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    Jesus-Shock
    Jesus-Shock
    Jesus-Shock
    Ebook137 pages2 hours

    Jesus-Shock

    By Peter Kreeft

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    About this ebook

    Jesus Shock is the second in a series of short works on seminal concerns of the impact that Jesus Christ made in the world. The first work, The Philosophy of Jesus (St. Augustine’s Press, 2007), explored philosophy in light of Jesus, rather than the other way around. The present work investigates the reception Jesus received both in His lifetime and continuously to the present time, not only from His enemies, but from His friends, a reception of shock, astonishment, even disgust.
      Perhaps a few remarks from the book best explains it:

    The point of the book:
     The point of the title: Imagine a storm has downed a telephone wire so that everyone who touches it is shocked in every cell of his body. Well, the storm of God’s crazy love has “downed” (incarnated) Jesus, and everyone who touches this “live wire” is shocked in every cell of his soul.
     The question of the book: Why is “Jesus” the most non-neutral, the most controversial, the most embarrassing name in the world? Why is talking about Jesus like talking about sex?
     This whole book is really about a single movie line, the greatest line in the greatest movie in history. Bet you know what it is.
     Jesus-Shock is about the Real Presence of Christ in the Gospels and in the Eucharist. It
    is not about the theology of the Real Presence, but about the experience of Him there, and about the experience of everyone in the Gospels who met Him.

     What was the bitterest controversy of the Protestant Reformation, both between Protestants and Catholics and between different Protestant denominations, the one that had both sides calling the other not just heretics but devils?   
     Answer: It was not Justification by Faith, the hallmark of the Reformation, even though that question is about nothing less momentous than how to be saved, how to get to Heaven. It was not the relation between religion and politics, even though that was a matter of life or death (literally, on battlefields and at guillotines and hangings) and not just a matter of truth or falsity, or of good or evil. It was not about the sufficiency of the Bible, or the corruption in the Church, or the relation between the Bible and the Church. It was not about the Pope, and the governance of the Church. It was not about Mary or saints or angels or Purgatory. It was not about the Incarnation or the Trinity or the Atonement.
     It was about the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

     Jesus-Shock, in addressing this controversy forcefully and faithfully, shows the reasons why to this day the name of “Jesus” stirs up controversy, even revulsion, in polite society. In the true spirit of ecumenism, it also points the way toward a true rapprochement among His modern-day disciples.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSt. Augustines Press
    Release dateApr 30, 2020
    ISBN9781587313998
    Jesus-Shock
    Author

    Peter Kreeft

    Peter Kreeft (PhD, Fordham University) is professor of philosophy at Boston College where he has taught since 1965. A popular lecturer, he has also taught at many other colleges, seminaries and educational institutions in the eastern United States. Kreeft has written more than fifty books, including The Best Things in Life, The Journey, How to Win the Culture War, and Handbook of Christian Apologetics (with Ronald Tacelli).

    Read more from Peter Kreeft

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      Book preview

      Jesus-Shock - Peter Kreeft

      References

      Part One: Seven Beginnings

      Beginning #1

      The Puzzling Question This Book Answers

      THIS BOOK HAS SEVEN beginnings. I don’t call them introductions or prefaces to the book because they are beginnings of the book itself. They are all questions.

      Nothing is more meaningless than an answer to a question that is never asked. Here, in two short pages, is the question this book answers. Everything else in the book is part of the answer.

      The question is this: Why is Jesus the most controversial and the most embarrassing name in the world?

      No one is embarrassed if you talk about Buddha, or Muhammad, or Moses. Neither Buddhists nor non-Buddhists are embarrassed to talk about Buddha. Why are almost all educated, non-fundamentalist Christians embarrassed to talk about Jesus to non-Christians, and why are almost all non-Christians embarrassed to hear such talk?

      If you’re not sure my assumption is true, test it, in any secular company, or mixed company, especially educated company. The name will fall with a thud, and produce sudden silence and embarrassment. You not only hear the embarrassment, you can feel it. The temperature drops. Or rises. It never stays the same.

      You might answer that Christians are embarrassed not for themselves but for others: they are embarrassed only because they are sensitive to the embarrassment they know the name of Jesus will cause to non-Christians. But that only pushes the mystery back one step: why are non-Christians so embarrassed at this name? Why is Jesus the most non-neutral name in the world?

      Jesus talk is like sex talk. There is no neutral language for sex. All our words about sex are either sexy or an attempt to avoid being sexy. They are either (1) the ecstatic language of love, or (2) the gutter language of raunch, or (3) the tension-releasing language of the laugh (sex and religion are the two most popular subjects of jokes), or (4) the deliberately impersonal, scientific, and technological language of clinical medicine. And our words about Jesus are either (1) love-words, or (2) blasphemy words, or (3) jokes, or (4) impersonal, technical, theological words.

