Introduction
Countless figures have had amazing affect in world history, but no-one, has exerted more influence than the first century prophet from Nazareth called Jesus the Messiah, the Anointed One, The Christ. ‘The crucified Jesus is the risen Christ’ or ‘Jesus is the Christ’. Christology is nothing more or less than the careful clarification of that basic proposition. Our calendric dating system e.g., 2016 (Common Era) is instituted on Jesus’ assumed birthdate at Bethlehem in Judea.
Ignatius was the first of the Church Fathers to speak of the mysteries of the life of Jesus when he produced evidence of Jesus’ humanity, which the Gnostics had denied, with the ‘three celebrated mysteries’ that took place in the stillness of God; the virginity of Mary; her childbearing, and the death of the Lord. Different approaches to the mystery of Christ can be seen, however, privileged sources are the Gospels, and also the living Jesus tradition. Our Christian mission is to pursue and unpick as much of the mystery as we can, of this ‘person of Jesus Christ’ in his own time and milieu. Then to investigate the various ways in which Jesus has been understood from the New Testament times right up to today. ‘Our primary access to the mystery of Jesus the Christ, and hence our starting point is the Church, through its Scriptures (pages 7-8), its creeds, its faith experienced, proclaimed, and handed on through the centuries4. Nothing is hidden or mysterious to God, whether it be the workings of the universe or human hearts. There are, however, places in the bible where something is disclosed to particular individuals or groups, but is hidden or mysterious to others.
To better comprehend Jesus’ mystery, one needs to ask ‘who he is’, and what he has done for us? In Mark’s Gospel Jesus enquired of his disciples: ‘But who do you say I am? Christological questions need posing: To declare the ‘mystery of Jesus Christ’ is to fundamentally concede, all human life as a mystery. For the human person is not simply mind and body, but also spirit. God is the sovereign mystery. St Paul comments, it is only ‘in God that we move and live and have our being’. Mystery, then, suffuses every aspect of our lives including our knowledge of ourselves, and the world. Mystery is at the heart of our relationships with others. If we get to the point where we might say to someone that; there is no mystery there! Clearly we fail to grasp the depth, beauty, pain and reality of who that individual is. We essentially confess to expressing ‘God’s absence!’ So the more we come to know and appreciate the human individual, the more we become aware of the depth of mystery and the reality of God in that individual. The central question of Christianity, and of history itself, is: Who is Jesus Christ? Indeed, the Bible makes it clear that, whether we recognize Him now or not, all must one day stand before God and answer that question.
The mystery of Jesus Christ is yet more philosophical on analysis of the types of human faith responses Jesus awakened in the disciples of his own day and in Christian followers in subsequent centuries. Human individuals stirred by the Jesus story answer in diverse ways and at numerous levels. The story of Jesus, however, still seizes the imagination, inspiring new vision and desire. For these individuals sense that Jesus somehow galvanizes a more genuinely human way to live their lives with increased openness to divine mystery.
Just how this first century Jew, came to exert such influence on human kind and on world history is of itself mystifying? The most insightful answer comes in human lives, their actions and deeds, the witness and testimony of Jesus’ followers. Only through laying open our own lives and surrendering to the mystery of the Jesus account can we start to view the profound meaning of his life, death and resurrection for us as individuals, and for our world.
We enter the mystery of the Jesus account by becoming part of an ecclesial community or Christian Church, celebrating the memory of Jesus in word and Sacrament. Here his account is given life again, as individuals experience his reality at the centre of their lives and world. From earliest times, this was expressed by saying that ‘Jesus is the Christ’ (Peter) or, even more profoundly, Jesus is ‘Lord and God’ (Thomas).
From the earliest of times in our Christian history it became evident that there are essentially two distinct approaches to the mystery and reality of Jesus Christ. One is called Christology (from below) because the emphasis is on the events in the historical life of Jesus: the one who came among us as a great prophet to announce the kingdom of God and who, despite his untimely death, has been raised on high by God. The other approach is called Christology (from above) because it begins by affirming the divine origins of Jesus who is ‘God made man’. These two approaches – called low ascending and high descending christologies. Are complimentary. However throughout the centuries, it has been the high descending Christology that has held the most sway. More recently the low ascending Christology has had a return to favour. Just as there is circularity in every other aspect of life there is circularity in Christological trends. However the mystery of Christ surpasses all our attempts to speak and understand. It is only by entering the story in word and deed, that is by becoming followers of Jesus, that we can hope to understand who he is and what he means for us today.
The Gospels are Privileged Sources
The good news does not consist of ‘eloquent wisdom’, but of Christ’s life and work, of ‘the cross of Christ’ (1Cor 1:17). Reference to the mysteries of Christ has always been fundamental for the proclamation and worship of the Church. If we are to understand Jesus at all we need to locate him in the first stories that were told about him. Their stories are the Gospels, meaning ‘Good News’. They were written by early followers of Jesus in the decades after his death, and are faith stories, not biographies. The Gospel writers were not out to prove anything other than to account for the perfect ways that God was present to them in the life of Jesus the Nazarene. And so they are indeed privileged sources, for they witness to the earliest experiences of faith in Jesus the Christ, the special messenger of God. They convey much about the Jesus of history and the events of his historical life. They are based on eye-witness accounts, which are told in stories before being committed to writing. It is in point some 30-60 years and beyond Jesus death that the gospels are written in final form. We can identify three different layers of tradition underlying the Gospel stories: The original words and deeds of Jesus; the oral proclamation of the apostles; and the written words of gospel writers. The Gospels, therefore, are a complex set of documents combining history and theology, facts and faith, events and interpretation. Each of the Gospels does this uniquely in their own way of seeing things. Each seeks to answer the same question Jesus put to Simon Peter: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ However each evangelist (Gospel writer) is struck by a different aspect of the mystery of the person of Jesus. And so the four gospels present us with different portraits of the same Jesus. Mark and Matthew place Jesus within the framework of Jewish faith and life. For Mark, Jesus is the suffering Messiah; for Matthew he is the new Moses and teacher of the new law. In Luke and John, Jesus is seen as the Saviour of all people within and beyond the world of Israel. The Lukan Jesus is identified as the one in whom the Holy Spirit is especially present; the Johannine Jesus is the Word of God made flesh. All different approaches to the one mystery of Jesus the Christ. Taken together their writings form the Christian Scriptures, foundational to doing Christology today since they carry the remembrance and witness of the inspired early communities12. Scripture in isolation fails to sufficiently reveal, ‘they must be read within the community of faith from which they came if they are to remain alive 13. Without a history of on-going interpretation the living Jesus tradition, neither the Gospels nor Jesus would still claim our attention today. So history and tradition is another important source for our knowledge of Jesus Christ. This tradition of interpretation, enshrined in the doctrines of the Church, witnesses to two thousand years of continuing faith in the mystery of Christ. We are heirs to that tradition as we seek to reinterpret our faith in Jesus Christ today.
