The Beatitudes: Poem of Hope and Irony
(Part 2 – The Personality of Jesus)
By Doug Talley

Read Part One

Read Part Two 

The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote in an early essay titled “The Nothingness of Personality” that there is no such thing as personality, but this was a green work and uncharacteristic of his later wisdom. In a more mature essay, “Personality and the Buddha,” he wrote on the personalities of Jesus and Buddha, and suggested two views, the apotheosis of Christ through personality and the apotheosis of Buddha by relinquishing it. Among his concluding insights were these:

From Chaucer to Marcel Proust, the novel’s substance is the unrepeatable, the singular flavor of souls; for Buddhism there is no such flavor, or it is one of the many vanities of the cosmic simulacrum. Christ preached so that men would have life, and have it in abundance (John 10:10); the Buddha to proclaim that this world, infinite in time and space, is a dwindling fire. Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, Penguin Books (1999), p. 350.

The celebration of life practiced by Christianity is founded in the salvation and preservation of the individual soul. Eternal life for the Christian begins with the resurrection, where the first words of the resurrected Christ to his apostles made clear that his personality survived into immortality. As recounted by Luke, and in the same vein of irony so pervasive throughout the four gospels and so characteristic of His personality, Jesus chided his disciples for their unbelief over a meal of fish and honeycomb.  (Luke 24:36-43). A more homespun account of the survival of human personality beyond death is hardly imaginable. 

Accepting the premise that Jesus had a personality that survived death, the curious among us might ask the question, what was his personality like? The literary critic Harold Bloom once wrote:

Dante’s personality is forbidding, Shakespeare’s elusive, while Jesus’ (like the fictive Hamlet’s) seems to reveal itself differently to every reader or auditor.  What is personality? Alas, we use it now as a popular synonym for celebrity, but I would argue that we cannot give the word up to the realm of buzz. When we know enough about the biography of a particular genius, then we understand what is meant by the personality of Goethe or Byron or Freud or Oscar Wilde.  Conversely, when we lack biographical inwardness, then we all agree that we are uncertain as to Shakespeare’s personality, an enormous paradox since his plays may have invented personality as we now most readily comprehend it. If challenged, I could write a book on the personality of Hamlet, Falstaff, or Cleopatra, but I would not attempt a book upon the personality of Shakespeare or Jesus.” Harold Bloom, Genius, Warner Books, (2002) p. 5 

Professor Bloom said he would never attempt a book on the personality of Jesus. With greater naiveté and less learning, I will venture an essay. 

Literary Descriptions of Christ

Perhaps the threshold challenge lies in distinguishing between the human and divine in the personality of Jesus. This challenge is compounded by the traditional notion of the Trinity that God is somehow a single being made of three beings, Jesus comprising only one part of this godhead and melding into it. Within this tradition, He is typically depicted as man in God and God in man, and some would consider it blasphemous to characterize Him in merely human terms, not only because it might demean His stature as God, but also because it is otherwise impossible to comprehend, let alone catalogue, the attributes of one who is God. 

Nevertheless, some have tried. St. Augustine in his Confessions specifically referred to the humanity of Jesus with the phrase “inspirasti mihi per humanitatem filii tui” (Thou hast inspired me through the humanity of Thy Son). Yet when Augustine attempted to describe the attributes of Jesus as God he became lost in a paradox of divine superlatives, as though humanity were a characteristic of mere mortality that Christ shed after his death. The attributes ascribed to Jesus as God are:

Summe, optime, potentissime, omnipotentissime, misericordissime et iustissime ... inmutabilis, mutuans omnia, numquam novus, numquam vetus, semper agens, semper quietus ...

The Highest, Most Wonderful, Most Powerful, Most Almighty, Most Merciful, Most Just ... Unchangeable, [yet] changing all things, Never New, Never Old, Always Active, Always Serene ... Confessions of St. Augustine, James Campbell and Martin McGuire, Prentice-Hall (1961), pp. 68-69

Even when Augustine introduces human emotion into this catalogue of superlatives, the paradox continues. He refers to God as “irasceris et tranquillus es“(“Thou art wrathful and Thou art tranquil”). Any trace of human personality in God must necessarily combine in incomprehensible mystery, which then is no longer human, but deified and ineffable.