      I’ll bet you never realized this before: the perfect correlation between Jesus talk and sex talk. Why didn’t you see it before? It’s both obvious and interesting. Is it too close? Is it embarrassing? Why?

      Jesus is a sword. He divides. You cannot be neutral about Him until you make a deliberate effort to thrust something away, something in your heart: either passionate attraction or passionate rejection of something, or at least deep embarrassment at something. Is it just at Christians? Is it at Christianity? Or is it at Christ?

      Why is He history’s greatest divider? Why is He the razor edge of the round world? What does He do to you, to put you on that edge, no matter who you are and no matter what you believe or don’t believe?

      Beginning #2:

      What Is This Book About?

      Reader: Why should I read this book? What is it about?

      Author: It’s about the difference Jesus makes.

      Reader: The difference He makes to what?

      Author: To everyone He meets.

      Reader: But there are thousands of different answers to that question. That would require thousands of different books.

      Author: No, only one. Because there is a single answer, a single phenomenon, which I call Jesus-shock, and that phenomenon has been all but forgotten. And even when it is not forgotten, it has not been named. This book identifies it and names it.

      Reader: I am skeptical. What new could be said about Jesus, after 2000 years?

      Author: Everything. He makes all things new. Just watch. Come and see.

      Beginning #3:

      A Self-Test, A Questionnaire

      HERE IS A SELF-TEST. It helps you to know yourself and your philosophy of life, your worldview. Don’t worry about its connection with this book: that will come after the test.

      Answer, as honestly and as concisely as you can, each of the following questions. Be sure you write your answers down in the blanks, rather than just thinking about them. You can deceive yourself about your thoughts very easily, but you cannot deceive yourself about what you make with your hands and see with your eyes.

      First, ten personal questions, questions about persons:

      1–3. Who do you think are the three greatest living persons in the world today?

      1.  _____________________________________

      2.  _____________________________________

      3.  _____________________________________

      4.  Who do you think is the most powerful person in the world today, whether for good or for evil?

      _____________________________________

      5.–10. Name the person you turn to first for advice and help when you have problems in each of the following areas of your life:

      5.  mental health__________________________

      6.  marriage______________________________

      7.  money _______________________________

      8.  sex __________________________________

      9.  family ________________________________

      10. work, career ___________________________

      Next, some theological questions:

      11. Why did God create the universe?

      ____________________________________

      12. How can we know God?

      ____________________________________

      13. What is God like?

      ____________________________________

      14. Why do you believe in life after death?

      ____________________________________

      15. What is the secret of getting wisdom?

      ____________________________________

      16. How can a wicked person become righteous?

      ____________________________________

      17. How can you become a saint?

      ____________________________________

      18. When you die and meet God and He asks you why He should let you into Heaven, what will you say?

      ____________________________________

      19. What is the Church?

      ____________________________________

      20. What is the solution to the problem of war?

      ____________________________________

      21. What did St. Paul know that you do not know that made him such an effective evangelist?

      ____________________________________

      22. Christianity seems to be just one religion among many in the world. How can this local, Western, Jewish, particular thing be for everyone, universally?

      ____________________________________

      23. What is Christianity? What does it preach, say, claim, or proclaim?

      ____________________________________

      Next, some philosophical questions:

      24. What is truth?

      ____________________________________

      25. Define your way of life.

      ____________________________________

      26. Define life.

      ____________________________________

      27. What is death?

      ____________________________________

      Next, some psychological questions:

      28. What is the end, goal, and purpose of your life?

      ____________________________________

      29. What is your solution to boredom?

      ____________________________________

      30. Define your true identity. Who are you?

      ____________________________________

      31. Why is your identity so mysterious?

      ____________________________________

      32. What is the best cure for loneliness?

      ____________________________________

      33. What can you do when you feel tired all the time?

      ____________________________________

      Finally, two questions to pull it all together:

      34. What was the last command of the last apostle?

      ____________________________________

      35. What is the most frequently disobeyed Commandment?

      ____________________________________

      The Point of the Test

      After you write down your honest answers—only after you write down your honest answers—you should now grade yourself. By what standard? The New Testament. If you are a Christian, your answers should match. If they don’t match, this means that you still have something to learn about being a Christian; and that means that perhaps you need this book.

      Here are the New Testament’s answers to all thirty-five questions, in boldface type. You can summarize all thirty-five answers in the same single five-letter word. It is the name that is above every name (Phil. 2:9), the name to which the angels beyond the universe and all the powers of the universe must bow (Phil. 2:10).

      1.–3. Who are the three greatest living persons?

      Why do you seek the living among the dead? (Lk. 24:5)

      If you didn’t say the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, why? Do you think God is impersonal? Do you think that only human persons are persons? Even if you thought that, why didn’t you list Jesus? Do you really, deep down, think of Him as dead, not alive?

      4. Who is the most powerful person in the world today?

      And Jesus said to them: all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. (Mt.

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