Jesus, Interpreted

  Jesus, Interpreted
Benedict XVI,
Bart Ehrman, and
the Historical Truth
of the Gospels

Matthew J. Ramage

The Catholic University of America Press

Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2017
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum
requirements of American National Standards for Information
Science–Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials,
ANSI Z39.48-1984.
∞
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ramage, Matthew J.
Title: Jesus, interpreted : Benedict XVI, Bart Ehrman, and the
historical truth of the Gospels / Matthew J. Ramage.
Description: Washington, D.C. : The Catholic University of
America Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016036444 | ISBN 9780813229089 (pbk. : alk.
paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ--Person and offices. | Bible.
Gospels—Criticism, interpretation, etc. | Bible. Gospels—
Hermeneutics. | Benedict XVI, Pope, 1927– | Ehrman, Bart D.
Classification: LCC BT203 .R35 2017 | DDC 232/.8—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016036444
For my father
Michael Joseph Ramage
1945–2016

[W]hoever obeys and teaches these commandments

will be called greatest in the Kingdom of heaven.
     Matthew 5:17

The flower of earthly splendor in time must surely die,

Its fragile bloom surrender to you, the Lord most high;
But hidden from all nature the eternal seed is sown
Though small in mortal stature, to heaven’s garden grown:
For Christ the man from heaven from death has set us free,
And we through him are given the final victory.
      Hymn “O God Beyond All Praising”
 Contents

Preface ix

1. “Who Do You Say That I Am?” Bart Ehrman, 1

Benedict XVI, and the Plan of This Book
2. Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism: 16
A Magisterial About-Face?
3. Benedict XVI’s “Method C” Exegetical Vision 56
4. The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ: 101
Bart Ehrman
5. The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ: 145
Benedict XVI
6. The Problem of an Imminent Parousia 194
7. “To Whom Shall We Go?” Toward an Apologia 232
for the Christian Approach to Jesus

Bibliography 265

Scripture Index  279

General Index­  281

Preface

The subject of this book has played an important part in my own

autobiography for many years now. Jesus, Interpreted is for my own life
a lot like what the Jesus of Nazareth series was for Benedict XVI: an
expression of my personal search for the face of Jesus Christ. The book
is my own attempt at a response to Jesus’ question, “But who do you
say that I am?” (Mt 16:15). It reflects my appropriation of the question
Peter asked Jesus, “Lord, to whom shall we go?” (Jn 6:68). In the par-
ticular enquiry at hand, the issue concerns whose interpretation of Je-
sus best captures his true face: the mainstream agnostic approach ex-
emplified in the work of Bart Ehrman or, instead, the appropriation of
critical scholarship within the context of Christian faith as practiced
and taught by Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
Many individuals deserve my gratitude for their contributions to
this book. As in the case of my prior volume, Dark Passages of the Bible,
here I first have to thank our emeritus pontiff, who now humbly goes
by “Fr. Benedict.” I have been studying Benedict/Ratzinger intensely
for more than a decade, and, though I have never met him in person,
the emeritus pontiff has consistently been the model who shows me
how, as a committed Christian, to engage, critique, and learn from the
most serious challenges posed by modern biblical criticism.
As for those who have played a more direct role in the crafting
of this manuscript, my colleagues at Benedictine College hold pride
of place. In particular I thank James Madden and Andrew Jaeger in

ix
x  preface

Philosophy for thoughtful conversations which helped to refine the

philosophical foundations of this work. My apologies to them for any
philosophical infelicities in the text and for misapprehending what I
garnered from them. And in my own department of Theology I es-
pecially thank Andrew Swafford and Andrew Salzmann for our fre-
quent conversations over the years that continually refine my thinking
and inspire me to be a more faithful disciple of Jesus Christ.
Some sections of this book originated elsewhere in different for-
mats. Chapter 2 originated as an article in the international theologi-
cal journal Nova et Vetera. I wish to express my heartfelt thanks to
their editorial staff, especially Matthew Levering, who has been an
inspiring model and source of encouragement to this young theolo-
gian over the past ten years. A version of chapter 6 first appeared in
the Josephinum Journal of Theology and had its first antecedents in a
series of short articles on my own theology blog, www.truthincharity.
com. In addition, my thanks go out to Brandon Vogt for reviewing my
previous book and for asking me to contribute articles to Strange No-
tions, his site that fosters dialogue between Catholics and atheists. The
thought I put into those articles on Benedict XVI, Bart Ehrman, and
the question of miracles was seminal for the eventual formation of this
book. I am grateful also to Fr. David Meconi, editor of Homiletic and
Pastoral Review, for publishing several of my articles which are cited in
various places throughout the work.
I also would like to thank the staff of CUA Press, in particular
John Martino and Brian Roach with whom it has been a pleasure to
collaborate on two projects now. My copyeditor, Susan Needham,
saved this manuscript from a multitude of errors.
Finally, I never would have been able to undertake this project
without the total, continued support of my parents, wife, and children.
Above all, I wish to thank my father, Michael Joseph Ramage, for ev-
erything he did in life and everything he taught me, especially the love
of Christ and his Church. It was from my dad that I learned by exam-
ple how to ask the hardest theological questions in a spirit of thankful-
ness and trust in Holy Mother Church. Though he did not possess
the theological formation to explore the topic of this book in as much
depth as I am able, it is precisely because of my dad’s dedication to his
 preface   xi
children, and his desire for us to have the education he never could,
that I am able to publish this volume. I hope that the practice of faith
seeking understanding in this book gives him fitting honor, and I pray
it will help many readers to see better the face of the Lord Jesus re-
vealed in his sacred word.
  Jesus, Interpreted
 1
“W ho Do You Say That I Am?” Bart Ehrman,
Benedict XVI, and the Plan of This Book

Modern Biblical Scholarship and Ancient Christian Faith

I must confess that I really enjoy reading Bart Ehrman. A former
Christian who now describes himself as an agnostic, Ehrman has writ-
ten several bestselling books popularizing modern biblical exegesis
and challenging believers to consider more thoughtfully the origins of
the Bible and Christianity. Part of what attracts me to Ehrman’s work
is his accessible style matched with a personal touch and an intellec-
tual humility that is often lacking in believers and nonbelievers alike.
It might at first strike one as odd that a book concerned with uphold-
ing the truth of Scripture should begin by speaking so enthusiastically
about a self-professed agnostic, but ironically the following lines from
Ehrman concisely capture the conviction that undergirds the present
volume: “My personal view is that a historical-critical approach to the
Bible does not necessarily lead to agnosticism or atheism. It can in fact
lead to a more intelligent and thoughtful faith—certainly more intel-
ligent and thoughtful than an approach to the Bible that overlooks all
of the problems that historical critics have discovered over the years.”1
1. Bart Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible
(And Why We Don’t Know about Them) (New York: HarperOne, 2009), 272.

1
2  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

In his various works, Ehrman goes to great lengths to make clear

his conviction that modern biblical exegesis is not exclusively the
domain of the agnostic or atheist. Yet far from everyone agrees that
modern biblical criticism and the Church’s ancient faith are compat-
ible, especially when it comes to those within the Christian fold. Un-
fortunately, in my years of working with a mostly Catholic audience I
have witnessed plenty to confirm Ehrman’s observation that Christian
writers, speakers, and teachers sometimes write off modern schol-
arship tout court as if it were an unholy and irredeemable endeavor.
Placed in scare quotes, modern biblical authorities are frequently la-
beled “scholars,” as if their lack (or perceived lack) of faith invalidated
all their controversial positions. I suspect that Ehrman is right in re-
marking that his own books are sometimes dismissed because peo-
ple—whether consciously or unconsciously—perceive his arguments
as threatening to their faith.
Ehrman does well to take issue with those who dismiss modern
scholarship out of hand as if it were practiced only by the godless. He
remarks, “These scholars are not just a group of odd, elderly, basically
irrelevant academics holed up in a few libraries around the world.”2 In
a very important sense we owe our modern, translated Bibles to these
very people—some of whom are indeed nonbelievers. Irrespective of
their faith or lack thereof, these academicians have dedicated their ca-
reers to producing Bible editions that present us, as closely as possible,
with the original texts of Scripture.
Many people fail to appreciate the importance of modern scholar-
ship because they have little sense of just how complicated was the ori-
gin of the texts we now take for granted as “the Bible.” For one thing,
Ehrman constantly emphasizes for his popular audience something
that all biblical scholars know: we do not possess the original bibli-
cal books fresh from their authors’ pens. Moreover, he insists that the
many—and much later—copies of texts we do possess contain im-
portant variants and points of seemingly blatant contradiction among

2. Bart Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story behind Who Changed the Bible and Why
(New York: HarperOne, 2007), 208. For a helpful Christian critique of this same re-
actionary attitude, see Kenton Sparks, God’s Word in Human Words (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Baker Academic, 2008), 303–8.
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  3
themselves. So which manuscripts ought to be considered authorita-
tive or inspired? Even if this were able to be settled, then we still have
to consider the question of how to interpret the authoritative texts
that have survived from antiquity. On this score Ehrman writes, “If
texts could speak for themselves, then everyone honestly and openly
reading a text would agree on what the text says.”3

Thesis and Goal of This Volume

Universal agreement in matters biblical is clearly not the reality
today, and it probably never will be. Yet this is not to say that no head-
way can be made and that sincere dialogue on biblical questions will
yield no fruit. On the contrary, an immense amount of work remains
to be done in the field of biblical studies today. The Church is in need
of faithful who are formed in the tradition, invested in dialogue with
modernity, and zealous to help other believers face the myriad chal-
lenges thrown their way, whether by colleagues, teachers, professors,
books, TV, social media, or even their children. It was this conviction,
informed by Benedict XVI’s call for scholars to help the faithful tackle
the Bible’s most difficult passages, that inspired my prior work, Dark
Passages of the Bible. As its full title indicates, that volume articulated
the exegetical programme of Benedict XVI and Thomas Aquinas with
an eye to addressing the presence of problematic passages in the Bible,
and within the Old Testament in particular.
This sequel volume likewise insists upon the exegetical vision of
Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI as a privileged avenue by which to ad-
dress the thorniest issues in contemporary biblical exegesis.4 However,
the present text has a different concern, in that it does not address the

3. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 216. For a scholarly but relatively accessible introduc-
tion to the complex history of New Testament manuscript traditions, see Bruce Metzger
and Bart Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Res-
toration, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005). For the Old Testament, see
Ernst Wurthwein, The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia Hebraica
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2014).
4. In this volume we shall ordinarily refer to this man with many names (“Fr. Ratz-
inger,” “Cardinal Razinger,” “Pope Benedict XVI,” “Fr. Benedict,” etc.) as “Benedict,”
although we may occasionally call him by his pre-papal names where that seems appro-
priate.
4  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

problematic Old Testament themes considered previously but rather

tackles issues bearing directly on the heart of the Christian faith such
as they emerge in contemporary New Testament studies. The thesis of
this present volume is that Benedict’s engagement with modern bib-
lical scholarship is unique in its ability to navigate the most difficult
challenges posed by New Testament exegesis while affirming the foun-
dations of the Christian faith itself that have been cast into doubt by
much modern scholarship. I aim to show that Benedict’s hermeneutic
of faith offers a plausible and attractive alternative to the mainstream
agnostic approach to the Gospels that is exemplified in the work of
Bart Ehrman, an alternative that is every bit as scholarly and no more
reliant on unprovable assumptions. I believe that this enterprise is of
paramount importance, for while scholars have touched upon topics
within Benedict’s biblical scholarship here and there in recent years,
little has been done to address the interface of Benedict’s exegetical
project with the opposing method to which he is so concerned with
providing an alternative.
In the present book, I could not possibly deal with every contem-
porary portrait of the life of Christ that stands as a rival to Benedict’s
approach. Engaging modern scholarship can simply be overwhelming,
so one might ask, “Whose exegesis? Which interpretation?” While
I certainly will interact here and there with other modern authors, I
have chosen Ehrman for my principal representative of the modern
academy because he tends to base his arguments on consensus views
among scholars, because he is immensely popular, and because he is a
fair-minded interpreter who is not so overcome by his own agenda as
to think that every rational person ought to see things his way.5 
I am passionate about this volume because its subject has played
an important part in my own autobiography. Over the years I have
been dissatisfied with the way some Catholic apologists simplistically

5. Over the course of this volume, other well-known challengers to Benedict’s ap-
proach also will be engaged, especially John Dominic Crossan. Moreover, Benedict’s ar-
guments will be supplemented by the work of other recent scholars who have written on
the subjects at hand. For the purpose of letting Benedict and Ehrman speak for them-
selves and to promote flow of the argument, the majority of these supplemental argu-
ments will be placed in the footnotes.
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  5
dismiss modern biblical scholarship without first deeply understand-
ing it.6 For me, however, Benedict XVI has always proven himself the
eminent exception to this rule. One can tell from reading his exegeti-
cal works that the questions he asks are not merely academic but also
existential in nature. The emeritus pontiff’s Jesus trilogy in particular
represents the fruit of his personal quest for the face of Christ, a quest
to answer Jesus’ question to his disciples: “But who do you say that I
am?” (Mt 16:15). In this endeavor, Benedict is always asking how, as
a committed Christian, to engage, critique, and learn from the most
serious challenges posed by modern biblical criticism.

The Problem of Engaging Modern Exegesis as a Christian:

A Case Study in the Bible and the Question of Miracles
Of course, the worries of Christians concerning modern biblical
exegesis are not entirely unfounded. Ehrman, after all, is not a believer
and does not pretend that his conclusions are consonant with ortho-
dox Christian doctrine. In this initial pass at Ehrman’s thought, here
I will only very briefly summarize his position concerning Christ’s
divinity and resurrection. Ehrman’s arguments will be explored in
greater detail later, but here the goal is to make plain what the Chris-
tian is up against in seeking to defend belief in the Bible generally and
in Christ particularly. Then I will critique what I consider to be an
inadequate but very common Christian response to skeptics of the
Bible. I think that this effort will bring into relief the precise nature of

6. Though approaching the historical Jesus question as a Catholic rather than a

Protestant, I can relate to the musings of Dale Allison, who writes of his own book The
Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), “It
is my personal testimony to doubt seeking understanding. . . . Whatever one makes of
the following pages, they are the stammerings neither of an apologist nor of a skeptic
but instead of an oft-confused Protestant who has come to his conclusions, modest as
they are, quite gradually, and who may alter his uncertain mind about much tomorrow.”
Allison, 5. Allison’s book is a powerful testimony to the truth that “informed changes of
mind should be welcomed, not feared.” Ibid. In a similar vein, the following comments
of N. T. Wright also reflect my vision in writing this book: “I cannot compel my readers
to follow me in this particular pilgrimage, but I can and do hold out an invitation to see
Jesus, the Gospels, ourselves, the world, and, above all, God in what may well be a new
and perhaps disturbing light.” Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus
Was and Is (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2015), 18.
6  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

our task by identifying the sort of approach upon which the following
chapters hope to improve.

Ehrman on Jesus’ Divinity and the Failure of

the “Trilemma” Argument
Ehrman’s position concerning the divinity of Christ can be quickly
grasped from his evaluation of C. S. Lewis’s famous “trilemma” argu-
ment. According to Lewis, Jesus’ lordship can be shown by reducing to
the absurd the possibility that he was either a liar or a lunatic. But in
Jesus Interrupted, Ehrman reveals a problem with Lewis’s logic:
I had come to see that the very premise of Lewis’s argument was flawed. The
argument based on Jesus as liar, lunatic, or Lord was predicated on the as-
sumption that Jesus had called himself God. . . . I had come to realize that
none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about
himself . . . not three options but four: liar, lunatic, Lord, or legend.7
At the risk of oversimplifying Ehrman’s more lengthy narrative, his
position is that Jesus’ disciples began to profess his divinity only after
they experienced him as risen from the dead. According to Ehrman’s
analysis of the data in How Jesus Became God, the earliest Christian
sources (Paul and Mark) do not portray Jesus as divine but rather as an
exalted human or an angel. While Jesus certainly existed as a histori-
cal person, for Ehrman he is nevertheless a “legend” in that he was not
divine as Christians subsequently came to believe.

Ehrman on Jesus’ Resurrection

One of the interesting features of Ehrman’s work is his affirma-
tion that at least some direct followers of Jesus sincerely believed their
master had been raised from the dead. He suggests that “three or four
people—though possibly more—had visions of Jesus sometime after
he died.” But he also states that the question of whether these puta-
tive experiences were veridical (i.e. whether Jesus was really there or
whether they were hallucinatory bereavement visions) is beside his
point. Rather, the claim he puts forth is the following:

7. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 141.

 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  7
[A]nyone who was an apocalyptic Jew like Jesus’s closest follower Peter, or Je-
sus’s own brother James, or his later apostle Paul, who thought that Jesus had
come back to life, would naturally interpret it in light of his particular apoca-
lyptic worldview—a worldview that informed everything that he thought
about God, humans, the world, the future, and the afterlife. In that view, a
person who was alive after having died would have been bodily raised from
the dead, by God himself, so as to enter into the coming kingdom.8
In Ehrman’s view, it was the disciples’ own apocalyptic worldview (in-
formed by Jesus’ teachings when he was alive) that led them to think of
their visions of the crucified Jesus in terms of resurrection. This is cer-
tainly a far cry from the orthodox Christian view; indeed, denying the
divinity and resurrection of Jesus could hardly be more opposed to it.

An Insufficient Christian Response

In the chapters that follow, we will be considering how one might
respond to Ehrman’s claims briefly introduced above. For the moment,
I wish simply to comment on how we ought not to address the chal-
lenges posed by modern biblical criticism. For a case study of a typi-
cal approach, I refer the reader to Peter Kreeft’s and Ronald Tacelli’s
Handbook of Christian Apologetics. In particular, I find inadequate the
authors’ response to the “quadrilemma” (Jesus is either a liar, lunatic,
lord, or legend). With due respect to these thinkers, whom I admire,
and recognizing that this represents just one wrinkle within a much
larger book, I think their response to the “legend” issue unfortunately
evinces a rather common, simplistic understanding of the biblical evi-
dence. The authors state that our extant biblical manuscripts contain
“very few discrepancies and no really important ones,” but I think Eh-
rman’s books Misquoting Jesus, How Jesus Became God, and Jesus, Inter-
rupted sufficiently disabuse one of the notion that the Gospels differ
only in accidentals such as order and number.9 And Ehrman is by no
means the only author who writes about this sort of thing; he is popu-
larizing information that biblical scholars already know.
Moreover, the authors argue, “If a mythic ‘layer’ had been added

8. Bart Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from
Galilee (New York: HarperOne, 2014), 203.
9. Peter Kreeft and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of
Answers to Crucial Questions (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 162.
8  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

later to an originally merely human Jesus, we should find some evi-

dence, at least indirectly and secondhand, of this earlier layer.” Here
I think Kreeft and Tacelli have an unduly narrow view of “myth,” and
moreover I think they fail to anticipate the obvious response of a Bible
scholar like Ehrman.10 What might he say? The evidence for this ear-
lier, nonmythical layer is right there in front of us: it is the Gospel of
Mark, which most scholars (including Benedict XVI) recognize to be
the earliest Gospel.
Finally, the authors of the Handbook ask who possibly could have
invented such a myth about Jesus. I think they are on to something in
remarking, “No one invents an elaborate practical joke in order to be
crucified, stoned, or beheaded.”11 Ehrman agrees with this to some ex-
tent, insofar as he does not seem to think that the disciples maliciously
invented the myth of a divine Jesus. (Remember, in Ehrman’s view, at
least some of the disciples really thought they saw Jesus alive after his
death, and it is this that eventually led them to conclude he was di-
vine.) The authors fail to envision reasonable counter-arguments when
they claim, “Whether it was his first disciples or some later genera-
tion, no possible motive can account for this invention.”12 It is indeed
difficult for a Christian to imagine someone inventing the notion that
Jesus was divine, but is it fair to say that “no possible motive” could ac-
count for this? Could not the disciples themselves have been delusion-
al, as Ehrman seems to suggest? Or could not they have been using the
“risen” Jesus as a power play for their own (ultimately unsuccessful)
personal ambitions? Now as a believer I am certainly not of the opin-

10. For a rich understanding of myth’s presence within Scripture, see C. S. Lewis,
Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan, 1978), especially the chapters
“Horrid Red Things,” “Christianity and ‘Religion,’” and “Miracles of the Old Creation.”
Equally valuable is Lewis’s The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses (New York: Mac-
millan, 1980), in particular the chapters “Transposition” and “Is Theology Poetry?” On
the capacity of myth to convey truth by means of the human imagination, see also G.
K. Chesterton’s chapter “Man and Mythologies” in The Everlasting Man, which can be
found, among other places, in The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton (San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1986). Finally, I recommend J. R. R. Tolkien’s Tree and Leaf: Including the
Poem Mythopoeia (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), with its chapters “Mythopoeia” and
“On Fairy Stories.”
11. Kreeft and Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics, 164.
12. Ibid.
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  9
ion that this is what actually happened, but one cannot properly call it
an impossible scenario.
The same principle applies when it comes to another key matter
to be discussed in this book: is it really impossible that St. Paul mis-
takenly believed that Christ would return within the first Christian
generation? Frequently the possibility of such a conclusion is immedi-
ately denied by believers who are afraid that accepting it will crumble
the foundations of the Christian faith. In this volume I hope to pro-
vide a way out of these problems not by avoiding but by going right
through them, addressing them head-on. Indeed, Benedict has given
us our marching orders for this task in pinpointing that a “criticism
of the criticism” must come “from the inside” by those who engage in
modern methods while remaining firmly grounded in the tradition.13

Benedict, Lewis, and Ehrman: A Critical Point of Convergence

I wish to complete this initial setup of the problem at hand by
drawing attention to a common thread in Benedict, Lewis, and Eh-
rman which ought always to be kept in mind by anyone who desires
a sincere marriage of faith and reason in matters biblical. Although
they ultimately come to quite different conclusions about the Chris-
tian faith, all three of these thinkers—a Catholic, an Anglican, and an
Evangelical turned agnostic—acknowledge that the problem of how
to engage modern exegesis has a much deeper foundation than one
might expect. As then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger famously avowed in
his Erasmus Lecture, “The debate about modern exegesis is not at its
core a debate among historians, but among philosophers.”14 Elsewhere
Ratzinger expounds upon the Kantian premises that undergird the
exegesis of contemporary figures such as John Hick and Paul Knitter:
Because of the structure of our cognition, what the Christian faith maintains
cannot be, according to Kant. Therefore, miracles, mysteries or sacraments
are superstitions, as Kant clarifies for us in his work Religion Within the Lim-

13. Joseph Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the
Itinerary for Exegesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foun-
dations of Biblical Interpretation, ed. José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-
Navarro (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2008), 8.
14. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 19.
10  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

its of Reason Alone. It seems to me that the questions from exegesis and the
limits and possibilities of our reason, i.e. the philosophical premises of the
faith, indicate in fact the crucial point of the crisis of contemporary theology
whereby the faith—and more and more the faith of simple persons as well—
is heading toward crisis.15
As Lewis puts it with regard to the question of miracles, “The dif-
ficulties of the unbeliever do not begin with questions about this or
that particular miracle; they begin much further back.”16 At the end
of the day, one’s answer to the question of whether the Bible’s portrait
of Jesus is true depends first upon whether or not one believes that
God exists and is of such a nature that he would enter into human
history in the first place. A negative answer to the initial question of
the divine’s existence necessarily entails the conclusion that purported
miracles such as Christ’s Resurrection cannot be true.
Ehrman, too, recognizes that the philosophical question under-
girds all the various debates between believers and those skeptical of
the Bible. Indeed, at one point he says something that I could have
mistaken as coming from the pen of Benedict had I not known oth-
erwise:
The first thing to stress is that everyone has presuppositions, and it is impos-
sible to live life, think deep thoughts , have religious experiences, or engage in
historical inquiry without having presuppositions. The life of the mind can-
not proceed without presuppositions. The question, though, is always this:
What are the appropriate presuppositions for the task at hand?17

15. Ratzinger, “Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today,” https://www
.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZRELA.HTM. In this same text Ratzinger adds:
“My thesis is the following: The fact that many exegetes think like Hick and Knitter and
reconstruct the history of Jesus as they do is because they share their same philosophy. It
is not the exegesis that proves the philosophy, but the philosophy that generates the ex-
egesis. If I know a priori (to speak like Kant) that Jesus cannot be God and that miracles,
mysteries and sacraments are three forms of superstition, then I cannot discover what
cannot be a fact in the sacred books. Let us look at this more precisely. The historical-
critical method is an excellent instrument for reading historical sources and interpreting
texts. But it contains its own philosophy, which in general—for example when I try to
study the history of medieval emperors—is hardly important. And this is because in that
case I want to know the past and nothing more. But even this cannot be done in a neutral
way, and so there are also limits to the method.”
16. Lewis, Miracles, 108.
17. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 144.
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  11
This is one of the questions that interests me most and which I
think lies at the heart of the emeritus pontiff’s statement that the de-
bate in exegesis is at bottom a philosophical one. We can never com-
pletely suspend our biases, but we can at least do our best to remain
conscious of their presence and engage in a self-critique that helps at-
tune our thought with the breadth of knowledge we can gain from the
sources available to us. While coming to a very different conclusion
than Benedict, John Dominic Crossan puts this rather well when he
says, “We cannot live without group ideology (or, if you prefer, theol-
ogy), but we must be able to keep it in dialectic with public evidence.”18
I believe that this is what lies at the heart of the pregnant line from
Ratzinger’s 1988 Erasmus Lecture in which he called for a self-criticism
of the modern, historical-critical method of biblical interpretation. On
the part of those involved in the craft of exegesis today, this self-criticism
entails the effort to identify and purify the philosophical presupposi-
tions we bring to our reading of the biblical text. In view of Ratzinger’s
envisioned critique, the pivotal question is: whose philosophical presup-
positions best position us for an accurate understanding of the Bible and
of the nature of things in general? This is an issue I will take up at the
end of the book; at this moment I am concerned with the more basic
task of identifying the foundational problem recognized by good think-
ers on both sides of the religious-skeptical aisle.

Chapter Previews
Before embarking upon the volume’s principal task of engaging bib-
lical problems from within the discipline of critical exegesis, I pause in
chapter 2 to consider the disputed question concerning the extent to
which such an enterprise is justifiable for a Christian in the first place.
Even a cursory overview of Benedict XVI’s exegetical works reveals
dramatic contrasts between his biblical scholarship and guiding mag-
isterial principles of previous epochs. With appropriate reservations
and criticisms, Benedict strongly advocates the use of modern scholarly
methods—many of the same ones used by skeptics like Ehrman—to
18. John Dominic Crossan, The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened in
the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1998), 29.
12  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

help Christians better discern the face of Christ revealed in Scripture.

In adopting many of these modern findings, it almost seems as if Bene-
dict has forgotten principles enforced staunchly by the Magisterium
less than a century earlier.
Though one may argue that the Church’s stance on modern bibli-
cal scholarship bears only indirectly upon faith and morals, the issue
remains timely today insofar as a divide persists in the Church con-
cerning the extent to which it is appropriate to incorporate the tools
and findings of modern exegesis in Catholic theology. Some, align-
ing themselves with a magisterial approach that once viewed modern
scholarship with great skepticism, still doubt that historical-critical
exegesis is reconcilable with the venerable traditions that preceded it.
The emeritus pontiff dedicated a significant portion of his schol-
arly life precisely to the endeavor of combatting the false dichotomy
between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church and to developing
a balanced hermeneutic that takes seriously the presence of both con-
tinuity and discontinuity in Catholic doctrine throughout the ages.
The aim of this second chapter is to face head-on patent discrepancies
in the Church’s approach to the Bible over the past century and, in so
doing, offer the principles needed for a robust apologia of Catholicism’s
engagement with modern biblical scholarship. The principles needed
for this account lie in Benedict’s “hermeneutic of reform” and its cen-
tral endeavor to discern the permanent theological core of Catholic
magisterial teachings that have withstood the vicissitudes of history
and the challenges of the modern scholarly world. As it turns out,
the same hermeneutical maneuver put to work here on a question of
Catholic doctrine will be applied in subsequent chapters to problems
within the Bible itself.
Operating with the understanding that our enterprise of critiqu-
ing the critique “from within” is in keeping with the Catholic faith,
in chapter 3 I spell out the core principles needed for this task. This
chapter begins by surveying the principles detailed in Ratzinger’s 1988
Erasmus Lecture, in particular the hermeneutical proposal in which
Ratzinger called upon exegetes to develop a new, fuller hermeneutical
method (Method C) that makes the truth of Scripture more evident
by synthesizing the best of patristic-medieval exegesis (Method A) and
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  13
historical-critical exegesis (Method B). For those who have read Dark
Passages of the Bible, much of what is said at this point will be review
with the addition of some new data that I have unearthed since that
volume was composed. Although we will be working primarily at the
level of Method B in this book, the Method A principles surveyed in
this section undergird everything I will be arguing in later chapters.
Next, this chapter considers Ratzinger’s exegesis in connection
with medieval exegetes Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. In his ear-
ly career, Ratzinger was critical of Thomistic neo-scholasticism, and
in this period of his life there emerged a preference for Bonaventure
which would guide his understanding of Scripture over the following
decades. Ratzinger is, therefore, not a Thomist of the strict obser-
vance. With this initial caveat in place, there follows an overview of
principles illustrating key points of contact in which Ratzinger con-
nects—both implicitly and explicitly at points—his exegetical pro-
gramme with that of Aquinas, whose exegesis offers a “counter-model”
to deconstructive forms of modern exegesis.19 By way of making these
connections, Ratzinger certainly emends the tradition he inherited
from Aquinas, but the dependence remains all the same.
Finally, the third chapter examines how the vision of the Erasmus
Lecture has been received and carried forward at a very high level in
the Church through the recent documents of the International Theo-
logical Commission and Pontifical Biblical Commission.
In the following chapters the import of the principles discussed
in chapters 2 and 3 will become evident as we apply Benedict’s her-
meneutical proposal in the effort to make sense of some of the most
difficult questions concerning the Gospels. The aim of these chapters
is to provide a compelling alternative approach to the study of Jesus’
life that eschews crucial pitfalls endemic to the hermeneutic of sus-

19. Note that I will be referring to the version of the Erasmus Lecture entitled “Bib-
lical Interpretation in Conflict” from the volume Opening Up the Scriptures. This ver-
sion of Ratzinger’s text (there are three different published editions of the lecture in the
English language alone) is interesting because it reveals more explicit connections with
Thomas Aquinas than the original English version “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis”
published in the volume Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible
and Church (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989).
14  “Who Do You Say That I Am?”

picion typical of many modern scholars like Ehrman. Confronting the

same troublesome biblical data as these thinkers, Benedict’s approach
is anything but naïve, yet it leads him to draw very different conclusions
from those of Ehrman. We begin in chapter 4 by surveying Ehrman’s
approach. The point here is to clarify what precisely it is that a faithful
exegete like Benedict is up against and to be challenged by the plausi-
bility of Ehrman’s approach, given his first principles. In chapter 5 we
examine how Benedict addresses the same sort of issues. The respec-
tive conclusions of Benedict XVI and Ehrman follow from mutually
incommensurable presuppositions about the Bible in relation to history
and truth. For a Catholic, the question is whether the Christology that
developed in the earliest days of the Church was the fruit of truthful
and providential reflection upon the mystery of Jesus, or whether it was
a misguided, delusional, desperate, or even conniving power play. In
this chapter, we explore how Benedict XVI and the Pontifical Biblical
Commission handle the same sort of—and indeed in many cases the
very same—issues addressed by Ehrman. If there is one thing I hope
the reader will take away from this chapter, it is my contention that
Benedict’s hermeneutic of faith offers a plausible and attractive alterna-
tive to Ehrman’s agnostic approach to the Gospels, one that is every bit
as scholarly and no more reliant on unprovable assumptions.
Building on Benedict XVI’s approach to the life, death, and Res-
urrection of Christ discussed above, chapter 6 shows how the theology
of the emeritus pontiff offers a robust hermeneutic for New Testa-
ment texts dealing with the end times, specifically the early Church’s
ostensibly failed expectation that Christ’s second coming (parousia)
would occur within the apostolic period. The question that arises
from a reading of these texts is quite simple: Why has Christ not come
back yet as he seemed to say he would? By searching out the intention
of Scripture’s sacred authors in relation to their expectation of an im-
minent parousia, Benedict offers a compelling alternative to the agnos-
tic approach of Ehrman and others who look upon the early Church’s
eschatology as wishful thinking that never panned out. As above, I be-
gin this chapter with a survey of the difficulty at hand through a frank
engagement with the opposing view that calls into question Christian
doctrine at its core. Then I examine problematic biblical and magiste-
 “Who Do You Say That I Am?”  15
rial texts to further establish the parameters of the problem at hand,
after which a solution will be advanced in light of magisterial texts and
the corpus of Benedict XVI.
In the volume’s concluding chapter I return to the book’s point of
departure and to a theme that runs throughout it. If the debate in mod-
ern exegesis is at bottom philosophical in nature, then we desperately
need to carry out a criticism of the criticism, identifying and evaluat-
ing the philosophical presuppositions believers and nonbelievers alike
bring to our reading of the biblical text. A major contention I make in
this regard is that the impossibility of miracles is not something that
can be proved, it can only be assumed. Indeed, I would say with Lewis
that this agnostic assumption is held by faith rather than reason.
While in earlier chapters I remained content merely to offer Bene-
dict’s exegetical approach as a viable alternative to that of Ehrman, in
this concluding chapter I offer some of my own reflections on the ques-
tion why a person should be inclined to choose one over the other. To
this end, I call into question the coherence of Ehrman’s approach at its
philosophical roots by challenging his position on the problem of evil,
absolute moral norms, and human rationality itself. To this criticism
of the criticism I add that there exist important positive reasons for ac-
cepting the Christian hypothesis and following Benedict’s approach
rather than Ehrman’s. I argue that the testimony of religious experi-
ence (direct and indirect) ought to form an integral part of our evidence
base when it comes to discussing the miraculous. As one who daily en-
gages in the craft of historical-critical exegesis, I find Benedict XVI’s
comments on this subject refreshing and liberating. In contrast with
what he calls a naturalist “ready-made philosophy” that precludes the
possibility of such experience, Benedict urges us to approach the Bible
with an “open philosophy” that refuses to exclude the possibility that
God himself “can work in history and enter into it without ceasing to be
himself, however improbable this might appear.”20 This posture, deeply
rooted in the Catholic tradition with its conviction that the boundary
of time and eternity is permeable, allows for the Bible to be what the
Church has always claimed it to be: the word of God in human words.

20. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 22.

 2
Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism:
A Magisterial About-Face?

Before embarking upon our principal task of engaging biblical

problems from within the discipline of critical exegesis, it is important
first to consider the disputed question concerning the extent to which
such an enterprise is justifiable for a Christian in the first place. Even a
cursory overview of Benedict XVI’s exegetical works reveals dramatic
contrasts between his biblical scholarship and guiding magisterial
principles of previous epochs. With appropriate reservations and criti-
cisms, Benedict strongly advocates the use of modern scholarly meth-
ods—many of the same ones used by skeptics like Ehrman—to help
Christians better discern the face of Christ revealed in Scripture. In
adopting many of these modern findings, it almost seems as if Bene-
dict has forgotten principles enforced staunchly by the Magisterium
only a century ago.
Though one may argue that the Church’s stance on modern biblical
scholarship only indirectly bears upon faith and morals, the issue re-
mains timely today insofar as a divide persists in the Church concern-
ing the extent to which it is appropriate to incorporate the tools and
findings of modern exegesis in Catholic theology. As I mentioned in
chapter 1, Catholics today sometimes reject historical-critical scholar-

16
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  17
ship out of hand, concluding that the approach itself is contrary to the
faith since acquaintance with it sometimes does indeed lead people to
lose their faith. Indeed, many still doubt that historical-critical exege-
sis is reconcilable with the venerable traditions which preceded it and,
in particular, with a magisterial approach which once viewed modern
scholarship with skepticism.1
The emeritus pontiff dedicated a significant portion of his schol-
arly life precisely to the endeavor of combatting the false dichotomy
between the pre-conciliar and post-conciliar Church and to developing
a balanced hermeneutic that takes seriously the presence of both con-
tinuity and discontinuity in Catholic doctrine through the ages. The
aim of the present chapter is to face head-on patent discrepancies in
the Church’s approach to the Bible over the past century and, in so do-
ing, to offer the principles needed for a robust apologia of Catholicism’s
engagement with modern biblical scholarship. The principles needed
for this account lie in Benedict’s “hermeneutic of reform” and its core
endeavor to discern the permanent theological core of Catholic mag-
isterial teachings that have withstood the vicissitudes of history and
the challenges of the modern scholarly world. As it turns out, the same
hermeneutical maneuver put to work here on a question of Catholic
doctrine will be applied in subsequent chapters to problems within the
Bible itself.

Leo XIII and Pius X: Rejection of Higher Criticism

To get a sense of the Magisterium’s past attitude concerning the
extent to which one can appropriate modern biblical scholarship, it is
fitting to begin by examining the writings of two pontiffs who wrote
at the height of the modernist controversy, Leo XIII and St. Pius X.
In his 1893 encyclical Providentissimus Deus, Leo criticized the rise of
modern biblical scholarship in no uncertain terms: “There has arisen,
to the great detriment of religion, an inept method, dignified by the
name of the ‘higher criticism,’ which pretends to judge of the origin,

1. At the opposite extremes of this divide we find those whom Benedict refers to as
“progressivists” and “traditionalists” who disagree with today’s Magisterium but agree
with each other in viewing Catholic doctrine in the post-Vatican II Church as a rupture
from what preceded it.
18  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

integrity and authority of each Book from internal indications alone.”2

Leo’s words are harsh but reasonable enough, for in the discipline
of history it is proper to be cautious of adjudicating issues concern-
ing texts without any reference to the witness of how they have been
received and interpreted. Leo, however, goes farther than this: “It is
clear, on the other hand, that in historical questions, such as the origin
and the handing down of writings, the witness of history is of prima-
ry importance, and that historical investigation should be made with
the utmost care; and that in this matter internal evidence is seldom of
great value, except as confirmation.”3 Why is internal evidence prized
so little by Leo? With the rise of rationalism in his day, there was a
legitimate fear of a slippery slope, the fear that accepting the methods
and conclusions of modern criticism would lead to a loss of the sense
of the Bible’s sacredness and, ultimately, to the loss of the Christian
faith itself:
To look upon it in any other light will be to open the door to many evil con-
sequences. It will make the enemies of religion much more bold and confi-
dent in attacking and mangling the Sacred Books; and this vaunted “higher
criticism” will resolve itself into the reflection of the bias and the prejudice
of the critics. It will not throw on the Scripture the light which is sought, or
prove of any advantage to doctrine; it will only give rise to disagreement and
dissension, those sure notes of error, which the critics in question so plenti-
fully exhibit in their own persons; and seeing that most of them are tainted
with false philosophy and rationalism, it must lead to the elimination from the
sacred writings of all prophecy and miracle, and of everything else that is outside
the natural order.4
In the discussion of Benedict XVI’s approach to higher criticism later
in this chapter, it will become clear that Benedict’s observations a cen-
tury later have confirmed the soundness of Leo’s suspicions. Observing
the exegetical landscape in our day, Benedict is keenly aware of how
right Leo was in predicting the rise of “disagreement and dissension”
and the fact that biblical scholarship often represents nothing but “the
reflection of the bias and the prejudice of the critics.” However, it will

2. Leo XIII, Providentissimus Deus (November 18, 1893), 17.

3. Ibid.
4. Ibid (emphasis added).
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  19
also become evident that Benedict stands in pointed contrast with Leo
concerning the question of whether higher criticism can be success-
fully incorporated into Catholic practice or whether it will inevitably
lead to the demise of the faith.
Touching more specifically on the central issues this chapter will
treat is a 1907 motu proprio of Pius X. Prefacing his letter with a com-
mendation of his predecessor Leo’s encyclical, Pius lauded Leo for
having “defended the divine character of [the sacred] books not only
against the errors and calumnities of the rationalists but also against
the false teachings of what is known as ‘higher criticism’—something
which the Pontiff most wisely exposed as nothing but the commentar-
ies of rationalism derived from a misuse of philology and related disci-
plines.”5 Immediately after this Pius turns his attention to reinforcing
the efforts of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (PBC) to stem the
malignant tide of modern biblical scholarship:
We are pleased to note that the Pontifical Biblical Commission, after ma-
ture examination and the most diligent consultations, has issued a number
of decisions that have proved very useful for the promotion and guidance of
sound biblical scholarship in accordance with the established norms. But we
have also observed that, although these decisions were approved by the Pon-
tiff, there are some who have refused to accept them with the proper obedi-
ence, because they are both unduly prone to opinions and methods tainted by
pernicious novelties and excessively devoted to a false notion of freedom—in
fact, an immoderate license—which in sacred studies proves to be a most in-
sidious and powerful source of the worst evils against the purity of the faith.
For this reason, we find it necessary to declare and prescribe, as we do now
declare and expressly prescribe, that all are bound in conscience to submit to
the decisions of the Biblical Commission, which have been given in the past
and shall be given in the future, in the same way as to the Decrees pertaining
to doctrine, issued by the Sacred Congregations and approved by the Sovereign
Pontiff. 6

5. Pius X, Praestantia Sacrae Scripturae (November 18, 1907).

6. Ibid. In commenting on this document I have reproduced the translation found in
Dean Béchard, The Scripture Documents (Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2002),
320–21. The Latin text of the second paragraph reads: “Quapropter declarandum illud prae-
cipiendumque videmus, quemadmodum declaramus in praesens expresseque praecipimus,
universos omnes conscientiae obstringi officio sententiis Pontificalis Consilii de Re Biblica,
sive quae adhuc sunt emissae, sive quae posthac edentur, perinde ac Decretis Sacrarum Con-
gregationum, pertinentibus ad doctrinam probatisque a Pontifice, se subiiciendi.”
20  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

This passage merits a number of observations, but prior to further

discussion, it is important to know which decisions of the PBC are in
question here. Between the years 1905 and 1933 the commission issued
a series of sixteen responsa concerning deleterious views of Scripture
reflected in the biblical scholarship emerging in that period. The de-
crees dealt with a variety of texts and centered on issues concerning the
historical origin and interpretation of biblical books.7 With regard to
the overarching question of whether Catholics could embrace the con-
clusions of modern biblical scholarship in these matters, the response
given by the PBC was on the whole “Negative.” In this document Pius
X manifests his will to “now declare and expressly prescribe” (declara-
mus in praesens expresseque praecipimus) that the PBC’s findings are to
be considered authoritative and binding on Catholic scholars, some of
whom had hitherto lacked due obedience in their regard due to an at-
tachment that confuses authentic freedom with “immoderate license”
(licentia intemperans).
Pius’s declaration was controversial even in its own day. In light of
this chapter’s broader argument it is significant to observe that, in ad-
dition to the official version of the above text published in Acta Sanctae
Sedis on November 18, 1907, a variant unofficial draft was mistakenly
printed shortly thereafter in Civiltà Cattolica, the Vatican’s own news-
paper. This version of the text reads:
We declare and prescribe that all are bound in conscience to submit to the
decisions of the Biblical Commission that pertain to doctrine, which have been
given in the past and shall be given in the future, in the same way as to the

7. The topics of the documents were as follows: implied quotations in Scripture

(1905); historical narratives (1905); the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch (1906); the
authorship and historicity of the Gospel of John (1907); the character and authorship of
the Book of Isaiah (1908); the historicity of the first three chapters of Genesis (1909); the
authorship and date of the Psalms (1910); the authorship, date, and historicity of Mat-
thew (1911); the authorship, date, and historicity of Mark and Luke (1912); the Synoptic
question (1912); the authorship and date of Acts (1913); the authorship, integrity, and date
of the Pauline Pastoral Epistles (1913); the authorship and manner of composition of He-
brews (1914); the parousia in the letters of Paul (1915); certain added verses in the Vulgate
(1921); and the false interpretation of Ps 16:10–11 and Mt 15 [16]:26 / Lk 9:25 (1933). This
chapter will not examine all of these but rather will discuss a handful of representative
positions with which Benedict XVI’s exegetical principles and practice stand in clear
tension. The document on the parousia will be treated later in this volume.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  21
Decrees issued by the Sacred Congregations and approved by the Sovereign
Pontiff.8
Although this text was replaced with the official one in the next
printing of the paper, it reveals that Pius was aware of the need to phrase
this document precisely and that said phrasing would have significant
ramifications. Whereas the official version gives all PBC decrees the
same authority as those concerning doctrine issued from other curial
offices, this unofficial text appeared to limit the authority of the PBC
by considering authoritative only its decisions pertaining to doctrine.
On this point, however, the alternate text more closely resembles two
later—also unofficial—statements issued by key curial figures.
Discussing this case in the appendix of The Scripture Documents,
Dean Béchard relates that two “semi-official clarifications” of Pius’s
document were issued in conjunction with the final preparation of
a newly revised edition of the Enchiridion Biblicum (1954). The state-
ments appeared in separate journals in the form of review articles
from no less important men than Athanasius Miller, OSB and Arduin
Kleinhaus, OFM, secretary and sub-secretary of the PBC, respec-
tively. Miller’s text makes it quite clear that, contrary to the ostensible
teaching of Pius X, the methods of modern biblical scholarship are ap-
propriate so long as their conclusions do not contradict the Church’s
teaching on faith and morals.
However, as long as those decrees propose views that are neither immediately
or mediately connected with the truths of faith and morals, it goes without
saying that the interpreter of Sacred Scripture may pursue his scientific re-
search with complete freedom and may utilize the results of these investiga-
tions, provided always that he respects the teaching authority of the Church.9

8. Civiltà Cattolica (November 27, 1907): 513-18. The Latin text of this alternate
version includes a small but important variation on the official text: “Quapropter de-
clarandum illud praecipiendumque videmus, quemadmodum declaramus in praesens
expresseque praecipimus, universos omnes conscientiae obstringi officio sententiis Pon-
tificalis Consilii de Re Biblica, ad doctrinam pertinentibus, sive quae adhuc sunt emissae,
sive quae posthac edentur, perinde ac Decretis Sacrarum Congregationum a Pontifice
probatis, se subiiciendi.” This version limits the authority of PBC “sentences” to those
pertaining to doctrine, whereas the official text indicates that all PBC decisions are to be
followed in the same way one would heed decrees of other curial congregations pertain-
ing to doctrinal matters.
9. Athanasius Miller, OSB, “Das neue biblische Handbuch,” Benediktinische Monat-
22  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

Béchard comments that since the responsa dealt almost entirely

with historical and literary issues rather than matters of faith and
morals, it was clear that “biblical scholars are not bound by these
earlier teachings, which addressed the particular needs of a histori-
cal situation happily no longer existent.”10 Further, he observes that
the Magisterium of the time had ample opportunity to censure these
men for their words, and that its silence concerning the two explana-
tory statements implies consent to their orthodoxy. Finally, Béchard
adds to this the fact that “many highly respected Catholic exegetes,
whose teaching and published research represent the practical out-
come of this semi-official clarification, have since been appointed, in
recent years, to serve as consultors or members of the PBC.”11 As if it
were not enough to see this discrepancy between prior official papal
teaching and the later semi-official statements of high-ranking PBC
officials, in the twenty-first century an equally eminent president of
the PBC would continue this trend—only this figure, whose writings
would likely have been censured less than a century earlier, went on to
become pope.12

Benedict XVI: A Divergent Appraisal of Modern

Biblical Scholarship
This section will consider texts from Benedict XVI that convey
in no uncertain terms the contrast he perceives between his own ap-
praisal of modern biblical scholarship and that of his predecessors

schrift 31 (1955): 49–50. The translation reproduced here is in Dean Béchard, The Scrip-
ture Documents, 327. See also Arduin Kleinhaus, “De nova Enchiridii Biblici editione,”
Antonianum 30 (1955): 63-65.
10. Béchard, The Scripture Documents, 327-28.
11. Ibid., 328-29.
12. Of course, it is important to bear in mind the respective weight due to Benedict’s
various writings, which depends partly on whether he is speaking in his capacity as a
private theologian or rather as pope or prefect of the CDF. As Benedict famously wrote
in the foreword to his first volume on the person of Jesus, “It goes without saying that this
book is in no way an exercise of the magisterium, but is solely an expression of my per-
sonal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’ Everyone is free, then, to contradict me. I would
only ask my readers for that initial goodwill without which there can be no understand-
ing.” Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigura-
tion (New York: Doubleday, 2007), xxiii–xxiv.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  23
discussed above. Although many of the statements immediately below
were made in his capacity as a theologian or as a curial official rather
than as pope, the problem raised is that writings from the highest of
Catholic officials today often appear to conflict directly with the bind-
ing pronouncements of the PBC in a time when it served as an official
organ of the Magisterium.13 In this regard it will also be helpful fur-
ther below to see how Benedict maintained the same stance when he
had occasion to write as a biblical theologian even after assuming the
Chair of Peter.
There is no better place to begin a discussion of Benedict’s biblical
approach in relation to the PBC than to examine an address he gave as
the commission’s president on the occasion of its 100th anniversary. At
the very outset of his talk, Cardinal Ratzinger gives us an indication of
why he has devoted so much of his career to the delicate issue concern-
ing the relationship of the Magisterium and exegesis, sharing that it
was “one of the problems of my own autobiography.”14 He recounts the
troubled story of one of his former professors, Friedrich Wilhelm Mai-
er, whose flowering academic career had been dealt a sharp blow by the
Magisterium in its 1912 Consistorial Decree De quibusdam commentariis
non admittendis. The document forbade Maier to teach New Testament
and required that the commentary into which Maier had been pouring
all his energy had to be “altogether expunged from the education of the
clergy.” In his work Maier had defended the controversial two-source
theory, which—as Ratzinger reminds his audience—is today “almost
universally accepted” as an account of the synoptic problem.15

13. The discrepancy would not be nearly as significant if it were between a reigning
pope and the PBC today. The commission was restructured by Paul VI in 1971 so that it
acts no longer as an official organ of the Magisterium but rather as an advisory forum
in which the Magisterium and expert exegetes to work together in the quest to illumine
matters concerning Sacred Scripture.
14. Joseph Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” in Opening Up
the Scriptures, 126. See also similar comments in Ratzinger’s Milestones: Memoirs 1927–
1977 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998), 52–53.
15. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127. As commonly ar-
ticulated, the two-source hypothesis proposes that the Gospel of Matthew and the Gos-
pel of Luke depended on common source material in Mark and an unidentified source,
dubbed “Q” (the first letter of the German word for “source”). Ratzinger also mentions
the figure of Maier in Milestones, 50–53.
24  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

Although the censured theologian was eventually permitted to re-

sume his teaching, Ratzinger relates that “the wound that Maier had
received in 1912 had never fully healed.”16 Indeed, Maier had told his
student that he would probably not live to witness the full dawning
of “the real freedom of exegesis of which he dreamed” and so yearned,
“like Moses on Mount Nebo [in Deuteronomy 34], to gaze upon the
Promised Land of an exegesis liberated from every shackle of magiste-
rial surveillance.”17 Ratzinger spends the next part of his article in the
effort “to climb Mt. Nebo with him, as it were, and to survey the coun-
try that we have traversed in the last fifty years,” tracing out various
milestones from the time of Pius XII forward as the Magisterium’s
relationship with modern exegesis approached its “Promised Land.”18
He reflects on Maier’s situation with great sympathy, acknowledging,
“It is perfectly understandable that, in the days when the decisions of
the then Pontifical Biblical Commission prevented them from a clean
application of the historical-critical method, Catholic theologians
should cast envious glances at their Protestant colleagues.”19 As he
would later state in one of his final public addresses as pope, Catho-
lic exegetes prior to Vatican II “felt themselves somewhat—shall we
say—in a position of inferiority with regard to the Protestants, who
were making the great discoveries, whereas Catholics felt somewhat
‘handicapped’ by the need to submit to the Magisterium.”20 It is reve-

16. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127.

17. Ibid., 127–28.
18. Ibid., 128. Ratzinger states, “The 1960s represent—to remain with our meta-
phor—the entrance into the Promised Land of exegetical freedom.” Other pivotal mo-
ments in this process described by Ratzinger include the publication of Divino Afflante
Spiritu (1943), the PBC’s Instruction on the Historical Truth of the Gospels (1964), Vati-
can II’s Dei Verbum (1965), the restructuring of the PBC by Paul VI’s Sedula Cura in 1971,
the 1971 appointment of Rudolf Schnackenburg (one of Friedrich Maier’s prominent stu-
dents) to the International Theological Commission, and the PBC’s The Interpretation of
the Bible in the Church (1994).
19. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 131.
20. Benedict XVI, Address to the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome (February 14,
2013). Reflecting on his time at the Second Vatican Council, he wrote: “Even more hot-
ly debated was the problem of Revelation. At stake here was the relationship between
Scripture and Tradition, and it was the exegetes above all who were anxious for greater
freedom; they felt themselves somewhat—shall we say—in a position of inferiority with
regard to the Protestants, who were making the great discoveries, whereas Catholics felt
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  25
latory of just how much this point influenced his life that the pontiff
returned to the same theme in one of his last public statements.
The extent to which Ratzinger was troubled by the early decisions
of the PBC can be seen in multiple places throughout his corpus. Writ-
ing as prefect of the CDF, his introduction to Donum Veritatis (In-
struction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theologian) spoke
of “the anti-modernistic decisions at the beginning of this century, es-
pecially the decisions of the Biblical Commission of that time.”21 His
commentary on Vatican II had put the matter more bluntly, describ-
ing these decisions as symptomatic of an “anti-Modernistic neurosis
which had again and again crippled the Church since the turn of the
century.”22 As a result of this approach, he laments, the research of
many scholars (like Maier above) was halted in its tracks and “much
real wheat was lost along with the chaff.”23 He indicates that this same

somewhat ‘handicapped’ by the need to submit to the Magisterium. So a very concrete

struggle was in play here: what sort of freedom do exegetes have? How does one properly
read Scripture? What is the meaning of Tradition?”
21. Joseph Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian,’” in The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Understanding Its Role
in Light of the Present Controversy, trans. Adrian Walker (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1995), 106.
22. Joseph Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II (New York: Paulist Press,
1966), 11 (emphasis added); cf. ibid., 23. A bit later in the text Ratzinger sheds further reve-
latory reflections concerning his time at Vatican II: “The real question behind the discus-
sion could be put this way: Was the intellectual position of ‘anti-Modernism’—the old
policy of exclusiveness, condemnation and defense leading to an almost neurotic denial
of all that was new—to be continued? Or would the Church, after it had taken all the
necessary precautions to protect the faith, turn over a new leaf and move on into a new and
positive encounter with its own origins, with its brothers, and with the world of today?”
Ibid., 44. For a lucid presentation of how Catholic scholarship “sank into a biblical winter”
in this period, in the context of a sketch of the milestones in Ratzinger’s writing on the
nature of biblical scholarship, see Joseph T. Lienhard, SJ, “Pope Benedict XVI: Theolo-
gian of the Bible,” Homiletic and Pastoral Review 110, 10 (2010): 66–78. For another sharp
criticism of this anti-modernistic attitude that prevailed in the Church for more than a
century, see Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church (San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), 258–66.
23. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 21. Here, in stark contrast to the
list of “milestones” discussed above, Ratzinger provides a brief but incisive history of
the Church’s “anti-modernistic” attitude. Pius IX’s Syllabus of Errors, he observes, “un-
doubtedly went about this with excessively one-sided zeal. This development reaches its
zenith in the various measures of Pius X against Modernism (the decree Lamentabili and
26  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

attitude was present even in the initial schema on divine revelation at

Vatican II: “This document pursued once more the line of thought of
Pius IX and Pius X. The schemata of the theological commission . . .
breathed this same spirit. The same cramped thinking, once so neces-
sary as a line of defense, impregnated the text and informed it with a
theology of negations and prohibitions.”24 Finally, in his PBC address
discussed above, Ratzinger gets more specific as he defends faith’s role
in exegesis while simultaneously admitting:
It remains correct that by making the judgments that we have mentioned,
the Magisterium overextended the range of what faith can guarantee with
certainty and that, as a result, the Magisterium’s credibility was injured and
the freedom needed for exegetical research and interrogation was unduly nar-
rowed.25
It is striking to witness in this passage the humility and boldness
of a Church official who recognizes that a frank appraisal of the lim-
its of the Magisterium is a necessary step toward arriving at a deeper
understanding of its nature and relationship to exegesis. The matter
would be different if this had been written by a dissenting Catholic or
an agnostic like Ehrman, but the fact is that it comes from the mouth
of a man of the Church whose very vocation was devoted to defending
the encyclical Pascendi [1907], and, finally, the ‘oath against Modernism’ [1910]). . . . This
historical perspective helps explain, then, that secret fear and mistrust of any theological
expression of modern historical and philosophical thought. This same anxiety persisted
until its last reverberation in the encyclical Humani Generis of Pius XII.” Ibid. See also
Ratzinger’s commentary in which he states that tension between the Magisterium and
modern exegesis “reached a new climax with the banning of professors at the Biblical
Institute from teaching and with the exceptionally sharp polemic of Mgr. Romeo against
modern Catholic exegesis.” Quoted in Herbert Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Docu-
ments of Vatican II (New York: Herder and Herder, 1967), 3:157–58.
24. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 42–43. Ratzinger further recalls
that “the problem of the historical dimension in theology which underlay the problems of
revealed truth, scripture, and tradition” had “set off a most violent controversy” among the
Vatican II Fathers debating these schemata. Elsewhere he describes the initial schema as
composed in a “purely defensive spirit,” with “the narrowest interpretation of inerrancy”
and “a conception of the historicity of the Gospels that suggested that there were no prob-
lems.” Vorgrimler, Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II, 3:159. If this original ver-
sion had passed, “[t]he burden that this would have meant for the future course of Catholic
theology was not easy to estimate: it would probably have been still more serious than the
difficulties that resulted from the one-sided condemnations of modernism.” Ibid., 159–60.
25. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 133.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  27
the faith. This, then, begs the question: How does Ratzinger account
for the discrepancy between his view of modern biblical scholarship
and that of the Magisterium before him? Before answering this ques-
tion, the following section will illustrate Ratzinger’s convictions with
concrete examples of how he adopts some of the very conclusions of
modern scholarship which were forbidden by the PBC just decades
earlier.

Apparent Contradiction between PBC Teaching and

Ratzinger’s Exegetical Practices
It is not only Ratzinger’s statements about modern exegesis and the
teaching of the past Magisterium that appear to stand in open contra-
diction to prior Church teaching; on a number of points Ratzinger’s
exegetical practice itself also plainly contradicts the views mandated to
be held by Catholics according to the PBC’s early decrees. For the sake
of brevity, I will illustrate the problem with just a few among many
possible examples covering a range of biblical books. Note that nei-
ther my nor Benedict’s point here is to argue for a particular exegetical
conclusion such as Markan priority (his position on this question will
become quite clear in later chapters). Rather, here the concern is to
address the larger question of what views a Catholic biblical scholar
may hold and how to offer a robust apologia for the Church’s change in
stance regarding the same.
On the whole, the PBC decrees in question are carefully crafted
so as to make their position known while avoiding categorical claims
that could readily be falsified by later scholarly findings. For example,
the 1908 decree On the Character and Authorship of the Book of Isaiah
responds “Negative” to its third question:
Whether it may be admitted that . . . the second part of the Book of Isaiah
(chs. 40-66), in which the prophet addresses and consoles not the Jews con-
temporary with himself but, as one living among them, those mourning in
the Babylonian exile, cannot have for its author Isaiah himself long dead, but
must be attributed to some unknown prophet living among the exiles.26

26. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Character and Authorship of the Book of
Isaiah (June 29, 1908). For this and all citations from PBC decrees, I have used the trans-
lation found in Dean Béchard, The Scripture Documents.
28  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

In various places Ratzinger demonstrates a conviction that the

Book of Isaiah is the work, not of one author but rather of two or
three, since he follows the standard scholarly convention of calling the
author of Isa 40–66 as “Deutero-Isaiah.”27 But does this amount to
saying that the later chapters of Isaiah “cannot have for its author Isa-
iah himself ” and that the work “must” be attributed to someone else?
The same applies in the case of the fourth and fifth questions of this
PBC decree. Ratzinger seems to hold that there are multiple authors,
but he does not insist upon what the fourth question rejects, namely,
that “the philological argument . . . is to be considered weighty enough
to compel a serious and critical scholar . . . to acknowledge for this book
a plurality of authors.”28 Neither does he argue for what the fifth ques-
tion rejects, that is to say, the claim that “there are solid arguments,
even when taken cumulatively, to prove that the Book of Isaiah must
be attributed not to Isaiah alone but to two or even more authors.”29
Ratzinger is a more careful thinker than that. Nevertheless, despite
the fact that he does not technically contradict this PBC decree, it is
clear that the two at least stand in deep tension.
The decree On the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch provides
more opportunity for reflection on this tension. Its first question
reads:
Whether the arguments amassed by critics to impugn the Mosaic authentic-
ity of the sacred books designated by the name Pentateuch are of sufficient
weight . . . to justify the statement that these books do not have Moses as their
author but were compiled from sources for the most part posterior to the time
of Moses.30
The answer to this question is, unsurprisingly, “Negative.” Notice that
the document does not expressly require one to maintain that Moses
wrote the entire Pentateuch. In fact, the second question in this docu-

27. For just a couple of examples, see Joseph Ratzinger, Introduction to Christianity
(San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 129–30, and Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life
(Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988), 86.
28. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Character and Authorship of the Book of
Isaiah (emphasis added).
29. Ibid. (emphasis added).
30. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch (June
27, 1906).
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  29
ment allows for the possibility that Moses entrusted his inspired work
to another who, omitting nothing from what he received, composed it
in a way faithful to Moses’ own thought. The third question affirms
that the authenticity of the Pentateuch would not be impugned if Mo-
ses had recourse to prior sources for its composition, while the fourth
question allows for the possibility that certain alterations to the text
were introduced over the centuries. At the same time, the fourth ques-
tion permits this under the assumption that one grants “substantial
Mosaic authenticity of the Pentateuch.”
Rather than directly tackling the question of Mosaic authorship,
Benedict’s exegesis reflects the belief that more is going on in the re-
daction of the Pentateuch than mere additions to a text substantially
produced at the time of Moses. This is especially evident in his treat-
ment of the creation accounts in the set of homilies published under
the title In the Beginning.31 It also comes across in the various questions
he addresses concerning creation in the interview book God and the
World. In an interesting response contrasting the Bible and the Koran,
he writes:
[The Bible] is mediated to us by a history, and even as a book it extends over
a period of more than a thousand years. The question of whether or not Mo-
ses may have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one side. It is still
true that the biblical literature grew up over a thousand year history and thus
moves through quite different stages of history and of civilization, which are
all reflected in it. . . . It becomes clear that God did not just dictate these words
but rather that they bear the impression of a history that he has been guiding;
they have come into being as a witness to that history.32
As is typical in his more informal works such as interviews or pas-
torally oriented documents aimed at a more popular audience, Ratz-
inger is careful not to take sides on the issue of who wrote the Penta-
teuch. What is noteworthy is that he says, “The question of whether
or not Moses may have been a writer is one we can happily leave to one
side.” For the PBC this was certainly not a question that could remain

31. Joseph Ratzinger, In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of Cre-
ation and the Fall (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995).
32. Joseph Ratzinger, God and the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002),
151–52.
30  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

unanswered. Ratzinger thus entertains a position that is contrary to

that of the PBC, yet this still does not amount to a direct contradic-
tion. After all, the PBC decree simply required one to hold that the
arguments of modern scholarship are not of sufficient weight “to im-
pugn the Mosaic authenticity of the sacred books.” It is not forbid-
den for Catholics today to hold substantial Mosaic authorship of the
Pentateuch, so the language of the PBC decree checks out even though
one can discern that Ratzinger’s exegesis conflicts with what can be
inferred from it.
A clearer example of contradiction concerns a text not typically
mentioned in a discussion of problematic PBC statements, a 1933 de-
cree On the False Interpretation of Two Texts. The first question of the
text asks: “Whether it is permissible for a Catholic . . . [to] interpret the
words of Psalm 15 [16]:10–11 . . . as if the sacred author was not speak-
ing of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ” and gives the answer
“Negative.”33 As part of its argument, the document references the au-
thoritative interpretation of “the two chief apostles” in Acts 2:24–33
and 13:35–37. The text reads:
For David says concerning [Christ] . . . “For thou wilt not abandon my soul
to Hades, nor let thy Holy One see corruption. Thou hast made known to
me the ways of life; thou wilt make me full of gladness with thy presence” [Ps
16:10]. Brethren, I may say to you confidently of the patriarch David that he
both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore
a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he
would set one of his descendants upon his throne, he foresaw and spoke of
the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did
his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are wit-
nesses.34
Modern exegetes would question the New Testament’s interpretation
here on at least two points. The first concerns whether it is correct to
assume that David composed this psalm, but that is not the issue here.
More importantly, did the psalmist himself actually foresee the Res-

33. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the False Interpretation of Two Texts (July 1,
1933).
34. Acts 2:25, 27, 30–32. Unless otherwise noted, all biblical citations will be taken
from the Revised Standard Version.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  31
urrection of Christ, as Acts maintains and the PBC mandated that
Catholics hold? Benedict treats briefly of this question:
In the Hebrew version [“You do not give me up to Sheol, or let your godly
one see the Pit . . .”] the psalmist speaks in the certainty that God will protect
him, even in the threatening situation in which he evidently finds himself,
that God will shield him from death and that he may dwell securely: he will
not see the grave. The version Peter quotes [“For you will not abandon my
soul to Hades, nor let your Holy One see corruption . . .”] is different: here the
psalmist is confident that he will not remain in the underworld, that he will
not see corruption.35
As Benedict observes, the version of the Old Testament typically used
by the early Church was the LXX. In that version, the verbs “You will
not abandon” and “Nor will you allow” of Psalm 16:10 occur in the fu-
ture tense, describing a restoration from physical death after David’s
natural death occurs: “Here the psalmist is confident that he will not
remain in the underworld, that he will not see corruption.”36 In the
original Hebrew of Psalm 16, on the other hand, the sacred author has
rescue from physical death in its sights. His use of the present tense—
“You do not give me up”—reflects the hope that God would shield him
from dying in the first place. Herein lies the ostensible contradiction
between Benedict’s exegesis of the psalm and that required by the
PBC. The PBC requires one to affirm that the sacred (human) author
was speaking of the Resurrection of Christ, whereas in the earliest ver-
sion of the text the sacred author does not seem to have resurrection
on his radar at all, let alone the Resurrection of Jesus.37
Another instance of tension between the requirements of the PBC
and the New Testament exegesis of Benedict concerns the authorship
of the Gospel of John. In a 1907 decree On the Authorship and His-

35. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to
the Resurrection (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 255.
36. Ibid.
37. For a discussion of how the spiritual sense plays a role in the interpretation of
Ps 16, see Matthew J. Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Bene-
dict XVI and Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2013), 269–73. Benedict adds a further potential wrinkle to the PBC argument in
demonstrating an openness to the possibility that the speech of Acts 2 might not be that
of Peter himself in the first place. See Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 256.
32  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

toricity of the Fourth Gospel, the commission’s first question considers

“[w]hether . . . it is proved by such solid historical argument that the
Apostle John and no other must be acknowledged as the author of the
Fourth Gospel, and that the reasons brought forward by the critics
against it in no wise weaken this tradition.”38 Although the PBC an-
swers with an “Affirmative,” Benedict’s exegesis challenges this conclu-
sion in an important way. According to Benedict:
The evidence suggests that in Ephesus there was something like a Johannine
school, which traced its origin to Jesus’ favorite disciple himself, but in which
a certain “Presbyter John” presided as the ultimate authority. The “presbyter”
John appears as the sender of the Second and Third Letters of John. . . . He is
evidently not the same as the Apostle, which means that here in the canonical
text we encounter expressly the mysterious figure of the presbyter. . . . At any
rate, there seem to be grounds for ascribing to “Presbyter John” an essential
role in the definitive shaping of the Gospel.39
Benedict’s conclusion stands in stark contrast to that arrived at by
the PBC. However, it should be noted that he adds something which,
while not completely eliminating the discrepancy, shows that he in-
tends to say something similar to what the PBC said but in a more
nuanced way. For Benedict, the contents of the Gospel go back “to an
eyewitness, and even the actual redaction of the text was substantially
the work of one of his closest followers.”40 As we will gather from the
principles elucidated below, Benedict would likely say that his essen-
tial point was the same as that of the PBC—namely, to uphold the
authoritative portrait of Jesus painted in the Gospel of John—even if
certain assertions of the PBC would later stand in need of correction.
Perhaps the most obvious contradiction between Benedict’s exege-
sis and the mandates of the PBC concerns the authorship, date, and
mutual dependence of the synoptic Gospels—what is sometimes called
the “synoptic problem.” It so happens that this question is also the most
germane to the concerns of the present volume, as will be seen in later
chapters. Here I will offer illustrations from three different PBC docu-
38. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Authorship and Historicity of the Fourth
Gospel (May 29, 1907).
39. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigu-
ration, 226.
40. Ibid., 227.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  33
ments which speak to the same broader point and then discuss them in
light of Benedict’s thought. The first is the 1911 decree On the Author-
ship, Date of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospel of Matthew.41 Its
first question affirms that “it may and must be affirmed with certainty
that Matthew, an apostle of Christ, is truly the author of the Gospel
published under his name.” Its fourth question is similar to the first:
Whether we may accept as probable the opinion of certain modern writers
who assert that Matthew, strictly speaking, did not compose the Gospel as
it has come down to us, but only composed a collection of the sayings and
discourses of Christ, which a later anonymous author, whom they call the re-
dactor of the Gospel, used as sources.
Answering “Negative,” the PBC asserts as not “probable” the propo-
sition that the Gospel of Matthew had its origin as a collection of
Christ’s sayings and discourses which were crafted into a literary
whole by an author who lived later than the apostle Matthew. The
sixth question goes further in responding “Negative to both parts” to
the following suggestion:
Whether . . . it may also be affirmed that the narratives of the deeds and words
of Christ found in the Gospel have undergone certain alterations and adapta-
tions under the influence both of Old Testament prophecies and of the more
developed perspective of the Church, and that, in consequence, this Gospel
narrative is not in conformity with historical truth.
This statement affirms that the Gospels must be acknowledged as rep-
resenting the “historical truth” of Christ’s life. It further insinuates
that it would not be in conformity with said truth if the words and
deeds of Christ’s life had undergone certain alterations by the authors
who wove them into their respective narratives.
The next source relevant to the synoptic problem is the 1912 decree
On the Authorship, Time of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospels
of Mark and Luke.42 As in the case of Matthew above, this document’s
first question affirms that “the clear witness of the tradition . . . com-
pels us to affirm with certainty that Mark, the disciple and interpreter

41. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Authorship, Date of Composition, and His-
toricity of the Gospel of Matthew (June 19, 1911).
42. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Authorship, Time of Composition, and
Historicity of the Gospels of Mark and Luke (June 26, 1912).
34  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

of Peter, and Luke the physician, the assistant and companion of Paul,
were truly the authors of the Gospels respectively attributed to them.”
The fourth question requires Catholics to hold that the final verses of
Mark are inspired and canonical. It additionally states that “the rea-
sons by which some critics attempt to prove that the last twelve verses
of the Gospel of Mark (Mk 16:9–20) were not written by Mark him-
self ” fails to demonstrate that Mark was not the author of said verses.
The fifth question concerning the chronological ordering of the Gos-
pels states that it is not permitted “to abandon the claim . . . that, after
Matthew, who first of all wrote his Gospel in his own native dialect,
Mark wrote second and Luke third.”
Finally, the 1912 decree On the Synoptic Question or the Mutual Rela-
tions Among the First Three Gospels speaks to the same overarching prob-
lem and appears in stark contrast to the thought of Benedict XVI.43 Its
second question generates a pair of “Negative” responses:
Whether we can consider what has been set forth above as observed by those
who, without the support of any testimony of tradition or of any historical
argument, easily embrace the hypothesis commonly known as the two-souce
theory, which seeks to explain the composition of the Greek Gospel of Mat-
thew and the Gospel of Luke mainly by their common dependence on the
Gospel of Mark and a so-called collection of the sayings of the Lord; and,
whether, in consequence, we can freely advocate this theory.
Thus it is not possible for a Catholic either to “easily embrace” or to
“freely advocate” the two-souce theory, which considers the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke to be the fruit of a synthesis between preexistent
material from Mark and a separate collection of Jesus’ sayings.44
Several works of Ratzinger exhibit fundamental disagreements
with the aforementioned PBC conclusions. For example, in two works
Ratzinger spoke of the two-souce theory as being “almost universally
accepted” as an account of the synoptic problem.45 In other works he

43. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Synoptic Question or the Mutual Relations
Among the First Three Gospels (June 26, 1912).
44. This collection of “sayings” is commonly referred to as “Q,” an abbreviated form
of the German word Quelle or “source.”
45. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 127; cf. Milestones,
50–51.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  35
illustrates this conviction when, for example, he assumes that Mark’s
eschatology is oldest and that “the gospel of Matthew, composed con-
temporaneously with Luke’s (or perhaps even later) contains an un-
diminished imminent eschatology which may even be described as
heightened in comparison with Mark.”46 A speech by Cardinal Ratz-
inger presents us with a case in which he traces the titles of Jesus
from the earlier title of “Christ” (seen in the confession of Mk 8:29) to
“Christ, Son of the living God” (the parallel confession in Mt 16:16) to
“Logos” (Jn 1).47 However, in God and the World, he elaborates upon
the synoptic problem more broadly and in a way that speaks to all of
the above PBC decrees:
With regard to the individual Gospels, today we assume that not Matthew
but Mark is the oldest of the Gospels. Matthew and Luke have, so to speak,
taken Mark as their basic framework and have enriched it with other tradi-
tional materials that were available to them. The Gospel of John, now, had a
separate origin and development and is homogeneous. It is important that
the first three Gospels were not just written by one writer in each case but
were based on the transmission of material by the whole believing Church—
a process, that is to say, in which material slowly crystallized in particular
traditions that were finally brought together to form the text of the Gospels.
In a certain sense, then, the question about particular people is secondary. . . .
What is fundamental is that oral transmission came at the beginning, as is so
characteristic in the Orient. That guarantees the close connection with the
historical origin.48

46. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 37.