A singular problem lurks here. That which is everything can readily be recast as nothing — like the paradoxical sphere whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere, used throughout Western literary tradition to variously describe God, or Nature, or the Universe.  See, Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, Penguin Books (1999), “Pascal’s Sphere”, p. 351. Jesus deified is a God so large He fills the universe, but so small He can dwell in the heart — that is, everything and nothing.

Dante Alighieri brought these paradoxes to his own sublime conclusion in his masterpiece, La Divina Commedia. In the final Canto of the poem, he has an ultimate, sublime vision of the Trinity as an ineffable series of diaphanous, concentric circles, like rainbows reflecting one upon the other: 

Ne la profonda e chiara sussistenza
De l’alto lume parvermi tre giri
Di tre colori e d’una contenenza;

E l’una da l’altro come iri da iri
Parea reflesso, e ‘l terzo parea foco
Che quinci and quindi igualmente si spiri

In the profound and clear existence
of the lofty light there appeared to me three circles
of three colors and of one circumference;

And one appeared reflected by the other,
as rainbow by rainbow, and the third of fire
was breathed forth equally by the other two.

Dante, Il Paradiso, Canto XXXIII, ll. 115-120

As a symbol of God, taken figuratively not literally, the metaphor has merit for its unparalleled vividness, aptness, and beauty. And yet, as gorgeous and profound as it is, this symbol is devoid of any characteristic of human personality. As Dante ascended through the circles of heaven and became increasingly sanctified to behold ever more glorious visions, the glory of God seemed to shed every trace of human personality until it became purely abstract love.

At the other extreme are efforts to emphasize primarily the humanity of Jesus. The modern poet Ezra Pound in the “Ballad of the Goodly Fere” gave voice to Simon Zelotes who testified of this humanity by depicting Jesus rather like a brawling sailor: 

Aye lover he was of brawny men
O’ ships and the open sea.

 *******

Oh we drunk his “Hale” in the good red wine
When we last made company,
No capon priest was the Goodly Fere
But a man o’ men was he.

I ha’ seen him drive a hundred men
Wi’ a bundle o’ cords swung free,
That they took the high and holy house
For their pawn and treasury.

They’ll no’ get him a’ in a book I think
Though they write it cunningly;
No mouse of the scrolls was the Goodly Fere
But aye loved the open sea.

Richard Ellman and Robert O’Clair, eds., Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, W.W. Norton & Co., (1973), p. 333.

What little I have read of the 18^th century Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg suggests that the personality of Jesus so impressed him that it infused his thinking completely with the concept of God as perfect, divine humanity. He wrote in De Divino Amore: 

in omnibus caelis non alia idea dei est quam idea hominis ... ex eo quod deus sit homo, omnes angeli et omnes spiritus, in perfecta forma homines sint. 

In all of the heavens there is no other idea of God than the idea of man ...  and from this that God is a man, and that all angels and all spirits, in their perfect form, are men.

This concept of continuing personality extended as well to mortal men and women. In Vera Christiana Religio Swedenborg wrote that when men die they do not lose their character. “The English preserve their private intellectual manner and respect for authority. The Dutch continue to engage in commerce. The Germans are weighted down with books, and when someone asks them a question, they consult the appropriate volume before answering.” Borges, Selected Non-Fictions, “Emanuel Swedenborg, Mystical Works”, Penguin Books (1999), p. 455. Swedenborg’s visions of the after-life fully embraced the “singular flavor of souls.” 

Characteristics of His Personality

Something in these descriptions, as compelling as they may be, is nonetheless wanting. For the Latter-day Saint anyway, the starting point regarding the personality of Jesus will always begin with the resurrection – a physical resurrection where the body of Jesus was raised in immortality.  Any discussion of the personality of Jesus must account for the eternal preservation of his physical body. Perhaps the premise is so obvious it hardly needs explanation. There can scarcely be any “personality” without the existence and manifestation of a “person.” 

