Jesus (eBook)

What Catholics Believe

Alan Schreck (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
144 Seiten
Servant (Verlag)
978-1-63582-454-4 (ISBN)

What do Catholics really believe about Jesus? Dr. Alan Schreck offers a thorough answer to this question. Jesus is central to everything the Church believes and teaches, yet few people really understand the significance of who Jesus is in their own lives. Dr. Schreck explains when and how Jesus lived, what he taught, his human and divine nature, and how the Risen Jesus continues to act today in the sacraments, through the Holy Spirit, and in his people and ministers. Written in an engaging, straightforward style, this is a book for anyone wanting to know more about Jesus.

chapter two

Jesus “From Above,” Jesus “From Below”

Jesus entrusted the task of both proclaiming him and interpreting the meaning of his life and teaching to the community of his followers, the church. Within the church this task particularly belongs to the apostles and their successors, the church’s bishops. Biblical scholars and theologians also have an important role in shedding light on the meaning of Scripture, although their findings are always subject to the discernment of the bishops, the official teachers (magisterium) of God’s people, the guardians of the church’s faith.

Scholars have distinguished between a theology of Christ “from above” (a “high, descending Christology”) and one “from below” (a “low, ascending Christology”). The starting point of the approach “from above” is the divine eternal Son of God who has “descended” into the world and taken on our humanity in the Incarnation. The approach “from below” begins with a focus on Jesus in his humanity gradually leading to an awareness that he transcends human boundaries and categories, thus “ascending” to belief in his divinity.

Christology “From Above”

In many respects the difference between these two Christological approaches may be observed in the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of John compared with that of the three Synoptic Gospels. John’s Gospel begins with a prologue that could serve as a summary of “high” Christology:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…. All things were made through him….

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. (John 1:1–3a, 14)

From the beginning to the end of the Gospel of John, Jesus is called the Son of God. For example, John the Baptist concludes his testimony about Jesus in John 1, “And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34). John’s Gospel frequently speaks of Jesus’s being sent by God the Father into the world (see John 3:17, 34; 5:24, 30, 36–38; 6:38–39, 44, 57; 7:16, 28, 29, 33; 8:18, 26, 29, 42; 11:42; 12:44, 45, 49; 16:5; 17:3, 8, 18, 21, 23, 25).

Jesus is not only sent by the Father but equal to the Father.

•[Jesus] called God his Father, making himself equal with God (John 5:18).

•“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).

•“The Father is in me and I am in the Father” (John 10:38).

•Philip said to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.” Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father…. Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me?’” (John 14:8–10).8

Where did Jesus come from? One way the Gospel of John expresses this is “from above.”

•“He who comes from above is above all; he who is of the earth belongs to the earth,… he who comes from heaven is above all. He bears witness to what he has seen and heard, yet no one receives his testimony” (John 3:31–32).

•“You are from below, I am from above; you are of this world, I am not of this world” (John 8:23).

The Gospel of John is replete with titles that Jesus applies to himself: the light of the world; the resurrection and the life; the way, the truth, and the life; the bread of life; and so on. It is evident that the author of this Gospel intends to present the identity and mission of Jesus very explicitly through these titles and through the events (contexts) in which Jesus speaks them.

Many have sought to explain why these titles in the Gospel of John are absent from the other three canonical Gospels. In fact, in these Gospels (especially in the Gospel of Mark), Jesus appears reticent to speak about his identity. He instructs the people whom he heals and even his own apostles not to speak publicly of his works or his Messianic identity (see Mark 7:36; 8:26, 29).

A common and plausible explanation is that John’s Gospel is intentionally written to provide a theologically enriched presentation of Jesus’s origin and identity. There are fewer miracles of Jesus reported in John, which focuses instead on seven “signs.” But each sign illustrates a specific aspect of Jesus’s mission and identity, often connected to one of the titles of Jesus.

The Gospel of John omits some critical events, such as the institution of the Eucharist at the Last Supper, but instead includes Jesus’s washing of the apostles’ feet (see John 13:3–15) and the lengthy “Bread of Life” discourse in chapter 6. Scholars conjecture that John’s Gospel, the last Gospel written, may have responded to questions that had arisen as the Gospel was preached, such as responding to misunderstandings about the Eucharist and even denials of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist that arose in the first century.

The portrait of Jesus in the Gospel of John has invited questions about the historical validity of the Gospels, raising again the question, “Will the real Jesus please come forward?” Some have argued that the source of this Gospel is the one who was closest to Jesus, the disciple “whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23; 19:26), and thus this Gospel is a more theological portrait, revealing through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit deeper, or at least different, insights into Jesus’s identity.

I would hold two things to be certain. First, the Catholic Church affirms that all of the canonical writings of the New Testament are inspired by the Holy Spirit, and therefore the Gospels, “whose historicity she unhesitatingly affirms,” tell us “the honest truth about Jesus” (Dei Verbum, 11, 19). Catholics have confidence, in faith, that every statement that the Sacred Scripture makes, especially about Jesus, embodies truth that is helpful for our life and salvation as well as our understanding of Jesus.

Secondly, the Gospel of John powerfully and even consummately represents this “high” Christology—a view of Jesus as the eternal Son of God who has come “from above” and has “become flesh” for the sake of our salvation. We must praise the Holy Spirit for inspiring the authorship of this text and for guiding the church to include it in the canon of the New Testament.

If one asks a Catholic, “Who is Jesus Christ?” it is probable that the response will be, “He is the Son of God,” or, “He is God made man,” or, “He is God in human form (incarnate).” These are expressions of “classical” Catholic Christology, which is “Christology from above” because it highlights the divinity of Jesus—that he is God. As we will see, St. Thomas Aquinas and other great theologians affirm that Jesus is a “divine person,” that is, he is the divine Son or Word of God who has “come down” to assume our humanity.

Christology “From Below”

In more recent times emphasis in biblical scholarship has shifted toward reflection on the humanity of Jesus as a starting point. The point is made that outside of Mary, Joseph, and the small circle of others who encountered Jesus in the infancy narratives (including Jesus’s kinsman, John the Baptist, who was in utero at the time), most contemporaries of Jesus encountered him as a carpenter’s son from a small town in the Galilean countryside. They had no clue that Jesus was anything other than a faithful Jew among the amharetz, the “people of the land.” This is the starting point of the descriptions of Jesus in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, which are labeled the “Synoptic Gospels” because their portrayals of Jesus are very similar. These Gospels are largely drawn from shared sources.

While the Gospel of John starts with the divine origin of Jesus “in the beginning,” the Gospels of Matthew and Luke present genealogies that trace Jesus’s human origin back to Adam (Luke 3:23–38) and his Jewish roots back to Abraham (Matthew 1:1–17). After the infancy narratives, which many scholars claim were included in Matthew and Luke last, we have the accounts of Jesus going to the Jordan River with the crowds to see a prophet preaching a “baptism” of repentance from sins. Jesus himself went to his kinsman John to receive this baptism. After the heavens opened to reveal Jesus as a unique “Son of God,” he immediately went into the wilderness to pray.

When he returned, Jesus began his pubic life and ministry. He was a “man with a mission”: teaching, healing, and...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	1.2.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
ISBN-10	1-63582-454-0 / 1635824540
ISBN-13	978-1-63582-454-4 / 9781635824544

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