"Jesus of Nazareth" Chapter 10

Chapter 10: “Jesus Declares His Identity”

This is another great, enjoyable and important chapter, and this chapter is the conclusion of the Pope Benedict’s book, which is the first volume of his planned two volumes about the life of Jesus Christ, his “personal search for the face of the Lord.” It is great that he put pen to paper during his search, and shared it with great value for many others. Because it is a personal search, Benedict includes only the context and words that serves his direction, which is fine. But I am compelled to add context again in this chapter, so that there is greater explanatory value for the general reader.

Jesus declaring his identity was not important because it was part of a hide-and-go-seek with Jewish and Roman authorities, or as a measure of how much he comprehended his own mission. I’m going to use some contemporary language and examples to better illuminate why the “identity” of Jesus was so important to the general populace, both his supporters and his enemies and why, therefore, he replied as he did at various times.

In those days people did not have resumes (C.V.’s) or job descriptions. The closest that one came to self identifying an occupation or an identity was actually to state who you were the son of (who was your father.) You actually see this at one point in the Gospels when the people react with amazement to Jesus’ preaching, asking “is he not the son of Joseph the carpenter? And is his mother not Mary?” A son’s father’s identification was the son’s resume, job description, social standing, and outlook in life all rolled into one. Your father’s name was like your ID card. And so the people are amazed that a carpenter’s son is preaching. This was also another reason why Jesus’ physical genealogy to the House of David (King and Prophet) was so emphasized. Now it’s a little less strange that Jesus should be at the very least a preacher, and potential leader, if he is descended (on both sides no less) from the House of David. It’s like having an extra trump father ID card. So it’s not just the fulfillment of prophecy about a Messiah from the House of David that is important, as it is the more mundane social necessity of people to understand how to relate to Jesus by knowing “who is his father and what does his father do.” You can now see why “Son of God” and “Son of Man” has huge day to day meaning to everyone, not just to the learned religious. I’ll get back to this some more in a bit, but first I need to discuss a second “form” of “resume, CV, job description, and social standing.” This is a title.

Who one’s father is served, as we have shown, to provide much of the information about a son’s identity. But for the religious, social, military and aristocratic elite there also existed the “title.” One can be a King, priest, centurion, daughter of a noble and those and similar titles map pretty closely to what we would call today one’s “job description” within a rarefied job class. Remember the very moving miracle where Jesus is approached by the centurion, who asks for a cure for his servant, as he states that on his command people come and go, but that he is not worthy that Jesus should come under his roof. Jesus marvels at his faith and heals the servant without entering the centurion’s house. Many do not notice, though, that the centurion is bestowing on Jesus a compliment and equality of title in his speech to Jesus. What is unsaid but implied is that just as the centurion can order people to come and go, he relates to Jesus’ authority to also come and go at will, to command others, and ultimately, to command the coming and going of his miraculous healing power. The centurion is actually the first person in the Gospels to give Jesus a title of secular power, a commander, a centurion, a leader, as a title, doing so obliquely by equating themselves. While the purpose of the Gospels was not to record every detail, giving “color” to the events, we can be assured without reading it that this message and implied honorific was not lost on any who witnessed or heard about it. When someone has a title, either inherited, as with Kings, or bestowed, as by the centurion on Jesus, this provides a reasonable set of expectations about the person’s current and future actions. When Jesus does not deny the compliment that the centurion bestows upon him, there is tacit acceptance by Jesus that leadership is indeed part of his “title.” However, he does not take a title willingly throughout the years of his ministry exactly so that he is not hemmed in to the understood conventions of those titles in those days, because he spans much, much more.

This is why Jesus is not being coy, mysterious, or confused when he replies or refers to titles somewhat obliquely. Each title carries with it a set of well understood expectations in both a societal and salvation history context. Because Jesus spans and encompasses more than a single title, he takes care not to accept one title, which would result in people, understandably, only focusing on that purpose (“job description”) and ignoring the parts of his preaching that does not map to that singular purpose. So now you can see the problems with various titles such as Messiah, where as soon as Jesus would accept one title, the other potential titles would be presumed to not apply, and expectations to see his “action plan” for his accepted “job description” would explode. This was why, as Benedict puts it, “Already during Jesus’ lifetime, people tried by applying to him categories that were familiar to them and were therefore considered apt for deciphering his mystery” (p. 239.) I think Benedict, like everyone else, is not clear enough in understanding why Jesus is being “mysterious.” It’s quite clear if you look at it this way. Benedict is wise in questioning the incredible intellectual exercises, such as “categorizing” the number of times Jesus is “may” have used this title, or “is said to have used that title but we don’t really believe the scriptures that he really said it, it’s those political disciples putting words in this mouth.” To use another contemporary example, that is like assuming that the several dozen quotes of Jesus about his title are the entire set of mysterious substances to analyze in the laboratory. Let’s look at how bizarre is that assumption.

