Holy Land Pilgrimage May 4-15, 2009 Part I

8 months earlier...on the telephone

Mom: Hi Simi, dad and I are going to Israel next March.
Simone: Okay, have fun!

Mom: Hi Nicki, dad and I are gong to Israel next March.
Nicole: What?! Take me!!!
Mom: Well...

Nicole: Hi Dad! Take me to Israel with you and Mom!
Dad: Okay habibi, whatever you want!

Nicole: Guess what? I'm going to Israel with mom and dad!
Simone: What?! I'm not going to let you go ALONE to the Holy Land!

Simone: Nicole and I are going with you and dad.
Mom: Sigh...

And this is *exactly* how I get taken on trips. I never ask, it just happens via one little sister.

So instead of going in March, my parents changed the trip to a pilgrimage departing in May. My finals ended on Friday. I flew out Saturday to meet my family and our pilgrimage group in Chicago, the departing destination.

Nietzsche in a Nutshell

Friedrich Nietzsche is one of those sexy philosophers that young people love to quote--and is one of the trendiest philosophers of late.

Nietzsche was a writer and a poet and used his artistic skill and literary style to persuasively craft his philosophical message. Ideas marketed well spread faster and more broadly. Hence, even if you've never read a lick of Nietzsche, you have most probably heard of him and his famous phrase: God is dead. Or a friend in college might have bought you a copy of Beyond Good and Evil with the intention of enlightening you. I actually like it when people do that--it means they care.

I've learned that when the Germans do it right, they really do it right (Pieper, Ratzinger, etc.). When Germans do it wrong, they really do it wrong. (Luther, Kant, Marx, etc.)

Dear Freddie is another rebellious ex-Lutheran "PK" (Pastor's Kid). I went to a "Lutheran" university and encountered lots of "ex-PKs" who lost their faith...at a Lutheran school. Many of them might not have lost their faith had they gone to a public university I believe.

Nietzsche did not merely lose his faith--he adopted materialism, atheism, nihilism, and had a deep hatred for Christianity. What a meanie!

Actually, if one disbelieves the Christian proposal, it makes sense to hate it. Either Jesus Christ is the Son of God or he is a liar and a lunatic. It's one or the other.

Nietzsche chose the latter, that belief in God's existence is a lie. God lives only in the human mind as the most pervasive of lies. He explains the "God delusion" away through psychological and historical explanations. (I guess he didn't have time to take on St. Thomas Aquinas' philosophical proofs for God's existence!)

Psychologically speaking, Nietzsche believed that man "invented" God out of fear and laziness. He believed that man is afraid of his greatness and/or he is too lazy to live up to his greatness. Thus, man "invents" God (who is really his alter ego) in order to be lazy and "ask for things" he wants or for the things he wants to happen in his life. God as Santa Clause if you will. Praying then, is the lazy man's way of asking God for things instead of "being a man" and making it happen for himself.

God Is Dead.

Nietzsche's phrase "God is dead," is his gripping way of saying "Welcome to adulthood." Basically, man needs to end this false attachment to God (this idea that just coincidentally won't go away...), and be unafraid to conquer himself and the world without God.

Interestingly, the Christian Faith also repeatedly preaches to man to fear not. Scripture is filled with exhortations to not be afraid. John Paul II began his pontificate with the memorable words, "Be not afraid."

Nietzsche's phrase "God is dead," is an affirmation of his adoption of nihilism. (Nihil comes from the Latin word meaning nothing.)For Nietzsche there is no meaning to life, no after life, and there is nothing beyond the material world. There is nothing but the world of sense, of "stuff." There is no truth, no law, and no ideals and ideas.

Man is now God.

The phrase "God is dead," therefore has more to do with man than God. According to Nietzsche, man can now be free of this fictional, "tyrannical" God. It has been said that "God is dead," is the single most important event in the course of Western culture. Perhaps. Regardless, modernity is suffering the consequences of Nietzsche's thought.

Nietzsche emphasized the will over the intellect. He believed that man must choose to confess that God is dead. Man must choose "this truth." This is a very different approach than say, a man coming to not choose truth (how can truth be chosen?), but to discover truth. For him, man's liberation comes from choosing "God is dead." However, once the choice is made, man must live up to this new found freedom. (I want to ask Nietzsche how he can believe in freedom, since freedom is not something material.)

