Murray Rae

The Cross: Centre Point and Starting Point

The criterion of all theology which claims to be Christian is the
cross of Jesus Christ. There is no God other than the God who is known
in this cross, and no ground for hope other than the overcoming of human
sin accomplished in the death of Jesus Christ. But that which compels us
to speak of this cross and no other is that the One who was crucified
has now been made alive. The Jesus who died is the One who has been
raised. This directs us to the most important Christological question to
be asked in the light of the cross. It is not first a question of how
our salvation is achieved, or what the cross means for human life. To
begin with we must ask ‘Who?’ Who is it that died on the cross of
calvary? He died condemned by the law. He died the death of a political
rebel. He died alone without the support of His friends, who had fled
the horror and anguish of the cross, and he died with the cry of
god-forsakenness upon his lips. But ultimately the answer to the
question of who Jesus is, is not answered from within the resources of
our own ability to perceive, but by attentiveness to the speaking of
Jesus Himself. Our question is modified and addressed to Jesus Himself.
Who are you Jesus? Speak for yourself. When John the Baptist sends his
disciples to ask this question of Jesus, he does not receive an answer
within the categories suggested by his contemporaries. Some said He was
a prophet, some a teacher; others were suggesting that He was Elijah or
Jeremiah. But Jesus points to the things going on around Him. ‘The blind
receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf
hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them’
(Matt. 11:4-5). These are the signs of the Messianic age, and they point
to the presence of the Messiah who stands amongst them. In Jesus, we are
confronted with more than a prophet or teacher-we are confronted with
the Messiah Himself, the Holy One of God who brings to fulfilment the
Kingdom of God.

But does this not simply make the cross even more problematic? Is
not Jesus’ message of the kingdom, in which suffering and death shall be
no more, negated by His own death? Does not the crucifixion of the
Messiah signal, not the beginning, but the end of hope? The truth is
that the cross does signal the end of a certain kind of theism, and a
certain kind of hope. The cross of Jesus brings to an end any faith in
the god of philosophy, the god of the law, or the god who is identified
with human power or striving to be like God. And the cross is the death
of any hope based upon human goodness, and the power of humanity to
create its own kingdom. It is the end of the god of the law, because the
Son of God died condemned by the law. It is the end of the god called in
to legitimate the use of human power, because the Messiah died at the
hands of those who claimed power to rule. It is the end of the god of
philosophy, because the suffering Jesus cannot be reconciled with the
remote god of the philosophers who is the embodiment of all perfections
and cannot be affected by time and change, suffering and death.

The Cross as Basis for a New Theology

If Jesus is the Messiah, then we are forced to ask, ‘What does the
cross of Jesus Christ mean for God?’ Traditional theism began its search
for God with the problem of human finitude and suffering, and concluded
that the only God who could bring salvation was a God who was detached
from the conditions of this world, and who was immortal, unchangeable,
and impassible. But this raises the problems which preoccupied the
Christology of the early Church. How can the intransitive God be in a
transitory human being? How can the unchangeable God become flesh? How
can the immortal God suffer and die on a cross?l These questions led to
the various Christological heresies which denied the existence of God in
Christ, and led also to atheism, for a remote God who cannot suffer is
also a God who cannot love. Such a God would have nothing to say to us,
and we should have no reason to love this God. But in the cross of Jesus
Christ a new God is introduced to the world. The cross of Jesus is God’s
Word of address to us in which God says who God is. God is revealed as
the One who loves to the point of death, and the One who is the God for
humanity, the God for us. When Jesus speaks, at the Last Supper, of his
crucifixion, he says, ‘Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God
has been glorified in Him’ (Jn 13: 31). The glory of God is made known
in the crucified Jesus. The glory of God, what God is like in the very
depth of God’s being, is love, a love which stops at nothing.

