As part of my Lenten reading I just finished Patrick Henry Reardon’s The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth about the Humanity of Christ. Publishers choose titles, and the title is a little misleading. Reardon has some escellent insights, but as he would inist, it is nto really new: it is in the Gospels. Russell Moore’s introduction is also a little misleading. Reardon does not concentrate on the brute physicality of Jesus’ existence, such as whether he was sick and suffered the indignities of intestinal flu. Reardon, wisely, does not discuss the intensely emotional question of Jesus’ sexuality – although Jesus grew up and underwent puberty like all human males.
Like a good Antiochan, Reardon, while fully accepting the conciliar dogmas on the two natures of Christ, concentrates on the humanity of Jesus. We are saved by the human acts of a divine person, and Reardon concentrates on the human intentions of the writers of Scripture and on the humanity of Jesus.
Perhaps the most important point that Reardon makes is that to be human is to be in movement, in development. If the Son of God assumed our full humanity, he also assumed the process of development that all human beings undergo. That is, Jesus learned things as we do, by observation, study, and pondering. He also, like the prophets, was given moments of special insight into events and into human thoughts. These do not prove that he was omniscient, in the sense that he knew all things in a quantitative sense (for example, all the stars in the universe, their planets, the movements of each atom and sub-atomic particle from the Big Bang to the End, etc.) As a Son he knew what the Father wanted him to know, in the way the Father wanted him to know them.
Reardon does not argue this but simply states it as being most congruent with the text – which it certainly is, but of course there is a strong tradition that claims that Jesus was in some sense omniscient. To address that theological tradition would require another book.
Reardon examines the texts to see how Jesus came to a clearer and clearer idea of what his Messianic mission entailed, that is, betrayal and the cross. This came about primarily through a study of the Scriptures.
When I was at Providence College in the 1960s, the Dominicans were totally captivated by the historical-critical approach to Scripture, the four source theory of Genesis, etc. I asked the question which was dismissed as not being worthy of an answer, whether Jesus’ approach to Scripture should not be normative. If we are to put on the mind of Christ, should we not also regard Scripture in the same way he regarded it? Reardon’s answer is yes.
Reardon’s approach also, no doubt inadvertently, bears a resemblance to books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that also tried to bring out the full humanity – and the masculinity – of Jesus, books such as Bruce Barton’s The Man Nobody Knows. Those writers, however, often had a weak grasp of the Messianic mission and of the atonement, and sometimes were on the fringes of orthodoxy, an accusation that cannot be made about Reardon.
Historically the Eastern Rites emphasize the Divinity of Christ while the Western Rite emphasizes His humanity. The root of this difference is evidenced in the first Councils of the Church.
Focal to the West is the Crucifixion ,while the East considers the Resurrection the paramount Feast..
One priest simplified this concept to me as ,
” The Western Church centralizes preaching on Christ’s humanity to make Him more relevant to the listener, while the Eastern Rites elevates the listener to focus on His Christ’s Divinity.”
I may sound prejudiced but have found this to be true. Also , I prefer the latter approach for meditation as it spiritually and psychologically enables us to rise above the fear of death and nothingness that we all face.