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 ARTICLE NAVIGATION: Part I | Part II | Part II (You are presently reading Part III) At the conclusion of this series the critical question Dr Brian Gleeson addresses to each of us is this: As our starting point to understand Jesus do we start with the Divine Jesus, or the human Jesus? Dr Gleeson suggests we start with the human Jesus rather than the other way about. Read more to find out why?
The evolution of the gospels into the forms the evangelists gave them was a fairly complex process. It must be said in general that the written gospels had first to pass though the life of the Church — its preaching, its teaching, its squabbles and debates, its organizational challenges and its worship. For this reason they are not, as was once commonly supposed, exact reports of the deeds and words of Jesus. They must, in fact, be regarded as products of three stages within one process.
During his life on earth, Jesus interacted with his first disciples and left certain impressions on them. He took them around with him and trained them to carry on his work. They would be his witnesses, and tell others what he did and said. Their experience of him included that of his rising from the dead, and not simply his ministry, message, and activities as Jesus of Nazareth. His resurrection reinforced the truth of what he had done and said prior to his dying and rising, and made this all the more acceptable and believable. For his faithful first disciples the resurrection was not the start of their faith in him. He had already left a deep impact on them, and in due course the impact he made on them gave us the accounts of Jesus in the gospels. For him they gave up their jobs, left their families, and committed themselves to follow him. They were in his company day after day, for months and maybe years on end. Their response was already a commitment of faith, a commitment of trust, and a commitment of love. They believed in him and they believed what he said. Of course, this early faith was illuminated and transformed by what happened on the first Good Friday and Easter day.[21] But if not yet Easter faith, it was already faith, 'disciple faith'.[22]
After Jesus rose from the dead and bestowed the Holy Spirit on his disciples, the first thing which they did was to preach about him, not write about him. With their experience of Jesus alive and in their midst, they emerged from their places of hiding and began proclaiming the 'good news' that, in the words of Peter, 'the Lord and Christ whom God has made is this Jesus whom you crucified' (Acts 2:36). Many accepted this teaching. They became convinced that God had indeed raised Jesus from death, and that he lives forever as their Lord and Saviour. For these converts, the Jesus of history was clearly much more than that. He was also the Christ of risen glory, the Christ in whom they had come to believe. The disciples in their preaching sought to 'package' Jesus, so to speak, in ways which would make sense to their hearers with their different backgrounds and different needs. It was also necessary for them to pay attention to different ways of telling the good news about their hero, e.g. through stories, songs, and summaries of belief. For this reason each gospel might be compared to a rosary made up of different beads. For their work of communicating and adapting the message, the preachers and teachers relied upon the presence of the Risen Lord, acting through his Spirit. This was the authority behind their words about Jesus. Backed up by this authority, they took real creative liberties in communicating his significance to their audiences. In fact, as the Second Vatican Council put it, they spoke with that 'fuller understanding' that came to them through his resurrection'.[23]
The evangelists took the information which had been passed on to them about what Jesus had done and said, took all that they had heard about him, and took this in the forms in which it had been handed on to them. To continue with the image of a rosary, they took the beads of various shapes and colours, and threaded some of them together, but in ways which would respond to the needs of the people in the different Christian communities to which they wrote. In the different ways they did this, they showed that they were theologians (i.e. interpreters of the Word of God), literary artists, and above all pastors (shepherds), concerned to meet everyday practical pastoral needs. While they received their beads ready-made, they arranged and polished them in patterns of their own making, but always so that the 'good news' about Jesus would make the greatest impact on the lives of the individuals and communities to whom they wrote. Their object overall was to inspire others to encounter Jesus now. For example, when Mark was writing his gospel, he was conscious of writing to a community which was suffering persecution, with the result that some of its members had fallen into apostasy by denying their faith. This led him to insist that in order to be true disciples, it is necessary to share in the sufferings of Jesus. So much so, that his gospel has been called 'a gospel of the passion, with extended introduction'! Matthew has to deal with the questions and doubts of both Jewish and Gentile Christians about the need to keep Jewish laws.