God’s Being ‘For Us’

The event of the cross is an event of God’s being for us, but the
‘for us’ is to be seen in two respects. First of all, it is the being of
God toward us in which God does not remain remote and uninvolved in this
world of suffering and death, but participates in it to the extent of
experiencing suffering and death Himself. The eternal God who is love
with all God’s being comes to our place of god-forsakenness and death,
the place that we have chosen in sin, and because of this, those who
live a life in which they have abandoned God are not themselves
abandoned by God. But the ‘for us’ of God’s being is also a being on our
behalf. Christ is crucified not only as God, but also as human. He hangs
on the cross in our place, bearing the judgement of God that should
rightfully be ours. This is not however a punishment that somehow
appeases an angry God. God does not require a death to balance the
scales of justice in the universe. But God’s ‘Yes’ to humanity which is
uttered in the cross is accompanied also by a ‘No’. God’s ‘No’ is a ‘No’
to sin. It is the contradiction of humanity’s estimate of itself. It is
the contradiction of the human attempt to live without God, and to be
God for ourselves. It is the ‘No’ of God to the illusion that we might
save ourselves and build our own kingdom here on earth. That quest can
only lead to death, for there is no life outside God. The love of God is
such that God bears also this death for us. Jesus becomes our substitute
so that we do not have to suffer the agony of abandonment by God. Colin
Gunton has pointed out that to confess that Jesus becomes our substitute
is to confess that our being is formed in the end, not by ourselves, but
by God.² It is to acknowledge that we cannot remove ourselves
from the love of God, and that we cannot cease to be the covenant
partner of God, because in Jesus, God has acted to restore the covenant
once and for all.

Thus, in the cross, it is not only revealed who God is, but also
what it means to be human. To be truly a person is to be a person in
relation to this God. The activity of God in Christ restores to us the
humanity which we have rejected and sought to transcend by becoming gods
ourselves. Salvation is not a matter of escaping from the conditions of
our humanity, but of recognising the God who says ‘I have made you this
way to be in relation to me.’

The Basis of Forgiveness The cross is simultaneously God’s word of
forgiveness. It is the overcoming of the sin of past and present, and
the opening up of a new future, a future which is inaugurated in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ, and in which all creation will be brought
to fulfilment. The last word of our sin is death, but the last word of
the God who comes to us in Christ is the love which creates life.
Therefore the cross is also a sign of hope. The One who is crucified is
the One whom God raised from the dead, manifesting His righteousness as
the One who will not abandon his creatures to ultimate death, but who
restores them to share in His love. The cross reveals also that love is
not something which God feels or which God chooses to bestow or
withhold. Love is not an emotion which God feels towards us, but a way
of being. God is love, and reconciliation with this God is to share in
the event of love. But if God is love, then the being of God must be
understood in trinitarian terms. Love is relational, it tales place
between persons, and in God, it takes place as the sharing of love
between Father and Son, as an event of the Spirit. The cross on which
the Son of God dies is the opening of the being of God to humanity, so
that the love of God includes us. The cross is the extent to which God
will go to restore humanity to His love. The cross is the place where
humanity does its worst. It is the place where we reject the love of God
and shout our defiance of God. But God accepts the suffering. God does
not angrily suppress the call of the crowd who demand his crucifixion.
Nor does He come down from the cross in response to the taunts of those
who do not yet understand that to come down from the cross would be to
stop short of the demands of love. It would be to stop short of being
the God with us who undergoes death for us, even death on the cross. It
would leave us in the position of having to face death alone and to find
our own solutions to the problems of sin and death. But God does not
stop short. God’s suffering and death on the cross reveal that there is
no place to which God will not go to reconcile the people whom He has
created for union with Himself. Suffering and death do not point to the
absence of God in this world. They are not the evidence of a Creator who
does not love us after all, because at Golgotha we learn that God is
present even there.

In his book The Crucified God, Jurgen Moltmann quotes Elie Wiesel,
who writes of his experiences in Auschwitz. Wiesel tells of a
particularly gruesome execution which all the members of the
concentration camp were compelled to witness. He writes:

The SS hanged two Jewish men and a youth in front of the whole camp.
The men died quickly but he death throes of the youth lasted for half an
hour. ‘Where is God? Where is he?’, someone asked behind me. As the
youth still hung in torment in the noose after a long time, I heard the
voice call again, ‘Where is God now?’ And I heard a voice in myself
answer: ‘Where is he? He is here. He is hanging there on the gallows…’
³

Moltmann responds:

Any other answer would be blasphemy. There cannot be any other
Christian answer to the question of this torment. To speak here of a God
who could not suffer would make God a demon. To speak here of an
absolute God would make God an annihilating nothingness. To speak here
of an indifferent God would condemn us all to indifference.⁴

