The Crucified God by JÜrgen Moltmann #3

The three final chapters of the The Crucified God, are “three systematic chapters which will develop the consequences of this theology of the crucified Christ for the concept of God (Chapter 6), for anthropology (Chapter 7) and for a critical theory of church and society (Chapter 8). These chapters are basically applications of the previous ones to theology, psychology and politics/culture.

Chapter 6 asks the question, how do we form a concept of God “which seeks to understand ‘the godforsakenness of Jesus’ on the cross.” Do we really begin and base our theology on the cross? The center of theology must be the “resurrection of the crucified Christ.” The cross involves the entire Trinity.

‘On the cross, God stretched out his hands to embrace the ends of the earth,’ said Cyril of Jerusalem. This is a symbolic expression. He invites the whole earth to understand his suffering and his hopes in the outstretched arms of the crucified Jesus and therefore in God. ‘O blessed tree on which God was outstretched.’ This symbol is an invitation to understand the Christ hanging on the cross as the ‘outstretched’ God of the Trinity. 207

In the next section of the chapter Moltmann follows Luther’s understanding of the cross as “as God’s protest against the misuse of his name for the purpose of a religious consummation of human wisdom, human works and the Christian imperialism of medieval ecclesiastical society. It is a protest for the freedom of faith. (208) We don’t understand mainly through dry, speculative theology but through how he has supremely revealed himself in the cross.

To know God in the cross of Christ is a crucifying form of knowledge, because it shatters everything to which a man can hold and on which he can build, both his works and his knowledge of reality, and precisely in so doing sets him free. 212.

The cross is ‘set up in the cosmos to establish the unstable’, we read in the apocryphal Acts of Andrew. There is a truth here: it is set up in the cosmos in order to give future to that which is passing away, firmness to that which is unsteady, openness to that which is fixed, hope to the hopeless, and in this way to gather all that is and all that is no more into the new creation. 219

The theist who does make the cross is not the center of theology becomes “brother to the atheist.” A God who does not suffer with his world and is unaffected by it is not the God of the cross or scripture.

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any man. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely insensitive, he cannot be affected or shaken by anything. He cannot weep, for he has no tears. But the one who cannot suffer cannot love either. So he is also a loveless being. 222

God himself loves and suffers the death of Christ in his love. He is no ‘cold heavenly power’, nor does he ‘tread his way over corpses’, but is known as the human God in the crucified Son of Man. 227

It is only when theology is centered in the cross, that one can make sense of the incarnation and the two natures of Christ.

So if we are to speak seriously of salvation in fellowship with God, we must go beyond the general distinctions between God and the world, or God and man, and penetrate the special relationships between God and the world and God and man in the history of Christ...God became man that dehumanized men might become true men. We become true men in the community of the incarnate, the suffering and loving, the human God. 231

We also need to center theology in the cross for a proper understanding of the Trinity. “The shortest expression of the Trinity is the divine act of the cross, in which the Father allows the Son to sacrifice himself through the Spirit. (241)

What Jesus commanded in the Sermon on the Mount as love of one’s enemy has taken place on the cross through Jesus’ dying and the grief of the Father in the power of the spirit, for the godless and the loveless. 248.

A start from the cross helps us to see God, not as just a unity, but as a Trinitarian, relational being who can love.

With a trinitarian theology of the cross faith escapes the dispute between and the alternative of theism and atheism: God is not only other-worldly but also this-worldly; he is not only God, but also man; he is not only rule, authority and law but the event of suffering, liberating love. Conversely, the death of the Son is not the ‘death of God’, but the beginning of that God event in which the life-giving spirit of love emerges from the death of the Son and the grief of the Father. 252.

Then the call to obey and serve God becomes a call to love and be loved.

If Christian belief thinks in trinitarian terms, it says that forsaken men are already taken up by Christ’s forsakenness into the divine history and that we ‘live in God’, because we participate in the eschatological life of God by virtue of the death of Christ. God is, God is in us, God suffers in us, where love suffers. We participate in the trinitarian process of God’s history. Just as we participate actively and passively in the suffering of God, so too we will participate in the joy of God wherever we love and pray and hope. 255.

