the Father acts on any created reality, He acts through and with the Son. 20. One reviewer complained that in The Divine Mother I simplified the Biblical witness to the divine Breath because some exegetes find the term “the word of God” used in a variety of ways. In have examined every text in the Bible which deals with the divine Breath and all describe Her as a principle of empowering enlightenment. Biblical authors may indeed use the term “word” in a variety of ways. Exegetes certainly interpret that term in a variety of ways. In explaining the prologue of John, they tend, however, to project into it an Augustinian philosophical identification of word and concept and of the Word with the divine intellect. In developing a foundational account of incarnation and trinity, one must, moreover, move beyond the results afforded by the functional specialty of exegesis; for one must verify or falsify Biblical and exegetical language in the historical events which reveal God to us. The fact that Jesus came to His Abba awareness through the enlightenment of the divine Breath means that She, not He, stands historically revealed as the cognitive link between Father and Son and therefore as the mind of God. That historical fact falsifies any Platonizing assimilation of the Johannine Word to the divine mind. The same reviewer asserted that the Johannine Word in fact means the mind of God rather than the spoken word of God. The assertion goes beyond the textual evidence. The text of the fourth gospel speaks of the eternal Logos only in its prologue. Nowhere does it distinguish between the spoken and conceived word of God, as the fathers of the Church later would. Given the dispensational character of the Beloved Disciple’s Christology, I find it more likely that he would have meant by the Logos the spoken word of God. In his gospel, he certainly portrays Jesus as the one through whom God speaks to us and acts upon us rather than as a divine intellect.
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So does the divine Breath, since from all eternity She inspires the Father’s creative, saving, and redemptive wisdom. She therefore conceives the gracious Word which the Father speaks in sending the Son. Johannine rhetoric asserts that since the Son sends the Breath, She will teach only what the Son tells Her to teach. In so speaking the Beloved Disciple describes the Breath as standing in an obediential relationship to the Son analogous to the Son’s obediential relation to the Father. In speaking of the Breath’s obedience to the Son who sends Her, the Beloved Disciple is using dispensational descriptive language, not the inferential, explanatory language of doctrinal theology. The evangelist is assuring his readers that as Christian doctrine evolves historically, the Breath will inspire no doctrine which contradicts the divine truth incarnate in Jesus. The Breath’s obediential relationship to the Son in Johannine narrative theology also urges the disciples to trust that the Breath’s inspirations will conform them obedientially to Jesus just as Jesus’ perfect obedience conformed Him to God the Father. Within the context of Johannine theology, therefore, the Breath’s obediential relationship to the Son would seem to raise soteriological issues rather than trinitarian ones. If, however, as an experiential construct of the trinity insists, the saving missions of the divine persons also reveal their relationship within the Godhead, ought not the Breath’s soteriologically significant obedience to the Son also to have trinitarian implications as well? In an attempt to answer the preceding question, let us first ponder doctrinally the different ways in which Son and Breath function in the gracing of human experience. Then let us ask whether this soteriological diversity reveals anything about the relationship of the Son and Breath to one another within the Godhead. Irenaeus of Lyons referred to the Son and the Breath as the “two hands of God,” as two historically distinct manifestations of God’s saving activity. If one interprets this insight in the light of an experiential construct of the trinity, it leads one to identify both an efficacious and a persuasive dimension to the gracing human experience. The Son communicates created grace efficaciously, the Breath communicates it persuasively. As Breath-baptizer and spoken Word of God, the Son eternally mediates the Breath’s persuasive intentions. The Son’s efficacious communication of grace mediates its persuasive transformation of human experience in a manner analogous to the way in which speech acts communicate meaning. In other words, an experiential construct of the trinity and of the incarnation endorses the doctrine defended by eastern orthodox theologians that, in the gracing of human experience, the Son always functions as mediator and the Breath as mediation. His efficacious touches communicate to us the divine ideas without giving us immediate cognitive
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access to those same divine ideas. The Breath conceives the saving illumination which the Son communicates efficaciously. In addition, She serves as the quasi-locus in the divine experience for the gracing of human persons, just as the Son serves as the quasi-locus for the gracing of that unique human experience whom we call Jesus of Nazareth. The Breath functions as the quasi locus of human gracing because within the trinity She functions as a cognitive, persuasive principle rather than as a principle of efficacy. That allows us to experience Her illuminations persuasively at the same time that we retain our human autonomy. As we have seen, a human experience efficaciously transformed in God develops with a divine autonomy which transforms it into the human experience of being a divine person. Human persons confront both one another and God as finite, autonomously functioning persons. Social communication among human persons requires both physical speech acts and the evaluative interpretation of those acts. When God communicates graciously with humans, something analogous happens. Within personal religious experience we feel ourselves on occasion touched efficaciously by God. When that happens we also need to interpret conceptually the significance of that touch. Moreover, we experience the graced interpretation of the divine activity as mediated by that touch. Ignatius of Loyola called such experiences “consolation without cause.” Whenever the divine persons act on any reality outside of themselves they act simultaneously. Otherwise the activity of one person and the non-activity of the other would compromise their perfect co-equality. During the patristic period, heterodox, subordinationist interpretations of the “the two hands of God” ascribed certain activities to one person and denied them to another. If the divine persons in fact act simultaneously, then one needs some kind of doctrinal justification for the tendency of the New Testament and of the Christian creeds to ascribe particular acts to particular persons. The creeds, for example, associate the Father especially with creation, the Son with redemption, the Breath with the graced creation of the Church. In an experiential construct of the trinity, the particular contribution which each divine person makes to the eternal life of the Godhead provides the realistic basis for the attributive predication of certain characteristics to one person rather than to another. We attribute creation especially to the Father because within the trinity He functions as the aboriginal and efficacious source of all. That eternal fact establishes what orthodox theologians call the divine monarchy. We attribute the graced illumination of the believers especially to the Breath because She contributes personalizing consciousness eternally to the shared life of the Godhead.
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We attribute redemption especially to the Son because through His obediential relationship to the other divine persons He functions eternally as the one through whom they act efficaciously and graciously on creation. An experiential construct of the trinity would, therefore, ascribe the efficacious gracing of human experience ultimately to the Father, proximately and redemptively to the Son, and illuminatively to the Breath. The incarnate Son also mediates the divine Breath’s illumination. Whenever the trinity touches us efficaciously the three divine persons always act through the Son. That efficacious divine touch creates in us a finite graced illumination (created grace) which takes its ultimate origin within the Godhead from the divine Breath. When we interpret the divine touch correctly, created grace conforms the character of our human response to the divine touch and to the divine Breath’s saving intentions. We therefore ascribe the persuasive gracing of experience to the Holy Breath of God even though we also recognize that the second person of the trinity functions as the eternal efficacious mediator of all saving acts of divine grace. Only in the incarnation does grace unite a human experience hypostatically to God. Jesus’ filiation by the Father within the Godhead expresses and exemplifies His divinity. We remain human persons even when graced. That grace, of course, conforms us creatively and obedientially to the paradigmatic example of God’s incarnate Son. We therefore experience divine grace as transforming us into God’s adopted children, not into divine persons. Grace does not conceive in us the human experience of being a divine person, as the grace of union does in Jesus. As adopted children of God, we do not experience grace worked efficaciously in us as it was in Jesus. Rather we experience the mediated illumination of the divine Breath as persuasive, as luring and inviting us into a loving relationship with the triune God. In what concerns the gracing of human experience, the Beloved Disciple’s rhetoric of obedience roots itself in the experience of mission. Because the Father sends Jesus, He relates obedientially to the Father. Because both Father and Son send the Breath, She relates obedientially to both of them. She can therefore disclose to humans nothing which contradicts the love relation between Father and Son. When one interprets the Beloved Disciple’s dispensational use of obediential language within the context of a metaphysics of experience, one realizes first of all that his language engages two different realms of experience. The Son acts in the order of efficacy as a divine communication. The Breath, who functions within the Godhead as an interpretative symbol, acts persuasively through the Son’s mediation. In other words, because the risen Christ mediates the Breath, She through His mediation inspires in us graced awareness of what He embodies. Second, while the
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Son acts upon the disciples directly and efficaciously in mediating the Breath, She reaches the disciples only through the Son’s mediation. Third, the illumination which She communicates, the participation in divine life which the Beloved Disciple calls “pneuma” differs from Her person. It consists in a share in the divine life; but it yields no immediate access to the mind of God. We come to know the Breath only through the incarnate Word’s efficacious mediation. Interpreted within the context of a metaphysics of experience, moreover, the Breath’s obediential, soteriological relationship to both the Father and the Son does reveal to us something about Their relationship to one another within the Godhead. In the higher forms of created experience, decision fixes belief. In this sense, decision dictates efficaciously the way in which finite human minds respond evaluatively to reality before that response takes form in overt acts of communication. When one interprets the trinity as the supreme exemplification of experience, then something analogous happens within the Godhead. The perfect, loving, mutual self-donation of Father and Son within the trinity does decide efficaciously the way God responds evaluatively to everything; for that mutual, efficacious self-gift insures that the divine wisdom can perceive both itself and created reality only lovingly. Hence, by deciding the evaluative shape of the eternal divine mind, the eternal, mutual self-donation of Father and Son within the trinity spirates the divine Breath. It determines the divine mind efficaciously to respond to everything lovingly. Even within the trinity, that decisive act of mutual self-donation on the part of the Father and Son would also ground an obediential relationship to Them on the part of the Breath whom Their mutual self-donation spirates. It demands that She know all things lovingly. A metaphysics of experience also provides logical categories for interpreting the Johannine notion of mutual indwelling. In John the members of the divine triad dwell in one another. They also dwell in believers and believers in Them. In a metaphysics of experience mutual indwelling (perichorêsis) does not designate an anomalous mode of existence proper to God alone. Instead, it describes accurately the way in which everything exists. When reality and experience coincide, then experienced realities stand within experience, not outside of it. As a consequence, those who experience one another by that very fact exist within one another at the same time that they remain distinct from one another in virtue of their autonomous functioning. Within the trinity, the mutual indwelling of divine persons consists in the mutual identity of life which they share in consequence of their perfect and mutual self-donation in love. The three divine persons remain distinct in virtue of Their autonomous functioning, but They use
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their autonomy in order to create the identity of divine life which unites Them in a perfection of love and social communion which creates in turn their unity. Their use of autonomy only unites Them. It never divides Them. On the contrary, it creates in turn the identity of divine life which they share with perfect co-equality. Among the writers of the New Testament, the Beloved Disciple, as we have seen, first formulated a vocabulary for talking about both the unity and trinity of God. In Johannine theology, the names of the three members of the divine triad foreshadowed what a later theology would call the distinction of persons in God. Johannine theology also offers two words for the divinity common to Father, Son, and Breath: namely, Theos and pneuma. Theos looks more to the immanent life of the Godhead. Pneuma designates the divine life in which believers participate through the gift of the Breath of the risen Christ. A metaphysics of experience provides a philosophical way of interpreting these aspects of Johannine trinitarian theology inferentially. That metaphysics interprets Father, Son, and Breath as three persons within the Godhead. Their common personal existence consists in the identity of life which results from their eternal mutual self-donation in love. A metaphysics of experience interprets the Johannine term “pneuma” as the transmutation and transvaluation of experience which results from accepting the empowering enlightenment of the Breath mediated and communicated by the risen Christ. Johannine theology interprets the reality of God as life, light, and love. A metaphysics of experience also offers a doctrinal interpretation of these basic Johannine metaphors. Within the trinity, the Father functions as the aboriginal and efficacious source of life, the Breath as its illuminative source, and the Son as the loving communication of both illumination and life. As the communication of divine truth, the Son embodies the divine light which the Breath of God conceives eternally and discloses to believers dispensationally through His mediating touch. In His ministry and especially in the paschal mystery, Jesus also communicates to us the saving, redemptive love of the Father which the divine Breath conceives within the Godhead. A metaphysics of experience also offers a doctrinal interpretation of the “fleshy” character of the incarnation. It consists in the second person of the trinity’s obediential appropriation of a finite, vulnerable, human experience as personally His own. Like the Beloved Disciple, a metaphysics of experience traces the vulnerability of Jesus’ humanity to its finitude and embodied character. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union also endorses and interprets doctrinally the theological legitimacy of the Johannine Jesus’ invocation of the divine name. Through the efficacious, obediential trans-
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formation of a human experience in the second person of the trinity, Jesus’ words and actions confront us as the words and actions of a divine person. The divine name correctly designates that person as the autonomous source of those actions. By the same token, the human words and deeds of Jesus reveal the divine glory by communicating the personal reality of the Son in His relationship to both the Father and the Breath. The Son’s obedience to the Father glorifies the Father because His words and actions disclose the obediential character of His eternal relationship to the Father. The Son’s return to the Father glorifies Him “in Himself ” because the complete transformation of Jesus’ human experience in God terminates the divine kenôsis. I define “kenôsis” doctrinally, as God’s decision in the incarnation to act and to suffer strictly within the limits of an individual human experience. After the resurrection, the incarnate Word casts off these self-imposed restraints and uses His glorified humanity as the efficacious channel of God’s universal saving action in the world. This chapter concludes preliminary doctrinal reflections on the person of Jesus. As we have seen, doctrinal Christology traditionally considers first the person of Jesus and then His saving ministry. As I have already indicated, a logic of consequences blurs the abstract neatness of that distinction. Doctrinal reflection on the ministry of Jesus explicates the practical consequences of the doctrine of His person and makes the latter doctrine practical. Moreover, both Jesus’ ministry and the hypostatic union disclose the reality of His person. In the context of the present study, therefore, the doctrine of Jesus’ ministry extends and develops the reflections contained in the opening chapters of this section. So far, I have considered dialectically a number of issues raised by the development of post-Chalcedonian Christology which I deemed important. I have argued that a sound insight into the eschatological realities grasped by intuitive faith and hope authenticate Chalcedonian Christology. I have also suggested that Chalcedonian doctrine in its original formulation needs inferential clarification. Finally, I have tested in a preliminary way whether a metaphysics of experience can endow inferential perceptions of the hypostatic union and of the trinity which it reveals with greater logical precision. I judge the results of that initial experiment promising. In the chapter which follows I shall begin examining the saving significance of Jesus’ ministry. Appropriately, then, I begin this second set of doctrinal reflections by asking: What does it mean to confess Jesus Christ doctrinally as one’s savior?
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Chapter 10 How Jesus Saves: Issues in Atonement Christology This section of the present volume deals with doctrinal Christology. As we have already seen, doctrinal Christology deals with Jesus’ person and with His saving work. Salvation means standing in a life-giving relationship with God. Accordingly, the opening chapters of this section developed first a doctrine of Jesus’ person by proposing an experiential construct of the hypostatic union. The present chapter begins doctrinal consideration of Jesus’ saving work. As we shall see, however, the person embodies the work; the work reveals the person. This chapter examines dialectically the soteriological issues raised by atonement Christology. The following chapter proposes a doctrinal account of the saving consequences of the incarnation. As we shall see in the chapters which follow chapter eleven, every aspect of Jesus’ ministry has saving significance. In pondering Jesus’ ministry from a doctrinal standpoint, I shall in subsequent chapters focus on its four traditional dimensions. I shall consider Jesus’ ministry as prophet, as priest, as king, and as eschatological judge. The doctrinal interpretation of Jesus’ ministry which follows presupposes and develops the experiential construct of the hypostatic union already presented in the preceding chapters. Indeed, the method which shapes this study demands that construct as a doctrinal context for understanding Jesus’ ministry. Let us try to understand why. Doctrinal Christology invokes Christological knowing as the norm for authenticating Christological beliefs. Christological knowing consists in conscious practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. The risen Christ sends the Breath. Every historical mission of a divine person consists in the graced transformation of human experience in the person sent as its quasi-locus in the Godhead. The mission of the Son consists in the persuasively graced, efficacious transformation of a single human experience into the human experience of being the second person of the trinity. The mission of the Breath of Christ consists in the persuasive social transformation of the rest of human experience in the third person of the trinity. In this sense, then, the historical mission of the divine Breath coincides with the mission of the Church, which it illumines and empowers. In every historical mission of a divine person, one sends and another is sent. The Breath’s mission by the risen Christ reveals His divinity, since only God sends God. The council of Chalcedon, as we have seen, cor-
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rectly set initial linguistic parameters for speaking about the incarnation of the second person of the trinity. As we have also seen, however, Chalcedonian Christology requires both metaphysical elucidation and logical clarification. In the preceding chapters, I have argued for the legitimacy of interpreting the hypostatic union in the light of a triadic metaphysics of experience. That experiential Christology builds directly on the work of Maximus the Confessor and portrays Jesus as the finite, human experience of being a divine person. The present doctrinal clarification of that initial Christological hypothesis invokes a pragmatic logic of consequences. A pragmatic logic clarifies the meaning of any hypothesis, including any Christological hypothesis, by deducing its operational consequences. The practical saving consequences of the incarnation take historical and eschatological shape in Jesus’ saving ministry. Those consequences both clarify and authenticate any particular doctrinal rendering of Chalcedonian faith. They clarify the meaning of the hypostatic union by predicting deductively its practical, soteriological consequences. One verifies those consequences in part by living them; for a sound insight into the operational consequences of a sound hypothetical interpretation of Chalcedonian faith will teach Christian converts how to advance practically in Christological knowing. By reverse logic, the practical consequences of an unsound Christological hypothesis will not only not advance Christological knowing but will even tend to subvert it. A pragmatic logic of consequences accords well, then, with the practical character of Christological knowing. Hence, the pragmatic clarification of the meaning of an experiential rendering of Chalcedon will, if successful, offer a doctrinal account of the practice of Christological knowing. Moreover, it will do so by explicating the saving consequence of the historical and eschatological ministry which reveals to us Jesus’ person. In other words, a pragmatic rendering of Christological faith resolves the debate between Aquinas and Scotus about the nature of theology. Aquinas regarded theology as a speculative science, while Scotus looked on it as a practical science. A pragmatic logic of consequence overcomes the dualistic split between theory and practice which lay implicitly at the basis of the disagreement between the Angelic Doctor and the Subtle Doctor. In pragmatic logic, the practical, operational consequences of any hypothesis clarify its speculative meaning. In other words, practice clarifies speculative intent, while belief consists in the willingness to take responsibility for the operational, practical consequences of what one affirms speculatively. In the course of this chapter and of the one which follows it, I shall argue that medieval atonement Christology fails to pass the test of doctrinal authenticity because it offers an interpretation of the saving conse-
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quences of the hypostatic union which tends to undermine both Christological knowing and Chalcedonian faith. This chapter assesses dialectically the issues raised by both a New Testament understanding of Jesus’ atoning death and by medieval atonement Christology. The chapter which follows argues for the necessity of replacing medieval atonement Christology with a Christological soteriology derived from the New Testament. The next chapter also ponders the salvation of non-Christians and the cosmic dimensions of salvation in Christ. The present chapter divides into six parts. Part one elaborates a Biblical theology of atonement and describes its impact on patristic soteriology. Part two ponders the emergence of Anselmian atonement Christology. Part Three traces the development of an Anselmian understanding of atonement during the high middle ages. Part four describes the appropriation of the Anselmian tradition in classical Protestantism. Part five documents the continued influence of Anselmian motifs in modern and contemporary Christology. Part six assesses the results of Anselm’s Christological experiment. (I) Since the first century Christians have confessed Jesus as savior. Jesus saves us by putting us in a life-giving relationship with God. Over the centuries, however, theologians have disagreed about how Jesus saves us. History provides theology with a laboratory for testing its doctrinal hypotheses. One cannot, of course, confine theological thought to inference alone; but, as the rhetorical, pastoral theology of the fathers of the Church gave way to scholasticism, logical patterns of thinking tended more and more to dominate theology, especially in the west. One can, then, trace through history the development of specific theological hypotheses: their emergence, the deductive explication of their consequences, the relative adequacy with which they interpret the New Testament witness, and their capacity to foster or undermine Christian orthopraxis. Atonement Christology Medieval atonement theory offers one possible way of understanding the saving work of Jesus. Largely a product of the twelfth century, atonement Christology fueled Christological debate during the high middle ages. At the time of the reformation, classical Protestant theology reformulated medieval atonement theory in the light of an Augustinian doctrine of human depravity. Moreover, a medieval understanding of atonement survives in transmuted form in a number of modern and contemporary Christologies. In order to appreciate the novelty of medieval atonement Christology, one needs to contrast it with New Testament and patristic patterns of
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thinking. A Christian theology of atonement has roots in the Jewish celebration of the Day of Atonement and in the theology which surrounded that celebration. As a theological idea, “atonement” implies three others: the fact of human sinfulness, divine redemption from sin, and the reconciling sacrifice which that redemption requires. The New Testament invoked all these ideas in order to understand the saving significance of the paschal mystery. In Genesis the story of Adam and Eve narrates not only the origins of humanity but also the origin of sin. The first human couple disobeys God out of a desire to decide personally what only God can ultimately decide: namely, the nature of good and of evil. Their disobedience expresses their refusal to trust the word of God, and it entails immediate consequences: separation from God as the source of life, the transformation of human labor into drudgery, sexual oppression, violence, war, and the fragmentation of the human race (Gen 2:1-11: 32). The Old Testament uses a variety of images to describe the reality of human sin. When we sin, we miss the mark (Pr 19:2, 18:35), we deviate from the purpose which God has for us. Sin irritates and exasperates God. (Dt 4:25, 32:21) The sinner owes God a debt which only God can remit. (Dt 24:10; 1 Mac 15:8) Old Testament theology associates the notion of redemption in a special way with the exodus. “Redemption” designates the means which God uses in order to save Israel. God acquires (redeems) Israel as His chosen people by saving the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. (Ex 12:27; 14:13; Is 63:9; Jer 31:32) Redemptive salvation also consecrates Israel to the service of God. (Ex 19:5; Dt 26:18) The covenant effects that consecration by binding Israel and God to one another in life-giving ways. God thus saves His people by freely and gratuitously re-establishing a life-giving relationship with them. (Ex 6:6-9, 34:10-35; 2 Sam 7:23-26) The sins of Israel frustrated God’s redemptive designs by setting Israel against God. The ritual sacrifice of atonement undid symbolically the divisive consequences of sin. That sacrifice mediated divine forgiveness and restored Israel each year to God’s favor. (Lev 4:20, 31; Num 15:22-31; Is 28:18) During the Hebrew rite of atonement, the sacrificing priest sprinkled blood on the propitiatory (hilasterion), i.e, on the horns, or four corners, of the altar and on the people. The sprinkled blood symbolized life and re-established ritually and symbolically the bond of life between God and His people. The sprinkled blood thus ritually restored and renewed the covenant. Indeed, in all the ritual uses of blood in the Old Testament—in the passover sacrifice, in the covenant renewals, and in the rite of atonement— blood always symbolized life, never punishment, never substitution. The sprinkling of blood always ritualized either the creation or the restoration
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of the covenant as a life-giving bond uniting God and His people. That bond overcame the division which sin had marred and destroyed. In the fourth servant song of second Isaiah, the mysterious figure of the servant atones for sin by his innocent suffering. By suffering the consequences of sin without sinning, the servant reconciles sinners to God. (Is 53:10) As in the rite of atonement, the term “atonement” here means at-one-ment, the restoration of a shattered relationship between God and humans and among humans themselves. In the Old Testament, atonement connotes sin, redemption, and sacrifice. The New Testament reinterprets all three ideas in the light of Jesus and of the paschal mystery. The synoptic tradition distinguishes between sin as an act (hamartia) and sin as a state of lawlessness (anomia). The act of sin (hamartia) subjects the sinner to the power of Satan and demands repentance and a change of heart. Repentant sinners encounter divine forgiveness as a free and gratuitous gift. (Mk 1:5, 2:5; Mt: 3:6, 12:34, 15:10-20; Act 2:38) In Christ, God also cancels the debt of lawlessness (anomia) which oppresses humanity. (Mt 6:12, 11:4) Johannine theology, in contrast to the synoptic tradition, uses the term “hamartia” to designate sin in general. (Jn 1:29) In the fourth gospel, all sin separates us from God (Jn 3:5ff ), reveals the inner corruption of the human heart (Jn 8:40), and transforms the sinner into a child of the devil. (Jn 2:16, 3:8, 4:5, 8:12,34,44) Jesus, on the other hand, takes away our sins by the gift of His Breath. (Jn 20: 22-3) Paul uses the term “hamartia” in the plural to designate sinful actions and in the singular in order to designate a more general state of sinfulness. (2 Co 11:16, Rom 14:23) Like the synoptics, Paul also applies the term “anomia” to the human state of sinfulness. He opposes anomia to justice (dikaiosunê) (2 Th 2:7, 8) and describes sin as a debt which God must cancel. (Col 1:14, Eph 1:7, Rom 3:25) For Paul, at the root of all sin lies greed, the desire for forbidden goods. (Rom 7:7, 1:29; 1 Co 10: 6, 20: 17; Col 3:5, Eph 5:5; 1 Tim 6:10) Sin exemplifies idolatry. (Rom 1:24; Gal 5:13; Col 3:5, Eph 5:5) It subjects us to the powers of this world. (Rom 5:12-21) It mars creation. (Rom 8:19-22) It dwells in the human heart. (Rom 7:18, 25) It operates through the flesh. (Rom 8:4-13) It uses the Law as its tool. (Rom 7:7 ff.) It expresses itself in acts of transgression. (Rom 5:20 ff.) It manifests the power of death, both temporal and eternal. (Rom 2:11, 5:12-21, 6::16, 20:6, 28:8, 7:5,10,23; 1 Co 15:26) In dealing with human sinfulness, then, the New Testament distinguishes between personal sins and a general state of human sinfulness, even though different New Testament authors use different terms to des-
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ignate the two interrelated realities. As we have seen, a later theology would call the state of sinfulness “original sin.” In the New Testament, faith in Jesus Christ saves humanity from sin. (Lk 7:50, 8:12) Father, Son, and Breath all act to save us: the Father as the aboriginal source of salvation (Tit 1:3-4, 2:10-3, 3:4-6), the Son as its mediator (Heb 9:15), the Breath as its present, gracious inspiration. (Rom 7:9-11) Faith acknowledges the divine saving action and responds to it on the terms which the deity sets. (Rom 5:9-10, 8:24) Paul insists in a special way on the eschatological character of our salvation in Christ: the present gift of the Breath, our downpayment on salvation, begins our ultimate resurrection. (Rom 8:9; 1 Co 6:9, 15:50; 2 Co 1:22; 6:2; 1 Th 2:12) The Breath of God frees us from the power of the flesh, from sin, from the Law, and from death. (2 Co 1:22, 5:5; Eph 1:14) In the New Testament the atoning death of Christ redeems us from sin. God redeems us in Christ by reclaiming us for Himself, by re-acquiring us through the paschal mystery: through the death and glorification of Jesus and through His mission of the Breath. Nowhere does the New Testament speak of redemption as a bargain, as a debt paid to anyone. As in the Old Testament, blood purchase in the New Testament signifies, not compensation, but acquisition. (Gal 2:20, Eph 1:7, 5:2, 25; Col 1:14; Jn 10:11, 15, 27) The paschal sprinkling of Jesus’ covenant blood establishes a bond of life between us and God. That bond transforms us from sinners into God’s cherished possession. (Heb 7:20-9:28) The New Testament never applies to Jesus the image of the scapegoat. When the New Testament speaks of Jesus as the atonement for our sins, the statement has nothing to do with God punishing Jesus or with God’s treating Him as a surrogate victim. Instead, through the cross of Christ, God manifests His mercy by freely suffering the consequences of human sinfulness without retaliating in kind, with sinful, vindictive violence. Jesus effects our at-one-ment with God because in the Crucified, God reveals His unconditioned love and will to forgive us, if only we repent. When the risen Christ sends His Breath into the hearts of sinners, He freely and gratuitously effects that repentance and reclaims us for God.1 Patristic commentary on the atoning sacrifice of Christ remained remarkably faithful to these New Testament insights. The fathers taught that Jesus gave up His life for us, that He saves us, that He mediates 1. Cf. Anthony J. Tambasco, A Theology of Atonement and Paul’s Vision of Christianity (Collegeville, IL: The Liturgical Press/Michael Glazier, 1991); Werner Zager, “Wie kam es im Urchristentum zur Deutung des Todes Jesu als Sühegeschen? Eine Auseinandersetzung mit Peter Stuhlmachers Entwurf einer “‘Biblischer Theologie des Neuen Testaments,’” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 87(1996), pp. 165-186.
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between God and sinful humanity. Through the paschal mystery God justifies us gratuitously through Christ and in the gift of His Breath. Only an insignificant handful of patristic writers spoke of Jesus’ death as ransoming us from the devil or as paying a price to Satan. The vast majority of the fathers correctly rejected such an interpretation of Jesus’ death as a betrayal of the New Testament witness.2 (II) One needs to recall the preceding Biblical and patristic insights in order to appreciate the revolution which medieval theology wrought in a western Christian understanding of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) began the revolution. The soteriological Christology which he created would influence generations of later thinkers. Moreover, despite significant thematic variations in the atonement tradition, one discovers one important constant which runs from Anselm of Canterbury to the present: namely, that by suffering Jesus had to pay to the Father the price which divine justice exacts of humanity for its sins. Anselm’s Revolution Anselm of Canterbury launched medieval atonement Christology at the end of the eleventh century. Anselm proposed his theory in a short treatise entitled Cur Deus Homo? (Why A God- Man?). In it he tried to demonstrate rationally the necessity of a divine incarnation in order to atone for human sin. At first, the rest of the theological community greeted his theory of atonement with less than enthusiasm. Not until the thirteenth century did the schoolmen begin to adopt and explore with some system the implications of Anselm’s novel Christological hypothesis. In its origins atonement Christology attempted to rationalize Chalcedonian Christology by explaining why human redemption requires the incarnation. In all of its various transformations, medieval atonement Christology invoked four interrelated ideas: the insult which sin shows to God, the injury which it does to humanity, the punishment which it entails, and the satisfaction through suffering which it demands of the Redeemer. Jesus’ innocent suffering restores the imbalance which sin 2. For a documented and more detailed discussion of these issues, see: Stanislaus Lyonnet and Léopold Sabourin, Sin Redemption, and Sacrifice (Rome: Biblical Institute, 1970); H.D. McDonald, The Atonement of the Death of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 1985); Robert H. Culpepper, Interpreting the Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1966); Timothy Gorringe, God’s Just Vengeance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Hans Kessler, Die theologische Bedeutung des Todes Jesu: Eine traditionsgeschictliche Untersuching (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1970); Karl Heinz Olig, “Zum Verständnis der Christologie: Die Rezeption Jesu auf Basis der Sinnfrage,” Diakonia: Internationale Zeitschrift für die Praxis der Kirche, 26(1995), pp. 294-304.
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introjects into the universe by paying to the Father the debt owed Him by sinners. Anselm defined sin as a failure to submit to the will of God. Both angels and humans have sinned and by their sin have skewed the order of the universe by dishonoring God. In Anselmian atonement theory, the justice of God requires that He punish sin vindictively before He can forgive it. God inflicts this punishment actively on sinful creatures. Vindictive punishment implies three things. 1) The punishment does not include the sinner’s voluntary submission to God. 2) The punishment does not restore to God the goods which sinful disobedience denied Him. 3) The punishment does not win the forgiveness of sin; nor does it restore a life-giving bond between God and sinners. In other words, it has no saving consequences. (Cur Deus Homo? I, 11-4) As a consequence of sin, for example, God punishes humanity vindictively by depriving it of eternal beatitude and by thus condemning it to corporeal death. (Ibid., I, 19,24; II, 1-2) Anselm understood atonement as satisfaction to the Father for sin. His understanding of satisfaction presupposed, therefore, his understanding of both sin and divine vindictive punishment. Like vindictive punishment, satisfaction for sin demands three things: 1) Satisfaction must resubmit humanity’s will to God. 2) Satisfaction must repay God for the dishonor and injustice which sin shows Him. 3) Satisfaction must restore to humanity the goods lost through sin. Anselm postulated the need for a perfect proportionality between the good offered to God in order to satisfy for sin, on the one hand, and the dishonor done Him by sinful insubordination, on the other.3 (Ibid., I, 11, 22-3). This insistence on a due proportionality between sin and the price which sin exacts distinguishes Anselm’s articulation of a substitutionist4 interpretation of atonement. Anselm’s sense of proportionality also contrasts with less moderate restatements of his position. For Anselm, therefore, satisfaction for sin requires two things: 1) Satisfaction must offer to God some good not otherwise due to God. 2) That good must be proportionate to the dishonor to God which sinful disobedience has offered Him. No mere human can fulfill either condition. As for the first condition, no human act can fulfill it, because humanity already owes everything to God in consequence of the divine creative act. Nor can a human act 3. Satisfaction must also reverse the devil’s victory over humanity by giving human kind a decisive victory over the devil. Atonement does that by restoring to heaven the number of the elect whom God had originally predestined for salvation. 4. In substitutionist atonement theory, as we have seen, the incarnate Son of God takes the place of sinners in paying the Father the debt owed Him because of sin.
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fulfill the second condition, because no created good bears any proportion to the divine honor which sin has insulted. Of itself, therefore, the human race lacks the ability to atone for sin. (Ibid., I, 8-9, 20-21) In the second book of Cur Deus Homo? Anselm attempted a rational demonstration of the fact that God had to take a human nature to Himself in order to atone for sin. In contrast to later atonement thinkers, Anselm himself did not teach that God commanded the death of His innocent Son; nor did he teach that the incarnate Son of God owed His death to the Father as a satisfaction for sin. (Ibid., I, 8). Anselm did assert the perfect obedience of the incarnate Son to the Father, and Anselm did regard the Son’s death as an inevitable consequence of such obedience in a sinful world (Ibid., I, 9). Anselm’s Christ submitted to the Father by accepting the divine decree which required that He suffer in payment for the debt of sin. (Ibid., I, 9; II, 11) Because humans die as a result of sin, the innocent Christ stood under no obligation to give His life in atonement for sin. In other words, He did not already owe His death to God. Instead, the incarnate Son chose freely to die for a sinful humanity, although He might in fact have chosen otherwise. The incarnate Word’s death thus fulfilled the first condition required for satisfying God for the dishonor done Him by sin because it offered to God a good not otherwise due to God. (Ibid., II, 10, 18) Jesus’ death also fulfilled the second condition by offering to God a good proportionate to the dishonor done to the deity by sin. Anselm held that one should prefer the destruction of the entire created universe to the commission of even a single sin (Ibid., I, 21). In dying freely for sin, the incarnate Son of God in fact offered to the Father a good greater than the whole of creation. As a consequence, the death of Christ atones for sin both intensively and extensively: intensively because it offers to God a good proportionate to the dishonor wrought by sin. The death of Christ atones for sin extensively because it offers a good adequate to satisfy for the sins of all human kind. (Ibid., II, 10, 14, 18) Moreover, because only God’s incarnate Son can atone for sin, only by His incarnation and death can God graciously undo the effects of human sinfulness. The atoning death of Christ also restores what humanity lost through the fall. The benefits which Christ wins in dying for sin belong to Him personally. Since, however, He already possesses all the goods which His death wins, He freely gives to humanity the reward due to Him for His suffering. The death of Christ thus restores gratuitously the unjust imbalance which sin introduced into the order of the universe and gains back for humanity the goods which they forfeited by sin: namely, the beatific vision and freedom from death. (Ibid., II, 19)
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Although no one seems to have noticed it at the time, Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo? radically transformed a Latin theological understanding of atonement. As we have seen, in both the New Testament and in the writings of the fathers, atonement means at-one-ment, reconciliation, the re-establishment of a life-giving relationship with God through a gracious act of divine forgiveness. Neither in the New Testament nor in virtually all of the fathers does atonement mean paying back to God the price for sin. Anselm changed all that. In Anselmian atonement theory a dishonored God requires in vindictive justice that someone suffer for the dishonor done to the deity by acts of human sinfulness before God can forgive sinners. Anselm also transformed the way in which theologians understood the saving consequences of Jesus’ death. In the New Testament and in the fathers, the term “salvation” looks to the relationship between God and humanity. In a sense, the same holds true in Anselm’s soteriology; but, by portraying the incarnation as the only way in which humanity could pay back to God the debt it owed His dishonored dignity, Anselm made salvation initially and causally into an inter-trinitarian issue between the Father and the Son and only subsequently into an issue between God and humanity. Anselmian atonement theory also projected an element of human vindictiveness into God the Father. Anselm’s Father cannot forgive freely and gratuitously, as the Father does in the New Testament. Anslem’s Father demands suffering in others as the antecedent price of forgiveness. Anselmian atonement theory thus transformed the innocent Son of God into the Father’s victim. True, Anselm’s Son freely consents to suffer victimization; but suffer it He does. As atonement theory evolved both divine vindictiveness and divine victimization would take on increasingly sinister connotations. (III) The preceding section describes Anselm’s atonement Christology. This section examines how subsequent medieval thinkers appropriated his ideas. The Anselmian Heritage It took time for Anselm’s atonement Christology to capture the medieval theological imagination. Peter Abelard (1079-1142 a.d.) in his commentary on the letter to the Romans did, however, advance medieval atonement theory by teaching that the redeemer had to substitute for humanity as the victim of divine justice.5 (Peter Abelard, Comm. in ep. Pauli ad 5. Abelard in his commentary on Romans offered a variety of definitions of sin, among them 1) any voluntary act of contempt for God and 2) the punishment God imposes for such contempt even upon those who do not actively show contempt for God. In Abelard’s mind, the sin of Adam justified such punishment (Peter Abelard, Comm. in
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Rom., 4:25, 5:8, 9, 6:9) Other twelfth century thinkers also portrayed Jesus redemptive death as His payment to God of the debt owed by humanity as a result of sin.6 Alexander of Hales (d.1245) wrote a commentary (Glossa) on the Lombard’s book of Sentences which failed to advance medieval atonement Christology in any significant way; but his Franciscan successor at the University of Paris, John of la Rochelle (c. 1190-1200 a.d.), published after Alexander’s death a Summa in Alexander’s name entitled Summa fratris Alexandri. This work began to bring atonement Christology into the mainstream of medieval theological thinking. The Summa fratris Alexandri propounded a much simplified version of Anselmian Christology. In the vision of John of la Rochelle, sin confronts God with two simple alternatives: either to punish human sin or to satep. Pauli ad Rom., 5:19). Adam’s sin merited death for all his descendants and the loss of the beatific vision with the eternal punishment which such a loss entails (Ibid., 5:13, 16, 19). In Abelard’s theology, however, God, in contrast to Anselm’s vindictive Father, seeks to convert us by manifesting His love for us. God does this especially in the sacrifice of Christ (Ibid., 4:25). Freedom from divine punishment for sin demands an act of divine forgiveness which wipes the sin away. (Ibid., 3:27, 4:7, 5:16,19) Christ both reveals to us the charity which evokes our conversion and frees us from the punishment due to sin. He accomplishes the latter by suffering in our stead the punishment imposed by God for sinful disobedience to His will. 6. Hugh of St. Victor (1085-1141 a.d.) taught that the fall of Adam demands that humanity both repay God for the loss He suffered in Adam’s fall and satisfy for the contempt which sin offers to the deity. No member of a sinful race, could, however, repay God adequately. Hence, God mercifully decided to become human so that by His innocent suffering He could offer a payment which exceeded the loss effected by Adam’s original sin. Since only an innocent human could redeem the loss to God effected by sin, Christ accomplished this by freely taking on Himself the corporeal death imposed on sinners. This act of free and generous love satisfied for the contempt of humanity’s sinful disobedience and gained the divine mercy. (Ibid., I, viii, 4) The Christological reflections of Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173 a.d.), while brief and cryptic, exhibit a conscious debt to Anselm. He saw in the incarnation a fitting divine response to the sin of Adam and Eve. They had exalted themselves foolishly before God when they disobeyed God by deciding for themselves the difference between good and evil. They thus transformed themselves and their descendants into God’s enemies. Richard’s Christological meditations presuppose, as Anselm had, that the forgiveness of the sin of our first parents demanded a punitive expiation which only a God-man could offer to God. Richard therefore found it appropriate that God chose to undo the pride of our first parents with a free and gracious act of self-abasement. Moreover, since humanity had sinned through folly, Richard also found it fitting that God accomplish our redemption through the incarnation of divine wisdom itself. (Richard of St. Victor, Ad Me Clamat ex Seir, viii-xvi) William of Auxerre (c.1150-1231 a.d.) also spoke of the atonement of Christ as His satisfaction for the sin of Adam and portrayed that sin as excluding every human from heaven. Satisfaction required that the humility of one person counterbalance the pride of Adam and that the satisfaction offered to God for sin should have the same value as the damned human race. (William of Auxerre, Summa aurea, III, t. 1, qq. 7-8)
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isfy for it. God chose satisfaction; and Christ accomplished the satisfaction. John’s atonement theory, in contrast to Anselm’s, turned on the notion of divine infinity rather than the notion of proportionality. John measured the evil of a sin by the dignity of the one offended. The sin of Adam offended an infinite God. It therefore effected infinite evil. An infinitely evil offense demands infinite satisfaction, infinite punishment. Under such a presupposition, only an infinitely good person can offer adequate satisfaction for the infinite evil of sin and thus satisfy for an offense offered to an infinitely good God. Moreover, only an infinite person can undo the disastrous consequences to human nature which sin produces, for only an infinite person has a value equivalent to the whole of human nature. That infinite person must, however, also be human in order to represent human nature before God (John of la Rochelle, Summa fratris Alexandri v.4(2),# 6, ad 3m, ad 4m, #8, ad 1m, ad 2m). One finds no trace in John’s argument of the complex balancing of different proportionalities which characterized Anselm’s theory of atonement. Instead, John of la Rochelle argues relentlessly from the infinity of the one offended to the infinity of the one who must undertake an infinite atonement. John of la Rochelle’s invocation of the notion of infinity did nothing to improve the allure of Anselm’s vindictive God. John’s God acts with an infinite vindictiveness which takes satisfaction in the infinite sufferings of His innocent Son. As we shall see, John Duns would quite correctly find the argument unconvincing. Subtler minds than that of John of La Rochelle would wrestle with the implications of Anselmian atonement theory: among them, Albert the Great and Bonaventure. Albert the Great (1193-1280 a.d.) expanded Anselmian atonement theory by invoking the merits of Christ in addition to His payment of sin’s debt in order to explain the saving significance of Jesus’ death.7 As 7. In his commentary on the third and fourth books of the Lombard’s Sentences, Albert reproduced most of the Lombard’s own Christological reflections but with some embellishment. Like John of la Rochelle, Albert invoked the notion of infinity in contrasting the pride of Adam and the humility of Christ; and he also introduced the Anselmian concept of satisfaction as a price for sin which humanity must somehow pay to God. After the sin of Adam, a divine decree barred the human race from heaven until humanity paid the price of satisfaction. Adam’s proud contempt for an infinite God demands an infinite satisfaction to atone for it (Albert the Great, Commentarium in 3 et 4 Sententiarum, III, d.18, a.14, IV, d. 15, a.5). Albert asserted that Christ paid the price of redemption with a humility adequate for the entire human race and that He thereby reopened the gates of heaven (Ibid., III, d.19, a.5, ad 4m); but Albert failed to clarify precisely how this occurred. Albert did, however, attempt to explain how the death of Christ reverses original sin. Tacitly assuming with Augustine that original sin transmits its taint through corporeal generation, Albert argued that the one who takes away original sin must, like Adam,
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medieval atonement theory developed, moreover, the notion of merit would take on enhanced soteriological significance. In his commentary upon the Lombard’s Sentences, Bonaventure (1221-74 a.d.) explored more fully than Albert the Great had exactly how the redeemer undoes the effects of Adam’s fall. Bonaventure’s theology of atonement, like Albert’s, focused more on the restoration of humanity than on the reparation of the injury done to God, although Bonaventure did assert the penal character of the passion. In Bonaventure’s thought, atonement primarily fulfills the condition required for the application of the merited grace of forgiveness to humanity. That grace delivers sinners from punishment.8 In his commentary on the Lombard’s Sentences, the young Thomas Aquinas (1226-74 a.d.) blended themes from both Anselm and John of La Rochelle. He conceded that the sin of humanity displays a certain infinity in that it shows contempt for an infinite good. The corruption which results from sin manifests a similar infinity in its unlimited generative power. The infinity of sin makes it impossible for any finite creature function as a principle of the human race but in a different order from the order of physical generation which Adam initiated. Christ functions as principal of the human race in both His divinity and His humanity. As God, Christ confronts us as the creative source of human existence and as the saving source of grace. As human, Christ confronts us as the meritorious rather than as the creative principal of grace: He merits grace for all humanity and functions as the head of the mystical body (Ibid., III, d. 20, a.7, ad 1m, ad 2m). Christ not only merits grace, He also satisfies for sin by freeing humanity from the condemnation of eternal punishment and from the guilt and deformation of the divine image in humanity which always accompanies eternal damnation (Ibid., III, d.19, a.2). In the end, however, Albert left the concrete meaning and mode of satisfaction as vague as one finds it in the Lombard’s original text. 8. Bonaventure set the scene for this discussion by endorsing a number of the Lombard’s basic positions: A divine decree requires satisfaction for the sin of Adam before anyone gain admission into heaven. Such satisfaction involves both the penal reparation through suffering of the offense that sin offers to God and a restoration of what humanity lost through the fall of Adam. It requires therefore both charity and suffering. Bonaventure, however, did not believe that in His passion Christ had suffered punishment for sin (Bonaventure, Commentarium in 3 et 4 libros Sententiarium, IV, d.18, a.2, q.3, d.20, a.1, qq. 3 and 5). In explaining how Christ undid the effects of sin, Bonaventure echoed important Anselmian themes. The fact that the redeemer needs to enjoy the capacity to communicate justification to all humans means that He must be divine and thus enjoy the power to impart saving grace universally, instead of just possessing it personally. In other words, the redeemer needs to head the Mystical Body (Ibid., IV, d.20, a.1, q.3). The passion of Christ remits the punishment due to sin, eradicates guilt and iniquity, and, as a consequence, releases sinners from the obligation of all the penalty due to sin. The death of Christ frees one immediately from the eternal punishment due to sin. Only in the future life does it free one from sin’s temporal punishment (Ibid., d.18, a.2, q.3, ad 3m; d.19, a.1, q. 1,c, ad 2m, q.4, ratio 4; In 4 Sent., d. 15, I, a.1, q.2,c).
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to satisfy for it.9 (Thomas Aquinas, In III Sent., d.1, q.1, a.2, ad 5m; d.20, a.2; In IV Sent., d.15, q.1, a.2, ad 1m) In the Summa, however, the Angelic Doctor backed off from such an interpretation of Jesus’ passion. The mature Aquinas restricted the purpose of atonement to the need to undo the contempt which sin shows for God. The mature Aquinas defined satisfaction as the act of presenting to an offended party something which the offended person loves as much or more than he or she hates the offense. The magnitude of the love of Christ, the value of His life as the God-man, and the fact that He bore the greatest of sufferings—all these things outweigh in the eyes of God the contempt which human sinfulness shows to the deity (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, III, q.48, a.2, c). Clearly, the mature Aquinas had serious second thoughts about Anselmian atonement theology. In the Summa he down-played the penal character of satisfaction. (Ibid., q.46, a.6, c, ad 6m). Instead, he focused on Christ’s communication of His merits to humanity as the head of the Mystical Body. The bond of charity uniting Christ as the head of the Mystical Body to His members allows Him to communicate to others 9. In Aquinas’s early Christology, three tasks confront the one who redeems from sin: 1) to satisfy for the offense made to God, 2) to offer to God a good at least equivalent in value to the good lost to God through the corruption of the whole of humanity and 3) to restore humanity to its pristine state (In III Sent., d. 19, a.3, q.1, sol.; q.2, sol.; d.20, a.3, ad 2m, a.3, sol., ad 6m). The redeemer must satisfy for the offense sin offers to God through penal suffering, which alone cleanses from sin and restores right order (Ibid., d.20, a.1, q.2, sol; In IV Sent., d. 15, q.1, a.4) The union of the divine nature to the human in Christ insured the adequacy of the penal satisfaction He offered on the cross. The corporeal life He offered to God contained more good than the eternal life enjoyed by other humans in virtue of the union of His human soul with His divine person. By dying Christ also satisfied for the temporal punishment due to sin, since His death has more value than all the temporal punishments required by both original and actual sin (In III Sent., d.19, a.3, q.1, sol, q.2, sol., d.20, a.3, ad 2m, a.3, sol., ad 6m). The young Aquinas held that human nature enjoys a quasi-infinity since it can be indefinitely multiplied. As quasi-infinite, human nature has more value than any individual human person. Hence, satisfaction for its corruption requires an infinite action, namely, the action performed by the God-man in virtue of the divine power present in His human action (Ibid., d.1, a.2, ad 6m, 9m; d.18, a.6, q.1, sol.; q.2, sol.; d.19, a.1, ad 1m; q.2, sol.; a.5, q.2, ad 3m; d.20, a.2, ad 4m.). For the young Aquinas, only Christ could lift the condemnation of sin from humanity by communicating to a fallen race His own merits. In the incarnate Word, the divinity uses its humanity as its instrument to transform the whole human race. Christ’s human activity thus merits a reward commensurate to the needs of the whole of humanity. As God, Christ exercises power over the whole of human nature and has more than sufficient power to extend the fruits of His merits to whomever He chooses. Moreover, He shares with others a grace which He possesses in its fullness. He also reduces temporal punishment for sin by His suffering, provided, of course, one lives joined to Him by faith and by charity (Ibid., d.18, a.6, q.1, ad 2m; q.2, sol.; d.19, a.1, q.1, ad 4m; q.2, sol.;a.3, q.2, sol.).
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the fruits of His satisfaction for sin: both forgiveness and salvation (Ibid., q.19, a.4, c, ad 1m; q.48, a.2, ad 3m). Scholars debate the authenticity of the commentary by John Duns Scotus (1274-1308) on the third and fourth books of the Lombard’s Sentences; but whatever its authorship that commentary articulated a radical critique of medieval atonement theory. In what follows I shall assume its Scotistic authorship. The commentary denied outright that the sin of Adam required infinite atonement. One cannot consider the sin of Adam, the act of a finite creature, an infinite evil. At best the sin of Adam enjoyed an extrinsic infinity in that by sinning Adam turned away from an infinite good. Satisfaction for the sin of Adam did not, then, require infinite atonement. It required only another analogous human act of either equal or greater value both in itself and for others. In fact, Scotus argued that any act of human love of God, whether performed by Adam or by any holy human being, could have atoned for the sin of Adam as long as it expressed a greater concentration of will than Adam’s sin had (John Duns Scotus, In 3 Sent., d.19, q.1; d.20, q.1). Scotus replaced the notion of satisfaction with that of merit. By “merit” he meant something which an offended person ought to accept. The acceptance obliged the one accepting to give another some boon in return. (Ibid., d. 18, q.1). Christ merits by freely offering His life to the Father in His passion. As a human act, this self-oblation remains finite. God can, therefore, neither see in it an infinite good nor grant for it an infinite reward (Ibid., d.19, q.1). At the heart of Scotus’s argument lay the presupposition that the formal goodness of an act flows from the nature which elicits it. Not even a divine person, therefore, can produce an infinitely meritorious act in a finite, created nature. With Anselm, however, Scotus continued to think of Jesus’ passion initially as a transaction between the Son of God and the Father. The Shape of Medieval Atonement Christology Medieval atonement theory developed in identifiable stages. Anselm contributed the notion that the redeemer must satisfy for the dishonor to God which sin effects by meeting the demands of punitive justice. Abelard introduced the idea that Christ substitutes for humanity by enduring the punishment imposed by God for sin. The Summa fratris Alexandri introduced the idea that sin shows infinite contempt for God and therefore demands an infinite satisfaction. The young Aquinas endorsed and developed this suggestion. In the thirteenth century, however, atonement Christologists increasingly concerned themselves with the restoration and rehabilitation of humanity through the reversal of sin’s consequences. In the same century,
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Albert the Great attributed the saving efficacy of Christ’s death to its meritorious character. In the fourteenth century Scotus rejected the idea that any finite act can accomplish either infinite evil or infinite good, not even the finite acts of Christ. He therefore appealed to the merits of Christ to explain the efficacy of redemption. Medieval atonement Christology displayed broad areas of consensus at the same time that it raised a number of unanswered theological questions. One may identify the following broad areas of consensus: 1) Atonement Christology tended to regard sin not only as a violation of the divine will but as humanity’s contempt for its creator. 2) Atonement Christology proposed that the offense and insult which sin offers to God demands punishment by God’s vindictive justice before God can forgive it. 3) Divine vindictive justice requires that God actively inflict suffering upon a sinful humanity. 4) The suffering demanded by sin pays God back for the contempt and dishonor sin offers Him at the same time that it restores humanity to the divine favor and re-opens the gates of heaven to a fallen human race. 5) Atoning suffering for sin must offer to God a good proportionate to the evil which sin effects. 6) Sinful humanity cannot offer to God the proportionate good which atonement requires. 7) The death which the innocent Christ freely chose to suffer did in fact pay God back for the sin of humanity. Jesus’ death also undid sin’s evil consequences by restoring the cosmic imbalance which sin introduces into the order of the universe. Medieval atonement Christology’s invocation of the category of vindictive justice and its portrayal of atonement as a payment made to God contrast sharply with the understanding of atonement developed by both the biblical and the patristic witness. Medieval atonement theory also raised a number of questions which it left unanswered. What role does the Father play in the condemnation of His innocent Son? Does the Son actually owe His death to the Father? Does the Son accomplish the atonement by actually enduring the suffering which divine vindictive justice demanded as a price for sin? As the centuries passed, theologians would offer a variety of answers to questions such as these, often with negative results. This section has examined important medieval responses to Anselmian atonement theory. The next section probes that theory’s appropriation in classical Protestantism. (IV) Scotus’s assault on medieval atonement Christology would not insure its demise. At the time of the Reformation, Protestant theologians would
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read the Anselmian Christological tradition through systematizing Augustinian eyes. Moreover, as we shall see, this Protestant re-reading of medieval atonement theory continues to color the Christology of modern thinkers like Karl Barth and of Jürgan Moltmann. Atonement in Classical Protestantism Martin Luther (1483-1546 a.d.) never wrote a systematic treatise in Christology. One must glean his theological perception of the person and saving mission of Jesus Christ from the voluminous corpus of his writings as a whole. As a consequence, the evolution of his Christological thought parallels the different phases of his career as a reformer. Luther derived his Christology from four principal sources: 1) from the fathers of the Church, especially Augustine; 2) from selected medieval theologians like Peter the Lombard, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Pierre d’Ailly, and Gabriel Biel; 3) from medieval piety: especially from Bernard of Clairveaux and from John Tauler, from the neo-platonic mysticism of Augustine and of Pseudo-Dionysius, and from the devotio moderna which took classic expression in Thomas A’Kempis’s Imitatio Christi; and 4) from the Bible, especially from New Testament Christology. Luther seems to have completely ignored the Christology of the great thirteenth century scholastics.10 In his early commentary on Romans, Luther made his first systematic contact with Pauline Christology and enunciated a theme which would dominate all his future Christological reflections: namely, the intimate link between Christology and soteriology. One finds other foreshadowings as well. The early Luther linked the saving Lordship of Christ to His presence in apostolic preaching and in the proclamation of the Word. His thought also displayed an indebtedness to Anselmian atonement Christology. Luther, however, used Anselm only selectively. He broke with Anselm when he denied that God could not have saved us except through the cross; but in other respects Luther endorsed the general thrust of Anselm’s thought. The innocent Christ comes to satisfy for sin by paying the Father the debt sinners owe Him. In Luther’s commentary on the letter to the Hebrews, Anselmian atonement theory took another sinister turn. The young Luther portrayed the crucified and innocent Christ as the victim of the Father’s relentless wrath. 10. Cf. Marc Lienhard, Martin Luthers chirstologisches Zeugnis: Entwicklung und Grundzüge seiner Christologie (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973), 14-37. Luther developed his early Christology in his scriptural commentaries on the Psalms and on the letters to the Romans and to the Hebrews. In his commentary on the Psalms, he portrayed Christ as the saving mediator foretold by the prophets. Platonic influences on his early Christological thought surfaced in his depiction of Christ as the reconciliation of opposites. In the course of developing these themes he did not hesitate to place the words of the psalms themselves on the lips of Jesus. (Ibid., 37-44.)
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In righteous anger the Father abandons the Son to the torments of the cross. In this act of divine abandonment, the saving paradox of the cross confronts sinners with the mystery of a self-revealing, yet hidden God. The revelation of the Father’s wrath against human sinfulness marks, however, only a moment in the process of salvation. Calvary gives way to the revelation of divine forgiveness in the risen Christ. In rising, Christ triumphs not only over the divine wrath but also over the principalities and powers of this world.11 As controversy transformed Luther the monk into Luther the reformer, it led him to stress all the more the centrality of the cross of Christ in human salvation. The suffering of God on the cross effects the salvation which faith in Christ claims. Luther the reformer proclaimed the cross as the critical point of entry into the mystery of Christ. That mystery challenges humanity to acknowledge the horrific extent of its sinfulness so that the repentant may claim the justifying forgiveness of Christ and imitate Him by the power of His grace and Spirit. In his zeal for reform, Luther also embellished rhetorically the wrath which the Father visited on His innocent, crucified Son. All the Father’s righteous enmity against humanity for its sins He vented upon the abandoned and crucified Christ. In freely suffering this awful outpouring of divine anger, the crucified Christ overcame it so that as the risen Lord He might manifest the Father’s love. In other words, as Luther’s thought matured not only did it endorse the idea that atonement initially engages the inter-trinitarian relationship between the Father and the Son; but he also transformed the atonement into a veritable contest between paternal vindictiveness and filial patience. Anselm had contented himself with portraying the innocent Son meriting our salvation by His innocent suffering. For the mature Luther, the crucified Christ functions more like a heat shield which receives, absorbs, and nullifies the Father’s otherwise unrelenting anger against sinners. Only the Son of God’s willingness to absorb that wrath can keep it from consuming us vindictively in the fires of hell. This the Son accomplished by a free and loving act of self-abasement which communicates salvation and sanctification to sinners. Luther’s reforming oratory stressed the saving rather than the sanctifying results of the cross. In a sense, therefore, even though Luther understood the cross’s saving consequences differently from Anselm, his portrayal of the death of Jesus stood well within the spirit of Anselmian Christology. An offended God demands penal satisfaction from His Son before He is willing to forgive human sinfulness. 11. Ibid., 44-68.
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Luther’s atonement Christology differs from Anselm’s chiefly by giving the Father a more actively vindictive role in the satisfaction process. Instead of receiving the atoning merits of the Son, Luther’s Father actively visits His avenging wrath upon the Crucified. The Son, for His part, saves us from being consumed by the divine vengeance by throwing Himself in the path of the Father’s righteous anger.12 12. Ibid., 69-88. As Luther’s Christology matured, his nominalism led him to stress the mystery present in the incarnation, which conceals God so that God can find humans in their sinfulness. The majesty of God hides itself in the incarnation so that God can offer us His heart, love, grace, and liberation from sin, death, and the devil. The incarnation thus reveals the transcendence and sovereign freedom of God. We know the divinity of Christ only through revelation and faith. The incarnation also reveals the trinity, the very mystery of the inner life of God. (Ibid., 108-14.) The mature Luther offered a straightforward interpretation of the kenotic character of the incarnation. Kenôsis means that in the incarnation the person of the Son became Jesus Christ without ceasing to be God and chose as human to walk among us as one who serves. In the person of the incarnate Word. God Himself suffered and died for us. In making atonement for us, Jesus confronts us as the only mediator between God and a sinful humanity. In our lost state only enmity and wrath exist between humanity and God. By enduring the Father’s enmity in His own person and by rising again, the Son of God Himself won for us the victory over sin, death, and the devil. (Ibid., 134-46.) In his controversy with the radical left of the Protestant reformation over Christ’s eucharistic presence, Luther further developed his understanding of the sacramental consequences of the incarnation. He found in Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531) his principal antagonist. Zwingli denied that the eucharist confers grace and that as a sign it strengthens faith. For Zwingli eating the body and blood of Christ in the eucharist meant hearing the word of God. Moreover, for Zwingli, the eucharist counted only as a memorial service, nothing else. Zwingli held that in the incarnation Christ took on a human nature (rather than turned into a man) but that the act of faith in the incarnation terminates at the divine nature only. Zwingli, moreover, restricted the sufferings of Jesus to His humanity only and regarded the passion of Jesus as simply a past historical event. Luther found a connection linking these heretical errors. Since apart from the humanity of Jesus we have no access to God, Luther insisted that the New Testament requires faith in the real presence of Christ in the eucharist. He resisted the total spiritualization of both the incarnation and the eucharist. Luther insisted that the glorified flesh of Christ plays a positive role both in our salvation and in Christ’s real eucharistic presence, since through His glorified flesh Christ sends His Spirit into the world, the Spirit who inspires the faith which animates eucharistic worship. The real presence of Christ in the eucharist reveals, then, His risen glory. It makes the passion of Christ into a present reality. In contrast to Zwingli, Luther insisted that God Himself had suffered in the passion. He grounded the universal presence of Christ in the divine person of Jesus but His saving eucharistic presence in the Lordship of the risen Christ. In his saving presence, the incarnate Word has bound Himself by His promise to the eucharistic bread and wine. In the wake of the eucharistic controversy, we find in Luther’s writings a stronger contrast between two facets of God: the God of revelation and the “hidden God,” or God as He exists in Himself. (Ibid., 146-184.)
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In the Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin (1509-64 a.d.) made it even clearer than Luther had that he approached the doctrine of the incarnation in the light of an Augustinian theory of human depravity. Calvin began his treatise on “The Knowledge of God the Redeemer” with reflections on original sin, which he defined as “an hereditary depravity and corruption of our nature, diffused through all parts of the soul, rendering us obnoxious to the Divine wrath, and producing in us those works which the Scripture calls ‘the works of the flesh.’” Original sin deprives humanity of all goodness and afflicts infants as well as adults. It corrupts every human power of activity “by a natural depravity, but which did not result from nature.”13 Sin destroys humanity’s capacity to choose the good and enslaves the human will to sin. Sin deprives humans of grace. The undoing of sin results from the grace of regeneration. Those without faith in Christ may, then, know the virtuous thing to do; but they cannot of themselves perform it. As a consequence, everything which proceeds from human nature deserves divine condemnation. Indeed, the utter depravity of human nature provided Calvin’s Christology with “the principal point of the argument.”14 The total ruin of human nature means that humanity can find salvation only in Christ, for apart from Christ we confront God as children of wrath, unable to please Him in any way whatever.15 In contrast to Luther, Calvin held that the abject corruption of human nature made the incarnation necessary; for only the coming of Christ could transform heirs of hell into heirs of heaven. Only by suffering the punishment which sin merited could Christ succor a ruined humanity and restore a fallen and polluted world. In taking on flesh, the Son of God freely associated Himself with everything vile and the contemptible.16 Christ descended into hell not simply to announce the gospel to those who had died but in order to break the power of hell by suffering the tortures of the damned; for “it was requisite, also, that he should feel the severity of the Divine vengeance, in order to appease the wrath of God, and satisfy for justice.” In his cry on the cross, “My God, my God, why have your forsaken me?” Christ even feared for the salvation of his own soul.17 Although Christ can only merit at God’s good pleasure, nevertheless, He truly did merit salvation for us. Christ therefore functions as the primary cause of salvation, faith as its secondary cause. Through the sacrifice of Christ sinners acquire gratuitous righteousness; for He sustained 13. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, translated by John Allen (3 vols.; Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian Board of Christian Education, 1936), II, i, 1-9. 14. Ibid., II, ii, 1-24; iii, 1-24, iv, 1-8. 15. Ibid., II, viii, 1-3, x, 1-23, xi, 1-15. 16. Ibid., II, ii, 1-7, xiii, 1-4, xiv, 1-8. 17. Ibid., II, xvi, 1-19.
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the punishment which we deserve. His death, therefore, enjoys expiatory, placatory, and satisfactory efficacy.18 By blending an Augustinian doctrine of depravity with Anselmian atonement theory, Luther and Calvin exaggerated and underlined the least defensible tenets of Anselmian Christology. Anselm’s God demands suffering as the price for sin and accepts the Son’s proportional atonement for human deviation from the divine will. The God of classical Protestant theology vents His unrelenting hatred for a sinfully polluted humanity on His innocent, crucified Son. Enlightenment rationalists would, with good reason, soon point out that such a God exhibits a peculiar sense of justice. The appropriation of Anselmian atonement theory in classical Protestantism continues to color Protestant Christology and soteriology to this day. It also finds an echo in the Christology of Hans Urs von Balthasar. The section which follow examines the hues of that coloration. (V) One finds a strong echo of classical Protestant atonement theory in the Christologies of Karl Barth and Jürgen Moltmann. Since Barth precedes Moltmann historically, I consider Barth first. The Modern and Contemporary Anselmian Heritage In Barth’s Christology Christ atones for sin within history; but the atonement takes precedence over all of history and reveals Jesus as the unique and only savior of a sinful humanity. Through the incarnation the electing creator becomes the elected creature; but, “because he negates God, the man elected by God, the object of divine grace, is himself necessarily, and logically, with all that it involves, the man negated by God....The Holy One stands in the place and under the accusation of a sinner and with other sinners.” Through His kenotic incarnation God reveals Himself in Christ as standing for us. Christ first took our place as our Judge by stripping us of all hypocritical pretensions to self-vindication before God. Christ also took our place as sinners by making Himself responsible for the sins of all. In taking our place as sinners and bearing the full force of God’s wrathful “No” to sin, the crucified Christ confronts us as the “supremely objective source of knowledge” of our sinful state before God. In taking on our evil case and answering for it as ours, Christ forgives sins. Hence, nothing remains for us to do as sinners except to accept the forgiveness of sin judged and remitted in Christ. Christ becomes our Judge by submitting to the divine judgment in our place. His death has a 18. Ibid., II, xvii, 1-5. American Puritanism endorsed an Anselmian approach to atonement. See: Dorus Paul Rudisill, The Doctrine of the Atonement in Jonathan Edwards and His Successors (New York, NY: Poseidon, 1971).