What both Wiesel and Moltmann are asserting is that God participates
in human history. God’s love is love that takes place in the world. ‘For
God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who
believes in Him may not perish but have eternal life.’ The words of
John’s Gospel are written after, and because of, Golgotha, and they are
written for Auschwitz, and Hiroshima, and every other hell of human
creation. God is present among us, and especially where we attempt to do
without God. Golgotha, and Auschwitz, and Hiroshima demonstrate what we
are often inclined to forget. God is not present because of something we
do. God is present in spite of what we do. The reconciling love of God
is without any basis in humankind itself. Grace, God’s gift of Himself
to us, is not something we earn, but something we are given. The word of
the cross is the acquittal of godless humanity. It is the unconditional
affirmation that we belong to God, and as such, represents the
contradiction of much Western theology and popular piety. God’s
forgiveness and reconciling love is not conditional upon our recognition
of our sin nor upon our repentance. Jesus died for those who killed
Hirn, and He prayed, ‘Father forgive them for they know not what they
do.’ He did not pray, ‘Father forgive them when they discover and repent
of their sin’, for that would amount to a gospel, not of grace, but of
law. Repentance has a place, to be sure, but it is the turning to a new
life lived out of the grace of God that occurs when we recognise that
while we were yet sinners, Christ has done enough for our salvation. ‘It
is finished!’ said the dying Jesus. There is no more that we need to do
to secure the love of God. Repentance does not hope for forgiveness, but
occurs because forgiveness has already been given.

Discipleship of the Crucified

God’s word to us in the cross is not a word seeking acceptance as
doctrine, or agreement as theory. It seeks faith in recognition of the
reconciliation given by God. Just as any achievement or cooperation on
the part of humanity, even in the form of some selfassumed humility, is
excluded, so also is that cheap grace which does not lead to repentance
and obedience. In faith, we live no more unto ourselves, but unto Him
who for us was crucified and is risen.⁵

Discipleship, then, in so far as it is to be a following of the One
who was crucified, is not an imitation of Jesus as exemplar, but a
sharing in what He has already achieved. It is participation in the
event of God’s love as it takes place in the world. Our life becomes, in
all its relationships, a thankful and obedient living to God’s glory,
and it is a life which is oriented to the way in which God has already
done enough for all people.

Because God in the death of Jesus took the place of the abandoned
(and condemned, we who would be His disciples must intercede on behalf
of the abandoned and the guilty to whom we ourselves belong. There can
be no rest while those who have been shown mercy by God are shown no
mercy by their brothers and sisters. Because God in the death of Jesus
has reconciled the world with Himself, we who would be His disciples
must work for reconciliation between all peoples at every level of
society. There can be no rest while those whom God has called his
children remain divided and at enmity. Because God in the death of Jesus
Christ has done enough for the salvation of the world, we who would be
His disciples cannot do enough for the welfare of the world. Because God
did not stop short of unconditional love, there can be no limits to our
sharing of the love that has been given us.

This is the way of discipleship. It is the way of the cross, and it
is founded upon the Self gift of God in Jesus Christ who, though He was
in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be
exploited, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a slave, being born
in human likeness. And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and
became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross. Therefore
God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every
name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven,
and on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:6-11).

The Rev Dr Murray Rae is presently Ecumenical Chaplain, University
of Auckland, New Zealand.

Reproduced with permission from the Handbook of Readings, Diploma in
Theological Studies, XTHS 105, University of Otago, New Zealand, 1991,
Introductory Essays (part 2), pp. 8-12.

Notes

1. Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 88.
2. Gunton, The Actuality of the Atonement.
3. Wiesel, Night, quoted in Moltmann, The Crucified God.
4. Moltmann, The Crucified God, p. 274.
5. ‘Understanding the Death of Jesus’, Interpretation (April 1970)

Bibliography

Berkhof, Hendrikus, Christian Faith (Eerdmans, 1979).
Kreck,
Walter, ‘The Word of the Cross’, Interpretation (April 1970).
Moltmann, Jurgen, The Crucified God (SCM, 1974).
Theological
Committee of the Evangelishchen Kirche der Union, ‘Understanding the
Death of Jesus’, Interpretation (April 1970).
Thielicke, Helmut, The
Evangelical Faith (Eerdmans, 1977), vol. 2.

[Found this article on the cross in a new journal called Interface
(edited by Veronica Brady) and was impressed. It’s produced by the
Australian Theological Forum, PO Box 504 Hindmarsh SA 5007 Australia.
Worth a look: http://www.atf.org.au/]

Copyright 1996, 1997 Australian Theological Forum. Reproduced with
permission.