To stand within this living Jesus tradition means that we must attempt to reinterpret his meaning for us today. Our interpretation must be both faithful to the Gospels and the on-going tradition of faith while also being creative in the way that we re-express our Christian faith today. It is, if you like, up to us to keep the Jesus story alive through faithful yet enterprising discipleship and interpretation. We will acquire our Christologies with reference to the issues and questions that are part of our world and experience, we could do no otherwise.
Scripture: Old Testament
Mystery is most clearly seen in Daniel 2, the one place in the OT where the term ‘mystery’ (raz in Aramaic, mysterion in Greek) is used. The content of mystery is the revelation of God’s present and future activity within history.
Scripture: New Testament
Similarly mystery is found in the NT. Jesus speaks mysterious things in parables to his disciples and the crowds. He discloses the hidden aspects of the kingdom of God, baffling countless numbers, but Jesus interprets them to his disciples so they may understand God’s present and future plans (Mark 4:10-12; Matt. 13:11-17; Lk. 8:9-10).
Conclusion
God is not accessible to our senses. We have been given a direct perception of God, but we cannot use it to designate and describe him16. However, ‘every Christology is related to Christopraxis: what we know and what we do belong together. And, practice is the touchstone against which a Christology’s authenticity has to be tested’17. Jesus parables were uniquely conceived by him, and were quite unlike those of the scribes, they were designed to make his hearers reflect, in the hopes that they would gradually determine ‘the mystery of the kingdom of God’ (Mk 4:11). But they could determine it only if their hearts were ready, if open to the good news. ‘Teaching about mystery has shown God hides his plan of salvation from those who do not know him. While it remains concealed to others, God does however, make his plan of salvation known to his people19. We know from the Gospels that Jesus withdrew to the mountain to spend nights in prayer. Pope Benedict XVI states: ‘These brief passages are central to comprehending Jesus for they raise the veil of mystery just slightly’20. Among ways we reveal Jesus today, is through those who heal the sick, and the poor, defend the rights of people against all forms of injustice. In these and multiple other indications of the power of Jesus at work in the world, we can perceive numerous ways of telling, accepting and interpreting the Jesus accounts.
In his prison letters, Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, ‘who is Jesus Christ for us today?’ that will shape how you live your lives. Upon reflection, there has doubtless never been a period in the history of Christianity where Christians did not ponder the question of who Jesus Christ was for them, at their particular time, and in their particular location21. Alongside Sacred Scripture, the liturgy recurrently advocates contemplation of the mysteries of Christ also. For each year, from Christmas to Ascension, the Church celebrates the entire sequence of the mysteries of the earthly life of Jesus. ‘In commemoration of feasts and solemnities of the Church year, she lets us live the mysteries of the Lord in a living representation. In these feasts, we always likewise celebrate our participation in these mysteries’22. ‘All the mysteries of the life of Jesus have three common elements/features: they are (a) a revelation of the father, (b) a mystery of redemption, and (c) a mystery of the “recapitulation” (recapitulatio) of everything under one head. These three main features relate to the three ways in which we share in the mysteries of Jesus: Jesus’ life is the exemplar for us; He lived it for us, and he permits us to live in him, everything that he lived; and he lives it in us.
In his Apostolic letter, Novo Millennio Ineunte, His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, (2000) said in his conclusion. ‘Let us go forward in hope! …relying on the help of Christ. The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today: we need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become the instruments of his work’ 24. God always remains a mystery but we can be witnesses in the meeting with other pilgrims, in personal witness and testimony, (something very important to young people). Children really need to hear an adult talk to them about their experience of faith.
Modern man listens more to witnesses than to teachers and if they do listen it is because they are a witness, so you can attract (Paul VI). Look also today at John Paul II’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI, who has a gentle firmness in his witness that radiates when you meet him in person, that is why he won over many of those who met him on his recent visit to the UK, many of whom, weeks prior, would have been openly hostile (stressing the importance of faith and witness today). Talking about the mysteries of Jesus corresponds to a certain view of his life. It is a matter of approaching this life in the belief that Jesus is true God and true man. Only in such a contemplation, in awe and reverence, can the traces of his mysteries be found everywhere in Jesus life. Everything in Jesus’ life was a sign of his mystery… What was visible in his earthly life leads to the invisible mystery of his divine Son-ship and redemptive mission. It is one which is already amongst us today, if we look.
The Church is like a vast ocean upon which we shall venture, relying on the help of Christ. The Son of God, who became incarnate two thousand years ago out of love for humanity, is at work even today: we need discerning eyes to see this and, above all, a generous heart to become the instrument of his work.
