|
F e a t u r e A r t i c l e
The Latest "Real" Jesus
By Mark P. Shea
|
This Rock
Volume 12, Number 7
 September 2001 
|
|
|
Recently I received an e-mail message about a web site called "New Covenant Ministries"—a self described "No-nonsense, Honest, Direct, Prophetic, Apostolic, Priesthood of All Believers (Men and Women), Post-Trib, Sabbatarian, Messianic-Israelite, Patriarchal, Evangelical, Received Text, Johannine Tradition & Communion, End-Time Gatherers, New Birth, Holiness, Restorationist, New Covenant Torah, NT-Charismatic, and Sola Scriptura" group that styles itself "One Spotless Church Gathered from the Corpse of Christendom."
That warm affirmation of ecumenism is a tip-off that this group is unlikely to be reliable when its assertions wander off the beaten path of Christian orthodoxy. But still my e-mail correspondent is worried.
This group insists (as gluttons for punishment can read for themselves at www.nccg.org/JesMar-04.html) that Jesus was married and that the real "groom and bride" at the wedding in Cana (John 2) were Jesus and Mary Magdalene. They argue that Mary was making a crypto-reference to Jesus as her husband when she exclaimed "Rabboni" on the morning of the Resurrection (John 20:16). They also teach that John the Baptist’s reference to Jesus as the Bridegroom (John 3:29) was yet another crypto-reference to Jesus’ marriage to Mary Magdalene. They argue that the early Church, influenced by gnostic loathing of sex, covered up all this wedded bliss in order to emphasize asceticism.
My correspondent explains that he wouldn’t take it seriously but that some recent show on the tube had made a similar claim. Is there perhaps something to it, he wonders?
Let’s be real. New Covenant Ministries’ intensely hypothetical speculation on this question is contrary to the entire memory of Christendom for two thousand years—beginning with the apostles. The whole of the Christian testimony on this subject is that Jesus remained unmarried. Contrary to the claim of the web site, the tradition that Jesus was unmarried did not "begin in gnosticism." It began with the apostles’ memories of Jesus and was always recognized as a genuine apostolic teaching, even by Church Fathers who were mortal foes of gnosticism and all its works and ways. Indeed, Jesus himself commended those who were "eunuchs [i.e., virgins] for the kingdom of God" (Matt. 19:12) and said that those who could accept this state should do so.
The web site’s position on John 2 fails to take into account the point the evangelist is attempting to convey in his account of the miracle at Cana. In that account—and elsewhere—Jesus is not the earthly bridegroom at the earthly wedding, no matter how much ingenious reading between the lines we attempt. Though the passage concerns primarily Jesus’ first miracle and the beginning of his ministry, the context of the wedding does provide the archetypal image of Jesus as the cosmic Bridegroom of the Church (cf. Eph. 5:23–30).
John the Baptist’s language describing Jesus as the Bridegroom is figurative, not descriptive of a relationship with Mary Magdalene. (Mary Magdalene is absent in the Johannine narrative except in the Resurrection account, and she comes nowhere near the wedding at Cana). The attempt to transform Mary’s cry of "Rabboni" on the morning of the Resurrection into a confession of her married status as Christ’s earthly wife is without attestation anywhere in the Christian tradition. John, in fact, tells us what Mary meant: She called Jesus "Teacher," not "husband." (John 20:16).
Here’s a good rule of thumb whenever you encounter a "real" Jesus who is radically at odds with the picture offered by the ordinary Tradition, Scripture, and magisterial teaching of the Church: Examine the dominant fixations of the age and see how much of a Rorschach test this new "real" Jesus is.
When liberal Protestantism went gaga for the Social Gospel a hundred years ago, the "real" Jesus looked very much like a Social Gospel Protestant à la Albert Schweitzer. When the world went nuts for Marxism, a new "real" Jesus suddenly appeared on the scene as the first Marxist preaching the Sermon on the Barricades to the oppressed proletariat. Nazism probably held that the "real" Jesus was an Aryan eager to condemn Judaism and who was not beholden to his Jewish ancestry. Ironic postermodernity sees an ironic postmodern Jesus. Feminism sees a feminist Jesus. New Agers see a "real" Jesus who offers the same sort of pantheistic worldview they offer. Of the making of "real" Jesuses there is no end.
We live in a popular, celebrity-obsessed culture that is fascinated with sex and with the sex lives—real and imagined—of the famous. By some remarkable coincidence, that’s just what this sort of speculation about Jesus resembles. In other words, this "real" Jesus, like all the previous "real" Jesuses, tells us more about our current cultural quirks and obsessions than it does about anything substantial in the historical record.
Further, speculation about Jesus’ sex life springs from a primal American habit of rejecting the official story and feeds the pride of some Catholics as freethinkers who aren’t told what to believe by sinister Vatican officials. As for New Covenant Ministries, when you are engaged in the ego-gratifying project of gathering one spotless church from the corpse of Christendom, you don’t suffer from the troubling questions of self-esteem and humility that lesser breeds so often do. You have the inside scoop. Only fools and simpletons would accept the commonly accepted story that, say, the earth is round or that Elvis is dead. You know that the truth is out there, and you aren’t afraid to tell it like it is.
The trouble is, sometimes the commonly accepted story is commonly accepted because it is true. It becomes the official story in this case not because officialdom tricked the dumb sheep into buying it but because the whole herd of sheep—beginning with apostles who ordained the officials—told officialdom, "This is what happened."
Attempts to chalk up Christian belief in the celibacy of Jesus to "gnosticism" are misinformed about the Catholic view of sex, just as Marxist attempts to divine a Marxist Jesus lack a grip on reality. Catholics do not believe Jesus was a virgin because sex is evil any more than they believe Jesus distrusted Mammon based on a Marxist theory of class warfare. On the contrary, for Catholics marriage is a sacrament, and sex is therefore holy.
But as Jesus makes clear, though marriage is holy, virginity is holy too. It is not a case of good and bad but of good and better. Jesus chose the way of virginity as a sign of his consecration to the Church, his Bride. This point can be gleaned from John’s account of the wedding at Cana. It was John the Baptist’s point in speaking of Jesus as the Bridegroom. It remains the Church’s point today—a point preserved, no thanks to gnosticism, in the apostolic Tradition, Scripture, and magisterial teaching of the Church for two thousand years. The only "real" Jesus is the one the Church has proclaimed since Pentecost. Accept no new, "improved" versions.
Mark Shea is a popular Catholic writer and lecturer. His latest book, Making Senses Out of Scripture, is available from Catholic Answers.
|
C A T H O L I C A N S W E R S :
[TOP]