In the time of Jesus people didn’t spend time alone, unless they were in the fields shepherding. Certainly as he traveled and lived with dozens of people Jesus was during the time of his ministry surrounded by people all of the time. During all of this time he and the disciples would have been talking constantly. So assuming that Jesus was able to get his good eight hours of sleep per night, you can count on Jesus talking, teaching, preaching and yes, chatting, with his disciples and extended family and followers a good ten hours out of every day. The Gospels are the coalesced summations and high points of his sayings and his actions that are selected by each author to be a “cram course in the essentials of Jesus.” This is why, for example, the Transfiguration, one of the major events in the life of Jesus is included in all three of the synoptic Gospels, because each of those Gospel authors felt that was “essential teaching.” St. John, by not including it, is not laboratory evidence that he wasn’t paying attention, or didn’t think it was important, or that there were “3 votes out of 4 that the Transfiguration happened,” but rather, St. John through his un-martyred long lived perspective included other “essentials” that would have been lost forever had he not, out of the wealth of discussion and events that took place during Jesus’ ministry. So a statistical, laboratory, numeric approach to the sayings and actions of Jesus is totally bogus and out of context. You can be sure that if an author records Jesus using the “Son of Man” title, for example once, he undoubtedly used that title a hundred times in the course of his total conversation with the Apostles and disciples. So it is ridiculous to try to apply a statistical or other numeric formula to words, speech, and events in the Gospels, “title classification” as Benedict calls it on p. 323. All one is really doing is evaluating the teaching and narrative style of that Gospel author as he condenses the total experience of what Jesus said and did. No one should have any doubt that Jesus said exactly what the Gospel authors recorded. Like someone who has heard their favorite professor lecture and say the same thing thirty times during a semester, though, the Gospel authors will not repeat material just for the purpose of repeating it. In their summary they may also emphasize certain speech that now becomes significant during their “remembering” of the sum total of implications of something Jesus said or did.

As an aside, in this spirit of clearing up mysterious context, let’s look for a moment on page 326, where Benedict mentions “the first beast, a lion with the wings of an eagle, has its wings plucked out” from the vision in the Book of Daniel. The lion is then lifted up from the ground and made to stand on two feet like a man and is given a man’s heart. Benedict, like most, interprets the lion to represent a dominant secular power, and how in the future it can be humanized and receive a human face, when the Son of Man returns. It is a bit of an aside, but I’d like to clarify what the winged lion actually represents, because people today, like those of yesterday, are obsessed with apocalyptic interpretations and lose all objectivity and accuracy as a result.

At the time of Daniel the fiercest animal that existed in their environment was the lion. The Israelis did not have the Indian tiger, or the Egyptian crocodile, or the African elephant or rhinoceros as the day to day “fiercest animal” to watch for, respect, and fear; they had the lion. Remember that however fierce a lion may be, it did not tend to walk through villages nor seek out people (their flocks perhaps, but not the people) and a lion can be escaped from by getting in the midst of settlement. A winged lion represented to the people of the day the greatest danger that cannot be escaped! With “wings” a lion can pursue a man through the air, into his very home or fortress. This was why the Assyrians had a winged lion as one of their motifs of power. It’s not because the winged lion is some sort of symbol of an abstract concept of good and evil, bestial or civilized. The Assyrians and others viewed the winged lion as the strongest power that cannot be evaded or stopped. This was why in the vision; the wings of the lion are removed. It shows that danger can be bound; it can go back to being a “lion” through the removal of the wings. The vision goes further because it now has the lion stand upright, and receive a human heart. This is what happens when the Son of Man is present, and I don’t want to digress too much by going into a full explanation of the vision of Daniel in this post, as I could. I will just add one other thing,, since I know those who have been tempted by 20th century “new age” so much. The winged lion is not a prediction about a Leo astrology sign billionaire who has his own plane in the time of global warming ha ha. Seriously, it is amazing how many people read the Bible and think it’s talking about them and their secular world, just like the Carly Simon song on the same subject, I guess. That is why I wanted to take this opportunity to explain what the authors, visionaries, and real life participants of the Bible meant and intended about the “winged lion,” not the overly psychological and revisionist projections based on cultural and egocentric urges and temptations that so many indulge in during the past century.

