{233}
THIRD PART
CHRISTIANITY
IN THE HISTORY OF RELIGIONS
{235} In the previous chapters1 I have dealt with the problem of the intrinsic historicity of the fact of religion. And I was saying that this historicity has two aspects, depending on whether they are non-monotheist religions or monotheist religions. In the former, historicity reveals itself in the “ab-erration” (in the sense given above), and in the circuitous route with which man reaches God. Monotheist religions have a different historicity, what I call the ups-and-downs: the difficulties that with great efforts are surmounted in order to reach God through a perfectly clear way, and the only true one. I was saying in the previous chapter that monotheism has this type of history, not only in the sense that it is true, but also in the sense that it is a viable truth. This truth, really and actually, has been able to establish itself in a permanent and fruitful way throughout history. This monotheism is the one introduced by the people of Israel, which later flows into the religion of Christ. It begins with Abraham, who was quite simply the one that had ’Elohim as his friend, and finishes in Christ, who preaches God the Father of all men.
{236} The historicity concerning us here is precisely the historicity of this Theós mónos, of this one only God, insofar as a religion is founded on Him. The problem of the intrinsic historicity of religions ultimately depends in also considering monotheism from this point of view. Then we ask: What is the position of the monotheist religions, and concretely Christianity, in the history of religions?
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CHAPTER VI
CHRISTIANITY
AS AN INTRINSICALLY HISTORICAL RELIGION2
From within the area, which intelligence opens to us, and in which as an extra, by an internal and manifestative experience in the surrender of faith that constitutes the access of man to God, Christianity presents a terminus of that option: the God of Christianity. Christianity makes no exception to anything I have said up to this point. The presentation of Christ and His preaching are inscribed in an historical experience: in the historical experience of Israel with respect to God, to the mónos Theós, which Yahweh is.
However, let us not think that the monotheism of Israel —the idea of Yahweh as it unfolded in its historical experience— identifies itself with a type of continuous experience in which, successively, Israel goes on perceiving moments of different interventions of Yahweh. The truth, {238} if it is not the opposite, needs of a complementary contrary. Israel has perceived in many crucial moments of its historical existence a special intervention of Yahweh, and only afterwards, those who have reflected about these different moments, apparently unconnected, have been able to discover that at the bottom of everything there is a continuity. This continuity, then, is the result of a theological reflection of the hagiographers. No doubt it is founded in re, and written by inspiration, but with no impediment to see that it is the case of a reflection on very dissimilar facts, and very heterogeneously realized in the course of history. After all, the books, such as we have them in the Bible, acquired their final form during the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (VI-V centuries B.C.), not at the time of Moses, and the crossing of the Red Sea.
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§ 1
THE PREACHING AND WORK OF CHRIST
At a certain moment of this historical experience, Christ appears on the scene in the world of Israel. He appears in a somewhat innocuous way, as just one more inhabitant of Israel, and within a lived religious history. Christ, who appears that way, acts as a revealer of God. This does not constitute any kind of great catastrophe in the life of Israel. Throughout its centuries-old history Israel has been accustomed to the appearance of some individuals who talk to them about a God who reveals Himself. All the prophets have done so. Just one more did not constitute a radical exception in the world of Israel. Christ clearly assumes this function of revealer.
One may pose the question: If in Christ the issue is the access of the whole of mankind to God, why and how is it possible that this access may take such an anonymous form, and one so poorly figured? Advancing some ideas, I will answer that the reason is because Christ does not address mankind, but men in their historical oneness. Then, it would follow that His appearance is also intrinsically historical, as we shall presently see.
Christ, then, acts as revealer, and in the first place as revealer of a God who is real, and in the second place of a God who is accessible. This option of faith, offered to the Israelites we are dealing with here, and all men insofar as they follow Israel, is articulated in an internal manner with the pure intellection that the rational provides for us. This articulation between option and rational has a precise name: the reasonable. By virtue of such articulation, {240} the overflow of faith, which is in the idea of God, is credible. What happens is that the credibility of God varies enormously throughout history. It depends on the amount possible to be accepted by the one receiving it. It is very easy to say that prophecies and miracles are the unquestionable motives for credibility. Neither for the ones who saw miracles and did not believe, nor for those who have not seen them are these considered unquestionable motives. Credibility necessarily has to posit its concrete characteristic at each moment of history.