Nietzsche's thought becomes interesting in his insight that many atheists still believe. Isn't that the truth? There are so many people today who claim to be atheists but who live like believers. Nietzsche is critical of these people and claims they are not really free. He notices that man actually wants to believe in something. (I wonder why...)

I guess God isn't really dead--he keeps coming up--especially from atheists. For example, the American Humanist Association has all sorts of anti-God propaganda. During Christmas time, they have a button you can sport that says "O Come Let Us Ignore Him." How can you let me ignore him? You keep bringing him up! It is telling to me that the method by which they propose to ignore God is by wearing a button about ignoring him. Someone who actually does not believe in God does not wear buttons about his non-existence. As I say over and over again, "If you don't believe in God, why do you keep bringing him up?"

Nietzsche also said that man should not believe in anything. (Except you should believe his philosophy, of course. His philosophy that ultimately has no meaning, because there is no such thing as meaning.)

Will to Power.

Nietzsche believed that man must ascend to Super-man. He believed that man must overcome himself and become a new man. Nietzsche also believed in the "transvaluation of values." Basically that man must create his own, new values. The old values of the Christian reduce man to the state of a beggar. The traditional Christian values such as humility and patience, for example, are "slave values."

Nietzsche also did not value peace. The perfect state of the world is rather war. Nietzsche explained that for a Christian to have pity on another human being is harmful since that kind of behavior encourages people to be weak. The good is not to help people, but that which heightens the feeling of power in man. (Sounds like tyranny to me.) So if there was a man drowning in the ocean, the truest way to love him would not be to save his life, but to let him die.

It's a good thing for Nietzsche that his mother and sister were not adherents to his philosophy--otherwise, they would have let him die alone in his insanity instead of caring for him until his death in 1900.

My question to Nietzsche would be: Why should I do this? If there is no meaning in life, if suffering is not redemptive, if there is no purpose or goal to which we are moving toward or for which we were created, then what's the point? If nihilism is true, then everything--including Nietzsche's philosophy--is nothing. If he really believes this then why does he even bother discussing it? If nothing but the material is real, then his ideas don't even exist.

If man can choose what is true and man "chooses" to believe in God, why does Nietzsche have a problem with it? If life is but a power-race, why would Nietzsche care? Let him be the Super-man. Wouldn't that make him the most powerful? Isn't that precisely his goal?

Critique.

In Jean-Paul Sartre's play No Exit, he writes, "Hell is other people."

For the nihilist, this must be true. Especially if life is but a power-struggle and a rat-race.

Benedict XVI explains the consequences of Nietzsche's influence in modernity well:

"And the deep darkness and alienation of our times is shown in the fact that we have powers and abilities but do not know what they are for; we have so much knowledge that we are no longer able to believe and see truth; we are no longer able to embrace the totality. Our philosophy is that of Pilate: "What is truth?" If man has no truth, only abilities, he is fundamentally alienated, and "participation" is only empty play-acting in the dark, deluding man with the notion of freedom and hurting him deeply. There is nothing fortuitous about the strident protests against such empty freedom: man, deprived of truth, has been dishonored."

Nietzsche failed to realize that man is not self-created. He was also unreasonable in expounding that man is or even can be entirely self-sufficient. The historical fact that we live in community (whether it be a village, tribe, town, city, state, country, etc.) should be a clue that we were not meant to be alone and that we are not alone in the universe. Further, Nietzsche was unreasonable because he attempted, in his philosophy, to start from scratch, to throw out the past. Truth (somehow!) began with him. But this is untrue. He was born into a history, a culture and a context. He even used faith as an indirect method of knowledge for which the functioning of life would be impossible. Everyone lives like this but many do not realize it. For example, most people have probably never been to Siberia, but they still believe in its existence. People buy bread at the market everyday having faith it will not be poisoned and this is a reasonable thing to do. As Thomas Merton said, "No man is an island."

