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PAGE 5-March 8,1973
Jesus-Son of God
“BISHOP SHEEN ONCE SAID, “The problem is
not that Jesus is too far away. It is that he is too close.
‘Behold, I stand at the door and knock’.’
door. (NC Sketch by Eric Smith)
Jesus at the
BY FATHER AL MCBRIDE, O.PRAEM.
A lot of myth talk surrounds the story of Jesus in recent
years. The reason for it is to bring out the meaning and personal
challenge of Jesus which may be obscured by the literary style
of the Gospel authors, a style that doesn’t follow the reportorial
crispness of modern journalism and history writing.
What started, innocently enough, as a reasonable effort to
alert us to the poetic biases of the evangelists, sometimes led to
a loss of the very realities they tried to communicate. The
search for meaning and the attempt to satisfy our scientific
mentality occasionally resulted in the mistake of admiring a
free-floating meaning with no reality to back it up. Then we are
treated to a strangely unscientific statement such as, “It doesn’t
matter what happened. It’s the meaning that counts.”
This was a neat way of avoiding thorny questions about
miracles, resurrections, second comings, and even divinity. Many
advocates of myth talk forgot what the inspirer of it all,
Rudolph Bultmann, quietly insisted on, namely, that myth is a
window onto the sacred, the transcendent, the beyond. It is an
invitation to perceive human meaning indeed, but far more, it is
a challenge to transcendent faith.
Breaking myths open like walnuts to see only relevant
meaning for local situations can be misleading, for myth talk
points mainly to God. It is no little irony that at the very
moment the myth speakers triumphed in getting all sorts of
human meanings out of the Gospel texts, the Jesus movement
came along and flaunted fundamentalism in their faces. Now I
believe that fundamentalism is a regression from a reasonable
perception of the Gospels, but I applaud its recovery of the
mood of utter transcendence (also read supernatural) that
surrounds God and Jesus, God’s only begotten son.
I do not wish to carry the discussion of myth talk and
fundamentalism beyond the remarks made. It was just that, in
some cases, the confusions generated by the discussions had
obscured the abiding belief of Christians that Jesus is the son of
God. This is why the answer to the question, “who is God?”,
which has plagued philosophers and theologians through all of
history can be answered by telling them to look at Jesus.
To say that Jesus is the disclosure of God is to say that
whatever we would want to grasp of God in a conscious, human
way may be acquired by comtemplating Jesus in the New
Testament literature, and in the writings that have reflected the
Christian experience of Jesus in every age of the Church. The
splendor of God is made manifest in Jesus, his beloved son.
It is not enough of course to look at the literature. Look
through it as well. Move through the literature to face the living
Son of God himself. Final appreciation of the divinity of Jesus
is only acquired in prayer. Direct communion with Jesus
possesses its dark side as we come to experience the absolute
mystery of his Godhead. Secondly, it possesses its light side, as
it discloses the glory of Jesus and the power and meaning he
confers on all that is. The sweat shirts and bumper stickers that
proclaim, JESUS IS MY LORD, are word events swatched in
mod styles that try to speak of the reality experienced when
communion with Jesus the Lord takes place.
Eastern mysticism fumbles the ball with its claim that man is
God. The Christian distinction is more helpful. Man’s radical
experience is to be in union with God. Baptism, the other
[Know Your Faith)
The Real Meaning of “Son of God
95
BY FATHER QUENTIN QUESNELL, S.J.
They called him “Son of God.” Centuries of Christian piety
and Christian theology have made the words familiar. They
come easily to our lips. They did not come so easily to the lips
of the first Christians.
The reality they began with was the reality of a man, Jesus of
Nazareth. He was the son of Joseph and Mary. He had been
crucified under Pontius Pilate. They had known him and loved
him.
They did not first hear that God had become a man. They
first met or heard of a man, and then found him “made
manifest as Son of God by his glorious resurrection from the
dead” (Romans 1,4).
Their approach to Jesus was the reverse of what we
generally experience today. We meet him first when we learn
our prayers as children. That is, we meet him first as God. The
people who teach us those prayers recite every Sunday at Mass:
“Bom of the Father before all ages, God of God, Light of Light,
true God of true God, begotten not made, of one substance
with the Father, by whom all things were made.”
When we say “Son of God,” this is what we think of first.
When the first Christians said it, they probably thought first of
things that could reasonably be said about a man. For instance,
“son of God” could be said of any good man insofar as a good
life is always a reflection of him who is Father of us all. Jesus
sometimes used the expression that way, as for instance in John
8,42 and 10,35.
He used it that way too when he said that those of us who
want to be sons of God should do what God does, do good to
evil and good people alike (Matthew 5,44ff.). A special
application to Jesus of “son of God” in this sense implied that,
of all men known or met, he was the most like God. To see
what God is like, look at Jesus.