An understanding and appreciation of the process of the development of the four gospels as they have come down to us, leads to the conclusion that within each gospel we have information about both the life of Jesus and the life of the early Church in New Testament times. Within each gospel we sometimes have the very words of Jesus, sometimes a paraphrase of his sayings, sometimes a statement of his significance for the early Church, sometimes a reflection by the evangelist himself. But whether it is the Church speaking or the evangelist speaking, an answer is being given to that question put by Jesus to his first disciples in Galilee, that question about his significance: 'But who do you say that I am?' (Mk 8:29).
While the New Testament, and more particularly the gospels, are our chief source of knowledge of Jesus, this is not the only source. Knowledge of him is also provided in the creeds (i.e. the professions of faith) and worship services of the Church. Knowledge of him is also given in the dogmas, i.e. in those truths which the Church proclaims as revealed by God.[24] Knowledge of him is also available in the faith of Christian people. This latter source can be problematic, however, as too many people put a full stop after the statement 'Jesus is God' and omit the words that need to be added for completeness. Those words are: 'and man together'. So the full statement of faith is this: 'Jesus is God and man together', together in one concrete being. He is not a hybrid, partly man, and partly God. He is not man + God. He is 100% fully, perfectly and completely human, and at the same time and in one concrete being, he is fully, perfectly and completely divine. But some people don't take his humanity seriously, or at least not seriously enough. They see his humanity as largely swamped or even replaced by his divinity. They find it hard, then, to grasp and accept that Jesus had to face real temptations, that he had to struggle to integrate his sexuality, to discern what God wanted of him, and to discover his own vocation.[25] So, in practice, they find it hard to relate to Jesus as someone like themselves in every way except sin, as someone who is a model for Christian living, and as someone they can strive to follow. But in this regard, a caution is in order, a caution that can save a person from developing a Messiah complex. It is neither possible nor desirable for any of us, as did St Francis of Assisi, to try to literally imitate Christ. Brian McDermott explains why: None of us, even if we tried, could become another Jesus of Nazareth. We are each called to live our own life in community within the limits and opportunities of our own talents, time and place. Nor are we called to follow the pattern of Jesus' life in all respects. Few of us are called to become itinerant preachers and healers. Jesus made a whole set of decisions that were his own; they involved spending his finite, human energy on some people and not others (he became master and teacher of the Twelve, but he did not seek out non-Jewish people), on some causes and not others (he preached God's reign but did not try to rescue John the Baptist or overthrow the Roman occupying forces).[26]
The legacy of the memory of Jesus as portrayed in art, in the written word, in preaching and teaching, and in the faith and lives of believers raises two important and connected questions: The first is about his relevance. The second is about the difference between knowing Jesus and knowing about him.
The concern that goes with our inquiry is this: 'In what real sense can a thing be said to exist for me if it has never touched my soul, demanded a decision of me, or affected my actions in any way?'[27] The only message that people like us, people of our modern twenty-first century world, can accept and apply is one that is related to our lives, that answers our questions, or corresponds in some way with our experiences of reality. In fact, psychologically speaking, 'the irrelevant cannot be believed'.[28] Any message that comes to us completely from the outside, with no relationship to our lives, will neither occupy our attention nor motivate us. It will be like the presence in our minds of some foreign object. Applying this principle to the study of Jesus Christ, both the Jesus of history and the Christ of risen glory, let me say without hesitation that he will not be real for us, unless we can see him as relevant. Our task, then, is to discover how what we learn about him ties in with our lives, challenges us, changes us, comforts us, motivates and fulfils us. This task of exploring his relevance concerns us personally and individually, but also as Church, which is to say as 'the community of the disciples of Jesus' in our world. For it has been said wisely and well that the years since the closing of the Second Vatican Council in 1965 have shown 'that any efforts to renew the Church will remain spiritually empty, emotionally hollow and doctrinally unsound unless they draw inspiration and strength from the founder of Christianity himself'.[29] 'What we do with the Church,' in fact, 'will rest ultimately on what we think about Jesus.'[30] This task has its difficulties, since his age and his world are in so many ways so different from ours. He had no experience of the phenomena that are familiar to us — computers, movies, CDs, DVDs, MP3s, iPods, mobile phones, aeroplanes, motorcars, interstate and overseas travel, radio, television, newspapers, supermarkets, weapons of mass destruction, and space probes. On the other hand, at levels of our lives that transcend all such technologies, and especially those which touch the very core of our humanity as people in relationships, we may instinctively sense that he and we have a great deal in common. We may also sense instinctively that meaningful answers are available to the question raised by the great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer: 'Who and what is Jesus Christ for us today?'[31] This is a question, that, in the final analysis, has to be answered in an individual and personal way, yet one guided by the wisdom of our people, our forefathers and foremothers in history and faith.
