A Mature Faith Fit for the New Millennium

In the search for meaning and transcendence in a worldly culture where reality must be concrete and truth verifiable, there is a well-worn path trod by those drawn to the miraculous stories of Jesus.

There are those along the path who believe that the scriptural accounts of the son of God are literally true. Jesus really did turn water into wine. He really raised Lazarus from the dead. And, most central to the Christian faith, he really overcame death on the cross.

Others are incredulous at stories of miracles and the bodily resuscitation of a man executed by an occupying Roman government. They look instead for the historical Jesus, a remarkable Jewish holy man whose life changed the world--but a man nonetheless who was subject to the limitations of all flesh.

Then there are the intrepid and disquieted believers who refuse to be bound by either the literalism of biblical fundamentalism or that of scientific inquiry. Donald Spoto, a former monk and biographer of Alfred Hitchcock, Laurence Olivier, Tennessee Williams and Ingrid Bergman, falls into the latter category.

Wherever his life has led, from the monastery to Hollywood, there has remained in him a need to penetrate what an anonymous English contemplative called the “cloud of unknowing.” Spoto’s new book calls it by another name, “The Hidden Jesus.”

To be sure, Spoto is not the first to say there was no Christmas star, no wise men from the East, no execution by Herod of Jewish children. He is not the first to see in the Jesus stories an adaptation of Rabbinic epics of Moses designed to make a case that in Jesus--the new Moses--Jewish prophecies are fulfilled.

Were he to stop at this point, he would simply be another in a long line of authors who have attempted to deconstruct traditional Christianity, some of whom take perverse pleasure in chortling at faith claims.

Spoto, however, does not dismiss these stories but delves deeply into them for hidden messages of transcendent love from a God who is forever “friendly.” More important, Spoto writes, God is “forever present in our present.”

He does so with a realistic humility. All language, he warns, is inadequate to the task of appropriating the divine. Metaphor is necessary to even begin to speak about the ineffable.

So far so good so true--and so common. But Spoto, after thinking about the subject of his book for 20 years, goes further. This former theology professor offers a mature faith fit for the new millennium. At times the homilist, at times the catechist and at times the religious dreamer, he is not satisfied with merely finding nuggets of truth embedded in ancient tales.

Though there is much that is conventional in his theology, his takes on time and the Resurrection are fascinating, if speculative. He suggests, for example, that a literal reading of the Resurrection may be justified in light of current understandings of physics and matter-energy.

“Can we say once and for all and with absolute confidence that there is no other type of body but one of flesh?” he writes. “Is it not in fact reasonable that you and I will eventually inhabit not a body of sinew and muscle, blood and tissue, but one wholly different yet continuous with our identity, so that we can say with even more confidence that we shall, like Jesus, survive the grave?”

Having said that, however, Spoto strains his case by making it “very clear” that he is not saying Jesus’ earthly body decayed like mortals’. After all, he points out, Scripture says the tomb was empty. It seems Spoto wants it both ways.

He also offers interesting insights into how scientific concepts of time-space fit within theological concepts of the timelessness of God: If God is always in the present, then God is present to us. If the Resurrection is always present, then it happens in the present for us.

Spoto’s strongest points are in his discussion of the hidden Jesus. So apparently unremarkable was Jesus among his contemporaries--a carpenter turned preacher--that he was “hidden” from his family, his disciples and perhaps even himself, Spoto says.

It was only after his Resurrection that what seemed unremarkable became remarkable. Only then dawned a recognition that his love and care for the sick and disenfranchised was evidence that he had been so infused by the spirit of God that he was God in the flesh.

Metaphor attempts to convey this epiphany, he writes. It becomes palpable in silence. Which brings us back to the Spoto main theme:

Engaging in a bit of metaphorical writing himself, Spoto concludes, “In Jesus, God does indeed speak, but in silence; he shouts over our noise, but in a whisper. Now as then, he remains hidden--and so forever discloses Himself. In stillness, we hear him. In allowing ourselves to be loved by God, we find the hidden Jesus, who, quietly and gradually, transforms our jaded lives.”