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The Prayer of Jesus: Jesus’ Prayer on the Mount of Olives in the Letter to the Hebrews – Pope Benedict XVI

January 24, 2012

William Blake, The Agony in the Garden, circa 1799-1800

We must turn our attention to the passage from the Letter to the Hebrews that points toward the Mount of Olives. There we read: “In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and lip was heard for his godly fear” (5:7). Here we may identify an independent tradition concerning the Gethsemane event, for there is no mention of loud cries or tears in the gospels.

We have to admit that the author of the Letter is clearly not referring exclusively to the night in Gethsemane, but has’ in mind the whole of Jesus’ via dolorosa right up to the crucifixion, that is to say, to the moment when, according to Matthew and Mark, Jesus “cried out with a loud voice” the opening words of Psalm 22; these two evangelists also tell us that Jesus expired with is loud cry; Matthew expressly uses the word “cried” at this point, meaning “cry out” (cf. 27:50). John speaks of Jesus’ tears at the death of Lazarus, and this in the context of his being “troubled” in spirit — for which, as we have seen, John uses the word that was to reappear in the “Palm Sunday” passage corresponding to the Mount of Olives tradition.

Each time, it is a question of Jesus’ encounter with the powers of death, whose ultimate depths he as the Holy One of God can sense in their full horror. The Letter to the Hebrews views the whole of Jesus’ Passion — from the Mount of Olives to the last cry from the Cross — as thoroughly permeated by prayer, one long impassioned plea to God for life in the face of the power of death.

If the Letter to the Hebrews treats the entire Passion as a prayer in which Jesus wrestles with God the Father and at the same time with human nature, it also sheds new light on the theological depth of the Mount of Olives prayer. For these cries and pleas are seen as Jesus’ way of exercising his high priesthood. It is through his cries, his tears, and his prayers that Jesus does what the high priest is meant to do: he holds up to God the anguish of human existence. He brings man before God.

There are two particular words with which the author of the Letter to the Hebrews underlines this dimension of Jesus’ prayer. The verb “bring” (prospherein: bring before God, bear aloft — cf. Heb 5:1) comes from the language of the sacrificial cult. What Jesus does here lies right at the heart of what sacrifice is. “He offered himself to do the will of the Father”, as Albert Vanhoye comments (Let Us Confidently Welcome Christ Our High Priest, p. 60).

The second word that is important for our purposes tells us that through his sufferings Jesus learned obedience and was thus “made perfect” (Hebrews 5:8-9). Vanhoye points out that in the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, the expression “make perfect” (teleioun) is used exclusively to mean “consecrate as priest” (p. 62). The Letter to the Hebrews takes over this terminology (cf. 711, 19, 28). So the passage in question tells us that Christ’s obedience, his final “yes” to the Father accomplished on the Mount of Olives, as it were, “consecrated him as a priest”; it tells us that precisely in this act of self giving, in this bearing-aloft of human existence to God, Christ truly became a priest “according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:9-10; cf. Vanhoye, pp. 61-62).

At this point, though, we must move on toward the heart of what the Letter to the Hebrews has to say concerning the prayer of the suffering Lord. The text states that Jesus pleaded with him who had the power to save him front death and that, on account of his godly fear (cf. 5:7), his prayer was granted. But was it granted? He still died on the Cross! For this reason Harnack maintained that the word “not” must have been omitted here, and Bultmann agrees. But an exegesis that turns a text into its opposite is no exegesis. Rather, we must attempt to understand this mysterious form of “granting” so as to come closer to grasping the mystery of our own salvation.

We may distinguish different aspects of this “granting”. One possible translation of the text would be: “He was heard and delivered from his fear.” This would correspond to Luke’s account, which says that an angel came and comforted him (cf. 22:43). It would then refer to the inner strength given to Jesus through prayer, so that he was able to endure the arrest and the Passion resolutely. Yet the text obviously says more: the Father raised him from the night of death and, through the Resurrection, saved him definitively and permanently from death: Jesus dies no more (cf. Vanhoye, Let Us Confidently Welcome Christ Our High Priest, p. 60). Yet surely the text means even more: the Resurrection is not just Jesus’ personal rescue from death. He did not die for himself alone. His was dying “for others”; it was the conquest of death itself.

Hence this “granting” may also be understood in terms of the parallel text in John 12:27-28, where in answer to Jesus’ prayer: “Father, glorify your name!” a voice from heaven replies: “I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again. The Cross itself has become God’s glorification, the glory of God made manifest in the love of the Son. This glory extends beyond the moment into the whole weep of history. This glory is life. It is on the Cross that we see it, hidden yet powerful: the glory of God, the transformation of death into life.

From the Cross, new life comes to us. On the Cross, Jesus becomes the source of life for himself and for all. On the Cross, death is conquered. The granting of Jesus’ prayer concerns all mankind: his obedience becomes life for all. This conclusion is spelled out for us in the closing words of the passage we have been studying: “He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:9-10; cf Psalm 110:4).

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The Prayer of Jesus: Jesus’ Will and the Will of the Father – Pope Benedict XVI

January 23, 2012

Giovanni Bellini, Le Christ Benissant, 1465 – 1470, at the Louvre in Paris

What does this mean? What is “my” will as opposed to “your” will? Who is speaking to whom? Is it the Son addressing the Father? Or the man Jesus addressing the triune God? Nowhere else in sacred Scripture do we gain t deep an insight into the inner mystery of Jesus as in the laver on the Mount of Olives. So it is no coincidence it the early Church’s efforts to arrive at an understand of the figure of Jesus Christ took their final shape as a result of faith-filled reflection on his prayer on the Mount of Olives.

At this point we should undertake a rapid overview of the early Church’s Christology, in order to grasp its understanding of the interrelation between the divine will and the human will in the figure of Jesus Christ. The Council of Nicea (325) had clarified the Christian concept of God. The three persons — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — are one, in the one “substance” of God. More than a century later, the Council of Chalcedon (451) sought to articulate the relation between divinity and humanity in Jesus Christ by adopting the formula that the one person of the Son of God embraces and bears the two natures — human and divine — “without confusion and without separation”.

Thus the infinite difference between God and man, between Creator and creature is preserved: humanity remains humanity, divinity remains divinity. Jesus’ humanity is neither absorbed nor reduced by his divinity. It exists in its fullness, while subsisting in the divine person of the Logos. At the same time, in the continuing distinction of natures, the expression “one person” conveys the radical unity that God in Christ has entered into with man. The formula of Pope Leo the Great — two natures, one person — expresses an insight that transcended by fit the historical moment, and for that reason it was enthusiastically accepted by the Council Fathers.

Yet it was ahead of its time: its concrete meaning had not yet been fully set forth. What is meant by “nature”? But more importantly, what is meant by “person”? Since this was by no means clear, many bishops after Chalcedon said that they would rather think like fishermen than like Aristotle. The formula remained obscure. Therefore the reception of Chalcedon was an extremely complex process, and fierce battles were fought over it.

In the end it led to division: only the Churches of Rome and Byzantium definitively accepted the Council and its formula. Alexandria in Egypt preferred to remain with the formula of “one divinized nature” (monophysitism); while farther east, Syria remained skeptical about the notion of one person, as it appeared to . compromise Jesus’ true humanity (Nestorianism). It was not simply ideas that were at issue here: more significantly, contrasting forms of devotion burdened the debate with the weight of religious sensibilities, rendering it insoluble.

The Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon continues to indicate, to the Church of all ages, the necessary pathway into the mystery of Jesus Christ. That said, it has t be appropriated anew in the context of contemporary thought, since the concepts of “nature” and “person” have acquired quite different meanings from those they had at the time. This task of reappropriation must go hand to hand with ecumenical dialogue with the pre-Chalcedonian Churches, so that our lost unity may be regained in the core of our faith — in our confession of the God who became man in Jesus Christ.

The great battle that was fought after Chalcedon, especially in the Byzantine East, was essentially concerned with the question: If there is only one divine person in Jesus, embracing both natures, then what is the status of his human nature? If it subsists within the one divine person, can it be said to have any real, specific existence in itself? Must it not inevitably be absorbed by the divine, at least at its highest point, the will?

This leads us to the last of the great Christological heresies, known as ” monotheletism”. There can be only one will within the unity of a person, its adherents maintained; a person with two wills would be schizophrenic: ultimately it is in the will that a person manifests himself, and where there is only one person, then ultimately there can be only one will. Yet an objection comes to mind: What kind of man has no human will? Is a man without a will really a man? Did God in Jesus truly become man, if this man had no will?

The great Byzantine theologian Maximus the Confessor (d. 662) formulated an answer to this question by struggling to understand Jesus’ prayer on the Mount of Olives. Maximus is first and foremost a determined opponent of monotheletism: Jesus’ human nature is not amputated through union with the Logos; it remains complete. And the will is part of human nature. This irreducible duality of human and divine willing in Jesus must not, however, be understood to imply the schizophrenia of a dual personality.

Nature and person must be seen in the mode of existence proper to each. In other words: in Jesus the “natural will” of the human nature is present, but there is only one “personal will”, which draws the “natural will” into itself. And this is possible without annihilating the specifically human element, because the human will, as created by God, is ordered to the divine will. In becoming attuned to the divine will. it experiences its fulfillment, not its annihilation.

Maximus says in this regard that the human will, by virtue of creation tends toward synergy (working together) with the divine will, but that through sin, opposition takes the place of synergy: man, whose will attains fulfillment through becoming attuned to God’s will, now has the sense that his freedom is compromised by God’s will. He regards consenting to God’s will, not as his opportunity to become fully himself, but as a threat to his freedom against which he rebels.

The drama of the Mount of Olives lies in the fact that Jesus draws man’s natural will away from opposition and back toward synergy, and in so doing he restores man’s true greatness. In Jesus’ natural human will, the sum total of human nature’s resistance to God is, as it were, present within Jesus himself. The obstinacy of us all, the whole of our opposition to God is present, and in his struggle, Jesus elevates our recalcitrant nature to become its real self.

Christoph Schonborn says in this regard that “the transition between the two wills from opposition to union is accomplished through the sacrifice of obedience. In the agony of Gethsemane, this transition occurs” (God’s Human Face, pp. 126-27). Thus the prayer “not my will, but yours” (Luke 22:42) is truly the Son’s prayer to the Father, through which the natural human will is completely subsumed into the “I” of the Son. Indeed, the Son’s whole being is expressed in the “not I, but you” — in the total self-abandonment of the “I” to the “you” of God the Father. This same “I” has subsumed and transformed humanity’s resistance, so that we are all now present within the Son’s obedience; we are all drawn into sonship.

This brings us to one final point regarding Jesus’ prayer, to its actual interpretative key, namely, the form of address: “Abba, Father” (Mk 14:36). In 1966 Joachim Jeremias wrote an important article about the use of this term in Jesus’ prayer, from which I should like to quote two essential insights: “Whereas there is not a single instance of God being addressed as Abba in the literature of Jewish prayer, Jesus always addressed him in this way (with the exception of the cry from the Cross, Mark 15:34 and parallel passages). So we have here a quite unmistakable characteristic of the ipsissima vox Jesu (Abba, p. 5).

Moreover, Jeremias shows that this word Abba belongs to the language of children — that it is the way a child addresses his father within the family. “To the Jewish mind it would have been disrespectful and therefore inconceivable to address God with this familiar word. For Jesus to venture to take this step was something new and unheard of. He spoke to God like a child to his father … Jesus’ use of Abba in addressing God reveals the heart of his relationship with God” (p. 62). It is therefore quite mistaken on the part of some theologians to suggest that the man Jesus was addressing the Trinitarian God in the prayer on the Mount of Olives. No, it is the Son speaking here, having subsumed the fullness of man’s will into himself and transformed it into the will of the Son.

Posted in Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI | Tagged Christoph Schonborn, Early Church Christology, ipsissima vox Jesu, Jesus' Humanity, Jesus' use of Abba, Jesus' Will, Maximus the Confessor, Monophysitism, Monotheletism, Nestorianism, The Will of the Father | Leave a Comment »

The Prayer Of Jesus: The Prayer On The Mount Of Olives – Pope Benedict XVI

January 20, 2012

Christ in Gethsemane by Heinrich Ferdinand Hofmann, 1890

The prayer on the Mount of Olives, which follows next, has come down to us in five versions: first, there are the accounts in the three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew 26:36-46; Mark 14:32-42; Luke 22:39-46); then there is a short text in the Fourth Gospel that John places among the collection of Jesus’ sayings in the Temple on “Palm Sunday” (12:27 28); and finally there is one based on a separate tradition in the Letter to the Hebrews (5:7-10). Let us now attempt, by examining these texts together, to approach as close as we can to the mystery of this hour of Jesus.

After the common recitation of the psalms, Jesus prays alone — as on so many previous nights. Yet close by is the group of three disciples — Peter, James, and John: a trio known to us from other contexts, especially from the account of the Transfiguration. These three disciples, even though they are repeatedly overcome by sleep, are the witnesses of Jesus’ night of anguish. Mark tells us that Jesus “began to be greatly distressed and troubled”. The Lord says to his disciples: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch” (14:33-34).