In some early Patristic writing, at least, the concept of a physical resurrection was explicit. Polycarp was a bishop of Smyrna and was burned alive in an arena there in approximately 156 A.D. He was counted the twelfth martyr in Smyrna, together with a group, which apparently had come from Philadelphia. A letter was written by the church in Smyrna to the church in Philomelium recounting this martyrdom and is remarkable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its testimony of a physical resurrection.  When Polycarp prays just before his death, he clearly alludes to the resurrection of both spirit and body:

eulogw se, oti hxiwsas me ths hmeras kai wras tauths, tou labein me meros en ariqmw twn marturwn en tw porhriw tou Cristos sou eis
anastasin zwhs aiwniou yuchs te kai swmatos en afqarsia pneumatos agiou.

I bless thee, that Thou hast granted me this day and hour, that I may share, among the number of the martyrs, in the cup of thy Christ, in the resurrection to eternal life of both spirit and body in the immortality of the Holy Spirit. Apostolic Fathers, Volume II, Harvard University Press (1976), pp. 330-331.

The physical resurrection of Christ was still near enough in time that the doctrine had not been lost. The body was raised in immortality together with the spirit. The idea of personality would necessarily include the physical body.

So what were the defining characteristics of that singular and sublime personality of Jesus, the Redeemer of humanity? The only words Jesus Christ ever wrote for mankind to read were some scribbles in the dust, which he calmly and quietly erased, and therefore, we must rely only on what others wrote about him for any clues. A brief essay cannot possibly address this vast topic, so I will confine myself to one defining characteristic — Jesus as an ironist. 

Personality in part is defined by humor, or lack of it. Humor may be of many different types — jovial, dry, playful, mordant, facetious, sardonic, loud, or morbid, among others. Certainly, an element of playfulness is manifest as Jesus gives nicknames to some of his disciples. He renames Simon Bar-jona in an engaging wordplay evident only in the original Greek: 

kagw de soi legw, oti su ei Petros, kai epi tauth th petra oikodomhsw mou thn ekklhsian.  

And I say also unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church. (Matthew 16:18).

The word translated as “Peter” is the Greek petros, meaning “little rock,” while the word translated as “rock” is the Greek petra, meaning “bedrock.”  The subtle word play is not without a tender humor. In our colloquial English we would say that Jesus made Peter “a chip off the old block.” 

Jesus gave James and John, the sons of Zebedee, the name Boanerges, meaning “the sons of thunder.” (Mark 3:17). There may be a gentle playfulness in this nickname as well, and perhaps a trace of irony. James and John were the disciples ready to call down fire from heaven on a village of Samaritans for their indifference to the teachings of Jesus. But Jesus “rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” (Luke 9:52-56). The nickname, whether given before or after this correction from Jesus, must have become humbling. James and John were the sons of thunder, because of a peevish willingness to hurl lightning at those who slighted them. What otherwise might have served as an appellation of praise, became instead a subtle reprimand. 

Among the definitions of “irony” in the Oxford English dictionary is “the humorous use of praise to imply condemnation or contempt.” This type of irony is evident in Jesus’ observation of certain hypocrites who sounded trumpets when giving alms or prayed in street corners to be seen of men. “Verily,” he said, “they have their reward.” (Matthew 6:2, 5). What these hypocrites wanted was the attention of others, and Jesus noted that they did receive this reward, but he remains silent as to the nature of the reward or its value. The reward could just as well have been the derision of others, as much as their acclaim. 

