3. JESUS VOLITION AND ACTION
What about Jesus' willing and doing?
There are men whose interest is to know truth, to examine it thoroughly,
and to explain it to others. Jesus was not one of these. He was concerned,
as we have seen, with a reality that was not yet complete but was destined
to be: with the reality of the sacred history of God and man; with the
fulfillment of a divine decree and the consummation of an eternal destiny;
with the coming of a new order of existence, that is, with willing and
doing. But how did he will? How did he act?
It is not easy to answer these questions either. Once again our only way
out is to make distinctions. Jesus did not exercise his will like a soldier
making an attack; nor like an engineer drawing up his plans, weighing the
possibilities, seeing and using all the means at his disposal; nor yet like
a reformer with a guiding principle and a practical program, or a workman
who has his task and performs it step by step. And we must distinguish,
too, when it comes to the means that he applied. Jesus did not use force
by, for instance, gathering men around him and going ahead. He employed no
hypnotism which, with his tremendous personality, he could easily have
done. He did not operate by making promises of any sort, holding out the
prospect of advantage in order to win agreement to his policy. He neither
threatened nor bluffed. He appealed neither to appetite nor imagination....
How, then, did he will and act?
His will was of great power. It was perfectly at one with itself, without
fear, prepared for anything that might happen, conscious that the stake was
the one thing of supreme importance--the decisive moment for the whole of
existence. It knew also that, in the absolute sense, the "time" had come.
At the same time it was completely calm, unhurried, not to be pressed. And
while his heart may have been filled with pain at the destruction of that
infinite possibility, this did not affect his behavior.
Jesus' will was in perfect union with the will of his Father who guides
sacred history and fixes the appointed "hours" for things. The basic
mystery of sacred history is this: God wills the coming of his kingdom and
his will makes all things possible. But this will addresses itself to man's
freedom and so can be rejected by man. As a result, the opportunity given
only once can be missed; guilt and misery can arise, and yet all things
remain encompassed by the will of God. This mystery permeated the volition
of Jesus. He was aware of the infinite demands of the moment and did all he
could to fulfill them. But the possibilities were measured not by human but
by divine standards; and so there was no anxiety, no uneasiness, no excited
activity. On the other hand, this resignation had nothing fatalistic about
it.
What was wrong remained wrong, and the missed opportunity was not offered
again. Yet appeal is made to a mystery which permits us to hope for all
things, because in it love and almighty power are one and the same.
This will is firmly oriented towards its goal. It follows no program that
has to be carried out: what must be done at each moment arises of itself
from the situation which develops at each step, depending upon the "hour
which has come" (John 2. 4; 7. 30; 8. 20). This will is so compelling that
Jesus says, in St. John, that it is like hunger for the food which
maintains life (4. 34). At the same time, he fully respects man's freedom.
He never does it violence, by suggestion or inspiration, fear or surprise.
The responsibility of the listener is always elicited and guided to the
point where it must pronounce its own Yes or No.
Jesus was governed by a mighty, unerring, indomitable will, but he had
neither "aims" nor "intentions". This will arose from no urge to create,
dominate, reform; it was rooted in that reality of which we have spoken
before. A work of God had come to maturity: "The kingdom of God is at hand"
(Mark 1. 15). His will is to open up the road to this, but with the help of
the truth of God which would be obscured by every act of mere human will,
and with the help of man's freedom which would be compromised by any act of
compulsion.
Will is inclined to isolate itself in its act of willing, to wrench reality
away from truth and dominate it by force. No such thing happened with
Jesus. His will was merely the obverse side of his knowledge, and his goal
was truth alone.
Here, too, must be sought the source of Jesus' fearlessness. This is not
merely an expression of individual temperament. It does not mean that he
had strong nerves, that he was cool-headed, resilient or enterprising; that
he viewed danger as an intensification of life or felt himself to be
carried along by fate. His fearlessness lay in his calm identification with
reality.
He presented reality, this reality which is sacred truth, each time it was
necessary, as the occasion demanded. He did so without fear, being himself
hidden in that reality, because all that he desired was that reality, and
he was ready to make any sacrifice for its sake. He did this, however, not
like some enthusiast or fanatic who fails to see the consequences of his
acts. He knew exactly what was going to happen. His courage came, rather,
from the fact that in him will and truth were one, so that the greatest
crisis which courage ever has to face, namely, when what is willed loses
all meaning and the will sinks into the void, could never arise for him. He
might suffer unimaginable torments; but the identity of his will with the
meaning of it all, with truth, could never be destroyed.
What has been said thus far still does not enable us to understand the
meaning of those words on the cross: "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me?" (Mat. 27. 46). To penetrate them we have to probe behind the
question and ask in what sense he can be said to have felt the burden of
responsibility for the guilt of the world on his shoulders and what
relation that gives him to divine justice; but we cannot go into this
here.[1]
We are now in a position to get some light on another question: Was Jesus
well-advised in his behavior?
In any case, we can affirm that he displayed no kind of mere cleverness.
There is no trace of any kind of tactics, no playing one man off against
another, no seizing an opportunity offered by a situation, no deliberately
concealing some things while exaggerating others or making inferential
remarks, or so forth. And this reveals something very significant about the
elevation of his personality. Cleverness is proper in its place: but it
does not seem to be a part of true greatness, especially in the
spiritually-minded, and, above all, the religious man.
Jesus' way of life displays none of those methods which men employ to
protect themselves in the battle for existence and to gain their ends, by
pitting subtlety against strength, cunning against superior power,
experience against great resources. In the sphere of Jesus' life there were
no peripheral values, but always and only the one sacred issue, the "one
thing necessary"--the glory of the Father and the salvation of the world.
Must we say, then, that Jesus' life was determined by noble and lofty
ideals?
Offhand we would be inclined to answer Yes; but then we might begin to be
assailed by doubt. These doubts certainly do not imply that there was in
Jesus' life anything mediocre or base, any concession to weakness,
cowardice or indolence, any departure from his absolute ideal. Even so, we
cannot classify his character as noble or lofty in the sense in which we
might apply these epithets to a hero or idealist.
For example, if "honor" is the strong, inexorable, yet sensitive and
vulnerable thing which it is in the lives of men who are characterized by
it; if it is a law which places men in a higher category than other men,
but at the same time exposes them to the continual danger and probability,
even, of total failure and disaster, then this is certainly not the
determining factor in the life of Jesus, as his behavior in its concluding
phase shows. But this is not because he is found wanting in honor in any
sense; it is because what is the decisive thing for him left honor far
behind. There was indeed "honor" in his life; but it was his Father's
honor, which gave rise to demands and entailed consequences which could not
possibly be measured by the common view.
The same sort of thing is true of the values of greatness or graciousness
or, indeed, any of the other aspects of "magnanimitas". Closer analysis
always proves that, in him, these values have not the importance they have
in other personalities dominated by them. And this is because the thing
which is decisive for him not only soars above the levels of this world,
but confronts this world and its values, judges them, and reveals the new
order of the unknown God, the "kingdom of God".
We cannot say, therefore, that lack of "prudence" or "cleverness" on the
part of Jesus revealed the noble folly of the perfect hero. He had nothing
in common either with Siegfried or with Parsifal; not because he was less
than they in any sense at all--an average, drab personality--but because he
lived at a depth which makes even these great luminaries appear somewhat
immature. Compared with him their brilliance pales.
ENDNOTES
1. See below, "Structures of Growth" Chap. 3, Part 2 ff.