The summons to vigilance has already been a major theme of Jesus’ Jerusalem teaching, and now it emerges directly with great urgency. And yet, while it refers specifically to Gethsemane, it also points ahead to the later history of Christianity. Across the centuries, it is the drowsiness of the disciples that opens up possibilities for the power of the Evil One. Such drowsiness deadens the soul, so that it remains undisturbed by the power of the Evil One at work in the world and by all the injustice and suffering ravaging the earth.

In its state of numbness, the soul prefers not to see all this; it is easily persuaded that things cannot be so bad, so as to continue in the self satisfaction of its own comfortable existence. Yet this deadening of souls, this lack of vigilance regarding both God’s closeness and the looming forces of darkness, is what gives the Evil One power in the world. On beholding the drowsy disciples, so disinclined to rouse themselves, the Lord says: “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” This is a quotation from Psalm 43:5, and it calls to mind other verses from the Psalms.

In the Passion, too — on the Mount of Olives and on the Cross Jesus uses passages from the Psalms to speak of himself and to address the Father. Yet these quotations have become fully personal; they have become the intimate words of Jesus himself in his agony. It is he who truly prays these psalms; he is their real subject. Jesus’ utterly personal prayer and his praying in the words of faithful, suffering Israel are here seamlessly united.

After this admonition to vigilance, Jesus goes a short distance away. This is where the prayer on the Mount of Olives actually begins. Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus falls on his face — the prayer posture of extreme submission to the will of God, of radical self-offering to him. In the Western liturgy, this posture is still adopted on Good Friday, at monastic professions, and at ordinations.

Luke, however, has Jesus kneeling to pray. In terms of praying posture, then, he draws Jesus’ night of anguish into the context of the history of Christian prayer: Stephen sinks to his knees in prayer as he is being stoned (Acts 7:6o); Peter kneels before he wakes Tabitha from death (Acts 9:40); Paul kneels to bid farewell to the Ephesian elders (Acts 20:36) and again when the disciples tell him not to go up to Jerusalem (Acts 21:5). Alois Stöger says on this subject: “When they were confronted with the power of death, they all prayed kneeling down. Martyrdom can be overcome only by prayer. Jesus is the model of martyrs” (The Gospel according to Saint Luke II, p. 199).

There now follows the prayer itself, in which the whole drama of our redemption is made present. In Mark’s account, Jesus begins by asking that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him (14:35). This is then filled out by a statement of the essential content of the prayer: “Abba, Father, all things are possible to you; remove this chalice from me; yet not what I will, but what you will” (14:36).

We may distinguish three elements in this prayer of Jesus. First there is the primordial experience of fear, quaking, in the face of the power of death, terror before the abyss of nothingness that makes him tremble to the point that, in Luke’s account, his sweat falls to the ground like drops of blood (cf. 22:44). In the equivalent passage in Saint John’s Gospel (12:27), this horror is expressed, as in the Synoptics, in terms reminiscent of Psalm 43:5, but using a word that emphasizes the dark depths of Jesus’ fear: tetáraktai – is the same verb, tarássein, that John uses to describe Jesus’ deep emotion at the tomb of Lazarus (cf. 11:33) as well as his inner turmoil at the prophecy of Judas’ betrayal in the Upper Room (cf. 13:21).

In this way John is clearly indicating the primordial fear of created nature in the face of imminent death, and yet there is more: the particular horror felt by him who is Life itself before the abyss of the full power of destruction, evil, and enmity with God that is now unleashed upon him, that he now takes directly upon himself, or rather into himself, to the point that he is “made to be sin” (cf. 3 Corinthians 5:21).

Because he is the Son, he sees with total clarity the whole foul flood of evil, all the power of lies and pride, all the wiles and cruelty of the evil that masks itself as life yet constantly serves to destroy, debase, and crush life. Because he is the Son, he experiences deeply all the horror, filth, and baseness that he must drink from the “chalice” prepared for him: the vast power of sin and death. All this he must take into himself, so that it can be disarmed and defeated in him.

As Bultmann rightly observes: Jesus here is “not simply the prototype, in whom the behavior demanded of man becomes visible in an exemplary manner … he is also and above all the Revealer, whose decision alone makes possible in such an hour the human decision for God” (The Gospel of John, p. 428). Jesus’ fear is far more radical than the fear that everyone experiences in the face of death: it is the collision between light and darkness, between life and death itself — the critical moment of decision in human history. With this understanding, following Pascal, we may see ourselves drawn quite personally into the episode on the Mount of Olives: my own sin was present in that terrifying chalice. “Those drops of blood I shed for you”, Pascal hears the Lord say to him during the agony on the Mount of Olives (cf. Pensées VII, 553).

The two parts of Jesus’ prayer are presented as the confrontation between two wills: there is the “natural will” of the man Jesus, which resists the appalling destructiveness of what is happening and wants to plead that the chalice pass from him; and there is the “filial will” that abandons itself totally to the Father’s will. In order to understand this mystery of the “two wills” as much as possible, it is helpful to take a look at John’s version of the prayer. Here, too, we find the same two prayers on Jesus’ lips: “Father, save me from this hour … Father, glorify your name” (John 12:27-28).

The relationship between these two prayers in John’s account is essentially no different from what we find in the Synoptics. The anguish of Jesus’ human soul (“I am troubled”; Bultmann translates it as: “I am afraid”, p. 427) impels him to pray for deliverance from this hour. Yet his awareness of his mission, his knowledge that it was for this hour that he came, enables him to utter the second prayer — the prayer that God glorify his name: it is Jesus’ acceptance of the horror of the Cross, his ignominious experience of being stripped of all dignity and suffering a shameful death, that becomes the glorification of God’s name.

For in this way, God is manifested as he really is: the God who, in the unfathomable depth of his self-giving love, sets the true power of good against all the power of evil. Jesus uttered both prayers, but the first one, asking for deliverance, merges into the second one, asking for God to be glorified by the fulfillment of his will — and so the conflicting elements blend into unity deep within the heart of Jesus’ human existence.

Posted in Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI | Tagged praying posture, The Prayer On The Mount Of Olives, The summons to vigilance, Those drops of blood I shed for you, three elements in this prayer of Jesus | Leave a Comment »

The Nature of Jesus’ Resurrection and Its Historical Significance – Pope Benedict XVI

January 16, 2012

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas is a painting of the subject of the same name by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, c. 1601-1602. It is housed in the Sanssouci of Potsdam, Germany. Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus (at the National Gallery in London) graces all our pages where the world these apostles knew, like ours, is analogous to the basket of food and teeters perilously over the edge.

Let us ask once more, by way of summary, what it was like to encounter the risen Lord. The following distinctions are important:

Jesus did not simply return to normal biological life as one who, by the laws of biology, would eventually have to die again.
Jesus is not a ghost (“spirit”). In other words, he does not belong to the realm of the dead but is somehow able to reveal himself in the realm of the living.
Nevertheless, the encounters with the risen Lord are not the same as mystical experiences, in which the human spirit is momentarily drawn aloft out of itself and perceives the realm of the divine and eternal, only to return then to the normal horizon of its existence. Mystical experience is a temporary removal of the soul’s spatial and cognitive limitations. But it is not an encounter with a person coming toward me from without. Saint Paul clearly distinguished his mystical experiences, such as his elevation to the third heaven described in 2 Corinthians 12:1-4, from his encounter with the risen Lord on the road to Damascus, which was a historical event — an encounter with a living person.

On the basis of all this biblical evidence, what are we now in a position to say about the true nature of Christ’s Resurrection?

It is a historical event that nevertheless bursts open the dimensions of history and transcends it. Perhaps we may draw upon analogical language here, inadequate in many ways, yet still able to open up a path toward understanding: we could regard the Resurrection as something, akin to a radical “evolutionary leap”, in which a new dimension of life emerges, a new dimension of human existence.

Indeed, matter itself is remolded into a new type of reality. The man Jesus, complete with his body, now belong totally to the sphere of the divine and eternal. From now on, as Tertullian once said, “spirit and blood” have a place within God (cf. De Resurrect. Mort. 51:3, CCSL, II 994) Even if man by his nature is created for immortality, it is only now that the place exists in which his immortal soul can find its “space”, its “bodiliness”, in which immortality takes on its meaning as communion with God and with the whole of reconciled mankind.

This is what is meant by those passages in Saint Paul’s prison letters (cf Colossians 1:12-23 and Ephesians 1:3-23) that speak of the cosmic, body of Christ, indicating thereby that Christ’s transformed body is also the place where men enter into communion with God and with one another and are thus all, to live definitively in the fullness of indestructible life. Since we ourselves have no experience of such a renewed and transformed type of matter, or such a renewed and transformed kind of life, it is not surprising that it over steps the boundaries of what we are able to conceive.

Essential, then, is the fact that Jesus’ Resurrection was not just about some deceased individual coming back to life at a certain point, but that an ontological leap occurred, one that touches being as such, opening up a dimension that affects us all, creating for all of us a new space of life, a new space of being in union with God.

It is in these terms that the question of the historicity of the Resurrection should be addressed. On the one hand, we must acknowledge that it is of the essence of the Resurrection precisely to burst open history and usher in a new dimension commonly described as eschatological. The Resurrection opens up the new space that transcends history and creates the definitive. In this sense, it follows that Resurrection is not the same kind of historical event as the birth or crucifixion of Jesus. It is something new, a new type of event.

Yet at the same time it must be understood that the Resurrection does not simply stand outside or above history. As something that breaks out of history and transcends it, the Resurrection nevertheless has its origin within history and up to a certain point still belongs there. Perhaps we could put it this way: Jesus’ Resurrection points beyond history but has left a footprint within history. Therefore it can be attested by witnesses as an event of an entirely new kind.

Indeed, the apostolic preaching with all its boldness and passion would be unthinkable unless the witnesses had experienced a real encounter, coming to them from outside, with something entirely new and unforeseen, namely, the self-revelation and verbal communication of the risen Christ. Only a real event of a radically new quality could possibly have given rise to the apostolic preaching, which cannot be explained on the basis of speculations or inner, mystical experiences. In all its boldness and originality, it draws life from the impact of an event that no one had invented, an event that surpassed all that could be imagined.

To conclude, all of us are constantly inclined to ask the question that Saint Jude Thaddaeus put to Jesus during the Last Supper: “Lord, how is it that you will manifest yourself to us, and not to the world?” (John 14:22). Why, indeed, did you not forcefully resist your enemies who brought you to the Cross? — we might well ask. Why did you not show them with incontrovertible power that you are the living one, the Lord of life and death? Why did you reveal yourself only to a small flock of disciples, upon whose testimony we must now rely?

The question applies not only to the Resurrection, but to the whole manner of God’s revelation in the world. Why only to Abraham and not to the mighty of the world? Why only to Israel and not irrefutably to all the peoples of the earth?

It is part of the mystery of God that he acts so gently, that he only gradually builds up his history within the great history of mankind; that he becomes man and so can be overlooked by his contemporaries and by the decisive forces within history; that he suffers and dies and that, having risen again, he chooses to come to mankind only through the faith of the disciples to whom he reveals himself; that he continues to knock gently at the doors of our hearts and slowly opens our eyes if we open our doors to him.

And yet — is not this the truly divine way? Not to overwhelm with external power, but to give freedom, to offer and elicit love. And if we really think about it, is it not what seems so small that is truly great? Does not a ray of light issue from Jesus, growing brighter across the centuries, that could not come from any mere man and through which the light of God truly shines into the world? Could the apostolic preaching have found faith and built up a worldwide community unless the power of truth had been at work within it?

If we attend to the witnesses with listening hearts and open ourselves to the signs by which the Lord again and again authenticates both them and himself, then we know that he is truly risen. He is alive. Let us entrust ourselves to him, knowing that we are on the right path. With Thomas let us place our hands into Jesus’ pierced side and confess: “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28).

Posted in Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI, The Resurrection | Tagged an ontological leap, Nature of Jesus' Resurrection, the dimensions of history, the manner of God's revelation in the world, the nature of historical event | Leave a Comment »

The Meaning of Jesus’ Death, Resurrection and Ascension in the Gospel of Luke — Mark Allan Powell

January 11, 2012

The Forerunners of Christ with Saints and Martyrs, about 1423-4, Fra Angelico. From the predella of the "Fiesole Altarpiece". The central panel of the predella is "Christ glorified in the court of Heaven".

In the previous post, all of the models discussed focus primarily on the meaning of Jesus’ life as reported in the Gospel of Luke. There has been less scholarly discussion as to the meaning of Jesus’ death. Indeed, a recent book entitled The Death of Jesus in Luke-Acts states that Luke “seems uninterested in piercing through to an understanding of the theological reason for the death or in analyzing what it was intended to accomplish.”‘ This is quite a contrast from the approach of writers like Mark and Paul, for whom Jesus’ death on the cross is the starting point for theological reflection.

Luke’s apparent disinterest in the cross can be seen in the fact that he links God’s gift of salvation variously to Jesus’ birth (2:11), his life and ministry (19:9-10), and his exaltation (Acts 5:3 1), but never to his death. The missionary speeches in Acts seem to treat Jesus’ death not as the accomplishment of salvation but as a potential obstacle to its accomplishment that is subsequently overcome. Luke omits Jesus’ reference to giving his life as “a ransom for many” (22:25-27; cf. Mark 10:42-45). Nevertheless, he insists that Jesus’ death is necessary, that it is part of God’s plan (9:22, 44; 24:7, 26, 44). What, then, does it mean?