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catastrophic character because it destroys the old age of sin and brings into existence the new age of redemption.19 In raising Jesus from the dead the Father acts differently from the way He acted in the passion, even though the two acts finally constitute one single saving act of God because of their intimate relationship to one another. In raising Jesus, the Father passes judgment on the passion and designates Jesus crucified and risen as the one Word of God whom all must hear if they desire to be saved.20 19. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, translated by G.W. Bromley and F.T. Torrence (New York, NY: Scribner’s Sons, 1956), IV, pp. 131-322. 20. Ibid., pp. 342-57. The doctrine of the glorification of Jesus describes His homecoming. Jesus’ humanity both resembled ours and differed from it. He differs as one human differs from another; but He also differs in that His history coincides with the exaltation of humanity through His total obedience to the will and decree of God. By becoming human the Word did not cease to be God; instead, he assumed humanity into God in a new way. All three divine persons act in the incarnation, but not in the same way. The Son’s self-abasement reveals His person specifically. The incarnation expresses the determination of the Son’s human essence (Wesen) by His divine. In the incarnation the human essence at first veils the divine so that the divine might eventually glorify the human. The mutual conditioning of the two essences grounds the communicatio idiomatum. The hypostatic union effects the communicatio gratiae. The hypostatic union effects a special gracing of the Son since He bore our sinfulness without sinning. His sinlessness and impeccability establishes His brotherhood with all other humans because it transforms Him into the one who reconciles humanity to God. Through His sanctification Jesus receives power (potestas not potencia) to forgive sins. Since His sanctification culminates in His obedience unto death on a cross, the humiliation and glorification of the Son coincide. Finally, in the incarnation one must also speak of a communicatio operationum, since in Jesus God and humanity act as one. (Ibid., IV, 2, pp. 1-73) All these communications of God in the incarnate Word effect a consortium divinitatis, a familiar presence of God among humanity. Through the self-revelation of God in Jesus we now encounter the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of Jesus. The incarnation makes the Spirit concrete, because the Spirit conforms us to Jesus. Moreover, our transformation in the Spirit reveals the glory of God. Jesus rises from the dead (the terminus a quo of the resurrection) and ascends into heaven (the terminus ad quem of the resurrection). Ascension translates Jesus into the hidden realm of the divine. (Ibid., 116-54) Glorification reveals Jesus as the royal man. The unforgettable memory of Jesus began that revelation; but the glorification completes it. Resurrection reveals Jesus as Lord. Not a political revolutionary, Jesus nevertheless proclaimed a kingdom whose freedom has revolutionary implications. The kingdom reveals that God stands with the suffering, the oppressed, the marginal. In Jesus an alien power entered history and endowed His actions with a supernatural power, a power revealed in His miracles which incorporate the suffering and oppressed into the kingdom. Glorification also transforms our perception of the cross of Christ. The resurrection reveals the passion as Jesus’ triumph over death. The glorification of the Son imparts a new direction to salvation history and demands that sinners submit to Jesus’ judgment on their sinfulness. We know ourselves only in confrontation with Jesus Christ because only in Him is the telos finally and fully revealed. The resurrection also gives us access to the Spirit of the risen Christ who advances history to the goal He sets and embodies. (Ibid., pp. 154-377) Cf. Berthold Klappert,
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Barth’s appropriation of classical Protestant atonement Christology mutes its rhetorical excesses; but it nevertheless replaces a New Testament account of atonement with transmuted Anselmian ideas. Like Anselm, Barth mislocates the drama of redemption by portraying it primarily as an intra-trinitarian transaction between Father and Son. The incarnate Son substitutes for a sinful humanity and suffers the punishment which it deserves. As a consequence, the God of wrath whom Luther and Calvin described survives in Barth’s portrayal of the crucifixion in the Father’s wrathful “No” to sin.21 Among contemporary Christologists Jürgen Moltmann (1926- ) blends themes from Karl Barth’s neo-orthodoxy with the same kind of dialectical thinking which characterized nineteenth century kenotic theology. True to his Lutheran roots Moltmann claims that the cross of Christ holds the key to his entire theology. As a contemporary, twentieth-century theologian, however, Moltmann’s theology of the cross addresses a very different social situation from either Luther or nineteenth-century kenotic Christologists. Moltmann has attempted to demonstrate the contemporary relevance of Christianity to a post-Christian Europe by moving a Lutheran theology of the cross in a political direction.22 Moltmann holds that one can know God only through God; but, in the cross, God is revealed in a Christ whom God abandoned. Jesus did not die a fine death. He approached it with trepidation. On the cross, He cried out to the God who had left Him in utter dereliction. The death of Jesus called into question the deity of the Father He had proclaimed.23 Versönung und Befreiung: Versuche, Karl Barth kontextuel zu Verstehen (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1994). 21. Emil Brunner (1889-1966) showed less enthusiasm for atonement Christology than did Barth. Brunner observed that Christian tradition offers two ways of understanding the atonement: the subjective theory of Abelard and the objective theory of Anselm. Abelard held that the death of Jesus gives us the clearest revelation of the love of God. This position, however, does not take into sufficient account human guilt. Anselm’s position sins in the direction of too much objectivity by teaching that only the Son of God could have expiated the infinite guilt of humanity. This theory has elements of truth in it but does not accord with the New Testament. Anselm, therefore, needs correction by Abelard, whose subjective approach includes the element of faith. Paul saw that all we undertake of ourselves comes under the curse of the Law. Jesus forgave sins in His own name and by His own authority. In the cross, moreover, God reveals His love for a sinful humanity in spite of its sinfulness. The Son experienced the curse of the Law and through the cross penetrated to the depths of human existence. Were we to focus on divine forgiveness alone, we would miss the earnestness of sin. Instead, the cross confronts us with the full weight of human sin and demands that we as a consequence abandon all attempts at self-justification. (Ibid., 291-8) 22. Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, translated by R.A. Wilson and John Bowden (New York: Harper & Row, 1973), pp. 1-25. 23. Ibid., pp. 145-153.
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In The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, Moltmann developed the dialectical implications of these assertions. Moltmann envisaged a progressive, dialectical revelation of the trinity in history. First, Jesus, whom Moltmann asserts must be understood as a “human person,” proclaimed the kingdom of God. The Father sent the Son to proclaim the kingdom at the same time that the Spirit allowed the Son to call God Abba. In the first stage of the revelation of the trinity, therefore, “the Father sends the Son through the Spirit. The Son comes from the Father in the power of the Spirit. The Spirit brings people into the fellowship of the Son and of the Father.”24 The passion of Jesus constitutes the second stage in the dialectical revelation of God. In Jesus’ passion the Father withdraws from the Son and leaves Him alone. Jesus’ unanswered prayer in the garden begins His passion. On the cross the Son despairs when He cries out: “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?” As a consequence, Calvary marks a break in the very life of the trinity. The Father casts off and curses the Son for our sakes; the Son suffers the forsakenness. During the triduum from Good Friday to Easter, therefore, the Holy Spirit alone abides as the bond between the Father and the Son. On Calvary, the trinity means the Father gives up His own Son to death in its most absolute sense for us, while the Son gives Himself up for the same purpose. Moreover, the common sacrifice of the Father and Son comes about through the Holy Spirit who continues to link the Son, even in His forsakenness and despair, with the Father. How the Spirit accomplishes this remains obscure, to say the least.25 Moltmann’s reading of classical Protestant atonement Christology uses dialectical logic in order to radicalize it. As in the case of kenotic Christology, the incarnation negates aspects of the inner life of the triune God. In nineteenth century kenotic Christology, the incarnation effects that negation. In Moltmann, the tragedy of the cross does. The Father abandons the Son and thereby ceases to be Father; the Son despairs on the cross and ceases to be the Son. Hegelian logic, however, supposedly saves the day when the resurrection negates the negation of the cross and commits the triune God to the struggle for human liberation within history.26 Moltmann deserves commendation for his attempt to endow Christology and trinitarian theology with political significance; but his endorse24. Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, translated by Margaret Kohl (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1981), pp. 61-74. 25. Ibid., 75-83. 26. In Moltmann’s Christology, the resurrection reveals the Son’s homecoming to the Father and begins the full eschatological revelation of the Son which will happen when all humanity perceives His Easter glory. The glory of God appears on the face of the risen Christ and reveals Him as Son enthroned in power. That glory endows His ministry with new saving significance.
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ment of a confused dialectical logic exacts too high a doctrinal price for radicalizing the gospel. I also find the price unnecessary. Moltmann fails to explain how a human person can also be a divine person. He leaves it obscure why the death of a human person should make any difference to the inner life of God. He also fails finally to extricate himself from the inadequacies of medieval atonement theory. For Moltmann, the drama of salvation plays itself out between Father and Son. It temporarily disrupts the inner life of the trinity: during the Easter triduum only the Holy Spirit keeps the Godhead from complete fragmentation. In Moltmann’s thought the moral vindictiveness of the wrathful God of classical Protestantism transforms itself into the Father’s heartless abandonment of the Son as He hangs in dereliction on the cross. How the Son of God manages to save us after He commits the sin of despair never finds an adequate explanation in Moltmann’s Christology. Even as astute a theologian as Wolfhart Pannenberg cannot finally extricate his Christology from the distortions of medieval atonement theory. Pannenberg betrays his rootedness in the Lutheran tradition when he interprets the eucharistic words of Jesus as endorsing a medieval theology of penal substitution. Pannenberg argues that redemption requires penal substitution because sin imposes a moral debt to God which needs paying. Christ “became sin” by suffering the misfortune which human sinfulness merited.27 Hans Urs von Balthasar’s dramatic soteriology also echoes the Anselmian tradition. Von Balthasar finds five motifs in Christological soteriology. 1) After the resurrection, therefore, the trinity means: The Father raises the Son through the Spirit; the Father reveals the Son through the Spirit; the Son is enthroned as Lord of God’s kingdom through the Spirit. (Ibid., 83-88) The resurrection elevates Jesus into the inmost being of the Godhead. In becoming Lord of the kingdom He acquires a new relationship to the Spirit, whom He now sends in charismatic abundance to effect a new creation. With the coming of Pentecost, the Trinity now means: The Father raises the dead Son through the life-giving Spirit, the Father enthrones the Son as the Lord of His kingdom, and the risen Son sends the creative Spirit from the Father to renew heaven and earth through baptismal incorporation into Christ. In baptism itself, we encounter the Trinity in yet a different way. In baptism the trinity means: a) the eschatological history of God which opens out onto the future; b) the unity of the Father, Son, and Spirit stands therefore as an open unity and not as a closed one; and c) that openness seeks the unification of all believers, of humankind, and of the whole creation. As this future unfolds, the trinity means: the Father subjects everything to the Son, the Son transfers the consummated kingdom to the Father, and the Son subjects Himself to the Father. In the incarnation we perceive the trinity as Father, Son, Spirit; but as an eschatological reality we perceive the trinity as Spirit, Son, Father. (Ibid., 97-114) 27. Cf. Wolfhart Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, translated by Lewis L. Wilkins and Duane A. Priebe (London: SCM Press, 1968), pp. 245-269, 279.
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The Son gives Himself through the Father for the salvation of the world. 2) Jesus, the sinless one, “changes places” with sinners. 3) This redemptive act sets humanity free. 4) The same act communicates to humans a share in trinitarian life. 5) The whole drama of salvation reveals divine love.28 In depicting Jesus’ death for sinners, however, von Balthasar portrays the Son as the object of divine vindictive anger. In von Balthasar’s script for his “theo-drama,” Jesus hangs upon the cross utterly abandoned by both by God and humans.29 (VI) I began these reflections on atonement Christology by suggesting that history functions as the laboratory for testing the truth or falsity, adequacy or inadequacy, and ethical consequences of theological theories. The time has come to assess the results of Anselm’s Christological experiment. In my judgment, the theological community needs to declare it a failed experiment once and for all and to consign it to the same theoretical dust bin as medieval alchemy. Sympathetic commentators on Anselmian atonement theory point out that it derives, not from the New Testament, but from the hierarchical structure of medieval society and from the ethos which such a society presupposed. That ethos demanded the violent punishment of crime by mutilation, torture, and legalized murder. That ethos also presupposed that no one who occupied a lower rung of society possessed the dignity or worth to offer satisfaction for offending anyone who occupied a higher rung. As we have already seen, the verification of a doctrine invokes both historical and religio- ethical norms. The doctrine must interpret correctly the historical revelation which we have in fact received. That revelation defines the practical scope of Christological knowing. As a result, the moral consequences of a sound doctrine will promote practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. In my judgment, Anselmian atonement theory fails both tests of doctrinal orthodoxy. Weighed theologically, Anselmian atonement theory seriously distorts how God has in fact accomplished human salvation in Christ. Saving redemption concerns most fundamentally the triune God’s relationship to a sinful humanity. It does not primarily and initially concern the relationship of one member of the trinity to another, as medieval atonement theory fallaciously asserts. By subsuming the drama of redemption into the inner life of God, Anselmian atonement theory mislocates it and, in 28. Cf. Hans Urs von Balthasar, Theo-Drama, translated by Graham Harrison (5 vols.; San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press, 1994), IV, p. 317. 29. Ibid., IV, pp. 349-356.
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the process of mislocating, Anselmian atonement theory badly misunderstands that drama. Anselm also blundered badly when he constructed a Christological hypothesis on the assumptions of medieval hierarchicalism and of medieval penal practice. Both institutions seriously contradict fundamental ethical demands of life in the kingdom of God proclaimed by Jesus. As we have seen, the kingdom calls for the construction of a radically egalitarian society in which the neediest and most marginal receive preferential support and honor. One cannot reconcile such a vision with the stratified social structure of medieval Europe. Similarly, the kingdom requires its members to relate to one another in mutual forgiveness. One cannot reconcile mutual forgiveness in the image of Christ with divine approbation of legalized mutilation, torture, and murder. Finally, in its classical Protestant formulation, atonement Christology exaggerated some of the most pessimistic elements in late medieval piety. In the thought of Luther and Calvin, that pessimism generated and popularized the vision of an infinitely angry and vengeful God whom reflective people, understandably enough, found somewhat difficult to trust. Should we, after all, really wonder at the difficulty of loving a God who takes infinite satisfaction in torturing His innocent Son? Anselmian atonement theory does, however, build on some sound insights. Sin does introduce disorder into the universe, a disorder which God desires to reorder. Jesus did die in obedience to the Father’s will. How, then, ought one to go about correcting the errors and oversights of Anselmian atonement theory? To this question I turn in the chapter which follows.
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Chapter 11 Jesus the Savior The preceding chapter traced the development of atonement Christology. It contrasted medieval and modern atonement Christologies with the understanding of Jesus’ saving death presented in the New Testament and in the writings of the fathers. This chapter develops a positive doctrine of atonement which calls into question the doctrinal adequacy of medieval atonement theory and the soteriological Christologies which it inspires. This chapter divides into three parts. Part one argues for the need to replace atonement Christology in its Anselmian and post-Anselmian formulations with a foundational account of salvation in Christ which better accords with the New Testament and patristic witness. Part two discusses the four ways in which Jesus in fact saves us. Part three reflects on the cosmic dimensions of salvation in Christ and on Christological and soteriological issues raised by the dialogue among world religions. (I) Nothing in the New Testament suggests that the Father wanted Jesus to die a horrible death by torture. Rather the New Testament suggests that the Father sent Jesus to tell us the truth about Himself and about us and in order to summon us to repentance, reconciliation, and sinless living. Jesus proclaimed again and again that God desires to forgive us if only we repent. Jesus also warned that the refusal to repent and to forgive one another sets the human heart in irreconcilable opposition to a forgiving God. Jesus died in obedience to the Father because a forgiving God required Him to persist in summoning humans to repentance and mutual reconciliation, no matter what they did to Him, even though they kill Him. His suffering then reveals the unconditioned character of God’s love and will to forgive us. If, moreover, the divine persons relate to one another in an attitude of total and mutual self-donation in love, then the Father took no pleasure or sadistic satisfaction in His incarnate Son’s death by torture. On the contrary, we need to recognize in the passion of the Son the compassion of both the Father and the Breath.1 The resurrection confirms this insight; for, when humanity had done its worst and assassinated God incarnate, the risen Lord used His divine omnipotence, not in order to take vengeance on His enemies, assassins, 1. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 169-174.
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and sinful disciples but in order to purify humanity of its sinfulness through the free and gratuitous gift of His own Breath. Those who conspired in order to murder the Son of God, like those who continue to murder Him in the “little ones” whom He loves best, do indeed stand under the judgment of God by their refusal to repent. That refusal does not, however, alter God’s loving desire for reconciliation with humanity. It contradicts that desire by its unregenerate sinfulness. Jesus’ non-violence, His gratuitous forgiveness of sin, even His own murder, which He suffered without demanding vindictive retaliation— all these things give the lie to Anselm’s suggestion that God requires vindictive punishment of humans before He is willing to forgive them. On the contrary, the paschal mystery makes it clear that God responds to sin, even to the sin of murdering God’s incarnate Son, without any hint of vindictive vengeance. The treachery of Judas grieved Jesus, but it did not cause Him to lash out vindictively at the traitor. Instead, Jesus persisted to the end in seeking reconciliation with His betrayer. The risen Christ did not flog, mutilate, or kill the disciples who abandoned Him fearfully and denied Him sinfully. Instead, He lovingly changed their hearts. Jesus the Lord proclaims and embodies a passionate divine desire for reconciliation with a sinful humanity; and He offers that reconciliation as a gratuitous gift of life. Moreover, having offered it, He also gratuitously effects it in sinful human hearts by the gift of His Breath. The paschal mystery does pass judgment on humanity’s hypocrisy and sinfulness. As universal judge, the risen Christ warns unrepentant and sinful mortals of the tragic consequences which flow from refusing the saving reconciliation which He brings. In the New Testament, Jesus does speak on occasion of divine retribution and of divine anger, (Mt 3:7; Lk 3:7, 21:23) but His condemnation of vindictive anger in human relationships precludes projecting human vindictiveness into God. (Mt 5:22) The God Jesus proclaims does not live on a lower moral plane than humans. Jesus comes precisely to save us from divine retribution, not to inflict it. (1 Th 1:10, 5:9) How, then, ought one to interpret the meaning of divine retribution? The New Testament names the kind of behavior which angers God: namely, the refusal to repent and to accept the gratuitous gift of divine forgiveness which Jesus proclaims and embodies. (Jn 3:36; Rom 1:18; 2:5, 8; 3:5; 5:9; 9:22; 12:19; Eph 2:3, 5:6; Col 3:6; 1 Th 5:9; Heb 3:11; 4:3; Rev 6:16, 17; 11:18, 14:8, 10, 19, 15:1, 7; 16:1, 19, 18:3, 19:15) In the letter to the Romans, Paul, even in his relentless denunciation of universal human sinfulness, proclaims that God’s anger at sin does not take the form of actively inflicting punishment on humans but in allowing intransigent sinners to suffer the consequences of their own evil choices in the hope that the experience of self-inflicted misery will bring them to recognize their evil plight and repent. (Rom 1:18-27, 13:5)
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Even lovers can make one another angry; but, if one loves in the image of Christ, anger never turns into spite, violence, or wounding. Divine anger exemplifies the ire which results from flouted and unrequited love. Because, however, God exemplifies the perfection of mutual self-donation in love, divine anger never degenerates into vindictive hatred. Even in anger, God continues to love us. The New Testament also makes it clear that Christian behavior which conforms to the demands of discipleship avoids vindictive displays of anger as scrupulously as the incarnate Son of God did. If God incarnate summons us to love our enemies in His image, that means that God loves His bitterest enemies even before they repent, even at the moment when they sin most grievously against Him. (Mt 5:22; Lk 22:47-51; Jn 18:10-11; Eph 4:26, 31, 6:4; Col 3:8; 1 Tim 2:8; Tit 1:7; Jam 1:19-20) It makes no logical, theological, or moral sense for God to forbid spiteful, vindictive, and violent behavior in humans only to indulge in such vicious, spiteful behavior Himself. As we have seen, the New Testament does use the image of fire to symbolize the holiness of God. That holiness purifies those who repent and seek God’s healing forgiveness; but it destroys those who refuse to repent. One need not, however— indeed, one should not—interpret the destructive power of divine holiness as an expression of divine vindictiveness. Rather, the moral demands of the life in the kingdom cause the unrepentant sinner to experience the very holiness of God as a reality which threatens to undo their sinful being. The message which the Father sent the Son to proclaim and which the Breath of God inspired within Him makes very specific moral demands. The vision of the kingdom makes it clear that God sides with the poor, with the marginal, with the degraded, with the oppressed, with the expendable. That means that God stands against those who line their pockets at the expense of the poor, against those who push others to the margins of society, against those who abuse and degrade other persons, against all oppressors, against those who turn their backs indifferently on those who are perishing. The message of the kingdom tells us that God stands ready to forgive any sinner who repents but that God cannot forgive the sins of those whose lack of repentance prevents them from forgiving others. If God has set His heart on forgiveness, then those who refuse to forgive set themselves against God and by that refusal make reconciliation with God impossible. Those who set their hearts intransigently against God experience the approach of divine holiness not as a blessing but as a threat to their very selves. No wonder. As emerging experiences, we create ourselves by our own choices. If we freely set ourselves against God, then face-to-face encounter with the holiness of God threatens to unravel the deepest fibers
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of our being which we have freely woven into a tight pattern of intransigent sinfulness. The approach of divine holiness promises no consolation to those who have set their very being in relentless opposition to everything which the holiness of God exemplifies. On the contrary, unrepentant, vindictive sinners and unrepentant religious hypocrites experience the approach of divine holiness as the annihilation of everything which they have chosen to become. In a very real sense, then, the suffering and martyrdom of prophets reveal historically the real possibility of hell. Humans can and do develop deep attachments to their own sinfulness. Because the approach of God seeks to undo those attachments, unrepentant and intransigent sinners resist that approach as a threat to what they have chosen to become. As a consequence, the assassination of a prophet like Martin Luther King does more than attack the person of the prophet. Those who kill prophets would silence and kill the prophet’s God, if they could. In Jesus’ case, we had the chance to murder God, and we took it. Intransigent unrepentance has, as a consequence, the capacity to transform a face-to-face confrontation with God into a hellish experience. God, then, judges us by telling us lovingly the truth about ourselves and about the divine reality which Jesus embodies. Those who have chosen to embody realities and values which contradict the truth embodied in Jesus hear the judgment of God, not as good news, but as a terrifying assault on their being. To hear the gospel as good news, sinful humans need to receive it into repentant hearts. When they do, they know the healing power of the divine forgiveness which Jesus proclaimed and embodied. When they do not, the good news fills them with vindictive rage and justifiable terror. The Beloved Disciple saw correctly and with wonderful clarity that those who accept the revelation of divine forgiveness with repentant and faith-filled hearts never experience a divine judgment of repudiation. Only those experience the holiness of God as an annihilating judgment who prefer sin to God, darkness to divine light, hate-filled violence to reconciling divine love. Some defenders of the Anselmian tradition argue that one trivializes sin unless one confesses that God punishes it vindictively. If, however, one takes the mind of Jesus as the measure of sin, then God would have to sin in order to punish sin; for, pushed to the extremest test on Calvary, Jesus refused to counter violence with violence. Risen, moreover, in glory, He sought, not retaliation, but reconciliation and forgiveness. God does, however, take the sin of vindictiveness with utter seriousness, with such total seriousness that God would never descend to committing it. The cross does in fact reveal all the hideousness of sin in stark and all-sufficient terms. Calvary displays the utterly repulsive sight of human
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vindictiveness hell-bent on destroying the divine excellence incarnate in Jesus. In the cross we confront the human assassination of an infinitely loving God. I would think that anyone would have supped full of horrors who has pondered that deicide in all of its implications. The God of the New Testament does reveal the full horror of sin; but God does so precisely by suffering sin and its consequences in love and without retaliating violently and vindictively. As a consequence, the cross embodies the perfection of divine forgiveness at the same time that it casts the glaring light of divine revelation on the most depraved corners of the human heart. As the fourth gospel correctly insists, the full revelation of the light of God’s love puts the full horror of sin in clearest and starkest relief. On Calvary, the perfection of divine, reconciling love and the hideous malice of the dark powers stand simultaneously and decisively revealed. Jesus on the cross did not pay anything to the Father. He did not suffer as a human scapegoat or as a surrogate victim of God’s active, destructive, and vindictive wrath. On the cross, God suffered human, not divine, wrath. On the cross, Jesus did not protect us from the Father’s vindictive vengefulness; rather He embodied in His humanity the perfection of divine love and forgiveness in the face of sinful, unjust, human malice and institutionalized vindictiveness. The cross reveals humanity’s rejection of God, not the Father’s rejection of the Son. Suffering human sinfulness without vindictive retaliation exacted a terrible price from Jesus. He paid that price in forgiving love; but He did not pay it to anyone. Contemporary theology both Protestant and Catholic has repudiated an Augustinian doctrine of human corruption. Sin diminishes and distorts our humanity, but it does not vitiate it totally. Even sinful humans can perform naturally good acts. The construct of human nature developed in this study attempts to avoid the extremes of Protestant pessimism and of Thomistic optimism. That theological shift undercuts any theological justification for belief in the wrathful God of classical Protestantism. Nevertheless, some preachers continue to perpetuate popularly the dated Christological rhetoric of the first reformers. The philosophers of the Enlightenment had the right of it, in my judgment, when they criticized the God of Calvinism as unjust to take ghoulish satisfaction in the hideous sufferings of His innocent Son. The vision of the Father visiting His unrelenting spite on the innocent Jesus sends a confused moral message to those who hear it preached; for, if God cannot forgive others until He has vented his vengeful spleen on somebody, even on His totally innocent Son, why should one expect weak and sinful humans to treat their enemies any differently?
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In a sense Moltmann’s dialectical reading of the crucifixion takes the excesses of classical Protestant rhetoric to its logical conclusion. If in fact God had treated His innocent and crucified Son as heartlessly as classical Protestant rhetoric suggested, He would in effect have abandoned Him as he died a death of torture. Since a morally responsible human being would not treat a dog that way, the suggestion that one divine person would treat another divine person so heartlessly qualifies in my judgment as blasphemy. In abandoning the Son, the Father would indeed have abandoned His very paternity and therefore also His divinity. The wrathful God portrayed in the extremest forms of evangelical rhetoric forfeits divinity through the sin of vengeance. The fact that Moltmann also makes the Son forfeit His divinity by committing the sin of despair only compounds the problem. Feminists who deride the idea of atonement as divine child abuse need to recognize that they are legitimately rejecting only one strain in the Christological tradition, a strain which other theologians, including those of the male persuasion, also reject. Moreover, all theologians need to take into account other more theologically acceptable interpretations of Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. Correctly understood, the cross does not encourage women or any other oppressed group to acquiesce supinely in suffering, as some feminist theologians fear. Jesus died because of His relentless prophetic opposition to all forms of human sin and oppression. In making the last first and the first last, He promoted all oppressed people, women included, to a privileged position in the new Israel He was founding. He also transformed the privileged into the willing slaves of the underprivileged. Christian atonement, like Christian service, insists on the practical rectification of all forms of social oppression and injustice. The greater the oppression one suffers, the greater the claim one makes on those more privileged than oneself and the more exalted one’s status in the new Israel. John Duns Scotus stands out among medieval Christologists for His forthright rejection of John of La Rochelle’s version of atonement Christology. Unfortunately, however, Scotus’s criticism did not go far enough. Scotus spoke of the merits of the suffering Christ instead of the price He paid to the Father. In speaking of the merits of Christ, however, Scotus still tacitly conceded that, at least initially, salvation consists primarily in a transaction between Father and the Son. Instead, the noun “salvation” designates the relationship which the entire triune God desires to have with humanity. The triune God wants to stand in a life-giving relationship to humanity, one which unites the divine and the human in love and reconciliation. A more thorough criticism of medieval atonement theory than the one which Scotus attempted would have relocated the drama of salvation where it belongs: between
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sinners and the saving reality of the entire Godhead, not between the Son and the Father, as von Balthasar and others have done. I have been arguing in this section that medieval atonement theory offers a misleading and doctrinally unsound way of understanding how Jesus saves us. What shape, then, would a sound foundational interpretation of Christian salvation take? To this question I turn in the section which follows. (II) In this section, I shall argue that Jesus saves us in four ways: 1) His sinless life heals, perfects, and elevates human nature; 2) His proclamation and embodiment of the kingdom provides us with the pattern of sinless living; 3) the paschal mystery reveals the ultimate goal of God’s saving activity; 4) the abiding gift of the Breath empowers us to live in Jesus’ image and through conformity to Him to attain the goal of God’s saving action in us.2 2. For other approaches to Christological soteriology, see: Theophil Tschipke, O.P., Die Menscheit Christi as Heilorgan der Gottheit (Freiburg: Herder & Co., 1940); Ian G. Wallis, The Faith of Jesus Christ in Early Christian Traditions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Paul S. Fiddes, Past Event and Present Salvation: The Christian Idea of Atonement (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1989); Illtyd Trethowen, The Absolute and the Atonement (New York, NY: Humanities Press Inc., 1971); Martin Jarrett- Kerr, C.R., The Atonement in Our Time (New York, NY: Morehouse-Gorham Co., 1953); Arthur C. Hedlam, The Atonement (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935); Michael Winter, The Atonement (Collegeville, MI: The Liturgical Press/ Michael Glazier, 1995); Vernon White, Atonement and Incarnation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); David L. Wheeler, A Relational View of the Atonement (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 1989); James E. Tull, The Atoning Gospel (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1982); Ulrich Simon, Atonement: From Holocaust to Paradise (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1987); Theodor Herr, Versönung statt Konflkt (Paderborn: Creator Verlag, 1991); F.W. Dillstone, The Christian Understanding of Atonement (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1968); Gerhard Ebeling, “Der Sünetod Christi als Glaubensassage,” Jürgen Becker, “Die neutestametliche Rede vom Sündetod Jesu,” Wilfried Hörle, “Die Rede von der Liebe und vom Zorn Gottes,” Klaus-Peter Jörns, “Der Sünetod Jesus Christi in Frömmigkeit und Predigt,” Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche, Beiheft 8, edited by Gerhard Müller (Tübingen, J.C.R. Mohr, 1990); Culin E. Gunton, The Actuality of Atonement (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1989); Dorothy Soelle, Christ the Representative (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1967); Robert S. Franks, The Atonement (London: Oxford University Press, 1934); Don S. Browning, Atonement and Psychotherapy (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1966); John Goldengay, ed., Atonement Today (London: SPCK, 1995); John Murray, The Atonement (Philadelphia, PA: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1962); M.D. Philippe, O.P., Le mystère du Christ crucifié et glorifié (Paris: Éditions Alsatia, 1968); Leon Morris, The Cross in the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1965); Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Jesus and Salvation,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 49(1994), pp. 1-18; Paul F. Knitter, “Clear Distinctions but Uncertain Paths,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America, 49(1994), pp. 19-23; M.M. Rossi, “Salvezza, appartenenza, identità, testamonianza anabasi verso il Gubileo,” Angelicum, 74(1997), pp. 219-242.
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Christians rightly call Jesus savior. Jesus does not just teach a doctrine of salvation, in the manner of the other founders of the great world religions. He alone among religious founders fully embodies salvation in the perfection of His sinlessness. By the same token, Jesus does not just teach us about God. Instead, He embodies personally the living reality of God. All other human founders of religions confront us as sinners who have achieved a limited measure of religious insight. Only Jesus incarnates personally in perfect human form the saving reality of God itself. In a metaphysics of experience, one understands the growth of experience as a process of collaborative self-creation with the help of God. Natural self-creation presupposes the divine creative activity, God’s ongoing creation of the universe. Graced self-creation presupposes God’s free and gratuitous intervention in human history in order to undo the effects of human sinfulness. We call that intervention the new creation, the recreation of humanity in the image of the sinless, Breath-filled, risen Christ. The gift of God’s Breath undoes the effects of sinfulness in us. Without the risen Christ’s efficacious mission and without His Breath’s persuasive gracing, human experience remains vulnerable to the corrupting influence of the situational sin which theologians call “original.” Those influences stand within natural experience and teach it to act in ways which defy God. Even with divine grace, the inertia of sinful habits and the coercive power of sinful social structures leave believers susceptible to concupiscence; for concupiscence, as we have seen, means those forces in the experience of the justified, other than their own personal sins, which come from sin and still lead to sin. In contrast to us, the synergy of divine and human decisions in Jesus worked grace in Him with a perfection which exceeds the gracing of any other human experience. The efficacious obediential transformation of a human experience in the second person of the trinity made it invulnerable to both original sin and concupiscence. It made Jesus invulnerable to original sin because from the first moment of the incarnation the sinless Son of God decided Jesus’ conscious and unconscious human decisions. Jesus experienced all the sinful forces which shaped His human world; but He experienced them neither as original sin nor as concupiscence because they never led Him to sin personally. As we saw in the last two chapters, the perfectly sinless, efficacious gracing of the human experience we call Jesus of Nazareth restored and recreated humanity in Him in a way which makes Him more perfectly human than sinners like ourselves. As more perfectly human, the sinless Christ begins the new creation. Jesus saves us, then, by embodying the perfection of sinless, graced union with God. As we also saw, not only does the dynamic recreation of humanity in the incarnation heal it of its sinfulness; but it also perfects it by empowering it to hope and to love
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with a God-like universality. Grace elevates humanity by orienting it in this life to perfect union with God in the world to come. In the preceding paragraphs, I have been considering the first way in which Jesus saves us: namely, by graciously recreating human nature in His own person and by healing, perfecting, and elevating it through the gift of His Breath. In the paragraphs which follow, I shall focus on the second way in which Jesus saves us, namely, by proclaiming the reign of God. First, I shall summarize the moral demands of life in the kingdom by recapitulating themes developed in volume two. Then I shall reflect doctrinally on their saving consequences. Jesus saves us by proclaiming and embodying the vision of the kingdom. That vision raises to human consciousness the sinlessness which He embodied personally. Life in the kingdom gives that sinlessness practical meaning and therefore clarifies what it means. Indeed, without the vision of the kingdom, faith in the sinlessness of Jesus would languish in abstract and impractical vagueness.3 Entrance into the kingdom demands repentance as its first condition. Repentance demands in turn the renunciation of Satan. Christian repentance gives one access to Jesus’ religious vision by requiring that one face and reverse all those attitudes, beliefs, and commitments which contradict His mind and attitudes. What attitudes, then, must the repentant Christian renounce? Jesus’ negative relationships in the gospels dramatize the attitudes which contradict the kingdom. Christian repentance calls one beyond self-righteous legalism, beyond religious snobbery, beyond contempt for others. The repentant do not judge others. They do not substitute for God’s commands human customs which contradict God’s saving will. The repentant renounce greed and the exploitation of other people. They renounce the idolatry of amassed wealth. Christian repentance also demands that one abjure the ways of the principalities and powers of this world. Those ways include moral and religious compromise, sensuality, and human respect. The kingdoms of this world use coercion to insure the personal advantage of the few. The 3. For Christians, sin consists in deviation from God’s will rather than in a fall. The image of sin as a fall presupposes the two-tiered, dualistic universe of Platonism and of Gnosticism. In a cosmos divided into divine spirit and either illusory or corrupt matter, sin takes the form of a fall from a higher spiritual realm into a lower, material realm. Christians, however, view sin teleologically and historically, not cosmologically and dualistically. God created the world with a saving plan in mind, an ultimate goal for creation and for human history. The nature of that goal stands finally and fully revealed in the paschal mystery because only the paschal mystery opens a window on the inner social life of God into which the divine Breath draws us. Ultimately, divine grace seeks to enfold us in the shared embrace of perfect love which unifies the divine experience. The vision of the kingdom orients us practically toward that union by schooling us in divine love in this life.
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world incarnates violence of heart and violence in deed. It leaves passion unbridled. It exploits and oppresses the weak. Christian repentance requires that one renounce all expressions of false religion: superstition, the hypocritical use of religious institutions for violence or personal gain, religious skepticism, sanctioning the oppression of others in God’s name. Finally, repentance reverses all such sinful attitudes by inspiring one with the willingness to accept Jesus’ offer of divine forgiveness. That acceptance commits one to living with His own compassion for sinners, for the suffering, and for the disadvantaged. In the process, repentance heals the shame, anger, fear, and guilt which distort human relationships and which separate humans from God and from one another. Those who embody the mind and attitudes of Christ live in perennial conflict with Satan. Satan personifies all those persons and institutions who oppose the establishment of God’s reign on earth. Satan inspires the refusal to believe in the God revealed in Jesus and in His Breath. Satan persuades one to replace trust in God with sinful self-reliance, to set conditions on one’s willingness to trust God, and to substitute for God’s reign the oppressive kingdoms of coercion, vindictiveness, and violence over which the prince of darkness presides. Christian repentance bears positive fruit in faith in Jesus Christ as the normative revelation of who God is and what God calls humans to become. Faith in Jesus Christ interprets His ministry and message in the light of the paschal mystery. One encounters Jesus in resurrection faith when one perceives Him as the human experience of being a divine person. In that encounter, one recognizes in His religious vision the human embodiment of God’s mind, of God’s saving attitudes. As a consequence, the paschal mystery reveals Jesus as the concrete historical norm of authentic religious faith. Belief in the resurrection thus endows the vision of the kingdom with morally ultimate and absolute claims. It transforms it from the utopian ideal of a socially marginal, first-century peasant prophet into a reality worth living for and, if necessary, worth dying for, because it incarnates sinless, divine excellence. As the gospels teach us, faced with the paschal mystery, humans can betray Christ and deny Him. They can stand by Him in His suffering and dying. They can take up their cross and follow Him. They can also continue to crucify Him in the poor and oppressed. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom invited others into His own Abba experience. It summoned them to relate to God with reverential trust and love. As synoptic narrative Christology teaches, relating to the Father in Jesus’ image demands principally: 1) the repentant acceptance of divine forgiveness, 2) longing for the establishment of God’s reign on earth,
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3) trust in the Father’s providential care of each person, 4) willingness to share one’s bread with others, especially the marginal and needy 5) willingness to forgive others, even one’s enemies,just as God forgives anyone who repents and seeks His mercy, and 6) the renunciation of violence against others and the steadfast refusal to use violence or coercion in order to establish God’s reign. Some feminists perceive the image of God the Father as sexist and therefore exclusive. Without doubt, however, Jesus Himself intended the image as unrestrictedly inclusive. Faith and trust in the Father requires the willingness to live as brothers and sisters united in the one human family of God. The family of God includes anyone repentantly obedient to the vision of the kingdom. Moreover, God’s family excludes no one in principle and seeks to include all people, both men and women, on an egalitarian basis. The family of God reaches out actively to those whom society regards as expendable: the degraded, the outcast, the marginal, the most wretched. God’s children even long to welcome their repentant enemies as brothers and sisters in the Lord. As we also saw in reflecting on synoptic narrative Christology, for Jesus, faith did not mean abstract intellectual assent to religious propositions. It meant the willingness to recognize the revelatory character of His own person and ministry and therefore to trust in the Father whom He proclaimed. In Jesus’ religious vision, trust in God’s providential care over one’s life frees one to share one’s “bread,” the physical supports of one’s life with those in greatest need. Such sharing redefines the purpose of human labor. Those who share the mind of Christ renounce the selfish accumulation of wealth. Instead they labor in order to have something to share with the needy and with the marginal. Christian sharing also typically takes the form of hospitality. It seeks to create a community of sharing. Jesus not only trusted the Father but did so unconditionally. Jesus laid down His life in obedience to the Father and in doing so trusted Him to transform His very death into a life-giving event for others, an event which would bind them even more closely to God. He embodied that trust when He instituted the eucharist. Because sharing the physical supports of life expresses trust in God, unconditioned trust demands unconditioned sharing in the sense that one refuses to set conditions in principle on one’s willingness to share with others. By that I mean that when one shares in the image of Jesus, one does not ask whether others deserve what one shares with them but whether or not they need it. Christian sharing therefore seeks to break down the barriers which keep people from sharing bread with one another in community. It seeks in this sense to create a classless society.
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Because Christian sharing excludes no one, it seeks to create an all-encompassing human community of faith. In Jesus’ preaching, sharing must also express mutual forgiveness. It finds expression, therefore, in table fellowship with sinners and with the outcast. It embraces one’s enemies. Mutual and universal forgiveness also authenticates Christian prayer. It welcomes heretics. Moreover, authentic worship of the Father grounds the kingdom and motivates living according to its moral demands. Finally, as Paul the apostle saw, in the eschatological age begun by the resurrection, Christian sharing includes sharing the Breath’s charisms. That sharing creates in turn the shared hope, faith, and love of the Church and thus gives one access to the mind of Christ. The Breath of Christ empowered Jesus’ mission. Her inspirations endowed what He said and did with divine authority. Those who share the mind of Christ find themselves also drawn into His mission. They prolong His proclamation of the kingdom. They seek, therefore, to draw all people into its ambit. Only Jesus, however, functions as the efficacious source of the Breath. Hence, only Jesus possesses Her in eschatological plentitude. One’s charismatic empowerment by the Breath of Christ therefore gives practical definition to the way in which both individual Christians and Christian communities seek to advance the overall mission of Christ in the world. These, then, constitute fundamental moral demands of life in the kingdom. They also make sense of the Tridentine teaching that Jesus not only redeems us but demands our obedience. Indeed, our very obedience to the vision of the kingdom redeems us by schooling us in a universal divine love. Still, Trent’s assertion that Jesus functions redemptively as a “legislator” needs qualification. Jesus’ does make specific moral demands of His followers; but He does so by calling them beyond a law-and-order ethic to a religious, melioristic morality of ideals. (Cf. DS 1571) Indeed, as the apostle Paul saw clearly, Jesus “legislates” precisely in a way which saves humanity from the law and from all forms of shallow legalism.4 Obedience to the moral demands of life in the kingdom also saves us from sin by undoing the consequences of sin in our own hearts and in our world. Sin, as we saw earlier in this chapter, transforms toil into drudgery. The vision of the kingdom saves us by redeeming human labor from the greed which exploits the labor of the poor. The kingdom also redeems labor by giving it a new purpose: namely, the creation of a community of sharing which reaches out to the neediest in society. 4. I began to explore the way in which the human conscience assimilates such an ethical vision at the end of volume two; and I shall extend that exploration still further in the final section of this volume. Here I merely note the soteriological implications of shifting from law-and-order ethics to the morality of faith demanded by the kingdom.
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Sin gives rise to sexual oppression. The vision of the kingdom demands repentance of all embodiments of sexism in the Church as well as in secular society. The kingdom therefore saves us by demanding an end to the battle of the sexes which both sexism and reverse sexism perpetuate. The kingdom also forbids the sexual abuse of other persons; and the paschal mystery requires us to reverence the bodies of believers as temples of the divine Breath. The kingdom, moreover, creates an egalitarian community of mutual sharing. As Paul the apostle correctly saw, that sharing also includes the Breath’s charisms. In God’s kingdom, therefore, men and women both have access to the same kinds of charismatic ministry, including ordained ministry, provided they manifest the competence in faith to minister. Sin divides humans from one another through deeds of violence. The vision of the kingdom saves us by demanding the healing of violence through mutual forgiveness and reconciliation. It also commits the children of God to walking the same path of non-violent, prophetic resistance to evil as Jesus did. Sin subjects humans to the principalities and powers of this world. The vision of the kingdom saves us by subverting the powers. It demands that those in positions of authority function not as tyrants but as the loving and voluntary slaves of the communities they serve. Sin corrupts the human heart. The vision of the kingdom saves us by healing the corrupted heart through repentance and gospel living. Sin mars creation and destroys its beauty through selfish exploitation. The vision of the kingdom saves us by demanding the renunciation of the kind of selfishness which spawns environmental degradation. The kingdom thus prepares the new creation by healing the destructive impact of sin upon the old one. Sin separates one from God. Obedience to the vision of the kingdom reconciles one to God. Incorporation into the kingdom also breaks the power of death which results from sin; for those who embody the kingdom live Breath-filled lives which will one day culminate in perfect union with God. The New Testament distinguishes between sin as an act and sin as a state. Obedience to the demands of life in the kingdom rectifies sinful acts by conforming them to the will of God. The same obedience heals the state of sin by creating grace-filled institutional environments which counter the corrupting influence of original sin and concupiscence. These reflections on the second way in which Jesus saves us also lend doctrinal sanction to two aspects of Jonathan Edwards’s aesthetic Christology. First of all, these reflections clarify the meaning of Christian practice, Edwards’s twelfth and culminating sign of truly gracious affections. By that I mean that Christian practice invokes a melioristic ethical ideal-
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ism which discovers in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom the ultimate moral aims and ideals of Christian living. Second, the preceding reflections also confirm Edward’s understanding of sin as dissent from God and from those whom God loves. By the same token, they also confirm Edwards’s doctrinal rendering of salvation as the cosmic unification of consent. Moreover, as in Edwards’s Christology, an experiential rendering of salvation portrays consent to the divine excellence incarnate in Jesus as God’s saving strategy for reunifying a sin-shattered world of warring experiences. Moreover, in a metaphysics of experience, the cosmic unification of consent assimilates the saved persuasively into the mutual consent of love which unifies the divine experience. The Breath’s empowering illumination lays a new foundation within experience for evoking that consent by healing, perfecting, and elevating natural and sinful attitudes, habits, and commitments. In the preceding paragraphs, I have considered the second way in which Jesus saves us: namely, by His proclamation of God’s reign. Jesus, however, saves us ultimately and especially through the paschal mystery. To this third aspect of His saving ministry I turn in the paragraphs which follow. The paschal mystery inaugurates the work of saving sinners by bringing the life and ministry of Jesus to revelatory completion. As we saw in volume one, Jesus saves us in the paschal mystery in three obvious ways. First, Jesus died to all sin on Calvary. Second, Jesus rose as a “life giving Breath.” Third, in rising and sending the Breath, Jesus revealed historically and eschatologically salvation’s universal scope. Let us reflect doctrinally on each of these points in turn. The crucified savior embodies the perfection of sinless obedience to God. As the apostle Paul saw clearly, on the cross Jesus, through His obedience to the Father even to death, died once and for all to sin. Moreover, as the Beloved Disciple teaches, in dying to sin, the crucified Jesus also confronts the world as the divine Bridegroom, as the perfect human embodiment of the forgiving love of God. A Pauline and a Johannine theology of the cross express, then, the negative and positive side of the same divine mystery. In addition, because of the Beloved Disciple’s single-minded focus on the paschal mystery, Johannine theology spells out in even greater detail than Paul the practical conditions for conformity to Jesus in His death. As we have seen, the Beloved Disciple roots his account of the moral demands of discipleship, not so much in Jesus’ public proclamation of the kingdom as in the paschal mystery itself. In the Johannine Jesus’ last discourse, the entire paschal mystery—Jesus’ death, resurrection, and mission of His Breath—endows Jesus’ commands to His disciples with their eschatological newness. The disciples’ faith must embody itself in a love and service which imitates the love and service of the crucified savior. In
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Johannine morality, therefore, the ultimate test of dying to sin consists in the loving willingness to lay down one’s very life for God and for those whom God loves. God, moreover, even loves “the world,” the very human forces massed against Jesus in homicidal fury. The divine love incarnate in Jesus yearns for the world’s salvation. Pauline soteriology, as we have seen, equates “death to sin” with putting on the mind of Christ, i.e. with practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. Moreover, as we saw in volume one, Paul’s understanding of the “mind of Christ” echoes in significant ways the ethics of discipleship which the synoptic evangelists put upon Jesus’ own lips. An experiential account of Christological soteriology discovers, then, complementarity, not contradiction, in the Pauline and Johannine accounts of the moral demands of discipleship. Moreover, Pauline morality echoes in significant ways a synoptic account of the moral demands of discipleship. Those demands endow both the kingdom and salvation with clarifying, practical meaning. In fact, the paschal mystery radicalizes the practical demands which the kingdom made upon Jesus Himself. The kingdom demands trust in the Father. By dying in obedience to His mission from the Father, Jesus embodied total and unconditioned trust. The kingdom requires one to share with others one’s bread, the physical supports of one’s life, as an expression of one’s trust in God’s providential care. In dying, Jesus shares His own body with others as the eucharistic bread which enlivens them. In Jesus’ vision of the kingdom, unconditioned trust in God requires the willingness to share with others on the basis of need and not of merit only. Such unconditioned sharing transforms the kingdom into a community of “nuisances and nobodies” which reaches out in reconciling love to the neediest and the most marginal. On Calvary, Jesus identifies with the marginal by enduring ultimate personal marginalization, execution by ecclesiastical authorities as a sinner and blasphemer and by civil authorities as a criminal. The kingdom demands mutual forgiveness as the ultimate test of prayer. Jesus’ death on the cross out of love even for those who betrayed, abandoned, denied, and murdered Him transforms His final prayer in some versions of Luke, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing,” into the ultimate measure of the authentic worship of the Father. By radicalizing the very ethical program which Jesus proclaimed as the kingdom, the paschal mystery confronts believers as Jesus’ final and ultimate embodiment of its meaning. One need not, therefore, choose between a Johannine and a synoptic account of the moral demands of discipleship. Both traditions articulate complementary insights into the way in which Jesus saves us.
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The paschal mystery includes more, however, than the passion. It also includes both the resurrection and the sending of the divine Breath. Moreover, as we have seen, apart from the mission of the Breath, the resurrection remains incomplete. The resurrection marks the perfection of Jesus’ transformation in the Breath. That transformation, however, also reveals Him as the divine source of Her historical mission; for, in the last analysis, only God can send God. As we saw in volume one, in asserting that the last Adam became a life-giving Breath, Paul the apostle meant among other things that His resurrection marked the culmination of His human transformation in the Breath of God. Paul also meant that anyone who has the Breath of the risen Christ possesses divine, risen life. Christological knowing, or practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath, saves sinners by teaching them to define their religious identities in the image of the risen Christ. Christological knowing prolongs the revelation of Jesus’ resurrection in space and time, because through His resurrection appearances, Jesus stands eschatologically and, therefore, historically revealed as the Breath’s efficacious source. Moreover because the Breath’s historical mission effects Christological knowing, its teleological trajectory also reveals the Breath’s source: namely, the risen Christ to whom She conforms those who believe. A metaphysics of experience also makes doctrinal sense of the Pauline assertion that moral and religious transformation in God through practical faith culminates in bodily resurrection. In its account of personal growth, that metaphysics blurs somewhat the distinction between ethics and metaphysics. It does so by teaching that our finite human decisions, including our moral choices, determine the kind of personal reality we eventually become really and, therefore, metaphysically. The history of our personal decisions defines our “essence” (i.e., what we eventually become) not some idea reified as a principle of being. In other words, in a world of self-defining, developing experiences, if one chooses to respond to God in the way in which Jesus did, then one will surely become like Him and will therefore eventually resemble Him in His risen glory. Resurrection means total transformation in God after death. Jesus’ resurrection appearances revealed the total transformation of His humanity in God after His death. The Breath’s action in our own lives functions as a “downpayment” on our own resurrection because it begins a personal and communal transformation in God which will reach its culmination when we too experience personally and collectively a total transformation in God analogous to that which Jesus experienced. Despite the mysterious character of resurrection, we who believe hope for it in sure confidence because we have already embarked down the road which leads to
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risen life through our practical imitation of the risen one in the power of His Breath. Graced assimilation to Jesus also adopts us sinners into the family of God. We know only adopted filiation because, unlike the second person of the trinity, we human persons do not share by our natures in the social life of the deity. Our adopted status also reflects the fact that our participation in divine life translates us from a state of sinful rupture with God into a life-giving participation in the divine reality. Jesus, the divine Son of God incarnate, never knew sin. In addition, our adopted status also reflects the fact that we participate in divine life as human persons who respond with human autonomy to the divine initiative, while Jesus, who speaks and acts with divine autonomy, confronts us as the human experience of being a divine person and therefore as the sinless, prototypical human. Finally, our adopted status results from the utter gratuity of grace, from the fact that it comes to us as free gift and not as something due us by nature. I have been reflecting on the third way in which Jesus saves us, namely, through the paschal mystery and through everything which it signifies. In the paragraphs which follow, I shall ponder the fourth way in which Jesus saves us: namely, through the abiding presence of the His divine Breath in a sinful world.5 Pauline and Lukan Christology agree in ascribing the ultimate revelation of God’s desire to save all people to the present action of Christ’s Breath in a world transformed by His resurrection. As we have already seen in earlier volumes, Jesus’ preaching quite plausibly included a universalist strain, even though He Himself confined Him ministry to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” By a universalist strain, I mean that He foresaw a day which would gather the Gentiles too into God’s reign. That universalist strain also grounds Christian belief in God’s desire to save all people. The action of the Breath, moreover, dramatizes the divine desire to save. God withholds Her from no one who seeks Her saving light in the obedience of faith. Paul and Luke asserted the universality of salvation in different theological and pastoral contexts. Paul’s battle to incorporate Gentile Christians into the Church on the same footing as Jewish Christians contextualizes His proclamation of God’s universal saving will. A Lukan interpretation of universal salvation reflects more the evangelist’s theology of salvation history. In Luke’ vision, the age of the Breath marks the final stage in that history, the eschatological stage which mediates between the 5. Cf. Thomas Weinandy, O.F.M. Cap., In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh: An Essay on the Humanity of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993); John P. Galvan, “The Origin of Faith in the Resurrection: Two Recent Perspectives,” Theological Studies, 49(1988), pp. 25-44.
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resurrection and the second coming. During the final age of salvation any attempt to block the saving action of Christ’s Breath only spreads Her saving illumination to more and more people. As a consequence, Luke portrays the spread of the gospel generally and especially Paul’s Gentile mission as largely the result of resistance to the gospel from those who refuse to believe. The fact that Luke, like Paul, ministered to a predominantly Gentile community no doubt helped color his universalist vision. One can understand the universal saving consequences of the paschal mystery intensively or extensively. Viewed intensively, universal salvation includes every aspect of the human person, even the physical dimensions of human experience. As Pauline theology evolves, especially in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians, the redemption of the body expands to include the entire physical cosmos.6 Christians long for the creation of a new heaven and a new earth. As the book of Revelation insists, that longing flows from the woes of the end time as we know it. Those woes result from both chance and cataclysm: from earthquake, flood, drought, and the spread of illness. The woes of the end time also flow from the intransigent refusal of humans to repent of their sinfulness. Prophetic conflict with Satan and with the powers of evil which rule this world augment the sufferings of the saved. Because Christian revelation includes the cross at its heart, the incarnation reveals that God does not save finite, vulnerable humans from suffering but through it. We find salvation by entering into the atonement of Christ: by suffering natural evil as well as the consequences of sin without sinning. The longing for a new heaven and a new earth also springs from resurrection faith. Christian faith insists with the apostle Paul on the bodily character of the resurrection. Bodies have environments. The risen body differs from our physical bodies; one would, then, anticipate that those who rise with Christ will exist in a proportionately different environment, one purified of the sin and suffering which characterizes our present environments. Christians call such an environment purified of all sin, suffering, and injustice “the new creation.” An experiential interpretation of final resurrection respects the mystery which attends faith in the risen Christ. Like the New Testament, it leaves the shape of the world to come shrouded in the same vagueness as the shape of Jesus’ risen body. We do not know clearly what precise form the new creation will take; but we do know that it will participate in the same mode of being as the risen Jesus. 6. Cf. John R. Sachs, S.J., “Apokatastasis in Patristic Theology,” Theological Studies, 54(1993), pp. 617-640; David M. Kelly, “‘Apokatastasis’ in the Early Church,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 9(1990), pp. 71-74.
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We Christians long, then, for a world purified of sin, suffering, and institutional injustice, for a world transformed by the face-to-face vision of God. The book of Revelation portrays the new Jerusalem descending from heaven as an narrative symbol of the fact that God must create the future shape of things. We therefore leave its final definition in God’s capable hands. For the present, we wait in hope to see what God will eventually do. With the New Testament, we call the risen body “angelic” as a way of indicating that it has a character compatible with existence in perfect loving union with God in heaven. The nature of that character remains, however, vague in this life. In the preceding reflections, I have stressed the positive consequences of salvation in Christ; but that salvation has negative consequences as well. In Pauline soteriology, for example, Jesus saves believers from sin, death, and the Law. The preceding reflections clarify the operational consequences of these basic Pauline insights. Jesus saves us from the Law by proclaiming an ethics of ideals which demands more than the Law did, not less. He also saves us from the Law by sending His Breath to empower us to live that ethics of faith. The Breath of the risen Jesus functions as the Law of the New Covenant. Salvation from the Law in the power of the Breath necessarily entails salvation from sin, since the Breath of Jesus teaches those who respond to Her how to live sinless lives in His image. Jesus saves us from death by imparting now a share in His risen life through the gift of the divine Breath. As we put on the mind of Christ by living in Jesus’ image we advance our transformation in the Breath of the risen Christ; and that transformation will culminate one day in our resurrection, in our total transformation in God after death. This section has pondered four ways in which Jesus saves us. In a contemporary context, the universal scope of salvation in Christ raises two sets of doctrinal issues. First, the cosmic scope of salvation in Christ causes one to coordinate Christological soteriology with evolutionary theory. Second, the fact that God wills the salvation of all peoples forces one to face the question of religious pluralism; and reflection on religious pluralism raises the further question of how to approach the dialogue among world religions in a Christological context. To these issues I turn in the next section. (III) How, then, in the context of a metaphysics of experience, ought one to interpret the cosmic dimensions of salvation in Christ? In order to answer that doctrinal question, one must deal first with the evolutionary Christology of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955). Teilhard’s Christological thinking advanced in an interdisciplinary manner. It blended insights from his scientific studies of human origins, from Maurice Blondel’s
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philosophy of action, from Transcendental Thomism, and from Pauline Christology. Blondel discovered within activity a capacity for self-transcendence which aspires to the infinite.7 Teilhard invoked the same insight as the explanatory key to cosmic evolution. For Teilhard, the universe in its evolutionary thrust drives toward personalization. It achieves this end through the creation of different overlapping and interacting spheres of activity. The roundness of the earth makes the emergence of these spheres possible. The biosphere took evolutionary shape when life first swarmed over the planet. As living things interacted and evolved within this living planetary envelope, the biosphere developed into the noosphere. The noosphere consists of conscious life. Its emergence created a second living layer enveloping the planet earth. The evolution of consciousness culminates in human social self-awareness. Human consciousness, like organic life, evolves by growing in complexity. In the process, shared consciousness acquires greater freedom and thrusts toward an “Omega point” whose ultimate scope stands historically revealed in the glorification of the Word made flesh.8 For Teilhard, then, Christ reveals both historically and eschatologically the Omega point of natural evolution. Like his friend and colleague Henri De Lubac, Teilhard believed that one can distinguish in the abstract the natural from the supernatural order of reality; but he also believed that we live concretely in a world transformed by supernatural grace. The incarnate Word of God, therefore, provides the world with its actual, concrete center. In other words, Teilhard recognized the distinction between the physical, the psychic, and the supernatural; but he saw all their radiating energies focused upon God incarnate. Teilhard did not hesitate to identify Christ as the “physical center” of the universe. The action of divine grace advances Christogenesis, or the historical evolution of the “fullness of Christ.”9 Despite occasional accusations to the contrary, Teilhard did not blind himself to the problem of evil. He did, however, tend to understand evil as the pain and suffering which necessarily accompany human progress toward Omega. Evolutionary progress encompasses, then, the evil of dis7. Cf. James M. Somerville, Total Commitment: Blondel’s L’Action (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1968); Henri Bouillard, Blondel and Christianity, translated by James M. Somerville (Washington, DC: Corpus Books, 1969). 8. Cf. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, The Phenomenon of Man, translated by Sir Julian Huxley (New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1961); Christopher F. Mooney, S.J., Teilhard de Chardin and the Mystery of Christ (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1968), 17-73. 9. In Teilhard’s vision, Christogenesis endows eucharistic theology with both soteriological and evolutionary significance. Through the transubstantiation of the eucharistic elements, physical matter becomes the incarnate God in order to advance the work of Christogenesis. Cf. Mooney, op.cit., 75-111.
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order and of failure. The cross reveals that death itself marks a transformative moment in the total process of Christogenesis. Progress toward Omega demands as a consequence not only the graced transformation of our active capacity for life and development but also our negative capacity for diminishment, suffering, and death. Teilhard called the latter the “divinization of our passivities.” In Teilhard’s evolving universe, the forces of life have the last word. Resurrection establishes Jesus Christ as the cosmic center of the universe. The risen Christ gives rise to the Church; and the Church in its turn embodies a genetic phylum of divine love within the total cosmic process, a phylum which draws humanity forward to Omega. The Parousia will give final definition to the meaning of Omega. In the meantime, the Church faces the challenge of synthesizing in conscious, creative faith the natural energy which promotes an evolution suffused with supernatural Christ-life. The graced evolution of the world transforms noogenesis into Christogenesis. It effects the pleromization of the universe in Christic life by drawing more and more persons and communities into divine union in the body of Christ. That union brings God-life to completion, not by adding anything to God, but by accomplishing the final transformation of the universe in God.10 As I have already indicated, Teilhard’s thought blends scientific, philosophical, and theological elements. Subsequent critical reflection on his evolutionary Christology has suggested the need to qualify all three components in his thought. As we have seen, Teilhard acknowledged the problem of evil and attempted in some measure to deal with it. I am, however, inclined to agree with Juan Luis Segundo when he faults Teilhard’s evolutionary theory with excessive optimism and with a failure to take into sufficient account the law of entropy.11 Evolution does not merely wind up; it also winds down. Instead of an inexorable march toward the Omega point, the world process also exemplifies regression and degradation. Teilhard’s optimism roots itself in philosophical and theological soil. As we have already see, Blondel’s philosophy of action projects into decisive human acts the same kind of virtual infinity which Transcendental Thomism discovers in the agent intellect. All growth of necessity involves self-transcendence; but the experience of self-transcendence need not spring from some a priori orientation toward infinity, whether one locates that orientation in action or in the intellect. A more sober and realistic analysis of human experience sug10. Ibid., pp. 156-99. 11. Cf. Juan Luis Segundo, A Evolutionary Approach to Jesus of Nazareth, edited and translated by John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988).
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gests rather that growth, including conscious human growth, follows finite needs and finite interests. As we have seen, theological motives also informed Teilhard’s thought. He found a theological corollary to Blondel’s analysis of action in the Thomistic doctrine of a natural human desire for the beatific vision. Teilhard’s friend and colleague, Henri de Lubac defended this Thomistic thesis.12 In transcendental Thomism, the intellectual desire for union with God results from the virtual infinity of the agent intellect, whose formal object endows it with an a priori thrust toward Being. In Transcendental Thomism, Being as such ultimately coincides with the triune God. Teilhard placed humanity at the apex of the evolutionary process. He also viewed humanity through the eyes of Blondel and de Lubac. He therefore discovered within cosmic evolution a spontaneous thrust toward God which Christogenesis supernaturalizes. These tacit philosophical and theological assumptions help explain Teilhard’s somewhat overly optimistic portrait of cosmic evolution. In my judgment, C.S. Peirce offers a more sober as well as a sounder assessment of the forces which shape evolution. Besides teleology, Peirce suggests that both chance and cataclysm mark the process of cosmic evolution. Evolutionary chance takes the form of sporting, or random genetic mutation. Cataclysmic environmental changes can eliminate entire species. Cataclysms can also force other species to evolve by adapting to changed environmental conditions. In other words, evolution need not always exemplify teleology, or law. When, moreover, one includes the law of entropy among the laws which guide evolution, then Teilhard’s sunny depiction of the upward evolutionary thrust toward Omega gives way to a somewhat darker but probably more accurate portrait of the world process.13 In this context, I note that chaos theory poses a challenge to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, often called the law of entropy. Entropy demands the constant and inevitable winding down of the universe. Unimpeachable as a rule of thermodynamics, entropy fails finally to describe exhaustively organization and disorganization in nature. Randomness, as Peirce suggested, breeds its own kind of order. Despite the law of entropy, life and structure emerge in nature and produce irregular order from pure disorder. Indeed, chaos theory would seem to validate a closer relationship between chance and tendency, or law, than classical science would allow.14 12. Cf. Henri de Lubac, Le mystère du surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965). 13. Cf. Heinz Schürmann, Jesu ureigener Tod (Freiburg: Herder, 1975), pp. 121-155. 14. Cf. James Gleick, Nature’s Chaos, photographs by Eliot Porter (New York, NY: Viking, 1990), pp. 34, 37.
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Peirce’s evolutionary theory combined elements from Darwinism, Lamarckism, and cataclysmic evolution. In Darwinian theory, two natural processes shape the trajectory of evolution: chance genetic variations and the processes of natural selection. Natural selection directs the movement of evolution by insuring the survival of the fittest. Since Darwinian evolution invokes chance sporting, Peirce calls it “tychasticism” from the Greek word for chance (tychê).15 Besides chance, cataclysm, the play of brute forces in nature, can also cause organic adaptation. Cataclysmic evolution shapes the course of evolution when it puts some organisms at an advantage and others at a disadvantage. The cutting of the Grand Canyon, for example, isolated the squirrels living on the north from those living on the south rim. Originally identical, the squirrels on the north rim have evolved differently from those living on the south rim. A thousand feet higher than the south rim, the north rim sees much more snow in winter. The whiteness of the snow in winter made brown squirrels more vulnerable to predators. As a consequence, the squirrels on the north rim have evolved a white mantle on their shoulders for camouflage, a trait which their cousins on the south rim have never developed. Cataclysmic evolution invokes physical necessity. In Greek, the noun “anagkê ” means necessity. Peirce therefore dubbed cataclysmic evolution “anancasticism.” In Lamarckian theory, evolutionary change results from the striving of individuals. Peirce confined this form of evolution to conscious, purposive striving; and, with hints from the fourth evangelist, he called this kind of purposive evolution agapastic because, in order to move the world process forward, purposive evolution must root itself in love (agapê). As Peirce put it: “Love, recognizing germs of loveliness in the hateful, gradually warms it into life and makes it lovely.”16 Agapastic evolution renders the evolutionary process consciously and aesthetically purposive. Peirce’s agapastic evolution corresponds to Teilhard’s noogensis. Since, moreover, Peirce derives the idea of agapastic evolution from the Beloved Disciple, this form of evolution would remain open to Teilhard’s Christogenesis. Tychasticism and ananchasticism together explain biogenesis.17 15. Cf. Elizabeth A. Johnson, C.S.J., “Does God Play Dice? Divine Providence and Chance,” Theological Studies, 57(1996), pp. 3-18: J.M. Maldamé. O.P., “Le Christ et l’univers. Dialogue entre la théologie et la cosmologie scientifique,” Angelicum, 74(1997), pp. 335-358. 16. Cf. Peirce, Collected Papers, 6.289. 17. Peirce looked upon conscious evolution which results from logical necessity as a degenerate from of ananchastic evolution. True agapastic evolution occurs when an individual adopts a new insight because of its spontaneous attractiveness. Communities, however, also evolve when they pass on shared insights to members who would otherwise never have the insight. Sometimes, too sympathetic association with a community will cause an individual to reach on his own some insight which that community shares. Peirce, however, regarded the latter two forms of agapastic
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The philosophy of experience developed in this study regards every instance of spatio-temporal experience as radically finite. Organic growth responds to finite needs and interests, not to some fixed a priori thrust toward infinity. Human desires reflect and lead human histories. They do not always lead it forward and upward. Nor do they inevitably spring from some fixed essential orientation of spirit. The conscious human capacity to convert naturally at an affective, intellectual, moral, and socio-political level endows human experience with an “obediential potency” for divine grace, because the human capacity to act with natural responsibility automatically endows humans with the capacity to respond in a responsible way to the gratuitous historical self-revelation and self-donation of God, if and when it occurs. When that self-revelation happens, however, humans encounter it as a pure and unmerited gift over and above the gift of creation: in other words, as supernatural. Natural creation prescinds in its processing from supernatural revelation. In the context of a metaphysics of experience, Christogenesis transmutes biogenesis and noogenesis through the synergy of divine and human energy in graced human choices. Moreover, Christogenesis transvalues noogenesis by teaching finite humans to put on the mind of Christ corporately and communally. How, then, in an experiential context ought one to interpret the “pleromization” of creation. As we saw in volume one, Pauline Christology conceives the “pleroma” in dynamic soteriological terms. Graced participation in the ministry and reconciling death of Christ creates the pleroma. As Christian communities suffer physical and moral evil without sinning, they create environments of grace which advance the world’s salvation toward its ultimate fulfillment in Christ. The Breath of Christ also contributes to the saving fullness of redemption. Moreover, Her action in the Christian community exemplifies the third way in which the paschal mystery saves us. The Breath of Jesus inspires justifying faith. She also comes in sanctification, in order to teach us, in the myriad circumstances in which different communities of disciples live out their lives, how to embody the same excellence as Jesus did. Only the Breath of God can conform finite human decisions to those of Jesus because only the presence of God within finite human hearts can teach them to love with the universality of divine love. Left only to its natural resources, the human heart spontaneously loves its own; but it does not spontaneously love the alien. It does not spontaneously love enemies, as the American obsession with the legalized evolution as degenerate. For a more detailed discussion of these and related issues, see: Vincent C. Potter, S.J., Charles Peirce on Norms and Ideals (Worcester, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1967), pp. 171-190.
