Jesus’ Scandalous “I”
Jesus’ “I” of his own authority has replaced the “I” speech of God that runs throughout the books of the writing prophets of the Old Testament. We really have to read through the first three gospels and note this phenomenon. Only then will we experience the “aha!” of recognizing what is actually happening:
“I came to bring fire to the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49). “I have come to call not the righteous but sinners” (Mark 2:17). “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill” (Matt 5:17). “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times.… But I say to you…” (Matt 5:21-22). “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock” (Matt 7:24). “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and [so] follow me” (Mark 8:34). “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26). “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Luke 10:18). “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has [already] come to you” (Luke 11:20). “You spirit that keeps this boy from speaking and hearing, I command you, come out of him, and never enter him again!” (Mark 9:25). “See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy; and nothing will hurt you” (Luke 10:19). “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves” (Matt 10:16). “Whoever listens to you listens to me, and whoever rejects you rejects me” (Luke 10:16). “You are those who have stood by me in my trials; and I [hereby] confer on you, just as my Father has conferred on me, a kingdom” (Luke 22:28-29). “Truly [or: Amen] I tell you…” (Matt 11:11, and frequently elsewhere). “And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Luke 7:23). “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35). “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14). “And I tell you, everyone who acknowledges me before others, the Son of Man also will acknowledge before the angels of God” (Luke 12:8).
To continue listing texts would be no problem. It is superfluous to ask whether each one of these sayings is authentic, because the relevant logia run throughout the gospels and belong to very different genres and situations. There are “I have come” sayings that are by no means retrospective summaries of the life of Jesus but have the sense of “it is my task to.…” There are the antitheses in the Sermon on the Mount, formulated with shocking authority,19 in which Jesus places himself in the stead of the one who formerly gave the Torah at Sinai. There are the discipleship sayings in which Jesus does not urge his disciples to study Torah or grow in the love of God but to abandon everything, even father and mother, spouse and children, to follow him.
There are the sayings in which he sends out his disciples, the words of command to the demons, the amen-sayings that replace the way the prophets introduced their message and themselves as messengers, and above all the sayings in which he inextricably links the decision of the final judgment to the decision about his own person—still more, in which he presents himself, though reticently and in code, as the end-time judge.
For Christians who hear the Gospel every Sunday this “I” of Jesus is a matter of course. But in reality it is anything but. Why? Because the center of Jesus’ message is not his own self. The heart, the center that dominates all of his preaching and his whole doing is the reign of God. And, as has already been made clear (chap. 11), the proclamation of the reign of God is nothing but the end-time realization of the primary commandment, namely, that Israel is to love its God as the only God, with its whole heart, soul, and strength. This one, this only God will now be master in Israel and, through Israel, in the whole world. So Jesus’ message is not at all his own person. His entire, his sole concern is God the Father, the One, the Only. He corrected someone who addressed him as “Good Teacher” by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone” (Mark 10:18). Thus God, the one, the absolute Lord, is the center of Jesus’ message, and for that very reason it is so appalling that Jesus unceasingly connects this One and his rule with his own person. This is the real stumbling block, then and now. It was because of that scandal that Jesus was brought to the cross. Many pious people, and especially the religious authorities in Israel, could not bear to hear that claim. Today also there are many who cannot stand to listen to this elementary link between God and a Jesus who spoke and acted as if he stood in God’s stead and as if God were coming to his people in Jesus himself.
Consequently, Jesus has been made a simple rabbi, a Jewish Socrates, or an itinerant Galilean philosopher who spoke about God with infinitely wise words. Or people have overlooked his message about the reign of God and made of him only a preacher of himself. Neither does justice to the historical record. Jesus’ radical proclamation of the reign of God contains an implicit Christology.
And it is not just his message; it is his actions as well. It is his coolness in authoritatively pronouncing the forgiveness of sins, when it is only God who can forgive sins.20 It is the claim that underlies the fact that he appoints the Twelve as a sign of the gathering of Israel, though in the Old Testament and in many Jewish prayers that gathering is predicated of God: “…who gathers the dispersed of Israel.” It is his deeds of power, the driving out of the demons of society and the many healing miracles along the way. He saw them as the works of God, and yet he accomplished them by his own power.
There was the messianic entrance into Jerusalem, the almost matter-of-fact taking possession of the temple, and the words of interpretation at the last meal, in which Jesus authoritatively declared his blood, now to be shed, to be “the blood of the covenant,” that is, the blood of the renewal and completion of the covenant God had once made with Israel (cf. chap. 15). And then, above all, there is the acknowledgment before the Sanhedrin that he, Jesus himself, will come again and judge his accusers. At this point, at the very end, the Christology implicit throughout his activity is unveiled and becomes public.
