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Krikščionis gyvenime #25
A Christological Catechism: New Testament Answers
Joseph Fitzmyer, eminent New Testament scholar, gives twenty-five succinct and well worked out answers to the major questions about the person of Jesus in Scriptures in this revised edition of A Christological Catechism. †
- GenresTheology
200 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1982
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
May 1, 2018
Thank God for people like Ray Brown and Joe Fitzmeier. This is a superb introduction to the issues of literary criticism of the Gospels.
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Paulist 1981
Joseph A. Fitrzmyer, S.J., A Christological Catechism. New Testament Answers.
Paulist Press. C 1982.
18 Is Not Such and Approach to the Historical Jesus and to the Canonical Gospels Tantamount to an Implicit Reduction in Christian Faith and Contrary to a Centuries-old Tradition of Gospel-Interpretation?
20-21 h. The major result of such critical study of the Gospels has been the realization that the Gospel tradition enshrines within it three sorts of material about Jesus of Nazareth. These are the three stages of the Gospel tradition with which any proper reading and study of the Gospels must cope. First, what Jesus of Nazareth did and said during the course of his earthly ministry in Palestine and its environs (Stage 1). … Second, what the apostles and disciples preached about him after his death (Stage II). At this stage Jesus the preacher had become the preached One, and the testimony borne to him and his mission had been suffused with faith in him as the risen Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). …Third, what the evangelists wrote down about him in their various Gospels (Stage III). Pursuing a method and a goal peculiar to each, the evangelists used the tradition which had grown up about him in the preaching of Stage II. But they selected/ material from it (sayings and parables, miracle-stories, pronouncement-stories, and stories about him, John the Baptist, and the apostles) synthesized it into their own literacy composition, explicated it by redactional modifications and additions, and fashioned it all into a unique literary form that we call “Gospel,” indeed, in the four accounts which we know as the canonical Gospels.
22-3 j. Finally, it should be apparent that the error in any simplistic or fundamentalist approach to the Gospels is precisely the confusing of Stage III with Stage I of the Gospel tradition. At least a generation elapsed between them, during which what was remembered about Jesus in Stage I was subject to much constructive Christian reflection born of faith in him as Christ the Lord…./ To pretend that stage III equals Stage I is a form of naiveté. It can have disastrous effects eventually, as has been attested often: either intellectual suicide (a refusal to think and use God’s greatest natural gift to human beings, the intellect) or a total loss of faith (a failure to follow where his Spirit guides the Christian community).
56 i. The perennial question emerges about the extent to which these words of Jesus reflect an awareness of his own destiny and of the giving of his life vicariously as a sacrifice for others. The discussion in the preceding section reveals an answer to that question in the sense that in the early Christian community his words were already so understood. …
Here once again it is important to realize that the twentieth-century Christian’s faith in the Eucharist does not depend on what he/she can reconstruct of the words of the historical Jesus, but rather on the words as reflected to us through the early Christian community which recorded its diverse, varied recollections of him and of his impact on them in this matter.
67 h. If our answers to questions 1 and 2 above [1. Do the Gospel Stories Present an Accurate Factual Account of the Teaching and Deeds of Jesus of Nazareth? 2. How Much, in Fact, Can We Claim to Know about the Historical Jesus?] were somewhat negative and minimal, it is good to remember that the faith of modern Christians is not measured by what they can establish about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Faith in the twentieth century means an allegiance to him who entered human history as God’s agent and Son, but also to him as reflected and refracted in the experience and tradition of the early Christian community. This is not to put a book (the New Testament) between Jesus and the modern believer, or even the christologies of the early Christians between them. However, the inspired christologies are normative of Christian faith, in a sense, in a way in which none of the later tradition is. The twentieth-century Christian has no pipeline to him apart from or independent of these writings and these christologies, different as they are. Two things have to be kept in tandem, Jesus of Nazareth and the early Christian portraits of him. These are the norma normans of all later Christological and soteriological teaching.
121 The Commission [1964, “An Instruction about the Historical Truth of the Gospels”] however insists that the use of such methods of literary criticism is not an end in itself. They must be used to bring out the meaning of the Gospel passages intended by God through the sacred writers. The professor is above all to emphasize the theological or religious teaching of the Gospels, and literary criticism is to serve only as a means to set forth the theological teaching of the evangelists.