47. Joseph Ratzinger, “Christ, Faith, and the Challenge of Cultures,” Speech given
in Hong Kong to the presidents of the Asian bishops’ conferences and the chairmen of
their doctrinal commissions during a March 2–5, 1993 meeting.
48. Ratzinger, God and the World, 229. Elsewhere Ratzinger makes a similar point
with a thought-provoking contrast with Protestantism and an allusion to Orthodoxy:
“[A]n exclusive insistence on the sola scriptura of classical Protestantism could not pos-
sibly survive, and today it is in crisis more than ever precisely as a result of that ‘scientific’
exegesis which arose in, and was pioneered by, the Reformed theology. This demon-
strates how much the Gospels are a product of the early Church, indeed, how the whole
of Scripture is nothing other than tradition. So much so that a number of Lutheran
scholars seem to converge with the view of the Eastern Orthodox: not sola scriptura but
sola traditio.” Joseph Ratzinger and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive
Interview on the State of the Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985), 160.
36  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

While well aware of the venerable tradition that considers Mat-

thew the first of the Gospels, Ratzinger clearly accepts—with appro-
priate nuances and modifications—the standard suggestions held by
modern scholars like Ehrman regarding the origin and relationship of
the synoptic Gospels.49 His findings thus directly contradict those of
the earlier PBC to the effect that Matthew was the first of the Gospels
and that he did not borrow from preexistent source material. Turning
on its head the somewhat simplistic question of who wrote which Gos-
pel and when, he focuses on the ecclesial nature of the Bible and wants
to show that “the first three Gospels were not just written by one writ-
er in each case but were based on the transmission of material by the
whole believing Church.” Earlier source material “slowly crystallized
in particular traditions that were finally brought together to form the
text of the Gospels.” In this way, “the question about particular people
is secondary,” since the Gospels originated not simply with individual
authors but rather in the heart of “the whole believing Church.”50
In the same discussion Ratzinger adds further points that con-
flict with the PBC’s declarations requiring Catholics to hold that the
Apostles themselves wrote the Gospels after whom they were named:
According to the results of research, the texts of the three synoptic Gospels—
Matthew, Mark, Luke—are intertwined with one another in some kind of
close relationship and are interdependent. The question of how Matthew
came to be written has been completely reopened. Nowadays the greater
number of scholars are of the opinion that one cannot ascribe this Gospel
to the apostle Matthew, that, on the contrary, it originated rather later and
was written down toward the end of the first century in a Syrian Christian
congregation. The origin and growth of the Gospels as a group now appears
to us to be a very complex process. At the beginning there were probably col-
lections of the sayings of Jesus, which were at first memorized and handed on

49. Ratzinger summarizes, “Earlier the Gospel of Matthew was held to be the oldest
of the Gospels. A note by a second-century writer, Papias, says that Matthew first of all
wrote this Gospel in Hebrew, and then it was translated into Greek. . . . Luke and Mark
were also acceptable, but Matthew was held to be the oldest and the one that offered
most, the one most immediately directed to the Church as far as her liturgy and her faith
were concerned.” Ratzinger, God and the World, 228.
50. For more of Ratzinger’s thoughts on the origin of the canon in the heart of the
Church, see Matthew J. Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, 62–68.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  37
orally but quite soon were also written down in a set form. . . . In the begin-
ning, then, there was oral tradition.51
Notice that Ratzinger does not go so far as forbid a Catholic to uphold
the venerable tradition that the Apostle Matthew himself wrote the
text attached to his name or that his was the first of the four Gospels.
Rather, he is content to summarize the available scholarly evidence,
the ancient tradition, and his own scholarly opinion. All the same, it is
clear that, contrary to the early PBC, Ratzinger is fine with attributing
the Gospels to authors other than the evangelists themselves, and he is
comfortable accepting an ordering among the four that differs from the
reckoning of the Church’s more ancient tradition. He is even open to
the presence of significant redactions to the biblical text from the sec-
ond century, as when he overtly contradicts the PBC in stating, “In the
second century, a concluding summary was added, bringing together
the most important Resurrection traditions and the mission of the dis-
ciples to proclaim the Gospel to the whole world (Mk 16:9–20).”52
At the same time, Ratzinger is careful to maintain that the various
evangelists and redactors, while re-forming the same basic material in
view of their respective theological insights and purposes, “transmit
the very same thing with slight variations.”53 To anticipate language
that will become critically important further below in this chapter and
in the book as a whole, “Even if the details of many traditions have
been expanded in later periods, we can trust the Gospels for the essen-
tials and can find in them the real figure of Jesus. It is much more real
than the apparently reliable historical reconstructions.”54 The Gospels
thus present us with a faithful portrait of the real historical Jesus. The
evangelists, Ratzinger writes, “were practicing painstaking fidelity, but
it was a fidelity that played a role in the formation process in the con-
text of lived participation, though without influencing the essentials.”55

51. Ratzinger, God and the World, 229–30.

52. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 262.
53. Benedict XVI, Light of the World (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010),, 174; cf.
Joseph Ratzinger, Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1983), 44.
54. Ratzinger, God and the World, 204 (emphasis added).
55. Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 174 (emphasis added).
38  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

Continuity and Discontinuity: Benedict’s

Hermeneutic of Reform
Up to this point I have been tracing the discrepancies between
Benedict-Ratzinger’s views and the views of the Magisterium of yes-
teryear vis-à-vis modern biblical criticism. However, the purpose of
emphasizing this discontinuity becomes clear only when we examine
how Benedict puts his critical observations to work, developing a her-
meneutic capable of addressing many of the greatest challenges to the
Magisterium’s authority today. As we will see below, whether true re-
form will come about in the Church is bound up with our ability to
understand and deal with two seemingly incompatible realities in the
history of Catholic doctrine and practice.
In an important speech to the Roman curia in the first year of his
pontificate, Benedict put the matter plainly concerning the proper
implementation of Vatican II: “It is precisely in this combination of
continuity and discontinuity at different levels that the very nature
of true reform consists.”56 To understand what Benedict has in mind
here, it is important to note that he is proposing not merely a “herme-
neutic of continuity” as some have thought, but rather what he calls a
“hermeneutic of reform.” This term is fitting because Benedict’s ap-
proach does not pretend that Catholicism has emerged utterly un-
changed through the centuries, and so it is willing to come to terms
with the elements of discontinuity we have witnessed in this chapter.
At the same time, this hermeneutic maintains that over the course of
history, “the one subject-Church . . . increases in time and develops, yet
always remaining the same.”57 Thus, in one brief statement, Benedict
distances himself from both radical traditionalism, which refuses to
accept the newness of the post-conciliar Church, and radical progres-
sivism, which fails to realize that the Church today is the same Church
that existed before Vatican II. He put this pointedly in an interview:

56. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005).
For this principle and its application to the thorny issue of religious freedom, see Martin
Rhonheimer, “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious Freedom,” Nova
et Vetera 9, no. 4 (2011): 1029–54.
57. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005).
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  39
It is impossible (“for a Catholic”) to take a position for or against Trent or
Vatican I. Whoever accepts Vatican II, as it has clearly expressed and under-
stood itself, at the same time accepts the whole binding tradition of the Cath-
olic Church, particularly also the two previous councils. And that also applies
to the so-called “progressivism,” at least in its extreme forms. . . . It is likewise
impossible to decide in favor of Trent and Vatican I, but against Vatican II.
Whoever denies Vatican II denies the authority that upholds the other two
councils and thereby detaches them from their foundation. And this applies
to the so-called “traditionalism,” also in its extreme forms. . . . Every partisan
choice destroys the whole (the very history of the Church) which can exist
only as an indivisible unity.58
At the end of the day, both radical camps described above operate by
what he has labeled a “hermeneutic of discontinuity and rupture,” an
approach that keeps them from accepting the Magisterium as the au-
thoritative guardian of Christian orthodoxy still today. Regrettably,
many Catholics today know only this popularized misinterpretation
of Catholic history. According to Benedict, this is due in part to the
fact that the hermeneutic of rupture “has frequently availed itself of
the sympathies of the mass media.”59
As an indication of how firmly he believes this, Benedict dedicated
some of his final thoughts as pontiff to the variant interpretations of
Vatican II, observing that “there was the Council of the Fathers—the
real Council—but there was also the Council of the media” which also
turned out to be the “accessible . . . dominant . . . more effective one.”60

58. Ratzinger and Messori, The Ratzinger Report, 28–29. For further comments in
this regard, see Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ, “Benedict XVI: Interpreter of Vatican II,” in
Church and Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988–2007 (New York: Fordham
University Press, 2008), 468-84.
59. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005).
On the two interpretations of Vatican II, see also Ratzinger’s Salt of the Earth (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1997), 75.
60. Benedict XVI, Address to the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome (February 14,
2013). The pope further lamented, “We know that this Council of the media was acces-
sible to everyone. Therefore, this was the dominant one, the more effective one, and it cre-
ated so many disasters, so many problems, so much suffering: seminaries closed, convents
closed, banal liturgy.” At the same time, in this speech Benedict exuded a firm hope that
the media’s portrayal of Vatican II as a rupture will not be the final word and that the
Church has great reason to rejoice in finally seeing the council bear the fruit it was de-
signed to yield. As for the damage that occurred to the Church after Vatican II, Ratzinger
had earlier stated, “I am convinced that the damage that we have incurred in these twenty
40  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

In various works he goes so far as to apply some of the same critical

labels to this mentality that he did to the anti-modernist statements of
the early twentieth century. Noting that even many Council Fathers
entertained a problematic hermeneutic of the Council, Ratzinger
described the ambience of the time as pervaded by an “almost naïve
progressivist utopianism” and a “euphoria of reform” that “can only be
called neurotic.”61 In a Wednesday catechesis on St. Bonaventure, he
added:
Indeed, we know that after the Second Vatican Council some were con-
vinced that everything was new, that there was a different Church, that the
pre-Conciliar Church was finished and that we had another, totally “other”
Church, an anarchic utopianism! And thanks be to God the wise helmsmen
of the Barque of St Peter, Pope Paul VI and Pope John Paul II, on the one
hand defended the newness of the Council, and on the other, defended the oneness
and continuity of the Church, which is always a Church of sinners and always a
place of grace.62
Benedict notes that St. Bonaventure, while serving as Minister
General of the Franciscan Order in his day, faced a problem similar
to the one that the Church faces in the modern period. For the sake of
unity within his order, Bonaventure made it a pastoral priority to com-
bat the widespread “anarchic utopianism” that caused many to dissoci-
ate the search for authentic spirituality from the hierarchical structure
of the Church. As indicated above, this is precisely the type of attitude
we often witness today: a disregard of the hierarchical Church which
takes its cue from the supposition that Vatican II is completely new and
that it has fundamentally changed the nature of the rigid, pre-conciliar,
hierarchical, institutional church. That said, in these passages Benedict

years is due, not to the ‘true’ Council, but to the unleashing within the Church of latent
polemical and centrifugal forces; and outside the Church it is due to the confrontation
with a cultural revolution in the West.” The Ratzinger Report, 30. Ratzinger observed
that historically any ecumenical council is typically followed by this sort of tumult, for
which reason John Henry Newman spoke of the danger involved with convoking coun-
cils. Ibid., 39–40. This is a theme Ratzinger takes up elsewhere, as when he states, “And
it cannot be denied that, from close by, nearly all councils have seemed to destroy equi-
librium, to create crisis.” Principles of Catholic Theology (San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
1987), 369.
61. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 227, 373.
62. Benedict XVI, General Audience (March 20, 2010) (emphasis added).
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  41
does indeed acknowledge a real “newness” and “discontinuity” in Vati-
can II. Indeed, in one place he even speaks of the pastoral constitution
Gaudium et Spes, in conjunction with Dignitatis Humanae on religious
liberty and Nostra Aetate on non-Christians, as a “countersyllabus” to
that of Pius IX.63 But if this speaks to the discontinuity side of Bene-
dict’s hermeneutic, it remains to be seen just how the aspect of continu-
ity has its due place.

Discernment of the Essential: Key to Benedict’s

Hermeneutic of Reform
One of the central dimensions to Benedict’s theology as a whole,
and to his hermeneutic of reform in particular, lies in the endeavor to
discern what he variously calls “the kernel,” “essential,” or “permanent”
aspect of Catholic doctrine, which has remained unchanged through
the centuries even amidst the vicissitudes of discontinuity and devel-
opment described above.64 The existence of this element is the linch-
pin that allows Benedict to grant the presence of both continuity and
discontinuity in the Church throughout the ages. In what follows, I
will be teasing out what he means by this concept and how he applies
it to the problem of the Church’s teaching concerning modern biblical
scholarship.
Benedict’s 2005 address to the Roman curia reveals the basis and
aims of his thought concerning our subject. It is significant that Bene-
dict incorporates the language of John Henry Newman when he af-
firms that a sound hermeneutic must admit the presence of discon-
tinuity but must also firmly insist on the existence of a “permanent
aspect” in the Church’s teaching in such a way that at Vatican II “the
continuity of principles proved not to have been abandoned.”65 Bene-
dict’s choice of the expression “continuity of principles” reflects verba-
tim Newman’s second “note” for distinguishing a genuine doctrinal
development from a “corruption,” as it is expounded in his Essay on

63. Ratzinger, Principles of Catholic Theology, 381–82.

64. As we will see in later chapters, Benedict frequently employs these terms and
other variations upon them when seeking to discern the principal affirmation of a prob-
lematic biblical text.
65. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005).
42  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

the Development of Christian Doctrine.66 The pontiff’s references to the

essential or core dimension of Catholic teaching likewise reflect New-
man’s way of expressing that Catholic doctrine “has been in substance
one and the same from the beginning.”67 These similarities, which
are just a couple among many, are probably no coincidence given that
Benedict not only beatified Newman but praised his theology else-
where on various occasions. Reflecting on the “fruitful possibilities”
for development of Newman’s teaching on doctrinal development, he
shares, “With this he had placed the key in our hand to build histori-
cal thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think histori-
cally in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all devel-
opments.”68
Throughout Benedict’s corpus one can witness his endeavor to ap-
ply Newman’s thought in a way that builds up the Church and lets the
central truths of the faith shine forth. This comes across most explicitly
when he is being interviewed about his personal vocation as a theologian.
66. John Henry Newman, An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 178–85. Regarding the language of
permanence used by Benedict, see ibid., 178, where Newman states, “Doctrines grow
and are enlarged; principles are permanent.” Among the other works of Newman that
explore this theme, I would highlight his sermon “The Theory of Developments in Re-
ligious Doctrine” (1843) and his Letter to the Reverend Pusey (1865). See also the dis-
cussion of the parallels between Benedict and Newman in Gerald O’Collins, SJ, “Does
Vatican II Represent Continuity or Discontinuity?” Theological Studies 73 (2012): 793.
67. Newman, Letter to the Reverend Pusey.
68. The context of this quotation is valuable to share at greater length: “Even deep-
er for me was the contribution which Heinrich Fries published in connection with the
Jubilee of Chalcedon. Here I found access to Newman’s teaching on the development
of doctrine, which I regard along with his doctrine on conscience as his decisive con-
tribution to the renewal of theology. With this he had placed the key in our hand to
build historical thought into theology, or much more, he taught us to think historically
in theology and so to recognize the identity of faith in all developments. Here I have to
refrain from deepening these ideas further. It seems to me that Newman’s starting point,
also in modern theology, has not yet been fully evaluated. Fruitful possibilities awaiting
development are still hidden in it. At this point I would only like to refer again to the
biographical background of this concept. It is known how Newman’s insight into the
ideas of development influenced his way to Catholicism. But it is not just a matter of an
unfolding of ideas. In the concept of development, Newman’s own life plays a role. That
seems to become visible to me in his well-known words: ‘to live is to change, and to be
perfect is to have changed often.’” Joseph Ratzinger, Presentation on the Occasion of the
First Centenary of the Death of Cardinal John Henry Newman, April 28, 1990.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  43
When asked whether there have in fact been “two Ratzingers” in his
lifetime—one a progressive teenager and the other a resigned conser-
vative ecclesial official—he responds:
I think I have already made the essential point, namely that the basic decision
of my life is continuous. . . . I want to be true to what I have recognized as es-
sential and also to remain open to seeing what should change. . . . I don’t deny
that there has been development and change in my life, but I hold firmly that
it is a development and change within a fundamental identity. . . . Here I agree
with Cardinal Newman, who says that to live is to change and that the one
who was capable of changing has lived much.69
These comments are notable for a number of reasons. First, here again
Ratzinger identifies with Newman in suggesting that the fullness of
life in the Church—and in one’s personal life as well—always entails
a certain amount of change. Second, the terminology “essential point,”
“continuous,” and “development and change within a fundamental
identity” is typical of Newman and of writings throughout Ratzinger’s
corpus. Third, when traditionally minded Catholics are faced with
Ratzinger’s thought concerning the appropriateness of modern bibli-
cal scholarship, they sometimes point to the fact that many of his more
controversial statements come from the time when he was a young
progressive and writing as an individual rather than with the authority
of the Magisterium. While it should certainly be granted that many
of the relevant texts in this chapter are not stamped with the seal of
magisterial authority, in this revealing application of hermeneutical
principles to his own life Ratzinger has made it clear that his thought
remained fundamentally one and the same throughout his career as
a theologian and churchman. One cannot, as I have sometimes seen
attempted, simply write off Ratzinger’s earlier theology as that of “the
young liberal Fr. Ratzinger.”
Elsewhere in this same interview, Ratzinger sheds further light on
the aim of his theology and the development of his thought:

69. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 115–16 (emphasis added). In a different interview,
Ratzinger was asked concerning his involvement in founding the international periodical
Concilium, “What significance does this have for the man who was to become prefect of
the former Holy Office? Was it a false step? A youthful transgression?” His reply was to
the point: “It is not I who have changed, but others.” Ratzinger, The Ratzinger Report, 18.
44  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

Although the constellations in which I have found myself—and naturally

also the periods of life and their different influences—have led to changes and
development in the accents of my thought, my basic impulse, precisely during
the Council, was always to free up the authentic kernel of the faith from encrusta-
tions and to give this kernel strength and dynamism. This impulse is the con-
stant of my life. . . . Naturally the office gives an accentuation that isn’t present
as such when you are a professor. But nonetheless what’s important to me is
that I have never deviated from this constant, which from my childhood has
molded my life, and that I have remained true to it as the basic direction of
my life.70
The “encrustations” Ratzinger has in mind here are of various types,
but as we can gather from his comments in earlier portions of this
chapter, they certainly would include some of the writings of Leo XIII,
Pius X, and the PBC on the subject of modern biblical scholarship. It
is critical that Catholics not fall prey to “forced interpretations” for the
apparent contradiction in Church teaching on this or any other point.
Ratzinger states consolingly:
Doubt need not be immediately associated with a fall from faith. I can sin-
cerely take up the questions that press upon me while holding fast to God,
holding to the essential core of faith. On the one hand, I can try to find solutions
for the seeming contradictions. On the other hand, I can also be confident
that, though I can’t find them all, there are solutions even when I can’t find
them. There are things that remain unsolved for the moment that should not
be explained by forced interpretations.71

70. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 79 (emphasis added). In this same text Ratzinger
opens up about “the cost” of having to take on his ecclesiastical role and abandon full-
time scholarly inquiry. “For me [becoming Prefect of the Congregation for the Faith]
the cost was that I couldn’t do full time what I had envisaged for myself, namely really
contributing my thinking and speaking to the great intellectual conversation of our time,
by developing an opus of my own. I had to descend to the little and various things per-
taining to factual conflicts and events. I had to leave aside a great part of what would
interest me and simply serve and to accept that as my task. And I had to free myself from
the idea that I absolutely have to write or read this or that, I had to acknowledge that my
task is here.” Ibid., 116–17. Though not stated explicitly here, it goes without saying that
part of the “accentuation” involved in taking on an ecclesiastical office is that one has to
be more careful in issuing theological opinions, since they all will be construed—rightly
or wrongly—as bearing authoritative weight. In this light, it is remarkable to see just
how much Ratzinger/Benedict pushed the envelope of theological development during
his tenure as prefect of the CDF.
71. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 31 (emphasis added).
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  45
Fortunately for the Church, Ratzinger was not content with a
forced interpretation that would offer a facile solution to the problem
of how to deal with modern exegesis in the Church. “Holding to the
essential core of faith,” he puts his hermeneutical principles to work in
the effort to offer a balanced account of continuity and discontinuity
in the matter at hand. We will find in later chapters that this balance
is invaluable in dealing with particular thorny issues within New Tes-
tament exegesis.

Application of Benedict’s Method to the PBC Decrees

Having elucidated the two elements of Benedict’s hermeneutic of
reform and the pivotal operation that consists in seeking out the en-
during essence of Catholic teachings, at last we are in a position to ap-
ply these principles to the problem of the Magisterium in relation to
modern biblical scholarship. To this end, two texts are of particular
relevance. The first is the text Ratzinger presented to the press upon
the publication of the instruction Donum Veritatis. His comments on
the document tie together the principles introduced above and add a
note of solemnity, issued as they were by the cardinal-prefect of the
CDF:
The text also presents the various forms of binding authority which corre-
spond to the grades of the Magisterium. It states—perhaps for the first time
with such candor—that there are magisterial decisions which cannot be the final
word on a given matter as such but, despite the permanent value of their prin-
ciples, are chiefly also a signal for pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional policy.
Their kernel remains valid, but the particulars determined by circumstances can
stand in need of correction.”72

72. Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theo-
logian,’” 106 (emphasis added). Among the texts Ratzinger has in mind here is the fol-
lowing portion of Donum Veritatis which discusses interventions of the Magisterium in
the prudential order: “It could happen that some Magisterial documents might not be
free from all deficiencies. Bishops and their advisors have not always taken into immedi-
ate consideration every aspect or the entire complexity of a question.” The importance of
this statement lies in the fact that it indicates certain aspects of magisterial utterances
contain “deficiencies” which are not intended to be the comprehensive final word in re-
sponse to their respective questions. In order to pursue his discipline well, the theologian
must be competent in history in order to ascertain correctly the context in which dog-
matic formulas arise and to be mindful of “the filtering which occurs with the passage of
46  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

This citation adds a pair of nuances germane to our endeavor. First,

Ratzinger confirms that some magisterial decisions are intended to be
not definitive but rather “provisional” determinations of pastoral pru-
dence. Second, in keeping with the terminology we have already ex-
amined, he indicates that such statements have a kernel that remains
valid throughout history, while certain “particulars” or accidental fea-
tures “can stand in need of correction” by later formulations.73
Ratzinger offers two examples to illustrate the aforementioned
point. “In this connection,” he writes, “one will probably call to mind
the pontifical statements of the last century regarding freedom of re-
ligion and the anti-Modernist decisions of the then Biblical Commis-
sion.”74 The second of these examples is the very issue at the heart of
this chapter. Having already established immediately prior to this the
principle that magisterial statements have both a permanent core as
well as particulars that may stand in need of correction over time, he
now adds that, “as warning calls against rash and superficial accom-
modations, they remain perfectly legitimate,” for “the anti-Modernist
decisions of the Church performed the great service of saving her from
foundering in the bourgeois-liberal world.”75 Thus, from our privi-

time.” While the document is careful to ensure that this statement not be construed as
“a relativization of the tenets of the faith,” it proceeds to add these poignant words: “The
theologian knows that some judgments of the Magisterium could be justified at the time
in which they were made, because while the pronouncements contained true assertions
and others which were not sure, both types were inextricably connected. Only time has
permitted discernment and, after deeper study, the attainment of true doctrinal prog-
ress.” Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis, 24.
73. Early in his pontificate Francis reiterated this same distinction in so many
words: “Exegetes and theologians help the church to mature in her own judgment. Even
the other sciences and their development help the church in its growth in understanding.
There are ecclesiastical rules and precepts that were once effective, but now they have lost
value or meaning. The view of the church’s teaching as a monolith to defend without nu-
ance or different understandings is wrong.” Quoted in Francis and Antonio Spadaro, SJ,
“A Big Heart Open to God,” America (September 30, 2013).
74. Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theo-
logian,’” 106.
75. Ibid. Among the things the PBC intended to save us from was what Ratzinger
calls a “ready-made philosophy” which uses historical criticism to draw false and destruc-
tive conclusions from the premise that God cannot intervene in history and reveal him-
self to man. Ratzinger tells us that such a being “is not the God of the Bible.” Ratzinger,
“Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the Itinerary for Exegesis
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  47
leged vantage point a century later, we can see that the principal goal
or core of the PBC decrees did not consist in their assertions concern-
ing such things as when and by whom particular biblical books were
composed. Rather, the substance of what the Magisterium intended to
convey at the time, and which remains true today, is the need to safe-
guard the authority of the Scriptures, the historicity of Jesus, and the
Church’s divine foundation in the wake of deconstructive intellectual
currents which would undermine the faith. Be that as it may, imme-
diately following these words concerning the important pastoral role
played by the PBC’s early decrees, Ratzinger soberly acknowledges,
“Nevertheless, with respect to particular aspects of their content, they
were superseded after having fulfilled their pastoral function in the sit-
uation of the time.”76
Today,” 23. In another work, he adds that modern scholarship sometimes reveals more
about the presuppositions of the scholar than about the person of Jesus: “I must admit
the more I hear about these efforts of source research, the less confidence I feel in the
plethora of hypotheses it has thrown up. . . . I think all these attempts are reconstruc-
tions in which we can always see the face of the architect. . . . All these constructions have
been undertaken with one guiding idea: There can be no such thing as God made man.”
Ratzinger, God and the World, 203. See also The Ratzinger Report, 143–44, in which we
are exhorted to beware of an uncritical acceptance of a weltanschauung that tries “to find
a message that represents what we already know, or at any rate what the listener wants
to hear.” For this reason, a “criticism of the criticism” or a “self-critique of historical ex-
egesis” is needed in order to evaluate the claims and limits of modern scholarship in a
way “that both carries on and modifies Kant’s critiques of reason.” Ratzinger, “Biblical
Interpretation in Conflict,” 8. For more on historical-critical exegesis revealing the face
of the interpreter just as much as the face of Jesus, see Dale Allison, The Historical Christ
and the Theological Jesus: “There is the Jesus of Tom Wright, a Jewish prophet and al-
most, it seems, orthodox Christian. There is the Jesus of Marcus Borg, a religious mystic
who dispensed perennial wisdom. There is the Jesus of E. P. Sanders, a Jewish eschato-
logical prophet à la Albert Schweitzer. There is the Jesus of John Dominic Crossan, a
Galilean but Cynic-like peasant whose vision of an egalitarian kingdom and non-violent
God stood in stark contrast to the power politics of Roman domination. One could go
on. . . . [T]he portraits, which serve different constituencies in the marketplace, are to a
large degree not complementary but contradictory.” Even regarding his own work Alli-
son writes, “I would be deceiving myself were I to imagine that my Jesus was nothing but
the product of brutal historical honesty.” Reflecting on a rough period in his life during
which he wrote a book on Jesus, Allison admits that the Jesus he presented there was
“probably the Jesus I needed at the time.” Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theologi-
cal Jesus, 17.
76. Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theo-
logian,’” 106 (emphasis added).
48  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

Benedict employs similar language in his 2005 Christmas address

to the Roman curia, underscoring the need to distinguish “permanent”
from “contingent” dimensions of magisterial teaching:
In this process of innovation in continuity we must learn to understand more
practically than before that the Church’s decisions on contingent matters—for ex-
ample, certain practical forms of liberalism or a free interpretation of the Bible—
should necessarily be contingent themselves, precisely because they refer to a specific
reality that is changeable in itself. It was necessary to learn to recognize that in these
decisions it is only the principles that express the permanent aspect, since they
remain as an undercurrent, motivating decisions from within. On the other
hand, not so permanent are the practical forms that depend on the historical situa-
tion and are therefore subject to change. Basic decisions, therefore, continue to be
well grounded, whereas the way they are applied to new contexts can change.77

77. Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005)
(emphasis added). For an informative discussion of the historical condition that affects
magisterial decisions, see the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1973 declara-
tion Mysterium Ecclesiae. At the beginning of a pivotal section entitled “The Notion of
the Church’s Infallibility Not to Be Falsified,” it indicates that we should seek to “de-
fine exactly the intention of teaching proper to the various formulas.” However, diffi-
culties arise in this domain for two reasons: first from the fact that God’s mysteries so
transcend the human intellect that they remain “wrapped in darkness” in this life, and
second from “the historical condition that affects the expression of revelation.” Spelling
out what is meant by this “historical condition,” the CDF argues that “the meaning of
the pronouncements of faith depends partly upon the expressive power of the language
used at a certain point in time and in particular circumstances. Moreover, it sometimes
happens that some dogmatic truth is first expressed incompletely (but not falsely), and
at a later date, when considered in a broader context of faith or human knowledge, it
receives a fuller and more perfect expression.” When one attends to these contexts, we
see that the Church “usually has the intention of solving certain questions or removing
certain errors” and that “all these things have to be taken into account in order that these
pronouncements may be properly interpreted.” Ever affirming that the truths of the faith
are not dependent upon “the changeable conceptions of a given epoch,” the document
acknowledges that “it can sometimes happen that these truths may be enunciated by the
Sacred Magisterium in terms that bear traces of such conceptions.” In light of the forego-
ing points, the document concludes that, while the Church’s ancient dogmatic formulas
“maintain . . . completely the same meaning” and “remain forever suitable” when inter-
preted correctly, “it does not however follow that every one of these formulas has always
been or will always be so to the same extent.” Mysterium Ecclesiae, 5. On the continu-
ity of meaning in dogmatic formulas over the centuries, see the First Vatican Council
constitution Dei Filius, ch. 4: “Hence, too, that meaning of the sacred dogmas is ever to
be maintained which has once been declared by Holy mother Church, and there must
never be any abandonment of this sense under the pretext or in the name of a more pro-
found understanding.” See also the discussion of this formula in Charles Journet, What
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  49
Here the pontiff situates decisions regarding “a free interpretation of
the Bible” within the realm of “decisions on contingent matters” that
are “subject to change.” As seen in the document above, so here he
maintains that decrees like those of the PBC have a “permanent as-
pect” that remains valid even if the “practical forms” of decisions are
“not so permanent” due to the changing landscape of the Church’s
situation in history. To many Catholics the use of such language in
relation to magisterial statements may understandably come across as
jarring. However, if we understand the expression properly within the
context of principles addressed in this chapter, it is right at the heart
of Ratzinger’s brilliant solution to the thorny problem of the Magiste-
rium in relationship to modern biblical scholarship—a solution which
he arrives at only by courageously facing difficulties head-on.
How are we to explain Benedict’s pointed language and the about-
face in the Church’s attitude toward the modern historical-critical
method today? Why did the PBC issue these decrees which to many
people today seem so plainly incorrect? Ratzinger offers a vivid com-
parison to illustrate:
The process of intellectual struggle over these issues that had become a nec-
essary task can in a certain sense be compared with the similar process trig-
gered by the Galileo affair. Until Galileo, it had seemed that the geocentric
world picture was inextricably bound up with the revealed message of the Bi-
ble, and that champions of the heliocentric world picture were destroying the
core of Revelation. It became necessary fully to reconceive the relationship
between the outward form of presentation and the real message of the whole,
and it required a gradual process before the criteria could be elaborated . . .
Something analogous can be said with respect to history. At first it seemed as
if the ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses or of the Gospels to the four individu-
als whom tradition names as their authors were indispensable conditions of the
trustworthiness of Scripture and, therefore, of the faith founded upon it. Here,
too, it was necessary for the territories to be re-surveyed, as it were; the basic
relationship between faith and history needed to be re-thought. This sort of
clarification could not be achieved overnight.78

Is Dogma? (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011), 20, 98. For the rejection of any form of
“evolutionism” in the Church, see also Pius X’s Lamentabili Sane (1907) as well as his Pas-
cendi Dominici Gregis (1907), 26–28 and “Oath against Modernism” (1910)
78. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and Magisterium of the Church,” 134. Benedict XVI re-
flected on this dimension of the Galileo affair in a poignant speech about Vatican II near
50  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

In this passage Ratzinger sheds insight into the reason certain features
of the PBC decrees in question stood “in need of correction.” Those
who crafted the statements had assumed that the trustworthiness of
Scripture—and thereby the faith itself—would be undermined if the
Church entertained findings of modern scholarship that contradicted
ancient traditions concerning such matters as the authorship and dat-
ing of biblical books.
To offer just one illustration of this concern, some understandably
fear dating the Gospel of Matthew later than Mark because this opens
the door to the claim that the papal institution narrative in Matthew
16 was a tradition invented by the early Church rather than spoken by
Jesus. However, I would counter by arguing that, even if Matthew does
not represent a precise transcript of Jesus’ words, one who approaches
the text from the perspective of faith will see Matthew’s work as not
an invention but rather a reflection of a Petrine primacy found already
in the earliest stratum of the Christian faith. On this point Ratzinger
observes, “The play on the word ‘rock’ . . . does not work with complete
success in Greek, where it is now necessary to switch gender from
Petros to Petra: we can thus hear even through this pun the Aramaic
word kepha and perceive the voice of Jesus himself.”79 According to
Ratzinger, the “substance of what Matthew says” is echoed throughout
the entire New Testament, a unity that “can be explained only is what
is recounted in Matthew originates in Jesus himself.”80

the end of his pontificate: “And we knew that the relationship between the Church and
the modern period, right from the outset, had been slightly fraught, beginning with the
Church’s error in the case of Galileo Galilei; we were looking to correct this mistaken
start and to rediscover the union between the Church and the best forces of the world,
so as to open up humanity’s future, to open up true progress.” Benedict XVI, Address to
the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome (February 14, 2013).
79. Joseph Ratzinger, Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today (San
Francisco: Ignatius, 1996), 60.
80. Ibid, 58. Additionally, if we hold all of the Scriptures to be inspired, then to me
it is nonsensical to reject the theological developments we find in later Gospels simply
on the grounds that they are later. Ratzinger explains, “[F]or one who in the faith of the
Church reads the Bible as the word of God, the validity of a given statement does not
depend upon the historical hypotheses concerning its most ancient form and source. . . .
It is valid because Holy Scripture is valid and because Scripture presents it to us as an
utterance of Jesus. Said in other terms: the guarantee of its validity does not result from
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  51

Conclusion
While it is understandable to fear a certain “slippery slope” once
one becomes acquainted with the undeniable presence of discontinu-
ity in certain areas of Catholic teaching, thankfully the Church offers
guidance for how to navigate through these difficulties. Indeed it is
critical—and relieving for a Catholic—to realize that the Church rec-
ognizes various levels of magisterial teaching which command corre-
spondingly different types of assent. Among the various doctrines of
the Church, the CDF indicates that many require “irrevocable assent,”
since of their own nature they are “irreformable.”81 These teachings
form the substance of the Catholic faith, which cannot change. Writ-
ing as head of the PBC, Ratzinger offered some examples of teachings
which, in contrast with the PBC decrees examined in this chapter,
could never be altered as the result of modern biblical scholarship: the
birth of Jesus by the Virgin Mary, the institution of the Eucharist by
Jesus, and Jesus’ bodily Resurrection from the dead. Concerning this
last point, he tells us that Jesus’ bodily Resurrection “is the meaning
of the empty tomb,” as if to preempt any objectors who would claim
that the essence of the empty tomb lay in a spiritual experience of the
hypothetical constructs, however well founded they might be, but from inclusion in the
canon of Scripture, which in turn the faith of the Church avouches as the Word of God.”
Ratzinger, Called to Communion, 58–59.
81. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Commentary on the
Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei” (1998), 5, 8. The CDF teaches that a Catholic
may never withhold assent to a divinely revealed truth, such as the articles of the Creed,
Marian dogmas, the inerrancy of Scripture, and papal infallibility. Likewise, a Catholic
may never refuse to accept “those teachings belonging to the dogmatic or moral area,
which are necessary for faithfully keeping and expounding the deposit of faith, even if
they have not been proposed by the Magisterium of the Church as formally revealed.”
Among many doctrines that fall within the scope of this statement, the CDF reminds
us of the illicitness of euthanasia, the legitimacy of saint canonizations, and the reserva-
tion of priestly ordination only to men, to name only a few examples. For a delineation
of these levels, along with examples of doctrines that have an “irrevocable character,”
see ibid., 11. That said, with this the CDF has not intended to provide a complete list of
truths which Catholics are bound to hold as irreformable. Indeed, it even elucidates a
third category of teachings “which either the Roman Pontiff or the College of Bishops
enunciate when they exercise their authentic Magisterium.” Even if these are not pro-
claimed “by a definitive act,” the document indicates that they nevertheless require “reli-
gious submission of will and intellect” on the part of the faithful. Ibid., 10.
52  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

apostles and not a direct encounter with the Son of God in his glori-
fied flesh. In short, Ratzinger emphasizes that the Christian faith is
bound up with certain accidental features, but it requires us to pro-
fess “that Jesus—in all that is essential—was effectively who the Gos-
pels reveal him to be.”82 This point will be of paramount importance
in later chapters as we explore the figure of Jesus through the eyes of
Benedict in his Jesus trilogy.
In this way, despite his frank criticisms of certain aspects of past
magisterial pronouncements, Ratzinger’s hermeneutical approach
is worlds apart from an attitude that would conclude from such ob-
servations that the Magisterium has erred in an essential matter and
thereby abdicated its authority to teach Christians today. For, while
he does not shy away from facing the most alarming challenges to the
Magisterium’s teaching authority, he writes, “Yet, neither do we lightly
condemn the past, even if we see it as a necessary part of a process
of knowing.”83 We must therefore regard as illegitimate the moves of
those who, believing themselves to be ahead of the curve in matters of
doctrinal development, dissent from today’s Magisterium on the hy-
pothetical grounds that its teaching might change some day and that
at any rate their views do not deny anything “irreformable.”84 Indeed,
given what was said above, features some consider essential to the faith
in theory could be shown to be accidental, but the CDF rightly re-
minds us that individual Catholics are in no position to play the role
of Magisterium in these matters. What are we to do in the meantime?
Benedict offers this wise counsel in the context of an interview:
Of course we always need to ask what are the things that may once have been
considered essential to Christianity but in reality were only expressions of
a certain period. What, then, is really essential? This means that we must
constantly return to the gospel and the teachings of the faith in order to see:
First, what is an essential component? Second, what legitimately changes with the

82. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church,” 134 (emphasis added).
83. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 20, 136.
84. In this regard it is important to recall that the CDF commentary is not exhaus-
tive. Even if it does not explicitly identify certain erroneous teachings or practices, the
Magisterium’s mind on these matters has often been made manifest in myriad other
ways which call for the “religious submission” of the Catholic’s will and intellect.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  53
changing times? And third, what is not an essential component? In the end, then,
the decisive point is always to achieve the proper discernment.85
Once again, for Benedict the key to properly assessing the presence of
discontinuity in Catholic teaching over the centuries lies in a herme-
neutic of reform and the crucial endeavor to distinguish what is essen-
tial in the faith from what “were only expressions of a certain period”
or what “legitimately changes with the changing times.”
One final text from an interview sheds unique light into the per-
son of Ratzinger-Benedict as he turns the thorny problems addressed
by the PBC on their head. Rather than letting the myriad challenges
of modern biblical scholarship trouble one’s faith, he invites the be-
liever to see the complicated process of the Bible’s composition as the
work of divine providence:
He must learn that the complicated history of the genesis of biblical texts does not
affect the faith as such. What shines through this history is something differ-
ent and greater. Through this complicated historical genesis, which, by the
way, is always hypothetical, one can see, on the contrary, how statements and
realities, which are not simply invented by man, impress themselves upon his
consciousness. I believe that precisely when one comes to know the human factors
of biblical history, one also sees all the more clearly that it is not just a case of hu-
man factors, but that another is speaking here.86
For Ratzinger, the fruit of modern biblical scholarship presents a pic-
ture of the Bible’s origin that gives even more glory to the divine provi-
dence at work in the early Church than it would if we could rest con-
soled in knowing that Matthew was the first Gospel, that the Beloved
Disciple wrote John, or that the Pentateuch could be substantially at-
tributed to Moses.
At the same time, throughout his career Ratzinger has shown that
he no more believes in the validity of all modern biblical scholarship
than he believes that the past decrees of the PBC provide an accurate
85. Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 141. In another interview, Ratzinger addressed
the problem of ecumenism in like terms: “We can only humbly seek to essentialize our
faith, that is, to recognize what are really the essential elements in it—the things we have
not made but have received from the Lord—and in this attitude of turning to the Lord
and to the center, to open ourselves in this essentializing so that he may lead us onward, he
alone.” Ratzinger, God and the World, 453 (emphasis added).
86. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 32 (emphasis added).
54  Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism

analysis of the Bible’s origins.87 Rather, Ratzinger’s biblical project

aims to offer a balanced synthesis of the best of ancient and modern
thought, taking into account the strengths and shortcomings of each.
He therefore takes seriously the greatest fruits and challenges of mod-
ern scholarship but in a way that enables us to see more clearly the per-
son of Jesus Christ. This is put best by Benedict himself on the subject
of his Jesus of Nazareth trilogy:
What you might call the high point of my book was the demonstration that
the Jesus in whom we believe is really also the historical Jesus and that his fig-
ure, as portrayed in the Gospels, is much more realistic and credible than the
numerous alternative portraits of Jesus that are paraded before us in constant
succession. . . . The important point is this: The only real, historical personage
is the Christ in whom the Gospels believe, and not the figure who has been
reconstituted from numerous exegetical studies.88

87. We will see this especially in his famous call for a “criticism of the criticism” dis-
cussed in the next chapter. One example of Benedict’s balanced approach can be seen in
how he responds to an interviewer whose question seemed to exhibit a very negative view
of modern biblical criticism as such. Benedict grants his point regarding the limits of
said scholarship, but he adds, “I would put things more cautiously and say that research
on points of detail remains important and useful, even though the excess of hypotheses
eventually leads to absurdity. It is clear that the Gospels also reflect the concrete situ-
ation of the transmitters of the tradition and that they are clothed directly in the flesh
in faith.” Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 172–73. For an in-depth treatment of Ratz-
inger’s project of exegetical synthesis, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, chapter 2.
88. Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 173. Approaching the matter from a different
angle but with what I take to be a substantially similar upshot, Francis Watson writes,
“Jesus is known only through the mediation of his own reception. There is no access to
the singular, uninterpreted reality of a ‘historical Jesus’ behind the reception process. . . .
Reception is original rather than secondary: there can be no giving without a corre-
sponding receiving, and both together constitute the completed event in which Jesus acts
out his calling. In consequence, no prior space is available for Jesus to enact a reality
exclusively his own, recoverable by stripping away everything that may be attributed to
the early church. There is nothing in the gospel that may not be attributed to the early
church; for the story that is told speaks of a gift received rather than an object abstracted
from this communicative context and accessible as it is in itself.” Francis Watson, Gospel
Writing: A Canonical Perspective (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013), 606. I think
that this perspective is helpful for adjudicating any number of debates in New Testament
exegesis. Because we cannot say that a given text is either exclusively from Jesus or from
the Church, then the provenance of a passage such as Mt 16:17–19 is a moot question. For
the Petrine primacy was, of course, something both given by Jesus and already mediated
by the Church in the text that Matthew presents us.
 Benedict XVI and Modern Biblical Criticism  55
This text from Benedict also reflects the ultimate goal of the pres-
ent volume: to build up the Church through a sincere engagement with
modern problems that would call into question our warrant for believ-
ing in Christ. The beauty and power of Benedict’s exegetical vision is
that it offers a compelling reason to believe that Christians today have
access to the true person of Jesus and the essence of his saving message
presented in the Gospels. And the key is that Benedict achieves this con-
viction not by ignoring but precisely by embracing what the historical-
critical approach has to offer. Although he draws different conclusions
from this observation, the matter has been put well by Ehrman in la-
menting that the best of modern biblical scholarship is not made more
widely available to intelligent Christians: “That’s a pity,” he says, “be-
cause historical criticism can have serious theological payoffs, and these
should be embraced and proclaimed.”89 It is my hope and conviction
that engaging modernity in this volume will yield great dividends for
the reader interested in the quest for a synthesis of faith and reason in
biblical studies today.

89. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 272.

 3
Benedict XVI’s “Method C”
Exegetical Vision

In the previous chapter, I addressed the fundamental question of

how a Catholic like Ratzinger may faithfully engage modern biblical
criticism while remaining grounded in a tradition that was for so long
inimical to it. Operating with the understanding that our enterprise
of critiquing the critique “from within” is in keeping with the Catholic
faith, we are now in a position to spell out the key principles needed
for this task.
This chapter begins by surveying these principles as detailed in
Ratzinger’s 1988 Erasmus Lecture, in particular the hermeneutical
proposal in which Ratzinger called upon exegetes to develop a new,
fuller hermeneutical method (Method C) that makes the truth of
Scripture more evident by synthesizing the best of patristic-medieval
exegesis (Method A) and historical-critical exegesis (Method B). For
those who have read Dark Passages of the Bible, most of what is said
in this initial part will be review, but with the addition of some new
material I have unearthed since that volume was composed. Although
we will be working primarily at the level of Method B in this book, the
Method A principles surveyed in this section undergird everything I
will be arguing throughout.

56
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  57
Next, the chapter considers Ratzinger’s exegesis in connection
with medieval exegetes Thomas Aquinas and Bonaventure. In his ear-
ly career, Ratzinger was critical of Thomistic neo-scholasticism, and
in this period of his life there emerged a preference for Bonaventure
that would guide his understanding of Scripture over the following
decades. Ratzinger is, therefore, not a Thomist of the strict obser-
vance. With this initial caveat in place, there follows an overview of
principles illustrating key points of contact in which Ratzinger con-
nects—both implicitly and explicitly at points—his exegetical pro-
gramme with that of Aquinas, whose exegesis offers a “counter-model”
to deconstructive forms of modern exegesis.1 By way of making these
connections, Ratzinger certainly emends the tradition he inherited
from Aquinas, but the dependence remains all the same.
Finally, this chapter examines how the vision of the Erasmus Lec-
ture has been received and carried forward at a very high level in the
Church through the recent documents of the International Theologi-
cal Commission and the Pontifical Biblical Commission.2

Ratzinger’s “Method C” Proposal

At the conference following his 1988 Erasmus Lecture, the then-
prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith argued
convincingly that today’s exegetes must have recourse to both ancient
and modern methods of interpretation if they are to make sense of
the problems in Scripture. He called upon exegetes to develop a new,
fuller hermeneutical method that makes the truth of Scripture more

1. Note that I will be referring to the version of the Erasmus Lecture entitled “Bibli-
cal Interpretation in Conflict” from the volume Opening Up the Scriptures. This version of
Ratzinger’s text (there are three different published editions of the lecture in the English
language alone) is interesting because it reveals more explicit connections with Thomas
Aquinas than the original English version published in the volume Biblical Interpretation
in Crisis.
2. I describe this reception as being at a “very high level” since neither Benedict XVI’s
exegetical works written during his pontificate nor the documents of the Roman curia are
binding magisterial documents. Indeed, Benedict tells us in the foreword to Jesus of Naza-
reth that it is “not a work of the Magisterium” but rather of his personal search “for the
face of the Lord.” Ibid., xxiii. Nevertheless, they represent the highest level of authorita-
tive engagement with modern exegesis over the past half-century and are therefore rightly
regarded as guides for how to move forward with our endeavor.
58  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

evident by synthesizing the best of ancient (patristic-medieval) and

modern (historical-critical) exegesis:
You can call the patristic-medieval exegetical approach Method A. The his-
torical-critical approach, the modern approach . . . is Method B. What I am
calling for is not a return to Method A, but a development of a Method C,
taking advantage of the strengths of both Method A and Method B, but cog-
nizant of the shortcomings of both.3
Benedict’s programme aims to incorporate insights from both the
patristic-medieval method, which tends to emphasize the unity and
truth of Scripture, and the historical-critical method, which often
observes development, diversity, and apparent contradictions therein.
My previous work Dark Passages of the Bible expounded at length upon
the constitutive principles of these two methods, especially the Meth-
od A realities of inspiration, inerrancy, the canon, and the interpretive
guidelines handed on to the Church by Dei Verbum. All of these tradi-
tional magisterial principles are assumed here. But in order to ground
the task that will be carried out in later chapters of this book, in what
follows I will review a few central points discussed in more detail in
my previous volume.4

3. Benedict’s words are taken from a summary and transcript of the discussion
following his lecture. See Paul T. Stallsworth, “The Story of an Encounter,” in Biblical
Interpretation in Crisis, 107–8. Benedict’s lecture “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On
the Question of the Foundations and Approaches of Exegesis Today” is printed in ibid.,
1–23. As Gregory Vall observes, “Strictly speaking, we are dealing not with two specific
‘methods’ but two general approaches. A series of basic principles unites the work of ex-
egetes as diverse as Origen and Chrysostom, Bernard of Clairvaux and Thomas Aquinas,
so that we may speak of a single dominant patristic-medieval approach to exegesis, which
Cardinal Ratzinger has labeled ‘Method A.’ When we turn to consider those biblical
commentators whose work falls under the umbrella of ‘historical-critical’ exegesis, the
diversity of specific methodologies is perhaps even greater. But in this case too, funda-
mental principles of exegesis shared by these scholars may be identified, justifying the
label ‘Method B.’” Gregory Vall, “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The
Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200.
4. Much of what follows in this next section is found in Ramage, Dark Passages of
the Bible, ch. 2.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  59

A Potential Weakness of Method A and the Principles of

Method B’s Response
Despite all the strengths of patristic and medieval exegesis, at times
those who employ the traditional method tend to emphasize the uni-
ty and inerrancy of Scripture and its spiritual sense to the neglect of
its literal sense with the evidence apparent contradictions observable
through a serious engagement with it.5 For historical-critical scholars,
this remains a continual source of skepticism with regard to traditional
exegesis. Benedict XVI’s work stands on a solid middle ground be-
tween the excesses of certain Method A exegetes and the skepticism
typical of Method B. He typically gives a positive but sober assessment
of patristic spiritual exegesis, as we witness in his treatment of the
parables of the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.6 For Benedict,

5. For instance, in his On First Principles Origen employs a helpful image to describe
sacred Scripture as having a “body” (historical sense) and “soul” (spiritual sense). How-
ever, at times in his exposition he dismisses the importance of the literal sense and goes
so far as to say that it sometimes does not even exist. Ibid., 4.12. On the other hand,
Matthew Lamb contrasts Thomas Aquinas with many medieval allegorists who “seemed
more interested in detours than in the intended route.” Aquinas paid painstaking atten-
tion to the literal sense as the one sense which is present in all the verses of Scripture.
Says Lamb: “By far, the greatest service which St. Thomas performed in regard to ex-
egetical presuppositions was to assert plainly the sufficiency of the literal meaning. The
literal is the only sense on which theological arguments can be based. St. Augustine and
others had counseled that arguments must be adduced from ‘plain testimonies,’ but nev-
er would they have dreamt of identifying these exclusively with the literal sense.” Thomas
Aquinas, Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, trans. Matthew Lamb (Al-
bany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966), 15.
6. Concerning the Good Samaritan, he writes: “The Church Fathers understood the
parable Christologically. That is an allegorical reading, one might say—an interpretation
that bypasses the text. But when we consider that in all the parables, each in a different
way, the Lord really does want to invite us to faith in the Kingdom of God, which he
himself is, then a Christological exposition is never a totally false reading. In some sense
it reflects an inner potentiality in the text and can be a fruit growing out of it as from
a seed.” Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, 199
(emphasis added). The pope proceeds to meditate on the parable’s various features over
a span of several pages. Of particular interest here is how he views the Fathers’ interpre-
tation of the man who was stripped and beaten, wounded and left half dead. He notes
that the Fathers interpreted this particular man’s sufferings as an allegory of mankind’s
twofold alienation due to sin—which has “stripped” us of the grace we had received
and “wounded” us in our nature. Benedict explains (200): “Now, that is an instance of
60  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

successful spiritual exegesis can go beyond the text of Scripture only

after it has gone through the text by dealing with its literal sense. This
is not an easy task to achieve, for even the most brilliant Fathers of the
Church themselves struggled with it.
If a hallmark of Method A is that it views Scripture from a spiritu-
al perspective and is able to discern the voice of Christ within it, then
a strength of Method B is that it attends to Scripture’s literal mean-
ing and desires to hear the voice of Scripture’s human authors at work
therein. Method B does not so much approach Scripture as God’s
word but instead operates according to the principle that it ought to
bracket out the question of faith and study these words insofar as they
are human words of a past context, a definite cultural milieu with its
own language and mindset. In the foreword to the Baptism volume of
his Jesus trilogy, Benedict gives the parameters of historical-critical
work: “It attempts to identify and to understand the past—as it was
in itself—with the greatest possible precision, in order then to find out
what the author could have said and intended to say in the context
of the mentality and events of the time.” 7 It employs all the scientific
tools at the disposal of modern man, not limited to but including a
broader knowledge of history, recent discoveries in archaeology and
the various natural sciences, and an increased competence in Semitic
languages, in view of attaining to the original meaning of the texts.
The “critical” attitude is not necessarily critical in the way many
people initially think. For example, concerning his attempt to ascer-

allegory, and it certainly goes far beyond the literal sense. For all that, though, it is an attempt
to identify precisely the two kinds of injury that weigh down human history.” Notice the
pope’s language here. He states that the allegorical patristic interpretation “bypasses the
text” (also eine Auslegung am Text vorbei) and “certainly goes far beyond the literal sense
(die sicher weit über den Wortsinn hinausgeht).”
Similar language can be found in Benedict’s dealings with the parable of the Prodi-
gal Son. Noting the difficulty involved in the effort to locate the figure of Jesus in this
parable when it is read allegorically, he asks (207): “Where does Jesus Christ fit into all
this? Only the Father figures in the parable. Is there no Christology in it? Augustine tried
to work Christology in where the text says that the Father embraced the son (Lk 15:20).
The arm of the Father is the Son.’” The pope comments, “This is a very evocative exposi-
tion, but it is still an ‘allegory’ that clearly goes beyond the text (die ganz klar über den Text
hinausgeht)”
7. Ibid., xvi.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  61
tain whether the New Testament’s understanding of expiation is one
that we can accept today, Benedict writes:
Naturally this will require of us a readiness not only to form a “critical” as-
sessment of the New Testament, but also to learn from it and to let ourselves
be led by it: not to dismantle the texts according to our preconceived ideas,
but to let our own ideas be purified and deepened by his word.8
According to Benedict, historical criticism does not of its own nature
seek to dismantle or criticize the faith, and it is compatible with the
Christian faith so long as we approach the Bible with a willingness to
be led by it. At the same time, it does entail a willingness to be purified
by asking questions—and entertaining corresponding answers—that
faithful Christians of previous ages did not tend to raise.

Method B’s Weaknesses

Of course, modernity’s willingness to question traditional Chris-
tian assumptions about Scripture is not always accompanied by a de-
sire to build up the faith. Traditionally minded Christians are well
aware that those belonging to the historical-critical school at times
have sought to undermine central tenets of the faith, especially when
it comes to the figure of Jesus. The pope goes so far as to insinuate
the presence of a demonic element in certain areas of historical-critical
scholarship.9 According to Benedict, the Antichrist wants to show that

8. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 120.

9. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, 35–36.
With respect to this subversive element present in the work of some exegetes, Scott
Hahn and Benjamin Wiker have recently undertaken to show that “[t]he development
of the historical-critical method is fully intelligible only as part of the broader project of
secularization in the West over the past seven centuries.” Hahn and Wiker, Politicizing
the Bible: The Roots of Historical Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture, 1300–1700
(New York: Crossroad Publishing Company, 2013), 9. Specifically, the authors argue that
the originators of the method developed it as a means of producing beliefs that accord
with modern secular political aims. Additionally, the authors find it highly significant
that in the work of Descartes, Hobbes, and Spinoza, nature was redefined as mathemati-
cal and mechanical: “Perhaps most important, the politicization of Scripture took place
within a radically redefined cosmos, a mathematical-mechanical view of nature that was
in continual antagonism to the Judeo-Christian cosmology. . . . It soon became apparent
that, since this universe was an entirely law-governed, self-contained, and self-sustaining
machine, the active, living, creating, and redeeming God of the Old and New Testa-
ment would either have to be redefined (by being subsumed into nature via pantheism),
62  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

Scripture’s teaching is false and that its spiritual meaning is a mere hu-
man invention, a fundamentalist’s abuse of the text. He wants to have
us believe that an “objective” reading of the biblical text is one done
with the caveat that the spiritual and the material are incompatible,
that God could never enter into human history and disclose himself.
Benedict has noted that in the present age these philosophical tenets
of some biblical critics have grown to the stature of academic dogmas,
to the point that criticizing them at all is considered tantamount to
sacrilege.10 Because of this bias, scholars and others committed to
creedal Christianity have rightly been taken aback by many of the
presuppositions of critical scholars.11 In light of these circumstances,

relieved of the power to control and sustain his creation (thereupon standing outside of
nature as an entirely dispassionate and detached watchmaker), or simply rejected.” Hahn
and Wiker, Politicizing the Bible, 544.
For another pointed survey of modern criticism’s origins, see N. T. Wright, Jesus
and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1996), 1–124. On the great iconoclast
Reimarus (1694–1768), who has been credited with inaugurating the “Old Quest” for the
historical Jesus, Wright notes: “His aim seems to have been to destroy Christianity (as he
knew it) at its root, by showing that it rested on historical distortion or fantasy. Jesus was
a Jewish reformer who became increasingly fanatical and politicized. His cry of derelic-
tion on the cross signaled the end of his expectation that his god would act to support
him. The disciples fell back on a different model of Messiahship, announced that he had
been ‘raised,’ and waited for their god to bring the end of the world. They too were disap-
pointed, but instead of crying out in despair they founded the early Catholic church. . . .
The ‘Quest’ began as an explicitly anti-theological, anti-Christian, anti-dogmatic move-
ment. Its initial agenda was not to find a Jesus upon whom Christian faith might be
based, but to show that the faith of the church (as it was then conceived) could not in fact
be based on the real Jesus of Nazareth.” Ibid., 16–17.
10. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 21. Cf. Francis Martin, “Joseph
Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation: Two Leading Principles,” Nova et
Vetera 5 (2007): 285–314. Among the achievements of Martin in this article, he appropri-
ates Benedict’s criticism of reductionist modern cognitional theories. This criticism of
the criticism and its “scholarly dogma” that “we know Jesus couldn’t have thought such
things” is echoed powerfully in N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 93. Undoubtedly
Benedict’s critique of this “dogma” has as its background Rudolf Bultmann’s well-known
claim, “It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail ourselves of mod-
ern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same time to believe in the New Tes-
tament world of spirits and miracles.” Bultmann, “New Testament and Mythology,” in
Rudolf Bultmann, Hans Werner Bartsch, and Reginald H. Fuller, Kerygma and Myth: A
Theological Debate (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), 5.
11. By employing the term “creedal Christianity” one includes not only Catholics but
all Christians who profess faith in the revelation of the triune God as expounded in the
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  63
Benedict argues that if historical criticism is to play a role in the exege-
sis of believers today, there must take place a “criticism of criticism,” as
he described it in his Erasmus lecture.12
Benedict’s critique helps us to see that, despite its capacity to chal-
lenge longstanding assumptions of exegetes who profess the Christian
faith, Method B’s fundamental strength turns out also to constitute its
principal weakness: its willingness to ask radical questions of Scrip-
ture and its ability to provide a scientific analysis of Scripture often
lead to excess of regard for its own competence and lack of regard for
Christ. But aside from its excesses, there is a more fundamental prob-
lem often present in historical-critical exegesis. Since faith is a not a
fundamental component of Method B exegesis, those who employ
this method sometimes miss the ultimate end, the very raison d’être of
Scripture: the opportunity to encounter the living God who teaches
man through his sacred word. As Benedict puts it, “Approaches to the
sacred text that prescind from faith might suggest interesting elements
on the level of textual structure and form, but would inevitably prove
merely preliminary and structurally incomplete efforts.”13 When ex-
egetes thus fail to rise up to appreciate the divine teaching in Scripture
and remain solely at the level of Scripture as a collection of texts, it is
impossible for them to see its inspired unity:
[The historical-critical] method is a fundamental dimension of exegesis, but
it does not exhaust the interpretive task for someone who sees the biblical
writings as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God. . . . The unity
of all of these writings as one “Bible” is not something it can recognize as an
immediate historical datum.14

Church’s early creeds. The term “Chalcedonian Christianity” is also frequently used by
scholars of various denominations to articulate their shared belief in the nature of God and
his revelation in Jesus Christ. For more on the subject of scholars ruling out the possibil-
ity of God’s self-disclosure in human history, see also Benedict’s “Biblical Interpretation
in Crisis” as well as the more recent Verbum Domini (cited hereafter as VD) §36, where he
elucidates the simple rule: “In applying methods of historical analysis, no criteria should be
adopted which would rule out in advance God’s self-disclosure in human history.”
12. “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6. In Light of the World, also, he argues (171):
“What is needed is not simply a break with the historical method, but a self-critique of
the historical method; a self-critique of historical reason.”
13. VD §29.
14. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, xvi–xvii.
64  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

For the emeritus pontiff, what we call the Bible is not truly the Bible
unless we see it “as a single corpus of Holy Scripture inspired by God.”
Method B exegesis can examine lines of development and the growth
of traditions in Sacred Scripture, yet it cannot make the further step
of seeing them as a unity. For Method A, on the other hand, the many
books of Scripture have a unity precisely inasmuch as they participate
in the economy of salvation. Accordingly, to the extent that historical
criticism disavows the possibility of an economy of salvation, it denies
Scripture its unifying principle. For Benedict, it would be a travesty
not to accept the Method A principles, which enlighten and heal the
defects in Method B and which alone enable Scripture to be experi-
enced as God’s holy word.

Both Approaches Are Needed for the Method C Project

In light of the “criticism of criticism” initiated by Benedict, Meth-
od B exegetes must be attentive if they are to ensure that their efforts
do not neglect the role of faith and ultimately end up bankrupt. The
pontiff counsels that exegetes today take the further step of acknowl-
edging faith as a hermeneutic:
If it wishes to be theology, [exegesis] must take a further step. It must recog-
nize that the faith of the Church is that form of “sympathia” without which
the Bible remains a closed book. It must come to acknowledge this faith as a
hermeneutic, the space for understanding, which does not do dogmatic vio-
lence to the Bible, but precisely allows the solitary possibility for the Bible to
be itself.15
Contrary to the tenets of those who approach Scripture with a her-
meneutic of suspicion, Benedict understands that Method A’s herme-

15. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 22–23; cf. VD §§51–52. Ratz-
inger elsewhere writes, “[H]istorical-critical exegesis does not bring the Bible to today, to
my current life. . . . The problem of exegesis is connected, as we have seen, with the prob-
lem of philosophy. The indigence of philosophy, the indigence to which paralyzed, posi-
tivist reason has led itself, has turned into the indigence of our faith. The faith cannot be
liberated if reason itself does not open up again. If the door to metaphysical cognition
remains closed, if the limits of human knowledge set by Kant are impassable, faith is des-
tined to atrophy: It simply lacks air to breathe.” Joseph Ratzinger, “Relativism: The Cen-
tral Problem for Faith Today,” https://www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZRELA
.HTM.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  65
neutic of faith is in reality the key to unlocking the true meaning of
Scripture, without which it remains “a closed book.”
Lest one assume that Benedict’s proposed exegetical synthesis is
solely a theoretical affair, it is important to emphasize that he has long
been instantiating it in his work, especially in his Jesus of Nazareth tril-
ogy. In the foreword to his third and final installment treating the life
of Jesus, he insists on this very method:
I am convinced that good exegesis involves two stages. Firstly one has to ask
what the respective authors intended to convey through their text in their
own day—the historical component of exegesis. But it is not sufficient to leave
the text in the past and thus relegate it to history. The second question posed
by good exegesis must be: is what I read here true? Does it concern me? If so,
how? With a text like the Bible, whose ultimate and fundamental author, ac-
cording to our faith, is God himself, the question regarding the here and now
of things past is undeniably included in the task of exegesis. The seriousness
of the historical quest is in no way diminished by this: on the contrary, it is
enhanced.16
In the foreword to the second volume of Jesus, Benedict likewise speaks
to the necessity of synthesizing the “historical hermeneutic” (Method B)
and “faith hermeneutic” (Method A) and his own attempt to do so in his
work on Jesus:
If scholarly exegesis is not to exhaust itself in constantly new hypotheses, be-
coming theologically irrelevant, it must take a methodological step forward
and once again see itself as a theological discipline, without abandoning its
historical character. It must learn that the positivistic hermeneutic on which
it has been based does not constitute the only valid and definitively evolved
rational approach; rather, it constitutes a specific and historically conditioned
form of rationality that is both open to correction and completion and in
need of it. It must recognize that a properly developed faith-hermeneutic is
appropriate to the text and can be combined with a historical hermeneutic,
aware of its limits, so as to form a methodological whole. Naturally, this com-
bination of two quite different types of hermeneutic is an art that needs to be
constantly remastered.17

16. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives (New York: Image,
2012), xi.
17. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, xiv–xv.
66  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

Here Benedict warns that scholarly exegesis will become an endless,

“theologically irrelevant” maze of hypotheses unless it takes a “meth-
odological step forward.” It must continue its patient attentiveness to
the historical nature of Scripture, but this must be at the service of
theology. “A faith-hermeneutic” helps correct and complete the his-
torical method. The two methods can be “combined . . . so as to form
a methodological whole.” However, he notes that “this combination
of two quite different types of hermeneutic is an art that needs to be
constantly remastered.” The Church is therefore constantly work-
ing toward an adequate approach to Scripture and learning the art of
balancing two very different exegetical methods. Our efforts toward
a synthesis will necessarily remain imperfect, but their goal is always
the same: an encounter with the Lord. Writing as a theologian rather
than in his capacity as the Roman pontiff, he humbly confesses:
I would not presume to claim that this combination of the two hermeneutics
is already fully accomplished in my book. But I hope to have taken a signifi-
cant step in that direction. Fundamentally this is a matter of finally putting
into practice the methodological principles formulated for exegesis by the
Second Vatican Council (in Dei Verbum 12), a task that unfortunately has
scarcely been attempted thus far. . . . In the combination of the two hermeneu-
tics of which I spoke earlier, I have attempted to develop a way of observing
and listening to the Jesus of the Gospels that can indeed lead to personal en-
counter and that, through collective listening with Jesus’ disciples across the
ages, can indeed attain sure knowledge of the real historical figure of Jesus.18
The pope concludes that the Method C synthesis he is searching for is
ultimately a matter of “finally putting into practice the methodologi-
cal principles formulated for exegesis by the Second Vatican Coun-
cil.” The council’s teaching demands that exegetes have recourse to the
strengths of both the faith hermeneutic (Method A) and historical
hermeneutic (Method B) if they wish to plumb the depths of Scrip-
ture. Each method on its own is insufficient for this endeavor and
eventually leads to problems.19
Benedict certainly acknowledges the many problems prevalent in

18. Ibid., xv, xvi–xvii.

19. In point of fact, in Verbum Domini, the pope goes so far as to claim that the two
levels of exegesis “exist only in reciprocity.” VD §35.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  67
Method B exegesis, but he is very clear that the historical-critical ap-
proach may not be discarded any more than Method A may be. In fact,
as he writes in the first volume of Jesus, “The historical-critical method
—specifically because of the intrinsic nature of theology and faith—is
and remains an indispensable dimension of exegetical work. For it is of
the essence of biblical faith to be about real historical events.”20 As the
pontiff explains, God has really entered into human history in his rev-
elation to Israel and with the coming of Christ, and for this reason his-
torical-critical exegesis must be carried out in order that the historical
dimension of Scripture might be more greatly penetrated. Moreover,
although Method B has the weakness of sometimes thinking it can
arrive at a pure and perfect understanding of Sacred Scripture devoid
of all reference to its role within the Church, the implementation of
this method nevertheless keeps one from the opposite extreme view of
paying heed to ecclesiastical traditions while neglecting discoveries in
the field of critical scholarship. Thus he says, “There should be no par-
ticular need to demonstrate that on the one hand it is useless to take
refuge in an allegedly pure, literal understanding of the Bible. On the
other hand, a merely positivistic and rigid ecclesiasticism would not
do either.”21 In other words, one’s adherence to the pronouncements
of the Magisterium in matters of biblical interpretation ought not to
be done in a positivistic manner, that is to say, in such a way that one
closes the door to modern findings without considering the possibility
20. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xv. He also reiterates the teaching in VD §32:
“Before all else, we need to acknowledge the benefits that historical-critical exegesis
and other recently-developed methods of textual analysis have brought to the life of the
Church. For the Catholic understanding of sacred Scripture, attention to such methods
is indispensable, linked as it is to the realism of the Incarnation.” Benedict’s words also
corroborate what Pius XII wrote in Divino afflante Spiritu, §38, §40; cf. Pontifical Biblical
Commission, Sancta Mater Ecclesia §4.
21. Benedict XVI. “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis,” 6; Cf. VD §44, which quotes
the Pontifical Biblical Commission’s The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church: “‘The
basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation is that, refusing to take into account
the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the
full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism
seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human . . . for this reason, it tends to
treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to
recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression condi-
tioned by various periods.’”
68  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

that Scripture’s mysteries might be more deeply penetrated with their

help. Likewise, this means that Catholics should be cautious in theo-
rizing about the nature of biblical inspiration and inerrancy while they
lack a firm grasp of the Bible’s sometimes quite problematic content.
As was noted in the introduction, this situation has unfortunately led
many Catholics to write off modern biblical scholarship without ever
having honestly considered its claims and evidence.22
Spelling out the interplay between patristic-medieval and historical-
critical exegesis, Benedict writes that there are two exegetical “opera-
tions” pertinent to the examination of any given text of Scripture from a
Method C perspective:
Certainly texts must first of all be traced back to their historical origins and
interpreted in their proper historical contexts to the extent possible. But the
second exegetical operation is that they must also be examined in the light of
the total movement of history and in the light of history’s central event, our
Lord Jesus Christ. Only the combination of both these methods will yield un-
derstanding of the Bible.23

22. Apropos of those who still doubt that historical-critical exegesis is reconcilable
with the venerable traditions which preceded it, I could do no better than to recall the
words of N. T. Wright: “When Christianity is truest to itself, however, it denies precisely
this dichotomy—uncomfortable though this may be for those of us who try to live in
and speak from and to both communities simultaneously. Actually, I believe this dis-
comfort is itself one aspect of a contemporary Christian vocation. . . . I am someone who
believes that being a Christian necessarily entails doing business with history and that
history done for all it’s worth will challenge spurious versions of Christianity, including
many who think of themselves as orthodox, while sustaining and regenerating a deep and
true orthodoxy, surprising and challenging though this will always remain. . . . It simply
will not do to declare this question out-of-bounds, to say that the Church’s teaching will
do for us, thank you very much, so we do not need to ask historical questions. . . . The
skeptics can and must be answered, and when we do so we will not merely reaffirm the
traditions of the Church. . . . We will be driven to reinterpret them, discovering depths of
meaning within them that we had never imagined.” Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 16–18.
Also in need of careful consideration are these pointed words from Wright: “[T]he way
to Christian growth is often to allow oneself to be puzzled and startled by new appar-
ent complexity. There is great simplicity at the heart of this picture, but it is costly. The
price it demands is sustained attention to the specific, and to us strange and perhaps even
repellent, first-century ways of thinking that characterized Jesus. Is it after all Jesus we
want to discover and follow, or would we prefer an idol of our own making?” Wright, 93.
23. Benedict’s words are cited in Stallsworth, “The Story of an Encounter,” 107.
He repeats this theme in various works. For example, in Feast of Faith: Approaches to a
Theology of the Liturgy (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), he states (58): “The whole
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  69
The first operation, examining the historical origins and contexts of
biblical texts, is the prerogative of Method B. In a Method C herme-
neutic that incorporates the goods of both Method A and Method B,
this comes first in the order of execution and provides ground for the
subsequent operation of Method A spiritual exegesis.24 It is important
to know as much as possible about the realities signified by the words
of a text (the literal sense) if one is to correctly grasp any signification
these realities might themselves have (their spiritual sense). Mean-
while, just as grace perfects man by building on nature, so Method A’s
spiritual encounter with Scripture perfects Method B’s exegetical op-
eration by placing the texts of Scripture within the total movement of
history and understanding them in light of Christ as history’s central
event.25 Benedict makes this same point in so many words:
[T]he inner nature of the [historical-critical] method points beyond itself
and contains within itself an openness to complementary methods. In these

Old Testament is a movement of transition to Christ.” In Eschatology he likewise exam-

ines how this second exegetical operation of examining events in light of Christ played
out in the nascent Church (113): “The risen Lord became the canon within the canon, the
criterion in whose light tradition must be read. In the illumination which he brought, the
internal struggles of the Old Testament were read as a single movement towards the One
who suffered, was crucified, and rose again” (emphasis mine).
As regards the topic of tracing texts back to their historical origins, Pius XII penned
these words: “What is the literal sense of a passage is not always as obvious in the speech-
es and writings of the ancient authors of the East, as it is in the works of our own time.
For what they wished to express is not to be determined by the rules of grammar and
philology alone, nor solely by the context; the interpreter must, as it were, go back wholly
in spirit to those remote centuries of the East and with the aid of history, archaeology,
ethnology, and other sciences, accurately determine what modes of writing, so to speak,
the authors of that ancient period would be likely to use, and in fact did use.” Divino af-
flante Spiritu §35.
24. In reality, of course, the ordinary Christian’s canonical reading of Scripture is
not necessarily concerned with historical-critical questions and therefore comes “before”
Method B’s academic treatment. However, here I am trying to describe the order that is
necessary in order to ensure a warranted rather than arbitrary canonical reading, and
this is achieved with the help of Method B.
25. Constitutive of this “perfection” wrought by Method A exegesis is the fact that
it does not negate, but rather preserves, the text’s original meaning ascertained through
Method B. For a Method C exegete, the spiritual sense apprehended through praying
biblical texts over the centuries makes the most sense when it is seen in continuity with
the historical events that gave rise to it.
70  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

words from the past, we can discern the question concerning their meaning
for today; a voice greater than man’s echoes in Scripture’s human words; the
individual writings [Schrifte] of the Bible point somehow to the living process
that shapes the one Scripture [Schrift].26
Method B exegesis may therefore come first in order of execution, but
it is not first in an absolute sense. What is first absolutely is something
the historical-critical method can only examine on a material level
and thus point toward—the reality of Scripture as God’s word, and
the end of Scripture, which is to encounter God teaching through his
word (both of which are principles of Method A).27 In other words,
Method A gives the exegete the real reason for his investigation be-
cause it gives him God’s word, whereas Method B by itself does not
formally study Scripture as God’s word; it examines only its material
components and therefore “does not transmit the Bible to today, into
my present-day life.”28 Method B’s investigation of the human dimen-
sion of Scripture must therefore be done with a view toward showing
the inherent openness of its words to a reality which transcends them
and which they serve to make present. Its operation should serve the
reader by making it easier for him to achieve what Method A seeks:
an encounter with Christ, who is not a mere figure of the past but is
present teaching the reader of Scripture today.29 Method A does not
negate Method B but rather presupposes and builds upon it.

26. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth, xviii.