Shall only pay attention to the first moment, i.e., to the intrinsic characteristic of credibility that existed during the life of Christ. St. Paul gives us the next one in the first epistle to the Corinthians (cf. 1 Co 1:23-24). However, that would be too lengthy for us at this moment, and shall leave it for the time when I discuss the internal content of Christianity3. Thus, the question will be to consider Christ as revealer of a God actually real, and actually accessible. But then, we must be told how man can have access to Christ, and in Christ, to God. For this we must necessarily address three points:
In the first place: What is the God revealed by Christ?
In the second place: What is Christ as revealer of God?
And, in the third place: the access of man to Christ.
As the reader may guess, I do not propose to tackle the whole content of Christianity now, that shall be the object of another study. Here, the task is purely and simply to enter into this great cycle, which Christianity is, through the way I have outlined when dealing on another occasion about the reality of God, of an accessible God, and how man accesses God4. In the end this was —as we shall soon see— the way followed by Christ himself.
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I. The God revealed by Christ
Actually, Jesus Christ does not say anything about God, which was not already known to all Israelites. The whole multisecular tradition accumulated in the Old Testament coincides with the idea that Jesus Christ had about God. Christ insists on those characteristics belonging to the God in which all Israelites believe, although adding something new, which is precisely what is going to constitute the exordium of the action of Christ in history. But, above all, Christ retakes the classical themes, the classical ideas with which Israel conceives God.
It is the case, in the first place, of a non-representable God, as had been said since the times of the Covenant. In addition, He is a God who has a certain characteristic of royalty, empire and dominion of men. Christ is going to preach the malkut shamáyeem, in Aramaic, the Kingdom of Heaven or the Kingdom of God. This God, of course, is Lord. The New Testament has translated using kýrios (as the Old Testament did in the version of the Septuagint) for the expression Yahweh that Hebrew did not wish to pronounce because of religious reasons, calling Him Adonai, “Lord”. Indeed, to call Him “Lord” is just to call Him “God”. The theological reflection of the authors of the priestly code discovers also that this is the case of a God that has had special interventions in favor of Israel, which indicates that God is someone for whom Israel is a friendly and amiable reality. God actually has a berît, a Covenant, which turns Israel into the favorite people of Yahweh, into “the apple of his eyes” (cf. Dt 32:10; Zc 2:12). For Israel this God long with mercy and forgiveness is a God creator out of nothing. This idea of creator out of nothing is not too old in Israel. Actually, it does not appear in writing until the middle of the II {242} century B.C., at the time of the Maccabees. Certainly, this expression is placed in the mouth of an ordinary woman of the people, and indicates the belief was by then well spread out. Nevertheless, until that moment there has been no explicit and formal testimony that God has produced things out of what is not, ex nihilo sui: hóti ouk ex ónton epóinsen autá o Theós (2 Mc 7:28). In the second place, parallel to this idea is the idea of an omnipotent God. The God as friend, whom I have just mentioned, is their God —the God of Israel—, and His friendship consists in just being that. This friendship has a jealous and exclusive characteristic from the side of Israel, which is going to constitute one of the serious points for interrogation of the Israelite religion. “Yahweh, the God of Israel”: Does this mean that a Yahwist is each and everyone who is an Israelite or inasmuch as one is an Israelite? Or does it mean, on the contrary, that an Israelite is each and everyone who believes in Yahweh? The first is an ethnic and political interpretation of the religion of Yahweh. The second is the Yahwist religious interpretation of the ethnós of Israel. When asked on this question at the supreme moment of his trial, Christ affirmed being the Son of the living God (cf. Mt 26:63-64 & parallel). With this, as a process of the history of religions, the ethnic interpretation of the religion of Yahweh collapsed. However, before reaching this point, Christ assumes and preaches the reality of the God of Israel, which undoubtedly exceeds5 the limits of reason. Reason cannot (or, at least, not necessarily) think the omnipotence of God, His providence over all things and each one of them. However, this was a property of Yahweh, which appears in the Gospel: “even all the hairs on your head are {243} counted” (Mt 10:30; Lk 12:7). It is a providence covering all details.