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form of murder euphemistically called the death penalty illustrates all too well. Even should the human mind conceive naturally the moral ideal of universal human benevolence, without the healing, perfecting, and elevating presence of the divine Breath, the human heart will fail practically to live that ideal. Even with Her help, we still fail all too often. The Breath’s charismatic activity creates the pleroma by creating the Church’s shared faith consciousness. Converted Christian communities of atoning love come to share faith consciousness through sharing their memories, hopes, and lives. That sharing engages all the charisms. Prophets and evangelists summon the Christian community to ongoing conversion. Gifts of prayer, of healing, and of miracles create a felt sense of the living presence of the risen Christ among His people. Teachers enable the Church to reappropriate in an ongoing way the saving events which give rise to it: Jesus’ life, ministry, death, resurrection, and historical mission of the divine Breath. The Church’s reappropriation of its story creates its present sense of identity. Prophets and teachers help the Christian community understand more clearly the future to which God calls it. Discerners facilitate the community’s shared activity by distinguishing between sound and unsound doctrine and practice. Then the action gifts, like helping, administration, and pastoral leadership mobilize the charisms of the entire community in order to transform its hopes for the future into actuality. In creating the shared faith consciousness of the Church, the Breath of Christ advances the pleroma, the fullness of salvation which the paschal mystery effects. It does so by creating in this world environments of saving grace which anticipate, albeit imperfectly, the ultimate, sinless, wholly life-giving, divine environment which the New Testament calls “a new heaven and a new earth” and “the heavenly Jerusalem.” Jesus, then, did not content Himself with leaving behind a religious doctrine in the manner of other merely human founders of religions. He sent the living reality of the divine Breath to inspire practical faith in human hearts and to empower them by Her suasive enlightenment to embody the mind of Christ corporately and personally. Breath-inspired conformity to Christ begins personal and corporate resurrection. It creates environments of grace which advance the pleroma, the fullness of salvation for which Christians long. I turn now to the second set of doctrinal issues which the universal scope of salvation in Christ raises. I refer, of course, to the way in which Christianity views other world religions. Echoing themes already considered above, the second Vatican council correctly taught that God wills the salvation of all people. The council also committed the Catholic Church to an ongoing dialogue with nonChristian religions; and, in that context, the council acknowledged the
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presence of both truth and holiness in religions other than Christianity. (Nostra aetate, 1-2.) Does that mean, then, that people who do not confess Christ can stand in a saving, life-giving relationship to God? If they do, then what does that say about the normative claims of Christian revelation? The dialogue among the world religions has only taken its first toddling steps; but already it has given us good reason to believe that all major religions share a certain number of very general beliefs. They all assert, for example, the existence of some supreme reality. They all teach that the human mind can never encompass that reality in concepts and images. One could expand the list further.18 Nevertheless, the world religions also differ profoundly in both doctrine and practice. Moreover, the theoretical and practical interpretation of religious experience conditions how it evolves. Should other religions contradict the saving truth which Jesus embodies concretely and normatively, then they would lead away from God rather than to God. Cultures colored by Confucianism tend, for example, to regard all religions as relative and as subordinate to morality. Confucian culture therefore inclines people to believe that as long as religions will promote rea18. In a fascinating summary of the results of an experiment in approaching the dialogue among world religions via spirituality, Thomas Keating reports that those involved in the dialogue agreed on the following doctrinal points: 1. The world religions bear witness to the experience of Ultimate Reality to which they give various names: Brahman, Allah, Absolute, God, Great Spirit. 2. Ultimate Reality cannot be limited by any name or concept. 3. Ultimate Reality is the ground of infinite potentiality and actualization. 4. Faith is opening, accepting, and responding to Ultimate Reality. Faith in this sense precedes every belief system. 5. The potential for human wholeness—or in other frames of reference, enlightenment, salvation, transformation, blessedness, nirvana—is present in every human person. 6. Ultimate Reality may be experienced not only through religious practices but also through nature, art, human relationships, and service of others. 7. As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance and illusion, weakness and suffering. 8. Disciplined practice is essential to the spiritual life; yet spiritual attainment is not the result of one’s own efforts, but the result of the experience of oneness with Ultimate Reality. In addition, the participants in Keating’s dialogue agreed on the importance of eight different religious practices. See: Thomas Keating, “Theological Issues In Meditative Techniques,” The Way: Supplement 78 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 54-63. See also: F. Heiler, “The History of Religions as a Preparation for the Cooperation of Religions” in The History of Religions, edited by M. Eliade and J. Kitagawa (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1959), pp. 142-153. For a discussion of theological issues raised by the dialogue among world religions, see: Hans Küng, Josef van Ess, Heinrich von Steitencron, Heinz Bechert, Christianity and World Religions: Paths to Dialogue (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986).
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sonably moral public lives, they are all leading in the same direction. People whose attitudes reflect Confucian values tend, as a consequence, to religious syncretism rather than to conversion. Conversion, however, lies at the heart of Christian faith and practice. In other words, syncretistic religions and Christianity differ profoundly in their fundamental moral presuppositions. They will, therefore, inculcate very different religious beliefs, attitudes, and practices. Cultural and historical relativists question whether any particular historical embodiment of religious faith can make normative claims on other religious systems. When relativism roots itself in nominalistic presuppositions, as it often does in the west, it regards history as a collection of valueless facts which subjective human sentiments endow with religious meaning. History, however, contains much more than valueless facts. The world abounds in tendencies, in laws, and therefore in real “oughts.” We ought to observe the laws of nature, because they operate with supreme indifference to human survival. When we flout them, they can and do exact a terrible price of us, as the world ecological crisis dramatizes all too well. Empirical science studies and articulates natural laws. Science deals, therefore, with more than bare facts. Science explains facts by laws, by understanding the general tendencies in nature which make concrete events intelligible. Incarnational religion creates the possibility of fixing theistic beliefs empirically. One fixes beliefs empirically by studying the personal, divine dynamism incarnate in Jesus Christ. In Jesus Christ we encounter God incarnate. Other people, both men and women, have founded religions; but, apart from Jesus, no other human religious founder confronts us as a divine person incarnate. No other religious founder embodies a sinless humanity. The religious tendencies embodied in Jesus provide, as a result, a unique and indispensable norm for measuring the authenticity of all other religious beliefs and practices. Jesus, precisely in His religious and moral uniqueness, confronts humanity as an embodied religious ought, as the historically normative revelation of who God is and of how humans ought to relate to such a God. The incarnation, in virtue of its very embodied uniqueness measures the saving significance of every other human response to God and therefore enjoys a paradigmatic, universal normativity. As a result, the fact of the incarnation makes inevitable the Christian claim that ultimately salvation comes in no other name than that of Jesus. If Jesus embodies the saving reality of God in normative ways, then nothing which contradicts the revelation of God in Christ counts as religiously authentic. By reverse logic, whatever conforms to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ gives evidence of divine, saving inspiration, whether or not it occurs in a Christian context.
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The kind of normativity embodied in Jesus does not require that the saved relive His life. The analogy of experience precludes that possibility. The gospel instead challenges Christians to allow the Breath of Christ to blow in lives and historical circumstances vastly different from first-century Palestine. Nevertheless, the hypostatic union does establish Jesus as the uniquely normative historical and eschatological paradigm of both divine and human reality. Paradigmatic normativity functions analogously. Faith in Jesus requires one to live and die for the same religious realities as He but in different historical circumstances from those in which He lived. Jesus reveals God sacramentally. That means that the incarnation conceals the reality of God at the same time that it reveals it; for no finite, sacramental revelation of God can ever disclose God exhaustively. If, however, Jesus does not reveal God exhaustively, then other historical revelations of God can indeed occur. Moreover, every gracing of human experience has a sacramental revelatory character imperfectly analogous to the personal revelation of God which occurs in Jesus. As a consequence, every transformation of human experience in God through authentic religious faith both reveals and conceals the presence and reality of the God in whom that transformation occurs. Moreover, in asserting the paradigmatic normativity of Jesus in what concerns human salvation, Christians need to remember that Jesus Himself taught His own disciples to honor authentic signs of religious faith wherever they encounter it, even in those who do not belong to their inner circle. The Jesus who said, “Whoever is not with Me is against Me” also said, “Whoever is not against Me is with Me.” Christians need in faith to recognize the normativity of both statements. Some believe that unless Christianity abandons all claims to a normative revelation, it cannot enter into sincere dialogue with other religions. In my judgment, the opposite holds true. Christianity can only enter into sincere dialogue with other religions when it presents Christian beliefs accurately and truly; and, from the first, the shared faith of Christians has claimed that salvation comes to the world uniquely and normatively through Jesus. The hypostatic union makes that claim inevitable. In other religions, one can encounter holy people who speak about God and trace paths which lead toward God. Only in Christianity does one encounter God Himself in human form speaking, acting, suffering, dying, rising, and sending His Breath. I shall return to this point in a different context when I reflect on Jesus’ priesthood. Without a doubt, the success of dialogue among the world religions demands that its members approach one another with mutual openness and respect. Inter-religious dialogue needs to begin by searching for common ground: shared beliefs and shared practices. Only after establishing
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common ground will those who truly embody different world religions find it helpful to begin respectfully to explore their differences. The normative revelatory claims which Christian faith makes for incarnational religion makes Christianity different from other world religions. As a consequence, Christology will not provide a useful starting point for inter-religious dialogue. Pneumatology, however, does offer a more promising initial talking point. God breathed in ancient Judaism; and the Breath of God, who breathes where She lists, can blow in any religion. Hence, a search for the signs of Her presence in religions other than Christianity will provide a more useful beginning for interreligious dialogue than will Christology. To the extent that the Breath of God inspires genuine faith in non-Christians to that extent their religious experience reveals the reality of God really, symbolically, and sacramentally. After all, Paul the apostle cited the religious faith of the non-Christian Abraham as a paradigm for justifying Christian faith.19 19. Cf. Harold Wells, “The Holy Spirit and Theology of the Cross: Significance for Dialogue,” Theological Studies, 53(1992), pp. 476-492; Francis X. Clooney, S.J., Paul J. Griffiths, Charles Hallisey, and James Lane, “Catholic Theology and the Study of Religion in South Asia,” Theological Studies, 48(1987), pp. 677-710; Friedrich Georg Friedmann, “Christen und Juden: Postskriptum zu einer Korrespondenz mit Karl Rahner,” Stimmen der Zeit, 213(1995), pp. 30- 36; Karl-Wolfgang Tröger, “Bibel und Koran: Historische und theologische Gesichtspunkte für den christlich-muslimischen Dialog” in Tradition und Translation: Zum Problem der interkulturellen Übersetzbarkeit religiöser Phänomene, edited by Christoph Elsas et al. (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1994), pp. 422-434; Hans Küng, “Le Christ, la lumière, et les autre lumières: De la problematique des religion mondiales et de l’éthos mondial,” Lumière et Vie, 44(1995), pp. 33-43; Rene Gilbert, “The Church in Modern China,” Tripod, 15(1995), pp. 113120; Willem Berends, “African Traditional Healing Practices and the Christian Community,” Missiology: An International Review, 21(1993), pp. 275-288; Adel Theodor Khoury, “Islam, Theokratie und Toleranz,” Una Sancta: Zeitschrift für ökumenische Begegnung, 45(1990), pp. 14-19; Christian van Nispen Tot Sevenaer, “Chétiens et musulmans: De la confrontation a la rencontre,” Christus: Revue de Formation Spirituelle, 150(1991), pp. 181-192; Guilio Basetti-Sani, “Autenticita della missione profetica di Muhammed—un’ ipostesi de lavoro,” Studia Patavina, 36(1989), pp. 121-127; Thomas Michel, “Christian-Muslim Dialogue in a Changing World,” Theology Digest, 39(1992), pp. 303-332; Eugene Hillman, “Massai Religion and Inculturation,” Louvain Studies, 17(1992), pp. 351-376; A.J.V. Chandrqakanthan, “Emerging Trends in Asian Theology,” East Asian Pastoral Review, 27(1990), pp. 271-280; Edwin Mercando, “Emerging Images of the Asian Church,” Philippiniana Sacra, 76(1991), pp.77-94; Raimond Panikkar, “A Christophany for Our Times,” Theology Digest, 39(1992), pp.3-21; Kossi J.K. Tossou, “Chancen und Schwierigkeiten der Inkulturation in Africa,” Theologisch-praktische Quarltalschrift, 139(1991), pp. 49-57; Gervais Mattam, “Jesus Christ: The Unique and Universal Guru,” Salesianum, 58(1996), pp. 487-513; Ukachucwu Chr. Manus, “African Christologies: The Centre-Piece of African Christian theology,” Zeitschrift für Missionswissenschaft und Religionswissenschaft, 82(1998), pp. 3-23; G. Altner et al., ed., Evangelische Theologie: Jesus Christus zwischen Juden und Christen, 55(1995).
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The fact, moreover, that all religions, including Christianity, offer only a finite revelation of God means that they probably all have something to teach one another about the divine reality and about how to approach it. The sinfulness of every religious community also means that any genuine expression of religious faith can also challenge inauthenticity in other faiths. Gandhi the Hindu taught Christians more about Christian non-violence than Christian militarists and war-mongers ever did. In other words, if Christians approach other religions in repentant self-confrontation and with a genuine desire to learn the truth, goodness, and beauty which other religions incarnate, they can indeed sincerely enter into dialogue with other faiths. They can, moreover, do so with a humble desire to learn from those faiths; and Christians can do so without abandoning any distinctively Christian beliefs, including belief in the normativity of Christian revelation.20 The dialogue among world religions promises to raise to consciousness the common ground shared by different religious faiths. It also promises to increase that common ground. I personally deem it unlikely, however, that the dialogue among the world religions will ever yield creedal and disciplinary unanimity.21 20. In my judgment, John Hick misses this point badly. His attempt to reduce the incarnation to a metaphor proclaims something other than the shared faith of Christians and exemplifies well the deplorable habit of fixing one’s theological beliefs through taste. Cf. John Hick, The Myth of God Incarnate (London: SCM Press, 1977); The Metaphor of God Incarnate: Christology in a Pluralistic Age (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993). For a response to Hick, see: Brian Hebblethwaite, The Incarnation: Collected Essays in Christology (London: Cambridge University Press, 1987). See also: Norman Anderson, The Mystery of the Incarnation (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978). I would also take exception to Paul Knitter’s suggestion that Christians can only participate in the dialogue among the world religions by soft-pedaling Jesus’ normative uniqueness. I find it difficult to believe that entering a dialogue with other religions under such false pretenses could possibly foster mutual trust. On the contrary, it would seriously undermine that trust, since the members of other religions would recognize the pretence. Moreover, the success of Thomas Keating’s experiment in inter-religious dialogue to which I referred above disproves the necessity of following Knitter’s suggestion. Cf. Paul Knitter, No Other Name? A Critical Survey of Christian Attitudes Toward the World Religions (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1986). For some Asian approaches to Christology, see: Peter C. Phan, “Jesus Christ with an Asian Face,” Theological Studies, 57(1996), pp. 399-430. 21. For a discussion of these and related issues, see: John R. Stacer, S.J., “The Hope of a World Citizen: Beyond National Individualism” in Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Discourse in America, edited by Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. with an afterword by Robert N. Bellah (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 188-218. Cf. William Ernest Hocking, The Coming World Civilization (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1956), Living Religions and a World Faith (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1940).
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Nor do I find “anonymous Christianity” a useful rubric to invoke in approaching interreligious dialogue.22 We finally have no good reason to believe that deep down devout Hindus, Buddhists, or Muslims really believe in Christ. They may indeed have genuine religious faith which puts them in a saving, life-giving relationship with God. That faith does not, however, make them anonymously Christian. It does make them devoutly Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim. What, then, can one realistically expect at this point from inter-religious dialogue? That dialogue has already uncovered common ground uniting all religious faiths. Further dialogue promises to enlarge the beliefs and practices shared by different religious faiths. One can also expect that dialogue will increase inter-religious collaboration and mutual tolerance. More than that could conceivably come from inter-religious dialogue; but, at this point in history, I personally deem it unlikely; but, as a contrite fallibilist, I know I could prove wrong. Every religious tradition blends elements of sin and grace. If, however, one can attain salvation as a Hindu, Buddhist, or Muslim, does Christian faith bring any saving advantage? Indeed it does. It puts one in contact with the Way, the Truth, and the Life, with the one person who embodies with sinless perfection the way to salvation. Given human sinfulness and the freedom of the human will, no one can claim ultimate personal salvation as a certainty. Christians who claim to know Jesus while refusing to imitate Him have good reason to tremble before the judgment of God. Those, however, who live in the image of Christ without knowing Him consciously have, as Matthew’s gospel assures us, good reason to hope for ultimate salvation. The surest path to salvation, however, consists in knowing Jesus by consciously imitating Him; for then one walks the path which leads straight to the heavenly mansions. Salvation, after all, involves more than getting from point A to point B. It has a qualitative shape, a shape which only Jesus embodies with sinless perfection. Moreover, if the second person of the trinity stands historically revealed as the spoken Word of God: as the one through whom the triune God acts upon the world in order to create, save, or judge it, then all saving grace enters the world through Him. Even when grace illumines non-Christian hearts, it enters them through the same divine source. To live in conscious saving contact with that source offers enormous graced 22. Rahner’s doctrine of the “supernatural existential” undergirds his espousal of the anonymous Christianity of non-Christian religionists. That doctrine rests, however, on an indefensible faculty psychology. It also demands that one regard non-Christians as necessarily oriented to Christ by the fixed, universal, a priori structures of the human spirit. All such a priori reasoning rests of a seriously flawed logical foundation. Cf. Gelpi, The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology, pp. 97-107; Grace as Transmuted Experience and Social Process, pp. 67-96.
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advantages to real converts. I shall return to this point later in discussing the mediatorial significance of Jesus’ priesthood.23 Conclusion: The Pragmatic Meaning of the Hypostatic Union Contemporary Christologists debate the relationship between Christology and soteriology. Christology offers an account of the saving God revealed in Jesus Christ. Soteriology propounds a doctrine of salvation. Schillebeeckx derives Christology from soteriology. He does so because his philosophical nominalism lacks the conceptual means to speak about an encounter with the risen Christ. As a consequence, Schillebeeckx erroneously presents resurrection faith as an inferential conclusion drawn from a subjective, graced experience of salvation.24 Panneberg regards Christology and soteriology as inseparable. He, however, derives soteriology from Christology because Christian faith must begin by confronting the person and divinity of Jesus.25 Kasper defends a position closer to Pannenberg. He views Christology as inherently soteriological.26 I myself endorse Kasper’s position. Pannenberg correctly perceives that soteriology derives from a confrontation in faith with the Son of God incarnate. Christology does not, however, give rise to a distinct theological discipline called soteriology. Rather, Christology itself becomes soteriological when one invokes pragmatic logic in order to clarify deductively the meaning of faith in an incarnate God. One clarifies deductively the doctrinal meaning of the hypostatic union by grasping its practical, saving consequences. That clarification explains the doctrine’s saving significance by yielding a sound insight into the practical, moral conditions for advancing in Christological knowing. One verifies a deductively clarified doctrinal account of the hypostatic union by showing its ability to interpret the historical and eschatological revelation of God in Christ. One also verifies it by living it. When, therefore, one interprets the doctrine of the hypostatic union with a pragmatic logic of consequences, the moral and religious demands of discipleship which that logic articulates do not count as extrinsic corollaries to a purely theoretical faith. Instead, those practical saving consequences spell out the theoretical meaning of the doctrine itself; for, in the 23. Cf. David Stindl-Rast, “Jesus als Wort Gottes in vergleichender religionspsychologischer Sicht” in Die Frage nach Jesus (Cologne: Verlag Styria, 1973), pp. 9-67. This doctrinal interpretation of trinity’s action upon creation makes sense of the Tridentine teaching that all justifying grace comes to us through Christ. Christ communicates to us the fruits of His passion by teaching us to die to sin as He did through the empowering enlightenment of His Breath, our downpayment on the resurrection. (DS 1523, 1530, 1560) 24. Cf. Schillebeeckx, Jesus, pp. 346-397, 526-534. 25. Cf. Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, pp. 38-49. 26. Cf. Kasper, Jesus The Christ, pp. 20-48.
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last analysis, one can verify any religious doctrine, including the doctrine of the hypostatic union, only by taking converted responsibility for its practical consequences. Those who believe in the hypostatic union recognize in Jesus the normative embodiment of divinity and humanity. If they really believe what they profess to believe, they will also live in His image. If they profess to believe in Jesus without living in His image, then they stand convicted of the kind of religious hypocrisy which, as Jesus warned, excludes one from the reign of God. In this chapter, I have pondered what it means to put faith in Jesus as savior. In the chapters which follow, I shall reflect on interrelated dimensions of the saving ministry which reveals His person. In the next chapter, I shall ponder what doctrinal theology has traditionally called the prophetic character of Jesus’ ministry. As we shall see, doctrinal focus on Jesus’ prophetic ministry examines in greater detail the doctrinal implications of one of the ways in which He saves us: namely, by proclaiming the kingdom.
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Chapter 12 Jesus the Prophet The preceding chapter began a doctrinal elucidation of faith in the hypostatic union by exploring deductively its practical saving consequences. This chapter ponders in greater doctrinal detail one of the ways in which Jesus saves us: namely, by His ministry of teaching. The Breath’s charismatic inspiration empowers prophets to speak in God’s name. Jesus of Nazareth almost certainly regarded John the Baptizer as a Breath-filled prophet and almost certainly claimed a similar prophetic authority for Himself. At the same time, the gospels all assert that Jesus speaks with more than prophetic authority. He confronts the reader as messiah and Breath-baptizer, as God speaking and acting in human form. The letter to the Hebrews, which contains the most extended reflection in the New Testament on Jesus’ priesthood, also meditates at some length on His prophetic ministry. Hebrews argues that Jesus as teacher speaks with a divine authority and with a clarity which transcends any other human or angelic messenger from God.1 1. We do not know who wrote the letter to the Hebrews. Its content suggests that it addresses a Jewish Christian community, possibly in Rome. Other scholars opine that the letter addresses a predominantly Gentile audience; but, since the author views Judaism as a danger to the faith, Hebrews may well address Jewish Christians. Its literary form suggests a synagogue sermon. It reads like a homily with an epistolary ending. The letter also presupposes extensive knowledge of the Old Testament and some acquaintance with Jewish temple worship. Some see in Heb 10:32-4 a reference to the persecution of Christians under Nero. That suggests ca. 85 a.d. as a possible date of composition. If, however, the letter postdates the destruction of Jerusalem in 70. a.d., it seems strange to find no mention of that momentous event in a letter so focused on the theological significance of the temple and its levitical priesthood. Cf. NJBC, 60: 2-5; Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1989), pp. 35-48; Erich Grässer, An die Hebräer (2 vols.; Zürich: Benziger, 1990), pp. 41-69; Lyle O. Bristol, Hebrews: A Commentary (Valley Forge, PA: Judson, 1967), p.23; Philip Edecumbe Hughes, A Commentary on the Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Raids, MI: Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 30-1; F.F. Bruce, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964); Knut Backhaus, “Der Hebräerbrief und die Paulus-Schule,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 37(1993), pp. 183-208; David A. Desilva, “Despising Shame: A Critical Anthropological Investigation of the Epistle to the Hebrews,” Journal of Biblical Literature, 113(1994), pp. 439-461; Ben Winterington, “The Influence of Galatians on Hebrews,” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 146-152; Barnabas Lindars, “The Rhetorical Structure of Hebrews,” New Testament Studies, 35(1989), pp. 382-406; Alan H. Cadwallader, “The Correction of the Text of Hebrews Toward the LXX,” Novum Testamentum, 3(1992), pp. 257- 292. See also: Franz Schneider, Jesus der Prophet (Göttingen: Vanderhoeck & Ruprecht, 1973); Rudolf Meyer, Der Prophet aus Galiläa: Studien zum Jesusbild der drei ersten Evangelien (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftlische Buchgesellschaft, 1970).
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This chapter divides into two parts. Part one presents the theological interpretation of Jesus’ ministry of teaching developed in the letter to the Hebrews. Part two reflects on the doctrinal implications of that ministry. (I) The letter to the Hebrews has no salutation. The author begins by alluding to the “fragmentary” character of Old Testament revelation and to the variety of ways (polytropôs) in which God spoke through the prophets. “In these last days,” however, in the end time of salvation, God has spoken to us “in His Son whom He made the heir of all things, through whom He also made the created epochs (di’ hou kai epoiesen tous aionas).” (Heb 1:1-2) That same Son creates the epochs continuously and providentially “by sustaining all things through His word of power.”2 (Heb 1:3; cf. Jn 1:3, Col 1:16) Let us try to understand the implications of these initial bold Christological affirmations. The letter contrasts the supreme dignity of God’s Son with the lesser dignity of the prophets. The Son of God confronts us not as a mere spokesperson for God but as the one through whom the Father created all things. The Father, moreover, created more than one epoch through the Son. The Greek noun “aionas” can mean epochs or worlds. Here it very likely means both, since the continuous creation of the world extends physical creation temporally. Its plural form suggests the difference between the visible and invisible worlds, the earthly realm, on the one hand, and the distant and different heavenly realms inhabited by the angels, on the other. The plural also suggests the succession of historical eras. As we shall see, this contrast between the human and angelic orders will assume importance as the argument of Hebrews unfolds. (Cf. Heb 1:4) The Son who co-authored creation also inherits it. The Son’s inheritance of the worlds apparently refers to His glorification after His passion and to His installation in divine splendor at the Father’s right hand. (Heb 1:3) The Son’s inheritance of the worlds entails, then, His divine authority over them. The incarnate Son’s inheritance of the worlds through His glorification also connotes creation’s eventual participation in His risen glory; for the glorified Son manifests in His risen humanity the divinity He possessed before the world began. (Heb 1:14; cf. Rom 8:17) Hebrews uses two metaphors to underscore the divine authority of the Son who speaks to us, calling Him “the radiance of glory (apaugasma tes doxes) and seal of His [God’s] being (character tes hypostaseos autou).” The two metaphors underscore both the Son’s distinction from the Father and His possession of the Father’s divinity. 2. Cf. NJBC, 60: 7-8; Bristol, op.cit., pp. 29-34; Hughes, op.cit., pp.35-49; Richard Dormandy, “Hebrews 1:1-2 and the Parable of the Wicked Husbandmen, Expository Times, 100(1989), pp. 371-375.
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“Glory” designates the divine reality revealed in its splendor, beauty, majesty, and holiness (Ex 24:16). As the radiance of that splendor the Son partakes of its divine reality and excellence. Similarly, a seal reproduces the image carved in it. So too, the Son reproduces the very being and reality of the Father. Distinct from the Father, the Son remains mysteriously one with Him. In contrasting the Son’s message to us with the fragmentary message of the prophets and with their diversity of expression, Hebrews implicitly characterizes the Son’s message as the opposite. With the coming of Jesus, we now listen to His one voice, not to many different kinds of voices. Moreover, the Son proclaims not a fragmentary message but a full and coherent one.3 The Son’s revelation also possesses an efficacy which the prophetic word never possessed. The incarnate Son of God has “accomplished the purification of sins (katharismon ton hamartiôn poesamenos).” Hebrews uses the plural form of the noun sin (hamartiôn). Instead of personifying sin as a force in the world by using the singular, the letter portrays the redemptive death of Christ as washing away each sinful act committed by humans. The prologue to Hebrews ends by introducing the first theme which the letter will treat in detail: the Son’s divine superiority to all the angels. Like the prophets, Biblical angels also bring messages from God to humanity. Having discussed the superiority of Jesus’ ministry to the Old Testament prophets, the author of Hebrews now makes it clear that Jesus speaks with a divine authority which exceeds even that of any angelic messenger. The fact that Jesus has inherited the divine name of Lord places Him as far above the angels in dignity as the reality which the divine name designates. (Heb 1:4) Not only does the Son’s superiority to the angels result from his possession of the divine glory and being; but it also derives from the fact that, as the Great High Priest of the heavenly sanctuary, He effects a universal redemption.4 (Heb 3:1 ff.) 3. Cf. NJBC, 60: 11-13; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 49-76; Grässer, An die Hebräer, I, pp. 70-97; Bristol, op. cit., pp. 25-9; John P. Meier, “Structure and Theology in Hebrews 1.1-14,” Biblica, 66(1985), pp. 168-189. 4. Hebrews cites a series of Old Testament texts to prove the Son’s superiority to the angels. God called the Davidic king His Son but never used the title of an angel. (Heb 1:5; Ps 2:7; 2 Sam 7:14) As the messiah and heir to David, Jesus bears the title of Son in a pre-eminent way. At the Son’s incarnation, “when [the Father] brought the firstborn into the inhabited world”— at that time, the Father commanded all the angels to worship Him. (Heb 1:6; cf. Dt 32:43; Ps 96:7) The Father regards angels as His servants and messengers (Heb 1:7; cf. Ps 104:4); but He quite literally bestows upon the Son an everlasting throne, gives Him the scepter of virtue, and anoints Him king with the oil of gladness above all His enemies. (Heb 1:8-9); cf. Ps 45:6-7) As Lord, the Son created the world and will continue to exist when the created world has vanished.
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I shall reflect on Jesus’ priesthood in the chapter which follows. Here it suffices to note that the author of Hebrews appeals to Jesus’ unique priesthood in order to justify the superior authority with which He speaks. As we shall see, in Hebrews Jesus’ priesthood has a divine, heavenly character which transcends any ritual order of priestly ministry on earth. Hebrews underscores the Son’s superiority to the angels by contrasting the message which God revealed in the Old Testament through the ministry of His angels with the superior message He has spoken in the end time through His incarnate Son. If the lesser revelation made by angels drew down divine retribution for its violation, how much more will the message spoken personally by the Lord Himself! Moreover, the divine authority of that message stands confirmed through the miraculous signs wrought by its apostolic witnesses, through works of power accomplished through the Divine Breath. (Heb 2:1-4) Finally, Hebrews argues the incarnate Son’s superiority to the angels from the fact that the Son rather than any angel effected a universal redemption. As a result of His redeeming death, the incarnate Son stands revealed as the one who orders “the world to come (oikoumenen ten mellousan).” Temporarily humiliated by taking to Himself a humanity less perfect than angelic existence, the incarnate Son in virtue of the redemption He has decisively accomplished now exercises authority over all existing reality. The final and full revelation of His universal sway will (Heb 1:10-2; cf. Ps 102:25-7) The Father bids only the Son, not any angel, to exercise divine authority by sitting as His right hand. In exalting the Son, moreover, the Father gives Him victory over all His enemies. (Heb 1:13; Ps 109:1) By contrast, the Father has made the angels into “ministering spirits” who serve those humans destined to share in the Son’s glorious inheritance. (Heb 1:14) Cf. Bristol, op. cit., pp. 34-41; Kenneth J. Thomas, “The Old Testament Citations in Hebrews, New Testament Studies, 11(1964-1965), pp.303-325; George Howard, “Hebrews and the Old Testament Quotations,” Novum Testamentum, 10(1968), pp. 208-216; John P. Meier, “Symmetry and Theology in Heb 1.5-14,” Biblica, 66(1985), pp. 503-533; Harris Lachlan McNeill, The Christology of the Epistle to the Hebrews (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1914), pp. 10-14; D.W.B. Robinson, “The Literary Structure of Hebrews 1:1-4, Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology, 2(1972), pp. 178-186; Lala Kalyan Kuman Dey, The Intermediary World and Letters of Perfection in Philo and Hebrews (Missoula, MT: Scholars Press, 1975), pp. 127-154; Erich Grässer, “Hebräer 1, 1-4: Ein exegetische Versuch” in Text und Situation: Gesammelte Aufsätze zum Neuen Testament (Gütersloh: Gütersloh Verlagshaus Gert Mohn, 1973), pp. 182-228; Graham Hughes, Hebrews and Hermeneutics: The Epistle to the Hebrews as a New Testament Example of Biblical Interpretation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979); Simon Kistermaker, The Psalm Citations in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Amsterdam: Soest, 1961); Michael Bachmann, “‘Gesprochen durch den Herrn’ (Hebr 2,3): Erwägungen zum Reden Gottes und Jesu im Hebräerbrief,” Biblica, 70(1990), pp. 365-394; Christian Rose, “Verheissung und Erfüllung: Zum Verständnis von Epaggêlia im Hebräerbrief,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 33:1 (1989), pp. 60-80 and 33:2(1989), pp. 178-191.
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take place at the parousia; but the revelation of the glory of the risen one makes that final revelation sure and certain. (Heb 2:5-9) How ought one to interpret in a doctrinal context this witness of Hebrews to the authority which sanctions Jesus’ teaching? To this question I turn in the section which follows. (II) The New Testament suggests that Jesus possessed, not just prophecy, but the full spectrum of the Pauline gifts: gifts of prayer, discernment, healing, miracles, exorcism, and practical pastoral leadership. Jesus’ sinlessness also entails that He possessed the perfection of theological hope, faith, charity, and a faith-filled passion for a just social order. In other words, Jesus, in His sinlessness, exemplified the perfect gracing of human experience. All these graced endowments mean that even during His mortal ministry, Jesus confronts us as something more than a ordinary prophet. A genuine prophet should ideally embody the word which he or she speaks in God’s name. Jesus’ sinlessness enabled Him to embody God’s word to humanity with a perfection which goes beyond anything one finds in sin-tainted prophets or in any other sin-tainted human religious leader. The paschal mystery transvalues even more the prophetic character of Jesus’ teaching ministry. The risen Christ confronts the world not only as one who received the divine Breath’s inspirations but as Her efficacious source. The source of a divine reality must itself possess divinity. The Breath’s historical mission by the risen Christ coincides with the historical mission of the Church. Christians therefore experience the divine Breath’s efficacious sending through their participation in the Church’s mission by the risen Christ. Viewed experientially, therefore, the Breath’s mission exhibits a three-fold efficacy: historical, ecclesial, and charismatic. The Breath’s historical mission prolongs in space and time the efficacious, saving mission of God’s incarnate Son. The risen Christ communicates the Breath initially to the Church as a whole. The Breath creates the Church by teaching it to put on the sanctifying mind of Christ through the sharing of the charisms. The charisms also empower specific communities and specific individuals within the Church to advance its corporate mission. Let us begin to probe the doctrinal implications of these initial insights. The risen Christ sends the Church. That efficacious mission produces in those who believe a gracious enlightenment which originates in the divine Breath as its ultimate source within the Godhead. Moreover, this enlightenment, which theologians traditionally and correctly call created grace, has the divine Breath as its quasi-locus within the Godhead because She alone functions as an autonomous source of evaluative response within the Godhead. Let us recall why.
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The human person responds to the efficacious impulse of grace autonomously. As a consequence, neither the Father nor the Son can provide the quasi-locus within God for the gracing of ordinary human experience. Both Father and Son function within the Godhead as eternal principles of divine efficacy. Human experiences efficaciously transformed in either the Father or the Son would, then, find themselves ruled efficaciously by God and would thereby cease to act with human autonomy. Because they would develop with divine autonomy, such experiences would exemplify human experiences of being a divine person. If, then, human persons must welcome grace with personal human autonomy, then the divine Breath, who lures human experience persuasively rather than shapes it decisively, must function as the quasi-locus of their transformation in God. Ordinary prophets speak about a divine reality which they adore. In the charismatic gracing of human experience, they retain their human autonomy. Jeremiah speaks and acts as Jeremiah; Ezekiel speaks and acts as Ezekiel; Balaam speaks and acts as Balaam. If virtue of their prophetic inspiration, however, all speak in God’s name even though each speaks in a finite, idiosyncratic, personal idiom. In virtue of the hypostatic union, however, Jesus’ human experience underwent a twofold gracing: both persuasive gracing in the divine Breath and efficacious, obediential gracing in the second person of the trinity. Jesus experienced persuasive gracing by the divine Breath because even under grace He responded to Her anointing and illumination with a conditioned, finite, human freedom. The efficacious, obediential gracing of Jesus’ human experience in the second person of the trinity transformed it into the human experience of being a divine person. The efficacious, obediential gracing of a human experience in the Logos also enables a divine person to speak to us with human lips. Jesus does not just speak for God, as ordinary prophets do. He speaks personally as God. In other words, the hypostatic union endows His message with an authority and normativity which goes beyond that of other creatures endowed with prophetic enlightenment. An experiential construct of the hypostatic union can, then, interpret within an inferential, doctrinal context the distinction which the letter to the Hebrews draws between Jesus’ unique, divine, magisterial authority, on the one hand, and the lesser authority of ordinary prophets or angels, on the other. Jesus’ sinlessness causes Him to embody perfectly the word He proclaims. In dealing with sinful humans, one can on occasion doubt whether they really believe or mean what they say. Jesus’ sinlessness makes any such doubt impossible. Jesus means what He says because He embodies in sinless perfection the saving word He speaks. The Son’s obediential
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relationship to the Father and to the Breath within the Godhead thus transforms Him in His human incarnation into God’s spoken Word, into the one through whom both the Father and the Breath act upon and speak to a sinful world with saving truth. Jesus confronts us as God’s spoken word in yet another sense. The symbolic structure of both the divine and human experience makes Jesus into an embodied divine communication in the technical sense in which I have defined the term “communication.” By a “communication” I mean the embodied expression of an evaluative response. As God’s spoken Word, as a humanly embodied divine communication, Jesus of necessity reveals to us simultaneously both the Father and the Breath. Let us recall why this is so. The Father, as we have seen, functions within the trinity as an aboriginal source of creative efficacy. The Son’s efficacious, historical mission by the Father reveals that within the Godhead the Father generates the Son efficaciously. With the Son He co-spirates the Breath efficaciously as Her historical mission also reveals; for the Father sends the Breath through His glorified, incarnate Son. Because the Father functions within the trinity as the aboriginal, efficacious source of all, we attribute the act of creation in a special way to the Father even though the entire Godhead acts through the Son in the ongoing creation of the world. Since the Father functions as a source of creative efficacy within the Godhead, Jesus reveals the Father to us obedientially through what he says and does, as the fourth evangelist saw clearly. Jesus’ efficacious acts of speech and of practical choice therefore embody concretely the Father’s efficacious, saving will. The Breath of God interprets graciously to Jesus His obediential relationship to the Father. That means that She stands historically revealed within the Godhead as the cognitive link between the Father and the Son, as the mind of God. For that reason we attribute divine enlightenment to the Holy Breath even though all three divine persons act is gracing us. As the spoken Word of God Jesus, then, reveals the divine Breath to us cognitively, by the way in which He responds evaluatively to the world, by the shape of His human, religious vision. As signs, communications divide into indices, icons, and linguistic symbols. An index symbolizes through physical action. For example, weather vanes, hour glasses, sun dials, thermometers, scales, and other mechanical instruments of measurement all communicate information indexically. Icons communicate by resemblance. Portraits, for example, tell us what people look like by resembling them. Maps symbolize the lay of the land by reproducing it to scale. Symbols communicate through speech acts: through genre, method, definition, grammar, and syntax. They subdivide into intuitive communications and inferential communications.
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Because the divine Breath inspired Jesus’ religious self-awareness, his obediential response to Her illumination makes His human mind, His religious vision, into a finite, created icon of the divine mind, of the divine Breath Herself, in Her saving intentions toward the world. Jesus communicated His religious vision to others in words and in symbolic gestures; but His human mind itself, the total spectrum of human evaluative responses which those symbolic acts expressed and signified, revealed the reality of the divine mind iconically. Better than any other human mind, the human mind of Jesus resembles how God responds evaluatively to a sinful world. More perfectly than any other human mind, the mind of Jesus shows us how God feels, understands, perceives, and judges. Since the divine Breath functions as the source of evaluative response within the Godhead, the evaluative shape of Jesus’ mind, despite its finitude, agrees in every particular with the way in which the divine Breath perceives the world and God in their relationship to one another. It therefore reveals Her normatively and paradigmatically, but sacramentally and therefore not exhaustively. The divine Breath in giving Herself to the Son within the trinity conceives the Word which He embodies. As a consequence, Gaius Marius Victorinus had the right of it when he suggested that we can imagine the Breath of God as the maternal principle within the Godhead. (Gaius Marius Victorinus, Against Arius, II. i. 58. 11-36) She conceives eternally the divine Word efficaciously communicated to us in Jesus. Jesus, therefore, reveals the familial character of the relations of the divine persons to one another within the trinity. He reveals obedientially the Father who generates Him and sends Him into the World; and by His religious vision He reveals the feminine wisdom of God, the divine Mother, the Holy Breath, the heavenly Sophia.5 As the iconic sacramental revealer of the divine Breath, as the most perfect human embodiment of the mind of God, Jesus confronts us then as much more than a prophet. His religious vision measures the authen5. Cf. Gelpi, The Divine Mother, pp. 215-238; Ives Congar, Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza and Elizabeth Johnson have all argued for the legitimacy of imagining the third person of the trinity as feminine. None of them, however, has attempted to develop this insight in the light of an experiential metaphysics of symbol. Any attempt to transform devotion to the divine Sophia into a goddess cult isolated from any relationship to Father and Son moves in a heterodox direction. Cf. Ives Congar, O.P. I Believe in the Holy Spirit, translated by Geoffrey Chapman (3 vols.; New York, NY: Seabury, 1983), III, pp. 155-164; Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1992); Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, Jesus: Miriam’s Child and Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology (New York, NY: Continuum, 1994). See also: Elizabeth A. Johnson, “Jesus the Wisdom of God: A Non-Biblical Basis for a Non-androcentric Christology,”Ephemerides Theologicae Lovaniensis, 61(1985), pp. 48-72.
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ticity of all other prophetic utterances because no other prophetic vision expresses the mind of God as perfectly as His. His religious vision also measures the authenticity of all religious teaching. Doctrines which contradict His human mind contradict the mind of God. As we shall see in the next chapter, some of the theological interpretations of Christian priesthood contradict the priestly reality embodied in Jesus. To that extent, therefore, those doctrines qualify as heterodox. Jesus’ religious vision also raises to human consciousness His unique experience of sinless living. His teachings, therefore, articulate the kind of obediential relationship to God which human life ought to embody. As a consequence, Jesus’ religious vision also measures the authenticity of religious discipline and practice. Institutions which contradict His mind embody sin. Disciplines which contradict His mind inculcate sin. Jesus, therefore, confronts us not just as a prophet but as much more than a prophet because, as savior, He functions as the great high priest of the new covenant, as the unique mediator between God and humanity in virtue of the hypostatic union. I shall reflect on the relationship of Jesus’ priesthood to His magisterial authority in the chapter which follows. Before doing so, however, another aspect of Jesus’ ministry of teaching needs doctrinal elaboration: namely, the relationship between His teaching and His miracles. By a miracle I mean an event occurring in a religious context which so baffles any attempt to explain it by finite, created causes that it invites ascription to God as its efficacious causal source. Jesus performed more than one such act in the course of His public ministry. Moreover, as we have seen, Jesus Himself seems to have viewed His healings and exorcisms as signs of the arrival of the messianic age in His very person and ministry. As signs of the advent of messianic times, Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms would have lent divine sanction to His ministry of proclamation. How, then, ought one to interpret doctrinally these historical claims. The first Vatican council presented Jesus’ miracles as “very certain signs of divine revelation adapted to the intelligence of all (divinae revelationis signa sunt certissima et omnium intelligentiae accommodata).” (DS 3009) They render divine revelation “credible through external signs (externis signis credibilem) (Ds 3033) One can know with “certainty (certo cognosi)” that miracles happen and that they offer “suitable evidence (rite probari) of the divine origin of Christian revelation.”6 (DS 3034) In presenting miracles as signs accommodated to the intelligence of all, Vatican I denied that only scientific experts can recognize when a miracle has happened. That denial does not rule out the scientific investigation 6. Cf. Klaus Schaz, Vaticanum I 1869-1870 (3 vols; Pederborn Ferdinand Schöningh, 1993), II, pp. 81-94; Dom Cuthbert Butler, The Vatican Council (2 vols; New York, NY: Longmans Green & Co., 1930).
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of miraculous events, an investigation which Church leaders have traditionally encouraged. Instead, Vatican I taught that, when miracles happen, ordinary folks can recognize the fact without being informed of it by some authoritative academic elite. In so speaking, the council had the miracles of Jesus in mind. The gospels tell us that Jesus’ exorcisms and miraculous healings astonished the ordinary people who witnessed them. We have no serious reason to doubt that astonishment; nor have we any reason to doubt that Jesus conducted a miraculous ministry of faith healing. Very likely, Jesus worked miracles and told parables in part for the same purpose. His healings and exorcisms certainly expressed His compassion for human misery and bondage; but they clearly blew the minds of those who witnessed them. As we have seen elsewhere, parabolic narratives seek an analogous narrative purpose. Parabolic narratives subvert a familiar world as a way of inviting people to imagine a world transformed. The surprising and often shocking events in Jesus’ parables invited His hearers to open their hearts to the in-breaking of God’s reign already happening in His person and ministry. His miracles and exorcisms served an analogous pastoral purpose. Jesus did things which surpassed the capacity of ordinary mortals. He healed miraculously and cast out demons with a simple command. His discombobulating actions like His discombobulating stories shattered the tyranny of the familiar and invited faith in the divine origin of Jesus’ mission and message. Vatican I describes miracles as “very certain (certissima) signs of divine revelation.” (DS 3009) Since certitude characterizes beliefs rather than events, the council is portraying miracles as events which invite a certain kind of interpretation. In effect, the council is saying that those events qualify as miraculous whose extraordinary character gives good reason for attributing them to a divine, transcendent source. In the late nineteen sixties and early seventies, I tended to approach miracles with a demythologizing, Bultmanian skepticism. I persisted in this vain, academic posturing until I found myself confronted with two certified miracles in the charismatic prayer community at Loyola University in New Orleans. One miracle involved the restoration of a withered optic nerve; the other, the reconstruction of a deteriorated hip bone. In both cases, the attending physicians testified that the cures defied any medical explanation. I had imbibed enough Peircean fallibilism at that point to realize that I would have to take my Bultmanian skepticism about miracles back to the drawing board. I also began to suspect that skepticism about the very possibility of miracles can easily transform itself into a self-fulfilling prophecy. The very occurrence of miracles would seem to require an expectant belief that they really can happen. Certainly, in the gospels, Jesus again and
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again assures those whom He cures miraculously that their faith has made the healing possible. At Nazareth, Jesus seems to have found skepticism a barrier to His ministry of faith healing. One should not confuse faith-expectancy with either wish-fulfillment or credulity. Just wanting a miracle to occur won’t make it happen. Nor does an expectant faith preclude sober investigation into apparently miraculous events in an attempt to dispel naive credulity or unmask obvious frauds. The suasive force of a miraculous event presupposes, then, an openness of heart and of mind to the possibility that a miracle can in fact happen. My experience in charismatic prayer groups has convinced me that the higher the faith expectancy the more likely the actual occurrence of faith healing, even of a miraculous healing. When miracles do occur in such a context, then they exert a powerful fascination on the human mind and heart and do indeed invite religious faith, without, however, compelling it. Vatican I calls miracles “very certain signs.” “Very certain” falls shy of absolutely certain. Like all finite human events which reveal the reality of God, miracles exhibit a sacramental character in the broadest sense of “sacrament.” By that I mean that they partially conceal the divine reality which they disclose. The sacramental character of a miracle endows it with a certain amount of ambivalence. Miracles may invite the free assent of religious faith; but they do not coerce it. Certainly, Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms did not persuade everyone in first-century Palestine of the divine origin of His ministry and message. In rebuking Breath-blasphemy, however, Jesus warned His contemporaries that skepticism has its limits and that it can betray a sinful lack of repentance which closes the heart to the divine Breath’s saving enlightenment. Jesus’ rebuke also implies that miracles will ultimately evoke religious assent when the divine Breath illumines their revelatory significance. Moreover, all the gospels further concede the revelatory ambivalence of Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms by portraying them as proleptic foreshadowings of the paschal mystery; for, if Jesus’ mighty works only anticipate the full revelation of His divinity in the paschal mystery, then, in the last analysis, the paschal mystery itself endows Jesus’ miracles with their ultimate revelatory sanction, not vice versa. For the believing Christian, then, faith in the paschal mystery provides the ultimate context for understanding the saving significance of Jesus’ miracles. The four evangelists grasped this principle well. They therefore used different narrative techniques for portraying Jesus’ miracles and exorcisms as anticipations of the religious healing and deliverance which
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the risen Christ would effect through Breath-baptism. As Breath-baptizer, Jesus, by inspiring resurrection faith, delivers those who believe in Him from bondage to Satan and from the paralysis of sin. He who healed the blind during His earthly ministry, once risen, opens the human heart to assent to the good news in the power of His Breath. By that same Breath, He who healed the deaf and dumb empowers His disciples to hear and to proclaim the gospel and to serve one another faithfully in His image. He who raised the dead by the gift of His Breath imparts risen life to those who confess His Lordship in shared bapismal faith. One must say the same for Jesus’ prophecies, which Vatican I also cites as divine confirmations of Jesus ministry. (DS 3009) Like Jesus’ miracles, Jesus’ prophecies derive their ultimate authority and suasive power from the paschal mystery. During His ministry, Jesus predicted the destruction of Jerusalem and of its temple. He very probably predicted His betrayal by Judas, Peter’s denial, and the terrified dispersal of His disciples after His arrest. He certainly anticipated, interiorized, and predicted His own death. Such predictions manifested an extraordinary gift of discernment. From what one can glean from history about the political situation in first-century Palestine, one can plausibly surmise that anyone who read the signs of the times realistically might have foreseen that Israel had embarked on a collision course with the Roman empire and that the collision would probably end as tragically as had resistance to the Babylonian invasion. Historical memories and shrewd contemporary political insight could conceivably have fed Jesus’ prediction of the fall and Jerusalem and the destruction of its temple. Similarly, Jesus’ prediction of His own tragic death might well have contained a healthy dose of political realism, especially as He pondered His own career in the light of the Baptizer’s martyrdom. Jesus’ anticipation of betrayal, abandonment, and denial might well have expressed in part an accurate reading of the human weakness of those who followed Him. A gift of prophecy, however, would have focused and formulated all such warnings and predictions. Reinterpreted in the light of the paschal mystery, moreover, these prophecies and their fulfillment take on new revelatory significance. As the prophetic utterances of God’s incarnate Son, they claim the minds and hearts of believers with a new kind of authority which goes beyond ordinary human prophecy.7 7. Cf. Meier, A Marginal Jew, II, pp. 509-645; Colin Brown, Miracles and the Critical Mind (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1984); Ernst and Marie Luise Keller, Der Streit um die Wunder (Gütersloh: Gert Mohn, 1968); Robert A.H. Larmer, Water into Wine? An Investigation of the Concept of Miracle (Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988); Ulrich Mann, Das Wunderbare: Wunder—Segen und Engel (Gütersloh: Gerd Mohn, 1979); Bernhard Wenish, Geschicte oder Gesnichete? Theologie des Wunders
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In this chapter I have considered some doctrinal implications of Jesus’ ministry of proclamation and of the miraculous signs which confirmed it. In the chapters which follow, I shall invoke this incarnational norm in assessing both Christian priesthood, on the one hand, and the institutionalization of religious and of secular authority, on the other. I begin with the question of priesthood.
(Salzburg: Verlag St. Peter, 1981); Richard Swinburn, The Concept of Miracle (London: Macmillan, 1970); Louis Monden, Signs and Wonders: A Study of the Miraculous Element in Religion (New York, NY: Desclée Company, 1966); C.D.F. Moule, ed., Miracles (London: A.R. Mowbray & Co Ltd., 1965); Ralph M. McInerny, Miracles: A Catholic View (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor Publishing Division, 1986); R.M. Burns, The Great Debate on Miracles from Joseph Glanville to David Hume (London: Associated University Press, 1981).
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Chapter 13 Jesus the Priest In virtue of the hypostatic union, Jesus confronts the world with a unique magisterial authority in religious matters. The last chapter dealt doctrinally with that authority. This chapter deals with Jesus’ priesthood. As we have already seen, the letter to the Hebrews discovered a close connection between Jesus’ priestly and prophetic ministries. The following reflections examine that connection; but they focus doctrinally on the sense in which Jesus’ ministry exhibits priestly characteristics. Since, moreover, the letter to the Hebrews provides the most developed sacerdotal Christology in the entire New Testament, of necessity, this chapter undertakes a doctrinal interpretation of that Christology. Like the last chapter, therefore, this one divides into two parts. Part one analyzes the account of Jesus’ priesthood presented in the letter to the Hebrews. Part two then interprets the doctrinal significance of a New Testament sacerdotal Christology in the light of a metaphysics of experience. (I) Jesus belonged to the tribe of Judah, not to the tribe of Levi. He never functioned during His ministry as a levitical priest. We have no historical evidence that He ever ordained anyone. When He challenged the high priestly authorities in Jerusalem, He did so as a layman. When Jesus participated in Jewish worship, He did so as a layman. People regarded Him as a teacher (rabbi); but Jesus never studied with the great rabbis in Jerusalem. He derived His authority to teach, not from formal membership in the rabbinate, but from His own sense of personal religious mission and charismatic empowerment. Nevertheless, the letter to the Hebrews portrays Jesus as the great high priest of the new covenant. The author of Hebrews develops this sacerdotal Christology in a series of comparisons. Hebrews proclaims that: 1) As great high priest of the new covenant, Jesus surpasses and replaces Moses as a mediator between humanity and God. 2) As great high priest of the new covenant, Jesus surpasses and replaces the levitical priesthood. 3) Because Jesus’ sacrificial death and resurrection replace and surpass the animal sacrifices of the old Law, the new covenant in Christ ushers in a new way of worshipping, one which replaces Jewish temple worship. In the course of what follows, I shall consider each of these comparisons in turn. First, however, the reader probably needs to ponder the
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problem of access which the letter to the Hebrews poses to the contemporary reader. The letter to the Hebrews poses a problem of access analogous to that posed by the book of Revelation. Both books of the New Testament baffle contemporary Christians for similar reasons. Both presuppose a detailed familiarity with Old Testament patterns of thought which exceeds anything which most contemporary readers bring to the texts of the New Testament. Both books of the New Testament employ a dated rhetoric which renders their texts opaque to today’s readers of the Bible. Revelation invokes the deliberately arcane and richly symbolic narrative imagery of Jewish apocalyptic. The author of Hebrews thinks and argues like a first century rabbi. His mind moves in unfamiliar allegorical and midrashic1 patterns of thought which easily baffle the popular contemporary mind.2 As in the case of Revelation, however, Hebrews repays careful contemporary study. As we saw in volume one, more than any other book in the New Testament, Revelation ponders the political and economic consequences of faith in the risen Christ. I shall examine the doctrinal implications of Christian apocalyptic Christology in the following chapter. Here I focus instead on the sacerdotal Christology of Hebrews. As we shall see, the Christology of Hebrews for a variety of reasons which I shall examine later in this chapter, challenges profoundly contemporary clericalized interpretations of Church leadership and of Church polity. I summarized in the preceding chapter Hebrews’ reflections on Jesus’ prophetic ministry. That summary illustrates the problem of access to which I allude. Even though in the early nineties popular religious imagination in the United States exhibited a faddish fascination with angels, most American readers find the angelology of the opening chapters of Hebrews tough sledding. The author takes angelic communications with the deity far more seriously than most post-Enlightenment Christians. The Priesthood of Jesus Christ in Hebrews The analysis of Hebrews which follows focuses on the letter’s sacerdotal Christology. As I have already indicated, that Christology offers the most 1. Rabbinic midrash sought to apply a familiar text of the Torah to the lives of people. Some forms of midrash dealt with practical precepts of the Law. Narrative forms of midrash applied stories from the Bible to contemporary situations by reconstructing the original story imaginatively. In other words, midrashic narrative retold a familiar story with variations in the narrative detail which related it to the story teller’s audience. The retelling of the encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek in Hebrews illustrates Christian use of narrative midrash. (Heb 7:1-28) 2. Cf. C. Spicq, O.P., “Le philonisme de l’épitre aux Hébreux,” Revue Biblique, 56(1949), pp. 542-572; 57(1950), pp. 212-242; Neville Clarke, “Reading the Book 2. The Letter to the Hebrews,” Expository Times, 108(1996), pp. 37-40.
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detailed theological reflection in the entire New Testament on the meaning of Christian priesthood. Moreover, the inclusion of Hebrews in the canon of the New Testament endows its theology of priesthood with special authoritative sanction; for any contemporary theology of Christian priesthood ought to interpret to believing Christians of our day the meaning of the New Testament witness. I begin reflection on Hebrews, then, by focusing on the first of its Christological comparisons. Hebrews begins its meditation on Jesus’ priesthood by asserting that Jesus, the great high priest of the new covenant replaces Moses as a mediator between God and humanity. “By God’s grace, He tasted death for all (chariti Theou hyper panto geusetai thanatou).” (Heb 2:9) If one accepts this reading of verse nine of the second chapter of Hebrews, it asserts that Jesus’ death reveals a universal free gift of God.3 It manifests the Father’s universal, saving intentions. The Father “by whom and for whom all things exist” willed the Son’s sufferings. They, however, transform Him into the perfect savior. They insure a total saving solidarity uniting Jesus to those whom He redeems. “The sanctifier and those being sanctified all form a single reality (ho te hagiazon de hoi hagiazomenoi ex henos pantes).” The phrase “ex henos” probably means “coming from the same stock,” as the statement which follows suggests: “That is why He is not ashamed to call them brothers.” The phrase “ex henos,” however, also asserts something stronger: namely, the profound unity and solidarity with humanity which Jesus’ experience of a shameful death effected. It binds Jesus to suffering sinners as sanctifier to sanctified. We find here the echo of a familiar Pauline theme: that on Calvary Jesus died both morally and physically. As a moral act, His free submission to death expressed His perfect death to sin. Those united to Him in sinless faith participate in that same death and through His Breath’s saving illumination experience its sanctifying consequences. Indeed, the very process of sanctification together with the hope for glory which it inspires transforms a once sinful humanity into Jesus’ holy family.4 (Heb 2:10-13; cf. Heb 10:4-10) Invoking a bold and daring metaphor. Hebrews proclaims that Jesus’ very execution as a criminal at the hands of the temple priests and of Pilate transformed Him into the Great High Priest of the new covenant. (Heb 2:17) The metaphor changes profoundly the very meaning of priest3. In some manuscript traditions, verse nine reads: “Apart from God (choris Theou), He tasted death for all.” If one accepts this phrasing as the more difficult reading, then the verse could assert that Jesus redeemed us by dying in apparent abandonment by God. (Cf. Mk 15:34) It could also mean that Jesus suffered in virtue of His humanity as opposed to His divinity. 4. Cf. Alan C. Mitchell, S.J., “The Use of Prepein and Rhetorical Propriety in Hebrews 2:10,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 54(1992), pp. 681-701.
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hood, because the author of Hebrews makes the unique revelatory event which we call the paschal mystery redefine what Christian priesthood ought to signify. The ancestral priesthood of the clan of Levi set one apart from other clans of Judah. Enlisted in support of the Davidic monarchy, the temple priesthood in Jerusalem underwent, as we have seen, increasing politicization as it evolved. By Jesus’ time, the aristocratic temple priests functioned as a sacral power elite separated from the people both religiously and economically: religiously by privileged links to the sacred and economically by wealth. Roman collaborators, temple priests who endorsed the Hellenization of Jewish worship also represented the scandal of religious compromise with paganism. In contrast to the temple priests, Jesus’ priesthood in Hebrews identifies Him totally with the common people; it does not set Him apart in some arcane sacral sphere. The temple priests of Jesus’ day had joined the aristocracy and conspired with the Roman oppressors of Israel in reducing God’s people to grinding, even degrading poverty. Jesus, the high priest of the new covenant, identifies, by contrast, with the dregs of humanity: with the lowest classes, even with the expendables, even with the criminal class. Finally, Jesus, the high priest of the new covenant, replaces the religiously compromised worship of the temple aristocracy with authentic, sinless worship of the Father. Instead of coveting political power in the manner of Annas and Caiphas, the high priest of the new covenant comes to the office through an experience of political powerlessness. Paradoxically, that very act of self-abasement establishes His universal divine authority.5 Jesus the High Priest of the new covenant did not identify with an angelic mode of existence; instead He took to Himself “descent from Abraham.” (Heb 2:16) The letter to the Hebrews, however, portrays Jesus’ Jewish descent, not in narrowly ethnic terms, but as having universal human and redemptive significance. As a child of Abraham, Jesus shares the vulnerable lot of every human. His priestly solidarity with humanity manifests itself in His submission to the same kinds of temptations as every other human being. Temptation and suffering schooled Him in compassion, so that as High Priest of the new covenant He could empathize perfectly with a suffering humanity.6 (Heb 2:17-8) Besides rooting itself empathetically and compassionately in the tragedy of universal human suffering, Jesus’ priesthood also manifests itself in the saving efficacy of His death. That efficacy takes two forms: 1) 5. Cf. Albert Vanhoye, Prètres anciens, prètre nouveau selon le Nouveau Testament (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980), pp. 15-108; Didier Gonneaud, “Dans le sacerdoce d’Israel, le ministère de Jésus,” Nouvell Revue Théologique, 120(1998), pp. 18-31. 6. Cf. Albert Vanhoye, La structure litteraire de l’Epitre aux Hébreux (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1976), pp. 12-85.
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Jesus’ death atones for sin by establishing a new bond of life between God and humanity. (Heb 2:17) 2) In addition, Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross breaks not only the power of death itself but also the devil’s power over death. These two aspects of Jesus’ saving sacrifice have an intimate connection with one another. Hellenistic Judaism held that the devil, not God, stood responsible for death by bringing sin into the world. (Wis 1:13, 2:23-4) Jesus by dying in obedience to the Father dies to sin and destroys its power; and by rising Jesus frees humanity from the bondage of living in fear of death. The paschal mystery thus undoes the devil’s work by wresting from Satan’s hands his chief weapons against humanity: namely, the fear of death and sin. (Heb 2:15) After these preliminary clarifications, Hebrews next advances its theology of Christ’s priesthood by arguing the three interrelated theses enunciated above: 1) As High Priest in the order of Melchizedek, Jesus’ priesthood outranks Moses’s mediatorial service. 2) Jesus’ priesthood both surpasses and replaces the levitical priesthood. 3) New covenant worship surpasses and replaces old covenant worship because Christ’s sacrifice of Himself on the cross surpasses and replaces the temple sacrifices offered under Mosaic law. The author of Hebrews has argued in 2:14-18, that Jesus’ compassionate priestly identification with humanity in its suffering and temptation has transformed the human race into His family. The brothers and sisters of Jesus all enjoy the same “heavenly calling (kleseos epourianiou)” as He, a vocation which comes from God and leads to God. The possession of such an intimate relationship with the Lord should, then, motivate the holy members of His family to concentrate their minds upon Him, “the apostle (apostolon) and high priest (archierea) of our confession.” No other verse in the entire New Testament calls Jesus an apostle. The term recalls the opening verses of Hebrews and designates Jesus not only as God’s messenger, but as God’s supreme and culminating messenger to humanity. The term “apostle” also suggests the continuity which links Jesus’ ministry to that of the apostles whom He sends and empowers by the gift of His Breath. (Heb 1:1-2; 2:3-4) The apostolic character of Jesus’ priesthood also makes it prophetic. The phrase “our confession” of Christ as apostle and high priest implicitly alludes to the baptismal confession of the faith common to all Christians. That baptismal profession of faith motivates the day-to-day confession of Christ.7 As God’s messenger and high priest, Jesus resembles Moses. He also resembles Moses in His fidelity to God. Each founds a different “household (oikos).” God Himself providentially built up both the household of 7. Cf. NJBC, 60: 14-18; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 63-103; Grässer, An die Hebräer, I, pp. 98151; Bristol, op.cit., pp. 41-54; Hughes, op.cit., pp. 50-124; Bruce, op.cit., pp. 1-53.