If the relationship with God, Christ and us is only functional – we just need Christ to be perfected and have eternal life – then Jesus becomes superfluous in the final kingdom. But if the purpose is eternal relationship within the relationships of the Trinity it has eternal value.

The goal of the consummation does not lie in the dissolution by Christ of his rule so that it is taken up into the rule of God, but in the consummation of the obedience of the Son and thus in the consummation of the brotherhood of believers. 266.

And we participate in eternal relationship and experience of the Trinity and with each other.

God does not become a religion, so that man participates in him by corresponding religious thoughts and feelings. God does not become a law, so that man participates in him through obedience to a law. God does not become an ideal, so that man achieves community with him through constant striving. He humbles himself and takes upon himself the eternal death of the godless and the godforsaken, so that all the godless and the godforsaken can experience communion with him. Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God, 276.

Chapter 7 attempts to answer the question, “Who is man in the face of the rejected Son of Man who was raised up in the freedom of God? How does he develop his life in the field of force of the passion of the crucified God?” 291.

Faith in the resurrection becomes faith that raises up, wherever it transforms psychological and social systems, so that instead of being oriented on death they are oriented on life. The prayer of Jesus, ‘And deliver us from evil’, is experienced and put into practice where men are liberated from these vicious circles, where the will to life is restored, and man comes out of the rigor mortis of apathy and regains his life once more. 294.

In the chapter he has a “conversation” with Freud’s idea that “neurosis is a caricature of religion.” Moltmann suggests that this is true in most traditional Christian religion which does not center itself in the cross and he suggests that we should take Freud as a corrective.

The prohibition against making images and likenesses, bowing down to them and worshipping them, is meant to protect the freedom of God and the freedom of his image in every man. This freedom is lost where the prejudices of tradition or the fixed ideas of ideology hold man’s understanding captive. It is lost where men worship their own works and bow themselves down to their own creatures, and where the objects that they have made gain power over them. The illumination of prejudices is therefore a liberation from the tutelage of tradition. 297.

We tend to replace real relationship with Christ with obsessive ritual which produces anxiety instead of peace.

Men who have not found their freedom in the humanity of God but, for whatever reason, feel anxiety at this God and the freedom that is expected of them, cling to the law of repressions. They then expect eternal support from things which offer no support. They hope for the absolute from relative values and eternal joy from transitory happiness. Instead of resolving conflicts, they construct aggressive images of enmity and make their enemies into demons in order to kill them spiritually. 301.

Or we set up “obsessional authoritarian and legalistic structures of church practice” to create guilt to control people. These are shown to be superfluous in the crucifixion and resurrection of the human God.

For Christian faith the crucified Christ stands between the slaughtered God and his apathetic, witless slaughterers. The conflict between guilt and anxiety, between guilty liberation and necessary reconciliation, between authority and annihilation, is transferred to God himself. God allows himself to be humiliated and crucified in the Son, in order to free the oppressors and the oppressed from oppression and to open up to them the situation of free, sympathetic humanity. 307

Or we live in a dream world and live by the “pleasure principle.” Of course, this is shattered by the reality of death. Only a life centered on the crucified and resurrected one has real hope.

The central symbol of Christian hope, the resurrection, is expressly related to the assumption of all human reality by God, including that reality which is spoilt by sin and condemned to death. It therefore represents a hope which is indissolubly coupled with the most intensive sense of reality. 312.

The final chapter looks at the question, “What are the economic, social and political consequences of the gospel of the Son of Man who was crucified as a ‘rebel’?” (317) Moltmann’s main point is…

The freedom of faith is lived out in political freedom. The freedom of faith therefore urges men on towards liberating actions, because it makes them painfully aware of suffering in situations of exploitation, oppression, alienation and captivity. 317.