27. As Benedict will write with regard to his own historical-critical work in Jesus
of Nazareth, “[T]his book presupposes historical-critical exegesis and makes use of its
findings, but it seeks to transcend this method and to arrive at a genuinely theological
interpretation of the scriptural texts.” Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 295. For Benedict,
historical criticism is not an end in itself but rather an aid to our encounter with Christ
through “a genuinely theological interpretation of the scriptural texts.”
28. Benedict XVI, Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions, trans.
Henry Taylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 133.
29. Benedict has described this interplay between the operations of Method A and
Method B in various other ways throughout his corpus of work. He often uses differ-
ent terms to describe the two exegetical methods from different angles. He may speak
of “Method A” versus “Method B” at one moment and “historical hermeneutic” versus
“faith hermeneutic” in another; he has also referred to “scholarly” and “scientific” exege-
sis in contradistinction to lectio divina. In an Angelus address delivered during the 2008
bishops’ synod on God’s word, he taught Christians how to encounter Christ in Scrip-
ture in the following manner: “Scientific exegesis and lectio divina are therefore both
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  71
The upshot of Benedict’s work is that, when employing the tools
of Method B, the Method C exegete will be such only to the extent
that his Method B operation (investigating the origins and the literal
sense of Scripture) remains faithful to the principles of Method A ex-
egesis (e.g. sacred Tradition, the Magisterium, inspiration, inerrancy,
the spiritual sense, etc.). In other words, even before he attempts to
carry out Method A’s operation of spiritual exegesis, the Method C
exegete already begins his Method B operation in accordance with the
rule of faith adhered to by Method A. This will be clearly seen when
we examine how Benedict instantiates his method in later chapters of
this volume.
In this way, it really is possible for the Method C exegete to incor-
porate Method B into his work: he is able to set aside the accidental
features or assumptions of particular exegetical “traditions” without
abandoning the principles of sacred tradition as a source of revelation.
For Pope Benedict, faith does not require that Christians espouse all
patristic-medieval assumptions, for example the ancient belief that
Matthew was the earliest gospel. The Method C exegete can remain
completely committed to the faith while asking questions and accept-
ing answers never entertained by exegetes of previous ages, and he can
do this because his work stands in accord with the principles of the
Christian faith—not the least among which is the belief that greater
knowledge of the historical dimension of Scripture leads to greater
knowledge of Christ.
It is appropriate to conclude this section with some of Benedict’s
most recent comments in Light of the World. In this book-length inter-

necessary and complementary in order to seek, through the literal meaning, the spiritual
meaning that God wants to communicate to us today.” Benedict XVI, Angelus. October 26,
2008. This quote concisely encapsulates the goal of the pope’s twofold exegetical ap-
proach. “Scientific exegesis” (Method B) ascertains the literal meaning of Scripture, but
it is when the Christian turns to the prayer of lectio divina (a feature of Method A’s ap-
proach) that he discovers the biblical text has a spiritual meaning relevant to his own life.
According to Benedict, this spiritual sense is arrived at “through” the literal. It is signifi-
cant that Benedict dedicated a section of Verbum Domini not only to the theory behind
lectio divina but also to teaching Christians how to practice it today. As is frequently the
case, here we have Benedict not only laying out theoretical principles for Christians but
also offering guidance for instantiating them in real life. Cf. VD §§86–87.
72  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

view, he once again reiterates the importance of historical-critical ex-

egesis and the need to establish a synthesis between critical and faith-
based approaches to Scripture. Writing more than twenty years after
the Erasmus Lecture in which he introduced his Method C proposal,
the pope provides the following summary of its main principles:
The application of the historical method to the Bible as a historical text was
a path that had to be taken. If we believe that Christ is real history, and not
myth, then the testimony concerning him has to be historically accessible as
well. In this sense, the historical method has also given us many gifts. It has
brought us back closer to the text and its originality, it has shown us more
precisely how it grew, and much more besides. The historical-critical method
will always remain one dimension of interpretation. Vatican II made this clear.
On the one hand, it presents the essential elements of the historical method
as a necessary part of access to the Bible. At the same time, though, it adds that
the Bible has to be read in the same Spirit in which it was written. It has to be
read in its wholeness, in its unity. And that can be done only when we ap-
proach it as a book of the People of God progressively advancing toward Christ.
What is needed is not simply a break with the historical method, but a self-
critique of the historical method; a self-critique of historical reason that takes
cognizance of its limits and recognizes the compatibility of a type of knowl-
edge that derives from faith; in short, we need a synthesis between an exegesis
that operates with historical reason and an exegesis that is guided by faith. We
have to bring the two things into a proper relationship to each other. That is
also a requirement of the basic relationship between faith and reason.30
It is once again clear that for Benedict the historical-critical method
plays a key role in exegesis. At the same time, he quotes Vatican II in
explaining that Scripture “has to be read in its wholeness, in its unity.”
The only way to achieve this is to read it as the story of “the People of
God progressively advancing toward Christ.” It would difficult to find
a better endorsement of the hermeneutic of the divine pedagogy than
what Benedict has here. He likewise reiterates the call for a “synthesis

30. Benedict XVI, Light of the World, 171–72 (emphasis added). See also Benedict’s
recent comments in VD §34: “The Synod Fathers rightly stated that the positive fruit
yielded by the use of modern historical-critical research is undeniable. While today’s
academic exegesis, including that of Catholic scholars, is highly competent in the field of
historical-critical methodology and its latest developments, it must be said that compa-
rable attention need [sic] to be paid to the theological dimension of the biblical texts, so
that they can be more deeply understood in accordance with the three elements indicated
by the Dogmatic Constitution Dei Verbum.”
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  73
between an exegesis that operates with historical reason and an ex-
egesis that is guided by faith.” For Benedict, the truth and unity of
Scripture cannot be reconciled in the face of modern challenges unless
exegetes have recourse to the tools of both Method A and Method B
exegesis. Grappling with the greatest of problems within Scripture, in
light of Benedict’s plan for exegesis, will lead Christians to a deeper
encounter with the mystery of Christ as well as to a better under-
standing of the nature of Scripture itself.

Benedict, Aquinas, and Bonaventure

Having summarized the broad strokes of Ratzinger’s exegetical vi-
sion, I will now flesh out in more detail the basis for carrying out his
programme that is found in the Method A theology of St. Bonaven-
ture and St. Thomas Aquinas. Even though these connections will not
be made explicitly in later chapters, the principles articulated below
undergird Benedict’s exegesis through and through.

Ratzinger’s Early Critiques of Neo-scholasticism and

Preference for Bonaventure
Although what follows will focus primarily on commonalties be-
tween the exegetical projects of Ratzinger and Aquinas, a word is in
order concerning the former’s critical stance toward scholasticism in
the form it had assumed within the century prior to Vatican II. In the
interview book Salt of the Earth, Ratzinger sums up his view at the
time of the council:
I was of the opinion that scholastic theology, in the form it had come to have,
was no longer an instrument for bringing faith into the contemporary dis-
cussion. It had to get out of its armor; it also had to face the situation of the
present in a new language, in a new openness. So a greater freedom also had
to arise in the Church.31
Instances of such criticism abound in Ratzinger’s reflections published
after the council in the volume Theological Highlights of Vatican II. Here
he relates that the council’s preparatory schema on revelation, framed
upon the basis of a “cramped” neo-scholastic theology with an “exces-

31. Ratzinger, Salt of the Earth, 73.

74  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

sively one-sided zeal,” was imbued with the same “anti-Modernistic

neurosis which had again and again crippled the Church since the turn
of the century.”32
Young Fr. Ratzinger was critical of scholasticism broadly speak-
ing, but in a few places it emerges that he had difficulty relating with
Thomas Aquinas specifically. Reflecting on his seminary experience
at Freising, he writes, “I had difficulties in penetrating the thought
of Thomas Aquinas whose crystal-clear logic seemed to me to be too
closed in on itself, too impersonal and ready-made.”33 Ratzinger traces
the cause of this difficulty to his experience with a certain Thomist
professor who “presented us with a rigid, neo-scholastic Thomism that
was simply too far afield from my own questions. . . . [I]t seemed that
he himself no longer asked questions but limited himself to defending
passionately, against all questions, what he had found.”34
Fr. Ratzinger struggled to relate with the thought of Aquinas early
in his career, but he found a like-minded partner in Bonaventure. He
indicates in his habilitation thesis on Bonaventure’s theology of histo-
ry, “For the questions with which I was concerned, Bonaventure was
naturally a more likely subject for study than Aquinas.”35 Bonaventure
dealt more directly than Aquinas with the themes that interested Ratz-
inger—specifically, questions at the intersection of divine revelation,
history, and metaphysics. Moreover, while Bonaventure did not target
Thomas himself in his critiques of contemporary Aristotelianism, it is
likely that what Ratzinger describes as an “anti-Thomism” in Bonaven-
ture exerted its influence upon him insofar as Bonaventure was wary of
a theology that would rely too heavily upon the thought of Aristotle.36
While Bonaventure’s lesser reliance on Aristotle had its appeal for
Ratzinger, the latter acknowledges that neither Bonaventure nor Aqui-
nas discussed the nature of divine revelation in the sense it has been un-
derstood within fundamental theology in the modern period. As one

32. Ratzinger, Theological Highlights of Vatican II, 41–42, 27; cf. Theological High-
lights, 23, 219.
33. Ratzinger, Milestones, 44.
34. Ibid., 14.
35. Joseph Ratzinger, Theology of History in St. Bonaventure (Chicago: Franciscan
Herald Press, 1971), xii.
36. Ratzinger, Theology of History, 136–38.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  75
finds in the treatise on prophecy in the Summa (II-II, qq. 171–74), the
theologians of the Middle Ages were more concerned with the nature
of “revelations” than with the objective reality or content of “revelation”
as such.37 Ratzinger elaborates:
[In the High Middle Ages] “revelation” is always a concept denoting an act.
The word refers to the act in which God shows himself, not the objectified re-
sult of this act. And because this is so, the receiving subject of revelation is al-
ways also part of the concept of “revelation.” Where there is no one to perceive
“revelation,” no re-vel-ation has occurred, because no veil has been removed.38
Meanwhile, Bonaventure’s understanding of revelation referred to the
unveiled spiritual sense of Scripture rather than its letter. This had a
profound impact on Ratzinger’s theology of revelation as evinced in
writings spanning his entire career. Following Bonaventure, Ratzinger
does not view Scripture as being revelation per se but rather the “es-
sential witness” or “testimony” to a revelation that precedes and ex-
ceeds it.39 This perspective has profound implications for how Bene-
dict deals with problems concerning the life of Christ brought to light
by modern New Testament scholarship.

Aquinas and Benedict: Points of Contact

Notwithstanding young Fr. Ratzinger’s criticisms of neo-scholas-
tic thought, from both what was stated above and from what he states
elsewhere in his corpus it is clear that Ratzinger’s problem was not

37. Ibid., 57.

38. Ratzinger, Milestones, 108.
39. Ratzinger, Theology of History, 62. On the subject of Scripture not being revela-
tion per se but rather the “essential witness” or “testimony” to a revelation that precedes
and exceeds it, see Milestones, 109 and 127; Karl Rahner and Joseph Ratzinger, Revelation
and Tradition (New York: Herder, 1966), 35; Benedict XVI, VD §§17–18. Peter Enns,
an important popular evangelical author, speaks in very similar terms which may strike
one as quite surprising coming as they do from the pen of a Protestant: “The Bible is not,
never has been, and never will be the center of the Christian faith. . . . As theologians tell
us, the Bible, in various and complex ways, ‘bears witness’ to Christ. That is the Bible’s
role, to encourage the faithful to live in its pages in order to look up from the pages and,
by the power and love of the Spirit of God, see Jesus. The Bible doesn’t say, ‘Look at me!’
It says, ‘Look through me.’ The Bible, if we are paying attention, decenters itself.” Peter
Enns, The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Unable to Read It
(San Francisco: HarperOne, 2014), 237.
76  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

with Thomas himself so much as with the overly rigid presentation

of Aquinas common in preconciliar theology. The following will tease
out several points of contact between the thought of Aquinas and
Ratzinger implied by the latter’s suggestion that Thomas’s exegesis of-
fers an antidote to secularist forms of modern exegesis.

Benedict and Aquinas’s “Open Philosophy”

On a number of occasions Benedict has made plain his conviction
that Aquinas’s example provides a powerful basis for countering mod-
ern challenges to the Bible. After explaining that his Jesus of Naza-
reth is not a “Life of Jesus” or a “Christology,” he explicitly states that
Aquinas’s treatise on the life of Christ in the Summa is “closer to my
intention” and that with this work “my book has many points of con-
tact.”40 Though privy to modern scholarly tools in a way Aquinas was
not, Benedict identifies with the latter in his patient attentiveness to
God’s word and his desire to put believers in touch with the mystery of
Jesus, his “figure and message.”41
In the section of his Erasmus Lecture entitled “Basic Elements
of a New Synthesis,” Benedict expounds at some length on the im-
portance of Thomas’s thought for helping believers encounter Christ
through his word. In contrast with a Kantian “ready-made philoso-
phy,” Aquinas’s “open philosophy” is “capable of accepting the biblical
phenomenon in all its radicalism” by admitting that a real encounter
of God and man is witnessed in history—and made possible today—
by the Scriptures.42 For Benedict, a “critique of the critique” requires
a rejection of the false presuppositions of those who would exclude a
priori God’s ability to speak through human words. Aquinas’s exege-
sis, deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition with its conviction that the
boundary of time and eternity is permeable, allows for the Bible to be

40. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, xvi.

41. Ibid.
42. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 23. Elsewhere Ratzinger
contrasts a proper hermeneutic with this closed, Kantian, “ready-made” approach: “In
short, in the revelation of God, he, the living and true One, bursts into our world and
also opens the prison of our theories, with whose nets we want to protect ourselves
against God’s coming into our lives.” Ratzinger, “Relativism: The Central Problem for
Faith Today.”
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  77
what the Church has always claimed it to be: the word of God in hu-
man words. This point will prove crucially important later as we pres-
ent Benedict’s hermeneutical engagement with modern scholarship as
an alternative to the mainstream skeptical view found in Ehrman.

The Literal Sense, Assertions, and “the Essential Point”

One important point of contact between Aquinas and Benedict is
not explicated by the latter but is nonetheless evident in the way he in-
stantiates his own principles by attempting to determine the “essential
point” asserted according to the literal sense concrete biblical texts.
Benedict demonstrates keen awareness that certain texts seem plainly
to contradict what is stated in other texts:
It is because faith is not set before us as a complete and finished system that
the Bible contains contradictory texts, or at least ones that stand in tension to
each other.43
It follows straightaway that neither the criterion of inspiration nor that of
infallibility can be applied mechanically. It is quite impossible to pick out one
single sentence and say, right, you find this sentence in God’s great book, so it
must simply be true in itself.44

43. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 152; cf.: “The problem of dating Jesus’s Last
Supper arises from the contradiction on this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the
one hand, and Saint John’s Gospel, on the other.” Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy
Week, 106.
44. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 153; cf. Benedict XVI, Address to Partici-
pants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (May 2, 2011): “Last-
ly, I would only like to mention the fact that in a good hermeneutic it is not possible to
apply mechanically the criterion of inspiration, or indeed of absolute truth by extrapolat-
ing a single sentence or expression. The plan in which it is possible to perceive Sacred
Scripture as a Word of God is that of the unity of God, in a totality in which the indi-
vidual elements are illuminated reciprocally and are opened to understanding.” See also
this thought-provoking text from James Tunstead Burtchaell, Catholic Theories of Biblical
Inspiration since 1810: A Review and Critique (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1969), 299, 303–4: “Both by those who accept these claims [of inerrancy and infallibility]
and by those who reject them, they have been imagined as some sort of flawless, eternal
ownership of the truth, expressed in formulas that might from time to time need a little
translating, but never need replacing. In this sense, there has probably never been an in-
errant declaration uttered or book written, nor need we look forward to one. But if iner-
rancy involve wild, and sometimes even frightening movement, if it mean being pulled to
the right and to the left, being tempted constantly to deviate, yet always managing some-
how to regain the road, then it begins to sound rather like what the Church has been
78  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

The problem of admitting the presence of contradictory biblical texts,

of course, lies in squaring these with the doctrine of inerrancy as it is
articulated in Dei Verbum: “Therefore, since everything asserted by the
inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the Holy
Spirit, . . .”45
As Germain Grisez has noted, it is a great mistake to read the
above sentence as saying that everything in Scripture is asserted by
the Holy Spirit: “Scripture contains not only many sentences express-
ing no proposition, but many sentences that express propositions not
asserted by their human authors.”46 In a helpful footnote in which he
offers illustrations from Aquinas to support his claim, Grisez adds
that the Council Fathers would have been well aware of the difference
between a mere statement on the one hand and an assertion or teach-
ing on the other.47 Brian Harrison, OS, in an essay which critiques a
view similar to that advanced by Grisez, offers a further helpful speci-
fication. According to the Council relator of Dei Verbum 11, Harrison
notes, the word teach (docere) refers to those things which are truly
affirmed (asseruntur) in Scripture.48 Harrison cites an important text
from Raúl Cardinal Silva Herínquez to clarify:

about. . . . In sum, the Church does find inerrancy in the Bible, if we can agree to take
that term in its dynamic sense, and not a static one. Inerrancy must be the ability, not
to avoid all mistakes, but to cope with them, remedy them, survive them, and eventually
even profit from them. In a distinct selection of faith-leavings from a distinct epoch of
faith-history, we have the archives of the process by which our ancestral faith began from
nothing, involved itself in countless frustrating errors, but made its way, lurching and
swerving, ‘reeling but erect,’ somehow though never losing the way, to climax in Christ.”
45. Dei Verbum, §11 (emphasis added). The text continues: “. . . it follows that the
books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without er-
ror that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.”
46. Germain Grisez, “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture,” in St. Paul Cen-
ter for Biblical Theology, For the Sake of Our Salvation: The Truth and Humility of God’s
Word (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2010), 186.
47. Ibid., 186n15. Grisez states that “[t]he distinction between what is asserted and
what is said without being asserted is one that Thomas uses regularly.” Examples he pro-
vides from the Summa theologiae include II-II, q. 110, a. 3, ad 1; I, q. 77, z. 5 ad 3; q. 100, a.
2, ad 2.
48. Acta synodalia Sacrosancti Concilii Oecumenici Vaticani II (Rome: Typis Poly-
glottis Vaticanis, 1970-), vol. 4, pt. 5, 709; Brian Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy and the
‘Hermeneutic of Discontinuity’” within the volume For the Sake of Our Salvation, 244. In
another piece, Harrison pointedly criticizes certain “recent Catholic authors” who “have
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  79
[T]he doctrine of biblical inerrancy is better expressed by the formal crite-
rion of teaching, since it is according to that criterion that no error can be
found. For in another sense, that is, the material sense, it is possible for ex-
pressions to be used by the sacred writer which are erroneous in themselves,
but which, however, he does not wish to teach.49
As Harrison proceeds to observe, the relator informed the Council Fa-
thers that Herínquez’s above proposal had been accepted “substantial-
ly” by the doctrinal commission. Thus Harrison affirms Herínquez’s
clarification as “a guide to what the Council means.”50
In contrast with Grisez, Harrison argues that the key distinction
in the cardinal’s text is not between “affirmations” and “teachings” on
the one hand and “statements” on the other.51 Rather, for him the di-

tried to reconcile [the teaching of Dei Verbum 11] with the supposed occurrence of errors
in Scripture by charging that the errors they have in mind are never in fact affirmed by
either the divine or human authors.” Harrison describes such a maneuver as a “contorted
hermeneutic” which “unreasonably attempts to determine what is being affirmed in a
given text in Scripture by appealing to content rather than form—subject matter rather
than syntax . . . but this procedure—trying to identify an author’s assertions by looking
at what he is talking about instead of how he talks about it—violates basic, common-
sense principles of verbal communication. Brian Harrison, “Does Vatican Council II Al-
low for Errors in Sacred Scripture?” Divinitas, LII, 3 (2009): 279–304. The text cited here
is from an updated version of the article available at http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt145-6.
html. This is a helpful critique, but it does not negate the importance of distinguishing
statements from assertions as Grisez does. This fundamental endeavor to distinguish
nonaffirmed statements from core assertions in the biblical text can be seen in the exege-
sis of Joseph Ratzinger throughout his career. But unlike the unnamed authors whom
Harrison critiques, Ratzinger’s exegesis by no means neglects the syntax or how a biblical
author wishes to assert his point. On the contrary, his patient attentiveness to this real-
ity is what makes his hermeneutic so powerful.
49. Acta Vaticani II, vol. 3, pt. 3, 799.
50. Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy,” 245.
51. It is helpful to compare what Harrison writes in the above piece to another
work in which he provides a helpful clarification of his view: “[S]ome biblical affirma-
tions—above all, those that are per se less directly concerned with salvation—may be
only approximations, or it may be that they express certain truths only in simple, popular
language rather than in precise or technical terminology. For since the formal object of
Sacred Scripture is to teach us God’s plan of salvation for the human race, and not pro-
fane history, natural science, or other forms of merely worldly knowledge for their own
sakes, one should not expect or demand, as a condition of the Bible’s freedom from error,
when it touches upon these subjects, the same standards of accuracy and clarity in de-
scription and terminology as we would expect and demand in works (especially modern
academic works) whose formal object is these ‘secular’ branches of knowledge. . . . [W]e
80  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

chotomy is to be found in contrasting what is formally “taught” with

what is merely “used” (adhiberi) by the sacred writers in making their
assertions. The category of what is merely used, Harrison concludes,
may include expressions (locutiones) that are “materially” erroneous.52 It
is worth noting that here we have a Thomistically inspired distinction
between material and formal error leveraged in order to make sense of
the Scriptures. As Aquinas himself indicates in his Commentary on the
Sentences, some biblical statements pertain to the substance of the faith
(ad substantiam fidei), while others pertain to the faith only accidentally
(per accidens). With respect to Genesis, we will see later that Aquinas
thus states that the doctrine of creation belongs to the substance of the
faith, but how and in what order the world was made (quo autem modo
et ordine factus sit) pertain to the faith only accidentally.53
Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit make a similar distinction, follow-
ing the contours of Aquinas’s discussion of prophecy in the Summa:
Truth is the adequatio rei et intellectus. It exists only in the judgment. And by
“ judgment” we obviously do not mean every proposition made up of subject,
verb, and predicate, but the formal act by which the intellect affirms its con-
formity (adequatio) to the object of knowledge. . . . An [inspired] author does

should not set the bar unreasonably high in deciding what is to count as truth, as opposed
to error, when the sacred writers make statements about secondary matters that are only
indirectly linked to the Bible’s principal and overall purpose.” Harrison, “Does Vatican
Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scripture?”
52. Harrison, “Restricted Inerrancy,” 245. Harrison’s way of speaking, though per-
haps jarring to some, has ancient precedent. Origen, after observing that there are many
points on which the Gospels’ narratives do not agree, added, “I do not condemn [the
Evangelists] if they even sometimes dealt freely with things which to the eye of history
happened differently, and changed them so as to subserve the mystical aims they had in
view; so as to speak of a thing which happened in a certain place, as if it had happened in
another, or of what took place at a certain time, as if it had taken place at another time,
and to introduce into what was spoken in a certain way some changes of their own. They
proposed to speak the truth where it was possible both materially and spiritually, and
where this was not possible it was their intention to prefer the spiritual to the material.
The spiritual truth was often preserved, as one might say, in the material falsehood.” Ori-
gen, Commentary on the Gospel of John, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 9, ed. Allan Menzies
(Buffalo, N.Y.: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1896), Book X, 4. On the possible
existence of material error (or imperfection) in Scripture, in contrast with the impossibil-
ity of formal errors in Scripture, see Matthew Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, 131–46.
53. Aquinas, In II Sent., dist. 12, a. 2.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  81
not speak of everything in an absolute way. . . . He tells the truth or he is mis-
taken only within the limits of the field of vision which he has established for
himself and in which he forms his judgment. . . . We must therefore respect
the varying degrees of his assent, rather than take all his sentences as cat-
egorical affirmations.54
Abbot Denis Farkasfalvy speaks in similar terms:
Divine inspiration does not imply that each passage and sentence of the bibli-
cal text must be found free of error from every conceivable point of view. . . .
But such a realization does not prove that God’s word asserts error. Rather, it
only means that God’s message is expressed, at one or another point of salva-
tion history, with the imperfections characteristic of human existence.55
One might expand upon Farkasfalvy’s point by explaining that any ap-
parent errors in Scripture are in reality material imperfections rather
than formal errors, since the biblical text still conveys “the human au-
thor’s concretely defined purpose and its divine author’s salvific pur-
pose,” in such a way that “every passage expresses the truth which it is
supposed to express according to God’s salvific will.” 56
Matthew Lamb, in his translation and notes on Aquinas’s Com-
mentary on Ephesians, makes a similar point from an angle that also
accounts for the divine pedagogy discussed above:

54. Paul Synave and Pierre Benoit, Prophecy and Inspiration (New York: Desclée,
1961), 134–35. Cf. ibid., 142: “[God] certainly cannot prevent [the sacred author] from us-
ing in one way or another these erroneous views and, consequently, from letting them
show through in his text. For example, no one will deny that the biblical authors had
now outmoded cosmological ideas in which they believed, and that they employed them
in their writings because they were unable to think apart from contemporary categories.
But they do not claim to be teaching them for their own sakes; they speak of them for a
different purpose, e.g. to illustrate creation and divine providence.”
55. Denis Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to
Sacred Scripture (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2010),
232. Farkasfalvy’s explanation has many resonances with the following text of C. S. Lew-
is. Writing on the subject of the Psalms, the latter observes: “The human qualities of
the raw materials show through. Naiveté, error, contradiction, even (as in the cursing
psalms) wickedness are not removed. The total result is not ‘the word of God’ in the sense
that every passage, in itself, gives impeccable science or history. It carries the word of
God; and we . . . receive that word from it not by using it as an encyclopedia or an encycli-
cal but by steeping ourselves in its tone or temper and so learning its overall message.”
C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms (London: Harvest Books, 1964), 111–12.
56. Farkasfalvy, Inspiration and Interpretation, 232.
82  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

We tend to regard a truth as either clearly and explicitly revealed or not re-
vealed at all. But for St. Thomas man’s knowledge of the faith grows; truths
are revealed slowly over a period of time. The Bible communicates this or-
ganic development of salvation-history to men up to its definitive apex in the
revelation of the Word Incarnate himself. The whole of the Bible must be
approached with faith; this does not mean that every sentence is a definable
dogma.57
As Lamb relates, it is not as if one can find a definable dogma in ev-
ery sentence of Scripture; indeed, Scripture never claims this about
itself. The reason for this is that the authors of Scripture understood
and taught revealed truth with varying degrees of clarity depending on
their place within the course of salvation history. To discern dogmatic
content within Scripture thus requires careful attention to the inten-
tions of its authors and to the broader role of a particular text within
the development of the canon as a whole. This also requires overcom-
ing the assumption that something is “revealed” only if it is perfectly
reflective of God’s own knowledge, or else it is not revealed at all.
For his part, Benedict assesses concrete problems in a way that is
compatible with and builds on the above understanding of inspiration
and revelation. Throughout his corpus the pontiff often seeks to rec-
oncile apparently erroneous biblical texts by inquiring into their “sub-
stance” or “essential point,” that is to say, by asking what message the
human and divine authors intend to teach or assert in a given text.
In the chapters that follow, we will examine many instances in which
Benedict makes this exegetical move.
Yet, although Benedict follows the Thomistic tradition regarding
the importance of ascertaining the intention or assertion of thorny
biblical texts, Aaron Pidel, SJ, astutely observes that the pontiff “re-
tools the neo-Thomist notion of intention in several important ways.”58
Whereas the neo-scholastic instrumental model of inspiration is able
to qualify the inerrancy of Scripture only through the “strained ef-
fort” to nail down the individual biblical author’s judgment, Ratzinger

57. Lamb (trans.), in Aquinas’s Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians,
256n17.
58. Aaron Pidel, SJ, “Joseph Ratzinger and Biblical Inerrancy,” Nova et Vetera 12.1
(2014): 308.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  83
“transfers the locus of intention and affirmation from the human au-
thors of Scripture to Scripture itself.”59 And Ratzinger can make this
move “because he conceives of Scripture (qua revelation) as text-plus-
living-subject.”60
Ratzinger’s major innovation here is to emphasize that individu-
al biblical authors were embedded within the community of faith.61
Thus in the foreword to his Jesus of Nazareth: Baptism volume, Bene-
dict envisions not two (divine and human) but three “interlocking sub-
jects” of Scripture. First, there is the individual author who wrote the
text. Here it is noteworthy that he makes room for the possibility of
a “group of authors” for a given text, presumably intending by this to
account for redaction and for books like Isaiah which most likely have
multiple authors writing during different historical epochs. Second,
the People of God is the “collective subject” who is now identified as
“actually the deeper ‘author’ of the Scriptures.” Third, as affirmed by
the scholastic tradition, God himself is “at the deepest level the one
speaking” through men and their humanity.62
In calling attention to the complex layers of this corporate inten-
tionality, Ratzinger is able to countenance the existence of biblical er-
rata in a way his neo-scholastic forebears were not. On the eve of Vati-
can II, Ratzinger wrote:
[A]ccording to a practically irrefutable consensus of historians there definite-
ly are mistakes and errors in the Bible in profane matters of no relevance for
what Scripture properly intends to affirm. . . . The true humanity of Scripture,
behind which the mystery of God’s mercy arises all the more, is now finally
dawning on our awareness; namely that Scripture is and remains inerrant and
beyond doubt in everything that it properly intends to affirm, but this is not
necessarily so in that which accompanies the affirmation and is not part of it.63
As Pidel puts it, from Ratzinger’s perspective not to concede the Bible’s
historical infelicities is “to baptize stubborn fideism and to consign the
Church to an intellectual ghetto.”64 But this admission is made pos-
59. Ibid., 310–11, 314. 60. Ibid., 318.
61. Ibid.
62. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, xx–xxi.
63. Jared Wicks, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as Peritus before and during
Vatican Council II,” Gregorianum 89 (2008): 280.
64. Pidel, “Joseph Ratzinger and Biblical Inerrancy,” 312–13.
84  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

sible because Ratzinger makes an important move: he considers all

individual biblical texts in light of their place within the entire plan of
salvation culminating in Christ. Thus Pidel remarks that for Benedict
the canonical books are surely inerrant, “but only to the extent that
they bear upon the intention of the whole—the mystery of Christ.”65
Accordingly, Scripture’s inerrant content is not to be equated with
what individual human authors intended to affirm, but rather with the
requirements of the Church’s faith in Christ.66
Benedict instantiates these principles with a crucial distinction
he makes in various ways throughout his corpus. A number of these
emerge in his essay “Farewell to the Devil?” to which we will return
later in this volume. According to Ratzinger, if we wish to know
whether geocentrism or the existence of the devil is de fide, then we
have to distinguish “the doctrinal message of the Bible” from “what
may be only the temporary contingent vehicle for its real theme.”67 We
must separate the core “content” of Scripture from its shell or “form.”68
It is critical to discern “what is and is not necessary for a profession
of faith” and make it clear “where faith ends and where world view
begins.”69 In a wonderfully evocative image, he states that we have to
learn again and again, with the changing of the times, how to distin-
guish between “fixed stars” and “planets,” between “permanent orien-
tation” and “transient movement.”70 Of course, even with Ratzinger’s
trifold understanding of biblical authorship, it remains very difficult
to ascertain what in a given passage is essential to the faith and what
is accidental. For this reason, and in keeping with his emphasis upon
the people of God as Scripture’s collective intending subject, Ratz-
65. Ibid., 330.
66. Ibid., 329.
67. Ratzinger, “Farewell to the Devil?” in Dogma and Preaching (San Francisco: Ig-
natius Press, 2011), 198. A concise summary of Ratzinger’s argument in this essay can be
found in my piece by the same title, “Farewell to the Devil?” for the Gregorian Institute
blog (October 25, 2013).
68. Ratzinger, “Farewell to the Devil?” 199.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid. For other instances of Ratzinger applying these distinctions, see his “Zum
Problem der Entmythologisierung Des Neuen Testamentes,” Religionsunterricht an
höheren Schulen 3 (1960): 2–11 and Pidel’s discussion of it in “Joseph Ratzinger and Bibli-
cal Inerrancy,” 324ff.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  85
inger affirms that knowledge of what is revelation and what is only its
shell is ultimately discernible only by the living community of faith.71
The three realities of Scripture, tradition, and Magisterium “are not
static entities placed beside each other, but have to be seen as one liv-
ing organism of the word of God, which from Christ lives on in the
Church.”72

Donum and Usus of Prophecy

Related to the issue of discerning an author’s intention, Matthew
Lamb draws attention to another facet of Aquinas’s theology that is
particularly helpful for reconciling the presence of apparently errone-
ous texts within Scripture with the doctrine of biblical inspiration.
This involves the discovery that Aquinas’s treatment of inspiration
takes place within the context of the Holy Spirit’s gift of prophecy.
As Lamb says of the saint, “He lived in an age when the Bible was still
considered within the total context of the prophetic mission exercised
by the people of God. Scripture was not seen as the end product of
this mission but as a means of continuing it.”73 According to Paul Sy-
nave and Pierre Benoit, commentators on Aquinas whom Lamb dis-
cusses and at certain points critiques, the Angelic Doctor offers a cor-
rective for the Christian who might otherwise have a one-dimensional
understanding of revelation. As I alluded to above, Christians are of-
ten tempted to identify “revelation” with “revelations” or discrete infal-
lible propositions channeled to man by God above. In Thomas’s view,
however, the divine light infused when an inspired prophet receives a
revelation does not necessarily involve the perfect communication of
a particular supernatural idea. Simply put, due to the limitations in-
herent within man’s darkened intellect and weakened will, not every
idea presented on the sacred page reflects God’s own knowledge of the
universe.

71. Ratzinger, “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung Des Neuen Testamentes,” 11.
72. Jared Wicks, “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 276–77. For Ratzinger one
of the key principles that has been deployed in this community over time is the recogni-
tion that an Old Testament passage is “not directly true, in its bare literal meaning,” but
rather problematic passages within it are “valid insofar as they are part of the history
leading up to Christ.” Ratzinger, “Farewell to the Devil?” 200.
73. Lamb, in the Introduction to Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians, 7.
86  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

As Lamb explains, the key here rests on Aquinas’s distinction be-

tween the donum and the usus of the gift of prophecy. Aquinas writes:
The use of any prophecy is within the power of the prophet. . . . Hence, one
could prevent himself from using prophecy; the proper disposition is a neces-
sary requirement for the correct use of prophecy since the use of prophecy
proceeds from the created power of the prophet. Therefore, a determinate
disposition is also required.74
Thus even if the Holy Spirit inspires a sacred author-prophet, this
does not guarantee that this particular author has the requisite dispo-
sition to use the prophetic gift properly.
This is by no means to say that an error has been committed when
a particular sacred author fails to make perfect use of the donum he
has received from God. On the contrary, when considering questions
of biblical inspiration it is critically important that we not isolate in-
dividual authors and texts from the entire order of divine revelation
wisely established in God’s providence. Thus, says Lamb, “[T]he
emphasis is shifted from isolated individuals to God’s control of the
whole process in which the Bible was formed. The pre-required dis-
positions [of the Bible’s authors] were arranged for within the scope of
this special Providence.”75 That is to say, the very defects we observe
in Scripture turn out to be a most significant clue for grasping its true
purpose. If the reader will permit me to indulge in another quotation
from C. S. Lewis, “[T]he value of the Old Testament may be depen-
dent on what seems its imperfection.”76

Condescension and the Divine Pedagogy

Returning more directly to Ratzinger’s own remarks in the Eras-
mus Lecture, we find that another point of contact between Benedict
and Aquinas involves the recognition of how essential it is to grasp the

74. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 12, a. 4. Translation by Matthew Lamb in Aqui-

nas’s Commentary on Ephesians, 258. Lamb provides references to many other places
in Aquinas’s corpus in which he distinguishes the prophetic donum and usus; cf. ibid.,
258n20. For a more thorough discussion of inspiration and prophecy in Aquinas from
which many insights in this chapter were drawn, see Matthew Ramage, Dark Passages of
the Bible, 118–42.
75. Lamb, Introduction to Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians, 9.
76. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, 114.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  87
Christological teleology of salvation history. For Ratzinger, Thomas
serves as a salutary “counter-model” in the field of exegesis today, for
he presupposes the action of divine providence guiding salvation his-
tory to its destination in Christ. Christ is thus for Benedict “the unify-
ing principle” of history “which alone confers sense on it,” and God’s
action gradually leading his people towards Christ is “the principle of
the intelligibility of history.”77
Aquinas’s Christological teleology helps us answer certain ques-
tions which arise in light of the foregoing argument: Why did divine
providence permit Scripture’s authors to sometimes have imperfect
dispositions with regard to the gift of prophecy, and how does this im-
perfection contribute to the value of the Old Testament? The inner
intelligibility of God’s decision to permit certain defects in Scripture
is found within his choice to ennoble human beings as secondary or
instrumental causes of its authorship. While God is the primary au-
thor of Scripture, Dei Verbum affirms the Patristic tradition that he
“condescended” so as to achieve his purpose by means of human in-
struments who functioned as true authors.78 Thus the literal—or per-
haps better, literary—sense of Scripture is that which was intended by
Scripture’s human authors, who, by means of their literary craft, used
various forms and devices within a particular genre.
Yet Aquinas reminds us that the literal sense of Scripture must be
approached not only bearing in mind the literary peculiarities of a giv-
en work, but also with attention to how this work fits into the canon
of Scripture, which developed over a period of more than a thousand
years. Aquinas’s critical insight here lies in his consideration of the di-
vine pedagogy, the gradual teaching method by which God gradually
prepared his people over the centuries for the coming of Christ in the
flesh. As Matthew Lamb observes, for Thomas the Spirit’s prophetic
gift is likened to divine education: “Aquinas holds that education is a
process in which the teacher actualizes the potentialities of the stu-

77. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 24n37. Benedict here is citing

Maximino Arias Reyero, Thomas von Aquin als Exeget: Die Prinzipien seiner Schriftdeu-
tung und seine Lehre von den Schriftsinnen (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1971), 106; cf.
“Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 23n35.
78. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 11.
88  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

dents as regards knowledge and virtue.”79 In De veritate, a text refer-

enced by Lamb at various points in his notes, Thomas develops his di-
vine pedagogy hermeneutic by comparing the education of the whole
human race in divine things to the education of an individual: “Just as
there is a progress in the faith of an individual man over the course of
time, so there is a progress in faith for the whole human race. This is
why Gregory says that divine knowledge has increasingly grown over
the course of time.”80 In the same way that an individual believer slow-
ly appropriates the truths of the faith into his life, so too the people of
God gradually appropriates divine knowledge over the course of salva-
tion history.
As Aquinas proceeds to explain, God had to hand on the faith to
men in piecemeal form, not because he is an inept teacher, but because
this is the only way men can digest its content: “Man acquires a share
of this learning, not indeed all at once, but little by little, according
to the mode of his nature.”81 Israel, God’s pupil, could not perfectly
appropriate the divine teaching immediately because she assimilated
this teaching according to the mode of our weak human nature. As
Aquinas astutely observes, Scripture itself likens the state of the peo-
ple of Israel in the Old Testament to spiritual childhood before God
the Father:
The master, who has perfect knowledge of the art, does not deliver it all at
once to his disciple from the very outset, for he would not be able to take it
all in, but he condescends to the disciple’s capacity and instructs him little by
little. It is in this way that men made progress in the knowledge of faith as
time went on. Hence the Apostle (Galatians 3:24) compares the state of the
Old Testament to childhood.82
For Thomas, as for St. Paul, whose theology he invokes, God’s first-
born son Israel gradually made progress in knowledge of him in ac-
cordance with the divine Teacher’s most wise pedagogy. God conde-
scended and taught man in accordance with the way he learns best,

79. Lamb, in Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians, 261n29.

80. Thomas Aquinas, De veritate, q. 14, a. 11.
81. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 2, a. 3. See also Matthew Ramage,
Dark Passages of the Bible, 101.
82. Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 1, a. 7, ad 2.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  89
which is “little by little.” Ultimately, through the life and ministry of
Jesus Christ, man attained the perfection of divine knowledge.
Aquinas explores this divine teaching method elsewhere in com-
menting on the text from St. Paul just cited. He argues that God’s
teaching was perfectly suited to the needs and ability of the people of
God at every stage of divine revelation, taking into account the fact
that the people would not always fully grasp what he wished to convey.
In the words of Thomas:
Nothing prevents a thing being not perfect simply, and yet perfect in respect
of time: thus a boy is said to be perfect, not simply, but with regard to the
condition of time. So, too, precepts that are given to children are perfect in
comparison with the condition of those to whom they are given, although
they are not perfect simply. Hence the Apostle says (Gal 3:24): “The Law was
our pedagogue in Christ.”83
For Thomas, God was not unable or unwilling to teach Israel himself;
rather, it was precisely because of his knowledge of frail human nature
that he used tangible and even transitory means like the Law. Thus he
is able to say that “nothing prevents a thing being not perfect simply,
and yet perfect in respect of time.” In other words, the reality is that
God knew the Law was imperfect and did not contain the fullness of
truth. However, given man’s frail intellect and hard heart it was “per-
fect in respect of time,” meaning that God adapted his teaching to the
needs of his disciple Israel at every moment throughout the course of
divine revelation. Herein lies the import of C. S. Lewis’s words cited
above: the very value of the Old Testament depends upon a certain
imperfection which God permitted within it so as to reveal himself in
a way that respects and ennobles our human nature.
The importance of what Aquinas and Lewis are saying here comes
into full relief if one steps back to observe just how often Benedict XVI
has insisted upon a hermeneutic of divine pedagogy over the past two
decades. His Verbum Domini is particularly significant because it has a
section entitled “The ‘Dark’ Passages of the Bible,” in which the pontiff
does this, though without precisely the same vocabulary. Benedict states
that instances of violence and immorality in the Bible can be adequately

83. Ibid., I-II, q. 98, a. 2, ad 1.

90  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

addressed only if Catholics take seriously the fact that “God’s plan is
manifested progressively and it is accomplished slowly, in successive stag-
es and despite human resistance.” He explains that God patiently and
gradually revealed himself in order to “guide and educate . . . training
his people in preparation for the Gospel.” Since “revelation is suited to
the cultural and moral level of distant times,” it narrates certain things
“without explicitly denouncing the immorality of such things,” a fact
that “can cause the modern reader to be taken aback.” What is needed
for correct interpretation, therefore, is “a training that interprets the
texts in their historical-literary context [another way of saying Meth-
od B] and within the Christian perspective [Method A] which has as its
ultimate hermeneutical key ‘the Gospel and the new commandment of
Jesus Christ brought about in the paschal mystery.’”84
The above text itself echoes the words of Dei Verbum and the later
Catechism of the Catholic Church, which eloquently states: “The divine
plan of revelation . . . involves a specific divine pedagogy: God com-
municates himself to man gradually. He prepares him to welcome by
stages the supernatural revelation that is to culminate in the person
and mission of the incarnate Word, Jesus Christ.”85 This patristically
based hermeneutic of divine pedagogy articulated by Benedict and the
Catechism is precisely the bridge that enables one to reconcile the uni-
ty of Scripture traditionally emphasized by Christian exegetes with
the development, diversity, and apparent contradictions observed by
modern scholars. For the hermeneutic of divine pedagogy affirms that
Scripture has a unity in light of the fact that it proceeds from God’s
one wise educational plan for mankind and communicates God him-
self to man. At the same time, this hermeneutic is comfortable with
diversity and apparent contradictions in Scripture since it sees these
within the greater context of their progression toward Christ.86

84. Benedict XVI, VD §42 (emphasis original); cf. §§11 and 20 for Benedict’s use of
the term “divine pedagogy.”
85. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §53. I have cited the Catechism here because
of its clarity and conciseness, but the Catechism itself is summarizing the Second Vati-
can Council constitution Dei Verbum, §15. For other magisterial statements of the divine
pedagogy, see Pius XI, Mit Brennender Sorge, §15 and Lumen Gentium, §9, which explain
Israel’s relationship with God in terms of gradual instruction.”
86. “The Bible is the condensation of a process of revelation which is much greater and
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  91
To further draw out the implications of this suggestion, I would
like to sample some more texts that illustrate the importance Benedict
places on a hermeneutic that takes seriously the divine pedagogy. In
his In the Beginning, he describes the Bible as the story of a twofold
struggle: God’s struggle to “make himself understandable to them over
the course of time,” and the people of God’s struggle to “seize hold of
God over the course of time.” This familiarization between God and
man was a journey of faith, and “only in the process of this journeying
was the Bible’s real way of declaring itself formed, step by step.” The
message of the Bible becomes clearer as salvation history progresses
and man acquires an increasing ability to penetrate the divine myster-
ies. Ultimately, however, the whole Old Testament is “an advance to-
ward Christ,” and as such its real meaning becomes clear only in light
of him who is its end. Benedict therefore argues that exegetes interpret
individual texts correctly only when they “see in the text where this
way is tending and what its inner direction is.”87
Benedict’s revealing interview God and the World is also illuminat-
ing, especially given the question concerning how the Christian Scrip-
tures apparently implicate God in evil in a way that seems comparable
with the Koran’s portrait of God. It is noteworthy that in this work
Benedict treats precisely the issue of whether the Scriptures exhibit
development. Contrasting Islam’s belief that the Koran was dictated
directly to Muhammad by God, he observes that the books of the
Bible “bear the impression of a history that [God] has been guiding,”
since they were composed and developed over a thousand years, medi-
ated by “quite different stages of history and of civilization.”88 As in
the texts just discussed, so here he explains, “The Bible is not a text-

inexhaustible. . . . It is then part of a living organism which, through the vicissitudes of

history, nonetheless conserves its identity.” Benedict XVI, “Sources and Transmission of
the Faith,” Communio 10 (1983): 28.
87. Benedict XVI, In the Beginning, 10–11. See also Benedict’s Jesus of Nazareth:
From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, where he explains that the process of the Bible’s
formation was “not linear . . . but when you watch it unfold in light of Jesus Christ, you
can see it moving in a single overall direction.” According to Benedict and his “Christ­
ological hermeneutic,” Christ is “the key to the whole” of Scripture. Benedict, Jesus of
Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, xix.
88. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 151–52 (emphasis added).
92  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

book about God and divine matters but contains images with percep-
tions and insights in the course of development, and through these
images, slowly and step by step, a historical reality is coming into exis-
tence.”89 As Ratzinger stated on the eve of Vatican II’s solemn inaugu-
ration, this feature of biblical revelation is precisely what distinguish-
es the Bible from the religious texts of other great world religions:
“[T]hese are taken to be timeless divine dictations, whereas the Bible
is the result of God’s historical dialogue with human beings and only
from this history does it have meaning and significance.”90
But if the Christian cannot turn to a given page of the Bible for
the fullness of revealed truth, then where can he find it? Ratzinger an-
swers, “The level on which I perceive the Bible as God’s Word is that
of the unity of God’s history. . . . In our Christian reading of it, we are
more than ever convinced, as we said, that the New Testament offers
us the key to understanding the Old.”91 The idea I wish to convey by
sampling these works of Benedict on the importance of a divine peda-
gogy hermeneutic is summarized well in a final work, Introduction to
Christianity, in which he states quite simply, “Anyone who wishes to
understand the biblical belief in God must follow its historical devel-
opment from its origins with the patriarchs of Israel right up to the
last books of the New Testament.”92
89. “Let us compare Holy Scripture with the Koran, for example. Moslems believe
that the Koran was directly dictated by God. It is not mediated by any history; no human
intermediary was needed; it is a message direct from God. The Bible, on the other hand,
is quite different. It is mediated to us by a history, and even as a book it extends over a period
of more than a thousand years. The question of whether or not Moses may have been a
writer is one we can happily leave to one side. It is still true that the biblical literature
grew up over a thousand-year history and thus moves through quite different stages of
history and of civilization, which are all reflected in it. In the first three chapters of Gen-
esis, for instance, we meet with a quite different form of culture from what came later, in
the exilic literature, or in the wisdom literature, and then finally in the literature of the
New Testament. It becomes clear that God did not just dictate these words but rather
that they bear the impression of a history that he has been guiding; they have come into being
as a witness to that history.” Ibid. (emphasis added)
90. In Jared Wicks’s “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger,” 280.
91. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 153 (emphasis added). Benedict again goes on
to speak of the “process of collective development” and the “many stages of mediation” by
which the biblical books gradually were able to “bring the history of God’s people and of
God’s guidance to verbal expression.”
92. Benedict XVI, Introduction to Christianity, 116. It is illuminating to read the
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  93

The Spiritual Sense

Another connection between Benedict and Aquinas concerns their
agreement about the need for a rich doctrine of the senses of Scripture.
While I believe that the principles already articulated are sufficient
to account for certain troublesome biblical texts from an apologetics
perspective, Benedict also identifies spiritual exegesis as an essential
component of his programme. Indeed, it is here that the word of God
achieves its end of taking flesh in our human lives and becoming truly a
“living” word. In Verbum Domini, Benedict draws on Aquinas, himself
citing Augustine, to emphasize the importance of the spiritual sense.
In reality “it is impossible for anyone to attain to knowledge of that
truth unless he first have infused faith in Christ” since “the letter, even
that of the Gospel, would kill, were there not the inward grace of heal-
ing faith.”93 In the Erasmus Lecture Benedict speaks to this at greater
length:
To discover how each given historical word intrinsically transcends itself, and
thus to recognize the intrinsic rightness of the rereadings by which the Bible
progressively interweaves event and sense, is one of the tasks of objective in-
terpretation. It is a task for which suitable methods can and must be found.
In this sense, the exegetical maxim of Thomas Aquinas is much to the point:
“The task of the good interpreter is not to consider words, but sense.”94
In contrast with those whose methodologies focus solely on the
“words” of Scripture, Benedict shares with Aquinas the conviction
that the words of Scripture were meant to be “re-read” over time, to
point beyond themselves to a reality revealed through them but which
transcends them.95 In this way, their rich teaching on the senses of
Scripture, while giving due attention to its words, also points beyond
the words so as to show that even Scripture’s most problematic pas-

entire chapter from which this citation is taken, as in it Benedict traces the roots of Is-
rael’s monotheism such as it developed throughout the Old Testament period.
93. VD §29; cf. ST I-II, q. 106, a. 2.
94. Benedict XVI, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 26 (emphasis added), citing
Thomas Aquinas, In Matthaeum, XXVII, n. 2321 (ed. R. Cai [Turin/Rome: Marietti,
1951], 358). Cf. VD §37. He cites Aquinas three times in this work.
95. For the reality of revelation being broader than the Bible, see Benedict’s “Biblical
Interpretation in Conflict,” 26, and VD §16.
94  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

sages may put believers in touch with Christ. The text in its whole-
ness, Benedict says, must become Rabbenu, “our teacher.”96 Method A
exegesis indicates that the texts of Scripture signify something in ad-
dition to their human authors’ original intended meaning: realities in
the lives of believers of all ages who meditate on these texts in order to
gain the knowledge and strength they need to live a life in Christ. As
Benedict indicates, Christians may be privy to the fullness of revela-
tion in a way our Old Testament forefathers were not, but the ancient
truths taught therein “are of course valid for the whole of history, for
all places and times” and “always need to be relearned.”97

A Word on Sobriety with Respect to Aquinas

As Ratzinger famously stated in his Erasmus Lecture, however,
simply retreating to past thinkers like Aquinas is not a viable path
out of our modern exegetical problems. Lest one take away from this
chapter an overly romanticized view of Thomas’s theology of inspira-
tion, it is worth recalling that Thomas himself did draw out the full
implications of his own principles. Lamb observes:
St. Thomas was aware of a certain growth or development in the revelation
of supernatural mysteries, even though he could scarcely perceive the histori-
cal dimensions of such an evolution. Any reflections on the Bible’s inerrancy
must take this development into account. Truth in God undergoes no change,
but man’s apprehension of the truth does.98
In other words, notwithstanding the integrity of Aquinas’s princi-
ples, the exegetical horizon of his day did not allow him to perceive

96. “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 27. This dimension of the divine pedago-
gy is eloquently described by the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue: “[The
Church] takes her lead from divine pedagogy. This means learning from Jesus himself,
and observing the times and seasons as prompted by the Spirit. Jesus only progressively
revealed to his hearers the meaning of the Kingdom, God’s plan of salvation realized in
his own mystery. Only gradually, and with infinite care, did he unveil for them the impli-
cations of his message, his identity as the Son of God, the scandal of the Cross. Even his
closest disciples, as the Gospels testify, reached full faith in their Master only through
their Easter experience and the gift of the Spirit. Those who wish to become disciples of
Jesus today will pass through the same process of discovery and commitment.” Dialogue and
Proclamation, §69 (emphasis added).
97. Benedict XVI, God and the World, 154.
98. Lamb, in his Introduction to Aquinas’s Commentary on Ephesians, 10.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  95
the extent of historical development within the Scriptures which we
now recognize thanks to modern exegesis. A theology of inspiration
grounded in Aquinas alone is thus impossible; as I insisted above, the
only way out of the modern exegetical quagmire is to march boldly
through it. For our emeritus pontiff Benedict XVI, this effort entails
synthesizing the tools and findings that modern criticism has to offer
with the best of the Christian exegetical tradition. And in Benedict’s
view, Aquinas’ theology of inspiration contains principles which ought
to play an important role in such a synthesis.

Conclusion: The Reception of Benedict’s Vision in

Recent Curial Documents
In the final section of this chapter, we turn our attention from
Benedict’s appropriation of the tradition to some comments on how
Benedict’s approach has been received in three recent curial docu-
ments. This reception of Benedict’s exegetical vision at a very high
level within the Church reveals that it is not something unique to him
but rather an authentic appropriation of Dei Verbum in the Church
today. In its 2011 Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria,
the International Theological Commission (ITC) echoes the vision of
Vatican II and Benedict in identifying the task of exegesis as that of
ascertaining “what God has wished to communicate to us.”99 Further,
echoing Ratzinger and the Catechism, it bids the interpreter to bear in
mind the entirety of sacred tradition, cognizant that Christianity is
not primarily a “religion of the book” but rather of the living Word,
the person Jesus Christ. Echoing language employed by Ratzinger
throughout his career, it teaches that the Scriptures are “witnesses of
faith” and “testify” to the Gospel revelation which is something greater
within which the Bible finds its proper context.100

99. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 12; International Theological Commis-
sion, Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria, 21–22.
100. This terminology appears a number of times within the document. For ex-
ample, see Theology Today, 7, 26, and 30: “The gospel of God is fundamentally testified
by the sacred Scripture of both Old and New Testaments. . . . Tradition is the faithful
transmission of the Word of God, witnessed in the canon of Scripture by the prophets
and the apostles and in the leiturgia (liturgy), martyria (testimony) and diakonia (service)
of the Church.” Ibid., 7. For a more thorough discussion of how the Scriptures witness or
96  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

In the course of its 2014 God the Trinity and the Unity of Humanity,
the ITC offers principles to reconcile the many Old Testament texts
in which God ostensibly acts against his own nature by commanding
deeds such as the slaughter of men, women, and children.101 While
this theme is not the central focus of this volume, it is important to
make a couple observations. First, the ITC follows Benedict in ac-
knowledging the incompatibility of violence with the nature of God
such as we understand it through reason.102 Second, like Benedict the
ITC emphasizes that the Christian must interpret the entire Old Tes-
tament in light of its gradual progression toward Jesus Christ, what
above was described in terms of the divine pedagogy. The document
describes the Old Testament’s redaction in terms of an evolutionary
dynamic (dinamica evolutiva) wherein the faith of ancient Israel was
gradually purified through a reconfiguration of memory (riconfigura-
zione della memoria). The ITC argues that it is from the retrospective
vantage point of the fullness of faith that the entire antecedent process
of divine revelation ought to be evaluated.103
attest to revelation, see my Dark Passages of the Bible, especially 7n8 and 65–66. See also
Ratzinger’s comments on the eve of Vatican II’s solemn inauguration: “Then it is clear
that revelation itself is always more than a formulated witness in Scripture; for revelation
is the living reality that surrounds Scripture and expands it.” “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph
Ratzinger,” 271–72.
101. ITC, God the Trinity and the Unity of Humanity, 26.
102. Ibid., 24. Since there currently exists no official English text of this work in
English, translations used in this volume are mine.
103. Ibid., 27. Whereas the ITC speaks here of developments within the Bible in
evolutionary terms, John Henry Newman sees good reason not to describe the phenom-
enon precisely in this way. See his Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine, where
he argues for the distinction between development and evolution, based on the Church’s
profession that the substance of the faith has not changed over time, as would be implied
if one adopted the evolutionary paradigm of species change. In this same paragraph the
ITC draws a parallel between the progressiveness of divine revelation and development
of doctrine within the Church. Here it is Newman again who sees such an analogy when
he writes: “The prophetic Revelation is, in matter of fact . . . a process of development: the
earlier prophecies are pregnant texts out of which the succeeding announcements grow;
they are types. It is not that first one truth is told, then another; but the whole truth or
large portions of it are told at once, yet only in their rudiments, or in miniature, and they
are expanded and finished in their parts, as the course of revelation proceeds.” Newman,
Essay, 64. Newman has the correct intuition that there exists an underlying “Idea” be-
hind revelation itself which was clarified gradually over time as Israel grew in her ability
to apprehend the Lord’s teaching. Indeed right after the passage just cited he says, “The
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  97
Most significantly for our purposes, in 2014 the Pontifical Bibli-
cal Commission (PBC) issued a document that bears directly upon
our quest in this volume. The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture
admirably executes the exegetical vision outlined in Vatican II’s Dei
Verbum and Benedict XVI’s Verbum Domini, works upon which it
explicitly draws. To begin, the PBC follows Benedict in unabashedly
confronting the problems raised by modern scholarship and recogniz-
ing the threat they pose to Christian belief:
The whole value for the life and mission of the Church depends on their in-
spiration and truth. . . . Nevertheless, the truth present in the sacred texts is
not always easily recognizable. At times, there are at least apparent contrasts
between what is read in the biblical accounts and the findings of the natural
and historical sciences. These sciences appear to contradict what the biblical
writings affirm and place their truth in doubt.104
The PBC remains convinced that eliminating problematic passages
from our Bible study or from the public reading of Scripture in the
liturgical assembly will not do, even as its members remain cognizant
of “contradictions of a geographical, historical, and scientific nature,
which are rather frequent in the Bible.”105 Here again, the only way
out of these apparent contradictions is to be found by tackling them
head-on: “[W]e cannot eliminate any passage from the narrative; the
exegete must strive to find the significance of every phrase in the con-
text of the narrative as a whole.”106
In agreement with the ITC and Benedict’s vision discussed above,
the PBC affirms that a guiding hermeneutical principle necessary
for this task involves the effort to ascertain the intention underlying a
thorny biblical text. But here this intention is discussed in greater detail:
In the Bible, we encounter many and various themes. An attentive reading,
however, shows that the primary and dominating theme is God and his salvific
plan for human beings. The truth which we find in Sacred Scripture essen-

whole Bible, not its prophetical portions only, is written on the principle of development”
and “It is certain that developments of Revelation proceeded all through the Old Dispen-
sation down to the very end of our Lord’s ministry.” Newman, Essay, 65, 67–68
104. Pontifical Biblical Commission, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture
(Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 2014), xiii.
105. Ibid., 163, 167.
106. Ibid., 124.
98  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

tially concerns God and his relationship with his creatures. . . . To respond to
the questions that arise in the interpretation of these difficult texts, it is nec-
essary to study them carefully, taking into account the findings of the modern
sciences and, simultaneously, the main theme of the texts, namely, God and
his plan of salvation. Such an approach shows how the doubts raised against
their truth and origin in God can be resolved.107
In other words, addressing believers’ doubts concerning the truth of
Scripture requires making it clear that the essence or main theme (in
other words, the guiding intention) of the Scriptures is to reveal God
and his plan for our salvation. All other, problematic material with-
in the canon must be viewed in light of this purpose. Closely echo-
ing Benedict’s understanding of the divine pedagogy, the PBC goes
on to affirm that troublesome passages ultimately make sense only in
light of their progression toward Jesus Christ: “The other definitions
of God in the biblical writings are oriented toward the Word of God
made man in Jesus Christ. This incarnate word becomes the key to
their interpretation.”108
Another crucial section from the PBC’s document bears the title
“Multiform Truth.” Here the commission reminds us that the prin-
ciple of unity within multiplicity has always been recognized by the
Church.109 Echoing the teaching laid out in Benedict’s Verbum Domi-
ni, it is argued that not all biblical authors convey the same message
for the very reason that they lived in completely different epochs and
cultural contexts:
The span of time encompassed by the literature of the Bible is without doubt
very extensive, since it goes beyond a millennium; it necessarily reveals the
legacy of concepts tied to a particular era, of opinions which are the fruit of
experience or concerns characteristic of a particular epoch of the People of

107. Ibid., xiv (emphasis added).

108. Ibid. Fascinatingly, at this point the commission weighs in emphatically on the
question of restricted or unrestricted biblical inerrancy: “It is obvious that these con-
siderations do not resolve all the difficulties, but it is undeniable that Dei Verbum, with
the expression ‘the truth . . . for the sake of our salvation’ restricts biblical truth to divine
revelation which concerns God himself and the salvation of the human race.” Ibid., 125.
It is not my purpose here to weigh in on this debate, but it is noteworthy that a document
containing this claim received the nihil obstat of the prefect of the Congregation for the
Doctrine of the Faith.
109. Ibid., 158.
 Benedict XVI and “Method C”  99
God. . . . The duty of the interpreter is to avoid a fundamentalist reading of
Scripture so as to situate the various formulations of the sacred text in their
historical context, according to the literary genres then in vogue.110
The upshot of this principle is that certain Old Testament texts will
reflect the culture in which they were written as much as they reflect
God’s own mind about how we are to go about our daily lives. To be
sure, salvation history “does not exist without a historical nucleus,” but
that does not amount to requiring a “fundamentalist reading” wherein
every deed of a biblical patriarch happened precisely as recorded and
ought to be emulated today.111
But the PBC does not stop there: “This multiform manifestation
of divine truth should not be restricted to the literature of the Old
Testament.” Unity within diversity is a principle applicable also and
especially in the case of the Gospels on which the present volume fo-
cuses. Thus, what is written in the Gospel according to Luke, for ex-
ample, “should be respected and supported, even if it does not coincide
exactly with what Mark or John say.”112 This extension of multiform
truth to the text of the New Testament is an important point that is
essential to get right if the Christian is to have any hope of a serious
engagement with modern biblical criticism. The reason for this is that
historical-critical scholarship is unanimous in recognizing a diversity
of voices within the New Testament. A serious Bible student who is
also a believer must find a way to acknowledge this diversity while see-
ing within it an expression of truth with an underlying unity that re-
flects the divine wisdom. Ironically, the agnostic and the fundamental-
ist concur in rejecting the coexistence of this truth with diversity, but
the Catholic Church insists that the two belong together. The ques-
tion we will need to address in later chapters is how the two coexist.
That said, the PBC is quite clear in affirming that this inspired
unity within diversity is a first principle that cannot be proven by rea-
son alone. Describing its own purpose, the document states:
In this document, then, the PBC does not intend to demonstrate the fact of
the inspiration of the biblical writings, which is a task for fundamental theol-

110. Ibid., 164–65. 111. Ibid., 124.

112. Ibid., 164.
100  Benedict XVI and “Method C”

ogy. We begin, rather, from the truth of faith according to which the books of
Sacred Scripture are inspired by God and communicate his Word; our con-
tribution will be only to clarify their nature, as it appears from the testimony
of the writings themselves.113
In the conclusion to our volume we will return to this important point
on the role of first principles within our exegetical debates. But by way
of concluding this summary of the PBC’s recent work, I would like to
recall just one more point about what the PBC saw as its purpose in
drafting the piece:
The brevity of the treatment may not always be satisfactory, but the herme-
neutical principles set forth here should prove helpful, as should some points
on specific questions. . . . [W]hat is formulated here is a possible hermeneu-
tical strategy with the intention of provoking further reflection in dialogue
with other interpreters of the sacred text.114
The same could be said both with regard to the present volume and to
Dark Passages of the Bible that preceded it. The two texts take up chal-
lenging passages from the Old and New Testaments and attempt to
explain them in light of the Church’s authoritative interpretive prin-
ciples. But even if there turns out to be much wanting in my argument
about a given passage here and there, I am convinced that the vision of
Benedict XVI to which I am pointing is something that the Church
needs to receive in earnest if we are to have any hope of engaging in-
fluential biblical critics like Ehrman inside and outside the academy
today.115

113. Ibid., 3.
114. Ibid., 168.
115. This vision is also pregnant with important ramifications beyond the field of
biblical studies: “This polyphony of sacred voices is offered to the Church as a model so
that she might acquire, in the present, the same capacity to combine the unity of the mes-
sage to be transmitted to humanity, with the necessary respect for the multiform variet-
ies of individual experiences, cultures, and gifts bestowed by God.” Ibid., 164.
 4
The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ:
Bart Ehrman

As we saw at the end of the last chapter, the International Theo-

logical Commission and the Pontifical Biblical Commission have been
putting into practice key aspects of Benedict’s exegetical vision in their
recent documents. Recourse to divine pedagogy, the effort to deter-
mine authorial assertions, and the recognition of a multiform truth
within Scripture are all constitutive features of this endeavor. In the
following chapters the import of these principles will become evident
as we apply Benedict’s hermeneutical proposal in the effort to make
sense of some of the most difficult questions concerning the Gospels.
The aim will be to provide a compelling alternative approach to the
study of Jesus’ life that eschews crucial pitfalls endemic to the her-
meneutic of suspicion typical of many modern scholars like Ehrman.
Confronting the same troublesome biblical data as these thinkers,
Benedict’s approach is anything but naïve, yet it leads him to draw very
different conclusions from those of Ehrman. We will begin here in
this chapter by surveying Ehrman’s approach; in the next chapter we
will examine how Benedict addresses the same sort of issues.
In chapter 1 of this book, I made a few brief notes in the introduc-
tion regarding Ehrman’s position on the divinity and Resurrection of
Jesus. In the present chapter, arguments from a few of his books will

101
102  Bart Ehrman

be explored in greater depth, so as to show that their gravity beckons

more than a superficial apologetic response on the part of the Chris-
tian faithful. My aim in this chapter will be achieved if by the end of it
the reader feels significantly challenged while also being able to iden-
tify certain areas in which Ehrman’s approach ought to be challenged.

Misquoting Jesus
In this book Ehrman is concerned with the question of how we got
the Bible. In the author’s own words, the text’s overarching theses are
as follows:
• We do not have the originals of any of the books of the New Testament.
• The copies we have were made much later, in most instances many cen-
turies later.
• We have thousands of these copies, in Greek—the language in which of
all the New Testament books were originally written.
• All of these copies contain mistakes—accidental slips on the part of
the scribes who made them or intentional alterations by scribes wanting to
change the text to make it say what they wanted it to mean (or thought that
it did mean).
• We do not know how many mistakes there are among our surviving
copies, but they appear to number in the hundreds of thousands. It is safe to
put the matter in comparative terms: there are more differences in our manu-
scripts than there are words in the New Testament.
• The vast majority of these mistakes are completely insignificant, show-
ing us nothing more than that scribes in antiquity could spell no better than
most people can today.
• But some of the mistakes matter—a lot. Some of them affect the inter-
pretation of a verse, a chapter, or an entire book. Others reveal the kinds of
concerns that were affecting scribes, who sometimes altered the text in light
of debates and controversies going on in their own surroundings.
• The task of the textual critic is both to figure out what the author of a
text actually wrote and to understand why scribes modified the text (to help
us understand the context within which scribes were working).
• Despite the fact that scholars have been working diligently at these
tasks for three hundred years, there continue to be heated differences of opin-
ion. There are some passages where serious and very smart scholars disagree
about what the original text said, and there are some places where we will
probably never know what the original text said.1

1. The bullet points above are Ehrman’s own summary of Misquoting Jesus as found
in its sequel, Jesus, Interrupted, 183–84. Ehrman argues further that the Bible, in addition
 Bart Ehrman  103
According to Ehrman, the conservative response to his arguments in
Misquoting Jesus has generally been to claim that the variants in extant
biblical manuscripts have no bearing on what the texts mean or on the
theological conclusions one draws from them.
Ehrman argues that just the opposite is the case. Some of the bib-
lical manuscript variants, he says, really matter when it comes to im-
portant questions like the following:
Was Jesus an angry man? Was he completely distraught in the face of death?
Did he tell his disciples that they could drink poison without being harmed?
Did he let an adulteress off the hook with nothing but a mild warning? Is the
doctrine of the Trinity explicitly taught in the New Testament? Is Jesus actu-
ally called the “unique God” there? Does the New Testament indicate that
even the Son of God himself does not know when the end will come? The
questions go on and on, and all of them are related to how one resolves dif-
ficulties in the manuscript tradition as it has come down to us.2
Depending on which manuscript variant one follows, radically di-
vergent answers to each of these questions may be given. Of course, a
person reading the Bible in English may be completely unaware of the
fact that what he is reading is a translation from a critical edition made
by a team of scholars who decided which particular extant manuscript
to follow in a given case.3
The fact that we have to rely on these very human decisions to as-
certain the original words of Jesus leads some people like Ehrman to
view the doctrine of inspiration as “irrelevant to the Bible as we have
it.” Why? We are not actually in possession of the original words of
the Gospels which purport to give us Jesus’ words. Even if inspiration
is true, argues Ehrman, then “the words God reputedly inspired had
been changed and, in some cases, lost.”4
But that is not all. As Ehrman argues, it is not just in the scrib-
al text that we find crucial differences on questions that bear on the

to containing mistakes, contains a great deal of what most people today would call lies.
For a book-length treatment of this, see his Forged: Writing in the Name of God : Why the
Bible’s Authors Are Not Who We Think They Are (New York: HarperOne, 2011).
2. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 208.
3. For a discussion of what the Christian is to make of these differences in manu-
script traditions, see my Dark Passages of the Bible, 62–68.
4. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus, 211.
104  Bart Ehrman

foundations of the Christian faith. The original Gospel texts them-

selves are “very human” works, a realization which Ehrman reflects
upon anecdotally as he is wont to do in his popular books:
The more I reflected on these matters, the more I began to see that the au-
thors of the New Testament were very much like the scribes who would later
transmit those authors’ writings. The authors too were human beings with
needs, beliefs, worldviews, opinions, loves, hates, longings, desires, situations,
problems—and surely all these things affected what they wrote . . .
And so I began to see that since each of these authors is different, it was
not appropriate to think that any one of them meant the same thing as some
other author meant—any more than it is fair to say that what I mean in this
book must be the same as what some other author writing about textual criti-
cism means in his or her book. We might mean different things. How can you
tell? Only by reading each of us carefully and seeing what each of us has to
say—not by pretending that we are both saying the same thing. We’re often
saying very different things.5
Ehrman laments that most readers do not take seriously the changes
made between one Gospel and another. For example, Mark (whom
scholars—including Ratzinger—almost universally recognize to be
the first Gospel) reports Jesus crying out “My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?” After this, he utters a loud cry and dies. Luke
almost certainly had this version of the story available to him, and
he modified it significantly by removing Mark’s comment that Jesus
was highly distraught. In Ehrman’s words, “The point is that Luke
changed the tradition he inherited. Readers completely misinterpret
Luke if they fail to realize this—as happens, for example, when they
assume that Mark and Luke are in fact saying the same thing about
Jesus.”6 At the end of the day, a person who pretends that the Gospels
are all saying the same thing “is not reading the Gospels themselves—
he or she is making up a new Gospel consisting of the four in the New
Testament, a new Gospel that is not like any of the ones that have
come down to us.”7 With this statement a faithful exegete like Bene-
dict XVI need not disagree, as we will see in later chapters. However,
Benedict and Ehrman certainly do come down on different sides when

5. Ibid., 212.
6. Ibid., 214.
7. Ibid.
 Bart Ehrman  105
it comes to the question of whether the differences between the four
different crucifixion accounts touch the substance of the tradition.
However, there are also more substantial criticisms of Ehrman’s
project, such as the following: there exist important reasons to think
that Benedict is right in seeing the four Gospel accounts as substan-
tially the same—and indeed substantially the same as the disciples’
pre-Easter memories. Michael Bird, while certainly aware that the
Gospels do not contain verbatim transcripts of Jesus’ words and deeds,
nevertheless writes:
[W]hat Ehrman says about the New Testament manuscripts makes his in-
quiry about Jesus methodologically impossible. If the New Testament was so
heavily corrupted, then how can you use it as your primary source to recon-
struct Jesus’ life? Well, to be honest, you can’t, but for some reason Ehrman
is not perturbed by this. Ehrman likes to play the part of the super-skeptic
when it suits him, but on other occasions he seems to move seamlessly from
his English Bible all the way back to Jesus of Galilee as if none of these criti-
cal issues existed. . . . Approaches like Ehrman’s, which begin by casting doubt
on the historical value of the Gospels for reconstructing the life of Jesus, but
then proceed to formulate a hypothesis about the historical Jesus anyway, are
essentially creating a vacuum and then filling it with scholarly fiction.8
Dale Allison likewise writes of the Gospels, “Either they tend to
preserve pre-Easter memories or they do not. In the former case, we
have some possibility of getting somewhere. But in the latter case, our
questing for Jesus is probably pointless and we should consider sur-
rendering to ignorance.”9 Bird and Allison together make the case that
the quest of skeptics like Ehrman is to a certain extent self-defeating,
for such interpreters are asking their audience to accept arguments
based on a text (the New Testament) which they themselves do not
view as a reliable historical witness. Among many, this skepticism ex-
tends to the Gospel of Mark, which is reckoned the earliest Gospel by
most scholars. But once we start claiming that the true words of Jesus
have been substantially altered already in Mark’s Gospel, our project

8. Michael Bird, How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine
Nature—A Response to Bart Ehrman (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan 2014), 48–49.
9. Dale Allison, “The Historians’ Jesus and the Church,” in Seeking the Identity of
Jesus: A Pilgrimage, ed. Richard B. Hays and Beverly R. Gaventa (Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2008), 84–85.
106  Bart Ehrman

has essentially collapsed in on itself. Thus we can say of Ehrman what

N. T. Wright says of John Dominic Crossan: “We may say of Crossan,
as he says of Mark, that he is such a gifted script-writer that we are
lured into imagining that his scheme is actually historical.”10

Jesus, Interrupted
The sequel to Misquoting Jesus, Ehrman’s Jesus, Interrupted, rehash-
es many of his earlier arguments while adding a few others that bolster
his case. For example, his rejection of C. S. Lewis famous “trilemma”
argument was mentioned in the Introduction. The following is Eh-
rman’s own summary of the results from his inquiry in this book:
• I came to see that there were flat-out discrepancies among the books
of the New Testament. Sometimes these discrepancies could be reconciled
if one worked hard enough at it with pious imagination; other times the dis-
crepancies could not, in my judgment, be reconciled, however fanciful the ex-
planation (Jesus dies on different days in Mark and John).
• I further came to see that these differences related not just to small de-
tails here and there. Sometimes different authors had completely different
understandings of important issues: Was Jesus in doubt and despair on the
way to the cross (Mark) or calm and in control (Luke)? Did Jesus’ death pro-
vide an atonement for sin (Mark and Paul) or not (Luke)? Did Jesus perform
signs to prove who he was (John) or did he refuse to do so (Matthew)? Must
Jesus’ followers keep the law if they are to enter the Kingdom (Matthew) or
absolutely not (Paul)?
• In addition, I came to see that many of the books of the New Testament
were not written by the people to whom they are attributed (Matthew and
John) or by the people who claimed to be writing them (2 Peter, 1 Timothy).
Most of these books appeared to have been written after the apostles them-
selves were dead; only eight of the twenty-seven books are almost certain to
have been written by the people traditionally thought to be their authors.
• The Gospels for the most part do not provide disinterested factual in-
formation about Jesus, but contain stories that had been in oral circulation
for decades before being written down. This makes it very difficult to know
what Jesus actually said, did, and experienced. Scholars have devised ways to
get around these problems, but the reality is that the Jesus portrayed in the
Gospels (for example, the divine being become human in the Gospel of John)
represents a later understanding of who Jesus was, not a historical account of
who he really was.