Some scholars have suggested that, while Jesus’ death does not have soteriological significance for Luke, it is important for other reasons. For one thing, it serves a moral purpose, portraying Jesus as the exemplary martyr whom persecuted Christians should imitate.

In addition, it is inspirational, intended to evoke sympathy for the suffering Christ and facilitate conversion to his cause.” Evidence for the first view is drawn from the observation that Jesus’ passion serves as a model for the story of Stephen’s martyrdom in Acts. The second point is substantiated by Luke’s unique report that those who witnessed the crucifixion were so moved that they returned home beating their breasts in repentance (23:48).

Recently, there have been attempts to show that Jesus’ death does have salvific value in Luke’s Gospel, even though it is not conceived of as an expiation for sin. Two different models have been tried, one that views martyrdom itself as redemptive, and another that interprets Jesus’ death in Luke as the foiled temptation of a “new Adam.”

It is taken for granted that Luke presents Jesus’ death as a pious martyrdom. Some scholars have pointed out, however, that in the Judaism of Luke’s day, a martyr’s death could be considered redemptive. The martyr dies for the sake of others and makes it easier for them to follow where he has gone. Robert Karris has taken up this theme afresh in Luke: Artist and Theologian. According to Luke, only God can save from sin and death, but God uses the death of the innocent Jesus to do so. Jesus’ passion presents a “double test case” for the integrity of Jesus, the persecuted one, and for the fidelity of God.

By remaining faithful in death, Jesus demonstrates his righteousness and awakens faith in those who see him as the innocent suffering righteous one (23:40-42, 47-48). God demonstrates his fidelity by raising Jesus, who typifies God’s creation held in the power of sin and death. It is ultimately the faithfulness of God that is the basis of salvation for Luke, and Jesus, as a “model of faith,” opens the way to trust in this faithfulness.

Jerome Neyrey also believes the faith of Jesus is the key to understanding the meaning of his death in Luke, but he emphasizes that this faith serves as more than just a model of trust. In his study of The Passion According to Luke, Neyrey proposes that Luke ascribes soteriological significance to the faith and obedience of Jesus through an implicit presentation of Jesus as the “new Adam.” The view that Jesus abrogates the effects of the first Adam’s sin and implements a new creation is found in the writings of Paul and in the letter to the Hebrews. In both cases, emphasis is given to the obedience, faith and righteousness of Jesus. These same themes prevail in Luke’s presentation of the passion (22:42; 23:46-47).

Luke presents Jesus as the new Adam in that he is the founder of a new period of history. This is brought out in the juxtaposition of the baptism and the genealogy pen-copes, which identify, respectively, both Jesus and Adam as God’s sons (3:22, 38). Adam, however, is not ultimately known as God’s son because of his sin and disobedience, and so the appropriateness of this term for Jesus must also be tested. Like Adam, Jesus is tempted by Satan, in the wilderness (4:1-13), in the garden of Gethsemane (22:39-46), and finally on the cross (23:32-49), but, unlike Adam, Jesus remains obedient (22:42) and faithful (23:46). Accordingly, the realm of paradise that was closed after Adam’s sin is now reopened and Jesus is able to promise repentant sinners that they will have a place there (23:43).

Neyrey, then, believes that Jesus’ death does have soteriological significance for Luke even though he does not present it as an expiation, a ransom, or a sacrifice for sins. Jesus’ acceptance of death in faith and in obedience to God’s will is the culmination of a radical holiness that has characterized his entire life. As the new Adam who does not succumb to temptation, Jesus initiates a new period of history: a time of salvation that may be described as the end of Satan’s reign (10: 18) and the inauguration of God’s reign (11:20-22). This is why, in the book of Acts, he can be referred to as the unique source of life, holiness, and salvation (3:15; 4:12; 5:31).

The Meaning of Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension
Richard Dillon has contributed a major study of Luke’s resurrection account titled From Eye-Witnesses to Ministers of the Word. After an exhaustive investigation of the traditions behind Luke’s resurrection narrative, Dillon forms conclusions based on the evangelist’s redactional activity. Basically, Dillon finds that the evangelist has combined sayings and narrative material to form a unified composition that emphasizes the importance of the resurrection for church mission.

Luke presents the risen Jesus as instructing his followers in a way that dispels their confusion and blindness and brings them to Easter faith. There are two significant points here. First, it is not the historical facts of the empty tomb or the resurrection appearances that bring about this faith, but the words of the risen Jesus. Second, the lifting of the veil is experienced as a pure gift made possible by the teaching and activity of the risen Lord.

Accordingly, Dillon takes issue with those who think Luke’s main interest is to ensure the historicity of the resurrection and to establish the apostles as guarantors of the historical fact. Rather, Luke makes it clear that the facts are incomprehensible even to these eyewitnesses until the Lord’s revealing word transforms them. As such, they will witness primarily to an Easter faith that proclaims the pure gift of God. Just as the revelation comes to them sola gratia, so the content of that revelation is a message of divine grace and forgiveness. The resurrection of Jesus not only undoes the work of those who rejected him but also facilitates the declaration that they are forgiven.

Jesus tells his disciples that it was necessary for the Christ to die and be raised so that “repentance and forgiveness of sins might be preached in his name” (24:47). In this way, the instruction of the risen Lord reveals the positive value not only of the resurrection but also of the passion. For Luke, the traditions of the rejection and murder of Jesus display not the irredeemable perversity of humanity but the invincible persistence of divine forgiveness. Before the resurrection, Jesus’ disciples were completely in the dark as to the meaning of his passion predictions (9:45: 18:34). In the Easter stories, however, they come to understand what only the risen Christ could reveal: where human failure is total, God rules most powerfully.

What is disclosed to the disciples through divine revelation will be the hallmark of the church’s mission. God responds to human rebellion with renewed grace and continues to offer forgiveness even to those who reject the harbingers of forgiveness. Luke’s story of Jesus’ resurrection shows the divine purpose most triumphant at the very point where people’s rejection is most dramatic.

Luke, however, does not conclude his Gospel with stories of the resurrection, but, rather, with a story of Jesus’ ascension. Gerhard Lohfink, in his monograph, Die Himninelfahrt Jesit identifies this story as expressive of a tradition that is uniquely Lukan.22 Although some New Testament passages apparently assume the idea of an ascension (John 6:62; 20:17; Eph 4:8-10; 1 Tim 3:16), it is only Luke who reports the event, and he gives two separate descriptions at that! (Cf. 24:50-53; Acts 1:6-11.) Lohfink also observes that, contrary to the other Gospel writers, Luke consistently records the departures of angels and other heavenly personages (1:38; 2:15; 9:33; Acts 10:7; 12:10; cf. Luke 24:3 1). Accordingly, he feels compelled to recount the departure of the risen Lord rather than simply closing with the latter’s final words (cf. Matthew28:20).

Luke’s motive for reporting the ascension as an observable event may be attributed, in part, to his interest in history, and, more precisely, to his concept of salvation history. A visible ascension appeals to him because, as a historian, he wants to concretize events that otherwise could become subject to cosmic speculations. By fixing the ascension as an event in space and time, furthermore, he integrates the traditional theme of Christ’s elevation into his particular scheme of salvation history. For Luke, the ascension marks the end of one era and the beginning of another. Henceforth, Jesus will be absent, or, at least, he will not be present in the same way that he was before. The two accounts of the ascension in Luke and Acts separate the time of Jesus and the time of the Church.

A recent study by Mikeal Parsons reinforces many of Lohfink’s insights from the perspective of “narrative criticism.” In The Departure of Jesus in Luke-Acts, Parsons illustrates how Luke uses traditional literary devices for “endings” and “beginnings” in his two accounts of the ascension. The version given at the end of his Gospel closes out the work by recalling elements mentioned earlier and resolving major story lines. The mention of Jesus’ priestly blessing (cf. 1:23), the disciples’ return to Jerusalem (cf. 2:45), and their continuous blessing of God in the Temple (cf. 2:37) all make allusions to situations in the first part of the story.

Furthermore, the concluding reference to the disciples in the Temple provides a certain resolution to the conflict that has been developed with regard to that institution throughout the narrative: at the end of Luke’s story, the Temple is at last a “cleansed house” (cf. 19:45-48). When the resurrection and ascension stories in chapter 24 are taken together as a unit, such instances of “closure” are even more numerous, leading Parsons to believe that Luke intends them to be read as the dramatic conclusion to his work. The final image that he wishes to impress upon his readers is that of the disciples, despite the absence of their Lord, blessing God and obeying his commands with joy.

Parsons goes on to analyze the ascension narrative in Acts and finds that it serves the opposite literary purpose of opening rather than closing a work. In fact, the various discrepancies between Luke’s two accounts can be accounted for in terms of their literary function: one closes out the Gospel and the other opens the story of Acts.

It would seem, then, that Parsons confirms in his literary study what Lohfink held to be the theological significance of the two accounts: they separate the story of Jesus in the Gospel from that of the Church in Acts. In another sense, however, the two accounts may be considered a bridge between the two books. What Luke wants to emphasize is that the Church provides the ending to the story of Jesus, just as Jesus provides the beginning to the story of the Church. In the final analysis, the literary effect of beginning one book with the same incident that ended another ties the two works together and stresses the continuity rather than the distinctiveness of their contents.

In his study, Christ the Lord, Eric Franklin deals with still another aspect of the ascension in Luke, namely the apparent change of status it confers upon Jesus. Before this event, Jesus is presented primarily as one obedient to God, but, afterwards, he becomes himself the object of worship (24:52). In Acts, the disciples pray to him (7:59) and call upon his name (9:13-14). In one key passage, Peter even proclaims that it is through the exaltation that God has made Jesus Lord and Christ (2:32-36).

The change in status is only apparent, however, for Luke makes it clear that Jesus is both Lord and Christ from his birth (2:1 1). Furthermore, his subordination to the Father does not cease altogether after the exaltation (Acts 4:24-30). What the ascension signifies is the visible and concrete revelation of Jesus’ status. It is as much a transition in the apprehension of the disciples as in the career of Jesus, for it is not until this moment that understanding and joy come to them (24:52-53).

As such, the ascension account that ends Luke’s Gospel puts the whole volume into perspective and shows its significance. In his first book, Luke concentrates on presenting Jesus as the Christ, a role that is further defined in terms of the Old Testament concepts of “Prophet” and “Servant of God.” Like the disciples, however, Luke’s reader is compelled by the glorification of Jesus at the ascension to reconsider this presentation. It is then recognized that the life described is that of the one now known as “the Lord.” What Luke does in his Gospel, then, is present the earthly life of Jesus in such a way that it can be seen, in retrospect, to congeal with the more explicit Christology of Acts. Luke considers Jesus to be the ever-present, exalted Lord who is worshipped by the community. Accordingly, he tells the story of Jesus’ life as a movement toward exaltation and as a fitting prelude to the recognition and glorification that he now receives.

Salvation History and Eschatology
The question of the continuity between Luke’s story of Jesus and his story of the Church touches on what has been perhaps the most controversial issue in Lukan scholarship: Luke’s view of salvation history and eschatology.

As indicated in Chapter One of this book, Hans Conzelmann set the stage for much future discussion of Luke’s Gospel when he proposed that Luke divides history into three distinct periods: the time of Israel, the time of Jesus, and the time of the Church. The break between the first two periods is indicated in 16:16 when Jesus says, “The law and the prophets were until John; since then, the good news of the Kingdom of God is preached.” The break between the second and third periods is indicated by the division between the Gospel and Acts and by the latter’s unique description of a community that must persevere for an extended period of time in the absence of its Lord.

Conzelmann’s identification of the first break in time is generally recognized, although there has been much discussion as to whether Luke intends to place John the Baptist in the first or second period. The second break, however, is more debatable and the ramifications of its acceptance more momentous. By introducing the “time of the Church” as a major era of history and by placing Jesus in “the middle of time,” Luke, according to Conzelmann, accepts the delay of the parousia as inevitable and prepares his Church for the long haul. He sacrifices, however, something essential to the eschatological proclamation of the Gospel, namely, the present accessibility of salvation.

Conzelmann claims that, for Luke, salvation was available in the past and it will become available again in the distant future, but, for now, the Church survives on memories and promises. Luke “historicizes” the salvation brought by Christ; he is the only New Testament writer who features the historical Jesus as announcing, “Today salvation has come...” (19:9; cf. 2:11; 4:21; 22:43). But for Luke’s community, this “today” belongs to the past; it does not carry the immediacy of, say, Paul’s proclamation that “now is the day of salvation” (2 Corinthians 6:2). For Luke, the time of salvation is not “now,” it is past, and its return at the end of time has been postponed indefinitely. In the meanwhile, the Church may be strengthened through the gift of the Holy Spirit, but it will also have to endure many trials (Acts 14:22).

