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PDF FormatIt is precisely the lack of lust in Jesus’ origin—a virgin birth and an Almighty father—that guarantees Jesus’ status as savior. Yet Jesus is believed to be the son not only of God, but of Mary as well; in fact, the New Testament claims Mary as Jesus’ biological link to the Davidic dynasty. But was that dynasty not produced through the various scandals enumerated above? Is not, then, the Christian messiah maternally linked to a scandalous and sinful past? The Catholic Church need not address this issue, for it asserts the doctrine of “immaculate conception,” according to which the mother of Jesus was unlike her ancestors: She was untainted by Adam’s fall, and therefore not in need of the salvation that her son would offer humanity. Mary, Pius IX declared in 1854, “in the first instance of her conception, by a singular privilege and grace granted by God, in view of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the human race, was preserved exempt from all stain of original sin.”26 Because of the sanctity of the savior, his mother is Eve personified: Woman as she was before the Fall, and unlike her sinful ancestors in every way—without urges, without desires, tempted by nothing but the opportunity to serve God.
Here, then, lies the remarkable contrast in the way each faith depicts its messiah. According to Christianity, the messiah was born of a virgin, conceived without the slightest sense of sexual desire. Moreover, not only the messiah himself but also his mother was born untainted. For Jews, however, the messiah descends from a history of scandalous affairs, each more perverse than the next. On his family tree, one will find kings, warriors, and poets—but also bastards, prostitutes, and sworn enemies of Israel. Nor did the rabbinic sages shy away from the salaciousness of the messianic narrative; on the contrary, they embraced it. Where will you find the son of Jesse? asks the midrash. “He is in Sodom.”27 The midrash goes so far as to tell of other scandals not explicitly enumerated in the Bible, suggesting at one point that Bathsheba was raped by David, and that David himself was also conceived under dubious circumstances.28
This disparity in the account of the messianic lineage is a reflection of how each religion sees the connection between repentance and redemption. Christians believe in a messiah whose righteousness made up for the wickedness of all others, and whose own perfection redeemed the imperfections of humanity. Such a messiah was born, lived, and died in purity, thereby redeeming an impure world that could not redeem itself. Jews, on the other hand, believe that the messiah exists not to save the world from damnation, but rather to inspire the world to earn its own redemption. “Fortunate is a generation,” remarks the Talmud, “whose leaders must atone for their sins.”29 This does not mean, the Talmud assures us, that we should desire wicked leaders, but that only a generation whose leaders overcame their own flaws can genuinely inspire their subjects to act likewise. Thus, in designating David as the ancestor of the messiah, the Jewish tradition teaches that the messiah can rise above his family history and even his own sinfulness—and so can every man. While Paul saw humanity as forever cursed by the sins of its ancestor Adam, the messiah of Hebrew scripture symbolizes the ability of man to defy his own past, and to bring about his own redemption.
IV
If Christians and Jews differ on the nature of the messianic figure and on the capacity of man to redeem himself, this difference has broad implications for the way man may bring himself closer to God, even in the absence of the messianic redemption. And indeed, these two approaches—of man who needs to be saved versus man who saves himself—find powerful expression in the respective attitudes of Christianity and Judaism towards repentance.
The Christian approach to repentance owes its origins in large part to the parable of “The Pharisee and the Publican,” which appears in the book of Luke:
Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: Thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.30
In a sermon on the above parable, Martin Luther urged the emulation of the publican and the adoption of the following attitude:
I am indeed a sinner, but still God is gracious to me; I am God’s enemy, but he is now my friend; I should justly be condemned, yet I know that he does not desire to condemn me, but to save me as an heir of heaven. This is his will, which he has had preached to me, and commanded me to believe for the sake of his dear Son, whom he has given for me.31
How ought we approach God in repentance? What should our orientation be when we beg forgiveness from the Almighty? Jesus’ answer is that we come before God not merely as men who have sinned and now wish to repent, but rather as sinners, whose sins reveal something ontologically awry, a metaphysical flaw in ourselves, that we cannot repair on our own.
In contrast, the paradigmatic penitent in Hebrew scripture, David, consistently strikes a different posture than does the publican. David never asks God’s mercy as an inveterate sinner, but rather as one who has sinned:
Nathan said to David…. “Why have you despised the word of the Eternal, to do what is evil in his sight? You have struck down Uriah the Hittite with the sword, and have taken his wife to be your wife, and have killed him with the sword of the Ammonites.…” And David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Eternal.”32
We find a similar response from David after he takes a census of his subjects, in apparent violation of the biblical law. The book of Samuel reports that “David was stricken to the heart because he had numbered the people. David said to the Eternal, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O Eternal, I pray you, take away the guilt of your servant; for I have done very foolishly.’”33 Once again, David’s focus is not on a fundamental flaw in his soul, but rather on the actions that he has committed, and for which he seeks to repent.
Likewise, a distinction can be discerned in the way that Christians and Jews pray for repentance. In its opening section on “Prayer,” the catechism of the Catholic Church draws on the story of the publican:
The prayer of the Church, nourished by the Word of God and the celebration of the liturgy, teaches us to pray to the Lord Jesus. Even though her prayer is addressed above all to the Father, it includes in all the liturgical traditions forms of prayer addressed to Christ…. The most usual formulation, transmitted by the spiritual writers of the Sinai, Syria, and Mount Athos, is the invocation, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on us sinners”.… By it the heart is opened to human wretchedness and the Savior’s mercy.34
Jewish liturgy, too, makes manifold references to our sins; the vidui,the lengthy list of wrongs that we have committed, is an essential part of the prayer services on Yom Kippur, and, for many Jews, throughout the rest of the year as well. Yet the focus is always on the specific actions that we have committed: At no point does the liturgy describe our sins as indicative of a deeper, sinful human state, of a wretchedness inherent in the human condition. Indeed, the first prayer said each morning by traditional Jews begins as follows:
My God, the soul you placed within me is pure. You created it, you fashioned it, you breathed it into me, you safeguard it within me, and eventually you will take it from me, and restore it to me in time to come. As long as the soul is within me, I am grateful to you, Eternal my God and the God of my forefathers, Master of all works, Eternal of all souls. Blessed are you, Eternal, who restores souls to dead bodies.
