The Theology Police
The Monday Mystery Part 5: The Finding of the Child Jesus in the Temple
“And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them” (Luke 2:50)
Welcome to the fifth entry of The Monday Mystery. Each week I will write a reflection on a mystery (i.e. an episode in the life of Jesus or Mary) from the Rosary. My hope for this series is to provide fuel and inspiration for your own meditations. When you finish reading the reflection, I encourage you to do a ‘test run’ of the mystery by praying a decade of the Rosary (i.e. one Our Father, ten Hail Marys, and one Glory Be) while meditating on the mystery.
Whenever I write about God, there’s always a part of me that worries a SWAT team of theologians will burst into the room and haul me off to jail. My recurring nightmare goes something like this:
“GET ON THE GROUND! Alright buddy. You’re under arrest for mangling key distinctions which underpin the hypostatic union between Christ’s human and divine natures. Didn’t you pay attention in Christology?”
Can you tell that I’m ready for a break from school? Kidding aside, my training in theology and scripture studies has given me a great respect, and even a healthy caution regarding the depth of these fields. I wrote an article about chess and the Dunning-Kruger effect earlier this year. The lessons I learned there are similar here. I’m good enough at chess that I would probably beat a hundred out of a hundred random people I ran into on the street. But put me up against a serious competition player and they will make me look silly. Similarly, I probably know more about the Bible and the Catholic faith than a hundred out of a hundred random people off the street. But one of the most humbling and frustrating things about my education was realizing that even after receiving a graduate degree, I won’t be an expert. To truly become an expert I’d need to dedicate my life to these areas.
When I realized this, I thought to myself “What’s the point then? And what business do I have teaching other people if I myself am ignorant of so much?” But eventually I realized that while I don’t know everything, I still know enough to help most people, and I have a lifetime to keep learning more. You don’t have to be a world renowned grandmaster to help other people learn chess. As exciting, impressive, and inspiring as the grandmaster’s tournament exploits may be, the high school chess coach and the coffee house club manager help far more people learn and find joy in chess. This, I think, summarizes the difference between a pastor and a scholar. The point of seminary is not to become a scholar. The point is to not be a pushover when someone comes to you with questions and objections.
My seminary education has certainly given me a good sense of the deep theological puzzles beneath today’s mystery. Generally speaking, if you’re talking about Jesus, chances are there was a centuries long, religion-defining debate on the very topic you’re discussing. And today’s mystery is no exception. Why are Christians so picky? Why did such ferocious disputes arise in the ancient church over such bone-dry and impenetrably technical matters of theological speculation? After all, at the end of the day, isn’t the most important thing for us to love one another?
The reason, in short, is that the Gospel gives us a radically unique and supernaturally empowered path to loving one another. It contains the fullest explanation for why we should love one another, as well as why we struggle and fail to do so. Most importantly, it reveals what is ultimately the only workable solution for our lack of love, that is, the life of grace we enter into when we place our faith in Jesus Christ, repent from our sins, and receive baptism. If Christianity really has what it claims to offer, then it’s incredibly important that we get it right.
In particular, the early Christians quickly realized that when it comes to the Gospel, if Jesus isn’t really God, or if he didn’t really and fully become human, then the math doesn’t add up. St. Anselm explained that Jesus needed to be fully God and fully human because of our sins: “But the debt was so great that while man alone owed it, only God could pay it.”1 Gregory Nazienzen explained it in terms of nature: Jesus needed to assume our nature to redeem it. He famously wrote: “that which is not assumed is not saved…”2
This is easy enough to grasp on paper. But when you meditate carefully on today’s mystery, you realize how appropriate the word ‘mystery’ is. Although Jesus is God, he acts exactly like we might expect a twelve year old to act. And although Jesus is all knowing, the passage we draw this mystery from says he grew in wisdom (See Luke 2:52). How can an all knowing God grow in wisdom? And if Jesus loved and honored his parents, why did he act in a way that was so seemingly inconsiderate?
Several years ago I attended a conference in Montreal. After a full day of slogging through travel delays (including several mind numbing hours snaking through customs lines), the journey became a race against the clock to not miss Sunday mass. At the last moment, I staggered into a small Church offering a ‘last chance’ Sunday evening mass. There a visiting bishop gave an excellent homily on the finding of Jesus. He noted that Jesus’ actions caused Mary and Joseph great distress, and that Jesus appears to be in the wrong. How is this possible if he’s God? The bishop noted that there are three ways which we can hurt other people: sin, lack of maturity, and miscommunication.