Nietzsche also greatly misunderstood the Christian Faith. He was raised a Lutheran, which is a corrupted version of the Faith, but even so he did not have a sense of paradox and mystery. Regarding the paradox of the slave versus free man, Benedict XVI responds well, "Christ overturns the worldview of modern times, it is not evolution or the laws of matter or the "universe" who has the last word but a person! If we know this person and he knows us then we are no longer slaves of the universe and its laws, but free!"

Nietzsche is ultimately unreasonable because he failed to recognize that in his and in each man's heart is the desire for truth, beauty, goodness, and freedom. This is what man was made for. With Nietzsche and with all these "modern philosophers" it truly does come down to a negativity versus a positivity:

Luigi Giussani tells the story about how a young man without faith was forced by his mother to go to confession to him. During the confession, the young man laughed at him and said, "Listen, all that you are trying so forcefully to tell me is not worth as much as what I am about to tell you. You cannot deny that the true grandeur of man is represented by Dante's Capaneus, that giant chained by God to Hell, yet who cries to God, 'I cannot free myself from these chains because you bind me here. You cannot, however, prevent me from blaspheming you, and so I blaspheme you.' This is the true grandeur of man." Father Giussani answered him, "But isn't it even greater to love the infinite?"

The End.

Christians: We are at least half the reason why there are atheists in the world. We are the ones being apathetic. Instead of disregarding the neighborhood nihilist, engage him by making a different proposal for his life. Nietzsche said some pretty right on things. But as Hilaire Belloc said, "Heresies are maintained by the truths they retain." So think critically, make the distinctions, don't fight to win but fight for clarity. And then (maybe) the Christian proposal will be accepted--then maybe, as Benedict XVI said, "all men will realize the truth that man is not redeemed by science, but by love and that redemption will cause liberation of all, for God wills that all be saved," in other words, that all men be happy.

Jesus Christ According to Benedict XVI-Conclusion

Descendit de caelis: He came down from heaven. Through Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh, man has become certain of God. God is no longer an abstract being, "out there," a distant “first cause” of the world. The Incarnation allows all to confess: “I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave me for himself.” -Galatians 2:20

It is not science that redeems man, but love. No matter what man's circumstances, in the encounter with absolute love man begets absolute certainty. This is the meaning of redemption in Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ is the God-man. This is a paradox. This is a mystery. It is almost unbelievable, but it is true. Benedict XVI emphasizes the relevancy of Christ and that what "makes Jesus important and irreplaceable in every age is precisely the fact that he was and is the Son, and that in him God has become man.” If, as the modern scholars often do, the attempt is made to remove "God" from the God-man, then the "man" is simultaneously obliterated. Jesus Christ does not make sense in any other way than as the God-man.

There are those today (much like the Arians of the past) who try to preserve the "purity" of the concept of God. They may believe in God, but he is not something accessible to man. But the Fathers of the Church regarded this as atheism: a God who is untouchable in human affairs is no God. Benedict XVI poses the question, “Do we not find it impossible that man can have a genuine relationship with God in the world?” Modernity has cowered from the God, has reduced his active role in the world, and has therefore retreated to the historical "man" Jesus.

"Pope Benedict has shown how a man of faith and reason, a Christian scholar, can find the face of Jesus in the canonical Gospels, and how others can do the same. Biblical scholars have been given a fine example of a pastoral hermeneutic capable of building up the life of the Church that is grounded in faith, reads Scripture canonically and theologically, and that draws both on the resources of critical exegesis and of the Christian tradition." -Peter S. Williamson

Benedict XVI's is a theologian as well as an evangelist. He enthusiastically invites those who read his writings to enter into that relationship with Jesus Christ which has prompted those reflections which is his personal testimony to the realities he describes. He invites us to sacrificially love others in union with Christ’s self-giving love for us revealed in the cross.

I leave you with these beautiful words of Benedict XVI, especially timely during these fifty days of Eastertide: “Christ summons us to find heaven in him, to discover him in others and thus to be heaven to each other. He calls us to let heaven shine into this world, to build heaven here. Jesus stretches out his hand to us in his Easter message, in the mystery of the sacraments, so that Easter may be now, so that the light of heaven may shine forth in this world and the doors may be opened. Let us take his hand! Amen.”

