In
the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict says that the purpose of writing a
book about Jesus—the whole reason why Jesus is important—is because he is the
one who brings God to men. In
The
Infancy Narratives, Benedict makes it clear
that when Jesus brings God to men the result is joy. Joy is the characteristic response to the coming of Christ
and it suffuses the early pages of Matthew and Luke. We see the joy of Zechariah, Mary, Elizabeth, the unborn
John the Baptist, the shepherds and angels, Simeon and Anna, and the Magi from
the East. The joy of Christmas is
further the result of the most stupendous revelation of all: the revelation of
God’s humility. God accomplishes
the utter reversal of human expectations in the appearance of the Son of God in
the newborn baby in the manger in a cave outside of the city with no place to
lay his head. In the Christ child,
the power of God is revealed in his humility: only the highest can, out of
love, descend to the lowest with no diminution. Only the all-powerful God accomplishes salvation through the
renunciation of power. Only the
infancy of God could bring hope to the poor and the sick, the captive and the
sinner. The revelation of the
humility of thes true Son of God is made all the more poignant by the
deliberate choice of the evangelists to juxtapose Jesus with Caesar Augustus,
who also claims to be a son of God.
The shadow of the Cross, therefore, also lurks menacingly
throughout the early life of Jesus: the gift of myrrh from the Magi, used to
anoint a corpse; the prophecy of Simeon to Mary that her heart will be pierced
by a sword; the rage of Herod and the slaughter of the Holy Innocents; and the
deliberate juxtaposition of Christ and Caesar, which points to the inexorable
conflict between the humble Christ, who does not grasp after equality with the
Father and whose kingdom is not of this world and Caesar, whose presumption
makes him grasp after divine prerogatives.
The book is divided into four chapters and an epilogue. The first chapter deals with general
reflections on the origin of Jesus, the second chapter is about the
annunciation stories of John the Baptist and Jesus, the third chapter reflects
on the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem, the final chapter takes up the visit from
the wise men and the flight into Egypt, and the epilogue considers the finding
of Jesus in the Temple when he is twelve years old. The first chapter functions as a general introduction not
only to the current volume, but to the whole of Jesus of Nazareth. After
all, the question of Jesus’ identity is the one Benedict is most fundamentally
trying to answer with his books.
It is also a perfect entry point into the question for the modern
reader.
It is very hard to get a clear vision of the figure of Jesus
himself using the methods of exegesis that have been dominant in the Church and
the academy in recent times.
Twentieth century biblical scholars are notoriously divided about Jesus’
identity, a division which somewhat belies their claim to superior rigor or
accuracy. Historical-critical
scholarship was born of the marriage of theology with the methods of modern
science in an attempt to produce more rigorous interpretations of biblical
texts. Modern biblical exegesis brings to bear powerful historical and
linguistic tools, allowing the reader almost unprecedented access to the
environmental, political, linguistic, and cultural context of the Gospels. They
ought to be able to sharpen our view of biblical characters and themes. Instead, Jesus too often tends to
disappear into the weeds of the politics of the ancient near east, comparative
religion, or the speculations of cultural anthropology.
Investigating Jesus with the historical-critical method can
often be like trying to understand a human being through the use of an electron
microscope. The microscope is
incredibly powerful and very good at collecting data at a level that is
normally invisible to us, but it also misses a lot. Modern scientific methods are only well suited for the
investigation of measurable phenomena;. About God, or the soul,
or—certainly—the mystical body of Christ, they can say nothing. The tendency, unfortunately, has been
to assume that the things quantitative science and the historical-critical
method are not suited to investigate are irrelevant, are only available in the
realm of private opinion or sentiment, or simply do not exist. The most important thing about
Jesus—that he brings God to men—is therefore not available to us through these
methods.
The title of the first chapter is the question, “Where are
you from?”, which Pilate asks in John 19:9. Those who come into contact with Jesus want to find out his
identity by asking after his origins.
We late modern Westerners instinctively seek to know a person’s identity
through understanding his provenance, too. We almost automatically try to understand a historical
figure by asking after his or her economic and political context, the cultural
factors at play, the main opinions or prejudices that were dominant at the
time, and so forth. For most
historical figures, this tack works at least reasonably well. If it were most deeply true that Jesus
is from Joseph and Mary, or Nazareth, or
the line of David, all of which we can understand pretty well, then asking
those questions would be reasonably adequate to grasp who Jesus is. That was, of course, also how Jesus’
contemporaries tried to understand him.
But Jesus’ response to his contemporaries encompasses us, as well: most
deeply Jesus is not from this or that family, town, or historical, political,
or economic context. Most deeply,
Jesus is from the Father. And no one knows the Father except the
Son and those to whom the Son reveals Him.
In order to make Jesus’ origin in the Father clear, Luke and
Matthew both employ genealogies tracing Jesus’ descent. The fundamental point Benedict makes
about these genealogies is that they indicate Jesus is the fulfillment of both
the history of Israel and the history of all time through their symbolic structure. In summing up all of history, Jesus
then gives it a fundamentally new direction: toward reconciliation with God
and, therefore, what Benedict calls “a new manner of human existence.” The modern mind tends to be by turns
allergic to numerology and superstitiously fascinated by it. If you look for the numerology section
at Barnes and Noble, you’ll find a vast array of quackery. Benedict is able to uncover both the
deep symbolism of the numerology of the genealogies and the playfulness with
which the Gospel writers use it without either dismissing it as hokey or
descending into quasi-gnostic enthusiasms.