The first is sin i.e., genuine wrongdoing. Something is wrong, we know it’s wrong, and yet we do it anyway. We have all committed sin, and we have all seen others commit sin. Because Jesus is God, we can rule this option out. God by definition cannot sin. As relatable and nice as they might sound, sermons that suggest that Jesus did something wrong and/or needed to ask Mary and Joseph for forgiveness are simply confused on this rather fundamental point of faith. To avoid the theology police, I suggest these pastors move to the other end of the country, substantially alter their appearance (perhaps by growing a beard or dying their hair), and start paying for everything in cash.
The second is a lack of maturity. Sometimes, for whatever reason, there’s an aspect of our human development which hasn’t gotten enough time in the oven. Sometimes it’s because we’ve neglected our growth, or it has been stunted by things that have happened to us. But even if someone stays completely on schedule, they won’t be as mature at age seven as they are at age twelve.
This sheds some light on Jesus’ growing in wisdom. Although Jesus was God, he seems to have chosen to act in ways that were consistent with his stage of development. He did not run around as a baby, even though, being God, he could have traveled anywhere he wanted, or miraculously given his infant legs the power to support him. In the same way that Jesus did not run around as an infant, we might suppose that he did not ‘reason around’ as a child.
To be crystal clear, Jesus did not lack the ability to reason, in fact, he possessed no positive ignorance at any point in his life. Thomas Aquinas explains:
…As there was the fulness of grace and virtue in Christ, so too there was the fulness of all knowledge, as is plain from what has been said above (III:7:9; Article 9). Now as the fulness of grace and virtue in Christ excluded the "fomes" of sin, so the fulness of knowledge excluded ignorance, which is opposed to knowledge. Hence, even as the "fomes" of sin was not in Christ, neither was there ignorance in Him.3
Thomas explains that Jesus chose to forgo expressing his knowledge through his behavior. If Jesus became a philosopher king from the moment he was capable of speaking, that would make it harder to believe he had become a human. Jesus chose to gradually reveal his wisdom to help our faith:
If he had wished to show his wisdom when he was seven years old, men could have doubted the reality of his assumed human nature, and for this reason Christ wished to be conformed to other men. Therefore, the Apostle to the Philippians says: He emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. Christ made himself little by taking on our littleness; and in order that he might truly show himself to be little he was made in the likeness of men. The Apostle says: He was seen on earth and conversed with men, and Christ first revealed his wisdom at that age when wise judgement usually first appears in a person, namely, when he was twelve years old. Therefore, he wished to reveal his wisdom little by little, not [all at once], so that the truth of his human nature within him would be accepted, and so that he might give us an example of growing in wisdom.4
The final way is miscommunication. We, and especially parents can take comfort here from the example of Mary and Joseph. So many parents beat themselves up. ‘If I were a better Mom, this wouldn’t have happened.’ ‘If I were a better Dad things would be different.’ I hope meditating on this mystery can help them be less hard on themselves: Mary and Joseph were two of the holiest people who ever lived. And yet they lost Jesus. Sometimes these things just happen, and it isn’t anyone’s fault. That doesn’t make incidents like this any less scary or distressing. But we should channel the anxiety we feel into seeking the Lord, as Mary and Joseph did. His answers may be perplexing and frustrating, but because he is God, we can always know that Jesus is about his father’s business.
For your test run of today’s mystery, imagine the moment twelve year old Jesus departs for the temple, and follow him as he walks along the way. He is not disrespecting his parents. What then is he doing and why? What is his Father’s business? May God bless you as you meditate.
Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo, Chapter XVIII, https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/basis/anselm-curdeus.asp (This source renders the latin in this way: “and this debt was so great that, while none but man must solve the debt, none but God was able to do it).
Gregory Nazianzen Epistle 101 https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3103a.htm (Phrased “For that which He has not assumed He has not healed” in this online source.)
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.XV.III, https://www.newadvent.org/summa/4015.htm
Thomas Aquinas Sermon: Puer Iesus translated by Athanasius Sulavik https://isidore.co/aquinas/english/SermPuerIesus.htm