Take time today to read this speech by Archbishop Charles Chaput. It begins:

The Catholic faith is not simply a collection of doctrines and ideas, or a body of knowledge, or even a system of beliefs, although all those things are important. At its root, Christianity is an experience: a life-changing, personal experience of the risen Jesus Christ. Everything else in the writings of St. Paul, and everything else in our life as Catholics, flows from that personal encounter with Jesus Christ. If we truly seek him, then we will always find him. But when we find him, we need to be ready for the consequences, because nothing about our lives can be the same.

This is the underlying theme of my book Who Do You Say That I Am? As Catholics, we highly value the Scriptures, our Tradition, the doctrines of the faith and our liturgy. But all of these are intended to be in service of our personal encounter with Christ; each one should direct us to interacting more deeply with the person of Jesus.

Too often there are two opposing trends in our attitude regarding our Catholic traditions. On the one hand, there are those we say that these traditions prevent a deep relationship with Christ; we need to jettison them and return to a “pure” practice of the faith like in the first century. This, however, is faulty reasoning: by looking to see how our forefathers (and foremothers) in the faith followed Christ we can be given insights into our own discipleship. It is spiritual hubris to think that we can simply follow Christ without any guidance from the giants of the faith that have come before us.

On the other hand, there are those who elevate our Catholic traditions to be the end of our faith, not the means to deepening it. They believe that man was made for our traditions, not traditions for man. This was clearly condemned by Christ himself in the Gospels, but unfortunately it seems to be human nature to elevate our own creations above the Creator.

As Archbishop Chaput reminds us, what we need is to have a new life in Christ – everything we do and believe should be directed towards that goal. It might be painful at times and it might (and probably will) involve suffering, but the result is beyond anything we can imagine.

Today is the 97th anniversary of Our Sunday Visitor, one of the largest Catholic publishers in the country (and publisher of my book to be released next year). Go here to read their history.

Happy Anniversary!

Two new books are being published this year to eager anticipation.

One is The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. It will continue the story of Robert Langdon and, if Brown’s previous work is any indication, will include depictions of Jesus Christ with no connection to history, Scripture, scholarship or reality. It might also be the most poorly-written bestseller since, well, The Da Vinci Code (yes, I did read it, and I still wish I could have those 2 hours back).

The other is Who Do You Say That I Am? by your blog host (okay, it’s eagerly anticipated in the Sammons household at least). It will contain Scriptural and historical depictions of Jesus that are consistent with the latest scholarship yet also conform to the teaching of Christ’s Church. And I’m hoping it is at least better written than The Lost Symbol, even if it doesn’t sell quite as many copies.

Perhaps I should use this beautiful video to promote my upcoming book on the titles of Jesus:

H/T: Archdiocese of Washington

Recently, Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence, Rhode Island wrote an article entitled “Jesus Wasn’t Always Nice.” The purpose of the article was to address critics of his who didn’t like an article he wrote a while back criticizing President Obama. Bishop Tobin reminds us that the real Jesus is often not like the Jesus of popular imagination; he can be harshly critical of others and does not shy away from challenging those who contradict his teachings.

One the primary reasons I am writing Who Do You Say That I Am? is to counteract the false images of Jesus that permeate our culture – including our churches. In reality, these false images have often become false idols that we set up to give us a Jesus who will agree with us and accept our faults and sins. But the real Jesus loves us too much to simply “accept us where we are” – he want us to be where he is.

If you read the Gospels carefully, you see that Christ’s contemporaries did not have such a limited view of him. They often saw him as a prophet in the mold of Elijah, Jeremiah or John the Baptist. When we think of those figures, we think of harsh men who challenged their people and called them to repentance. If Jesus was compared to them by those who knew him, isn’t it likely that he too was such a prophet?

As you have probably heard, the prequel to The Da Vinci Code, “Angels and Demons,” is coming to theaters this May. From the trailer (which you can see here), it looks like more of the same: the big, bad Catholic Church knows nothing about Jesus, hates science and only cares about keeping its power. Yawn.

What strikes me most about representations of Jesus in places like the Da Vinci Code, the Jesus Seminar, and the annual Easter media Jesus-bash is how commonplace and boring that Jesus is. Each of these revisionist Jesuses have one thing in common: no one would ever give their life to that man. No one would go to the ends of the earth preaching about a nice preacher who died due to an unfortunate misunderstanding. No one would radically change their lifestyle for a proto-socialist who just wanted to live a quiet life with Mary Magdalene. No one would be martyred for a Jesus who didn’t really raise from the dead.

