There has been something Promethean about the critical labor of turning Christ the Lord back into Jesus of Nazareth, but the transgressive daring of the historical critique must not eclipse the enormity of the original literary offense itself. And that offense, that effrontery, cannot be appreciated unless the God of Israel has first been confronted in all his untamed and terrifying intensity. That of all gods this god should be imagined to have become of all men this man; and that, repudiating everything he had always seemed to be, he should have had himself put to death by the enemy of his chosen people — this is a reversal so stunning that it changes everything back to the beginning. The Rock of Ages cannot die as God; but as God Incarnate, the Rock can be cleft. God, shattered, can descend to death; and when he rises to eternal life, he can lift his human creatures up with him. Victory is postponed in the Christian revision of the Jewish epic no less than in the Jewish original. Yet because that victory is assured, even the poor, even the meek, even the grief-stricken and scorned who in this world must hunger and thirst for justice may count themselves blessed. Theirs, because he made himself one of them, is the kingdom of heaven.