10. N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, 65.

 Bart Ehrman  107
• There were lots of other Gospels available to the early Christians, as
well as epistles, Acts, and apocalypses. Many of these claimed to be written
by apostles, and on the surface such claims are no more or less plausible than
the claims of the books that eventually came to make up the New Testament.
This raises the question of who made the decisions about which books to in-
clude, and of what grounds they had for making the decisions. Is it possible
that nonapostolic books were let into the canon by church leaders who simply
didn’t know any better? Is it possible that books that should have been in-
cluded were left out?
• The creation of the Christian canon was not the only invention of the
early Church. A whole range of theological perspectives came into existence,
not during the life of Jesus or even through the teachings of his original apos-
tles but later, as the Christian church grew and came to be transformed into
a new religion rather than a sect of Judaism. These include some of the most
important Christian doctrines, such as that of a suffering Messiah, the divin-
ity of Christ, the Trinity, and the existence of heaven and hell.11
For the most part, Ehrman’s claims above are not controversial among
biblical scholars. However, important differences will emerge in the
next chapter when we contrast how he and Benedict handle the same
thorny data.
In the meantime, however, it should be noted that strong argu-
ments have been put forth against the commonplace presupposition
that most of the New Testament books were written after the apostles
were dead. Says Richard Bauckham:
The assumption that Jesus traditions circulated anonymously in the early
church . . . was propagated by the form critics as a corollary of their use of the
model of folklore, which is passed down anonymously by communities. The
Gospels, they thought, were folk literature, similarly anonymous.12
Against Ehrman, Bauckham recalls that if one looks at the actual
evidence available for the gospel titles, our earliest extant manuscripts
reveal that the Gospels were never known by other names and that

11. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 273–75.

12. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006), 300. In like manner, Martin Hengel helpfully
observes that, in the ancient world, “[a]nonymous works were relatively rare and must
have been given a title in the libraries. . . . Works without titles easily got double or multi-
ple titles when names were given to them in different libraries.” Hengel, The Four Gospels
and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press, 2000), 48.
108  Bart Ehrman

their form was always the same (“Gospel according to” Matthew, Mark,
Luke, or John). Bauckham’s balanced takeaway:
Of course, this does not guarantee that the author was named Luke; the at-
tribution to Luke could be later and erroneous. But we are not, at this point,
concerned with establishing the real authorship of each Gospel, only with re-
futing the idea that the Gospels were presented and received as anonymous
works whose contents would have been taken as coming from the community
rather than from known authors.13
We turn next to Ehrman’s chapter on orthodoxy and heresy in the
early Church. In this important chapter, he characterizes the view of
Eusebius that eventually became known as orthodoxy:
Eusebius maintained that the views he and like-minded Christian leaders
of the fourth century held were not only right (orthodox) but also that they
were the same views Jesus and his apostles had promoted from day one. . . .
Heresies, then, were seen to be offshoots of orthodoxy that came along as
the demons tried to work their nefarious purposes in the church and pervert
the truth. Heresy was always secondary (coming after orthodoxy), derivative
(altering the views of orthodoxy), and perverted.14
This was the standard view of most scholars until Walter Bauer
took issue with Eusebius in his 1934 Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest
Christianity. Bauer reconceptualized what had happened in the strug-
gle for theological dominance in the early Church. Ehrman gives an
account of what Bauer found through his studies of the earliest evi-
dence for Christianity in a range of geographical regions:
In many places of early Christianity, forms of Christian belief that were later
labeled heretical were the original form of Christianity, and in some parts of
the church so-called heretics outnumbered those who agreed with the ortho-
dox form of the faith. In some places Marcionite Christianity was dominant;
in other places, one or another of the Gnostic systems prevailed. Moreover, a
number of Christian groups saw no sharp divisions between what would later
be called heresy and what would be called orthodoxy. The clear theological
distinctions of Eusebius’s day were not original to the faith, but were created
later when the battle lines were drawn up. Some people who were later con-
sidered heretics would have been seen, and were seen, as completely orthodox
in their own day. The way Bauer saw it, the church of the second and third

13. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 301.

14. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 213.
 Bart Ehrman  109
centuries was not made up of one massive and dominant movement known as
orthodoxy, with heretical groups at the fringes. Early on there were all sorts
of groups with all sorts of views in lots of different places. Of course, all of
these groups believed that their views were right, that their beliefs were or-
thodox. But in the struggle to win converts, only one group eventually won
out; this was the group that was particularly well represented in the city of
Rome.15
Today the majority opinion among critical scholars is that Bauer
was wrong in many of his details and that he overplayed his hand. Eh-
rman, though, believes that Bauer’s portrayal of the early Christian
centuries remains correct in its core assertions:
There were lots of early Christian groups. They all claimed to be right. They
all had books to back up their claims, books allegedly written by the apostles
and therefore representing the views of Jesus and his first disciples. The group
that won out did not represent the teachings of Jesus or of his apostles.16
I do not think that the emeritus pontiff would disagree with all of
these claims. However, the difference is that a Catholic like Benedict
holds by faith that the group that “won out” (not Benedict’s wording,
obviously) was indeed the group that faithfully preserved Jesus’ teach-
ing. Bauer and Ehrman, on the other hand, operate on an unprovable
first principle, namely that the struggle for orthodoxy in the early
Christian centuries was primarily a power play rather than the fruit of
divine providence working through the vicissitudes of history.
Ehrman’s chapter “Who Invented Christianity?” is an important
read for the debate concerning whether Christianity is true and, if so,
how one would be able to prove it. The author is right here to argue
that Christianity’s claim to being divinely inspired is a theological view

15. Ibid., 214.

16. Ibid., 215. On the subject of winners and losers, it is worth remembering that
some Christian traditions held to a canon different from the one that came to be accept-
ed as orthodox: “[H]istorically there have always been some churches in some countries
(Syria, Armenia, Ethiopia) that have slightly different canons of Scripture from the one
we have. Even the twenty-seven book canon with which all of us are familiar did not ever
get ratified by a church council of any kind—until the anti-Reformation Catholic Coun-
cil of Trent in the sixteenth century, which also ratified the Old Testament Apocrypha,
in response to the widespread Protestant rejection of these books as noncanonical. In a
strange way, the canon, far from being definitively decided upon at some point of time,
emerged without anyone taking a vote.” Ibid., 190.
110  Bart Ehrman

that cannot be evaluated on the basis of history alone.17 It is not as if

one can comb through the Old Testament, match up all the prophe-
cies to their fulfillment in Christ, and conclude that he is therefore the
long-awaited Messiah. Indeed, Jews living at the time of Christ were
not at all expecting the suffering savior that Christians claimed Jesus to
be. Ehrman forcefully drives home this point:
When I try to explain to my students how absurd the claim sounded to most
Jews, I often resort to an analogy. The gut reaction that many Jews had to the
claim that Jesus was the Messiah is comparable to what your reaction would
be if I insisted in all earnestness that the Branch Davidian leader David Ko-
resh, who was killed by the FBI at Waco, is the Lord of the universe. David
Koresh? Yes, he is the savior of the world and the Lord of all! Oh, sure—what
are you, crazy? (I get in trouble for making this analogy every semester; at
least one student will say on his or her course evaluation, “I can’t believe that
Ehrman thinks David Koresh is the Lord of the universe!”)18
In the next chapter we will address this criticism in light of what
Benedict has to say on the subject of Israel’s messianic expectations.
As ever, the two authors make similar observations but draw radically
different conclusions from them.
Ehrman’s concluding chapter, “Is Faith Possible?” continues this
thread. As with the truth of Christianity in general, so the Resurrec-
tion of Christ “was not a historical event that could be proved or dis-
proved, since historians are not able, by the nature of their craft, to
demonstrate the occurrence of a miracle. It was a bold mythical state-
ment about God and the world.”19 According to Ehrman, the point
of the Resurrection “myth” was to show that this world is not the
whole show, that the horrible events of history are not God’s last word.
Speaking again anecdotally, he recounts:
I came to think of the Christian message about God, Christ, and the salva-
tion he brings as a kind of religious “myth,” or group of myths—a set of stories,
views, and perspectives that are both unproven and unprovable, but also un-
disprovable—that could, and should, inform and guide my life and thinking.20
Unlike various other agnostics and atheists, Ehrman does not reject
Christianity in toto, in the sense of finding its very existence repug-

17. Ibid., 226. 18. Ibid., 235.

19. Ibid., 276. 20. Ibid., 275.
 Bart Ehrman  111
nant. Yet, while continuing to see beauty and inspirations in its moral
teachings, he has come to view salvation, the concepts of heaven and
hell, and even God himself also as myths. Still, the author claims that
it was none of this that made him an agnostic. It was the problem of
evil that led him down this path, a problem we will touch upon at the
end of this book.
Another major issue Ehrman raises here concerns how to trans-
late the Bible’s ancient morality into today’s world. In his view, pretty
much all of the Bible’s norms need to be revised: involved here are
the Bible’s teachings “about women, about same-sex relations, about
extra-marital sex, about capital punishment, about war, about wealth,
about slavery, about disease, about . . . well, about everything.”21 Not
surprisingly, the issue of homosexuality so prominent in public dis-
course today looms large for Ehrman, who maintains that we are no
longer bound by the ancient assumptions undergirding the Church’s
traditional view:
In thinking about which parts of the Bible have something to say in the mod-
ern context, it is important to recall the historical view that the biblical au-
thors were all living in a different world from ours and reflected the assump-
tions and beliefs of people in their world. . . . As a result, the very assumptions
that lie behind the apostle Paul’s denigration of same-sex relations are very
different from the assumptions that people in the modern world have about
themselves as sexual beings. You cannot very well take Paul’s instructions on
same-sex relations, remove them from the assumptions that Paul had about
sex and gender, and transplant them onto a different set of assumptions.22
To be sure, Ehrman is right that assessing the contemporary rel-
evance of the Bible’s moral teachings requires us to reflect upon their
original context and whether the same norms ought to be reproduced
identically today. However, one operating within the classical natural
law tradition (and/or the Catholic magisterial tradition) will take is-
sue with the insinuation that Paul’s “denigration” of same-sex inter-
course is invalid because his assumptions “are very different from the
assumptions that people in the modern world have about themselves
as sexual beings.”23

21. Ibid., 281. 22. Ibid., 280.

23. Ibid.
112  Bart Ehrman

I have heard it argued many times that, given that we no longer ex-
ecute people for the act of sodomy as prescribed in the Bible (Lv 20:13),
then there remains no good argument against sodomy itself. Ehrman
makes precisely this sort of argument when he says:
The same books that condemn same-sex relations, for example, also require
people to stone their children to death if they are disobedient, to execute any-
one who does any work on Saturday or who eats pork chops, and to condemn
anyone who wears a shirt made of two kinds of fabric.24
One who maintains the Catholic position that same-sex attraction is
intrinsically disordered while denouncing slavery or polygamy is thus
accused of picking and choosing from the Bible what he wishes to be-
lieve. On this score Ehrman writes, “Some people may think that it
is a dangerous attitude to take toward the Bible, to pick and choose
what you want to accept and throw everything else out. My view is
that everyone already picks and chooses what they want to accept in
the Bible.”25
While Ehrman is on to something here, I believe that Catholi-
cism has a very compelling counterargument to Ehrman’s claim that
Christianity’s moral norms are the haphazard result of picking and
choosing. For instance, Benedict XVI certainly recognizes that Chris-
tians no longer follow many of the Old Testament prescriptions, but
according to Catholicism this is not due to a haphazard process based
on personal preferences. Jesus himself said, “Think not that I have
come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have come not to abolish
them but to fulfil them” (Mt 5:17). In his messianic fulfillment of the
law, certain time-bound elements of the tradition were open to change
(casuistic law), whereas the fundamental metanorms (apodictic law) of
the Old Testament have remained in place. This is what Catholics take
to be the meaning of Jesus’ saying, “For truly, I say to you, till heaven
and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the law until
all is accomplished” (Mt 5:18).26 Now Ehrman still may well call this

24. Bart Ehrman, God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Important
Question—Why We Suffer (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 17.
25. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 281.
26. See Benedict’s discussion of this distinction in Jesus of Nazareth: From the Bap-
tism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 123–25.
 Bart Ehrman  113
an artificial distinction, but it is far from the haphazard process he
describes taking place within the evangelical community to which he
formerly belonged.

How Jesus Became God

Of the three Ehrman texts discussed in this chapter, How Jesus Be-
came God bears most directly upon my concern in this book, as it sets
its sights squarely on the question of Jesus’ divinity and Resurrection.
Regarding Jesus’ divinity, Ehrman insists that early Christians
were not in agreement among themselves as to the meaning behind
their claim “Jesus is God.” He says that the Gospel of Mark under-
stands Jesus as a human who came to be made divine (exaltation or
adoptionist Christology), whereas the Gospel of John understands
him as a divine being who became human (incarnation Christology).27
While Ehrman is convicted that Jesus existed as a historical person,
for him Jesus is nevertheless a “legend,” in that our earliest source does
not clearly have him being divine in the way that Christians subse-
quently came to believe.28
As I discussed in the introduction, Ehrman’s position concerning
the divinity of Christ can be quickly grasped from his evaluation of
C. S. Lewis’s famous “trilemma” argument in Jesus Interrupted. Accord-

27. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 230–32.

28. John Dominic Crossan also strongly affirms the existence of Jesus, although he
believes that there is considerable distance between the historical Jesus and what most
people assume about him from their reading of the Gospels. Describing the four Gospels
as four very different mega-parables about Jesus, Crossan writes, “That is my second, in-
ternal, and far more definitive reason for accepting Jesus as a historical figure—no mat-
ter how creatively he has been portrayed in parable in small ways and large throughout
the four gospel versions. Here is the point: If you are inventing a nonhistorical figure,
why invent one you cannot live with, but must steadily and terminally change into its
opposite? In other words, I find it much more likely that Jesus was an actual histori-
cal figure whose radical insistence on nonviolent distributive justice was both accepted
and negated by the tradition it engendered. I conclude that Jesus was an actual, factual,
historical figure and not a metaphorical, symbolic, or parabolic invention by his first-
century Jewish contemporaries.” While a traditionally minded exegete like Benedict will
rightly question Crossan’s reduction of the Gospel narratives to parables about Jesus,
there is something to Crossan’s point that the Jesus of the Gospels is not the comfortable
Jesus we would likely invent for ourselves. Crossan, The Power of Parable: How Fiction by
Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus (New York: HarperOne, 2013), 251.
114  Bart Ehrman

ing to Lewis, Jesus’ lordship can be shown by reducing to the absurd the
possibility that he was either a liar or a lunatic. But Ehrman reveals a
problem with Lewis’s logic:
I had come to see that the very premise of Lewis’s argument was flawed. The
argument based on Jesus as liar, lunatic, or Lord was predicated on the as-
sumption that Jesus had called himself God. . . . I had come to realize that
none of our earliest traditions indicates that Jesus said any such thing about
himself . . . not three options but four: liar, lunatic, Lord, or legend.29
How Jesus Became God endeavors to back up this conclusion that Jesus’
divinity is a matter of legend. Ehrman’s is not, on its face, an unreason-
able position, given the presence of many similar figures in the ancient
world: “Even though Jesus may be the only miracle-working Son of
God that people know about today, there were lots of people like this
in the ancient world.”30

Divine Humans in the Ancient Mediterranean

and in Judaism
In the first chapter of How Jesus Became God, Ehrman treats fig-
ures in ancient Greece and Rome who were believed to be divine, from
the Caesars to the cynic Peregrinus and the Pythagorean philosopher
Apollonius.31 Some divine humans were such because they had been
born from the union of a god and a mortal, while some became divine
by adoption. Ehrman writes of the moment he realized the deep con-
nection between the emperor cult and the Christian worship of Jesus:
And it hit me: the time when Christianity arose, with its exalted claims about
Jesus, was the same time when the emperor cult had started to move into full
swing, with its exalted claims about the emperor. Christians were calling Je-
sus God directly on the heels of the Romans calling the emperor God. Could
this be a historical accident? How could it be an accident? These were not
simply parallel developments. This was a competition. Who was the real god-

29. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 141.

30. Ibid., 17.
31. Ibid., 25ff. John Dominic Crossan summarizes Jesus’ person and message as fol-
lows: “The historical Jesus was a peasant Jewish Cynic whose strategy was a combination
of free healing and common eating, religious and economic egalitarianism.” Jesus: A Rev-
olutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 198. On the “brokerless
kingdom of God,” see also Crossan’s The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jew-
ish Peasant (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 341, 422.
 Bart Ehrman  115
man? The emperor or Jesus? I realized at that moment that the Christians
were not elevating Jesus to a level of divinity in a vacuum.32
Seeing the parallels between Christian claims about Jesus and the
Romans’ view of their emperor leads Ehrman and Crossan to conclude
that the Christian view was modeled on the latter.33 Benedict, on the
other hand, sees the same evidence and draws a very different conclu-
sion. For him, Christians were indeed calling Jesus God on the heels
of the Romans doing the same. But it is not as if the disciples looked
at Caesar’s divine claims and from there reasoned to Christ’s divinity.
Rather, a Christian thinks that the disciples already believed Jesus to
be divine in some way beforehand, and that the language of Roman
emperors was applied to Jesus in order to underscore that this son of
God and savior had brought the only Gospel of true peace and the truly
everlasting kingdom.34
Following this broad discussion of divine humans in the ancient
Mediterranean, Ehrman’s next chapter hones in on the presence of di-
vine humans in ancient Judaism. He begins by arguing that Judaism was
not a uniformly monotheistic religion in Jesus’ day. Rather, it still exhib-
ited (at the very least) traces of its earlier henotheism, wherein one God
was worshiped while the existence of other, lower-level divinities was
not denied.35 There thus was belief in a spectrum of divinity in ancient
Judaism: divine beings who temporarily become human; humans who
become angels; divine beings who beget semi-divine beings (Gn 6; Nm
13:3); nonhuman divine figures such the Son of Man, Wisdom, and the
Logos; and the king of Israel, who became divine by adoption.36 Most
important for our purposes is the last of these: “Just as within pagan
circles the emperor was thought to be both the son of god and, in some
sense, himself god, so too in ancient Judaism the king of Israel was con-
sidered both Son of God and—astonishingly enough—even God.”37

32. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 49.

33. For Crossan’s view, see The Power of Parable, ch. 7.
34. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 54ff.
35. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 53. On Israel’s henotheism, see my Dark Pas-
sages of the Bible, 166ff.
36. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 64ff.
37. Ibid., 76.
116  Bart Ehrman

We know from the promise of 2 Sm 7:12–14 that the son of Da-

vid would be chosen by God himself and adopted as his own son: “I
will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your
body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my
name; and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will
be a father to him, and he shall be a son to me.” This may not sound
very scandalous, but Ehrman’s claim gains a lot more traction when
one takes a closer look at other texts within the Old Testament on
the subject of the king’s divine adoption. Psalm 110:1 contains the fa-
mous words: “The LORD says to my Lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until
I make your enemies your footstool.’” What are we to make of this?
Who is the “Lord”? Ehrman responds:
What is striking here is that YHWH is speaking to “my Lord” and telling him
to “sit at my right hand.” Any being enthroned with God is sharing the glory,
status, and honor due to God himself. There is not a question of identity or ab-
solute parity here—the king, sitting at God’s right hand—is not God Almighty
himself. That is clear from what is said next: God will conquer the king’s en-
emies for him and put them under his feet. But he is doing so for one whom he
has exalted up to the level of his own throne. The king is being portrayed as a
divine being who lives in the presence of God, above all other creatures.38
Even more stark in this regard is Psalm 45:6–7. Here the king is ad-
dressed in startling terms, as a God: “Your throne, O God, endures
forever and ever. Your royal scepter is a scepter of equity; You love
righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has
anointed you With the oil of gladness beyond your companions.” Eh-
rman comments:
It is clear that the person addressed as “O God” (Elohim) is not God Al-
mighty but the king, because of what is said later: God Almighty is the king’s
own God and has “anointed” him with oil—the standard act of the king’s
coronation ceremony in ancient Israel. And so God has both anointed and
exalted the king above all others, even to a level of deity. The king is in some
sense God. Not equal with God Almighty, obviously (since the differentia-
tion is made clearly, even here), but God nonetheless.39

38. Ibid., 78.

39. Ibid., 79.
 Bart Ehrman  117
Finally, Ehrman calls attention to an even more astonishing exam-
ple, wherein a new king has been given to the people. Christians know
this passage very well:
For a child has been born for us,
A son given to us;
Authority rests upon his shoulders;
And he is named
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God [El],
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.
His authority shall grow continually,
And there shall be endless peace
For the throne of David and his kingdom. (Is 9:6–7)
In its original Jewish context, Ehrman notes, the text “appears to be
referring not merely to the birth of the king, but to the birth of the king
as the son of God—in other words, it is about his coronation. At this
coronation, a ‘child’ has been given to the people —that is, the king has
been made the ‘son of God.’”40 This anointed king is clearly not Yahweh
himself, yet the epithets bestowed upon him are astounding.
The above considerations are pivotal because they give us an indi-
cation of what the earliest Christians may have been thinking when
they professed Jesus to be the Messiah, the King of Israel, the Son of
God. As Jews, they “believed that divinities could become human and
humans could become divine.”41 Now according to Ehrman, if we look
at the earliest evidence from the Gospel of Mark, Jesus was not consid-
ered to be God in any sense at all. Indeed, he relates:
One of the enduring findings of modern scholarship on the New Testament
and early Christianity over the past two centuries is that the followers of Je-
sus, during his life, understood him to be human through and through, not
God. People saw Jesus as a teacher, a rabbi, and even a prophet. Some people
thought of him as the (very human) messiah. . . . As an adult—or possibly
even as a child—he became convinced, like many other Jews of his time, that
he was living near the end of the age, that God was soon to intervene in his-
tory to overthrow the forces of evil and to bring in a good kingdom here on
earth. Jesus felt called to proclaim this message of the coming apocalypse, and
he spent his entire public ministry doing so.42

40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 46.

42. Ibid. On the expectation that the eschatological kingdom would come about on
118  Bart Ehrman

Ehrman suggests that soon, perhaps even during his own lifetime, Je-
sus came to be thought of as divine in the adoptionist sense like the
one seen above, wherein he was not equated with God Almighty in an
absolute sense. In other words, before Jesus became God in the fourth-
century sense, “he had been seen as God before that, by people who
did not have this fourth-century understanding of the relationship of
the human and divine realms.”43 The point Ehrman wishes to stress
here is that the Nicene understanding of Jesus was a “development”
with respect to what we find in the earliest strata of Christian belief.
Again, I do not think that an orthodox Christian need disagree here,
at least not entirely. Taking Bl. John Henry Newman as our guide,
the Catholic not only can but should admit the presence of doctrinal
development regarding Christology in the early Church. But the dif-
ference between Newman and Ehrman is that Newman sees this dy-
namic as the working of divine providence guiding the Church to a
fuller understanding of Christ, whereas skeptics naturally approach
the phenomenon in terms of a purely human power struggle.
Before leaving the topic of alleged sources for Jesus’ identity in

this earth, see Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 95: “[Jesus] envi-
sioned, as did many in his time and place, the advent, after suffering and persecution, of a
great judgment, and after that a supernatural utopia, the kingdom of God, inhabited by
the dead come back to life, to enjoy a world forever rid of evil and wholly ruled by God.
Further, he thought that the night was far gone, the day at hand.”
43. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 44. For a different approach that also contrasts
later orthodox Christology with that of the New Testament, Dale Allison writes, “But
when one looks at how its advocates have, from ancient times, interpreted certain New
Testament texts, one must object, at least if one has been trained to think historically.
Again and again Jesus’ divinity has all but liquidated his humanity, making him a his-
torically impossible figure.” Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 82.
Allison continues (84–85): “Our theological tradition is full of tendentious, ahistorical
readings of Gospel texts, readings that have served orthodox christological agendas in-
stead of historical truth. . . . It is impossible, after immersing oneself in the quest for the
historical Jesus, with its obligation to set the traditions about Jesus within their first-cen-
tury contexts, to take any of this seriously as history—and Christians belonging to the
more conservative churches should find this disturbing. For the theologians and exegetes
I have quoted are not from the margins of ecclesiastical history; they are rather, every one
of them, important figures, even ecclesiastical authorities. . . . What then does it mean
that, until relatively recent times, our dominant theologians have put Jesus into a christo-
logical straightjacket, that they have, despite their protests otherwise, been docetists of a
sort, for whom Jesus’ humanity was above all a philosophical problem?”
 Bart Ehrman  119
ancient Rome and Judaism, it is worth stopping to ponder whether
Ehrman might have his argument entirely backwards. Agreeing with
Richard Bauckham, N. T. Wright contends:
[S]cholars have been looking in the wrong place. The question has been put in
the form, Did Judaism have any figures—angels, mediators, messiahs, what-
ever—who were regarded in an “exalted” fashion prior to the first century, so
that there were Jewish categories available when someone came along whose
followers wanted to find “exalted” language to use of him? . . .
But to raise the question in this way is, I believe, to start at the wrong
end. If the phenomenon to be explained is the fact that from extremely early
on the followers of Jesus used language for him (and engaged in practices,
such as worship, in which he was invoked) which might previously have been
thought appropriate only for Israel’s God, why should we not begin, not with
‘exalted figures’ who might as it were be assimilated into the one God, but
with the One God himself? Did Judaism have any beliefs, stories, ideas about
God himself upon which they might have drawn to say what they now wanted
to say about Jesus? The answer is: yes, they did.44
But Wright does not stop here. He proposes to build on Bauckham’s
understanding of “eschatological monotheism”:
Central to second-Temple monotheism was the belief . . . that Israel’s God,
having abandoned Jerusalem and the Temple at the time of the Babylonian
exile, would one day return. He would return in person. He would return
in glory. He would return to judge and save. He would return to bring about
the new exodus, overthrowing the enemies that had enslaved his people. He
would return to establish his glorious, tabernacling presence in their midst.
He would return to rule over the whole world. He would come back to be
king. This act, still in the future from the perspective of the pre-Christian
Jews, was a vital part of what they believed about “divine identity.” And this
is the part that best explains not only Paul’s view of Jesus but also that of the
entire early church. The long-awaited return of YHWH to Zion is, I suggest,
the hidden clue to the origin of christology.45

44. N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
1992), 653.
45. Ibid., 654. Wright continues, “Whereas in the modern period people have come
to the New Testament with the question of Jesus’ ‘divinity’ as one of the uppermost wor-
ries in their mind, and have struggled to think of how a human being could come to be
thought of as ‘divine’, for Jesus’ first followers the question will have posed itself the other
way round. It was not a matter of them pondering this or that human, angelic, perhaps
120  Bart Ehrman

Did Jesus Think He Was God?

The next chapter of Ehrman’s book asks the fascinating follow-
up question, “Did Jesus think he was God?” It is difficult to answer
this question, the author argues, because our ancient sources “are not
as ancient as we would like.”46 The first Christian author was Paul,
whose letters date to twenty or thirty years after Jesus’ life here on
earth. The problem with Paul is that he did not know Jesus personally
and does not tell us much about Jesus’ teachings or activities. Our next
earliest sources for the historical Jesus, then, are the Gospels of the
New Testament. Writes Ehrman:
As it turns out, these are our best sources. They are best not because they
happen to be in the New Testament, but because they are also the earliest
narratives of Jesus’s life to survive. But even though they are the best sources
available to us, they really are not as good as we might hope.47
On the one hand, this is good news for the Christian believer. Even by
an agnostic scholar’s standards, the canonical Gospels give us a better
glimpse into the life of Jesus than later apocryphal texts.48 However,
for Ehrman the problem with the Gospels is that they are not written
by eyewitnesses.49 Who, then, wrote them?
quasi-divine figure, and then transferring such categories to Jesus in such a way as to
move him up (so to speak) to the level of the one God. It was a matter of them pondering
the promises of the one God whose identity, as Bauckham has rightly stressed, was made
clear in the scriptures, and wondering what it would look like when he returned to Zion,
when he came back to judge the world and rescue his people, when he did again what he
had done at the exodus.” Ibid. On the further suggestion that Jesus saw himself embody-
ing YHWH’s “wisdom” having returned to his people, see ibid., 670ff.
46. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 89.
47. Ibid., 90.
48. For an excellent argument in favor of the canonical Gospels’ priority over the
Gospel of Thomas, see Mark Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s
Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012).
49. Says Ehrman: “There are good reasons for thinking that none of these attribu-
tions is right. For one thing, the followers of Jesus, as we learn from the New Testament
itself, were uneducated lower-class Aramaic-speaking Jews from Palestine. These books
are not written by people like that. Their authors were highly educated, Greek-speaking
Christians of a later generation. They probably wrote after Jesus’s disciples had all, or
almost all, died. They were writing in different parts of the world, in a different language,
and at a later time. There’s not much mystery about why later Christians would want
to claim that the authors were in fact companions of Jesus, or at least connected with
 Bart Ehrman  121
Just the apostles? It can’t have been just the apostles. Just the people whom
the apostles authorized? No way. Just people who checked their facts to make
sure they didn’t change any of the stories but only recounted events that re-
ally happened and as they happened? How could they do that? The stories
were being told by word of mouth, year after year, decade after decade, among
lots of people in different parts of the world, in different languages, and there
was no way to control what one person said to the next about Jesus’s words
and deeds. Everyone knows what happens to stories that circulate this way.
Details get changed, episodes get invented, events get exaggerated, impressive
accounts get made even more impressive, and so on.50
At this juncture Ehrman takes on the claim of those who assert that
ancient oral cultures were careful to make certain that their traditions
were not changed significantly:
This turns out to be a modern myth, however. Anthropologists who have
studied oral cultures show that just the opposite is the case. Only literary cul-
tures have a concern for exact replication of the facts “as they really are.” And
this is because in literary cultures, it is possible to check the sources to see
whether someone has changed a story. In oral cultures, it is widely expected
that stories will indeed change—they change anytime a storyteller is telling a
story in a new context.51
Ehrman contends that our canonical Gospels are no exception to this
rule, and that historical criticism confirms it:
Scholars for three hundred years and more have studied them in minute de-
tail, and one of the assured results of this intensive investigation is the cer-
tainty that the Gospels have numerous discrepancies, contradictions, and
historical problems. Why would that be? It would be better to ask, “How
could that not be?” Of course, the Gospels contain nonhistorical information
and stories that have been modified and exaggerated and embellished. These
books do not contain the words of someone who was sitting at Jesus’s feet
taking notes.52

apostles: that claim provided much needed authority for these accounts for people want-
ing to know what Jesus was really like.” Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 90.
50. Ibid., 92.
51. Ibid., 93.
52. Ibid., 92. While I do not disagree substantially with Ehrman on this point,
Dale Allison’s criticism of historical criticism from within gives us reason to be “aller-
gic” to any “assured critical result,” three words which, as Allison observes, “often func-
tion as a simplification for novices and as an excuse for scholars to think less.” Allison,
The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 10–11. As Luke Timothy Johnson has it,
122  Bart Ehrman

So in Ehrman’s opinion, we do not have access to transcripts of what

the historical Jesus said or thought. In this he does not differ great-
ly from Benedict, who also recognizes that the Gospels mediate the
words of Jesus through the literary artistry of human authors. The
difference, of course, is that Benedict holds it as a first principle that
these authors were inspired by the Holy Spirit. Thus, in contrast with
Ehrman, he will conclude that the Gospels really do present us with
the essential figure of Jesus, even if it is not precisely the same portrait
many Christians imagine we have.
Nevertheless, Ehrman does think that we can take a good stab at
what Jesus might have said by situating him within his first-century
Jewish apocalyptic milieu. He assigns four characteristics to this
worldview: dualism (the forces of good engaged in battle with the
forces of evil, with the latter ruling the present age and the former the
future); pessimism (things are bad in this age and only going to get
worse until the end); judgment (when things get as bad as they pos-
sibly can, God will intervene to judge not only the living but also the
dead); and imminence (all this is going to happen within the current
generation).53 Those who adhered to this apocalyptic perspective were
expecting God to act soon and to act definitively. In contrast with ear-
ly Christian claims about Jesus, Ehrman writes:
[A]s far as we can tell, Jesus did nothing during his life to make anyone think
that he was this anointed one. That is to say, he did not come on the clouds
of heaven to judge the living and the dead; he was not a priest; and he never
raised an army and drove the Romans out of the promised land to set up Is-
rael as a sovereign state . . .

“History is a limited mode of human knowing. Historical analysis can yield real knowl-
edge about earliest Christianity and the figure of Jesus. But there are intractable limits to
this knowledge. . . . The New Testament writings yield some historical information, but
this is not what they do best.” Johnson, The Real Jesus, 167. Johnson’s is clearly a much
more balanced approach in comparison with what we find in some of history’s great bibli-
cal scholars, for example Rudolf Bultmann: “I do indeed think that we can know almost
nothing concerning the life and personality of Jesus, since the early Christian sources
show no interest in either, are moreover fragmentary and often legendary; and other
sources about Jesus do not exist.” Bultmann, Jesus and the Word (New York: Scribner’s,
1958), 8.
53. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 99ff.
 Bart Ehrman  123
Ancient Jews had no expectation—zero expectation—that the future
messiah would die and rise from the dead. That was not what the messiah
was supposed to do. Whatever specific idea any Jew had about the messiah
(as cosmic judge, mighty priest, powerful warrior), what they all thought was
that he would be a figure of grandeur and power who would be a mighty ruler
of Israel. . . . Jesus, in short, was just the opposite of what Jews expected a mes-
siah to be.54
According to Ehrman, arguing that Jesus fulfilled passages like Isa-
iah 53 and Psalm 22 would have had little to no impact upon a Jewish
apocalypticist of the day for one simple reason: these texts were not
thought of as messianic prophecies.
How, then, do we account for the earliest Christians proclaiming
that Jesus was the messiah? Says Ehrman:
The only plausible explanation is that they called Jesus this after his death
because they were calling him this before his death. . . . Jesus’s followers must
have considered him to be the messiah in some sense before his death, because
nothing about his death or resurrection would have made them come up with
the idea afterward. The messiah was not supposed to die or rise again.55
John Dominic Crossan writes in a similar vein:
What happened historically is that those who believed in Jesus before his ex-
ecution continued to do so afterward. Easter is not about the start of a new
faith but about the continuation of an old one. That is the only miracle and
the only mystery, and it is more than enough of both.56
We glimpse here quite clearly the philosophical underpinning of Cros-
san’s approach to the Gospels. For him as for Ehrman, the disciples
believed in Jesus (whatever precisely the content of that belief might
have consisted in) even before his crucifixion. The “only miracle” is
that they continued to do so afterwards. Indeed, it is dumbfounding
to consider what possibly could have compelled them to continue pro-
fessing their faith in this crucified rabbi. If one does not believe in the
miracle of Jesus’ Resurrection, then the Easter faith of the disciples is
indeed a “miracle.”

54. Ibid., 116.

55. Ibid., 118.
56. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 190.
124  Bart Ehrman

Jesus’ Messianic Self-Understanding

So Ehrman and Crossan are willing to grant that Jesus claimed
the title of messiah for himself, and that the disciples had at least some
sort of belief in him during his lifetime. What, then, was Jesus’ mes-
sianic self-understanding? Ehrman suggests:
[A]s an apocalypticist, Jesus did not think that the future kingdom was going
to be won by a political struggle or a military engagement per se. It was going
to be brought by the Son of Man, who came in judgment against everyone
and everything opposed to God. Then the kingdom would arrive. And I think
Jesus believed he himself would be the king in that kingdom.57
It may surprise some to learn that, while Ehrman thinks that Jesus
viewed himself as the king in the messianic kingdom, Ehrman thinks
he did not consider himself the Son of Man.
To be sure, Ehrman admits that there are many places in the Gos-
pels where Jesus identifies himself as the Son of Man, but do these
texts stand up in a historical-critical analysis? The criterion of dis-
similarity is invoked by Ehrman at this point. The gist of this evalua-
tive principle is that a Jesus tradition that differs from what the early
Christians would have wanted to say about him is probably histori-
cally accurate. So does Jesus’ self-identification with the Son of Man
pass muster? Ehrman responds: “Obviously not: if you think Jesus is
the cosmic judge, you would have no difficulty coming up with sayings
in which Jesus is identified as the Son of Man.”58 In contrast, Ehrman
argues that the earliest Gospel traditions point to someone other than
Jesus being the Son of Man, even though Christians naturally assume
that Jesus is talking about himself in these cases. For example, in Mark
8:38 Jesus says, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this
adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of man also be
ashamed, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy an-
gels.” But if Ehrman is right, it is not a matter of Jesus being ashamed
of one who has been ashamed of him:

57. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 118.

58. Ibid., 106.
 Bart Ehrman  125
Instead, it says that if anyone is ashamed of Jesus, of that person the Son of
Man will be ashamed when he comes from heaven. Nothing in this saying
makes you think that Jesus is talking about himself. A reader who thinks Je-
sus is talking about himself as the Son of Man has brought that understand-
ing to the text, not taken it from the text.59
This saying also passes the historical-critical method’s criterion of em-
barrassment: Ehrman therefore concludes that it was probably not
made up by the early Christian community—which would have been in-
clined to identify Jesus with the Son of Man. Against Ehrman, however,
it should be observed that the earliest Gospel contains a number of texts
that both identify the “Son of man” with Jesus and stand up well under
historical-critical analysis (for example, Mk 10:33, 45; 14:41, where the
Son of man has come to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many).
On the subject of these criteria, it moreover should be observed
that respected scholars have questioned their application by the likes
of Ehrman and members of the Jesus Seminar.60 Critiquing the crite-
rion of dissimilarity as applied by Ehrman, Michael Bird writes:
Think about it. A story about Jesus or a saying attributed to Jesus is only his-
torical if it does not sound anything like what the church was saying about
Jesus. What historian would say that the historical Plato is different from
what the platonic school said about Plato? . . . You end up with a Jesus who
said, thought, and did nothing that his earliest followers believed that he said,
thought, and did. . . . No wonder, then, that the criterion of dissimilarity has
been nearly universally abandoned and replaced with something far more
credible, like a criterion of historical plausibility. We can regard a unit in the
Gospels as claiming a high degree of historical authenticity when a saying or
event attributed to Jesus makes sense within Judaism (i.e., plausible context)
and also represents a starting point for the early church (i.e., a plausible con-
sequence).61

59. Ibid., 107.

60. For the latter, see Robert Funk, The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic
Deeds of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998), and Robert Funk and Roy W.
Hoover, The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus: New Translation and
Commentary (New York: Macmillan, 1993). It is worth recalling that Benedict himself em-
ploys historical criticism’s criteria for ascertaining the authenticity of certain Jesus tradi-
tions. For example, in his discussion of Jesus’ calling of the disciples he invokes the criteria
of multiple attestation, embarrassment, and witness antiquity. Jesus, the Apostles, and the
Early Church (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2007), 9–10.
61. Bird, How God Became Jesus, 50–51.
126  Bart Ehrman

Dale Allison, too, believes these traditional scholarly criteria to be

fatally flawed. In addition to the well-known problems with dissimi-
larity, he argues:
Multiple attestation overlooks the obvious problem that the more something
is attested, the more the early church must have liked it, so the more suspi-
cious we may well be about it. . . . My question is not Which criteria are good
and which are bad? or How should we employ the good ones? but rather
Should we be using criteria at all? . . . After years of being in the quest busi-
ness, I have reluctantly concluded that most of the Gospel materials are not
subject to historical proof or disproof, or even to accurate estimates of their
probability.62
We have now seen that Ehrman does not think “the historical Je-
sus” considered himself the Son of Man. Let us next investigate Eh-
rman’s answer to an additional question: Did Jesus himself ever stake
a claim to being divine? After noting that there are indeed sayings in
the last Gospel—the Gospel of John—wherein Jesus claims to be di-
vine, Ehrman comments:
But looked at from a historical perspective, they simply cannot be ascribed to
the historical Jesus. They don’t pass any of our criteria. They are not multiply
attested in our sources; they appear only in John, our latest and most theo-
logically oriented Gospel. They certainly do not pass the criterion of dissimi-
larity since they express the very view of Jesus that the author of the Gospel of
John happens to hold. And they are not at all contextually credible. We have
no record of any Palestinian Jew ever saying any such things about himself.
These divine self-claims in John are part of John’s distinctive theology; they
are not part of the historical record of what Jesus actually said.
Look at the matter in a different light. As I pointed out, we have numer-
ous earlier sources for the historical Jesus: a few comments in Paul (including
several quotations from Jesus’s teachings), Mark, Q, M, and L, not to men-
tion the finished Gospels of Matthew and Luke. In none of them do we find
exalted claims of this sort.63

62. Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 54–55.
63. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 125. Note that the assumption of Q as a his-
torical source is not an essential feature of historical criticism. For a powerful argument
in favor of Markan priority without Q, see Mark Goodacre’s The Case Against Q (Har-
risburg, Pa.: Trinity Press International, 2002) and his The Synoptic Problem:  A Way
through the Maze (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001). My thanks to John Kincaid
for putting me onto Goodacre’s work.
 Bart Ehrman  127
While Ehrman is surely correct that, among the Gospels, John’s has
the most developed Christology, I as a reader am left wondering what
the skeptic is to make of other portions of the synoptic Gospels that
would seem to have Christ claiming divinity for himself. Consider the
following instances:
• In identifying himself as the Bridegroom, Jesus equates himself
with Yahweh, Israel’s bridegroom in the Old Testament (Mk 2:19–
20; cf. Is 61:10–62:5; Ezek 16; Jer 2–3; Hos 1–2; Song). Richard Hays
rightly observes, regarding images like that of the Bridegroom, “[I]t is
precisely through drawing on OT images that all four Gospels portray
the identity of Jesus as mysteriously fused with the identity of God.
This is true even of Mark and Luke, the two Synoptic Gospels usually
thought to have the ‘lower’ or most ‘primitive’ Christologies.”64
• In certain places, such as the Beatitudes, Jesus speaks with the
authority of God himself, issuing a new, definitive Law (Mt 5).
• Indeed, he makes it quite plain that following God’s law is insuf-
ficient and that one must also follow Jesus himself as well (Mk 10:17–
31).65
• Jesus forgives sins, which is the prerogative of God alone (Mk 2:7).
• He calls himself greater than the Temple and Lord of the Sab-
bath (Mk 2:27–28; Mt 12:8).
• The natural sense of Jesus’ “I have come” statements is that he has
come from somewhere beyond this world to accomplish his mission
(Mk 2:17; Mt 5:17; 10:35; 20:28; Lk 12:49–51; 19:10).66
• Christ stills the sea in a text whose parallels with Yahweh calm-
ing the sea in the Old Testament can hardly be coincidental (Mk 4:35–
41; cf. Ps 107).
• Only a couple of chapters later, Jesus appears walking on the sea

64. Richard Hays, Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel
Witness (Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2014), 108.
65. In recalling Rabbi Jacob Neusner’s book A Rabbi Talks with Jesus (Montreal:
McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), Benedict XVI points out that this placing of
himself at the center of the Law is what caused many of his contemporaries to draw back
from him. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Trans-
figuration, 103–5.
66. On this subject see also Simon Gathercole, “What Did the First Christians
Think about Jesus?” in Michael Bird, How God Became Jesus, 94–116.
128  Bart Ehrman

and telling his disciples, “I am (egō eimi); have no fear” (Mk 6:45–52;
cf. Ex 3:13–15). Many Bibles translate this text “It is I,” but there are
more compelling reasons for translating it “I am.” Especially important
in this connection is the fact that Mark tells us that Jesus had intended
to “pass by” the disciples on the sea, a clear reference to Old Testament
episodes wherein Yahweh “passed by” Moses and Elijah, who could not
see his face (Ex 33:19, 22; 34:6; 1 Kgs 19:11). With Jesus, however, God
finally stops and visits his people, who then “worship” him (Mt 14:32–
33).67 Also important is Benedict XVI’s treatment of this passage: “At
first sight, this instance of the words ‘I am he’ seems to be a simple iden-
tifying formula. . . . This interpretation does not go far enough, how-
ever. For at this point Jesus gets into the boat and the wind ceases. . . .
The remarkable thing is that only now do the disciples really begin to
fear. . . . It is this ‘divine terror’ that comes over the disciples here. For
walking on the waters is a divine prerogative. . . . The Jesus who walks
upon the waters is not simply the familiar Jesus; in this new Jesus they
suddenly recognize the presence of God himself. . . . [T]here is no doubt
that the whole event is a theophany, an encounter with the mystery of
Jesus’ divinity. Hence Matthew quite logically concludes his version
of the story with an act of adoration (proskynesis) and the exclamation
of the disciples, ‘Truly, you are the Son of God’” (Mt 14:33).68
• Finally and most important, there is the fact that even our earliest
Gospel records Jesus being sentenced to death for blasphemy immedi-
ately following his claim to be “the Christ, the Son of the Blessed.” In
response to this question, he replied most unequivocally, “I am; and you
will see the Son of man seated at the right hand of Power, and coming
with the clouds of heaven” (Mk 14:61–64; cf. Dn 7:9–13; Ps 110:1–3).
Given that these examples are drawn for the most part from the earli-
est Gospel, it seems much more likely than not on historical grounds
alone that Jesus did in fact stake some claim to divinity during his life-
time.69
Ehrman for his part considers the possibility that Jesus thought of

67. My thanks to Brant Pitre for pointing out this connection to me.
68. Benedict, Baptism, 351–52; cf. Job 9:8; Ps 76:20 LXX; Is 43:16.
69. In light of these and many other texts that could be adduced, Dale Allison is
 Bart Ehrman  129
himself as divine in the sense of being the messianic king adopted by
God. But here too he answers in the negative:
It is of course possible, but I think it is highly unlikely for the following rea-
son. . . . [W]e have no known instance of a living Jewish king proclaiming him-
self to be divine. Could Jesus be the exception? Yes, of course; there are always
exceptions to everything. But to think that Jesus is the exception in this case,
one would need a good deal of persuasive evidence. And it just doesn’t exist.
The evidence for Jesus’s claims to be divine comes only from the last of the
New Testament Gospels, not from any earlier sources.70
I think the Christian might respond to Ehrman’s point by contest-
ing whether we even need the sort of evidence for which he is looking.
Moreover, for a Christian the fact that no other Jewish king ever pro-

right to observe that “all the primary sources repeatedly purport that Jesus had astound-
ing things to say about himself. One can dissociate him from an exalted self-conception
only through multiple radical surgeries on our texts.” Allison, Constructing Jesus: Mem-
ory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010), 225. Put
plainly, Allison concludes (304): “We should hold a funeral for the view that Jesus enter-
tained no exalted thoughts about himself.” I think that Michael Bird is on the right track
in this regard: “I think it is necessary to explode a popular caricature where Jesus cruises
around Galilee announcing, ‘Hi, I’m God. I’m going to die on the cross for your sins
soon. But first of all I’m going to teach you how to be a good Christian and how to get to
heaven. And after that I thought it would be fitting if you all worshiped me as the second
member of the Trinity.’ This might seem a rather silly way to understand Jesus’ identity,
but it is a sketch of Jesus that many Bible-believing Christians have. When I contend
that Jesus understood himself to be divine, this is definitely not what I am talking about.
When I say that Jesus knew himself to be God, I mean that he was conscious that in him
the God of Israel was finally returning to Zion (i.e., Jerusalem) to renew the covenant
and to fulfill the promises God had made to the nation about a new exodus.” Bird, How
God Became Jesus, 52.
On Jesus embodying Yahweh’s return to Zion, see Wright, Jesus and the Victory of
God, 642–45, 653: “[F]orget the attempts of some well-meaning Christians to make Jesus
of Nazareth conscious of being the second person of the Trinity; forget the arid reduc-
tionism that some earnest liberal theologians have produced by way of reaction. Focus,
instead, on a young Jewish prophet telling a story about YHWH returning to Zion as
judge and redeemer, and then embodying it by riding into the city in tears, symbolizing
the Temple’s destruction and celebrating the final exodus. I propose, as a matter of his-
tory, that Jesus of Nazareth was conscious of vocation: a vocation, given him by the one
he knew as ‘father,’ to enact in himself what, in Israel’s scriptures, God has promised to
accomplish all by himself. He would be the pillar of cloud and fire for the people of the
new exodus. He would embody in himself the returning and redeeming action of the
covenant God.” See also Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 121–23.
70. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 126.
130  Bart Ehrman

claimed himself divine adds nothing to the debate. If Jesus is indeed

divine, there seems no reason to suppose that others would have made
the same claim before him. Moreover, as indicated above, a Christian
might object to Ehrman by pointing to other indicators that Jesus saw
himself as divine (his miracles, his forgiveness of people’s sins, and his
reception of adoration from those who bow down before him, etc.).
Ehrman, however, dismisses this argument: “There are two points to
stress about such things. The first is that all of them are compatible
with human, not just divine, authority. . . . But even more important,
these activities may not even go back to the historical Jesus.”71

How Jesus Became God

Directly related to the question of Christ’s divinity is the question
of how or why Jesus came to be considered God. For Ehrman, the short
answer is that it flowed from his followers’ belief that he had been
raised from the dead.
My overarching contention is that belief in the resurrection—based on vi-
sionary experiences—is what initially led the followers of Jesus (all of them?
some of them?) to believe that Jesus had been exalted to heaven and made to
sit at the right hand of God as his unique Son. These beliefs were the first
christologies—the first understandings that Jesus was a divine being.72
Thus it was only after Jesus had died that his disciples came to believe
that he was, at least in some sense, God.
Did Jesus actually rise from the dead or not? Ehrman shows genu-
ine intellectual humility when he acknowledges that history does not
disprove Jesus’ Resurrection:

71. Ibid., 127.

72. Ibid., 7. In a similar vein Marcus Borg contends, “‘Resurrection’ does not mean
resumption of previous existence but entry into a different kind of existence. To use
Paul’s phrase, it involves a ‘spiritual body’ (not a body of flesh and blood); moreover, a
resurrected person will not die again. Resurrection could involve something happening
to a corpse (transformation of some kind), but it need not. Thus Easter need not involve
the claim that God supernaturally intervened to raise the corpse of Jesus from the tomb.
Rather, the core meaning of Easter is that Jesus continued to be experienced after his
death.” Borg, The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More Authentic
Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997).
 Bart Ehrman  131
I have said that it was the belief in the resurrection that led some of his fol-
lowers to claim he was God. This is because, as a historian, I do not think we
can show—historically—that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead. To be
clear, I am not saying the opposite either—that historians can use the his-
torical disciplines in order to demonstrate that Jesus was not raised from the
dead. I argue that when it comes to miracles such as the resurrection, histori-
cal sciences simply are of no help in establishing exactly what happened. Re-
ligious faith and historical knowledge are two different ways of “knowing.”73
I think that the believer can basically agree with what Ehrman says
here. I find especially refreshing Ehrman’s recognition that faith and
knowledge are two different modes of knowing. Moreover, this is sub-
stantially in agreement with Aquinas, according to whom no amount
of historical evidence is sufficient for rendering the act of faith war-
ranted. At the most, external evidence may predispose one to the act
of faith, but the gift of faith is chiefly from God, who by grace moves
us to the act of assent.74
According to Ehrman, the reason historians have so much difficulty
discussing the Resurrection is that the Gospel accounts of Matthew 28,
Mark 16, Luke 24, and John 20–21 “disagree on nearly every detail in
their Resurrection narratives.”75 He is right to say that these differences
cannot be reconciled without a lot of “interpretive gymnastics,” though I
would add the caveat that what might simply look like gymnastics from
his point of view may from a Christian perspective simply be the rigor
required for ascertaining a text’s meaning.
Moreover, Ehrman recalls that our earliest “witness” to the Res-
urrection, Paul, says nothing about the discovery of an empty tomb;

73. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 132.

74. In the words of Aquinas: “As regards . . . man’s assent to the things which are of
faith, we may observe a twofold cause, one of external inducement, such as seeing a mir-
acle, or being persuaded by someone to embrace the faith: neither of which is a sufficient
cause, since of those who see the same miracle, or who hear the same sermon, some be-
lieve, and some do not. Hence we must assert another internal cause, which moves man
inwardly to assent to matters of faith. . . . [S]ince man, by assenting to matters of faith, is
raised above his nature, this must needs accrue to him from some supernatural principle
moving him inwardly; and this is God. Therefore faith, as regards the assent which is the
chief act of faith, is from God moving man inwardly by grace.” Thomas Aquinas, Summa
theologiae, II-II, q. 6, a. 1.
75. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 133; cf. Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet
of the New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 228–29.
132  Bart Ehrman

on the other hand, the earliest Gospel, Mark, narrates the discovery of
the empty tomb without discussing any of the appearances (Mk 16:1–8).
This has led some scholars to suggest:
[T]hese two sets of tradition—the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus
after his death—probably originated independently of one another and were
put together as a single tradition only later—for example, in the Gospels of
Matthew and Luke. If this is the case, then the stories of Jesus’s resurrec-
tion were indeed being expanded, embellished, modified, and possibly even
invented in the long process of their being told and retold over the years.76
While a Catholic like Benedict will certainly agree that the stories of
Jesus’ Resurrection were expanded over the years (as seen, for example,
with the multiple endings of Mark), for a Catholic it would be a bridge
too far to allege with John Dominic Crossan that these traditions were
merely being “invented.”77 Although the Catholic need not affirm that
every last detail in the narratives could have been captured on a video
camera, a hermeneutic of faith tends to accept each discrete appear-
ance as historical unless there is compelling evidence to suppose it was
intended to be taken parabolically.78
76. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 143.
77. John Dominic Crossan articulates this view when he says, “Emmaus never hap-
pened. Emmaus always happens.” According to Crossan’s understanding, a parable is a
“story that never happened but always does—or at least should.” The Power of Parable, 5.
Seeing the clear parallels between the Last Supper and the meal at Emmaus (in both,
Jesus took bread, blessed, broke, and gave it to the disciples) leads Crossan to conclude
that Luke’s point was not historical so much as theological and liturgical: “That is par-
able, not history. The Christian liturgy involves both Scripture and Eucharist with the
former as prelude and prologue to the latter. . . . The story is a parable about loving, that
is, feeding the stranger as yourself and finding Jesus still—or only?—fully present in that
encounter.” Ibid., 4. It is possible that Crossan is onto something here, in that Luke may
be embellishing his narrative so as to draw out the liturgical importance of this post-Res-
urrection eucharistic feast. However, Crossan’s view of the story as parable is no more
likely than the view that the event has a basis in history. His book makes the fascinating
claim that parables by Jesus (e.g., the Good Samaritan) were turned into parables about
Jesus by the evangelists. Here again, though, I see no reason why the causality could not
have just as likely operated the other way around. In other words, to me it seems just as
likely that the Good Samaritan of Jesus’ parable was a veiled allusion by Jesus to himself,
as that the supper at Emmaus was a parable masquerading as history.
78. For a helpful articulation of a hermeneutic of faith that views it as reasonable
to continue maintaining belief in Scripture’s miracles until there is compelling evidence
against them, see Paul Williams, The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to
Catholicism (Edinburgh: T and T Clark, 2002), 165–66.
 Bart Ehrman  133
That said, it remains of paramount importance to reflect continually
on the question raised by Dale Allison: how much history does theology
require? The answer, says Allison, depends on one’s presuppositions.
Some things once thought essential and immutable have shown them-
selves to be inessential and mutable, which ought to make one cautious
about insisting too strongly that authentic Christian faith requires this
or that event to be historical.79 Like Crossan, Allison suggests that the
Gospels would remain intact even if to a certain degree their content
were to turn out to be highly parabolic:
They too are works of literature. Why should we fret much over how much
history is in them? Why cannot the Gospels be like the parables that Jesus
told? . . . Should we not live by the Golden Rule whether Jesus spoke it or not?
What difference would it make if we learned that he had been crucified not
outside the walls of Jerusalem but outside the walls of Jericho? 80
Now Allison is not arguing that Jesus never taught us the Golden
Rule, but he does want to push us on the question of what we think
the validity of this norm depends upon: does it depend upon the say-
ing being traceable to the historical Jesus, or rather is it sufficient that
the Golden Rule, no matter what its ultimate provenance, has been in-
cluded by the Church in the inspired canon of Scripture? I think that
Allison is right to press us on this issue, though to be sure the Catho-
lic may disagree with him when it comes to arguing which particular
parts of the Gospels need be historical. What I wish to achieve here
with the help of Allison is to anticipate a point that Benedict XVI

79. Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 39–40. While going far-
ther than many would in applying this principle, Allison candidly asserts, “I am persuad-
ed that, for most theological purposes, we should treat the Gospels the same way that we
treat Genesis; we should use them first of all not to reconstruct the past but to construe
our world theologically.” Ibid., 43. Though the Catholic may rightly contend that Alli-
son overplays his comparison between the Gospels and the opening chapters of Genesis,
nevertheless it is evocative to consider the truth in Allison’s observation, “[M]any of us
within the churches have changed our minds about the importance of history for under-
standing any number of scriptural books. We no longer, for example, look to Genesis if
we are seeking to gather facts about the cosmological or geological past. . . . This does not
mean, however, the Genesis has ceased to function as Scripture. We have learned how to
read the text as theology without reading it as history. . . . Much of what people once took
to be history is now known to be, or suspected to be, something else.” Ibid., 33–34.
80. Ibid., 33.
134  Bart Ehrman

will make repeatedly in the next chapter—namely that the faith has
an enduring substance that must be distinguished from its accidental
features, such as the historicity of certain logia or events narrated in
the Gospels. But let me be clear: regardless of what individual scholars
may happen to think about the historicity of particular episodes in the
life of Christ, for Catholics the fundamental components of the Creed
(Incarnation, death, Resurrection, etc.) are not negotiable historically.
In other words, these cannot be mere parables or else the Christian
faith loses its foundation.
Returning to Ehrman, it is unsurprising that he exhibits his usual
skepticism regarding Jesus’ burial. In his estimation, we cannot know
that Jesus received a decent burial or that his tomb was later discov-
ered to be empty:
As the burial tradition came to be told and retold, it possibly became embel-
lished and made more concrete. Storytellers were apt to add details to stories
that were vague, or to give names to people otherwise left nameless in a tradi-
tion, or to add named individuals to stories that originally mentioned only
nameless individuals or undifferentiated groups of people. This is a tradition
that lived on long after the New Testament period.81
In a brief inquiry into Roman practices of crucifixion, Ehrman cites
John Dominic Crossan’s infamous suggestion that Jesus’s body was
eaten by dogs.82 Ehrman himself does not go this far, but he still re-
mains skeptical of the Christian claim:
My view now is that we do not know, and cannot know, what actually hap-
pened to Jesus’s body. But it is absolutely true that as far as we can tell from all
the surviving evidence, what normally happened to a criminal’s body is that it
was left to decompose and serve as food for scavenging animals.83
It is indeed unlikely that someone innocently moved the body, but Eh-
rman is right that it is not inconceivable. It is also unlikely that Jesus’
followers stole the body and then lied about it, but then again it is by
no means impossible that this occurred. Indeed, looking at the mat-
ter strictly from a historical point of view, either of these views is less
unexpected than the claim that Jesus rose from the dead: “A Resur-
81. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 150.
82. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 123ff.
83. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 157.
 Bart Ehrman  135
rection would be a miracle and as such would defy all ‘probability.’”84
It may disturb some Christians to grapple with this, but I think it is
a salutary challenge and also one that I will take up before concluding
this volume.
In the meantime, when evaluating Ehrman’s and Crossan’s claims,
it is important to consider the phenomenon of protective anonymity
as an alternate explanation for the expansions we find in later Gospels
(e.g., why unnamed persons in Mark receive names in the later Gos-
pel of John). As Richard Bauckham observes, “These should not be
regarded as instances of some alleged tendency for names to get added
in the tradition. . . . [T]here is little evidence of such a tendency before
the fourth century.”85 Regarding Mark’s anonymous young man who
flees naked (Mk 14:52), Gerd Theissen writes:
It seems to me that the narrative motive for this anonymity is not hard to
guess: both of them [the bystander who cut off the ear of the high priest’s
slave and the young man who ran away from the scene naked] [had] run afoul
of the ‘police.’ . . . Their anonymity is for their protection, and the obscurity of
their positive relationship with Jesus is a strategy of caution. Both the teller
and the hearers know more about these two people.86
Concerning the woman who anointed Jesus (Mk 14:3–9), Bauckham
argues that this likely would have been perceived in a messianic sense,
i.e., as the anointing of the Messiah, the new king of Israel:
What has not been generally recognized is the significance of Mark’s placing
of this story between his account of the plot by the Jewish authorities to ar-

84. Ibid, 165. Ehrman pointedly adds: “And no one should be put off by the claim,
‘No one would be willing to die for what he knew to be a lie.’ We don’t know what hap-
pened to most of the disciples in the end. We certainly have no evidence that they were
all martyred for their faith. On the contrary, almost certainly most of them were not. So
there is no need for talk about anyone dying for a lie. (Moreover, we have lots of instances
in history for people dying for lies when they think it will serve a greater good. But that’s
neither here nor there: we don’t know how most of the disciples died.)” I do not think
that our evidence for the disciples’ martyrdoms is as weak as Ehrman does, but he is right
that it is possible for someone to “die for a lie” (or because they are delusional). I think
that the Christian has to admit this much, but the question remains whether or not this
is the best explanation for the apostles’ heroic faith.
85. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 194.
86. Gerd Theissen, The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synoptic
Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991), 186–87.
136  Bart Ehrman

rest and kill Jesus and his account of Judas’ visit to the chief priests in order
to hand Jesus over to them. This is a typically Markan ‘sandwich’ construc-
tion, like, for example, the placing of the account of Jesus’ demonstration in
the Temple between the two parts of the story of the withered fig tree. . . .
We should surely understand that Judas reports the incident of the anoint-
ing to the chief priests, for whom it must constitute significant evidence that
Jesus and his disciples are planning an imminent messianic uprising. . . . What
would have put these persons in danger in Jerusalem in the period of the ear-
liest Christian community would be their complicity in Jesus’ allegedly sedi-
tious behavior in the days before his arrest. Furthermore, the whole Christian
community was potentially at risk for its allegiance to a man who had been
executed for such seditious behavior. We can readily understand that, just
as the pre-Markan passion narrative protected certain individuals by leaving
them anonymous, so it protected the community by not making too obvious
the messianic meaning of the events that had constituted the chief priests’
evidence for treating Jesus as a dangerously seditious figure.87
Bauckham applies this same logic to the case of Lazarus—whom
we are told in Jn 12:10 that the chief priests had sought to kill—and to
Peter, who only in John is identified as the one who cut off the ear of
the high priest’s servant. Thus in the latter case he writes:
Peter is afraid of being identified not just as a disciple of Jesus but as the one
who assaulted the servant of the high priest. . . . [I]n the light of our discus-
sion, we certainly cannot maintain that the connection is historically unlikely
simply because it is made only in John’s Gospel. It could not have been made
in the pre-Markan passion narrative (on which not only Mark, but, by way
of Mark, the other Synoptic Evangelists at this point depend), without also
identifying Peter as the man who cut off the high priest’s servant’s ear. The ex-
tent of the fear that motivated Peter’s denial could not be explained without
blowing his cover.88
In addition to challenging Ehrman and Crossan on the question of
added names in the later Gospels, Craig Evans offers a pointed chal-
lenge to these authors on the subject of Jesus’ burial.The nonappear-
ance of Joseph of Arimathea in the ancient creed of 1 Cor 15:3–5 leads
Ehrman to conclude that his later appearance was a result of the ten-
dency to add names to the tradition over time. However, Evans argues

87. Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 192–93.

88. Ibid., 194–95; see also Craig Evans, Mark 8:27–16:20 (Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas
Nelson Publishers, 2001), 359–60.
 Bart Ehrman  137
that Ehrman fails to account either for Jewish custom at the time or
for the archaeological evidence. Says Evans:
It is against this legal and cultural backdrop that the story of Joseph of Ari-
mathea should be understood. . . . In short, there is nothing irregular about
the gospels’ report that a member of the Sanhedrin requested permission to
take down the body of Jesus and give it proper burial, in keeping with Jew-
ish burial practices as they related to the executed. It is entirely in keeping
with all that we know from the literature and from archaeology. . . . Although
archaeology does not prove there was a follower of Jesus named Joseph of Ari-
mathea or that Pontius Pilate granted his request for Jesus’ body, the gospel
accounts describing Jesus’ removal from the cross and burial are consistent
with archaeological evidence and with Jewish law.89
Further, Evans observes on a different note:
But if the gospel stories were filled with as much fiction as Ehrman thinks,
one must wonder why the Evangelists did not alter the stories and give more
prominence to men. . . . This in fact happened, as we see in the mocking chal-
lenges offered by pagan skeptics like Celsus and Porphyry. The second cen-
tury Gospel of Peter, which claims that hostile Jewish leaders and Romans,
along with the male disciples themselves, witnessed the resurrection, was
composed to answer that criticism.90
Finally, as to the commonplace proposition that Jesus’ disciples
had come to believe that he had “risen” in an immaterial way, Evans
concludes:
I find it difficult to explain Paul’s proclamation of Jesus as resurrected, had
the followers of Jesus spoken only of a spiritual resurrection and had the body
of Jesus remained dead and decomposing in a tomb. After all, the Jewish peo-
ple had their traditions of ghosts, spirits, and visions, which did not lead to
the conviction that people had been resurrected.91
Turning from what Ehrman thinks cannot be known about the
Resurrection to what we can know about it, I would like to explore in

89. Craig Evans, “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right,” in Bird, How
God Became Jesus, 94–116.
90. Ibid., 90.
91. Ibid., 92. On this last point see also N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus: “For a
start, if Peter or Paul had had such experiences [of Christ’s “spiritual” rather than bodily
resurrection], the category that would have suggested itself would not be ‘resurrection’; it
would be that of the appearance of Jesus’ ‘angel’ or his ‘spirit.’” Wright, 148.
138  Bart Ehrman

more detail something I mentioned in the introduction: Ehrman af-

firms that at least some direct followers of Jesus sincerely believed that
their master had been raised from the dead. He suggests that “three or
four people—though possibly more—had visions of Jesus sometime
after he died.”92 Elsewhere he states emphatically, “There can be no
doubt, historically, that some of Jesus’s followers came to believe he
was raised from the dead—no doubt whatsoever.”93 And, unlike some
who deny the Resurrection, Ehrman agrees with Christians that the
Resurrection being claimed here is not a mere resuscitation, a return
to normal earthly human existence as in the case of Lazarus.
Although Ehrman agrees with orthodox Christianity that the al-
leged Resurrection of Jesus was perceived to be a unique apocalyptic
event, he disagrees on the all-important issue of whether the Christian
claim is true. What was it, then, that caused Jesus’ disciples to pro-
claim that he was resurrected? While ultimately remaining agnostic
on the question, he seems to think that the most likely explanation for
the claim is that the disciples experienced bereavement visions, a phe-
nomenon that occurs when a person’s source monitoring fails to dis-
tinguish whether a sensation arises from inside or outside the mind:
Bentall argues that source monitoring judgments are affected by the culture
in which a person grows up. If a person’s culture subscribes to the existence
of ghosts or the reality of dead people appearing, the chance that what one
“sees” will be assumed to be a ghost or a dead person is obviously heightened.
Moreover, and this is a key point, stress and emotional arousal can have se-
rious effects on a person’s source monitoring skills. Someone who is under
considerable stress, or experiencing deep grief, trauma, or personal anguish,
is more likely to experience a failure of source monitoring. This may be why
two of the most frequently reported forms of visions involve the comforting
presence of a deceased loved one or of a respected religious figure.94

92. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 192.

93. Ibid., 174.
94. Ibid., 194. Crossan, too, seems to think that the disciples experienced Jesus in
trances and visions rather than in the manner described in the Gospels: “Of course there
may have been trances and visions. There always are such events in every religion.” Cros-
san, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 190; cf. also 168. Crossan thinks that such trances,
which continue to occur even today, are not pathological delusions: “Trance and ecstasy,
vision and apparition are perfectly normal and natural phenomena. Altered states of
consciousness, such as dreams and visions, are something common to our humanity.”
Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, xvii–xviii.
 Bart Ehrman  139
Ehrman thinks that the question of whether these putative experi-
ences were veridical (i.e., whether Jesus was really there or whether
they were hallucinatory bereavement visions) is beside his point, but
to this reader it seems clear which direction he leans on the issue—a
direction that is completely at odds with the requirements of authentic
Christian belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus.
So if their experience of the crucified Jesus was not real, why did
the disciples frame it in terms of Resurrection rather than a vision,
spirit, or something else? Argues Ehrman:
[A]nyone who was an apocalyptic Jew like Jesus’s closest follower Peter, or Je-
sus’s own brother James, or his later apostle Paul, who thought that Jesus had
come back to life, would naturally interpret it in light of his particular apoca-
lyptic worldview—a worldview that informed everything that he thought
about God, humans, the world, the future, and the afterlife. In that view, a
person who was alive after having died would have been bodily raised from
the dead, by God himself, so as to enter into the coming kingdom.95
Furthermore:
If an apocalyptic Jew of this kind were to come to believe that the resurrec-
tion of the dead had begun—for example, with the raising of God’s specially
favored one, his messiah—what would that resurrection involve? It would
naturally and automatically involve precisely a bodily resurrection. That’s
what “resurrection” meant to these people. It did not mean the ongoing life of
the spirit without the body. It meant the reanimation and glorification of the
body. If the disciples came to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead, they
would have on the spot understood that this meant his body was no longer
dead but had been brought back to life. They wouldn’t need an empty tomb
to prove it.96
In Ehrman’s view, then, it was the disciples’ own apocalyptic world-
view (informed by Jesus’ teachings while he was alive) that led them to
think of their visions of the crucified Jesus in terms of Resurrection.

Conclusion
In sum, for Ehrman the disciples’ belief in Jesus’ Resurrection
marked the decisive turning point in the history of Christology. From
that point on, Jesus was no longer a mere mortal but was, at least in

95. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 203.

96. Ibid., 186.
140  Bart Ehrman

some sense, God. Naturally, this view also had major implications for
what the disciples thought would happen next in history. Even before
Jesus’ Resurrection, the disciples had already believed the following:
In the very near future, God was going to send a cosmic judge over the earth,
the Son of Man, to destroy the wicked powers that were making life so miser-
able in this world and to set up a good kingdom, a utopian place where good
would prevail and God would rule through his messiah. The disciples would
sit on thrones as rulers in the coming kingdom, and Jesus would be seated on
the greatest throne of all, as the messiah of God.97
But with the game-changer of Jesus’ bodily Resurrection from the
dead, this view clearly required emendation:
In his own teaching [Jesus] had proclaimed that the Son of Man was to ap-
pear as the cosmic judge over the earth. But now it was obviously Jesus him-
self who was coming from heaven to rule. The disciples very soon—probably
right away—concluded that Jesus was the coming Son of Man. So when they
told stories about him later, they had him speak of himself as the Son of
Man—so much so that it became one of his favorite titles for himself in the
Gospels. As we have seen, the Son of Man was sometimes understood to be a
divine figure. In that sense also, then, Jesus was God.98
Ehrman discusses several key biblical texts in which this change
appears to unfold before our very eyes. In Romans 1:3–4, Paul states
quite clearly that Jesus “was designated Son of God in power according
to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.” Similarly,
Acts 13:32–33 has Paul identifying the “day” on which the Son of God
was begotten (cf. Ps 2) as the day not of his conception or birth but of
his Resurrection. Peter, too, speaks in similar terms: “Let all the house
of Israel therefore know assuredly that God has made him both Lord
and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified” (Acts 2:36; cf. 5:30–31). Eh-
rman comments:
During his lifetime Jesus’s followers had thought he would be the future mes-
siah who would reign as king in the coming kingdom of God to be brought
by the Son of Man, as Jesus himself had taught them. But when they came
to believe he was raised from the dead, as Acts 2:36 so clearly indicates, they
concluded that he had been made the messiah already. He was already ruling

97. Ibid., 204.

98. Ibid., 209.
 Bart Ehrman  141
as the king, in heaven, elevated to the side of God. As one who sits beside God
on a throne in the heavenly realm, Jesus already is the Christ.99
Ehrman describes this view of Christ as exaltation Christology, for
by his Resurrection “the man Jesus is showered with divine favors be-
yond anyone’s wildest dreams, honored by God to an unbelievable ex-
tent, elevated to a divine status on a level with God himself, sitting at
his right hand.”100 Commonly such a view would be described as low
Christology or even as adoptionist Christology, but Ehrman prefers
his term for the following reason:
When the earliest Christians talked about Jesus becoming the Son of God at
his resurrection, they were saying something truly remarkable about him. He
was made the heir of all that was God’s. He exchanged his status for the sta-
tus possessed by the Creator and ruler of all things. He received all of God’s
power and privileges. He could defy death. He could forgive sins. He could be
the future judge of the earth. He could rule with divine authority. He was for
all intents and purposes God.101
In other words, from our point of view today within orthodox Christi-
anity, Ehrman’s view of Christ may be low, but for first-century Jews it
would have been an immensely lofty theology.
In the remaining chapters of his book, Ehrman continues to trace
the beginnings of Christology from the New Testament through the
patristic period. While most of what he argues there exceeds the scope
of our volume, it is important to note his conclusion that there were
two fundamentally different Christologies at work in the early Church.
Writing about the trajectory we find in the Gospels, Ehrman says:
Originally, Jesus was thought to have been exalted only at the resurrection; as
Christians thought more about the matter, they came to think that he must
have been the Son of God during his entire ministry, so that he became the
Son of God at its outset, at baptism; as they thought even more about it, they
came to think he must have been the Son of God for his entire life, and so
he was born of a virgin and in that sense was the (literal) Son of God; and as
they thought about it more again, they came to think that he must have been
the Son of God even before he came into the world, and so they said he was a
preexistent divine being.102

99. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 228.