Jesus Christ According to Benedict XVI- Part IV.

The Christian Faith is not about being nice. It is not simply about the Golden Rule. And it it certainly not a philosophy. The Faith is an encounter with a person, with the Person.

“Christ tells us who man truly is and what man must do to be truly human. He shows us the way, and this way is the truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. He shows us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life. The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death…he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through.” -Benedict XVI

Benedict XVI clarifies that the reason Jesus Christ is so hard to figure out apart from revelation is because he did not leave behind a body of teaching which is separate from his “I.” He did not perform a work that could be distinguished from his “I.” His work is the giving of himself. This is the mystery and beauty of Jesus Christ: that he is not a mere teacher. He himself is simultaneously both teacher and the teaching. Since the person of Jesus is his teaching, the Christian Faith is truly the only personal faith in the form of an encounter. It is not limited to the affirmation or adherence of a particular system, but rather the acceptance of this "person who is his word, of the word as person and of the person as word.”

The Christian proposal is simply this in the words of Benedict XVI: "If we know this person and he knows us, then we are no longer slaves of the universe and its laws, but free."

Benedict XVI provides us with a beautiful meditation regarding the encounter with this person: “Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves."

Jesus Christ According to Benedict XVI-III.

“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony to which was given at the proper time.” -Timothy 2:5-6

Descendit de caelis: He came down from Heaven. Why? To bring us God.

The Incarnation is the central creed of the Christian faith. The ancient Christological councils of the Church, notably the Council of Nicea in 325 A.D. and Constantinople in 381 A.D. developed the Nicene Creed establishing the understanding that Jesus Christ is both God and man. Since the early Church, theologians have been reflecting on the drama of this event trying to more deeply understand the mystery of God and of man.

Benedict XVI expresses, "Jesus is the most human of men, the true man, and thus subscribes to the identity of theology and anthropology."

By becoming man, Jesus Christ unites himself with all the victims of sin and injustice in history. As mediator, the "Son of Man" brings God to man and man to God through his solidarity with men in his life and death. As a fellow man who has suffered the most horrific injustice, he truly knows man's plight.

Through the event of the crucifixion, the God-man becomes the ultimate sacrifice, the sacrifice to end all sacrifices and in doing so not only fulfills the Law of the Old Covenant but eternally unites and links himself to humanity.

As the Son, Jesus Christ is entirely obedient to the will of the Father. His example provides a way for men to follow him in his obedience. Obedience is a friendship. Jesus Christ knows what man wants and what he was created for: happiness. Communion with Jesus provides communion with God who is the origin of man's being and who is perfect happiness. Only Jesus brings happiness because only Jesus brings God. And Jesus brings God because Jesus is God.

Benedict XVI illuminates, “Jesus who himself died on the Cross, brought something totally different: an encounter with the Lord of all lords, an encounter with the living God and thus an encounter with a hope stronger than the sufferings of slavery, a hope which therefore transformed life and the world from within.”

It is in his rejection that God is glorified. It is in the weakness of man that God's sovereignty is established. It is in Christ’s earthly existence that he makes God’s heavenly existence present and known. "If God has descended and is now below, then “below” has also become an “above,” and the old division into “above” and “below” has been shattered.” His death is an act of self-communication. This shattering, this communication, is man’s redemption and it signifies the victory of love over death.

Thus, as Benedict XVI expresses, "Love is the ultimate reason for the Incarnation."

Benedict XVI posits that since the core of Jesus’ personality is prayer, then those who seek to understand him must actively participate in his prayer. He makes an excellent point by illustrating that, for example, medicine can only be learned in the practice of healing. Similarly, “religion can only be understood through religion—and the fundamental act of religion is prayer.” He logically explains that this is what is suggested in the Gospel when John writes “No one can come to him unless the Father draws him.” Without the Father, there is no Son and without the Son, no one can truly know the Father. Prayer then, is “the basic precondition if real understanding is to take place.” If this is true then Benedict XVI is correct in noting that genuine developments in the study of Christology and in theological understanding must be complemented by the “theology of the saints, which is theology from experience.” This experience has its source and origin in the act of love, which is prayer itself. It is this act of self-surrender (which Jesus accomplished so perfectly) by which Christians truly comprise the Body of Christ.

