CONTENTS
Title Page
Abbreviations
Publisher's Note
Foreword
INTRODUCTION:
AN INITIAL REFLECTION ON THE MYSTERY OF JESUS
CHAPTER ONE: THE BAPTISM OF JESUS
CHAPTER TWO: THE TEMPTATIONS OF JESUS
CHAPTER THREE: THE GOSPEL OF THE KINGDOM OF GOD
CHAPTER FOUR: THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT
The Beatitudes
The Torah of the Messiah
"You Have Heard That It Was Said But I Say to You"
The Dispute Concerning the Sabbath
The Fourth Commandment: The Family, the People, and the Community of Jesus' Disciples
Compromise and Prophetic Radicalism
CHAPTER FIVE: THE LORD'S PRAYER
Our Father Who Art in Heaven
Hallowed Be Thy Name
Thy Kingdom Come
Thy Will Be Done on Earth as It Is in Heaven
Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread
And Forgive Us Our Trespasses, as We Forgive Those Who Trespass Against Us
And Lead Us Not into Temptation
But Deliver Us from Evil
CHAPTER SIX: THE DISCIPLES
CHAPTER SEVEN: THE MESSAGE OF THE PARABLES
The Nature and Purpose of the Parables
Three Major Parables from the Gospel of Luke
The Good Samaritan (Lk 10:2537)
The Parable of the Two Brothers (the Prodigal Son and the Son Who Remained at Home) and the Good Father (Luke 15:1132)
The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk 16, 1931)
CHAPTER EIGHT: THE PRINCIPAL IMAGES OF JOHN'S GOSPEL
Introduction: The Johannine Question
The Principal Johannine Images
Water
Vine and Wine
Bread
The Shepherd
CHAPTER NINE: TWO MILESTONES ON JESUS' WAY: PETER'S CONFESSION AND THE TRANSFIGURATION
Peter's Confession
The Transfiguration
CHAPTER TEN: JESUS DECLARES HIS IDENTITY
The Son of Man
The Son
"I Am"
Glossary
Bibliography
Copyright
ABBREVIATIONS
The following abbreviations are used for books of the Bible:
Acts
Acts of the Apostles
Amos
Amos Bar Baruch
1 Chron
1 Chronicles
2 Chron
2 Chronicles
Col
Colossians
1 Cor
1 Corinthians
2 Cor
2 Corinthians
Dan
Daniel
Deut
Deuteronomy
Eccles
Ecclesiastes
Eph
Ephesians
Esther
Esther
Ex
Exodus
Ezek
Ezekiel
Ezra
Ezra
Gal
Galatians
Gen
Genesis
Hab
Habakkuk
Hag
Haggai
Heb
Hebrews
Hos
Hosea
Is
Isaiah
Jas
James
Jer
Jeremiah
Jn
John
1 Jn
1 John
2 Jn
2 John
3 Jn
3 John
Job
Job
Joel
Joel
Jon
Jonah
Josh
Joshua
Jud
Judith
Jude
Jude
Judg
Judges
1 Kings
1 Kings
2 Kings
2 Kings
Lam
Lamentations
Lev
Leviticus
Lk
Luke
1 Mac
1 Maccabees
2 Mac
2 Maccabees
Mal
Malachi
Mic
Micah
Mk
Mark
Mt
Matthew
Nahum
Nahum
Neh
Nehemiah
Num
Numbers
Obad
Obadiah
1 Pet
1 Peter
2 Pet
2 Peter
Phil
Philippians
Philem
Philemon
Prov
Proverbs
Ps
Psalms
Rev
Revelation (Apocalypse)
Rom
Romans
Ruth
Ruth
1 Sam
1 Samuel
2 Sam
2 Samuel
Sir
Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)
Song
Song of Solomon
1 Thess
1 Thessalonians
2 Thess
2 Thessalonians
1 Tim
1 Timothy
2 Tim
2 Timothy
Tit
Titus
Tob
Tobit
Wis
Wisdom
Zech
Zechariah
Zeph
Zephaniah
The following abbreviations are used from time to time:
ATD: Das Alte Testament Deutsch, ed. Volkmar Herntrich and Artur Weiser, Gottingen, 1949-. This is a famous commentary in German on the Old Testament. The figures that follow the abbreviation indicate the volume number and the page number.
CSEL: Corpus Scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum, Vienna, 1866-. Like the more famous Patrologia latina, this is a collection of Christian sources in Latin.
