The connection between verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) now enables us to see their unity of will.

Sunday 3 July 2011 Matthew 11:25-30

The Sunday riveting pericope Matt 11:25-30 resounded in our hearts. Any  commentaries are found lacking. 

Pastoral ruminations serve their purpose. The incisive and scriptural roots search for more. 

To the rescue again is Benedict xvi; as in Jesus of Nazareth, Part 1 'The Son' pp.355-344.

Let us return to the Jubelruf. The equality in being that we saw expressed in verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) as oneness in will, and in knowledge is now linked in the first half of verse 27 with Jesus' universal mission and so with the history of the world: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father.” When we consider the Synoptic Jubelruj in its full depth, what we find is that it actually already contains the entire Johannine theology of the Son. There too, Sonship is presented as mutual knowing and as oneness in willing. There too, the Father is presented as the Giver who has delivered "everything" to the Son, and in so doing has made him the Son, equal to himself: "All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine" (Jn 17:10). And there too, this fatherly giving then extends into the creation, into the "world": "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"  (Jn 3:16).

POPE BENEDICT XVI   JESUS OF NAZARETH Part I, pp 335-345

THE SON

At the beginning of this chapter, we saw briefly that the two titles “Son of God” and "Son" (without further qualification) need to be distinguished; their origin and significance are quite different, even though the two meanings overlapped and blended together as the Christian faith took shape. Since I have already dealt quite extensively with the whole question in my Introduction to Christianity, I offer only a brief summary here as an analysis of the term "Son of God.”

The term “Son of God” derives from the political theology of the ancient Near East. In both Egypt and Babylon the king was given the title "son of God"; his ritual accession to the throne was considered to be his "begetting" as the Son of God, which the Egyptians may really have understood in the sense of a mysterious origination from God, while the Babylonians apparently viewed it more soberly as a juridical act, a divine adoption. Israel took over these ideas in two

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ways, even as Israel's faith reshaped them. Moses received from God himself the commission to say to Pharaoh: "Thus says YHWH, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, 'Let my son go that he may serve me'" (Ex 4:22f.). The nations are God's great family, but Israel is the "firstborn son," and as such, belongs to God in a special way, with all that firstborn status means in the ancient Middle East. With the consolidation of the Davidic kingship, the royal ideology of the ancient Near East was transferred to the king on Mount Zion.

The discourse in which Nathan prophesies to David the promise that his house will endure forever includes the following: "I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come forth from your body, and I will establish his king­dom .... I will be his father, and he shall be my son. When he commits iniquity, I will chasten him ... but I will not take my steadfast love from him" (2 Sam 7:I2ff.; see Ps 89:27f., 37f.). These words then become the basis for the ritual installation of the kings of Israel, a ritual that we encounter in Psalm 2:7f.: "I will tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to me, 'You are my son, today I have begotten you. Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession:"

Three things are evident here. Israel's privileged status as God's firstborn son is personified in the king; he embodies the dignity of Israel in person. Secondly, this means that the ancient royal ideology, the myth of divine begetting, is discarded and replaced by the theology of election. "Begetting" consists in election; in today's enthronement of the king, we see a summary expression of God's act of election, in which Israel and the king who embodies it become God's "son:'

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Thirdly, however, it becomes apparent that the promise of dominion over the nations-a promise taken over from the great kings of the East-is out of all proportion to the actual reality of the king on Mount Zion.

He is only an insignificant ruler with a fragile power who ends up in exile, and afterward can be restored only for a brief time in dependence on the superpowers of the day. In other words, the royal oracle of Zion from the very beginning had to become a word of hope in a future king, a word that pointed far beyond the present moment, far beyond what the king seated upon his throne could regard as "today" and "now:'

The early Christians very quickly adopted this word of hope and came to see the Resurrection of Jesus as its actual fulfillment. According to Acts 13:32f., Paul, in his stirring account of salvation history culminating in Christ,  says to the Jews assembled in the synagogue of Antioch in Pisidia: "What God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, 'Thou art my Son, today I have begotten thee." 

We may safely assume that the discourse recounted here in the Acts of the Apostles is a typical example of early missionary preaching to the Jews, in which we encounter the nascent Church's Christological reading of the Old Testament. Here, then, we see a third stage in the refashioning of the political theology of the ancient Near East. In Israel, at the time of the Davidic kingship, it had merged with the Old Covenant's theology of election; as the Davidic kingship developed, moreover, it had increasingly become an expression of hope in the king who was to come. Now, however, Jesus' Resurrection is recognized by faith as the long-awaited

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"today" to which the Psalm refers. God has now appointed his king, and has truly given him possession of the peoples of the earth as a heritage.