Conzelmann’s thesis found initial wide acceptance and influenced the work of many. Gerhard Schneider wrote that Luke replaces the hope of an imminent parousia with an exhortation to always be ready. Jacques Dupont suggested that he substitutes for the ultimate hope an “individual eschatology,” by which salvation is received by the believer at the end of his or her earthly life. Gunter Klein observed that the effect of Luke’s enterprise is to make reception of salvation dependent upon communion with the sacred past, which is only accessible through legitimate tradition.;’ In one way or another, all these proposals are variations on the basic theme sounded by Conzelmann.

Helmut Flender, in his book St. Luke: Theologian of Redemptive History, proposes a somewhat different model. To understand Luke’s thinking aright it is necessary to realize that his scheme is influenced by a distinction between earthly and celestial modes of being. Salvation history and eschatology have a vertical as well as horizontal dimension, for the earthly and heavenly spheres exist concurrently. Basically, Luke understands things as working out according to the scheme described in Revelation 12: a victory in heaven first, and then the restoration of all things on earth. From Luke’s point of view, the first step is completed and the second is in the process of being fulfilled.

According to Flender, the ascension of Jesus should not be understood negatively, as a departure that precedes a period of absence, but positively, as the inauguration of his present reign. In fact, Luke has transferred many functions usually associated with Christ at his parousia to his exaltation, notably, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Observing that Daniel 7:13 did not originally refer to the Son of Man coming to earth but to his enthronement in heaven, Flender affirms that, for Luke, the ascension and the parousia are virtually identified. The day of the Son of Man’s revelation on earth (17:30) will be but one of the “days of the Son of Man” (17:22) that have already begun.

It has been said that Flender simply restates Luke’s predicament in spatial rather than temporal terms. Whereas Conzelmann sees salvation as removed to the past or future, Flender represents it as removed to the heavens.” He insists, however, that salvation remains perpetually present in a dialectical sense. Although Christians continue to live a historical existence, they are not caught in a dismal period of transition. Rather, they enjoy communion with the risen Christ and receive the Holy Spirit, which Flender considers much more than just a “substitute” for genuine salvation.

Accordingly, when Christian preachers tell potential converts that God will send Christ to them (Acts 3:20), they are in effect promising a personal parousia to all who repent. Similarly, Jesus’ words regarding the “today” of salvation are to be read existentially. Luke intends for his readers to hear the promises of fulfillment and salvation as applicable to their own “today” in a way that transcends the historical sense. The Church, then, shares in the basically changed situation brought about by Jesus while, at the same time, participating in the renewal of the world. This mission takes place under the direction of the heavenly Christ and the guidance of the Spirit. The message of a salvation already completed by Christ transforms the world in a way that prefigures the consummation of that salvation on earth.

Observations and Conclusions
Though many various ideas concerning Luke’s view of Jesus are presented in this chapter, the careful reader will have already noted points of convergence between them. It is widely recognized that the Gospel and Acts present different portraits of Jesus, but most scholars believe that the same Christology is behind them and that a reading of the second book is necessary to understand the first. Luke wants to present Jesus as the Messiah, but also as “more than the Messiah.”

Kingsbury, Bock, and Franklin all indicate ways in which he does this: by the use of confessional titles, Old Testament references, and the story of the ascension, Luke moves beyond reporting the bald facts of Jesus’ life to indicate more fully who he is. Similarly, the models from the ancient world that Luke uses to describe Jesus tell only part of the story. Jesus may be likened to the divine philosopher, the mythological immortal, or the Hellenistic benefactor, but, above all else, Luke wants to say that he is unique (Acts 4:12).

It can be said without question that Luke believes Jesus has brought the salvation of God, but just how that salvation was procured and how it is to be received is less certain. Part of the problem is that Luke himself uses cryptic speech, describing what Jesus “accomplished at Jerusalem” as his “exodus” (9:31) and as his “being taken up” (9:51). These expressions could refer to his crucifixion, his resurrection, his ascension, or, and this seems most likely, to all three.

Luke has been accused of harboring a “theology of glory” because he puts so little value on the death of Jesus. Though some would contest this outright, others say that what he really does is broaden the locus of salvation:35 Jesus brings salvation during his earthly life (19:9), in his death (23:43), and after his glorification (Acts 2:21, 38). The “message of salvation” (Acts 13:26) is understood in Luke’s day to include the entire contents of his first volume, that is, everything that Jesus did and taught from his birth through his ascension (Acts 1:1). It is only in this sense that one can understand the rather ambiguous promise, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved” (Acts 16:31).

Obviously, salvation has a paradoxical quality for Luke. All scholars would agree that Luke sees conditions now as different from what they were before Jesus came. It is also agreed that he recognizes things are not yet what they shall be. The argument turns on which side of this paradox receives the emphasis: some view the evangelist as proclaiming the salvation that is already present, while others emphasize his struggle to come to grips with the reality of what is “not yet.”

As the leader of the latter camp. Conzelmann has had his day and his ideas continue to be influential. The increasing trend among scholars, however, is to do justice to the continuity that Luke sees between the time of Jesus and the time of the Church and to his recognition that salvation is a present reality for both eras. In fact, many are prepared to dispense with Conzelmann’s threefold scheme altogether and to speak only of two periods: a “time of promise” on the one hand, and a “time of fulfillment” or “time of salvation” on the other.

Posted in Jesus, The Gospel of Luke | Tagged Jesus and the first Adam, Jesus' ascension in Luke, Jesus' death serves a moral purpose, redemptive martyrdom, Salvation History and Eschatology in Luke | Leave a Comment »

Discipleship in Matthew – Jack Dean Kingsbury

January 6, 2012

Stained glass window of the Confession of Peter in Luke 9:20: "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered: "The Christ of God,” Detail from stained glass in the church of St Mary and St Lambert in Stonham Aspal in Suffolk England.

I was collecting some biographical information on Jack Dean Kingsbury, who has been the author of this week’s posts on The Gospel of Matthew when I came across the fact that he had passed away in 2011. I first came to know Professor Kingsbury in a New Testament seminary course that featured his superior analysis of NT theology and Christology. Reciting the Benedictus, Venite a vedere this morning, I was struck by the following (said of John the Baptist) and how much it seemed to apply to a scholar like Jack Dean Kingsbury whose life was spent in the same ministry of giving light and guiding those of us in the darkness, preparing our hearts and illuminating the Gospels. God Bless you, Professor Kingsbury, your wisdom remains with us.

As for you, little child,
you shall be called a prophet of the Most High.
You shall go ahead of the Lord,
to prepare His ways before Him,
to make known to His people their salvation,
through forgiveness of all their sins.
The loving-kindness of the heart of our God,
who visits us like the dawn from on High.

He will give light to those in darkness
and those who live in the shadow of death,
and guide us into the way of peace.

****************************************************

Matthew affirms, as we mentioned above, that God is the Father of Jesus in a way that is not predicated of other human beings (11:27). Conversely, he insists that Jesus is the Son of God in a manner that is true of no one else (1:23; 3:17; 11:27).

When Jesus authoritatively summons persons to follow him and they obey his call (4:18-22; 9:9), Matthew pictures them as entering the sphere where God’s end-time rule already impinges upon the present order of things (5:3-11; 11:3-5; 12:28). Through Jesus, the Messiah Son of God, these persons enter into a relationship of sonship with God. So it is that Jesus designates them as “Sons of God” (5:9, 45; 13:38) and speaks to them of God as “your Father” (cf., e.g., 5:16, 45) .

Although Jesus and his disciples are active in the midst of Israel, Matthew marks them off more sharply as a separate group than either Mark or Luke. Jesus is “with them” and they are “with him,” and the rubric obtains: “He who is not with me is against me, and he who does not gather with me scatters” (12:30) . Consequently, Jesus and his disciples form a “family” that stands apart from the rest of Israel. In relation to himself, Jesus declares that his disciples are his true relatives (12:49) and his “brothers” (28:10). In relation to one another, he asserts that they, too, are “all brothers” (23:8). In one passage, Matthew has Jesus stress at once both his uniqueness in comparison with his disciples and his “relatedness” to them: “For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, and sister, and mother” (12:50).

Accordingly, Jesus and the disciples comprise, in Matthew’s own terms, a brotherhood of the sons of God and of the disciples of Jesus. The very word “disciples” (mathetai) also characterizes Jesus’ followers as “learners.” Jesus is their “one teacher” and “Lord” (10:24; 23:8, 10), and they are his “slaves” who “learn from him” (10:24; 11:29; 13:36, 51-52). What he teaches them are the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (13:11, 51). At times they stand in need of explanation from Jesus (13:36; 15:15) or they can be persons of “little faith” (6:30; 8:26; 14:31; 16:8). But basically, they do in fact comprehend his word (13:11, 23, 51-52; 15:15-16; 16:12; 26:2) .

They are not fettered with the gross ignorance that afflicts the disciples in Mark’s Gospel. Indeed, Matthew has so richly endowed the disciples of his story with insight that they have simply become representative of the Christians of his own church. If Matthew has made the figure of Jesus “transparent” to his own age, he has done the same with the disciples.

We noted that in calling disciples to follow him, Jesus mediates to them the gracious, saving presence of God and his eschatological rule (5:3-11). Jesus’ disciples, then, are the “salt of the earth (5:13) and the “light of the world” (5:14). As such, they respond to their call and the teaching Jesus imparts to them by leading lives that reflect the “greater righteousness” (5:20). What this means Jesus explains in the pivotal passage 5:48: “You, therefore, shall be perfect (teleioi), as your heavenly Father is perfect.” As this verse suggests, the disciples practice the greater righteousness when they are absolutely single-hearted, or undivided (whole, complete), in their doing of the will of God.

The ministry of the pre-Easter disciples in Matthew’s Gospel is exclusively to Israel (10:6). Jesus summons the twelve and coin-missions them to preach the nearness of the kingdom and to heal (10:1-2, 5-8). In Matthew’s scheme, this ministry of the earthly disciples is, in effect, an extension of Jesus’ own earthly ministry to Israel (9:35-38).

In contradistinction to both Mark and Luke, it is within Jesus’ earthly ministry that Matthew locates the founding of the “church” (16:18; 18:17).’1 The setting is his expanded version of the Marcan pericope on Peter’s confession of Jesus at Caesarea Philippi (cf. 16:13-20 with Mark 8:27-30). Here Peter confesses Jesus to be the Messiah, the Son of the living God (16:16). He does so in his capacity as the first of the disciples to be called (4:18; 10:2) and therefore as their spokesman (16:15-16). As the first-called of the disciples, Peter thus becomes the foundation on which Jesus promises that he will build his church (16:18). As such, he will receive from Jesus the “keys of the kingdom of heaven,” which constitute the power to decide matters that pertain to church doctrine and to church discipline (16: 19). This power, however, Peter will share with the rest of the disciples (18:18) .

One reason Matthew portrays Jesus as founding the church has to do with his concern to assert the unbroken continuity and legitimacy of the tradition of doctrine and practice observed by his own community. Matthew understands the earthly Son of God himself to be the source of this tradition (cf. 18:15-20; 28:20). The Son of God has entrusted it to his disciples, and they, in turn, have faithfully administered it and handed it on to the post-Easter church. From the earthly Son who on the pages of Matthew’s Gospel knows and does the Father’s will, the church of Matthew learns what it is to know and do the Father’s will.

Although the disciples in Matthew’s Gospel comprehend the words of Jesus and know him to be the Son of God, they, like their Marcan counterparts, are unable at the last to make good on their pledge to hold to him no matter what might befall them (26:35). The upshot is that Judas betrays him (26:14-16, 47-50), the other disciples leave him and flee (26:56), and Peter denies him (26:58, 69-75). Still, upon his resurrection the Son of God sends word to the disciples through the women that they are to go to Galilee, where they will see him (28:10). In this way, he reconciles them to himself, and commissions them to their post-Easter ministry (28:16-20).

Posted in Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew | Tagged mathetai, The Founding of the "Church", the ministry of the disciples | 1 Comment »

The Ministries of Jesus In Matthew by Jack Dean Kingsbury

January 5, 2012

Christ Preaching, REMBRANDT Harmenszoon van Rijn, C. 1643-49

Jesus’ Ministry of Preaching
Jesus’ initial act as he undertakes his public ministry in Matthew’s story is to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (4:17). In the three passages that summarize Jesus’ activity in Israel, Matthew characterizes his message as “the gospel of the kingdom” (4:23; 9:35;[11:1]).

The term “gospel” in this expression denotes “good news.” The term “kingdom” is short for the “kingdom of heaven.” Hence, the message Jesus preaches in Israel is the “good news about the kingdom of heaven.”

The “kingdom of heaven” is an equivalent term for the “kingdom of God.” Both refer to the eschatological, or end-time, rule of God. For Matthew as for Mark, Jesus Messiah, the Son of God, is the agent of God’s end-time rule (4:17; 11:25-27). Therefore in him (1:23) , in his words and deeds (11:2-6) , the rule of God has drawn so near (4:17) that it impinges upon the present and can be described by Matthew as a present reality (11:12; 12:28). This is the import of a saying of Jesus such as this: “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (12:28).

As a present reality, however, the kingdom is also a hidden reality. In fact, only the followers of Jesus can perceive its presence in him. This is the truth to which the Matthaean Jesus alludes when he declares to his disciples: “But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear” (13:16).

