Is Knowing Jesus Personally Essential to the Faith? Quaestio Disputata

Abstract

Is Knowing Jesus Personally Essential to the Faith?Quaestio Disputata Brian Pedraza, PH.D. (bio) One of the greatest notes of correspondence and continuity among the postconciliar popes is their repeated call for Christians and all people of good will to encounter or know Jesus Christ personally. Despite the origin of phrases such as "personal relationship with Jesus" in evangelical circles and its use largely in pastoral contexts, a Catholic scholar such as Joseph Ratzinger, whose erudition is universally respected by admirers and critics alike, could write in the preface to his last scholarly works that it was his intention to "present the figure and message of Jesus" and so "foster the growth of a living relationship with him."1 So, too, could one easily argue that the first major teachings of the papacies of John Paul II, Benedict, and Francis all coalesce around this central idea.2 This idea extends beyond the papal magisterium to other guiding ecclesial documents on evangelization and catechesis. Take, for instance, the closing remarks from the 2012 Synod of Bishops on the New Evangelization for the Transmission of the Christian Faith, in which the Final Propositions mention a personal relationship or encounter with the risen Lord at least eight different times.3 From the same Synod, in the bishops' Message to the People of God, they write: "Before saying anything about the forms that this new evangelization must assume, we feel the need to tell you with profound conviction that the faith [is entirely decided] in [End Page 109] the relationship that we [establish] with the person of Jesus who takes the initiative to encounter us."4 Finally, one of the most recent examples of this theme comes from the newest Directory for Catechesis which explains Christian faith as a welcoming of God's love in Jesus Christ and a "sincere adherence to his person."5 Using the language of Lumen Fidei, the directory describes faith as both a believing that what Jesus reveals is true, but also a believing in him, which is to say that faith is a "personal relationship" or "trustful abandonment" to the one who reveals.6 The reasons for this resurgence in personalism are as varied as there are advocates for it, but among the great figures of twentieth-century theology there are common threads. First, is certainly the shared experience of the world wars. Despite the rationalist hopes for a better tomorrow built with the towers of reason, the most devastating conflicts in history proved, yet again, that humanity had not escaped its inclination to evil. This was especially poignant in the face of totalitarian regimes that seemed to minimize the importance of the person and his or her role vis-à-vis the State. Wojtyla, reflecting upon the Soviet invasion of his homeland, wrote, The present age is such a moment. It is a time of great controversy about the human being, controversy about the very meaning of human existence, and thus about the nature and significance of the human being. . . . This aptly describes the situation in Poland today with respect to the whole political reality that has arisen out of Marxism, out of dialectical materialism, and strives to win minds over to this ideology.7 [End Page 110] In the second place, we can mention a scholarly current of personalism (or, perhaps, personalisms) from sources as varied as Kant and Newman. Wojtyla, for instance, mentions Levinas, Buber, and Rosenzweig as influential,8 and his acceptance of the second formulation of Kant's categorical imperative—that humans should be treated as ends and never merely as means—is well-known.9 Ratzinger, too, in his personal memoirs, mentions Buber as well as Theodor Steinbüchel and claims that, upon encountering their personalism, he immediately likened it to Augustine.10 In a speech commemorating the hundredth anniversary of Newman's death, he also affirms the English scholar's influence upon him, noting that it became an important foundation for "theological personalism, which was drawing us all in its sway."11 Third, and perhaps most important for the Church's work of evangelization, scholars of the twentieth century all seemed to signal the last dying breath of a medieval or...