Now, to this God of Israel Christ adds a new aspect, with not a small relevance. In order to understand this let us think that the attitude of surrender of man to God, just as I have been explaining it up to now, involves precisely a religation to God as ultimate reality, as possibilitating reality, and as impelling reality. And in this triple dimension, the act of surrender also has a triple characteristic: insofar as it refers to God as ultimate reality, it is what we might call the acquiescence, with whatever is founded upon acquiescence, for example the obedience to the Torah, etc. In the second place, insofar as it refers to God as radical possibilitating, the surrender is an act of adoration and supplication. In the third place, the act by which man refers to God as impelling radical power, and makes one be, is his strength6. It is proper in all of the Old Testament to call God “my rock”, “my strength”, etc. (Ps 18:2-3).
Hence, these three dimensions are going to be bound by Christ into one single word, which also did not shock the Israelites too much, revealing that marvelous activity of Christ: to apparently say things, which any others might say, but however, transcending them. We are referring precisely to the fact that Christ called God “Father”, Aba. That is the question. Certainly, it is not alien to the Israelite world to call God “Father”. The expression “Father” appears throughout the Old Testament, but in reference to the people of Israel, which is the one chosen by God, the apple of his eye. It is not merely a juridical paternity, as some exegetes have said with excessive ease. What {244} happens is that actually it is nothing but a national paternity. It appears that each of the Israelites is a friend of God because he is an Israelite. In Christ, however, the paternity does not mean something founded only on the berît, on the Covenant. It means something more. It means precisely that the paternity is a characteristic with respect to every human spirit. It is a universal paternity, something that did not occur with the God of Israel: Yahweh had not advanced acquiring universal characteristics except quite slowly, and in a limited form towards the end of the prophetic era, just before Christ. On the other hand, in Christ, the paternity of God is absolutely universal: He is Father of all mankind. This is the strict universality.
Furthermore, this paternity does not mean something merely sentimental, but first and above all it is a theological concept. A father is one who gives of what he is to another reality, to the reality of his son. From this stems the fact that the inexorable correlate of this paternity of God is the radical characteristic of the relationship of man with God, which the filiation is. And the filiation, as well as the paternity, is not a sentimentality. Just the opposite: it is the characteristic of a personal surrender in religation. And a personal surrender, which moves within an option directed towards a reality, which is respected and complied with. Towards a reality, which one supplicates, and towards a reality one asks for strength to be radically what one is. It is a trusting surrender, and inasmuch as it is trusting it constitutes a filiation from the side of man, homologous to the paternity of God. Of course, both the concept of paternity, and the concept of filiation still remain in the shadows, and it will be the very reality of Christ, which will have to explain to us what this paternity is, and what this filiation is.
Finally, with His predication, and revelation of this God, Christ has done no more than to affirm the Yahwist faith once more, within Israel. The faith in that God, which Jesus Christ is {245} not going to leave behind. Just the opposite: moments before dying, from the cross, Jesus Christ is precisely going to invoke Yahweh, present in the Temple of Jerusalem. It is going to be the last act as a pious Israelite that Christ will perform, when He says to Him Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani, “My God, my God, Why have thou forsaken me?” (Ps 22:2; cf. Mk 15:34; Mt 27:46). Then, Psalm 22 continues: “yet you are enthroned in the holy place,” —which He had three hundred meters away— “Oh glory of Israel” (v. 4). This is the radical invocation of that Yahweh from whom Christ never felt dispossessed. And this because of two reasons, one negative, and the other positive. Negative, insofar as Christ never consented in being addressed as Lord, because this was the translation of Yahweh. However, all the New Testament writings after His death call Him precisely kýrios, Lord. Positive, insofar as Christ is going to present this God as accessible. This is the second question we shall have to deal with: the access to God just as Christ presents it.
II. Christ as revealer of God
Inasmuch as Christ has done what I have just described, He is a revealer of the word of God. This had been done by all the prophets, from the classical prophetism of Amos to the time of Zachariah or Malachi. In this sense, Christ is like them a revealer of God, and the word of Christ is the word of God. However, this word of God in Christ has a special characteristic. Because Christ did not limit Himself to transmit the word of God, talking in His name as all the other prophets had already done. Christ asserts something more. He asserts that in this word of His there is {246) involved precisely the very access to God. This brings about a series of important problems. Simply, because if this is so, two questions must be clarified:
In the first place, How is God in Christ?