100. Ibid., 232. 101. Ibid., 234.
102. Ibid., 237. On this subject I appreciate the following quip, which by no means
142  Bart Ehrman

In contrast with this trajectory, Ehrman contends that Paul had

an incarnation Christology in which Jesus was an angel who came
to earth from above.103 Given the widely divergent views of Paul and
the Gospels, it is no wonder that an ecumenical council was required
to determine the precise nature of Jesus Christ, and that even after-
wards—contrary to the popular imagination—“nothing could be far-
ther from the truth” than to think that there was universal agreement
on the question.104
Ehrman concludes his book with an appeal to Martin Hengel,
who famously claimed that the early Church’s Christology developed
more in the first twenty years than in all the centuries of dogmatic de-
velopment that have followed. Here is Ehrman’s assessment:
There is a certain truth to this claim. Of course, a lot did indeed happen after
the first twenty years—an enormous amount. But the major leap was made
in those twenty years: from seeing Jesus as his own disciples did during his
ministry, as a Jewish man with an apocalyptic message of coming destruction,
to seeing him as something far greater, a preexistent divine being who became
human only temporarily before being made the Lord of the universe.105
Perhaps a Catholic need not dispute Ehrman’s claim entirely. Per-
haps more did happen in the first twenty years in terms of Christology
than in the remaining two thousand years of Church history. But the
question is whether the Christology developed during this period was
the fruit of truthful and providential reflection upon the mystery of Je-
sus, or whether it was a misguided, delusional, desperate, or even con-
niving power play.106 Similarly, was the hope that Christ would return

refutes Ehrman but does raise a meaningful objection: “At the transfiguration, God says
of Jesus: ‘This is my Son, whom I love. Listen to him!’ (Mk 9:1). Presumably God is not
adopting Jesus again. But it is hard to see how the voice at the baptism could refer to God’s
adoption of Jesus and the similar-sounding voice at the transfiguration could mean some-
thing different.” Gathercole, “What Did the First Christians Think about Jesus?” 99.
103. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 252ff.
104. Ibid., 356.
105. Ibid., 371; cf. Martin Hengel, The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the
History of Jewish-Hellenistic Religion (London: SCM, 1975), 4.
106. Unlike Ehrman, those who belong to the so-called “Early High Christology
Club” contend that this development discussed by Hengel was faithful to Jesus’ own
self-conception and can be described as a “big bang” origin to the Church’s Christology.
The antiquity of this explosion can be seen in Paul’s letters, which were written mostly
 Bart Ehrman  143
in judgment as Lord of the universe founded in Jesus’ own teaching
and faithful reflection upon it, or was it merely wishful thinking? It is
to this subject, the question of Christ’s imminent return, that we will
turn further in chapter 6. But first we will look at how Benedict XVI
handles the same sort of (and indeed, in many cases, the very same)
issues addressed by Ehrman. The point here has been to clarify what
precisely it is that a faithful exegete like Benedict is up against, to let
ourselves be challenged by the plausibility of Ehrman’s approach, giv-
en his first principles, and to highlight certain areas in which Ehrman’s
approach can be seen to be flawed.
A final note on that score: A clear example of an unwarranted
scholarly assumption can be glimpsed in how Ehrman dealt above
with Rom 1:3–4 (Jesus “was designated Son of God in power accord-
ing to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead”). Eh-
rman considers the small phrase “in power” is insignificant, for he
asserts that Paul “probably added” it to an early creed he had inher-
ited.107 However, some Christian interpreters have come to a differ-
ent interpretation by accentuating the “in power” portion of this verse.
Benedict XVI, for instance, insists, “The novelty of the Resurrection
consists in the fact that Jesus, raised from the lowliness of his earthly
existence, is constituted Son of God ‘in power.’”108 Simon Gathercole
likewise writes, “This is what it means that Jesus at the resurrection

in the 50s yet use what appear to be traditional, stereotyped formulations for talking
about Jesus’ identity and divine status (e.g. Rom 1:3–4; 1 Cor 8:6; Gal 4:4; Phil 2:5–11).
Writes Michael Bird: “When the early Christians mentioned God, they had to mention
Jesus as well, and whenever they mentioned Jesus, they felt constrained to mention God
in the same breath. It’s like God was Jesified and Jesus was Godified. . . . [I]t seems that
what happened was that among Jesus’ earliest followers there was an immediate move
to reconfigure Jewish monotheism, whereby the one God of Israel was now known and
experienced as the Lord Jesus Christ and God the Father.” Bird, How God Became Jesus,
13–14, 28, 40. Development in the case of the Holy Spirit did not follow these precise
lines; some described the early Church’s theology in terms of binitarianism or Christo-
logical monotheism. Ibid., 28. See 1 Thes 1:1; Gal 1:3–5; Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ:
Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003), 151–52.
For a recent treatment of Hengel, Hurtado, Bauckham, and others in the “Early High
Christology Club,” see N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God. 647–56.
107. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 224.
108. Benedict XVI, St. Paul (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009), 69.
144  Bart Ehrman

becomes Son of God in power, and Lord and Christ in a new sense. He
is ‘Son of God in power,’ in stark contrast to his physical condition in
his earthly ministry, which culminated in his death.”109 In this same
text Gathercole unmasks the “unwarranted prejudice” of Ehrman’s
assumption by showing that it reflects more the skeptic’s presuppo-
sition that the early Church considered Jesus adopted by God than
the relevant ancient evidence itself, which is precisely what we have in
Romans. In other words, we know that historical-critical exegesis has
overplayed its hand when it starts claiming that the truth of what hap-
pened must lie before or behind the earliest historical texts we have at
our disposal. At this point one can only ask: which is more made vis-
ible by this sort of exegesis—the face of the historical Jesus or the face
of the interpreter?

109. Gathercole, “What Did the First Christians Think about Jesus?” 115.
 5
The Life, Death, and Resurrection of Christ:
Benedict XVI

In the previous chapter, we examined Bart Ehrman’s approach to

the life of Christ and saw that his and the believer’s respective conclu-
sions follow from mutually incommensurable presuppositions about
the Bible in relation to history and truth. For a Catholic, the ques-
tion is whether the Christology that developed in the earliest days of
the Church was the fruit of truthful and providential reflection upon
the mystery of Jesus, or whether it was a misguided, delusional, des-
perate, or even conniving power play. In this chapter, we will explore
how Benedict XVI and the Pontifical Biblical Commission handle the
same sort of—and indeed in many cases the very same—issues ad-
dressed by Ehrman.

General Principles from the PBC and

Benedict’s Jesus Forewords
In its 2014 work The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, the
Pontifical Biblical Commission provides an indispensable key to coun-
tering Ehrman’s assertion that the early Church invented Christ’s di-
vinity and resurrection. First, it is of paramount importance that the
document in fact acknowledges rather than avoids the sound conclu-

145
146  Benedict XVI

sions drawn by modern scholars. For example, Ehrman thinks it bla-

tantly obvious that the words of Jesus presented in the Gospels are
often not his actual words. So too the PBC admits, “In many cases,
in fact, we do not have the ipsissima verba of the prophet (inspired by
God), unless in the words of his disciples. This is typically the case in
the gospels, whose inspiration is not in question.”1 In the Old Testa-
ment and New Testament alike, we are not talking about transcrip-
tions or video camera recordings. On this point modern scholars are
in agreement regardless of their faith persuasions.2
So if we are not in possession of Jesus’ precise words, then of what

1. PBC, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, 161. See also the PBC’s 1964
instruction The Historicity of the Gospels: “The truth of the Gospel account is not com-
promised because the Evangelists report the Lord’s words and deeds in different order.
Nor is it hurt because they report His words (verba), not literally, but in a variety of ways,
while retaining the same meaning (sensus).” A point worth pondering in this regard is
that the quotation marks in our modern bibles (which are not in the original Greek and
Hebrew) give us the unfounded impression that speech reported in the Bible represents
verbatim locutions from God, Jesus, etc. This is not to say that the biblical languages
have no way of conveying direct discourse, but it does challenge the naïve impression of
many Christians and skeptics alike: namely, that we are able to retrieve with certainty
the precise words of Jesus such as they came out of his mouth. Here it is critical to pon-
der the full ramifications of the christological analogy formulated in Vatican II’s Dei
Verbum, 13: “The words of God, expressed in human language, have been made like hu-
man discourse, just as the Word of the eternal Father, when He took to Himself the
flesh of human weakness, was in every way made like men.” If God’s word is truly both a
divine and a human word, and human words are not immune from being transmitted im-
perfectly, then why should we expect God’s word to be immune from these realities? In
other words, why would it not be the case that the Bible truthfully conveys the substance
of God’s word even in the presence of the imperfections inherent to human verbal and
written communication?
2. “[T]here is real reason to wonder whether the Gospel tradition and the evange-
lists were all that concerned about the precise wording of what Jesus said. . . . For example,
we have four reports of what Jesus said over the bread and wine at the Last Supper . . . and
all four versions differ among themselves. . . . Obviously, Jesus was able to say these words
only once before his life abruptly ended; hence . . . importance to the early Church guar-
anteed agreement in substance, not in exact wording. If this is true for these vital “words
of institution” at the Last Supper, do we have any reason to think that other words of
Jesus were preserved with greater zeal for word-for-word accuracy?” John Meier, A Mar-
ginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 4 vols. (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University
Press, 1991, 1994, 2001, 2009), 1.43 (emphasis added). My thanks to Brant Pitre for put-
ting me onto Meier’s formulation whereby it is understood that we possess not the exact
words of Christ but rather the substance of his words.
 Benedict XVI  147
use are the Gospels, and what do they actually provide us? The PBC
answers, “We must, therefore, bear in mind that the gospels are not
merely chronicles of the events in the life of Jesus, since the evangelists
also intend to express in narrative form the theological significance of
these events.”3 The Gospels certainly convey history, but not exactly in
the way many moderns think of history. Explains the PBC:
In other words, the intention of announcing Jesus, the Son of God and Sav-
ior of all—an intention which can be called “theological”—is widespread and
fundamental in the gospels. The reference to concrete facts which we encoun-
ter in the gospels falls within the framework of this theological announce-
ment. This means that while the theological affirmations about Jesus have a
direct and normative import, the purely historical elements have a subordi-
nate function.4
The primary aim of the Gospels, then, is to proclaim Jesus. They are
not purely historical documents, but neither are they anti-historical.
An authentic Christian appropriation of the Gospels recognizes that
they have a historical nucleus, yet one which is intimately bound up
with the various authors’ unique attempts to draw us into the mystery
of Christ. In a particularly helpful formulation, Erasmo Leiva-Merika-
kis writes that the Gospels communicate “the objective reality of his-
tory, but offered as kerygma.”5
The above understanding of the Gospels was not invented but
rather inherited by the PBC, and in no small part through a recep-
tion of Benedict XVI’s exegesis of the Gospels. As Benedict will say
below in the context of the infancy narratives, the Gospels are histo-
ries, to be sure, but they are interpreted histories that present us with
the life of Jesus Christ through the lens of the early Church’s faith. In
saying this, Benedict demonstrates that he is just as aware as Ehrman
that the Gospels do not contain transcripts of the ipsissima verba of

3. PBC, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, 142.

4. Ibid.
5. Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis, Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on the Gos-
pel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 2 (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), 45; cf. ibid.,
44. While differing significantly on the extent to which the gospels preserve the histori-
cal nucleus of Christ’s life, Crossan formulates this idea well when he says, “The gospels
are written for faith, to faith, and from faith.” The Birth of Christianity, 21.
148  Benedict XVI

Jesus.6 Yet at the same time Benedict rejects the common scholarly di-
chotomy between the “Jesus of history” and the “Christ of faith.”7 In
the foreword to his first volume of the Jesus series, he observes that
the common result of historical-critical scholarship operating on this
assumed rupture is that many now think we have very little certain
knowledge about the man Christians profess to be God incarnate.8
Benedict took up this same theme in his 2006 Regensburg Ad-
dress. Identifying nineteenth- and twentieth-century liberal exegesis
as the precursor to the widespread cultural pluralism of today, the
pontiff observed that its goal “was to bring Christianity back into har-
mony with modern reason, liberating it, that is to say, from seemingly
philosophical and theological elements, such as faith in Christ’s divini-
ty and the triune God.”9 The central idea of Adolf von Harnack, liber-
al theology’s “outstanding representative,” was to get back to the man
Jesus and his simple message that have been covered over through cen-
turies of theological accretions.10 In order to achieve this end, liberal

6. Benedict is by no means the first Catholic to acknowledge this. A century ago

Marie-Joseph Lagrange could write, “We must be ready to give up the untenable. Since
Jesus did not fix his teaching in writing, it was impossible that the terms of that teaching
should have always been preserved for us with mathematical accuracy. Those of the evan-
gelists are in part borrowed from the Church and given back to the Church; she provides
them and she accepts them.” Lagrange, Historical Criticism and the Old Testament (Lon-
don: Catholic Truth Society, 1905), 44.
7. It should be noted that even some of the most archetypal modern scholars now
reject this dichotomy. John Dominic Crossan, for instance, writes of his most recent
project: “This, by the way, is emphatically not the old challenge of the ‘Jesus of history’
versus the ‘Christ of faith.’ The new challenge is whether we consider the ‘Jesus of history’
and/or ‘the Christ of faith’ to have been nonviolent or violent. This is a new and different
challenge, not just another dreary repetition of an outdated one.” Crossan, How to Read
the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Violence from Genesis Through Revelation
(New York: HarperOne, 2015), 37. Nevertheless, it is the case that Crossan identifies the
historical Jesus with the biblical Christ in the way that Benedict does. We see this when
Crossan says, “If, for Christians, the biblical Christ is the criterion of the biblical God,
then, for Christians, the historical Jesus is the criterion of the biblical Christ.” Ibid., 5.
8. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigura-
tion, xi–xii.
9. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections,”
Address at the University of Regensburg (September 12, 2006).
10. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigu-
ration, xii. Benedict also brings up Harnack in this connection in his introduction to the
first volume of Jesus. Harnack claimed that Jesus’ message was only about the Father, and
 Benedict XVI  149
exegesis committed methodologically to accept only mathematical or
empirical certainties, relegating the question of God to the realm of
the unscientific or pre-scientific. As a result, Benedict writes that in-
terpreters of the Bible today find ourselves “faced with a reduction of
the radius of science and reason, one which needs to be questioned.”11
Anticipating a point that will emerge again at the end of this book,
Benedict “critiques the critique” by taking issue with the modern de-
hellenizing tendency to bracket the philosophical question involving
God. The irony of deciding to exclude the God question is that this
decision is itself philosophical in nature, a first principle assumed
rather proved empirically. In response, Benedict argues that we need
to overcome “the self-imposed limitation of reason to the empirically
falsifiable” while at the same time taking care not to lose sight of the
goods that have been achieved through modern biblical criticism:
This attempt, painted with broad strokes, at a critique of modern reason from
within has nothing to do with putting the clock back to the time before the
Enlightenment and rejecting the insights of the modern age. The positive as-
pects of modernity are to be acknowledged unreservedly: we are all grateful
for the marvelous possibilities that it has opened up for mankind and for the
progress in humanity that has been granted to us. . . . While we rejoice in the
new possibilities open to humanity, we also see the dangers arising from these
possibilities and we must ask ourselves how we can overcome them. 12
As mentioned above, one important danger of excluding philo-
sophical or religious elements within exegesis is that we lose sight of
the true figure of Jesus presented in the Gospels. But another is that
when the whole of science is reduced to the empirical, “it is man him-
self who ends up being reduced, for the specifically human questions
about our origin and destiny, the questions raised by religion and eth-
ics, then have no place within the purview of collective reason as de-
fined by ‘science,’ so understood.”

therefore Christology had no place in it. Benedict argues that this is a fallacy: Jesus is
able to speak the way he does only because he is in full communion with the Father, and
this mystery of the Son as revealer of the Father is present in everything he says and does.
Ibid., 7. Benedict believes that we have to start here if we wish to understand the figure of
Jesus, for it is “the central point” that anchors all that the New Testament tells us about
the words, deeds, suffering, and glory of Christ. Ibid., 5.
11. Benedict XVI, “Faith, Reason, and the University.”
12. Ibid. (also quote below).
150  Benedict XVI

Returning to the foreword of Jesus, Benedict writes that this re-

duction leads to a “dramatic situation for faith, because its point of
reference is being placed in doubt; intimate friendship with Jesus, on
which everything depends, is in danger of clutching at thin air.”13 This,
then, is why Benedict dedicated so many years late in his career to
penning the Jesus trilogy. The emeritus pontiff’s chief concern and the
“main implication” of his method is that the Jesus of the Gospels is the
historical Jesus. Benedict is adamant that we can trust the Gospels—
and find in them the path to a personal encounter with Jesus Christ.14
In what follows, we will examine more concretely just how Benedict
goes about defending the truth of specific Gospel texts through a seri-
ous and judicial appropriation of modern exegesis.

Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the

Transfiguration
Baptism and Temptations
While it would be reasonable to begin at the infancy of Christ, for
our present engagement with the mysteries of Christ’s life I have de-
cided to follow the order Benedict himself adopted in authoring the
Jesus trilogy. After the foreword and introduction to his first volume
discussed above, Benedict begins by considering the baptism and
temptations of Jesus (Mt 3–4; Lk 3–4). Anchoring the story of Jesus in
such historical persons as Tiberius Caesar, Pontius Pilate, and Herod,
Luke wishes his audience to understand Jesus’s activity not as taking
place in a mythical “anytime” (which can mean always or never) but
rather as something that happens only once within human history it-
self.15 Unlike many other religious traditions, the Gospels purport to
convey real history, albeit presented through the lens of faith.
To be sure, even the Gospels contain elements which might re-
tain something of a mythic character, but that does not mean we are
justified in dismissing their core claims. For example, Benedict urges

13. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, xii.
14. Ibid., xxi. Benedict repeats this conviction in the foreword to the final volume of
the trilogy, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, xii.
15. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism to the Transfiguration, 11.
 Benedict XVI  151
that the second temptation of Christ “has to be interpreted as a sort of
vision.”16 The event, in other words, is not something that we would
have been able to capture on a video camera, but this is not to say that
it has no historical basis or that Satan is not real. Quite contrary to
such a supposition, Benedict is emphatic that the figure of Satan is
indispensable for understanding the mission of Jesus and, in turn, the
Church.17 But regardless of which aspects of the temptation narrative
would pass as history according to our modern preconceptions, Bene-
dict insists that “the point at issue” is revealed in Jesus’ answer, “You
shall not put the Lord your God to the test” (Dt 6:16).18
One of the most fascinating insights of Benedict’s book lies in his
excursus on the dialogue between Jesus and Satan in the temptation
scene. Benedict describes this exchange as a theological debate among
scholars over the correct interpretation of Scripture. Satan cites Scrip-
ture and twists it to his own purposes; Christ cites it right back at him
according to the spirit in which it was written.19 The point is that,
16. Ibid., 34.
17. Ratzinger, “Farewell to the Devil?” 202. See also my article by the same title at
http://www.thegregorian.org/blog/farewell-to-the-devil.
18. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Trans-
figuration, 37. Dale Allison concurs in viewing the temptation narratives as something
other then mere history: “Although I may be wrong about this, the temptation narra-
tives . . . do not strike me as sober history. For one thing, and as Origen already observed,
there is no high place from which one can see the whole world. For another, doubting
the historicity of the similar dialogues between rabbis and Satan strikes me as sensible,
and turnabout is fair play. Why should I evaluate the Synoptic encounter differently? In
any event, I concur with many that our story is the product of a sophisticated Christian
scribe who spun a delightful haggadic tale out of Deuteronomy and the Psalms.” Allison,
The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 25. At the same time, Allison adds that
the narratives are not myth pure and simple: “The Temptation narrative may not be his-
tory as it really was, yet it is full of memory. My judgment is that, taken as a whole, its
artistic originator has managed to leave us with a pretty fair impression of Jesus, even if
the episode does not contain one word that Jesus spoke or narrate one thing that he did.
Memory and legend are not easily disentangled, so when we try to weed out the fictions,
will we not be uprooting much else besides?” Ibid., 25–26.
19. The pope bases his comments on Vladimir Solovyov’s short story “The Anti-
christ,” a work that, since he also refers to it in his Erasmus Lecture and his book Es-
chatology, we may surmise he finds important. In Solovyov’s work, the figure of the An-
tichrist tries to seduce Christians by touting the honorary doctorate in theology he has
been awarded by the University of Tübingen. Tübingen has historically been a mecca
for historical-critical biblical research. Solovyov, then, is unabashedly connecting the
152  Benedict XVI

while Benedict does not reject scholarly biblical interpretation as such,

he wishes to caution us against its possible aberrations. Thus he writes
(pp. 35–36):
The fact is that scholarly exegesis can become a tool of the Antichrist. . . . The
alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most
dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith. The
common practice today is to measure the Bible against the so-called modern
worldview, whose fundamental dogma is that God cannot act in history. . . .
And so the Bible no longer speaks of God, the living God; no, now we alone
speak and decide what God can do and what we will and should do. And the
Antichrist, with an air of scholarly excellence, tells us that any exegesis that
reads the Bible from the perspective of faith in the living God, in order to lis-
ten to what God has to say, is fundamentalism; he wants to convince us that
only his kind of exegesis, the supposedly purely scientific kind, in which God
says nothing and has nothing to say, is able to keep abreast of the times. The
theological dispute between Jesus and the devil is a dispute over the correct
interpretation of Scripture.
One would be hard-pressed to find a harsher criticism of modern
biblical scholarship at such a high level within the Catholic Church,
and yet all this from the pen of a pope who engages such criticism not
merely to critique but also to harvest the great good found within it.

The Kingdom of God

The third temptation of Christ discussed above concerns the same
question Benedict addresses in his next chapter on the nature of the
kingdom. Satan offers Jesus all the kingdoms of the world in exchange
for a little worship. According to the emeritus pontiff, this is the “fun-
damental temptation because it concerns the question as to what sort
of action is expected of a Savior of the world.”20 As Ehrman noted in
the previous chapter, Jews living at the time of Christ were not at all
expecting the suffering savior that Christians claimed Jesus to be, but
rather a political figure who would usher in an everlasting kingdom
here on earth. Benedict in his own turn echoes this concern:

hermeneutic of suspicion practiced at Tübingen with the work of the Antichrist, and
ultimately the devil.
20. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigu-
ration, 42.
 Benedict XVI  153
It is our Jewish interlocutors who, quite rightly, ask again and again: So what
has your “Messiah” Jesus actually brought? He has not brought world peace,
and he has not conquered the world’s misery. So he can hardly be the true
Messiah who, after all, was supposed to do just that.21

Is there anything more tragic, is there anything more opposed to belief in the
existence of a good God and a Redeemer of mankind, than world hunger?
Shouldn’t it be the first test of the Redeemer, before the world’s gaze and on
the world’s behalf, to give it bread and end all hunger?22
So what does Benedict think Jesus’ kingdom is? What has Christ
brought if not world peace, universal prosperity, and bread for the
world? This is a most important question, for according to Benedict
the proclamation of the kingdom constitutes “the core content of the
Gospels” upon whose proper understanding “everything depends.”23
Ehrman for his part thinks that Jesus brought nothing new because,
quite frankly, his promised kingdom failed to materialize. Or, as
the Catholic modernist Alfred Loisy has it in a passage referenced
by Benedict: Jesus preached the kingdom, but what came was the
Church.24 Are Ehrman and Loisy right? Did Jesus’ kingdom fail, and
we Christians end up with a disappointing Church as our compensa-
tion? Benedict acknowledges that the message of the Church shifted
from the kingdom to Christ at a very early stage. But was this shift
warranted?
As ever, Benedict observes some of the same phenomena as Eh-
rman (for example, the very obvious reality that world hunger has not
been eliminated and that the Church began to focus more on Christ
than on the kingdom in its earlier Jewish sense). The emeritus pon-

21. Ibid., 116. It is striking that Benedict formulates this question critical of Christi-
anity in much the same way he cites Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus against Is-
lam in the Regensburg Address: “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new,
and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by
the sword the faith he preached.”
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Ibid., 47–48.
24. Ibid., 48. On this score Michael Bird argues, “Jesus may have spoken of himself
in far more elevated ways than Ehrman imagines. It is certainly not the case that Jesus
proclaimed God’s kingdom and later on the church proclaimed Jesus. For even within
Jesus’ kingdom message there was always an implicit self-reference.” Bird, How God Be-
came Jesus, 52.
154  Benedict XVI

tiff, however, draws a completely different conclusion from his obser-

vations, insisting that the primary question is not about the Church
but rather about the relationship between the kingdom and Christ.
So what is the novum in the kingdom? What has Christ brought that
is new?
The answer is very simple: God. . . . He has brought God, and now we know
his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human
beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the
truth about our origin and destiny: faith, hope, and love.25
As both the Hebrew malkut and the Greek basileia indicate, the king-
dom of God is not a static thing but rather a dynamic event: “God’s
being Lord” in history.26 Above all, Benedict points to Jesus as the
autobasileia, the kingdom in person. Within the New Testament per-
spective, the kingdom being at hand means that God is acting now in
the person of Jesus; it is through him that God is being Lord among
us. In other words, in this kingdom the messenger himself is the mes-
sage.27
According to Benedict, this radical perspective on the kingdom
was perhaps an even more formidable motivation for many Jews’ re-
jection of Jesus. Instead of exhorting his people to follow God, Jesus
places himself at the center of the Law when he says, “Come and fol-
low me” (Mt 19:21). It thus is not what Jesus subtracts from the Law
(e.g. dietary regulations, circumcision, etc.) but what he adds it that
the Jews found problematic.28 Contrary to certain modern interpreta-
tions, Benedict is adamant that Jesus was not merely a “liberal reform

25. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigu-
ration, 44.
26. For all the differences between his and Benedict’s views of the kingdom, it is
noteworthy that John Dominic Crossan also thinks of it in terms of power, rule, and
“process” rather than as a static place. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 55. See
also N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus, 36. Wright’s work is especially penetrating
when it comes to showing how everything Jesus did in his ministry was aimed at enacting
and embodying the coming kingdom of Yahweh in his own person.
27. As Benedict relates, the kingdom of God is a dynamic reality that admits of ec-
clesiastical, mystical, eschatological, and christological interpretations. For these and for
his understanding of the kingdom as an event, see Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in
the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 49ff.
28. Ibid., 99ff.
 Benedict XVI  155
rabbi,” but rather a man claiming to be God himself.29 Indeed, this is
shown in Benedict’s observation that “[n]o one would crucify a teacher
who told pleasant stories to enforce prudential morality.”30 Jesus was
not a moralist. Rather, as we find in his parables—which according to
Benedict constitute the heart of his teaching—the deepest theme of
Jesus’ message was nothing other than himself.31
Benedict is well aware that, to someone who thinks that the Mes-
siah should have put an end to all wars and solved the problem of
world hunger, his own understanding of the kingdom may come across
as a cheap response. But according to Benedict, it is only our hard-
ness of heart that makes us think of this as too little. The truth of the
matter is that, while poverty and hunger continue to plague humanity
unto this day, man does not live by bread alone. To be sure, Jesus is not
indifferent to human hunger and to our bodily needs, “but he places
these things in the proper context and the proper order.”32 The issue,
then, is the primacy of God as the reality without which nothing else
can be good.
Of course, we always wish that God’s presence were as evident as
the more tangible things of our everyday experience, but the myste-
rious divine plan has ordered things in such a way that God “can be

29. Ibid., 119.

30. Ibid., 186. Interestingly, Ehrman agrees to some extent here: “[If] Jesus had sim-
ply been a great moral teacher, a gentle rabbi who did nothing more than urge his devoted
followers to love God and one another, or an itinerant philosopher . . . then he would
scarcely have been seen as a threat to the Romans and nailed to a cross. Great moral
teachers were not crucified—unless their teachings were considered subversive.” Bart
Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 275–76.
31. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 183, 188. As
noted in the previous chapter, this view is in contrast with that of Crossan, who believes
that the gospel histories themselves are parables. Says Crossan: “My general proposal is
that parables by Jesus during his life begot parables about Jesus after his death; and, fur-
thermore, that the four gospels not only contain parables about Jesus, but are best under-
stood as four discrete megaparables about Jesus.” The Power of Parable, 154. Even though
his and Benedict’s views are clearly incompatible on this important point, it is worth re-
flecting on Crossan’s description of parables (The Power of Parable, 243) as participatory
pedagogy wherein the narrative lures one into its plotted micro-world to participate as an
outsider-insider in its ongoing adventure.
32. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration, 32.
156  Benedict XVI

sought and found only when the heart sets out on the ‘exodus’ from
‘Egypt,’” a process that occurs “first and foremost by obedience to
God’s word.”33 Christ conforms his faithful to himself, making us
“sons in the Son” and members of his Mystical Body who are called to
be his hands and feet in the world. The key here is that Christ wishes
to heal the world not through a snap of his fingers but rather through
that obedience by which we become cooperators in his own saving
work: “Only when this obedience is put into practice does the attitude
develop that is also capable of providing bread for all.”34 But of course,
this whole picture of becoming sharers in God’s own nature and work
is itself dependent on the Church’s faith. The issue here as ever ends
up being philosophical in nature. If we are committed to reading the
Gospels without this faith, then Benedict’s answer will hardly appeal.
If on the other hand we approach the Gospels with a hermeneutic of
trust, then we can admit that Jesus did not fulfill Jewish messianic
expectations in the way most anticipated. Indeed, it does not follow
from the incarnation being a surprise that God’s plan was not fulfilled
through it.

Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance

into Jerusalem to the Resurrection
The Last Supper
The second volume of Benedict’s Jesus trilogy begins on Palm Sun-
day with the triumphal entry into Jerusalem and takes us through
Holy Week, finishing with an epilogue on the Ascension. However,
in the effort to be concise, I will focus on just a few key events that are
particularly relevant to the theme of our book. In this regard there is
no better place to begin than with the methodological foreword em-
bedded in Benedict’s chapter on the Last Supper. Considering the fact
that many modern scholars doubt that the Last Supper happened in
any way resembling how it is depicted in the Gospels, it is significant
that Benedict states point blank that “the text in question concerns the
very heart of Christianity.”35 The problem, however, is that the events

33. Ibid., 34. 34. Ibid.

35. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 103.
 Benedict XVI  157
of the Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist have been
“caught up in a dense undergrowth of mutually contradictory hypoth-
eses, which seem to make access to the real event nearly impossible.”36
In this connection it is imperative to understand that, for Benedict,
the historical method can at best produce high probability but not ab-
solute certainty over every detail of our inquiry. This is why he focuses
on the task of getting to know the figure of Jesus through the Gospel
narratives, while leaving “the details to the experts.”37
All the same, the emeritus pontiff insists that Christians cannot
ignore the historicity question concerning the events that unfolded
during Holy Week. For him it is “essential that these events actually
occurred in the history of this world.”38 These are not myths or sym-
bolic stories of timeless meta-historical truths. Indeed, Benedict is so
convicted of this as to avow that if the historicity of such events were
disproved, then the Church’s faith would lose its foundation.39 Our
task then, is “to ascertain whether the basic convictions of the faith
are plausible and credible when today’s exegetical knowledge is taken
in all seriousness.”40 This is not the same as proving that the events
happened. Accepting that a given historical event happened inevitably
involves an act of trusting the witness reporting it. According to Bene-
dict, all the believer needs to do at this point is to defend the plausibil-
ity of the Christian claim and to answer objections to the effect that
our Church’s teachings are incompatible with reason.
Benedict begins his response to this question by drawing the dis-
tinction he frequently makes between the substantial and the acciden-
tal, the essential and the details. While many details of the Gospels
remain open to multiple interpretations, for Benedict the fundamen-
tal historicity of basic Christian truths such as the Incarnation, Last
Supper, cross, Resurrection remains essential. As was indicated above,
however, absolute certainty for these claims is unattainable by means
of the historical method alone. Where, then, does the Christian get
his certitude?

36. Ibid. 37. Ibid.

38. Ibid., 103–4. 39. Ibid., 104–5.
40. Ibid., 105.
158  Benedict XVI

It is faith that gives us the ultimate certainty upon which we base our whole
lives—a humble commonality of belief in company with the Church of every
age under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. On this basis, moreover, we can
serenely examine exegetical hypotheses that all too often make exaggerated
claims to certainty.41
At the end of the day, it is the gift of faith that gives us certainty. This
point, introduced briefly above, is something to which we will return
in our conclusion. For now, the point is that no amount of historical
evidence is sufficient to give us certainty when it comes to the myster-
ies of Christ’s life, and if we are waiting for infallible certainty before
accepting them, then we will probably never get there.
Turning from these methodological points to the text of the Gos-
pel itself, a significant portion of Benedict’s chapter focuses on the dat-
ing of the Last Supper. Here in particular the emeritus pontiff demon-
strates his exegetical prowess and his interest in a sincere engagement
with modern hypotheses. To begin, it is striking to see Benedict say
that “[t]he problem of dating Jesus’ Last Supper arises from the contra-
diction on this point between the Synoptic Gospels, on the one hand,
and Saint John’s Gospel, on the other.”42 While it might catch some
Christians off guard to hear Benedict speak of the Gospels as mutu-
ally contradictory in some way, the fact of the matter is that the re-
spective chronologies of the Triduum differ by one day. The synoptic
Gospels situate the Last Supper contemporaneously with that year’s
evening Passover vigil meal:
And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the passover
lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for
you to eat the passover?” (Mk 14:12)
After the Last Supper–Passover meal, Jesus goes to pray in Geth-
semane, where he is arrested and led away; he is then tried, denied by
Peter, and held overnight in Caiaphas’s prison. Early the next morn-
ing, he is condemned to death by Pilate, taken outside of the city and
crucified around the third hour, and breathes his last at the ninth hour
(Mk 15:34). Mark makes it abundantly clear that his body was then
taken down in the evening before sunset:
41. Ibid. (emphasis added).
42. Ibid., 106 (emphasis added).
 Benedict XVI  159
And when evening had come, since it was the day of Preparation, that is,
the day before the sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the
council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage
and went to Pilate, and asked for the body of Jesus. (Mk 15:42; cf. Lk 23:54)
Jesus’ body fittingly rests in the tomb the following day, the day of the
weekly Sabbath. Then, “very early on the first day of the week” (Mk
16:12), Jesus rises from the dead and the empty tomb is discovered by
the holy women (whose names differ somewhat depending on which
Gospel one is reading).43
The Gospel of John agrees with the synoptic Gospels in placing the
resurrection on the first day of the week (Jn 20:1). However, the Johan-
nine chronology clearly differs when it comes to the placement of the
Last Supper and crucifixion. Whereas the synoptic Gospels portray
Jesus as celebrating the Last Supper as a Passover vigil meal, John goes
to great lengths to show that the Last Supper was not a Passover meal.
Introducing the events of that fateful night, the evangelist writes:
Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to
depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the
world, he loved them to the end. (Jn 13:1–2)
As in the synoptic tradition, Jesus is arrested and put on trial after-
wards. The apparent disagreement between the Gospel accounts is
that the evening Passover vigil described in the first three Gospels had
not yet taken place at the time of Jesus’ morning trial in John:
Then they led Jesus from the house of Caiaphas to the praetorium. It was
early. They themselves did not enter the praetorium, so that they might not
be defiled, but might eat the Passover. (Jn 18:28)
John thus has Jesus being crucified at the sixth hour, earlier on the
same day that the synoptics say that he celebrated the Last Supper, the
“day of Preparation for the Passover” (Jn 19:14). But then John gives us
this puzzling piece of information:
Since it was the day of Preparation, in order to prevent the bodies from re-
maining on the cross on the sabbath (for that sabbath was a high day), the
Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken, and that they might be
taken away. (Jn 19:31)
43. Note that this chronology is from our earliest Gospel, thus undermining Cros-
san’s claim that Jesus’ body was eaten by dogs.
160  Benedict XVI

What was this “day of Preparation” of which the Gospels speak?

For the synoptics, it is clearly the day in which the people prepared
for the weekly Sabbath. But for John as noted above, it was the day of
preparation for the Passover (Jn 19:14). Now here in John it emerges
that the preparation was for both the Passover and the Sabbath, which
happened to fall on the same day that year.
The question thus naturally arises: which of the two traditions is
more historical? In favor of the synoptic tradition, all three of these
Gospels were composed before John and thus were closer to the event
of the Last Supper itself. Moreover, according to Benedict, the Last
Supper seems so closely tied to Passover “that to deny its Passover
character is problematic.”44 Finally, there is the argument from tradi-
tion: the long tradition assigning the Last Supper to Holy Thursday
was established as early as the second century.45
Benedict, however, seems to favor the Johannine chronology. Fol-
lowing John Meier, whose solution is “astonishingly simple and in
many respects convincing,” he suggests that the Last Supper was not
the traditional Passover meal but rather Jesus’ own Passover. Know-
ing that he was about to die and would not be able to eat the Passover
with his disciples, according to this hypothesis Jesus invited his dis-
ciples to a Passover of a very different kind in which he himself was the
Lamb slain for the sins of the world. In contrast with the longstanding
tendency to see John’s Gospel as more theological (e.g., John has Jesus
killed at the same hour the paschal lambs were slaughtered), Benedict
believes that John’s chronology is “more probable historically than the
Synoptic chronology.”46 The main factor driving him to this conclu-
44. Ibid., 109.
45. Ibid., 111.
46. Ibid., 109. Benedict does not cite Meier in the first installment of Jesus, but
his work is referenced several times in the second volume of the trilogy. One wonders
whether the pontiff in the meantime had read and taken to heart Richard Hays’s incisive
observation that “[Benedict’s] dialogue partners in New Testament exegesis are, for the
most part, the great scholars of earlier generations.” Hays adds, “Jesus of Nazareth does
not seem to be informed at all by the more recent, and now much more influential, work
of even such great Catholic scholars as Raymond Brown and John Meier. It is perhaps
not surprising that an eighty-year-old scholar would continue to focus on the categories
and questions that were current in the German academy during the era of his own train-
ing and more active scholarly career. But it is regrettable that Benedict did not bring his
 Benedict XVI  161
sion is his supposition that the Jews would not have tried and executed
someone on such a feast day as the Passover; to him it seems “ques-
tionable” and indeed “scarcely conceivable.”47
Even so, to my mind Benedict’s argument here does not convinc-
ingly undermine the traditional position. If the Jewish authorities saw
Jesus’ presence in Jerusalem that week as an imminent threat, might
not they have been willing to break from protocol? But regardless of
what side of the debate one ends up on, the larger point here is that
the debate showcases Benedict’s method, casting into relief how he ap-
propriates modern criticism with fidelity to the Church. While many
Christians may feel uncomfortable with Benedict finding it “question-
able” that the Last Supper took place on the Passover, the pontiff is
not afraid of the problems posed by modern scholarship. It is clear
that even when calling certain things questionable or contradictory he

discussion up to date. His dismissive discussion of Jesus as an apocalyptic teacher would

profit greatly from engagement with the work of scholars such as E. P. Sanders and
Dale Allison. And it would be fascinating to know what the pope thinks of the work of
N. T. Wright, whose books on Jesus are widely influential in the English-speaking
world.” Richard Hays, “Benedict and the Biblical Jesus,” First Things (August, 2007). In
this regard it should be observed, first, that Benedict’s work does in fact evince deep ac-
quaintance with the scholarly literature from the 1960s to 80s and, to a lesser exent, the
90s and later. Moreover, it ought to be recalled that Jesus of Nazareth was conceived to be
an account of his own personal search for the face of the Lord, not an exhautive mono-
graph. All the same, Hays’s criticism has its merits, and in this volume I have attempted
a partial rectification of this situation by incorporating some of the most recent scholar-
ship available that bears upon the topics addressed by Benedict and Ehrman. Much of
this can be found in the footnotes of this chapter.
47. Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 107, 109. In this connection it is worth recalling the
argument recorded in Mark, “Not during the feast, lest there be a tumult of the people”
(Mk 14:1–2). In this section Benedict also dismisses Annie Jaubert’s attempt to harmo-
nize the Johannine and Synoptic chronologies as “fascinating . . . but too weak to be con-
vincing.” Jaubert’s interpretation proceeds from the observation that there were two dif-
ferent Jewish calendars used in Jesus’ day, and it then hypothesizes that Jesus celebrated
the Last Supper following the calendar not sanctioned by the authorities in Jerusalem.
Such a solution would enable one to hold that Jesus really celebrated a Passover meal
(as in the Synoptics), while maintaining that it was not the Passover meal of the Jewish
authorities (as in John). Yet Benedict remains cautious, avowing that we can reconstruct
the world at the time of Christ only to a limited degree. Ibid., 109–11. On the question of
whether John or the Synoptic dating tradition is more probable, I am open to, but remain
unconvinced by, Benedict’s argument in favor of the Johannine chronology. See also Dale
Allison’s critique in The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 86.
162  Benedict XVI

remains firmly convinced that these contradictions are only apparent

and that they can be explained if only we work through them rather
than ignoring them. For Benedict, the various Gospel accounts of the
Last Supper certainly exhibit “differences in detail,” but they remain
“very similar in essentials.”48
An important example: the New Testament contains four distinct
Eucharistic institution narratives following two principal lines of tra-
dition (Mark 14/Matthew 26 on the one hand, and Luke 22/1 Cor-
inthians 11 on the other). In a telling moment in which he discusses
the relative antiquity of these two models, Benedict acknowledges
that Paul’s text is older in literary terms, even though both Paul’s and
Mark’s texts ultimately have roots in the 30s.49 It really does not mat-
ter which of the two is older, for Benedict rightly states that these ac-
counts have taken on “an essential meaning for the Church’s recep-
tion of this whole tradition.” In other words, given the degree to which
these accounts have been received in the Church’s life over the past
two millennia, a Catholic cannot assume that they were invented, as
many modern scholars do. The presence of two strands of tradition
within the canon demonstrates that the Church permitted “a degree of
nuanced redaction.” At the same time, the nascent Church “was con-
scious of a strict obligation to faithfulness in essentials.”50
As a final word on the subject of the Last Supper, it is fascinat-
ing to read Benedict’s thoughts on why its historicity is so commonly
called into question. Says Benedict:
Given the uniquely powerful event described in the Last Supper, in terms of
its theological significance and its place in the history of religions, it could
hardly fail to be called into question in modern theology; something so ut-
terly extraordinary was scarcely compatible with the picture of the friendly
rabbi that many exegetes draw of Jesus. . . . As this concerns the very heart of
Christianity and the essence of the figure of Jesus, we must take a somewhat
closer look.51

48. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 115ff.

49. Ibid., 117. Note that Benedict, following the majority of modern scholars and
thus distancing himself from the majority opinion throughout Church history, assumes
Markan priority here as he does throughout his corpus.
50. Ibid., 127.
51. Ibid., 117–18.
 Benedict XVI  163
As Benedict tells us, the principal argument levied against the
historicity of the institution narratives concerns their seeming incom-
patibility with Jesus’ image of God and his message of the kingdom.
Wherein lies this tension? Jesus taught that the Father is uncondition-
ally ready to pardon all people, and yet at the Last Supper the Gos-
pel authors would have him say that his blood was shed “for you—for
many,” not for all. This leads to a striking and incisive moment within
Benedict’s criticism of the criticism. He explains:
This is the real reason why a good number of modern theologians (not only
exegetes) reject the idea that the words of the Last Supper go back to Jesus
himself. It is not on the basis of historical evidence: as we have seen, the eu-
charistic texts belong to the earliest strand of tradition. From the point of
view of historical evidence, nothing could be more authentic than this Last
Supper tradition. But the idea of expiation is incomprehensible to the mod-
ern mind. Jesus, with his proclamation of the kingdom of God, must surely
be diametrically opposed to such a notion [so think many moderns]. At issue
here is our image of God and our image of man. To this extent, the whole
discussion only appears to be concerned with history.52
This sort of dynamic is what underlies Benedict’s conviction that the
modern exegetical debate is at bottom philosophical in nature. Fol-
lowing historical-critical methodology as faithfully as possible, Bene-
dict sees no reason to doubt the essential veracity of the Last Supper
traditions (granting that each differs in matters of detail). According
to Benedict, the real problem moderns have with the Last Supper is
not historical in nature, but rather that we find the idea of expiation
repugnant.
In conclusion, Benedict describes the claim that the Eucharist
was invented by the Apostles as “absurd, even from a historical point
of view.” While deeming this suggestion “absurd” may be more than
some historians would be willing to grant, Benedict rightfully calls at-
tention to the inconsistency of those who base their reconstruction of
the historical Jesus largely on the Synoptic tradition but then proceed
to reject a tradition that is found not only in all three Synoptic Gos-
pels but also in St. Paul. Moreover, to my mind Benedict’s following

52. Ibid., 119.

164  Benedict XVI

question is spot-on: “How could the first generation of Christians—as

early as the 30s—have accepted such an invention without anyone call-
ing it into question?”53 Of course, to be fair to skeptics one must con-
cede that it is always possible that someone did call it into question,
but that their complaint was either not registered in writing or later
disposed of by the proto-orthodox. But the skeptic just stating that
this is possible does not constitute an argument. I think that exegetes
like Ehrman are asking a lot more than they appear to be asking when
they allege that key traditions such as the Last Supper and the Resur-
rection were invented during the first decade after Jesus’ crucifixion.
The best historical evidence we actually have on this matter is the New
Testament itself, whose earliest strands affirm the historicity of these
mysteries. Moreover, these Gospel witnesses themselves may be older
than scholars generally assume.54

Trial(s), Crucifixion, and Resurrection

One who reads Benedict’s account of Holy Week in its entirety
will find that he makes the same sort of moves in the effort to uphold
the historicity of later events that he made in the case of the Last Sup-
per. For example, the various accounts of Jesus’ dialogue with Caia-
phas “differ in detail” in light of the overall context of each Gospel
and by the audiences being addressed. At the same time, Benedict
makes it clear that these differences occur only in accidental matters
and that “[t]he essential content of the exchange nevertheless emerges
quite unequivocally from the three different accounts. . . . In all essen-
tials, the four Gospels harmonize with one another in their accounts
of the progress of the trial.”55 That said, Benedict follows the standard
line of historical criticism in concluding that Mark presents us with

53. Ibid., 125.

54. The primary foundation for a late-first-century dating of the synoptic gospels
rests squarely on the unfounded assumption that Jesus’ foretelling of the Temple’s de-
mise must have been invented by the evangelists. This is an entirely unsurprising as-
sumption, given that many modern biblical scholars assume the impossibility of miracles
in general, including prophecy. But even granting this unfounded assumption, would it
really have required the gift of prophecy for Jesus to read the signs of the times and figure
out that the end of the Temple was near?
55. Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 179, 184.
 Benedict XVI  165
“the most authentic” form of the dramatic dialogue between Jesus and
Caiaphas.56 And when it comes to the dialogue between Jesus and
Pilate, he notes that this is “of course” contested by exegetes who in-
evitably become wary when a tradition is recorded only in John.57 To
this challenge Benedict responds by acknowledging, “Certainly no one
would claim that John set out to provide anything resembling a tran-
script of the trial.” With this all modern scholars would agree. But
Benedict veers from the norm when he professes, “Yet we may assume
that [John] was able to explain with great precision the core question
at issue and that he presents us with a true account of the trial.”58 As
in the case of the Last Supper, the pontiff insists that there is a core or
essence to the event that each of the various Gospels captures faith-
fully, even as each account differs in matters of detail which cannot be
harmonized according to the standards of modern historiography.59

56. Ibid., 179. 57. Ibid., 184.

58. Ibid.
59. A valuable approach to this reality can be found in Dale Allison’s Constructing
Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010)
and his shorter The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, which I cite here. Employ-
ing different language to capture the same dynamic, Allison, in the latter of these two
works, begins by distinguishing the “general” from the “particular,” arguing (61): “Even
when human memory fails to retain the particulars, it can still get general impressions
right.” Regarding gospel texts that testify to Jesus’ self-conception, he writes (65): “I do
not contend (or deny) that Jesus formulated any of the sayings just cited. . . . I am rather
displaying a pattern. Jesus’ starring role in the eschatological drama is all over the tra-
dition. . . . So my inference is that, whatever titles he may or may not have used, Jesus
probably believed himself to be not just an eschatological prophet, but the personal locus
of the end-time scenario, the central figure of the last judgment.” In another place (95)
he writes: “I do not contend, because I do not believe, that all this material comes from
Jesus, directly or indirectly. Nor do I insist that any of it is word-perfect memory . . . the
Synoptics are not primarily records of what Jesus actually said and did but collections of
impressions. They recount, or rather often recount, the sorts of things that he said and
did, or that he could have said and done.” Allison’s account of memory is balanced and
realistic; he admits (61): “We mix memories with imagination. . . . [W]e impose narra-
tive connections on events in order to make them intelligible . . . projecting our current
circumstances and beliefs backward in time. . . . We need not be bottomless skeptics to
see that our sources have not been miraculously immune to all the usual failures and
biases of memory. All one has to do is peruse a synopsis, which will reveal variations
in order, contradictions in description, and discrepancies in wording.” Accordingly, he
says (62): “Given that we typically remember the outlines of an event or the general pur-
port of a conversation rather than the particulars . . . [w]e should rather be looking for
166  Benedict XVI

The same logic applies in the case of the crucifixion accounts that
appear in the Gospels. No two of these accounts come even close to
matching up perfectly, and indeed one gets the sense that there is a
good deal of theology injected into the protagonists’ speeches. Bene-
dict carefully demonstrates how Jesus’ Passion is painted as a fulfill-
ment of the Old Testament texts such as Isaiah 53, Psalm 22, Psalm 69,
and Wisdom 2. But when one sits down and compares these Old Tes-
tament texts with their New Testament counterparts, the whole thing
might come across as too neat to be true. In other words, the natural
objection from Ehrman and others in his camp is to assert that the
Gospel authors invented their narratives based on these Old Testa-
ment texts, and it is this—rather than their being prophecies—that
accounts for the resemblance between the two. On Ehrman’s account,
these connections were made only after the Resurrection, when the
disciples began to think that Jesus was, in some sense, God. Or, as
John Dominic Crossan has it, “What we have now in those detailed
passion accounts is not history remembered but prophecy histori-
cized. . . . Prophecy, in this sense, is known after rather than before the
fact.”60
Actually, Benedict agrees to a certain extent on this last point but
differs in his evaluation of whether the Gospels’ post-resurrection ex-
egetical moves were warranted. Here is how he describes the dynamic:
Underpinning this particular way of recounting events is the learning process
that the infant Church had to undergo as she came into being. At first, Jesus’
death on the Cross had simply been an inexplicable fact that placed his entire
message and his whole figure in question. . . . In the light of the Resurrection,

repeating patterns and contemplating the big picture.” By approaching the Gospels in
this way, Allison departs from the standard scholarly practice of applying criteria to as-
certain whether a particular saying or deed is attributable to the historical Jesus. While
his approach may not appear very significant at first glance, it allows us to conclude
many things about Jesus that contradict the conclusions of Ehrman or the Jesus Seminar
(63–64): “Working through the tradition in the way I suggest leads to a large number of
conclusions. Jesus must have been an exorcist who interpreted his ministry in terms of
Satan’s downfall. He must have thought highly of John the Baptist. He must have repeat-
edly spoken of God as Father. He must have composed parables. He must have come into
conflict with religious authorities.”
60. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 145.
 Benedict XVI  167
in the light of this new gift of journeying alongside the Lord, Christ’s follow-
ers had to learn to read the Old Testament afresh.61
At this point Benedict affirms what just above we saw Ehrman de-
claring, namely, that the Jews did not anticipate a crucified Messiah.
But then he parts paths with the agnostic:
It was not the words of Scripture that prompted the narration of facts; rather,
it was the facts themselves, at first unintelligible, that paved the way toward a
fresh understanding of Scripture.62
Whether one is going to accept Benedict’s or Ehrman’s take on this
matter boils down to the question of whether we are committed to
seeing the early Church’s theological developments as a human work
guided by divine providence, or whether we are going to see the pro-
cess as a purely human effort to rationalize the crucifixion of Jesus. As
I have said above and I will repeat again below, at bottom the decision
one makes here is ultimately driven by prior philosophical and reli-
gious commitments.
Benedict deepens this same point in his ensuing discussion of the
resurrection. Demonstrating how important the question is, he writes
that the Christian faith “stands or falls with the truth of the testimony
that Christ is risen from the dead,” and that in the quest to know the
figure of Jesus revealed in Scripture, “the Resurrection is the crucial

61. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 202–3. The apostles also had to
rethink other events of Christ’s life in light of the crucifixion. Thus the Transfiguration
scene (Mt 17:1–8) is painted by the evangelist in parallelism with his account of the cruci-
fixion (Mt 27:31–50). For a concise summary of these parallels, see Allison, The Luminous
Dusk, 58–59.
62. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 203. For a serious challenge to the
standard assumption (shared by Benedict and Ehrman) that no one before Christ had
expected a crucified Messiah, see Brant Pitre, Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the
Exile: Restoration Eschatology and the Origin of the Atonement (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2005), especially pp. 56–57. Although Pitre acknowledges that the Suffering Servant
prophecy of Isaiah 52–53 is not explicitly identified with the Messiah, there is one text—
Dan 9:25–27—in which an “anointed one” would rise up before “the end” and be “cut off.”
Considering Jesus’ clear self-identification with the Son of Man figure found just two
chapters earlier in Daniel, Pitre’s argument that Jesus understood his mission in these
terms is entirely reasonable within a first-century Jewish context and merits serious con-
sideration. On Jesus treating the figures of Daniel 7 and Daniel 9 as the same person, see
Pitre, 393–99.
168  Benedict XVI

point.”63 As he did with the crucifixion, Benedict proceeds to exam-

ine texts such as Psalm 16:27–28 and Hosea 6:1–2, which prophesy
or at least appear to foreshadow Christ’s resurrection. It is important
that Benedict agrees with the mainstream scholarly consensus, which
holds that these two texts were not originally written as prophecies of
the Messiah’s cross and resurrection. Indeed, the Hebrew version of
Psalm 16 has its sights set on deliverance from dying in the first place
rather than rising again after having died.64 And as for the “third day”
discussed in Hosea 6, Benedict maintains that this was not originally
a prophecy but rather “could become an anticipatory pointer toward
resurrection on the third day only once the event that took place on
the Sunday after the Lord’s crucifixion had given this day a special
meaning.”65
So what are we to make of the divergences in the Gospels’ resur-
rection accounts, inasmuch as they differ from one another every bit
as much as those of the crucifixion? And what are we to make of the
many Old Testament foreshadowings of Christ’s resurrection which
appear almost too good to be true? Benedict elaborates:
The process of coming to Resurrection faith is analogous to what we saw in
the case of the Cross. Nobody had thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the
“fact” was there, and it was necessary, on the basis of that fact, to take a fresh
look at Scripture. . . . Admittedly, this new reading of Scripture could begin

63. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 241–42. See also 1 Cor 15:14–15.
64. Ibid., 255. For more on Psalm 16, especially the differences between the original
Hebrew and the Greek cited by Peter in Acts 2, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible,
270–71.
65. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 257–58. As Peter Enns writes on
another passage that originally did not point to resurrection, “No one reading and com-
ing across [Exodus] 3:6 would think that resurrection was suddenly the topic of conversa-
tion.” Enns, Inspiration and Incarnation (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2005),
114; cf. Lk 20:27–40; Mt 22:23–33; Mk 12:18–27. Enns elaborates, “The New Testament
authors were not engaging the Old Testament in an effort to remain consistent with
the original context and intention of the Old Testament author. . . . To put it succinctly,
the New Testament authors were explaining what the Old Testament means in light of
Christ’s coming.” Ibid., 115–16. In other words, “It is not that the Old Testament words
are taken out of context and tossed into the air to fall where they may. Rather, the New
Testament authors take the Old Testament out of one context, that of the original hu-
man author, and place it into another context, the one that represents the final goal to
which Israel’s story has been moving.” Ibid., 153.
 Benedict XVI  169
only after the Resurrection, because it was only through the Resurrection
that Jesus was accredited as the one sent by God. Now people had to search
Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new
way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.66
An important contemporary Evangelical scholar, Peter Enns,
speaks similarly in the context of Jesus’ appearance along to the road
to Emmaus:
For any Jew who saw him or herself as one of the Chosen People, hearing a
claim like this [that Jesus had risen] would have been hard to take in—frank-
ly, it would have sounded ridiculous, as if God was turning his back on their
unique tradition, their rich heritage, their story—the story God himself had
written. What we’ve got here is more than just a slight adjustment to Israel’s
story.
You can read the Old Testament as carefully and as often as you want—
standing on your head, backward, with special decoder glasses, or in Klin-
gon—and you won’t find anything about a future messiah dying and rising
from the dead on the third day , the very thing Jesus says you will find there
[Lk 9:22]. Not a word. Don’t even bother looking. So what’s Luke’s angle?
Why does Jesus say something is in the Bible when it clearly isn’t? That makes
no sense. No, it doesn’t—until we are clear on what Jesus is actually telling
his disciples. Jesus didn’t mean for the disciples to root through their Bibles
to find the places where a dying-and-rising-from-the-dead messiah was hid-

66. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 245. Benedict notes that this deep-
ened understanding of Christ’s mystery is seen in the two endings of Mark: “The end-
ing of Mark poses a particular problem. . . . The authentic text of the Gospel as it has
come down to us ends with the fear and trembling of the women.” Ibid., 261. To this a
second-century redactor later added a concluding summary which brings together the
most important resurrection traditions and the mission of the disciples to proclaim the
Gospel to the whole world (Mk 16:9–20). Also worthwhile reading in this connection
is Richard Hays’s comment, “A Gospel-shaped hermeneutic necessarily entails reading
backwards reinterpreting Israel’s Scripture in light of the story of Jesus.” In addition to
the texts Benedict discusses, Hays mentions such examples as Jn 2:22, wherein the dis-
ciples realized the meaning of Jesus’ Temple prophecy only after his resurrection. Hays,
Reading Backwards, 104. Concerning the Emmaus narrative in Lk 24:13–35, Hays further
elaborates on how the gospels teach us how to read the Old Testament aright: “Jesus’
teaching does not produce that result immediately. The moment of recognition comes
only as they sit at the table and Jesus breaks bread with them (vv. 30–32). This point, too,
is significant for understanding how the Gospels teach us to read the OT. We come to
understand Scripture only as we participate in the shared life of the community, enacted
in meals shared at table.” Ibid., 15.
170  Benedict XVI

ing. . . . Jesus isn’t “in” Israel’s story that way. You’ll never read Israel’s story
on its own terms and “find Jesus” on the surface. To see Jesus, you won’t get
there by sticking to the script. You will only see Jesus there in hindsight and
under the surface, where your reading of the Old Testament is driven by faith
in Christ, where Jesus has become the starting point for re-understanding Is-
rael’s story, not the logical conclusion of Israel’s story. Here in Luke’s Gospel
Jesus is not telling his disciples to stick literally to the script. He is telling
them to reread the script in light of his death and resurrection.67
Unlike Ehrman, who views the early Church’s handling of the Old
Testament as a work of creative fiction, Benedict and Enns consciously
decide not to approach the Gospels with a hermeneutic of suspicion.
From this standpoint of faith, they admit that Jesus’ forebears never
expected the messiah to die and rise, and yet they also insist that the
Old Testament connections to Christ’s resurrection were planned
providentially by God.
Finally on the subject of the resurrection, Benedict is quite honest
about the apparent contradictions within the four Gospels’ accounts
of Easter Sunday:
The dialectic [between recognition and nonrecognition of Jesus], which per-
tains to the nature of the Risen Christ, is presented quite clumsily in the
narratives, and it is this that manifests their veracity. Had it been necessary
to invent the Resurrection, all the emphasis would have been placed on full
physicality, on immediate recognizability, and perhaps, too, some special
power would have been thought up as a distinguishing feature of the risen
Lord. But in the internal contradictions characteristic of all the accounts of

67. Enns, The Bible Tells Me So, 201–2. Enns speaks similarly of understanding Je-
sus’ infancy narratives: “The real Jesus can only be truly understood from a later vantage
point—interpreted after the resurrection when the broader implications of who Jesus
was and what he did could be better grasped. That is the Jesus the Gospel writers give
us, each in his own way. That’s where I land, but I’m just riffing, and if it’s not convinc-
ing to you, leave it to the side and work it out some other way. We’re all free to put the
pieces together as we think best. The bigger point here is that the stories of Jesus’s birth
behave the way stories do, and we can’t wish that away.” Ibid., 86. These words remind me
of a quote from William James, “It is true that we instinctively recoil from seeing an ob-
ject to which our emotions and affections are committed handled by the intellect as any
other object is handled.” James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1985), 17. It is difficult for many Christians to come to terms
with the reality that the biblical stories are truly human stories and are susceptible to the
methods of investigation that we apply to texts within other areas of enquiry.
 Benedict XVI  171
what the disciples experienced, in the mysterious combination of otherness
and identity, we see reflected a new form of encounter.68
For the evangelists, Jesus’ resurrected presence is entirely physical, and
yet the Lord is not bound by physical laws. Jesus did not simply return
to normal biological life in his resurrection, nor is he a ghost or sim-
ply alive in the hearts and minds of the disciples. And yet, for all this,
the four Gospels still are not perfectly clear as to the nature of Jesus’
resurrected body. As Benedict says, the question is addressed “quite
clumsily” and with “internal contradictions.”
With the above admission, Benedict aligns himself with the vast
majority of modern biblical scholars. As before, however, he does not
take these admitted tensions as an indication that the Gospels have
lost the essential figure of the historical Jesus. On the contrary, the ten-
sions only serve to highlight what the International Theological Com-
mission observed: “The Easter accounts, precisely because of their di-
vergences, show that they are not simple chronicles.”69 The evangelists
were not trying to capture Jesus on video camera. Not only did they
not have cameras, but even if they had this technology it would not
have yielded the kind of history that interested them. Just to take one
example, the ITC considers the earthquake of Matthew 27:51–54 and
its attendant phenomena (in particular the bodies of the saints rising,
entering the holy city, and appearing to many) to be part of Matthew’s
theological style: “It is likely, therefore, that Matthew uses this ‘lit-
erary motif.’ By mentioning the earthquake, he wishes to underline
that the death and resurrection of Jesus are not ordinary events but
‘traumatic’ events in which God acts and achieves the salvation of the
human race . . . The evangelists, then, do not speak of an earthquake
whose force could be measured according to the grades of a specific
scale but seeks to awaken and direct the attention of his readers to-
ward God.”70 What magnitude would this earthquake have registered
on the Richter scale? There will never be a definitive answer to this
question on this side of eternity, but the ITC seems to think that the

68. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 266–67.

69. ITC, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, 155.
70. Ibid., 139–40.
172  Benedict XVI

answer is zero.71 Regardless of how one answers this question, the es-
sential point that Jesus was raised from the dead remains at the heart
of the Christian faith and cannot be set aside as part of a particular
evangelist’s theological style.

Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives

Why Are These Narratives Not in Mark’s Gospel?
Clocking in at just 132 pages, the short “antechamber” to Benedict’s
Jesus trilogy reveals the emeritus pontiff’s exegetical approach just as
candidly as its lengthier prequels.72 The author begins by discussing
the overarching concern of the four canonical Gospels: “Who is Je-
sus? Where is he from? The two questions are inseparably linked. The
four Gospels set out to answer these questions.”73 The purpose of the
Gospels, in other words, is to put us in touch with the figure of Jesus.
Yet in our journey through the infancy narratives we encounter cer-

71. Dale Allison similarly concludes, “Surely, then, if anything in the New Testa-
ment is haggadic fiction, this is it.” Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus,
21. The wonders that, according to Matthew, accompanied Christ’s death left no trace in
the other gospels, Acts, Paul, or Josephus; Allison is led to observe that “if such marvels
really had some basis in fact, they would instantly have become the bedrock of Christian
apologetics.” For another take on this “strange passage,” see N. T. Wright, The Challenge
of Jesus, 136, and Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: For-
tress Press,1992), 329–34. Ultimately, whether we take this or other pericopes as histori-
cal depends on the philosophical presuppositions we bring to the text. Moreover, as Al-
lison does well to observe, even if we may think a particular event legendary, there is no
way determine whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John was of the same mind. In a text
that evinces great wisdom but perhaps also some tension with the Catholic approach to
Scripture, Allison states, “More importantly, the intention of the texts cannot be our sole
or even chief guide. Contemporary Christians who read Genesis as theological saga in-
stead of historical record do so not because of what a close reading of the book has taught
them but because of what science and archaeology have demanded. That is, convictions
acquired independently of the text have moved us to construe it in a certain fashion. And
this is the rule for all our reading: presuppositions extrinsic to the texts govern how we
interpret them. . . . Determining whether Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John believed some-
thing is not necessarily the same as determining whether we can or should believe it.”
Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 38–39.
72. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, xi. Though it was the
third installment of the Jesus trilogy to be published, Benedict explicitly wrote that he
viewed it less as a third volume than an “antechamber” to the other two works.
73. Ibid., xvi.
 Benedict XVI  173
tain peculiarities which pose potential stumbling blocks for our quest
to meet Jesus.
The first of these consists in the simple fact that the birth of Jesus
is found only in later Gospels, prompting one to ask quite naturally:
where did these stories come from, then? And why does Mark, our
first Gospel, not mention them? Referencing Joachim Gnilka, Bene-
dict concludes that the infancy stories are clearly derived from Jesus’
own “family traditions” for the obvious fact that Mary alone could
have reported the event of the Annunciation to the disciples.74 He ac-
knowledges that modern exegetes will naturally tend to dismiss such
connections as naïve. Yet the emeritus pontiff responds:
But why should there not have been a tradition of this kind, preserved in
the most intimate circle and theologically elaborated at the same time? Why
should Luke have invented the statement about Mary keeping the words and
events in her heart, if there were no concrete grounds for saying so? Why
should he have spoken of her “pondering” over the words (Lk 2:19; cf. 1:29) if
nothing was known of this?75
In other words, the modern assumption that the infancy narratives
were invented after the fact may be reasonable and even plausible, but
it remains just that: an assumption. It is also possible that Mark him-
self simply did not know the stories or that he chose not to include
them for some other reason.
In order to determine which of the above possibilities is more
likely, it is always important to remember that people on both sides
bring presuppositions to the debate. On the one hand, skeptics assume
that the later genealogies and birth narratives were invented—other-
wise Mark would have mentioned them. On the other hand, people
approaching the Bible with a hermeneutic of faith believe that the in-
fancy narratives are essentially true and for two thousand years have
operated on the assumption that such is the case. Nevertheless, from a
purely historical point of view, it would appear that the skeptic’s posi-
tion squares quite well with what we know about how Israelite histo-
riography worked at the time of Christ. Over time, stories were con-

74. Ibid., 16.

75. Ibid.
174  Benedict XVI

stantly being expanded, so it stands to reason that the later infancy

narratives of Matthew and Luke themselves could represent literary
embellishments rather than history as such.
What, then, are we to say positively about the fact that Mark omit-
ted the infancy narratives? Early in his book Benedict replies: “I would
add that the late emergence, particularly of the Marian traditions, can
be similarly explained by the discretion of the Lord’s mother and of
those around her: the sacred events of her early life could not be made
public while she was still alive.”76 The emeritus pontiff later returns to
this issue and suggests that the infancy stories were not made known
earlier lest the mystery surrounding Christ’s birth be reduced to an
event like any other. Only at the proper time could this mystery be
made public:
It seems natural to me that only after Mary’s death could the mystery be
made public and pass into the shared patrimony of early Christianity. At that
point it could find its way into the evolving complex of Christological doctrine
and be linked to the confession of Jesus as the Christ, the Son of God—yet
not in the manner of a story crafted from an idea, an idea reformulated as a
fact, but vice versa: the event itself, a fact that was now in the public domain,
became the object of reflection—understanding was sought.77
Here, as we saw above in the cases of the crucifixion and the resurrec-
tion, Benedict remains firm that the stories of Jesus’ birth were not
crafted from the evangelists’ prior ideas but rather represent the fruit
of reflection upon an event that really happened in history. Clearly this
approach to the infancy narratives differs from that of many modern
exegetes, but it is certainly plausible and cannot be disproved by the
historical-critical method. At the same time, even after pondering
Benedict’s book for a few years, I still do not find his argument sur-
rounding Mary’s death compelling. To me it is understandable that
she did not make these events known during Jesus’ lifetime lest others
besides Herod would seek to kill him before it was his time. But why
this revelation had to wait until Mary’s death escapes me.78

76. Ibid. 77. Ibid., 53.

78. It is interesting that Benedict speaks of Mary’s “death” here rather than her as-
sumption or dormition, words which preserve the mystery of whether she died or not.
Contrary to what many Catholics assume, the belief that Mary died has a long pedigree
 Benedict XVI  175

The Genealogies
At any rate, the question of origins is only one issue we face
when dealing with the infancy narratives: another is the fact that the
Matthean and Lukan genealogies we have do not readily line up with
one another. For one thing, the genealogies occur at different places
within their respective texts. This, however, is not an issue, since it is
clear that Matthew and Luke have strategically placed their genealo-
gies for theological motives. Matthew’s version comes at the very be-
ginning of his work so as to introduce his readers to Jesus Christ as
“the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Mt 1:1). For Matthew, Jesus
is indeed the New David, the true King of Israel come to fulfill God’s
promise of an everlasting worldwide dominion which the old David
had failed to establish. Matthew also makes it clear that Jesus de-
scended from the line of Abraham, the patriarch through whom God
had promised that all the nations of the earth would bless themselves
(Gn 18:18). In this way, Matthew ties the beginning of his Gospel to
its end, wherein the risen Jesus commissions his disciples to go and
“make disciples of all nations” (Mt 28:19). As the pontiff says, “[T]he
universality of Jesus’ mission is already contained within his origin.”79
In contrast with Matthew, Luke chose to place his genealogy not
at the beginning of the book but at the outset of Jesus’ public ministry.
However, this difference in placement is not much of an obstacle when
it comes to reconciling the evangelists’ respective genealogies. Neither
is it particularly problematic that Matthew’s genealogy runs from the
past to the present, while Luke’s traces back from the present to the
past. It is more thought-provoking to observe that Luke’s genealogy
is much broader than Matthew’s, tracing Jesus’ lineage not merely to
Abraham but to “Adam, the son of God”—that is to say, the very first
human being. Here once again, this is explicable by the fact that the
two evangelists had different theological motives in penning these ge-
nealogies. There is no reason Matthew should have been compelled to

in Western Christianity and can be seen in the Church’s art through the Middle Ages
(e.g., in the stained glass at Chartres) and the baroque era (e.g., Caravaggio’s Death of the
Virgin).
79. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 5.
176  Benedict XVI

go all the way back to Adam if it did not help him convey his primary
message. Luke’s concern, however, is precisely to illumine Jesus’ role as
the New Adam. Like Adam, Jesus is the son of God, and in him all of
humanity starts anew. In the emeritus pontiff’s words, “the underly-
ing intention” of Luke is to show us that “Jesus takes upon himself the
whole of humanity, the whole history of man, and he gives it a decisive
re-orientation toward a new manner of human existence.”80
A thornier difficulty noted by Benedict concerns the likelihood
that Matthew and Luke based their genealogies on distinct preexis-
tent sources, and thus “agree on only a handful of names; not even the
name of Joseph’s father is common to the two.”81 Thus far, we have
seen some clear differences in emphasis between the two Gospel ge-
nealogies, but how can it be that the Gospels seem to get it wrong on
the basic historical question of who belongs to Jesus’ family lineage?
Does this mean that the Gospels contradict one another and that one
or both of them is in error?
To address this sort of challenge, below we will discuss a principle
laid out by Benedict early in his book: the Gospels do record “real his-
tory that had actually happened,” but they are also “interpreted his-
tory.”82 As for the present case, let us just say that, in contrast with
what we might expect and wish for as moderns, Matthew and Luke
are not trying to give us a video report of Jesus’ family life or a precise
transcript of his family history. Those simply were not the concerns of
Jews living in Jesus’ day, and to hold them to our standards of histori-
ography is anachronistic. This modern mindset misses out on what is
really most important in the Gospel genealogies. Each has a unique
emphasis that reveals its “essential purpose,” to use the words of the
emeritus pontiff.83 This phrase is a technical expression that we have
seen Benedict use time and again. Although the infancy narratives are
inspired and inerrant, we must carefully discern the precise nature
(the substance) of what is being formally asserted or taught if we wish
to avoid falling into the fundamentalist position of thinking that every
last word within them constitutes a categorical truth claim. With this

80. Ibid., 11. 81. Ibid., 8.

82. Ibid., 17; cf. 119. 83. Ibid., 4.
 Benedict XVI  177
principle in mind, Benedict draws the following conclusion regarding
the purpose of these genealogies:
Neither evangelist is concerned so much with the individual names as with
the symbolic structure within which Jesus’ place in history is set before us:
the intricacy with which he is woven into the historical strands of the prom-
ise, as well as the new beginning which paradoxically characterizes his origin
side by side with the continuity of God’s action in history.84
In Benedict’s view, if the Gospel genealogies stand in some degree of
tension with one another, this should not to be an obstacle to our be-
lief. Their real concern lies in the symbolic structure, that is to say,
the typological theology conveyed through the literary artistry of the
evangelists’ interpretive histories. It is important to keep this precise
concept of historiography present before us when we consider Bene-
dict’s use of the word “symbolic,” for by no means is he saying that the
Gospel accounts are mere symbols devoid of historical content.
Benedict finishes his treatment of the Gospel genealogies with a
discussion of John’s prologue. He observes that, though John does not
present us with a genealogy in the strict sense of the word, the evange-
list repeatedly raises the question of Jesus’ provenance in his own way:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God” (Jn 1:1). For John, the “genealogy” of Jesus is to be traced
not merely back to Abraham or even to Adam, but to God himself. Je-
sus’ origin lies within God; he is “the only Son, who is in the bosom of
the Father” (Jn 1:18). Not only that, John further writes that “to all who
received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become chil-
dren of God; who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh
nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:12). John’s astounding purpose
here is to reveal that those who believe in Jesus share in his own divine
sonship, becoming “sons in the Son” as the Church Fathers would have
it. The emeritus pontiff’s conclusion is that “John has recapitulated the
deepest meaning of the genealogies,” namely, that “those who believe in
Jesus enter through faith into Jesus’ unique new origin, and they receive
this origin as their own. . . . so it can now be said of us that our true ‘ge-
nealogy’ is faith in Jesus.”85 The Gospel genealogies thus present Jesus’
family history as well as our own family history as adopted sons of God.
84. Ibid., 8–9 (emphasis in original). 85. Ibid., 12.
178  Benedict XVI

Interpreted History
After his introductory discussion of the genealogies of Jesus, Bene-
dict pauses for an important word concerning method before consid-
ering the infancy narratives proper. Rigorous thinker that he is, the
emeritus pontiff tells us that we need to step back for a moment before
we delve into study of the events surrounding Jesus’ birth: “Before we
consider the content of the texts, a brief word about their particular
literary character is necessary.”86
The statement that the Gospels have a “particular” literary char-
acter is something many believers find hard to appreciate. As has been
said multiple times above, it is critical to emphasize that the Gospels
are not simply video-camera representations of the life of Christ.
However, as Christians we profess that they are not legends or myths,
either. How, then, are we supposed to discern what historical claims
the evangelists are actually making? How are we supposed to know
what would have appeared if the apostles had happened to have a video
camera on hand? How are we supposed to know what we should re-
ally be taking away from the Gospel narratives? On what grounds are
we to trust their historical trustworthiness? In his characteristically
blunt manner, Benedict ties these questions together and applies them
to the subject at hand:
Finally we must ask in all seriousness: when the evangelists Matthew and
Luke tell us, in their different ways and following different traditions, about
Jesus’ conception from the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, is
this a historical reality, a real historical event, or is it a pious legend? 87
A clue to answering this challenge emerges right at the outset of
Benedict’s treatment of the Annunciation. He tells us that “attempts
have been made” to explain the Gospel genre in terms of haggadic mi-
drash, an interpretative method used by the rabbis consisting in an
exegesis of Scripture by means of narratives.88 In midrash, the rabbis
sought to tell a pre-existing story in a new way to a new audience in
light of their circumstances. An author might condense a text, expand

86. Ibid., 14. 87. Ibid., 51.

88. Ibid., 15.
 Benedict XVI  179
it, fill in gaps, or clarify potentially misleading verses. Famous exam-
ples abound.89
In the case of Matthew’s Gospel, it is often supposed that the
slaughter of the innocents and flight into Egypt were not historical
events. Not only is there no extra-biblical evidence to confirm these
events, but we have good reason to consider the possibility that Mat-
thew’s narrative is operating more as midrash than history on this
point. Benedict thus considers the widespread motif of the persecuted
child-king, which could have served as the story’s model. He also re-
fers to the rabbinic work Moses Haggadah, which has been handed on
to us by Josephus.90 In this text, God appears to Moses’s father, prom-
ising to save his child, much in the same way an angel of the Lord ap-
pears to Joseph in a dream telling him to take the holy family to Egypt
to escape Herod’s persecution.
Approaching the Gospels from a very different point of view, John
Dominic Crossan likewise refers to this work as well as to the later
Book of Remembrances. Crossan declares quite unabashedly, “That sto-
ry, with its four successive scenes, is the model for Matthew’s account
of Jesus’ birth. . . . It is not the bare biblical account but the expanded
popular versions of Moses’ birth that served Matthew as the model
for the birth of Jesus.”91 This aligns with Crossan’s more recent thesis
that the Gospels as whole are more parabolic than historical in nature:
“[I]n this parabolic rather than historical overture, Matthew is cre-
ating a parallel between the evil Pharaoh, who slaughters the infant
males in Exodus 1–2, and the evil Herod, who does the same in Mat-
thew 1–2.”92 Crossan obviously recognizes that there are important
differences between Matthew’s account and these texts, but for him
these discrepancies are to be expected, given Matthew’s concern to
channel the tradition in the direction of Jesus.