You can now read the rest of the chapter, where Benedict discusses “The Son” and “I Am” with less confusion and more context, understanding what I’ve explained about the importance of “identity” (who one’s father is and what he does) and “title” (what one’s job description is.) Without this context, so many people wallow in the “mystery” of Jesus’ identity and how he states it rather than recognizing the all encompassing nature of his mission, which he deliberately avoided pigeonholing. Jesus did not want to confuse anyone or be mysterious, which is why he often quoted biblical prophesies in connection to who he is. That way he could provide a framework and let the listener draw the conclusions, but without being forced to “select” only one title, one prophecy, one mission, one “job description.” In the section “The Son” Benedict discusses the political and theological implications to the Jews and early Christians of this identity and implied title. Again, as a scholar on his own search, Benedict does look for a lot of the ties and interconnections in the cultural, historical, and theological milieu of the times. I feel he really gets back in gear on p. 340 when he writes, “Only the Son truly ‘knows’ the Father. Knowing always involves some sort of equality” and then goes on to discuss the synchronization of the Father with the Son. This is his long round about way of illuminating the observation I made at the beginning, which is during those times, identity was mostly informed by who one’s father was. Here there is an incredible numinosity when the identity of the Son is revealed through the identity of the Father as God.

The next section, “I Am” can therefore be more easily understood as Jesus’ “title,” his “job description.” Just as his identity as Son is informed by who is his Father, his “I am sayings,” as Benedict calls them, are really the clearest that Jesus comes to accepting a title. See, this is where what I commented about the difference in priorities of reporting between the Synoptic authors and St. John is key, because St. John is the one who mostly records the “I Am” sayings. St. John, being the Apostle Jesus loved, and having a long life, not cut short by martyrdom, to reflect and remember, would not surprisingly be able to remember and highlight those subtle “I Am” sayings and understand them as being Jesus’ job description, his title. Benedict references the “I Am” sayings to the Old Testament and the historic competition between God and the “other gods” and idols of the region. Thus Benedict focuses, understandably, on the “I Am” as reinforcement of Jesus’ identity as oneness with God, and the oneness of God. He points out, correctly, that the “I Am” sayings illuminate his identity and origin. Benedict does get to the point of the “I Am” saying being Jesus’ “job description” (though not with the emphasis I’ve placed on it) when he writes on p. 354:

And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift-he is “life.” For precisely this reason, his whole being consists in communicating, in “pro-existence.” This is exactly what we see in the Cross, which is his true exaltation.

This great quotation is the second to the last page of the book, and is a fine summation of what could have been a confusing and complicated chapter, and indeed, is a fine summation of this first book of the two planned. I would invite you to continue to work with the “job description” analogy when you read this and ponder it, because Benedict hits it squarely with his phrase “pro-existence.” The purpose, the “job” of Jesus Christ in his oneness with God is to be the champion of life and existence. God is life, and Jesus Christ existed to, as Benedict wrote earlier, “bring us God,” to introduce humanity to God, whose job description is “pro-existence” and “life.” No one remembers or cares how many benches Jesus crafted. Jesus is everything about communicating pro-existence. Jesus wants people to live and thrive, and he also wants them to be saved and have eternal life. But he himself who is one with God teaches to fear God, in other words, to fear the loss of God, because if one rejects and loses God, that is not pro-existence because one then loses both body and soul. Jesus really gave two very direct stern warnings during his public ministry. He warned that people should neither lead children to sin, and to not forget that God is first, as he can destroy not only one’s life but also banish the unrepentant sinner’s soul to hell. Jesus is advocating for life, for eternity of existence, He does not do this through repeated fire and brimstone preaching, because that was not the need, the knowledge of God and the personal experience of “his face” was what was needed. Though make no mistake that was then. As St. John records in the Book of Revelations, all too many do choose the other way, the anti-existence, as I work with the great phrase that Benedict provides in “pro-existence.” I think that Benedict did a wonderful job of sharing his personal search for the face of the Lord in “Jesus of Nazareth,” to everyone’s benefit. The face of the Lord, the face of God, is the face of someone who very much wants every soul to succeed, to live and to thrive, and whose only sadness are those who choose their own destruction. Benedict appropriately closes with mention of Peter and his words:

In the Nicene Creed, the Church joins Peter in confessing to Jesus ever anew: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Mt 16:16).