He advocates that faith and politics must correspond, not be separated. He recognizes that politics do not bring real freedom in Christ requires a corresponding response in society that mirrors Christ and what he has done for us.

The path of a theology of the cross that is critical of society goes between irrelevant Christian identity and social relevance without Christian identity. It must make the idols of bourgeois religion superfluous in their own place and destroy them. In place of the ritual integration of a people, a race or a class and its confirmation of itself as a symbol, it must develop openness for the recognition of others and a humanity that is free from anxiety and self-esteem. 324–325.

People liberated by Christ have a responsibility to speak truth and liberation to the culture around them and to hold the organized church accountable.

Wherever Christianity extends, the idea of the state changes. Political rule is no longer accepted as God-given, but is understood as a task the fulfillment of which must be constantly justified... Christians will seek to anticipate the future of Christ according to the measure of the possibilities available to them, by breaking down lordship and building up the political liveliness of each individual. 328–329.

The church then has a responsibility to work to bring Christ’s liberation to people from “vicious cycles of death” like poverty, racism, and economic oppression. The church should be a catalyst for unity between man and God, human and human, and humanity and nature.

There can be no conquest of poverty and oppression without the liberation of men from their racial, cultural and technocratic alienation. 331.

In a situation of godforsakenness and senselessness the knowledge of the hidden presence of God in the godforsaken Christ on the cross already gives ‘courage to be’, despite nothingness and all annihilating experiences. Hell does not lie before men. It has been conquered in the cross. 335.

We prepare for the kingdom by living it out now. We prepare for it by being agents of liberation and transformation as we wait for Jesus to consummate it at his 2nd coming.

In the vicious circle of poverty it can be said: ‘God is not dead. He is bread.’ God is present as bread in that he is the unconditional which draws near, in the present sense. In the vicious circle of force God’s presence is experienced as liberation for human dignity and responsibility. In the vicious circle of alienation his presence is perceived in the experience of human identity and recognition. In the vicious circle of the destruction of nature God is present in joy in existence and in peace between man and nature. In the vicious circle of meaninglessness and godforsakenness, finally, he comes forward in the figure of the crucified Christ, who communicates courage to be. 337–338.

Christmas Season on Guam

Even though it does not snow here on Guam, except inside the malls at specific times, we get into the Christmas spirit. The Christmas season seems to officially begin, not counting when the Christmas decorations get put up at Kmart and Home Depot in October, when Santa comes riding in on a carabao at Ypao park with dancing and a Christmas concert. So Joyce took the grandkids down to see it on Sunday December 7th. We also picked up a real Christmas tree last Saturday and decorated it in preparation for the arrival of Matt and his family this coming Sunday. To me, the Christmas season began with our Advent chapel on December 5, but either way, it is Christmas season on Guam.

Titus was excited to win the raffle prize at the concert. Serenity and Gwen play with the ipad

Serenity does not miss her opportunity to dance with one of the local dancers

Courage chooses her own music and then dances

My contribution was an adjustment to the Christmas story – just kidding

We all worked hard decorating the tree

And then relaxed a little

A World Split Apart: Dualism in Western Culture and Theology

PIU faculty member M. James Sawyer has recently published his book, A World Split Apart: Dualism in Western Culture and Theology, on Kindle. As promised, we will discuss this book here and on my Facebook page (easier to manage comments there) with a post on the first half of the book today and the second half a week from now. You can pick up Jim’s book for $2.99 at Amazon here and read it on your Kindle or computer. You can then join the discussion this coming week. Today I am looking at pages 1-16 (through the discussion about Augustine).

Jim begins by pointing out that “Western thinking is uniformly dualistic in its nature, whereas Eastern thinking is founded upon monism.” Westerners tend to think in terms of opposites which cannot be reconciled. The key one for the purposes of discussion is “spirit-matter” which are “two qualitatively and irreducibly different orders of reality.” Eastern thought, monism, deals with this by relegating the material world to “illusion” with only one half (the immaterial) of the duality being real. The only truly holistic view of reality in the ancient world was that of the Hebrews who saw matter and spirit united in a God who is intimately involved in his creation,

The Hebrew basis of thinking is one that embraces both sides of the disjuncture presented in the dualistic mode while insisting that they must be held in tension as opposed to being irreconcilable opposites. 6

This dualistic thinking is an inadequate description of reality. First, though dualistic thinking worked well in a Newtonian mechanistic model of the universe, Einstein and his successors have shown that the universe does not work that way.