PG: Patrologia Graeca, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, 161 vols., Paris, 1857-1866. This is a collection of ancient Christian sources in Greek.
RGG: Die Religionen in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Tubingen, 1909-1913; 2nd ed., 1927-1932; 3rd ed., 1956ff. Some articles were contributed to this last edition by the young Professor Ratzinger.
TDNT: Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. G. Kittel and G. Friedrich, 10 vols., Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1964-76.
Publisher's Note
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is the preferred translation for Scriptural quotations within the text. In some instances, however, in order to reflect as clearly as possible the verbal associations emphasized by the author, it has been necessary to translate directly from the original biblical text.
FOREWORD
This book about Jesus, the first part of which I am now presenting to the public, has had a long gestation. When I was growing up--in the 1930s and 1940s--there was a series of inspiring books about Jesus: Karl Adam, Romano Guardini, Franz Michel Willam, Giovanni Papini, and Henri Daniel-Rops were just some of the authors one could name. All of these books based their portrayal of Jesus Christ on the Gospels. They presented him as a man living on earth who, fully human though he was, at the same time brought God to men, the God with whom as Son he was one. Through the man Jesus, then, God was made visible, and hence our eyes were able to behold the perfect man.
But the situation started to change in the 1950s. The gap between the "historical Jesus" and the "Christ of faith" grew wider and the two visibly fell apart. But what can faith in Jesus as the
Christ possibly mean, in Jesus as the Son of the living God, if the man Jesus was so completely different from the picture that the Evangelists painted of him and that the Church, on the evidence of the Gospels, takes as the basis of her preaching?
As historical-critical scholarship advanced, it led to finer and finer distinctions between layers of tradition in the Gospels, beneath which the real object of faith--the figure [Gestalt] of Jesus--became increasingly obscured and blurred. At the same time, though, the reconstructions of this Jesus (who could only be discovered by going behind the traditions and sources used by the Evangelists) became more and more incompatible with one another: at one end of the spectrum, Jesus was the anti-Roman revolutionary working--though finally failing--to overthrow the ruling powers; at the other end, he was the meek moral teacher who approves everything and unaccountably comes to grief. If you read a number of these reconstructions one after the other, you see at once that far from uncovering an icon that has become obscured over time, they are much more like photographs of their authors and the ideals they hold. Since then there has been growing skepticism about these portrayals of Jesus, but the figure of Jesus himself has for that very reason receded even further into the distance.
All these attempts have produced a common result: the impression that we have very little certain knowledge of Jesus and that only at a later stage did faith in his divinity shape the image we have of him. This impression has by now penetrated deeply into the minds of the Christian people at large. This is a dramatic situation for faith, because its point of reference is being placed in doubt: Intimate friendship with Jesus, on which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.
Rudolf Schnackenburg was probably the most prominent Catholic exegete writing in German during the second half of the twentieth century. It is clear that toward the end of his life, this crisis surrounding the faith made a profound impression on him. In view of the inadequacy of all the portrayals of the "historical" Jesus offered by recent exegesis, he strove to produce one last great work: Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology. The book is intended to help believing Christians "who today have been made insecure by scientific research and critical discussion, so that they may hold fast to faith in the person of Jesus Christ as the bringer of salvation and Savior of the world" (p. x). At the end of the book, Schnackenburg sums up the result of a lifetime of scholarship: "a reliable view of the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth through scientific effort with historical-critical methods can be only inadequately achieved" (p. 316); "the efforts of scientific exegesis to examine these traditions and trace them back to what is historically credible" draw us "into a continual discussion of tradition and redaction history that never comes to rest" (p. 318).
His own account of the figure of Jesus suffers from a certain unresolved tension because of the constraints of the method he feels bound to use, despite its inadequacies. Schnackenburg shows us the Gospels' image of Christ, but he considers it to be the product of manifold layers of tradition, through which the "real" Jesus can only be glimpsed from afar. He writes: "The historical ground is presupposed but is superseded in the faith-view of the evangelists" (p. 321). Now, no one doubts that; what remains unclear is how far the "historical ground" actually extends. That said, Schnackenburg does clearly throw into relief the decisive point, which he regards as a genuinely historical insight: Jesus' relatedness to God and his closeness to God (p. 322). "Without anchoring in God, the person of Jesus remains shadowy, unreal, and unexplainable" (p. 322).