But this "dominion" over the peoples of the earth has lost its political character. This king does not break the peoples with an iron rod (cf Ps 2:9)—he rules from the Cross, and does so in an entirely new way. Universality is achieved through the humility of communion in faith; this king rules by faith and love, and in no other way. This makes possible an entirely new and definitive way of understanding God's words: "You are my son, today I have begotten you." The term "son of God" is now detached from the sphere of political power and becomes an expression of a special oneness with God that is displayed in the Cross and Resurrection. How far this oneness, this divine Sonship, actually extends cannot, of course, be explained on the basis of this Old Testament context. Other currents of biblical faith and of Jesus' own testimony have to converge in order to give this term its full meaning.

Before we move on to consider Jesus' simple designation of himself as "the Son," which finally gives the originally political title "Son of God" its definitive, Christian significance, we must complete the history of the title itself For it is part of that history that the Emperor Augustus, under whose dominion Jesus was born, transferred the ancient Near Eastern theology of kingship to Rome and proclaimed himself the "Son of the Divine Caesar;' the Son of God (cf P. W v. Martitz, TDNT, VIII, pp. 334-40, esp. p. 336). While Augustus himself took this step with great caution, the cult of the Roman emperors that soon followed involved the full claim

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to divine sons hip, and the worship of the emperor in Rome as a god was made binding throughout the empire.

At this particular historical moment, then, the Roman emperor's claim to divine kingship encounters the Christian belief that the risen Christ is the true Son of God, the Lord of all the peoples of the earth, to whom alone belongs worship in the unity of Father, Son, and Spirit. Because of the title "Son of God;' then, the fundamentally apolitical Christian faith, which does not demand political power but acknowledges the legitimate authorities (c£ Rom 1P-7), inevitably collides with the total claim made by the imperial political power. Indeed, it will always come into conflict with totalitarian political regimes and will be driven into the situation of martyrdom-into communion with the Crucified, who reigns solely from the wood of the Cross.

A clear distinction needs to be made between the term "Son of God," with its complex prehistory, and the simple term "the Son;' which essentially we find only on the lips of Jesus. Outside the Gospels, it occurs five times in the Letter to the Hebrews (cf. 1:2, 1:8, 3:6, 5:8, 7:28), a letter that is related to the Gospel of John, and it occurs once in Paul (cf  1 Cor 15:28). It also occurs five times in the First Letter of John and once in the Second Letter of John, harking back to Jesus' self-testimony in the Gospel of John. The decisive tes­timony is that of the Gospel of John (where we find the word eighteen times) and the Messianic Jubelruf (joyful shout) recorded by Matthew and Luke ( see below), which is typically—and correctly—described as a Johannine text within the framework of the Synoptic tradition.  To begin with, let us examine this messianic Jubelruf: "At that time Jesus

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declared, 'I thank thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and understand­ing and revealed them to babes [to little ones]; yea, Father, for such was thy gracious will. All things have been delivered to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wills to reveal him" (Mt 1I:25-27; Lk 10:21-22).

Let us begin with this last sentence, which is the key to the whole passage. Only the Son truly "knows" the Father. Knowing always involves some sort of equality. "If the eye were not sunlike, it could never see the sun:' as Goethe once said, alluding to an idea of Plotinus. Every process of coming to know something includes in one form or another a process of assimilation, a sort of inner unification of the knower with the known. This process differs according to the respective level of being on which the knowing subject and the known object exist. Truly to know God presupposes communion with him, it presupposes oneness of being with him. In this sense, what the Lord himself now proclaims in prayer is identical with what we hear in the concluding words of the prologue of John's Gospel, which we have quoted frequently:

"No one has ever seen God; it is the only Son, who is nearest to the Father's heart, who has made him known" (Jn 1:18). This fundamental saying—it now becomes plain—is an explanation of what comes to light in Jesus' prayer, in his filial dialogue. At the same time, it also becomes clear what "the Son" is and what this term means: perfect communion in knowledge, which is at the same time communion in being. Unity in knowing is possible only because it is unity in being.

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Only the "Son" knows the Father, and all real knowledge of the Father is a participation in the Son's filial knowledge of him, a revelation that he grants ("he has made him known," John tells us). Only those to whom the Son "wills to reveal him" know the Father. But to whom does the Son will to reveal him? The Son's will is not arbitrary. What we read in Matthew 1l:27 about the Son's will to reveal the Father brings us back to the initial verse 25, where the Lord thanks the Father for having revealed it to the the little ones. We have already noted the unity of knowledge between Father and Son. The connection between verses 25 and 27 now enables us to see their unity of will.

The will of the Son is one with the will of the Father. 

This is, in fact, a motif that constantly recurs throughout the Gospels. The Gospel of John places particular emphasis on the fact that Jesus unites his own will totally with the Father's will. The act of uniting and merging the two wills is presented dramatically on the Mount of Olives, when Jesus draws his human will up into his filial will and thus into unity with the will of the Father. The second petition of the Our Father has its proper setting here. When we pray it, we are asking that the drama of the Mount of Olives, the struggle of Jesus' entire life and work, be brought to completion in us; that together with him, the Son, we may unite our wills with. the Father's will, thus becoming sons in our turn, in union of will that becomes union of knowledge.

