When we think of Catholicism countless concepts and ideas come to our minds: Jesus, resurrection, the Holy Spirit, the Pope, the church and politics, are just a few. However, I believe that the main conception that must be understood in order to define Catholicism is the transformation of the Jesus of History, through resurrection, into the Christ of Faith. The resurrection of the Jesus of History provides us with new insights and meanings about the nature of his life and death which, along with the historical events narrated in the gospels, will become the base of our beliefs in the Christ of Faith.
In understanding the transformation of Jesus it is important that we recognize that what we say about the Jesus of History is not always automatically true for the Christ of Faith. The Jesus of History can be understood more as a social critic and moral teacher than as God’s method of coming close to humanity. In other words, the Jesus of History is the Jewish prophet who preached through parables and performed miracles to complement his teachings. On the other hand, the Christ of Faith is the savior; He is the sinless individual who gave his life in order to liberate humanity from evil and sin. This transformation, nevertheless, cannot happen without resurrection. I want to explore through this analysis how the teachings of the Jesus of History come together with the mystery of resurrection to ultimately produce what we understand as the Christ of Faith.
There are two ways of looking at the Jesus of History, either with an eschatological view or with a non-eschatological view. The non-eschatological view of Jesus perceives Christ as a wise man who, through powerful teachings and an exemplary life, incites his followers to break away from the conformist mind-set enclosing their society. Thus, for the scholar who perceives a non-eschatological Jesus, the kingdom of God “is a symbol used by Jesus to describe an experiential presence of God that draws one into a new way of living, not the “broad way” of conventional wisdom and its concerns for family, wealth, honor, and organized religion, but “the narrow way” centered in trust on the Spirit of God.” These scholars also emphasize on a rupture between Jesus’ teachings about the Kingdom of God and ancient Jewish apocalyptic thinking, establishing in this way a belief that this kingdom he proclaims will not come at the end of the world, but that it is his means of promoting the transformation of the actual world. Although non-eschatological interpretations provide several insights into the meaning of Jesus’ teachings, this view does not fairly concord with the idea of the resurrection and the Christ of Faith. Thus, they can teach us very little about the transformation of Jesus from one stage to the other.
Conversely, the Jewish-influenced eschatological view of Jesus focuses on the apocalyptic implications of Christ and his teachings. That is, they believe that the kingdom of God which Jesus announced will only become a reality if the world in which we live in comes to an end. Nevertheless, I agree better with the interpretations of scholars with a more open eschatological view of Christ who combine some of the non-eschatological views of Jesus with the eschatological point of view to make further sense out of some of the data. For example, scholars like N.T. Wright and John Meier believe Jesus talked about a kingdom that is both present and future. Wright argues that “Jesus’ apocalyptic prediction is not precisely of the end of this space-time universe, but is of such a new kind of world to be brought in by God that only apocalyptic imagery is adequate to describe it.” This notion of the kingdom of God allows us to understand most of the scriptures of both the Old and the New Testament.
Furthermore, scholars like Meier and Wright argue that Jesus, through his words and actions, presented humanity with examples of how the kingdom of God can be found in this world. From this point of view, parables and miracles are Jesus’ ways of demonstrating the eschatological message. As the author of The Life and Teaching of Jesus of Nazareth cleverly states “Miracles can be described as a peek into the kingdom of God – indeed also as a peak or high point of experience of that kingdom, but it remains only an anticipation of a reality the full experience of which is yet to come.” In other words, through the miracles we get a feeling that this kingdom which Jesus proclaims is starting in this world, nevertheless, it ends in another realm.
Once we understand the nature of the kingdom of God as being both present in this world, but ending in another, then we can move on to see how the Christ of Faith develops from of a combination of these beliefs and the idea of death and resurrection. For it is through the resurrection that the Jesus of History undergoes a transformation that will eventually make him the Christ of Faith. However, before exploring the concept of the transformation of Jesus, first I want to analyze his death and the actual event of the resurrection.
The death of Jesus is definitely a crucial element in the development of the Christ of Faith. In general, most Catholics envision the death of Christ as part of his means for saving humanity. However, this belief can take two different perspectives. In the first, as the author of The Means of Atonement: Death and Resurrection affirms in his or her discussion: “Christ's resurrection is one event with his death as conquest. In his death Jesus appeared to be overcome by sin, law and even death itself, but was in reality refusing allegiance to any of these powers. His resurrection completed that rejection and makes it available to us as our own.” From this perspective the death of Christ is seen as an example of how we, as humans, can also overcome sin and evil by living life in accordance to Jesus’ teachings. The second perspective is defined in the discussion as understanding “that Christ's death was really the expression of a pattern of life, expressive of his entire life of love and obedience. This pattern of life never ends and is incorporated into the life of the risen Christ.” This interpretation, which I believe is the most rational, recognizes the life and death of Christ as the ultimate example of the path that we as human being should follow in order for the kingdom of God to become a reality. Furthermore, the special thing about Jesus’ life is that we can follow his path all the way until its culmination, in death.