89. Outside the Bible, one of my favorite examples of this sort of move is when the
Book of Jubilees retells the command to sacrifice Isaac in a way that resolves the tension
of having a good God command someone to do an evil deed. In this account, God is not
responsible for commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but rather the demon Mastema
instigates it. Within the Old Testament, the Book of Wisdom is likewise illuminating.
Wisdom 10 puts a new spin on the Fall of Adam and the cause of the Flood.
90. Ibid., 109–10.
91. Crossan, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, 12, 15.
92. Crossan, The Power of Parable, 178.
180  Benedict XVI

In addressing these parallels, Benedict makes the characteristic

moves that appear elsewhere in his exegesis of Jesus’ life and of the in-
fancy narratives in particular. First, he differs from Crossan in main-
taining that the differences between the rabbinic Moses traditions and
Matthew’s Gospel are too great to constitute a true parallel. Second
and more importantly, he points out that the Antiquitates of Flavius
Josephus—even if based upon earlier traditions—are almost certainly
later in date than Matthew.93 Finally, even though there is no exter-
nal evidence supporting the slaughter of the innocents or Jesus’ flight
into Egypt, we must ask whether it is right to expect this evidence in
the first place. Why would we expect the Romans to have preserved a
record of this, and why would we expect the Egyptians to have main-
tained records of a small family spending a short time in their land?
On the other hand, from what we know of Herod, it is perfectly in
keeping with his character to kill hundreds of Jewish infants.94 The
emeritus pontiff’s conclusion is that Matthew’s narrative was not mere
midrash, though he does admit that, in the case of Luke at least, “liter-
ary resemblance is beyond dispute.”95
According to this author, Benedict’s argument above is fundamen-
tally sound on the whole but could have been more nuanced. For one
thing, his dismissal of the parallels between Matthew and the rabbinic
Moses traditions seems hasty. Unlike Benedict, I find that Crossan
and others make a strong case for Matthew’s awareness of these rab-
binic traditions. However, like Benedict and on the basis of his very
principles, I argue that a certain amount of literary license on the part
of Matthew is compatible with holding his account to be fundamen-
tally historical in nature. Also worth considering is the following view
articulated recently by Peter Enns:
Scholars disagree on a good many things, but most think Matthew probably
created at least some of these scenes to shape his story. A star—millions of
light-years away—can’t actually move and then stop over one specific house

93. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 110. Crossan himself
dates Josephus’ work wherein this tradition appears to 93 or 94 A.D., which places it well
after when most scholars think Matthew was composed.
94. Ibid., 108. Having known that Herod killed three of his own sons, the emperor
Augustus once quipped that it was safer to be Herod’s pig (hus) than his son (huios).
95. Ibid., 15.
 Benedict XVI  181
on earth, nor do stars even appear to do so from our earthly vantage point.
Herod’s massacre of children isn’t hinted at in any other ancient source of the
day, which also rouses some suspicion over whether it happened.
So is Matthew a liar? Is that what we’re supposed to think? Only if you
grade Matthew along with the other Gospel writers by a standard they clearly
weren’t operating under.
Matthew’s portrait of Jesus serves his purpose: he drops into his Gospel
images of Jesus that remind you of Moses and the exodus story. So a guid-
ing star is like the pillar of fire that guided the Israelites to safety across the
Red Sea. Herod’s edict to kill the children and Jesus’s escape is like Pharaoh’s
edict to throw the male infants into the Nile with baby Moses escaping. Je-
sus’s trek down into Egypt as an infant and then back home again echoes Mo-
ses’s and later Israel’s journeys to and from Egypt.
Is Matthew reporting history as we understand the word? Did all these
things happen? I am committed to keeping an open mind, but, along with
most scholars, I think not in this case.96
Unlike Crossan, and in concert with Benedict, Enns affirms the fun-
damental historicity of Jesus’ Incarnation; yet, unlike Benedict, Enns
agrees with the mainstream scholarly consensus in seeing Matthew’s
narrative more as midrash than history through and through. Never-
theless, Enns’s approach to this question aligns remarkably well with
Benedict’s own exegetical inclinations, even if the two do differ regard-
ing the extent to which Matthew’s infancy narrative is historical.97

96. Enns, The Bible Tells Me So, 82–83. Also worth pondering are Enns’s comments
elsewhere on the flight of the Holy Family into Egypt: “Matthew is not reading Hosea
‘objectively.’ He did not arrive at his conclusion from reading Hosea. Rather, he began
with the event by which all else is now to be understood. It is the reality of the risen
Christ that drove him to read Hosea in a new way: ‘Now that I see how it all ends, I can
see how this part of the OT, too, drives us forward’. . . . If Matthew were to be transport-
ed back into Hosea’s time and had the opportunity to tell Hosea that his words would
be fulfilled in the boy Jesus, and that, furthermore, this Jesus would be crucified and rise
again for God’s people, I am not sure if Hosea would have known what to make of it. But
if Hosea were to go forward to Matthew’s day, it would be very different for him. There
Hosea would be forced, in light of recent events, to see his words—precisely because they
are inspired by God, the divine author—in the final eschatological context. In a stunning
reversal, it is now Matthew who would show Hosea how his words fit into God’s ultimate
redemptive goal: the death and resurrection of Christ. And so Hosea’s words, which in
their original historical context did not speak of Jesus of Nazareth, now do.” Peter Enns,
“Fuller Meaning, Single Goal: A Christotelic Approach to the New Testament Use of
the Old in Its First-Century Interpretive Environment,” in Three Views on the New Testa-
ment Use of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2008), 201–2.
97. It is also important to remember that the Mosaic theme runs throughout
182  Benedict XVI

Whether one finds Benedict’s approach or Enns’s more convinc-

ing, the key takeaway is that, for a Christian, the Gospels constitute a
form of interpreted history that differs significantly from our modern
expectations. As Benedict puts it:
[W]hat Matthew and Luke set out to do, each in his own way, was not to
tell “stories” but to write history, real history that had actually happened,
admittedly interpreted and understood in the context of the word of God.
Hence the aim was not to produce an exhaustive account, but a record of what
seemed important for the nascent faith community in the light of the word.
The infancy narratives are interpreted history, condensed and written down
in accordance with the interpretation.98

Matthew’s gospel. For a concise listing of parallels from the birth of Moses to his recep-
tion of the Ten Commandments, see Allison, The Luminous Dusk, 110–11. For a concise
summary of the Transfiguration as a rewriting of the story of Moses on Sinai, see Alli-
son, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Rather than considering the Transfig-
uration narrative to be a video camera account, Allison suggests, “We need also to keep
firmly before our minds that it was a habit of the early Christians to score theological
points by inventing fantastic, picturesque stories.” Ibid., 69. On the fantastical apocry-
phal work The Acts of Peter and Andrew, Allison writes in this connection, “The author of
this vivid and outlandish fantasy had to know, while he was making it all up, that he was
making it all up. Further, his far-fetched tale so sacrifices all probability for the sake of
delight in storytelling that later readers or hearers must have known this too. . . . Is it not,
then, natural to suppose that some or even many of the miracle stories about Jesus were
likewise composed to teach theological lessons, not record historical facts? . . . Excellent
candidates for this last category include Matthew’s infancy narrative, Peter walking on
the water, and the many corpses coming to life at Jesus’ crucifixion. Is not the sensible
verdict that the transfiguration is likewise not a report but a myth, whose meaning can
have nothing to do with what really happened?” Ibid., 71–72. Despite his skepticism
with regard to the historicity of the transfiguration, Allison makes the philosophically
balanced admission that the miracles associated with Jesus need not be late inventions:
“And yet, having said all this, the judgment that the transfiguration is nothing but my-
thology may turn out to be premature. For the inference implicitly assumes that people
are never transfigured into light.” Allison then proceeds to discuss Gregory of Nyssa on a
similar miracle involving his brother Basil: “Some might feel free to dismiss these words
as ancient credulity, or maybe as a rhetorical flight of fancy. I hesitate, however. Not only
was Gregory an extraordinarily intelligent man, but I have, over the years, formed an
opinion of his character, and it is hard for me to discount his apparently earnest witness.
It is easier for me to believe that he saw a light he could not explain, whatever its origin
may have been.” Ibid., 72. In other words, given the trust he has in the person of Gregory,
it is easier for Allison to believe in the highly improbable miracle to which he testifies
than to believe that his teacher has been deceived or deceiving.
98. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 17. On the subject of the
gospels as interpreted history, it is instructive to situate them within the contemporary
 Benedict XVI  183
There is a lot of meat to digest within this paragraph, but I wish to
make just a few observations. First, Benedict is adamant that the Gos-
pels describe real events that actually happened. For us today, it means
that on principle they could have been captured on video camera. Sec-
ond, this history nevertheless does not contain precisely what would
have been recorded on video, since it is “admittedly interpreted” and
“understood in the context of the word of God.” This means that the
Gospel histories reflect a history prior to themselves—that of the Old
Testament. Because they seek to retell that history in light of Christ,
the Gospel accounts might vary from what otherwise would have ap-
peared on a video camera. Third, the Gospels’ aim is not to produce an
exhaustive account; rather, each evangelist crafted his narrative with
an eye to what was important for his flock to know in the concrete
circumstances of their lives.
The pontiff is careful to maintain a careful hermeneutical balance
here. In contrast with how Ehrman, Crossan, and others would have
it, he says that the account of Jesus’ conception is not “a story crafted
from an idea, an idea reformulated as a fact.”99 This is precisely the
same move he made in discussing the crucifixion and resurrection
above. For Benedict, that an author writes an interpretive history does
not mean that he invents facts to support his own preconceived ideas.
According to Christians, the reality is the other way around: “[T]he

genre of Graeco-Roman bioi. Richard Burridge argues, “The four canonical gospels ex-
hibit a clear family resemblance with other Graeco-Roman bioi and have at least as much
in common with them as these other bioi have with one another.” Burridge, What Are
the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 1992), 258. Indeed, he goes so far as to affirm that “any idea of the gospels as
unique, sui generis works is a nonsense.” Ibid., 255. But this does not mean that the gos-
pels were biographies in the sense of attempts to be completely objective: “Just as many
other ancient bioi were used by philosophical groups in order to teach their beliefs and
attack other groups, so we should approach the gospels with the expectation that they
too will include didactic, apologetic, and polemical dimensions.” Ibid., 256. Craig Keener
writes in this vein, “Public lives tended to be encomiastic, magnifying heroes, but such an
emphasis does not make them fictions.” Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2009), 80n91. To be sure, the evangelists had their theological
agendas; thus the gospels have an “essentially historical as well as propagandistic func-
tion.” Ibid., 80n96.
99. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 53.
184  Benedict XVI

event itself, a fact that was now in the public domain, became the ob-
ject of reflection—understanding was sought. The overall picture of
Jesus Christ shed light upon the event, and conversely, through that
event, the divine logic was more deeply grasped.”100 As a result, it is
Christ’s Incarnation alone that gives Old Testament texts their full
meaning, “which hitherto could not be recognized.”101
Indeed, Benedict writes that in Jesus’ day some passages of the
Hebrew Bible were still “stray,” as it were, until the early Christian
narrative provided these “waiting” words with their “owner.”102 In this
connection Benedict highlights Isaiah 53 (the Messiah as suffering ser-
vant) and Isaiah 7:14 (the virgin who would conceive and bear a son
who would be “God with us”) as texts which ultimately attained clarity
only with the coming of Christ. When it comes to the latter, he writes,
“Exegesis has therefore searched meticulously, using all the resources
of historical scholarship, for a contemporary interpretation—and it
has failed.” Thus, it is “rightly objected” that there must have been a
meaning to this conception at the time of King Ahaz, yet Benedict
concurs with Rudolf Kilian that “[n]o single attempt at interpretation
is entirely convincing.”103 The passage about the virgin, like that of the
Suffering Servant song, was a “word in waiting,” or, as Marius Reiser
has it, “a miraculously formed keyhole” into which the key of Christ
fits perfectly. These texts, incomprehensible for so long, came true at
the moment Christ was conceived in the womb of the virgin Mary.104
Wrapping up his discussion of the virgin birth in relation to Old
Testament prophecy, Benedict characteristically poses the modern
question point blank:
Finally we must ask in all seriousness: when the evangelists Matthew and
Luke tell us, in their different ways and following different traditions, about
Jesus’ conception from the Virgin Mary by the power of the Holy Spirit, is
this a historical reality, a real historical event, or is it a pious legend?105

100. Ibid., 53–54.

101. Ibid., 15.
102. Ibid., 17.
103. Ibid., 48–49. Benedict considers four possibilities for the child prophesied in
this passage: the Messiah; a son of King Ahaz; a son of Isaiah; the New Israel.
104. Ibid., 50–51.
105. Ibid., 51.
 Benedict XVI  185
Is it true? Or is it possible that archetypal concepts have been transferred
onto the figures of Jesus and his mother?106
With these “archetypal concepts,” Benedict has in mind the attempts
to provide a natural explanation for the virgin birth. Since the time of
Martin Dibelius, interpreters have looked to the history of religions
for evidence likening Jesus’ birth to that of the heroes from the Greco-
Roman world and the pharaohs of Egypt. Within the more germane
Egyptian context, the divine generation of the pharaohs (resulting
from the divinity approaching a human woman) was a political theol-
ogy crafted in order to legitimize the cult of the ruler.107
While not ignoring these pagan parallels to Christ’s birth—for
which many more could be adduced than Benedict takes the time to
discuss—the emeritus pontiff rejects them out of hand: “The difference
between the concepts involved is so profound that one really cannot
speak of true parallels.”108 Whereas these other traditions envision a
miraculously conceived demi-god as part of a cosmic allegory, the Gos-
pel accounts are realist in that they staunchly preserve the oneness of
God and the infinite distance between him and the creature. This leads
Benedict to conclude: “The accounts of Matthew and Luke are not
myths taken a stage further. They are firmly rooted, in terms of their
basic conception, in the biblical tradition of God the Creator and Re-
deemer.”109 The ITC’s most recent publication on the inspiration and

106. Ibid., 55.

107. Ibid., 51–52.
108. Ibid., 52.
109. Ibid., 53. On this subject I find C. S. Lewis’s reflections very helpful. According
to Lewis, the resemblance between pagan myths and the Christian faith is not surpris-
ing for those who think that divine, diabolical, and human elements are all involved in
mythology: “The resemblance between these myths and the Christian faith is no more
accidental than the resemblance between the sun and the sun’s reflection in a pond,
or that between a historical fact and the somewhat garbled version of it which lives in
popular report, or between the trees and hills of the real world and the trees and hills
in our dreams. One can, without any absurdity, imagine Plato or the myth-makers if
they learned the truth, saying, ‘I see . . . so that was what I was really talking about. Of
course. That is what my words really meant, and I never knew it.’” Lewis, Reflections on
the Psalms, 107–8. In other words, while the skeptic’s reading of Christ as just another
myth is possible, it is also possible that the world’s religions have these parallels with
Christ precisely because God wished to plant the semina verbi among them as prepara-
186  Benedict XVI

truth of Scripture aligns well with Benedict and to my mind captures

concisely the view that ought to be affirmed by the Christian on this
matter: “In the infancy narratives, not all details of the accounts can
be verified historically, while the virginal conception of Jesus is clearly
affirmed.”110 In other words, Benedict, Enns, and the ITC agree that
it is unlikely every last detail recorded in the infancy narratives would
have been captured on a video camera had one been available at the
time. However, the virginal conception of Jesus is clearly affirmed by
the evangelist as essential to the figure of Jesus, a belief that has re-
mained foundational to Christianity for two millennia.
Why, ultimately, do many people today find it difficult to accept
the core content of the infancy narratives? As mentioned above, cer-
tainly one obstacle is the understandable allurement of seeing Jesus’
miraculous birth as just one among many myths with similar charac-
teristics. But, according to Benedict, at the end of the day this is often
not why the historicity of these narratives is rejected. Just as many re-
ject the historicity of the Last Supper on the ground that it does not
corroborate their image of Jesus as a liberal reform rabbi, so the birth
and resurrection of Jesus shatter the figure of Jesus as a good teacher
and resident of this world alone. In short, for Benedict the underlying
motivation for rejecting the miraculous birth and resurrection of Jesus
is often philosophical in nature. As we saw earlier in this volume, it
ultimately boils down to whether or not we believe the premise that
God can enter meaningfully into human history:
These two moments [the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus] are a scan-
dal to the modern spirit. God is “allowed” to act in ideas and thoughts, in
the spiritual domain—but not in the material. That is shocking. He does not
belong there. But that is precisely the point: God is God and he does not op-
erate merely on the level of ideas. In that sense, what is at stake in both of
these moments is God’s very godhead. The question that they raise is: does
matter also belong to him? . . . [H]ere we are not dealing with the irrational

tion for the gospel. From a purely rational point of view, this conclusion may be no more
likely to be true than that of skeptic, but that is precisely the point. In line with the over-
all aim of this chapter, all the Christian needs to do is to show that his view is a plausible
alternative to the popular view afforded by Ehrman.
110. ITC, The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, 154.
 Benedict XVI  187
or contradictory, but precisely with the positive—with God’s creative power,
embracing the whole of being. In that sense these two moments—the virgin
birth and the real resurrection from the tomb—are the cornerstones of faith.
If God does not also have power over matter, then he simply is not God.111
In this rich paragraph we return to the pivotal discussion with which
this volume opened. The debate in modern exegesis is at bottom a phil-
osophical debate, a matter of competing worldviews and their compet-
ing presuppositions and methods. One who approaches the Bible from
an agnostic or atheist point of view will of course deny Jesus’ miracu-
lous birth, because no God exists to work such miracles in the first
place. On the other hand, one who becomes convicted that God exists
cannot preclude his entering into human history through miracles, for
if the divinity lacks dominion over matter, he is not really God.

The Census and the Date of Jesus’ Birth

While there are many other aspects of the infancy narratives that
could be considered, the question of the census in particular is an is-
sue that typically raises red flags in the eyes of modern exegetes. The
reason is that, while Luke’s Gospel tells us that the Romans were in
the process of taking a census at the time of Jesus’ birth, there remains
much debate regarding whether Luke faithfully reported the details of
this census. Benedict responds by pointing out that the census would
have taken several years to complete, regardless of when it started. Ac-
cording to Josephus, to whom we owe most of our knowledge of Jew-
ish history for this period, it took place in A.D. 6 under the governor
Quirinius. Luke, however, explicitly states that the census took place
during the reign of Herod the Great, who died in 4 B.C. According
to Benedict, this ten-year discrepancy is explicable on the supposition
that Luke was writing during the initial phase of the census when all
the persons and property were registered with the state, whereas Jose-
phus was writing during the final stage of the census, when payments
were determined. It was this final, more injurious moment that led to
the uprising of Judas the Galilean (Acts 5:37).112

111. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 56–57.

112. Ibid., 62.
188  Benedict XVI

The dating of Herod’s death to 4 B.C. also means that the tra-
ditional date of Jesus’ birth on which we base our calendars is incor-
rect and “is therefore to be placed a few years earlier.”113 While it may
disturb some Christians to learn that Jesus was not born in the year
A.D. 0, Benedict’s willingness to accept the best of modern historical
scholarship shines through here. Moreover—and this should come as
no surprise—he invokes his standard hermeneutical line to account
for this tension between what Christians thought for centuries and
what turns out really to be the case in light of our present knowledge:
“Regarding the details, the discussion could continue indefinitely. . . .
Yet the essential content of Luke’s narrative remains historically cred-
ible all the same”114 The precise date of Jesus’ birth is thus a detail,
accident, or secondary feature, whereas the birth of Jesus in human
history is the true content or essence of the matter.115 Here Benedict
repeats the central point: “It is not with the timelessness of myth that
Jesus came to be born among us.”116 The birth of Jesus is a real histori-
cal event, even as it bursts open the categories of time and space.
Regardless of the precise date to which we fix the census of Judea,
Benedict issues a salutary reminder: “In any case, [Luke] was situated
much closer to the sources and events than we could ever claim to be,
despite all our historical scholarship.”117 Sure, Luke was not the first
Gospel written, but even from a purely historical point of view his at-
tempt to produce “an orderly account” (Lk 1:3) of Jesus’ life ought to be
taken seriously. The same goes for Matthew, although it is fascinat-
ing that Benedict does not shy away from critiquing certain features
of Matthew’s infancy narrative. Noting that Luke and Matthew “evi-
dently belong to quite distinct narrative traditions,” Benedict proceeds
to observe that “Matthew apparently did not know that Joseph and

113. Ibid., 61–62. The traditional date of Jesus’ birth goes back to the monk Diony-
sius Exiguus around the year A.D. 550 Benedict writes that he “evidently miscalculated
by a few years.”
114. Ibid., 63.
115. Thus the ITC comments on the infancy narratives: “The differences, which can
be harmonized in part, refer to secondary aspects common to the two evangelists that
relate to the central figure of Jesus.” The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture, 134.
116. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 64.
117. Ibid., 63.
 Benedict XVI  189
Mary were both originally from Nazareth.”118 Upon returning from
Egypt, Matthew has Joseph wanting to go to Bethlehem, and it is only
the news that a son of Herod is reigning in Judea that causes him to
travel to Galilee instead. Luke, on the other hand, makes it clear from
the outset that the holy family returned directly to Nazareth.
Because of this and other differences, Benedict describes “signifi-
cant exponents of modern exegesis” as thinking that the birth of Jesus
in Bethlehem was a theological rather than historical affirmation on
the part of the evangelists. Contrary to what the Gospels say, these
exegetes believe that Jesus was born in Nazareth where he grew up.
According to this view, the evangelists reshaped history theologically
“to designate Jesus . . . as the long-awaited shepherd of Israel,” the New
David who would restore the kingdom of God (cf. Mi 5:1–3; Mt 2:6),
just as they had reshaped history to portray Jesus as the new Moses. In
Benedict’s response to this suggestion, we find an outstanding critique
of the historical-critical method on its own terms:
I do not see how a basis for this theory can be gleaned from the actual sourc-
es, As far as the birth of Jesus is concerned, the only sources we have are the
infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. . . . If we abide by the sources, it is
clear that Jesus was born in Bethlehem and grew up in Nazareth.119
According to Benedict, if we abide by historical criticism’s own crite-
rion of multiple attestation, it is highly significant that Bethlehem as
the birthplace of Jesus is attested equally by the two “quite distinct”
traditions of Matthew and Luke.120 Benedict finds the fact that these
two Gospels, despite their differences, share this tradition gives good
reason to believe that Bethlehem was indeed Jesus’ birthplace. Of

118. Ibid., 65.

119. Ibid., 66.
120. Another fascinating move Benedict makes is to invoke the ancient local tradi-
tions that place Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem. The tradition that Jesus was born in a cave that
Christians in Palestine could point to dates back at least to Justin Martyr and Origen
in the second century. After the Jews were expelled from the Holy Land, Rome turned
the cave into a shrine of Tammuz-Adonis in the effort to suppress the cult of Jesus on
the site. As Benedict puts it, “Local traditions are frequently a more reliable source than
written records. So a considerable measure of credibility may be assigned to the tradition
that Bethlehem was Jesus’ birthplace, a tradition to which the Church of the Nativity
also bears witness.” Ibid., 67–68.
190  Benedict XVI

course it is always possible that both Gospels were making the same
theological move, but Benedict is keen to point out that these are the
only two sources we have on the subject. Thus it may be a matter of
belief to hold that Jesus was born in the city of David, but it is equally
an act of belief to hold that he was not born there. In fact, in a very
real sense the former belief would appear more warranted on histori-
cal grounds alone.

Conclusion: The Magi and Other Nonessential Matters

Not surprisingly, modern scholars frequently dismiss the story of
the magi as part of Matthew’s distinctive theology rather than an at-
tempt to report history. Benedict asks the question in his characteris-
tically candid manner: “[H]ow are we to understand all this? Are we
dealing with history that actually took place, or is it merely a theo-
logical meditation, presented under the guise of stories?” It is highly
instructive to observe that Benedict treats the story of the magi dif-
ferently than he does that of the Annunciation to Mary, even though
they both come from the infancy narratives. Specifically, whereas he
insists that the Annunciation narrative touches upon the core of the
Christian faith, Benedict is open to the possibility that the story of the
magi was Matthew’s own theological invention:
In this regard, Jean Daniélou rightly observes: “The adoration of the Magi,
unlike the story of the annunciation [to Mary], does not touch upon any es-
sential aspect of our faith. No foundations would be shaken if it were simply
an invention of Matthew’s based on a theological idea.”. . . Daniélou himself,
though, comes to the conclusion that we are dealing here with historical
events, whose theological significance was worked out by the Jewish Chris-
tian community and by Matthew. To put it simply, I share this view. 121
Despite his inclination to view the magi story as historical, Benedict
is aware that many ecclesially minded exegetes reject its historicity,
and he confirms that these individuals remain within the bounds of
orthodoxy notwithstanding their position on this matter.122 So why

121. Ibid., 118.

122. Ibid., 119. In contrast with the virginal conception, crucifixion, resurrection, etc.
affirmed in creeds throughout Christian history, not all events recorded in the gospels
 Benedict XVI  191
does Benedict gravitate toward viewing the magi as historical? Here
he provides a principle from Klaus Berger which can serve as a guide
for theologians on any number of questions that arise concerning the
Gospels’ historicity: “Even when there is only a single attestation [of a
given Gospel text] . . . one must suppose, until the contrary is proven, that
the evangelists did not intend to deceive their readers, but rather to inform
them concerning historical events.”123 Benedict argues that contesting
the historicity of a Gospel account on mere suspicion exceeds the com-
petence of the historian. His application of this principle leads Bene-
dict to conclude, “The two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel devoted to
the infancy narratives are not a meditation presented under the guise
of stories, but the converse: Matthew is recounting real history, theo-
logically thought through and interpreted, and thus he helps us to un-
derstand the mystery of Jesus more deeply.”124
At the end of the day, then, some events recorded in the Gospels
must be affirmed as historical by the orthodox Christian, whereas on
other matters one may gravitate to one or another interpretation. But
even for those events that belong to the core of Christian faith (e.g., the
virginal conception of Jesus, the resurrection, other elements of the
creed, etc.), we must remember that the biblical authors were not the
kind of historians we might mistakenly take them to be or wish they
had been. As faithful Jews, their historiography operated on the as-
sumption that to embellish the past and bring it into contemporary rel-
evance was more, not less true to reality than a video of Jesus’ life could

have equal claims to historicity. To my knowledge no infallible statement has ever been
issued by a pope or council requiring Catholics to maintain that belief in the historical
visit of the magi or flight into Egypt is de fide. Though this point may be disconcerting to
some Christians, for me it only reinforces the pivotal importance of the Magisterium in
safeguarding the deposit of faith. That said, within the Church there are different levels
of magisterial teaching including many “irreformable” doctrines that require “irrevo-
cable assent.” For a discussion of these levels along with examples of doctrines that fall
within each, see Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, “Doctrinal Commentary on
the Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei” (1998). Thinking about how much flex-
ibility there is within Catholic exegesis reminds me of Chesterton’s line that the Catholic
Church may have high doctrinal walls, but inside one finds a great playground.
123. Berger, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament, p. 20; quoted by Benedict XVI in Je-
sus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 119.
124. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives, 119.
192  Benedict XVI

ever be. Speaking of storytellers in general and the Gospel authors in

particular, Peter Enns is right on the mark:
They are not objective observers and don’t pretend to be. They are artists
bringing past and present together to leave the audience with something to
ponder, to persuade—to inspire. . . . To do their thing, storytellers “shape”
the past. They decide what to include, what order to put things in, how to
compress or combine scenes to save time and get to the money shot, and so
on. They also invent dialogue and scenes to knit the narrative together. They
have to, since much of the past is inaccessible to storytellers—they themselves
weren’t there to see and hear what happened.125
It would have never dawned on the evangelists that just sticking to the
objective facts (which is impossible at any rate) would have been better
than what they set out to do. For what drove the Bible’s storytellers
to recount the life of Christ the way they did was the quest to make it
possible for others to experience him in the present. This is perhaps
best formulated in a short comment from Benedict on the discourses
in John’s Gospel: “What the Gospel is really claiming is that it has cor-
rectly rendered the substance of the discourses . . . so that the readers
really do encounter the decisive content of this message and, therein,
the authentic figure of Jesus.”126 That certain facts recorded in the
Gospels do not always readily square with one another was not a game
changer for the early Church. In fact, it is perhaps the surest sign that
the way our forefathers thought of history differs considerably from
the standards to which we misguidedly seek to hold them accountable.
Benedict does well to remind us that the early Church’s concern was
to present the “decisive content” of Jesus’ message always with an eye
to fostering a genuine encounter with him.
In sum, my main concern throughout this chapter has been to
show that Benedict XVI’s exegesis offers a reasonable and even com-
pelling explanation for the discrepancies we find among the Gospels.
But in concluding, I also wish to echo Peter Enns’s point that Chris-
tians often devalue the Bible that we have by wanting it to be some-
thing that it is not. The Bible as seen by Benedict XVI is not one that

125. Enns, The Bible Tells Me So, 75.

126. Benedict, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration,
229.
 Benedict XVI  193
conforms strictly to modern canons of history; the problem is not the
Bible but rather the ill-considered expectations we impose upon it. If
there is one thing I hope the reader will take away from this chap-
ter, it is that the rigorous hermeneutic of faith espoused here offers a
plausible and attractive alternative to Ehrman’s agnostic approach to
the Gospels, one that is every bit as scholarly and no more reliant on
unprovable assumptions.
 6
The Problem of an Imminent
Parousia

Building on Benedict XVI’s approach to the life, death, and Res-

urrection of Christ discussed in the previous chapter, this chapter will
show how the theology of the emeritus pontiff offers a robust her-
meneutic for New Testament texts dealing with the end times, spe-
cifically the early Church’s ostensibly failed expectation that Christ’s
second coming (parousia) would occur within the apostolic period.
The question that arises from a reading of these texts is quite simple:
Why has Christ not come back yet, as he seemed to say he would? By
searching out the intention of Scripture’s sacred authors in relation to
their expectation of an imminent parousia, Benedict offers a compel-
ling alternative to the agnostic approach of Ehrman and others who
look upon the early Church’s eschatology as wishful thinking that
never panned out. As above, I will begin with a survey of the difficulty
at hand through a frank engagement with the opposing view that calls
into question Christian doctrine at its core. Then I will examine prob-
lematic biblical and magisterial texts to further establish the param-
eters of the problem at hand, after which a solution will be advanced in
light of magisterial texts and the corpus of Benedict XVI.

194
 An Imminent Parousia  195

Ehrman on Christian Eschatology

The Origins of Apocalypticism
In Jesus, Interrupted, Ehrman pointedly contrasts present-day Chris-
tian discourse on heaven and hell with the view of Jesus and the first
apostles, arguing that the two are radically different. He begins his dis-
cussion with a personal reflection on oddities he perceives within Chris-
tian beliefs concerning the afterlife, at the end of which his major claim
emerges:
In some corners of Christendom today, especially the ones that I was at one
time associated with, the religion is all about the afterlife. On the very per-
sonal level, people are eager to experience the joys of heaven and to avoid the
fires of hell. Most Christians I meet today believe that when you die, your
soul goes to one place or the other. I’ve never quite figured out all the incon-
sistencies of this view. On the one hand, the afterlife of the soul sounds like
some kind of disembodied existence, since your body stays in the grave; on
the other hand, people think that there will be physical pleasure or pain in the
afterlife, and that you’ll be able to recognize your grandparents. That would
require having a body. The earliest Christians, starting with Jesus, did not
believe in that sort of heaven and hell, as a place that your soul goes when you
die. This, too, is a later Christian invention.1
This claim touches the heart of the Christian faith and has every-
thing to do with the doctrine of the parousia under consideration in
this chapter. Looking at the same evidence as Benedict XVI and other
Christian believers, Ehrman concludes that our expectation of the
second coming represents a serious departure from the vision of Jesus
and his apostles, a departure brought about because their apocalyptic
predictions failed.
The Jewish apocalyptic worldview first started to take shape in the
centuries immediately preceding the birth of Jesus as a way to deal
with the problem of theodicy. While this term was not coined until
the seventeenth century by Leibniz, it appropriately reflects the con-
cern of Jewish apocalypticism after the Babylonian exile and the per-
secutions of the Maccabean period. The question posed in apocalypti-
cism concerns how to reconcile faith in a just and loving God with the

1. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 261.

196  An Imminent Parousia

untold misery that his people were experiencing at the time. Ehrman
observes that the apocalyptic response to this question is first found in
the Hebrew Bible within the book of Daniel from the second century
B.C. In brief, the answer runs along these lines:
For apocalypticists there would be justice. Not in this life or this age, but
in the resurrection, in the age to come. God would raise all people from the
dead, bodily, to give them an eternal reward or an eternal punishment. No
one would escape. Evil would not have the last word; God would have the last
word. And death would not be the end of the story.2
It is no coincidence that this is the first (and last, if one does not accept
the deuterocanon) book of the Hebrew Bible to exhibit belief in the res-
urrection of the body. For the author of Daniel, resurrection was the
answer to the problem of theodicy. The resurrection of the righteous
to life and the resurrection of the unrighteous to contempt (Dn 12:1–3;
cf. 2 Mc 6–7, 12; Wis 3) explains how a just God could allow good peo-
ple to be tortured and murdered while the wicked get away with re-
maining powerful and rich.3

Later Christians Transformed Jesus’

Apocalyptic Worldview
Ehrman’s account above may not come across as very controversial,
but what he does next understandably raises eyebrows. To begin, he
summarizes in more detail the events that were expected to unfold at
the consummation of history:
So taught the early Jewish apocalypticists, and so taught Jesus. The Kingdom
of God was soon to appear with the coming of the Son of Man. People needed
to prepare for it by mending their ways and siding with God, even though it
meant suffering in this age. But a new age was coming in which God and his

2. Ibid., 263.
3. Ehrman explains elsewhere, “Apocalypticism is nothing so much as an ancient
kind of theodicy, an explanation of why there can be so much pain and suffering in this
world if a good and powerful God is in charge of it. The apocalyptic answer is that God is
indeed completely sovereign, and that he will reassert his sovereignty in the future when
he overthrows the forces of evil and vindicates everyone who has sided with him (and
therefore suffered) in this age.” Ehrman, God’s Problem, 256. For more on the develop-
ment of Old Testament doctrine concerning the afterlife, see Ramage, Dark Passages of
the Bible, ch. 6.
 An Imminent Parousia  197
ways would rule supreme, in the Kingdom of God to come, here on this earth.
All would eventually be made right with this world, and everyone would be
brought back to life, bodily, to see and experience it. . . . They would then live
eternally, here on earth. Thus, for Jesus, Paul, and the earliest Christians, eter-
nal life was a life lived in the body, not above in heaven but down here where we
are now.4
There is clearly a significant difference between orthodox Christian
belief and what Ehrman attributes to Jesus here. According to this
view, the earliest Christians hoped neither to live forever in heaven
nor to live spiritually in some other manner; rather, the hope was to
reign with Christ eternally on this earth in the re-established kingdom
of God.
It is interesting that Ehrman emphasizes the physicality of this
longed-for resurrection. In 1 Cor 15, Paul stresses this point against his
opponents who thought that they had already experienced a spiritual
resurrection: “The resurrection was physical, and since it was physi-
cal, it obviously had not happened yet. This world is still carrying on
under the forces of evil, and only at the end will all be resolved and the
followers of Jesus be vindicated, transformed, and given an eternal re-
ward.”5 In saying this, Ehrman might seem closer to orthodox Chris-
tianity than those who claim Jesus’ resurrection was merely spiritual.
However, it must be recalled that he envisions Paul locating the fulfill-
ment of this hope here on earth. According to Ehrman, this is also the
view presented in the book of Revelation. At the end of days, “a new
heavens and a new earth” will appear as the new, heavenly Jerusalem
that will come down from above to replace the old, corrupt, and now
destroyed Jerusalem. And it is here on earth, in this new City of God,
that the saints will live forever (Rv 21:1–2).

What Happened When the Expected End

Did Not Materialize
So what did Christians do when the apocalyptic scenario that Jesus
expected to occur in “this generation” (Mt 24:34; Mk 13:30; Lk 21:32)
never came about? Or when Paul’s expectation that he would be alive

4. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 263 (emphasis added).

5. Ibid., 264.
198  An Imminent Parousia

at the second coming of Christ was disconfirmed by his own death?

Faced with these facts, people who wanted to remain faithful to the
original vision of Jesus had to explain how a seemingly essential element
of that vision could have been so wrong. Ehrman expounds:
One thing that happens, of course, is that some people begin to mock. That is
the problem addressed in the last book of the New Testament, 2 Peter, whose
author insists that when God says that it will all happen very soon, he means
by the divine calendar, not the human. And one needs always to remember
that “with the Lord, a day is as a thousand years and a thousand years as one
day” (2 Pt 3: 8).6
When the end never came, Christians simply reconceptualized the
anticipated timeline for the parousia. As Ehrman describes it, the
apocalyptic duality of two ages—this one and the world to come—
was transposed spatially into two spheres—this world and the world
above. This duality, Ehrman claims, worked itself out in the doctrine
of heaven and hell that Christians know today. In short, this is what he
thinks happened:
[W]ith the passing of time, the apocalyptic notion of the resurrection of the
body becomes transformed into the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.
What emerges is the belief in heaven and hell, a belief not found in the teach-
ings of Jesus or Paul, but one invented in later times by Christians who real-
ized that the kingdom of God never would come to this earth. This belief
became a standard Christian teaching, world without end.7
I find a couple of things problematic in the paragraph above. First, I do
not appreciate the “world without end” statement at the end that—at
least to me—comes across as snarky. More substantially, I am not sure
it is fair to characterize the Christian belief that eventually emerged as
“immortality of the soul” as contrasted with resurrection. That said,
these observations of mine do not touch Ehrman’s central point, that
later Christians altered the views they had inherited in accordance
with the events of Christ’s life. Nor do they mitigate what he argues
elsewhere at greater length:
When the author of Revelation expected that the Lord Jesus “was coming
soon” (Rv 22:20), he really meant “soon”—not two thousand years later. It was

6. Ibid., 265.
7. Ibid., 266.
 An Imminent Parousia  199
only a later bit of sophistry that devised the idea that “soon” with God meant
“the distant future”—that “with the Lord a day is as a thousand years and a
thousand years as a day,” as the author of 2 Peter put it (2 Pt. 3:8). This re-
definition of what “soon” might mean makes sense, of course. If the author of
Revelation, and other ancient Christian prophets like Paul, thought the end
was to come right away, and it never did come, what else could one do but say
that “right away” meant by God’s calendar, not by earthly calendars? 8
When the end did not come as expected, some of Jesus’s followers trans-
formed this temporal dualism (this age versus the age to come) into a spatial
dualism, between the world below and the world above. Or put differently,
they shifted the horizontal dualism of apocalyptic expectation of life in this
age versus life in the age to come (horizontal dualism because it all takes place
on this plane, here on earth) into a vertical dualism that spoke instead of life
in the lower world versus life in the world above (with an up and down). In
other words, out of the ashes of failed apocalyptic expectation there arose the
Christian doctrine of heaven and hell.9
To address Ehrman’s arguments meaningfully, we will need the help
of Benedict XVI’s exegesis. But first it is necessary to spend some time
with the Scriptures themselves so as to drive home more forcefully
Ehrman’s pointed criticisms.

Biblical Texts Seemingly Incompatible with

the Events of History
In its 1989 work The Interpretation of Dogma, the International
Theological Commission affirmed that “the Paradosis [tradition] of the
Church is universally valid and unchangeable in substance.”10 Based
on the authority of the First Vatican Council, this document makes it
clear that Catholic dogmas are “irreversible” and that in their regard
“there can be no departure from the meaning once and for all defined
by the Church.”11 The dogma of the parousia is no exception to this

8. Ehrman, God’s Problem, 247.

9. Ibid., 256.
10. International Theological Commission, The Interpretation of Dogma, A.II.1.
11. International Theological Commission, The Interpretation of Dogma, B.II.1; cf.
First Vatican Council, Dei Filius, ch. 4. Warning against relativism in the field of dog-
ma and insisting upon the importance of maintaining the Church’s precise dogmatic
language, the document also draws from Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei, 24, and Pius XII,
Humani Generis, 14–17. The latter is particularly harsh on those who “want to reduce
to a minimum the meaning of dogmas” and thus “cherish the hope that when dogma
200  An Imminent Parousia

rule. There is abundant evidence of hope for the Second Coming of

Christ within the New Testament and apostolic tradition, a teach-
ing enshrined in the creed promulgated already at the First Council
of Nicea and still affirmed today.12 Difficulties arise, however, when
one compares the content of the New Testament’s hope to the actual
events of history that ensued. In what follows, I will introduce just a
few thorny biblical texts that illustrate this problem. Then I will bring
the problem into even greater relief by highlighting certain magiste-
rial statements which appear to conflict with these texts and with the
events of history.

1 Thessalonians 4:13–18
One of the earliest New Testament works, dating to around A.D. 50,
1 Thessalonians offers a privileged vantage point from which to catch a
glimpse of the nascent Church’s mind concerning the parousia of Christ:
But we would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning those who are
asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope. For since we
believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring
with him those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the word
of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, shall
not precede those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord himself will descend
from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call, and with the
sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we
who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord. There-
fore comfort one another with these words.
Here we are presented with one of the clearest indications that the
apostles expected Christ to return within their lifetimes. To be sure,

is stripped of the elements which they hold to be extrinsic to divine revelation, it will
compare advantageously with the dogmatic opinions of those who are separated from the
unity of the Church.” Ibid., 14.
12. Though this chapter generally refers to the Second Coming of Christ with the
Greek term parousia (cf. 1 Cor 15:23; 2 Thes 2:1), the New Testament employs several
other terms and expressions to denote the same expectation: epiphaneia (2 Thes 2: 8);
apokalypsis (1 Pet 4:13); “that Day” (2 Tm 1:12); “the day of the Lord” (1 Thes 5:2); “the day
when the Son of man is revealed” (Lk 17:30); and “the last day” (Jn 6:39–40). The Second
Coming is likewise graphically portrayed in the words of Jesus and throughout the New
Testament without using these precise terms.
 An Imminent Parousia  201
one may raise the question of whether Paul intended his words to be
taken literally or rather to be read in light of a broader apocalyptic
genre, yet it is difficult to ignore the discrepancy between his words
and the events of history.

1 Corinthians 7:29, 10:11, and 15:51–52

Another very early text, composed around A.D. 54/57, 1 Cor seems
to reflect an outlook and circumstances similar to those we find in
1 Thessalonians. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul offers practical instructions
to guide the behavior of the young community, his assumption being
that these Christians were living in an interim state awaiting Christ’s
imminent return: “I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very
short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had
none” (7:29). A few chapters later he adds an admonition, “Now these
things happened to them as a warning, but they were written down for
our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come” (10:11).
Paul’s extensive discourse on the resurrection in 1 Cor 15 reveals
this same outlook: “Lo! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but
we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the
last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we shall be changed” (15:51–52). The allusion to the
trumpet also resonates with the discourse mentioned above in 1 Thes-
salonians (4:16). It is difficult to ignore the ostensible fact that Paul
expected some people alive in his day still to be alive when Christ re-
turned in glory.13
13. It is also worth mentioning what the Gospel of John has to say concerning
Christ’s return: “When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, ‘Lord, what about this man?’
Jesus said to him, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow
me!’ The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet
Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but, ‘If it is my will that he remain until I
come, what is that to you?’” (Jn 21:21–23). As John reports Jesus raising a question rather
than making a positive assertion, this text is relatively easy to reconcile with the events of
history in comparison with the above texts from Paul. Nevertheless, Dale Allison does
well to observe, “Obviously behind these verses is Christian anxiety: the Beloved Dis-
ciple had died but Jesus had not yet returned.” Within the context of this anxiety and
uncertainty, the fundamental message here, as in other texts broaching the imminent
return of Christ, is the necessity of watchfulness and steadfastness (“Follow me!”) no
matter what might be the timing of the parousia. Allison, The Historical Christ and the
Theological Jesus, 100.
202  An Imminent Parousia

Mark 13 with Its Parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21

Jesus’ discourse in Mark 13 is narrated also in the other synoptic
Gospels. In Mark it follows Jesus’ saying to the disciples, “Truly, I say
to you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before
they see that the kingdom of God has come with power” (Mk 9:1).
This is a text Ehrman explicitly cites in arguing that Jesus “thought
the apocalyptic end would arrive very soon, before his disciples had all
died.”14 Couched in the imagery of an apocalyptic genre not meant to
be interpreted in an overly literal fashion, these passages abound with
wars, earthquakes, famines, trials, false christs, stars falling, and the
like. Some of what Jesus says here, however, is difficult not to take as a
literal prediction of the future:
And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power
and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the
four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven. . . . So also, when
you see these things taking place, you know that he is near, at the very gates.
Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away before all these things take
place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. But
of that day or that hour no one knows, not even the angels in heaven, nor the
Son, but only the Father. Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the
time will come. (Mk 13:26–33; cf. Mt 24:34; Lk 21:32)
What precisely Jesus is predicting here has been the subject of debate
for some time, but whether he intended it as a literal prediction of the
end of time, the fall of the Temple, or something else, two things are
clear: On the one hand, Jesus affirms that no one knows the precise day
or hour of his return; on the other hand, he seems clearly to affirm that
“this generation will not pass away before all these things take place.”15
When read only in light of the gospel itself, a figurative reading of this

14. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 102.

15. For an interesting read on Jesus himself not knowing the day or hour of his own
return, see Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Allison asks, “How
could the judge of the last day not know when his own court would be in session?” He
then rightly dismisses a number of patristic explanations for this as “far-fetched,” going so
far as to allege that this exegesis “must be regarded as defensive exegesis, as special plead-
ing. The church fathers read the logion with presuppositions foreign to it, presuppositions
that indeed contradict it. They found only what they wanted to find, reading their own
Christology into the Gospels so that Jesus might hand it right back to them.” Ibid, 82–83.
 An Imminent Parousia  203
text might seem compelling. However, when approached in light of the
unity of Scripture—in particular the texts from Paul described above
dating from roughly the same period—a strong case could be made
that Jesus intended to describe something more vast and definitive than
the end of the Jewish world, namely, the end of the world itself.

Magisterial Texts Seemingly Incompatible with

the Scriptures and History
Another set of difficulties concerning the parousia arises within a
1915 document of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.16 While the prob-
lems presented by this text may at first appear trivial in comparison with
those found in Scripture and are not on Ehrman’s radar, it must be re-
membered that at this time the PBC served as an organ of the Magiste-
rium. This makes the discrepancy between its teachings and modern ap-
proaches (including that of Benedict XVI discussed below) much more
significant.17 Like the other responsa issued by the PBC at the time, this
document follows a question-and-answer format, the answers represent-
ing the Magisterium’s teaching on the matter in question.
Question 1: Whether it is permissible for a Catholic exegete, in solving dif-
ficulties that occur in the Letters of St. Paul and the other apostles, where
the so-called “Parousia” or Second Coming of our Lord Jesus is mentioned, to

16. Pontifical Biblical Commission, On the Parousia or Second Coming of Our Lord in
the Letters of St. Paul the Apostle (June 18, 1915). The English translation reproduced here
is taken from Béchard, The Scripture Documents, 207–8. Italics have been added for em-
phasis. Several years earlier, Pius X had weighed in on a closely related topic, condemning
the following proposition: “Everyone who is not led by preconceived opinions can readily
see that either Jesus professed an error concerning the immediate Messianic coming or
the greater part of His doctrine as contained in the Gospels is destitute of authenticity.”
Pius X, Lamentabili Sane, 33. Like the PBC, the pontiff was careful not to issue a blanket
condemnation but rather a condemnation of those who claimed that one could “readily
see” that Jesus or the gospels erred in the matter of expecting an imminent parousia. For
a contemporary critical appraisal of this condemnation, see Allison, The Historical Christ
and the Theological Jesus, 96–97. Speaking more bluntly than Ratzinger on the subject, Al-
lison characterizes the Church’s anti-modernist statements as examples of “the cognitive
dissonance of people who, preferring their theological inclinations to the historical facts,
mistreat our sources, thereby obtaining a Jesus more to their liking.”
17. The commission was restructured by Paul VI in 1971 so that it acts no longer as
an official organ of the Magisterium but rather as an advisory forum in which the Mag-
isterium and expert exegetes work together in the quest to illumine matters concerning
Sacred Scripture.
204  An Imminent Parousia

assert that the apostles, although they teach no error under the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, nevertheless do express their own human views, into which
error or deception can enter.
Response 1: Negative.
This answer combats the notion that Scripture contains certain state-
ments which issue from the pen of human authors who are liable to err
when they are not writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. In
other words, what is condemned here is the attempt to preserve bib-
lical inerrancy by saying that problematic parts of Scripture are not
inspired but rather constitute merely the expression of the human au-
thor’s point of view. In line with the PBC’s statement, Vatican II pre-
cluded this approach by affirming that “the books of both the Old and
New Testaments in their entirety, with all their parts, are sacred and
canonical because written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
they have God as their author.”18
In the same section of Dei Verbum cited above and reprised by
the PBC, the council further teaches that “everything asserted by the
inspired authors or sacred writers must be held to be asserted by the
Holy Spirit.”19 It is therefore not possible to admit that only certain
parts of Scripture are inspired or that certain parts affirm erroneous
human views. How, then, are we to account for the presence of the
biblical texts mentioned above if not by admitting that they merely
expressed the erroneous views of their respective human authors? To
give a hint of the argument that will be made further below, the key
to addressing discrepancies between magisterial texts like this and
the manifest sense of biblical texts like those described above lies in
determining just what the sacred authors are asserting in a given in-
stance. For Benedict XVI, the exegete’s endeavor must be to ascertain
the “fundamental message” and “essential points” being made in texts
which appear to contradict the facts of history.20

18. Second Vatican Council, Dei Verbum, 11.

19. Ibid. See International Theological Commission, Theology Today, 22, as well as
the PBC’s earlier The Interpretation of Dogma, C.I.3.
20. For a thorough treatment of Benedict’s method of searching out the essence or
kernel of key problematic biblical texts, see Ramage, Dark Passages of the Bible, especially
chapter 4.
 An Imminent Parousia  205
Turning now to the second question of the PBC decree in ques-
tion, we are presented with a question which raises the stakes in our
conversation about the relationship between history, dogma, and ex-
egesis. I have abbreviated the question due to its length and convoluted
grammatical structure:
Question 2: Whether . . . it is fitting to affirm that the apostle Paul certainly
declared in his writings nothing that is not in perfect harmony with that ig-
norance of the time of the Parousia, which Christ himself proclaimed to ob-
tain among human beings.
Response 2: Affirmative.
This text contains a double negative that makes it grammatically chal-
lenging, but taking it out one finds that the PBC teaches it is “fitting”
to affirm that what Paul taught concerning the parousia was “in perfect
harmony” with what Jesus said on the topic—namely that we know
neither the day nor the hour when he will come again. The underlying
reference is to Mark 13:32 discussed above.
The expression “whether . . . it is fitting” (utrum . . . oporteat) is per-
haps significant. While the English translation I have reproduced
employs the relatively mild term “fitting,” this verb frequently takes
on the stronger meaning of “demanded,” “proper,” “right,” “requisite,”
“inevitable,” “reasonably expected,” or “required.”21 Is the PBC requir-
ing Catholics to affirm that Paul’s teaching concerning the time of the
parousia is perfectly consonant with that of Jesus? When one takes
into account the overall tenor of the PBC documents from this pe-
riod it seems unlikely that the commission would have been open to
acknowledging a discrepancy between the thought of Paul and that of
Jesus. In summary, in this question we observe the PBC teaching that
both Paul and Jesus affirmed the impossibility of knowing when the
time of the Second Coming would be. However, the fact remains that

21. The following meanings are taken from the entry oportet in the Oxford Latin Dic-
tionary, ed. P. G. W. Glare (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 1254–55: 1: “It is demanded
by some principle or standard, it is proper, right, requisite, etc. (often represented by Eng.
‘ought,’ ‘should’)”; 2: “(in a confident precision) It is bound to happen, it is inevitable”; 3:
“(expr. The presumed certainty of a fact) It must surely be the case, it may be reasonably
expected”; 4: “To require (to be done, etc.)” I offer gratitude to my erudite colleague Ed-
ward Macierowski for his assistance with navigating the nuances of the Latin in this text.
206  An Imminent Parousia

this reply has yet to offer a sufficient argument that confronts the prob-
lem of the early Church apparently erring in its expectations concern-
ing the Second Coming. Does it in any way leave room for the possibil-
ity that Paul thought Christ would return in his lifetime even while
Jesus himself did not claim to know the precise hour? Once again to
anticipate our answer below, it should be noted that this PBC docu-
ment primarily served a practical purpose. It was not concerned with
providing sophisticated arguments but rather with giving concise,
concrete guidance to Catholic exegetes in the early twentieth century.
Finally, I would like to turn our attention briefly to the third ques-
tion of the PBC ‘s document on the parousia:
Question 3: Whether, after considering [the phrase “we who are alive, who
are left until the coming of the Lord” of 1 Thes 4:15] . . . we may reject as far-
fetched and unfounded the explanation traditional in Catholic schools . . .
which explains the words of St. Paul in 1 Thes 4:15–17 without in any way im-
plying the affirmation of a Parousia so imminent that the apostle added him-
self and his readers to those of the faithful who would survive to meet Christ.
Response 3: Negative.
This question makes a particularly helpful contribution to our dis-
cussion because it explicitly addresses a biblical text that has proved
to be a stumbling block for exegetes, a text that is numbered among
the texts already mentioned above when introducing the problem of
the parousia. If I am reading the document correctly, here the PBC is
not demanding that Catholic exegetes reject the possibility that Paul
thought the parousia would occur in his lifetime. Rather, the ques-
tion is phrased so as to teach that the traditional explanation (i.e., the
view that Paul did not expect the Second Coming in his day) is not to
be rejected as far-fetched and unfounded. There is quite a difference
between these two statements, and the commission members would
certainly have been aware of the difference between the two. If the ap-
proach here is the same as what we find in the PBC’s other decrees
from this period, such language was probably devised deliberately in
order to avoid an imprudent blanket condemnation of the view that
Paul expected Christ to return in his lifetime.
 An Imminent Parousia  207

Toward a Solution: Principles and Illustrations

from Benedict XVI’s Exegesis
The aim of the previous section was to cast in relief key biblical and
magisterial texts that illustrate the discrepancy between the events of
history and the early Church’s apparently mistaken expectation of the
parousia within the first century. Now we are in a position to turn to the
more positive side of things with a view to finding a solution to the afore-
mentioned problems. The principles below will be drawn from magiste-
rial and curial texts as well as from the corpus of Benedict XVI/Joseph
Ratzinger; those principles will be illustrated in light of germane works
on the subject by the emeritus pontiff. As before, the goal here is to pro-
vide a compelling alternative to Ehrman which at once respects the in-
tegrity of the Christian faith and the positive contributions of modern
biblical scholarship.

Benedict XVI on St. Paul and the Parousia

Benedict treats the problem of the parousia in a number of places
in his corpus. Each treatment contains particularities one would ex-
pect in texts deriving from a span of decades and composed for audi-
ences ranging from biblical scholars to the lay faithful. I would like to
begin by considering the treatment found in Benedict’s general audi-
ences for the year of St. Paul (2008–2009). Here the pontiff explicitly
addresses 1 Thes 4:13–18 discussed above, bearing especially in mind
the words, “We who are alive, who are left until the coming of the
Lord, shall not precede those who have fallen asleep.”  The emeritus
pontiff begins by observing that this text—the first of Paul’s letters
and what some have deemed the earliest New Testament document—
was likely written around A.D. 52. Contextualizing the letter, he adds
that its purpose was to aid the Thessalonian church being beset by
doubts and problems.22 This purpose will play an important role in
our discussion below.
One who has persevered with me up to this point in the book will
not be surprised at some of his ensuing observations which may af-

22. Benedict XVI, St. Paul, 72.

208  An Imminent Parousia

flict the comforted Catholic. He describes 1 Thessalonians as replete

“with symbolic imagery, which, however, conveys a simple and pro-
found message.”23 Benedict views 1 Thes 4 not as a literal depiction
of the Second Coming but rather as concerned with theological truth
through symbolic imagery. The “essential message,” he says, is that
“our future is to be with the Lord.”24 What we can take away from this
is that, regardless of whether or not Paul expected an imminent parou-
sia, he was not intending to make a claim or assertion on the subject
of its timing. As the International Theological Commission wrote in
its earlier work on eschatology, “The early Christians, whether they
thought that the parousia was imminent or considered it to be quite
remote, soon learned through experience that some of them would
be taken away by death before the parousia.”25 Persecution and mar-
tyrdom were constant threats for early Christians, and Paul’s letter
served to guide the nascent community through these challenging
times. Irrespective of the precise moment when Christ himself would
return, many knew that they would be meeting him face to face in the
near future one way or another.
Moreover, it can be argued that the sense of 1 Thes 4 remains the
same even if it could be demonstrated that Paul literally expected the
Second Coming to be ushered in with an angel blowing a trumpet.
In the marvelous chapter of his book Miracles entitled “Horrid Red
Things,” C. S. Lewis offers an evocative treatment of this type of imag-
ery. He says, “Even if it can be shown, then, that the early Christians
accepted their imagery literally, this would not mean that we are justi-
fied in relegating their doctrines as a whole to the lumber-room.”26 The
early Christian belief concerning the parousia and other doctrines like
it “would survive substantially unchanged” even after “the falsity of the
earlier images had been recognized.”27 Using terminology strikingly
similar to the terminology employed by Benedict, Lewis argues that
particular physical details about the end of time or the world to come
“would not have been what [the sacred authors] cared about. . . . The

23. Ibid., 73. 24. Ibid.

25. International Theological Commission, Some Current Questions in Eschatology, 3.1
26. Lewis, Miracles, 119. 27. Ibid.
 An Imminent Parousia  209
difficulty here is that they were not writing as philosophers to satisfy
speculative curiosity about the nature of God and the universe.”28
Like Benedict, Lewis affirms that images concerning how or when
the parousia will take place do not constitute the purpose of the bibli-
cal texts in which they appear. According to the standards of Dei Ver-
bum introduced in chapter 3, these images are not erroneous because
they are not asserted or taught for their own sake in the first place.
As Benedict and Lewis show time and again in their writings, Chris-
tians should not be afraid to admit the presence of symbolic imagery
or even myth in the Bible. Read Lewis, Tolkien, or Chesterton, and
it is quite clear that myth does not equal falsehood.29 To be sure, in a
certain sense this makes the theologian’s task more difficult, as he has
to search out the essential message of biblical texts and bring into re-
lief their permanent dimension or core meaning as distinct from acci-
dental features not part of the deposit of faith. This requires more pa-
tience and skill than simply saying every sentence of Scripture is true
on its own terms apart from its context and without qualification.30
On the other hand, following this approach of Benedict and Lewis is
liberating because Christians can be confident that there is always a
core message God wants to convey to us in the Bible and that this re-
mains unchanged even if we grant the presence of certain difficulties
in the text or have to emend our previous reading of it.
Interestingly, Ehrman himself seems to grasp the basic point
about images as distinct from the message for which they are a vehicle:

28. Ibid., 119–20.

29. For just one of many possible illustrations from each author, see Tolkien, Tree
and Leaf, 48; Lewis, Miracles, 146, 218; Chesterton, The Everlasting Man, 233–47.
30. “It follows straightaway that neither the criterion of inspiration nor that of in-
fallibility can be applied mechanically. It is quite impossible to pick out one single sen-
tence and say, right, you find this sentence in God’s great book, so it must simply be true
in itself.” Ratzinger, God and the World, 153; cf. Benedict XVI, Address to Participants
in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (May 2, 2011): “Lastly, I
would only like to mention the fact that in a good hermeneutic it is not possible to apply
mechanically the criterion of inspiration, or indeed of absolute truth by extrapolating a
single sentence or expression. The plan in which it is possible to perceive Sacred Scrip-
ture as a Word of God is that of the unity of God, in a totality in which the individual
elements are illuminated reciprocally and are opened to understanding.”
210  An Imminent Parousia

The idea that “Jesus is coming back” is built on the idea that above us, in the
sky, over the clouds, is a space where God lives, and that Jesus has gone up
there to live with Him. He ascended bodily and he is coming, bodily, back
down. No one any longer thinks that above the clouds is a place where God
and Jesus live. Above the clouds is more of the atmosphere, and above that is
space, and beyond that are billions of stars—and that’s just our own galaxy.
If the very notion that Jesus is coming back down assumes that there is an
“up”—what does one do with that idea in a universe such as ours where there
is, literally, no up and down, except in relation to where you happen to be
standing at the moment? You obviously need to translate the idea into some
kind of modern idiom for it to make sense.31
Of course, Ehrman ultimately disagrees with Benedict and Lewis on
the implications that flow from distinguishing image and message. Un-
like Ehrman, Christians continue to expect the second coming even as
we envision how it is to happen differently than did our forebears.
Returning to Benedict’s catechesis, he next turns his attention to 2
Thes 2:1–4, which reads:
Now concerning the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling to
meet him, we beg you, brethren, not to be quickly shaken in mind or excited,
either by spirit or by word, or by letter purporting to be from us, to the effect
that the day of the Lord has come. Let no one deceive you in any way; for that
day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness
is revealed, the son of perdition, who opposes and exalts himself against every
so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of
God, proclaiming himself to be God.
Paul here warns his church lest its members be deceived in thinking an
imminent Second Coming can be determined based on human calcu-
lations. He reminds his audience that “the man of lawlessness” must
come first, and that he plainly has not yet. Benedict for his part tells
us that “the intention” of this text “is primarily practical.”32 How so?
Paul wrote this because he needed to correct Thessalonians who were
rationalizing their neglect of worldly duties with the claim that the
end was approaching soon anyway: “For we hear that some of you are
living in idleness, mere busybodies, not doing any work” (2 Thes 3:11).33
31. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 280. 32. Benedict XVI, St. Paul, 73.
33. It should be noted that Paul’s exhortation regarding the end times in 1 Cor 10
might also be described as primarily practical. After saying that these things “were writ-
ten down for our instruction, upon whom the end of the ages has come,” he immediately
 An Imminent Parousia  211
Teasing out Paul’s thought, Benedict teaches that the expecta-
tion of Jesus’ parousia does not dispense Christians of any epoch from
working in the world but rather increases our responsibility to work
in and for the world while not being of the world. This is but one of
several examples in this catechesis of how Benedict characteristically
follows his careful and critical exegesis with a spiritual exhortation for
Christians to apply God’s word to our lives. He concludes by teaching
that, while Christians today might not pray for the end to come soon
in the same way St. John did (cf. Rv 16:22), we can and should pray
for the Lord to put the injustices of the world to an end. We can also
work for the world to be “fundamentally changed” into a “civilization
of love.”34
That said, Benedict’s catechesis does not completely resolve the
problem of the early expectation of the parousia, but it does help us to
see that teaching the precise moment of the Second Coming was not
Paul’s real point in the theologically thorny text of 1 Thessalonians.

Ratzinger’s Eschatology and the Parousia

In contrast with his catechetical instructions on St. Paul discussed
above, Ratzinger’s Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life was written in
his capacity as a private theologian, long before he became pope. This
book is pivotal because its proper object is the eschaton. It is reveal-
ing—and perhaps startling—to read the very first sentence of the
book’s section entitled “The Expectation of an Imminent End.” Ratz-
inger plainly states, “Beyond a shadow of a doubt, the New Testament
does contain unmistakable traces of an expectation that the world will
end soon. Where do these traces come from? Do they go back to Je-
sus?”35 In characteristic fashion, Ratzinger soberly raises the possibil-
ity that the New Testament got it wrong with respect to the timing of
Christ’s second coming.
In the ensuing discussion, Ratzinger flexes his historical-critical
muscles as he explores hypotheses that attempt to date the various

proceeds to add, “Therefore let any one who thinks that he stands take heed lest he fall”
(1 Cor 10:11–12).
34. Benedict XVI, St. Paul, 77.
35. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 35.
212  An Imminent Parousia

New Testament texts dealing with the subject of the parousia. The
standard maxim, he relates, is “the greater the stress on expectation
of an imminent end, the older a text must be.”36 As evidence for this,
he observes that Matthew and Luke, composed (according to the stan-
dard view of Ratzinger and most modern scholars) later than Mark,
speak of a “delay of the arrival” of the Bridegroom, whereas Mark does
not. Ratzinger tells us, “In such texts the waiting Church retrojects its
own experience of the ‘delay’ of the parousia into the earlier sayings of
Jesus.”37
Next Ratzinger turns his attention to 2 Peter and observes, “In
this epistle, one sees even more clearly how a later period reached a
compromise between imminence and remoteness, and explained the
parousia’s delay in theological fashion.”38 2 Pet 3:4 confronts the argu-
ment of those who would scoff and ask, “Where is the promise of his
return?” To this question Peter replies:
But do not ignore this one fact, beloved, that with the Lord one day is as a
thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. The Lord is not slow about
his promise as some count slowness, but is forbearing toward you, not wish-
ing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. But the day
of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a
loud noise, and the elements will be dissolved with fire, and the earth and the
works that are upon it will be burned up. (2 Pet 3:8–10)
Emphasizing that we cannot know the precise day or hour, Peter en-
joins Christians to “be zealous to be found by him without spot or
blemish, and at peace” (2 Pet 3:14).
At this point, however, Ratzinger tweaks the standard scholarly
chronology of New Testament texts dealing with the parousia:
In themselves the examples given are doubtless cogent evidence for the thesis
[that the older the biblical text, the greater the stress on an imminent end to
the world]. . . . Nevertheless, it is open to question whether one can infer from
this anything like a general chronological principle whereby Christian ori-
gins are marked by an eschatology of radical imminence which would then be
gradually toned down until one finally arrives at John, where, for Bultmann

36. Ibid.
37. Ibid., 35–36. As evidence for this claim, Ratzinger cites Mt 24:48 and 25:5 as well
as Lk 12:45.
38. Ibid., 36.
 An Imminent Parousia  213
at least, temporal eschatology has been wholly eliminated in favor of its exis-
tential counterpart.39
As we have observed throughout this book, on the subject of historical-
critical scholarship Ratzinger demonstrates great respect for the find-
ings of modern scholarship while at the same time soberly acknowl-
edging its limitations. In this case, while acknowledging the presence
of development within the thought of the New Testament itself, he
stresses modern scholarship’s inability to furnish a strict chronology of
biblical texts dealing with the parousia.40 Not without a touch of irony
does Ratzinger thus state, “Naturally, [the person who believes that
later texts are more accurate with regard to the timing of the parousia]
has to claim that John understood Jesus better than Jesus understood
himself.”41
Adducing evidence contrary to the presupposition that later means
less imminent when it comes to the early Church’s expectations of the
parousia, Ratzinger writes that one commentator, Hans Conzelmann,
“has shown that the gospel of Matthew, composed contemporaneously
with Luke’s (or perhaps even later) contains an undiminished immi-
nent eschatology which may even be described as heightened in com-
parison with Mark.”42 How is this to be explained?

39. Ibid.
40. Particularly illuminating are his comments concerning developments in the
later Gospel of John. “That deepening of the idea of the Parousia achieved in the Fourth
Gospel is not, therefore, when compared with the Synoptic tradition, something differ-
ent and strange. Rather does it clarify the relation of the Parousia to the worldly time,
something only lightly sketched in the Synoptics.” Ibid., 203. It is in this Gospel that
the New Testament’s conception of the parousia reaches full maturity: “It would take a
careful analysis of the concepts of ‘going’ and ‘coming’ in the Farewell Discourse to dis-
play the idea of the Parousia in that mature form which was reached at the close of the
New Testament development and passed on from there to the Church.” Ibid., 203–4. For
an important treatment of doctrinal development within the New Testament itself, see
the International Theological Commission’s 1990 document The Interpretation of Dogma:
“There is evidence even in the New Testament that there were stages in the arrival at
truth: these expressions of truth reinforce one another mutually, go from depth to depth,
but never contradict one another. It is always the identical mystery of God’s salvation
in Jesus Christ which has found expression in many forms and from different aspects”
(B.I.3).
41. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 36.
42. Ibid., 37.
214  An Imminent Parousia

In some circumstances, an extreme form of temporal expectation might well

be the product of a re-Judaizing process. The Judaism of Jesus’ day had an
overwhelming expectation of the imminent end. Such an expectation cannot
be regarded, then, as something peculiarly characteristic of Jesus. The schema
of linear development simply does not correspond to the facts.43
As evidence for this claim, Ratzinger recalls that Matthew is the only
one of the Synoptic Gospels to depict the coming of the Son of Man in
sudden fashion: “For as the lightning comes from the east and shines
as far as the west, so will be the coming of the Son of man” (Mt 24:27).
In point of fact, he notes that Matthew is the only gospel to employ
the precise term parousia.
What Ratzinger achieves here both helps our cause and simulta-
neously makes it more difficult. On the one hand, he makes it clear
that the New Testament indeed contains an “imminent eschatology”
at various points and does not merely appear to do so. On the other
hand, he has not yet offered an explanation for how such an admis-
sion is consonant with the doctrine of biblical inerrancy. In other
words, if we cannot respond to Ehrman’s challenges concerning prob-
lematic texts by saying, “Dr. Ehrman, you’re reading it wrong—the
apostles didn’t really think that the world was about to end,” then how
is one supposed to respond to this challenge? Furthermore, Ratzing-
er’s thought introduces yet another problem: that not only the early
Church, but possibly even Jesus himself, expected the consummation
of the world to be at hand in his day.
To counter these challenges, Ratzinger next turns his attention
to “the text which lies at the heart of the problem”—Jesus’ eschato-
logical discourse describing the fall of Jerusalem in Mark 13 along with
its parallels in Matthew 24 and Luke 21.44 In particular he focuses on
Mt 24:29–31, Mk 13:24–27, and Lk 21:25—each of which contains a
unique narrative connecting the fall of Jerusalem and the parousia tem-
porally. Ratzinger remarks, “So far as our problem is concerned, it is
43. Ibid., 37–38. For a further critique of an attempt to perceive a strictly linear de-
velopment within Scripture, see Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in
the Jordan to the Transfiguration, xix. On the possibilities and limits of tracing doctrinal
development within Scripture, see my Dark Passages of the Bible, in particular chapter 6
on the afterlife.
44. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 38.
 An Imminent Parousia  215
extremely important to note how these two aspects—the imminent
destruction of Jerusalem and the Parousia—are temporally related.”45
After pointing out that what Luke portrays “is not the end of the world
but the start of a new age in salvation history,” he turns his attention
to Mark, the most challenging of the texts concerning the problem un-
der consideration in this chapter.46 “By contrast,” he relates, “Mark ap-
pears to present a direct temporal link between the fall of the city and
the consummation of the world.”47 Noting that the issue is more com-
plex than this, Ratzinger wraps up his discussion by acknowledging,
“Nevertheless, the impression persists that the trials and tribulations
entailed in the destruction of Jerusalem are connected in time with the
events of the end of the world.”48 As further evidence of this connec-
tion, he adds later in the book, “Even in his own age, Paul believed that
he had in fact offered the Gospel to the whole inhabited world. The de-
mand that the Gospel would be preached to all the world seemed thus
already fulfilled in the generation of the apostles, what the Markan Je-
sus calls ‘this generation.’”49
As Ratzinger is always so good at doing, he moves to summarize
and tell his readers what they are to take home from the foregoing dis-
cussion: “What ought we to think of these internal divergences within
the Synoptic tradition and the issue which they concern?” He imme-
diately answers: “In the first place, the single Gospel is heard only in

45. Ibid., 39. 46. Ibid.

47. Ibid.
48. Ibid., 40 (emphasis Ratzinger’s). For example, recalling that Matthew converts
Mark’s schematic in illo tempore (“in those days”) into his euthys, Ratzinger then argues
that the latter should not be translated “immediately” but rather “suddenly,” adding that
“the entire assertion [should be] interpreted accordingly.”
49. Ibid., 199. This is not the only place in Ratzinger’s corpus in which he describes
Paul’s conviction in this manner. For example, he made the following remark in a speech
to catechists: “Of course, at the end of his life Paul believed that he had proclaimed
the Gospel to the very ends of the earth, but the Christians were small communities
dispersed throughout the world, insignificant according to the secular criteria. In real-
ity, they were the leaven that penetrates the meal from within and they carried within
themselves the future of the world.” Joseph Ratzinger, Address to Catechists and Re-
ligion Teachers for the Jubilee of Catechists (December 12, 2000). For an illuminating
text concerning the assumption that the Gospel had been preached to all creatures, see
Jean-Pierre Torrell, OP, “Saint Thomas et les non-chrétiens,” Revue thomiste 106 (2006):
17–49.
216  An Imminent Parousia

the quartet of the four evangelists (for John belongs there too!). The
word of Jesus persists only as something heard and received by the
Church.”50 We find Ratzinger stating here what he has said in many
other places, a teaching which is but an echo of Dei Verbum: the iner-
rancy of biblical texts is not to be found in looking at them in isolation,
but rather within the unity of the entire Word of God contained in
Scripture and tradition and lived by the Church.51 Hence, if Mark’s
text seems to present problems, we need to look at what the other
evangelists say on the topic and evaluate Mark’s central purpose in
light of that knowledge. We also must bear in mind the entirety of sa-
cred tradition, cognizant that Christianity is not primarily a “religion
of the book” but rather is a religion of the living Word, the person Je-
sus Christ. The ITC’s recent work, echoing Ratzinger’s language, thus
teaches that the Scriptures are “witnesses of faith” and “testify” to the
Gospel revelation which is something still greater within which the
Bible finds its proper context.52
When it comes to the timing of the parousia and whether the early
Church erred with an expectation that Christ would return in the ap-
ostolic era, Ratzinger argues:
The decisive point is surely that the New Testament writings leave open the
nature of the difference between literary schema and reality in this connec-
tion. . . . Schema and reality are differently related by different authors, but
none of them makes the bold claim to an identity between the two. . . . Since
what interests them is not the question of exact chronological succession or a
possible causality of development but the inner unity of the whole, they are
able to present their material in schematic blocs, united by schematic connec-
tions. . . . It can only be laid out in some way that the governing affirmations of
their message suggest.53

50. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 40.