But otherwise Jesus’ claim retains its tactfulness. Jesus was clear and yet always discreet. He was clear and yet always reticent. It is from this very implicit, often hidden, often concealed, and yet all-penetrating Christology that a great power emerges. Fundamentally that power is much greater than if Jesus had spoken in the language of the Fourth Gospel, where everything is direct and immediate to the point of provocation. There Jesus says “whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9), or still more clearly, “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30). In the course of the first century this explicit Christology became necessary, and it was altogether appropriate and accurate. But it was not the language of Jesus.
A Successful BreakIn
The power of Jesus’ language lies precisely in the fact that it only points the way. One last text can show us that. It is in Luke 12:39 and reads in some translations “if the owner of the house knew at what hour the thief was coming, he would prevent his house from being broken into.” This image, or similitude, played an extraordinary role in the early church. It admonishes to watchfulness. It was intended to say: we know neither the day nor the hour in which Christ will appear in glory. He will come as suddenly and unexpectedly as a thief in the night. Therefore be ready at all times! Keep awake!
Naturally, Christ is not portrayed as a burglar here. The point of comparison is only the suddenness and unpredictability of his return. So it is not that Christ is a thief but rather that he will come as unexpectedly as a thief does. Just when no one is expecting him, he will appear. That is how Matthew and Luke, and Paul, and the early church understood it.21 But there is good reason to think that Jesus himself understood the similitude differently.22 That is to say, it can be translated (as does the NRSV) as “past contrary to fact�
�: “if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into.” If we remove the text from its present context (the return of Christ) and understand it in this latter sense, the similitude is not warning against a future breakin but is looking back at one that has already happened. Then it is talking about a burglary that succeeded. The successful breakin would then be the coming of the reign of God, and the text would say: the reign of God has already come. It is here. It has taken place.
In that case this similitude belongs within a series of texts that speak in similar fashion of the reign of God as having already come, for example: “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons, then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Luke 11:20). The following metaphor also presumes the having-already-come of the reign of God. The background here is again Jesus’ exorcisms of demons: “No one can enter a strong man’s house and plunder his property without first tying up the strong man; then indeed the house can be plundered” (Mark 3:27). This image too does not speak of coming events; against the background of Luke 11:20 it means to say that everything is already happening. Jesus is already in the “house of the strong man,” that is, he has pushed his way into the world ruled by demons.23 The Satan is already bound, the power of the demons already broken.
Mark 3:27 in particular is especially close to the text we began with, Luke 12:39, because there too a “house” is invaded. Thus the interpretation of Luke 12:39 I have presented here fits thoroughly within Jesus’ bold way of speaking, one that is not frightened of daring images. Similarly bold and “violent” is the so-called violence saying: “The prophets and the law [were in effect] until John. From then on the kingdom of heaven has broken its path with violence, and the violent take it by force” (cf. Matt 11:13, 12 // Luke 16:16). Against this whole background the similitude of the thief who breaks into a house during the night reveals an excellent sense. Jesus could, in the sense of the thing, have spoken as follows:
To what shall I compare the reign of God? What image shall I use for it—for you doubters who think the reign of God is still far in the future? But it has already come. Its coming is like a breakin that could not be prevented. If the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming he would, of course, have kept watch. But he did not know. And so the thief broke into his house.
In this similitude Jesus does not seem to be speaking about himself at all. As so often, he talks of the coming of the reign of God. And yet he speaks in the same similitude about his own activity.
If we read carefully and place the similitude in the context of his activity we have to say that yes, he broke into the spaces of the old society, the realm of the demons’ power and that of the gods of the world, the taken-for-granted things from which people interested only in themselves build the houses of their lives. The old society would have defended itself; it would not have let him in; it would have secured itself, locked up everything, blocked all entrances. But he surprised it. He came like a thief in the night, secretly, in silence, unexpected, when no one was thinking about any of it. With him the reign of God was suddenly there, and the new had already begun—in the midst of the old world.
In this form it is an unbelievably bold similitude! And it is full of truth. The similitude of the burglar who comes in the silence of the night is a cry of victory. Jesus has broken into the model images, the self-deceptions and compulsions of a society far from God. He has succeeded, and he goes on succeeding. No one is safe from him.
What a self-awareness speaks in this text from Jesus! And yet he keeps his restraint, and that very restraint is what fascinates me about Jesus. It makes his language tactful and yet lends it an enormous power. Above all, this incognito allows for the necessary space in which one can decide for him, or not.
Chapter 20
The Church’s Response
The church confesses and teaches: Jesus Christ is true human and true God—the latter, of course, in full unity with the Father and the Holy Spirit. It has said that not just since the Council of Chalcedon in the year 451.1 The New Testament says the same.
It is not hard to believe that Jesus is truly human, at least not in the West. In the sphere of the Orthodox churches, however, things are different. There the image of Jesus is projected more powerfully in terms of his divinity; it can draw Jesus’ humanity into itself and almost conceal it altogether. Orthodox believers sometimes admit that they have difficulties with Jesus’ radical humanity. Apparently a long history of theology and belief has left its traces here.