In Matthew’s thought as in Mark’s, the kingdom is not only a present, hidden reality, it is also a future reality. Although it is so near that people confront it even now in Jesus Son of God, it has not yet been consummated. Indeed, Matthew depicts in some detail the future appearance of the kingdom: the Son of man will come suddenly, all the nations will be gathered before him, he will separate them into two groups, and he will speak judgment on them, thus determining who will “inherit the kingdom” and who will “go away into eternal punishment” (25:31-46; 13:40-43; 24:29-31).

Like Mark, Matthew, too, posits continuity between the present, hidden beginnings of the kingdom in the person and ministry of Jesus Son of God and the future manifestation of the kingdom in splendor at the coning of Jesus Son of man. The former will issue ineluctably in the latter (13:31-32, 33).

On the other hand. Matthew possesses a more highly developed sense of the delay of the parousia of the Son of man than does Mark. To be sure, Mark affirms that “the gospel must first be preached to all nations” before the end will come (13:10; cf. 13:34) . But in the parable of the talents, for example, Matthew speaks of the “lord of those slaves” as not returning until “after a long time” has passed (25:19). What this suggests is that the question of Christian existence within the world is a more insistent problem for Matthew.

In the light of Matthew’s concept of the kingdom of heaven, how, then, is the expression “the gospel of the kingdom” to be defined? It is the good news that God, in the person of his Son Jesus and in the word his followers preach about him (4:23; 24:14; 26:13), has drawn near to people (first Israel and then the Gentiles) with his eschatological rule to save.

As Jesus preaches the gospel of the kingdom in Israel, he is at the same time calling people to repentance (4:17). He is, in effect, impelling them to turn away from evil and to turn toward God, i.e., to enter into the sphere of God’s gracious rule by becoming his disciples (cf. 19:21). The alternative is to refuse repentance and hence to live in the sphere of Satan’s rule (12:26; 13:38-39) . The decision each person makes is of ultimate consequence, for it will be ratified to salvation or damnation at the latter day (11:20-24; 13:36-43) .

Jesus’ Ministry of Teaching
Since Matthew presents Jesus in his Gospel as the Son of God who knows and does his Father’s will (3:13-4:11), it is not surprising that “teaching” should be the principal activity in which Jesus engages during his public ministry to Israel. This emphasis on teaching comes to the fore in three ways in particular.

First, Matthew cites “teaching” ahead of “preaching” and “healing” in the three summary passages that describe what Jesus is about in his public ministry (4:23; 9:35; 11:1).
Second, although Matthew writes that John the Baptist and the disciples “preach” (3:1; 10:7), “teaching” remains the special prerogative of Jesus (28:20). And
Third, Matthew has Jesus state unequivocally that he, the Messiah, is the “one teacher” of the disciples (23:8, 10) .

In view of the high esteem in which Matthew holds Jesus’ activity of teaching, it is ostensibly an anomaly that only a stranger, opponents, and Judas, but never the (true) disciples, address Jesus as “teacher.” We recall that in Mark’s Gospel the disciples do address Jesus as “teacher.” But “teacher” is merely a term of human respect. For this reason, Matthew puts it on the lips of “outsiders” but replaces it with “Lord” when it comes to the disciples or to persons who approach Jesus in faith. “Lord” attributes to Jesus divine authority; it is appropriate to Matthew’s heightened Christology, for as the Messiah Son of God, it is with divine authority that he teaches.

Unquestionably, Mark presents Jesus, in his capacity as teacher, as the authoritative interpreter of the will of God. Still, he does not go out of his way to pit Jesus against Moses. By contrast, Matthew makes it a point to show that Jesus supersedes Moses.24 Two examples demonstrate this. In the first place, Jesus Son of God ascends the mountain, just as Moses once ascended Mount Sinai (Exod. 24), in order to expound the will of God to the Israelite crowds and his disciples (5:1-2). In the course of his teaching, he makes prominent use of the literary device of the antithesis: “You have heard that it was said to the men of old … but I say to you” (5:21-22, 27-28, 31-32, 33-34, 38-39, 43-44).

In so doing, Jesus reveals that it is, in principle, his word that has replaced the word of Moses. Indeed, this supersession of Moses’ word by Jesus’ word is also graphically illustrated at the end of the Gospel: on the mountain in Galilee, the risen Son of God enjoins his disciples to “observe all that I have commanded you” (28:20) . And in the second place, in debates between Jesus and the Israelite leaders over matters of law, Matthew diverges from Mark and accentuates the fact that Jesus speaks the mind not merely of Moses, but of God (cf. 15:4 with Mark 7:10; 19:4 with Mark 10:3; 22:31 with Mark 12:26).

Jesus Son of God, therefore, is in Matthew’s eyes the spokesman of God in a direct and immediate fashion (11:27; 28:18). He makes known the will of God in terms of its original intention (19:4, 8). With absolute sovereignty, he abrogates commands of Moses, such as those on divorce (5:31-32), oaths (5:33-37), and retribution (5:38-42) Or he radicalizes commands of Moses, such as those on murder (5:21-26), adultery (5:27-30), and love of one’s enemy (5:43-48) . Or he repudiates demands for a false observance of commands of Moses, such as is the case with his rulings on the sabbath law (12:1-8, 9-14) and the dietary laws (15:10-20a).

By the same token, the Matthaean Jesus can also come out against the regulations of the Pharisaic “tradition of the elders” (16: 11-12). He castigates, for instance, contemporary practice relative to the so-called vow of Corban (15:5-7), and he judges that “to eat with unwashed hands does not defile a person” (15:20). Or he can turn around and endorse certain of these regulations (cf. 23:2-3), as when he says of the rule concerning the tithing of mint and dill and cummin that these things ought to be done (23:23).

On the basis of these examples, it is not difficult to discern the salvation-historical principle that informs Matthew’s treatment of the law. This principle is that it is in Jesus Son of God that the law, as the expression of the will of God, attains to its “fulfillment” (5:17; 11: 13); it is his word that gives the law its final shape and meaning (22:16; 7:28-29). But if this is true, then it also follows that his sayings are binding on the disciples for all time to come (28:20) and will never pass away (24:35).

Does all of this mean, then, that what the Matthaean Jesus entrusts to his disciples is an elaborate system of casuistry? Certainly not. For what precludes this is the recurring insistence that the deepest intention of the will of God is love (7:12; 9:13; 12:7; 19:19) : love toward God and love toward the neighbor (22:34-40). Thus, doing the will of God or keeping the injunctions of the law is in essence, Matthew maintains, always an exercise in love.

If Mark’s Jesus clashes with the leaders of Israel over his interpretation of the law, the dispute between Matthew’s Jesus and Israel’s leaders is even more acrimonious. There is no chapter in Mark’s Gospel, for example, to compare to that of Matthew 23. In Matthew’s perspective, the nub of the matter is that Israel’s leaders prove themselves to be “hypocrites,” i.e., “they preach, but they do not practice” (23:3, 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29). What makes this accusation so onerous is the circumstance that hypocrisy is indicative of “divided allegiance,” of not being “perfect,” or wholehearted in the knowledge and service of God (5:48; Deut. 18:13). Hypocrisy is, in short, “lawlessness” (23:28), which Jesus Son of man will condemn at the final judgment (13:41-43).

Jesus’ Ministry of Healing
The third major facet of Jesus’ public ministry in Israel is that of “healing” (4:23; 9:35; 11:1, 5)•27 Up to a point, Matthew’s approach to the healing ministry of Jesus parallels that of Mark.

Like Mark, Matthew designates the miracles Jesus performs as “powerful acts” (cf. 11:20, 21, 23; 13:54; 14:2). This very term (dynameis) indicates that the divine authority which marks Jesus’ teaching and preaching is likewise present in his deeds (cf. 21:1415 to 21:23). As for “signs and wonders,” Matthew does not associate them with Jesus. On the contrary, only “an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign” (12:39; 16:4), and it is the “false prophets” who do “great signs and wonders” (24:24).

Like Mark, Matthew, too, sees in the powerful acts of Jesus the cosmic struggle between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan (12:24-29) . Disease in people and upheaval in nature are symptoms of sin and of bondage to Satan. Hence, through the activity of healing and of exercising dominion over nature, Jesus Son of God is liberating people from the sphere of Satan’s rule and bringing them into the gracious sphere of the rule of God. “But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons,” Jesus proclaims, “then the kingdom of God has come upon you!” (12:28).

But there is one respect in which Matthew’s portrayal of the healing activity of Jesus differs noticeably from that of Mark. For his part, Mark predicates the verb “to heal” (therapeõ) to Jesus only four times. Matthew, on the other hand, does so some twelve or thirteen times.” Now the root meaning of therapeõ is “to serve,” and “to heal” is secondary to this. Moreover, at 8:16-17 Matthew employs a formula quotation in order to characterize the healing ministry of Jesus as the “fulfillment” of OT prophecy.

Significantly, the OT passage he cites is Isaiah 53:4, a verse of one of the Servant Songs: “He took our sicknesses and bore our diseases” (8:17) . Taken together, these factors explain why it is that Matthew exhibits such fondness for the verb therapeõ: he plays on the double meaning of “to serve” and “to heal” in order to present the “healing activity” of Jesus as the “ministry of service” which the Messiah Son of God carries out on behalf of his people Israel. Jesus, therefore, “heals” the sick among the crowds and so “serves” the people of Israel by bestowing on then the blessings of the end-time rule of God. Once again, therefore, Jesus sovereignly stands forth as the Son who knows and does his Father’s will.

Because Jesus Son of God proffers salvation to Israel through his ministry of healing, his powerful acts, no less than his preaching, summon Israel to repentance and to discipleship (11:20-24). Israel, however, refuses such repentance (11:20). This, in turn, evokes from Jesus the stark word of judgment: “But I tell you that it shall be more tolerable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom than for you” (1 1 :24; cf. 11:22).

Posted in Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew | Tagged 'kingdom of heaven, dynameis, Jesus and the day of judgment, Jesus' Ministry of Healing, Jesus' Ministry of Teaching, Teaching vs Preaching in Matthew, the word of Moses, therapeõ | Leave a Comment »

The Mission Of Jesus In Matthew – Jack Dean Kingsbury

January 4, 2012

The Tarlati polyptych is a Renaissance polyptych painted by the Italian artist Pietro Lorenzetti, with tempera and gold on panel, in 1320.

Preliminary to the public ministry of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel are the ministry of John the Baptist and the baptism and the temptation of Jesus. Matthew follows Mark and also treats these events as preliminary to the public ministry of Jesus (cf. 3:1-4:16 to Mark 1:2-13). In fact, Matthew shapes them so that they play a critical role in preparing the reader to understand properly the further development of his story (4:17-16:20; 16:21-28:20).

The ministry of John paves the way for the ministry of Jesus in that John readies Israel for the coming of Jesus, the Messiah Son of God (3:3, 5-6, 11-12) . John is a prophet who is likewise “more than a prophet” because he is Elijah redivivus, the “forerunner” of the Messiah (11:9-10, 14). He appears in the desert of Judea and fulfills his mission by calling Israel to repentance (3:1-2, 5-6, 11). He announces the nearness of the kingdom even before Jesus does (3:1-2; 4:17), but the burden of his announcement is not of the nature of good news but of judgment (cf. 3:7-12 with 4:23).

People from all the surrounding country go out to John, and they respond to his call by submitting to his baptism and confessing their sins (3:5-6). The leaders of Israel also come out to him, but for them John has only harsh words: he denounces them as a “brood of vipers” (3:7), warns them of impending judgment (3:7), enjoins them to lead lives befitting repentance (3:8), discounts their belief that they can rely for salvation on their descendency from Abraham (3:9), and predicts the imminent coming of the “Mightier One” who will exercise judgment to salvation or damnation (3:11-12).

John’s prediction about the Mightier One comes true as Jesus suddenly arrives on the scene (3:13). Jesus compels John to baptize him (3:15), but not as one who must repent of sin. On the contrary, Jesus insists that he be baptized because he knows that this is God’s will and he will do it (3:15). After he has been baptized, God empowers Jesus with his Spirit for messianic ministry (3:16) and declares him to be his unique Son (3:17).

Accordingly, the perception the reader has of Matthew’s Jesus following the baptismal scene is that he is the Spirit-endowed Son of God who knows and does his Father’s will. Matthew employs the pericope on the temptation (4:1-11) to confirm this perception. The Spirit with which Jesus has been empowered leads him out into the desert to confront Satan in the place of his abode (4:1).

Satan’s objective is to put Jesus at cross-purposes with the will of God. He tempts Jesus:

(a) to rebel against God by miraculously stilling his hunger and thus forcing a change in his circumstances (4:2-4),

(b) to put God to the test to see whether he will stand by his promise to protect him from harm (4:5-7), and

These temptations are all antitypical to those experienced by Israel in its wanderings in the desert (Deuteronomy 8:3; 6:13-14, 16). But whereas Israel son of God broke faith with God. Jesus Son of God remains loyal to God. He demonstrates that he is in truth the Son who knows and does his Father’s will.