The universe is open, it turned out, not closed and deterministic as Newtonian physics had insisted. Likewise, it is contingent and not necessary. Miracles are indeed possible, because God is not locked out of his creation. This is not just an a priori theological assertion—it is the necessary implicate of a universe that is open and contingent. Physicists recognize this reality today, although those in the social and life sciences have not yet abandoned their dualist-determinist thinking and tend to be stuck in mechanistic categories. 7

Second it is an inadequate description of spiritual reality too. The Old and New Testaments present a relational God who is intimately involved with his creation.

Christianity was born out of a Jewish worldview that had no such dualistic thinking embedded in it. Unlike the Platonist’s God, utterly removed and unconcerned with physical reality, Yahweh was a God who got his hands dirty. He created the material world and took a personal interest in it, communicating personally with his people through the prophets. He loved his people. Most startling of all, he revealed himself through the incarnation of the eternal Son whose name was Emmanuel—God with us. 9

However, as the church tried to make the gospel intelligible to the Greek world, Greek dualistic thinking began to influence theology. This can be seen in early movements such as Docetism, Gnosticism and Arianism. Each of these movements tried to separate God who is Spirit from creation which is matter in one way or another. It was in this environment that the Nicene Creed and subsequent theological definitions were hammered out by the church fathers in the early councils.

“The Nicene theology thus gave basic shape to the doctrine of the Trinity that was found to belong to the essential structure of faith in God and to the intrinsic grammar of Christian thought.” This conclusion shattered the Greek philosophical concept of God as static, remote, and impassible (incapable of suffering pain). God in his inner being is tri-personal relationship that is dynamic and active. 12

Divine reality is dynamic, not static; it is an interpenetrating of one another in a relational, spiritual, and intensely personal way. Theirs is a permanently shared consciousness. The life of God is a social life which becomes the source and example for community among God’s creatures. The Trinitarian persons “indwell” each other (perichoresis), make room for each other, and are “hospitable to each other, or to use another metaphor, they are united in an exquisite divine dance.” 13-14

However, “In the West, dualism reasserted itself in the work of Augustine,” who “used Neoplatonic philosophy, with its inherent dualism, as a framework for interpreting reality and communicating the Christian faith.” This led to the dualistic thinking common in the Western church today that matter is evil and spirit is good. This thinking has fueled legalism, asceticism, and psychotic apocalypticism for 1500 years of church history and made the kingdom of God only out there in the future, instead of something we participate in now as we wait for a bodily consummation of the kingdom at the return of Christ.

Next week we will pick up with Jim’s discussion of the continued influence of dualism in church history and how we need to rethink this in our theologies today.

The Crucified God by JÜRGEN MOLTMANN #2

In this post I will continue my discussion of Moltmann’s, The Crucified God, The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology. In today’s section I will look at chapters 3-5. In these chapters Moltmann looks at Jesus in terms of who he was historically (3), who he is in terms of the cross and how a theology of Christ developed from that (4) and then who he is in regard to his resurrection and eschatology (5). As before for discussion and comment please go to my Facebook page.

In chapter 3, Questions About Jesus, Moltmann asks 4 questions about God (see below). He recognizes that there are many Christ’s out there but real Christianity involves relationship and faith in the Christ that has its foundation in the historical Jesus. “Thus the first task of Christology is the critical verification of the Christian faith in its origin in Jesus and his history.” (84) I

If one wishes to say who the Christ, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Logos, etc. actually is, then one must use the name of Jesus and recount his history. The name of Jesus can neither be translated into other languages nor be replaced by other names, or by the names of other people. His history cannot be replaced by other histories, or by the histories of other people. To say what Jesus is, means and does, one must go to the ancient and modern titles for his office and function, expound them and supplement them anew. The constant in the changes brought about by time, and in the transformations in the concrete form of faith, love and hope, is the name of Jesus, and the essential reference to him and his history in every Christian statement about God, the world and man. But the variables are to be found in the titles and predicates which can always be altered, and which are meant to state what Jesus is for us today. 85–86.