This enables us to understand the opening of Jesus' Jubelruf, which on first sight may seem strange. The Son wills to draw into his filial knowledge all those whom the Father wills should be there. This is what Jesus means when he says in the 

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bread of life discourse at Capernaum: "No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me so wills" (Jn 6:44). But whom does the Father will? Not "the wise and understanding;' the Lord tells us, but the simple.

Taken in the most straightforward sense, these words reflect Jesus' actual experience: It is not the Scripture experts, those who are professionally concerned with God, who recognize him; they are too caught up in the intricacies of their detailed knowledge. Their great learning distracts them from simply gazing upon the whole, upon the reality of God as he reveals himself—for 'people who know so much about the complexity of the issues, it seems that it just cannot be so simple. Paul describes this same experience and then goes on to reflect upon it: "For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written, 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and the cleverness of the clever I will thwart' [Is 29:14]...  For consider your call, brethren, not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth, but God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong ... so that no human being might boast in the presence of God" (1 Cor 1:18f., 26-29). "Let no one deceive himself If anyone among you thinks that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool that he may become wise" (1 Cor 3:18). What, though, is meant by "becoming a fool," by being “a little one;” through which we are opened up for the will, and so for the knowledge, of God?

The Sermon on the Mount provides the key that discloses the inner basis of this remarkable experience and also

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the path of conversion that opens us up to being drawn into the Son's filial knowledge: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God" (Mt 5:8). Purity of heart is what enables us to see. Therein consists the ultimate simplicity that opens up our life to Jesus' will to reveal. We might also say that our will has to become a filial will. When it does, then we can see. But to be a son is to be in relation: it is a relational concept. It involves giving up the autonomy that is closed in upon itself; it includes what Jesus means by saying that we have to become like children. This also helps us understand the paradox that is more fully developed in John's Gospel: While Jesus subordinates himself as Son entirely to the Father, it is this that makes him fully equal with the Father, truly equal to and truly one with the Father.

Let us return to the Jubelruf. The equality in being that we saw expressed in verses 25 and 27 (of Mt 11) as oneness in will, and in knowledge is now linked in the first half of verse 27 with Jesus' universal mission and so with the history of the world: "All things have been delivered to me by my Father.” When we consider the Synoptic Jubelruj in its full depth, what we find is that it actually already contains the entire Johannine theology of the Son. There too, Sonship is presented as mutual knowing and as oneness in willing. There too, the Father is presented as the Giver who has delivered "everything" to the Son, and in so doing has made him the Son, equal to himself: "All that is mine is thine, and all that is thine is mine" (Jn 17:10). And there too, this fatherly giving then extends into the creation, into the "world": "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son"  (Jn 3:16). On one hand, the word only here points back to the prologue to John's 

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Gospel, where the Logos is called "the only Son, who is God" (Jn 1:18). On the other hand, however, it also recalls Abraham, who did not withhold his son, his "only" son from God (Gen 22:2,12). The Father's act of "giving" is fully accomplished in the love of the Son "to the end” (Jn 13:1), that is, to the Cross. The mystery of Trinitarian love that comes to light in the term "the Son" is perfectly one with the Paschal Mystery of love that Jesus brings to fulfillment in history.

Finally, Jesus' prayer is seen also by John to be the inte­rior locus of the term "the Son." Of course, Jesus' prayer is different from the prayer of a creature: It is the dialogue of love within God himself-the dialogue that God is. The term "the Son" thus goes hand in hand with the simple appellation "Father" that the Evangelist Mark has preserved for us in its original Aramaic form in his account of the scene on the Mount of Olives: "Abba,'

Joachim Jeremias has devoted a number of in-depth stud­ies to demonstrating the uniqueness of this form of address that Jesus used for God, since it implied an intimacy that was impossible in the world of his time. It expresses the "unicity" of the "Son." Paul tells us that Jesus' gift of participation in his Spirit of Sonship empowers Christians to say: "Abba, Father" (Rom 8:15; Gal 4:6). Paul makes it clear that this new form of Christian prayer is possible only through Jesus, through the only-begotten Son.

The term "Son;' along with its correlate "Father (Abba)," gives us a true glimpse into the inner being of Jesus-indeed, into the inner being of God himself Jesus' prayer is the true origin of the term "the Son." It has no prehistory, just as the Son himself is "new;' even though Moses and the Prophets

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prefigure him. The attempt has been made to use post-biblical literature—for example, the Odes of Solomon (dating from the second century A.D.)—as a source for constructing a pre-Christian, "Gnostic" prehistory of this term, and to argue that John draws upon that tradition. If we respect the possibilities and limits of the historical method at all, this attempt makes no sense. We have to reckon with the originality of Jesus. Only he is "the Son."