51. On the importance of reading individual texts in light of the unity of Scripture,
see Dei Verbum, 12, and Theology Today, 22.
52. This terminology appears a number of times within the document. For example,
see Theology Today, 7, 26, and 30: “The gospel of God is fundamentally testified by the
sacred Scripture of both Old and New Testaments. . . . Tradition is the faithful transmis-
sion of the Word of God, witnessed in the canon of Scripture by the prophets and the
apostles and in the leiturgia (liturgy), martyria (testimony) and diakonia (service) of the
Church.” Ibid., 7. For a more thorough discussion of how the Scriptures witness or attest
to revelation, see my Dark Passages of the Bible, especially 7n8 and 65–66.
53. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 41–42 (emphasis added).
 An Imminent Parousia  217
By distinguishing “schema” from “reality,” Ratzinger moves us away
from a rigid literalism that would, in the name of reading the Bible
“at face value,” miss its primary message conveyed through the liter-
ary artistry of the various sacred authors. “What interests them,” the
emeritus pontiff observes, is not the issue of what precise moment the
Second Coming will take place. Rather, “the governing affirmations of
their message” suggest something different, something observable in
the author’s treatment of Paul above. For Ratzinger this is the critical
point: in dealing with the second coming, the biblical authors subordinate
the question of timing to the question of how Christians ought to behave
regardless of when Christ returns. For all we know, some biblical authors
may have expected Christ to return in their day, as many texts seem to
indicate. But what Ratzinger demonstrates is that these expectations
are not being asserted or taught, any more than the author of Genesis
was trying to provide a timeline for the world’s creation.54 Jesus may
return today, or he may return millennia upon millennia from now,
but irrespective of this eventuality, the reality is that Christians of all
ages have to be awake and prepared. For, even if Christ does not re-
turn to earth in our lifetime, this fact remains: we each will be meeting
him face to face within a number of minutes to a number of decades,
and the precise moment of this meeting will likely occur most unex-
pectedly.

54. For a formidable treatment of this point in relation to Genesis, see Ratzinger, In
the Beginning. Concerning how to read the account of the world’s creation in relation to
the parousia at its end, it is also worth pondering Allison, The Historical Christ and the
Theological Jesus, 98: “It matters not, once we understand Genesis aright, what year the
book implicitly sets for the world’s first dawn. Bishop Ussher’s calculation of 4004 B.C.
must be wrong because the series of events he ostensibly dated never took place. . . . In like
fashion, locating the coming of the Son of Man in the distant future is no more sensible
than locating the occasion in the near future: mythological events do not intersect the
historical time line. The parousia is a parable, a projection of the mythopoeic imagina-
tion. Its date cannot be known because it has no date.” While one may take issue with
Allison’s calling the parousia a parable, I believe his overall comparison remains helpful
as it shows that the timing of the Second Coming is secondary and unknowable in much
the same way as the events concerning our human origins remain shrouded in mystery,
accessible only through the images the Church’s faith has handed down to us.
218  An Imminent Parousia

Benedict XVI’s Jesus of Nazareth and the Parousia

To see what excellent Catholic exegesis looks like, there is no bet-
ter place to look than the three volumes of Benedict XVI’s Jesus of
Nazareth, which were examined in the previous chapter. In this sec-
tion we will follow the lead of our emeritus pontiff in the chapter en-
titled “Jesus’ Eschatological Discourse” from the second volume of the
trilogy. The discourse Benedict has in his sights is roughly the same as
that found in his work Eschatology, which we treated above. For insight
into Benedict’s mind on this matter, it is significant that he begins his
discussion with these words: “This discourse, found in all three Syn-
optic Gospels with certain variations, could perhaps be described as
the most difficult text in the whole of the Gospels.”55 This fear-inspir-
ing claim should remain with us and keep us humble as we proceed in
our work of exegeting Benedict’s exegesis.
One of Benedict’s first paragraphs on the subject reveals striking
similarities with his treatment of the parousia explored above:
While this vision of things to come is expressed largely through images drawn
from tradition, intended to point us toward realities that defy description, the
difficulty of the content is compounded by all the problems arising from the
text’s redaction history: the very fact that Jesus’ words here are intended as
continuations of tradition rather than literal descriptions of things to come
meant that the redactors of the material could take these continuations a
stage further, in the light of their particular situations and their audience’s ca-
pacity to understand, while taking care to remain true to the essential content
of Jesus’ message.56
Here we find key terms and expressions which recur throughout
Benedict’s corpus and so reveal what he considers the key to solving
our problem. In Eschatology we find “schema” or literary presentation
distinguished from “reality,” while in this text a similar distinction
emerges between “images” and “realities.” The images or literary pre-
sentation, he observes, are bound up with the Gospels’ redaction his-
tory—referring to the process by which the biblical books were gradu-
ally compiled, edited, and adapted until reaching their canonical form.

55. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 26–27.

56. Ibid., 27 (emphasis added).
 An Imminent Parousia  219
Like Ehrman and other historical-critical scholars, Benedict does not
assume that the Gospels contain a word-for-word transcript of Jesus’
discourses at every point. Rather, Jesus’ words here represent “con-
tinuations of tradition”—tradition which preceded Jesus and was de-
veloped both by Jesus and by the early Church after his return to the
Father. Thus Benedict relates that “the redactors of the material could
take these continuations a stage further, in the light of their particular
situations and their audience’s capacity to understand.”57
How, then, do we know what the truth of the matter is? Do we
really know what Jesus said concerning his Second Coming? Could
Jesus himself, whose teaching itself forms part of a continually de-
veloping tradition, have erred? What Benedict states—tersely but
profoundly—is that the evangelists took care “to remain true to the
essential content of Jesus’ message.”58 Here again as elsewhere in his
corpus, Benedict searches out the intention of a particular biblical pas-
sage in order to ascertain its essential content. He is clear that not every
single word in Scripture is being asserted or taught for its own sake,
and so difficult passages must be understood within the whole of each
individual author’s work and in light of the entirety of Scripture. For
that matter, Benedict is even aware that Jesus himself employs images
which are by their very nature imperfect. Jesus, he says, affirms the
substance of said images without the intention of formally incorporat-
ing them in their entirety into his message.59
As for the question of whether a given statement can be verified as
a direct quote from Jesus, Benedict is open to various answers, but he
reminds his audience that this is actually a peripheral issue. To draw

57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. For instance, in discussing the image of Hades in Luke 16, Benedict explains: “Je-
sus uses ideas that were current in the Judaism of his time. Hence we must not force our
interpretation of this part of the text. Jesus adopts existing images, without formally in-
corporating them into his teaching about the next life. Nevertheless, he does unequivocally
affirm the substance of the images. . . . But, as we saw earlier, this is not the principal mes-
sage that the Lord wants to convey in this parable. Rather, as Jeremias has convincingly
shown, the main point—which comes in the second part of the parable—is the rich man’s
request for a sign.” Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration,
215–16 (emphasis added).
220  An Imminent Parousia

a now-familiar distinction, we know the essence or substance of Jesus’

message, but the extent to which we can verify its many features as
issuing from Jesus’ own human mouth is an accidental matter. Hence
Benedict states, “The extent to which particular details of the escha-
tological discourse are attributable to Jesus himself we need not con-
sider here. That he foretold the demise of the Temple—its theological
demise, that is, from the standpoint of salvation history—is beyond
doubt.”60 What is Benedict getting at with this talk of the Temple’s
“theological demise”? Why not just speak of the physical demise it un-
derwent at the hands of the Romans in A.D. 70? It seems to me that
Benedict speaks in this way so as to leave open the question of whether
or not Jesus foretold the destructive events in question.61 The pontiff
thus argues:
[T]he nucleus of Jesus’ prophecy is concerned not with the outward events of
war and destruction, but with the demise of the Temple in salvation-historical
terms, as it becomes a “deserted house.” It ceases to be the locus of God’s pres-
ence and the locus of atonement for Israel, indeed, for the world.62

60. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 34–35.

61. For a better understanding of this problem, it is important to recall the doubt
of modern scholars concerning whether Jesus prophesied the end of the Temple. This
approach assumes that the Gospel authors sought to convey Jesus’ message by putting
words into his mouth after the events had unfolded in history, and for this reason they
would not consider the words in question here true prophecies. One of the criticisms that
Benedict has leveled at certain scholars is precisely their presupposition that miracles
and prophecy cannot occur. In particular, see the first volume of Jesus of Nazareth, espe-
cially where he identifies as the “fundamental dogma” of modernity the belief that “God
cannot act in history.” Ibid., 35. On this subject, see also Cardinal Ratzinger’s famous
lecture “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the Itinerary of Ex-
egesis Today,” in Opening Up the Scriptures, 1–29. Just as incisive are his lesser-known
remarks concerning modernity’s assumption that only what is visible or empirically
verifiable is true: “In today’s context, the impossibility of passing beyond what is appar-
ent, that is, of passing beyond phenomena, has indeed become a kind of dogma.” This
“so-called modern worldview,” which Ratzinger associates with Bultmann in this text,
entails a “dictatorship of appearances.” Joseph Ratzinger, “Culture and Truth: Some Re-
flections on the Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio,” The Patrician (Winter 1999): 1–8. That
said, Benedict does not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to modern
exegesis. Not all those who practice historical-critical exegesis go about their business
with a “ready-made philosophy” that is closed to the possibility of divine intervention in
the world.
62. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 46.
 An Imminent Parousia  221
In speaking of this “nucleus,” Benedict wishes to signal carefully that
whether Jesus prophesied the physical demise of the temple is acci-
dental with respect to the gospel message. By no means does Bene-
dict speak in this way out of indifference or lack of careful attention to
the biblical text; rather, precisely out of respect for the text he draws
a distinction to make sense out of what would otherwise be a contra-
diction. Here we witness the emeritus pontiff humbly welcoming the
questions and observations of modern scholars which at first glance
appear incompatible with the Christian tradition. His genius, how-
ever, does not lie in this charitable attitude alone. It consists in the
fact that he engages the best of modern thought while at the same time
remaining true to the constant tradition of the Church, endeavoring a
synthesis between the two at points where most people (on both sides
of the exegetical isle) say rapprochement is impossible.
Benedict does not stop here, however. Regarding the nucleus of
Jesus’ eschatological discourse, he adds that “the nucleus of Jesus’ es-
chatological message includes the proclamation of an age of the na-
tions.”63 This age is the time of the Church, which the Bible portrays
as the intervening period following the time of Jesus’ earthly pilgrim-
age and preceding his return in glory. For Benedict this point is highly
relevant because it reveals there to be more than one voice in the New
Testament concerning the question of when Jesus will return. For
Benedict, the Bible is like a mosaic or stained-glass window with many
different pieces that make sense only when looked at as a whole.64 It
is therefore not as if the entire Church were in a state of confusion
in expecting an imminent parousia. Benedict writes, “It seems obvi-
ous to me that several of Jesus’ parables . . . speak of this time of the
Church; from the perspective of a purely imminent eschatology, they
would make no sense.”65 He likewise states, “From the content, it is
clear that all three Synoptic Gospels recognize a time of the Gentiles:
the end of the world can come only when the Gospel has been brought
to all peoples.”66

63. Ibid.
64. Ratzinger, God and the World, 101.
65. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 47.
66. Ibid., 42.
222  An Imminent Parousia

To be sure, the emeritus pontiff is not backing away from his ear-
lier admission that certain passages explicitly state that “this genera-
tion will not pass away” before the end (Mt 24:34). At the same time,
he is well aware that other texts suggest the parousia will not occur
“until the times of the Gentiles are fulfilled” (Lk 21:24) and that “the
Gospel must first be preached to all nations” (Mk 13:10; cf. Mt 24:14).
To this he adds, “Paul, too, recognizes an age of the Gentiles, which
is the present and which must be fulfilled if God’s plan is to attain its
goal.”67 In light of this evidence, one can see that drawing a one-to-one
correspondence between Jesus’ use of eschatological imagery and his
thought concerning the chronological end of the world would consti-
tute a “superficial reading” of the Gospels.68 Granted that the Gospels
witness to a time of the Gentiles expected to precede the parousia, we
nevertheless remain faced with another stumbling block—the percep-
tion that certain early Christians thought the Gospel had in fact al-
ready reached all the nations.
How are we to square such an observation with our discussion up
to this point? The reality is that certain biblical authors may have as-
sumed that the Gospel had reached unto the ends of the earth and
that Jesus was about to return in glory in their day. This cannot be
proved beyond the shadow of a doubt, but neither can it be disproved
simply by saying that they could not have thought this way, since say-
ing that would be tantamount to admitting the presence of an error in
Scripture. Benedict’s approach is much more refined—and thus chal-
lenging—than this. Rather than coming down on one side or another
on this question, he shows that the very issue is peripheral and could
go either way:
The fact that the early Church was unable to assess the chronological dura-
tion of these kairoi (“times”) of the Gentiles and that it was generally assumed
they would be fairly short is ultimately a secondary consideration. The essential
point is that these times were both asserted and foretold and that, above all
else and prior to any calculation of their duration, they had to be understood
and were understood by the disciples in terms of a mission.69

67. Ibid., 43. 68. Ibid., 41.

69. Ibid., 43 (emphasis added).
 An Imminent Parousia  223
The bottom line in all of this is that the Bible does not formally assert
the precise time of the Second Coming. Although we find indications
of what individual apostles expected concerning the matter, Benedict
understands that, for them also, this was “ultimately a secondary con-
sideration.” Whether they thought the world was going to end within
a day or a decade or a millennium, he tells us that the “essential point”
they were asserting concerned the need for spiritual preparation, for
mission, and for endurance in the face of persecution. It turns out that
these are realities that must govern Christians’ lives regardless of the
epoch in which they live and how much time remains in their earthly
pilgrimage.70 They are the core message, the true key, to understand-
ing the Bible’s parousia passages. This is exactly what one would expect
Benedict to say in light of his synthetic exegetical approach, an ap-
proach adopted by the PBC in its latest document in the effort to take
seriously the literal sense of Scripture while also asking how it can be
applied in the lives of Christians in every age.71
70. Though located within a discussion of the Sermon on the Mount, the follow-
ing insight from Servais Pincakers, OP, is equally applicable to the parousia texts in this
chapter: “The expectation of the end time, the urging of the Spirit, and the threat of per-
secution certainly contributed a special vitality and forcefulness to the Gospel precepts.
Yet nowhere in the Sermon itself do we find any textual reference to a time limit for the
fulfillment of its injunctions.” The Sources of Christian Ethics (Washington, D.C.: The
Catholic University of America Press, 1993), 138. On the subject of the spiritual prepara-
tion and watchfulness that lies at the heart of the New Testament’s imminent parousia
passages, see Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 98–99: “Proclaiming
a near end confronts people with a decision that cannot wait. In addition, because such
proclamation typically arises among the disenfranchised, it can rudely unmask the sins
of the status quo.” Citing B. H. Streeter, Allison rightly notes that for many the expecta-
tion of an imminent end had the effect that imminent death has upon individuals of any
epoch: “So in ordinary life ultimate values and eternal issues are normally obscured by
minor duties, petty cares, and small ambitions; at the bedside of a dying man the cloud
is often lifted.” Streeter, Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms of Modern
Thought: By Seven Oxford Men (Longdon, Macmillan, 1913), 119–20.
71. See Theology Today, 22: “It is in this context that exegesis searches for the literal
sense and opens itself to the spiritual or fuller sense (sensus plenior) of scripture.” The
PBC here cross-references the commission’s earlier work The Interpretation of the Bible
in the Church as well as the Catechism of the Catholic Church, 115–18. In the following sen-
tence the commission explicitly cites Benedict XVI to further its case: “Only where both
methodological levels, the historico-critical and the theological, are respected, can one
speak of a theological exegesis, an exegesis worthy of this book.” VD, 34. For an in-depth
treatment of how Benedict weds a critical reading of the literal sense with a theological
224  An Imminent Parousia

The Adventus Medius in Benedict’s Theology

The epilogue to Benedict’s second volume of the Jesus trilogy offers
a final fascinating angle from which to make sense of thorny parousia
texts within the New Testament. Reflecting on the subject of Christ’s
Ascension and return in glory, he begins by dispelling a common yet
mistaken assumption concerning the risen Jesus’ message that he will
come to judge all men and establish God’s kingdom in the world:
There has been a substantial trend in recent theology to view this proclama-
tion as the principal content, if not the very heart of the message. Thus it is
claimed that Jesus himself was already thinking in exclusively eschatological
categories. The “imminent expectation” of the kingdom was said to be the
specific content of his message, while the original apostolic proclamation sup-
posedly consisted of nothing else. Had this been the case, one might ask how
the Christian faith could have survived when that imminent expectation was
not fulfilled. In fact, this theory goes against the texts as well as the reality of
nascent Christianity, which experienced the faith as a force in the present and
at the same time as hope. The disciples undoubtedly spoke of Jesus’ return,
but first and foremost they bore witness to the fact that he is alive now.72
Benedict responds here to those who would claim that the “specific
content” or core of Jesus’ post-resurrection teaching concerned the
prediction of his imminent return in glory. As we already have seen
above, he does not deny that the early Church may have expected an
imminent parousia, but to make the further claim that the message
“consisted of nothing else” would be utterly mistaken. To be sure, the
disciples spoke of Jesus’ return, but their primary concern was with
the present. Again, as Benedict demonstrated above, the essential con-
tent of the apostolic message concerning the parousia was not its tim-
ing but rather the spiritual preparation and mission to be cultivated
with urgency regardless of when Christ’s return was to take place.73

reading of the spiritual sense and its relation to lectio divina, see my Dark Passages of the
Bible, especially chapters 2, 5, and 6.
72. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week, 279.
73. Not only is this the essential content of the Gospel message concerning the parou-
sia, but in an illuminating linguistic move Benedict also says that this spiritual dimension is
the content of the Christian life: “The content of the Christian life, we said, is not predict-
ing the future, but it is, on the one hand, the gift of the Holy Spirit and, on the other hand,
the disciples’ worldwide testimony to Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord.” Ibid., 286–87.
 An Imminent Parousia  225
In subsequent pages Benedict turns from this issue of Christ’s fi-
nal return to ponder the possibility that there might be another “com-
ing” of Christ between his coming in the flesh and his coming in glory
at the end of time:
Is it not the case that he will come to us only on some unknown last day? Can
he come today as well? These questions have left their mark on John’s Gospel,
and Saint Paul’s letters also attempt to answer them. Yet the essential content
of this answer can be gleaned from the accounts of the “Ascension” at the end
of Luke’s Gospel and the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles.74
How does Christ come to Christians today? The Gospel of John reveals
that by going away Christ is able to come again with a new closeness and
presence through the Holy Spirit.75 In the following passages Benedict
spells this out at greater length and illustrates with a few examples:
Specific reference is made [in the Gospel of John] to a “coming” of the Father
and the Son: it is an eschatology of the present that John has developed. It
does not abandon the expectation of a definitive coming that will change the
world, but it shows that the interim time is not empty: it is marked by the ad-
ventus medius, the middle coming, of which Bernard speaks. This anticipatory
presence is an essential element in Christian eschatology, in Christian life. . . .
The “middle coming” takes place in a great variety of ways. The Lord comes
through his word; he comes in the sacraments, especially in the most Holy
Eucharist; he comes into my life through words or events.76
The idea of an adventus medius developed by St. Bernard is identified
here as an “essential element” in eschatology and the concept of the
parousia. Christ enters our lives every day, especially in the Eucharist.
We can see how this connection is developed at greater length by
returning to Ratzinger’s Eschatology for a moment:
The cosmic imagery of the New Testament cannot be used as a source for
the description of a future chain of cosmic events. All attempts of this kind
are misplaced. Instead, these texts form part of a description of the mystery
of the Parousia in the language of liturgical tradition. . . . The Parousia is the
highest intensification and fulfillment of the Liturgy. And the Liturgy is Par-
ousia, an event taking place in our midst.77
74. Ibid., 280 (emphasis added).
75. Ibid., 283–84. Benedict refers here to the speech of Jesus narrated in Jn 14:25–31.
76. Ibid., 291 (emphasis added).
77. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 202–3. See also Joseph Ratzinger, A New Song for the
Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today (New York: Crossroad, 1996), 129.
226  An Imminent Parousia

Once again, Ratzinger denies that the New Testament has its sights
set on a literal description of how future events will unfold. Instead,
he picks up on a point that many fail to consider in the whole parousia
debate, namely that the Scriptures depict the Lord’s coming in the lan-
guage of liturgy, not cosmology. “Every Eucharist is Parousia,” Ratzinger
emphatically reasserts.78 Thus the words “Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rv 22:20)
can and should be prayed by everyone who is blessed to partake in the
marriage supper of the Lamb (cf. Rv 19:7–9). To put it in Benedict’s own
words from one of his last catecheses as Roman pontiff, “Jesus repeats
several times: ‘Behold, I am coming soon’ (Rv 22:7, 12). This affirmation
does not only indicate the future prospect at the end of time but also
that of the present: Jesus comes, he makes his dwelling place in those
who believe in him and receive him.”79 To be sure, this explanation does
not suffice on its own to account for all the Bible’s problematic parou-
sia passages, but it does provide another important angle from which to
glimpse the concerns of early Christians and thereby to provide an alter-
native to approach that respects both the integrity of the faith and the
enterprise of scholarly exegesis.

Conclusion: Toward a Reconciliation of Past and Present

Magisterial Teaching on the Parousia
Having advanced Ratzinger’s approach toward reconciling prob-
lematic biblical texts concerning the parousia, I would like to conclude

78. Ratzinger, Eschatology, 203. My aim here is not to develop Ratzinger’s argument
in favor of this connection. For an accessible treatment of this, see Scott Hahn’s chapter
“Come Again? The Real Presence as Parousia,” in Catholic for a Reason III: Scripture and
the Mystery of the Mass (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road, 2004), 31–48. In connec-
tion with the parousia and the Book of Revelation, see his The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass
as Heaven on Earth (New York: Doubleday, 1999). Also highly valuable is the excellent
history of doctrine upon which Hahn draws: Jaroslav Pelikan, The Emergence of the Cath-
olic Tradition (100–600), Vol. 1: The Christian Tradition (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1971), especially 126–27 where he states: “The Eucharistic liturgy was not a com-
pensation for the postponement of the parousia, but a way of celebrating the presence
of one who had promised to return.” For another accessible treatment of the issue, see
Michael Barber, Coming Soon: Unlocking the Book of Revelation and Applying Its Lessons
Today (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road, 2005).
79. Benedict XVI, A School of Prayer: The Saints Teach Us How to Pray (San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 270.
 An Imminent Parousia  227
with a few considerations regarding the PBC decrees on the same sub-
ject. It is clear that in many ways the corpus of Joseph Ratzinger differs
both in principle and in practice from the magisterial texts surveyed
above. To be sure, the PBC decisions are not themselves dogmas, but
they are concerned with upholding the dogma of the Second Coming
in its full integrity and were issued with magisterial authority. How
are they to be reconciled with the biblical text in light of modern ex-
egesis and the teaching of today’s Magisterium?
While the constraints of the present chapter do not make it pos-
sible to provide the more lengthy treatment this question could easy
receive, for present purposes I would like simply to summarize a few
key elements in such a solution to the problems posed by the PBC de-
cree described above—a solution which follows along the same lines
advanced in the case of similar problems posed above by the text of
Scripture. Both in Ratzinger’s works and in the recent magisterial
tradition one finds an emphasis on the need to situate dogmas within
the Church’s living and developing tradition. From the awareness that
dogmas have a historical dimension follows the need to ascertain the
precise context, meaning, intent, and content of dogmatic formulas.
Ratzinger/Benedict and the International Theological Commission
refer to the latter variously as the core, principles, or permanently
valid content of dogmas.80 The key to discernment here lies in grasp-
ing the precise question under consideration in a given magisterial
statement.81 Ascertaining the relevant question and answer within

80. “Without doubt a distinction must be made between the permanently valid
content of dogmas and the form in which this is expressed.” International Theological
Commission, The Interpretation of Dogma, C.III.3. The document at this point summa-
rizes Newman’s seven criteria for discerning true from false developments of doctrine.
Concerning how said dogmas are to be rendered accessible to believers today, the com-
mission teaches that “the dogma must be stripped down to the original kernel to make
it intelligible in a new culture. It is a problem involving all evangelization today, and es-
pecially where new factors affect the process of evangelization.” Ibid., A.II.1. Benedict
employs similar language, underscoring the need to distinguish “permanent” principles
from “contingent” practical forms of magisterial teaching, which are subject to change.
See Benedict XVI, Christmas Address to the Roman Curia (December 22, 2005). For an
informative discussion of the historical condition that affects magisterial decisions, see
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith’s 1973 declaration Mysterium Ecclesiae, 5.
81. International Theological Commission, Theology Today, 29: “Dogmas belong to
228  An Imminent Parousia

their context thus enables one to distinguish truths of sacred tradition

which constitute the deposit of faith from human traditions which
may be ancient yet stand in need of critique and are thus amenable to
change over time.82
What is needed therefore is a “critique” that distinguishes the
specific pastoral decisions of the commission at the time from the es-
sence of the message they wished to affirm. We have already seen that
Ratzinger explicitly locates the core of Scripture’s parousia passages
within their message concerning spiritual preparation, mission, and
endurance in times of persecution. What, then, is the core or kernel
of those troublesome PBC decrees on the subject of the Second Com-
ing? Asking this question necessarily entails another question: What
was the primary interest of the PBC in drafting such documents, and

the living and ongoing Apostolic Tradition. Theologians are aware of the difficulties that
attend their interpretation. For example, it is necessary to understand the precise ques-
tion under consideration in light of its historical context, and to discern how a dogma’s
meaning and content are related to its formulation. Nevertheless, dogmas are sure points
of reference for the Church’s faith and are used as such in theological reflection and argu-
mentation.” The commission here cites its earlier document The Interpretation of Dogma,
B.III.3, as well as John XXIII’s opening speech at Vatican II and the latter’s constitu-
tion Gaudium et Spes, 62. See also the ITC’s earlier document cited in The Interpretation
of Dogma, B.II.2, which describes the Second Vatican Council as having “presented the
Church’s traditional doctrine on a much greater canvas” and, in so doing “accepted that
dogma has an historical dimension.” The document adds that “a dogmatic definition is
not only the end of a development but equally a new start.” Ibid., C.III.1.
82. International Theological Commission, Theology Today, 31: “Vatican II distin-
guished between Tradition and those traditions that belong to particular periods of the
Church’s history, or to particular regions and communities, such as religious orders or
specific local churches. . . . While criticism is not appropriate with reference to Apostolic
Tradition itself, traditions must always be open to critique, so that the ‘continual refor-
mation’ of which the Church has need can take place, and so that the Church can renew
herself permanently on her one foundation, namely Jesus Christ. Such a critique seeks to
verify whether a specific tradition does indeed express the faith of the Church in a par-
ticular place and time, and it seeks correspondingly to strengthen or correct it through
contact with the living faith of all places and all times.” The ITC here cites the following
texts from the Second Vatican Council: Dei Verbum, 8; Lumen Gentium, 13–14; Unitatis
Redintegratio 6, 15, 17; Ad Gentes 22. See also The Interpretation of Dogma, C.II.2: “The
discernment of spirits (1 Cor 12:10; 1 Thes 5:21; 1 Jn 4:1) is therefore an element in the
entrance through the agency of the Holy Spirit into ‘the fullness of truth.’ The problem
is to make a distinction between Tradition as received from the Lord (1 Cor 11:23) and the
traditions of men (Mk 7:8; Col 2:8).”
 An Imminent Parousia  229
of what lasting relevance are their findings that stand in such stark
contrast with magisterial writings today? 83 While we cannot speak for
the members of the 1915 PBC, a clear indication of their underlying
intent is offered by none other than Ratzinger himself in a work writ-
ten while he was head of the PBC. He provides a vivid comparison to
illustrate:
The process of intellectual struggle over these issues that had become a nec-
essary task can in a certain sense be compared with the similar process trig-
gered by the Galileo affair. Until Galileo, it had seemed that the geocentric
world picture was inextricably bound up with the revealed message of the Bi-
ble, and that champions of the heliocentric world picture were destroying the
core of Revelation. It became necessary fully to reconceive the relationship
between the outward form of presentation and the real message of the whole,
and it required a gradual process before the criteria could be elaborated. . . .
Something analogous can be said with respect to history. At first it seemed as
if the ascription of the Pentateuch to Moses or of the Gospels to the four individu-
als whom tradition names as their authors were indispensable conditions of the
trustworthiness of Scripture and, therefore, of the faith founded upon it. Here,
too, it was necessary for the territories to be re-surveyed, as it were; the basic
relationship between faith and history needed to be re-thought. This sort of
clarification could not be achieved overnight.84
In this passage Ratzinger sheds light on the reason certain features of
early PBC decrees stand “in need of correction.” Those who crafted
the statements had assumed that the trustworthiness of Scripture—
and thereby the faith itself—would be undermined if the Church en-
tertained findings of modern scholarship that contradicted ancient

83. In a section of its work Unity of the Faith and Theological Pluralism entitled “Per-
manent Nature of Doctrinal Formulations,” the ITC states: “Dogmatic formulations
must be considered as responses to precise questions, and it is in this sense that they
remain always true. Their permanent interest depends on the lasting relevance of the ques-
tions with which they are concerned; at the same time it must not be forgotten that the
successive questions that Christians ask themselves about the understanding of the di-
vine word as well as already discovered solutions grow out of one another, so that today’s
answers always presuppose in some way those of yesterday, although they cannot be re-
duced to them.” Ibid., §10 (emphasis added). This document is cited twice in the ITC’s
most recent work, Theology Today.
84. Ratzinger, “Exegesis and Magisterium of the Church,” 134 (emphasis added).
Benedict XVI also reflected on this dimension of the Galileo affair in a poignant speech
about Vatican II near the end of his pontificate. Benedict XVI, Address to the Parish
Priests and Clergy of Rome (February 14, 2013).
230  An Imminent Parousia

traditions concerning such matters as the authorship and dating of

biblical books. Applying Ratzinger’s principles to the case of the par-
ousia, with the rising tide of modernism in the early twentieth century
the commission had a reasonable fear of an exegetical slippery slope.
In other words, they could see no way to reconcile the inspiration and
inerrancy of Scripture with an admission that at least some New Tes-
tament authors expected the Second Coming within their generation.
Having come to terms with the problems entailed in maintain-
ing both of these seemingly incongruous positions (the inspiration of
Scripture and the expectation of an imminent parousia), Ratzinger ex-
plains that some magisterial decisions are not intended to be definitive
but rather “provisional” determinations of pastoral prudence. In keep-
ing with the terminology employed in magisterial works discussed
above, he indicates that such statements have a kernel that remains
valid throughout history as well as certain “particulars” or changeable
accidental features.85 Regarding what he calls “the anti-Modernist
decisions of the then Biblical Commission,” Ratzinger makes two
observations. On the one hand, “with respect to particular aspects of
their content, they were superseded after having fulfilled their pas-
toral function in the situation of the time.”86 On the other hand, he
observes that “as warning calls against rash and superficial accommo-
dations, they remain perfectly legitimate,” for “the anti-Modernist de-
cisions of the Church performed the great service of saving her from
foundering in the bourgeois-liberal world.”87

85. These citations come from a document then-Cardinal Ratzinger presented to

the press upon the publication of the instruction Donum Veritatis on the ecclesial voca-
tion of the theologian: “The text also presents the various forms of binding authority
which correspond to the grades of the Magisterium. It states—perhaps for the first time
with such candor–that there are magisterial decisions which cannot be the final word
on a given matter as such but, despite the permanent value of their principles, are chiefly
also a signal for pastoral prudence, a sort of provisional policy. Their kernel remains
valid, but the particulars determined by circumstances can stand in need of correction.”
Joseph Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theolo-
gian,’” in The Nature and Mission of Theology, 106. For the background to this statement
see especially Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Donum Veritatis, 24.
86. Ratzinger, “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the Theo-
logian,’” 106.
87. Ibid.
 An Imminent Parousia  231
Thus from our privileged vantage point a century later, we can see
with Benedict that the core of the PBC decrees did not consist in their
assertions concerning particular matters which prominent faithful ex-
egetes today dispute. Rather, the substance of what the Magisterium
intended to convey at the time, and that remains true today, is the de-
sire to safeguard the truth of Scripture. In the case of our topic in this
chapter, this entails upholding the dogma of the parousia while letting
our precise understanding of it be illumined by modern exegesis. This
has been the central thrust of our book: to provide a compelling ap-
proach to contemporary problems that does not dismiss but rather
thinks through them with the conviction that doing so will only serve
to strengthen our faith in Christ and his Church.
 7
“To Whom Shall We Go?” Toward an Apologia
for the Christian Approach to Jesus

In the preceding chapters I endeavored to show that Benedict XVI’s

exegetical vision offers a compelling, faith-affirming alternative to the
prevalent secular approach to the life of Christ epitomized in the writ-
ings of Bart Ehrman. While at times I have indicated that Benedict’s
particular conclusions are more warranted than those of Ehrman, on
the whole I only claim to have offered Benedict’s approach as a viable
alternative rather than arguing specifically why one should be inclined
to choose it. In this concluding chapter I would like to offer some of
my own reflections on this question that I hope will be of value to oth-
ers pursuing it.

Benedict XVI: Pure Objectivity Does Not Exist

“The debate about modern exegesis is not at its core a dispute
among historians, but among philosophers.”1 This all-important quote
I mentioned in the introduction to this volume has remained with us
throughout our quest and demands a final word here by way of conclu-
sion. As we have seen in the pages above, Ratzinger’s call for a “criti-

1. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 19.

232 
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  233
cism of the criticism,” made a generation ago, remains as relevant as
ever for those who wish to engage modern biblical criticism seriously
from a perspective of faith.
Whether we are aware of it or not, every reader—agnostic and
Christian alike—when sitting down to read the Bible brings philo-
sophical presuppositions to the table. These first principles are “specta-
cles” we wear which color our entire view of reality, including what we
think is going on within Scripture. Ratzinger for his part argues that
Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle has an analogy here: “Pure objec-
tivity is an absurd abstraction,” he says, for “the observer’s perspective
is an essential determinant of the outcome of an experiment.”2 What
this means in the context of this book is that the answers to particu-
lar questions we ask of Scripture are in large part determined before
we ever open up the text in the first place. What are we to make of
Jesus’ miracles and of his resurrection in particular? If one is an agnos-
tic like Ehrman, then a natural explanation will be adduced for these
phenomena. Such an explanation could take many forms: for example,
a putative healing miracle could be explicable in light of modern medi-
cine, or more likely it was invented by the gospel authors decades after
Jesus’ life in order to convince others of his divinity.
On the other hand, a person who approaches the Bible assuming
theism to be true will be open to taking the healing story at face value
and will attribute it to Jesus’ divine mastery over the natural order. Or
perhaps the believer will take a position similar to that of the agnostic
but with the understanding that God in his providence shows us the
face of Jesus by working through natural causes, whether medicine or
human authors with their own agendas. My point here is not to adju-
dicate which if any of these explanations best explains a given miracle
story in the gospels. Rather, I simply wish to underscore the reality
that our conclusions about a given text are in large part governed by
principles and commitments we had before opening up the Bible.
Throughout his career, Joseph Ratzinger has shown himself to be
at once a great admirer and practitioner of modern exegesis as well as
one of its most incisive critics. While the above chapters should have

2. Ibid., 9.
234  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

made it clear that Ratzinger by no means rejects the modern approach

to Scripture, he nevertheless admits that it “has brought forth great
errors” caused in no small part by an unquestioning allegiance to cer-
tain “academic dogmas.”3 Perhaps the principal mainstream assump-
tion the emeritus pontiff finds problematic is the belief (and I use that
word here deliberately, meaning something one cannot prove) that
God cannot enter in and work in human history. However improbable
divine intervention in our world might appear, Ratzinger argues that
this cannot be excluded a priori unless one has definitive proof that
God does not exist. The miraculous is by its very nature something
unexpected and highly improbable. The jump from calling it improb-
able to impossible is what Ratzinger finds problematic, and he thinks
that many people today read the Bible in this way without reflecting
upon whether their assumption of such a conclusion is warranted or
not.

Ehrman: Everyone Has Presuppositions

Approaching the question from a very different angle, the agnostic
Ehrman does both sides of the debate a great service in debunking the
notion that we hold our respective convictions about Scripture on the
basis of certain proofs. For example, in Jesus, Interrupted he writes that
we can neither prove nor disprove the Resurrection:
I am decidedly not saying that Jesus was not raised from the dead. I’m not say-
ing the tomb was not empty. I’m not saying that he did not appear to his dis-
ciples and ascend into heaven. Believers believe that all these things are true.
But they do not believe them because of historical evidence. They take the
Christian claims on faith, not on the basis of proof. There can be no proof. 4
These words may alarm some Christians who think that we can
“prove” the Resurrection. To be sure, we Christians can and must ad-
duce reasons for our belief and be prepared to defend our faith against
objections. But Ehrman is perfectly right to push us on the reality that
these reasons do not amount to a definitive proof. This indeed is why
we call it faith, not science.

3. Ibid., 27.
4. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 180.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  235
Now the Catholic position is by no means saying that faith is “un-
scientific” or at odds with history. Rather, the point here is that the
Christian and the agnostic may look at the same evidence and draw
different conclusions because of our prior commitments, specifically
our adherence to the Christian faith, which itself is a gift from God
meditated by the Church. Aquinas puts this well in his discussion of
the cause of faith:
As regards . . . man’s assent to the things which are of faith, we may observe a
twofold cause, one of external inducement, such as seeing a miracle, or being
persuaded by someone to embrace the faith: neither of which is a sufficient
cause, since of those who see the same miracle, or who hear the same sermon,
some believe, and some do not. Hence we must assert another internal cause,
which moves man inwardly to assent to matters of faith . . .
[S]ince man, by assenting to matters of faith, is raised above his nature,
this must needs accrue to him from some supernatural principle moving him
inwardly; and this is God. Therefore faith, as regards the assent which is the
chief act of faith, is from God moving man inwardly by grace.5
Ultimately, various factors influence one’s approach to the Christian
mystery, and it is difficult to articulate how two intelligent, well-mean-
ing people can look at the same evidence and draw radically different
conclusions. Politically incorrect and unsatisfying as it may sound, the
Christian response of Aquinas is that it has everything to do with the
mystery of grace. Not even witnessing a miracle is sufficient to pro-
duce faith. Good arguments may dispose one to belief, but faith itself
is a gift given by God.
Granted that believing above all depends upon God’s grace, this is
by no means to say that we simply need to “leave it in God’s hands” and
do nothing to help people come to Christ. On the contrary, I think

5. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, II-II, q. 6, a. 1. Ehrman is right to criticize the com-

mon simplistic responses offered by Christians when they are faced with the findings of
modern biblical scholarship: “The reason historians cannot prove or disprove whether
God has performed a miracle in the past—such as raising Jesus from the dead—is not
that historians are required to be secular humanists with an anti-supernaturalist bias.
I want to stress this point because conservative Christian apologists, in order to score
debating points, often claim that this is the case. In their view, if historians did not have
anti-supernaturalist biases or assumptions, they would be able to affirm the historical
‘evidence’ that Jesus was raised from the dead.” Ehrman is right that the historical meth-
od alone cannot yield a decision as to whether Jesus rose from the dead.
236  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

that one of the most helpful things we can do is to help people think
about their assumptions or first principles. In his book How Jesus Be-
came God, Ehrman himself has a helpful overview of the fundamen-
tals for doing history properly at the level of first principles. As I men-
tioned in the introduction, he says something here which I could have
mistaken as coming from the pen of Benedict XVI had I not known
otherwise:
The first thing to stress is that everyone has presuppositions, and it is impos-
sible to live life, think deep thoughts , have religious experiences, or engage in
historical inquiry without having presuppositions. The life of the mind can-
not proceed without presuppositions. The question, though, is always this:
What are the appropriate presuppositions for the task at hand? 6
This issue lies at the heart of Benedict’s conviction that the debate
in exegesis is at bottom a philosophical one. We can never completely
suspend our biases, but we can at least do our best to remain conscious
of their presence and engage in a self-critique that helps to purify our
thought and attune it with the breadth of knowledge we can gain from
the sources available to us. In view of this critique, the pivotal ques-
tion is: whose philosophical presuppositions best position us for an accurate
understanding of the Bible and of the nature of things in general? While I
ultimately disagree with the assumptions he chooses to operate upon,
John Dominic Crossan puts the matter quite well:
I repeat, once again, that you must decide your presuppositions about gospel
traditions before reconstructing either the historical Jesus or earliest Chris-
tianity. Everyone must. Everyone does. . . . [N]obody can avoid presupposi-
tions, although you can avoid these in favor of those. You can refuse mine and

6. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, 144. These remarks are refreshing coming as
they do from a scholar who approaches the gospels with a hermeneutic of suspicion. In
particular, they contrast with those of Julius Wellhausen, who alleged that philosophy
does not precede, but rather follows biblical criticism. Note that I do not construe this
observation to be a back-door attack on the Documentary Hypothesis but simply an ob-
servation of how much more realistic I find Ehrman’s philosophical sense. I concur with
Hahn and Wiker, who observe on this score, “A critical approach and a deeper knowl-
edge of history do not produce these presuppositions. . . . Rather, the presuppositions de-
termine the way that exegetes are critical and the way that they use history.” Politicizing
the Bible, 12. Hahn and Wiker’s evaluation of Wellhausen can be found on p. 561 of the
same work.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  237
choose your own. In historical Jesus research, nobody can avoid presupposi-
tions about the gospels—about their number, their nature, and their relation-
ships. And nobody can dismiss another’s presuppositions using the grounds
that they are just that. Presuppositions can be rejected only by judgments of
inadequacy, illegitimacy, or invalidity.7
This leads us right to the heart of the matter: whose presuppositions
are more adequate—the Christian’s or the agnostic’s?

Whose Philosophical Presuppositions Are Better?

Ehrman’s Case
As I mentioned above, the conclusions we draw about the Bible
are largely determined by the presuppositions that governed our
worldview before we ever opened up the sacred page in the first place.
What this means for our book is that our position on Christ’s divinity,
Resurrection, and return ultimately hinges on how we answer a prior
question: whether or not the natural world we know is the only reality
that exists—in other words, whether or not the supernatural or divine
exists. While a positive answer to this question does not guarantee the
truth of Jesus Christ (one can be a theist without being a Christian), a
negative answer necessarily entails the conclusion that purported mir-
acles such as Christ’s resurrection cannot be true. Ehrman’s position is

7. Crossan, The Birth of Christianity, 95. It should be recalled from chapter 4 that
significant arguments against Ehrman’s exegetical criteria (especially the criterion of dis-
similarity) have been adduced by contemporary scholars. According to Luke Timothy
Johnson, “It should be obvious that these are not ‘criteria’ at all, but assumptions that
are attached to a predetermined vision of the Jesus who is supposedly sought.” Johnson,
The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional
Gospels (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996), 25. Regarding these criteria, Dale
Allison soberly acknowledges, “Because our criteria are not strong enough to resist our
wills, we almost inevitably make them do what we want them to do: we, with all our
expectations and presuppositions, bend them more than they bend us. . . . Once a para-
digm about Jesus is in place, cognitive bias will also be in place. . . . Honesty moves me
to indict myself here. . . . My Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and probably forever.”
Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 58–59. In a sobering remark that
all academics would do well to ponder, he writes (p. 60): “A historian’s Jesus is never just
the consequences of reading sources through a screen of criteria. Rather, we conduct our
intellectual rituals, that is, invent and/or apply our criteria, only after we have adopted
some firm ideas about Jesus. Our criteria are less routes to our destination than ways of
persuading others to end up where we have.”
238  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

not strictly negative in the sense of claiming to have disproven God’s

existence, but he rejects miracles nonetheless.8
Ehrman is quite open about how he came to his current persua-
sion. It was the problem of evil—not a devastating encounter with his-
torical biblical criticism—that drove him to agnosticism:
For many people who inhabit this planet, life is a cesspool of misery and suf-
fering. I came to a point where I simply could not believe that there is a good
and kindly disposed Ruler who is in charge of it. . . . I can’t believe in that God
anymore, because from what I now see around the world, he doesn’t inter-
vene.9
Ehrman recently dedicated his entire book entitled God’s Problem to
the problem of evil as addressed in different, and even what appear to
be contradictory, ways throughout the Bible. In the course of his text,
the author examines the entire gamut of biblical theodicies and finds
all of them wanting. Moreover, he finds both unbiblical and uncon-
vincing the standard Christian appeal to man’s free will as the expla-
nation of evil in our world. And within the free will theodicy, most ap-
palling to Ehrman is the suggestion that a divine being would torture
humans eternally for only a very brief misuse of their free will while on
earth. As he puts it in Jesus, Interrupted, “There is not literally a place
of eternal torment where God, or the demons doing his will, will tor-
ture poor souls for 30 trillion years (as just the beginning) for sins they
committed for thirty years. What kind of never-dying eternal divine
Nazi would a God like that be?”10 In light of this qualm and others
like it, Ehrman concludes, “I don’t ‘know’ if there is a God; but I think
that if there is one, he certainly isn’t the one proclaimed by the Judeo-

8. I for one appreciate Ehrman’s general attitude toward the question of God’s ex-
istence insofar as it differs in tone and quality from that of many strident atheists. In
the author’s own words: “I should stress that it is not the goal of this book to convince
you, my reader, to share my point of view about suffering, God, or religion. I am not
interested in destroying anyone’s faith or deconverting people from their religion. I am
not about to urge anyone to become an agnostic. Unlike other recent agnostic or atheist
authors, I do not think that every reasonable and reasonably intelligent person will in the
end come to see things my way when it comes to the important issues of life.” Ehrman,
God’s Problem, 17.
9. Ibid., 3.
10. Ehrman, Jesus, Interrupted, 276.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  239
Christian tradition, the one who is actively and powerfully involved in
this world.”11
One of the most interesting and telling dimensions of Ehrman’s
thought regarding evil comes at the end of his book-length treatment
of it: “I have to admit that at the end of the day, I do have a biblical
view of suffering. As it turns out, it is the view put forth in the book of
Ecclesiastes. . . . In my opinion, this life is all there is.”12 He then pro-
ceeds to elaborate upon what he takes to be the moral implications of
this naturalistic view:
In any event, the idea that this life is all there is should not be an occasion for
despair and despondency, but just the contrary. It should be a source of joy
and dreams—joy of living for the moment and dreams of trying to make the
world a better place, both for ourselves and for others in it. This means work-
ing to alleviate suffering and bringing hope to a world devoid of hope. . . . By
all means, and most emphatically, I think we should work hard to make the
world—the one we live in—the most pleasing place it can be for ourselves.
We should love and be loved. We should cultivate our friendships, enjoy our
intimate relationships, cherish our family lives. We should make money and
spend money. The more the better. We should enjoy good food and drink.
We should eat out and order unhealthy desserts, and we should cook steaks
on the grill and drink Bordeaux. We should walk around the block, work
in the garden, watch basketball, and drink beer. We should travel and read
books and go to museums and look at art and listen to music. We should
drive nice cars and have nice homes. We should make love, have babies, and
raise families. We should do what we can to love life—it’s a gift and it will not
be with us for long.
But we should also work hard to make our world the most pleasing place
it can be for others—whether this means visiting a friend in the hospital, giv-
ing more to a local charity or an international relief effort, volunteering at the
local soup kitchen, voting for politicians more concerned with the suffering in
the world than with their own political futures, or expressing our opposition
to the violent oppression of innocent people. What we have in the here and
now is all that there is. We need to live life to its fullest and help others as
well to enjoy the fruits of the land. In the end, we may not have ultimate solu-
tions to life’s problems. We may not know the why’s and wherefore’s. But just
because we don’t have an answer to suffering does not mean that we cannot
have a response to it. Our response should be to work to alleviate suffering
wherever possible and to live life as well as we can.13

11. Ehrman, God’s Problem, 4. 12. Ibid., 276.

13. Ibid., 278.
240  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

As a Catholic, I find myself agreeing with most of Ehrman’s moral im-

peratives mentioned above, and I think he lays them out eloquently.
Indeed, from the perspective of natural law as taught in the Catholic
Church, a person does not need explicit faith in God to know that the
above things are good.
In any event, the problem of evil is not the only point in Ehrman’s
favor when it comes to assessing the strength of his presuppositions.
As we saw above, Ehrman’s case that the early Church mythologized
the man Jesus is by no means something to be dismissed out of hand.
While I have endeavored to show that Benedict XVI’s alternate her-
meneutic of the evidence is just as plausible as Ehrman’s, this is a far
cry from demonstrating Ehrman’s agnostic assumptions to be wrong.
In other words, it is possible that the clearer insight into Jesus’ divinity
we find in later strands of tradition was the work of providence and
genuine divine revelation, but it is also possible that the early Church
invented Jesus’ divinity. Likewise, it is possible that the New Testa-
ment authors found genuine foreshadowing in the Old Testament
after they had encountered Jesus in his real historical Resurrection,
but it is also possible that these same authors artfully crafted events in
Jesus’ life to make him “fulfill” Old Testament texts that fit their agen-
da. Bearing in mind that the Resurrection is a miracle and by defini-
tion highly improbable, I think it is unreasonable to dismiss Ehrman’s
agnostic approach to the gospels as illegitimate based on internal evi-
dence alone.

Whose Philosophical Presuppositions Are Better?

The Case for Benedict
Regarding the Problem of Evil
Ehrman is by no means the first person driven to agnosticism by
the problem of evil, nor will he be the last. It would be pretentious to
claim that I can diffuse this timeless conundrum in a few short words,
but since the issue bears so directly on our exegetical presuppositions,
I would at least like to point the reader in the direction of a compelling
Christian response.
First, there is the classical Christian answer to the problem of evil,
represented in the thought of such figures as Augustine and Aquinas.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  241
In short, God would not allow evil in the first place unless his om-
nipotence and goodness were such as to bring greater good out of the
evil he allows.14 For this wisdom these patristic and medieval authors
themselves were indebted to an even more authoritative and ancient
source: Scripture itself. Whether it is Paul teaching that where sin
abounds, grace abounds all the more (Rom 5:20) or Joseph the pa-
triarch telling his brothers that what they meant for evil, God meant
for good (Gn 50:20), the Bible affirms that God allows certain evils
precisely in order to bring about an even greater good. Ehrman does
not accept this argument, but many Christians including myself find it
invaluable even while recognizing that it does not constitute a compre-
hensive solution to the problem of evil.
Second, I would like to highlight a dimension of the problem
that many authors fail to address. The question here is: what kind of
world ought we to expect from God? As Brian Davies writes, many
anti-theistic writers embrace the notion that relief from suffering is
an intrinsically good thing, but many theists reject this assumption.
A Christian who thinks like Aquinas and Augustine will argue that
sacrifice and pain can lead to desirable results in accordance with the
belief (also rooted in experience, even if it is not always verifiable) that
God brings even greater good out of evil. Another way Davies takes
up this issue is to challenge the temptation to suppose that “Maximize
happiness” is an imperative that any decent-minded God would act
upon. Davies suggests that such an imperative is unintelligible, since
God could always make a person happier.15
Davies refers to various Christian thinkers who have urged that
reason alone cannot say very much vis-à-vis the question of what kind
of world God should be expected to make. In particular he calls upon
the Angelic Doctor to show that, insofar as anything can be deemed a
“characteristic effect” of God, it is being (esse)—the fact that there is
any world at all. He continues:

14. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 2, a. 3, ad 1; Augustine, Enchiridion, xi.

15. Brian Davies, The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil (London: Continuum,
2006), 23. My thanks to James Madden for putting me onto this and a couple other philo-
sophical works to which I appeal in this conclusion.
242  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

For Aquinas, we have to start by noting what God has, in fact, made to be.
Reflections on the topic of God and evil must, so he thinks, start from that,
and not from assumptions we might have dreamed up (on what basis?) con-
cerning what God is or is not likely to create.16
If this is the case, then are there any grounds other than intuition on
which we might base our convictions regarding God in relation to evil,
so that we would avoid endorsing a voluntaristic view of God? Refer-
encing Herbert McCabe, Davies writes:
Like Aquinas, McCabe is suggesting that, since God accounts for there be-
ing something rather than nothing, we have no basis as philosophers (i.e. apart
from recourse to divine revelation) for expectations concerning the kind of
world which God (if he chooses to create) will make.17
There does, however, exist another channel by which to under-
stand the relationship between God and evil. According to Christiani-
ty, this mode of knowledge consists in divine revelation, something not
available to all on the basis of human reason alone. If Davies is right,
then ironically many who reject the existence of God on the basis of
the problem of evil are drawing on capital left over from Christianity.
Cognizant of it or not, it is the worldview furnished by a Christian
culture that leads one to demand that God be good in the way most
today presume him to be good. But this was not an assumption shared
by most religions or philosophies prior to Christianity. In fact, Ehr-
man puts this rather well in his discussion of the Book of Job:
Do we think that everything would be made right if the six million Jews
killed in the Holocaust were “replaced” by six million additional Jews born
in the next generation? As satisfying as the book of Job has been to people
over the ages, I have to say I find it supremely dissatisfying. If God tortures,
maims, and murders people just to see how they will react—to see if they will
not blame him, when in fact he is to blame—then this does not seem to me to
be a God worthy of worship. Worthy of fear, yes. Of praise, no.18
Ehrman can only claim that God as presented in Job is unworthy of
man’s devotion, but he cannot go so far as to conclude that the divine
does not exist. Indeed, from the standpoint of natural reason as re-
flected in the history of religion, it would seem right to believe that

16. Ibid., 24. 17. Ibid., 25 (emphasis added).

18. Ehrman, God’s Problem, 172.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  243
God (or gods) exists and that he (or they) is indeed worthy of fear.
Who is to say that the divinity ought to be loved or that God loves?
Argues Davies:
Christian teaching warrants those who accept it in thinking that God is lov-
ing in something like the sense of “loving” that we have in mind when we are
concerned with love between equals. . . . [T]he doctrine of the Trinity licenses
those who accept it in believing that, as the New Testament says, “God is
love.”19
Although there may be philosophical grounds for thinking of God as
good and loving, for Davies it is ultimately only the additional pool of
evidence furnished by Christian revelation that warrants our belief in
God being good in the way that we who (consciously or unconsciously)
have inherited a Christian worldview commonly presume him to be
good.

Morality and the Notion of Evil Itself Are

Vacuous without God
In addition to missing the mark on the problem of evil, I would ar-
gue that agnostics like Ehrman also find themselves in a contradictory
position when it comes to the moral norms they profess. This line of
criticism is expressed well by C. S. Lewis, who appeals to the absolute
nature of the value judgments we all make as an indication that there
exists some transcendent ground to them:
There is no escape along these lines. If we are to continue to make moral judg-
ments . . . then we must believe that the conscience of man is not a product of
Nature. It can be valid only if it is an offshoot of some absolute moral wisdom,
a moral wisdom which exists “on its own” and is not a product of non-moral,
non-rational Nature.20
In other words, if the natural world is all that exists and human ratio-
nality is entirely explicable as an evolution from the subrational, then
why should we trust our own moral judgments? How can we be con-
victed that an action such as rape or murder is evil if the notions of
“good” and “evil,” “ justice” and “injustice,” are merely the conceptual

19. Davies, The Reality of God, 240–41 (emphasis added).

20. Lewis, Miracles, 60.
244  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

byproducts of blind evolution?21 If naturalism is true, argues Lewis,

then all moral judgments are merely statements about their speakers’
feelings.22 As Benedict XVI writes on the alluring supposition of a
world without God, “On closer examination, though, it seems suspi-
cious. Who is to say what justice is?”23 Paul Williams, in his fasci-
nating book detailing his conversion from Buddhism to Catholicism,
writes in a similar vein: “We can truly say God is good. But for us
his goodness is bound up with his being the source of all good things
(Aquinas). Apart from that we cannot know what we mean, as it were
‘from God’s side’ by saying God is good.”24 Like Benedict and Davies,
Williams finds it nonsensical for the agnostic to claim that God has
moral obligations toward humans and that he should have made a
better world. Rather, it is only in light of the revelation that God is
love that evil becomes a problem in relation to God: “The issue of evil
in the world becomes an issue of a particular type of mystery for the
believer, rather than an argument against the existence of God.”25 In
sum, I think that Dostoevsky’s character Ivan Karamazov has it right
when he insinuates that if there is no God, everything is permitted.
One of Lewis’s more crucial observations on this score concerns
agnostics who subscribe to moral relativism: “A moment after they
have admitted that good and evil are illusions, you will find them ex-
horting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionize, liquidate,
live, and die for the good of the human race.”26 While the above state-

21. Note that the Catholic need not deny evolution here—the point is whether the
process is guided by divine reason or not.
22. Lewis, Miracles, 56. Scott Hahn writes similarly in one of his popular works,
“People who allow evil to drive them to atheism suddenly have no standard by which
to judge something evil. Instead of solving the problem, they’ve institutionalized it—
written it into the very fabric of the cosmos. If there is no God, then there is no transcen-
dent, ultimate goodness, no perfect measurement of righteousness; and so there can be
no true evil, either. Without God, everything becomes a matter of moral indifference or
mere human preference.” Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the
Catholic Faith (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 49.
23. Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfigu-
ration, 54.
24. Paul Williams, The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholi-
cism (London: T and T Clark, 2002), 45.
25. Ibid.
26. Lewis, Miracles, 57.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  245
ments from Ehrman demonstrate that he does not consider himself
a moral relativist, I think that Lewis’s argument holds for all those
who in one way or another fall short of affirming the existence of a
supernatural ground to the universe. As we saw above, Ehrman wraps
up his book God’s Problem with a beautiful exhortation to drink fine
wine and enjoy making love, but when putting the book down I cannot
help but think, “Amen to that—but why should we all agree that these
things ought to be done?” Brian Davies expresses my point here better
than I could hope to put it in my own words:
We cannot, I think, make good progress when trying to think about God
and evil if we do not (and apart from the issue of evil) ask if there are posi-
tive grounds for believing in God to start with. If there are such grounds,
the next obvious question to ask is “What should we suppose God to be?”
God is often (though certainly not always) said to be omnipotent, omniscient,
and good. But how, when it comes to God, should we construe “omnipotent,”
“omniscient,” and “good”? You might reply, “It is obvious, is it not?” My view,
however, is that it is not obvious.27
In other words, the problem of evil is meaningless in the absence of a
prior discussion of whether or not we have good reasons to believe that
God exists in the first place.

Our Rationality Itself Depends on God

In addition to arguing that an agnostic worldview is incompatible
with belief in absolute moral norms, Lewis contends that our rational-
ity itself is unreliable if God does not exist. According to Lewis, “[I]t is
not dependence simply but dependence on the non-rational which un-
dermines the credentials of thought. . . . It is only when you are asked
to believe in Reason coming from non-reason that you must cry Halt,
for, if you don’t, all thought is discredited.”28 As in the case of moral-
ity above, there is no reason to believe that my reasoning is valid if it is
merely the product of sub-rational causes.
More recently and in a more developed scholarly fashion, Alvin
Plantinga has argued that there is deep conflict between naturalism
and the scientific theory of evolution which most naturalists accept.
27. Davies, The Reality of God, 26–27.
28. Lewis, Miracles, 41–42; cf. ibid., 46.
246  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

Far from rejecting evolution as such, Plantinga finds untenable a com-

mon naturalistic gloss or add-on to this scientific theory: the claim
that evolution is unorchestrated by God or anyone else. Like Lewis,
Plantinga maintains that human rationality itself is undermined in an
agnostic universe:
I argue that it is improbable, given naturalism and evolution, that our cogni-
tive faculties are reliable. It is improbable that they provide us with a suitable
preponderance of true belief over false. But then a naturalist who accepts cur-
rent evolutionary theory has a defeater for the proposition that our faculties
are reliable. Furthermore, if she has a defeater for the proposition that her
cognitive faculties are reliable, she has a defeater for any belief she takes to be
produced by her faculties. But of course all of her beliefs have been produced
by her faculties—including, naturally enough, her belief in naturalism and
evolution. That belief, therefore—the conjunction of naturalism and evolu-
tion—is one that she can’t rationally accept. Hence naturalism and evolution
are in serious conflict: one can’t rationally accept them both. And hence, as I
said above, there is a science/ religion conflict (maybe a science/quasi-religion
conflict) to be sure, but it is between science and naturalism, not science and
theistic belief.29
Put in another way, the non-theist who argues that reason has led him
to the conclusion of atheism or agnosticism has no rational grounds
for believing that this conclusion itself is any more true than its op-
posite.
Addressing more specifically the mechanism of natural selection,
Plantinga appeals to naturalistic philosophers who acknowledge a ten-
sion between their own premises and conclusions. Thus Thomas Na-
gel: “If we came to believe that our capacity for objective theory [e.g.,
true beliefs] were the product of natural selection, that would warrant
serious skepticism about its results.”30 Barry Stroud likewise admits,
“There is an embarrassing absurdity in [naturalism] that is revealed as
soon as the naturalist reflects and acknowledges that he believes his
naturalistic theory of the world. . . . I mean he cannot say it and consis-
tently regard it as true.”31 Concerning Patricia Churchland’s affirma-
29. Alvin Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), xiv.
30. Thomas Nagel, The View from Nowhere (Oxford University Press, 1989), 79.
31. Barry Stroud, “The Charm of Naturalism” in Naturalism in Question, ed. Mario
De Caro and David Macarthur (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004), 28.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  247
tion that the “chore” of our cognitive faculties is to promote survival,
Plantinga summarizes:
Churchland’s point, clearly, is that (from a naturalistic perspective) what evo-
lution guarantees is (at most) that we behave in certain ways—in such ways as
to promote survival, or more exactly reproductive success. The principal func-
tion or purpose, then, (the “chore” says Churchland) of our cognitive faculties
is not that of producing true or verisimilitudinous (nearly true) beliefs, but
instead that of contributing to survival by getting the body parts in the right
place. . . . Our beliefs might be mostly true . . . but there is no particular reason
to think they would be: natural selection is interested, not in truth, but in ap-
propriate behavior.32
On our cognitive faculties being aimed not necessarily at truth but at
some other property such as survival, Plantinga contrasts the critiques
of Christian belief made by Marx and Freud: “Marx’s claim is that re-
ligious belief arises from cognitive dysfunction; as a result of living in a
dysfunctional society the believer’s cognitive faculties are not working
properly.”33 Freud, on the other hand, contests that the problem has to
do with the reality that our cognitive faculties are not aimed at truth
in the first place:
32. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 315; cf. Patricia Churchland, Journal
of Philosophy 84 (October 1987): 548. Plantinga demonstrates that these philosophical
reservations are by no means new. Friederich Nietzsche, for example, writes: “It is unfair
to Descartes to call his appeal to God’s credibility frivolous. Indeed, only if we assume
a God who is morally our like can ‘truth’ and the search for truth be at all something
meaningful and promising of success. This God left aside, the question is permitted
whether being deceived is not one of the conditions of life.” Nietzsche, Nietzsche: Writ-
ings from the Late Notebooks (Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy), ed. Rü-
diger Bittner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), Notebook 36, June–July
1885, 26. For Descartes, even our knowledge of mathematics hinges upon the existence of
a God who is not an evil deceiver: “Thus I concluded that it is at least as certain as any
geometrical proof that God, who is this perfect being, is or exists.” Discourse on Method
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 129. Plantinga notes that even Darwin
himself expresses serious doubts along these lines: “With me the horrid doubt always
arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind
of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the
convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?” Darwin,
Letter to William Graham, Down, July 3rd, 1881, in The Life and Letters of Charles Dar-
win Including an Autobiographical Chapter, ed. Francis Darwin (London: John Murray,
Albermarle Street, 1887), vol. 1, 315–16.
33. Alvin Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 2015), 22.
248  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

Belief in God is an illusion . . . but illusion has its uses, in particular in en-
abling us to live in this cold, bleak, miserable world in which we find our-
selves. Someone with properly functioning cognitive faculties might very well
form religious belief. Still, there is a problem with such belief: it isn’t pro-
duced by cognitive faculties whose purpose is to furnish us with true beliefs
about our world.34
In making this analysis, by no means is Plantinga insinuating along
with Freud that our cognitive faculties are unreliable. Rather, Plant-
inga’s reductio argues that the naturalist who accepts evolution is ra-
tionally obliged to give up the assumption that his thinking itself is
reliable.35
On the other hand, the alternative, theistic approach does not en-
tail this deep conflict between itself and science or between itself and
absolute moral norms as discussed above. Indeed, according to Plant-
inga,
[The believer] will see the shoe as on the other foot. According to St. Paul,
it is unbelief that is a result of dysfunction, or brokenness, failure to function
properly, or impedance of rational faculties. Unbelief, he says, is a result of
sin; it originates in an effort, as Romans 1 puts it, to “suppress the truth in
unrighteousness.” Indeed, unbelief can also be seen as resulting from wish-
fulfillment—a result of the desire to live in a world without God, a world in
which there is no one to whom I owe worship and obedience.36

34. Ibid., 25.

35. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 326. Concerning his own epistemologi-
cal assumptions, the author continues, “So the belief that my cognitive faculties are reli-
able is one for which I don’t need evidence or argument—that is, I don’t need evidence
or argument in order to be rational in believing it. I can be fully and entirely rational in
believing this even though I have no evidence or argument for it at all. This is a belief
such that it is rational to hold it in the basic way, that is, not on the basis of argument or
evidence from other things I believe.” Ibid., 341.
36. Plantinga, Knowledge and Christian Belief, 43. Continues Plantinga: “And God
himself, the source of my very being, can also be a threat. In my prideful desire for au-
tonomy and self-sufficiency I can come to resent the presence of someone upon whom I
depend for my every breath and by comparison with whom I am small potatoes indeed.
I can therefore come to hate him too. I want to be autonomous, beholden to no one.
Perhaps this is the deepest root of the condition of sin, and a motivation for atheism
as wish-fulfillment.” Ibid., 50. On the cause of atheism, also worthy of our meditation
are Dale Allison’s reflections on the correlation between secularization and our growing
separation from the natural world that has led to the loss of our ability to wonder. See
Allison, The Luminous Dusk (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006), especially 1–23
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”`  249
Ultimately, then, Plantinga disagrees with Freud: our belief-forming
faculties really are aimed at truth. With Marx, however, he will admit
that these faculties sometimes fail to achieve their proper end—only it
turns out that the people whose faculties malfunction are not believers
but rather nonbelievers.

Are Divine Interventions Plausible?

