MetaCatholic

A few days ago Nick Norelli posted about the impossibility of overrating Jesus.

I don’t think it possible to rate Jesus high enough.  There is no devotion we can give him, no prayer that we can pray to him, no song that we can sing to him, and no life that we can live in obedience to him, that he does not deserve.

In all sorts of ways I agree with him, but I want to suggest there are at least two ways in which people can in a sense overrate Jesus, one academic, one popular.

The academic way has generally fallen out of fashion, but hints of it still creep in here and there. This is the desire to identify the uniqueness of one or other bit of Jesus’ teaching. It is both what lead to an over-simple and mistaken use of the criterion of double dissimilarity in Jesus research, and seems at times to be guided by a form of anti-Judaism, separating Jesus from his people and his roots, and a form of anti-Catholicism, separating Jesus from his Church. I can’t help feeling that this outdated approach still informs the scholars associated with the Jesus seminar, and the Jesus Project (as proposed and scorned here and elsewhere last year). The desire to diesembody Jesus from his context and history seems to me to be one of essentially overrating and misconceiving his uniqueness.

The popular way is to so focus on Jesus whether as good teacher, wise guide, even God-in-flesh, that he is abstracted both from the Trinity and the Church. The popular “Jesus, yes; Church no” type of movement is one form (and however understandable, is simply wrong). More likely to mislead, however, are those forms of devotion to Jesus, both secular (wise guide / good moral teacher) and devotional, that so exclusively focus on Jesus that they give no space to Father or Holy Spirit. I sometimes fear this is reflected in some contemporary choruses. There is nothing wrong with a focus on Jesus in particular devotions, let me hasten to say. I would happily introduce Nick to, say, the Litany of the Holy Name. But Jesus also directs our attention to the Father. To do Jesus without the Trinity is to overrate and misconceive him.