The irony of Jesus extended also to paradox, the seemingly self-contradictory statement which, when examined, proves well founded or true. Paradox is everywhere evident in the Beatitudes, where Jesus declared, for example, “Blessed are they that mourn.” Another translation of the same Greek passage starkens the paradox: “Happy are the sad.” This kind of paradox is commonly encountered, and often not without humor, as in the cliché among lawyers that “no good deed goes unpunished.” Or in Shakespeare’s observation in Hamlet that crowds will not spend a single penny to help the living poor, but will pay five quid to see a dead Indian. Jesus, as an ironist, as one who apprehended the irony of certain eternal truths, was keenly sensitive to paradox, and resorted to it frequently, whether to expose hypocrisy (“Verily they have their reward”), to offer comfort (“Are not two sparrows sold for a penny ... fear not, you are worth more than many sparrows”), or to establish truth (“Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit”). 

Some might argue that the Jesus of the gospels is humorless, that his personality admits of too much harshness and severity to allow anything of humor. Such a view is unfortunate and could be the result of mistranslation or misreading or both.  As a single example, I would cite the passage in Matthew where a Canaanite woman sought a blessing from Jesus for her afflicted daughter. The English version indicates that Jesus replied, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.”  If Jesus were being playful with words in this instance, it is a harsh play in which he calls the woman a dog. But the original Greek says something entirely different:

 Ouk esti kalon labein ton arton twn teknwn, kai balein tois kunariois.

It is not good to take the bread of the children, and cast it to the puppies.
(Matthew 15:26)

The word translated in the English as “dogs” is in the Greek, kunariois, meaning “a little dog,” a “whelp,” or “puppy.” The Greek word for “dog,” which is kuov, is decidedly not used. That word, according to my Greek lexicon, is clearly a word of reproach, to denote shamelessness or audacity in women, or rashness and recklessness in men. But a Greek diminutive is used instead, which means “puppy.”  As this passage is translated in the King James Version it seems quite harsh and offensive — Jesus is calling the woman a dog, and if the Greek original were the word kuov, it would indeed be a reproach that the woman was shameless and brazen.  But the statement is actually much more gentle in the Greek. One senses a distinct, tender paternalism here in Jesus. The Israelites are “children,” and the Canaanite woman, not of the house of Israel, is a “puppy.” I do not believe that Jesus’ exchange with the woman was intended to be offensive, and clearly, because of the worship and faith she manifested, He deemed her worthy of the blessing she sought.

What Think Ye?

The reason why Jesus’ personality may reveal itself differently to every reader is because it forces the reader to a religious view.  “What think ye of Christ,” Jesus asked of the Pharisees, and he listened to their answer. (Matthew 22:42). Every person will have a different response, because every person has a different personality. 

Individual personality, springing from eternal intelligence, is the very essence of our nascent divinity and the raw material of any apotheosis to godhood. Central to the glory of the eternal world is the preservation of individual identity. Eternal life means not just that we live in some fashion forever as part of a vast misty essence that many believe is God, but it means that we live forever in the casement of individual identity. The story of Jesus is the story of how the human personality, when perfected, is made divine. Jesus is God become man and man become God, and therefore, his is not simply kindness and compassion in the abstract. He was not bland, colorless perfection. His expressions of hope, comfort and kindness were not without humor and, at times, not without irony. They were not without the stamp of a singular and sublime personality. The pure in heart, we are told, will see God, and when that day comes, rather than an Augustinian mist or a Dantesque rainbow, we will be pleased to meet, perhaps over a meal of fish and honeycomb, a resurrected man.

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Doug Talley graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Bowling Green State University in 1976. Upon graduation he spent the summer in the Grand Tetons looking for God, which led him on a hitch-hiking spree to Salt Lake City. He joined the Church and thereafter served in the Italy, Rome Mission from 1978 to 1980. After his mission he enrolled in the University of Akron School of Law. He graduated in 1984 and has "fiddled at the law" ever since, currently as the CEO of Millennial Assurance Services, Inc. He has published one book of poetry, The Angel Voice of Irony, a sonnet sequence about his conversion. A second book of poetry, April in October, is planned for publication in 2003. His poems have appeared in The American Scholar, Midwest Poetry Review, Piedmont Literary Review, Hellas, and other journals. He and his wife and seven children live in Akron, Ohio, where he has served in every ward calling from scoutmaster to bishop.

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