This brings us to the point toward which we have been steering. The Jesus who sets out on his public ministry to Israel (4: 17) is the royal Son of God who perfectly knows and does the will of God. Throughout the rest of his story (4: 17-28:20), Matthew elaborates the two sides of this view of Jesus.

On the one hand, Jesus is the Son who “does” the will of God. What such doing of the will of God entails Matthew brings to light in the narrative line of his story. In the second main part of his story, which is devoted to Jesus’ public ministry (4:17-16:20), it entails teaching, preaching, and healing (4:23; 9:35; 11:1). In the third main part, which is devoted to Jesus’ passion and resurrection (16:21-28:20), it entails submitting to betrayal, suffering, and death (16:21; 17:22-23; 20: 18-19).

On the other hand, Jesus is likewise the Son who “knows” the will of God. It is in the great discourses that Matthew plays up this side of his understanding of Jesus. These discourses deal with topics that are of fundamental significance to the life of discipleship. In them, Jesus Son of God addresses himself to such matters as the ethics of the kingdom (chaps. 5-7), instructions on missionary outreach (chap. 10), secret knowledge about the kingdom (chap. 13), community life (chap. 18), and the time before the end (chaps. 24-25).

Consequently, Matthew places both the narrative line of his story and the great discourses in the service of the image he projects of Jesus at his baptism and temptation as the authoritative Son who knows and does his Father’s will. In addition, however, Matthew also conveys this image of Jesus in another, more subtle, way. As compared with Mark, he intensifies the “aura of the divine” that surrounds Jesus and hence tends to clothe the earthly Jesus in the splendor of the risen Jesus his church worships and confesses.

To illustrate this, consider the term “Father.” For his part, the Marcan Jesus invokes the image of God as Father only sparingly,” and seems not to use the expression “my Father” (but cf. 14:36). By contrast, the Matthaean Jesus makes frequent references to God as Father (cf. concordance). Not only this, but he also rigidly distinguishes in his use of this term between himself and his disciples: he speaks of “my Father” or “your Father” but never of “our Father” (the Lord’s Prayer is no exception; cf. 6:9).

Other examples of this art of writing are likewise ready to hand. Thus, in forty-nine instances Matthew utilizes the verb proserchomai (“to come to,” “to approach”), which in the LXX is cultic in coloration and in Josephus is used of stepping before a king, in order to portray persons as approaching Jesus with the same reverence that would be due to a deity or king. In similar fashion, he likewise utilizes the verb proskyneo (“to worship,” “to do obeisance to”) in order to show that Jesus is the worthy object of worship. In the same vein, Matthew furthermore “spiritualizes” the person of Jesus. One way he does this is by dropping Marcan references to the “feelings” of Jesus: “anger” (Mark 3:5), “pity” (Mark 1:41), “wonder” (Mark 6:6), “pneumatic frenzy” (Mark 8:12), “indignation” (Mark 10:14), and “love” (Mark 10:21).

Another way he does this is by “editing out” a number of queries Jesus poses in Mark’s Gospel which, on the surface, seem to intimate a lack of knowledge or perception on Jesus’ part. And fourth, Matthew heightens the majesty of Jesus by also modifying or omitting Marcan expressions that appear to circumscribe his authority or allude to the fact that some desire of his went unfulfilled.”

A special example of Matthew’s penchant for coloring the earthly Jesus in the hues of the heavenly Jesus concerns the manner in which persons address Jesus. On the one hand, Matthew depicts a nonbeliever, opponents, and Judas as addressing Jesus as “teacher” or “rabbi,” i.e., with terms which attribute to him human respect.” On the other hand, he consistently depicts the (true) disciples and those who come to Jesus in the attitude of faith as addressing him as “Lord.” The force of the latter title in Matthew’s Gospel is such that it attributes to Jesus an exalted station and divine authority.

On balance, then, if it cannot be said of Mark that he replicates in his story the historical Jesus, even less can this be said of Matthew. Quite the opposite, Matthew’s goal is to make the Jesus of his story “transparent” to the Christians of A.D. 90 for whom he is writing. Hence, Matthew’s Jesus is Jesus as he is known by the post-Easter church. As we mentioned above, he moves and speaks and acts with the “aura of the divine” about him.

With this image in mind of Jesus as the authoritative Son who knows and does his Father’s will, we now want to look more closely at the public ministry of Jesus. This spans the second main part of Matthew’s story (4:17-16:20). In three summary passages, Matthew describes the heart of it: Jesus goes “about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing every disease and every infirmity among the people” (4:23; 9:35; 11:1).

At the same time, Matthew stresses more emphatically than Mark that Israel is the primary object of Jesus’ attention. At 15:24, Jesus states categorically: “I have not been sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Similarly, Jesus commands the pre-Easter disciples with an eye to their mission: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (10:5-6).

To reinforce the notion that Jesus directs his activity first of all to Israel, Matthew restricts geographically the movement of Jesus. Except for brief excursions,’ Jesus stays within the confines of Israel. Galilee is the area where he works (4:23; 9:35; 11:1) and, within Galilee, Capernaum stands out as the place in and around which numerous events of his ministry occur (cf. chaps. 8-9). Although neither Mark nor Luke ever writes that Jesus takes up residence anywhere, Matthew speaks of him as “dwelling” there (4:13). Capernaum is “his own city” (9: 1 1), and it may be that the “house” there is to be thought of as belonging to him (cf. 9: 10, 28; 12:46 and 13:1; 13:36; 17:25).

In comparison with Mark, it is with relative ease that one can also track the movement of Jesus during his public ministry in Matthew’s story (4:17-16:20). This movement is without the air of haste and, at times, even aimlessness which seems to attend it in Mark’s story. Thus, as the Son who knows and does his Father’ will (3:13-4:11), Matthew’s Jesus presents himself to Israel (4. 17).

He preaches to the people and summons them to repentance in view of the gracious nearness of the kingdom of heaven (4:17). He also calls his first disciples (4:18-22). Followed by them and attracting huge crowds (4:23-25; 5: 1), he ascends a mountain and there teaches the will of God (5:1-7:29). Then, wandering in the area of Capernaum and traveling across the sea of Galilee and hack, he performs ten mighty acts of deliverance, in so doing setting forth the nature and the cost of discipleship (8:1-9:34). At the height of his activity, he commissions the twelve to a ministry in Israel modeled on his own, one of preaching and healing though not of teaching (9:35-10:42).

Despite Jesus’ ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing, however, he is repudiated as the Messiah by all segments of Israel (11: 2-12:50). Even his family appears to desert him, so that his disciples alone remain as those who are his true relatives (12:46-50). Jesus’ response to this total rejection by Israel is a dual one. On the one hand, he declares that Israel has become hard of heart, and gives public demonstration of this by addressing the crowds in “parables,” in speech they cannot comprehend (13:1-35). On the other hand, he turns his attention to his disciples and reveals to them the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven (13:11, 36-52). Still, by the end of Jesus’ parable discourse the trend of events is clear.

Because violence threatens him before “his hour” (12:14; 14:1-12), he momentarily withdraws to a deserted place (14:13) or into the regions of Tyre and Sidon (15:21) to avoid his opponents (16:4). The bright spot is that his disciples comprehend that he is in fact Israel’s Messiah, the Son of God (14:33), and at the close of this phase of his activity Peter boldly confesses him to be such (16:16).

Posted in Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew | Tagged Jesus and Israel, Jesus the authoritative Son, the pericope on the temptation | Leave a Comment »

The Figure Of Jesus in Matthew: Son of Man, Son of God – Jack Dean Kingsbury

January 3, 2012

One like a Son of Man, Engraving by Gérard JOLLAIN, Presumably published 1670

The first main part of Matthew’s Gospel (1:1-4:16) is not, strictly speaking, a prologue. It is, more accurately, the initial phase of the story to be narrated. The major purpose of this part of Matthew’s story is to inform the reader as to who Jesus is (1: 1) . And because Matthew departs from Mark and tells first of the origins and infancy of Jesus, the reader is not introduced to John the Baptist until Chapter 3.

Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God
Matthew writes in the opening verse that Jesus is the “Messiah, the Son of David, the Son of Abraham” (1:1) . Interestingly, Matthew omits from this pedigree his preeminent title for Jesus, that of the “Son of God.” The reason is that this latter title is of such importance that Matthew will allow no one other than God himself to be the first to utter it, at Jesus’ baptism (3: 17).

The Matthaean Jesus, therefore, is the Davidic Messiah, the royal Son of God, who descends from Abraham. For this understanding of Jesus, Matthew is basically in debt to Mark. What Matthew has done is to adopt Mark’s Christology, elaborate it, and adapt it to meet the needs of a new situation.

Matthew makes use of Christological terms with great skill in order to describe the person and mission of Jesus. The very name “Jesus,” for instance, means “God is salvation.” Matthew plays on this meaning early in his story in order to alert the reader to the nature and scope of Jesus’ mission. To Joseph the angel declares, “… you shall call his name `Jesus,’ for he shall save his people from their sins” (1:21). Salvation from sin, therefore, is what Jesus is about.

Moreover, because the personal name “Jesus” harbors within it what Matthew takes to be Jesus’ calling, he removes it from the realm of familiar usage. Thus, Bartimaeus and the two demoniacs may address Jesus by his name in Mark’s Gospel (1:24; 5:7; 10:47), but Matthew erases these touches (8:29; 20:30).

Matthew’s broad description of Jesus is that he is the “Messiah” (1 :1, 16, 17) . As the Messiah, he is the Coming One foretold by the prophets and awaited by Israel (11:2-6). Standing in the line of David (1:1, 17, 25), he brings the history of Israel to its culmination (1:1, 17). He is invested with the authority of God, and encounter with him is no idle event, for one’s salvation hinges on it (3:11; 11:2-6).

Mark makes no mention of Jesus as being the “Son of Abraham.” Matthew’s interest in this title (1: 1) is twofold. On the one hand, he is concerned to show that Jesus is the one in whom the entire history of Israel, which had its beginning in Abraham, attains to its fulfillment (1:17). On the other hand, he is concerned to present Jesus as the one in whom God makes good on the promise he gave to Abraham regarding the Gentiles (Genesis 12:3; 18:18; 22: 18: 26:4). The “many” who put their faith in him, asserts the Matthaean Jesus, “will come from east and west and sit at table with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven” (8:10-11).

Of all the evangelists, none occupies himself more with the Davidic sonship of Jesus than does Matthew. Whereas Mark and Luke, for example, employ the title Son of David only four times each. Matthew employs it no fewer than eleven times: ten times it refers to Jesus (cf. concordance); and once it refers to Joseph (“Joseph, son of David”; 1:20).

By and large, Matthew pursues two objectives in his use of the title Son of David. The one objective is simply to affirm the Davidic lineage of Jesus. Still, this is not without problems. The Matthaean genealogy of Jesus runs through Joseph (1:16). In Matthew’s eyes, therefore, Joseph is clearly a “son of David” (1:16, 20) . The problem, however, is that as Matthew presents it, Joseph is neither the physical father of Jesus (1:18, 20, 23, 25) nor does Mary stand in the line of David (1:16). This problem comes to a head in the last link of Matthew’s genealogical chain: “. . . and Jacob fathered Joseph, the husband of Mary, from whom Jesus was born, who is called the Messiah” (1:16).

But if Joseph is not really the father of Jesus and his mother Mary is not from the house of David, how can Jesus legitimately be said to be the “Son of David”? In his pericope on the origin of the Messiah, Matthew gives his answer to this question (1:18-25) . It is that Jesus, miraculously conceived by the Holy Spirit (1:18, 20), receives his name from Joseph (1:25). What this means, in turn, is that Matthew’s solution to the problem of Jesus’ genealogy is that he can legitimately be called the Son of David because Joseph son of David adopts him into his line (cf. 13:55: “Is not this the son of the carpenter?”).

The second objective Matthew pursues with his Son-of-David Christology is that of focusing on the guilt that is Israel’s for not receiving its Messiah. As the Son of David, Jesus is promised and sent specifically to Israel (1:1; 15:22-24; 21:5, 9; 22:42). Through individual acts of healing, he demonstrates this. These acts extend to such persons as the following: two “blind men” (9:27-31), a “blind and dumb man” (12:22) , the “daughter” of a Gentile woman (15: 21-28), two more “blind men” (20:29-34), and the “blind and lame” in the temple (21:14). What is noteworthy about these persons is that they are the ones who count for nothing in Israel, which is likewise true of the “children” who hail Jesus as the Son of David in the temple (21:5) and the Canaanite “woman” who pleads the cause of her daughter (15:21-22).

Now these “no-accounts,” or those who assist them, acknowledge in the attitude of faith that Jesus is the Son of David. The irony is that in so doing, they “see” and “confess” what the leaders of Israel and the crowds do not. When the leaders of Israel, for example, witness the healing activity of Jesus Son of David, this only provokes them to anger (21: 15 ) or motivates them to charge him with being an emissary of Satan (9:32-34; 12:22-24). For their part, the crowds at least pose the question as to whether Jesus is the Son of David (12:23). But the manner in which they frame it anticipates, in the Greek original, a negative reply (12:23).

