Bill CAIN, SJ. The Diary of Jesus Christ. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. pp. 210. $20.00 pb. ISBN 9781626984073. Reviewed by Anita HOUCK, Saint Mary’s College, Notre Dame, IN, 46556.

In writing The Diary of Jesus Christ, Bill Cain, S.J. isn’t doing something altogether new. There are other autobiographies of Jesus and of God, and other modern retellings of Jesus’ life. But many of these rely on either unsmiling piety or dismissive laughter. Cain’s book, instead, joins the sparse and laudable ranks of works that are both deeply faithful and brilliantly funny. Cain’s Jesus—here called Joshua—is abundantly loving, thoroughly human, and invitingly honest. In Diary, humor and reverence kiss.

Diary is composed of forty homilies Cain has preached in daily masses. Each chapter opens with a gospel passage, then follows the model of Ignatian contemplation (209) as Joshua narrates and reflects on corresponding events in his life. Throughout, it’s evident that Cain is a masterful, moving story-teller. He is, after all, an accomplished author, screenwriter, and playwright, probably best known for his 1997-1998 Peabody-winning TV series Nothing Sacred, which in turn may be best known (alas) for the Catholic League’s protests against it. Cain’s readings of the gospel are often delightful and almost always revelatory. He doesn’t avoid the gospels’ trickier stories, but instead proposes clever solutions to biblical conundrums, among them how Jesus managed to be left behind in Jerusalem when he was twelve (“Oldest trick in the book,” 5), why Nathaniel was so impressed to hear Jesus noticed him under a fig tree (46-50), and how a radically compassionate savior could refer to a Canaanite woman as a dog (137-40). Cain creates several new characters, gives some central Biblical figures backstories that raise potent issues, and casts some anonymous gospel characters as women (why, after all, should we imagine all ten lepers as men?). It’s clear that in his encounters with others, Joshua learns as much as he teaches. It’s also clear that his two most significant teachers are women. Joshua characterizes his mother as a perfectionist teetotaler given to impatience and passive-aggression (51-52), but also messianic in her commitment to justice. Mary Magdalene is less playful than her protegé, but also in some ways more powerful (Cain said in an interview with Robert Ellsberg that “the resurrection, in this construction, could not have even begun to happen without Magdalene”).

Cain’s stories find surprising theological possibilities in these very familiar gospel texts, and no doubt readers will react differently to the surprises. Several stories engage popular and scholarly Christological questions, for instance, whether Jesus was influenced by the Essenes, what role women had in his ministry, whether he married or why he didn’t, and how Rome treated the people it crucified. Almost always, these provocative points are explored with enough detail to bring a reader along to fruitfully ponder, if not always to be fully persuaded; one exception might be Joshua’s offhand reference to his experience of “sexual union” (42). The area that persistently raised concern for me was the portrayal of Judaism, as when the book describes Jewish law as “creat[ing] hypochondriacs” (43), or Joshua dismisses the Jewish “War God” (172), or the Transfiguration becomes an encounter with a Moses and Elijah so entrenched in violence and power that they’re actually disappointed in Joshua; in response, the Father laments his religious efforts so far as a “failure” (155). Such passages touch on longstanding questions of how people understand God and read the Bible, and Cain’s responses certainly echo the book’s themes of the wideness of divine love and the limits of human theologizing. But they may also remind readers of how prone Christianity has been to supersessionism.

Diary will likely work best for those who know the Bible well—well enough, at least, to appreciate the artistry and insight of Cain’s interpretations, and well enough to engage the theological questions the book raises without immediately assuming that Cain’s edgier answers are either canonical or blasphemous. The book, or parts of it, might contribute to courses that also provide students with sufficient understanding of the Biblical text and context, Ignatian spirituality (or the genre of midrash), and the Church’s rejection of supersessionism. But Diary might be best read with friends who will be up for talking about it, perhaps in a competently led church group. In such a context, it should be clear that Diary is an impressive accomplishment. It powerfully embodies an approach to Christology that Roberto Goizueta explained in a recent lecture: “God is inherently relational; reality is inherently relational. Like all of us, Jesus is not an autonomous individual but is defined by his relationships” (Lumen Christi Institute, 18 May 2020). Cain’s Joshua is a good character to see the world through, to think with, to walk alongside.