The first question that must be asked is “Is Jesus True God?” The early church so emphasized the divinity of Christ that they almost became docetic (Jesus was not really human, he only seemed to be human). One of the great objections to Jesus’ divinity was, “How could God be crucified and die.” Thus the cross must also be an important factor when we think of who God is.

If the mystery of Jesus is the eternal presence of God amongst men, then the salvation of the world is also to be found in him. God became man, so that men could partake of God. He took on transitory, mortal being, for that which is transitory and mortal to become intransitory and immortal. 88.

The second question that must be asked is “Is Jesus True Man?” That is, can Jesus the man be called God? Theologies that split Jesus from the Christ remove the convicting power of a faith and removes Christianity from relevance to practical action and its ability to deal with human sin and its consequences.

Modern Christology always assumes faith, and states that Jesus can be understood in this way in faith. But it rarely says why one should have faith, and have faith in Jesus in particular. Thus it becomes a modern Christology which is accepted within its own circle, but has virtually nothing to say to non-believers, unbelievers or those who hold a different faith. 97.

The third question is “Are you he who is to come?” In this section Moltmann joins the disciples in dialogue with the Jews and focuses on the inauguration of the kingdom promised in the OT. He sees this anticipation as fulfilled in the church, in a very real and concrete way, which reaches out to all the unredeemed in the world.

The Jewish answer could be described by saying that God forces Israel to repent through suffering. The Christian answer is that God brings the sinner, whether a Jew or a Gentile, to repentance through his own suffering in the cross of Jesus. The ultimate difference between Jews and Christians lies in the attitude to the crucified Christ. 102.

The final question of chapter 3 is “Who do you say that I am?” This question turns things around, as Jesus is the one asking the question, and requires the reader to make a response to Jesus. The hope of the world is now centered in Jesus, who has fulfilled the hope of Israel. We follow because we believe the crucified one is also the returning one who will “make all things new.”

This question of Christ can only be answered by a new creation, in which the novelty which is Jesus is no longer a novelty, and his cross is no longer a scandal, and in which they have become the basis and the light of the kingdom. By confessing Jesus as the Christ, faith also confesses that this future of his is real...Thus it is profoundly significant that the name of Jesus and his history remain fixed, as fixed as his death, whereas the titles of Christ which are a response to his openness are historically changeable with the passing of time, and in fact change history. 106.

Chapter 4, The Historical Trial of Jesus, is an attempt to “achieve an understanding of the crucified Christ, first of all in the light of his life and ministry, which led to his crucifixion.” (112) He again emphasizes the historical crucified Jesus cannot be separated from the risen Christ. By “the trial of Jesus” he means “the struggle for the truth of God in which he came forward as a witness.” The first question he asks is about the origin of Christology. How did the Jesus who preached become the Jesus who was preached? He finds the answer in the cross and resurrection….

He who proclaimed that the kingdom was near died abandoned by God. He who anticipated the future of God in miracles and in casting out demons died helpless on the cross. He who revealed the righteousness of God with an authority greater than Moses died according to the provision of the law as a blasphemer. He who spread the love of God in his fellowship with the poor and the sinners met his end between two criminals on the cross. Thus in the end the basic problem and the starting point of Christology is the scandal and the folly of the cross. 125.

Moltmann begins the second part of the chapter,  Jesus’ Way to the Cross, by stating that the death of Jesus on the cross is an assured historical fact. The key question is the meaning of his death. On one side the death and resurrection points to the fulfillment of the law by Jesus and the offer of righteousness through grace alone. On the other side it condemned the powers and authorities of this world while simultaneously offering forgiveness in the person of the crucified Jesus. It brought the outcasts of all the world into fellowship with God.