And, in second place, How does one go to God through Christ?
A) How is God in Christ? We usually say —and it is true— that Christ is God. Yes, but Christ did not present Himself as such to the Israelites. No one would have understood Him, and besides, all would have considered this absurd. Christ presented Himself —I shall point to this next— in another form, which certainly involved this affirmation, but one that did not explicitly exist in the mouth of Christ or in the ears of those listening to Him. How did Christ present Himself to His disciples and listeners? Certainly, I cannot take up a complete exegetical exposition of the figure of Christ in the New Testament, but rather I am going to concentrate here on three of the most remarkable points, which the exegesis, obviously, has recognized.
1) In the first place, Christ appears as a great thaumaturge7. He performs miracles. Our idea of a thaumaturge is quite embroidered in medieval legends, a thing, which did not happen —fortunately— with the Israelites. For an Israelite, to perform prodigies was clearly an extraordinary thing, but the history of Israel was dotted to a lesser or greater extent with these extraordinary facts. Elijah and Elisha had resurrected the dead, etc. To be a thaumaturge did not constitute an irruption on the life of Israel. And this is what is important to underline: Christ {247} began by not making a break with anything, and just doing what others did, but —and that is the issue— transcending it. Transcending what others did. Christ performed miracles; that is the testimony of the Gospel. But we must agree about what a miracle is. Christ was asked to come down from the cross in order to believe in Him, and He did not do it. Christ never pretended with His miracles to impose Himself in a brutal manner, as in a sort of great theophany facing humanity, near or remote. In the passage of the temptations in the desert we have precisely the typical Messianic temptation: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down. Scripture has it: ‘He will bid his angels take care of you; with their hands they will support you’.” (Mt 4:6). Christ discarded this as a temptation.
Yet, Is it not the case that Christ performed miracles? Yes, but, What were the miracles in Christ? Certainly they were prodigious feats, but these feats did not have the aspect, in the conscience of the Israelite, of being interruptions of the laws of nature. This is a degraded conception of what a miracle is. How can we pretend that a miracle is the interruption of the laws of nature? The interruption or not of the laws of nature is not what constitutes a miracle. The proof of this will appear when we consider one of the most typical miracles in the life of Christ, the cure of the paralytic man (cf. Mt 9:1-8 & parallel), where we find that the first thing Christ says —a scandal to the listeners— to the paralytic is: “son, your sins are forgiven” (Mt 9:2). To forgive sins is an attribute that no one had except Yahweh. This is aiming towards something more than the prophets. One thinks that those present would be astonished by the cure of the paralysis. However, the text does not say that, but says “and they praised God for giving such authority to men” {248) (Mt 9:8). Not by the power of God, but by the power given to men. Certainly, the miracles of Christ were extraordinary things, but were done as testimony of the power He had. A power, which He also had personally. This is the difference with all the other thaumaturges of the history of Israel: they all surely did what Christ had done, but they did not do it with a personal power.
2) In the second place, Christ presents Himself as Messiah. Surely, He did this in a very limited fashion. To His disciples, above all according to St. Mark, He asks them to keep the Messianic secret in a firm and resolute way. He did not allow to be called “Christ” during His lifetime. In reality the Israelites did not have a univocal idea of the Messiah. For some He was the descendant of David, and therefore, a pretender to the throne of Israel. For others it was the case of someone transcendent, the Son of Man who would descend from the clouds full of power (cf. Dn 7:13). For a few others, it was the case of the Servant of the Deutero-Isaiah who would die and expiate all sins (cf. Is 52:13, 53:12). At any rate, there was no definite and clear figure of what the Messiah might be. And Christ did not concern himself at all with defining its figure. But He did what I have just indicated: He forgave sins, which was an exclusive prerogative of Yahweh. Without mentioning what His Messianic relationship with God was, He acted precisely by virtue of a personal power to forgive sins8. He did not say God forgives them, but that He forgave them.