Early in his pontificate, Benedict XVI preached that, “the message of Jesus is completely misunderstood if it is separated from the context of the faith and hope of the Chosen People.”

The genius of the gift of the Lord’s prayer, the “Our Father” is that by praying “Our” Father, together as a community, “those who belong to Jesus participate in Jesus’ relationship to God," by sharing in his gesture.

This is, in a sense, a case for the Church.

Regarding the Body of Christ and its mysterious existence as the Church, Benedict XVI clarifies, “No one lives alone. No one sins alone. No one is saved alone.” This insight of Benedict XVI boldly addresses modernity’s current individualistic mentality. This mentality has penetrated even among Christians particularly by the emerging "house church" movement or more radically by those who claim to be Christians without "organized religion."

Theologians of Christology who view Jesus Christ through the mentality of individualism greatly miss the point. The Church is Christ's Body which is comprised of the unity of its members. Followers of Christ do not pray the “My Father” (only Christ could regard God in that way, according to his unique filial relationship with the Father) but the “Our Father.” Further, although Jesus brought an entirely new dimension to humanity’s access to God the Father, he did so within the traditional framework of God’s People, Israel. His dialogue with the Father was also a dialogue with Moses and Elijah as in the Transfiguration account. He did not abolish the Law, but fulfilled it. He did not destroy Israel, but renewed it. The result of which gave the nations "access to the Spirit of revelation and hence to God the Father, the God of Jesus Christ.” Thus, the “Church” truly became Universal, not just for Israel but for all mankind.

This understanding has imperative implications for those who claim to know Jesus outside of the Church. True fellowship with Jesus presupposes that “communication with the living subject of tradition to which all this is linked into communication with the Church.” This is the context given by which one must come to know Jesus Christ. Benedict XVI poses a challenge to denominations of the one Church by clarifying that even the “New Testament book presupposes the Church as its subject.”

It was and continues to be this context, the Church, which provides the understanding that Jesus Christ is “the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, one in Being with the Father.”

Jesus Christ is both man and “Other.” Benedict XVI writes, “Jesus Christ is he who has moved right out beyond himself and thus the man who has truly come to himself.” Thus, in finding himself in Christ, man is more himself the the more he is with others. (As Lorenzo Albacete would say, "We need community to be truly human.") In this way, man becomes more like Jesus Christ the more open he is to God—by moving “out beyond himself.”

It is precisely in this relation with “the Other” and concretely through others that Jesus Christ shows that the Faith is not primarily about the individual; for the salvation of the mere individual there would be “no need of either a Church or a history of salvation, an incarnation or passion.” Man is himself when he is fitted into the whole and thus the Faith, the encounter with Christ, must be understood in the context of the Church.

Being a Christian is not an individual but a social charisma.

The Christian Faith demands the individual, but wants him for the whole and not for himself. The Faith teaches us to be like God--who created us out of charity and who sent his Son to show us that.

Jesus Christ According to Benedict XVI- Part II.

"According to the testimony of Holy Scripture, the center of the life and person of Jesus is his constant communication with the Father.” -Benedict XVI

Jesus Christ's “constant communication” with the Father was in prayer. It is in prayer that the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son is most evident and understood. Paradoxically, it is in the hiddenness of his prayer which most openly expresses the core reality of his personality as “Son” to the apostles and particularly to Peter.

Benedict XVI notes some the numerous titles applicable to Jesus Christ: prophet, priest, rabbi, king, Lord, and Son. But the most appropriate title for Jesus Christ, in light of his constant communication with the Father, is Son. Benedict XVI expresses, "It is the only comprehensible designation for Jesus. It both comprises and interprets everything else.” Thus, the Church’s confession is consistent with Peter’s confession, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

According to Benedict XVI, whole of Christology lies is Jesus’ prayer. He recalls the Biblical account of Jesus' prayer at the Mount of Olives. Jesus addresses God as "Abba" which in his native language of Aramaic translates to "Daddy" or "Papa." This was a completely novel way to address Father-God. Jewish custom did not refer to God in such an informal manner. The familiarity by which Jesus addressed God was radical, not only for Jews but also for the pagans of the time. The philosophical rationalists had a concept of God, but "a God to whom one could pray" did not exist for them.