Along the lines of this basic idea, the Jews had used the term
for their kings. They felt or hoped to feel the divine power and
love of justice embodied in those who ruled them, so they called
them “sons of God.” They also often applied the same words to
their longed-for anointed, the Messiah to come, the Christ. They
expessed the idea that their salvation, when it did arrive, would
be truly through an “Emmanuel,” a “God-with-us.” God is the
true and only savior of Israel, He who “comes in the name of
the Lord” will be doing the saving work which is proper to God
himself.
All those senses of the expression “son of God” could be and
were reverently used of Jesus. What about the “real” sense? The
one in the Creed at Mass? That sense presented grave problems.
Pagan gods could have children like themselves. But the God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could never have anyone else like
himself. “Hear. O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.” The
God whom Jesus called Father had said: “Thou shall not have
other gods before me.” There could not be two Gods. And the
one true God could not have children.
It took many generations of thinking and praying and arguing
among Christians to work that one out. On the one hand, it
seemed impossible to take the words “son of God” completely
seriously. On the other hand, they felt that no other sense of
“son of God” was big enough to express all Jesus meant to
them. He was perfect salvation. He must be fully “Emmanuel -
God-with-us.” It was not enough to call him a man who
reflected God’s image. He was that image itself before their
eyes. But how could all this be?
Eventually there was worked out what we call “the mystery
of the Blessed Trinity.” We learn the right words about it from
the catechism. We can come closer to getting the full impact of
those words, however, if we let the experience of the first
Christians become more real for us.
They knew Jesus first as a man and son of man. They began
to call him “Son of God” to praise him as a man. But then as
they went on looking at what he did and tried to live by what
he taught, they came to realize with astonishment that Jesus
could have done all he did only if he was even more than the
best of men. He was really Son of God. When that astonishment
becomes ours too, “Son of God” can take on its full meaning
for us. 1
The One Absolute
BY FATHER JOSEPH M. CHAMPLIN
The people of St. Stephan’s Parish in Kansas City, Mo., are
fortunate to have Father William Bauman as their pastor. In
fact, that Midwest diocese and the wider Church throughout the
United States can count as a real blessing from the Lord the
presence of this talented, dedicated person in its midst.
Father Bauman is a liturgist, musician, and parish priest. He
knows all these fields and does well in each of them. I have seen
him willingly accept many, varied and substantial tasks, then
with Germanic efficiency successfully complete them. Yet a
pleasant, easy manner adds the human touch to his labors.
Father Bauman works hard and gets others to labor with him,
but he is not a cold, insensitive machine.
Having prematurely canonized my friend and colleague and
brought a flush to the man’s face which should match his red
hair, I now want to cite a few points he made in the November,
1972 issue of “Liturgy,” a publication of the Liturgical
Conference. That issue, totally dedicated to music in worship,
opens with his article, “The Relative Absolute.” Father
Bauman, who, in addition to parochial duties, serves as secretary
of the Kansas City diocesan liturgical commission and chairjnan
of the music committee for the Federation of Diocesan
Liturgical Commissions, establishes in the early paragraphs his
basic contention.
“There is one fundamental and absolute value at the heart of
the church music problem. It is the simple axiom that good
church music is music for prayer. Christians gather in
community to pray, and music is the handmaid, the servant of
this prayer. Every selection of music, be it a song all sing
together or a psalm from Scripture or a song to be listened to by
the people as it is sung or performed, is music for prayer.”
I think my friend is right on target with his remarks and very
much in tune with the concern for prayer which prevails across
the country at this time in our history. Many of us have said in
the past few years that quality in church music is what truly
counts. We have maintained that it makes little difference
whether a worshiping community uses organ or guitar, the new
or the old as long as the music is of merit.
Neither Father Bauman nor this writer wishes to retract that
belief, but both of us sense, if I read him correctly, the
existence of a higher norm, a more pervasive principle to guide
in the selection of music for the liturgy. He counsels: “Before
all other considerations, choose the music that will help this
particular community to pray on this particular occasion.”
Such an axiom or directive, however, has a practical
consequence to it. If suitability for prayer is the one absolute,
then we must be prepared for a greater diversity of approach
and a much freer spirit in selecting music for wprship.
“Different strokes for different folks” seems to be today’s
dominant philosophy of acceptance and it can be applied with
discretion to the matter under discussion.
Different people pray in different ways for different purposes
at different times. The music which should help them pray more
effectively under those diverse circumstances quite naturally,
therefore, will differ for each situation.
A critic from Mississippi, responding to my column on a jazz
Mass in San Francisco, wrote: “This sounds more like
entertainment than a church service. Now the Church is in the
process of making our churches places of entertainment, movie
houses, concerts, girlie shows, etc. I am fed up with the whole
bit.”
Was that San Francisco event at Old St. Mary’s pure
entertainment or prayerful worship? Did Turk Murphy and his
jazz men merely tickle the ears or did they stir up the heart?
