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The Passion of Jesus: A Test Case for Providence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Louis Roy OP
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In this essay I should like to raise the question: In what sense could we say that God’s providence was active in the last events of the life of Jesus, that is to say at Gethsemane and on the cross? I will proceed in three steps. First, I shall characterise Jesus’ encounter with evil. Second, I shall reconstruct the meaning attached to his life and to his relationship with the Father. Third, from the clash of evil and meaning represented in the passion of Jesus, God will be portrayed as absent-present in the midst of human suffering.

Before engaging in our reflections, a methodological note is in order. When we examine New Testament texts reporting Jesus’ words and actions, we find out that ‘the accounts are not mutually consistent either in detail or in the interpretation they offer.’ Each of the scriptural narratives or comments on the passion not only does not attribute the same words to Jesus, but casts the saving event into a particular theological vision. Therefore, most exegetes try very carefully to avoid concordism.

Next, the Gospel narratives are not ‘historical’ in the sense we moderns ascribe to this adjective. Surely they have an historic basis, but each of them tells a story the purpose of which is to highlight what it entailed for the faith of believers several decades after the resurrection of Jesus. The New Testament texts are not meant to give us some information about the inner psychology of Jesus. The details and dialogues presented are not directly biographical, but they are part of a narrative whose organizing principles are, in a sense, closer to those of a novel.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 79 , Issue 934 , December 1998 , pp. 512 - 523
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Stanley, David M., Jesus in Gethsemane (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), 7Google Scholar.

2 See Brown, Raymond E., A Crucified Christ in Holy Week. Essays on the Four Gospel Passion Narratives (Collegeville, Liturgical Press, 1986)Google Scholar.

3 See Frei, Hans, The Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 103–104Google Scholar. For a recent response to Frei. see Tracy, David, “The Gospels as Revelation and Transformation: A Tribute to Sebastian Moore', in Loewe, William and Gregson, Vernon J. (eds.), Jesus Crucified and Risen: Essays in Spirituality and Theology in Honor of Dom Sebastian Moore; (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1998), 195–210Google Scholar.

4 For an abundant bibliography on this topic, see Caza, Lorraine, 'Mon Dieu, mon Dieu, pourquoi m'as‐tu abandoné?' comme bonne nouvelle de Jésus Christ, Fils de Dieu, comme bonne nouvelle de Dieu pour la multitude (Montreal: Bellarmin, and Paris: Cerf, 1989), 519–546Google Scholar.

5 See Grelot, Pierre, Duns les angoisses ľespérance (Paris: Seuil, 1983), 219Google Scholar.

6 Biblical quotations are from The New Revised Standard Version, with occasional modifications of mine, based on the Greek text.

7 See Feuillet, A., L'agonie de Gethsémani. Enquȩte exégétique et théologique (Paris: Gabalda, 1977), 200–205Google Scholar.

8 Hengel, Martin, La crucifixion (Paris: Cerf, 1981), 172 and 202Google Scholar; Moltman, Jü;rgen, The Crucified God (London: SCM Press, 1974), 145–146Google Scholar; Rossé, Gerard, The Cry of Jesus on the Cross: A Biblical and Theological Study (New York: Paulist Press, 1987)Google Scholar, Ch. 3. Moreover, according to Xavier Léon‐Dufour, Jewish texts highlighting the redemptive character of the violent death of the just were not written prior to the end of the first century C.E. and thus could not have shaped Jesus' self‐understanding. See‘La mort rédemptrice du Christ selon le Nouveau Testament’, in Mort pour nos péchés (Bruxelles: Facultés universitaires Saint‐Louis, 3rd ed., 1984), 34Google Scholar.

9 Moltmann, 145.

10 As Grelot points out, 190–191, and 195, n. 20. See also Nickelsburg, George W.E., Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 1972Google Scholar.

11 Moltmann, 146.

12 See Hengel, 199.

13 187–213.

14 The Aims of Jesus (London: SCM Press, 1979), 205 and 218; see 205–209.

15 149 and 147; see 146–151.

16 See Moltmann, 149–153.

17 Summa theologiae; III, 46, 6 (corpus and ad 4).

18 The Identity of Jesus Christ (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), 40–44 and 90–93Google Scholar.

19 44; emphasis in the text.

20 92.

21 Frei distinguishes between ‘intention‐action’ description and ‘self‐manifestation’ description (see 43–44, 45 and 91). I could not figure out what the latter kind of description really added to the former, until I came across a perceptive remark by Ronald F. Thiemann, who convincingly argues that the ‘self‐manifestation’ description should be simply regarded as belonging to ‘intention‐action’ description. See Revelation and Theology: The Gospel as Narrated Promise (University of Notre Dame Press, 1985), 182Google Scholar, n. 1.

22 Es 128 and 133–137.

23 See 181–185. The author goes back to this theme in ‘The “Inside” of the Jesus Event’, in Lamb, Matthew L. (ed.), Creativity and Method (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1981), esp. 207–210Google Scholar.

24 Heinz Schü;rmann thinks it is probable that Jesus instructed his disciples as to the salvific nature of his death. See Comment Jésus a‐t‐il vécu sa mort? (Paris: Cerf, 1977)Google Scholar, Ch. 1.

25 See Galvin, John, ‘Jesus’ Approach to Death: An Examination of Some Recent Studies', Theological Studies; 41 (1980) 719–720CrossRefGoogle Scholar. 26 See Traduction Oecuménique de la Bible; footnote to Mt 16:1. See also the warnings against false prophets in Dt 13:1–5, Jr 23:9–32.

27 See Meyer, 185–197.

28 See Roloff, Jü;rgen, ‘Anfä;nge der soteriologischen Deutung des Todes Jesu (Mk. X.45 und Lk. XXII.27)’, New Testament Studies; 19 (1972–73) 38–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar, es 39–43.

29 105–106.

30 107 Thiemann (117) confirms Frei's thesis as he writes that Matthew depicts Jesus as the obedient Son of God, i.e., the one who purposefully enacts his own intentions in conformity with the intentions of the Father' (his emphasis).

31 Interpreting Jesus (Ramsey, NJ: Paulist Press, 1983), 79‐ 92Google Scholar. 32 79

33 See Galvin, John, ‘The Death of Jesus in Contemporary Theology: Systematic Perspectives and Historical Issues’, Horizons; 13 (1986) 239–252CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34 See Rossé Chs. 5,7 and 8.

35 For this distinction I am indebted to Burrows, Ruth, Guidelines for Mystical Prayer (London: Sheed and Ward, 1977) 36Google Scholar.

36 See 78–83.

37 ‘The Primitive Christian Kerygma and the Historical Jesus’, in Braaten, Carl E. and Harrisville, Roy A. (eds.), The Historical Jesus and the Kerygmatic Christ (New York and Nashville: Abingdon Press), 1964, 24Google Scholar. Eberhard Jü;ngel adopts Bultmann's position in Death: The Riddle and the Mystery (Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1975), 105Google Scholar.

38 For the connection meaning/integration and meaninglessness/disintegration, see Fingarette, Herbert, The Self in Transformation (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1965)Google Scholar.

39 See Zerwick, Max, Analysis Philologica Novi Testamenti Graeci (Rome: Pontifical Biblical Institute, 1953)Google Scholar, at Mt 27:46 and Mk 15:34: The verb engkataleipo (I abandon) means ‘relinquo in aliqua mala condicione.’

40 Face à la mort, Jésus et Paul (Paris: Seuil, 1979), 128–129Google Scholar.

41 In Ch. 2 of Mimesis (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Book, 1957)Google Scholar, to which Frei refers on 116.

42 124–125.