Moreover, it is important that I mention that the death of Jesus should not be interpreted as a literal sacrifice in which an animal is killed as a gift to please God. Instead, his death should be comprehended as the “perfect offering of his life to God, an expression of perfect obedience or perfect unity of wills, which, as representative for all humanity, enables us to move out of sin and alienation into renewed unity with God.” In other words, Christ’s death is the definitive expression of absolute trust and conviction in God’s power. An expression that every Catholic should endeavor to achieve.
Jesus’ death evidently has a very strong influence in his transition towards the Christ of Faith. However, it would be impossible to fully grasp Catholicism or the Christ of Faith without taking a careful look at the resurrection. Through resurrection, Jesus enters a new form of existence that allows him to influence our lives and our faith. According to Paul, “by his resurrection God not only completes Christ's final conquest of sin and death, and not only confirms his obedience unto death, but transforms these into a new risen life that Christ shares with us.” We, as normal human beings, reach the resurrection by living and participating in Christ’s new state. Furthermore, the resurrection should not be regarded only as a sign of divinity but as a “transformation of Christ in such a way that the resurrection is an integral part of the saving event itself.” The alleged transformation of the Christ has brought up many discussions since this theory seems to have a fair amount of discontinuity and continuity at the same time.
According to Paul, when Christ resurrected he did not rise as a living corpse back into the real world, but instead he rose in a new form and into a new life without all the sin and evil of the real world. The new life of resurrection is in many ways discontinuous with Christ’s actual life and death. For example, the Jesus of History is the one that dies and is also the one that rises. However, the Jesus who dies is different in many aspects to the Jesus who resurrects; he has become the Christ of Faith. Exactly how Jesus is transformed is still a mystery. What we do know we receive from Paul’s writings about the resurrection of the body of both Christ and ourselves in which he states that:
“When he speaks of the resurrection of the body, he refers to the entire person entering into a new existence. Resurrection of the body should not conjure images of resuscitation, graves opening at the end of time and corpses being rejoined to souls. Neither does it imply, on the other hand, that our risen life will not involve physical dimensions of our being, for we are enfleshed spirits, not in two parts, but in an inseparable, integrated unity. Resurrection of the body means that we who died will move into new life. But we will be changed and how our enfleshed spirit--seen as a totality--will be transformed remains unknown to us.”
Paul’s explanation is the closest we can get to understanding the mystery of the resurrection. There is not really an exact method for explaining the resurrection, we just believe in it as an act of faith. Thus, it is the resurrection that takes away most of the historical elements of the Jesus of History and transforms him into a divine and mysterious being that we know as the Christ of Faith.
Consequently, the Christ of Faith can be perceived as the renovated Jesus of History. This powerful and divine being incorporates the teachings and the exemplary life of the Jesus of History to ultimately become what we have come to know in our time as the Messiah. He can be understood as the Jesus of History that, through crucifixion and resurrection, has achieved complete unity with God. The Christ of Faith is one with God, he is God incarnated in a simple and humble human being. Moreover, the unity with God bestows upon him enough power to change our lives permanently if we decide to follow his lead. It is up to us to decide if we want to participate in the new life of the Christ to achieve this life ourselves.
If we think about it carefully, we can come to the assumption that it is the Christ of Faith who in the end has the biggest influence in the beliefs and doctrines of Catholicism. The reality is that the Christ of Faith is the engine that runs the train of thought and conviction known as Catholicism. Without the Christ of Faith, we would be left only with the Jesus of History, a social critic that preached about an ambiguous kingdom of God and who allegedly died in the cross for blasphemy. There would be no meaning in his death, no resurrection, no salvation, no Holy Spirit, and consequently, no Catholicism. Therefore, in order to fully understand the foundation of the Catholic religion, we must first explore how Jesus of History becomes the Christ of Faith. In other words, we must appreciate how a social critic, through crucifixion and resurrection, rises from death into a new state, in order to provide humanity with a new life free of evil and sin. As a result, we can define Catholicism as the belief in the Christ of Faith, a divine being who overcame death and sin, transcended humanity and achieved unity with God to provide the human race with his spirit of salvation.
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