Four Gospel Genealogies

In recent posts, I have reflected on what genealogical work might mean for a Christian intellectual. My basic claim is that we stand in a kind of between position, and that the task of a Christian genealogist is to explore this historical context as a way of understanding what contemporary Irish philosopher William Desmond calls the metalogical. This is the space in which neither the eternal and transcendent nor the temporal and immanent are denied, and so we can be open to a history beyond either determination or contingency. I want to shift from these philosophical claims to look at the four Gospels’ genealogies. The four Gospels provide fertile ground for thinking about genealogical work. One might be surprised at the idea of talking about four Gospel genealogies since it seems only Matthew and Luke provide genealogies. Nonetheless, the Christian genealogist must engage with the portrayal of Jesus presented in John and Mark if we are to get a full vision of the task of Christian thinking.

Tree of Jesse, Anonymous Netherlandish artist, 15th c.

To start, let’s turn to Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies. In Matthew, we see Jesus’ lineage traced from the past to the present. This lineage is traced through the history of the Hebrew people and forms a threefold structure of 14s: “the total number of generations from Abraham to David is fourteen generations; from David to the Babylonian exile fourteen generations; from the Babylonian exile to the Messiah, fourteen generations.” Jesus is marked by his place in the history of the Jewish people, who are the People of God. The emphasis is on Jesus as Messiah, through his connection to Abraham the father of faith and David the king. In contrast, Luke’s genealogy begins with the present and moves into the past. Jesus is placed in the Davidic line and connected to Abraham; however, Luke places this Hebrew heritage in an anthropological context. He runs Jesus’ lineage beyond Abraham to Adam. The Lucan genealogy emphasizes Jesus’ position as human, as from Adam. Luke does not deny Jesus’ Judaism but affirms his place in the human family.

Here we see two features of Christian genealogy. Following Matthew, it traces the history of the people of God. Matthean questions include the following: How are we to understand the Church as a pilgrim community across time? In what ways do we see continuities and discontinuities in this history? Following Luke, Christian genealogies seek to articulate a history of humanity, a story in which the Church is a part. How are we to understand the history of humanity and the complex communities that make up this broader category? How are we to understand the people of God in its relations to the nations? To draw on Augustine, we must understand the City of God within the City of Man. Augustine insists that we cannot disentangle that history, because the demarcation of those two cities is too difficult to ascertain. And yet, we can trace the complicated lineages of both cities if we seek God’s actions within these human stories. It is important to see here that this cannot be reduced to an account of a religious genealogy next to or against a secular one. Luke is not giving a secular history. He traces humanity not to itself but to God. Adam is “the son of God.” There is, in this sense, ultimately no “secular” history. All of history stands before God, who has sourced the contingencies of history. There may be more seeds of Providence in the city of man than Augustine is willing to grant. The Christian genealogist must be attentive to these.

If Matthew indicates a need for an ecclesial genealogy and Luke indicates the need for anthropological genealogy, what are we to make of Mark and John? The Christian genealogist should attend to these two Gospels, because they disrupt the temptations to think of genealogy in a purely immanent mode. The genealogist looks for the traces of God in time because she remains convinced that providence is the deeper story even if it is only faintly legible. Both Matthew and Luke indicate that their genealogies are only part of the narrative. For Luke, Jesus “was the Son, as was thought, of Joseph,” and Matthew writes “of Joseph, the husband of Mary. Of her was born Jesus.” Their two genealogies are put forward as essential to understanding Jesus, and yet both indicate another lineage. In this, they open the way to the Johannine genealogy.

John’s lineage steps beyond the Hebraic or the anthropological to the Divine. His Gospel opens with this theological genealogy: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The Logos is the beginning, and so is beyond, above, and before Time. Here we find neither Mary nor Joseph but the Son of the Father. The eternal Logos does not remain distant but enters history, so that “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us.” If one is to understand the origin of Christ, one must see in him the Word who creates and then enters into the time of humanity. We now find the Logos within Time. Consequently, no story of the temporal can be told without its relation to the eternal. The eternal is not distant and unreachable; it walks the paths of Galilee and so walks the paths of history. There is no merely human Jesus, and so no merely human human. As Irenaeus writes, “the glory of God is the human fully alive.” We see this glory in the Word made flesh, which reveals that human history is the story of God’s relation to time. The Christian genealogist can be tempted to let this aspect of her task fall to the side. This is partially due to the complexity of thinking of God in history. It is also difficult because this work is what the immanent frame of historical thinking precludes. The Christian genealogist studies history to deconstruct this frame. We need John to reopen the frame of time.

Tree of Jesse, Norwich Cathedral, c. 1490

What then do we make of Mark? Mark does not give a background story to Jesus. There is no genealogy, no nativity story, no archeology of the Word of God. The core of the Marcan genealogy is the immediate and unexpected. John appears on the scene with a cry in the wilderness. Rather than showing Jesus’ lineage, Mark just depicts his arrival on the scene: “He Came to Galilee proclaiming the gospel of God. ‘This is the time of fulfillment. The kingdom of God is at hand. Repent and believe in the gospel.’” Mark is the gospel of the immediate. Every background is washed out in light of Jesus’ sudden proclamation that this is the moment of fulfillment. Here we see time not as chronos, the gradual chain of events, but of the kairos, the instantaneous event that no one saw coming. Matthew gives the history of the Jewish people, Luke gives the story of humanity, and John plumbs the depths of eternity. Mark is in a sense counter-genealogical, but this is why genealogists need to attend to his Gospel. He gives us the now of the kairos, which demands our attention and conversion. The kairos, as unexpected event, can always come but never be anticipated. The history of salvation is, in part, the story of kairoi, the divine punctuations of history: the suddenness of creation, the unexpected call of Abraham and then Moses, David’s elevation to King, the unworthy prophets, and then Jesus. This does not end with Christ. The lives of saints and the movements within the Church continue this genealogy of the unexpected. Considering the unexpected, we now live in the kairos of Christ, standing between his coming in Judea and his coming in glory. This eschatological event is always hoped for but can never be anticipated.

This is only a sketch of the implications of Jesus’ four origin stories. Christian genealogists must return to these four Gospels as signposts for our own genealogies. Each provides a different but complementary wisdom. They need to be read together, as they have throughout the Christian tradition. To overemphasize one without reference to the others undermines the wholeness and complexity of our task. Whatever our genealogical emphasis, our task remains to think ever anew the meaning of Christ.