For C. S. Lewis the upshot of the above arguments against natural-
ism is clear: “If we decide that Nature is not the only thing that is, then
we cannot say in advance whether she is safe from miracles or not.”37 In
other words, if there exists a Being who is not limited by the confines
of the natural world but is rather the very ground of this world, then
we can never conclusively deny that this Being sometimes acts in a way
other than that which we tend to expect based on our observations of
nature. But how is the Christian to explain positively the phenomena of
miracles or divine interventions?
While Christians often speak of miracles as divine “interven-
tions,” unfortunately this turn of phrase appears to presuppose that
God is somehow “absent” from his creation and then “intrudes” upon
it to perform a miracle. As Brian Davies puts it, “For something can
only intervene by entering into a situation from which it is first of
all absent, while God [as the Catholic conceives of him] cannot be
thought to be absent from anything he creates. . . . God is creatively
present to everything at all times.”38 According to Davies, it is best to
follow Aquinas on this subject. Aquinas holds that miracles are not
explicable in natural terms, and yet this is not due to God’s “interven-
tion.” Rather, for Aquinas what specifies a miracle is that it is an event
which has nothing but God as its cause.39
Similarly for Lewis, the miracles we take to be “interruptions” of
nature’s history are in reality “expressions of the truest and deepest
and 177–78. Natural theology without nature, argues Allison, loses its potency. Ibid.,
17–18. According to Allison, other factors that, in today’s world, make believing more dif-
ficult include urbanization, industrialization, increasing distance from nature’s terrors,
and the ubiquity of artificial noise. Ibid., 32.
37. Lewis, Miracles, 14.
38. Davies, The Reality of God, 75.
39. Ibid., 76; cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, I, q. 8, a. 1.
250  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

unity in [God’s] total work.”40 He in turn proposes that within the

universe “there are rules behind the rules, and a unity which is deeper
than uniformity.”41 This articulation aligns well with Plantinga’s dis-
cussion of miracles in light of Newtonian and quantum physics. As for
the former, Plantinga points out that Newton himself believed that
God providentially guides the world and periodically adjusts the or-
bits of the planets. This classical view is summarized well here:
[I]t is no part of Newtonian mechanics or classical science generally to declare
that the material universe is a closed system. . . . Classical science, therefore,
doesn’t assert or include causal closure. The laws, furthermore, describe how
things go when the universe is causally closed, subject to no outside causal
influence. They don’t purport to tell us how things always go; they tell us,
instead, how things go when no agency outside the universe acts in it.42
So thought of, the natural laws offer no threat to special divine action. Mir-
acles are often thought to be problematic, in that God, if he were to perform
a miracle, would be involved in “breaking,” going contrary to, abrogating,
suspending, a natural law. But given this conception of law, if God were to
perform a miracle, it wouldn’t at all involve contravening a natural law. That is
because, obviously, any occasion on which God performs a miracle is an occa-
sion when the universe is not causally closed; and the laws say nothing about
what happens when the universe is not causally closed.43
So much for miracles in relation to classical physics, but what hap-
pens if we turn to contemporary quantum mechanics (QM)? Like
Plantinga, in matters of science I am reduced to arguing from author-
ity here, but based on this authority Plantinga concludes that the fol-
lowing is what we can say:
QM doesn’t determine a specific outcome for a given set of initial conditions,
but instead merely assigns probabilities to the possible outcomes. This means
that, even apart from that proviso, QM doesn’t constrain special divine action
in anything like the way classical deterministic mechanics does.44
Miracles may be highly improbable, but there is nothing inherently
contradictory in the supposition that God sometimes deviates from
the usual way we observe him governing his creation. To this point
Plantinga adds something that resonates with Davies’s point above:
40. Lewis, Miracles, 154. 41. Ibid., 153.
42. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 78–79.
43. Ibid., 82. 44. Ibid., 94.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  251
given contemporary quantum physics, it might not even make sense
to speak of intervention in the first place, let alone find something in
science with which it is incompatible.45
Even if one accepts this defense of the miraculous offered by Plant-
inga, there still remains the question of whether the miracles presented
in Scripture are credible or not. In other words, granted that God can
act independently of created causes within our universe, do we have any
reason to suppose that he has done so in any given instance? Ironically,
in the name of science biblical scholars and theologians commonly an-
swer “no” to this question. In so doing, they are (whether consciously
or unconsciously) assuming the Laplacean picture of a causally closed
physical universe which itself is a metaphysical worldview unsupported
by classical science. Plantinga observes:
[T]here is an interesting irony in these theologians urging the determinis-
tic, Laplacean picture, when that picture is no part of the classical science to
which they solemnly pledge fealty. There is a further irony: the classical sci-
ence they so eagerly meant to accommodate was well out of date at the time
they were eagerly accommodating it.46
As a theologian, I myself am keenly aware of how tempting it is
to think that God did not perform the various miracles attributed to
him in Scripture. Whether we like it or not, even traditionally minded
thinkers like myself are children of our age, an age indelibly marked by
the widespread conviction that history is a closed continuum that can-
not be rent by the interference of supernatural, transcendent powers.47
It pains me to admit it, but I will probably never be able to completely
shake off Rudolph Bultmann’s famous assertion that I learned in col-
lege: “It is impossible to use electric light and the wireless and to avail
ourselves of modern medical and surgical discoveries, and at the same
time to believe in the New Testament world of spirits and miracles.”48
Like many other theologians and biblical scholars, I do not object
to the truth that God creates and sustains the world. What I myself
45. Ibid., 97.
46. Ibid., 91.
47. Ibid., 70 ; cf. Rudolf Bultmann, Existence and Faith, ed. Schubert Ogden (New
York: Meridian Books, 1960), 291–92.
48. Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, selected, ed-
ited and translated by Schubert Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984), 4.
252  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

have difficulty with—and which Plantinga rightly challenges people

like myself on—is the claim that God does or has done anything in
addition to creating the world and sustaining it in existence. In other
words, from this point of view it is what Plantinga calls special divine
action that is the problem.49
When I am tempted to write off the possibility of special divine
action, I ask myself the question Plantinga poses to exegetes: is there
any reason to think that my assumption is true? I think that Plantinga
hits the nail on the head in exposing this assumption for what it is:
“Here the objection, obviously, is theological. It has nothing to do with
science. The idea is that God simply wouldn’t do such a thing; this sort
of action is inconsistent with his unfathomable augustness and unsur-
passable greatness.”50 Special divine action, so the claim goes, would
make God fall into inconsistency, arbitrariness, or caprice by dealing
in two different manners within the universe.51 In a vein that is similar
to Lewis’s argument above, Plantinga responds with a pointed ques-
tion:
But is this really true? There would be arbitrariness and inconsistency only if
God had no special reason for acting contrary to the usual regularities; but
of course he might very well have such reasons. This is obvious for the case of
raising Jesus from the dead: God intends to mark the special status accruing
to Jesus by this mighty act of raising him from the dead. In other cases too,
however, he might have reasons for “dealing in two different manners” with
his cosmos; how could we be even reasonably sure that he doesn’t?52
As Lewis said above, the Christian believes that within the uni-
verse there lies a unity which is deeper than uniformity. Within this
grand providential plan, God’s special action (through miracles, grace,
etc.) is no more out of place than the most mundane and uncontro-
versial actions few find objectionable. The trouble is, of course, that
we mortals cannot glimpse this plan fully. For us, in this vale of tears,

49. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 72. For another thorough treatment of
these topics, see Plantinga’s Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2000).
50. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, 74, 105.
51. Ibid., 106.
52. Ibid., 107.
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  253
God’s reply to Job must suffice. But it is also worth considering Paul
Williams’s response to the problem of miracles’ improbability. Like
Lewis, he argues that the miraculous is far from out of place for one
who accepts the existence of God and his providence:
Perhaps those who deny [miracles such as] the virgin birth do so on the ba-
sis that a virgin birth is just not very likely. But why should our understand-
ing of God’s actions, or the incarnation of Christ, be based on what is more
likely? One might expect the exact opposite. It is indeed not very likely that
what God would do is what is most likely, what would be most expected. The
Christian message is indeed one of God behaving in the most unexpected
way. Denial of the virgin birth on these grounds would suggest doubt as re-
gards the whole message of Christianity.53
For Williams, miracles and mysteries are precisely what we should ex-
pect if the Christian message that God became man is true, and they
only make the Christian that more compelling.
Dale Allison says something similar about what makes Christian-
ity compelling. Writing of his own work The Historical Christ and the
Theological Jesus, Allison states:
The upshot of the foregoing pages is that the historical Jesus remains, in Sch-
weitzer’s familiar words, a stranger and an enigma. As a Christian, however,
I do not find this so dreadful. What good is Jesus if he does not trouble our
theological dreams? Certainly the character in the gospels combats compla-
cency and self-satisfaction, and what but complacency and self-satisfaction
can come from a historical Jesus who confirms us in our theological ways,
whether those ways be liberal or conservative? A domesticated Jesus who
sounds like us, makes us comfortable, and commends our opinions is no Jesus
at all.54
Like Williams, in the case of the radical improbability of miracles Al-
lison finds that the troubling endeavor of historical Jesus research does
not undermine his faith, but rather enhances it. Allison’s account of
his own experience resonates with my own:
The inexplicable divine mystery still speaks through the old pages and
through my hermeneutical confusion. . . . Despite my modernity and my cyni-
cal nature, despite my dissection of it and my quarrels with it, the Bible re-

53. Williams, The Unexpected Way, 63–64.

54. Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 89–90.
254  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

mains profitable for teaching, for correction, and for training in righteous-
ness. It comforts. It inspires. It commands. When I push its pages apart, I lay
my finger on God’s heart.55

Christian Belief and the Evidence of Religious Experience

To this criticism of the criticism regarding miracles, I would add
that there also exist compelling positive reasons for accepting the mi-
raculous even if we personally are not conscious of having experienced
it. In particular, Lewis reminds us not to discount the fact that our
world is full of testimonies of people who claim to have experienced
miracles. To be sure, miracles are by definition improbable, and it is
prima facie more likely that the witnesses to an alleged miracle are ly-
ing or deluded than that the miracle actually occurred. And yet, even
as we know fraudulent cases exist, these by no means discredit all such
claims regarding the miraculous. Indeed, upon closer inspection, it
may actually end up being more probable that a putative miracle oc-
curred than that it did not. How so? David Hume held that a miracle
is always improbable, but he also admitted that this probability in-
creases dramatically in the presence of a credible witness we know and
trust. Says Hume: “If the falsehood of his testimony would be more
miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then,
can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.”56 I wonder whether
Hume’s criterion might be met when we come face to face with the tes-
timony of a living saint whom we can scarcely imagine being delusion-
al or dishonest. Thus Ratzinger’s oft-repeated conviction that “the true
apology of Christian faith, the most convincing demonstration of its
truth . . . are the saints and the beauty that the faith has generated.”57
In this connection I find it helpful to employ a concept developed
by Sandra Lee Menssen and Thomas Sullivan. The authors propose a

55. Ibid., 111.

56. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Indianapolis: Hackett
Pub. Co, 1977), Part I, 77.
57. Ratzinger, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” (August 24,
2002). Other formulations of Ratzinger’s leading apologetics principle are found in Feast
of Faith, 124; The Ratzinger Report, 129–30; Principles of Catholic Theology, 373; Truth and
Tolerance, 226; Meeting with the Clergy of the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone (August 6,
2008).
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  255
potentially fruitful way of evaluating revelatory claims by appealing
to what they call conditional upon explanation facts (CUE-facts). These
are putative facts “one does not accept as true but would accept, pro-
vided they are appropriately linked to a plausible explanation.”58 Ex-
tending this framework beyond the authors’ own application of it, I
would suggest that a given miracle receives precisely this sort of plausi-
ble explanation when we—though skeptical of the purported miracle
examining it in isolation—know that the one testifying to it is a living
saint who would not be delusional or dishonest. When it comes to the
CUE-fact of Jesus’ Resurrection, I would suggest this sort of plausible
explanation may come from a variety of places: through our personal
experience of beauty and holiness in the same Church that claims that
Jesus rose from the dead; through the freedom and happiness that
come through obedience to the Church’s moral teachings; through the
Church’s indefectibility over the centuries; through the peaceful forti-
tude of martyrs across the ages (in particular Jesus’ first disciples) who
have given their lives for Christ, etc. Another author, Paul Williams,
even goes so far as to claim that, after considering all arguments for
and against the resurrection of Jesus, one may “reach the stage where
the onus of proof is on the other side to construct a more convincing
and plausible case of what did happen instead of the resurrection.”59
Concerning miracles, I myself tend to be very skeptical when
people talk to me of miraculous healings on the one hand or demonic
possessions on the other. But then every once in a while I hear an ac-
count of some such phenomenon directly experienced by someone I
trust and know not to be delusional. These are the moments that make
me reconsider the possibility that such things happen after all even if
I (thankfully, in the case of possessions) have never consciously experi-
enced them. On this very point, George Mavrodes does well to call out
David Hume on his mistaken assumption that one’s personal lack of

58. Sandra Lee Menssen and Thomas D. Sullivan, The Agnostic Inquirer: Revela-
tion from a Philosophical Standpoint (Grand Rapids, Mich: William B. Eerdmans Pub,
2007), 211.
59. Williams, The Unexpected Way, 121; see pp. 121–35 of the same work for Wil-
liams’s full argument wherein he counters suggestions that Jesus’ risen body was only
“spiritual,” that his disciples had suffered from hallucinations, etc.
256  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

experiencing the miraculous is at all relevant to probability judgments

about miracles as such. This is in harmony with Lewis, who observes
that we could go on and on our whole lives and never obtain a sample
size large enough to support a probability judgment regarding the pos-
sibility of miracles. Hume categorically claims that a resurrection has
never been observed in any age or country, but this is merely an un-
grounded assertion. Mavrodes thus writes:
The clearest fact in this whole area would seem to be that the testimony about
resurrections, and other apparently miraculous happenings, is not uniform. . . . In
the case of miracles, the fact that there are these other troubling minority
testimonies, the testimonies of those who claim to have experienced miracles
themselves, becomes part of the data with which we must deal.60
On a related note, skeptics sometimes point to the prevalence of
clearly false miracle stories throughout the world as an indication that
the miracles of Christ were also mythical in character. Dale Allison
turns this analogy on its head:
The argument from analogy has usually been employed to argue that the
miracles stories in the Gospels are not memories but inventions. Being like
so many obviously fictional tales, they likewise must be unhistorical. I have
swapped this argument for another, urging instead that the numerous ac-
counts of purported wonders from sincere eyewitnesses should moderate our
skepticism and keep us open-minded.61
Perhaps more common than grandiose miraculous events are expe-
riences of another sort that point directly to God: experiences of grace.
Though one may not think of them as miraculous, the grace of the
Holy Spirit active in one’s life and miraculous healings are events that
have God alone as their cause. I would venture that all living members
of Christ’s body at some moment have had an experience that was too
perfect to be a coincidence, something that God alone could have or-
chestrated—or at least something so improbable that it would be more
incredible not to attribute it to God’s direct orchestration.62

60. George Mavrodes, “David Hume and the Probability of Miracles,” International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998): 176, 180.
61. Allison, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 77–78.
62. In speaking of “probability” here, by no means am I insinuating that the certitude
of faith is only probable. Thus John Henry Newman: “[T]he very idea of Christianity in
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  257
One particularly powerful way God’s grace moves the believer
is through his encounter with beauty and holiness in our world. As
Benedict (quoted above) said, in his view the greatest apology for the
Christian faith lies in the saints and the beauty that the Church’s faith
has generated. Throughout his career, the emeritus pontiff has time
and again emphasized that the via pulchritudinis, the way of beauty, is
a privileged path toward God, especially in a de-Christianized society
that is often hostile to the Church’s truth claims and moral norms. In
a couple of places he even gives us an autobiographical glimpse into
how the beauty of music bolstered his faith. One time, after attending
a Bach concert with a Lutheran bishop, the two spontaneously looked
at each other and said, “Anyone who has heard this, knows that the
faith is true.” Benedict later reflected on the experience, saying, “The
music had such an extraordinary force of reality that we realized, no
longer by deduction, but by the impact on our hearts, that it could
not have originated from nothingness, but could only have come to be
through the power of the Truth that became real in the composer’s
inspiration.”63 In experiencing beauty like this, the believer intuitively
sees it as incredible that such power could be at work in a universe
without God.

its profession and history, is . . . to be positively acknowledged, embraced, and maintained
as true, on the ground of its being divine, not as true on intrinsic grounds, not as probably
true, or partially true, but as absolutely certain knowledge, certain in a sense in which
nothing else can be certain, because it comes from Him who neither can deceive nor be
deceived.” Elsewhere we find him writing, “No man can worship, love, or trust in a prob-
able God.” And yet Newman himself argues that certitude can be found through an “ac-
cumulation of probabilities,” none of which may be certain on its own but which taken
together can lead to a real assent of faith. All this goes to show that the certitude of the
faith ultimately derives from the authority of the God revealing himself to man rather
than from man’s effort to grasp him. John Henry Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar
of Assent (Garden City, N.Y.: Image, 1955), 302, 320; Letter to David Brown, Jan. 14, 1875,
in Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, vol. XXVII, ed. C. S. Dessain and E. E.
Kelly (Oxford: Clarendon, 1961), 188. On the certitude of faith see also Aquinas, Summa
theologiae, I, q. 1, a. 5, ad 1; II-II, q. 4, a. 8. For a helpful popular treatment of the question,
see Thomas Dubay, SM, Faith and Certitude: Can We Be Sure of the Things That Matter the
Most to Us? (San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985).
63. Joseph Ratzinger, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” (Au-
gust 24, 2002). See also his account of this experience in his catechesis “Art and Prayer”
(August 31, 2011).
258  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

In saying this, one should not get the false impression that only
art connoisseurs can come to God through the experience of beauty.
There have been many times in my life when I have looked out on the
world and said something similar to what Benedict is reporting here:
the beauty of an encounter with a friend in deep conversation, the
beauty of a film that brought tears, the beauty of my newborn child—
these are just a few experiences wherein I, like Benedict, have had oc-
casion to say: “This could not have originated from nothingness.” I
recently experienced this reality in the most profound way when my
father unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and passed away within
hours. Although his death was probably the most earth-shattering
event of my life thus far, the week I spent at my childhood home after
Dad’s passing was one in which God rained down countless reminders
of his love and providential care for my family. My dad had died a holy
death, and everyone surrounding him at his passing and burial knew
it. I was not the only one who could not stop thinking, amidst so much
suffering, just how beautiful the whole affair was. In our pain God did
not just whisper that he was still there—he shouted it, especially in
the Church’s liturgy throughout the week.
To give just one example of how the beauty of the Church’s funeral
rites moved me to faith, I would like to recall what happens in a Catho-
lic funeral right before the Mass begins. Immediately after my father’s
casket was closed for the final time, I was handed the funeral pall and
helped my siblings lay it over the casket. The pall is the reminder of
the faithful departed’s baptism into Christ—an indelible mark that he
now carries into eternity. As we laid the pall over my father’s casket,
I could not help but draw the connection to the Catholic baptismal
liturgy. After baptizing the child, the priest clothes him with a little
white garment and says, “You have become a new creation, and have
clothed yourself in Christ. See in this white garment the outward sign
of your Christian dignity. With your family and friends to help you
by word and example, bring that dignity unstained into the everlast-
ing life of heaven.” It hit me more strongly than ever before that this is
what the funeral pall recalls.
My liturgical experience of Dad’s death spoke volumes about the
truth of Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particu-
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  259
lar. I think Benedict captures the reason this is so: “Why, in brief,
does the faith still have a chance? I would say the following: because
it is in harmony with what man is. Man is something more than what
Kant and the various post-Kantian philosophers [and, I might add, ex-
egetes] wanted to see and concede.”64 The Catholic Church’s doctrine
and practice is in harmony with who man is: the Church forces us to
confront death in all its awfulness, but then she also gives us all the
grace we need to face it well.
Closely related to the liturgy and to our own experience of death,
the epitome of beauty is glimpsed by the Christian in the experience
of God’s love in his bearing of the cross for us. Christ’s total gift of self
on the cross is the most beautiful of human actions ever to have been
performed, and it challenges the superficial notion of beauty domi-
nant in our culture today. According to Benedict, the beauty of the
crucified Jesus is not simply an aesthetic harmony of proportion and
form. While Christ is surely “the fairest of the sons of men” (Ps 45:2),
he is also the one “who had no form or comeliness that we should look
at him, and no beauty that we should desire him” (Is 53:2). From the
suffering Christ we learn one of life’s most important lessons: that true
beauty also embraces the ugliness of pain and even the dark mystery
of death. Jesus on the cross reminds us that true beauty, true freedom,
and ultimately true happiness are ultimately found when we embrace
suffering as part of God’s plan for our sanctification.65 In short, it is
the crucible of suffering with Christ on the cross that draws us away
from the transitory, detaches us from what is opposed to God, and
unites us intimately to him. Dostoyevsky’s character Prince Myskin
famously remarked that beauty will save the world. But here Benedict
reminds us of something people usually forget: salvific beauty is not
any beauty whatsoever but specifically the redeeming beauty of Christ
crucified who invites us to share in his cross.
Reading the lesser-known writings of Benedict XVI one frequent-
ly discovers unexpectedly delightful gems, and it is with one of these

64. Joseph Ratzinger, “Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today,” https://
www.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZRELA.HTM
65. Joseph Ratzinger, “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty” (Au-
gust 24, 2002); cf. Benedict XVI, Sacramentum Caritatis, 35.
260  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

that I would like to draw these brief remarks on religious experience

and beauty to a close. When he celebrated Mass in St. Patrick’s Ca-
thedral in New York, Benedict gave a fascinating homily in which he
reflected upon the great building as an allegory of faith and the search
for truth. Like any Gothic cathedral, from the outside its windows
appear dark and heavy, even dreary. But once one enters the Church,
these same windows suddenly come alive with resplendent light pass-
ing through their stained glass. The allegory is clear: “It is only from
the inside, from the experience of faith and ecclesial life, that we see
the Church as she truly is: flooded with grace, resplendent in beauty,
adorned by the manifold gifts of the Spirit.”66 Here Benedict teaches
in poetic fashion a truth he has reiterated in many different places and
ways throughout his career. The truth of the Catholic Church ulti-
mately can be seen only from the inside when we fast from our own
preconceptions and desires with a willingness to embark upon “the
experiment of faith.”67 I agree with Benedict’s contention that is only
from the inside—from a posture of obedience to the truth—that the
power of Christianity is clearly seen. Paradoxically, it is when we lose
our life for Christ’s sake that we truly find it. It is when we relinquish
our freedom to do as we please that we discover the truth that authen-
tic freedom lies in pleasing God. It is when we learn to die with Christ
that we truly live.68

66. Benedict XVI, Homily for Votive Mass for the Universal Church (April 19,
2008). Related to this image, I appreciate Dale Allison’s remark: “The Sermon on the
Mount does not look the same from the outside as it does from the inside.” Allison, The
Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus, 48. See also Allison, The Luminous Dusk, 62–
63. Recalling the wisdom of Albert Schweitzer, who long ago emphasized that Christ
reveals himself to us fully only when we hearken to him, Allison exhorts us to “the first-
hand experience of heeding and following Jesus, of personally striving, as best we can, to
enter into his moral vision. Without such effort, our knowledge of him will be less. As
the Jesus of Mt 11:29 says, ‘Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me.’” Ibid., 48; see also
Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2000), 487.
67. Joseph Ratzinger, “Why I Am Still in the Church,” in Fundamental Speeches from
Five Decades (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012), 132–53. For a fuller treatment of Ratz-
inger/Benedict’s theology of beauty in relation to the truth of Christianity, see Matthew
Ramage, “Benedict XVI’s Theology of Beauty and the New Evangelization,” Homiletic
and Pastoral Review (January 29, 2015; online).
68. For a fuller treatment of Christian freedom in contrast with the prevailing con-
temporary notion of freedom in our culture, see Matthew Ramage, “Benedict XVI and
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  261
To be sure, none of what has been said above changes the fact that
the believer can and must always be prepared with reasonable argu-
ments to defend faith in Christ in our world today. Indeed, that is what
this book has been all about. Yet Benedict wishes to remind us that we
are rarely if ever going to argue someone into believing. One thing a
Christian can certainly do every day—even on those days when the
subject of faith never comes up explicitly in our conversations—is to
live beautifully a life of grace and Christian freedom. A life lived in
the quest for holiness has great power to draw others to Christ. This
Christian witness epitomizes what Benedict has in mind in calling the
Church’s saints and her beauty the greatest apology of Christian faith.

Conclusion
My argument has been that the testimony of religious experience
(direct and indirect) ought to form an integral part of our evidence
base when it comes to discussing the miraculous. In concluding, I
would like to make a now-familiar observation, namely, that rejecting
this pool of evidence out of hand is not a scientific conclusion but an-

Freedom in Obedience to the Truth: A Key for the New Evangelization,” Homiletic and
Pastoral Review (May 12, 2014; online). The “experiment of faith” of which Ratzinger
speaks necessarily involves a communitarian dimension. Indeed, according to Alasdair
MacIntyre, membership within a community is a precondition for rational enquiry:
“Reason can only move towards being genuinely universal and impersonal insofar as it is
neither neutral nor disinterested, that membership in a particular type of moral commu-
nity, one from which fundamental dissent has to be excluded, is a condition for genuinely
rational enquiry, and more especially for moral and theological enquiry.” MacIntyre,
Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition (Notre
Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990), 60–61. Also helpful in this regard
is MacIntyre’s description of a “practice.” See his After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003), especially p. 242. Finally, see
also his Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (Notre Dame, Ind: University of Notre Dame
Press, 1988), 367 and 388, where he says, “It follows that the only rational way for adher-
ents of any tradition to approach intellectually, culturally, and linguisitic alien rivals is
one that allows for the possibility that in one or more areas the other may be rationally
superior to it in respect precisely of that in the alien tradition which it cannot as yet com-
prehend. . . . Only those whose tradition allows for the possibility of its hegemony being
put into question can have rational warrant for asserting such hegemony. And only those
traditions which recognize the possibility of untranslatability into their own language-
in-use are able to reckon adequately with that possibility.”
262  “To Whom Shall We Go?”

other unwarranted philosophical presupposition like others discussed

further above. As one who daily engages in the craft of historical-criti-
cal exegesis, I find Benedict XVI’s comments on this subject refreshing
and liberating. In contrast with what he calls a naturalist “ready-made
philosophy” that precludes the possibility of such experience, Benedict
urges us to approach the Bible with an “open philosophy” that refuses
to exclude the possibility that God himself “can work in history and
enter into it without ceasing to be himself, however improbable this
might appear.”69 This posture, deeply rooted in the Catholic tradition
with its conviction that the boundary of time and eternity is perme-
able, allows for the Bible to be what the Church has always claimed it
to be: the word of God in human words.
As we have seen in the chapters above, this is by no means to deny
that there exist certain tensions between the Catholic faith and the
findings of historical-critical biblical scholarship. If there did not, then
this book would have been superfluous. While admitting that diffi-
culties do and likely always will remain, I think Plantinga does well
to conclude that these alleged conflicts do not provide defeaters for
Christian belief:
The reason . . . is that the scientific evidence base, constrained as it is by meth-
odological naturalism, is only a part of the Christian evidence base. Perhaps
certain Christian beliefs are improbable from that partial evidence base; it
doesn’t follow that they are improbable from a Christian’s complete evidence
base.70
The key to the Christian evidence base, a key absent in the non-theist’s
arsenal, is of course God himself, and thus the real question under-
girding our exegetical debates is the prior issue of whether or not God
exists and governs our world. It is the question of whether we have
independent reasons to believe that there exists a supernatural Being
beyond the natural order, a Being to whom nature owes its existence
69. Ratzinger, “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict,” 22.
70. Plantinga, Where the Conflict Really Lies, xii. See also Plantinga, Knowledge and
Christian Belief, 106: “The traditional Christian thinks he knows by faith that Jesus was
divine and that he rose from the dead. Hence, he will be unmoved by the fact that these
truths are not especially probable on the evidence to which Duhemian HBC [histori-
cal biblical criticism] limits itself—that is, evidence which explicitly excludes what one
knows by faith.”
 “To Whom Shall We Go?”  263
and who may act within that order in ways we do not typically ob-
serve. In the arguments from Lewis and Plantinga surveyed above, I
think we find well-argued reasons to believe that the answer to this
question is “yes.”
I would like to conclude by returning to my point of departure for
this volume and reiterating a theme that has run throughout it. If the
debate in modern exegesis is at bottom philosophical in nature, then
we desperately need to carry out a criticism of the criticism, identi-
fying and evaluating the philosophical presuppositions that believers
and nonbelievers alike bring to their reading of the biblical text. A
key contention I have made in this regard is that the impossibility of
miracles like Christ’s Incarnation and Resurrection is not something
that can be proved; it can only be assumed. Indeed, I would say with
Lewis that this agnostic premise is held by faith rather than reason.
Furthermore, in light of the arguments outlined above I am convinced
that holding to God’s nonexistence while making claims to truth or
morality requires more “faith” than accepting the Christian hypoth-
esis. But if we are to entertain this hypothesis—even if we only come
to the conclusion that theism is true—then we cannot consider our-
selves “safe” from miracles and from the Christian narrative so deeply
interwoven with them.
Bibliography

Note: All of the addresses, homilies, etc. of Pope Benedict XVI and all the
works of the International Theological Commission listed here are available on
the Vatican website, w2.vatican.va.

Allison, Dale. Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Grand

Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2010.
———. “The Historians’ Jesus and the Church.” In Seeking the Identity of Jesus:
A Pilgrimage, edited by Richard B. Hays and Beverly R. Gaventa, 84–85.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2008.
———. The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2009.
———. The Luminous Dusk: Finding God in the Deep, Still Places. Grand Rap-
ids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006.
Arias Reyero, Maximino. Thomas von Aquin als Exeget: Die Prinzipien seiner
Schriftdeutung und seine Lehre von den Schriftsinnen. Einsiedeln: Johannes
Verlag, 1971.
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. The Office of Peter and the Structure of the Church. San
Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
Barber, Michael. Coming Soon: Unlocking the Book of Revelation and Applying
Its Lessons Today. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2005.
Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testi-
mony. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2006.
Béchard, Dean. The Scripture Documents. Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical
Press, 2002.
Benedict XVI. Address to the Parish Priests and Clergy of Rome. February
14, 2013.
———. Address to Participants in the Plenary Meeting of the Pontifical Bib-
lical Commission. May 2, 2011.

265
266  Bibliography

———. Angelus. October 26, 2008.

———. “Art and Prayer.” August 31, 2011.
———. Christmas Address to the Roman Curia. December 22, 2005.
———. “Faith, Reason, and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Ad-
dress at the University of Regensburg. September 12, 2006.
———. General Audience. March 20, 2010.
———. Homily for Votive Mass for the Universal Church. April 19, 2008.
———. Jesus, the Apostles, and the Early Church. San Francisco: Ignatius Press,
2007.
———. Jesus of Nazareth: From the Baptism in the Jordan to the Transfiguration.
New York: Doubleday, 2007.
———. Jesus of Nazareth: Holy Week: From the Entrance into Jerusalem to the
Resurrection.San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.
———. Jesus of Nazareth: The Infancy Narratives. New York Image, 2012.
———. Light of the World: The Pope, the Church, and the Signs of the Times.
San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2010.
———. Meeting with the Clergy of the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone. Au-
gust 6, 2008.
———. Sacramentum Caritatis. 2007.
———. A School of Prayer: The Saints Teach Us How to Pray. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 2012.
———. St. Paul. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2009.
———. Verbum Domini. 2010.
Bird, Michael, Craig Evans, Simon Gathercole, Charles Hill, and Chris Till-
ing. How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Na-
ture—A Response to Bart Ehrman. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan 2014.
Borg, Marcus. The God We Never Knew: Beyond Dogmatic Religion to a More
Authentic Contemporary Faith. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997.
———. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the
Heart of Contemporary Faith. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1995.
———. Reading the Bible Again for the First Time: Taking the Bible Seriously but
Not Literally. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.
Brown, Raymond E. The Birth of the Messiah: A Commentary on the Infancy
Narratives in Matthew and Luke. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1977.
———. The Gospel According to John. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966.
Bultmann, Rudolf. Existence and Faith. Edited and translated by Schubert Og-
den. New York: Meridian Books, 1960.
———. The Gospel of John: A Commentary. Edited by G. R. Beasley-Murray
Philadelphia, Penn.: Westminster Press, 1971.
———. Jesus and the Word. Translated by Louise Pettibone Smith and Er-
minie Huntress Lantero. New York: Scribner’s, 1958.
———. “The Primitive Christian Kerygma and the Historical Jesus.” In The
 Bibliography  267
Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ: Essays on the New Quest of the
Historical Jesus, edited by Carl E. Braaten and Roy A. Harrisville, 15–42.
New York: Abingdon Press, 1964.
Bultmann, Rudolf, Hans Werner Bartsch, and Reginald H. Fuller. Kerygma
and Myth: A Theological Debate. Translated by Reginald H. Fuller. New
York: Harper and Row, 1961.
Burridge, Richard. What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman
Biography. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Burtchaell, James Tunstead. Catholic Theories of Biblical Inspiration since 1810:
A Review and Critique. London: Cambridge University Press, 1969.
Catechism of the Catholic Church. Translated by United States Catholic Confer-
ence. Washington, D.C.: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1994.
Chesterton, G. K. The Everlasting Man. In The Collected Works of G. K. Ches-
terton. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. “Doctrinal Commentary on the
Concluding Formula of the Professio Fidei.” 1998.
———. Donum Veritatis. 1990.
———. Mysterium Ecclesiae. 1973.
Crossan, John Dominic. The Birth of Christianity: Discovering What Happened
in the Years Immediately after the Execution of Jesus. San Francisco: Harper-
SanFrancisco, 1998.
———. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991.
———. How to Read the Bible and Still Be a Christian: Struggling with Violence
from Genesis through Revelation. New York: HarperOne, 2015.
———. Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco,
1994.
———. The Power of Parable: How Fiction by Jesus Became Fiction about Jesus.
New York: HarperOne, 2013.
Daniélou, Jean. The Infancy Narratives. Translated by Rosemary Sheed. New
York: Herder and Herder, 1968.
Darwin, Charles, and Francis Darwin. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin:
Including an Autobiographical Chapter. New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1887.
Davies, Brian. The Reality of God and the Problem of Evil. London: Continuum,
2006.
Descartes, René. Discourse on Method. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov: The Constance Garnett Transla-
tion Revised by Ralph E. Matlaw: Backgrounds and Sources, Essays in Criti-
cism. New York: Norton, 1976.
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor. The Idiot. Translated by Richard Pevear and Larissa
Volokhonsky. New York: Everyman’s Library, 2002.
268  Bibliography
Dubay, Thomas, S.M. Faith and Certitude: Can We Be Sure of the Things That
Matter the Most to Us? San Francisco: Ignatius, 1985.
Dulles, Avery, S.J., “Benedict XVI: Interpreter of Vatican II.” In Church and
Society: The Laurence J. McGinley Lectures, 1988–2007, 468–84. New York:
Fordham University Press, 2008.
Ehrman, Bart. God’s Problem: How the Bible Fails to Answer Our Most Impor-
tant Question—Why We Suffer. New York: HarperOne, 2008.
———. Forged: Writing in the Name of God: Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not
Who We Think They Are. New York: HarperOne, 2011.
———. How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Gali-
lee. New York: HarperOne, 2014.
———. Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
———. Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible
(And Why We Don’t Know about Them). New York: HarperOne, 2009.
———. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why.
New York: HarperOne, 2007.
———. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian
Writings. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Enns, Peter. The Bible Tells Me So: Why Defending Scripture Has Made Us Un-
able to Read It. San Francisco : HarperOne, 2014.
———. “Fuller Meaning, Single Goal: A Christotelic Approach to the New
Testament Use of the Old in Its First-Century Interpretive Environment.”
In Three Views on the New Testament Use of the Old Testament, 167–217.
Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2008.
———.Inspiration and Incarnation. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic,
2005.
Evans, Craig. “Getting the Burial Traditions and Evidences Right.” In How
God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature—A
Response to Bart Ehrman, edited by Michael Bird, 94–116. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Zondervan 2014.
———. Mark 8:27–16:20. Nashville, Tenn.: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2001.
Farkasfalvy, Denis. Inspiration and Interpretation: A Theological Introduction to
Sacred Scripture. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2010.
Francis, Pope, and Antonio Spadaro, SJ. “A Big Heart Open to God.” America.
September 30, 2013. http://americamagazine.org/pope-interview.
Funk, Robert W. The Acts of Jesus: The Search for the Authentic Deeds of Jesus.
San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1998.
Funk, Robert W., and Roy W. Hoover. The Five Gospels: The Search for the
Authentic Words of Jesus: New Translation and Commentary. New York:
Macmillan, 1993.
 Bibliography  269
Gathercole, Simon. “What Did the First Christians Think about Jesus?” In
How God Became Jesus: The Real Origins of Belief in Jesus’ Divine Nature—
A Response to Bart Ehrman, edited by Michael Bird, 94–116. Grand Rap-
ids, Mich.: Zondervan 2014.
Glare, P. G. W. Oxford Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982.
Gnilka, Joachim. Das Matthäusevangelium. Freiburg: Herder, 1986.
———. Jesus of Nazareth: Message and History. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson
Publishers, 1997.
Goodacre, Mark. The Case Against Q. Harrisburg, Pa.: Trinity Press Interna-
tional, 2002.
———. The Synoptic Problem: A Way through the Maze. London: Sheffield
Academic Press, 2001.
———. Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Syn-
optics. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2012.
Grillmeier, Alois. Christ in Christian Tradition: From the Apostolic Age to Chal-
cedon (451). Mowbray, 1965.
Grisez, Germain. “The Inspiration and Inerrancy of Scripture.” In For the Sake
of Our Salvation: The Truth and Humility of God’s Word, St. Paul Center
for Biblical Theology, 181–90. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Road Publish-
ing, 2010.
Hahn, Scott. “Come Again? The Real Presence as Parousia.” In Catholic for
a Reason III: Scripture and the Mystery of the Mass, 31–48. Steubenville,
Ohio: Emmaus Road Publishing, 2004.
———. The Lamb’s Supper: The Mass as Heaven on Earth. New York: Double-
day, 1999.
———. Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catho-
lic Faith. New York: Doubleday, 2007.
Hahn, Scott, and Benjamin Wiker. Politicizing the Bible: The Roots of Historical
Criticism and the Secularization of Scripture, 1300–1700. New York : Cross-
road Publishing Company, 2013.
Harnack, Adolf von. What Is Christianity? Translated by Thomas Bailey Saun-
ders. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1986.
Harrison, Brian. “Does Vatican Council II Allow for Errors in Sacred Scrip-
ture?” Divinitas, LII, 3 (2009): 279–30.
———. “Restricted Inerrancy and the ‘Hermeneutic of Discontinuity.’” In
St. Paul Center for Biblical Theology, For the Sake of Our Salvation: The
Truth and Humility of God’s Word, 225–46. Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus
Road Publishing, 2010.
Hays, Richard. “Benedict and the Biblical Jesus.” First Things (August, 2007).
http://www.firstthings.com/article/2007/08/001-benedict-and-the-biblical
-jesus
———. Reading Backwards: Figural Christology and the Fourfold Gospel Wit-
ness. Waco, Tex.: Baylor University Press, 2014.
270  Bibliography
Hengel, Martin. The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ. Trans-
lated by John Bowden. Harrisburg, Penn: Trinity Press, 2000.
———. The Son of God: The Origin of Christology and the History of Jewish-
Hellenistic Religion. Translated by John Bowden. London: SCM, 1975.
Heschel, Susannah. The Aryan Jesus: Christian Theologians and the Bible in
Nazi Germany. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008
Hume, David. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Indianapolis,
Ind.: Hackett Publishing Co., 1977.
Hurtado, Larry. Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 2003.
International Theological Commission. God the Trinity and the Unity of Hu-
manity. Christian Monotheism and Its Opposition to Violence. 2014.
———. The Interpretation of Dogma. 1990.
———. Some Current Questions in Eschatology. 1992.
———. Theology Today: Perspectives, Principles and Criteria. 2012.
———. Unity of the Faith and Theological Pluralism. 1972.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1985.
Jaubert, Annie. The Date of the Last Supper. Staten Island, N.Y.: Alba House,
1965.
Jeremias, Joachim. The Parables of Jesus. Translated by S. H. Hooke. London:
SCM Press, 1963.
Johnson, Luke Timothy. The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical
Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels. San Francisco: HarperSan-
Francisco, 1996.
Journet, Charles. What Is Dogma? Translated by Mark Pontifex, OSB. New
York: Hawthorn Books, 1964.
Keener, Craig. The Historical Jesus of the Gospels. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 2009.
Kleinhaus, Arduin. “De nova Enchiridii Biblici editione.” Antonianum 30
(1955): 63–65.
Kreeft, Peter, and Ronald Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds
of Answers to Crucial Questions. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press,
1994.
Lagrange, Marie-Joseph. Historical Criticism and the Old Testament. Translated
by Edward Myers. London: Catholic Truth Society, 1905.
Laurentin, René. The Truth of Christmas beyond the Myths: The Gospels of the
Infancy of Christ. Translated by Michael J. Wrenn. Petersham, Mass.:
St. Bede’s Publications, 1986.
Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo. Fire of Mercy, Heart of the Word: Meditations on
the Gospel According to Saint Matthew. Volume 2. San Francisco: Ignatius
Press, 2004.
 Bibliography  271
Lienhard, Joseph, S.J. “Pope Benedict XVI: Theologian of the Bible.” Homiletic
and Pastoral Review 110, 10 (2010): 66–78.
Leo XIII. Providentissimus Deus (November 18, 1893).
Levenson, Jon. The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transforma-
tion of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity. New Haven, Conn.: Yale
University Press, 1993.
———. Resurrection and the Restoration of Israel: The Ultimate Victory of the
God of Life. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006.
Levine, Amy-Jill. The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jew-
ish Jesus. New York: HarperOne, 2006.
Lewis, C. S. Miracles: A Preliminary Study. New York: Macmillan, 1978.
———. Reflections on the Psalms. London: Harvest Books, 1964.
———. The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses. New York: Macmillan,
1980.
Loisy, Alfred. L’Évangile et l’Église. Paris: Picard, 1902.
MacIntyre, Alasdair C. After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory. Notre Dame,
Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2003.
———. Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and
Tradition. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1990.
———. Whose Justice? Which Rationality? Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2003.
Martin, Francis. “Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI, on Biblical Interpretation:
Two Leading Principles.” Nova et Vetera 5 (2007): 285–314.
Mavrodes, George I. “David Hume and the Probability of Miracles.” Interna-
tional Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43 (1998): 167–82.
Meier, John P. A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus. 4 vols. Anchor
Yale Bible Reference Library; New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press,
1991, 1994, 2001, 2009.
Menssen, Sandra Lee, and Thomas D. Sullivan. The Agnostic Inquirer: Revela-
tion from a Philosophical Standpoint. Grand Rapids, Mich: William B.
Eerdmans, 2007.
Metzger, Bruce, and Bart Ehrman. The Text of the New Testament: Its Trans-
mission, Corruption, and Restoration. New York: Oxford University Press,
2005.
Miller, Athanasius. “Das neue biblische Handbuch.” Benediktinische
Monatschrift 31 (1955).
Nagel, Thomas. The View from Nowhere. New York: Oxford University Press,
1989.
Neusner, Jacob. A Rabbi Talks with Jesus. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s Univer-
sity Press, 2000.
Newman, John Henry. An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. Garden City,
N.Y.: Image, 1955.
272  Bibliography

———. An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Notre Dame, Ind.:

University of Notre Dame Press, 1989.
———. Letter to David Brown. January 14, 1875. In Letters and Diaries of John
Henry Newman. Volume 27. Edited by C. S. Dessain and E. E. Kelly. Ox-
ford: Clarendon Press, 1961.
———. “The Theory of Developments in Religious Doctrine.” In Fifteen Ser-
mons Preached before the University of Oxford, 312–51. Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1998.
Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm, Rüdiger Bittner, and Kate Sturge. Writings
from the Late Notebooks. Translated by Kate Sturge. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2003.
O’Collins, Gerald, SJ. “Does Vatican II Represent Continuity or Discontinu-
ity?” Theological Studies 73 (2012).
Origen. Commentary on the Gospel of John. Translated by Allan Menzies. In
vol. 9 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers
down to A.D. 325, edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson.
Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans: 1989.
———. Contra Celsum. In vol. 4 of The Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the
Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325, edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts
and James Donaldson. Grand Rapids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans: 1989.
———. On First Principles. Translated by Frederick Crombie. In vol. 4 of The
Ante-Nicene Fathers: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D.
325, edited by Rev. Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson. Grand Rap-
ids, Mich.: W. B. Eerdmans: 1989.
Paul VI, Mysterium Fidei. 1965.
———. Sedula Cura. 1971.
Pelikan, Jaroslav. The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100–600), Volume 1:
The Christian Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.
Pesch, Rudolf. Das Markusevangelium. Freiburg: Herder, 1976.
Pidel, Aaron, SJ. “Joseph Ratzinger and Biblical Inerrancy.” Nova et Vetera 12.1
(2014).
Pinckaers, Servais, OP. The Sources of Christian Ethics. Washington: The Cath-
olic University of America Press, 1993.
Pitre, Brant. Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile: Restoration Eschatol-
ogy and the Origin of the Atonement. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005.
Pius IX. Syllabus of Errors. 1864.
Pius X. Lamentabili Sane. 1907.
———. The Oath Against Modernism. 1910.
———. Pascendi Dominici Gregis. 1907.
———. Praestantia Sacrae Scripturae. 1907.
Pius XI. Mit brennender sorge. 1937.
Pius XII. Humani Generis. 1950.
 Bibliography  273
———. Divino Afflante Spiritu. 1943.
Plantinga, Alvin. Knowledge and Christian Belief. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 2015.
———. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford University Press,
2000.
———. Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism. New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Pontifical Biblical Commission. On the Authorship, Date of Composition, and
Historicity of the Gospel of Matthew. 1911.
———. On the Authorship and Historicity of the Fourth Gospel. 1907.
———. On the Authorship, Time of Composition, and Historicity of the Gospels
of Mark and Luke. 1912.
———. On the Character and Authorship of the Book of Isaiah. 1908.
———. On the False Interpretation of Two Texts. 1933.
———. The Historicity of the Gospels. 1964.
———. The Inspiration and Truth of Sacred Scripture. Collegeville, Minn.: The
Liturgical Press, 2014.
———. The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church. 1994.
———. On the Mosaic Authorship of the Pentateuch. 1906.
———. On the Parousia or Second Coming of Our Lord in the Letters of St. Paul
the Apostle. 1915.
———. On the Synoptic Question or the Mutual Relations among the First Three
Gospels. 1912.
Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue. Dialogue and Proclamation. 1991.
Ramage, Matthew. “Benedict XVI and Freedom in Obedience to the Truth: A
Key for the New Evangelization.” Homiletic and Pastoral Review. May 12,
2014.
———. “Benedict XVI’s Theology of Beauty and the New Evangelization.”
Homiletic and Pastoral Review. January 29, 2015.
———. Dark Passages of the Bible: Engaging Scripture with Benedict XVI and
Thomas Aquinas. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America
Press, 2013.
———. “Farewell to the Devil?” Gregorian Institute. October 25, 2013.
http://www.thegregorian.org/blog/farewell-to-the-devil
Rahner, Karl, and Joseph Ratzinger. Revelation and Tradition. Translated by
W. J. O’Hara. New York: Herder, 1966.
Ratzinger, Joseph. In the Beginning: A Catholic Understanding of the Story of
Creation and the Fall. Translated by Boniface Ramsey. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 1995.
———. “Biblical Interpretation in Conflict: On the Foundations and the
Itinerary of Exegesis Today.” In Opening Up the Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger
and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation, 1–29. Edited by José Grana-
274  Bibliography
dos, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-Navarro. Grand Rapids, Mich.:
Eerdmans, 2008.
———. “Biblical Interpretation in Crisis: On the Question of the Founda-
tions and Approaches of Exegesis Today.” In Biblical Interpretation in Cri-
sis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, edited by Richard John
Neuhaus, 1–23. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.
———. Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1996.
———. “Christ, Faith, and the Challenge of Cultures.” Speech given in
Hong Kong to the presidents of the Asian bishops’ conferences and the
chairmen of their doctrinal commissions during a March 2–5, 1993,
meeting.
———. “Culture and Truth: Some Reflections on the Encyclical Letter Fides
et Ratio.” The Patrician (Winter, 1999): 1–8.
———. Daughter Zion: Meditations on the Church’s Marian Belief. San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 1983.
———. Eschatology: Death and Eternal Life. Translated by Michael Waldstein.
Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1988.
———. “Exegesis and the Magisterium of the Church.” In Opening Up the
Scriptures: Joseph Ratzinger and the Foundations of Biblical Interpretation,
126–36. Edited by José Granados, Carlos Granados, and Luis Sánchez-
Navarro. Grand Rapids, Mich..: Eerdmans, 2008.
———. “Farewell to the Devil?” In Dogma and Preaching: Applying Christian
Doctrine to Daily Life, translated by Michael J. Miller and Matthew J.
O’Connell. 197–206. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2011.
———. Feast of Faith: Approaches to a Theology of the Liturgy. Translated by
Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986.
———. “The Feeling of Things, the Contemplation of Beauty.” Message of
His Eminence Card. Joseph Ratzinger to the Communion and Liberation
(CL) Meeting at Rimini (24-30 August 2002).
———. God and the World: A Conversation with Peter Seewald. Translated by
Henry Taylor. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2002.
———. “On the ‘Instruction Concerning the Ecclesial Vocation of the
Theologian.’” In The Nature and Mission of Theology: Approaches to Under-
standing Its Role in Light of the Present Controversy, 101–20. Translated by
Adrian Walker. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1995.
———. Introduction to Christianity. Translated by Michael J. Miller. San Fran-
cisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
———. Milestones: Memoirs 1927–1977. Translated by Erasmo Leiva-Merikakis.
San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1998.
———. A New Song for the Lord: Faith in Christ and Liturgy Today. Translated
by Martha M. Matesich. New York: Crossroad, 1996.
 Bibliography  275
———. Presentation on the Occasion of the First Centenary of the Death of
Cardinal John Henry Newman. April 28, 1990. Vatican website.
———. “Zum Problem der Entmythologisierung Des Neuen Testamentes.”
Religionsunterricht an höheren Schulen 3 (1960): 2–11.
———. Principles of Catholic Theology: Building Stones for a Fundamental The-
ology. Translated by Sr. Mary Frances McCarthy, SND. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1987.
———. “Relativism: The Central Problem for Faith Today.” https://www
.ewtn.com/library/CURIA/RATZRELA.HTM
———. Salt of the Earth: The Church at the End of the Millennium—An In-
terview with Peter Seewald. Translated by Adrian Walker. San Francisco:
Ignatius Press, 1997.
———. “Sources and Transmission of the Faith.” Communio 10, no. 1 (1983):
17–34.
———. Theological Highlights of Vatican II. New York: Paulist Press, 1966.
———. Theology of History in St. Bonaventure. Translated by Zachary Hayes.
Chicago: Franciscan Herald Press, 1971.
———. Truth and Tolerance: Christian Belief and World Religions. Translated
by Henry Taylor. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
———. “Why I Am Still in the Church.” In Fundamental Speeches from Five
Decades, translated by Michael J. Miller, J. R. Foster, and Adrian Walker,
132–53. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2012.
Ratzinger, Joseph, and Vittorio Messori, The Ratzinger Report: An Exclusive
Interview on the State of the Church. Translated by Salvator Attanasio and
Graham Harrison. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1985.
Reiser, Marius. Bibelkritik und Auslegung der Heiligen Schrift: Beiträge zur Ge-
schichte der biblischen Exegese und Hermeneutik. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck,
2007.
Rhonheimer, Martin. “Benedict XVI’s ‘Hermeneutic of Reform’ and Religious
Freedom.’” Nova et Vetera 9, no. 4 (2011): 1029–54.
Sanders, E. P. Jesus and Judaism. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1985.
Schnackenburg, Rudolf. Freundschaft mit Jesus. Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder,
1996.
———. The Gospel According to St. John. Translated by Cecily Hastings. New
York: Seabury Press, 1980.
———. Jesus in the Gospels: A Biblical Christology. Translated by O. C. Dean
Jr. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995.
Schürmann, Heinz, and Klaus Scholtissek. Jesus, Gestalt und Geheimnis: gesa-
mmelte Beiträge. Paderborn: Bonifatius, 1994.
Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus. Translated by W. Mont-
gomery, J. R. Coates, Susan Cupitt, and John Bowden. Minneapolis,
Minn.: Fortress Press, 2000.
276  Bibliography
Solovyov, Vladimir Sergeyevich. The Antichrist. Edinburgh: Floris Books, 1982.
Sparks, Kenton. God’s Word in Human Words. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
Academic, 2008.
Stallsworth, Paul T. “The Story of an Encounter.” In Biblical Interpretation in
Crisis: The Ratzinger Conference on Bible and Church, edited by Richard
John Neuhaus, 102–90. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1989.
Streeter, Burnett Hillman. Foundations: A Statement of Christian Belief in Terms
of Modern Thought: By Seven Oxford Men. London: Macmillan, 1913.
Stroud, Barry. “The Charm of Naturalism.” In Naturalism in Question. Edited
by Mario De Caro and David Macarthur, 21–35. Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 2004.
Synave, Paul, and Pierre Benoit. Prophecy and Inspiration: A Commentary on
the Summa Theologica II-II, Questions 171–178. New York: Desclée Co.,
1961.
Theissen, Gerd. The Gospels in Context: Social and Political History in the Synop-
tic Tradition. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991.
Thomas Aquinas. Commentary on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. Trans-
lated by Matthew Lamb. Albany, N.Y.: Magi Books, 1966.
———. S. Thomae Aquinatis Opera Omnia: ut sunt in Indice Thomistico, ad-
ditis 61 scriptis ex aliis medii aevi auctoribus. Edited by Robert Busa. 6 vols.
Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann-Holzboog, 1980.
———. Summa Theologica [Summa theologiae]. Translated by the Fathers of
the English Dominican Province. Westminster, Md.: Christian Classics,
1981.
Tolkien, J. R. R. Tree and Leaf: Including the Poem Mythopoeia. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 1965.
Torrell, Jean-Pierre, OP. “Saint Thomas et les non-chrétiens.” Revue Thomiste
106 (2006): 17–49.
Vall, Gregory. “Psalm 22: Vox Christi or Israelite Temple Liturgy?” The
Thomist 66 (2002): 175–200.
Vatican Council I. Dei Filius. 1870.
Vatican Council II. Ad Gentes. 1965.
———. Dei Verbum. 1965.
———. Gaudium et Spes. 1965.
———. Lumen Gentium. 1964.
———. Unitatis Redintegratio. 1964.
Vorgrimler, Herbert. Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II. New York:
Herder and Herder, 1967.
Watson, Francis. Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective. Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Eerdmans, 2013.
Wicks, Jared. “Six Texts by Prof. Joseph Ratzinger as Peritus before and dur-
ing Vatican Council II.” Gregorianum 89 (2008): 233–311.
 Bibliography  277
Williams, Paul. The Unexpected Way: On Converting from Buddhism to Catholi-
cism. London: T&T Clark, 2002.
Wright, N. T. The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is.
Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsityPress Books, 2015.
———. Jesus and the Victory of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press,1996.
———. The New Testament and the People of God. Minneapolis: Fortress
Press,1992.
———. The Resurrection of the Son of God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003.
Wurthwein, Ernst. The Text of the Old Testament: An Introduction to the Biblia
Hebraica. Translated by Erroll F. Rhodes. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerd-
mans, 2014.
Scripture Index

Genesis Psalms Ezekiel 22.23–33: 168

6: 115 2: 140 16: 127 24: 202–3, 214
18.18: 175 16: 168 24.14: 222
Daniel
50.20: 241 16.10–11: 7, 24.27–31: 214
7: 167
30–31 24.34: 197,
Exodus 7.9–13: 128
16.27–28: 168 202, 222
1–2: 179 9: 167
22: 58, 123, 166 24.48: 212
3.6: 168n65 12.1–3: 196
45.2: 259 25.5: 212
3.13–15: 128
45.6–7: 116 Hosea 26: 162
33.19: 128
69: 166 6.1–2: 168 27.31–50: 167
Leviticus 76.20: 128 27.51–54: 171
107: 127 Matthew 28: 131
20.13: 112
110.1: 126 1–2: 179 28.19: 175
Numbers 110.1–3: 128 1.1: 175
13.3: 115 2.6: 189 Mark
Wisdom 3–4: 150 2.7: 127
Deuteronomy 2: 166 2.17: 127
5: 127
6.16: 151 3: 196 2.19–20: 127
5.17–18: 112,
34: 24 2.27–28: 127
127
Isaiah
1 Kings 11.29: 260 4.35–40: 127
7.14: 184
19.11: 128 12.8: 127 6.45–52: 128
40–66: 27–28
14.32–33: 128 7.8: 228
2 Maccabees 43.16: 128
16: 50 8.29: 35
6–7: 12, 196 52–53: 167
16.15: 5 8.38: 124
53: 123, 166,
Job 16.16–19: 35, 9.1: 142, 202
184
9.8: 128 54 10.17–31: 127
53.2: 259
16.26: 20 10.33–45: 125
61.10–62.5: 127
17.1–8: 167 12.18–27: 168
19.21: 154 13: 202–3

279
280  scripture index
Mark (cont) 20.27–40: 168 Romans 4.15–17: 206–8
13.10: 222 21: 202–3, 214 1: 248 5.2: 200
13.24–27: 214 21.24: 222 1.3–4: 140, 143 5.21: 228
13.26–33: 202 21.25: 214 5.20: 241
2 Thessalonians
13.30: 197 21.32: 197, 202
1 Corinthians 2.1: 200
13.32: 205 22: 162
7.29: 201 2.1–4: 210
14: 162 23.54: 159
8.6: 143 3.11: 210
14.1–2: 161 24: 131
10: 210–11 2.8: 200
14.3–9: 135 24.13–35: 169
10.11: 201
14.12: 158 2 Timothy
John 11: 162
14.41: 125 1.12: 200
1: 35 11.23: 228
14.52: 135
1.1–18: 177 12.10: 228 1 Peter
14.61–64: 128
2.22: 169 15: 197 4.13: 200
15.34: 158
12.10: 136 15.3–5: 136
15.42: 159 2 Peter
13.1–2: 159 15.14–15: 168
16: 131 3.4: 212
14.25–31: 225 15.23: 200
16.1–8: 131 3.8: 198–99
18.28: 159 15.51–52: 201
16.9–20: 34, 3.8–10: 212
19.14: 159
37, 169 Galatians 3.14: 212
19.31: 159
16.12: 159 1.3–5: 143
20.1: 159 1 John
3.24: 89
Luke 20–21: 131 4.1: 228
4.4: 143
1.3: 188 21.21–23: 201
1.29: 173 Philippians Revelation
Acts 16.22: 211
2.19: 173 2.5–11: 143
2: 168 19.7–9: 226
3–4: 150
2.24–33: 30–31 Colossians 22.7, 12: 226
9.22: 169
2.36: 140 2.8: 228
9.25: 20
5.30–31: 140
12.45: 212 1 Thessalonians
5.37: 187
12.49–51: 127 1.1: 143
13.32–33: 140
15.20: 60 4.13–18:
13.35–37: 30
16: 219 200–202
17.30: 200
General Index

Adventus medius, 224–25 Assent, 51, 81, 131, 191n122, 235, 257
Affirmation, 6, 32, 41, 46n72, 47, Assertion. See Affirmation
77–83, 101, 109, 145, 147, 189, 201n13, Atheism. See Agnosticism
206, 208, 215–17, 226, 231, 251, 256 Augustine of Hippo, 59n5, 60n6, 93,
Afterlife, 7, 139, 195, 196n3, 214n43 240–41
Agnosticism, ix, 1–4, 9, 14–15, 26, Authority, 18, 21, 32, 38–39, 43, 45, 47,
99, 110–11, 120, 138, 167, 187, 193–94, 52, 117, 121, 127, 130, 141, 199, 227, 230,
233–40, 243–46, 248n36, 255, 263 250, 257
Allison, Dale, 5n6, 47n75, 105, Authorship, 2–3, 20n7, 27–37, 49–50,
118n42, 118n43, 121n52, 126, 128n69, 69, 78–87, 94, 98, 102–8, 111, 120–22,
133, 151n18, 161n46, 161n47, 165n59, 126, 147, 166, 168n65, 178, 181n96,
167n61, 172n71, 182n97, 201n13, 182n97, 183, 191–92, 196, 198–99, 204,
202n15, 203n16, 217n54, 223n70, 208–9, 216–22, 229–30, 233, 240–41;
237n7, 248n36, 253, 256, 260n66, 265 the Church as collective author or
Angel: Christ as, 6, 115, 119, 137n91, subject, 83
142; in connection to the parousia,
200, 202, 208; of the Lord, 179 Babylonian exile, 27, 119, 195
Anointing of Jesus, 135–36 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, 25n22
Anonymity: 33, 107–8; protective, Baptism of Jesus, 141–42, 150–52
135–36 Barber, Michael, 226n78
Antichrist, 61, 151–52 Bauckham, Richard, 107–8, 119–20,
Apocalypticism, 7, 107, 117, 122–24, 135–36, 143n106
138–42, 161n46, 195–202 Beauty, 55, 111, 254–61
Apologia, 232–64 Béchard, Dean, 19n6, 21–22, 203n16
Aquinas, St. Thomas, 3, 13, 31, 57–59, Benoit, Pierre, 80–81, 85
73–82, 85–89, 93–95, 131, 235, 240– Bernard of Clairvaux, 58n3, 225
44, 249, 257, 276 Bird, Michael, 105, 125, 127n66,
Ascension, 224–25 129n69, 137n89, 143n106, 153n24

281
282  general index
Birth of Jesus. See Infancy narratives Core, 12, 14, 17, 42, 44–49, 79n48, 84,
Bonaventure, 13, 40, 57, 73–75 109, 130n72, 150, 153, 165, 186, 190–91,
Borg, Marcus, 47n75, 130n72 194, 209, 223–24, 227–36. See also
Bridegroom, Christ as, 127, 212 Essentials; Kernel; Nucleus; Per-
Brown, Raymond, 160n46, 266 manent theological content; Prin-
Bultmann, Rudolf, 62n10, 122n52, ciples; Substance
212–13, 220n61, 251 Council of the media, 39
Burial of Jesus, 134–37 Criterion: of dissimilarity, 124–26,
Burridge, Richard, 183n98 237n7; of embarrassment, 125; of
Burtchaell, James, 77n44 historical plausibility, 125; of mul-
tiple attestation, 125–26, 189
Canon, 32–36, 50n80, 51n81, 58, Criticism, higher. See Method B
69n23, 69n24, 82, 84, 87, 95n100, Criticism, modern biblical. See
98, 107, 109n16, 120–21, 133, 162, 172, Method B
183n98, 196, 204, 216n52, 218 Critique of the critique, 9, 15, 18, 47,
Catechism of the Catholic Church, 90, 54, 62, 76, 163, 220, 233, 254, 263
95, 223n71 Crossan, John Dominic, 4n5, 11,
Census, 187–90 47n75, 106, 113–15, 123–24, 132–38,
Certainty, 5n6, 26, 33, 121, 146n1, 149, 147–48, 154n26, 155n31, 159n43, 166,
157–58, 201n13, 205n21, 233, 256–57 179–183, 236–37
Chesterton, G. K., 8n9, 191n122, 209 Crucifixion, 105, 123, 134, 159, 164–68,
Christology: exaltation or adoption- 174, 182n97, 183, 190n122
ist, 113–18, 129, 141–44; incarnation,
133, 142 Daniel, 167, 196
Condescension, divine, 86–92. See Daniélou, Jean, 190
also Divine pedagogy Darwin, Charles, 247n32
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Date of Jesus’ birth. See Census
Faith, 22n12, 25, 44n70, 45, 46n72, David, 30–31, 116–17, 175, 189–90
48n77, 51–52, 57, 98n108, 191n122, Davies, Brian, 241–45, 249–50
227n80, 230n85 Debate, 9–11, 15, 24n20, 54n88,
Conscience, 19–20, 42, 243 62n10, 98n108, 100, 102, 109, 130, 151,
Content: of magisterial documents, 161, 163, 173, 187, 202, 226, 232–36,
47; of scripture, 32; 68, 75, 79n48, 82, 262–63
84, 88, 108, 123, 133, 153, 164, 177–78, Dehellenization, 149
186–88, 192, 200, 218–21, 224–30 Dei Verbum, 24n18, 58, 66, 72n30,
Contingent matters: as distinct from 78–79, 87, 90, 95–98, 146n1, 204,
permanent, 48–49, 84, 227n80. See 209, 216, 228n82
also Details; Particulars Descartes, René, 61n9, 247n32
Continuity, 12, 17, 38–41, 45, 48, 51, 53, Details: as distinct from essentials,
69n25, 177 37, 106, 109, 121, 134, 157, 186–88, 208,
Contradictions, 1–2, 27–32, 44, 220. See also Contingent matters;
58–59, 77n43, 81n55, 90, 97, 121, 158, Particulars
162, 165n59, 170–71, 221 Deuteronomy, 151n18
 general index  283
Development, 25n23, 35, 41–46, Evidence, 7–8, 11, 15, 18, 32, 37, 59,
50n80, 52, 58, 61n9, 64, 72n30, 82, 68, 107–108, 115, 117, 129–37, 144,
90–97, 114, 118, 142–43, 167, 196n3, 158, 163–64, 179–80, 185, 195, 200,
213–16, 227n80, 228n81 212–15, 222, 234–35, 240, 243, 248,
Devil. See Satan 254–63
Dibelius, Martin, 185 Evil, 18–19, 91, 117–18, 122, 153n21, 179,
Divine action, special, 250–52 196–97; problem of, 15, 111, 238–47
Divine pedagogy, 72, 81, 86–98, 101, Evolution, 243–38; of dogma, 49n77,
155n31. See also Condescension 94–96
Divinity of Christ, 5–7, 101, 107, 113– Exodus, 119–20, 129, 156, 181
19, 127–30, 145, 148, 187, 233, 237, 240 Experience, 6, 10, 15, 51, 64, 74, 94,
Dogma, 45n72, 48n77, 51–52, 64, 82, 98, 100, 106, 130, 137–39, 143, 155,
142, 191n122, 199–205, 213n40, 227– 170–71, 192, 195, 197, 208, 212, 224,
31; academic, 62, 152, 220n61, 234 236, 241, 253–63
Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, 259 Expiation, 61, 163
Dubay, Thomas, 257n62
Dulles, Avery, 39n58 Faith, 1–4, 9–22, 25–29, 36–37, 42–
88, 91–104, 108–10, 119, 123, 130–35,
Earthquake, 171, 202 142–43, 146–52, 156–73, 172, 185, 187,
Ecclesiastes, 239 190–95, 198, 206–9, 216–17, 224–40,
Ecclesiasticism, 67 244, 251–63; experiment of, 260–61;
Embellishment, literary, 121, 132, 134, faith hermeneutic, 65–66, 70n29.
174, 191 See also Method A
Enns, Peter, 75n39, 168n65, 169–70, Farkasfalvy, Denis, 81
180–82, 186, 192, 268 Fideism, 83. See also Fundamentalism
Erasmus Lecture (Ratzinger), 9, Francis, Pope, 46n73
11–13, 56–57, 63, 72, 76, 86, 93–94, Freud, Sigmund, 247–49
151n19 Fundamentalism, 62, 67n21, 99, 152,
Error, 18–19, 25n23, 48, 50n78, 78–83, 176. See also Fideism
86, 176, 203n16, 204, 222, 234 Funk, Robert, 125n60
Eschatology, 14, 28n27, 35, 47n75,
69n23, 117n42, 119, 151n19, 154n27, Gathercole, Simon, 127n66, 142n102,
165n59, 167n62, 181n96, 193–231. See 143–44
also Apocalypticism Genealogies of Jesus, 175–77
Essential, discernment of the, 41–45 Genesis, 20, 80, 92, 133, 172, 217
Essentials, 37, 45, 51, 55, 67, 98, 162, Gnilka, Joachim, 173
164–65, 188, 204n20, 220, 228. See Goodacre, Mark, 120n48, 126n63
also Content; Core; Kernel; Nucle- Grace, 69, 93, 131, 235, 252, 256–57,
us; Permanent theological content; 259–61
Principles; Substance Grisez, Germain, 78–79
Eucharist, 51, 132n77, 157, 162–63,
225–26 Hades, 30–31, 219n59
Evans, Craig, 136–37 Haggadah, 179
284  general index
Hahn, Scott, 61n9, 226n78, 236n6, Infants, slaughter of, 180–81
244n22 Inspiration, 58, 68, 71, 77–82, 85–86,
Hallucinations. See Visions 94–99, 103, 111, 145–47, 168n65,
Harnack, Adolf von, 148 171n69, 185–88, 204, 209n30, 230,
Harrison, Brian, 78–80 257
Hays, Richard, 105n9, 127, 160n46, Intention, 14, 48n77, 76, 80n52,
169n66 82–85, 97–98, 100–102, 147, 168n65,
Heaven, 107, 111–12, 122, 125, 128–30, 172n71, 176, 194, 210, 219; practical,
140–41, 195–202, 212, 234, 258 48–49, 201, 206, 210, 227n80
Hell, 107, 111, 195, 198–99. See also International Theological Com-
Hades mission, 13, 24n18, 57, 95–97, 101,
Hengel, Martin, 107n12, 142–43 171, 185–88, 199, 204, 208, 213, 216,
Herínquez, Raúl Cardinal Silva, 78 227–29
Hermeneutic of discontinuity and Irreformable doctrine. See dogma
rupture, 39, 78n48 Isaiah, 27–28, 83, 184
Hermeneutic of reform, 12, 17, 38–45,
53 James, William, 170n67
Hermeneutic of suspicion, 64, 101, Jaubert, Annie, 161n47
126, 152n19, 170, 191, 236n6 Jeremias, Joachim, 219n59
Hick, John, 9–10 Jerusalem, 119, 129, 133, 136, 214–15
Historical-critical exegesis. See Jesus Seminar, 125, 166
Method B Job, 242, 253
Historical hermeneutic, 65–66, Johnson, Luke Timothy, 121n52,
70n29. See also Method B 237n7
Historical Jesus, 5n6, 37, 54, 62, 105, Joseph of Arimathea, 136–37, 159
113–14, 118, 120–22, 126, 130, 144, Journet, Charles, 48n77
148n7, 150, 163, 166n59, 171, 236, 253 Jubilees, Book of, 179n89
Historicity, 20, 26, 32–33, 47, 134, 146, Judgments: 118n42, 122, 124, 138, 143,
151, 157, 162–64, 181–82, 186, 190–91 165n59, 237, 256; magisterial, 26,
Historiography, 165, 173, 176–77, 191 46n72, 46n73; moral, 243–44; of
History: interpreted, 147, 176, 178, 182 Scripture’s authors, 80–82
Hosea, 181
Hume, David, 254–56 Keener, Craig, 183n98
Hurtado, Larry, 143n106 Kernel, 41, 44–46, 204n20, 227n80,
228, 230. See also Content; Core;
Image: as distinct from content, 84, Essentials; Nucleus; Permanent
92, 202, 208–10, 217–19, 222, 225 theological content; Principles;
Imagination, 8n9, 106, 142, 165, 217 Substance
Imminent eschatology. See Parousia Kerygma, 62n10, 147
Inerrancy, 26n24, 51n81, 58–59, 68, Kingdom of God, 7, 47n75, 59n6,
71, 77–84, 94, 98n108, 176, 204, 214, 94n96, 106, 114–18, 124, 139–40,
216, 230, 269, 272 152–56, 163, 189, 196–98, 202, 224
Infancy narratives, 172–93 Kleinhaus, Arduin, 21–22
 general index  285
Knitter, Paul, 9–10 49, 151n19, 152, 156, 161–65, 171, 174,
Kreeft, Peter, 7–8 189–90, 207, 212–13, 219–21, 229, 233,
235, 262
Lady Wisdom, 115, 120n45 Method C, 12, 56–100
Lagrange, Marie-Joseph, 148n6 Metzger, Bruce, 3n3
Lamb, Matthew, 59n5, 81–82, 85–88, Miller, Athanasius, 21
94n98 Miracles, 5, 8–10, 15, 18, 62n10, 110,
Laplace, Pierre-Simon, 251 114, 123, 130–35, 164n54, 165n59,
Last Supper, 156–64 182n97, 184–87, 220, 233–40, 249–
Lazarus, 136–38 56, 263; Christ stilling and walking
Lectio divina, 36, 70–71, 224n71. See on the sea, 127
also Method A Modernism, 17, 25–26, 40, 46, 49, 74,
Legend, 7–9, 113–14, 122n52, 151n19, 153, 203, 230
172n71, 178, 184. See also Myth Monotheism, 93n92, 115, 119, 143; es-
Leiva-Merikakis, Erasmo, 147 chatological, 199
Leo XIII, 17–18, 44 Morality, 89–90, 111, 155, 243–45, 263
Lewis, C. S., 6–10, 15, 81n55, 86, 89, Moses, 24, 28–29, 49, 53, 92n89, 128,
106, 113–14, 185n109, 208–10, 243– 179–82, 189, 229
46, 249–56, 263 Myth, 7–8, 62n10, 72, 84–85, 110–11,
Lienhard, Joseph, 25n22 121, 150–51, 157, 178, 182n97, 185–88,
Literal sense, 59–60, 69–71, 77, 87, 209, 217n54, 240, 251, 256. See also
223 Legend
Literary schema, as distinct from re-
alities, 216–18 Nagel, Thomas, 246
Liturgy, 36n49, 39n60, 95n100, Neo-scholasticism, 13, 57, 73–75
132n77, 216n52, 225–26, 258–59 Neusner, Jacob, 127n65
Loisy, Alfred, 153 New Evangelization, 260n67, 261n68,
273
MacIntyre, Alasdair, 261n68 Newman, John Henry, 40–43, 96–
Magi, 190–93 97, 118, 227n80, 256n62
Maier, Friedrich, 23–25 Newton, Sir Isaac, 250
Martin, Francis, 62n10 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 247n32
Marx, Karl, 247–49 Nucleus, 147, 220–21. See also Con-
Mavrodes, George, 255–56 tent; Core; Essentials; Kernel;
Meier, John, 146n2, 160 Permanent theological content;
Menssen, Sandra Lee, 254–55 Principles; Substance
Messiah, 62n9, 107, 110, 117, 119,
123–24, 135, 139–40, 153, 155, 167–70, Obedience, 20, 156, 248, 255, 260–61
184n103 Objectivity, 62, 75, 93, 147, 181n96,
Method A, 12–13, 56–73, 87, 90, 94, 183n98, 192, 232–34, 246
141, 202n15, 241 O’Collins, Gerald, 42n66
Method B, 1–27, 30, 36, 38, 41, 44–73, Origen, 58n3, 59n5, 80n52, 151n18,
77, 90, 97–99, 101, 117, 124–25, 144– 189n120
286  general index
Parousia, 14, 20n7, 194–231 Protestantism, 5n6, 24, 35n48, 75n39,
Particulars: as distinct from essen- 109n16
tials, 45–46, 165n59, 230. See also Providence: as opposed to power
Contingent matters; Details play, 53, 118, 167, 240, 253
Patristic-medieval exegesis. See Psalms, 20, 81, 86, 151, 185
Method A
Paul VI, 23n13, 24n18, 40, 199n11, Q (source). See Synoptic problem
203n17 Quadrilemma. See Legend
Pelikan, Jaroslav, 226n78 Quantum mechanics, 250
Pentateuch, 20n7, 28–30, 49, 53, 229
Permanent theological content, 12, 17, Rahner, Karl, 75n39
41–42, 45–49, 209, 227–30. See also Ramage, Matthew, 31n37, 36n50,
Content; Core; Essentials; Kernel; 54n87, 58n4, 80n52, 86n74, 88n81,
Nucleus; Principles; Substance 168n64, 196n3, 204n20, 260n67
Philosophy, 9–11, 15, 18, 26, 46, 62, 64, Rationalism, 18–19
76–77, 114, 118, 123, 148–49, 155n30, Rationality, 65, 243–49
156, 163, 167, 172, 182–83, 186–87, Religious experience. See Experience
209, 220, 232–63 Resurrection, 6–7, 10, 30–31, 37, 51,
Pidel, Aaron, 82–84 110, 113, 130–45, 156–59, 164–71, 174,
Pitre, Brant, 128n67, 146n2, 167n62 181, 183, 186–87, 190–91, 196–201,
Pius IX, 25–26, 41 224, 233–34, 237, 240, 255–56, 263
Pius X, 17–21, 25n23, 26, 44, 49n78, Revelation, divine, 24n20, 26, 48n77,
203n16 49, 62n11, 61, 71–76, 82–86, 89–98,
Pius XI, 90n85 174, 200n11, 216, 229, 240, 242–44
Pius XII, 24, 26, 67, 69, 199n11 Rhonheimer, Martin, 38n56
Plantinga, Alvin, 245–52, 262–63 Romans, 144
Pontifical Biblical Commission, 13,
14, 19, 24, 27–34, 57, 67, 77, 97–100 Saints, 171, 197, 254, 257, 261
Pontifical Council for Interreligious Sanders, E. P., 47n75, 161n46
Dialogue, 94n96 Satan, 84–85, 151–52, 166n59
Prejudice, 18, 144 Schnackenburg, Rudolf, 24n18
Premises, 6, 9–10, 46, 114, 186, 246, Schweitzer, Albert, 47n75, 253,
263 260n66
Presuppositions, 10–11, 14–15, 47, 59, Scientific exegesis, 35, 70–71. See also
62, 76, 107, 133, 144–45, 167, 172–73, Method B
187, 202, 213, 220, 233–40, 262–63 Second Coming. See Parousia
Probability, 126, 135, 157, 182, 253–56 Skepticism, 12, 57, 59, 105, 134, 182n98,
Progressive revelation, 72, 90, 93–94, 246, 256
96n103. See also Divine pedagogy Solovyov, Vladimir, 151n19
Progressivism, 17n1, 38–40, 43 Song of Songs, 127
Prophecy, 18, 75, 81, 164–69, 184, 220; Sparks, Kenton, 2n2
donum and usus of, 85–87 Spinoza, Benedict, 61n9
 general index  287
Spiritual sense, 31n37, 59, 69n25, 71, Vall, Gregory, 58n3
75, 93–94, 224n71 Vatican Council, First, 48n77, 199
Stallsworth, Paul, 58n3, 68n23 Vatican Council, Second, 17, 22,
Streeter, Burnett Hillman, 223n70 24–26, 38–42, 49, 52, 66, 72–74,
Stroud, Barry, 246 83, 87n78, 90n85, 92, 95–97, 146,
Substance, 42, 47, 50–51, 80, 82, 204n18, 228n81, 228–29. See also Dei
96n103, 105, 134, 146n1, 176, 192, Verbum
199, 219–20, 231. See also Content; Verbum Domini, 63n11, 64n15, 66n19,
Core; Essentials; Kernel; Nucleus; 67n20, 71n29, 72n30, 75n39, 89–90,
Permanent theological content; 93, 97–98, 223n71
Principles Violence, 89, 96, 148n7
Suffering Servant, 167n62, 184 Virgin birth, 51, 141, 175n78, 178,
Synave, Paul, 80–81, 85 184–87, 190–91, 253
Synoptic problem, 23, 32–35, 126n63 Visions, 6–8, 130, 137–39, 151, 255
Vorgrimler, Herbert, 26n23, 26n24
Temptations of Jesus, 150–52
Testimony, 5n6, 15, 34, 72, 75, 95n100, Watson, Francis, 54n88
100, 107, 167, 216n52, 224n73, 254, Wicks, Jared, 83, 85, 92
256, 261. See also Witness Williams, Paul, 132n78, 244, 253–55
Theissen, Gerd, 135 Witness, 18, 2–33, 75–76, 92n89, 95–
Tolkien, J. R. R., 8n9, 209 96, 105, 107–8, 120, 125n60, 127n64,
Torrell, Jean-Pierre, 215n49 131, 135–37, 157, 164, 182n97, 189n120,
Traditionalism, 17n1, 38–39 216, 224, 235, 254–56, 261. See also
Transfiguration, 142n102, 167n61, Testimony
182n97 Wright, N. T., 5n6, 47n75, 62n9,
Trent, Council of, 39, 109n16 68n22, 106, 119, 129, 137n91, 143n106,
Trial of Jesus, 159, 164–66 154n26, 161n46, 172n71
Trilemma, 6–7, 106, 113 Wurthwein, Ernst, 3n3
Truth, multiform, 98–101
Two-source theory. See Synoptic
problem
Jesus, Interpreted: Benedict XVI, Bart Ehrman, and the Historical
Truth of the Gospels was designed in Adobe Jensen and composed
by Kachergis Book Design of Pittsboro, North Carolina. It was
printed on 60-pound Natural Recycled Tradebook and bound by
Thomson Reuters of Eagan, Minnesota.