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"Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
The popular consensus about Jesus is never going to tell us the whole story, even when it contains aspects that are true. When we ask the least informed people they may suggest that Jesus was merely fictional, mythological, like characters in so many other poetic stories. Of people who answer in this way, some may assert that the stories about him were at least noble ideals. Others may hold a grudge for the ways, some of which are indeed admittedly negative, that the story of Jesus has changed the history of the world. But the position that there was no historical reality to Jesus is not historically tenable.
One who is asked about the identity of Jesus must provide some concrete rationale for how a poor and insignificant rabbi became so important. Closer to the truth than those who say that Jesus didn't exist at all are those who suggest that he was merely a good moral teacher whose identity was later exaggerated by his followers. Or others may suggest that he was a political revolutionary whose identity took on the shape of a legend in the years after his life.
None of these common theories can provide a compelling account of the data we have from history about Jesus. One might say that Jesus was like the earlier prophets, that he so provocatively called Israel to account for her failure to put love of God and as her first priority that people desired to put him to death in order to silence him. But this doesn't explain the categorical difference between his impact and that of earlier prophets. It doesn't explain the split between early Christians and Jews in the practice of such traditions as the celebration of the Sabbath and keeping kosher food laws. It doesn't explain the meaning of the immediate and constant emphasis on the resurrection of Jesus as the central historical fact on which the faith of Christians was built.
Jesus did speak prophetically and incited much opposition in doing so. But much of this opposition was precisely because of the central place his own person played in his message, to the degree that, if it were not true it would certainly be blasphemous. None of the other prophets spoke of themselves as exciting before Abraham or as greater than Solomon, much less as one with the Father, the sole person capable of revealing him to the world. But Jesus did say and was hated for saying these and similar things. Yet, unlike the other prophets, his message was uniquely vindicated through the resurrection, the Father signing the testimony of the Son with his own divine power. Even the life of an authentic prophet could not account for the historical truth about the person of Jesus. Much less so the life of a merely political revolutionary, who would quickly have been forgotten along with so many other violent messianic figures of the time.
He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"
Even if we ask other Christians about Jesus they can only answer by telling us about Jesus. Even if we can repeat with exactitude what they have told us, correctly stating that he is fully human and fully divine, it does not mean that we have internalized those truths, or that we know him in the way he wants to be known. It is one thing to say truly that Jesus is Lord. But it is something else to experience the truth of who he is through a revelation that transforms our lives. What others can't convey through mere words the Father desires to reveal to us through his Spirit. It is important to help Christians to know true doctrine about Jesus. But it is even more important to point them to a personal encounter with him.
"Being Christian is not the result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the encounter with an event, a person, which gives life a new horizon and a decisive direction."
- Deus Caritas Est, Benedict XVI
The role Peter was given in the Church as a guarantee against the forces of the netherworld is unique to him and his successors, the popes. But the guarantee is built on his faith in the revelation of the Father precisely to signal that the Church will always be a rock were the truth can be found. The voice of Peter calls through the centuries, not only teaching us truths about Jesus, but calling each of us to have our own encounter with him. She does this perhaps most perfectly in the mass, where she not only presents to us Jesus as an object of faith, but invites us to come and receive the Eucharistic Lord.
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