This is also the point around which I will construct my own book. It sees Jesus in light of his communion with the Father, which is the true center of his personality; without it, we cannot understand him at all, and it is from this center that he makes himself present to us still today.
To be sure, in the particular contours of my own presentation of Jesus I make a determined effort to go beyond Schnackenburg. The problem with Schnackenburg's account of the relationship between New Testament traditions and historical events stands out very clearly for me when he writes that the Gospels "want, as it were, to clothe with flesh the mysterious Son of God who appeared on earth" (p. 322). I would like to say in response that they did not need to "clothe him with flesh," because he had already truly taken flesh. Of course, the question remains: Can this flesh be accessed through the dense jungle of traditions?
Schnackenburg tells us in the foreword to his book that he feels indebted to the historical-critical method, which had been in use in Catholic theology ever since the door was opened for it by the encyclical Divino Afflante Spiritu in 1943 (p. ix). This encyclical was an important milestone for Catholic exegesis. Since then, though, the debate about method has moved on, both inside and outside the Catholic Church. There have been significant new methodological discoveries--both in terms of strictly historical work and in terms of the interplay between theology and historical method in scriptural interpretation. Dei Verbum, the Second Vatican Council's Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, made a decisive step forward. In addition, two documents of the Pontifical Biblical Commission communicate important insights that have matured in the course of debates among exegetes: The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church (Vatican City, 1993) and The Jewish People and Their Sacred Scriptures in the Christian Bible (Vatican City, 2001).
I would like to sketch at least the broad outlines of the methodology, drawn from these documents, that has guided me in writing this book. The first point is that the historical-critical method--specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith--is and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work. For it is of the very essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events. It does not tell stories symbolizing suprahistorical truths, but is based on history, history that took place here on this earth. The factum historicum (historical fact) is not an interchangeable symbolic cipher for biblical faith, but the foundation on which it stands: Et incarnatus est--when we say these words, we acknowledge God's actual entry into real history.
If we push this history aside, Christian faith as such disappears and is recast as some other religion. So if history, if facticity in this sense, is an essential dimension of Christian faith, then faith must expose itself to the historical method--indeed, faith itself demands this. I have already mentioned the conciliar Constitution on Divine Revelation; it makes the same point quite explicitly in paragraph 12 and goes on to list some concrete elements of method that have to be kept in mind when interpreting Scripture. The Pontifical Biblical Commission's document on the interpretation of Holy Scripture develops the same idea much more amply in the chapter entitled "Methods and Approaches for Interpretation."
The historical-critical method--let me repeat--is an indispensable tool, given the structure of Christian faith. But we need to add two points. This method is a fundamental dimension of exegesis, but it does not exhaust the interpretive task for someone who sees the biblical writings as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God. We will have to return to this point at greater length in a moment.
For the time being, it is important--and this is a second point--to recognize the limits of the historical-critical method itself. For someone who considers himself directly addressed by the Bible today, the method's first limit is that by its very nature it has to leave the biblical word in the past. It is a historical method, and that means that it investigates the then-current context of events in which the texts originated. It attempts to identify and to understand the past--as it was in itself--with the greatest possible precision, in order then to find out what the author could have said and intended to say in the context of the mentality and events of the time. To the extent that it remains true to itself, the historical method not only has to investigate the biblical word as a thing of the past, but also has to let it remain in the past. It can glimpse points of contact with the present and it can try to apply the biblical word to the present; the one thing it cannot do is make it into something present today
--that would be overstepping its bounds. Its very precision in interpreting the reality of the past is both its strength and its limit.
This is connected with a further point. Because it is a historical method, it presupposes the uniformity of the context within which the events of history unfold. It must therefore treat the biblical words it investigates as human words. On painstaking reflection, it can intuit something of the "deeper value" the word contains. It can in some sense catch the sounds of a higher dimension through the human word, and so open up the method to self-transcendence. But its specific object is the human word as human.
Ultimately, it considers the individual books of Scripture in the context of their historical period, and then analyzes them further according to their sources. The unity of all of these writings as one "Bible," however, is not something it can recognize as an immediate historical datum. Of course it can examine the lines of development, the growth of traditions, and in that sense can look beyond the individual books to see how they come together to form the one "Scripture." Nevertheless, it always has to begin by going back to the origin of the individual texts, which means placing them in their past context, even if it goes on to complement this move back in time by following up the process through which the texts were later brought together.