The Cross and the World

Theology of the Cross

I've not yet written a review of Mel Gibson's movie. I'm not sure I will now. Yet I have been thinking of what I might say differently about the sacrifice of Christ and its meaning for us today. I recently got some help in this effort from two articles in The Lutheran. Douglas John Hall has written on the theology of the cross in "The 'difference' of Luther and the ambivalence of life," and "Beyond the cross of Calvary."

The second piece is particularly helpful as we focus this week and next on what it means to proclaim Christ and him crucified. Is it just that Jesus died so I don't have to (Mel's apparent theology of the cross)? I don't reject a substitutionary atonement (which is not to say that I understand it exactly, either), but I think the cross's implications are much broader than "Jesus paid the price." Hall describes a theology of the cross as:

• A theology of faith, not sight.
• A theology of hope, not finality or consummation.
• A theology of love, not power.

In a short article, he shows how each of these has direct implications for North Americans and their congregations today. Faith (not sight) leads to a "modest theology" that knows, if it sees "something ultimate, absolute, it is only 'through a glass darkly' (1 Corinthians 13:12)" (15). This stance makes it harder to kill people who don't see what we see, or even to regard them as lost in darkness.

Hall explains what he means by "hope, not finality or consummation," by saying "God, who brought Jesus from the dead, is at work in the world to fulfill the promise of creation, appearances to the contrary." Such a theology means that we do not have to "turn away from all seemingly hopeless things that occur" in order to sustain our hope" (17). We can admit how messed up things are and roll up our sleeves, rather than having to escape from harsh reality by means of spiritualism or materialism, or by denying that anything is "still wrong" with the world since the victory has been won in Christ.

When he talks about "love not power," Hall addresses everything from wanting to do evangelism as a numbers game to Christian groups who, in the search for power in the current system of things, "eagerly lend their support to a government that no longer pretends to hide but openly flaunts it imperial ambitions" (18). The alternative is suffering love, love that hears the natural order's groaning in travail (Romans 8:22) and responds.