Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

So this profound conflict is about the will of God. That will does not mean always keeping the norms of conduct. It is not timeless. It has its moment. It has its hour, again and again, and that hour can very quickly become the moment of truth. Peter has suddenly entered into this moment of truth, just as Jesus uninterruptedly enters into it. Note: the “will of God” is not that Jesus should be killed in Jerusalem but that Israel everywhere, including in the capital city, should be confronted with the Gospel of the reign of God.

Once again Jesus acts with ultimate decisiveness. When it is a matter of the will of God, of the reign of God, everything else takes a back seat for him; he permits no compromise, even if it should cost him his life. It is true that he himself is tempted to the most profound depths of his being. The scene on the Mount of Olives shows that. And yet he possesses an inerrant consistency. Jesus went his way in an unconditional determination focused entirely on God. That unconditional attitude is revealed also in a matter that cuts deep into the life of every person: having a life partner.

Jesus’ Celibacy

We spoke in the eighth chapter of this book about Jesus’ sign-actions: for example, the creation of the group of the Twelve and the establishment of a new family. We set aside one fundamental sign-action in Jesus’ life, namely, that he did not marry. But it must be discussed in this book, because it is an essential part of “who Jesus was.” Luke 9:57-58 reports the following: “As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.’” That is: if you want to follow me you may have to live as I live. You will have no nest of your own full of comfort and safety. You will have no building in which you are sheltered and protected. You may even have your own family against you and all your relatives too.

The Son of Man has nothing on which to rest his head. We can easily think of the spouse who can embrace her husband, in whose love he can breathe, in whose understanding he can rest. Jesus had none of that. Why? Because he wasn’t mature enough? Or out of hostility to the flesh? Or rejection of sexuality? Or fear of women? Or some kind of rigorism or fanaticism? Hatred of the world? The right answer is found in a saying of Jesus transmitted in Matthew 19:12:

There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let anyone accept this who can.

This saying, typical of Jesus in its extreme sharpness and almost ironic play of language, needs an explanation of its own. The Greek text speaks of “eunuchs” and “being made eunuchs,” that is, castrati and castration. Jesus lists three possibilities: there are men who lack sexual organs from birth, others who have been castrated against their will, and still others who have castrated themselves. We have to translate this drastic speech in order to be clear about what Jesus means. He is saying that there are people who are incapable of marriage from birth. Others are made incapable of marriage in some way by their environment. But there are also people who remain unmarried freely and by their own decision.

It sounds more genteel that way, and some modern versions translate it in this polite way.⁷ But Jesus is not so genteel. His way of speaking is extraordinarily drastic, and all the more so because castration was strictly forbidden in Israel.⁸ He also speaks in extreme terms in view of the fact that remaining unmarried was despised by his contemporaries. The rabbis appealed to Genesis 1:28 (“increase and multiply”) to say that begetting progeny was a duty ordered by God. “He who does not engage in propagation of the race is as though he sheds blood.”⁹

And Rabbi Eliezer (ca. 270) said: “Any man who has no wife is no proper man; for it is said, Male and female created He them and called their name Adam.”¹⁰ Where, then, does Jesus’ drastic and pointed formulation come from?