The uniqueness of Jesus | National Catholic Reporter

The uniqueness of Jesus National Catholic Reporter

Father is smart to publicly ignore the USCCB and Rome as long as possible. No good can come from poking them with a stick.

I like what he says about Jesus as a man of faith. Indeed, Man of Faith is one of his titles. My take on it is that the way Jesus found out about his identity as Son of God was through the Scriptures rather than some mental hotline to the Divine. While he was filled with the Spirit, as the man of faith, he had to do the head work for himself.

As to his mental anguish on the cross, I suspect it to be entirely authentic and not at all hopeful. If one reads all four Gospels, one can come to the truth. Just prior to this moment, in John, he gives the care of his mother over to his beloved disciple (rather than telling this disciple to carry on his mission). In other words, he cuts himself off from the source of his divinity - his virgin birth (whose recollections also must have informed him of his divine nature). He also cuts off his mission.

Doing these things likely fills him with the anguish he needs to authentically call out to God in despair. The fact that this despair is the essence of salvation can be demostrated by his drinking of the fruit of the vine at this next moment after the statement "I thirst." If drinking the vinegar falls into the promise that he wait to do so until he is in his Father's kingdom, then it must already be fulfilled, even before his death. The alternative is that the whole of Christianity is a sham, for he indeed drink the fruit of the vine before he died, although he refused it when first crucified.