In the West, theology and the history of devotion have acquired different accents. We only have to think of the late medieval images of the crucifixion that depict its horrors with ultimate realism. Scriptural interpretation is differently weighted in the West as well. It holds to the saying that Jesus “increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor” (Luke 2:52). That means Jesus learned. He struggled to gain insight, he prayed, he wept, he sorrowed, he was tempted by the Evil One, he suffered unspeakably. It really should not be difficult to believe that he was a true human being.
Jesus Deified?
But true God? Isn’t it the case that here a Jew who was certainly deeply believing and charismatic has been retrospectively made into a superhuman, divine figure? We read and hear that statement over and over, not only from our non-Christian contemporaries but even from quite a few Christian theologians. In the year 2000 Gerd Theissen published a book titled Die Religion der ersten Christen. Eine Theorie des Urchristentums.2 Part 1, section 3 in the book is titled “How Did Jesus Come to Be Deified?” Theissen’s intention in this book is not to write a “theology of the New Testament,” that is, to consider early Christianity from within, but to analyze it in strictly religious-historical terms from a deliberately chosen external perspective. Obviously that is a legitimate effort. It even makes good sense. But it seems to me that he does not respect the boundaries of such a perspective. A historian of religions can say that the early church, using Jewish concepts and forms of thought, confessed Jesus as Messiah, as Son of God, even as true God, and was convinced that in doing so it was adopting Jesus’ own claim and developing its implications.
All that can be said from an external perspective. But when Theissen writes that the early church deified Jesus he is adopting a concept from the Hellenistic ruler cult, namely, “apotheosis.” In the Roman imperial cult this deification of great heroes and rulers, exemplified by the celebration of Alexander the Great, developed a specific shape: a series of Roman emperors were elevated to the status of state deities by consecratio. Their divinization took place as follows: The emperor’s body was brought in a magnificent wagon to an artistically constructed pyre several stories high. On the uppermost platform stood a quadriga, a chariot that would conduct the emperor to Olympus. Alongside it were two cages, each containing an eagle. As the pyre began to burn, the two eagles were released. Their upward flight was regarded as a symbol of the deification of the dead person. The ascension of the emperor in question was then affirmed in a solemn public act by means of eyewitnesses, and reviewed by the Roman Senate. Finally, the emperor was declared a god.3 That is the religious-historical background of the idea of “deification.” It in no way applies to the development and nature of the early church’s Christology. The concept is altogether inappropriate for it, even purely from the point of view of religious phenomenology.
On the other hand, it is understandable that Theissen speaks of deification. Probably every serious Christian has thought in this direction at least once. It seems so natural that one day the question would arise in our minds: could it be that talk about “Jesus’ divinity” was simply a culturally conditioned language pattern whose only function was to attempt to describe Jesus’ outstanding importance? Was the statement “Jesus is true God” perhaps meant to say nothing more than that he is the most important person for every Christian, the one who shows us the way, the one who is the guideline and measure of
our lives?
We must not suppress such doubts; we must engage with them. This chapter is meant to serve that purpose: not as if it could prove Jesus’ divinity in the way proofs are developed by the natural sciences. Faith must always remain, faith that is open and trusting, because—and this is often forgotten—we can only encounter the truly great things in life through trust. Love can never be proved. We can only entrust ourselves to it. It is only when we trust ourselves to another that we truly know him or her. Knowing another person presupposes openness, looking within, listening within, moving toward the other: sympathy, in fact.
Nevertheless, faith must not be blind, just as love for another human being must not be blind and indifferent. In this particular case that means that theology can remove difficulties that stand in the way of belief in Jesus Christ’s divine sonship. It can protect the christological statements against misunderstandings. It can point to areas of agreement. It can clarify concepts and statements. It can investigate historical processes. It can, for example, ask how, historically speaking, it came about that Jesus was affirmed as true God. In that way alone it can show the falsehood of a whole series of repeated assertions. Before we undertake that, to a very modest extent, in what follows, and since the proper theme of this book is not early church Christology, let me offer three preliminary remarks:
1. If Jesus was only a human being and nothing else, from the perspective of religious phenomenology he would have been a kind of “prophet.” And then it would be impossible to understand why God would not one day send other prophets who might be still more important than Jesus was, more eloquent, with better answers to the questions of our time—prophets who would one day surpass Jesus.
If Jesus had been merely a prophet, then, theologically speaking, he would not have been God’s final word. God would indeed have spoken through him but only in preliminary fashion. God would not yet have said everything through Jesus; crucial things would have been held back. God would by no means have spoken God’s complete mind through Jesus. Christian faith confesses that Jesus Christ is the “Word” in whom God has expressed himself entirely and with finality. But in this case that is precisely what would not have happened. We would be living in an ultimate insecurity, because even the best prophet can be surpassed and corrected by a newer prophet.
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