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Moses and that of Christ. Nevertheless, in the plan of providence, Jesus’ household supplants that of Moses. Hebrews dramatizes the superiority of Jesus’ household by contrasting it with that of Moses. Christ outshines Moses in glory just as the one who builds a house deserves greater honor than the house itself. Moses, moreover, functioned as God’s servant in his household, while Christ heads the Christian household as God’s own Son. He therefore rules as the master and steward of His household; He does not serve as a slave within it. As God’s servant Moses prophesied the saving reality which Christ brings, while the members of the household of Christ look forward in confident hope to sharing in their master’s divine glory.8 (Heb 3:1-6) 8. In the exhortatory section of the letter, the author of Hebrews returns to the theme of God’s house. The Christian community should rest confident of its access to the heavenly sanctuary because Christ, the great high priest of the new covenant, presides over all the house of God. Here the phrase “house of God” would seem to connote the Christian community as God’s house or temple of worship. In 3:6, the author of Hebrews has already identified the Christian community as the house of God over which Christ presides as faithful Son. The author had also insisted on the superiority of the house of Christ to that of Moses. The community’s sanctification through Christ transforms it into God’s house. Hence, the author of Hebrews exhorts the community to come into the presence of God with “a heart sprinkled clean of evil conscience and a body washed with pure water.” (Heb 10:22) The reference to water recalls the ritual cleansing with water effected by the levitical high priest but almost certainly points to Christian baptism as the efficacious fulfillment of earlier symbolic purifications. If so, then, the author is portraying the sanctifying transformation of the Christian community into God’s house as the result of baptism. The author is also depicting baptism as the rite which mediates to believers the saving, sanctifying effects of Christ’s atoning sacrifice. The exhortation to remain faithful to community gatherings (Heb 10:25) also suggests that entering into the heavenly Holy of Holies includes the Christian eucharist as well; for the eucharist recalls and makes present Christ’s saving sacrifice. As at other points in this letter’s argument, it makes sense to contrast the religious vision of Hebrews with a strict Platonic understanding of religious typology. The author of Hebrews speaks more like a Christian sacramentalist and eschatologist than like a Platonist. Here and now, in this world, the experience of corporate and personal sanctification and of shared worship gives the Christian community present access to the heavenly sanctuary where dwells their great High Priest. This world and the world to come fuse in a dynamic, eschatological, sacramental reality instead of living in essential separation as a strict Platonic dualism of time and eternity would suggest. The author also warns the community that those who sin seriously separate themselves from divine forgiveness and transform themselves into the objects of divine judgment and condemnation. The author seems particularly concerned about the sin of apostasy and describes it as the act of “ having trampled on the Son of God and having regarded the blood of the covenant in which one is sanctified as profane and having insulted the Breath of grace.” (Heb 10:29) Trampling on the Son of God puts one in the same category as those who crucified Him. Instead of letting the atoning blood of Christ complete the process of sanctification, apostates treat it with contempt. With equal pride they contemn the divine Breath of the risen Christ, for She seeks to effect
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Membership in the more glorious household of Christ should teach Christians to learn from the mistakes made by the members of Moses’ household. They tested God in the desert and thereby forfeited their entry into the land which promised rest from their desert wanderings. Christians, however, long for a different and vastly superior place of rest: through Christ they long for a share in the eternal rest of God. Partakers in a common call, they also partake in Christ. They participate in His saving work and in His heavenly status and reality.9 (Hb 3:14) In this context, the author of Hebrews cites Ps 94, which rebukes the sins of the Israelites during their desert sojourn: “Today, when your hear His voice, harden not your hearts as did your ancestors in the wilderness....” (Ps 95:7) For the Christian the “today” to which the psalm refers encompasses the entire end time. The eschaton began with the first coming of Christ, and it will culminate in universal resurrection.10 (Heb 3:7-4:11) I have considered the first Christological comparison in Hebrews. In it the author of Hebrews asserts that Jesus’ priesthood of identification with the tragedy and alienation of the human condition endows Him with a divine authority which exceeds that of any other messenger from God to humanity, whether human or angelic. Jesus also replaces Moses as the mediator of God’s covenant. In this first comparison, the author of Hebrews makes good his earlier promise to link Jesus’ priesthood and His ministry of proclamation. Both have a mediatorial and therefore a priestly character. Teaching, after all, constituted one of the traditional responsibilities of the levitical priesthood. The second comparison develops further Jesus’ sacerdotal superiority by comparing His priesthood and the levitical priesthood. To this second comparison I turn in the paragraphs which follow. The author of Hebrews begins the second comparison by asserting that Jesus Christ has preceded into heaven those who believe. There He abides on high as the great high priest of the new covenant. First, however, He plumbed the depths of human weakness. He underwent every kind of human temptation, but without sinning. Moreover, Jesus’ sinlessness makes Him into a completely accessible intercessor before God. their sanctification. Those, however, who contemn divine forgiveness will discover to their sorrow that “it is dreadful to fall into the hands of the living God.” (Heb 10:30) Cf. NJBC, 60: 60-61; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 283-293; Dey, op. cit., pp. 155-158; Bristol, op.cit., pp. 107-39; Vanhoye, La structure literaire, pp. 115-82, Prètres anciens, pp. 236-63; R. Williamson, “The Eucharist and the Epistle to the Hebrews,” New Testament Studies, 21(1974-1975), pp. 300-312. 9. Cf. Enrique Nardone, “Partakers in Christ (Hebrews 3.14),” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 456-472. 10. Cf. Otfried Hofius, Katapausis: Die Vorstellung vom endzeitlichen Ruheort im Hebräerbrief (Tübingen: Mohr, 1970); Scott C. Layton, “Christ Over His House (Hebrews 3.6) and Hebrews,” New Testament Studies, 37(1991), pp. 473-477.
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As we have already seen, Jesus’ sufferings create a deep bond of solidarity between Him and suffering humanity. Sin, however, divides sinful humans from God and from one another. Jesus’ sinlessness, therefore, transforms Him into the perfect mediator. Perfectly united to God, the sinless Jesus has nothing to divide Him even from a sinful humanity. Seated now upon a divine throne, on “a throne of grace,” (Heb 4:16) Jesus’ sinlessness makes Him completely approachable. The saving redemption which He has wrought by dying and rising has revealed the divine throne on which He sits as the source of grace and forgiveness. (Cf. Heb 8:1, 12:2) For that reason, those who call upon Him in need can do so in the confidence of experiencing His grace (charin) and mercy (eleos).11 (Heb 4:14-16) 11. Cf. NJBC, 60: 19-28; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 104-136; Grässer, An die Hebräer, I, pp. 156-197; Bristol, op.cit., pp.55-70; Hughes, op.cit., pp. 125-68; Vanhoye, Prètres anciens, pp. 109-30; Gerhard Friedrich, “Das Lied vom Hohenbpriester im Zusammenhang von Heb 4, 14-5, 10,” Theologische Zeitschrift, 18(1962), pp. 95-115; Dey, op. cit., pp. 215-266. The exhortatory conclusion of Hebrews returns at least implicitly to the theme of Jesus’ sinlessness when it portrays Him as the “pioneer and perfecter” of faith. After a long catalogue of figures from the Old Testament who suffered for their faith and even went to death rather than renounce it (Heb 11:1-40), Hebrews cites Jesus as the supreme and culminating example of fidelity to God even unto death. He freely accepted the shame, torture, and torment of the cross. Moreover, in doing so He showed Himself “pioneer (archegon) and perfecter (teleoten) of faith (tes pisteos).” (Heb 12:2-3) As the pioneer of faith Jesus confronts the community as its model. Like Him they must face unflinchingly any suffering which threatens for the sake of sharing His joy through union with Him and the Father in heaven. The community has not yet faced martyrdom. As a consequence, God is asking less of them than He did of His own Son. (Heb 12:4) The Son of God’s trust in the Father’s vindication as He hung on the cross, through its sinless perfection, confronts the believer as the supreme human act of trust. (Cf. Heb 4:15) In this sense Jesus perfects human faith in God. “Perfecter of faith,” however, probably also has an active connotation: the perfect, sinless self-offering of the Son on the cross effects the Christian’s sanctification in faith. Hence, by sending the sanctifying Breath to transform the Church in faith, Christ brings the faith of the Church to completion, to perfection. Jesus’ faith, then, exceeds the faith of believers by empowering their faith. Cf. NJBC, 60: 67; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 353-358; Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “Der Anführer und Vollender unseres Glaubens: Zum theolgischen Verständnis dees Hebräerbriefs” in Gestalt und Anspruch des Neuen Testaments, edited by J. Schreiner and G. Dantzberg (Würtzburg: Echter, 1969), pp. 262-281; Robert L. Brawley “Discursive Structure and the Unseen in Hebrews 2:8 and 11:1: A Neglected Aspect of the Context,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 55(1993), pp. 81-98; Dennis Hamm, S.J., “Faith in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 52(1990), pp. 270-291; Thomas Söding, “Zuversicht und Geduld im schauen auf Jesus: Zum Glaubensbegriff des Hebräerbriefs,”Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 82(1991), pp. 214-241; Albert Vanhoye, “Le teleôsis de Christ: point capital de la Christologie sacerdotale d’Hébreux,” New Testament Studies, 42(1996), pp. 321-338.
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In the exhortation which closes Hebrews, the author returns to the theme of accessibility. Sanctified by the blood of Christ, the Christian community needs to recall that the divine forgiveness effected by Jesus’ single saving sacrifice gives them the right to enter into the same heavenly Holy of Holies where He now dwells. Since only the high priest could enter the Holy of Holies in Jerusalem, Hebrews is portraying the Christian community as participants in Jesus’ own high priesthood. Under the new covenant, believers no longer need a merely human priest who enters into the presence of God in their name: instead, all believers have immediate access to God in Jesus, the divine high priest. (Heb 10:19) A Christian’s access to the heavenly Holy of Holies has a double meaning. It implies the present access to God which the Christian community possesses, as the living house, or temple, of God. (Heb 10:21; 3:6) One senses, however another meaning. Jesus Himself entered the heavenly sanctuary through the sacrifice of His life: He entered “through the curtain (dia tou katapetasmatos), that is, the flesh (tout’ estin tes sarkos).” Here the term “flesh” has the negative connotations of weakness and vulnerability. As the curtain in the temple kept the holy of holies hidden from sight, so the flesh of Christ, especially in His humiliation and crucifixion, obscured His divinity until its full revelation through His glorification. Finally, Christ entered the heavenly sanctuary precisely by laying down His life and therefore did so “through the flesh.” Entering into the heavenly sanctuary connotes, therefore, the willingness to lay down one’s life for the faith, if need be, in imitation of the crucified. Martyrdom, moreover, culminates in one’s being ushered into the presence of Christ in the eternal Holy of Holies.12 (Heb 10:21-4) On the basis of this understanding of Jesus’ mediatorial activity, the author of Hebrews contrasts further Jesus’ priesthood with the levitical high priesthood. He begins by recalling some of the levitical priests’ traditional liturgical functions. The levitical priest, like Aaron, existed as a result of a divine vocation, a divine call. The levitical high priest offered gifts and sacrifices for sins. A sinful man himself, the high priest could compassionate with the people’s weakness and sinfulness and so perform this sacrifice with due empathy (metriopathein).13 (Heb 5:1-4) The priesthood of Christ parallels and surpasses that of the levitical priesthood in each of these descriptive traits. Jesus has a more perfect calling than the levitical priest. God called the tribe of Levi collectively to priestly ministry; but the Father Himself called Jesus personally to the priesthood in two messianic psalms. Ps 2:7b asserts: “Your are my son, 12. Cf. NJBC, 60: 69-61; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 283-291. 13. The term “metriopathein” has Stoic overtones and connotes a measured emotional response: something between unbridled passion and lack of feeling.
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today I have begotten you”; while Ps 110:4 proclaims: “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” The author of the letter treats these psalm verses as the very words of the Father. In fact, they do develop theologically Jesus’ messianic commissioning by the Father in the synoptic gospels. Jesus, the high priest of the new covenant, empathizes more perfectly with human weakness and suffering than did the levitical high priest. He does so by His reconciling death on the cross. The author of Hebrews makes much of the fact that Jesus’ messianic priesthood fulfills that of Melchizedek. The author will argue in chapter seven that the priesthood of Melchizedek, whose offering of bread and wine in Gen 14:18 foreshadows the eucharist, holds a higher dignity than the levitical priesthood which descended from Abraham. Here, in chapter five, the author indicates the reason for that greater dignity. Jesus possesses His priesthood in virtue of being the Son of God incarnate, sent by the Father to effect the universal reconciliation of sinners. The Father’s act in raising Jesus from the dead manifests both His divine sonship and His eternal priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek. (Heb 5:9-10) Despite His supreme dignity as Son, Jesus, “learned obedience through what He suffered.” (Heb 5:8) Indeed, his obedience even to death manifested the sinless perfection of His obedience. (Heb 5:9, cf. 4:15, 10:4-10) Like the levitical priest, therefore, Jesus could empathize completely with those for whom He offered the supremely efficacious sacrifice of atonement. Indeed, Jesus’ atoning sacrifice far surpasses the efficacy of the sacrificial intercessions offered to God by the levitical high priests on the day of Atonement. During His days in the flesh He offered prayers and supplications with loud cries and tears to the one who had power to save Him; and He was heard because of His reverence. (Heb 5:7)
The author of Hebrews is probably alluding the Jesus’ prayer for deliverance addressed to the Father in the garden of Gethsemani. That prayer ends with His total submission to the divine will, should the Father require Him to die. (Cf. Mk 14:36) That submission, the perfection of His sinless obedience even unto death, endows His intercession with saving efficacy. “He was heard because of His reverence.” The Father answers Jesus’ prayer, not by sparing Him the cross, but by raising Him to glory after the passion. Moreover, this act of the Father fulfills the two Messianic verses from the psalms cited in 5:5-6. (Ps 2:7 and 110:4) Hebrews therefore portrays their fulfillment as the equivalent of their formal proclamation by the Father to the Son. The resurrection, therefore, manifests Jesus
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as divine Son of God. It also proclaims Him as universal high priest of the order of Melchizedek.14 Invoking Biblical typology, Hebrews uses midrash in order to portray Mechizedek as a foreshadowing of Jesus’ incarnational priesthood. A king of righteousness and of peace, Melchizedek appears in Genesis without human ancestors of any kind. Like the Son of God, therefore, his life neither begins nor ends but (symbolically and rhetorically) abides forever. The righteousness and messianic peace which Jesus brings fulfills what Melchizedek typifies as does His eternal existence as Son of God. Invoking narrative midrash, the author of Hebrews discovers the superiority of Mechizedek’s priesthood to the levitical revealed in fact that, in the story of the encounter between Abraham and Melchizedek in Genesis (Gen 14:17-24), Abraham paid tribute to Melchizedek. By thus subordinating himself, Abraham acknowledged the superiority of Melchizedek’s priesthood to the levitical priests whom Abraham would engender. Levi, present in the loins of Abraham, ceded pride of place to Melchizedek through Abraham’s act of homage.15 (Heb 7:4-10) 14. Cf. Vanhoye, La structure litteraire, pp. 86-113; Prètres anciens, pp. 130-66; P. Andriessen and A. Lenglet, “Quelques passages difficiles de l’Épitre aux Hébreux (5, 7. 11; 10, 20; 12,2),” Biblica, 51(1970), pp. 207-220. In a brief exhortatory interlude, the author of Hebrews avows his intention to offer reflections about Christ which transcend basic catechesis. (Heb 5:11-6:2) He laments the sad state of those who received a share in the Holy Breath and then apostatized. They cannot be reconciled a second time, “since they crucify the Son of God willfully and hold Him up to contempt.” (Heb 6:6) Those who persevere in faith, however, have solid reason to hope. They have an “anchor” for their souls in Jesus, the eternal High Priest of the order of Melchizedek. They know Him as a “precursor for us,” the one who has entered into the heavenly sanctuary before us in order to make our own entry possible. He has penetrated beyond the veil of the Holy of Holies in the temple of heaven and thus brought His atoning sacrifice on the cross to its efficacious, redemptive climax. (Heb 6:19-20) Cf. Bristol, op.cit., pp. 71-94. 15. Cf. NJBC, 60: 38-39; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 137-154; Grässer, An die Hebräer, I, pp. 240- 314, II, pp. 7-35; Shinya Nomoto, “Herkunft und Struktur der Hohenpriestervorstellung im Hebräerbrief,” Novum Testamentum, 10(1968), pp. 10-25; Egon Brandenburger, “Text un Vorlagen von Hebr. V, 7-10,” Novum Testamentum, 11(1969), pp. 190-224; Bruce Demarest, A History of Interpretation of Hebrews 7, 1-10 from the Reformation to the Present (Tübingen: Mohr, 1976); Dey, op. cit., pp. 185-214; Erich Grässer, Die Glaube im Hebrœerbrief (Marburg: N.G. Elwert, 1965), esp. 198-219; Fred L. Horton, Jr., The Melchizedek Tradition: A Critical Examination of the Sources to the Fifth Century and in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); Gottfried Schulle, “Erwägunen zur Hohepriesterlehre des Hebräerbriefs,” Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlische Wissenschaft, 46(1955), pp. 81-109; Jerome H. Neyrey, S.J., “‘Without Beginning of Days or End of Life’ (Hebrews 7:3): Topos for a True Deity,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly, 53(1991), pp. 439-455; Gareth Lee Cocerill, “Mechizedek or ‘King of Righteousness,’” Evangelical Quarterly, 63(1991), pp. 305-312; Mikeal Parsons, “Son and High Priest: A Study in the Christology of Hebrews,” Evangelical Quarterly, 60(1988), pp. 195-216.
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A second midrashic “argument” confirms the superiority of Jesus’s priesthood to the levitical. The fact that the Old Testament speaks of the messiah as “priest of the order of Melchizedek” and not as a priest of the order of Aaron or Levi means that with the coming of the messiah, His priesthood, which descends from Melchizedek, replaces the levitical priesthood, just as the new covenant which He seals by His own blood replaces the old covenant. Priestly ministry flows from a covenant. Since the new covenant abrogates the old, it also abrogates the priesthood of the old covenant. Indeed, God made a point of having His Son descend, not from the tribe of Levi but from the tribe of Judah, which had no official priestly responsibilities under the old covenant. God did this in order to manifest the novelty and superiority of the priesthood which Jesus brings. (Heb 7:11-14) Hebrews’ third argument for the superiority of Jesus’ priesthood to that of Levi appeals to the former’s eternity and efficacy. Jesus’ indestructible risen life guarantees both the eternity and efficacy of His priesthood. The author of Hebrews dismisses the office of the levitical priest as “weak and useless” like the Law from which it sprang. That Law “perfected no one.” Hence, the priestly functions it sanctioned suffered from the same impotence. (Heb 7:11) The priesthood of Jesus, however, does possess saving efficacy and therefore gives a better hope, a hope which enables one to draw near to God. (Heb 7:15-9) We draw near to God through the intercessory efficacy of Jesus’ priesthood, “for He can save completely those who draw near to God through Him, living always [as He does] to make intercession for them.” (Heb 7:25) The efficacy of Jesus’ priesthood also insures the completeness of the salvation He brings. It saves one totally. Its perpetuity grounds the “better hope” it gives, since one knows that at every moment of time the glorified Jesus sits beside the Father pleading eternally for us. The salvation which Jesus brings also imparts a share in incorruptible life. The perpetuity and efficacy of Christ’s priesthood entails its total sufficiency. It makes a succession of priests under the new covenant wholly unnecessary. Levitical priests were born and died in a temporal succession. Because the resurrection makes Jesus priest “for ever in the order of Melchizedek,” Christians need no other priest but Him. (Heb 7:23-4) In replacing the ancestral levitical priesthood with an eternal priesthood, Jesus also abolishes the former once and for all. Moreover, in Ps 110:4, God Himself testifies to the perpetuity of Jesus’ priesthood. God, however, gave no such guarantee to the ephemeral levitical priesthood, since He had destined it to perish when the High Priest of the new covenant arrived. The new covenant too replaces the old as the guarantee of our hope for salvation in Christ. (Heb 7:20-22)
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The author ends this section of the letter with a fourth argument for the superiority of Jesus’ priesthood: namely, its sinless perfection. Under the old law, levitical priests offered the sacrifice of atonement not only for the people but for themselves. The author of Hebrews argues that the very liturgical structure of levitical worship dramatizes its impotency. The daily repetition of levitical sacrifices betrays its inability to put a decisive end to sin. Jesus, by contrast, offered an utterly sinless sacrifice and did so once and for all. The sinlessness of Jesus’ sacrifice ensures its enduring efficacy. So does its eschatological scope. Jesus’ single sacrifice culminated in His eternal exaltation “above the heavens,” to a perfect, eternal, sinless realm beyond the power and influence of sinners. Hebrews here alludes to the Mishnah requirement that the levitical high priest separate himself from others for a week before offering the sacrifice of atonement. Through the exaltation which constitutes Jesus High Priest of the new covenant, the incarnate Son of God lives in perpetual separation from sinful influence and can therefore intercede perpetually before God for sinners. The sinfulness of the levitical priests insured the imperfection of their sacrifices, which therefore needed constant repetition. By reverse logic, the sinlessness of Christ’s sacrifice insures its perfection: both its perfect efficacy and its perfect sufficiency. Having offered it once, Jesus need not offer it again. It abides as a perpetual intercession for sinners.16 (Heb 7:26-8; cf. Heb 10:4-10) I have considered the second comparison which gives rhetorical structure to the sacerdotal Christology of Hebrews. In it the author argues that Jesus, the messianic priest of the order of Melchizedek, surpasses and replaces the levitical priesthood through the eternity, efficacy, all-sufficiency, and sinlessness of His single sacrifice. In the paragraphs which follows I shall ponder the third comparison. It asserts that the new covenant in Christ ushers in a new age of worship which replaces the worship offered in the temple in Jerusalem.17 As we have just seen, the fact that Jesus exercises His priesthood in glorified exaltation at the Father’s right hand dramatizes its eschatological 16. Cf. NJBC, 60: 38-43; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 198-215; Grässer, An die Hebräer, II, pp. 35- 65; Bristol, op.cit., pp. 94-105; Hughes, op.cit., pp. 54-160; Vanhoye, Prètres anciens, pp. 167- 93; Franz Laub, “Ein für allemal hineigegangen in das Allerheiligste’ (Hbr 9,12)—Zum Verstœndnis des Kreuzetodes im Hebräerbrief,” Biblische Zeitschrift, 35(1991), pp. 65-85; T.J. Finney, “A Proposed Reconstruction of Hebrews 7.28a in P46,” New Testament Studies, 40(1994), pp. 472-473. 17. Cf. Jerome Smith, O.P., A Priest Forever (London: Sheed and Ward, 1969); Richard D. Nelson, Raising Up a Faithful Priest: Community and Priesthood in Biblical Theology (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993), pp. 141-168; Dorothy Soelle, Christ the Representative: An Essay in Theology after the”Death of God” (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1967).
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character. In the course of the third comparison, the author of Hebrews describes the heavenly liturgy over which Jesus presides as the perfect pattern and prototype of temple worship in Jerusalem. The prototype qualifies as reality; its earthly copy, as an inferior imitation. Some commentators discover in this comparison Platonic influences. The author of Hebrews does indeed recognize a superior, invisible spiritual realm as the pattern for earthly reality. He derives the idea, however, not from Plato but from Ex 25:40, where Moses patterns the meeting tent which housed the arc of the covenant on a heavenly prototype revealed to Him by God. (Heb 8:5) Like Plato, the author of Hebrews also believes that the unseen order surpasses the created world in perfection. (Heb 9:11) Throughout the letter, however, he portrays the difference, not in dualistic, Platonic, metaphysical terms, but in historical, eschatological terms, as the imperfection of a type which foreshadows the ultimate eschatological revelation of a heavenly reality. Eschatological thinking dominates, not Greek metaphysics. Similarly, the author of Hebrews portrays the atoning sacrifice of Jesus as beginning in time but as culminating in eternity. It began on the cross but found completion in the resurrection, which transforms Jesus forever into the eternal High Priest of the new covenant. From heaven, Jesus’ priestly intercession continues to effect the salvation of believers on earth. That salvation His sacrificial death accomplished once and for all. In other words, the third comparison contrasts the realms of time and eternity; but the dynamic, historical, and eschatological way in which the author portrays Jesus’ saving activity in the heavenly realm prevents his vision from qualifying as philosophical Platonism. In Platonic philosophy the transcendent forms of things exhibit no such activity as Hebrews attributes to the glorified Christ. They do not save, intercede, or transform. Essentially immutable, they merely serve as the unchanging intelligibilities in which the mutable world participates. Moreover, the eschatological age blurs the essentialistic, Platonic distinction between time and eternity by giving Christians on earth present access to heavenly realities.18 How, then, does the paschal mystery fulfill ancient Hebrew worship? Moses constructed the first Tent of Meeting according to the heavenly pattern revealed to him atop Mt. Sinai. As a consequence, both the Mosaic Tent of Meeting and the sacrifices conducted in it only amount to a “pattern and shadow of heavenly realities.” So indeed does any ritual sacrifice offered to God on earth. (Heb 8:4-5) For that very reason, Jesus the 18. Cf. Aelred Cody, O.S.B., Heavenly Sanctuary and Liturgy in the Epistle to the Hebrews: The Achievement of Salvation in the Epistle’s Perspectives (St. Meinrad, IN: Grail, 1960); James Swetman, S.J., “Christology and Eucharist in the Epistle to the Hebrews,” Biblica, 70(1989), pp. 74-95.
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layman by His Davidic descent was providentially prevented from offering ritual sacrifices on earth. (Heb 8:4, cf. 7:13-4) Through the paschal mystery, however, Jesus has entered once and for all into “the true tent of meeting,” the very heavenly reality revealed to Moses on Sinai as the pattern for the physical tent which he constructed. No human created that heavenly tent; only “the Lord” did. The title “the Lord” occurs here in a citation of the Septuagint translation of Num 24:6. The title, therefore, would seem to refer in this context to the Father who created the heavenly tent and who established Jesus in it as “the minister of the sanctuary (ton harion leitourgos)” by exalting Him in glory to sit as His right hand. (Heb 8:1-3) Hebrews, however, has already made it clear that the Father creates through the Son who therefore exists prior to creation. (Heb 1:2-3) The author of Hebrews now regards the superiority of Jesus’ priesthood to the levitical as proven; and in the passages which follow, his argument rises to its rhetorical climax. The superiority of Jesus’ priesthood flows simultaneously from the fact that both the sacrifice of His death and the covenant which it seals surpass anything which Old Testament faith and worship has to offer. In developing these ideas Hebrews offers two arguments in support of the new covenant’s superiority. First, the new covenant holds better promises than the old. Second, the imperfection of the old covenant ensured its eventual disappearance and required its replacement by a new and more perfect covenant, as, indeed, Jeremiah prophesied. (Heb 8:6-13; Jer 31:31-4) The author of Hebrews illustrates both these points by contrasting in considerable rhetorical detail the Jewish sacrifice of atonement with Jesus’ atoning death and saving glorification. Once a year and only once, the High Priest and he alone could enter the Holy of Holies in order to offer the sacrifice of atonement. (Heb 9:11) The levitical High Priest would sprinkle the people first with the blood of goats and bulls and then with the ashes of a heifer mixed with water. Then he would enter the Holy of Holies to sprinkle some of the same blood on the Mercy Seat, which symbolized God’s presence among His people. (Cf. Num 19:9, 14-21) Sprinkling with heifer’s ashes cleansed from defilement. The sprinkling of blood, as we have seen, symbolized the new bond of life which the sacrifice of atonement created between God and Israel, despite its sins of the past year. (Heb 9:12-13) According to Hebrews, the levitical sacrifice of atonement did nothing to change the inner selves of those who participated in it, because the rules of the Law concerned outward things and lacked the power to transform human hearts in the way in which the new covenant does. Needless to say, a devout first-century Jew would not have regarded the temple sacrifices as inefficacious. One hears, however, in this passage of Hebrews
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another echo of Pauline theology. The single sanctifying sacrifice of Christ through the gift of God’s Breath, which it mediates, gives one strength to avoid sin and to grow in sanctification with a power which transcends utterly anything which the old Law accomplished.19 (Heb 10:1-4) Three things manifest the superiority of the new covenant and its sacrifice. First, Jesus, the priest and victim of the new covenant, offered Himself through the power of the eternal Breath. (Heb 9:10, 13-4) His death therefore possesses the power to purify the inner self from “dead actions so that we may serve the living God.” Second, Christ has entered the heavenly, uncreated Holy of Holies. That heavenly sanctuary, in virtue of its not having been created, surpasses in perfection the inner sanctum of the Mosaic Tent of Meeting. (Heb 9:11) Third, Jesus has entered the heavenly sanctuary carrying, not animal blood, but His own blood by which He has won for repentant sinners an eternal redemption.20 (Heb 9:12-3) Some interpreters deny that the eternal Breath which inspired Jesus’ sacrifice designates the Holy Breath.21 They see in the term pneuma a tacit contrast between the realm of eternal spirit and the visible, earthly realm 19. In the exhortatory section of Hebrews, the author further develops his atonement Christology. On the day of Atonement, the high priest burned the bodies of the sacrificed animals outside the precincts of the Hebrews’ camp; an act which foreshadowed Jesus’ dying for us as a degraded outcast. His degrading death reveals the inevitability of death for all humans and that abiding life lies only in the world to come. Through Christ, then, the community should offer praise to God by acknowledging His name, cultivating good works, and sharing what they possess in common. (Heb 13:11-6) The prayer which closes the letter portrays Jesus as the one whom the God of peace brought back from the dead. (Heb 13:20) Through the death and resurrection of Jesus, God has made peace between Himself and humanity; for Jesus’ death and resurrection fulfill the prophecy of Zech 9:11. Zechariah had promised the coming of one who becomes “the great Shepherd of the sheep by the blood which sealed an eternal covenant.” Having sealed the new covenant in the paschal mystery, Jesus continues to function as the good and great shepherd of His flock by inspiring in Christians the willingness to do the will of God in every circumstance. In this way, through Jesus Christ God makes believers acceptable to Himself. (Heb 13:20-1) (Cf. Bristol, op.cit., pp. 169-90; Vanhoye, La structure litteraire, pp. 194-224; Hughes, op.cit., pp. 277594); Gabriella Berenyi, “La portée de dia touto en Hé 9, 15,” Biblica, 69(1988), pp. 108-112. 20. The exhortation which closes Hebrews further develops the saving significance of Jesus’ blood. In the eschatological age, Christians have entered into the very presence of “Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and of a sprinkling of blood which speaks more eloquently than Abel’s.” (Heb 12:24) Abel’s blood cried out to God for retribution against his brother and murderer. (Gen 4:10) Jesus’ blood cries out to God for the universal forgiveness of repentant sinners in a way which not only blots out sin but effects human sanctification. (Cf. Heb 10:11-8; Bristol, op.cit., pp. 141-67) With the help of the Lord Jesus, Christians should, moreover, fear nothing which mere humans can do to them, for His fidelity and forgiveness lasts forever. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” (Heb 13:6-8) 21. Cf. NJBC, 60:53.
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to which Hebrews called attention elsewhere. Even if one concedes the contrast, however, it need not rule out a reference to the Holy Breath of God, who as divine would also belong to the eternal realm. Moreover, like the apostle Paul, the author of Hebrews recognizes that the enlightenment of the Holy Breath empowers one to respond to the new covenant. (Heb 6:4) Might not the same author be suggesting here that the same Breath empowered Jesus’ sinless sealing of the covenant?22 In Hebrews, Jesus functions as mediator of the new and more efficacious covenant because His death cancels the sins of the earlier covenant. (Heb 9:16) In proof of this assertion, the author of Hebrews constructs a rhetorical legal “argument.” He urges that a last will and testament requires the death of the testator before it binds anyone legally. The same condition applies to the new covenant. It could not take effect until the one who made it had first died. (Heb 9:16-7) The author of Hebrews builds his rhetorical “argument” on a pun. The Greek term “diathêkê ” can mean either a covenant or a testament, as in a “last will and testament.” (Cf. Heb 9:15) One cannot logically interchange the two terms; but the author of Hebrews here argues rhetorically as though one could. While the argument limps, the central theological point the author is making remains clear: sealing the new covenant demanded the death of Jesus. Reverting to typological thinking, the author argues that the slaughter of the animals whose blood the Hebrews used in their sacrifices provided only earthly copies of the more perfect heavenly reality accomplished through Jesus’ single sacrifice on the cross.23 (Heb 9:18-23; cf. 7:2- 3) In contrast to the inefficacious animal sacrifices, Jesus’ death ushers in the eschatological age. The author of Hebrews observes enigmatically apropos of the Hebrew rites of purification: It was, then, necessary that the copies of heavenly things be purified by these things, but the heavenly things themselves [would need to be purified] by better sacrifices than those. (Heb 9:23) 22. Cf. Otfried Hofius, Der Vorhang von dem Thron Gottes (Tübingen: Mohr, 1972). 23. Some commentators find this legal argument so implausible and indefensible that they portray verses 18-22 as deriving from the argument of the entire letter up to this point. I do not find the suggestion convincing. The author of Hebrews strikes me as less concerned with legal technicalities and more concerned to use legal language metaphorically and rhetorically in order to insist on the redemptive efficacy of Christ’s death. In describing Melchizedek as eternal (Heb 7:2-3) the author has already proven his ability to develop from Old Testament texts rationally implausible interpretations of their meaning. In the present instance, it makes more sense finally to take the author at his word and see him as interpreting the new covenant as Christ’s dying testament to us. The metaphor finds theological justification in the Pauline notion that the justification through faith mediated by Christian baptism makes believers into co-heirs with Christ.
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Exegetes puzzle over what the purification of “the heavenly things themselves” with “better sacrifices” might mean. Under the presupposition that heavenly things themselves need no purification, some have suggested that here purification means consecration and not purification from sin. Others deem that such an interpretation does violence to the text and find instead a reference to Job 15:15: “Behold, God puts no trust in His holy ones, and the heavens are not clean in His sight.” The text in Job probably alludes to the existence of evil principalities and powers. Exegetes also puzzle over the use of the plural in the noun “sacrifices (thysias),” since Hebrews recognizes only one heavenly sacrifice: namely, that of Christ. The plural form could suggest a hypothetical generalization about the nature of heavenly things. Since the Mosaic rites of purification imitate superior heavenly realities, those heavenly realities would in principle need other and better kinds of purification. In fact, the heavens received their purification when Christ entered them once and for all. If, moreover, the actual purification of the heavens does refer to the risen Christ’s decisive triumph over the evil principalities and powers who dwell “in the heavenly places,” then, the author of Hebrews is also asserting that the final eschatological triumph over evil requires more efficacious sacrifices than Mosaic rituals. In the end, only the single, supremely efficacious self-sacrifice of the Son of God effected the necessary purification. Christ, through His redemptive death and glorification has entered once and for all, not into a manufactured sanctuary, but into heaven itself. He stands face to face with God. He has entered heaven on our behalf, as our redeemer and intercessor before the Father. (Heb 9:24) Unlike the levitical high priest who had to offer the sacrifice of atonement again and again using alien blood, Christ has done away with sin by shedding His own blood once and for all and by shedding it for the sake of others. In so suffering, Christ stands historically revealed as the suffering servant of God. (Cf. Is 53:12) Innocent of all sin, He wins pardon for the people by willingly suffering death in their stead. Moreover, Jesus’ death “once and for all (hapax),” begins the final eschatological age which His second coming will bring to completion. Having died once, Christ will not die again. By His death and glorification He has dealt decisively with sin at a single stroke. When He comes again, He will not suffer a second time but will reward with salvation those who look forward to His final manifestation.24 (Heb 9:25-8)
24. Cf. NJBC, 60: 44-56; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 216-266; Grässer, An die Hebräer, II, pp. 78- 200; Hughes. op.cit., pp. 161-276; Vanhoye, Prètres anciens, pp. 194-235; Franz Laub, Bekenntnis und Auslegung: Die paränetische Funktion der Christologie im Hebräerbrief (Regensburg: Verlag Friedrich Pustet, 1980); Marie E.Isaacs, “Hebrews 13.9-16 Revisited,” New Testament Studies, 43(1997), pp. 268-284.
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The Argument Summarized The author of Hebrews closes the expository section of the letter by summarizing some of its key insights. The summary makes four assertions: 1) The Law only foreshadowed the saving reality of Christ. 2) The repeated sacrifices of the old Law dramatize their intercessory inefficacy. 3) Jesus’ enthronement at the right hand of God manifests the superiority of the new covenant. 4) The single sacrifice of the new covenant forgives sins once and for all. Let us consider each of these summary points in turn. As a foreshadowing (skia) of the realities accomplished in Christ, the Law was not “the [true] form (tê eikona) of what occurred.” Here the term “form (eikona)” contrasts with the term “shadow (skia)” as reality contrasts with its imperfect, shadowy anticipation. The law and the repeated sacrifices it sanctioned had no power to accomplish what Christ’s single sacrifice has done: viz, the perfecting of those who draw near to share in His sacrifice. (Heb 10:1) The very fact that the law required repeated sacrifices manifests that the levitical sacrifice of atonement had no power to keep people from sinning. If it had, after a single sacrifice, all sin consciousness would have disappeared. Instead, the levitical sacrifices recalled the sins of the Hebrews year after year.25 (Heb 10:1-3) The one sacrifice of Christ and His ensuing glorification has by contrast endowed Him with universal, divine, messianic authority. Enthroned at God’s right hand, Jesus now awaits the inevitable and final submission of all His enemies under His feet. The image of enthronement alludes to Ps 110:1, the same coronation psalm which proclaims the Davidic king a priest of the order of Melchizedek, (Ps 110:4; cf. Ps 1:3, 8:1, 12:2) Some 25. The phrase, “but in them [i.e., the sacrifices under the Law] the remembrance of sin [occurred] year after year,” (Heb 10:3) suffers from a certain ambiguity. On the one hand, it could mean that the Hebrew people each year recalled the sins of the preceding year on the day of atonement. On the other hand, the phrase could mean that year after year the inefficacious sacrifice of atonement only served to remind God of the cumulative guilt of Israel. I find both meanings plausible. Perhaps the author intended both. In confirmation of this argument, the author cites Ps 40:6-8: Sacrifices and oblations you have not desired, but you have prepared a body for me; in holocausts and sin offerings you have taken no pleasure. Then I said, “See, I have come to do your will, O God,” as it is written of me in the scroll of the book. Because of Israel’s cumulative sinfulness, its sacrifices lacked any power to please God. Only the incarnation of the Son of God and His perfect obedience, even unto death, had that power. For that reason, the death of Christ abolishes once and for all the need for levitical sacrifices. (Heb 10:5-10) Cf. Karen H. Jobes, “Rhetorical Achievement in the Hebrews 10 ‘Misquote’ of Psalm 40,” Biblica, 72(1992), pp. 387-396.
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have also found a possible allusion to 2 Sam 7:18, where David asks God’s blessing on all His posterity, although the latter reference seems more dubious. “For by a single offering He has perfected (tetoleioken) once and for all in perpetuity those who are being sanctified (tous hagiazomenous).” The use of the perfect tense in the verb “tetoleioken” connotes finality: by one single sacrifice Christ has decisively accomplished the salvation of His saints. His enthronement at the right hand of God ensures the perpetuity of His single sacrifice’s saving consequences. The present passive participle “hagiazoumenous” suggests that the sanctifying effects of Jesus’ single sacrifice extend through time and accomplish the present, ongoing sanctification of believers. In Heb 8:8-12, the author has already cited in full Jeremiah’s prophecy of a new covenant. Now the author recalls verses from that citation and ponders their fulfillment in Christ. In recalling Jeremiah’s words, the author calls attention to their Breath-inspired character. The author probably does so as a way of alluding to the Breath-inspired character of the new covenant in Christ. The sanctifying action of the enthroned Christ seals in the hearts of believers the new covenant promised by Jeremiah. (Heb 10:15-7) Having cited the words of Jeremiah, “I will remember their sins and misdeeds no more.” (Heb 10:17; Jer 8:12), the author of Hebrews ends the doctrinal section of the letter with the statement: “Where there is forgiveness of these [offenses], there is no longer offering for sin.” (Heb 10:18) The divine forgiveness revealed in the single saving sacrifice of Christ explains why God no longer calls the sins of believers to mind: He has forgiven them definitively, once and for all.26 26. Cf. NJBC, 60: 57-61; Attridge, op. cit., pp. 267-304; Grässer, An die Hebräer, II, pp. 200-238; Hughes, op. cit., pp.125-404; Ulrich Luck, “Himmlisches und irdisches Geschen im Hebräerbrief” in Charis kai Sophia: Festschrift für Karl Heinrich Rengstorf (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1964), pp. 192-215; David M. Hay, Glory at the Right Hand: Psalm 110 and Early Christianity (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1973); Floyd V. Filson, “Yesterday”: A Study of Hebrews in the Light of Chapter 13 (Napierville, IL: Allenson, 1967); Mathias Rissi, Die Theologie des Hebräerbriefs (Tübingen: Mohr, 1987); George H. Guthrie, The Structure of Hebrews: A Text-Linguistic Analysis (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994); William R.G. Loader, Sohn und Hohepriester: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Untersuchung aur Christologie des Hebräerbriefs (Neukirchen-en-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1981); Léopold Sabourin, Priesthood: A Comparative Study (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1973); Andreas Stadelmann, “Zum Christologie des Hebräerbriefs in der neueren Diskussion” in Theologische Berichete 2, edited by Josef Pfammatter et al. (Zürich: Benziger, 1973), pp. 135-221; James Swetman, Jesus and Isaac: A Study of the Epistle to the Hebrews in the Light of the Aquedah (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981); Heinrich Zimmermann, Das Bekenntnis der Hoffnung: Tradition und Redaktion im Hebräerbrief (Cologne: Peter Hanstein Verlag, 1977); Die Hohepriester Christologie des Hebräerbriefs (Paderborn: Schöningh, 1964); Lucas F. Mateo-Seco, “Muerte de Christo y Theologia de la Cruz” in Cristo Hijo de Diós y Redentór del Hombre, edited
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In this section I have summarized the sacerdotal Christology of the letter to the Hebrews. In the section which follows, I shall propose a doctrinal interpretation of the sacerdotal Christology of the letter to the Hebrews. Moreover, I shall formulate that interpretation in the light of the metaphysics of experience developed in this study. (II) This section of the present chapter elaborates a doctrinal account of Jesus’ priesthood. It reflects on the message of Hebrews in the light of the metaphysics of experience developed in this volume. It also invokes a pragmatic logic of consequences in order to clarify the saving significance of the experiential construct of the hypostatic union and of the trinity proposed in this section. I begin these doctrinal reflections by contextualizing historically the sacerdotal Christology of the letter to the Hebrews. My remarks in this section fall into three parts. First, I contextualize the argument of Hebrews. Second, I flesh out some of its propositions with insights from the rest of the New Testament. Third, I reflect doctrinally on Christological sacerdotalism in the light of a metaphysics of experience. Among the first Christians, Hellenists, like those expelled from Jerusalem in Acts, occupied the extreme theological left. Originally Jewish Christians with ties to the Diaspora (Cf. Acts 6:8-8:3), the Hellenists looked upon the Christ event as such a radically new beginning in salvation history that it replaced and abrogated its temple, its feasts, and its priesthood. The letter to the Hebrews emerged from a similar theological mind-set.27 The Hellenists developed a prophetic strain in Jesus’ own preaching: namely, His denunciation of abuses in temple worship. Viewing Jesus’ confrontation with the temple priesthood from the other side of the paschal mystery, however, the Hellenists radicalized this dimension of Jesus’ preaching. In contextualizing Hellenistic theology historically, one needs, then, first of all to situate it with respect to Jesus’ own denunciation of abuses in temple worship. During His mortal ministry, Jesus Himself stood in an adversarial, prophetic relationship with the temple priesthood in Jerusalem. He did not, however, like the author of Hebrews, declare the levitical priesthood null and void. Instead, Jesus called for the radical reform of a politically compromised, clericalized priestly caste. by Lucas Matéo-Seco (Pamplona: Ediciones Universidad Navarra, 1982), pp. 699-747; Norbert Hugede, Le sacerdoce du Fils (Paris: Fischbacher, 1983); André Fueillet, The Priesthood of Christ and His Ministers, translated by Matthew J. O’Connell (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1975). 27. Cf. Raymond E. Brown and John P. Meier, Antioch and Rome: New Testament Cradles of Catholic Christianity (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist, 1982), pp. 6-8.
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Jesus made His nearest approach to the position taken in Hebrews when He foretold the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. That destruction would in fact eliminate the temple priesthood as a force and presence in Jewish religion. After the fall of Jerusalem in 70 a.d. and the subsequent destruction of the temple, Pharisaism and the rabbinate would assume the reins of Jewish religious leadership. On what issues did Jesus distance Himself from the temple priesthood? In cleansing the temple, Jesus denounced the rich, aristocratic priests’ use of the temple in order to fill their already brimming coffers at the expense of the poor. Priestly greed violated a fundamental demand of life in God’s kingdom. Submission to God’s reign requires the renunciation of accumulated wealth and the free sharing of one’s physical possessions with the poor and the marginal. Jesus also demanded that those in positions of leadership in the new Israel which He was founding must serve others humbly in His image. The messianic reversal of values which He proclaimed transformed the rich and powerful into the willing slaves of the rest of the community at the same time that it elevated the lowest and most despised to the places of highest importance. Such sentiments contrasted sharply with the exploitative conduct of the aristocratic priestly elite in Jerusalem. In addition, Jesus denounced the hypocrisy of the temple priests for pretending to give religious leadership to Israel while ignoring the summons to repentance which both John the Baptizer and Jesus Himself announced. Finally, Jesus also rebuked the skeptical Sadducees for doubting the resurrection. Instead of giving a sound witness to faith, their skepticism undermined confidence in God’s saving power. The temple priests, for their part, seem to have understood well the muted messianic claims which Jesus made symbolically in His triumphal entry into Jerusalem. Having understood them, however, the priests also rejected them. What we can reconstruct historically about Jesus’ relationship to the levitical priesthood provides, then, no warranty whatever for calling an anticlericalistic, lay prophet a priest. As we have seen, the letter to the Hebrews twice insists that Jesus belonged to the tribe of David, not to the tribe of Levi and that He never functioned as a levitical priest during His mortal ministry. Hebrews regards Jesus’ lay status and membership in the tribe of David as providentially arranged by God with a view to creating a totally new kind of messianic priesthood. Hebrews finds Jesus’ messianic priesthood foreshadowed in the figure of Melchizedek. Since Melchizedek functioned as both priest and king, by tracing Jesus’ priesthood to the line of Melchizedek, the author of Hebrews characterizes Jesus as a messianic priest, as both priest and mes-
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siah. I shall reflect on Jesus’ messianic dignity in the section which follows. Here I focus on His priesthood. Although the author of Hebrews uses a fanciful Biblical typology in order to compare Jesus and Melchizedek, his argument for the priestly character of Jesus’ ministry rests on a much more solid doctrinal foundation than that comparison. Hebrews correctly argues that the utter uniqueness of the incarnation and of the paschal mystery so redefines the meaning of priesthood as to invalidate and supersede any merely human order of ritual priests. The letter to the Hebrews correctly grounds its theology of Christ’s priesthood first of all in the incarnation. Priests mediate between God and humanity. Until God personally entered history by taking to himself a complete human experience, the levitical priesthood performed a legitimate though often comparatively ineffectual function in salvation history. The incarnation of the Son of God, however, makes the saving reality of God immediately and personally present in human form. Jesus therefore supersedes all other merely human mediators, including Moses. The incarnation also radically changes the character of priesthood. The priesthood of the tribe of Levi, like all other priestly castes, separated its members from the people and endowed them with a special sacral aura and authority. Traditional forms of priesthood presuppose and re-enforce a sharp distinction between the sacred and the profane. A priesthood grounded in the incarnation, however, abolishes the distinction and sanctifies the profane. Jesus exercises, not a priesthood of sacral separation, but a priesthood of total identification with humanity. By taking to Himself His own human experience, the Son of God identifies totally and permanently with those whom He had come to save, even with the basest and most marginal. Moreover, because the incarnation recreates humanity by rendering it sinless, Jesus confronts a sinful world as a completely accessible priest. Sin not only deforms humanity; it separates people from God and from one another. The sinless Son of God experienced the separation which the sins of others create. He experienced that separation most poignantly, tragically, and violently on Calvary. His own sinlessness, however, kept Him from creating barriers between Himself and others. As we have seen in other contexts, during Jesus’ mortal ministry, His sinlessness expanded His human heart to welcome everyone into the household of God: the poor, the marginal, the degraded, even the expendable. He loved sinners. He even loved His enemies. During His mortal ministry, Jesus seems also to have envisaged the day when the new Israel which He was beginning would include the Gentiles in its saving embrace.
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This universalist strain in Jesus’ preaching and ministry takes on new connotations in the light of the paschal mystery. The paschal mystery ends the kenosis, the period of history during which God acted and suffered within the limits of human experience. The risen Christ acts with saving universality, dispensing the divine Breath to any who approach Him in faith. Jesus, therefore, exercises not only a priesthood of total identification with humanity but a priesthood of total accessibility. No clerical barriers separate Him from those He comes to save. His glorification only enhances His accessibility by making Him the efficacious source of a universal salvation. Like many a pilgrim to the Holy Land, I experienced this truth standing on the soil of Israel. One day as I rejoiced in the opportunity to visit the very land where Jesus had lived, ministered, died, and risen, a clear and mildly ironic word came to me in prayer: “You did not have to come here in order to find Me.” I felt gently rebuked. The author of Hebrews saw clearly and correctly that the incarnation culminates in the paschal mystery. The paschal mystery in turn discloses the incarnation by revealing Jesus as the Breath-baptizer, as the source of divine life and therefore as divine. Taken together, Calvary, resurrection, and the mission of the Breath endow the paschal mystery with a saving efficacy which transcends any merely ritual sacrifice. In other words, by revealing the incarnation, the paschal mystery so redefines the meaning of priestly mediation as to make all other priestly traditions superfluous by comparison. Jesus Himself looked upon His own death as a sacrifice. In His eucharistic words He assimilated His blood to the blood used in sealing and renewing the covenant. In effect, then, He expressed His trust that the Father would use His death in order to deepen His disciples’ covenant commitment and in order to establish a new bond of life between humanity and God. The rite of atonement renewed the covenant by restoring the bond of life between God and Israel. In alluding to His covenant blood, therefore, Jesus implicitly compared His death to an atoning, reconciling sacrifice. On the cross, moreover, Jesus died to sin. All the coercive violence of the Satanic principalities and powers of this world did nothing to diminish His loving obedience to the Father. The cross also gives new meaning to Jesus’ priesthood of identification. The incarnate Son of God not only took to himself His own human experience and thus shared the lot of every other human; but by dying the death of a criminal He identified totally with the dregs of humanity. He also transformed apparent death and defeat into the supreme expression of divine saving love.
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Redemptive suffering lies, therefore, at the heart of Christian priesthood. Through it, those who share in Christ’s priesthood mediate God to the world by participating in and extending the atoning love of Christ into the darkest and most sinful corners of a very dark and sinful world. I shall return to this point later in other contexts. The resurrection and mission of the Breath also transform the meaning and efficacy of priestly service. The resurrection reveals Jesus’ divine authority over the powers, while the Breath of the risen Christ comes to empower humans to live the same kind of sinless life as Jesus did. Moreover, both the resurrection and the arrival of the Breath endow human experience with a new kind of transcendence. The resurrection reveals the goal of the process of graced transformation which Breath-baptism begins. The paschal mystery therefore also endows Jesus’ priesthood with yet another kind of accessibility: accessibility to life with Christ in God. The paschal mystery creates present sacramental accessibility to Jesus as well. Baptism inaugurates the life-long experience of Christological knowing. The eucharist advances that knowing by uniting one to Christ in the experience of shared, Breath-filled worship which renews the new covenant in Christ. In other words, taken together both the incarnation and the paschal mystery justify calling Jesus’ ministry “priestly,” not because Jesus functioned like an ordinary priest, but because the incarnation, death, and glorification of God’s Son together with His mission of His Breath constitute a unique and privileged mediation of God to the world, a mediation which supersedes any merely ritual human act of priestly mediation. An experiential construct of the trinity and of the hypostatic union provides a sound doctrinal interpretation of these fundamental New Testament insights into the meaning and scope of Christian priesthood. In an experiential construct of the trinity, the second person confronts believers as the spoken Word of God, as a divine communication, in virtue of His obediential relationship to both the Father and the Breath. His obediential relationship to the other divine persons does not in any way call into question His co-equality with Them. Rather, it transforms Him into the one through whom both the Father and the Breath act efficaciously upon creation. In the incarnation, They act through the Son in order to save and redeem humanity by setting sinners in a life-giving relationship with the entire Godhead. The efficacious, obediential transformation of a human experience in the second person of the trinity effects the incarnation. In the incarnation, Jesus confronts the world as the finite, developing human experience of being a divine person. In Jesus’ human actions, the Son of God acts. When Jesus speaks, a divine person speaks. When Jesus heals, the
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very Son of God heals. When Jesus exorcises, a divine person exorcises. When Jesus suffers and dies, the very Son of God suffers and dies. As I have already suggested in other contexts, the paschal mystery ends the period of the kenosis, that span of history when the Son of God acted and suffered strictly within the limits of the human. The risen Christ confronted those who saw Him with a humanity so transformed in God that it functioned thereafter as the human channel of the divine Breath. As Breath-baptizer, the glorified humanity of Jesus functions as the mediatorial source of a universal salvation. The gift of the divine Breath saves us by drawing us into loving union with the supremely loving, social reality of the triune God. As we have already seen, the paschal mystery discloses the very social life of the deity: namely, the processions, self-emptying, and, mutual self-donation of the divine persons. In disclosing the social life of the triune God, the paschal mystery simultaneously reveals to us something perpetually true about the way the triune God relates efficaciously to the world: namely, the other members of the divine triad always act through the second person of the trinity in dealing with created reality. The New Testament inferred this truth quickly and correctly when it proclaimed that the God who acted through Jesus to save the world also acted through Him in creating the world and will act through Him in judging it. Viewed experientially, therefore, the incarnate Son’s obediential relationship to the Father and to the Breath within the social life of the Godhead transforms Him into the universal mediator, into the one through whom they effect and communicate with created reality. Since, however, mediation between God and the world defines the very constitutive purpose of priesthood, in revealing the Son’s obediential relationship to the Father and to the Breath, the incarnation also reveals His unique and universal priesthood. These insights also interpret the way in which we sinners experience the divine Breath’s illumination. Theologians have traditionally called that illumination “created grace.” The tern “created grace” designates the difference which a saving relationship with God makes in the growth of a finite, developing human experience. Created grace differs from uncreated grace, i.e., from the divine reality which functions as the source of saving grace. When, therefore, we sinners experience graced enlightenment, we do not experience the mind of God directly. The mediated character of saving grace rules out any ontologistic interpretation of the enlightenment of faith. We have no direct access to the ideas in the mind of God either naturally of through the gracing of human experience. Of course, all graced enlightenment has its origins in the divine Breath, since She functions within the deity as the divine mind, as the origin of
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God’s saving wisdom. Her enlightenment always reaches us, however, through the mediation of the second person of the trinity, through His efficacious communicative touch within prayer. The Church’s corporate, efficacious mission by the risen Christ mediates to it the graced illumination of the Breath in a manner analogous to the way in which Jesus’ efficacious mission by the Father mediated to Him messianic enlightenment and empowerment. In a metaphysics of experience, decision creates the social links among experiences. For us to experience anything, that reality needs first to act upon us efficaciously and decisively. We cannot see anything until light rays strike the retina of our eyes. We cannot feel anything which does not touch us in some way. Because the divine Breath functions within the Godhead as the eternal source of evaluation rather than as an eternal source of decision, for Her to touch us decisively, She must do so through the Son’s efficacious mediation. She acted through the Son’s efficacious mediation in illumining those who saw the risen Christ. She continues to act through His efficacious mediation in the gracing of every human experience. Whenever, therefore, we experience created grace, we know ourselves as touched efficaciously by God. Sometimes others mediate that touch through their witness of faith. When that happens, however, we sense that the person who witnesses stands in relationship to a deity who invites us into a similar relationship. Sometimes too the divine touch reaches us directly in the solitude of prayer. Sometimes it breaks into experience suddenly and unexpectedly. However it occurs, that divine touch never coerces us, never functions mechanically. It lures us lovingly with a graced insight which takes its origin within the Godhead from the divine Breath, who, as the divine mind, inspires the deity’s every saving purpose and who serves in the Godhead as the quasi-locus of our graced transformation. In powerful experiences of created grace, experiences which Ignatius of Loyola called “consolation with out cause,” we know simultaneously the efficacious touch of God and where it leads and invites us. Other less dramatic graced transformations of experience require a “lingering out sweet skill,” the gradual incremental gracing of a human experience through alternative experiences of light and darkness, of consolation and desolation. That alternation yields a progressive insight into the direction in which the divine touch points and invites.28 The mediated character of graced experience entails that it yields no immediate access to the divine mind. The light of created grace always results from the saving touch of the divine mediator, of Jesus, the incar28. Cf. The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, translated by Louis J. Puhl, S.J. (Chicago, IL: Loyola University Press, 1951), 313-344.
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nate Word of God and great high priest of the new covenant. Put in the more technical language of a metaphysics of experience, we always experience created grace, not as a divine interpretative symbol, but as a divine communication. In the gracing of human experience the incarnate Word functions as the communicator, the divine Breath as the interpretative symbol whom He communicates. Created grace embodies our interpretative and decisive response in justifying faith to the divine mediator’s touch.29 As a consequence, we humans can on occasion misinterpret what the Son of God seeks to communicate to us, just as we can misinterpret what other humans try to communicate to us. For that reason, one needs to 29. I am suggesting in this argument, that when one interprets Jesus’ incarnational priesthood in the light of a metaphysics of experience, it raises simultaneously Christological, trinitarian, and anthropological issues. It raises these issues simultaneously because any theological interpretation of how we communicate with the Christian God needs to give an account of the God who communicates, the incarnational medium through which God communicates with us, and the way in which humans experience and interpret that communication. We face here a complex and thorny set of issues. In his excellent study, Christ and the Spirit: Spirit Christology in Trinitarian Perspective (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1994), Ralph Del Colle argues correctly and persuasively that Augustinian trinitarian theology fails finally to coordinate adequately trinitarian and Christological doctrine in a way which does justice to the New Testament witness to God’s saving activity. In classic Augustinian trinitarian theology, except during the incarnation, the trinity acts upon creation through the divine substance, the dynamic principle of activity common to all three divine persons. In effect, such a theory rules out in principle the ability of the Holy Spirit to act personally in the gracing of experience. Del Colle proposes a contemporary doctrinal reappropriation of Irenaeus’s metaphor of the two hands of God. According to Irenaeus, the Father acts upon creation through two different divine channels, the Son and the Breath, who each act as one of the “hands” of the Father. I suggested above that history provides the laboratory for testing theological hypotheses. It has already begun to test the doctrine of a two-handed God. Very early in the evolution of trinitarian theology, the following question arose: If God acts with two hands, do both hands do the same thing or does one do what the other does not do? The second of these responses led in the direction of subordinationism by suggesting that the Son does more than the Breath but less than the Father. The Arian controversy therefore taught orthodox theologians to hold that when the deity acts on creation, all three persons must act simultaneously or else forfeit their divine co-equality. Augustine subsequently explained the divine co-activity by appealing to a divine substance common to all three persons, which functioned as the joint source of all actions ad extra, i.e., aimed at creation. I have already suggested that one can better interpret the metaphor of the two hands of God with doctrinal orthodoxy if one portrays Jesus as the efficacious mediator of the Breath and Her as His mediation. She conceives within the Godhead the saving enlightenment which the efficacious touch of the second person of the trinity communicates to us with persuasive efficacy. Moreover, the divine Breath functions as the quasi-locus within the Godhead for the gracing of all human persons and of the communities they constitute.
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take care to understand the Word of God correctly both by meditating on His historical revelation in Christ and by carefully discerning the movements of divine grace from other natural or sinful impulses. When we misinterpret the Word God speaks to us in Christ, we run serious risk of deviating from the divine will. When we recognize that misunderstanding and persist in that deviation, we do in fact sin. We sinful Christians can, moreover, institutionalize misunderstandings of the Word spoken to us in Jesus Christ. Institutions give social sanction to habitual patterns of human behavior. Sinful institutions sanction sinful forms of behavior. Institutions, moreover, do not stand outside of experience but inside of it to the extent that they shape us as experiences. When institutions impinge on experience, they shape it both decisively and persuasively. Sometimes they seek to shape experience coercively. Institutionalized misunderstandings of the incarnate Word function, therefore, as a perennial example of concupiscence because baptized Christians experience them as distinct from their personal sins and yet as coming from sin and leading to sin. Over the centuries, Christian priesthood has received a variety of interpretations and has taken a variety of institutional shapes. Not all these interpretations agree. Some contradict one another. Hence, not all of them can in fact co-exist socially with consistency. When institutions point in contradictory directions, the need to distinguish between sinful and sinless institutional impulses takes on heightened importance because a serious mistake could end by separating one from God. In what concerns a sound doctrinal understanding of Christian priesthood, the letter to the Hebrews, as one of the canonical documents of the New Testament, provides helpful norms for distinguishing sound from unsound sacerdotal doctrine and innocent from sinful institutionalizations of priestly ministry. Let us, then, begin to reflect on the doctrinal evolution of the Christian priesthood in the light of the insights into its purpose and reality enunciated in Hebrews. The author of the letter to the Hebrews predicates the superiority of the new covenant to the old on the fact that the new covenant makes better promises than the old. The Sinai covenant promised happiness and prosperity in this life to the people of Israel; the new covenant promises life forever with God in heaven. If the new covenant promises more, it also demands more. As Matthew the evangelist saw, Christian discipleship replaces the negative commands of the old Law with the ideals of the kingdom. Those ideals demand more, not less, of human generosity. Breath-baptism also endows the new covenant with a saving efficacy. As both Paul the apostle and the author of Hebrews saw, laws written on stone do not change human hearts and consciences; but receptivity to the
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Breath of Christ does. Finally, the new covenant possesses a greater intercessory efficacy because of the power with which the name of Jesus endows intercessory prayer. Because Jesus’ priesthood embodies the new covenant, it also incarnates that covenant’s fundamental moral demands. The vision of the kingdom defines those demands. The kingdom envisioned an egalitarian community of mutual service. Priesthood in such a community differs therefore from ancestral and aristocratic institutionalizations of priestly ministry. Like all other priestly castes, the levitical priesthood marked one out as the member of a religious elite. Jesus, by contrast, shares His priesthood with all those to whom He sends His Breath. The priesthood of Jesus thus transforms the Church into the priestly people of God. All Christians therefore participate in Jesus’ mediation of God to the world by sharing in His Breath. The people of God share corporately and fundamentally in Jesus’ priestly ministry through shared growth in Christological knowing. Assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath draws one into Jesus’ atoning sacrifice by teaching weak and sinful humans to suffer, without sinning, both human vulnerability and the consequences of sin. For that reason, every eucharistic covenant renewal has a sacrificial character because in recalling the atoning death of Christ, the Christian community recommits itself to love a sinful world with the sinless, atoning love of Christ.30 Nowhere does the New Testament portray the leaders of the Christian community as quasi-levitical cult priests. Hebrews, for example, offers the most extensive reflections in the whole New Testament on the meaning of Christian priesthood; and Hebrews insists over and over that the utter uniqueness of a priesthood rooted in the incarnation of God and in the paschal mystery makes every other kind of cultic priesthood superfluous. This study uses pragmatic logic in order to understand the meaning of a doctrine of faith by articulating its practical consequences. Faith in the unique priesthood of Jesus has as one of its important negative consequences the unconditioned repudiation of the sin of clericalism. Let us try to understand why. Anyone commits the sin of clericalism who uses religious authority in order to take advantage of others, to manipulate others, or to oppress them in any way. The gospels tell us that the chief priests whom Jesus confronted committed this sin. When Jesus rebuked their clericalism, they responded by engineering His legal assassination. The resurrection reverses the judgment passed on Jesus by Pilate and by the temple priesthood. The resurrection therefore also endows with 30. Cf. Gelpi, Committed Worship, II, pp. 198-253.
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divine sanction Jesus’ denunciation of the sin of clericalism together with its concomitant sin of deicide. At the heart of Christian revelation, therefore, lies an unequivocal divine condemnation of all institutionalized expressions of clericalism as the worst kind of sinful religious hypocrisy. One would like to believe that clericalism could never take root in a religious community founded on the unequivocal divine repudiation of clericalism. Unfortunately, however, history tells a very different story. As I have already indicated, we possess no historical evidence which suggests that Jesus, the lay prophet, ordained anyone. The principle of multiple attestation makes it virtually certain that He chose the Twelve and associated them with Him in His ministry; but those actions count as prophetic gestures rather than as an ordination. (Mk 3:16-19; Mt 10:1-5; Lk 6:13-16; Acts 1:13; Jn 6:67; 1 Cor 15:5) During Jesus’ ministry the Twelve functioned symbolically as the patriarchs of the new Israel which He was founding. Israel did not have Twelve matriarchs. Since, then, historical precedent forced Jesus to choose only men, His act says nothing about the gender exclusiveness of Church leadership structures. Jesus headed a renewal movement within Palestinian Judaism which only after Pentecost evolved into a Church. I deem it only possible that Jesus promised the Twelve that they would exercise judicial authority in His new Israel, since these texts could reflect the situation of the post-Easter Church. Hence, the historical evidence that Jesus made such a promise remains tenuous. (Mt 19:27-29; Lk 22:16) In a very attenuated sense, then, the choice of the Twelve did give a very rudimentary but far from definitive leadership structure to the new Israel. Nor does Jesus’ command at Luke’s last supper—”Do this in memory of Me”—count as an ordination. (Lk 22:19) The command sanctions Christian eucharistic celebrations; but it ordains no one specific to preside at them. In Acts the disciples elect a replacement for Judas (Acts 1:12-26); but at the subsequent death of the apostles we find no attempt to replace them or to perpetuate the Twelve as an ecclesiastical institution. The apostles functioned as the leaders of the first Christians. The Twelve became apostles in the strict sense when they saw the risen Christ; but others also functioned as apostles. The apostles consisted of those who saw the risen Christ and whom He commissioned to testify to Him publicly. Their authority derived from their encounter with the risen Christ and from the fact that they actually founded local churches. The Twelve numbered among the apostles but so did others as well, like the apostle Paul. The latter testifies to an apparition of the risen Christ to five hundred people at one time. We have no idea how many of them functioned as apostolic witnesses or how many women disciples numbered among them.
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John’s gospel portrays Mary Magdalene as an apostle to the apostles; and she may well have numbered as a member of the original apostolic college. (Jn 20:27-28) The presbyterate, led by overseers (episkopoi), succeeded the apostles collectively and functionally as Church leaders. Very early the laying on of hands, which served a variety of ritual purposes, emerged as a way of designating Church leaders. (2 Tm 1:8) This practice eventually evolved into the rite of ordination. The first presbyterate probably included married couples who presided over house churches. Rich widows may have presided over churches which met in their houses, since they normally performed the same hospitable acts as their husbands.31 The monepiskopos, a single bishop presiding like a parish priest over a local church, took shape in the second century. Women deacons served under the bishop at a time when the diaconate had more ecclesial prominence and importance than the presbyterate; for until the fourth century, presbyters served more as church elders rather than as eucharistic priests and pastors in the current understanding of that term. With the rapid expansion of the Church in the fourth century, presbyters began to represent the bishop by presiding at eucharists; and that practice, as it evolved, eventually transformed them into parish priests and bishops into Church administrators. As the Papal Biblical Commission appointed by Paul VI reported in 1967, nothing in the New Testament warrants excluding women from ordination. The conciliar document Dei verbum teaches that Church tradition ought to hand on the New Testament faithfully. An examination of Christian tradition suggests that the impulse to exclude women from the clergy took shape in the fourth century; and that the impulse parallels the growing clericalization of the episcopate. In other words, it exemplifies a disciplinary abuse rather than the faithful handing on of the tradition. In the Latin church, the clericalism which arose in the fourth century consolidated itself institutionally during the middle ages. It continues today to mar the life of the Church, to undermine its credibility and that of its leaders, and to oppress people sinfully and hypocritically in the name of Jesus Christ, the divine anticlericalist. When people sin, they usually find ways of convincing themselves of the permissibility of their sinful ways. Jesus correctly called the pious rationalization of sin hypocrisy. Clericalism, which may in fact exemplify the most systematic institutionalization of sinful hypocrisy in the Church, also generated its hypocritical pseudo-justifications. 31. Cf. Elizabeth Meier Tetlow, Women and Ministry in the New Testament: Called to Serve (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1980).
