In the years before and during his papacy, Benedict XVI issued three volumes in a series, Jesus of Nazareth.
It is an astonishing feat of Biblical exegesis, which I would contend, seeks to incorporate the best of historical criticism, and repair the damage done by those who used modern methods of Biblical criticism without faith.
This one thing that is the object of man’s many wishes and hopes also finds expression in the second petition of the Our Father: thy Kingdom come. The “Kingdom of God” is life in abundance—precisely because it is not just private “happiness,” not individual joy, but the world having attained its rightful form, the unity of God and the world.In the end, man needs just one thing, in which everything else is included; but he must first delve beyond his superficial wishes and longings in order to learn to recognize what it is that he truly needs and truly wants. He needs God. And so we now realize what ultimately lies behind all the Johannine images: Jesus gives us “life” because he gives us God. He can give God because he himself is one with God, because he is the Son. He himself is the gift—he is “life.” For precisely this reason, his whole being consists in communicating, in “pro-existence.” This is exactly what we see in the Cross, which is his true exaltation.”
In fact, I think Benedict’s great accomplishment in these books effectively closes a two-century project of scholarship that went badly off the rails. Historical-critical methods, at their worst, pulled apart each sentence of the Gospels as mere data, over which all religious meaning was overlaid later. Benedict vindicates the theological and liturgical reading of Scripture as the true and only reasonable intention of the Gospel authors.