Faith in the crucified Christ is in the political sense a public testimony to the freedom of Christ and the law of grace in the face of the political religions of nations, empires, races and classes. Between faith in Christ and the deified rulers of the world, the personal cults and the social and political fetishes of society, Jesus himself stands. The recollection of his crucifixion is something both dangerous and liberating. 145.

The cross of the Son divides God from God to the utmost degree of enmity and distinction. The resurrection of the Son abandoned by God unites God with God in the most intimate fellowship. 52.

Chapter 5, “THE ESCHATOLOGICAL TRIAL OF JESUS CHRIST” faces “the task of understanding his death and his life and thus his whole historical appearance in the context of his resurrection from the dead and of eschatological faith.” (160)

Christian faith essentially reads the history of Jesus back to front: his cross is understood in the light of his resurrection, his way to the cross in the light of the saving meaning of his cross, his words and miracles in the light of his Easter exaltation to be Lord. Even his insignificant birth is recalled and narrated in the light of his crucifixion. 162.

Moltmann defines resurrection as “a qualitatively new life which no longer knows death and therefore cannot be a continuation of this mortal life.” (169–170). This is the foundation of both future hope and present Christian experience and life. It gives hope to the outcasts, poor and sufferers of the world…

The message of the new righteousness which eschatological faith brings into the world says that in fact the executioners will not finally triumph over their victims. It also says that in the end the victims will not triumph over their executioners. The one will triumph who first died for the victims and then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through the vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind with a new humanity. 178.

The significance of the cross is seen in the fact that the rejected one has become the lord of the universe. Jesus can, thus, both represent God in this unredeemed world and bring in his kingdom as holy God in judgment. In the present it brings “liberating love” to the world and, in the end, God’s perfect kingdom.

Therefore we must say that Christ’s death on the cross is ‘the significance’ of his resurrection for us. Conversely, any interpretation of the meaning of his death which does not have as a presupposition his resurrection from the dead is a hopeless matter, because it cannot communicate the new element of life and salvation which came to light in his resurrection. Christ did not die only as that expiatory offering in which the law was restored or the original creation was reconstituted after the fall of man. He died ‘for us’, to give us, ‘the dead’, a share in his new life of resurrection and in his future of eternal life. 186.

The surprising thing here is that “God not only acted in the crucifixion of Jesus or sorrowfully allowed it to happen, but was himself active with his own being in the dying Jesus and suffered with him.” (190) thus reconciling the world to himself. It is the crucified loving God who brings in the kingdom and lives it through his church in the present.

Creation, new creation and resurrection are external works of God against chaos, nothingness and death. The suffering and dying of Jesus, understood as the suffering and dying of the Son of God, on the other hand, are works of God towards himself and therefore at the same time passions of God. God overcomes himself, God passes judgment on himself, God takes the judgment on the sin of man upon himself. He assigns to himself the fate that men should by rights endure. The cross of Jesus, understood as the cross of the Son of God, therefore reveals a change in God, a stasis within the Godhead: ‘God is other.’ And this event in God is the event on the cross. It takes on Christian form in the simple formula which contradicts all possible metaphysical and historical ideas of God: ‘God is love.’ 192–193.

PIU Staff Christmas Party

Another one of the traditional end of Fall semester activities at PIU is the annual staff Christmas party. This year we held it at the Taste Restaurant in the Westin Hotel. They have an amazing buffet for a very reasonable price. I especially enjoyed the many varieties of sashimi and I think I may have made 3 or 4 visits to the dessert counter (Joyce and I are “toasting” here with our desserts). It was a fun night and I don’t think I have laughed that much in a while. We had a white elephant gift exchange and, thanks to several local businesses, vendors and board members who donated some very nice prizes, all of our faculty and staff won something in our raffle. Celia, Nino, Samantha and the admin team did a great job planning the evening. Another good night and good memory at PIU on Guam.

