Chapter today was lively. We were discussing whether of not Jesus knew He would be resurrected. Dr. McCoy said that some theologians don't think Jesus knew He was going to be resurrected. That He was just accepting the Will of God in going through with His crucifixion.
I immediately jumped all over that presumption. Scripture reference show that He knew--destroy this temple and in 3 days....the angel in the tomb told the women that He did what He told you.... Dr. McCoy said that those references were applied after the fact. That scholars looked for places where they could apply references.
We went round and round about it.
Meanwhile, my eyes noticed a sign that I had never noticed before: "Chapel or Battle Room." This Lay Dominican Chapter is in a prison. So I surmised that the Battle Room was the place where the correctional officers would assemble to group, arm , plan...what to do in case of an emergency. But in the chapel? Why that room and not another?
I also thought, how apropos! Does not the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass do battle against Satan?
I asked my "cloistered brother" what the sign, "Chapel or Battle Room," meant.
He just responded that if you go through those doors, you can go upstairs to the Chapel, or downstairs to the Battle Room.
"Oh." :-/
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4 comments:
Hi Faith! Glad to read about this.
Yes, well the comment I made was in reference to another Dominican brother's remark that Fr Manximilian Kolbe must have had a more difficult choice to make in his sacrificial death than Jesus in choosing his own death. The brother offered the reasoning that Jesus knew of his own resurrection with divine foreknowledge, while Fr Kolbe did not, so Fr Kolbe's choice was harder. I replied, this is why some theologians have emphasized that Jesus in his humanity suffered all of human death as a human being would, ie, with the same fear, anxiety, pain, and so on...and possibly even possessing imperfect (human) knowledge of what would happen from moment to moment, resting in a pure faith that God's will was being done and that God would redeem the situation. They have argued that Jesus did not know the precise nature of how he would die, how long it would take, the exact nature of the resurrection, or the future well being of the Church completely in advance, but rather did the will of His Father in faith and obedience. You are right that the difficulty with this view is that there are Scriptural references to the prediction of death and resurrection, so for example, Scholastic and neo-Scholastics saw Jesus' knowledge as unlimited in this area. But some Biblical scholars read those references as the later community's reflections upon Jesus' words during his ministry. Karly Rahner argued that Jesus did not have a kind of encyclopedic knowledge of all human history, but one where his consciousness, always in the presence of the divine, nonetheless developed in human history.
The difficulty is that Jesus dies both fully divine and fully human, just as He lived. My main point was that since Jesus did die as a human being, as well as divin, He did certainly undergo the same kinds of fear, loss, sadness, not only physical but also emotional pain that we all would. The key difference often between us and Him is that He still reaches out in Love from the Cross...but there, too, not only as God but also as an embodiment of what it means to be a fully human person. --Marina McCoy
Another brief comment: I do not deny myself that Jesus may have known of his death and resurrection in advance, but it's worthwhile to point out that many of the comments Jesus makes about how He will eventually die are in the context of speaking about discipleship. It's less prediction for its own sake than explaining to Peter and the others, if you follow me, this is what it means to be a disciple, to take up the Cross, and to act in love even unto death. At least His comments cannot be limited to prediction of the future, but a deeper kind of call to the vocation of being a Christian. --Marina McCoy
Thanks, Marina. I think it's common sense that Jesus wasn't born knowing everything in the future. He grew into that knowledge. So I actually agree with everything you said.
LOL I just found out that the "Battle Room" is named after someone whose last name was Battle.
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