There is some difference between knowing Jesus personally and simply knowing about him. To know Jesus personally is to respond to his person and message, to share our lives with him, to follow him, and as a result, to change our lives and become better people, more human and humane people. This is the knowledge that involves an experience of his presence, friendship with him, discipleship, trust and prayer. But the knowledge which comes from an inter-personal relationship with him gives rise to a desire, and perhaps even a yearning and a hunger, to know more about him, to learn more about his values and how he lived his life. Faith in him, then, is a matter of both the head and the heart. When we hear or read about him, we also expect to meet him in the voices we hear and in the pages we read. But we do not seek 'a Jesus hidden behind the texts' but 'a Jesus revealed within the texts'.[32]
Christology, in the sense of what can be said about Jesus Christ today, aims to state in an up-to-date way who Jesus Christ is and what is important and relevant about him. But the question must be asked: Can he be understood and appreciated if we simply take his divinity for granted, and his pre-existence as the Son of God and the Word of God, and then merely ask how this divine Son could join to himself a human nature? In fact, it may well be a mistake to start with his divinity, and start saying about Jesus the man that he is therefore all-knowing and all-powerful, etc. This is a slippery slope. It may lead to answering 'yes', 'yes', 'yes' to such statements as these: 'When he was a baby and a child Jesus knew everything — past, present and future'; 'Even before it took place Jesus knew just what was going to happen to him'; 'Jesus always knew clearly what he had to do to save us'; 'Jesus only seemed to be human. Really he was just God'; 'Jesus ate and drank, but he did not really need to, because he was God'; 'Because he was God Jesus did not actually need a body'; 'Because he was God, Jesus did not really suffer; he only appeared to be in pain'; 'Jesus could have made a computer and a television set if he wanted to'. It is surely better, as the gospels in general indicate, to start like the first disciples from the real human being Jesus, his existence and message in history, his activities, life and destiny, and then ask about the relationship of this concrete human being Jesus to God, about his unity with the Father, and about how he has been for us the human expression of God, the human face of God, and the humanity of God. ARTICLE NAVIGATION: Part I | Part II | Part II (You are presently reading Part III)  FOOTNOTES: Brian Gleeson
What are your thoughts on this commentary? ©2010Dr Brian Gleeson CP |
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THE GOSPELS AS PEN-PORTRAITS OF JESUS (continued)
How the gospels came into existence...
Stage One: Jesus and his disciples…
Conclusion regarding the gospels and faith in Jesus Christ...
OTHER SOURCES FOR KNOWING JESUS
TWO IMPORTANT AND CONNECTED QUESTIONS:
The question of his relevance for 21st Century people...
The question of the difference between knowing Jesus personally and knowing about him...
CONCLUSION
Dr Brian Gleeson, a Passionist priest, lectures in systematic theology at the Yarra Theological Union in Melbourne. He recently stepped down as the Head of the Department of Church History and Systematic Theology at YTU. He joined the faculty at the beginning of 2001. His previous appointments were at Catholic Theological College Adelaide (2 years); St Paul's National Seminary Sydney (13 years); Catholic Theological Union Sydney (8 years); Pius XII Regional Seminary, Brisbane (1 year); and Good Samaritan Teachers' College, Sydney (4 years). His postgraduate studies were with the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium; the Gregorian University, Rome; and the Melbourne College of Divinity. Fr Gleeson is also an active member of ACTA (Australian Catholic Theologians' Association).
The 6 killer apps of prosperity... Over the past few centuries, Western cultures have been very good at creating general prosperity for themselves. Historian Niall Ferguson asks: Why the West, and less so the rest? He suggests half a dozen big ideas from Western culture — call them the 6 killer apps — that promote wealth, stability and innovation. And in this new century, he says, these apps are all shareable. History is a curious thing, and Niall Ferguson investigates not only what happened but why. 20m20s [String on the Catholica Forum where the general issue of wealth inequality and this documentary was first discussed 20May12] | [WATCH THE VIDEO]
Doco 040: 20May12
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