I did manage to keep my chocolates in the gift exchange. Joyce was not able to retain this very cool Darth Vader. Joyce and Kita made a few trips to the food line

Here are a few pictures of us enjoying the evening

The Crucified God by JÜRGEN MOLTMANN #1

For the last couple months I have been working my way through Jurgen Moltmann’s, The Crucified God, The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology, for my Sunday “ theological reading. Some of you have been following the quotes from the book I have been posting on my Facebook page. I will also post the link to my blog on my page and would comments and discussion about this post there. The great strength of the book is the reminder that, “The theological foundation for Christian hope is the raising of the crucified Christ. Anyone who develops a ‘theology of hope’ from this center will be inescapably reminded of the other side of that foundation: the cross of the risen Christ... Hope without remembrance leads to illusion, just as, conversely, remembrance without hope can result in resignation. (ix) We get focused on a lot of theological issues but we must remember that everything must take into account the fact that the incarnate God came to this earth to submit to crucifixion. We must reveal God in our lives the way he revealed himself to us…

I saw that when God reveals himself to us godless men and women, who turn ourselves into proud and unhappy gods, he does not do so through power and glory. He reveals himself through suffering and cross, so he repudiates in us the arrogant man or woman and accepts the sinner in us... What is manifested in the cross is God’s suffering of a passionate love for his lost creatures, a suffering prepared for sacrifice. x.

The theme of the book is that the cross must be placed at the center of all theology. No theology is Christian that does not take seriously the abandonment of the sufferer undergone for the all of creation alienated from God. This is the church’s mission as “The Christian church and Christian theology become relevant to the problems of the modern world only when they reveal the ‘hard core’ of their identity in the crucified Christ and through it are called into question, together with the society in which they live. ” (3) This is how the church “takes up its cross.”

The first chapter deals with The Identity and Relevance of Faith. It is only through a theology centered in the cross that the church can pursue relevance in modern society without losing its identity as biblical Christianity. The church is in a crisis of relevance because biblical faith has such a tendency to degenerate into dogmatism, legalism, sectarianism, separatism and fail in its mission. However when the church jettisons the cross to be relevant it becomes no different than any other social or rebel movement. To maintain identity while seeking relevance…

When a Christian community feels obliged to empty itself in certain social and political actions, it must take care that its traditional religious and political identity is not exchanged for a new religious and political identity, but must sustain its non-identity. Otherwise a church which, seeking for an identity and not preserving its distinctiveness, plunges into a social and political movement, once again becomes the ‘religion of society’. 17

This creates a “crisis of Christian identity.” “Christian identity can be understood only as an act of identification with the crucified Christ, to the extent to which one has accepted the proclamation that in him God has identified himself with the godless and those abandoned by God, to whom one belongs oneself. If Christian identity comes into being by this double process of identification, then it is clear that it cannot be described in terms of that faith alone, nor can it be protected against decay by correct doctrinal formulae, repeatable rituals and set patterns of moral behaviour.” (19) Good doctrine alone is not enough. Changed practice, structures and circumstances as a result of hearts changed by Christ is the main thing that is necessary.

The solution is to realize that ultimate truth is revealed in the cross and “One must become godless oneself and abandon every kind of self-deification or likeness to God, in order to recognize the God who reveals himself in the crucified Christ.” (27) The church must live out the cross in fellowship with those who are “different or alien.”

The church of the crucified Christ cannot be assimilated to what is different and alien to it. Nor can it shut itself away from what is alien in a social ghetto, but for the sake of its identity in the crucified Christ, must reveal him and itself, by following him, in what is different and alien. 28.

