BOOKS LEWIS AYRES
ALL FOR THE FATHER AND THE WORLD
Jesus of Nazareth – Holy Week: from the entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection Pope Benedict XVI
CTS, 384PP, £14.95 ■Tablet bookshop price £13.50 Tel 01420 592974
T
he first volume of Pope Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth puzzled many readers. Drawn in by Benedict himself describing the book as “my
personal search for the face of the Lord”, they were surprised to find detailed expositions of scholarly debates, a long engagement with the Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner, and the interweaving of texts from early and medieval Christian writers. It didn’t seem very “per- sonal”, not very reflective of the mind beneath the papal zucchetto. This surprise is understandable, but it also
reflects a divorce between the way we under- stand the task of the theologian and the task of the “spiritual” writer. Many imagine the theologian to be one who is obsessed with “speculation” about complex and probably irrelevant theological and scriptural minutiae. But in origin the Latin verb speculor means to look, observe, watch, investigate. It is the term one uses for someone looking out from a watchtower, scanning the horizon; in theo - logical terms it is also the word one uses for someone straining to think through the ways in which Scripture speaks of the divine in human words, someone looking as hard as human beings can into the mysteries of divine life and action. To speculate theologically can, then, be a deeply spiritual task, rooted in the most fundamental mysteries of our faith. Pope Benedict’s book exudes a spirituality insep- arable from his intellectual life, and an intellectual life formed by a lifelong meditation on the heart of Christ’s person and mission in the world.
But while we should certainly see Benedict’s
Jesus project as both a highly intellectual exer- cise and revealing of his own prayer, we may also argue with the writing that results – such is the nature of the theological enterprise. Throughout most of his career, Joseph Ratzinger has been a first-class essayist, a pen- etrating intellect suggesting lines of approach to classical problems, but rarely attempting a full-length study. Many years lie between his
24 | THE TABLET | 12 March 2011
last full-length monograph and the first volume of this work, and the essayist’s bent was surely apparent in the many side roads and alleys explored in that volume. The main lines were clear, but the range of topics commented on was vast and occasionally distracting. In the first volume Benedict was also
attempting something for which there are few exemplars: a treatment of Scripture that both attended to the fruits of modern historical scholarship on the gospels and tried to show how the text could be read from within the Catholic faith. Many professional biblical crit- ics found something to disagree with, and it was certainly true (as it is in this volume) that Benedict frequently engages with scholarship that is no longer in the forefront of debate (and yet, on occasion, he will suddenly surprise with a very topical reference). But few of those professionals noted that among the range of historical methods used in the scholarly world at present, Benedict’s expressed focus was what is known as “canon- ical criticism”, a mode of reading that focuses on the finished form of the text. Benedict sees this concern as fruitful for promoting dialogue with the long tradition of early and medieval Christian exegesis. Other more historically focused scholarship he treats in a more ad hoc manner. In linking these styles of reading, Benedict draws on Vatican II’s Dei Verbum 12 and its attempt to combine attention to the Bible’s literary forms with the overarching need to read the text as a unity and in the light of faith. Fault lines remain in this attempted combination, but the attempt to do so is important. In the introduction to the second volume, Benedict directs attention again to the form of his book and helpfully remarks that its clos- est parallel is perhaps the “treatise on the mysteries of the life of Jesus” that we find in Aquinas’ Summa Theologiae. This comment helps to get to the core of the project: Benedict offers us his own engagement with Scripture’s presentation of Christ’s mission to show how that life, death and Resurrection contains within it the message and act of salvation. Overall this volume is, for me, more successful than the first. The writing and argument flows more easily and the deep spiritual vision that shapes the work shines forth very clearly. There is, of course, much to comment on in the book – Benedict’s strong endorsement of Nostra Aetate’s attitude towards the Jewish people has received much press comment already – but I want to draw out just one theme, which takes us to the heart of Benedict’s vision. At the heart of the book lies a meditation on Christ’s prayer. Chapter Four focuses on Christ’s high-priestly prayer in John 17 where, for Benedict, Christ reveals that he is consecrated by the Father. To be consecrated is to be set apart, wholly given over to a particular function. Christ’s whole
Pope Benedict XVI’s new book ‘exudes a spirituality inseparable from his intellectual life’.
Photo: CNS
being is devoted to God – he also consecrates himself for this task both at the Last Supper and in John 17:19. But to be set apart in this context is also to be set apart for the world. As John makes clear, a stand for God is also a stand against the world, understood as the world that fails to recognise the one through whom it was made. And, thus, for Christ to be for God is for him to accept his own sacrifice. But Christ’s high-priestly prayer also reveals that those who are drawn from the world and into him are also prepared for sacrifice them- selves: they share in Christ’s own consecration. Because Christ is the one in whom God’s name dwells – which Benedict reads as God’s pres- ence (following Deuteronomy 12) – we may have faith that Christ brings those consecrated in him into the very union of Father and Son (John 17:21). At the very end, Benedict points to a theme at the heart of his own theology of priesthood: the disciples are sanctified because they share in Jesus’ own mission, his priestly mission, and are given wholly to God and thus to the world as sacrifice: perhaps here, he remarks, we may also see the origin of the apostolic priesthood. In a short discussion of “Jesus’ death as rec- onciliation (and atonement)” (page 224ff), Benedict returns to this theme as it was sub- sequently drawn out by the early Church. He writes: “the Son, the Incarnate one, bears us all within himself … Part and parcel of the Christian life, then, is both the sacrament of Baptism, by which we are taken up into Christ’s obedience, and also the Eucharist, in which the Lord’s obedience on the Cross embraces us all, purifies us and draws us into the perfect worship offered by Jesus Christ.” This theme of our incorporation into Christ, and even into the very life and prayer of Jesus giving all to the Father and giving all for the world, lies at the heart of Benedict’s vision of Christ’s incarnate mission. This reality shapes all that he offers here on the Eucharist, on ecumenism, on the role of Christians in the world. It is, for me, the presence of this theme that makes the book so suitable as a reading for Lent, a reading towards Easter.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40