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The rationalization of clericalism poses as theology; but in fact it counts as ideology rather than theology. Ideologies rationalize institutional injustice. Religious ideologies rationalize religious injustice and compound that sin with the sin of hypocrisy. In Committed Worship I summarized and documented the development of ordained leadership in the Christian Church. I shall not, therefore, repeat that summary and documentation here. We need, however, to face some of the issues which that history raises.32 Strains in the fourth-century theological movement called “sacerdotalism” rationalized an initial clericalization of the episcopacy. Sacerdotalism emerged from the struggle between the episcopacy and the empire. It sought to provide a clear rationale for keeping the emperor’s meddling hands out of Church affairs. In that quest it failed; for in the eastern empire the emperor so engaged himself in Church administration as to earn in time the florid title “the thirteenth apostle.” As the emperor transformed bishops into imperial judges and civil functionaries, sacerdotalism also sought to remind those same bishops of the sacredness of their calling. It also warned them against allowing imperial power to corrupt them morally as it had already corrupted many other imperial bureaucrats. Sacerdotalism did well to try, though not successfully in the eastern church, to maintain the separation between Church and state. It also did well to hold up high religious and moral standards to bishops. It did well to discern a qualitative difference between the priesthood of the ordained and the priesthood of the rest of the believers. That difference results, however, from the qualitative difference among the charisms, not from any resemblance of Christian priesthood to the priesthood of Annas and Caiphas. Sacerdotalism erred when it invoked Old Testament prototypes in order to rethink the meaning of the episcopacy. As the emperor politicized the episcopacy, sacerdotalism began portraying bishops as the Christian equivalent of those other earlier political clients of the Roman empire, the levitical priests in Jerusalem. As I have already indicated, the second Vatican council correctly teaches that Christian tradition should hand on the New Testament witness. (Dei verbum, 7-26) Sacerdotalism did not hand on the theology of priesthood articulated in the letter to the Hebrews. Instead, sacerdotalism replaced that theology with something else. It transformed bishops from the servant leaders of God’s priestly people into the quasi-levitical priests of the new covenant. It thus replaced Jesus’ priesthood of identification with a clericalized priesthood of sacral separation. 32. Cf. Gelpi, Committed Worship, II, pp. 70-132.
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Fourth-century sacerdotalism understood episcopal authority as the ecclesial counterpart of imperial authority. Sacerdotalism portrayed bishop and emperor as both participating immediately in divine authority. The emperor participated in divine authority in the secular realm, while bishops participated directly in divine authority in the religious realm. This line of thinking led with logical inevitability to patterning Church structures on imperial institutions and, during the middle ages, Christian leadership on the mores of Gentile kings. In other words, through its very struggle to assert its independence of political manipulation, the fourth-century episcopacy found its self-understanding increasingly politicized. Not all bishops yielded to the allure of clericalism. Some suffered terribly in resisting the empire. Still, the temptation to conceive ecclesiastical structures as the spiritual equivalent of imperial institutions persisted.33 Another ideology helped rationalize the sin of Christian clericalism: namely, hierarchicalism. A sixth-century Platonizing monk first formulated this particular religious ideology. We know him as Pseudo-Dionysius because he wrote under the pseudonymous name of Dionysius the Aeropagite, whom Paul the apostle converted. (Acts 17:34) A convinced Platonist, Pseudo-Dionysius believed that the Church on earth must participate in the order of heaven. He found nine choirs of angels in the Bible. He divided them by three and arranged the resulting three groups of three choirs into a pattern which he called a hierarchy. He defined a hierarchy as “a eternal, established principle of order.” Moreover, over the centuries, clericalizing ideologies have tended to portray Church institutions as essentially fixed, unchanged, and unchangeable, despite the manifest historical fact that they have evolved and will continue to evolve. Pseudo-Dionysius’s angels diminished in spiritual acumen as one descends the angelic hierarchical ladder. Moreover, Pseudo-Dionysius imagined that grace must trickle down all nine angelic hierarchies before it can enter the Church. Hierarchicalism projects analogous structures into the institutional Church. Pseudo-Dionysius arranged the Church on earth into two hierarchies which imitate the order of the angelic hierarchies. The clerical hierarchy contains first the bishop, then priests, and finally deacons. The lay hierarchy contains first religious, then lay people, and finally catechumens. 33. For a discussion of sacerdotalism, see: Gelpi, Committed Worship, II, pp. 86 ff. See also: Kenan B. Osborne, O.F.M., Priesthood: A History of the Ordained Ministry in the Roman Catholic Church (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1988); Nathan Mitchell, O.S.B., Mission and History: History and Theology in the Sacrament of Order (Collegeville, MN: The Liturgical Press, 1982); Bernard Cook, Ministry to Word and Sacrament: History and Theology (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress, 1976).
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Because the operation of the ecclesiastical hierarchies imitates the angelic hierarchies, all motion in the Church trickles down from bishop to priest and from priest to deacon. It then trickles down into the lay hierarchy. Religious, whose vows endow them with quasi-clerical elevation over the laity, benefit first from the clerical mediation of divine grace. They communicate it to the laity who in turn communicate it to the catechumens. By the time Pseudo-Dionysius wrote, the catechumenate had ceased for all practical purposes to exist. As a consequence, the laity found themselves on the bottom rung of the hierarchical ladder. Over the centuries, Pseudo-Dionysius’s hierarchical trickle-down theory of grace helped rationalize the reduction of the laity to total passivity within the Church. Eventually, it transformed them into “Pray, pay, and obey” Catholics. Hierarchicalism endorsed and re-enforced the clericalized priesthood of separation which sacerdotalism had begun to rationalize ideologically. Hierarchicalism also provided a rationale for the abuse of authority in the Church by demanding that the Church grow always from the top down. The medieval Latin Church used this hierarchical ideology in systematically clericalizing ecclesiastical structures. The process of clericalization reflected in part a serious misunderstanding. The sixth century monk who first imagined the Church as a trickle-down hierarchical structure wrote, as I have already indicated, under the pseudonym of Dionysius the Aeropagite, whom Paul the apostle converted in the first century. The pseudonym betrayed medieval churchmen and schoolmen alike into accepting Pseud-Dionysius’s quaint and misguided account of Church order as a description of first-century ecclesiastical discipline.34 Both sacerdotalism and hierarchicalism survive as clerical ideologies. They both played a significant role in the debates of Vatican II, and they continue to confuse that council’s implementation.35 During the papacy of John Paul II, the Latin church has witnessed their systematic re-institutionalization. Their survival and even enthusiastic cultivation 34. Cf. Gelpi, Committed Worship, II, pp. 89 ff. See also: Jean Colson, Ministre de JésusChrist ou sacerdoce de l’évangile (Paris: Beauchesne et ses Fils, 1966); Albert Houssiau and Jean-Pierrre Mondet, Le sacerdoce du Christ et de ses serviteurs selon les pères de l’église (Louvain-le-neuve: Centre d’Histoire des Religions, 1990); Thomas F. Torrence, The Mediation of Christ (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1992); William J. Carroll, “Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite: 1960-80,” Patristic and Byzantine Review, 1(1982), pp. 225-234; Yves Congar, O.P., L’écclesiologie du haut moyen âge: De Saint Gregoire le Grand à la décision entre Byzance et Rome (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1968); Jean Marie Roger Tillard, L’évêque du Rome (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1982). 35. Cf. Giuseppe Alberigo, Jean-Pierre Jossa, and Joseph A. Komonchak, The Reception of Vatican II (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1987); Penny Lernoux, People of God: The Struggle for World Catholicism (New York, NY: Penguin, 1989).
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by clericalists requires that one confront the sin of clericalism as a doctrinal as well as a moral abuse. In fact, the second Vatican council sought to declericalize ordained Church leadership. Vatican II did so by rejecting in principle some of the least acceptable aspects of hierarchicalism. Like sacerdotalism, hierarchicalism has some virtue to it. It correctly recognizes that a world-wide Church needs to operate according to a principle of subsidiarity; but it distorts a subsidiarity of responsibility into blatant authoritarianism. In a sound understanding of Church subsidiarity, the college of bishops has the primary responsibility for public Church leadership, for formulating doctrinal consensus, and for presiding over the Church’s pastoral needs. Priests assist the bishops in their discharge of those responsibilities. All baptized Christians share responsibility for seeing to the Church’s common good; but in deciding corporately how best to achieve the common good the buck stops with the episcopacy. The bishop of Rome has a special responsibility of promoting unity among the bishops while fulfilling his episcopal and patriarchal responsibilities in a manner which allows the rest of the episcopal college to see in him a mirror image of themselves. A healthy Church grows not primarily from the top down, but primarily from the bottom up, even though a sound understanding of Church order must preserve the right and responsibility of Church leaders to challenge the Christian community when it fails to live the gospel in some significant way. The contemporary Roman church needs to repent institutionally of clericalism and to relearn that truth. It also needs to relearn a truth which the orthodox church never forgot: namely, the reception of official Church teaching by the people of God gives it final sanction. When official Church teaching ignores the non-reception of a particular doctrine it breeds confusion by repeating an already discredited teaching and betrays its clericalistic bias. The Latin tradition understands doctrinal reception hierarchically and clericalistically as joint reception by the pope and bishops only. The orthodox Church correctly extends reception to include the people of God. A small minority of conservative Integralists at Vatican II defended a hierarchical, monarchical vision of the Church; but the great majority of the bishops repudiated the unvarnished monarchical authoritarianism which the Integralists defended. The council recognized the need for subsidiarity in the Church. In the ecclesiology of Vatican II, the ordained leaders of the Church do not function as the only channel of divine grace to the laity. Nor do the laity relate to the ordained in an attitude of supine and infantile passivity. The laity do not need to wait for the ordained to tell them what to do. On the contrary, through example and through gospel proclamation (which includes sacramental ministry), the ordained seek to turn the laity to the Breath of Christ so that She by Her sanctify-
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ing and charismatic inspirations can teach them how to serve one another and the world. The ordained do not stand over the Church so much as within it. They do not wield power over the Church but function publicly and responsibly as the servants of the servants of God.36 Vatican II also rejected a hierarchical interpretation of religious life. Instead of portraying religious as standing on a higher rung of spiritual perfection than the laity, Vatican II portrayed religious life as one way of going about both lay and ordained ministry. (Lumen gentium, 43) Vatican II significantly advanced the work of correcting the doctrinal errors of hierarchicalism; but it did not go far enough. The council continued to use the term “hierarchical” even though it rejected the substance of trickle-down hierarchicalism. Moreover, Vatican II also explicitly invoked fourth-century sacerdotalism in justifying the sacramental character of the episcopacy. (Lumen gentium, 21) In my judgment, one can indeed justify the sacramental character of the episcopal consecration; but one can do it on sounder theological terms than fourth-century sacerdotalism.37 The Church will never purge itself fully of the sin of clericalism until it purges its teaching of the ideologies which rationalize the institutionalization of clericalism. In order to do that, we Catholics need to revise our popular theological understanding of Christian priesthood. That revision should advance in four steps. First, we Catholics need to reclaim the theology of priesthood articulated in the letter to the Hebrews and to reject the erroneous aspects of the ideologies of sacerdotalism and hierarchicalism which supplanted it. By that I mean we need to replace a sacral priesthood of clericalized separation with a truly Christian priesthood of identification with humanity, especially with the poor, the marginal, the suffering, the degraded, the expendable. No other exercise of priestly ministry imitates that of Jesus.38 Similarly, we need to replace hierarchicalism with a predominantly trickle-up version of Church subsidiarity. That transformation of ecclesial self-understanding will require a further democratization of Church structures. It will require the clear formulation of an adequate bill of rights in the Church. It will demand canonical procedures which ensure that problem solving in the Church takes place as much as possible at a local level. Ending hierarchicalism will make necessary the formulation and enforcement of adequate procedures for due process in resolving Church disputes. Those processes need to respect the legitimate human and Chris36. For an analysis of the ecclesial visions which clashed at Vatican II, see: Gelpi, Committed Worship, I, pp. 120-124. 37. Ibid., II, pp. 98-132. 38. Cf. Julien K. Mawule, Humanité et autorité du Christ-prètre: une approche exegeticothéologique de Hé 2,5-18; 3,1-6 et 4.15-5,10 (Rome: Insititue Salesiano Pio IX, 1985).
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tian rights of all concerned. Finally, the eclipse of hierarchicalism will demand a strengthening of existing checks and balances in the world-wide governance of the Church and will probably require the creation of others. Finally, since the term “hierarchicalism” will probably always connote authoritarianism, we also, in my judgment, need to consign the term “hierarchical” to the dust heap of failed religious concepts.39 Second, we Catholics need to replace clericalized patterns of thinking with the clear and frank recognition that both the ordained and the lay members of the Church participate in the priesthood of the Church as a whole. Only the Church as a whole participates immediately in the priesthood of Jesus. When the risen Christ sent the Breath to create the Church on Pentecost by an outpouring of the charisms, He did not send Her only to the Twelve. She came to the whole community of disciples which numbered at least one woman among them. Because the Breath first makes the risen Christ present and active in the Church as a whole, the Church as a whole participates causally in the priesthood of Christ prior to any of its members. Both the baptized and the ordained acquire a priestly status by participation in a priestly community. As a consequence, the Church as a whole must mediate Christ to the world by entering into the saving atonement which He began. The entire Church mediates the Breath to her members. In the same way, men and women in the Church, whether ordained or not, share in the priesthood of Christ by sharing in the priestly mission of the universal Church. Third, we need to recognize the charismatic basis of Church authority, including the authority of the ordained. Anyone who exercises a charismatic ministry in the Church does so in virtue of his or her charismatic competence to do so. Mother Teresa spoke and acted with authority within the limits of her charismatic call to serve the poorest of the poor. Karl Rahner spoke with theological authority in virtue of his charismatic competence to teach. Official Church leaders must also speak and act within the limits of their charismatic competence. The charism of the ordained calls them to corporate, public responsibility for securing the common good of the Church as a whole and of regional and local churches and communities. The ordained also have a special responsibility to hand on intact the apostolic witness without distortion and without replacing it with something else. Religious priests and lay religious minister especially to those 39. Cf. Leonardo Boff, Church: Charism and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1985) Boff correctly censures sinful clerical abuses of power in the Catholic Church; but his prophetic denunciation tends, in my judgment, to degenerate into an anarchical anti-institutionalism. We need to reform Church institutions, not ignore or abolish them. Only the institutionalization of sin requires abolition.
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who fall through the cracks of diocesan structures. Lay apostles have a special responsibility for Christianizing secular society. In their ministry, priests and laity, whether religious or not, all speak and act with the authority of their special charisms. Fourth, we need to acknowledge that individuals within the Church participate in its corporate priesthood in virtue of the particular charismatic calling which the Breath of Christ imparts to them. In other words, we need to set aside the sacerdotalist and hierarchicalist assumption that the ordained mediate the priesthood of Christ to the rest of the Church. Rather the priesthood of the Church as a whole, its empowerment by the Breath to mediate Christ to the world, mediates to both ordained and lay Christians a share in Christ’s priesthood. Each particular charism specifies how each member of the Church goes about exercising that priesthood in practice. Any Christian, ordained or not, can commit the sin of clericalism. One commits the sin of clericalism whenever one abuses religious authority in order to oppress rather than to serve others. Because the ordained enjoy special public responsibility for leading the Church, they, however, probably find themselves more often tempted to commit this sin than lay Christians. In the last analysis, however, anyone in a position of public leadership in the Church, whether ordained or not, can commit the sin of clericalism. Besides discouraging clericalistic behavior, especially in its leaders, the Church also needs to declericalize its institutions. An institution, as we have already seen, does not exist apart from the people who make it up. An institution comes into being whenever groups of people act in identifiable and socially sanctioned ways. One declericalizes the Church, then, by withdrawing official sanction from hitherto sanctioned oppressive religious behavior and by calling to repentant accountability those who engage in such behavior. The second Vatican council correctly teaches that rights and duties in the Church have charismatic grounding. In other words, the council asserts that anyone who has the gifts and competence to serve others in the Church has a right to do so, while the Church has a duty to recognize that right. (Apostolicam actuositatem, 3) Barring Christians from the exercise of charisms which they actually have received oppresses them. That means that anyone who has the gifts to serve in a position of public leadership in the Church has a corresponding right to expect the Church to recognize those gifts and give them official scope for their exercise irregardless of their sex or marital status. In my judgment, both the historical record and the sinfully corrosive influence of institutionalized clericalism from the fourth century to the
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present render extremely dubious any attempt to invoke the uniformity or even the alleged infallibility of tradition in order to exclude women from ordained leadership. Rather than expressing the inspiration of the divine Breath, who conforms Christians to Jesus, the divine anti-clericalist, the rise of clericalism together with its multiple ideological pseudo-rationalizations institutionalize human sinfulness. Should not Catholics, then, take seriously the all too real possibility that the exclusion of the charismatically competent from ordained leadership institutionalizes, not some divine imperative, but the sins of sexism and of clericalism? The ordained lapse into clericalism when they act with hierarchical authoritarianism. The authoritarian attempt to cut off prematurely the legitimate discussion of disputed theological questions counts as sinful and hypocritical clericalism. The use of episcopal appointments in order to impose a particular ideology, especially a hierarchical ideology on the Church as a whole, counts as the sin of clericalism. Church leaders have the responsibility to dispute any doctrine in the Church which contradicts its shared faith; but the punitive silencing of teachers without due process counts as clericalism. For the Vatican curia to usurp the authority of episcopal conferences counts as clericalism. Clericalism undermines Church authority through abuse. Church leaders cannot credibly summon secular authorities to respect the rights of citizens and at the same time that they violate those same rights in dealing with members of the Christian community. Church leaders cannot credibly denounce sexism as a sin in secular society but hypocritically accord it divine sanction in the Church. Though clericalists may try to inculcate a double standard of morality, I find it difficult to believe that God does. Double moral standards exemplify the kind of hypocrisy which Jesus denounced unrelentingly. Nor can the ordained expect believers to find Christ in their priestly ministry if they take Annas and Caiphas as their role models. The ordained also lapse into clericalism when they allow status and privilege to separate them from the rest of humanity instead of imitating Jesus’ priesthood of identification with the poor, the sinner, the marginal, the degraded, the expendable, the sinful. If necessary, the ordained must even lay down their lives for those they serve, as did Oscar Romero and the martyrs of the University of Central America, and as have countless Church leaders in other ages and lands. Too often, however, preparation for ordination socializes candidates for Church leadership into clericalized, classist expectations and patterns or behavior. When preparation for ministry clericalized candidates for ordination, it turns them into pious, “Pharisaical” hypocrites. The preceding account of Jesus’ priesthood should, I believe, clarify the intimate connection between His priestly and His prophetic minis-
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tries. The hypostatic union makes Jesus’ prophetic ministry priestly by transforming it into a privileged historical mediation of God. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom makes His priesthood prophetic by undercutting priestly clericalism. The incarnation reveals God as intransigently anti-clericalist. In the final chapter of this section, I shall reflect on two other related aspects of Jesus’ ministry: His messianic dignity and His judicial authority. As we shall see, both of these aspects of Jesus’ saving ministry also flow from the hypostatic union. In addition, both engage His confrontation with the principalities and powers of this world.
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Chapter 14 Jesus, Messiah and Judge The Roman empire judged, condemned, and executed Jesus as a political rebel and subversive. His disciples, however, proclaimed that His resurrection had reversed the judgment of both the temple and Rome, had confirmed Jesus’ messianic authority, and had revealed Him as the eschatological Son of Man divinely appointed to pass judgment upon the kingdoms of this world. (Dan 7:13-14) This chapter examines Jesus’ divine messianic and judicial authority. It considers how those two aspects of His saving ministry set Him in direct conflict with the kingdom of Satan as it takes institutional embodiment in the principalities and powers of this world. This chapter divides, then, into two parts. Part one ponders Jesus’ relationship to the messianism of His day. It then examines the way in which the paschal mystery redefines the doctrinal meaning of Jesus’ messianic dignity. Part two reflects on Jesus’ trial and condemnation by secular and religious authority. It then probes the doctrinal implications of Jesus’ elevation through the paschal mystery to the dignity and authority of universal eschatological judge. Of necessity, then, section two will also reflect doctrinally on New Testament apocalyptic Christology. (I) We can take it as extremely probable, even certain, that Jesus of Nazareth rejected secular, Davidic messianism. An apostolic church which proclaimed Jesus the Davidic messiah would hardly have recalled in its gospels Jesus’ own refusal to play the Davidic messiah unless Jesus had in fact eschewed the role. We can also hazard a guess as to the reason why Jesus refused to don the crown of a Davidic warrior king and battle the Roman empire in the manner of another Judas Maccabaeus: namely, the use of military force in order to establish God’s reign on earth contradicted some of the kingdom’s most fundamental moral demands. The reign of God which Jesus proclaimed founds the kingdom on authentic worship of the Father. Moreover, it requires, as we have seen, mutual forgiveness and love of enemies as the test of the authenticity of prayer. The kingdom does indeed commit one to non-violent resistance to institutionalized evil and oppression; but it refuses to establish God’s reign on earth through the use of force and oppression. Had Jesus yielded to pressures to proclaim Himself a Davidic warrior king, He would have contradicted the very religious realities for which He stood and died.
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One may, however, make a plausible case for the fact that Jesus did in fact make qualified messianic claims. He certainly proclaimed God’s reign; and He very probably believed that God’s reign was already arriving both in His person and in His ministry of proclamation, healing, and exorcism. Moreover, the gospels make it at least plausible to suppose that Jesus recognized in His own ministry signs that the messianic age had arrived. (Mt 11:2-5; Lk 7:18-22) Quite plausibly too, Jesus orchestrated His triumphal entry into Jerusalem in a way which fulfilled the prophecy of Zechariah 9:9-10. If so, then, in so staging the triumphal entry, He performed a prophetic gesture in which He presented Himself as a different kind of messiah from the war-like David. By entering the holy city astride a colt or donkey instead of a war-horse, Jesus, not without a touch of peasant irony, acted the part of a humble messiah and a man of peace, not that of a warlike Davidic king. Jesus’ cleansing of the temple also made implicit messianic claims. Jesus certainly suffered crucifixion as a messianic pretender. Only in the paschal mystery, however, does He stand finally and fully revealed as the messiah, the anointed one. The Breath of God anointed Jesus during His ministry; but in His resurrection appearances Jesus confronted His astonished disciples as “a life-giving Breath,” as a personal source of the very Breath of God and of the divine life which She imparts. The risen Christ’s gift and mission of the divine Breath reveals, therefore, that Jesus’ possesses Her, not as an ordinary prophet or anointed human leader, but in eschatological plentitude, as Her personal divine source. That revelation manifests Jesus’ personal divinity. It simultaneously reveals His messianic dignity by manifesting His divine messianic authority. That revelation, however, radically redefines the very meaning of the “messiah,” the “anointed one.” The paschal mystery reveals and defines Jesus’ messianic dignity in two ways. First, it reveals the hypostatic union; and, second, the hypostatic union defines once and for all what intertestamental Jewish messianism ought to have meant. The resurrection reveals the personal divine authority with which Jesus speaks and acts. Hence, by revealing the hypostatic union, the paschal mystery also manifests retrospectively that Jesus conducted His mortal ministry with unimpeachable divine authority. Because in the person of Jesus, God speaks to us in human form, Jesus’ redefinition of the meaning of messianism during His mortal ministry discloses to us God’s own understanding of the providential saving role which God intended the messiah to play in the history of salvation. By revealing God’s own attitudes toward intertestamental Jewish messianism, the paschal mystery purifies messianic hope of any sinful, violent, or elitist elements which originally distorted it. By endowing the
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crucified and risen Jesus with a divine, messianic authority, the hypostatic union places Him above all the principalities, powers, and kingdoms of this world. At the same time that the incarnation reveals and redefines Jesus’ “royal” authority, it simultaneously condemns the injustice of the temple priests and of Pilate for crucifying the innocent Son of God. The resurrection thus reverses the judgment passed upon Jesus by the ecclesiastical and secular powers of this world. It unmasks that judgment as both sinful and Satanic. In the light of the paschal mystery, therefore, those who condemned Jesus themselves stand condemned before the tribunal of God. All four gospels make this same narrative point somewhat differently. The paschal mystery, therefore, endows the term “messiah” with a transcendent meaning which exceeds and heals the violent human hopes which informed Davidic messianism. The paschal mystery heals the violence of Davidic messianism by revealing the messiah as the suffering servant of God whose innocent death atones for sin and whose sinless commitment to suffer sin without sinning reconciles humanity to God. It also reveals the messianic Son of God as the Word of God incarnate. In other words, as a consequence of the hypostatic union, every aspect of Jesus’ saving ministry illumines every other because the hypostatic union redefines them all and endows them all with unique saving significance. As in the case of Jesus’ prophetic and priestly ministry, then, His person, His ministry, His death, His resurrection, and His mission of the Breath all combine in order to redefine the meaning of the term “messiah,” or “anointed one.” Jesus’ anointing by the Breath of God manifests that He alone possesses Her in eschatological abundance because He alone sends Her with and from the Father to create the eschatological age. That sending reveals the eternal fact that the mutual love of Father and Son “spirate”1 the divine Breath within the Godhead. The hypostatic union lends divine sanction to that historical and eschatological redefinition of messianic authority. Indeed, the hypostatic union makes it clear that in invoking Old Testament categories in order to understand the paschal mystery, the first Christians did not in fact project onto divine revelation a meaning derived from the past, as Schillebeeckx’s nominalism leads Him at times to suggest. Rather, the eschatological newness of the incarnation redefined the saving meaning of the Law, of the prophets, of messianic hope, and of salvation itself.2 1. The term “spiration” derives from medieval trinitarian theology which invoked it as a technical term for the divine Breath’s procession within the trinity. 2. Cf. P. Beskow, Rex Gloriae: The Kingship of Christ in the Early Church (Stockholm: Almquist & Wiksell, 1962).
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All feminist theologians correctly deplore the Church’s sexist discrimination against women. Many correctly deplore sexism as irreconcilable with the radically egalitarian vision of the kingdom which Jesus embodied and proclaimed; and they argue that despite the sexism of the institutional Church, women can still find salvation in Christianity. In some of its expressions, African-American womanist theology downplays the maleness of Jesus and depicts Him as the savior who freely suffered in its extremest form the tragedy of the human condition. Radical feminists have, however, charged that Christians worship the maleness of Jesus and that women must look for salvation in some other form of religion.3 Besides giving evidence of proceeding on occasion from a reverse sexism as deplorable as sexist discrimination against women, the charge that Christians worship masculinity misrepresents the truth about Christian faith. Christians do not adore and have never adored any creature, whether male or female. Christians adore the divine person of the second person of the trinity and the divine reality of the other persons He reveals. Divine persons have no sex. Nor should one interpret the incarnation as the deification of maleness. First of all, such an interpretation commits the essence fallacy. It assumes that the incarnation consisted in the union between the second person of the trinity and the essence of masculinity. In fact the incarnation exemplifies an historical and eschatological process. In the incarnation, the second person of the trinity appropriated a developing human experience, whose full development culminated in resurrection. In addition, such an interpretation of the incarnation ignores the “angelic” character of the risen body. In endorsing Pharisaical belief in the angelic character of the risen body, Jesus proclaimed that resurrection transforms human bodies as we know them in ways which cause them to transcend all gender difference. He rebuked the crude imaginings of the Sadducees who spoke of copulation in heaven. (Mk 1:18-27; Mt 22:23-33; Lk 21:27-40) The New Testament leaves the precise nature of the risen body vague; but its “angelic” character does make sexual identity irrelevant. In other words, not only does the union of the second person of the trinity with a developing human experience exemplify an historical and eschatological process; but that process culminates in a transformation which places Jesus’ humanity beyond all gender difference.4 3. For a summary of feminist Christological reflections, see: William M. Thompson, The Jesus Debate: A Survey and Synthesis (New York, NY: Paulist, 1985), pp. 375-382; see also, Jaquelin Grant, White Women’s Christ and Black Women’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and Womanist Response (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989); Elizabeth Schüssler-Fiorenza, “Jesus and the Politics of Interpretation,” Harvard theological Review,90(1997), pp. 343-358. 4. I note in passing that the position developed in these volumes can enter into dialogue with other feminist concerns. Like feminist theology it focuses on experience; and it
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Moreover, the supreme perfection of the three divine persons redefines and qualifies any images or concepts which we may apply analogously to Them. Those images reveal to us something true about God; but they point to a divine reality which infinitely transcends the images themselves. Only a person who has failed to think about the divine reality with any depth would apply finite images or concepts to God literally. If or when the literal application of created images to God occurs, it expresses muddled thinking and human confusion, not the shared faith of Christians. In other words, even though Jesus walked this earth as a male, the transformation of humanity which the resurrection effects places even His humanity beyond sexual distinctions as we know them. Anyone who would regard Jesus’ glorified humanity as male would commit the same theological blunder which Jesus rebuked in the Sadducees: they would fail to recognize that resurrection transforms the human body in ways which place it beyond our present experience of gender and of gender differences. The New Testament leaves us in the dark concerning the precise character of the risen body; but it leaves no doubt that risen bodies will differ radically from the bodies we construct according to genetic codes. Nevertheless, anyone who deplores the sin of sexism can, in my judgment, find saving significance in the very maleness of Jesus. That saving significance does not consist in the divinization of Jesus’ masculinity but in the fact that in the incarnation God died in the flesh to all forms of human sin, including the most common embodiments of sexist bigotry. Sexism of any kind dehumanizes those who practice it. Institutionalized sexism, for example, ordinarily takes the bigoted form of degrading women and of discriminating unjustly against them. As a consequence, the male of the species usually succumbs to destructive sexist attitudes more easily and more frequently than women. The latter tend to interiorize institutionalized sexism as self-hatred rather than hatred for others, although the phenomenon of reverse-sexism shows that they, like males, experience no exemption from the destructive effects of original sin and concupiscence. The mere possession of a masculine gender does not, of offers a more systematic construct of experience than feminists have to date produced. Like feminists, this Christology takes embodiment very seriously and portrays the body philosophically as the immediate spatio-temporal environment from which the person emerges. The position espoused in these pages endorses the feminist critique of dualism and of hierarchicalism; and, by endorsing an experiential metaphysics of community, it also takes into account feminist concern with mutuality and social location. [Cf. Susan A. Ross, “Feminist Theology: A Review of the Literature,” Theological Studies 56(1955), pp. 327-341.] I have, moreover, developed all these positions by drawing on the insights of American philosophers of the male persuasion. That fact leaves me doubting the gender specific character of all of the preceding feminist themes.
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course, automatically make one a sexist; but the personal interiorization of institutional forms of sexist bigotry does, whether it occurs in secular society or in the churches. In Jesus’ vision of the kingdom, men and woman both share the same dignity as disciples and relate as equals, as members of the same divine family, as people on the same social footing, as sisters and brothers in the Lord. As in the case of Mary, Jesus encouraged woman to “choose the better portion” by living like any other disciple. Jesus even scandalized His contemporaries by including women in His traveling entourage of close disciples. He gratefully accepted the monetary support of Mary Magdalene and of other well-to-do women who joined the inner circle of His disciples, to the scandal of Jesus’ own contemporaries. The kingdom, therefore, challenges both women and men to claim their full dignity as children of God in repentant mutual forgiveness and mutual reconciliation. In other words, it calls for an end to the battle of the sexes, which some expressions of feminism seem bent on perpetuating. As we have seen, the incarnate Son of God recreated and restored humanity through a lifetime of sinless living. In the process, He also recreated and redefined the meaning of masculinity by dying to male machismo with its arrogant swagger and penchant for violence. In dying to sexism as a male and by sending His Breath to teach all people to put on His mind, Jesus also called into existence a community of faith which embodies His sinless vision, including its repudiation of sexism. When, therefore, the Christian community acquiesces in and sanctions either sexism or reverse sexism, it gives serious scandal by its rank religious hypocrisy; for it proclaims one religious reality while embodying its contradiction. Jesus not only subverts a stereotypical understanding of macho masculinity, but He also subverts any traditional understanding of a king. Jesus proclaimed, as John Dominic Crossan has felicitously phrased it, “a kingdom of nuisances and nobodies.” The kingdom of God effects the messianic reversal of values. The kingdom transforms the rich and the powerful into the slaves of the poor and disenfranchised, and it elevates the slaves, the marginal, the poor, the degraded, the expendable to the status of those most honored and cared for. Leaders in God’s kingdom must renounce the ways of “Gentile kings” who oppress those they rule by lording it over them. Instead, leaders in God’s kingdom must imitate the loving self-abasement of God which they contemplate in a crucified messiah. The kingdoms of this world crave power and wealth; and they wrest it violently from others. Jesus proclaims a classless kingdom of mutual forgiveness, of non-violent atoning love, and of gratuitous sharing with all, especially with those in greatest need.
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The cross subverts most radically the traditional meaning of the term “king.” The charge on Jesus’ cross read “Jesus of Nazareth: the King of the Jews.” As the Beloved Disciple with his habitual irony saw, even in executing Jesus unjustly as a criminal, the Roman governor and official representative of the empire in Palestine nevertheless officially proclaimed the true messiah. The true messiah confronts the world as the crucified God. Moreover, as the Beloved Disciple also saw, the atoning love which Jesus embodied on the cross demonstrated finally and unequivocally the other-worldly character of the kingdom of God. Besides the crucifixion, the resurrection and sending of the Breath also subvert the traditional meaning of “king.” They reveal the divine character of Jesus’ authority and person at the same time that they manifest the full scope of His atoning love. In His revelation as divine, Jesus responds to the crime of deicide, not with violent retaliation, but by sending His Breath in forgiveness so that She might take away the sins of the world. She does so, moreover, precisely by teaching humans to embrace the sinless, topsy-turvy values and ideals of God’s kingdom. For all these reasons, in dealing with Jesus’ messianic dignity, I tend to oppose the replacement of the traditional title “king” with the more abstract and allegedly gender-inclusive term “sovereign.” Those who promote such verbal gymnastics may be acting out of good intentions; but, in my judgment, they give evidence of missing the tensive symbolic richness and broadly subversive character of proclaiming the crucified criminal who proclaimed God’s egalitarian reign the real king of the universe. Properly understood as a Christological term the title “king” in its application to the Crucified says everything which “sovereign” intends to say about gender inclusiveness. In fact, the term “king” when re-interpreted in the light of the incarnation says even more by addressing broader and more universal justice issues which include but go beyond sexism. Faith in Jesus the messiah, therefore, sets one in prophetic opposition to any human institution which contradicts the moral demands of life in the kingdom. Indeed, faith in the divine kingship of an executed criminal transforms Christianity, when systematically lived, into a politically, economically, and culturally subversive movement. Never in the entire course of human history has any cultural, economic, or political arrangement of society which humanity conceived on its own ever even approximated the kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed and embodied both in His ministry and in the paschal mystery. It takes a universalizing, grace-inspired, forgining, divine love to create the kingdom, a love which human nature, left to itself finds impossible. When, therefore, the Church betrays the kingdom by institutionalizing sexism and other forms of oppression, like the medieval benefice system, it embodies a crude religious hypocrisy which belies its verbal pro-
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fessions of faith. Jesus repudiated sexism, and He excoriated hypocrisy. In the present context, however, it perhaps suffices to note that medieval artists spoke a prophetic word when, among the heads of those roasting in hellfire, they included several wearing miters, and an occasional papal tiara. In the final chapter of this study, I shall analyze some of the forces in the United States which, by gospel standards qualify as antichrist. Before reflecting on the ways in which commitment to Jesus Christ in faith transforms the moral dimensions of natural conversion, however, I need to explore one final dimension of Jesus’ saving ministry: namely, His activity as eschatological judge. As we shall see, Jesus’ judicial authority also sets Him in irreconcilable opposition to the oppressive kingdoms of this world.5 (II) The power elites of Jesus’ day, both religious and secular, judged Him dangerous, subversive, and intolerable. They therefore conspired to bring about His legal assassination. As we have just seen in the preceding section of this chapter, the first Christians proclaimed that the paschal mystery had reversed that human judgment of condemnation and had vindicated everything which Jesus proclaimed and embodied. In addition, kerygmatic Christology very quickly discovered in the paschal mystery a revelation of Jesus’ universal, apocalyptic, judicial authority. The letters to the Thessalonians furnish us with the earliest Christological reflections we possess. In them, Paul teaches that, as Lord and 5. Cf. Christian Duquoc, Messianism de Jésus et discretion du Dieu (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984); Peter Stuhlmacher, Jesus von Nazareth Christus des Glaubens (Stuttgart: Calwer Verlag, 1988); Martinus de Jonge, Jesus, the Servant Messiah (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1991); Margaret Barker, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1992); Otto Betz, Jesus der Messias Israels: Aufsätze zur biblischen Theologie (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohn, 1987); Arthur W. Kac, The Messianic Hope: A Divine Solution for the Human Problem (Baltimore, MD: Reese Press, 1975); Walter Kasper, ed., Christologische Schwerpunkte (Düsseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1980); George A. Riggan, Messianic Theology and Christian Faith (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1967); James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity (Minneapolis, MI: Fortress, 1992); Ralph Patai, The Messiah Texts (Detroit, IL: Wayne State University Press, 1979); Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1971); Edouard Massaux, La venue du messie: messianisme et eschatologie (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1962); Joseph Klausner, The Messianic Idea in Israel from Its Beginning to the Completion of the Mishnah, translated by W.F. Stinespring (New York, NY: Macmillan, 1955); Nathan Peter Levinson, Der Messias (Stuttgart: Kreuz Verlag, 1994); S. Mowinckel, He That Cometh, translated by G.W. Anderson (New York, NY: Abingdon, 1954); J.C. O’Neill, Who Did Jesus Think He Was? (New York, NY: E.J. Brill, 1995); D. Lauenstein, Der Messias: Eine biblische Untersuchung (Stuttgart: Verlag Urachhaus, 1971).
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messiah, the crucified and risen Jesus will one day return to judge the entire world. The Book of Revelation closes the New Testament. It prophecies the Lamb’s ultimate victory over Rome and over Satan in all his human and institutional embodiments. How, then, ought one to interpret doctrinally New Testament apocalyptic Christology? Final judgment belongs to God alone. The proclamation of Jesus as the one who passes final judgment on the world implies therefore His divinity. In other words, from a doctrinal standpoint, the hypostatic union grounds Jesus’ judicial authority just as it grounds and explains every other aspect of His saving work. As we have seen, the hypostatic union reveals the second person of the trinity as the spoken Word of God. In Jesus God Himself proclaims to a sinful humanity the way of salvation. That proclamation embodies God’s saving intentions. It reveals to us iconically the very mind of God. As universal, divine judge, Jesus will one day call the world to accounting for its response to the message of salvation which He personally proclaimed, embodied, mediated, and sanctioned with divine messianic and priestly authority. The fourth gospel tells us that the incarnation begins the final judgment, because humanity stands collectively and individually accountable to God for the way in which it responds to the divine love incarnate in Jesus. The incarnation, however, only begins God’s final, eschatological struggle with the forces of evil and sin. Empowered by the Breath of the risen Christ, the Church prolongs collectively the prophetic mission of Jesus. Like Him the Church demands that humanity hear and respond to the saving Word which Jesus embodies and communicates. Since, moreover the risen Christ acts wherever His Breath does, through the mission of the community which He founds, the risen Christ Himself prolongs historically in space and time the divine judgment begun in His ministry and divinely sanctioned in the paschal mystery. Judgment, then, is already happening here and now in the choices which humanity makes for or against the incarnate God. Those who respond to the Breath of God by choices which conform them to Christ have no reason to fear His final judgment of condemnation. On the contrary, they long for ultimate vindication before His throne of grace. Only those need fear divine retribution whose personal and collective choices transform them into Anti-Christ.6 The universal scope of the salvation proclaimed in Christ endows the divine struggle against sin and evil which the incarnation begins with cosmic dimensions. Because God seeks to save all people, all will one day 6. Cf. Marie-Louise Gubler, “Die Auferstehung der Toten und das Weltgericht: Zur Entstehung der Neutestamentliche Centralbotschaft,” Diakonia: Internationale Zeitschrift fuer die Praxis der Kirche, 27(1966), pp. 150-161.
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answer to God for the way in which they have responded to the Breath of the risen Christ. More than individuals will answer to the divine judge. Institutions will also stand accountable because in the last analysis institutions simply consist in people acting in socially sanctioned ways. Like personal choices, institutional choices and sanctions can embody the same saving reality as Jesus. They can also prescind from that reality; and they can contradict it sinfully. Natural institutions prescind from the historical self-revelation of God. They sanction legitimate concerns and values, but they confine their scope to this-worldly goods. Like individuals, however, they exhibit radical vulnerability to the forces of original sin and concupiscence. Marriage and the family, for example, exemplify two of the most ancient of all natural human institutions. It would be hard, however, to find two institutions more vitiated by human sinfulness. How many crimes of violence occur in the family! In this country, child abuse, substance abuse, sexism, divorce, the feminization of poverty, physical violence and capitalist exploitation all combine to infect and corrupt familial relationships. Perhaps even more than individuals, natural institutions find it very difficult to preserve their natural innocence. The institutionalized forces of sin and oppression distort, warp, and manipulate natural institutions to sinful ends. Those same forces corrupt even religious institutions, which have graced resources for resisting sinful contagion. Natural institutions which eschew those resources succumb to sinful institutional pressures even more readily. As we have seen, during the last age of salvation, Christians do not experience the future simply as a complex of alluring but inefficacious possibilities. Christian hope perceives the future as a reality, as the saving approach of God in the Breath of the risen Christ. The incarnation reveals that the God of the future always draws near to humanity through Christ, through the Word spoken in Jesus, in the enfleshed second person of the trinity. Even now both the Father and the Word continue to do so in the gift of His Breath. Christian apocalyptic longing does more, then, than dream nightmarish and unrealistic dreams. Christian apocalyptic longing expresses Christian hope; and Christian hope discerns the shape of the future through sensitivity to the present saving action of the God who is our future. Nevertheless, Christian apocalyptic does well to portray the last age of salvation as a cosmic struggle between the God of the future and the embodied, institutionalized forces of evil. The first and last gospels both insist with special rhetorical emphasis on the reality and inevitability of that struggle. Both gospels proclaim that in a sinful world conflict be-
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tween Christ and Anti-Christ defines the way in which Christian revelation inevitably happens. Christian visions of the end time do not offer newspaper accounts of the end of the world. They do express radical confidence and trust that the finite human forces of evil and sin, even in their most corrupt and corrupting institutional embodiments, can never finally triumph over a saving God. Christian visions of the end time proclaim in the face of institutional monuments to human greed, hypocrisy, lies, violence, and oppression that their power, compared to the divine power revealed in the resurrection of Jesus, pales to insignificance. The final victory no more lies with them than it did with Pilate and the chief priests in Jesus’ day. Even if the forces of Anti-Christ do their worst, even if they slaughter and oppress the saints of God, the saints, in and through their innocent suffering and oppression, claim the victory because their sinless suffering conforms them to the redeeming and victorious Christ. In the very starkness of the contrast which it draws between the forces of light and the forces of darkness, Christian apocalyptic makes another important doctrinal point: namely, those who do not actively oppose the forces of Anti-Christ will soon find themselves co-opted and corrupted by them. The Christian victory through suffering has nothing to do with supine passivity in the face of evil. It requires one instead to confront the forces of darkness prophetically and non-violently. The forces of light must confront the forces of evil both actively and non-violently, because those who oppose sinful violence with sinful violence do not oppose the Anti-Christ. Instead, by endorsing the tactics of Satan, they join forces with the prince of darkness. The Christian struggle against the principalities and powers breeds eschatological longing. Those who confront the Satanic beasts of sin, violence, and oppression in all of their personal and institutional incarnations stand face-to-face with the mystery of iniquity. In that confrontation, they long with all their hearts for the vindication of Christ’s cause. They cry out to God for the crucifixions to end: Maranatha, come, Lord Jesus. In longing for the ultimate dawning of salvation, Christians crave a world purified of sin, of oppression, of sinful dissent, and of injustice. They therefore long for a universe which even graced human striving can never create. Christians do not prolong Christ’s prophetic announcement of God’s reign because they hope to succeed better in that proclamation than He. Christian apocalyptic hope promises not success but salvation. It anticipates the cross; and it does not shrink from it. The environments of saving grace which the Church provides people on pilgrimage into God offer oases of life, of love, of reconciliation, of healing, and of hope in a
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desert of death, violence, hatred, war, and despair. They create the Pauline plerôma. Because, however, even the most life-giving graced human environments fall far short of the fullness of salvation, Christians long for the second coming of Christ and for the descent of the heavenly Jerusalem. They recognize that only the God who promises and is in fact effecting salvation in Christ can save the world finally and completely. Ultimate salvation requires that God create a total environment of grace very different from this graced yet sinful world. The vision of the new Jerusalem which closes the book of Revelation enunciates the last word which sacred scripture speaks to us about the dawning future. That vision tells us that our saving God will transform the human race into a living temple suffused with divine light. With good reason, the image suggests that in the end only the reality of the triune God can provide the sinless environment of grace for which the saints still embattled with the forces of Anti-Christ long. Those, then, who enter into the compassionate atonement of Christ, those who suffer this world of sin and oppression without sinning conquer human sin and fragmentation with a consent to divine beauty incarnate; and that consent prepares them to share finally in the mutual consent of love which unifies the social life of the triune God. Humanity must answer personally and collectively to God for its response to the Word spoken to it in Christ. Moreover, as the one through whom the Father and Breath act whenever They act upon creation, Jesus Himself will demand that response. For that reason He confronts the world as the apocalyptic Son of Man, as the one divinely appointed to pass judgment on the human race and on its institutions. God saves the world by evoking from human hearts consent to the divine excellence incarnate in Jesus. Salvation therefore requires consent to the moral demands of life in the kingdom. Those who embody the kingdom die united to God through the Breath-inspired love of Christ. Those who set themselves in irreconcilable opposition to God’s kingdom walk the path to perdition. The mediocre try to waffle. The diversity of possible human moral responses to the will of God embodied in Jesus thus makes inevitable doctrinal faith in heaven, purgatory, and hell. Viewed experientially, heaven, purgatory, and hell all function as limit concepts. Hell, for example, foresees the ultimate consummation of lives lived in grossly sinful contradiction of God’s saving will. The doctrine of hell simply takes to its logical moral conclusion a pattern of evil like that incarnate in Nazism or in American racist bigotry. The inhabitants of hell must choose to dwell there by pitting themselves in irreconcilable opposition to the God revealed in Jesus Christ. Anyone who would make that terrible option would experience the approach of divine holiness,
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not as a healing, saving event, but as a hideously terrifying threat to everything which they have chosen to incarnate. Moreover, by opposing God’s saving initiatives, the tenants of hell also live in complete vulnerability to all the tormenting forces of evil which, like them, refuse the offer of divine forgiveness and reconciliation. If the gates of hell do have locks, the key probably turns from the inside. Heaven designates the ultimate consummation of Christological knowing, of practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. Since we know the God incarnate in Jesus by loving both Him and those whom He loves, those who choose to live in heaven will experience that love brought to its perfect consummation. Pauline apocalyptic and the book of Revelation both agree on this point. When the knowing which is loving reaches perfection, theologians traditionally call that experience “the beatific vision.” (DS 1000-1001) The idea of purgatory results from Christian reflection on the ultimate fate of the mediocre. The doctrine of purgatory predicts that those who die in fundamental union with God but still attached to small, sinful idols must experience the final purgation of all sinful dissent before they can enjoy perfect loving union with God in heaven. The fire of divine holiness must still purify their hearts, minds, and consciences. (Cf. DS 1546, 1582, 1820) The doctrinal repudiation of the vindictive God popularized by atonement Christology requires also that one purge one’s doctrinal account of hell and of purgatory of any hint of divine vindictiveness. The God who suffered compassionately with the crucified Son of God on Calvary takes no pleasure in tormenting others, not even sinners. In the end, those who choose sin and reject God’s offer of reconciling forgiveness torment themselves with the destructive consequences of their own choices. Moreover, the unrepentant sinner quite correctly and realistically experiences the approach of divine holiness, beauty, goodness, and truth as a threatening and terrifying judgment. Will anybody go to hell? Will everyone finally go the heaven? In the past, theologians of predestination cheerfully consigned large segments of humanity to eternal barbecuing by a vengeful God. Nowadays, theologians show renewed interest in apokatastasis, i.e., in the belief that the God who wills the salvation of all will one day get His way, if not in this life then in the next.7 In fact, theologians who presume to pass judgment on the final state of anyone go beyond the historical revelation which we have received; for that revelation says nothing finally about who will in fact enjoy ultimate salvation. The revelation of God in Christ does warn that people can by 7. Cf. John R. Sachs, “Current Eschatology: Universal Salvation and the Problem of Hell,” Theological Studies, 52(June, 1991), pp. 227-254.
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their own free choice put themselves in hell; but it does not tell us whether any have so chosen or if anyone will choose that kind of ultimate moral self-destruction. Worse still, those theologians who try to insure either the salvation of all or the damnation of some violate a fundamental moral precept of the new covenant in Christ: “Do not judge, and you will not be judged.” Judgment lies, finally, with Jesus, with the divine Son of Man. Instead of talking about things of which they finally know nothing, theologians would do better to leave final judgment in His all too capable hands. Like Job, they would do well to repent of prating about matters beyond their scope and sit with their fingers on sealed and silent lips. Those who leave judgment in divine hands by that act of trust proclaim Jesus the Lord of history. The incarnate God presides over human emergence with the saving power to transform even repented sin into grace. We know too that Jesus yearns to keep even the least of God’s little ones from perishing. Whether they will in the end cooperate remains an open question because it engages human freedom. The reflections on doctrinal Christology developed in this second volume have examined two interrelated issues. They have pondered how the hypostatic union grounds and unites Jesus’ saving ministry; and, in the process, these doctrinal considerations have clarified in an initial way the relationship of doctrinal Christology to practical Christology. I therefore conclude these reflections with a few final observations on these two interrelated themes: namely, the unity of Jesus’ saving ministry and the relationship between doctrinal and practical theology. I have argued in this doctrinal section that a foundational Christology authenticates Chalcedonian Christology. I have also defended the position that a realistic, triadic, social metaphysics of experience makes Chalcedonian Christology thinkable in a contemporary North American context. Such a metaphysics avoids the philosophical blunders which have marred Christological thinking in the past. Too often those blunders have betrayed theologians into confounding mystery with logical contradiction. I have suggested that the operations which structure inferential thinking require one to approach doctrinal Christology with a Peircean relational logic of consequences. That logic blurs the traditional distinction between the doctrine of Jesus’ person and the doctrine of His saving ministry because it requires that one clarify the meaning of the hypostatic union by understanding its saving consequences. Jesus’ ministry, death, resurrection, and mission of the Breath embody and reveal the hypostatic union’s saving consequences. The symbolic structure of experience also blurs the distinction between Jesus’ person and ministry because it demands that one recognize that Jesus’ ministry reveals His person symbolically at the same time that His person endows His ministry with saving significance and divine authority.
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As we have seen, Jesus’ saving ministry has both an historical and an eschatological dimension, because the paschal mystery, which begins the final age of salvation, reveals the full saving significance of Jesus’ historical, mortal ministry. By endowing Jesus’ ministry with divine saving sanction, the paschal mystery brings that ministry to its ultimate personal embodiment, an embodiment which so unites the divine and the human as to blur any distinction between time and eternity, between this world and the next. At the same time, Jesus’ mortal ministry, His proclamation of the reign of God, endows the paschal mystery with practical meaning. Together, then, both Jesus’ ministry and the paschal mystery reveal to us how in practice a saving God relates to a sinful humanity and how humanity ought to relate to God. A metaphysics of experience allows one to overcome the dualistic sundering of time and eternity. It portrays the triune God as an eternal process which comprehends and environs the spatio-temporal process. By acknowledging the reality of religious experience, that metaphysics discovers eschatological significance and reality in the encounter with the Breath of the risen Christ who transforms the triune God into the future of all believers. We experience Christ’s Breath as a personal, divine vector proceeding from and leading us into the social reality of the triune God. When one develops Christological doctrine by invoking pragmatic logic, the doctrine of the hypostatic union unifies one’s account of Jesus’ saving ministry. Jesus confronts us as savior, prophet, priest, messiah, and judge because in the paschal mystery He confronts us as God incarnate, as the human experience of being a divine person. Because, moreover, the hypostatic union both unifies and redefines the soteriological significance of every aspect of Jesus’ ministry, each facet of His saving work both illumines and informs every other. His ministry of proclamation endows His priesthood, kingship, and judicial ministry with prophetic meaning. His priesthood endows His ministry of preaching as well as His messianic and judicial authority with sacerdotal, mediatorial significance. His royal authority makes his prophetic ministry, His priesthood, and his judicial authority messianic. His authority as Son of man suffuses his prophetic ministry, His priesthood, and His messianic authority with eschatological significance and judicial authority. Finally, because Jesus confronts us as the human experience of being a divine person, every aspect of His ministry has ultimate and normative saving significance.8 8. Cf. T.F. Glassen, Jesus and the End of the World (Edinburgh: Saint Andrews Press, 1980: G.C. Berkouwer, The Return of Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1972); V. Norskov Olsen, ed., The Advent Hope in Scripture and History (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Assn., 1987); John A.T. Robinson, Jesus and His Coming: The Emergence of a Doctrine (New York, NY: Abingdon, 1957); Johannes Timmermann, Nachapostolisches Parusiedenken (Munich: Max Hüber Verlag, 1968); Jean-Marie Glé, “Le retour de l’eschatologie,” Recherches de Science Religieuse, 84(1996), pp. 219-251.
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The unity of Jesus’ saving ministry also throws light on the second issue which I raised above: namely, the relationship between doctrinal and practical theology. Let us try to understand why. As I have just indicated, the hypostatic union endows the person and ministry of Jesus with universal saving significance at the same time that it establishes Him as a normative, though not exhaustive, revelation of how a saving God relates to a sinful humanity and how that same God desires humanity to respond to the divine offer of salvation. This soteriological insight holds the key to understanding the relationship between doctrinal and practical Christology. Christological doctrine offers an inferential interpretation of Christological knowing, i.e., of that knowledge of Jesus’ person and saving mission which results from practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath. Authentication of Christological doctrine must, as a consequence, pass a double test. Since Christological knowing assimilates believers to an historical reality, they need to interpret that reality correctly; for one who does not know what kind of human reality Jesus embodied cannot judge whether or not one is or is not living like Him. The inherently practical character of Christological knowing, however, also demands that one authenticate a Christological doctrine not just historically and eschatologically but also practically, by living out its saving consequences. Christological knowing, however, transvalues in faith the four forms of secular conversion. Sound Christological doctrine ought, therefore, to promote the graced transvaluation in faith of all the natural forms of conversion. By the same token, unsound Christological doctrine will tend to subvert or even to annul integral conversion to Christ. The ongoing authentication of Christological doctrine demands therefore a constant interplay between two critical processes: 1) reflection of the meaning of the hypostatic union guided by a pragmatic logic of consequences and 2) the actual living out of the saving practical consequences of doctrinal Christological faith. Those practical consequences define the speculative meaning of belief in the hypostatic union. As we shall see in greater detail in the following section, practical Christology reflects on the deliberative processes which guide the lived authentication of Christological doctrines. Practical Christology engages two interrelated realms of moral deliberation. They correspond to the two kinds of moral conversion. The graced transvaluation of personal moral conversion requires that Christological knowing engage human interpersonal relationships. The graced transvaluation of socio-political conversion demands that Christological knowing also engage public morality and the corporate search for the common good.
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The prophetic, messianic, and judicial aspects of Jesus’ saving ministry especially require Christological knowing to engage both forms of moral conversion. Let us try to understand why. As we have seen above, Jesus’ prophetic ministry requires Christians to see in the kingdom a human incarnation of the saving mind of God. The vision of the kingdom which Jesus proclaimed and embodied both in His ministry and in the paschal mystery makes it clear that Christians can finally encounter God only in community. Commitment to the kingdom incorporates one into a universal community of sharing, faith, worship, and mutual forgiveness which seeks to embrace the entire human race by excluding no one from concern. Sharing authenticates faith and trust in God; mutual forgiveness authenticates worship. Love of enemies authenticates mutual forgiveness. Both faith sharing and mutual forgiveness engage human interpersonal relationships and necessitate their transvaluation in faith. In other words, Jesus’ prophetic ministry requires the graced transvaluation of personal moral conversion. The messianic and judicial dimensions of Jesus’ saving ministry both require socio-political conversion because as messiah and final judge Jesus enters into conflict with the Satanic kingdoms of this world and with all personal and institutional embodiments of religious hypocrisy. Inevitably, then, those whom the Breath of the risen Christ inspires to live in His image must in their own day confront with prophetic non-violence the evil principalities and powers of this world. Those who can oppose institutional oppression but refuse to do so conspire with it. They sin by omission. Those who live a privatized faith have not yet understood fully who Jesus is; and, to the extent that they do not know Jesus, to that extent they fail to imitate Him. In other words, because Jesus’ messianic and judicial ministries set Him at odds with the principalities and powers of this world, commitment to Him in faith makes socio-political conversion morally inevitable for those who claim to follow Him. Relevance to the RCIA In the preceding chapters I have reflected doctrinally on how Jesus’ ministry as savior, prophet, priest, king, and judge all reveal the mystery of the incarnate God. The incarnation, Jesus’ life and ministry, and the paschal mystery all combine to endow foundational Christology with morally revolutionary and socially subversive meaning. These doctrinal reflections have, then, important implications for the RCIA. The too often distorted intellectualism of the Catholic tradition in the West can and often does skew the catechesis given to neophytes in the restored catechumenate. One hears complaints that the RCIA frequently amounts to “a bunch of lectures and a bath.”
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The RCIA succeeds only when those conducting it focus on the conversion process through which converts are passing. All instruction given to catechumens, including doctrinal instruction, should, then, seek to advance their lived progress in an integral, five-fold conversion. As a consequence, in a successful RCIA, those conducting it need to tailor all instruction, including doctrinal instruction, to each catechumen’s personal conversion needs. The conversion needs of candidates must dictate the length of preparation for initiation. It cannot be legislated a priori or in advance. Successful doctrinal instruction challenges people to live practically the consequences of the doctrines which they proclaim with their lips. Catechists need, therefore, to avoid a purely speculative approach to Christian doctrine. When Christian teachers fail to spell out the practical consequences of doctrines like the incarnation and the trinity, they leave their theoretical meaning shrouded in unintelligible vagueness and obscurity, for a doctrine’s practical saving consequences give it its full speculative meaning. Accordingly, in this doctrinal section I have consistently applied a pragmatic logic of consequences to belief in the hypostatic union and in the saving work of Jesus Christ. I have done so in the hope that those who draw upon this study in order to devise a catechesis which meets the personal needs of each catechumen will themselves use a similar logic in explaining Christological doctrine to converts; for only concern with the practical meaning of Christian doctrine will advance the ongoing conversion of adult Christians. These doctrinal reflections have also tried to exemplify another important methodological imperative: namely, the need to coordinate the intuitive and inferential expressions of Christian faith. In the earlier sections of this study, I have described the way in which commitment to Jesus Christ transforms the hopes of the human heart and the imaginative perceptions of religious realities. Kerygmatic and apocalyptic Christology explore the intuitive dimensions of Christian hope. Narrative Christology ponders the affective and intuitive dimensions of Christian faith. In developing a doctrinal Christology, I have accordingly offered a rational, inferential interpretation of fundamental issues raised by kerygmatic, apocalyptic, and narrative Christology. Every popular doctrinal Christological catechesis ought to do the same. It should help people to understand the doctrinal implications of the New Testament witness to Jesus. The catechetical integration of the inferential and intuitive dimensions of faith not only insures that head and heart agree about God, but it also provides a powerful antidote to fundamentalism by demanding critical, rational reflection on the actual meaning of Christian faith. Finally, the integration of the rational and imaginative dimensions of
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faith also teaches converts that, when they gather to worship, they need not leave their brains parked outside beside their automobiles. The final section of this study deals with practical Christology as such. In it I shall reflect on the way in which commitment to Jesus Christ in faith transvalues the two forms of moral conversion. In treating personal moral conversion, I shall show how commitment in faith to Jesus Christ heals and transforms disordered human passions. In dealing with socio-political conversion, I shall show how Christian conversion promises to liberate the United States from economic, social, and political oppression. These two final chapters complete, then, this foundational and doctrinal account of the practical consequences of belief in the hypostatic union. The final chapter completes the inculturation of that account in a United States context.
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Part 3 Practical Christology Chapter 15 To Love As Jesus Loved A foundational Christology considers the ways in which commitment in faith to Jesus Christ as the normative, historical self-revelation of God transforms affective, intellectual, moral, and socio-political conversion. I have so far examined how Christological knowing transforms two of those conversion experiences. I have pondered how practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath transforms affective conversion into Christian hope; and I have examined how faith in Jesus Christ transvalues intellectual conversion’s intuitive and inferential grasp of religious realities into theological faith. Together Christian faith and hope ground and motivate practical Christology; for, as we have seen, both Christian faith and Christian hope have an inherently practical character. Narrative theology gives imaginative expression to Christian faith; and in the course of doing so, it clarifies the practical meaning of the Christological knowing to which Christian hope aspires. Doctrinal Christology reflects inferentially and practically on the meaning of Christian hope and on the intuitive dimensions of Christian faith. Doctrinal Christology therefore uses a pragmatic logic of consequences in order to endow the insights of narrative Christology with logical precision and ethical meaning. Practical Christology as such applies all these graced insights to the actual practice of Christological knowing. The practice of Christological knowing engages moral deliberation.1 Prudential thinking takes the logical form of moral deliberation. The deliberating mind thinks disjunctively. It weighs mutually exclusive options in the light of relevant realities, facts, norms, and aims. All deliberation targets decision. Humans make two basic kinds of decisions. Some decisions fix beliefs and attitudes. Others respond to social and environmental challenges and stimuli. Not all human deliberations have a moral character. One can, for example, weigh the advantages or disadvantages of different explanatory hypotheses. When painters do different preliminary sketches for a painting, they deliberate about the effectiveness of different modes of aesthetic 1. Cf. R. Garcia de Haro, “Cristo y la Sabidura Moral” in Cristo Hijo de Dios y Redentor del Hombre, pp. 177-212.
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expression. Engineers deliberate about the relative efficiency of competing structural designs. Prudential deliberation takes on a moral character when it invokes norms which make ultimate and absolute claims. Something claims one ultimately when one consents to it as a reality not only worth living for but, if necessary, worth dying for. Ultimate realities, values, and ideals—like truth, justice, beauty—set life’s long-term goals. They endow human living with responsible purpose. Absolute realities, values, and ideals make claims upon human choice in every circumstance. I cannot, for example, imagine any circumstance which would justify the drive-by shooting of innocent bystanders. Moral deliberation concerns itself with both the motives and the consequences of concrete options. Moral reasoning deals with motives because doing the right deed for the wrong reason corrupts the conscience as effectively as overtly vicious social behavior. A teacher, for example, who disseminates truth out of pride or vanity performs a useful service to others but at the price of becoming a pedant and an ass. The fawning Uriah Heep transforms seeming expressions of humility into rank hypocrisy and ambition. Moral reasoning also deals with the consequences of human choices. Human persons seek to fulfill analogous needs in community. As a consequence, responsible moral choices must answer for the good or ill which they freely visit upon others. Evil deliberately inflicted on other persons violates their rights. Evil deliberately inflicted on society violates the common good. Practical benevolence toward both individual persons and communities counts as virtue. This final section of volume three examines how Christological hope and faith transvalue prudential moral deliberation. It therefore completes the account of the Christian conscience developed in volumes one and two. As we have seen, moral deliberation makes prudential thinking socially responsible. Moral conversion comes in two forms: personal moral conversion and socio-political conversion. These two conversions deal ethically with different but interrelated realms of social intercourse. Personal moral conversion focuses on human interpersonal relationships. Socio-political conversion deals with public morality, with the quest for a just social order. Personal and public morality differ in identifiable ways. When, for example, people stand in an interpersonal relationship to one another they relate with concrete immediacy. They know one another’s names and faces. The way they treat one another yields immediate satisfaction or causes immediate pain. Humans manage interpersonal relationships more easily than they manage large, impersonal institutions chiefly because interpersonal relationships involve a limited number of people and lack the bu-
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reaucratic complexity and the anonymity of large institutions. When problems arise in interpersonal relationships, one can often enough talk things through with those involved and achieve both mutual understanding and mutual satisfaction. The resolution of personal moral conflicts presupposes, of course, good will on the part of all concerned. As we have seen, institutions come into existence when persons relate to one another in identifiable and publicly sanctioned ways. Even the most intimate personal relationships yield to institutionalization. Different cultures, for instance, institutionalize the family differently. The members of a Confucian family relate differently from the way in which the members of an American middle-class family do. Similarly, in some cultures uncles have the right to discipline nieces and nephews; in others, not. As institutions grow in size, they take on an increasingly impersonal character. The immediacy of human interpersonal relationships counts for nothing when the CEOs of great corporations make decisions which affect the lives of countless people whom they have never met and never will meet. In interpersonal relationships, one can assign responsibility for human decisions with relative ease because those decisions have an immediate impact on others. One finds it more difficult, however, to assign responsibility for decisions which filter through complex bureaucratic structures. In Japan, for example, corporate decision making ensures that no one will lose face through bad decisions. Making everyone responsible for a failed policy precludes pointing a finger of blame at any single individual. In a culture of shame, if corporate decisions turn sour, everyone still saves face. While interpersonal relationships yield immediate satisfaction or immediate pain, bureaucratic delays in large institutions tend to prolong the time between taking a decision and experiencing its consequences. The delay heightens the risk of injustice. Faithful service which must wait for its reward may never receive it. Fraud and mismanagement take time to come to light. While humans manage interpersonal relationships with comparative ease, the anonymity, diffused responsibility, and complexity of large, impersonal institutions make them more difficult to control. Interpersonal and public morality also differ in the kinds of moral dilemmas each poses. They therefore differ as well in the kind of information one needs and in the norms one invokes in resolving those dilemmas. Personal inquiry, for example, usually suffices to provide the factual information one needs in order to resolve interpersonal moral challenges; but one needs accurate social analysis of complex institutional processes in order to resolve questions of public morality. In questions of interpersonal morality, a sound insight into personal rights and duties ordinarily suffices. In resolving
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questions of public morality, however, one measures the morality of human choices by the common good. One secures the common good by creating a situation in which all the members of society can contribute to and profit from its benefits with reasonable fairness and adequacy. Institutional reform requires, then, social analysis, the re-organization of institutional patterns of behavior, the collaboration of large groups of people, strategic planning, and the successful implementation of strategies for institutional change. The distinction between interpersonal and public morality makes it possible for a person to experience personal moral conversion without converting socio-politically, and vice versa. In individualistic America, for instance, one constantly encounters people who seem committed to living responsible lives at an interpersonal level but who find it difficult even to understand questions of public morality. One also encounters social activists whose zeal for the commonweal causes them to neglect family and other interpersonal responsibilities. If interpersonal and public morality differ, they also stand in an intimate relationship to one another. Public morality needs to take into account the personal rights and duties which large, impersonal institutions violate. Large, social institutions also condition the way in which persons relate at an interpersonal level. The interrelation between personal and public morality insures that one cannot live a fully responsible moral life unless one undergoes both kinds of moral conversion. Lack of concern with social injustice will inevitably cause one to act irresponsibly at an interpersonal level as well. One, for instance, who grows up in a racist society like ours will treat the members of other races unjustly unless one comes to terms with one’s socially acquired bigotry. Similarly, one cannot show genuine concern for the common good unless one also respects the claims of personal rights and duties. Executives, for example, who contemn the personal rights of subordinates and of the constituencies whom they serve will surely formulate and enforce socially irresponsible, unjust, and disgraceful public policies. The present chapter deals with the ways in which Christological knowing transforms personal moral conversion. As we have seen, the graced transvaluation of affective conversion gives rise to the theological virtue of hope; and the graced transvaluation of intellectual conversion in both its intuitive and inferential expressions gives rise to the theological virtue of faith. In an analogous way, the graced transvaluation of personal moral conversion gives rise to the theological virtue of charity. Because deliberative thinking culminates in decision it exhibits an unavoidable concreteness. Decision, after all, makes experience this rather than that. In the end, therefore, one learns about charity in the same way
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in which one learns about all natural virtue: namely, by living it. Charity, of course, demands graced living empowered by the Breath of Christ. A theoretical account of the way in which Christological knowing transvalues personal moral conversion cannot deal with the living of charity in all of its concreteness. That account can, however, ponder some of the typical moral challenges of graced, interpersonal living in Jesus’ image. It can also describe the over-all way in which commitment to Christ requires one to approach the concrete resolution of such challenges. Building on the seminal work of Roberto Unger, I shall in the present chapter argue that in effecting the graced transvaluation of personal moral conversion Christian charity heals disordered human passion. As we have already seen in other contexts, the construct of experience defended in this study regards human affectivity as cognitive, as a way of perceiving and judging reality. By passion, I mean, with Unger, the affective perception of human interpersonal relationships. Since personal moral conversion deals responsibly with interpersonal relationships, it must, then, deliberate about human passions. By the same token, when charity graciously transforms natural human interpersonal relationships in conscious faith and hope, it too necessarily engages human passions. This chapter divides into three parts. Part one reflects on the role of passion in human interpersonal relationships. Part two examines some common disordered passions. Part three shows how Christian charity heals disordered passions by transvaluing them in justifying faith. (I) Human affections divide into emotions and passions. We react emotionally to things. We react passionately to persons. Interpersonal morality deals with human interpersonal relationships. Passion raises such relationships to appreciative consciousness.2 Human Passion As we have seen in other contexts, human affections both perceive and judge reality. When we perceive reality affectively we react to it in a preliminary way either sympathetically or negatively. The sympathetic affections—admiration, appreciation, desire, etc.—perceive the tendencies in persons and in things as benign. The negative affections—rage, fear, guilt, shame etc.—perceive the tendencies in persons and in things as threatening and potentially destructive. Realistic negative affections make an important positive contribution to human affectivity; but we call such feel2. As I have already indicated, these reflections on the passions derive from the groundbreaking insights of Roberto Unger. Cf. Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Passion: An Essay in Personality (New York, NY: Free Press, 1984); J.J. Mueller, Faith and Appreciative Consciousness: The Cultural Theology of Bernard Meland (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981).