================================================================
Paulist 1981
Joseph A. Fitrzmyer, S.J., A Christological Catechism. New Testament Answers.
Paulist Press. C 1982.
18 Is Not Such and Approach to the Historical Jesus and to the Canonical Gospels Tantamount to an Implicit Reduction in Christian Faith and Contrary to a Centuries-old Tradition of Gospel-Interpretation?
20-21 h. The major result of such critical study of the Gospels has been the realization that the Gospel tradition enshrines within it three sorts of material about Jesus of Nazareth. These are the three stages of the Gospel tradition with which any proper reading and study of the Gospels must cope. First, what Jesus of Nazareth did and said during the course of his earthly ministry in Palestine and its environs (Stage 1). … Second, what the apostles and disciples preached about him after his death (Stage II). At this stage Jesus the preacher had become the preached One, and the testimony borne to him and his mission had been suffused with faith in him as the risen Lord and Christ (Acts 2:36). …Third, what the evangelists wrote down about him in their various Gospels (Stage III). Pursuing a method and a goal peculiar to each, the evangelists used the tradition which had grown up about him in the preaching of Stage II. But they selected/ material from it (sayings and parables, miracle-stories, pronouncement-stories, and stories about him, John the Baptist, and the apostles) synthesized it into their own literacy composition, explicated it by redactional modifications and additions, and fashioned it all into a unique literary form that we call “Gospel,” indeed, in the four accounts which we know as the canonical Gospels.
22-3 j. Finally, it should be apparent that the error in any simplistic or fundamentalist approach to the Gospels is precisely the confusing of Stage III with Stage I of the Gospel tradition. At least a generation elapsed between them, during which what was remembered about Jesus in Stage I was subject to much constructive Christian reflection born of faith in him as Christ the Lord…./ To pretend that stage III equals Stage I is a form of naiveté. It can have disastrous effects eventually, as has been attested often: either intellectual suicide (a refusal to think and use God’s greatest natural gift to human beings, the intellect) or a total loss of faith (a failure to follow where his Spirit guides the Christian community).
56 i. The perennial question emerges about the extent to which these words of Jesus reflect an awareness of his own destiny and of the giving of his life vicariously as a sacrifice for others. The discussion in the preceding section reveals an answer to that question in the sense that in the early Christian community his words were already so understood. …
Here once again it is important to realize that the twentieth-century Christian’s faith in the Eucharist does not depend on what he/she can reconstruct of the words of the historical Jesus, but rather on the words as reflected to us through the early Christian community which recorded its diverse, varied recollections of him and of his impact on them in this matter.
67 h. If our answers to questions 1 and 2 above [1. Do the Gospel Stories Present an Accurate Factual Account of the Teaching and Deeds of Jesus of Nazareth? 2. How Much, in Fact, Can We Claim to Know about the Historical Jesus?] were somewhat negative and minimal, it is good to remember that the faith of modern Christians is not measured by what they can establish about the historical Jesus of Nazareth. Faith in the twentieth century means an allegiance to him who entered human history as God’s agent and Son, but also to him as reflected and refracted in the experience and tradition of the early Christian community. This is not to put a book (the New Testament) between Jesus and the modern believer, or even the christologies of the early Christians between them. However, the inspired christologies are normative of Christian faith, in a sense, in a way in which none of the later tradition is. The twentieth-century Christian has no pipeline to him apart from or independent of these writings and these christologies, different as they are. Two things have to be kept in tandem, Jesus of Nazareth and the early Christian portraits of him. These are the norma normans of all later Christological and soteriological teaching.
121 The Commission [1964, “An Instruction about the Historical Truth of the Gospels”] however insists that the use of such methods of literary criticism is not an end in itself. They must be used to bring out the meaning of the Gospel passages intended by God through the sacred writers. The professor is above all to emphasize the theological or religious teaching of the Gospels, and literary criticism is to serve only as a means to set forth the theological teaching of the evangelists.
February 1, 2021
A good addition for the bookshelf.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews