Question #3: Why must there be many gospel witnesses to Jesus?
There must be multiple witnesses to
the person of Jesus so that there will be multiple “vantage points” (119) by
which to capture the truth of Him. This
allows the Church to develop an interpretation of Jesus without being fettered
by strictly biographical narration, thereby speaking to the holistic reality of
Jesus (125).
When
many are interested in “the facts” of Jesus, looking for points of congruency
and rationales for discrepancy, the most important reality of Jesus is lost,
namely the plural nature of the truth of Jesus (125). By this is meant that the diversity or
“multiplicity” of the Gospels speaks to more than a simply historical
narrative. It speaks of the living
memory of the community that believes in Him (122) and, in so doing, speaks of
the enduring experience of the nature of Jesus throughout history (127). “Truth” in the Gospels is not simply factual
information, but the witness of faith given by the evangelists that point to
the incomprehensible reality of Jesus as God and Man (128).
I recently received a comment about this post, addressing a misunderstanding with regard to the last sentence. The meaning of this sentence is to imply that the Gospels are not merely, only, or fundamentally factual information.
ReplyDeleteUtilizing historical critical methods when reading Scripture can only get you so far. As our Holy Father has stated in his book "Jesus of Nazareth":
"... to believe that, as man, he [Jesus] truly was God, and that he communicated his divinity veiled in parables, yet with increasing clarity, exceeds the scope of the historical method. Yet if instead we take this conviction of faith as our starting point for reading the texts with the help of historical methodology and its intrinsic openness to something greater, they are opened up and they reveal a way and a figure that are worthy of belief." ("Jesus of Nazareth," Foreword, pg xxiii)
My point, and I think the point of the author of this text, is that scriptural analysis is wanting if seen solely from the dimension of "fact."
In another book "At the Origin the Christian Claim," Fr. Luigi Giussani makes a great point:
"[In the Gospels] we are not presented with all the facts as they happened but with some that, nevertheless, did happen and which have come down to us from the memories of witnesses, spurred by the urgency and the imperative of relaying importance to individuals and all humanity. ("At the Origin of the Christian Claim," Chapt 4, pg 37)
I hope this helps to clarify the post.