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ings negative because they function cognitively like the intuitive equivalent of a logical “not.” Initial affective perceptions tend to generate imaginative reflection on attractive or threatening realities. If one finds oneself drawn to some person or thing, one usually begins to dream about how one might enjoy the relationship or reality in question. If one finds persons or situations threatening, one ordinarily begins to imagine all the ways in which they might harm oneself and others. One also dreams either of escape or of victory after combat. Affective judgments of feeling terminate intuitive reflection on reality. In other words, initial affective perceptions of reality function as the intuitive equivalent of inferential hypotheses, while final intuitive judgments of feeling function as the intuitive equivalent of inferential inductions. The creative imagination functions as the intuitive equivalent of inferential deduction. Prudential judgments of feeling have a practical, prudential, aesthetic, or discerning character. We deliberate practically about the most efficient strategy for getting a job done. We deliberate speculatively about the best hypothesis to adopt. We deliberate aesthetically about the best way to express a beautiful perception. We deliberate prudentially about questions of personal and public morality. We discern when prayer and receptivity to the Breath’s inspirations inform one’s deliberations. Humans live willy nilly in social relationship to one another even when those relationships take on a negative, or hostile, character. Human finitude entails human need. Every human person needs food, drink, clothing, shelter, education, employment; and even the most self-reliant depend extensively on others in order to acquire and enjoy these goods. Social solidarity makes people mutually interdependent; and mutual interdependence makes humans vulnerable. Disordered human passions exploit human vulnerability for the sake of selfish satisfaction. In exploiting others, one runs roughshod over their needs and thus violates their rights; for a right consists of a personal need which makes claims upon another’s conscience. Well ordered human passions, by contrast, respect the rights and dignity of other persons as persons. Human passions have instinctive roots. The slapped neonate does not need to learn how to vent personal rage through tears. The infant responds affectively to pain with instinctive fear and hostility. Sexual maturation creates the capacity for romantic love and erotic passion. Despite its instinctive roots, however, human passion evolves as humans learn to interrelate socially. The way one relates socially therefore builds into the personality habitual ways of responding passionately to other persons. As the natural passion of love evolves, for example, the mutual affection which binds together the members of the same family
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changes into peer friendships. In adolescence, friendship matures into romantic love. One relates passionately not only to other persons but to oneself. Passionate self-perceptions shape one’s personal self image. They either foster or inhibit healthy self-development. The instinctive character of passion insures that passionate human development engages both the conscious and the unconscious mind. As a consequence, conscious disorder in one’s passionate relationships often roots itself partially in unconscious passions. Unconscious disorder in one’s passions frequently engages the negative affections: shame, fear, anger, guilt. The passion of shame expresses self-hatred. The passion of fear perceives another as threatening and as more powerful than oneself. The passion of anger perceives another as threatening but as conquerable. The passion of guilt rues personal responsibility for morally irresponsible or sinful choices. The systematic repression of negative passions prevents one from perceiving reality, especially interpersonal reality, realistically. As unconscious shame, rage, fear, and guilt accumulate, one gradually loses the ability to respond to persons and to things for what they embody or exemplify. Instead, one projects onto them the painful negative characteristics of persons and of events from out of one’s past. One who has never dealt with personal resentment toward one’s father will tend, for example, to react negatively to anyone who resembles a father figure, however benign the father-figure may in fact prove. Clinical psychology discovers a predictable pattern of dysfunction which results from the systematic repression of negative affections and passions. “Nervousness” characterizes the first state of dysfunction. One over-reacts to annoying stimuli. A chance remark may, for example, cause one to “bite another’s head off.” Failure to deal with “nervousness” tends to give rise to more serious personality dysfunctions: compulsions, addictions, and other costly forms of emotional rigidity. A third level of dysfunction takes the shape of outbursts of violent, destructive, and anti-social behavior. Beyond social violence lies “insanity.” The insane have reached such a state of unconscious emotional and passionate disorder that they can no longer react to the world as they find it. Their extreme delusional state requires hospitalization. Beyond insanity lies despair and suicide.3 If the systematic suppression of the negative passions produces systematic affective dysfunction, then the development of a healthy affectivity requires the conscious integration of negative passions and emotions into one’s personality. Healthy negative responses perceive potentially destructive persons and situations realistically and respond to them in an appro3. Cf. Karl Menninger, Martin Mayman, and Paul Pruyser, The Vital Balance: The Life Process in Mental Health and Illness (new York, NY: Viking, 1963).
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priate and life-giving manner. One ought to rue one’s mistakes and sins and mend one’s ways. Righteous anger ought to motivate the struggle against both personal and institutional injustice. One ought to approach unavoidable and potentially dangerous situations with appropriate caution. We should fear nuclear holocaust and environmental catastrophe and see to it that neither ever happens. Human passions have unconscious roots, some instinctive, others learned; but the passions function consciously, as persons interrelate out of mutual attraction and mutual hostility. The fact that the passions bridge conscious and unconscious human behavior means that what begins as neurosis can end as immorality. Unconscious disorder in one’s passionate life can lead one to make deliberately irresponsible and humanly destructive choices. Neurotic fear or rage can, for example, cause one to lash out viciously at those who threaten one even when they do so unintentionally. The unconscious roots of one’s actions may mitigate one’s responsibility for performing the vicious acts which violate one’s conscience; but humanly irresponsible and destructive choices, when taken freely and consciously, have a moral character. Moreover, disordered passion distorts the conscience itself. Scholastic philosophy tended to portray the judgment of conscience as the act of a dispassionate spiritual intellect measuring the responsibility or irresponsibility of human choices. When one reflects, however, on the way in which the conscience actually works, it becomes apparent that human affections and passions lend it judgmental shape. No abstract rational inference, no abstract moral maxim can tell one how to deal concretely with conflicted moral situations of any complexity. Moral thinking advances prudentially and therefore intuitively. One must feel one’s way to an affective perception of the moral response appropriate to specific situations. One feels interpersonal relationships passionately. Judgments of conscience express judgments of feeling. The passions perceive interpersonal relationships. Hence, judgments of conscience concerning questions of interpersonal morality both engage and express human passion. Disordered passions, therefore, introduce disorder into the conscience’s own judgments about interpersonal relationships. A Don Juan who cultivates lustful passions will find it difficult to relate to women as anything but sex objects. One schooled in the ways of gang violence will find it all too easy to “waste” other people. Dysfunctional family relationships tend to perpetuate and reproduce themselves. Disordered passion sets the conscience at odds with itself. As we have seen, the morally converted conscience stands committed to conforming personal conduct to ideals, principles, and realities which claim it ultimately and absolutely. As we have also seen, the ultimacy of moral claims demands that one stand willing not only to live by them but even to die
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for them, if necessary. The absoluteness of moral claims means that they claim us in all circumstances. In interpersonal morality, the moral rights of others impose corresponding moral duties on the human conscience. By a moral right I mean a human need which mutually interdependent persons legitimately expect others to respect and to help fulfill. In respecting the rights of others, one deals with them responsibly as persons. Disordered passions, however, like vindictiveness, greed, lust, or envy prevent one from dealing with other persons as persons. Hatred leads one to disregard the needs and rights of those one despises. Greed values personal wealth more than the sufferings and wants of those one exploits. Lust uses others selfishly for personal carnal gratification. Envy begrudges others legitimate growth, legitimate achievement, and the legitimate fulfillment of their needs. Ethical judgments which proceed from disordered passions distort the conscience by contradicting the ultimate and absolute ideals, principles, and realities to which one stands responsibly committed. That contradiction sets the conscience at odds with itself. As a consequence, those who violate the rights of others by yielding to disordered passionate impulses typically feel the need to rationalize their behavior through self-deception. As a young white boy in New Orleans, for example, I, like other racists, learned to convince myself that the racial inferiority of African Americans justifies reducing them to second-class citizenship and that African Americans themselves prefer things that way. Sexists delude themselves into believing that nature itself, or the unchanging will of God, or even divine revelation has subjected women socially, politically, economically, and educationally to men. The self-deception which rationalizes yielding to disordered passions compounds blatant malice with the kind of hypocrisy which Jesus seems never to have tired of denouncing. This section has considered the nature of passion, its evolution, its dysfunctions, and the way in which disordered passions skew judgments of conscience and breed moral hypocrisy. The section which follows examines some of the specific disorders which mar human passion and render it potentially vicious. (II) Disordered passions distort one’s perception of oneself and of other persons. Viciously disordered passions prevent one from relating to persons as persons. Disordered Passion Sometimes one disordered passion breeds another. Despair offers a good example of a seminal passionate disorder. Prolonged pain, frustration, failure, and oppression sow the seeds of despair. Despair stifles the cre-
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ative imagination. It blinds one to realistic possibilities of growth in oneself and in others. Those who despair cease to believe in the possibility escaping the evils which beset them.4 Despair comes in degrees. It can take the form of fatalism, a supine acquiescence in the painful given by shamefully interiorizing injustice, bigotry, and oppression. It breeds self-pity. It isolates one from the agents of creative change. In its extremest forms despair breeds a loathing for life itself and a fascination with suicide. William James would have recognized in despair a form of soul-sickness.5 The despairing feel trapped in a situation of pain and oppression from which they feel they can never extricate themselves. Sometimes the entrapment has psychological roots: neurotic compulsion imprisons one in self-destructive patterns of behavior. Sometimes the entrapment takes social and institutional shape. One thinks, for example, of the fatalism which so often dogs the permanent underclasses. The despairing need others to hope for them.6 Because despair isolates one from and blinds one to the means of extricating oneself from pain and oppression, the hope and imagination of others need to pierce the dark curtain in which despair shrouds the human heart. Despair can fuel hatred. We hate our enemies and oppressors when we despair of changing them into friends and benefactors. When despair leads to suicide, it embodies the ultimate in self-hatred. Despair has other consequences. It can, for example, erode the very foundations of moral commitment: the despairing find it hard to believe in anything or anyone worth living for. Despair also breeds fear as one faces a future fraught with loathing and pain. When despair blends with shame, one ceases to believe in the very possibility of one’s own loveability. When despair fuses with guilt, past sins and failures loom as unforgivable barriers between oneself and those one has wounded. The passion of pride blinds one to the fact of one’s dependence on other people. Pride cometh before a fall. As one yields to the illusion of quasi-divine self-sufficiency, one enters into a dangerous state of ego-inflation. The inflated ego loses touch with its limitations and with its unconscious destructive tendencies. The prideful illusion of omnipotence betrays one into manipulating other persons as impersonal means to one’s own selfish ends. Blind to their own limitations, the proud can easily overreach themselves, sometimes with disastrous consequences to themselves and others. Think of Adolf Hitler. Think of right-wing para-
4. Cf. William Lynch, Images of Hope (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1974). 5. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Garden City, NY: Doubleday), pp. 121-154. 6. Cf. Menninger, et al., The Vital Balance, pp. 357-420.
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military units who dynamite inhabited federal buildings and day care centers.7 Often vanity sows the seeds of pride. Vanity breeds disorder in self-love. It craves the praise of others. The vain form such a high opinion of themselves that they cannot recognize excellence in other people or appreciate the achievements of others. The inability to appreciate other persons leads one to disparage them unjustly and, of course, to one’s own advantage. Pride differs from vanity in the social isolation it breeds. The vain thrive on the adulation of others. The proud view others with the eyes of contempt. They isolate themselves in positions of power in order to lord it over the weak. The proud crave power over others; and they use it ruthlessly in order to maintain themselves in power. Greed values possessions more than people. It exploits others as a means to amassing wealth. Greed and gluttony go hand in hand. Those who crave the lifestyles of the wealthy and famous usually covet as well the self-indulgent pleasures which virtually limitless supplies of money can buy. Television programs like “The Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous” portray pride, greed, and gluttony as virtues and luxuries as pseudo-necessities. Greed spawns contempt for the poor. Indeed, during the Reagan era of “trickle-down economics,” only one thing ever trickled down to the poor and to the homeless from those amassing obscene fortunes with governmental sanction: namely, the contempt of the rich for those weaklings who had never “made it.” In the nineteen nineties, die-hard proponents of Reaganomics formalized the contempt by cynically declaring poverty a moral rather than an economic problem. Right-wing think tanks spawned this particular blinding “insight” along with other ideological slogans which scapegoated the poor as an excuse for ignoring them. In post-Reagan America, the Contract with America transformed contempt for the poor into a wholesale assault upon them. The Contract sought to destroy the federal safety net for the American poor without necessarily replacing it with anything. At the same time it promoted massive tax breaks for the rich. So called “welfare reform” enacted during the Clinton administration swells the ranks of the unemployed poor by eliminating the needy from welfare rolls and leaving them to drift in a sea of upper-class indifference and predatory capitalism. It takes no crystal ball to foresee the consequences of such policies: spreading hunger among the American poor, brain-damaged children, and the growth of a permanent underclass. The unbridled capitalism of schemes like the Contract dramatizes all too well, that greed fuels class warfare, as the poor and disadvantaged simmer with rage at the heartless indifference and gross moral irresponsibility of the gluttonous rich. 7. Cf. Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype (Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1972), pp. 3-104.
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Lust reduces other persons to mere sex objects, to an impersonal means for satisfying one’s selfish and irresponsible desire for genital pleasure. In fact, one can use genital sex in order to express a wide gamut of disordered passions: violent hatred, macho sexism, misogyny, contempt, the desire to degrade and to be degraded. Whatever its passionate motive, lust leaves genital sex untouched by either genuine love or responsible personal commitment. Not all anger qualifies as vicious. We respond angrily in threatening situations which we believe we can dominate or manage. Situations of personal or institutional injustice ought, for example, to evoke from us righteous anger. Anger, however, becomes vicious when it transforms itself into vindictive hatred of other persons. One can feel anger toward a person one loves. When that happens the love one feels keeps one sensitive to that person’s redeeming traits despite the faults or failings which happen to evoke one’s temporary wrath. Vindictive hatred, by contrast, blinds one to any redeeming traits in one’s enemy. One who hates views the enemy with sneering contempt and with the desire for pitiless retribution. The rationalization of hatred requires that one dismiss any alleged virtues in one’s enemy as hypocrisy or illusion. Hatred precludes communication among enemies and predisposes them to resolve their conflict violently. Hatred festers in the heart until one’s enemy lies prostrate or destroyed. Hatred takes institutional shape in war and in the death penalty. Envy expresses a kind of hatred. One tends spontaneously to hate those who threaten one’s own well-being or the well-being of those one loves. The envious hate others for possessing what the envious themselves lack: possessions, success, virtue, talent, genius. The movie Amadeus dramatized the lethal potential of envy. Instead of rejoicing in the gifts and good fortune of others, the envious connive to undermine and destroy those more fortunate or gifted than they. If envy sets one in enmity against others more advantaged than oneself, the passion of sloth blinds one to one’s own giftedness. That blindness stifles gratitude and the willingness to develop one’s gifts for the benefit of others. Sloth feeds on a negative self-image and has kinship with shame. Ordinarily, the slothful fail morally, not so much by committing morally vicious acts, but by omission, by failing to grow in morally responsible ways. Pride, greed, gluttony, lust, hatred, envy, and sloth—the seven capital sins all embody disordered human passions. Moreover, they all have this in common: they all distort one’s affective perception of one’s personal relationship to others in such a way as to prevent one from relating to other persons as persons and by blinding one to their legitimate rights and needs. Disordered passions can also cause one to violate one’s own
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person. If disordered passions do not spring from despair, they often breed it in oneself or in others. I have proposed an anatomy of human passion and have examined the ways in which disordered passions vitiate human interpersonal relationships. In the section which follows, I shall reflect on the way in which commitment to Jesus Christ in faith heals disordered, destructive passions by replacing them with the life-giving passions of hope, of faith, and especially of charity. (III) At the end of the second volume of this study, I reflected on the ways in which imaginative thinking lends dynamic shape to the Christian conscience. The time has come to complete that portrait of the Christian conscience by reflecting more explicitly on the way in which commitment to the figure of Jesus as the normative, historical, personal revelation of God endows Christian moral thinking with its distinctive brand of normativity. The account of the Christian conscience which follows both endorses and develops the important, seminal insights of William C. Spohn.8 As we have already seen, those who question whether the concrete life of a particular historical individual can make normative moral claims often implicitly view both persons and history with nominalistic eyes. In denying normativity to the concrete and particular, they implicitly equate it with a valueless fact. In the ethically and religiously barren world of conceptual nominalism, human subjectivity must endow valueless facts with both meaning and normativity; but the alleged objectivity of rational knowledge combines with the alleged relativity and subjectivity of moral judgment and of feeling in order to deprive the objects of knowledge of any realistic claim to normativity. Charles Sanders Peirce correctly viewed the development of post-Cartesian European philosophy as discordant variations on the same nominalistic theme. 9 In my judgment, neither deconstructionism nor post-modern skepticism relieve the discord, since they too tend to exemplify a species of conceptual nominalism.10 With Peirce, however, one 8. Cf. William C. Spohn, “Jesus and Ethics,” Proceedings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (1994) 49:40-57; “Jesus and Christian Ethics,” Theological Studies, 56(1995), pp. 92-107; “Spirituality and Ethics: Exploring the Connections,” Theological Studies, 58(1997), pp. 109-123. 9. C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (8 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1. 15-27. 10. Classical nominalism denied the reality of all universals and equated them with concrete spoken words repeatedly applied to concrete sensible objects. Conceptual nominalism denies real generality in things but discovers it in the subjective universal conceptions of the mind. In conceptual nominalism, the mind imposes universality on surd and unintelligible concrete sensibles.
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can transcend the fallacies of nominalism by recognizing that the human mind perceives laws, real tendencies in things. The human mind does so both inferentially and intuitively. Moreover, in the metaphysics of experience defended in this pages, persons embody complex tendencies and therefore exemplify norms of conduct. Some people, of course, embody nobler moral and religious norms than others. Others incarnate immoral or sinful norms. Others still exemplify heroic virtue or utter depravity. Moreover, precisely because humans embody general modes of acting, personal and group conduct does in fact give to others either good or bad example. It does so by exemplifying virtuous or vicious habits of activity which others can imitate. For the same reason, human learning exhibits a mimetic character: humans often learn through imitating the behavior of others for better or for worse. Moral education thrives on the good example of others because ordinarily humans need to see ideals embodied and lived before they take them seriously, especially if fidelity to the ideals in question requires sacrifice.11 Two additional traits endow the human tendencies embodied in Jesus with unique and universal normativity in religious matters: His sinlessness and the fact that His human mind confronts us as a perfect, created, sacramental icon of the divine mind. Both Jesus’ sinlessness and His mind’s iconic revelation of God’s saving intentions to humanity presuppose and flow from His personal divinity. Deny the hypostatic union and the history of Jesus loses any claim to any unique or universal normativity. Instead, his religious vision degenerates into the utopian dream of an obscure, failed, first-century, peasant prophet. Confess the hypostatic union; and the uniqueness of Jesus’ historical experience, which expressed itself in the sinless fidelity with which He announced God’s saving intentions to humanity, make normative claims on every human person. They also exemplify the way in which God Himself would have us relate in faith to Him and to one another. If the historical figure of Jesus makes normative religious and moral claims upon every human conscience, the application of that norm to one’s own ethical situation requires an analogical imagination. A fallacious univocal approach to the religious and moral normativity which Jesus embodies would require that each Christian literally relive His life. No one, of course, can do that; but the analogical Christian imagination 11. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see: Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Turn to Experience in Contemporary Theology (New York, NY: Paulist, 1994). I disagree with René Girard’s contention that mimesis always results in competition and conflict. Humans also experience collaborative mimesis. Think, for example, of a creative loving relationship between a teacher and a pupil. Cf. René Girard, Violence and the Sacred, translated by Patrick Gregory (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1972).
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can, as Spohn has correctly argued, discover in the person of Jesus a paradigmatic normativity.12 Instead of trying to deduce right and wrong from universal moral principles, analogical moral thinking uses the example of Jesus in order to illumine problematic moral challenges and situations. Ethical paradigms do not dictate specific decisions; but they do orient the conscience in a direction which allows it to bring questionable and challenging situations to moral resolution. The paradigmatic example of Jesus teaches believers how to relate habitually to God and to others; but it does not tell one what concretely to do. One therefore begins the discernment process by using the example of Jesus in order to determine which aspects of a problematic situation count as religiously or morally significant. In other words, personal identification with the person of Jesus and with the cause which He both proclaimed and embodied focuses one’s conscientious perceptions of what counts as ethically important. In confronting a situation of injustice, for example, identification with the mind of Jesus teaches one instinctively to view matters through the eyes of the victims rather than through the lens of power or of mere expediency. In dealing with conflicts, identification with Jesus’ view of reality teaches one to choose non-violent rather than violent solutions, negotiated reconciliation rather than vindictive retaliation. Similarly, unconditioned trust in God in Jesus’ image enables one to adopt faith as the context for moral decision making; and insertion into the family of God which Jesus begins forms the conscience in responsible dialogue with other charismatically gifted believers. Identification with the Father’s universal love and forgiveness inclines one to prefer the more universal good to the more particular and restricted good. In all these ways commitment to the paradigmatic figure of Jesus conditions the Christian conscience’s sense of what counts as morally important. Besides allowing one to identify the ethically significant elements in a specific moral situation, commitment to the moral demands of life in the kingdom supplies the Christian conscience with a litmus for testing the motives behind different moral options. Trust in God in the image of Jesus has, for example, specific moral consequences. It demands the willingness to share one’s bread, the physical supports of one’s life with the poor, the needy, the marginal, the expendable. It therefore requires the willingness to collaborate in the creation of a radically egalitarian community of sharing and of faith, a community in which the neediest receive the greatest honor and attention, while those who lead the community in any way relate to it and to its members in self-effacing and humble 12. See also: Alfons Auer, “Die Aktualität der sittlicher Botschaft Jesu” in Die Frage nach Jesus, pp. 271-363.
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service. Involvement in such a community poses a decisive moral challenge to selfish egotism, to natural or sinful self-reliance, to greed, to arrogance, to social indifference to the fate of others, to classism, to racism, to sexism, and to any other “ism” which fragments both secular and ecclesial society. Similarly, the mutual sharing in the family of God which Jesus began must also express the same unconditioned forgiveness which Jesus embodied in His ministry and in the paschal mystery. That forgiveness commits Christians to a universalized love which excludes no one in principle and which even includes one’s enemies. Christian forgiveness commits one to imitating Jesus’ non-violent prophetic resistance to injustice, to oppression, and to all forms of religious hypocrisy. Such a commitment calls into moral question violence of heart and of action, envy, hatred, social and political apathy. Finally, identification with the paradigmatic figure of Jesus endows one with a moral identity. One must choose the more Christlike path in resolving any question of conscience. Paul the apostle here set the example: he habitually exhorted his converts to imitate him in his own imitation of Christ. Putting on the mind of Christ demands more than consent to the religious and moral ideals which Jesus proclaimed and lived. It also inculcates His attitudes of heart, His imaginative perception of reality. Jesus’ religious vision and His attitudes stand, moreover, in an intimate relationship to one another. His humility and self-effacement express His obediential reverence for the Father. His compassion encompasses the poor, the marginal, the suffering, the expendable. His universal love and forgiveness imitates the Father’s own saving attitudes toward humanity. Acquiring Jesus’ moral and religious attitudes predisposes one to resolve personal moral challenges as He would have. His habitual pattern of living and of relating to others models the sinless way to respond to personal human rights and needs, even though it does not dictate what concretely to do in any given circumstance. As a consequence, the salvation which Jesus proclaims reverences human freedom and takes it with utter seriousness. Every human self must choose the kind of self it desires to exemplify. One makes those self-defining choices, of course, in collaboration and conflict with other persons; but the Christian conscience discovers in the sinless example of Jesus the kind of humanity which God desires all people to embody. As we have seen, Jesus’ sinlessness makes Him more perfectly human than the rest of us. Through the sum total of Jesus’ human choices, the hypostatic union recreates physically a sinless humanity in the midst of a sinful world. The incarnation of God thus redefines both concretely and normatively the meaning of “human.” It does so concretely because no other human embodies the human experience of being a divine per-
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son. It does so normatively by exemplifying the kinds of habits and dispositions which make for sinless living. In other words, the incarnation reveals in a unique and normative way the kind of human experience God wants every human person to become. Inevitably therefore, Christian morality has a inherently Christlike character because it demands the imitation of Jesus and therefore exemplifies Christological knowing. As the pattern of Jesus’ life illumines the pattern of our own living, as we allow His Breath to teach us who He is through practical assimilation to Him, the story of Jesus intersects with our personal story and reshapes it toward ends which bind us to God in the same kind of filial relationship which He embodied. The intersection of our stories with Jesus’ story thus endows the history of each believer and of every Christian community both with a transcendent, ultimate purpose and with a present practical agenda. Those who live for God and into God live with transcendent purpose. For those who confess the divinity of Jesus, however, living for and into God commits one to making the divine reign on earth into a present lived reality. In all these ways, Christological knowing defines Christian identity. The perception, motivation, and identity of the Christian conscience function as norms which one can apply again and again to different kinds of moral situations, as the life story of individual Christians and of Christian communities intersect with the paradigmatic story of Jesus Christ. The repeated applicability makes these norms a practical method for resolving the Christian conscience. In what follows, I shall reflect on how one applies these norms within Christian ethical deliberation. I argued at the end of the second volume of this study that commitment to Jesus Christ in practical faith dedicates the Christian conscience to a melioristic ethics of ideals. The challenge of such an ethic lies in the imaginative and discerning construction of a moral bridge. That bridge links the ideal which Jesus embodied and to which He summons us personally and collectively to the natural and sinful realities which the gospel challenges us to transform. As we saw at the end of volume two, an ethics of ideals demands that the conscience never compromise or lie to itself about the ideals to which it stands committed. The Christian conscience must bend natural and sinful reality to the ideal of the kingdom, not that ideal to natural and sinful reality. Dealing realistically with reality requires, however, a genuine appreciation of the truth, goodness, and beauty already ingredient in persons and in morally conflicted situations. That appreciation presupposes a prior and ongoing repentant confrontation with the threatening aspects of moral conflicts; for only that kind of repentant self-confrontation frees the heart to see reality with realistic appreciation.
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Repentant self-confrontation also frees the heart from self-righteous perfectionism. It forces a compassionate, realistic assessment of one’s own limitations and sinfulness and of the sinfulness and limitations of others. A genuine appreciation of the ideals to which the kingdom commits one requires that one deal compassionately with human limitation and sin. Building a bridge from the Christian ideal to natural and sinful reality advances in stages. The Christian conscience first derives from the ideal of the kingdom principles which apply to the morally significant aspects of the conflicted ethical situation which it confronts. From principles, it derives policies; and from policies, strategies. By these stages the Christian conscience moves discerningly and prayerfully to a felt sense of how best to advance morally conflicted situations the next possible step toward the ideal of the kingdom. The United States bishops’ pastoral letter Economic Justice for All illustrates admirably the workings of the Christian conscience. The letter begins with a positive appreciation of the achievements of the Unites States economy. After noting morally significant problems in the contemporary economic situation, the bishops meditate on the way in which the ideal of the kingdom throws moral light on those problems. From the ideal of the kingdom, the bishops then derive principles to guide future economic policy. Among those norms they stress the principle of preferential option for the poor. By applying the same norms to an economy suffering from the gross injustices of “trickle-down” economics, the bishops formulate flexible policies which promise to rectify those injustices. In the end, however, the bishops leave it to the discerning deliberations of American Christians to devise personal and institutional strategies which will transform policies into realities. Economic Justice for All deals with problems of public morality. In resolving questions of interpersonal morality, the conscience faces a different set of challenges. As the process of Christological knowing transforms and transvalues personal moral conversion, the theological passions of hope, faith, and charity heal, perfect, and elevate disordered natural passions. Let us reflect in more detail on how that occurs. The Theological Passions Thomistic theology portrayed Christian hope, faith, and love as virtues of the spiritual soul. (Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I-II, qq. vi-x, lxii) Unfortunately, this theological interpretation of the three religious attitudes to which Paul alludes in 1 Cor 13:13 rests on an indefensible operational dualism. Aquinas Platonized Aristotle’s philosophical account of the human soul by arguing for its essential immortality. The Angelic Doctor portrayed the human soul as the form of the body but as essentially spiritual because endowed with two purely spiritual powers of op-
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eration: the intellect and the will. Since Aquinas also assumed that only the spiritual powers of the soul oriented it to God, hope, faith, and love all had to reside in either the intellect or the will. The Angelic Doctor correlated faith easily enough with the spiritual intellect. He located both hope and love in the spiritual will. More recently, Roberto Unger has suggested that we view theological hope, faith, and love as passions of the soul.13 The metaphysics of experience which I have developed in this and in other foundational studies tends to support Unger’s suggestion. That metaphysics avoids the fallacies of philosophical dualism by eschewing essentialism and by conceiving all reality as relational. By rejecting essentialism, a metaphysics of experience avoids specifically the dualistic concepts of “matter” and of “spirit” which have traditionally dogged and distorted Christian theological thinking. Three kinds of relationships structure the higher forms of experience: conceptual relations, or intentions; factual relations, or decisions; and habitual relations, or tendencies. Autonomously functioning tendencies count as selves. Self-conscious selves capable of responsible activity count as persons. Decision fixes beliefs and attitudes and creates environmental and social relationships among persons, while intentional relations make persons present to themselves and to their world. A foundational analysis of the gracing of the natural forms of conversion discovers an intuitive, passionate element in theological hope, in theological faith, and in theological love. Hope as we have seen dwells primarily at an affective level. Theological hope heals, perfects, and elevates natural human hopes by making God their future and by insuring that humans hope for the same realities which God does. The God revealed in Jesus, however, wills the establishment of His reign on earth as in heaven through the creation of faith-filled communities of sharing, mutual forgiveness, and worship. Inevitably, then Christian hope embodies a deeply affective perception of one’s interpersonal relationship with God and with other persons. It therefore qualifies as a passion. Because it comes from God and leads to God, Christian hope also qualifies as a theological passion. The theological passion of hope motivates the graced acts of hope which infuse the theological virtue of hope. Christian faith too has a passionate dimension. Theological faith heals, perfects, and elevates human beliefs by conforming them to the normative historical revelation of God which we have received in Christ Jesus and in His illuminating Breath. Belief, however, comes, as we have seen in two forms: intuition and inference. Intuitive beliefs engage human affective perceptions and judgment. Because Christian faith believes in a tri-personal God and in the human community of faith which proceeds from the historical revelation of that God, like hope faith grasps and 13. Cf. Unger, Passion, pp. 220-237.
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grapples with affectively complex interpersonal relationships. As the affective grasp of interpersonal relationships, faith, like hope, qualifies as a passion. Its focus on divine things makes it theological. The theological passion of faith motivates the graced acts of faith which infuse the theological virtue of faith. The theological virtue of charity also engages the human heart. Hypothetical thinking engages the intuitive mind; but deductive and inductive inference proceed dispassionately according to the rules of logic, even though rational thought never loses affective connotations. All other forms of human knowing engage the imagination and the affections directly. When we love other persons we perceive them with affective benevolence and act toward them in ways which embody that benevolence. Christian love finds its motive and ultimate object in God and in those persons whom God loves. The God of Jesus Christ loves with an all-encompassing universal benevolence. As the affective perception of human interpersonal relationships, Christian love counts as a human passion. Its focus on God makes it into a theological passion. The theological passion of love motivates the graced acts of love which infuse the theological virtue of charity. The three theological passions of hope, faith, and love heal the disordered passions of the human heart by elevating them to God and by perfecting them through universalization. Hope heals the human heart of despair by anchoring affective perceptions of the future in the experience of the Breath of the risen Christ, whose saving empowerment transforms the triune God into humanity’s future. The paschal mystery gives Christian hope its ultimate object: perfect loving union with God in the life to come. Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom gives Christian hope its proximate object. Christians long proximately for the establishment of God’s reign on earth through the reconciliation of all people to one another in God, in Christ, and in Their forgiving Breath. By committing the human heart to the practical establishment of God’s reign on earth, Christian hope mounts a frontal assault on the causes of despair: pain, frustration, failure, oppression. It inserts those tempted to despair into a healing community of hope. When personal hopes dwindle, the shared hopes and longings of the Christian community have the power to nurture hope and longing in the despondent. Despair stifles the imagination. Christian hope, by contrast challenges the human imagination to allow God’s Breath to expand it to embrace the dawning reality of our future in Christ. Despair blinds one to personal possibilities of growth in oneself and in others. Christian hope heals the blindness of despair through initial and ongoing repentance; and it challenges Christians to acknowledge and
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develop their gifts under the empowering charismatic enlightenment of Jesus’ Breath. Christian hope thus transforms sloth, fatalism, self-pity, and despairing self-isolation into active service of God and of others in Jesus’ name and image. Repentance and the Christian hope which spring from it also demand that the followers of Jesus take realistic steps to overcome the emotional and social entrapment which breed discouragement and despair. Finally, Christian hope universalizes the natural aspirations of the human heart by teaching it to hope the best for all people. Left to its own resources, natural hopes content themselves with wishing only one’s own well. Natural hopes ordinarily leave out enemies, aliens, and strangers. A passionate commitment to God and to others in faith heals the hypocritical moral and religious rationalizations which disordered passion inspires. As we have seen, when disordered passion skews moral deliberation, it distorts and violates the conscience at the same time that it motivates the pseudo-rationalization of those violations. Christian faith, by contrast, demands that one consent with all one’s heart to the truth about God revealed in Jesus and in His Breath. As Christians we see ourselves and others truly when we view both with Jesus’ own compassionate eyes. We see one another truly when we forgive one another with the forgiveness of Christ. That forgiveness recognizes in every human person the capacity to repent of past sins and failings. Graced repentance creates a new capacity to live for and in God and to serve others in Jesus’ image. As a consequence, Christian faith will not tolerate the hypocritical rationalization of sin, injustice, and immorality. The theological passion of Christian love heals all the other passionate disorders by expanding the human heart to embrace the triune God and the entire human family. Christian love also replaces all seven deadly sins with charitable benevolence toward all. In the late sixties, situation ethics attempted to sentimentalize Christian charity by depriving it of all content.14 In point of fact the love of charity demands very specific moral commitments. One finds those moral commitments enunciated in Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom and embodied in the paschal mystery. Commitment to the kingdom teaches the human heart to love as Jesus loved. The synergy of divine and human energy in Jesus universalized His love for others. That synergy expanded His heart to include not only the poor, the marginal, the alien, and the expendable but even His own enemies. Jesus loved not just theoretically but practically. Christian love begins with practical concern to meet the basic physical needs of all people. It creates a community of sharing in which the least members of human 14. See: Joseph Fletcher, Situation Ethics (Philadelphia, PA: Westminster, 1966).
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society receive the greatest care, concern, and honor and in which the great and powerful serve the rest. The synoptic gospels, which best preserve Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom, all testify to these practical demands of Christian love. Moreover, as we have seen, the synoptics enunciate more clearly than the Johannine tradition the universal demands of Christian charity. As we have seen in another context, however, the gospel of John completes a pragmatic portrait of the meaning of Christian charity by discovering in the paschal mystery the supreme expression of God’s love for sinful humans. As John’s Jesus hangs upon the cross, He confronts the world as the divine bridegroom, as the supreme human embodiment of God’s reconciling, forgiving love. Moreover, in Johannine theology, the paschal mystery endows the new commandment—”Love one another as I have loved you”—with its concrete meaning. All the gospels, of course, portray Jesus as having loved even unto death. John, however, underscores this point in a special way. As we have seen, the paschal mystery radicalizes the love which Jesus lived and proclaimed. The cross radicalizes Jesus’ love of the Father by the totality of His self-donation into the Father’s hands. It radicalizes Jesus love of His own disciples by transforming it into a love even unto death. Finally, it radicalizes Jesus’ love of His enemies by revealing the unconditioned character of God’s offer of forgiveness to a sinful humanity. It radicalizes Jesus’ compassion for the suffering through His personal embrace of extremest suffering. The resurrection reveals the radical character of the divine love because, instead of retaliating vindictively to His murder, betrayal, denial, and abandonment on Calvary, the risen Christ sends in the Father’s name the sin-forgiving Breath who transforms us in His image. Christian charity heals disordered human pride by replacing sinful self-reliance and the illusion of human self-sufficiency with unconditioned reliance on and trust in God. It replaces prideful ego-inflation with repentant self-confrontation before God. Repentance sensitizes the heart to both its limitations and its sinfulness. Life in the kingdom also demands the renunciation of power over others for the humble service of the least of Jesus’ sisters and brothers. Charity replaces greed for power with authentic worship of Jesus’ Father in mutual reconciliation and forgiveness. It breaks down the sinful self-isolation in which pride imprisons the human heart by inserting one into a repenting faith community of mutual and practical service. Humble, mutual service in Jesus’ image begets humility. A charity rooted in repentant self-confrontation also heals the lesser sinful passion of vanity by demanding that one acknowledge the truth about oneself and others before God: the truth about human limitations
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and malice, the truth about personal value and achievement. By demanding that one always attend to the needs of others, charity schools the heart to recognize their true worth. Those who love truly in Jesus’ name find joy in the excellence of God and in the excellence of those whom God loves. Realistic self-esteem and appreciation of the gifts of others also inculcates humility. Christian charity makes a frontal assault on human greed. The greedy value wealth and personal possessions more than people. Christianity repudiates the sinful amassing of wealth as a form of idolatry. Idols possess us, not we them. In what concerns physical possessions, we cannot claim to own them until we have the freedom to part with them. Until then, the things we cling to own us. Idols also demand human sacrifice; and the greedy rich cheerfully sacrifice the lives of the poor and needy to their own bloated fortunes and self-indulgent pleasures. Charity demands that one choose between God and mammon by valuing people more than wealth or personal possessions. The practical demands of life in the kingdom require the renunciation of wealth and the transformation of labor into service. One labors in order to keep from burdening others and in order to have something to share with those in greatest need. Charity also heals the contempt in which the rich and advantaged often hold the poor. It requires that the neediest and most marginal members of the community receive the greatest care, concern, and honor. It discourages class warfare by creating a radically egalitarian community which cares for the needs of all, especially for those in greatest need. Finally, charity replaces gluttonous self-indulgence with active concern for the needs of others. The concreteness of love demands that charity express itself in deeds and not just in words. The lustful use other people as sex objects. In Committed Worship I argued that the four forms of natural conversion heal sexuality by humanizing it and by transforming it into chaste marital love. The love of charity heals disordered sexual desires by endowing marital love with sacramental, religious significance. It transforms marriage into a solemn commitment taken before God and transforms the Christian family into a realm of grace which nurtures initial and ongoing conversion in all its members. I shall not repeat these insights in detail here. Instead, I refer the reader to the pertinent passages in Committed Worship.15 Charity heals hatred through forgiveness in the name and image of Jesus. While hatred divides people from one another and encourages violence by destroying communication among enemies, the practical demands of Christian love reconcile enemies and teach them to love one another. Reconciliation teaches one to look for the best in people rather 15. Cf. Gelpi, Committed Worship, II, pp. 29-69.
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than to maximize their faults in enmity. Charity also heals the hatred called envy by teaching one to rejoice in the success, good fortune, and excellence of others. Christian charity also inculcates well-ordered self-love. Christians seek to love their neighbors as they love themselves. Well-ordered self-love undoes the shame and self-hatred which motivate the slothful neglect of one’s own talents. The charismatic inspirations of the divine Breath transform the responsible development of personal gifts into charismatic service to the Christian and to the human community. The preceding reflections enable one to contextualize the therapeutic Christology of Sebastian Moore.16 Moore has drawn on Jungian archetypal theory in order to develop a relational Christology which probes the ways in which confrontation with Christ promotes psychic healing. Moore portrays the crucified Jesus as symbolizing psychologically that aspect of the unconscious self which one continues to crucify by refusing to bring it to healing awareness. Confrontation with the crucified savior empowers one to face the dark, shadow side of the self. That confrontation unmasks the final unreality of one’s sinfulness and creates the possibility of resurrection through psychic integration. Through resurrection Christian sorrow acquires a transcendent, eschatological character. For Moore faith in the crucified Jesus demands that one die to all narcissistic self-preoccupation and self-idolatry. That death to one’s sinful and neurotic self allows one to rise to a discovery of one’s true self in the experience of loving self-transcendence. Jesus, therefore, begins a new phase of religious history which reveals Him as the God who lives within us. Given the individualistic, therapeutic caste of culture in the United States, it comes as no surprise that Moore’s therapeutic Christology emerged from theological reflection in this country. A therapeutic approach to Christology, however, runs certain risks. It tends to portray Christological faith as a facet of the therapeutic process. Somewhat like Schillebeeckx, for example, Moore seems to ground faith in the risen Christ in the subjective experience of psychic healing in faith. Schillebeeckx, as we have seen, grounds it the subjective experience of salvation. A foundational Christology demonstrates its adequacy by its ability to deal with the issues raised by more partial approaches to Christological faith. The foundational Christology developed in this study roots Christological faith as such in the person and ministry of Jesus when understood in the light of the paschal mystery. The apostles’ encounter with the risen Christ motivated the Christological faith which they proclaimed, the 16. Cf. Sebastian Moore, The Crucified Jesus Is No Stranger (New York, NY: Cossroad, 1977); The Fire and the Rose Are One (New York, NY: Seabury, 1980).
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personal conversion to Christ which they experienced, and the summons to a similar conversion to which they invited others. With Moore, however, a foundational Christology acknowledges a therapeutic dimension to Christological knowing. Repentant self-confrontation in response to God’s historical self-revelation in Jesus and in His Breath does demand confrontation with one’s dark and sinful shadow self. It does open the human heart to the Breath’s healing touch. A foundational Christology would, however, also insist that conversion to Christ requires more than therapeutic healing. It engages the entire self: not just feeling and imagination, but also inferential reasoning and the deliberations of the human conscience. Conversion transforms a self environmentally rooted and socially engaged. The practical Christology developed in the present chapter also makes it clearer than Moore does that the healing of disordered passions engages not just the unconscious psyche but also the moral rectification of conscious attitudes. Disordered passions wound the psyche; but they also set the conscience at odds with itself. As a consequence, putting on the mind of Christ involves simultaneous growth in hope, faith, and love. It also demands growth in the passionate Christian search for a just social order. To this last question I turn in the final chapter of this volume. Relevance to the RCIA In the present chapter I have sketched the ways in which commitment in practical faith in Jesus Christ transforms personal moral conversion. I have argued that personal morality deals with human interpersonal relationships. Since passion raises those relationships to consciousness, the gracing of natural moral conversion requires the healing of disordered human passions. In a theological treatise like this, one must perforce consider passion abstractly. The experience of initial and ongoing conversion, however, demands that one face the concrete disorders in one’s personal relationships, the neglect or violation of the rights of others of which one stands convicted. Natural moral conversion demands that one re-order one’s concrete passionate human relationships in the light of justice and prudence. Christian charity demands that one reorder those same concrete passionate relationships in the light of the kingdom and of the paschal mystery. Disordered passions like pride, vanity, greed, lust, hatred, gluttony, envy, and sloth become sin through concrete embodiment in acts which wound, violate, neglect, or manipulate living persons. Initial and ongoing conversion together demand that one repent of all such evil actions and of the habits which motivate them.
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Re-evaluating one’s concrete personal relationships through prayer and counseling poses a fundamental moral challenge to all converting Christians. It includes those experiencing the RCIA. It also includes initiated Christians who ought to be responding to the demands of ongoing conversion to Christ. Re-evaluating one’s concrete social responsibilities constitutes the second challenge which confronts all converting Christians. As I have just indicated, I shall address this second challenge in the chapter which follows.
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Chapter 16 To Serve As Jesus Served In the last chapter I reflected on the ways in which commitment to Jesus Christ in faith transforms personal moral conversion. I pondered the difference and relationship between personal moral conversion and socio-political conversion. I argued that, since personal moral conversion deals with interpersonal relationships, it demands the healing of disordered passions. With Roberto Unger, I defined passion as the affective perception of human interpersonal relationships. I then examined how the theological passions of hope, faith, and love have the capacity to heal those disordered passions which motivate the seven deadly sins. The present chapter deals with the second form of moral conversion: socio-political conversion. Those converted socio-politically commit themselves to collaborating with others in order to bring about a just social order. Socio-political converts invoke prudential reasoning in order to devise collaborative strategies for securing the common good. The common good requires that all persons have reasonable access to benefiting from the goods available in human society. The common good also secures for all a reasonable ability to contribute to shared social benefits. As we saw in the preceding section, confession of Jesus’ priestly, messianic, and judicial authority necessarily pits one in prophetic, non-violent opposition to institutional violence and injustice. Commitment to Jesus Christ transforms socio-political conversion into the Christian search for a just social order. Socio-political conversion uses natural, deliberative reason in its prudential search for the common good. The Christian search for a just social order, however, advances in faith. It therefore measures the justice or injustice of human institutions by the extent to which they embody or contradict the mind of Christ. As a consequence, the Christian conscience can call no society just until it embodies the vision of the kingdom. As we have already seen, the kingdom has a utopian character. It calls for the creation of a radically egalitarian society in which the rich and powerful serve others in the image of Jesus, the servant messiah. It demands the free sharing of the physical supports of life as an expression of mutual forgiveness and reconciliation in God. It founds society, not on power politics, but on the authentic worship of the God whom Jesus reveals by his ministry, death, resurrection, and mission of the Breath. Authentic Christian worship roots itself in love of enemies and in non-violent, prophetic resistance to all forms of sinful oppression.
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When the vision of the kingdom measures human interpersonal relationships, it infuses the theological passion of charity into the human heart. When the vision of the kingdom measures the morality of social institutions, it gives theological meaning to a shared Christian passion for social justice. No society counts as just unless its institutions embody the order which God wills it to have. As we saw in pondering Jesus’ prophetic ministry, His sinless religious vision confronts sinful humanity as a perfect created icon of the divine mind. In matters of public morality, then, Jesus’ religious vision reveals to us the kind of order God wills human institutions, both ecclesiastical and secular, to instill and incorporate. The vision of the kingdom thus coincides with the Christian ideal of justice. It passes judgment on all human institutions, both secular and ecclesiastical. No human society, including the Christian Church, has ever perfectly embodied the vision of the kingdom. Cynicism tempts one, then to mount an initially plausible argument that the utopian character of the kingdom makes it unrealistic and unrealizable. If no human society has ever succeeded in realizing the ideal of the kingdom perfectly, then why even try? How might one respond to such an argument? First of all, while sin mars the human attempt to bring the vision of the kingdom to concrete embodiment, some Christian communities do successfully embody it, albeit imperfectly. Many Christian families, religious communities, and churches strive successfully to incarnate the mind of Christ. Moreover, they succeed so well in incarnating the ideals of the kingdom that they do reveal it practically and sacramentally to others. That revelation attracts converts to the Church through the divine excellence which it incarnates; and, by motivating initial and ongoing conversion, that revelation transforms those whom it attracts into active, new members who benefit from and contribute to the shared life of the Christian community. Jesus Himself believed that the kingdom had arrived in His person and ministry. At the same time, He looked to its ultimate and final eschatological fulfillment in the future. The eschatological character of the kingdom means that, though already incipiently here , it has yet to arrive finally and fully and will not do so until the second coming. Second, a utopian ethics of ideals fits a world of developing experiences. Without ideals to live for, the human heart succumbs to cynicism, selfishness, and despair. Without vision the people perish. The beautiful ideals which lure moral conduct give meaning and direction to human living at the same time that they stand in judgment over its vice and sinfulness. Without religious and moral ideals the conscience flounders in crudely pragmatic disorientation and lacks any ultimate direction or norms for choosing. United States politics in the nineties exemplifies well
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the disorienting consequences of the moral cynicism systematically inculcated by our national leaders during the Reagan era. Third, the ideal of the kingdom calls the conscience beyond crudely pragmatic considerations and norms. The vision of the kingdom claims the conscience absolutely and ultimately. Jesus regarded the reign of God important enough not only to live for but even to die for; and He required His disciples to sacrifice anything for the sake of the kingdom. Because He discovered in the kingdom God’s saving will for humanity, He also recognized its moral absoluteness. Jesus did not seem to believe that the Father required Him to succeed in converting His contemporaries to the obedience of faith; but He did believe that the Father required Him to die, if necessary, for the truth which He proclaimed and incarnated. Jesus’ disciples can live consistently only if they relate to the kingdom as He did. Jesus both lived and died for it. The kingdom therefore claims Jesus’ disciples as ultimately and absolutely as it claimed Him. One proclaims and seeks to embody the kingdom, not because that prophetic witness guarantees worldly success, but because God wills it. The kingdom therefore challenges the conscience to lived fidelity to its demands in all the circumstances of life. Moreover, like Jesus, His Breath-filled disciples stand corporately committed to proclaiming and embodying Jesus’ religious vision, even though that apostolic endeavor sets their very lives in jeopardy. Fourth, in the preceding chapter I argued with William Spohn that the habitual attitudes which Jesus incarnated teach the Christian’s heart how to respond morally to the world’s sinfulness even though they leave one free to decide concretely what to do in any given circumstance. Jesus’ refusal to water down His prophetic message even in the face of a cruel death by torture defines paradigmatically the way in which His disciples must also relate to the kingdom. Like Jesus they too may face defeat and death for bearing witness to the kind of justice which God desires human institutions to embody. Like Oscar Romero and the martyrs of the UCA, like the martyrs of Rwanda, Jesus’ disciples know that they will be judged by their unswerving fidelity to God’s will for this world. As a consequence, a melioristic Christian ethics of ideals requires that the disciples of Jesus never tire of doing good. Despite reversals, failure, and setbacks, they must persist in supporting the principles, policies, and strategies which advance an unjust world the next possible step toward the ideal of divine justice to which the kingdom summons it. This chapter examines the socio-political dimensions of commitment to Jesus Christ. It divides into three parts. The first part reflects on the challenge posed to the Christian conscience by liberation Christology. The second part reflects on the sinful obstacles to Christian socio-political
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conversion which infect culture in the United States. The third part of this chapter examines some of the major institutional injustices on which Christians in the United States who are converting socio-politically need to reflect. It also suggests a practical, pastoral strategy for challenging converts to life-long commitment to the Christian search for a just social order. (I) Liberation theology attempts to respond to two major challenges issued by the second Vatican council. Vatican II called for inculturated evangelization. The council also called for a renewal of the apostolate of the laity. In what follows, I shall reflect on the relationship of each of these challenges to the emergence of liberation theology. The Challenge of Liberation Christology Vatican Council II called for inculturated evangelization. Inculturated evangelization, as we have seen, wrestles with three interrelated issues: 1) How does one incarnate the gospel in the symbols of a particular culture? 2) How does the gospel challenge the sinfulness of that culture? 3) What gift does such a particular inculturated living of the gospel have to give to the world Church, and what has it to learn from the world Church? Inculturated evangelization presupposes an inculturated theology. In calling for the former, the second Vatican council implicitly called for the latter as well. Catholic liberation theology began as the attempt of Latin American theologians to develop a inculturated theology which speaks to the religious needs of the masses of the suffering and oppressed people in the Third Word. That same theology challenges the Church and secular society to undo the injustices which cause that suffering. Inculturated evangelization and the Christian search for a just social order have, then, an intimate and necessary relationship to one another. One cannot inculturate the gospel successfully unless one’s embodiment of Christian faith challenges and transforms the sinful social structures which corrupt human society. The church in the United States has produced two theologies of liberation: black liberation theology and feminism. More recently both the Hispanic and the native American communities have begun to find their distinctive theological voice. Martin Luther King laid the remote foundations for black liberation theology,1 although the movement postdates King’s martyrdom. Simultaneously and independently of theological developments in Latin America, 1. For a representative sample of King’s writings, see: James M. Washington, ed., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, 1986).
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Protestant black liberation theology arose in the United States as a strategy by African-American ministers to assert their theological leadership of the Black Power movement. The Vatican has only discovered feminism in the latter part of the twentieth century; but American feminism spreads its roots back into the nineteenth century. It began among women abolitionists who realized that they were fighting for rights for slaves which they themselves did not enjoy. The first phase of feminist political activity culminated in securing the vote for women. Contemporary feminism and womanism raise a broader set of justice issues. When feminist and womanist thinkers critique the sexism of the churches, their thought inevitably takes on a theological caste. With time liberation theologians in Latin America and in the United States have entered into a fruitful dialogue with one another. Latin liberationists have added racism and sexism to their list of indigenous injustices. Black and feminist liberationists have learned to examine more closely the economic and political roots of racial and sexual oppression in the United States. Vatican council II issued another challenge which helped motivate the rise of liberation theology. It entrusted to Christian laity the chief responsibility for Christianizing secular social structures. In Gaudium et spes, moreover, the council placed the search for social justice at the heart of the lay apostolate. Gaudium et spes stands within a long tradition of official Catholic social teaching, which in modern times began with Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum novarum, issued in 1891. (DS 3265- 3271) Forty years later, Pius XI updated the teachings of Rerum novarum with another major social encyclical: Quadragesimo anno. (DS 3725-3743) Prior to Vatican II, Pope John XXIII further developed Catholic social teaching with his two masterful encyclicals: Mater et magistra and Pacem in terris. John XXIII applied Catholic teaching on the common good to international politics and economics. He argued that one should employ a sliding scale in order to measure the rights of people to contribute to and share in the benefits of society. The more goods society produces, the greater the share to which each of its members has a right.2 2. Cf. Andrew Christiansen, S.J., “The Common Good and the Politics of Self-Interest: A Catholic Contribution to the Practice of Citizenship” in Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Discourse in America, edited by Donald L. Gelpi, S.J. with an afterword by Robert N. Bellah (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 54-86. See also: Joseph Gremillion, ed., The Gospel of Peace and Justice: Catholic Social Teaching Since Pope John (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1976); David J. O’Brien and Thomas A. Shannon, eds., Catholic Documents on Peace, Justice, and Liberation (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1977).
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Gaudium et spes summarized and developed Catholic social teaching and applied it to specific realms of society: culture, economics, politics, and the fostering of world peace. In issuing this document Vatican II clarified what it meant by the Christianization of secular society. The document also committed the Catholic community as a whole to the struggle for international peace and justice. Among Catholics liberation theology emerged in response to that challenge. It only took time, of course, before liberation theologians expanded the concern with justice to include injustice in Church institutions.3 Vatican II’s vindication of responsible freedom of conscience in Dignitatis humanae also fueled to responsible criticisms of ecclesiastical injustice. Among Latin American liberation theologians, Leonardo Boff, Jon Sobrino, and Juan Luis Segundo have all constructed liberation Christologies. Of the three, Sobrino has succeeded the best, in my judgment. A common theme runs through all three of these liberation Christologies: they all give a political reading to Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom. By underscoring both the prophetic character of Jesus’ message and by insisting on its economic and political consequences, Latin liberation Christology has summoned the Church and the world to confront the stark fact that we live in a world in which eight hundred million people are starving to death.4 In my judgment Latin American liberation theology poses its most radical challenge to Christology when it claims that one can understand the person of Jesus only through the eyes of the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed. The idea of Christological knowing developed in these vol3. Cf. Leonardo Boff, Church, Charism, and Power: Liberation Theology and the Institutional Church, translated by John W. Dreckmeier (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1985). 4. Cf. Leonardo Boff, Jesus Christ Liberator: A Critical Theology for Our Time, translated by Patrick Hughes (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979); Passion of Christ, Passion of the World: The Facts, Their Interpretation, and Their Meaning Yesterday and Today, translated by Robert R. Barr (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1987); Jon Sobrino, Christology at the Crossroads: A Latin American Approach, translated by John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1978); Jesus in Latin America (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982; Jesus the Liberator: A Historical-Theological View, translated by Paul Burns and Francis McDonaugh (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1994); Juan Luis Segundo, Faith and Ideologies, translated by John Drury (New York, NY: Orbis, 1982; The Historical Jesus of the Synoptics, translated by John Drury (New York, NY: Orbis, 1985); The Humanistic Christology of Saint Paul, translated by John Drury (New York, NY: Orbis, 1986); The Christ of the Ignatian Exercises, edited and translated by John Drury (New York, NY: Orbis, 1987); An Evolutionary Approach to Jesus of Nazareth edited and translated by John Drury (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1988). Black liberation theology has produced: Albert Cleage, Jr., The Black Messiah (New York, NY: Sheed and Ward, 1968). For a survey of feminist Christology, see: Jaquelyn Grant, White Woman’s Christ and Black Woman’s Jesus: Feminist Christology and a Womanist Response (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1989); Thomas L. Schubeck, S.J., “Ethics and Liberation Theology,” Theological Studies, 56(1995), pp. 107- 121.
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umes lends foundational sanction to such a suggestion. Jesus Himself came from the ranks of the poor. He stood socially just above the degraded class. He not only sided with the poor, the marginal, and the oppressed; but He also promoted them to a privileged status in the kingdom of God. Since Jesus saw reality through the eyes of the poor, so must any disciple who aspires to living in His image. If liberation Christology poses the moral challenge of opting preferentially for the poor and of viewing the world through the eyes of oppressed and marginal people of this world, it poses a theological challenge as well. Latin American liberation Christology responds theologically to that challenge by underscoring the prophetic dimension of Jesus’ ministry as well as its implications for contemporary institutional reform. A foundational Christology endorses this strategy but attempts to move beyond it by using pragmatic logic in order to spell out the practical moral consequences of Christological doctrine. Latin liberation theology’s failure to date to transcend the Kantian dichotomy between thought and action has left it vague concerning the relationship between orthodoxy and orthopraxis. As a consequence, liberation Christologies emanating from Latin America have tended to date to give only short shrift to doctrinal Christology and to overlook its practical, moral implications.5 In attempting to articulate a Christology which spells out the economically, politically, and socially revolutionary aspects of Jesus’ person and teaching, theologians in the Third World and in the United States find themselves facing very different situations. That difference requires corresponding inculturated shifts in theological focus and emphasis. In the Third World the majority of the population languishes in poverty and marginality. In the more socially mobile United States, minority groups live in poverty, although racism and Reaganomics may have succeeded, temporarily at least, in creating a permanent underclass. Latin liberation theology attempts quite rightly to voice the prophetic cry of the starving and the illiterate. Unless members of the middle and upper classes espouse the cause of the illiterate poor, they perish in silent anonymity. The situation stands somewhat differently in the United States. The number of illiterates in this country is in fact increasing.6 Nevertheless, in the United States, oppressed minorities—African Americans, women, Hispanics, and native Americans—retain the capacity to speak publicly for themselves. As a product of middle class America, I would regard it as presumptuous even to attempt to speak for any oppressed minority in this country; and, I suspect, those same minorities would view me with 5. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see: Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., The Turn To Experience in Contemporary Theology (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist, 1994), pp. 24-51. 6. Cf. Jonathan Kozol, Illiterate America (New York, NY: Penguin, 1985).
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similar eyes. When the oppressed have the capacity to speak for themselves, sympathetic outsiders can only second what they have to say on their own behalf. It makes sense in a Third World context to portray Jesus primarily as a liberator. When the majority of the population languish in economic and political bondage, the freedom which the gospel of Jesus promises speaks directly and eloquently to the legitimate human and religious longings of most people. In my judgment, however, the Church in the First World needs to hear a different kind of Christological message. Those who benefit from an affluence which breeds hunger and poverty in the Third World need to hear not so much a message of liberation as one of conversion. It does not take a great deal of insight to understand why: until First-World Christians repent of the corrupting influences of a predatory, capitalistic materialism and commit themselves instead to gospel living, until they transcend self-serving classist prejudices, until they face the lethal consequences of institutional policies with which they more or less consciously connive, they will never acquire the ability to see reality through the eyes of the poor. Until they see with the eyes of the poor, however, they will never see reality with the eyes of Jesus Christ. Nor, therefore, will they understand the person of Jesus and His message. Those who do not understand Jesus cannot consciously imitate Him. Those who fail to imitate Him cannot advance in Christological knowing. Conversion, then, rather than liberation provides the leitmotif of the following reflections on the Christian search for justice. (II) People in the United States find it hard to convert politically. About half the population never even bothers to vote. Two obvious factors militate against socio-political conversion in the contemporary United States: the erosion of democratic government during the Cold War and the individualism which infects popular moral perceptions. Original Sin American Style No one ever wins a war, not even a Cold War. One might vanquish another nation militarily; but one achieves victory at the high price of corporate ethical compromise and corruption. By the norms of just war theory, no nation has ever fought a just war. Even if the nation in question had a right to go to war, the insane violence of warfare with moral inevitability betrays warring nations into serious violations of human rights in the course of waging the war. This has in fact happened in every war; and it happened to the United States during World War II. After Pearl Harbor, the United States declared war in order to defend itself against Japanese aggression. It declared war on the Axis powers in
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Europe in order to defend democracy against totalitarianism. The people of this country correctly deplore the Nazi holocaust. We tried our vanquished German enemies for their war crimes; but after the war we conveniently closed our eyes to the war crimes which we ourselves had perpetrated. The fire bombings of Dresden and of Tokyo and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki all qualify as crimes against humanity. The Nazis first gassed innocent civilians and then burned their dead bodies. The United States incinerated thousands of innocent civilians alive. When the United States entered the second World War, its government recognized the grievous immorality of carpet bombing. Both the national government and the air force therefore adopted what under the circumstances of war qualifies as a fairly responsible military policy, when judged by the standards of just war theory. They restricted air raids to the precision bombing of military targets. War, however, corrupted our national conscience with a desire for pitiless vengeance. By the end of the war, the United States government had replaced its policy of precision bombing with indiscriminate carpet bombing. The fire-bombings of Dresden and of Tokyo prepared the way for two other American-sponsored holocausts: Hiroshima and Nagasaki.7 As we view the world from the devastation left at the end of the Cold War, we can perhaps begin as a nation to view the creation and use of the atomic bomb by the United States government as one of the hideous war crimes of the twentieth century. The atomic bomb incinerated 400,000 civilians and very probably prolonged World War II by blinding our leaders to Japan’s readiness for a negotiated peace. Once we had developed the bomb, we could have tried first to persuade the Japanese to surrender without actually dropping the bomb on inhabited cities. We could, for example, have exploded the bomb publicly on an unpopulated target. We chose not to. Racism and the desire for revenge against the Japanese seem to have motivated in part the United States government to commit two needless acts of mass murder.8 At the time, only the papacy courageously denounced the immorality of what the United States had done. Morally corrupted by the violence of war, the vengeful people of this nation only applauded and, unrepentant, on the whole continue to do so. The development and use of atomic weapons by this country set the stage for the Cold War. Our experts erred in their judgment of the amount of time it would take for the Russians to develop their own atomic bomb. The first Russian atomic test in August, 1949 began the arms race. 7. Cf. Stewart L. Udall, The Myths of August: A Personal Exploration of Our Tragic Cold War Affair with the Atom (New York, NY: Pantheon Books, 1994), pp. 49-82. 8. Ibid., pp. 58-125.
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As the Cold War intensified, the United States became obsessed with a policy of national security. A policy of national security empowered the United States government to do anything it needed to do in order to survive the Cold War and to secure “the national interest.” From a moral standpoint “defending the national interest” bore a striking resemblance to the doctrine of Lebensraum which justified Nazi aggression in Europe.9 Having declared war in order to keep the world safe for democracy, the United States very soon thereafter found itself following policies not that ethically far removed from Hitler’s. We canonized as justified any action which would secure an advantage for us in the struggle for world power: the support of oppressive military and totalitarian governments who paid lip service to anti-communism, the internal subversion of legitimate, democratically elected governments, the training of terrorist death squads. The Cold War killed Americans. After Japan, more citizens died of the atomic bomb in the United States than in any other nation. The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), which played a key role in directing the Cold War, invoked “national security” in order to classify and therefore to keep from public disclosure the policies which claimed these American lives as well as the legal evidence which would have convicted the AEC in court of supporting criminal policies. The AEC did nothing to protect the lives of hundreds of Navajo uranium miners daily exposed to lethal toxic doses of radiation, even though the AEC knew well the fatal consequences of its inaction. The AEC also successfully manipulated the courts in order to insure that the families of the miners whom their policies had equivalently murdered never received any just compensation for the tragic and needless deaths of their loved ones. The AEC used similar criminal tactics to conceal from those living downwind from atmospheric atomic testing the fatal consequences of dwelling in lethally toxic environments.10 At the beginning of the Cold War, John Foster Dulles, then Secretary of State, and Alan Dulles, Director of the CIA, decided that in order to save democracy they had to subvert it.11 By that they meant that the governmental institutions which directed the Cold War had to place themselves beyond the normal checks and balances of the American democratic system. The Dulles brothers gave decisive shape to the policies and institutions which waged the Cold War. Like the AEC, both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC) classified the damning evidence of the numerous crimes they committed, all in the name of “national security.” 9. Cf. José Comblin, The Church and the National Security State (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1979). 10. Ibid., pp. 217-249. 11. Cf. David Halberstam, The Fifties (New York, NY: Fawcett-Columbine, 1993).