As Benedict has pointed out throughout the years, much of modern
theology tends to vacillate back and forth about who Jesus is: it moves from an
obsessive focus on the so-called Jesus of history to the exclusion of what the
faith teaches about Christ, to an obsessive focus on the phenomenon of faith
that neglects the concretely historical character of Christian faith. These two tendencies each deny, either
implicitly or explicitly, that God actually enters into history. Neither tendency is correct; neither
does true justice to the figure of Jesus we find in the Gospels. The right balance is difficult to
strike; after all, the Incarnation will always be a scandal. In the second and third chapters,
Benedict strikes the right balance deftly. Perhaps the two most derided Christian doctrines in the
modern era, after all, are the Virgin birth and the Resurrection, which signal,
Benedict observes, both God’s sovereignty over history,
but also his intimacy with the material world.
Christianity has always claimed the mantle of reason. It refrained from identifying itself
with theology for centuries because of the association of theology with pagan
divinity. Instead, Christianity
preferred to ally itself with philosophy: for logos over mythos, for reason over fable.
But to our eyes, much of the infancy narrative appears to be
mythological rather than logical.
The appearance of angels, the fulfillment of ancient prophecies,
communication with God via dreams, and the Virgin Birth itself all seem to
belong to the realm of folklore and fairy tales than to history or
science. This leads to the
suspicion that Christian doctrine and theology are really much more closely
allied with the fantasies of pagan myths than perhaps they want to let on. Leaving aside the injustice this does
to some myths, Benedict shows clearly how the marvelous stories of the infancy
narratives have little in common with the myths with which we too facilely
group them.
To take one example, Benedict draws out the great difference
in origin, structure, and content between the story of the Virgin Birth in the
Gospels and the stories of other divine begettings in the myths of the ancient
world. In the Gospels, there is no
copulation between God and Mary as there was, say, Zeus and Alcmene in the
procreation of Hercules; there is no attempt to legitimize a political regime,
as in the Egyptian myths of the divine origins of the Pharaohs; and there is no
reference to the disruption and renewal of the eternal recurrence of temporal
periods as there is in Virgil’s Eclogues. The stories of the Virgin birth have
much more the mark of a wondering attempt to convey a marvelous and unexpected
event with which the evangelist is confronted, rather than the construction of
a tale meant to advance a pre-conceived agenda.
The fourth chapter considers the two kinds of responses that
human beings can have to the appearance of God among men: the response of the
Magi and the response of Herod.
Benedict convincingly argues that the Magi are representatives of the
natural impulse in human reason and religion toward God. On its own and freed as much as
possible from the shackles and narrowness of sin, the human spirit seeks
God. That search manifests itself
both in what is best about human religion and in the speculative disciplines
like philosophy and science. If
human reason and human religion are assisted by divine revelation, as the Magi consult
the scribes in Jerusalem to find out where, exactly, the savior has been born,
then they are capable of opening up the human spirit to receive God. The Magi are therefore indicators that
reason and religion are properly constituted and rightly ordered when they are
open to receiving grace. The
response of the Magi is to seek to know God and, when they have found him, to
offer him worship.
Herod, on the other hand, indicates that the human spirit
can just as easily—perhaps much more easily—close itself off from grace. Herod, whose sole desire is power and
control, responds to news of the birth of the savior by attempting to eliminate
the threat to his power. He
therefore attempts to scrub out God from the midst of men for the sake of his
own power and autonomy. When Herod
finds God, he desires to eliminate him.
Both possibilities are present within every human heart. Both the joy of Christmas and the
shadow of the Cross, therefore, inseparably appear in the infancy
narratives. It is appropriate to
rejoice at the birth of the savior, at the coming of God into our midst—but it
is also appropriate to remember, in the words of the hymn, that Christ was born
“for to die.”
Many of the key themes Pope Benedict has written about
throughout his career find their place in this last, slim volume: faith and
reason, Christianity and politics, Christ’s fulfillment of the Old Testament,
the Church as the extension of Christ’s presence through history, the
limitations of a scientific approach to the Bible, and many others. He manages to put all of those
important concerns at the service of his one, overarching goal: to bring
clarity to the figure of Jesus Christ.
If the reader learns, along the way, about the relationship between
faith and reason or some of the ways to think about Christianity’s engagement
with the political order, it is because the light Pope Benedict shines on
Christ allows us to see the light Christ shines on the world.
Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives is an extraordinary conclusion to an extraordinary
work. The fact that most of the
themes Benedict has dealt with in his career show up in this little volume is a
testament to the capaciousness of Benedict’s thought, but also to the degree to
which his entire body of work is focused like a laser beam on the figure of
Christ. One of the great virtues
of the book is that it is so accessible without losing any depth. It can be read as a devotional aid, as
an edifying book for recreational reading, or used in a theology course. In that respect, Pope Benedict’s book
imitates its subject: Christ himself both suffers the little ones to come to
him, and provides more than ample material for the greatest minds to
ponder.