{249} 3) In the third place Christ called himself Son of God. It is also an expression that would have not shocked Israelite ears. In the Old Testament the title of “son of God” was given to the just who obey the will of God, to the pious kings, or Israel itself insofar as obeying the will of God. The expression indicates a certain intimacy with God, and in this Christ is not different from the other Israelites. But —and here surfaces another “but”— He is careful to say that the Father is known only by Him, who is the Son. And the Son is only known by the Father (cf. Mt 11:25-27). It is the case of an intimacy, which others do not have. To the extent that when He teaches His disciples to pray He says to them: “This is how you are to pray: Our Father...” (cf. Mt 6:9). He never includes himself in the “our”, but rather speaks of “your Father” (Mt 5:16; 5:45; 5:48; etc.), without placing on the same level His reality and the reality of other men.
Finally, Christ takes the current predicates in the world of Israel to speak about a great prophet, thaumaturge, Messiah9, adding a “but” to them, and also a limitation, which properly constitute an indication that there is something else here beyond what had existed before. Actually, these “buts” point to the fact that in Christ there is a transcendent reality with respect to what the thaumaturge, the idea of the Messiah, and every son of God have been. Nevertheless, if we now wish to visualize what this point of transcendence is, let us remember what I have said before: the oneness {250} of the human person with God is a oneness with an internal dynamic tension10. A tension by virtue of which sometimes the person appears divine, while at others it seems God is human, that He is a human person. This internal and dynamic tension, however, supports a certain duality, without which everything in the ordinary man would disappear. Let us imagine, indeed, that this tension through intimacy is elevated towards the infinite: in a certain way we will have an identity. In such case Christ not only transmits the word of God, but He is in His own reality the very Word of God. This does not mean that Christ, with His stomach, with His brain, with His soul or psychism, may be God. However, there is a moment of identity according to which all the human reality of Christ would consist in being identically the very Word of God. The primitive community did not go beyond this affirmation, but it was enough. The point of transcendence is that internal, theological, and metaphysical identity, which only occurs in the person of Christ. And to that person Christ asked for a personal adherence, a personal adherence to His person. This is the second essential point of the problem: How does one go to God through Christ, who not only transmitted the word of God, but was in reality the very Word of God, the very moment of identity?
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1 In Zubiri’s index of the 1965 Madrid seminar the third part included an initial study on “Christianity in the monotheist tradition”. Since in the 1971 seminar this chapter became independent, the third part, “Christianity in the history of religions” was left with two chapters: “Christianity as an intrinsically historical religion”, and “Christianity and the history of religions”.
2 From this point on we reproduce a text coming from the first part of the 1971 seminar. In this seminar, just as in the one from 1968 on El hombre y el problema de Dios (“Man and the problem of God”), Zubiri concluded the analysis of the “access of man to God” with one or several conferences dedicated to the God of Christianity. In them he gathered and elaborated on what is presented with repect to the preaching and the work of Christ in the third part of the 1965 Madrid seminar.
3 In a volume of unpublished texts still in preparation. (Tr. note: this refers to the already published The Theological Problem of Man: Christianity, Madrid, 1997)
4 Zubiri refers to the first part of the 1971 seminar, corresponding to what was published in El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”).
5 The reservations of Zubiri concerning the idea and the term “excess” should be remembered.
6 Cf. what Zubiri says in El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”) op. cit., p. 199-200.
7 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri had crossed out the expression “as a thaumaturge”, and written on the margin: “benefactor filled with charity and commiseration towards the needs and human misfortunes. ‘Went about doing good works’ (Acts 10:38). And this, above all, because of the miracles. Christ appears as a thaumaturgic charity.”
8 On the text of the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri noted: “as Messiah, Christ was above Moses and Abraham. However, I repeat, the figure of the Messiah was dark and confused. An any rate, in the same manner with which he had outranged the classical thaumaturge with His personal power to forgive sins, He also outranged the traditional image of the Messiah by making sovereign dispositions about the Torah, the Law. He pointed —merely pointed— to the idea that the Messiah would be the Servant of Yahweh, who would suffer death. He did not go beyond this.
9 In the 1965 Madrid seminar Zubiri considered, in addition, a fourth predicate, the “Son of man”.
10 Concerning “theological tension”, cf. El hombre y Dios (“Man and God”), op. cit., p. 355-365.