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They thus transformed themselves into a government within a government, a free standing and powerful bureaucracy accountable to no one. During the Iran-Contra affair, the tip of this iceberg floated briefly into view. Democracy can survive only when elected leaders know the truth about government policies. Those same leaders also need access to factual information about the implementation of those policies. The classification of information by the AEC, CIA, and NSC denied the members of Congress that knowledge. In this way, the Cold War created a government within our national government whose immoral polices and actions successfully defied congressional review and legal prosecution because the very perpetrators of the crimes in question saw to it that all incriminating evidence remained classified and therefore inaccessible to other branches of government. Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Inevitably, the lies and deceptions which such government agencies systematically pursued eroded the credibility of the democratic process in this country. The official lies simultaneously motivated the mounting political apathy in which the majority of Americans now seem to languish.12 The Cold War corrupted more than one government agency. It also corrupted the presidency. The Cold War saw the rise of “the imperial presidency” which arrogated to itself, again in the name of “national security,” the right to declare war for all practical purposes without the advice and consent of Congress. During the Cold War one American president after another spent billions of tax dollars fighting secret “paramilitary” operations which amounted to undeclared wars. After 1947, the United States waged fairly continuous secret and undeclared wars on virtually every continent on the planet.13 The war protests of the sixties expressed the widespread public perception that the carnage in Vietnam was not in fact securing the “national interest.” The double talk which this nation’s military and political leaders used in order to prolong that carnage further eroded governmental credibility in the eyes of most American voters.14 12. Cf. Daniel K. Inouye and Lee H. Hamilton, Report of the Congressional Committees Investigating the Iran-Contra Affair, With the Minority View (New York, NY: Random House. 1988); Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989); Steward L. Udall, op.cit.; Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York, NY: Ballentine Books, 1989); William Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy: New Edition (New York, NY: Norton, 1984). 13. Cf. John Prados, Presidents’ Secret Wars: CIA and Pentagon Covert Operations from World War II through Iranscam (New York, NY: Quill, 1986); Halberstam, op. cit. 14. Cf. Stanley Karnow, Vietnam: A History (Harrisberg, VA: R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company, 1984).
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The Cold War also created the military-industrial complex which continues to undermine the economy of the country. An entrenched military-industrial complex also helped transform our foreign policy. Americans like to think of our nation as generous toward others. After World War II, the Marshall plan created a popular perception of the United States as a philanthropic nation which extends a helping hand of friendship even to its enemies. The movie The Mouse That Roared parodied this perception. In it a miniature and backward kingdom declared war on the United States with medieval weapons so that after surrendering it could receive unlimited financial aid. The economic reconstruction of Europe and of Japan which the Marshall plan helped accomplish did not, however, express pure altruism. Our nation gave massive foreign aid to many countries devastated by World War II because American business demanded foreign markets. We gave aid selectively. We chose not to aid Russia. Whatever the humanitarian motives of the Marshall Plan, the arms race which the Cold War fueled transformed the United States into one of the major arms merchants of the world. No matter how oppressive a given government, during the Cold War, it benefitted from United States military aid as long as it officially opposed the USSR. The arms which this nation supplied gave oppressive, dictatorial regimes ample means to impose themselves on their victim populations and to prison, torture, and murder victims. Sometimes the United States trained the torturers and death squads.15 Under the Reagan administration, the acceleration of the arms race together with unrestrained military spending helped bring about the collapse of the Russian economy; but it came close to torpedoing our own economy as well. It saddled the American tax payer with a crushing national debt.In lavishing trillions of dollars on the development and testing of weapons which threatened and continue to threaten human survival on this plant, our national leaders ignored the warning of Dwight Eisenhower that, money pumped into the military-industrial complex, would not help make life more humane, especially not for the poor and oppressed. During the Clinton administration, a Republican Congress used the national debt which right-wing politics had created as a shallow excuse to declare war on all federal entitlement programs which benefit the poor. The hungry citizens of nations which benefitted from American arms shipments found all too tragically that they could not eat bombs. Neither 15. Cf. Frances Moore Lappé, Rachel Schurman, and Kevin Danaher, Betraying the National Interest: How U.S. Foreign Aid Threatens Global Security by Undermining the Political and Economic Stability of the Third World (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1987), pp. 27-55.
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could American citizens. One suspects that the tax revolt in this country has resulted in no small measure from the fact that Americans benefit so little from the tax dollars they spend. As a student of mine from Germany once put it: “At least in democratic socialist countries in Europe people get something for the taxes they pay. In capitalist America, they get practically nothing.” The Cold War seriously eroded democratic government in the United States by undermining both the national Constitution and the confidence which Americans place in their elected leaders. Moreover, the lies, the secrecy, the violence, and the cynicism reached a high water mark during the Reagan-Bush administration.16 The morally corrosive effect of both hot and cold wars upon the corporate conscience of this nation dramatizes all too well the ethical bankruptcy of one of our most cherished national myths: namely, the myth of redemptive violence. That myth teaches the people of the United States to believe that violent opposition to injustice can create a just social order. Virtually every Hollywood western inculcates the myth of redemptive violence. TV violence brings the myth right into peoples’ parlors. Presidents with sagging popularity polls invoke the myth to improve their ratings by declaring war on nations they can easily conquer.17 Jesus Christ, however, proclaimed and embodied redemptive suffering and in God’s name denounced the illusion of redemptive violence. Judged in the light of the gospel, therefore, the myth of redemptive violence counts as sinful, ideological double talk. History supports the judgment. Those who ascribe to the myth of redemptive violence embody in their aggressive and often murderous acts the very evil which they condemn. The divine judgment pronounced on Calvary unmasks the myth of redemptive violence as Anti-Christ. The Cold War has had a seriously corrosive effect on American political attitudes; but other factors in our recent national life have also undermined the credibility of government. The work of Political Action Committees (PACs) and of powerful partisan lobbies against the common good, lobbies like the National Rifle Association, have re-enforced the popular impression that in the United States we have indeed the best politicians which money can buy. The reluctance of the congress to pass significant election reforms by curbing the power of PACs and of other monied lobbies leaves the electorate with the unavoidable sense that our elected officials care more about their own vested interests than about the genuine good of the American people. 16. Cf. Haynes Johnson, Sleepwalking Through History: American During the Reagan Years (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1992). 17. Cf. Walter Wink, Engaging the Powers: Discernment in a World of Domination (Minneapolis, MI: Fortress, 1984), pp. 13-32.
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Another force within contemporary American society contributes to political apathy and to the lack of socio-political conversion among the citizens of this nation. I refer, of course, to the morally corrosive consequences of the ideology of individualism. By an ideology I mean a pseudorationalization of institutional injustice which parades as self-evident truth. Individualism functions as an ideology of isolation. It systematically discourages people from taking morally responsible, corporate action to rectify institutional injustice. It does so by teaching them to think of themselves as isolated, unrelated individuals incapable of collaborating with others in order to effect institutional reform. As an ideology of isolation individualism lends massive re-enforcement to the injustices of the status quo. It also provides a fatalistic pseudo- rationalization for political apathy in the United States. Besides encouraging the injustices of the status quo, individualism also systematically corrupts the consciences of those who espouse it. In the United States, utilitarian individualism flourishes in the business and political communities.18 Expressive individualism thrives in the academy and in private life.19 Utilitarian individualism propounds the doctrine that one can justify anything one needs to do in order to “get ahead.” Getting ahead means getting richer and corralling more personal and economic power. Expressive individualism teaches people to believe that they possess an inner core within themselves which they must never sacrifice to others. When therefore others encroach on this “core self,” one must sever all connection to them.20 The new left of the sixties popularized an ethos of expressive individualism by encouraging people to “do their own thing.” Individualism teaches people in this country to come of age by severing connections with the communities of faith and of value which have nurtured them. Healthy coming of age actually happens in community and commits one to taking adult responsibility for the communities to which one belongs. Individualistic self-isolation feeds Americans’ neurotic “nervousness” and obsession with their own psyches. The search for deliverance from emotional conflicts through therapy only compounds the problem, however, because therapy in this country tends to presuppose and therefore to re-enforce an individualistic ethos. 18. Cf. Hedrick Smith, The Power Game: How Washington Works (New York, NY: Ballentine, 1987); Robert Lekachman, Visions and Nightmares: America After Reagan (New York, NY: Collier, 1987). 19. Cf. Robert N. Bellah, et al., Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life (Berkeley, CA: University of Californian Press, 1985). 20. In Endless Seeker: The Religious Quest of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991), I studied the creation of an American ethic of expressive individualism and its capacity to isolate one in sad and destructive ways.
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Individualism fuels the divorce rate in the United States by betraying young people into the moral impasse of seeking total intimacy in marriage while at the same time withholding from their spouses access to the “core self ” which they jealously protect from commitment to others. Too often the serious erosion of family life encourages further loosening of moral commitment among the worst victims of divorce: namely, the children of divorced parents. Individualism privatizes religion. In the United States, the legal separation of Church and state frequently degenerates into a moral segregation between religion and morality, on the one hand, and public policy, on the other. When religion and conscience abdicate their responsibilities for shaping public policy, the ruthless immorality of utilitarian individualism then replaces them. In its most ego-centric expression American religion expresses crude self-idolatry and narcissism. Much New Age religion exemplifies this aberration. Moreover, as the culture unravels, the main line Churches can all too often proclaim a privatized pietistic fundamentalism. Consumerism, capitalism, and individualism make willing bedfellows. The combination strikes at the heart of the moral demands of gospel living.21 Utilitarian individualism makes the American practice of capitalism cutthroat and ruthless. In the United States, the business community tends to give top priority to turning a profit, second priority to the quality of the product, and last priority to its employees. One finds exceptions to this pattern but not often enough. The American system not only sacrifices human lives to institutional greed but in the end makes for poor business practice. Capitalistic greed also corrupts and trivializes the media which seem to lapse occasionally into responsible journalism.22 Capitalistic greed motivated Reaganomics; and in 1995 the same morally disastrous economic policies took shape in the unilateral “Contract with America.” I call the contract unilateral because those who drew it up never consulted the American people. They got their ideas instead from right-wing “think tanks” established with the specific purpose of dismantling the Great Society and the New Deal. Ronald Reagan’s promise to “get government off the backs of Americans” pandered to the individualistic selfishness of the middle class and successfully persuaded them to align themselves with the rich against the poor. In practice, getting the government off people’s backs meant tax 21. Cf. John Francis Kavanaugh, Following Christ in a Consumer Society: The Spirituality of Cultural Resistance (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1981). 22. Cf. David Halberstam, The Powers That Be (New York, NY: Dell, 1979); Joseph E. Persico, Edward R. Murrow: An American Original (New York, NY: Dell, 1988).
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breaks for the wealthy and corporate welfare for big business; but it meant ruthless capitalism for everyone else. Reaganomics produced a shrinking middle class. A few members of the middle class got rich, but more quietly slipped into poverty. While piously and hypocritically mouthing cliches about “family values” the Reagan-Bush administrations systematically pursued economic policies which increased economic pressures on the American family and thus seriously eroded family life. The Contract with America sought to replace the federal safety net for the poor with block grants of federal funds to the states, who might or might not use the money to support the poor. It generated the welfare law which President Clinton signed and under which the poor have subsequently languished.23 To date the welfare bill has marked the most successful assault on federal entitlement programs launched by the Republican right wing after Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory over Barry Goldwater. According to the Congressional Budget Office, this so-called “reform” legislation fell $13 billion short in the funding needed to put welfare families to work and $1.4 billion short of sufficient funding for the child care needed by welfare families alone, not to mention those who work. The law eliminated aid to families with dependent children. It limited receipt of welfare to five years in a lifetime and allowed states to set even stricter limits. The law allowed states to deny benefits to children born to a party receiving welfare assistance at the time of birth. The law permitted states to deny welfare to unwed mothers under eighteen years of age. The law required states to reduce by 25% their welfare caseload within a year or forfeit its federal block grant. The law did not require states to provide child-care assistance. The law required states to maintain welfare funding at a minimum. States had to submit their plan for welfare reform by July 1, 1997 and every two years thereafter. Until repealed, this so-called welfare “reform” will certainly augment hunger in the United States. The bill called for across-the-board cuts in food stamp benefits. By 2002, the average food stamp benefit would shrink from 80 cents per person per meal to 66 cents. By 1998, very poor families with annual incomes below half the poverty line ($6,250 for a family of three) will probably lose an average of $656 per year in food stamp benefits. States can enforce a single set of eligibility and work requirements for the reception of food stamps, cash assistance, and other welfare programs. These requirements would affect 40% of the states’ food stamp caseload and would result in substantial variation in the conferring of food stamp benefits from state to state. The welfare law limited to three months the period in which childless, able-bodied people from eighteen 23. Cf. Robert Lekachman, Greed Is Not Enough: Reaganomics (New York, NY: Pantheon, 1982).
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to fifty years of age could qualify for food stamps during periods of unemployment. Beginning April 1, 1997, legal, non-citizen immigrants ceased to qualify for food stamp assistance. Finally in the case of undocumented immigrants and of certain legal immigrants, the welfare law allowed states to deny to pregnant and nursing mothers and to small infants the assistance available through the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC). In other words, by scapegoating welfare recipients, the legislation enacted policies calculated to increase poverty, hunger, infant mortality, and the number of small children brain damaged for lack of sufficient nourishment.24 Public debate over universal health care during the Clinton administration care dramatized the extent to which individualistic presuppositions corrupt the conscience of this nation. No one disputed that one of the most affluent nations in the world has failed to provide adequate health care for a significant number of its citizens. No one who studied the matter seriously questioned that the government of this nation has a serious responsibility to adjust the present system of health care. In public discussions of this issue, however, one never heard the media asking whether proposed adjustments would benefit the nation as a whole. Instead, the media focused narrowly on the sacrifices which the adjustments would demand of individuals or of vested interests. As a consequence, the discussion never got around to the key question: what kind of health care program would best serve all American citizens? American law and jurisprudence also rest on individualistic presuppositions. Our constitution rests on the social contract theory of the Enlightenment. As Roberto Unger and others have shown, the Enlightenment viewed society as a collection of atomic individuals much in the way in which it portrayed sensations nominalistically as the atomic building blocks of knowledge. The Enlightenment also portrayed morality as the satisfaction of individual desire. Since Enlightenment philosophy also tended to regard desire as purely subjective and irrational, it looked to universal rational principles to curb irrational, personal desires. In a liberal Enlightenment ethic, then, private, atomic individuals determine the ends of personal and corporate action. Since the sharing of ends, however, expresses the accidental convergence of capricious, wholly subjective, individual preferences, the common good ceases to make any moral claims; and legislation degenerates into a pragmatic compromise among individuals and vested interests.
24. See: Lynette Engelhardt, The 1996 Welfare Law (Silver Spring, MD: Bread for the World, 1996).
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In Enlightenment legal theory, the universal principles which seek to curb the selfishness of desire take institutional form in laws which supposedly apply uniformly and impersonally to all. Because, however, in such a philosophical system, laws and rules can only pose a threat to one’s individual desires, Enlightenment political theory propagated the idea that small government means good government. In social contract theory, a right almost always means freedom from interference, especially from interference by institutional authority. As a consequence, on the lips of people in the United States, the term “right” loses any connotation of responsibility for others or for the commonweal. Inevitably, then, the defence of individual rights degenerates into a pseudo-rationalization for the ruthless pursuit of unenlightened self-interest. Finally, in an Enlightenment political ethic, social institutions express accidental, freely constructed, and often fragile social relationships. Institutions created for no other purpose than to serve individual self-interest make no moral claims on the conscience. The individuals who created them dismantle them as soon as they become inconvenient or unprofitable. In such a moral and legal system, the transitory and artificial character of social relationship endows even basic institutions like the family with enormous fragility. Because it rests on the dualistic fallacies of Enlightenment rationalism, the legal system in the United States finds itself confronting a number of unresolvable antinomies. Instead of viewing laws as rules which seek to secure the common good of all, jurisprudence in the United States tends to struggle with the dilemma of reconciling the rule of law with the irresponsible and capricious freedom of atomic individuals. In the adjudication of conflicts, the courts seek to regulate human behavior according to universal rules; but in reality the resolution of conflicts too often degenerates into the somewhat arbitrary balancing of conflicting self-interests. The laws proclaim everyone equal; but the toleration of significant class differences too often means that the rich and powerful use their ample resources to circumvent the law, whose harshness then vents itself on the poor and on the underclass. The wealthy and the powerful use technology to manipulate social consciousness in order to accomplish crudely self-serving ends.25 I have been reflecting on some of forces which make it difficult for people in this culture to convert to responsible living at the level of public morality. I have named and examined two forces: 1) erosion of public confidence in the structures of government which resulted from the lies, cynicism, and violence of the Cold War and 2) the individualistic caste of popular mores, which makes it difficult for people in this country to 25. For a detailed discussion of these and other issues, see: Roberto Mangabeira Unger, Knowledge and Politics (New York, NY: Free Press, 1984).
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understand the meaning of the common good and even harder to commit themselves to it. Fortunately, however, our culture contains resources for countering both of these corrosive influences. Recently, Cornel West has argued, correctly in my judgment, that the pragmatic tradition of in the United States offers resources of mounting and sustaining ongoing public discourse concerning the commonweal and the fate of our republic.26 While one might choose to disagree with this or that aspect of West’s historical argument, he has put his finger on an important resource within the American tradition for revitalizing values discourse on public issues. In The Good Society, Robert N. Bellah and the Habits of the Heart team have advanced that discourse in significant ways. They have proposed concrete measures for reforming tottering American institutions.27 The John Courtney Murray Group has suggested other such resources. One can trace the development of a prophetic tradition within American philosophy and theology. That strain has consistently protested the corrosive influence of individualism on American mores. That same tradition summons this nation to communal loyalty and to mutual commitment in community. Jonathan Edwards, Orestes Brownson, Francis Ellingwood Abbot, Charles Sanders Peirce, Josiah Royce, William Ernest Hocking, John A. Ryan, John Courtney Murray, Walter Rauschenbusch, Martin Luther King, and H. Richard Niebuhr have all made significant contributions to the development of this tradition. One can extend the list even further.28 In every modern society, one of three institutions tends to dominate the culture: the political system, the economic system, or the Church. In contemporary Iran, the Church dominates. In mainland China, politics dominates. In the United States the economy dominates. It will take an influential institution to counteract the morally corrosive political and economic influences of individualism, capitalism, consumerism, and the Cold War. In the United States, the churches give most evidence of passionate commitment to concern for the common good. A recent study of contemporary religious lobbies in Washington has documented the fact that they make a significant contribution to the legislative process by voicing the legitimate concerns of large numbers of citizens which would otherwise go neglected by Congress. The more lib26. Cf. Cornel West, The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). 27. Cf. Robert N. Bellah, Richard Madsen, William M. Sullivan, Ann Swidler, and Stephen M. Tipton, The Good Society (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1991). 28. Cf. Donald L. Gelpi, ed., Beyond Individualism: Toward a Retrieval of Moral Discourse in America (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989).
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eral church-based lobbies, like Bread for the World, serve as an effective voice for the poor, the hungry, and the homeless in this country and abroad.29 Despite the unfortunate spread of single-issue politics among some members of the Catholic episcopacy, the National Conference of Catholic Bishops continues a successful advocacy in Washington for a variety of moral concerns affecting the common good. Their pastoral letters The Challenge of Peace and Economic Justice for All publicly criticized two of the morally corrupt policies propounded by the Reagan administration: the belief that one could win an atomic war and Reaganomics. In my limited judgment, if the political conversion of the American electorate is going to happen, that conversion must begin in the churches. We find ourselves in the infancy of the RCIA; but it has already proved its power to transform not just individuals but even parishes whose leaders take it seriously and whose baptized members show openness to involvement in the kind of corporate conversion which the RCIA seeks to inculcate. An RCIA program which would seriously challenge both converts and cradle Christians to political conversion could, over the long haul, make a significant contribution to conscientizing the people of this country by helping to shore up this nation’s faltering commitment to liberty and justice for all. So far in this chapter I have reflected on the challenge posed to the Church and to society by liberation Christology. I have also reflected on some of the major obstacles to conversion in United States culture. I have suggested that the Churches must take the lead in summoning the people of this nation to socio-political conversion; and I have suggested one possible way of institutionalizing that summons within the Church. In the section which follows, I shall attempt to present a realistic and practical pastoral strategy for conscientizing Americans to face some of the important national and international challenges to public morality which we as a nation face. (III) In this section I shall first reflect on the moral necessity of socio-political conversion from two interrelated theological standpoints. First, I shall argue from the moral exigencies of Christological knowing. Second, I shall argue from the forms and dynamics of the conversion process. Finally, I shall explore a concrete pastoral strategy for facilitating sociopolitical conversion.
29. Cf. Allen D. Hertzke, Representing God in Washington: The Role of Religious Lobbies in American Polity (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1988)
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The Necessity for Socio-Political Conversion Christologies which overemphasize the divinity of Jesus tend to obscure the fact that Christians worship as divine someone who was executed as a religious blasphemer and as political subversive. Jesus preached a prophetic, religious doctrine. He denounced institutional injustice and the hypocrisy of religious leaders who connived in that injustice; but He also repudiated armed insurrection as a viable solution to injustice. One should not, however, underestimate the subversive implications of the kingdom of God which He proclaimed. In proclaiming the kingdom, Jesus stood unequivocally with the poor, the marginal, the oppressed, and the expendable. In standing with them, He also stood unequivocally opposed to the persons and institutions which impoverish, marginalize, suppress, and banish God’s little ones: the Roman empire, the client Jewish aristocracy, and the client priesthood in Jerusalem. His ministry targeted Palestinian Jews. He seems to have dreamed of bringing Israel to a pitch of religious conversion and commitment which would transform it into God’s instrument for effecting a universal salvation. In the course of doing that, Jesus summoned the religious, political, economic, and social powers of Israel to both personal and corporate repentance. Jesus challenged the rich to renounce their wealth and take a stand with and for the poor. He challenged the powerful to renounce the use of coercive violence and to stand with and for the weak. He also encouraged the victims of institutional violence to oppose the violent with an imaginative, non-violent resistance which challenged their very oppressors to repent and believe the good news which Jesus proclaimed and incarnated. The chief priests and Herodians seem to have recognized all too well the revolutionary implications of Jesus’ religious doctrine. We find evidence in the gospels that Herod would have liked to arrest Jesus. In the end, the temple priesthood used legal assassination in an attempt to discredit and silence Him. By destroying Jesus they also, no doubt, hoped to destroy the movement which He headed. The Roman governor aided and abetted the priests in their murderous plot. The resurrection of Jesus reversed the decisions which sanctioned His execution. By revealing Jesus as the source of the divine Breath, the resurrection manifested His divinity. It also vindicated the fact that when He proclaimed the kingdom, Jesus spoke with divine authority. The resurrection reveals, therefore, that, in a world marred by religious hypocrisy and by institutional violence and oppression, the triune God stands with the poor, the marginal, the oppressed, and the expendable. God, therefore, stands just as intransigently opposed to the oppressive, exploitative principalities and powers of this world.
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The resurrection not only endows Jesus’ subversive religious vision with divine authority; but it also makes the willingness to take one’s stand publicly with Jesus the condition for sharing in His resurrection. Of all the evangelists, Luke, perhaps makes this point clearest of all. The parable about the rich man and Lazarus teaches that the rich and powerful who ignore the poor and the disenfranchised close their hearts to resurrection faith and court eternal damnation. Those, by contrast, who stand with Jesus commit themselves in solidarity with the poor, the suffering, the marginal, and the oppressed. (Lk 16(19-31) The risen Christ sends His divine Breath in order to inspire His disciples to prolong His mission. Anyone who claims to follow Jesus must, therefore, live in His image. The Church as a whole as well as the individuals who compose it have, therefore, the serious obligation before God to proclaim to the principalities and powers of this world the same radical gospel which Jesus proclaimed and for which He sacrificed His life. In other words, the practical exigencies of Christological knowing, of moral assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath, demands the graced transformation of the corporate human search for a just social order. Hence, Christological knowing also demands the gracing of socio-political conversion which authenticates that search. Jesus alone possessed the divine Breath in its plentitude. As Paul the apostle saw clearly, however, the divine Breath which dwelt personally in Jesus diffused Herself through the Christian community as a whole in order to transform it into the body of Christ: into His hands, His tongues, His human instruments for prolonging His own prophetic mission in human history. In the Acts of the Apostles Luke portrays the arrival of the charism-dispensing Breath as the creation of just such a prophetic community. The Breath’s charisms define the way in which different members of the Christian community contribute to the Church’s corporate prolongation of Jesus’ prophetic mission: through prayer, through discernment, through teaching, through prophetic witness, through healing the corporate hurts of the human family and of the body politic, through pastoral leadership, or through some combination of charisms. The gospel challenges not just individuals but the entire Christian community to stand corporately against all forms of institutional injustice and of institutionalized religious hypocrisy. As a consequence, the Church betrays the mission it receives from Jesus and suppresses His Breath every time it settles for privatized religious ministry and living; for privatized religion silences the gospel’s challenge to institutional sin and implicitly conspires with sinful oppression by refusing to challenge it. Besides the preceding argument for the necessity of socio-political conversion based on an insight into the practical exigencies of Christological
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knowing, one can also mount an argument based on an insight into the dynamics and counterdynamics of Christian conversion. As we have seen, the total process of conversion blends five forms of conversion: affective, intellectual, personal moral, socio-political, and Christian. In each realm of conversion one takes responsibility for one’s personal development in some identifiable realm of human experience. The affectively converted take responsibility for cultivating healthy emotional responses. The intellectually converted take responsibility for the truth or falsity of intuitive and inferential beliefs and for the adequacy or inadequacy of the frames of reference in which one reaches those beliefs. Those who convert at a personal moral level take responsibility for respecting interpersonal rights and duties. Those who convert socio-politically commit themselves to constructing a social order which insures the common good. Christian converts commit themselves to Christological knowing: viz. to life-long, practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. In addition to the five forms of conversion, one can identify seven dynamics within the total process of conversion. As we have seen, a dynamic of conversion describes the way in which one kind of conversion re-enforces other conversions. 1) Affective conversion, for example, animates the other conversions by suffusing them with enthusiasm, emotional health, affective flexibility, and imaginative creativity. 2) Intellectual conversion orders itself and the other forms of conversion by yielding a sound insight into their character and dynamics. 3) Both forms of moral conversion—personal and socio-political—help orient the other forms of conversion to values and realities which make absolute and ultimate claims. 4) The four forms of personal conversion—affective, intellectual, personal moral, and Christian—help authenticate socio-political conversion by supplying norms which unmask social injustice. 5) Socio-political conversion deprivatizes the other forms of conversion by demanding that one confront the victims and perpetrators of injustice and by committing one actively to some cause of universal human moral import. 6) Initial Christian conversion mediates between affective and moral conversion by demanding that the conscience acknowledge the moral claims of Christian revelation. 7) Ongoing Christian conversion transvalues the four forms of ongoing conversion by ensuring that they advance in justifying faith.30 The presence of seven dynamics within conversion implies seven inversely corresponding counterdynamics. A counterdynamic within conversion describes the way in which the absence of conversion tends to subvert other forms of conversion. The absence of conversion within some 30. For a more detailed discussion of the forms, dynamics, and counterdynamics of conversion, see: Donald L. Gelpi, S.J., Committed Worship, I, pp. 3-181.
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realm of experience subverts another kind of conversion when it causes one to act irresponsibly in some realm of experience in which one has previously decided to act responsibly. I shall not discuss here all the counterdynamics which can mar the integrity of conversion. Here I focus exclusively on the way in which the absence of socio-political conversion undermines affective, intellectual, personal moral, and Christian conversion. If the presence of socio-political conversion deprivatizes the other four forms of conversion, then its absence has the opposite effect. Its absence causes one to live a privatized affective, intellectual, personal moral, or Christian life. In the process, the lack of socio-political conversion betrays those personally converted into acting at cross-purposes with themselves. When human choices contradict the commitment one has made in converting at a personal level, they suffuse one’s life with inauthenticity and hypocrisy. Affective conversion demands that one face and deal with neuroses and psychoses which prevent healthy emotional development. In order to live a healthy affective life, however, one must deal with more than one’s own psyche. Different social systems institutionalize different kinds of neurosis. Some systems can even breed group psychosis. All forms of institutionalized social bigotry seem, for example, to have roots in emotional disorders of one form or another. Institutional bigotry not only expresses those disorders but also inculcates them. Those who try to cultivate emotional health while ignoring the ways in which their social environments instil and inculcate neurosis or even psychosis will with moral inevitability succumb to the emotionally unhealthy forces which shape human behavior, often unconsciously or with only a vague sense of the impact of institutionalized neuroses. Similarly, the intellectually converted who commit themselves to the search for truth without coming to terms with the obfuscating ideologies, prejudices, and erroneous beliefs which mar every human culture will soon find themselves lying to both themselves and others. Think of the lies spawned by transnational capitalism. Think of the distortions of the American conscience wrought by individualism and governmental concern for “preserving the national interest.” Given the widespread impact of modern communications media, error poses a less serious threat to someone committed to the truth than do the lies systematically popularized and enforced by powerful vested interests. Those who decide to respect the rights of others at an interpersonal level but refuse to commit themselves to the fight for social justice will soon find themselves pressured by the injustices embodied in the institutions in which they serve to violate the personal rights of others and to ignore their own personal duties toward other persons. Corrupt institu-
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tions do not lie outside of human subjective experience, as Enlightenment individualism would have one believe. They stand within the experience of persons and of groups and shape that experience decisively. Unjust institutions shape human social experience to immoral and sometimes criminal ends. Think of the Boesky and Milkin junk-bond scams.31 Finally, those who refuse to convert socio-politically will also systematically ignore fundamental moral demands of Christian conversion. By failing to identify with the poor, the marginal, the oppressed, and the expendable, they will inevitably misunderstand both the message and person of Jesus. In proclaiming Him they will replace both His person and message with something else. Their “gentle Jesus meek and mild” will bear little resemblance to the prophetic Jesus of the gospels. By refusing to see reality through the eyes of the poor, privatized Christians inevitably fail to see reality through Jesus’ own eyes; and just as inevitably their practice of religion will degenerate into the kind of hypocrisy which Jesus denounced with prophetic intransigence. No one escapes the corrosive influences of corrupt social institutions. The aberrations of expressive individualism, for example, thrive in the religious left; and that same individualistic ethos easily inclines people on the left to support abortion on demand. The left all to easily replaces genuine morality with a shallow concern for political correctness. Nevertheless, the so-called “Christian” religious right in the United States poses a special case in part because wealth gives it power. Right-wing “Christianity” dramatizes all too well how effectively popular ideologies like individualism, capitalism, and militarism betray the uncritical religious conscience into confusing genuine socio-political conversion with irresponsible political activism. The fundamentalism of the religious right leaves it particularly vulnerable to manipulation by self-serving political, economic, and social institutions. The fundamentalistic mind has yet to undergo intellectual conversion. It believes naively that it can have truth handed to it on a platter. Habituated to reading irrational prejudices into Biblical and other religious texts which in fact say something quite different, the religious fundamentalist finds it easy to invoke proof-texting in the pseudo-religious rationalization of institutionally inculcated sexism, racism, classism. As a result, the political causes which the “Christian” right often espouses have nothing to do with Christianity and in fact contradict the kingdom of God which Jesus proclaimed. Think of right-wing Christians who oppose federally funded school breakfasts and lunches in the name of “family values.” Economically ignorant and trapped in middleclass and upper-class assumptions, these self-styled Christians fail to recognize that one in five children in the United States lacks proper nourish31. Cf. James B. Stewart, Den of Thieves (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1991).
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ment. Those who insist that a child eat breakfast “in the family” when the family in question cannot put food on the table condemn the child in question to malnutrition. Worse still, they do so in the name of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The follies of the religious right do not stop with opposition to the federal funding of school nutrition programs. They include the pseudo-religious rationalization of militarism, racism, sexism, and other “isms” systematically inculcated by secular culture in the United States. As a result, the political religious right exemplifies perhaps more than any other religious group the kind of “pharisaical” hypocrisy which Jesus denounced in His own day. Political conversion demands more than active political involvement. It demands critical ethical commitment to the common good. A faith-inspired political conversion demands a political activism which advances the cause of the poor, the marginal, and the oppressed. In practice, the political activism of the fundamentalistic religious right too often replaces dedication to public morality and to gospel values with knee-jerk support for popular but oppressive ideologies. Facilitating Socio-Political Conversion One converts socio-politically as a Christian when one accepts Jesus’ vision of the kingdom as the Christian definition of the meaning of a just social order. That commitment distances one from the immorality of both the political left and the political right. When one dedicates oneself to the kingdom, one simultaneously commits oneself to collaborating with others in order to advance human institutions toward the realization of that vision. One therefore fosters socio-political conversion in the first instance by helping initial and ongoing converts to understand how the kingdom calls into question institutionalized human injustice. One fosters the same kind of conversion by challenging them to build God’s just reign on earth. In my judgment, in what concerns socio-political conversion, it does not matter which kind of injustice one focuses on initially, as long as it has universal human import. The scandal of world hunger offers a good example of what I mean. The gospel challenges Christians to create a community which shares in faith the physical supports of life and which reaches out actively to those in greatest physical need. When one casts the lens of the gospel upon the fact that we live in a world in which eight hundred million people go hungry, then one must recognize in the fact of world hunger a massive and Satanic institutionalization of injustice. Bread for the World, a church-based, bipartisan, ecumenical lobby in Washington seeks to move through Congress legislation which alleviates hunger in this country and abroad. It offers in my judgment a pastorally
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sound and effective strategy for involving people in the struggle against global injustice. The strategy has a triple thrust: prayer, practical commitment to a some measure of political activism, and self-education. Each aspect of this strategy re-enforces the others. 1) Prayer: One must commit oneself to praying regularly for a new economic and political world order in which all people will have enough to eat. One must pray also for the commitment and generosity to involve oneself in the fight against hunger. Prayer provides the context of faith for both political commitment and self-education. 2) Political Activism: Bread for the World correctly recognizes that socio-political conversion demands more than almsgiving, or personal charity.32 It requires one to acknowledge that injustices result from the morally flawed policies of morally flawed institutions. Bread for the World asks its members to commit themselves to do something on a monthly basis to transform those same morally flawed policies into morally sound ones. Concretely, Bread for the World asks its members to write their senators and representatives in Washington regularly in order to move effective anti-hunger legislation through Congress. Ordinarily, the letter writing takes less than an hour. Those who choose can, of course, devote more time to anti-hunger activism; but for minimal involvement about an hour a month suffices. I personally find it hard to believe that, however busy one’s schedule, one cannot find the time to give an hour a month to doing something about world hunger. It also helps to sustain regular commitment to the simple act of letter writing to know that every posted lobbying letter saves at least one human life. The letter writing also works. Virtually, every year Bread for the World scores some significant legislative victories. Helping produce those victories also helps restore confidence in the democratic process. 3) Self-education: If prayer provides the context of faith for political activism, active political commitment provides the realistic context for the third thrust of Bread for the World’s political war against hunger: namely, educating oneself and others to the causes of world hunger. Intelligent activism requires that one understand the structural injustices which cause eight hundred million people to go hungry; for until one understands the roots of institutional injustice one has no handle on rectifying the situation. In what follows, I shall first describe the emergence of world hunger as a global issue. Then I shall call attention to institutional structures which perpetuate it. 32. Cf. Arthur Simon, Christian Faith and Public Policy: No Grounds for Divorce (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).
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The world began to take note of the problem of world hunger during the food crisis which spanned the years 1972 to 1975. A number of factors conspired to produce the crisis. By 1970 the world’s grain stocks had peaked at over 191 million tons. Such surpluses drive grain prices down. Producers usually respond to this economic challenge by cutbacks in production which then drive prices back up. This the food and fertilizer industries did toward the end of the 1960’s. After 1970 grain production fell by an estimated twenty million tons. Major crop failures in the early 1970s made food supplies even scarcer. Bad weather played its part in the food crisis of the early seventies. A particularly harsh winter and dry summer devastated the Soviet Union’s wheat crop. Severe drought gripped Argentina and Australia. India’s monsoon failed to deliver enough moisture, while typhoons devastated the Philippines. At the same time, over-fishing in the Atlantic Ocean and off the coast of Peru caused a severe drop in available food fish like anchovy, herring, halibut, cod, and haddock. Fish supplies much of the protein for Japanese and Soviet tables. The increased demand for food to replace the evanescent fish put even greater strains on the world’s grain supply. Grain prices soared. The demand for fertilizer soon outran the available supplies. At the same time the OPEC nations decided to raise the price of oil by three dollars a barrel. Since the grain and fertilizer industries depend on fuel for production, higher fuel prices meant higher food prices. As a consequence, poorer nations could not compete in the world food market. Their inability to buy food brought hunger and starvation to their people.33 The food crisis of the early seventies made all the nations aware of the fact of world hunger. Subsequent analysis of this persistent, tragic problem reveals that it results from a variety of interwoven and complex causes. The poor throughout the world go hungry. They especially confront the prospect of death by starvation. Among the poor children suffer most. Infant mortality, therefore, provides a good index of the extent of hunger in any given region of the earth. We find the highest infant mortality in countries which exhibit low incomes, limited education, high birth rates, and lack of political and economic power. UNICEF estimates that a child dies of hunger or of hunger related causes about every two seconds. By the end of the Reagan-Bush years, thanks in no small part to Reaganomics, every fifth child in the United States went to bed hungry. Despite some success in 33. Cf. Suzanne C. Toton, World Hunger: The Responsibility of Christian Education (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1982), pp. 3-5.
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reducing infant mortality in the United States, an infant born in Hong Kong still has a better chance of surviving than one born in the States. The federal safety net offers the poor of this nation their principal institutional defense against degrading poverty. Its abolition would leave them for all practical purposes institutionally defenseless in a ruthlessly predatory capitalistic economy. Rapid growth in the world’s population has in recent history outstripped and canceled increases in food production. It took humanity more than a million years to reach a population of one billion. In only one hundred and twenty years, the total number of people reached two billion. In thirty-two years, three billion. In fifteen years, four billion. According to early estimates, by the year 2000 the world’s population should by present standards exceed six billion. More recent surveys indicate that world population is in fact stabilizing. Population increases can, however, contribute to the world food crisis; but they never tell the whole story. World hunger results from other factors as well.34 By the seventeenth century, Portugal, Spain, Holland, Britain, and France had all developed extensive colonial empires in the new world, in Asia, and in parts of Africa. At first, these empires sought to protect international trade routes, as colonizing Europeans lost no time in appropriating the land of indigenous peasants while enslaving them either really or virtually. The colonizers extracted and exported precious metals; and they exploited other natural resources of the lands they colonized in order to fill their own personal and national coffers. The first phase of colonial dependence lasted from 1500 a.d until about 1850 a.d. The industrial revolution inaugurated the second stage in colonial dependence. It lasted roughly from the middle of the nineteenth century until the end of World War II. While the economies of the major industrial nations grew, economic expansion in pre-capitalist countries manifested irregular and unsystematic development. Often the economic expansion which occurred represented only windfall gains. The colonizing countries continued to seize and consume a significant part of the economic resources of the lands they colonized. They created centralized economic bureaucracies. The European scramble for Africa occurred in the second phase of colonization.35 During this same period of time, the leaders of pre-capitalist countries manifested no sustained interest in fostering healthy, indigenous economies.
34. Cf. J. Bryan Hehir, “Population and Poverty: Exploring the Relationship,” in The Causes of World Hunger, edited by William Byron (New York, NY: Paulist, 1982), pp. 207-219. 35. Cf. Thomas Packenham, The Scramble for Africa: White Man’s Conquest of the Dark Continent from 1876 to 1912 (New York, NY: Avon Books, 1991).
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The third phase of colonization, called neo-colonialism, has occurred since 1945 a.d. It has resulted from the internationalization of capitalism through the rise of transnational corporations. In the first two phases of colonial exploitation military conquest and political domination paved the way for economic exploitation of colonized lands. The final stage of colonization, has seen the collapse of the old European empires and the rise of the United States as a major military and economic superpower. Neocolonialism relies primarily on economic means to subjugate developing nations to the industrialized First-World nations.36 The emergence of transnational corporations (TNCs) has resulted from the aggressive need of a capitalist economy to develop foreign markets. The new global economic managers tend to present themselves as harbingers of world peace. They often predict that with time the nation states, which have afflicted the world with one war after another, will wither away. The TNCs promise to bring about planetary peace through the creation of a world shopping center. They also tend to demand that their employees place loyalty to the corporation above national allegiance. The economic policies of transnational corporations too often belie this idyllic, self-promoting rhetoric. In Third-World countries they often undermine the local economy by buying up successful local businesses and by drawing off the best business talent with higher wages. The transfer of technologies from the First World to the Third which the transnational promote frequently seeks to maximize their own profits rather than meet the needs for technological development in the host nation. Besides often undermining the host nation’s indigenous economy, the transnationals perpetuate the economic dependence of the Third World on the First. Not infrequently their control of arable land prevents the production of food for the people of the country which hosts them. They have on occasion used advertising in order to create an artificial desire for junk food in undernourished populations.37 Toward the end of World War II, the industrial nations created three organizations to regulate the international economy: The International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank, and The General Agreement on Trades and Tariffs (GATT). Created and controlled by the industrial nations, these organizations have consistently pursued policies which benefit the First World more than the developing nations. GATT, for example, often imposes higher tariffs on Third-World nations or requires 36. Cf. John R. Neuhaus, “The Colonial Legacy: From Guilt to Responsibility,” in The Causes of World Hunger, pp. 64-80; Toton, op. cit., pp. 21-24. 37. Cf. Richard J. Barnet and Ronald Mueller, Global Reach: The Power of the Multinational Corporations (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 1974); Toton, op.cit., pp. 52-61.
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trade quotas of them which it does not require of developed nations. Many Third-World nations find themselves hopelessly indebted to the IMF and to the World Bank.38 As we have already seen, during the Cold War, U.S. foreign aid took on an increasingly military character. Often enough during the Cold War, food sent to nations with marginally surviving populations served army messes rather than fed the starving. Even what looked like humanitarian aid responded more to marketing needs in the United States than to the actual development needs of the recipient nation. Food aid which undercuts local markets in the Third World tends to exacerbate hunger abroad by subverting indigenous agriculture.39 The use of modern technology to exploit and degrade the environment also contributes to world hunger when it leads to soil loss, converts agricultural lands to non-agricultural uses, produces uncontrollable flooding, and promotes saharafication. Transnational corporations have not infrequently transferred factories from the First to the Third World not simply because they can pay sweatshop wages to ununionized populations but also because they can pollute the environment with impunity.40 Women in the Third World produce the bulk of food but often get to share in it last. The eighties also witnessed the growing feminization of poverty in the United States. Women and children in the United States occupy on the whole a lower economic bracket than white American males. The social anatomy of poverty reveals, then, that sexism functions as one form of oppression within another. Divorce also fosters the feminization of poverty. Divorced wives, who often must rear children as single parents, almost always descend the economic ladder after separation from their former husbands.41 The popular imagination links extreme hunger to natural disasters. The expansion of deserts, flooding, destructive storms, droughts—cataclysms such as these can and do contribute to food shortages and hunger; but they almost never tell the whole story. More frequently, disasters of nature lead to mass starvation when combined with the human folly of war. Civil war in the horn of Africa has dramatized all too vividly the lethal combination of drought and warfare. Wars disrupt and displace large segments of the population. Often enough fleeing refugees find themselves separated from the land on which they grow the food which they eat. Without the means of sustenance 38. Cf. Toton, op.cit., pp. 38-51. 39. Cf. Lappé et al., Betraying the National Interest (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1987). 40. Cf. Arthur Simon, Bread for the World (New York, NY: Paulist, 1984), pp. 55-64. 41. Cf. Barbara C. Gelpi, Nancy C.M. Hartsock, Clare C. Novak, and Myra H. Strober, eds. Women and Poverty (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1986); Angela Y. Davis, Women, Race, and Class (New York, NY: Random House, 1983).
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they often face death by starvation and disease in squalid refugee camps. Refugees who never cross national boundaries suffer the most, because they do not qualify legally for humanitarian international aid. The violence of war also disrupts the transport of food to starving refugees; unless prevented, greedy and unscrupulous black marketeers line their pockets by selling food donated in charity to feed the hungry.42 Bigotry of all sorts breeds hunger. In the United States racism has transformed large segments of the African American population into a permanent underclass.43 Until visionary leadership in South Africa ended the reign of apartheid in that country, racial segregation left thousands of black people starving. In Sudan’s prolonged civil strife, the Muslim north has tried systematically to effect the genocide of the Christian south through violence and systematic starvation. In Rwanda tribal hatred motivated both genocide and hunger among the refugees who fled mass assassination. If the human race had the shared will, it actually possesses the resources to end world hunger. We are in fact producing enough food to feed everyone. The fact that world hunger persists means that in practice the nations of the world prefer to let people starve.44 An analysis of the causes of world hunger illustrates why it matters little to which cause one chooses to commit oneself in converting sociopolitically provided that the cause in question has universal human import. The structures of human oppression so intermesh that reflective opposition to one major source of universal human oppression leads to a confrontation with the others as well. One cannot, for example, espouse the cause of women’s rights without confronting the feminization of poverty and of hunger. One cannot dedicate oneself to nuclear disarmament without confronting the economic consequences of the Cold War. One cannot promote the preservation of the environment without confronting the predatory dimensions of world capitalism. One cannot stand in opposition to bigotry without confronting the economic and political structures of oppression which bigotry inspires. One cannot seek to alleviate the suffering of refugees without opposing the wars which create refugees and the greed and hatred which inspire those wars. 42. Cf. Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, War Against the Poor: Low-Intensity Conflict and Christian Faith (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1989); Eileen Egan, “Refugees: The Uprooting of Peoples as a Cause of Hunger,” in The Causes of World Hunger, pp.173-195. 43. Cf. Manning Marable, How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Politics, Economics, and Society (Boston, MA: South End Press, 1983); Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer, op.cit. 44. Cf. Frances Moore Lappé and Joseph Collins, World Hunger: Twelve Myths (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1986).
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In reflecting on the dynamic structure of Christian hope, we saw that Christian apocalyptic politicizes Christian hope by teaching the Church as a whole to stand in prophetic, non-violent opposition to the principalities and powers of this world. Those oppressive powers embody the Anti-Christ. In the first century, the prophetic author of Revelation correctly identified the Roman empire with the kingdom of Satan; but sin and oppression take other forms besides Roman imperial oppression. In our own day, the forces which conspire to cause the starvation of eight hundred million people contradict the kingdom at every point. 1) The kingdom requires that we share our bread and the other physical sources of life freely with one another. The forces which cause world hunger concentrate wealth and the sources of production in the hands of a greedy few. 2) The kingdom requires that we seek to break down the barriers which divide people from one another by creating a universal community of mutual service. The forces which create world hunger feed upon and re-enforce racial, sexual, ethnic, class, and national bigotries. 3) The kingdom requires the rich to enslave themselves freely to the poor. The forces which create world hunger enslave the poor to the rich. They keep Third-World nations in oppressive economic bondage to the First World. 4) The kingdom teaches us to create safe environments where people can live and grow together in community; and the paschal mystery teaches us to long for a new heaven and a new earth, purged of human sin, division, and injustice. The forces which cause world hunger sinfully exploit and degrade human environments. 5) The kingdom demands the renunciation of violence and mutual reconciliation through forgiveness. The forces which cause world hunger themselves feed on war, violence, and militarism. Those who do not stand with Jesus stand against Him. Those who stand against Him aline themselves with the forces of Anti-Christ. Those, therefore, who commit themselves to life in God’s kingdom must, as Jesus did, denounce the principalities and powers of this world and declare non-violent war on the kingdom of Satan. Opposition to the kingdom of Satan commits one to replacing it with God’s just kingdom; and that commitment inspires an ongoing socio-political conversion thoroughly informed by faith. To cynics, Christian commitment to ending world hunger and to constructing a just world of peace will probably sound like jousting with windmills. The Christian conscience needs, however, to approach every moral issue, including one as complex as world hunger, with sober realism. As we have already seen, a melioristic Christian idealism requires that in dealing with any moral dilemma, one must first come to clarity
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about both ultimate and proximate goals. In what concerns world hunger, the demands of life in the kingdom require that we aspire to its final elimination. With the elimination of hunger as an ultimate goal, the Christian conscience must then identify the realistic conditions for advancing progressively toward that ultimate goal. Transforming those conditions into realities supplies the conscience with its proximate goals. In The Cruel Choice Denis Goulet has argued persuasively that three strategic principles need to undergird an ethics of global economic development: 1) Human beings must first have before than can live. Without the resources to live a humane life, people cannot in fact live it. 2) The nations of the world need to act in global solidarity to foster the economic development of the Third World. 3) We need broad popular participation in setting the policies which advance economic development and which promise to end world hunger and poverty. The oppressed know best what they need to do in the short run in order to begin to extricate themselves from poverty and hunger. Hence, we need to formulate and revise global development policies in close dialogue with those whose lives those policies will most affect.45 No one underestimates the enormity of the task with which the war against starvation confronts us. Winning that war will require a flexible global strategy, world financing, and a global pool of skilled planners and facilitators.46 Hence, the final elimination of world hunger necessitates the creation of a new international economic order in which all the nations of the world, including the economically developing nations, have an effective voice in setting international economic policies.47 The elimination of world hunger will demand some sacrifices of affluent, First-World countries. Here one needs to distinguish three different kinds of human needs: 1) necessities, 2) enhancements, and 3) luxuries. The necessities of life insure bare physical survival and minimal human development: food, clothing, shelter, physical and cultural education, mutual protection. Enhancements make human life humane: they foster health, growth, creativity, maturity, balance, appreciation, insight. Luxuries do not improve the quality of life as do enhancements. Instead luxuries symbolize and re-enforce superior social status.48 45. Cf. Denis Goulet, The Cruel Choice: A New Concept in the Theory of Development (New York, NY: Atheneum, 1971), pp. 123-148. See also: Frances Moore Lappe and Joseph Collins, World Hunger: Twelve Myths (New York, NY: Grove Press, 1986). 46. Ibid., pp. 282-289. 47. Cf. Peter J. Henriot, S.J., “Restructuring the International Economic Order,” in Multinational Managers and Poverty in the Third Word, edited by Lee A. Tavis (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), pp. 11-50; Pierre Gibert, S.J., ed., Recherches de Science Religieuse: Le Christianisme dans la mondalization, 86(1998). 48. Cf. Goulet, op.cit., pp. 241-247.
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Aggressive capitalistic greed manipulates advertising and the media in order to convince people that they need luxuries to live both a human and a humane life. In other words, consumerism deliberately deceives people into viewing luxuries as either enhancements or necessities. This deliberate lie ambitions the maximization of capital gains. The reign of God, by contrast, demands the renunciation of luxuries because it mandates the creation of an egalitarian social order in which the advantaged seek to serve the disadvantaged in humility and simplicity. Christians cannot serve both God and mammon. By blurring and even obliterating class distinctions, the kingdom also proscribes all craving for luxuries which re-enforce class distinctions. Commitment to the elimination of world hunger will not demand of First-World nations the renunciation of the necessities and legitimate enhancements of life; but it will surely demand the renunciation of many useless luxuries. Those who cling stubbornly to luxuries whose enjoyment denies to others the necessities and enhancements of life play the part of the rich man in Luke’s parable. They allow their greed and selfindulgence to blind them to the suffering of the poor; and, unless they repent, they risk the rich man’s fate. The Contract with American illustrates well the point I am trying to make. The Contract tried to convince Americans that they could no longer afford federal food programs for the poor. In point of fact, wealthy people in this country spend more on jewelry ($30.1 billion) than the federal government prior to the Contract spent on food and nutrition assistance ($28. billion).49 By promoting tax breaks for the rich and by eliminating federal nutrition programs, the Contract with America made it clear that in the eyes of those who supported it the rich need their jewelry more than the poor need food. We cannot eliminate world hunger tomorrow, but we can begin today to collaborate with others in the effort to mitigate it. Active participation in an ecumenical, Church-based lobby like Bread for the World provides contemporary Christians with a set of proximate political and economic goals for beginning to address in practical ways the problem of world hunger. In its statement of policy, Bread for the World has articulated those goals clearly. The lobby has committed itself to fight hunger in the United States by improving existing programs like food stamps, school lunches, and nutritional assistance. Hunger legislation needs to target those most vulnerable: like pregnant or nursing mothers and infants. Bread for the World ultimately ambitions a national nutrition policy which will enable every citizen of the United States to get an acceptably nutritious diet. 49. Cf. Bread for the World Institute, Hunger 1995: Causes of Hunger (Baltimore, MD: Communication Graphics, 1995), p. 3.
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Bread for the World also supports the reform and expansion of the United States’ development assistance to poorer nations. Here we face a complex set of issues. When measured by gross national product, the United States now ranks last among First-World nations in such development assistance. Bread for the World calls for increased aid for needy nations which increases their own capacity to feed themselves in environmentally sustainable ways. Bread for the World also urges the separation of development assistance from all forms of military assistance. At the same time, the lobby promotes the over-all reduction of military spending and aid. Bread for the World fosters preferential treatment of poorer nations in setting international trade policies. The lobby also calls for the cancellation of the debts of the poorest debtor nations. Bread for the World supports the ongoing study of the policies and economic impact of transnational corporations and for the passage of legislation which calls the transnationals to public accountability. Bread for the World calls for responsible efforts to control population growth, for aid to the world’s poor which enhances their ability to extricate themselves from their cruel predicament, for health programs abroad which reduce infant mortality and which increase health security. The lobby also seeks to modify consumption in the United States in ways which allow other nations to grow economically. Bread for the World also encourages its members to recognize their religious responsibility to eliminate luxuries.50 Anyone can join the fight against hunger today by joining Bread for the World. Just send $25.00 or whatever you can afford to Bread for the World, 1100 Wayne Ave. Suite 1000, Silver Spring, MD 20910. As I have already indicated, by joining you commit yourself minimally to writing both your senators and your congressional representative about once a month. Bread for the World sends out a regular newsletter which provides the needed data for composing an informed letter which will advance anti-hunger legislation through Congress. By joining Bread for the World you also commit yourself minimally to informing yourself about the causes of world hunger. Bread for the World offers a wide range of resources for educating oneself and others about why a child dies of hunger about every two seconds. Finally, by joining Bread for the World, you also commit yourself minimally to praying for the end of world hunger and for generosity and courage in responding to the challenge which it poses. If you want more than just minimal involvement, you can in addition do any of the following. 1) Interest others in the fight against world hunger. 50. For the full text of Bread for the World’s statement of policy see: Arthur Simon, Bread for the World, pp. 195-201.
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2) Discuss the question of world hunger within your family and encourage your relatives to take up the fight against starvation. 3) Write to the local media urging them to educate people about world hunger and about the efforts to end it. 4) Examine your conscience regularly about the extent to which American individualism, militarism, capitalism, and consumerism are undermining your commitment to the gospel. 5) Encourage your local church to become a “covenant church” which educates itself about world hunger, lobbies to end it, and gives financial and political support to Bread for the World. 6) Form a local Bread for the World group which gathers regularly for prayer, self-education on hunger issues, and letter writing. Bread for the World will supply suggestions for the best way to go about forming such a group. 7) Organize a Bread for the World “offering of letters” in your parish by getting others to write Congress on Sunday when they gather to worship. Bread for the World will also supply you with a how-to-do-it kit for organizing an offering of letters. 8) Help some of the poor and hungry in your area. Befriending the poor helps their morale and shores up your own commitment to end hunger. 9) Support financially relief agencies which are fighting hunger. 10) Encourage the pastoral leaders of your church to make educational materials about world hunger available to the worshipping community. Urge them to preach regularly on the appropriate Christian response to world hunger. Full-time political activists might well object that a chapter on socio-political conversion which starts with liberation theology and ends with Bread for the World begins with a bang but ends with a whimper. Surely meeting the dire need of the poor and hungry demands more than letter-writing. I could not agree more. I am not proposing Bread for the World as a panacea to all the social, economic, and political ills of humanity. I am not even proposing it as a final solution to the problem of world hunger. I am proposing it as a tried and effective pastoral tool for helping middle class Americans take their first steps down the path of a faith-motivated socio-political conversion. One does not expect heroic sanctity of initial converts; nor can one realistically expect to transform overnight into political radicals an American middle class alienated from the political process and duped by popular ideologies. I do, however, recommend Bread for the World as an effective pastoral strategy which accords with the melioristic ethical idealism defended in this study. For individualistic, religiously privatized North Americans, a lobby like Bread for the World offers a realistic first step toward a responsible Christian commitment to social justice. Moreover, that strategy has
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proven its pastoral and political effectiveness. I have no doubt that if every parish in the United States which has an RCIA program would also transform itself into a Bread-for-the-World covenant parish, those same parishes would have a significant and positive impact on the political process in this country; and we would live in a world which better approximates the moral demands of responsible Christian living. Once advanced thus far down the road to corporate responsibility, a parish can begin to ask itself as a community what the next step might entail. Relevance to the RCIA A sound RCIA program seeks to foster an integral, five-fold conversion in those who enter the Church. One cannot, however, with any credibility challenge others to convert unless one is already converting oneself. Those who conduct the RCIA will, therefore, successfully persuade others to active commitment to the Christian search for social justice only if they themselves have converted socio-politically. Until one devotes a significant amount of time to some just cause of universal human import, however, one has yet to advance even to an initial socio-political conversion. In other words, those who lead the RCIA need minimally to model for converts a participatory political activism through participation in an organization like Bread for the World. The parish which new converts are in process of joining needs to model the same commitment corporately and collectively. It could do so by becoming a Bread for the World covenant parish. Given the individualistic character of American mores, RCIA teams need, moreover, to put high on their pastoral agenda the fostering of a graced socio-political conversion in neophytes. Bread for the World offers one very effective strategy for involving converting Christians in an ecumenical search for a just national and international world order. One might encourage involvement in other analogous organizations. I have, however, focused on Bread for the World both because of its effectiveness as a lobby and because it offers, in my opinion and in the opinion of others, one of the most effective pastoral tools for conscientizing middle class Americans. In this chapter, I have reflected on the ways in which commitment to Jesus Christ in faith transforms socio-political conversion and inspires the Christian quest for social justice. It concludes this foundational attempt to understand how commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith transvalues the secular forms of conversion. I began the first volume of this study by proposing a Christological experiment. I suggested testing the ability of a foundational theology of conversion to resolve the current crisis in Christology. In the brief afterword which follows this chapter I shall assess the relative success of that experiment.
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Afterword In the first volume of this study I argued that contemporary Christological speculation manifests confusions analogous to those which fueled the Christological controversies of the fourth and fifth centuries. Both periods betray considerable confusion about three key Christological terms: humanity, divinity, and the relationship between them in Jesus. The contemporary Christological crisis differs, however, in significant ways from the Christological controversies which troubled the patristic era. During the first centuries of the Christian era, uncritical acquiescence in the dualisms of Platonic thought sowed confusion in the minds of theologians. Contemporary theologians, by contrast, find themselves hard put to deal with the challenge of intellectual pluralism. I identified three “nests” of intertwined issues at the basis of the contemporary Christological crisis. First, contemporary Christology has wandered down three culs de sac from which theologians are still struggling to emerge. Second, four major paradigm shifts in theological thinking have raised complex issues in need of resolution. Third, the secularization of contemporary thought has led some theologians to acquiesce, sometimes uncritically, in an Enlightenment fundamentalism. I described the three dead ends in the following terms: Dead End One: The classical philosophical understanding of divinity and of humanity have collapsed; and no other philosophical consensus has replaced them. Nor does any promise to do so in the near future. Dead End Two: Theologians generally agree that the “high” Christologies developed during the middle ages sacrifice Jesus’ humanity to His divinity. How best to correct these medieval errors remains, however, to date an open question. Dead End Three: Overspecialization among academic theologians has led to the dissociation of Christology from trinitarian theology. In volume one, I also identified the following four paradigm shifts which exacerbate the current Christological crisis: 1) The context of theological thinking has shifted from metaphysics to history. At the same time, confusion about how to deal with the complex speculative challenges raised by the history of theology and by the history of human speculation in general has caused a drift toward historical relativism. 2) The shift from a classical, normative understanding of culture to concern with inculturated theological thinking has raised the specter of cultural relativism. 3) Feminism has called into question the “masculinist” presuppositions the Christian theology and of Christian faith. 4) The dialogue among world religions has caused some theologians to call for muting any normative claims for the revelation of God given us in Jesus Christ.
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Secularism challenges contemporary Christology in the following three ways: 1) Naive acquiescence in the presuppositions of Enlightenment fundamentalism has led some theologians to rationalize theological thinking in ways which question the truth of traditional Christological beliefs. 2) Enlightenment fundamentalism also propagates an ethos of individualism which erodes shared religious faith and shared religious commitment. 3) In the United States as in other western nations, the combined impact of aggressive capitalism and of consumerism so undermines practical commitment to gospel living as to promote a practical atheism. After anatomizing the current Christological crisis, I examined several methods which theologians have already invoked for dealing with that crisis. I found some merit in each of them; but I judged them all finally inadequate to deal with the scope and complexity of the contemporary Christological challenge. I therefore suggested an experiment. I proposed to test the claims of Lonergan’s method to provide norms for distinguishing between sound and unsound doctrinal beliefs. In Lonergan’s theory of theological method, a normative theology of conversion measures doctrinal authenticity. Doctrines which promote conversion count as authentic, while doctrines which fail to promote conversion count as inauthentic. A Christology developed in the context of a normative theology of conversion asks the following question: How ought faith in Jesus Christ to transform every dimension of the conversion process? If the experiment which I proposed succeeded, then in the course of answering that question, one would discover the norms which would, like Ariadne’s thread, lead one out of the contemporary Christological labyrinth. The time has come to assess the results of the speculative experiment which I proposed in volume one. Does the Christology developed in these volumes provide a means for dealing with the Christological dead ends, with novel paradigm shifts, and with the challenge of secularism? The foundational Christology developed in these pages avoids the pitfalls of Enlightenment fundamentalism by building on sound philosophical critiques of the fallacies of Enlightenment philosophy. Among philosophers in the United States, C.S. Peirce mounted, in my judgment, the most telling systematic refutation of Enlightenment philosophy. Peircean realism refutes Enlightenment nominalism and subjectivism. His relational logic of consequences justifies a perspectival realism and demonstrates the irreducibly social and relational character of all human experience and thought. Josiah Royce, whose philosophy of religion also contributes significantly to the metaphysics of experience proposed in these volumes, developed, with Peirce’s distant blessing, some of the theological implications of Peirce’s triadic metaphysics. Peirce regarded the mature Royce as the only
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other pragmatist he knew. Royce’s work finds an echo in the contemporary critiques of Enlightenment individualism mounted most tellingly by Robert Bellah and by Roberto Mangabeira Unger. The Christology developed in these volumes builds upon and extends the insights of Royce’s monumental work The Problem of Christianity. More specifically, this reading of Christology in the light of a metaphysics of experience seeks to illustrate the justice of Royce’s claim that, in writing The Problem of Christianity, he had created a speculative context for dealing doctrinally with the person of Jesus.1 Not only, therefore, does the preceding Christology invalidate the uncritical acquiescence of theologians in the speculative presuppositions of Enlightenment thinking in its many philosophical and methodological expressions; but it also invalidates individualism as either a social or personal ethos. In other words, the Christology which I have developed qualifies as genuinely and constructively “post-modern” in one of the many meanings of that muddled term. The preceding foundational Christology also avoids wandering down the theological culs de sac which seem to baffle many contemporary Christologists. It offers a viable philosophical and theological alternative to classical conceptions of both divinity and humanity. The Christology defended in these three volumes conceives both divinity and humanity as experiential processes, one infinite and eternal and the other finite and spatio-temporal. Process theology ambitions something analogous; but the Christology here proposed replaces the nominalistic process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead with a defensible metaphysical realism. As a result, the experiential Christology which I have here defended finds no need to deal reductionistically with Christian revelation as most process theology does. On the contrary, a triadic, social, relational metaphysics of experience interprets both the hypostatic union and the trinity while respecting the mystery which they reveal. The foundational Christology presented in this volume also makes it clear that in rejecting inflated medieval Christologies which sacrificed the humanity of Jesus to His divinity, one need not endorse any of the contemporary “low” Christologies which sacrifice His divinity to His humanity. Judged by the norms of the foundational Christology developed in this study, such “high” and “low” Christologies qualify as bad Christology. Finally, the foundational Christology here espoused also avoids the fallacy of academic overspecialization, which separates Christology from trinitarian theology. On the contrary, the preceding foundational Christo1. Cf. Josiah Royce, The Problem of Christianity (2 vols.; Chicago: Regnery, 1968), I, pp. 202-205, II, pp. 423-429.
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logy invokes a triadic metaphysics of experience in order to coordinate incarnational and trinitarian faith. Among theologians, the shift from metaphysical to historical thinking has raised the specter of theological relativism. The metaphysics of experience developed in these three volumes unmasks the choice between history and metaphysics as a false option. It does so by proposing a metaphysics which interprets the historical process as developing experiences. By discovering in the incarnation a unique, normative historical revelation of how a saving God relates to humanity and of how a sinful humanity ought to relate to a saving God, an experiential foundational Christology also avoids historical relativism The foundational method invoked in this study ambitions an inculturated North American Christology; but it avoids cultural relativism by providing norms for assessing culturally conditioned perceptions of reality. Reality itself judges those perceptions by either behaving or failing to behave as different cultures expect it to behave. Cultural perceptions which cannot interpret the world accurately need revision. The historical world we know includes Christian revelation and therefore exhibits an eschatological dimension. Moreover, the fallibilistic logic invoked in this study views cultures as interpretative frames of reference and therefore judges them by the norm of adequacy. Cultures which prevent one from reflecting on realities which require intelligent interpretation need corresponding revision. Finally, fallibilism requires all local cultures to look to other cultures to correct their oversights and amplify their insights. Feminist Christology has yet to develop a truly systematic Christology. The foundational Christology developed in this study does, I believe, give evidence of an ability to dialogue with feminists both about the presuppositions and conclusions of their Christological proposals. Finally, as we have already seen in reflecting on the soteriological implications of Christological faith, an experiential Christology invites dialogue with other world religions, without, however, needlessly sacrificing to dialogue any traditional Christological beliefs. The story goes that someone challenged Karl Barth toward the end of his career to summarize in a single sentence the many volumes of his Church Dogmatics. He whimsically replied: “Jesus loves me, this I know because the Bible told me so.” I have undertaken this more modest Christological study as a way of responding to the current crisis in Christology. I have done so by developing a systematic foundational Christology of conversion which challenges people to practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath. By approaching Christology in the context of conversion, I have also laid
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systematic foundations for the kind of Christological catechesis which ought to go on in the RCIA. Perhaps I can most fittingly close and summarize these three volumes by imitating Barth’s whimsy. I grew up in New Orleans with the sound of Dixieland jazz in my ears. Should it come, then, as any surprise if the first two verses of an old New Orleans spiritual sum up for me with deep feeling and admirable simplicity the preceding Christological argument? Just a closer walk with Thee Grant it, Jesus, is my plea; Daily walking close to Thee, Let it be, dear Lord, let it be. I am weak but Thou art strong. Jesus, keep me from all wrong. I’ll be satisfied as long As I walk, let me walk, close to Thee.
