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          In yesterday’s paper there was a picture of Pope Benedict XVI being welcomed at the Park East Synagogue in New York City.  Today for many pious Jews the very mention of Jesus’ name is to be avoided.  But in the early church there was a group of Jewish Christians who acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah or, in Greek, the Christ. 
            However, the Christian movement was to develop in another direction which would cut it off from its roots in Judaism, and the beginning of this development can be seen in Stephen’s vision of Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 
            The Nicene Creed takes the final step in this development: Jesus is professed to be “God  of God, light of light, very God of very God.”  “Christ,”  which had been a title expressing Jesus’ mission, became his last name: Jesus Christ.  “Christ” was therefore no longer adequate to express the mystery of Jesus’ being.
            The development of a “high” christology would not only mark the parting of the ways between Christianity and Judaism; it would also lead to denunciations from the third monotheistic religion, Islam.  The 9th Surah of the Qur’an pronounces a curse against those who say that Christ is the Son of God, and the 5th Surah declares: “They are unbelievers who say that Christ, the son of Mary, is God.”
            There is no doubt that the Christian confession that Jesus is the Son of God, or God, is seen as blasphemy by both Judaism and Islam.  The doctrine of the Trinity, which seeks to reconcile Jesus’ divinity with monotheism, is difficult even for Christians to understand and can scarcely satisfy Jews and Muslims. 
            My former colleague in the Toronto School of Theology, Father Roger Haight, S.J. , wrote a book entitled Jesus, Symbol of God, which got him into trouble with the present pope, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Sacred Congregation for the Defence of the Faith. 
            “Symbol of God”  seems to fall short of the profession of the creed: “God of God.”  But a symbol gives expression to something which cannot be expressed in any other way.  For the Christian, Jesus gives expression to the reality of the divine in a way that nothing else can do. 
            When belief begins to wane, one has recourse to rationalistic explanations, to seek to avoid the incalculable consequences of the loss.  But what should we then put in place of the symbol?  How can there be a better way of expressing a mystery which has never yet been understood?

April 20, 2008

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