But the traditional Jesus – the one who claimed to be the Way, the Truth and the Life, the one who demanded that we be perfect and follow him in order to be saved, the one who died a bloody death to save us and defeated the powers of death by rising from the grave – is the Jesus who produces a radical change in the lives of individuals who follow him. This is the Jesus that is the impetus for a worldwide religion that has changed human history. This is the Jesus who is the inspiring force behind countless saints.

It is this Jesus – the Jesus of the Scriptures and of history – that I am trying to present in my book Who Do You Say That I Am? He is the Lord to whom millions have made a radical commitment, thereby changing the world forever.

So when you hear about the “new Jesus” this Easter or in May, remember that the “trad Jesus” is the “rad Jesus.”

I just reached a major milestone in writing Who Do You Say That I Am? By completing the chapter on “Son of David,” I finished the last chapter I had left in my manuscript! I still have about 2-3 months of editing until I hand it over to OSV for their editing, but still, I’m pretty excited.

This calls for a celebration – perhaps I’ll place an Amazon order! (Yes, that’s how I celebrate).

One of my favorite theological interests – as can be seen from the topic of my book Who Do You Say That I Am? – is Christology, the study of the person of Jesus Christ. The identity of Jesus is at the heart of the Gospel message, and if you distort his identity, you distort the whole message of salvation. This is why the early Church spent hundreds of years and numerous ecumenical councils debating exactly who Jesus is.

This is also why the Church is so concerned when a theologian appears to be distorting the identity of Christ in his teachings. Back in 2004, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued a notification condemning some of the teachings of Jesuit theologian Roger Haight. The concern was primarily over Haight’s book Jesus, the Symbol of God, which attempted to make Jesus “relevant” to the modern world by watering down the reality of his divinity. The CDF at that time told Haight that he could not publicly teach Catholic theology, so he left the Jesuit-run school he was at and moved to a non-Catholic university.

Last month the CDF announced that their concern over Haight’s teaching was so great that they ordered him not to teach theology anywhere. The Church realizes the damage that can be done by a Catholic priest distorting the teaching on Jesus, even if he is not working at a Catholic university.

In striving to make Jesus “relevant” many theologians turn him into a caricature of themselves. As a professor once said to me: “When they read the Gospels, it’s like they are looking in a mirror.” I especially liked the quote by Gerald O’Collins, one of the premier authorities on Christology and another Jesuit:

I wouldn’t give my life for Roger Haight’s Jesus. It’s a triumph of relevance over orthodoxy.

And this is the standard to which any Christology must be judged. Christ’s closest followers gave their lives for Jesus, and have continued to do so for 2,000 years. If someone invents a new “Jesus” who no one is willing to die for, you can be sure that it is not the Jesus of the Gospels.

Lately I’ve been working on the chapter for the title “Lord” for my book Who Do You Say That I Am? and it caused me to return to probably my favorite passage in the whole Bible, Philippians 2:5-11:

Have this mind among yourselves,
which was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,
but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
being born in the likeness of men.
And being found in human form he humbled himself
and became obedient unto death,
even death on a cross.
Therefore God has highly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
which is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

Two books in particular that I’ve read recently – What St. Paul Really Said by N.T. Wright and Lord Jesus Christ by Larry Hurtado – discuss the radical nature of this passage. Most likely Paul wrote this letter in the early 60′s, but most scholars agree that this passage is a pre-Pauline hymn, which means it dates to the early 50′s at the latest. Yet this hymn clearly ascribes divinity to Jesus of Nazareth while maintaining Jewish monotheism. Any theory that worship of Jesus as divine dates to the late 1st century or early 2nd century cannot be reconciled with this passage.

Furthermore, this passage is directed both to Paul’s fellow Jews and the Roman Gentiles. To the Jews, this hymn is fundamentally changing the heart of monotheism. The passage Paul alludes to here – Isaiah 45:23 (“to me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear”) – is located in the most explicitly monotheistic section of the Old Testament (Isaiah 40-55). In fact, that OT section proclaims strongly that God’s glory cannot be given to anyone else, but in his letter Paul is declaring that this very glory has been given by God to Jesus Christ. Quite a radical realignment of beliefs, while maintaining the underlying truth of monotheism.

To the Romans, Paul is undercutting the cult of the emperor. The term “Lord” is the very term used by Romans to refer to their emperor, and it suggests divinity in that context. Yet Paul’s passage is blatantly subversive. No longer is Caesar “Lord” but now a man condemned and shamefully put to death by the Roman authorities is the true Lord. Considering Paul wrote this letter from prison, he knew the consequences of such a declaration.