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Glossary ABBA: in Hebrew, a term of intimate address to one’s father; Jesus’ name for God ABDUCTION: in pragmatic logic, an inference which concludes to a case from a rule and a result; in other words, an inference which gives an initial classification to data in need of explanation on the basis of a law assumed to function in reality; the formulation of an hypothesis ABSOLUTE: unconditioned; as an ethical category, commitment to particular ideals and principles no matter what the circumstance ABSTRACT: lacking concreteness ACCOMMODATION: adjustment; in developmental psychology, adaptive growth ACT: as a technical philosophical term, the determination of a potency ACTUAL: in a metaphysics of experience, factual, or pertaining to the realm of decision ADAPTATION: change with regard to a situation; in developmental psychology, adjustment to an environment through accommodation or assimilation ADOPTIONISM: the heterodox doctrine that Jesus first existed as a human person and only subsequently became the Son of God by an act of divine grace AESTHETICS: in pragmatic logic, the normative study of ideals and of the habitual forms of behavior which appreciate and respond to them AFFECT ATTUNEMENT: in social psychology, the capacity of an adult to share empathetically and symbolically in the emotional experiences of an infant AFFECTION: in a metaphysics of experience, the emotive perception or judgment of reality AFFECTIVE CONVERSION: the decision to take adult responsibility for one’s own subsequent emotional development ANALOGY: similarity in difference ANALOGY OF CHRISTOLOGICAL KNOWING, THE: practical assimilation to Jesus in the power of His Breath in different historical situations ANALYTIC: dividing into elemental parts or basic principles ANHYPOSTASIS: a term introduced into the Christological tradition by Friedrich Loofs which denies a hypostatic, or subsistent, character to the humanity of Jesus in its own right ANONYMOUS CHRISTIAN: the questionable theological doctrine that all persons experience an a priori, graced orientation to Jesus Christ prior to the act of faith in Him ANTHROPOLOGY: a more or less organized account of the human ANTI-CHRIST: those persons or institutions which sinfully oppose Jesus and His religious vision ANTICLERICALISM: opposition or hostility toward those holding religious authority APOCALYPTIC: revelatory APOCALYPTIC THEOLOGY: a visionary account of the end time: i.e., of the final stage or salvation and of final judgment APOLLONARIANISM: the heterodox doctrine that in the incarnation Jesus’ divinity and humanity blend into a third theandric reality
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APOPHATIC THEOLOGY: a doctrine of God which holds that created reality can only reveal what God is not A PRIORI: before the fact; the character of an argument which fallaciously claims validity without evidence to support it ARIANISM: the heterodox theological denial of the divinity of Jesus and of his divine Breath ASCETICISM: cultivated physical austerity, often for moral or religious motives ASSIMILATION: in developmental psychology, biological adaptation through ingestion ATHEISM: the denial of the reality of God PRACTICAL: the failure to accept the practical consequences of one’s alleged belief in God ATONEMENT: reconciliation; the restoration of a ruptured relationship by accepting the suffering which reconciliation requires AUTHENTICATION: validation AUTHORITY: the power and right to make decisions concerning others AUTONOMY: in a metaphysics of experience, the bare capacity to initiate activity BAPTISM: ritual washing; the first part of the Christian rite of initiation BEATIFIC VISION: the face-to-face vision of God in the next life BEATITUDES, THE: the eight blessings of the new covenant which open the sermon on the mount in Matthew’s gospel BEAUTY: the intuitive perception of excellence; the simultaneous intuitive grasp of goodness and of truth in some reality BEELZEBUL: the Lord of the Flies; in the Old Testament, the name of the god of the Philistine city of Ekron; in the New Testament, a Hebrew name for the prince of demons BEING: really existing BELIEF: in pragmatic logic, a proposition for whose consequences one stands willing to assume responsibility BELOVED DISCIPLE, THE: the author of the fourth gospel BENEDICTUS, THE: in Luke’s gospel, the prayer of praise uttered by Zechariah after the birth of his son, John the Baptizer BIBLICAL CHRISTOLOGY: an account of what the New Testament says about Jesus Christ BIGOTRY: rigid stereotyping of the members of an out-group combined with overt hostility toward them BLASPHEMY: insulting God BODY: in a metaphysics of experience, the immediate environment from which a finite self emerges BREATH-BAPTISM: personal transformation in the third person of the trinity which begins with justifying faith and ends with resurrection CAPITALISM: an economic system which buys human labor for producing, handling and marketing goods, which promotes a so-called1 free market system 1. The freedom of the capitalistic market varies with one’s economic assets. Wealthy corporations, the rich, and the affluent experience considerable freedom in a capitalistic market. The starving poor tend to find it oppressive rather than liberating.
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as well as the private and corporate ownership of the means of production, and which seeks to maximize the profits of businesses and corporate investors CASE: in pragmatic logic, the classification of data in inferential thinking CATECHUMENATE: an organized period of preparation for receiving the sacraments of Christian initiation CATEGORY: a predicate; an concept used in interpreting reality CELIBACY: the deliberate renunciation of genital sex CERTAIN: beyond the shadow of a doubt CHALCEDONIAN CHRISTOLOGY: the doctrine that the person of Jesus unites His divinity and His humanity without blending them into a third reality CHARISM: a particular manifestation of the gift of salvation accomplished in the missions of Jesus and of His Breath; a supernatural empowerment which renders one docile to the inspirations of the Breath of Jesus CHARITY: love in the image of Jesus CHIASM: literally, shaped like the Greek letter chi (X); an ordering of textual elements in such a way that the first and last, the second and second-to-last, etc. correspond CHIASTIC: having the literary structure of a chiasm CHRISTIAN CONVERSION: the decision to respond to the revelation of God in Jesus Christ and in the mission of His Breath on the terms which that revelation demands CHRISTIAN ORIGINS, CRITERION OF: a norm for authenticating historically words or actions of Jesus which asserts that any historical portrait of Jesus must offer a plausible account of how the movement He headed could have evolved into the Christian Church CHRISTOGENESIS: a term invented by Teilhard de Chardin for the incarnation’s transformation of the process of evolution CHRISTOLOGICAL KNOWING: the knowledge of Jesus Christ which results from practical assimilation to Him in the power of His Breath CHRISTOLOGICAL QUESTION, THE: asking how divinity and humanity relate in the person of Jesus CHRISTOLOGY: a more or less organized account of the person and ministry of Jesus Christ ATONEMENT: an account of the person and ministry of Jesus which highlights the reconciliation between humanity and God which He effects DOCTRINAL: a foundational theological account of how commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith transforms inferential perceptions in theological faith of His person and mission OF HOPE: a foundational theological account of how commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith heals, perfects, and elevates natural and sinful human hopes KENOTIC: an account of the divine self-emptying, or self-abnegation, which the incarnation demands NARRATIVE: a foundational theological account of how commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith transforms intuitive perceptions of His person and mission communicated in story form
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PRACTICAL: a foundational theological account of how commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith transforms both personal moral conversion and socio-political conversion SPIRIT: an account of the person and ministry of Jesus which gives prominence to His relationship to the Breath, or Spirit, of God CHRISTOPRAXIS: living out the practical consequences of commitment to Jesus Christ in justifying faith; Christological knowing. CLASSIC: a work of art or literature which from generation to generation makes human life and experience meaningful CLASSISM: the fallacious ideological justification of giving to one or more social groups privileged access to the benefits of a society to the detriment and even oppression of other social groups CLERICALISM: the sinful abuse of ecclesiastical authority through self-serving domination over others CO-EXISTENCE: the simultaneous enjoyment of reality COHERENCE, CRITERION OF: a norm for authenticating as historical words and actions of Jesus on the basis of their compatibility with other words and actions already authenticated by other norms COLONIALISM: a policy which extends and maintains the control of one nation over foreign dependencies COMMON GOOD: a social arrangement which ensures that every member of society has the opportunity to share with reasonable adequacy in that society’s benefits and to contribute to those same benefits COMMON SENSE: colloquially, the ability to deal realistically with one’s world; as a technical philosophical term, the power to correlate sense perceptions COMMUNICATIO IDIOMATUM: literally, Latin for “the communication of traits”; in theology, a doctrinal account of the way human and divine traits relate in Jesus Christ COMMUNICATION: in a metaphysics of experience, symbolic activity which expresses to one mind the evaluative perceptions of another about some entity COMMUNICATIONS: a functional theological specialty which uses the results of theological reflection in order to re-establish dialogue among the members of a religious community when lack of conversion causes dialogue to break down COMPLEMENTARITY: the assertion of true propositions about interrelated realities CONCEPT: in a metaphysics of experience, a particular way of responding evaluatively to one’s world CONCUPISCENCE: those forces in the environment of a baptized person which differ from that person’s own sins but which nevertheless come from sin and lead to sin CONSCIENCE: personal judgment of moral right and wrong CONSCIOUSNESS: awareness PERSONAL: awareness which begins with distinguishing one’s own body from its surrounding environment and which develops by making distinctions and asserting relationships
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COMMUNAL: the consciousness of a community which results from its shared memories, shared hopes, shared lives, practice of atoning love, and degree of conversion CONTRADICTION: the assertion of mutually exclusive propositions about the same reality CONVERGENCE: the assertion of true but different propositions about the same reality CONVERSION: the decision to pass from irresponsible to responsible behavior in some realm of human experience INITIAL: one’s first assumption of adult responsibility in some realm of experience ONGOING: living out the consequences of initial conversion CONSUMERISM: an economic system which seeks to persuade buyers to regard luxuries, i.e., possessions which enhance class status, as necessities COORDINATION OF CATEGORIES, THE: reflection on the relationship of categories which derive from different disciplines which study the same or related realities CORRELATION, METHOD OF: a mode of thinking which interrelates different realities under investigation COUNCIL OF THE CHURCH: a plenary meeting of leaders and teachers of the Christian community in order to decide doctrinal and pastoral questions COUNTERDYNAMIC OF CONVERSION: the tendency of the lack of conversion in one realm of experience to undermine the presence of conversion in another realm of experience COVENANT: a mutually binding agreement among persons CREATION: as a divine act, God’s ongoing constitution of the developing universe as a reality; as an object, the developing spatio-temporal universe viewed as a product of divine activity CRITICAL COMMON SENSISM: a doctrine of pragmatic logic which maintains that if one attempts to doubt seriously one’s spontaneous beliefs, one will find some beliefs which one cannot doubt CULTURE: reality mediated and conditioned by human symbolic behavior DECISION: in a metaphysics of experience, an action which makes reality concretely this rather than that; a fact DEDUCTION: in pragmatic logic, an inference which concludes from a case and a rule to a result; in other words, the prediction of facts not yet in evidence but entailed by a particular abduction DEISM: a philosophical system which posits the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, and universal moral principles but which denies divine intervention in human history DELIBERATION: in a metaphysics of experience, disjunctive thinking; the weighing of mutually exclusive alternatives for choice AESTHETIC: disjunctive thinking about how best to communicate an intuitive grasp of excellence PRUDENTIAL: disjunctive thinking about ethical choices PRACTICAL: disjunctive thinking about how best to get a job done
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SPECULATIVE: disjunctive thinking about mutually exclusive interpretations of reality DEMIURGE: in Platonic philosophy, a quasi-deity who fashions the material universe DEMYTHOLOGIZATION: the substitution of rational explanation for a mythic grasp of reality DE-OBJECTIFICATION: the process of replacing inferential thinking which claims to grasp things as they are in themselves with a mode of thought which recognizes the relational character of all reality and of all knowing DEPRAVITY: moral corruption; as a theological term, the doctrine that sin has so corrupted human nature that it can of itself perform no morally good acts DIALECTIC: a functional theological specialty which compares and contrasts different doctrinal frames of reference in order to assess if and why they agree or disagree DIOHYPOSTATIC THEOLOGY: an early form of heterodox trinitarian theology which focused on the existence of two subsistent realities in the Christian Godhead, the Father and the Son, but which left the Son’s eternal existence and co-equality with the Father vague DI-POLAR NOMINALISM: a philosophical doctrine which reduces human knowing to the subjective interrelation of concrete percepts and abstract concepts DISCERNMENT: a charism of the Holy Breath which renders human deliberation receptive to Her inspirations DISCONTINUITY, CRITERION OF: a principle for authenticating historically words and actions attributed to Jesus which argues that, if one cannot trace them either to the milieu in which Jesus lived or to the apostolic Church, they probably originated in Jesus Himself DISPENSATIONAL THEOLOGY: a descriptive account of God’s saving action in human history DIVINITY: divine reality; the nature of deity DOCTRINES: a functional theological specialty which distinguishes sound from unsound doctrine by the former’s ability to advance an integral five-fold conversion and by the latter’s tendency to undermine an integral five-fold conversion DUALISM: the fallacious conception of two interrelated realities in such a way that their real relationship to one another becomes subsequently unintelligible COSMIC: conceiving time and eternity in such a way that their real relationship to one another becomes subsequently unintelligible MATTER-SPIRIT: the characterization of reality as divided into essentially different realms, one embodied and the other disembodied, with the result that their interrelationship becomes subsequently unintelligible OPERATIONAL: the conception of human powers of activity in such a way that their interaction becomes subsequently unintelligible SUBJECT-OBJECT: an interpretation of a cognitive relationship in such a way that the act of knowing becomes subsequently unintelligible
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SUBSTANTIAL: the division of the human person into two essentially different substances whose essential difference makes the unity of the person unthinkable DUTY: a moral obligation to respond to the need of some person or persons DYNAMIC OF CONVERSION: the tendency of one kind of conversion to re-enforce another ECCLESIOLOGY: a more or less organized account of the Church ECLECTICISM: the endorsement of beliefs on the basis of taste and without much concern for their mutual compatibility EGO: in psychology, the conscious person EGO DEFLATION: the painful psychological state of one whose ego-inflation has led to positing an act with destructive consequences to oneself and/or others EGO INERTIA: in clinical psychology, the human tendency to resist challenges to personal attitudes, beliefs, or commitments EGO INFLATION: a psychological state of exaggerated self-confidence resulting from lack of contact with potentially destructive, unconscious impulses EMBARRASSMENT, CRITERION OF: a norm for authenticating historically words or actions of Jesus which argues that, if a New Testament author records something about Jesus as disconcerting either to the one who records it or to the Christian community, then the event in question probably took place EMOTION: in a metaphysics of experience, the affective perception or judgment of reality SYMPATHETIC: a benevolent attitudinal response like affection, sympathy, friendship, love which functions as the affective equivalent of a logical “yes” NEGATIVE: an attitudinal response which function as the affective equivalent of a logical “not,” like fear, anger, shame, guilt EMPIRICAL THEOLOGY: a theology which requires that all theological propositions find verification in the historical events which reveal God in space and time ENHYPOSTASIS: a term invented by Friedrich Loofs which asserts the existence of the humanity of Jesus in the hypostasis, or subsistent reality, of the second person of the trinity ENLIGHTENMENT FUNDAMENTALISM: the spontaneous and dogmatic endorsement of the untenable aspects of Enlightenment philosophy ENLIGHTENMENT, THE: an intellectual movement in the eighteenth century which defended the superiority of scientific knowing nominalistically conceived, moral individualism, the purely subjective character of moral and religious judgments, and social contract theory ENVIRONMENT: in a metaphysics of experience, the physical universe from which the self emerges, most immediately its own body but also the surrounding world from which it derives its physical life EPISTEMOLOGY: a philosophical account of human knowing ESCHATOLOGICAL: pertaining to the eschaton ESCHATOLOGY: a more or less organized account of the final age of salvation inaugurated by the incarnation and by the paschal mystery
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ESCHATON: the final age of salvation inaugurated by the incarnation and by the paschal mystery ESSENCE: what something is; in a metaphysics of experience, a mode of evaluative perception abstracted from the one perceiving and the reality perceived ESSENCE FALLACY: the indefensible reification of essences as existing in their own right instead of regarding them as fallible modes of perception ESSENTIALISM: a philosophy which endorses the essence fallacy ETERNAL OBJECT: in Whiteheadean philosophy, a concept in the conceptual pole of the divine experience ETHICS: a moral code which measures human conduct by norms, principles, and ideals which make absolute and ultimate claims EUCHARIST: thanksgiving; the ritual, sacramental recall of the paschal mystery through the re-enactment of Jesus’ last supper with His disciples EVALUATION: in a metaphysics of experience, a quality of experience viewed as an intentional, cognitive relationship EVALUATIVE CONTINUUM: in a metaphysics of experience, the entire network of intentional, evaluative relationships in human experience which includes, sensation, emotion, memory, intuition, inference, and deliberation EVANGELIST: the author of one of the canonical gospels EVOLUTION: the emergence over time of different biological species AGAPASTIC: evolution motivated by love ANANCHASTIC: the emergence of new biological species as the consequence of some natural cataclysm TYCHASTIC: the emergence of new biological species through chance, or sporting EXCELLENCE: a reality’s capacity to evoke in another the simultaneous intuitive perception of goodness and of truth; in the theology of Jonathan Edwards, harmonious, proportional existence exemplifying the consent of whole to parts and of parts to whole EXCEPTIVE CLAUSE: in Matthew’s gospel, the phrase “except for uncleanness (porneia)” which qualifies Jesus’ prohibition of Mosaic divorce practices EXEGESIS: the interpretation of texts EXISTENTIALISM: a phenomenological account of the human subject’s relationship to Being understood as the total pattern of meaning EXORCISM: the ritual driving out of a demon, or evil spirit, which assumes the personality of a human being and controls the person’s bodily movements, including speech EXORCIST: one who performs an exorcism EXPERIENCE: in a metaphysics of experience, a process composed to relational elements called feelings; the higher forms of experience contain three kinds of relational elements: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies REALM OF: an distinctive habitual way of responding evaluatively or decisively FACT: in a metaphysics of experience, a decision, an action which makes reality concretely this rather than that
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FACULTY PSYCHOLOGY: an account of the human person which explains human activity by grounding it in really and essentially distinct powers with fixed formal objects FAITH: commitment to a self-revealing God on the terms which that self-revelation demands JUSTIFYING: an initial religious conversion which conforms the convert to the divine will and therefore commits one to ongoing religious conversion THEOLOGICAL: the graced transformation of intellectual conversion CHARISM OF: a gift of the Holy Breath which enhances the social visibility of one’s commitment to God by rendering it more prayerful, more docile to the movements of grace, and more willing to take personal risks for the sake of God FALLACY OF UNIVERSAL TEXTUALITY, THE: the false belief that one can characterize every entity as a text FALLIBILISM: in pragmatic logic, the philosophical doctrine that if one admits that one can err in interpreting reality one has a better chance of reaching the truth than if one denies one’s capacity for error FALSE: the characteristic of a belief which contradicts the evidence FEELING: in a metaphysics of experience, a relational element within experience, which in its higher forms manifests three kinds of relational elements: evaluations, decisions, and tendencies FEMINISM: a movement of social reform with scholarly and theological underpinnings which seeks to vindicate the rights of women to freedom from personal and institutional oppression on the basis of sex FINITUDE: limitation FORMAL OBJECT: the object of a power of operation which defines the essence of that power by specifying the aspect under which it operates on its object FORENSIC: pertaining to legal proceedings or argumentation FOUNDATIONS: a functional theological specialty which proposes a strictly normative account of the forms, dynamics, and counterdynamics of conversion FREEDOM, ELEMENTARY: the power to act or not or to choose to do this rather than that FUNCTIONAL SPECIALTY: a realm of theological investigation which raises a particular kind of theological question requiring a distinctive method to answer it FULFILLMENT: an event which keeps a promise and/or makes a prediction come true GENEALOGY: a family tree GOODNESS: desirability, the exemplification of excellence GOSPEL: a narrative account of Jesus told in the light of the paschal mystery SYNOPTIC: the accounts of Jesus written by Mark, Matthew, of Luke; literally, “at a glance, a term derived from the practice of reproducing these gospels in parallel columns for the purpose of comparative analysis GRACE: as a theological term, God’s utterly gratuitous intervention in human history in order to undo the consequences of human sinfulness and in order to unite humans to God and to one another GLORY: the divine excellence, especially in its historical manifestations
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HEAVEN: as a theological term, perfect union with God and His saints after death HELL: separation from God after death HERESY: the tenacious defence and propagation of a heterodox belief HERESIARCH: the principal propounder of a heresy HERMENEUTICAL CIRCLE, CLOSING THE: a theological method characteristic of liberation theology which begins by investigating a situation of institutional injustice, searches divine revelation for norms which promise to rectify the injustice, and then devises specific strategies for effecting the desired rectification HERMENEUTICS: a theory of interpretation HETERODOX: in theology, the characteristic of a belief which interprets divine revelation incorrectly HIERARCHY: a social order characterized by subordinated grades or classes HIERARCHICALISM: a theological account of Church order characterized by subordinated grades or classes in which grace and activity always proceed from higher to lower HIGH CHRISTOLOGY: an account of the person and mission of Jesus which begins with reflection on His divinity and which sometimes sacrifices His humanity to His divinity HISTORICAL-CRITICAL METHOD: the scholarly interpretation of a text in the light of the circumstances which originally inspired its composition HISTORY: developments in space and time; in the metaphysics of experience, the unfolding of spatio-temporal experience; as a functional theological specialty, a scholarly account of a religious community’s development HOLY BREATH: the third person of the trinity conceived as a sanctifying source of divine life HOMOIOUSIOS: similar in being; a technical Greek theological term for asserting that the Son and Holy Breath have a divine reality similar to the Father’s HOMOOUSIOS: one in being; a technical Greek theological term for asserting that the Son and the Holy Breath have identically the same divine reality as the Father HOPE: in a metaphysics of experience, the intuitive perception of a desirable future HUMANITY: the nature possessed by finite embodied persons HYLEMORPHISM: a philosophical doctrine which asserts that finite substances consist of a potential principle called matter (in Greek, hyle) and an actual principle called form (in Greek morphe) HYPOSTASIS: in theology, the Greek term for a particular, subsistent reality HYPOSTATIC UNION: the uniting of divinity and humanity in the second person of the trinity without their blending into some third reality neither fully divine nor fully human HYPOTHESIS: an abduction ICON: a sign which communicates by resembling what it signifies IDEAL: a desirable possibility which makes normative claims IDEOLOGY: the false and deceptive rationalization of a situation of injustice
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IMAGINATION: the capacity to interpret reality through the use of images IMMATERIAL: purely spiritual, devoid of matter IMMORALITY: the decisive violation of ethical ideals and principles IMMUTABILITY: the inability to change IMPASSIBILITY: the inability to suffer IMPOSSIBLE: what cannot or could not have happened; the character of a belief which defies verification under any circumstances IMPLAUSIBLE: the character of a belief which the preponderance of the evidence calls into question without, however, ruling it out altogether as false or impossible IMPROBABLE: the characteristic of a belief which the evidence calls seriously into question but without establishing the likelihood of another interpretation INAUTHENTICITY: having a false or bogus character; hypocrisy INCARNATION: embodiment; as a theological term, the embodiment of the second person of the trinity INCOMMUNICABILITY: the incapacity of transference from one entity to another INCULTURATION: evangelization or theological thinking which uses the symbols of a particular culture, which invokes the gospel to challenge that culture’s sinfulness, and which establishes a dialogue between a particular culture and the Church universal INDEX: a sign which communicates by physical activity INDIVIDUAL: single; separate INDIVIDUALISM: the ideological belief that society consists of atomic individuals with only accidental and artificial relations to one another EXPRESSIVE: the self-isolating ideological belief that one must defend one’s “core self” from the incursions of others UTILITARIAN: the ideological belief that one can justifiably do anything necessary to advance one’s own interests and to succeed THERAPEUTIC: psychological theories and healing practices which inculcate the ideological belief in oneself as an atomic individual with only accidental and artificial relationships with others which one can sacrifice as needed in order to ensure personal self-fulfillment INDIVIDUALITY: the results of individuation; the traits which make one individual differ qualitatively from another INDIVIDUATION: the process of becoming an individual qualitatively distinct from other individuals INDUCTION: in pragmatic logic, an inference which concludes from a result and a case to a rule; the verification of a deductively clarified abduction which establishes the reality of the rule which a prior abduction presumed to obtain in reality INFANCY NARRATIVE: an account of the birth of Jesus in the light of the paschal mystery INFERENCE: in pragmatic logic, an argument which interrelates a rule, a case, and a result INFINITE: that which encompasses every other thing and is encompassed by nothing
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INFUSED KNOWLEDGE: preternaturally communicated perceptions of reality INSTITUTION: a group of persons acting in socially sanctioned ways INTELLECT: in philosophy, the spiritual power which grasps Being cognitively as true AGENT: in scholastic philosophy, the spiritual power of the human soul which uses an image in the imagination as an instrument for imprinting an idea on the passive intellect PASSIVE: in scholastic philosophy, the spiritual power of the soul which the active intellect enables to grasp sensible being as true INTELLECTUAL CONVERSION: the decision to take adult responsibility for the truth or falsity of one’s beliefs and for the adequacy or inadequacy of the frames of reference in which one fixes one’s beliefs INTELLIGIBILITY: something possessing significance or meaning INTERPLAY OF CATEGORIES: the interpretation of categories derived from one intellectual discipline by categories derived from another intellectual discipline INTERPRETATION: a meaningful account of symbolic significance; as a functional theological specialty, exegesis, or a scholarly account of the significance of religious texts and artifacts INTUITION: in a metaphysics of experience, knowledge mediated by images and affections JESUSOLOGY: a rational account of Jesus’ humanity and mortal ministry JOURNEY DISCOURSE: Lk 10:51-19:27; Luke’s account of Jesus’ final pilgrimage to Jerusalem in which He instructs His followers about the demands of discipleship JUBILEE: an English term for the law enunciated in Lv 25:8-17, 29-31, which called for the periodic rectification of injustice in Israel JUDGMENT: in pragmatic logic, the fixation of a belief JUSTIFICATION: in theology, passage from a state of sin to the obedience of faith KINGDOM OF GOD: Jesus’ central message; Jesus’ egalitarian vision of a new Israel founded on unconditioned trust in God; on the free sharing of the physical supports of life, especially with the poor, the marginal, and the expendable; on prayer; on mutual forgiveness even of one’s enemies; and on non-violence KENOSIS: the Son of God’s free self-emptying in becoming human and suffering crucifixion KENOTIC CHRISTOLOGY: a Christology which interprets the meaning of the divine self-emptying which occurred in the incarnation LAMB OF GOD: a Johannine title of Jesus which designates Him as the victim of a covenant sacrifice, as the suffering servant of God, and as the victorious messiah LAW: in the metaphysics of experience, a general tendency LIBERATION THEOLOGY: a theology which takes as its starting point social, economic, and political injustice and which invokes gospel values to overcome such injustice
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LIBERTY: in a metaphysics of experience, responsible human freedom; freedom to live for the beautiful, the good, and the true LINKAGE: a literary device employed by an evangelist in order to unify into a coherent narrative anecdotes about Jesus ALLUSIVE: the literary use of repetition in order to interrelate different parts of a gospel DRAMATIC: the way in which Jesus relates to identifiable constituencies in a gospel narrative THEMATIC: the development of a theological idea through different incidents in a gospel LOGIC: a normative account of the way the human mind ought to think KANTIAN: transcendental logic, which recognizes only deductive inference and which offers an a priori account of the structure of human subjectivity LOGICAL: inferentially self-consistent; lacking internal contradictions in meaning LOGICAL ADEQUACY: in pragmatic logic, the ability of a theory to interpret all relevant data LOGICAL APPLICABILITY: in pragmatic logic, the ability of a theory to interpret some relevant data LOGICAL COHERENCE: the characteristic of a theory whose key terms remain unintelligible apart from one another LOGOS: the Greek term for word; as a Christological term, a title of the incarnate second person of the trinity which portrays Him as a divine communication LOGOS-ANTHROPOS CHRISTOLOGY: a Christology which claims that the incarnate Son of God possesses a complete humanity which consists of both a body and a soul LOGOS-SARX CHRISTOLOGY: a heterodox Christology which claims that in the incarnation the divine Logos replaces the human soul in Jesus’ humanity with the result that the second person of the trinity in becoming incarnate possesses a human body but not a human soul LOW CHRISTOLOGY: a Christology which begins by reflecting on Jesus’ humanity but which sometimes fails to offer an adequate account of His divinity LUXURY: a possession which enhances class status MAGNIFICAT: Mary’s prayer of praise to God in Luke’s infancy narrative MARIOLOGY: a theological account of Mary as mother of God MATTER: physical reality; in Aristotelian philosophy, the pure potency for substantial change MEANING: in a metaphysics of experience, evaluation viewed as the intentional grasp of significance MEDIATION: the establishment of a relationship between or among distinct realities MEDIATOR: a go-between MELIORISM: an ethical system which sanctions those choices which best approximate a moral ideal MEMORY: the ability of recall past experiences
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MESSIAH: the anointed one; in Jewish apocalyptic theology one anointed by God to effect the deliverance and salvation of Israel MESSIANIC AGE: in apocalyptic theology, the era of peace and prosperity resulting from the victory of a messiah MESSIANIC SECRET: in Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ unsuccessful attempt to conceal his messianic identity MESSIANISM: belief in the coming of a messiah METAPHOR: the intuitive grasp of analogy through the verbal identification of two partially similar realities METAPHYSICS: an organized account of reality in general; a theory of the whole of reality which develops systematically a root metaphor for Being METAPHYSICS OF EXPERIENCE: a theory of the whole which takes experience as a root metaphor for the whole of reality METHOD: a set of recurrent and related operations yielding cumulative and progressive results MIAHYPOSTATIC THEOLOGY: an early heterodox form of theology which discovers only one subsistent reality in the Christian deity MIA PHYSIS: the Greek phrase meaning “one nature”; as a Christological term, Cyril of Alexandria’s unusual term for the person of the incarnate Word MIRACLE: an event which defies explanation, which occurs in a religious context, and which invites faith in God’s saving intervention in human history MISSION: the sending of one person by another; in trinitarian theology, the historical sending of the second and third persons of the trinity MODEL: a representation of some reality MONOPHYSITISM: Apollonarianism; the heterodox Christological doctrine which taught that the divinity and humanity of the incarnate Word blend into a third nature neither fully divine nor fully human MONOTHELITE CONTROVERSY: debate about whether Jesus possessed both a divine and a human will MORALITY: a code of conduct which measures choices by ideals, principles, and realities which make ultimate and absolute claims on the human conscience PERSONAL: a code of conduct which invokes rights and duties in resolving interpersonal conflicts PUBLIC: a code of conduct which measures institutional justice by the common good MULTIPLE ATTESTATION, CRITERION OF: a principle for validating historically words and actions of Jesus which claims that, when different New Testament authors bear witness to the fact that Jesus said or did something, He probably did, especially if the authors in question represent independent historical traditions about Jesus MYSTERY: whatever eludes explanation or cognitive comprehension MYSTAGOGY: the last phase of the catechumenate which instructs newly baptized Christians in the demands of Christian living MYTH: a story which creates an adult world of value NARCISSISM: morbid self-preoccupation NARRATIVE: a tale told by a story-teller to an audience about a world
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NATURAL: in a metaphysics of experience, the character of an experience which responds legitimately to created value only and which ignores the historical self-revelation of God NATURAL LAW: a tendency operative in the cosmos NATURE: in philosophy, a reality’s essence viewed as the source of its activity; in theology, created reality untransformed by saving, supernatural grace NATIONAL SECURITY: an ideology which claims that a government has the right to do anything at all which secures its own interests NEO-ARIANISM: the heterodox tendency in contemporary Christology to portray Jesus as a graced human person NEO-COLONIALISM: the economic domination of one nation by another or by transnational corporations NEO-ORTHODOXY: a movement in Protestant theology which rejects metaphysical thinking and which recognizes only the analogy of faith as a legitimate theological method NEO-PLATONISM: a school of Platonism which fused middle Platonic philosophy and contemplative religious impulses NESTORIANISM: the heterodox denial that Mary is the mother of God NOMINALISM: the philosophical denial of real generality CLASSICAL: the reduction of universal concepts to mere spoken words and of reality to concrete sensibles CONCEPTUAL: the restriction of real generality to conceptual universals which exist only in human subjectivity NORM: that which measures something else NORMATIVE SCIENCES: philosophical disciplines which reflect on the way in which one ought to respond to reality aesthetically, ethically, and logically NOTE: in theology, a category which assigns to a particular belief a degree of verifiability NOTION: a conception; in trinitarian theology, a predicate which designates a relationship between divine persons NUNC DIMITTIS: in Luke’s infancy narrative, the prayer of Simeon in response to his seeing the messiah OBJECTIFICATION: the attempt to portray reality as it exists in itself instead of portraying it as inherently relational OMNIPOTENCE: supreme power OMNISCIENCE: supremely perfect knowledge ONTOLOGICAL: metaphysical; pertaining to a theory of the whole ONTOLOGISM: the philosophical doctrine which claims that created minds have immediate access to the ideas in the mind of God OPERATIONAL: pertaining to activity OPTIMISM: the tendency to focus on good and pleasant realities rather than on evil and unpleasant realities ORALITY: the characteristic of a culture which communicates through the spoken rather than through the written word PRIMARY: the way language functions in purely oral cultures SECONDARY: the way orality functions in literate cultures ORDINATION: sacramental incorporation into Church leadership
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ORTHOPRAXIS: decisive behavior which conforms to appropriate norms ORTHODOXY: shared religious beliefs which conform to the norms of truth and adequacy in interpreting the historical self-revelation of God ORIGINAL SIN: the totality of human sinfulness in the experience of the unbaptized minus one’s own personal sins viewed as standing within experience and conditioning it in both conscious and unconscious ways OUSIA: a Greek term for being; as a technical trinitarian term, the reality common to the three members of the trinity PANENTHEISM: the doctrine that created reality differs from God but exists in Him PANTHEISM: the identification of all created reality with God PARABLE: a comparison, which, when expressed in narrative form, seeks to subvert a familiar world in order to open its audience to an alternative way of viewing reality PARADIGM: in grammar, a list of inflectional forms; in the philosophy of science, an organized way of asking and answering questions which invokes an appropriate method, appropriate instrumentation, appropriate models, and appropriate concepts for dealing with a problem; in morality, a concrete norm PARADIGM SHIFT: the abandonment of one organized rational way of asking and answering questions for another PARADIGMATIC: uniquely binding PAROUSIA: Jesus’ second coming in divine judgment in order to vindicate those who believe in Him PASCHAL MYSTERY: Jesus’ death, resurrection, and mission of the divine Breath PASSION: the affective perception of interpersonal relationships PENTECOST: literally, the fiftieth day; a Jewish harvest festival during which the Breath of the risen Christ created the Church through a outpouring of Her charisms PERCEPT: a concrete, sensible reality viewed as an object of knowledge PERFECTIONISM: unrealistic religious or moral rigorism PERICHORESIS: a Greek term designating the existence of one reality in another PERSON: an autonomous, subsistent reality enjoying continuity of life and capable of entering into responsible social relationships with other realities like itself PERSONAL MORAL CONVERSION: the decision to take adult responsibility for respecting the rights and duties of others PESSIMISM: the tendency to focus on evil and suffering rather than on good, pleasant, beneficial realities PHANTASM: in scholastic philosophy, a term for an image in the imagination PHARISEE: the member of a Jewish sect which resisted the Hellenization of Jewish religious faith by requiring that Jews observe not only the Torah but pious oral traditions as well PHENOMENOLOGY: the organized description of what appears in experience without attempting to distinguish between reality and illusion PHILOSOPHY: critical reflection on lived human experience
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PHYSIS: the Greek term for nature PLATONISM: the school of philosophy founded by Plato in the fourth century b.c. which divides reality into an unchanging, spiritual realm of ideas and ideals and a material realm of constant change and illusion MIDDLE: a school of Platonism which located ideas and ideals in a quasi-divine intellect PLAUSIBLE: the character of a belief supported by some evidence without that evidence ruling out other possible or even probable interpretations PLEROMA: a Pauline term for the extension of salvation in Christ to the material universe through the mediation of the Church; in Gnosticism, the realm of angelic and demonic creation; in Stoicism, the cosmos PLURALISM: the characteristic or a situation which permits of a variety of interpretative approaches and evaluations PNEUMATOLOGY: a more or less organized account of the Holy Breath, the third person of the trinity POLICY: an institutionally sanctioned practice POSSESSION, DEMONIC: the seizure of a human person by an evil spirit which thereafter controls that person’s bodily movements, including speech POSSIBLE: the character of a belief which could conceivably enjoy verifiability despite the fact that little evidence supports it POSSIBILITY: that which could occur; an idea or ideal capable of real or actual exemplification POST-MODERNISM: a vaguely organized movement in contemporary western thought which seeks to advance beyond the presuppositions of modern culture, often characterized by the denial of any subject of discourse and by extreme skepticism concerning linguistic meaning POTENCY: as a technical philosophical term, the capacity for actualization PRAGMATIC LOGIC: a theory of inference which holds that the deductive operational consequences of any abduction define the whole of its meaning PRAXIS: decisive activity which seeks to transform reality, especially oppressive social institutions PRE-CATECHUMENATE: the first phase in the instruction of candidates for Christian baptism which seeks to introduce them to the Christian community and to evoke from them an initial Christian conversion PRECONSCIOUS: capable of recall PRE-EXISTENCE: a technical Christological term for the mode of being enjoyed by the second person of the trinity prior to the incarnation PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR THE POOR: a principle of Christian ethics which insists that in the resolution of disputed questions of public morality the needs of the socially, economically, and politically disadvantaged take precedence over those of the advantaged and affluent PREHENSION: in Whiteheadean philosophy, a concrete fact of relatedness which includes a subject, its initial datum (or what it prehends at the beginning of its processing), the subject’s objective datum (or perspective on the universe), its negative prehensions (which distinguish it from other prehensions), and its subjective form (or way of prehending the universe) PREJUDICE: an opinion formed without sufficient attention to the facts
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PRE-OPERATIONAL: in developmental psychology, a characteristic of the cognitive behavior of children who have yet to develop the capacity for abstract rational thought PRESENTATIONAL IMMEDIACY: in a metaphysics of experience, the way in which an evaluative response makes the mind present to its world and the world to it PRETERNATURAL: beyond the powers of created nature PRIEST: one who mediates between God and humanity PRINCIPLE: a rule of conduct derived from an ideal PRINCIPLE OF ALTERNATION: in logic, a rule which asserts that the mind should focus by turns on the investigation of particular problems and the readjustment of its metaphysical theory of the whole in the light of the results of a focused investigation PROBABLE: the character of a belief which the preponderance of the evidence favors without, however, establishing its certitude PROCESS THEOLOGY: an account of God which equates all reality with change and development PROPHET: one who speaks for God in summoning a community to repentance and to hope PROPORTIONALITY: balance, symmetry, harmonious relationship PROSOPON: a Greek term for the mask worn by an actor in classical Greek theater; as a theological term, prosopon has many different meanings, some orthodox, some heterodox PRUDENCE: deliberation ruled by sound moral principles PSYCHIC CONVERSION: Robert Doran’s term for the kind of conversion which transforms human affectivity; ordering disordered affectivity in the light of sound insights generated by intellectual conversion PSYCHOLOGY: the scientific study of human behavior EMPIRICAL: the scientific study of human behavior which measures its hypotheses against the behavior of control groups DEVELOPMENTAL: a branch of empirical psychology which argues that human behavior develops in predictable stages SOCIAL: the scientific study of how individual persons and institutions interact PURGATORY: a time of moral and religious purification after death QUALITY: in a metaphysics of experience, an instance of particular suchness QUESTS FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS: the rational attempt to validate words and actions of Jesus as authentic (the new quest) and to situate them in the context in which He lived (the third quest) RACISM: prejudice and bigotry directed toward the members of a particular race RCIA: The Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults; the restored catechumenate REACTION: a way of responding to reality CIRCULAR: in developmental psychology, an activity whose pleasurable character tends to motivate its repetition PRIMARY: in developmental psychology, an infantile circular reaction which focuses on the infant’s own body
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SECONDARY: in developmental psychology, an infantile circular reaction which focuses on objects other than the infant’s own body TERTIARY: in developmental psychology, an infantile circular reaction which explores the child’s environment REAL: in a metaphysics of experience, pertaining to the mode of existence of a tendency REALISM: in philosophy, a defense of the mind’s ability to grasp reality in opposition to subjectivism, or a defence of the existence of real generality in opposition to nominalism, or the simultaneous defence of both positions REDACTION CRITICISM: the interpretation of a text in the light of its editing REDEMPTION: reacquisition; as a theological term, salvation viewed as the divine reacquisition of a religious backslider REFORMED SUBJECTIVIST PRINCIPLE: an axiom of Whiteheadean philosophy which asserts that apart from the experiencing of subjects there is nothing, nothing, nothing, bare nothingness REJECTION AND EXECUTION, CRITERION OF: a norm for authenticating historically words and actions of Jesus which asserts that any historical portrait of Jesus must offer a plausible account of why He suffered condemnation and crucifixion RELATION: the ordering of one reality to another CONCEPTUAL: intentionality FACTUAL: interaction VECTORAL: tendency RELATIVISM: the philosophical denial of binding, universal norms for human behavior and cognition RELIGION: an organized way of relating to God REPENTANCE: the conscious repudiation of one’s former sinfulness RESEARCH: in theology, a functional specialty which provides other theologians with the tools which they need in order to think theologically RESPONSIBILITY: accountability to oneself, to others, and ultimately to God RESPONSIBLE, PERSONAL FREEDOM: the liberty to choose the beautiful, the true and the good which results from an integral five-fold conversion RESULT: in pragmatic logic, the descriptive identification of data in need of explanation RESURRECTION: total transformation in God after death REVELATION: in theology, God’s historical self-disclosure REVERSION: a technical term in Whiteheadean philosophy for the experience of novel possibility by prehending an eternal object in the mind of God RHETORIC: the study and practice of the art of persuasion RIGHT: a personal need which makes legitimate claims on another person or persons ROOT METAPHOR: in philosophy, an intuitive grasp of analogy which serves as a conceptual model for Being in general RUAH: the Hebrew word for breath or wind in motion; in Christian theology a Hebrew term for the third person of the trinity RULE: in pragmatic logic, the conceptual formulation of a real law or tendency SACERDOTAL: pertaining to the priesthood
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SACERDOTALISM: the theological assimilation of Christian clergy to the Jewish levitical priesthood in a manner which separates them from the laity and endows the ordained with a superior, sacral status SACRAMENT: most broadly, an event which simultaneously reveals and conceals the reality of God; in sacramental theology, an official act of new covenant worship which expresses the shared faith of the Christian community, which therefore requires a minister sanctioned by that same community, and which challenges Christians assembled in worship to committed faith in the paschal mystery and in the triune God which the paschal mystery reveals SACRIFICE: a ritual offering SADDUCEES: a religious sect in first-century Judaism which fostered obedience to the Torah but which, in contrast to the Pharisees, denied bodily resurrection, the existence of angels, and did not regard unwritten Jewish religious practices as binding SALVATION: in theology, the state of standing in a life-giving relationship with the triune God SAMARITAN: an inhabitant of Samaria, a province of first-century Palestine between Galilee and Judea; in the first century, orthodox Jews tended to regard Samaritans as heretics, enemies, and Roman collaborators SANHEDRIN: the supreme governing council of Palestinian Jews, composed of elders, priests, and scribes SATAN: the Biblical personification of all those forces which oppose God and put those who believe in God to the test; in the New Testament, the personification of anti-Christ SAVIOR: a rescuer; as a theological term, one who puts another in a life-giving relationship with God SCHEMA: in developmental psychology, a technical psychological term for an acquired cognitive habit SCHOLARSHIP: systematic study which eschews the technological instrumentation and precise mathematical measurement of the empirical sciences SCIENTIA BEATA: in theology, a Latin term for the special transformation of Jesus’ human self-awareness effected by the incarnation SCRIBE: in the ancient world, a member of the literate class charged with making and keeping records SECOND COMING, THE: the parousia, Jesus’ return in divine judgment in order to vindicate those who believe in Him SECULARISM: an ethos which either subordinates religious values and realities to values and realities which have nothing to do with religion or which replaces religious realities and values with non religious ones SELF: in the metaphysics of experience, an autonomously functioning tendency SEPTUAGINT: literally, “seventy”; the name of the Greek translation of the Old Testament made in Alexandria, allegedly by seventy-two scribes, before the Christian era, probably in the third century b.c. SENSATION: initial perception of environmental impact on a conscious animal SEVEN DEADLY SINS: pride, covetousness, lust, anger, gluttony, envy, and sloth SEXISM: discrimination and oppression for reasons of gender
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SIGNIFICANCE: in the metaphysics of experience, the intelligibility of events and of symbolic communications SIN: a deliberate violation of the will of God ORIGINAL: situational sin abstracted from one’s own personal sins and viewed as standing within experience and conditioning it in conscious and unconscious ways PERSONAL: an individual’s acts of disobedience to the divine will SINLESSNESS: perfect obedience to the divine will SOCIO-POLITICAL CONVERSION: the decision to take responsibility for seeking to end institutional oppression through commitment to some just cause of universal human significance SOUL: an animating principle SOTERIOLOGY: a more or less organized account of God’s saving activity in human history SPIRIT: in philosophy, immaterial reality SPIRIT CHRISTOLOGY: an explanation of the person and ministry of Jesus which takes into account His relationship to the divine Breath STRATEGY: a concrete plan for implementing a policy or principle STRICTLY NORMATIVE THINKING: critical reflection of one’s own behavior in the light of ideals and principles which one has appropriated and interiorized SUBJECT: in a metaphysics of experience, an emerging, experiencing self; in substance philosophy, an underlying reality SUBJECTIVISM: the philosophical belief that one can experience only one’s own subjectivity SUBJECTIVITY: the evaluative responses of an experiencing self contrasted with the realities that self experiences SUBSISTENCE: in a metaphysics of experience, autonomous functioning SUBSTANCE: in philosophy, that which exists in itself and not in anything else as a subject of inhesion SUPERNATURAL: that which exceeds the power of created nature; in theology, pertaining to the realm of saving grace SUPERNATURAL EXISTENTIAL: an alleged a priori, graced expansion of the formal object of the agent intellect which endows it with a spontaneous longing for the beatific vision and for the God revealed in Jesus Christ SUPREME: greater than all possible conception SYMBOL: in the metaphysics of experience, whatever mediates the symbolic grasp of significance COMMUNICATION: an evaluative response expressed by one mind to another through decisive activity EXPRESSIVE: a significant event INTERPRETATIVE: an unexpressed evaluative response SYNECHISM: the philosophical assertion of continuity in development SYNERGY: simultaneous, collaborative activity SYNTHETIC: pertaining to the perception of relationship and of unified wholes
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SYSTEMATICS: in theology, a functional specialty which examines relationships among sound theological doctrines TENDENCY: in a metaphysics of experience, a general law in reality; a habitual orientation to decide or evaluate in a particular way THEANDRIC: combining divine and human traits THEISM: belief in the reality of God THEOLOGY: a more or less organized account of God MEDIATING: the theological retrieval of a religious tradition; the functional specialties of research, interpretation, history, and dialectics MEDIATED: the theological reformulation of a religious tradition; the functional specialties of foundations, doctrines, systematics, and communications THEOTOKOS: a Greek term meaning “mother of God”; in theology, the doctrine that Mary is the mother of the second person of the trinity THERAPEUTIC CHRISTOLOGY: an interpretation of the person and mission of Jesus in the light of the psychological study of human behavior THOMISM: philosophical and theological ways of thinking inspired by the thought Thomas Aquinas TIME: the present transformation of a past into a future CLOCK: measured motion REAL: in a metaphysics of experience, the present movement of experience from a past toward a future TRANSACTION: decisions which put autonomous selves into social relationship TRANSNATIONAL CORPORATION: a business which practices international capitalism TRANSCENDENTAL THOMISM: the reformulation of the thought of Thomas Aquinas in the light of Kantian logic and the turn to the subject TRANSDUCTIVE: in developmental psychology, pre-rational, intuitive thinking TRANSMUTATION: change relationally, aesthetically, and organically conceived TRANSVALUATION: the re-evaluation of a reality, actuality, or possibility by transposing it from one frame of reference to another TRINITY: three persons in one God; the Christian deity ECONOMIC: the revelation of the triune God in history IMMANENT: the reality of the triune God in its transcendence of space and time TRIUMPHALISM: a view of the Catholic Church which presents it alone as the one, true Church and which de-emphasizes or denies its flaws and sinfulness TRUTH: the correct interpretation of reality TURN TO COMMUNITY, THE: a methodological shift from preoccupation with the individual subject to concern with the way in which persons interrelate socially and institutionally TURN TO EXPERIENCE, THE: the systematic use of “experience” as central category in one’s account of reality
Glossary
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TURN TO THE SUBJECT, THE: critical reflection on human intentionality which typically invokes Kantian logic ULTIMATE: final; in ethics, the characteristic of some reality or value worth not only living for but, if necessary, worth dying for; in Whiteheadean philosophy, universally predicable UNCERTAIN: in logic, unsupported by evidence which would force a judgment one way or the other UNCONSCIOUS: lacking awareness UNIQUE: incapable of reduplication UTOPIA: the title of a book by Saint Thomas Moore describing an ideal society; an unrealizable ideal world VAGUE: the character of a belief which one can neither verify or falsify until one first clarifies its meaning VALIDITY: in logic, the characteristic of thinking which follows sound methodological principles; the characteristic of a verified inference or belief VALUE: desirability; in a metaphysics of experience, a particular mode of perception VULGATE, THE: the Latin translation of the Bible made by St. Jerome VIRTUAL INFINITY: the alleged ability of a finite power of operation to aspire to infinite satisfaction WILL: in philosophy, a spiritual power to make decisions WOMANIST THEOLOGY: a strain in feminism usually promoted by women of color which criticizes the ethnic and class bias of white feminists WORLD RELIGION: an organized way of relating to God professed by a large number of people of different racial, national, and cultural backgrounds WORLD SOUL: in philosophy, the animating principle of the universe
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INDEX OF JOHANNINE PERICOPES THE GOSPEL OF JOHN The Prologue: Jn 1:1-18, 13-24, 25-27, 34, 38, 56, 60, 73, 93, 102, 129, 154, 183, 206, 209 n.16, 212 The Witness of John the Baptizer: Jn 1:19-34, 99, 26-32, 38, 85-86, 102, 113, 152, 162, 206, 209 n. 16, 212, 218 The Call of the First Disciples: Jn 1:35-51, 32, 38-39, 86-87, 95-96, 99, 131, 153-156, 184-185, 218 The Book of Signs: The First Miracle at Cana: Water into Wine: Jn 2:1-12, 97-99, 106, 153, 158, 180, 193-197, 212, 219 The Cleansing of the Temple: Jn 2:13-25, 39-40, 56, 106, 117-119, 156-157, 173 n. 24, 196, 198, 209 n.16, 218 The Meeting with Nicodemus: Jn 3:1-21, 26, 35, 37-43, 46-47, 73, 86, 102103, 112, 131, 152, 168, 185, 196-197, 209-210, 216 The Baptizer’s Last Witness to Jesus: Jn 3:22-36, 99, 32-35, 41-43, 56, 157, 195-196, 206, 209 n. 16 Jesus in Samaria: Jn 4:1-42, 41, 43, 46, 87, 101-102, 106, 113, 131, 152, 158161, 185, 196-197, 205-206, 209 n. 16, 212, 218 The Second Miracle at Cana: The Cure from a Distance: Jn 4:43-54, 168, 193, 195, 197-198, 209 n.6 The Sabbath Cure: 5:1-18, 45-47, 86, 106, 114-115, 119, 148 Jesus’ Discourse on His Sabbath Cure: Jn 5:19-47, 44-49, 62, 114-115, 198, 203-205 Jesus and the Father: Jn 5:19-30, 152, 198, 210 The Witnesses to Jesus: Jn 5:31-47, 36, 48, 54, 198, 205, 210 The Miracle of the Loaves: Jn 6:1-15, 131, 148, 160-161, 185,, 193, 198, 219 Jesus Walks on the Water: Jn 6:16-21, 56, 161, 208 The Bread of Life Discourse: Jn 6:22-71, 105, 109, 148-149, 152, 204-205 Opening Dialogue: Jn 6:19-34, 50-51, 94, 148-149, 160 The Bread of Wisdom: Jn 6:35-50, 48, 51-52, 107-108, 210-212 The Eucharistic Bread: Jn 6:51-66, 44, 53, 86, 108, 149, 161-162, 196, 210211 Peter’s Testimony: Jn 6:67-71, 162, 218 The Feast of Tabernacles: Jn 7:1-59, 41, 43, 106, 149-151, 193, 197 Jesus Goes to Jerusalem for the Feast of Tabernacles: Jn 7:1-10, 113, 119120 Disagreements about Jesus: The Debate Opens: Jn 7:11-30, 48, 54, 73, 104105, 108-109, 120-121, 149, 205, 210-212, 218 Jesus Predicts His Departure and the Gift of Living Water: Jn 7:31-39, 8788, 113, 121, 196, 205-206, 210-211, 216, 218 The Disagreements Deepen: Jn 7:40-52, 109, 112-113, 121, 137, 180, 205, 210, 218
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The Woman Caught in Adultery: Jn 7:53-8:11, 112-114, 150, 205 Jesus Proclaims Himself Light of the World: Jn 8:12-20, 55, 61, 102, 105, 114, 137, 205-206, 210-212 The Unbelieving “Jews”: Jn 8:21-30, 48,56-57, 63, 79, 102, 103, 105, 109, 121, 137, 198-199, 205-208, 210-211, 215, Jesus, Abraham, and the Father: Jn 8:31-59, 44, 48,58-60, 62-63, 104-105, 109, 143, 151-152, 162-164, 205-206, 208, 210-211 The Cure of the Man Born Blind: Jn 9:1-41, 46, 61-63, 102-103, 111, 114-115, 163-164, 193, 199-200, 202, 210 Jesus, the Shepherd of Israel: Jn 10: 1-21, 64, 104, 188-189, 210-211 The Feast of Dedication: Jn 10:22-42, 36,46, 63-66, 102, 105, 121, 164, 193, 207, 211, 218 The Raising of Lazarus: Jn 11:1-44, 66-67, 102, 115-116, 121, 158, 164, 193, 212, 218 Jesus Condemned to Death: Jn 11:45-54, 121-123, 150, 164 The Last Passover Approaches: Jn 11:55-57, 106, 115, 123 The Anointing at Bethany: Jn 12:1-11, 111, 123, 150, 153, 164-165 The Triumphal Entry: Jn 12:12-19, 102, 116, 120, 131, 150, 164, 166, 219 The Greeks Seek Jesus: Jn 12:20-36, 41, 67-69, 72, 101, 103, 150-151, 160, 173, 180, 198, 212, 214, 218-219 Jesus’ Rejection and Final Testimony: Jn 12:37-50, 46, 48, 69-71, 73, 102 The Book of Glory: The Foot Washing: Jn 13:1-20, 71, 102-103, 105, 167-170, 172, 198-199, 217 Jesus Foretells Judas’s Treachery: Jn 13:21-32, 38, 48, 59, 61, 72, 93, 101, 170, 173, 179, 217, 219 The Last Discourse, I: Jn 13:33-14:31, 124, 169-178, 205, 213-217 The New Commandment: Jn 13:33-38, 170-173, 179. 215 The Way, Truth, and Life: Jn 14:1-21, 44, 47, 72-75, 102, 152-154, 173175, 177, 177 n.23, 179, 213, 215-217 The Coming of the Other Witness: Jn 14:22-31, 47, 64, 71, 75, 83, 89, 92, 102, 152, 175-176, 178-179, 213, 216 The Last Discourse, II: Jn 15:1-17:26, 44, 58, 109 n. 6, 153, 179, 213-217 The Vine and the Branches: Jn 15:1-17, 64, 75-77, 109 n.6, 152-154, 178, 214-217 The Hostility of the World: Jn 15:18-16:4a, 63, 77, 88-90, 103, 105, 126, 176, 178, 213, 216-217 The Testimony of the Other Witness: Jn 16:4b-15, 26, 41, 47, 77, 83, 9091, 102-103, 154, 176-177, 177 n. 27, 178, 214-216 Jesus’ Return and Victory: Jn 16:16-33, 77-78, 90, 102-103, 124, 155, 164, 178, 215-217 Jesus’ Priestly Prayer: Jn 17:1-26, 66, 78-81, 102-103, 124, 152, 154, 162, 178-179, 213, 215-217, 219 Jesus Arrested in the Garden: Jn 18:1-11, 82, 102, 105, 116, 123-125, 133, 136, 181, 208 Jesus before Annas: Peter’s Denial: Jn 18:12-27, 93, 102, 106, 124-126, 164, 179-180, 208
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Jesus Tried by Pilate: Jn 18:28-19:16, 37, 44, 82, 103-104, 106, 126-140, 166, 197-198, 218-219 The Crucifixion: Jn 19:17-42, 140-147 The Charge on the Cross: Jn 19:17-22, 106, 128-129, 140, 152 Jesus’ Garments Divided: Jn 19:23-24, 140-144 Jesus Gives His Mother to the Beloved Disciple: Jn 19:25-27, 93, 96-99, 142, 158, 164 Jesus Dies: Jn 19:28-30, 90, 94, 140, 142-144 The Sign of Blood and Water: Jn 19:31-37, 94, 129, 140, 157, 173 n. 14, 196 Joseph and Nicodemus Bury Jesus: Jn 19:38-42, 43, 106, 112, 136, 180-181 The Resurrection: The Disciples See Jesus: Jn 20:1-31, 41, 160 The Beloved Disciples Sees Jesus: Jn 20:1-10, 96, 181, 183, 198, 200 Mary Sees Jesus: Jn 20:11-18, 124, 158, 181-183 The Ten See Jesus: Jn 20:19-23, 63, 73-74, 82-83, 85, 87-88, 91-92, 103, 166, 177 n.27, 178, 183, 186 n. 41, 196-197 Thomas Sees Jesus: 20:24-29, 96, 181, 183-184, 199 The Conclusion: Jn 20:30-31, 96 Appendix: Apparition in Galilee: Jn 21:1-23, 90, 94, 167, 179-180, 185-189, 215 Second Conclusion: Jn 21:24-25, 95, 99 THE FIRST LETTER OF JOHN: Introduction: The Word Made Flesh: 1 Jn 1:1-4, 21-23 n.14 Breaking with Sin, I: 1 Jn 1:5-2:2, 81-82, 88, 176 n. 26, 200-201 n.7 Keeping the Commandments: 1 Jn 2:3-11, 173-174 n. 24, 176-177 n.27 Detachment from the World: 1 Jn 2:12-17, 104-105 n. 2, 174 n. 24177 n.27, 185, 185-186 n.41 The Enemies of Christ, I: 1 Jn 2:18-29, 10-11 n. 2, 97-98 n. 76, 109 n. 6, 161163, 168-169 n. 21, 177 n.27 Living as God’s Children: 1 Jn 3:1-2, 109-110 n. 6, 185-186 n. 41 Breaking with Sin, II: 1 Jn 3:3-9, 86, 105 n.6, 109-110 n.6, 169 n. 21, 200-210 n. 7 The Commandments: The Law of Love: 1 Jn 3:10-24, 168-169 n. 21, 171-172 n. 23, 173-175 n. 24 The Enemies of Christ, 1 Jn 4: 1-6, 10-11 n.2 The Centrality of Love: 1Jn 4:7-5:4, 173 n.24, 174-175 n.25, 185 n.41 The Centrality of Faith: 1 Jn 5:5-12, 41, 144-145 n. 39 Conclusion: 1 Jn 5:13-21, 168-169 n. 21, 176 n. 26, 185 n. 41 THE SECOND LETTER OF JOHN: 2 Jn 1-13, 10, 21-23 n. 13, 163, 173-174 n. 24, 174-175 n. 24, 185, 185-186 n. 41 THE THIRD LETTER OF JOHN: 3 Jn 1-15, 10, 174-175 n. 25
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Marquette Studies in Philosophy Andrew Tallon, Editor Standing orders accepted All books available as eBook Harry Klocker, S.J. William of Ockham and the Divine Freedom. ISBN 0-87462-001-5. 141 pages, pp., index. $15. Second edition, reviewed, corrected and with a new Introduction. Margaret Monahan Hogan. Finality and Marriage. ISBN 0-87462-600-5. 122 pp. Paper. $15. Gerald A. McCool, S.J. The Neo-Thomists. ISBN 0-87462-601-1. 175 pp. Paper. $20. Max Scheler. Ressentiment. ISBN 0-87462-602-1. 172 pp. Paper. $20. New Introduction by Manfred S. Frings. Knud Løgstrup. Metaphysics. Translated by Dr. Russell Dees ISBN 0-87462-603-X. Volume I, 342 pp. Paper. $35. ISBN 0-67462-607-2. Volume II, 402 pp. Paper. $40. Two volume set priced at $70. Howard P. Kainz. Democracy and the “Kingdom of God” . ISBN 0-87462-610-2. 250 pp. Paper. $25. Manfred Frings. Max Scheler. A Concise Introduction into the World of a Great Thinker ISBN 0-87462-605-6. 200 pp. Paper. $20. Second ed., rev. New Foreword by the author. G. Heath King. Existence Thought Style: Perspectives of a Primary Relation, portrayed through the work of Søren Kierkegaard. English edition by Timothy Kircher. ISBN 087462-606-4. 187 pp., index. Paper. $20. Augustine Shutte. Philosophy for Africa. ISBN 0-87462-608-0. 184 pp. Paper. $20. Paul Ricoeur. Key to Husserl’s Ideas I. Translated by Bond Harris and Jacqueline Bouchard Spurlock.With a Foreword by Pol Vandevelde. ISBN 0-87462-609-9. 176 pp., index. Paper. $20. Karl Jaspers. Reason and Existenz. Afterword by Pol Vandevelde. ISBN 0-87462-611-0. 180 pp. Paper. $20. Gregory R. Beabout. Freedom and Its Misuses: Kierkegaard on Anxiety and Despair ISBN 0-87462-612-9. 192 pp., index. Paper. $20. Manfred S. Frings. The Mind of Max Scheler. The First Comprehensive Guide Based on the Complete Works ISBN 0-87462-613-7. 328 pp. Paper. $35. Claude Pavur. Nietzsche Humanist. ISBN 0-87462-614-5. 214 pp., index. Paper. $25. Pierre Rousselot. Intelligence: Sense of Being, Faculty of God. Translation of L’Intellectualismse de saint Thomas with a Foreword and Notes by Andrew Tallon. ISBN 0-87462-6153. 236 pp., index. Paper. $25. Immanuel Kant. Critique of Practical Reason. Translation by H.W. Cassirer. Edited by G. Heath King and Ronald Weitzman and with an Introduction by D.M. MacKinnon. ISBN 0-87462-616-1. Paper. 218 pp. $20. Gabriel Marcel’s Perspectives on The Broken World. Translated by Katharine Rose Hanley. The Broken World, A Four-Act Play followed by “Concrete Approaches to Investigating the Ontological Mystery.” Six orignal illustrations by Stephen Healy. Commentaries by Henri Gouhier and Marcel Belay. Eight Appendices. Introduction by Ralph McInerny. Bibliographies. ISBN 0-87462-617-X. paperbound. 242 pp. $25. Karl-Otto Apel. Towards a Transformation of Philosophy. New Fore-word by Pol Vandevelde.ISBN 0-87462-619-6. Paper. 308 pp. $35. Gene Fendt. Is Hamlet a Religious Drama? As Essay on a Question in Kierkegaard. ISBN 087462-620-X. Paper. 264 pp. $30.
Marquette Studies in Theology Andrew Tallon, Editor Standing orders accepted All books available as eBook Frederick M. Bliss. Understanding Reception. ISBN 0-87462-625-0. 180 pp., index, bibliography. Paper. $20. Martin Albl, Paul Eddy, Renée Mirkes, OSF, Editors. Directions in NewTestament Methods ISBN 0-87462-626-9. 129 pp. Annotated bibliography. Paper. $15. Foreword by William S. Kurz. Robert M. Doran. Subject and Psyche. ISBN 0-87462-627-7. 285 pp. Paper. $25. Second ed., rev. With a new Foreword by the author. Kenneth Hagen, editor. The Bible in the Churches. How Various Christians Interpret the Scriptures ISBN 0-87462-628-5. 218 pp. Paper. $25. Third, revised editon. New chapter on Reformed tradition. Index. Jamie T. Phelps, O.P., Editor. Black and Catholic: The Challenge and Gift of Black Folk. Contributions of African American Experience and Thought to Catholic Theology. ISBN 0-87462-629-3. 182 pp. Index. Paper. $20. Foreword by Patrick Carey. Karl Rahner. Spirit in the World. New, Corrected Translation by William Dych. Foreword by Francis Fiorenza. ISBN 0-87462-630-7. COMPUTER DISK VERSION. $10. Available on 3.5 inch disk; specify Macintosh or Windows. By a special arrangement with Continuum Publishing Co. Karl Rahner. Hearer of the Word. New Translation of the First Edition by Joseph Donceel. Edited and with anIntroduction by Andrew Tallon. By a special arrangement with Continuum Publishing Co. ISBN 0-87462-631-5. COMPUTER DISK VERSION. $10. Available on 3.5 inch disk; specify Macintosh or Windows. Robert M. Doran. Theological Foundations. Vol. 1 Intentionality and Psyche. ISBN 087462-632-3. 484 pp. Paper. $50. Robert M. Doran. Theological Foundations. Vol. 2 Theology and Culture. ISBN 0-87462633-1. 533 pp. Paper. $55. Patrick W. Carey. Orestes A. Brownson: A Bibliography, 1826-1876. ISBN 0-87462-634X. 212 pp. Index. Paper. $25. John Martinetti, S.J. Reason to Believe Today. ISBN 0-87462-635-8. 216 pp. Paper. $25. George H. Tavard. Trina Deitas: The Controversy between Hincmar and Gottschalk ISBN 0-87462-636-6. 160 pp. Paper. $20. Jeanne Cover, IBVM. Love–The Driving Force. Mary Ward’s Spirituality. Its Significance for Moral Theology ISBN 0-87462-637-4. 217 pp. Paper. $25. David A. Boileau, Editor. Principles of Catholic Social Teaching. ISBN 0-87462-638-2. 204 pp. Paper. $25. Michael Purcell. Mystery and Method: The Other in Rahner and Levinas. With a Foreword by Andrew Tallon. ISBN 0-87462-639-0. Paper. 394 pp. $40. W.W. Meissner, S.J., M.D. To the Greater Glory: A Psychological Study of Ignatian Spirituality. ISBN 0-87462-640-4. Paper. 657 pp. $50. Catholic Theology in the University: Source of Wholeness. Virginia M. Shaddy, editor. ISBN 0-87462-641-2. Paper. 120 pp. $15. Subscibe to eNews from Marquette University Press Email
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