And when Jesus enters Jerusalem and the crowds do hail him as the Son of David, they explain that this means no more than that he is “the prophet … from Nazareth” (21 :9-11 ). Consequently, by contrasting sharply the reception of Jesus as the Son of David by certain “no-accounts” with Israel’s refusal to acknowledge him as such. Matthew calls attention to the guilt that accrues to Israel for its blindness.

But although Matthew strongly affirms the Davidic sonship of Jesus Messiah, Jesus is more for him than merely the Son of David. For Mark, too, of course the latter is also true. But whereas Mark does not squarely address this issue until the pericope on the question about David’s son in Chapter 12 (cf. Matt. 22:41-46). Matthew addresses it already in this first part of his Gospel. His theological position, like that of Mark, is that Jesus is preeminently the “Son of God.” But while this title is rich in content for both Mark and Matthew, the chief emphasis is not the same. In oversimplified terms, what it says of Jesus in Mark’s story is that he is the royal Messiah who dies upon the cross (14:35-36; 15:39; cf. 12:1-12; 16:6). What it says of Jesus in Matthew’s story is that he is “Emmanuel,” the royal Messiah in whom God draws near to abide with his people (1:23; 18:20; 28:20).

As early as 1: 16, Matthew alludes to the divine sonship of Jesus. He casts the verb “to be born” in the passive voice, in this way alerting the reader to special activity on the part of God: ‘Jesus is born [by an act of God)." This verb, in turn, points forward to the passive participle "that which is conceived" in 1:20. This, too, alludes to divine activity, and is embedded in the pericope on the origin of Jesus (1: 18-25). In this pericope, Matthew states less cryptically that Mary's conception is "by the Holy Spirit" (1:18, 20), that God through the prophet discloses the true significance of the person of her son ("God with us," 1:22-23), that Mary is a "virgin" when she bears him (1:23) , and that the child cannot be from Joseph because Joseph makes no attempt to have relations with Mary until after she has given birth to her son (1:25). Taken together, the intention of these terms and statements is clear: Matthew asserts that Jesus, born of Mary, is nevertheless the Son of God, for his origin is in God.

In Chapter 2, Matthew continues his description of the person of Jesus. The Magi arrive in Jerusalem and ask where the newborn "King of the Jews" is to be found (2:2). Herod responds by designating this king as the "Messiah" (2:4). His mistaken notion of the Messiah, however, is that he will seize his throne (2:3, 13). By drawing on the OT, Matthew shows that the royal Messiah is destined for far greater things than merely the overthrow of Herod: he will, in fact, be the eschatological Shepherd of God's people Israel (2:6).

Now it is striking that, following 2:6, Matthew never once refers to Jesus in Chapter 2 as "king" or "ruler." Instead, he refers to him consistently as "the child" and repeatedly employs the expression "the child and [with] his mother” (2:8-9, 11, 13-14, 20-21). The remarkable thing about this latter expression is that it is at once appropriate to the narrative and a means by which Matthew can speak of Jesus without giving the impression that he is the son of Joseph and hence solely the Son of David (1:20, 25) .

On the contrary, in that Matthew makes reference to Jesus and Mary exclusive of Joseph, he recalls the situation of Chapter 1: the virgin Mary gives birth to a son who has been conceived apart from Joseph son of David by the Holy Spirit (1:18, 20, 23) . Thus, it becomes plain that the purpose of the expression “the child and [with] his mother” is to remind the reader that the son of Mary is at the same time the Son of God. Consequently, the term “the child” in Chapter 2 reveals itself to be a surrogate for “Son of God,” and Matthew himself confirms this observation: at 2:15, he breaks his otherwise consistent use throughout 2:7-23 of the expression “the child and [with] his mother” so that none other than God, through the prophet, might call “the child” Jesus “my Son.” In the last analysis, therefore, we see that “the child” whom the Magi come to Bethlehem to “worship” (2:11) as the “King of the Jews” is in fact the “Son of God,” just as “the child” whom Herod plots to kill is no political throne-pretender but the eschatological Shepherd of God’s people who is likewise the “Son of God.”

At the beginning of Chapter 3, Matthew introduces John the Baptist to his story (3:1-12). John is the forerunner of Jesus (3:1-4, 1 1) and he announces, much as in Mark’s Gospel: “He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry” (3:1 1). Indeed, this Mightier One, predicts John, will visit Israel as one who dispenses salvation and condemnation (3:11-12).

No sooner has John foretold the coming of the Mightier One than Jesus appears at the Jordan river to be baptized by John (3:13). John would “prevent” this, objecting that he has need to be baptized by Jesus (3:14). Jesus overrules John, however, declaring that “it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness” (3:15). Since this “confrontation” between John and Jesus is related only by Matthew, he obviously attaches special importance to it. What purpose does it serve? It shows that Jesus submits to baptism, not because he, like Israel, must repent of sin (3:2, 6), but because he is perfectly obedient to his Father’s will.

The double occurrence of the expression “and behold” at 3:16 and 3:17 indicates that it is these verses that form the climax of the baptismal scene. Following Mark rather closely, Matthew, too, depicts the descent of the Holy Spirit upon Jesus and his resultant empowerment for the messianic ministry he is shortly to begin (3: 16; 4:17). Because Jesus has been conceived by the Spirit, it is ruled out that his empowerment with the Spirit at his baptism should be construed as his initial endowment with the Spirit.

The second major event to occur at the baptism is that the voice calls out from heaven, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased” (3:17). Once again, this declaration is a composite quotation (cf. Mark 1:11) with the words taken from Genesis 22:2, Psalms 2:7, and Isaiah. 42: 1. They characterize Jesus as the unique Son of God from the house of David whom God has chosen for eschatological ministry in Israel.

In this declaration of the heavenly voice at 3: 17, we have reached the apex, not only of the baptismal pericope, but also of the entire first main part of Matthew’s story (1:1-4:16). In this part, Matthew describes the person and origins of Jesus. The overriding truth he promulgates is that Jesus is the Davidic Messiah, the royal Son of God. He does not state the whole of this truth in 1: 1, the heading of the first main part of his story. For, as something that can be known solely by revelation (16:16-17), this truth must first be proclaimed, not by any character in the story, but only by God.

Accordingly, Matthew alludes to this truth with circumlocutions (1:16, 18, 20), with metaphors (2:8-9, 11, 13-14, 20-21; 3:11), or with a term (“son”) that is susceptible to dual meaning (1:21, 23, 25). He even permits it to sound softly as the word of the Lord spoken through the prophet (1:22-23; 2:15). Still, all remains adumbration until that climactic point following the baptism of Jesus when the voice from heaven proclaims in the presence of John that Jesus is indeed the unique Son of God (3:17).

The pericope on the temptation of Jesus (4:1-11) follows that on the baptism. Let us call attention here to the fact that in this passage, too, Jesus stands forth as the “Son of God” (4:3, 6). By resisting Satan, Jesus Son of God gives further proof of his perfect obedience to the will of God.

By way of presenting a summary sketch of the Christology of 1:1-4:16, it is instructive to draw together the contents of several key passages in which Matthew employs a series of related idioms. These idioms are the following: “his people” (1:21), “my people” (2:6), “my Son” (2:15; 3:17), and “the Son of God” (4:3, 6). In combination, the passages containing these idioms cast Jesus in the following light: Jesus, in the line of David (1:21), is the Son of God (2:15; 3:17), i.e., he has his origin in God (1:20) and is the one chosen to shepherd the end-time people of God (2:6); empowered by God for messianic ministry (3:16-17), he proves himself in confrontation with Satan to be perfectly obedient to the will of God (4:1-12); as such a one, he saves his (God’s) people from their sins (1:21). Although there are details still to be added, this sketch captures well Matthew’s basic understanding of Jesus.

Jesus as the Son of Man
Matthew has taken over Son-of-Man references from both the Marcan tradition and Q. But although Q tells of the “earthly activity” and of the “future coming” of Jesus Son of Man, it is silent concerning his “suffering.” Mark, on the other hand, ascribes all three phases of activity to Jesus Son of Man. Structurally, Matthew elaborates the pattern of Mark but, like Q, lays great stress on the parousia of the Son of Man.

To get at the function of the title Son of Man in Matthew’s Gospel, it is helpful to compare it with the way in which he uses the title Son of God. “Son of God” for Matthew is of the nature of a “confessional” title. Although supernatural beings, such as God (3:17; 17:5), Satan (4:3, 6), and demons (8:29), know that Jesus is the Messiah Son of God, such knowledge is beyond the natural capacity of human beings.

To be sure, human beings in Matthew’s story do address Jesus as the Son of God, but it is in the spirit of mockery or blasphemy (26:63; 27:40, 43). To confess Jesus to be the Son of God aright, i.e., in faith, is possible only through the gift of divine revelation (11:25-27; 13:11; 16:16-17; 27:54). To dispel any doubt about this, Matthew brings a passage not found elsewhere in the synoptic traditions. In direct response to Peter’s confession, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!” (16:16), the Matthacan Jesus declares: “… flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven!” (16:17).

Consequently, Son of God functions as a “confessional” title in Matthew’s story in the sense that the only human beings who can utter it aright are those who have been blessed by God with the “eyes of faith” (1 1 :25; 13: 16-17). The truth that this title conveys, namely, that in Jesus God is present among people with his end-time rule (1:23), is inaccessible to the “world,” Jew or Gentile (11:25-27; 13:11).

Once this is understood, we can further understand how it is that Matthew handles Mark’s secret of the divine sonship of Jesus. In Mark’s story, the secret that Jesus is the Son of God remains in force until Jesus dies on the cross (15:39) and is raised (16:6-7) . Indeed, the disciples do not comprehend this secret until they “see” Jesus in Galilee (14:28; 16:6-7). In Mark’s scheme of things, it is this “seeing” of the crucified and resurrected Son of God that belongs, along with other events (3:13-16; 14:58; 15:29, 38), to the founding of the church.

In Matthew’s story, on the other hand, the church is founded by Jesus already during his earthly ministry (16:17-19; 18:15-20). The disciples “see” and “worship” Jesus as the Son of God before he ever dies on the cross (14:33; 16:15-16). Hence, in Matthew’s story the secret of the divine sonship of Jesus, while hidden from Israel and the world, is “given” to the disciples (11:25-27; 13:11, 16-17).

It is against this backdrop that Matthew develops his use of the title Son of Man. In his Gospel as in Mark’s, Jesus is never confessed to be the Son of Man or even addressed as such. Accordingly, Son of Man is not, like Son of God, a confessional title. On the contrary, it is what may be termed a “public” title. Indeed, the groundwork for treating it as such is present already in Mark (cf. esp. 2:6, 10, 24, 28). But in what sense is Son of Man a “public” title? In the sense that it is the title by which the Matthaean Jesus refers to himself as he interacts with the “world,” both Israel and the Gentiles.

Thus, the title Son of Man occurs on the lips of the Matthaean Jesus in all of the following contexts: when he makes reference to himself in the audience of the Jewish crowds or of his opponents during his public ministry to Israel;° when he tells his disciples, in sayings like the passion predictions, about the suffering God has ordained that Judas, the Israelite leaders, and Gentiles should inflict upon him; when he points to himself, in contrast to the “rulers of the Gentiles” and the “great men” of the world, as the model of self-sacrificial service his disciples are to emulate in their own lives in the world (20:25-28) ; when he describes himself following Easter as the Exalted One who will reign over the world and raise up in it sons of the kingdom (13:37-38); and when he sketches for the disciples his future return in glory as Judge of all the nations of the world.

One passage that indicates particularly well how Matthew works with the title of Son of Man is 16:13-20 (cf. also 8:19-22; 13:3738; 26:20-25). Here Jesus asks with a view to the public, “Who do men say that the Son of Man is?” (16:13) . But with a view to his disciples he asks, “Who do you say that I am [ = the Son of God]?” (16:15-16). The thing to observe is that whereas “Son of Man” is made to correlate with “men,” “I” (“Son of God”) is made to correlate with the disciples. If Jesus stands before the world as the Son of Man, he is known and confessed by his disciples (and church) to be the Son of God. if Son of Man is a “public” title, Son of God is a “confessional” title.

Does this mean, then, that Matthew has two Christological “lines” running through his Gospel which nowhere meet? No, for there is one point at which the two lines can be seen to converge: at the parousia. Mark hints of this already in his presentation (cf. 8:38), and Matthew picks up on this and develops it. In his pericope on the last judgment (25:31-46), Matthew plainly assimilates the figure of the future Son of Man to the figure of the Messiah Son of God.

For example, if the Messiah Son of God is a royal figure, so is the future Son of Man, for Matthew terms him the “King” (25:34, 40). If the Messiah Son of God is the agent of God’s eschatological kingdom (4:17; 11:2-5, 25-27; 12:28), so is the future Son of Man (7:21-23; 16:27-28). If the Messiah Son of God knows God as “my Father” (11:27; 16:17), so does the future Son of Man (25: 34; cf. 16:27). And just as the Messiah Son of God refers to his disciples as “my brothers” (12:48-50; 28:10), so the future Son of Man refers to the righteous at the latter day as “my brothers” (25:40; cf. with 18:6). Clearly, therefore, Matthew desires to show that also at his parousia as the glorious Son of Man, Jesus remains the Son of God.