Could the planners of this special liturgy say afterwards that
people prayed better or worse, found it easier or harder to reach
Jesus the Son of God, because of the music? That should be the
ultimate, the one absolute criterion.
sacraments, love behavior, prayer, social concern are all
consciousness awakeners to keep reminding us and to reinforce
the bond of our union with Jesus, the son of God. In a certain
sense we already live in Paradise. The problem is to remember it.
At the Easter Vigil we wake up again and say, “Yes, I have
put on the Lord Jesus Christ.” Sadly, by Easter Monday we
already forget what we resolved to remember. Archbishop
Fulton J. Sheen once said, “The problem is not that Jesus is too
far away. It is that he is too close. ‘Behold, I stand at the door
and knock.’ ”
Those who have difficulty with the divinity of Jesus have
closen the desolateness of a life where the awareness of ultimate
meaning, which is the source of making sense out of proximate
meaning, never reaches the taking off point. It means an unlived
life, but for those who believe, and pray that their unbelief will
be purified, a lived life is the master possibility. And the world
is better for this.
Jesus, God’s Son
BY FATHER CARL J. PFEIFER, S.J.
I recently came across a creed apparently written by
Benjamin Franklin. In it he summarizes his personal beliefs. Part
of his creed refers to Jesus Christ: “As to Jesus of Nazareth, I
think his system of morals and his religion as he left them to us,
the best the world ever saw or is likely to see; but . . .1 have
some doubts as to his divinity, though it is a question I do not
dogmatize on.”
His words struck me as curiously comtemporary. In recent
years there has been a wave of renewed interest in Jesus,
particularly in his example of what human nature can achieve.
He is seen as the model of human goodness, an attractive,
courageous, compassionate man. His life and teachings have
drawn and motivated people to work for the poor, denounce
war, and fight for social justice.
In many ways the present preoccupation with Jesus the man
is a healthy reaction against centuries of concentration on Jesus
the Son of God. His humanity was not denied, but received
considerably less attention than the fact that he was the Son of
God. As always, however, there is danger that the pendulum
now swings too far in the opposite direction, an overemphasis
on Jesus’ divinity to a neglect of it as Jesus’ humanity is overly
stressed.
The General Catechetical Directory suggests a healthy balance
for religious education: “Catechesis must proclaim Jesus in his
concrete existence and in his message, that is, it must open the
way for men to the wonderful perfection of his humanity in
such a way that they will be able to acknowledge the mystery of
his divinity” (53). Getting to know Jesus the man should be
encouraged in a manner that opens people to know him as
God’s Son.
How can this be done? The Directory’s statement contains
two words which suggest an approach: “wonderful” and
“mystery.” Something of the wonder and mystery of Jesus’ life
as described in the Gospel needs to be captured. A sensitive
exploration of the Gospel stories can give rise to the kind of
wonder experienced by his disciples, who pondered aloud:
“What sort of man is this that even the winds and sea obey
him?” (Mt. 8:27).
The Gospels can help us “acknowledge the mystery of his
divinity” because they provide an authentic point of contact
with the “wonderful perfection of his humanity.” Young and
old alike have a right to be guided into a greater familiarity with
the Gospels and challenged to reflect more profoundly on the
meaning of the familiar biblical stories. Unfortunately few
adult Catholics have ever read even one Gospel straight through
from beginning to end.
It is within u.e context of the Gospel accounts, to preserve a
sense of mystery, that the Church’s later statements about Jesus
are best learned. The credal affirmations that he is “true God”
as well as “true man,” “God of God, Light of Light, true God of
true God, begotten not made, one substance with the Father,”
become much richer when related to the experiences recalled in
the Scriptures. The Christians of the 4th century who first
formulated those definitions were intimately at home with the
New Testament.
Contact with the Gospels helps guarantee that the learning of
doctrinal definitions take place with an awareness that no
formulation can ever adequately comprehend Jesus, the Son of
God. Jesus is greater, more exciting, more wonderful, than
human words can contain. No Catholic should be left with the
impression that doctrinal formulations completely exhaust the
reality of Christ. Every true definition opens new questions,
new vistas to explore. Always a sense of mystery needs to be
preserved, as in the Gospels.
Catechesis of Jesus’ divinity involves intellectual knowledge
of the Church’s teaching coupled with growing wonder at the
mystery of this attractive man who is also God. Perhaps the-
most vital element of all is prayer, a personal union with Jesus
Christ. Faith in Jesus, true God and true man, is not merely a
matter of speculative thought. Faith is primarily a relationship
of love that opens up to ever more intimate and penetrating
knowledge. Faith grows through prayer, conscious moments of
union with Jesus Christ, nourished on the Gospels and the
Church’s traditional teaching about Jesus.
Such faith is expressed beautifully by Thomas, whose doubts
resolve as he gives way to wonder and love: “My Lord and My
God.” (Jn. 20:28).
“WE MEET HIM (JESUS) when we learn our
prayers as children. That is, we meet him first as God.”
A child talks to Jesus in prayer. (NC Photo by Hal
Ledet)