The second chapter discusses THE RESISTANCE OF THE CROSS AGAINST ITS INTERPRETATIONS. The uniqueness of the Christian church has always been the worship of a crucified savior. It is odd to worship something so horrible, as “the cross is the really irreligious thing in Christian faith. It is the suffering of God in Christ, rejected and killed in the absence of God, which qualifies Christian faith as faith, and as something different from the projection of man’s desire.” 37 The cross thus contradicts the desire and focus of human culture and tradition…

The symbol of the cross in the church points to the God who was crucified not between two candles on an altar, but between two thieves in the place of the skull, where the outcasts belong, outside the gates of the city. It does not invite thought but a change of mind. It is a symbol which therefore leads out of the church and out of religious longing into the fellowship of the oppressed and abandoned. On the other hand, it is a symbol which calls the oppressed and godless into the church and through the church into the fellowship of the crucified God. Where this contradiction in the cross, and its revolution in religious values, is forgotten, the cross ceases to be a symbol and becomes an idol, and no longer invites a revolution in thought, but the end of thought in self-affirmation. 40.

Sadly human tradition has tried to maintain the “cult of the cross” by making the once-for-all sacrifice of the cross a repeatable event. Moltmann also criticizes the church for misusing the mysticism of the cross “in the interest of those who cause the suffering.” Instead it should be that “Jesus was their identity with God in a world which had taken all hope from them and destroyed their human identity until it was unrecognizable.” (48) But ultimately,

The poverty and sufferings of Christ are experienced and understood only by participation in his mission and in imitating the task he carried out. Thus the more the poor understand the cross, in the mysticism of the cross, as the cross of Christ, the more they are liberated from their submission to fate and apathy in suffering. 52

We don’t follow Christ by assent to good doctrine, following religious rituals etc. Those who want to follow Christ must suffer and die with him. When Christianity assimilates to the values of the society around it “the cross is forgotten and hope is lost.”

The suffering of love for forgotten, despised and betrayed human beings wherever they are oppressed is concrete suffering in imitation of Christ, and in practice can be called taking ‘one’s cross’ upon oneself. But it should not be isolated, and for all the existential understanding of Jesus that in fact is achieved in it, the qualitative difference between Christ’s own cross and the cross of those who follow him should not be ignored. The cross of Christ is the basis on which the apostle, the martyrs and those who show selfless love are crucified with him. 64

A real theology of the cross transforms lives…

A Christian theology which sees its problem and its task in knowing God in the crucified Christ, cannot be pure theory. It cannot lead to a pure theory of God, as in the vision of God in the early church. Pure contemplation of this kind abandons the realm of the transitory, of mere appearance and uncertain opinion, and finds true, eternal being in the logos. The pure, self-forgetting contemplation of God transforms him who contemplates into that which he contemplates, and enables him to participate in God himself, making him divine through mimesis and methexis.  68.

And sets people free in the experiential knowledge of God..

Man seeks God in the will for political power and world domination. If he sees and believes God in Christ who was powerless and crucified, he is set free from this desire to have power and domination over others. Man seeks to know God in the works and ordinances of the cosmos or the course of world history, in order to become divine himself through knowledge. If he sees and believes God in the suffering and dying Christ, he is set free from the concern for self-deification which guides him towards knowledge. 69

And Moltmann concludes chapter 2…

The crucified Christ therefore remains the inner criterion of all preaching which appeals to him. So far as it points to him, it is tested by him; so far as it reveals him, it is authorized by him. 75.

We cannot know the crucified God unless we are willing to serve the suffering and alienated people of the world and be crucified to the values of the society around us.

We will look at chapters 3-5 in the next post.

PIU Advent Chapel

Every year the last chapel of the PIU Fall semester is the PIU Christmas chapel. As Mike pointed out, since it is not Christmas yet, it is actually an Advent chapel. As a school we all participate in focusing on the most important event in world history – the entrance of the Creator into the world to become one of us and complete the kingdom task. We celebrated with song, scripture reading and fellowship. It was a great climax to a good semester of chapels.

We had a wide variety of Christmas music

The 4 candles were lit with the appropriate readings

Many students, staff and faculty participated in the program

Michael’s power point slides enhanced the worship experience

 

And afterwards, group pictures around the advent candles or in front of the Christmas tree