Jesus’ entire existence is relationship with the Father. So integral is this understanding of his personhood that Benedict XVI notes that Jesus even died while praying. ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"-Mark 15:34) Jesus was never alone. Benedict XVI writes, “His whole existence until his final cry on the cross was one single act of reaching out to that Other whom he called Father.” The dignity of his being is all rooted in his relationship to God the Father. While Jesus Christ is also "King" and "Lord," the central name that designates his power is “Son.”

His power lies in his total relativity to the Father.

The evangelist Luke recounts the story of Jesus' Transfiguration. His face and clothes are transfigured before the apostles Peter, James, and John. The significance of the transfiguration is that it revealed that Jesus is not only truly human, but also a truly divine being. His divinity is revealed precisely because of the perfection of his communion with the Father. This communion merits the words of God, "This is my Son, my Chosen, listen to him!" (Luke 9:28-36)

The mystery of Jesus becomes visible in his prayer. Benedict XVI explains that in this dialogue of love, “Luke has raised the prayer of Jesus to the central Christological category from which he describes the mystery of the Son.”

It is in the solitary speaking with the Father that he comes to men and that men come to him. This theology of Luke is most clearly expressed in his ironic (yet intentional) choice of words: “when he was alone with the disciples.” (Luke 9:18)

Benedict XVI conveys so eloquently that “only by entering into Jesus’ solitude, only by participating in what is most personal to him, his communication with the Father, can one see what this most personal reality is; only thus can we penetrate to his identity.”

He is Son because of his unceasing prayer. This union and communion signifies his Son-ship to the Father.

Simply put by the God-man, "I and the Father are one." (John 10:30)

Jesus Christ According to Benedict XVI- Part I.

In Benedict XVI's spiritual, theological and pastoral writings, it is evident that he is committed to restoring the disconnect caused by modern historical scholarship between the “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of Faith.”

Benedict XVI points out that the “title of ‘Christ’ has largely given way to the personal name ‘Jesus.’” The title “Christ” implies the Jesus of “faith” as the Church understands and confesses him to be which is the God-man. Leaving the "Christ" out of the title "Jesus Christ" emphasizes his humanity over his divinity which is a reduced understanding of who he is.

This disconnect has been further popularized through the various television documentaries on the life of Jesus. The "Jesus of history" is often contrasted with the "Jesus of faith." Believers and nonbelievers alike have suggested that the historical Jesus (what is exclusively known of him solely by historical evidence) is quite different and oftentimes contradictory to the Jesus understood by those in the Christian tradition and revelation.

Putting fanciful (and fallacious) histories of Jesus aside, a true believer should not disregard the historical-critical method of biblical scholarship. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that the Christian Faith is a historical religion. By becoming incarnate, God entered human history through the life and events of Jesus of Nazareth. Second, because if the Faith is true, it cannot and will not be contradicted with what history (and further science) provides. Benedict XVI calls the method an "indispensable tool." Historical scholarship can aid in understanding Jesus by providing the historical context of the four Gospels.

Benedict XVI clarifies that it is crucial to remember that the method, however, is limited and that not everything that is true about a person can be shown by historical evidence. Oftentimes theories are treated as certainties only later to be disregarded as erroneous. One must also consider the personal agenda of the particular scholar and that historical documents can be found to be inauthentic and misinterpreted.

The restoration of the gap between the supposed “historical Jesus” and the “Christ of faith” is imperative if one is to understand Jesus Christ in the totality of his being. Thus, the “Christian interpretation begins with an act of faith in Christ that is consistent with historical reason but transcends it.” The historical-critical methods that claim to present a purified (apart from the Christian revelation) representation of Jesus are ultimately inadequate. "Jesus only subsists as the Christ and Christ only subsists in the shape of Jesus."

Benedict XVI portrays Jesus beyond the limitations of historical criticism and “draws on the resources of Christian faith which is much more logical, and, historically speaking, much more intelligible than the reconstructions provided by the historical quests of recent decades.”

Simply put, the Christ of Faith is the Jesus of history.