Matthew’s view, then, is that if Jesus is known by his disciples during his ministry and by his church following Easter as the Messiah, the Son of God, he interacts with the world, first Israel and then the Gentiles, as the Son of Man. At the consummation of the age, however, Jesus will appear visibly as the Judge and Ruler of the universe. At that time, the whole world will see what until then only the eyes of faith had ever been given by God to perceive: that in Jesus, God is present with his end-time rule. Consequently, at the parousia both the church and the world will behold Jesus in all the majesty of God as the Son of Man. Yet, even as he appears in splendor as the Son of Man, Jesus remains the Son of God, the King through whom God exercises his rule.

Posted in Jesus, The Gospel of Matthew | Tagged Mark's Gospel, Matthew's Gospel, Son of God, Son of Man | Leave a Comment »

A New Kind of Revolution – N.T. Wright

December 29, 2011

Pietro Lorenzetti (or Pietro Laurati; c. 1280 - 1348) was an Italian painter, active between approximately 1306 and 1345. He was born and died in Siena. He was influenced by Giovanni Pisano and Giotto, and worked alongside Simone Martini at Assisi. He and his brother, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, helped introduce naturalism into Sienese art. In their artistry and experiments with three-dimensional and spatial arrangements, they foreshadowed the art of the Renaissance. Many of his religious works are in churches in Siena, Arezzo, and Assisi. His last documented work is the Nativity of the Virgin (c. 1335-1342), now in the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo. His masterwork is a tempera fresco decoration of the lower church of Basilica of San Francesco d'Assisi, where he painted a series of large panels depicting Crucifixion, Deposition from the Cross, and Entombment (shown here). In these works, massed figures display emotional interactions, unlike many prior depictions which appear to be iconic agglomerations, as if independent figures had been glued on to a surface, with no compelling relationship to one another.

First, it will not do to suppose that Jesus came to teach people “how to get to heaven.” That view has been immensely popular in Western Christianity for many generations, but it simply won’t do. The whole point of Jesus’ public career was not to tell people that God was in heaven and that, at death, they could leave “earth” behind and go to be with him there. It was to tell them that God was now taking charge, right here on “earth”; that they should pray for this to happen; that they should recognize, in his own work, the signs that it was happening indeed; and that when he completed his work, it would become reality.

In particular, we must be clear what is and isn’t meant when Jesus, in Matthew’s gospel, speaks about the “‘kingdom of heaven.” Many have wrongly assumed that he was referring to a “kingdom” in the sense of a place called “heaven” — in other words, a heavenly realm to which people might aspire to go once their time on “earth” was over. That is simply not what the phrase meant in the first century — though, sadly, it doesn’t seem to have taken very long within the early church for the misunderstanding to creep in, doubtless because within a century or two the original Jewish meanings of Jesus’ words were being forgotten.

Within Jesus’ world, the word “heaven” could be a reverent way of saying “God”; and in any case, part of the point of “heaven” is that it wasn’t detached, wasn’t a long way off, but was always the place from which “earth” was to be run. When, in the book of Daniel, people speak about “the God of heaven,” the point is that this God is in charge on earth, not that he’s a long way away and unconcerned about it. “The God of heaven” is precisely the one who organizes things on earth (Dan. 2:37) and will eventually set up his own kingdom there (2:44; see also 4:37; 5:23).

Second, was Jesus, then, mounting some kind of quasi-military revolution? Some have thought so. Many, fed up with the way contemporary churches have colluded with corrupt and wicked establishments, have been eager to find in Jesus a different dream, a dream that perches uncomfortably halfway between the Sermon on the Mount and the sermons of Karl Marx. Attempts have then been made to ward off this proposal by insisting that Jesus’ message was “spiritual” rather than “political.” This has been, in my view, another dialogue of the deaf.

The case for seeing Jesus as a would-be revolutionary bent on overthrowing the Roman order (and the Jewish aristocrats who functioned as Rome’s local puppets) and establishing himself and his followers as rulers in their place rests on one very solid foundation: Jesus’ announcement of God’s kingdom. As we saw earlier, first-century Jewish revolutionary movements used “God’s kingdom” as one of their major slogans. They didn’t want other rulers; they just wanted God himself to be king. From some points of view, Jesus does indeed look a bit like Judah the Hammer, going around with his little band of loyal followers, gathering support, managing to stay out of trouble, and eventually going up to Jerusalem, palm branches waving, to “cleanse the Temple.”

From some points of view, Jesus even looks a bit like Simon the Star, mounting a three-year kingdom movement in which the “kingdom” had indeed already begun (remember the year on Simon’s coins), while the great battle and the proper rebuilding of the Temple remained in the future. Jesus, like Simon, seems to have practiced and taught a severe way of life in which Israel’s ancient law was intensified; for Jesus, anger and lust were as much off limits as murder and adultery. And there are some signs in the gospels that people were eyeing Jesus, during his public ministry, to compare him with Herod Antipas. The sources suggest that he was giving his followers instructions on how to behave now that they were living under his rule. There are enough analogies there for us to say that Jesus really does belong on the map of those kingdom movements.

The parallel with Simon the Star is particularly striking, showing how easy and natural it was in that climate to speak of something having already been well and truly inaugurated — the coins, again — and also of something that had yet to be accomplished. Jesus’ way of combining present and future sayings about God’s kingdom has long baffled scholars who were trying to understand him without reference to his Jewish context. Once we put him back in that world, the problem simply vanishes. Of course he believed that God’s kingdom had already begun. Of course he believed that it would take another great act to complete the job. These are not in tension. They belong together quite naturally. The combination comes with the territory.

We can of course see why, faced with the Jesus-the-Marxist theory, many scholars and preachers have reacted in horror. It wasn’t just their possible right-wing sympathies, though those may have come into play as well. It was that the whole thrust of Jesus’ public career, insofar as we can reconstruct it from passage after passage in the gospels, seemed to be going in a very different direction. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t a violent revolutionary. We have already studied his commands to love and forgive and we have set them in their first-century political context. He warned at one point that, if God’s kingdom was breaking into the world, the men of violence were trying to muscle their way into the act (Matthew 11:12; Luke 16:16). He just wasn’t the sort of freedom fighter we have come to know rather well in the last hundred years or so.

It won’t do, then, to suppose that what Jesus was doing was simply advancing a kind of human revolution, a proto-Marxist movement in which the poor would overthrow the rich. Jesus has plenty of harsh words for the rich — far more than for anyone else, in fact. But, just as, to the dismay of his own imprisoned cousin, he showed no sign of launching a movement to oust Herod Antipas and set his prisoners free, so he showed no sign either of joining one of the various already existing resistance movements or of starting his own.

Those movements, clearly, were using the same language as he was, since they too spoke about God becoming king. But what Jesus meant by that, acted out in a hundred vivid demonstrations of God’s sovereign power, and explained in a hundred parables that told the ancient stories in a new way, was quite different from what the ordinary revolutionaries had in mind.

Nor does that mean, of course — in the light of the first point we have just made — that Jesus was saying, “Forget revolution. Go to heaven instead.” It was about giving up the ordinary kind of revolution, in which violent change produces violent regimes, which are eventually toppled by further violent change, and discovering an entirely different nay instead. “Don’t resist evil,” he said, and the words he used didn’t mean, “Lie down and let people walk all over you.” They meant, “Don’t join the normal `resistance’ movements.” The Marxist or quasi-Marxist option simply has too many elements of the story running against it. Clearly, Jesus was not apolitical — how could he be, talking about God becoming king in first-century Palestine? — but his “politics” don’t seem to fit the molds into which many have tried to squash him.

Nor was Jesus simply advocating a clever, philosophically savvy way of living courageously within the present evil world, a way by which his followers might be able to attain some kind of detachment. After the failure of earlier attempts to make Jesus into a Marxist hero, we have seen more subtle attempts to make him a Cynic hero, looking out on the follies and failings of the world with an ironic smile and teaching his followers how to rise above it all. No doubt there are echoes of Cynic sayings and attitudes here and there in Jesus’ words, just as his voicing of the Golden Rule (“Whatever you want people to do to you, do that to them,” Luke 6:3 1) is echoed in many cultures and traditions. But he wasn’t teaching his followers how to rise above the mess of the world. He was training them to be kingdom bringers. As Marx himself said, the point is not to understand the world, but to change it.

Third, and most important, we must avoid jumping to the conclusion, from all that has been said above, that Jesus was doing things that “proved his divinity” — or that the main point he was trying to get across was that he was the “son of God” in the sense of the second person of the Trinity. Here we must be careful. I have already hinted strongly enough, I think, that Jesus saw his own work, his own public career, his own very person, as the reality to which Temple, Sabbath, and creation itself were pointing.

That is, or ought to be, a clear indication that, in terms of the “God” of first-century Jews, Jesus understood himself to be embodying this God, doing things whose best explanation was that this was what God was doing, and so on. My problem with “proofs of divinity” is that all too often, when people have spoken or written like that, it isn’t entirely clear that they have the right “God” in mind. What seems to be being “proved” is a semi-Deist type of Christianity — the type of thing a lot of Christians in the eighteenth century, and many since then, have thought they should be defending. In this sort of Christianity, “God” is in heaven and sends his divine second self, his “Son,” to “demonstrate his divinity,” so that people would worship him, be saved by his cross, and return with him to heaven. But in first-century Christianity, what mattered was not people going from earth into God’s kingdom in heaven. What mattered, and what Jesus taught his followers to pray, was that God’s kingdom would come on earth as in heaven.

Jesus’ powerful acts of healing, then, together with all the other extraordinary things the gospels credit him with, are not done in order to “prove” his “divinity.” If you see them like that, they prove too much and too little. Too much: other people had, and still have, remarkable gifts of healing. That’s always been a feature on the edge of religious movements, and sometimes in the center of them. But it doesn’t mean that the person doing the healing is “God,” just like that.

Were that to be the case, there would be quite a lot of gods. Equally, too little: those who have seen Jesus’ powerful acts as “proofs of divinity” have often just stopped there, as though that was the main thing one was supposed to conclude from a reading of the gospels. They have then allowed the “right” answer to the question about “divinity” to shut down the question the gospels are urgently pressing upon us — is God becoming king?

A considerable amount of “apologetics” to this day, in fact, has consisted of arguing for the “right answers” to two questions. First, asks the apologist, did Jesus do these things? Yes! Second, what does it prove? That he was God! QED! And off goes the apologist in triumph, a day’s work done.

And Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John would call the apologist back. Sorry, but you’ve just scored a home run when you should have scored an end run. You’re playing the wrong game. The gospels are not about “how Jesus turned out to be God.” They are about how God became king on earth as in heaven. The good is the enemy of the best. From one point of view it’s good to see the intimate connection, throughout the gospels, of Jesus with Israel’s God. If you’re trying to score a point against a Deist opponent who sniffily suggests that Jesus couldn’t possibly have been “divine,” because no sane human being could imagine that he was God incarnate, you may end up winning that game. But you may then lose the real one.

Plenty of Christians, alas, have imagined that a “divine Jesus” had come to earth simply to reveal his divinity and save people away from earth for a distant “heaven.” (Some have even imagined, absurdly, that the point of “proving that Jesus really did all those things” is to show that the Bible is true — as though Jesus came to witness to the Bible rather than the other way around.) It has been all too possible to use the doctrine of the incarnation or even the doctrine of the inspiration of scripture as a way of protecting oneself and one’s worldview and political agenda against having to face the far greater challenge of God taking charge, of God becoming king, on earth as in heaven. But that is what the stories in the Bible are all about. That’s what the story of Jesus was, and is, all about. That is the real challenge, and skeptics aren’t the only ones who find clever ways to avoid it.

Once we begin to see beyond these three distracting angles of vision, then, and grasp the story in its own terms, we find ourselves compelled forward into the narrative again. If the time is fulfilled, what will happen to bring even this fulfilled-time moment to its proper conclusion? If Jesus is behaving as though he were the Temple in person, what will this mean both for the existing Temple and for his followers? And if, through his work, new creation is breaking into the world, how is it going to make any headway against the apparently still all-powerful forces of corruption, evil, and death itself?

Posted in Jesus, N.T. Wright | Tagged 'kingdom of heaven, Jesus as freedom fighter, Simon the Star, The God of heaven | Leave a Comment »

Paying Attention To The Sky

Archive for the ‘Jesus’ Category

The Prayer of Jesus: Jesus’ Prayer on the Mount of Olives in the Letter to the Hebrews – Pope Benedict XVI

The Prayer of Jesus: Jesus’ Will and the Will of the Father – Pope Benedict XVI

The Prayer Of Jesus: The Prayer On The Mount Of Olives – Pope Benedict XVI

The Nature of Jesus’ Resurrection and Its Historical Significance – Pope Benedict XVI

The Meaning of Jesus’ Death, Resurrection and Ascension in the Gospel of Luke — Mark Allan Powell

Discipleship in Matthew – Jack Dean Kingsbury

The Ministries of Jesus In Matthew by Jack Dean Kingsbury

The Mission Of Jesus In Matthew – Jack Dean Kingsbury

The Figure Of Jesus in Matthew: Son of Man, Son of God – Jack Dean Kingsbury

A New Kind of Revolution – N.T. Wright

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