On becoming 'theologians of the cross'

As some may have noticed, I’ve been away from the world of blogging and e-mail for a few days break (near the New Forest). I’m grateful to those who submitted comments about my post on Giles Fraser’s ‘Thought for the Day’ and sorry some of them took so long to appear.

I also couldn’t help being struck by the fact that a post put together at the last minute attracted so much comment —indeed it has generated its own thread on the Fulcrum website! Typical when something which took ten minutes gets the attention, whilst other things that take hours sink without trace!

However, it does rather make the point I was basically arguing, that there is a real tension between ‘cross centred’ and ‘resurrection centred’ theologies. Of course, neither is an ‘either-or’ approach, despite the tendency to caricature. The question is one of balance, not of choosing alternatives, and even Giles Fraser’s approach has a place for both.

I do, nevertheless, hold that whichever provides the ‘centre of gravity’ will shape the rest of our theology, and that, furthermore, it is the cross which should rightly take that position. Martin Luther’s dictum, Crux sola est nostra theologia (“The cross alone is our theology”), is, I think, a true summary of the Christian faith.

One of the points I was arguing, therefore, in my four Good Friday meditations is that we cannot think of the cross solely in terms of its salvific effects. We may, for example, have a theology which entirely accepts penal substitutionary atonement (another bone of contention), and yet which is not a ‘theology of the cross’. Without wishing to start a whole new argument (or create a whole new set of enemies!), I think much Charismatic theology falls into this category. Indeed, one could argue that the letters to the Corinthians very much address this problem. Compare Paul’s understanding of Apostleship with the Corinthian understanding of the Way of Christ:

Already you have all you want! Already you have become rich! Quite apart from us you have become kings! Indeed, I wish that you had become kings, so that we might be kings with you! For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become a spectacle to the world, to angels and to mortals. (1 Cor 4:8-9)

Despite the denial of the resurrection by some in the Corinthian church, it is widely accepted by commentators that a major part of the Corinthian problem was an over-realized eschatology — thinking that the benefits of the world to come could all be experienced in the ‘here and now’. The present application of the cross for these Corinthians was therefore the experience of life rather than death, whereas for the Apostle it was life through death:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you. (2 Cor 4:8-12)

The evangelical (that is to say, gospel) way is therefore not to assert that ‘because Christ has died, we live’. That is at best a mistake and at worst triumphalism. Rather, we must realize that because Christ has died we must die daily, and through that daily experience of death will come life, for us, and for the world.

Now it seems to me that this Apostolic understanding (which stands in contrast with the Corinthian understanding despite their faith in Christ!) relies on the cross being the transformative feature of our theology. As I argued before, there is nothing revolutionary in the belief that God raises the dead, and thus I must disagree with Tom Wright’s analysis which sees the resurrection as the ‘world-view changing’ element of the gospel message.

The Apostle Paul was a believer in the resurrection before he was a believer in Jesus, and presented this belief as an example of Jewish orthodoxy. Again, we might look to the exchange between Jesus and Martha concerning Lazarus:

Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.” (Jn 11:23-24)

Of course there are issues here about bringing a future hope into the present in the person of Jesus. To repeat, this is not about choosing between cross and resurrection. But it is clear that Martha already believes (albeit without much present comfort) in the resurrection. The issue for her is that this Jesus is the one who embodies that hope. And of course that understanding will undergo further transformation through the crucifixion.

Indeed, as John presents it, the raising of Lazarus is a trigger for the death of Jesus — a death on which Caiaphas delivers the prophetic verdict, “it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn 11:50). Once again, therefore, it is the cross which is the focal, and transformative, element in the gospel.

Once again, though, I would emphasize the need to see that this transformation is not simply in us being saved, nor merely in knowing that we are saved. It is a transformation which comes from experiencing the cross — from being ‘theologians of the cross’ in Luther’s sense of “dying and being damned” and knowing God most intimately in this (the experience of what Luther called anfechtung).

And this, I venture to say, is so alien to most contemporary Christian theology that we all have something to learn.

John Richardson
19 April 2009

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Good Friday: The Transforming Cross (4)

The Transformation of Power

Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. ¹⁵ Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. ¹⁶ Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited. ¹⁷ Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. ¹⁸ If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. ¹⁹ Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. ²⁰ On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”²¹ Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Rom 12:14-21)

Some of the Apostle Paul’s advice to the Church at Rome might seem odd to modern Christian ears. Specifically, why would we want to heap burning coals on someone’s head? That doesn’t sound very loving or moral.

The same advice might have sounded odd to Jewish ears, too, but for rather different reasons. Paul is quoting from the book of Proverbs, and when we look at this in context, what matters is not only what he has left in but what he has left out:

If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. (Prov 25:21-22)

Taken by itself, the Proverb might seem to imply that there is some sort of ‘quid pro quo’ involved in love for our enemies — do this for God and God will do something for you. But Paul will have none of it. To behave as he is suggesting is, indeed, to act in line with Scripture, but we do this because it is right, not because there is something in it for us.

Yet how many of us actually do what he suggests? In particular, how many of us seek to overcome evil with good? Surely evil is to be overcome by something more than us being nice to evil people?

Indeed, what springs to mind at this point is the famous quotation of Edmund Burke, “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” It is a quotation so familiar that it has become an axiom of modern society, which is interesting, because it seems that Burke actually said no such thing. The quote is apparently a misquote, but its popularity is significant because it is says something we passionately and instinctively believe to be true —when the bad act, the good must react. Even if Burke didn’t say it, we all believe it to be true.

And just because it wasn’t said by someone famous, doesn’t mean it isn’t true. But how much less popular, even amongst Christians, is another quotation, from a source we do know:

You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. (Matt 5:38-39a)

In the Sermon on the Mount, from which this comes, we have what is sometimes seen as a manifesto for Christian living. Yet if it is a manifesto, it is remarkably impractical one. Occasionally we may hear someone say something like, “I don’t have much time for the Church, but I do believe in the Sermon on the Mount.” Rest assured, anyone who says that has probably not read the Sermon, and certainly not understood it, for who could love what Jesus said next?

If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. (Matt 5:39b-42)

We may admire it, we may be challenged by it, we may even try to live by it, but we cannot easily love words which demand that we become the potential victim of every bully, thief, shyster and charlatan. Indeed, we know that anyone who actually lived by these principles in this world would soon find themselves out of cloaks and money, miles from home with cheeks bruised red on both sides. Yet that is the whole point, for the principles of the Sermon on the Mount cannot work as a manifesto for this world, if by ‘work’ we mean, ‘lay down principles by which society could be governed’.

The Sermon on the Mount is addressed to lambs who live in the midst of wolves, telling them how to live as lambs. But it does not tell them how to avoid being eaten by the wolves. Indeed, it cannot, because in this world, the lamb that lives as a lamb will always, ultimately, be eaten by the wolf.

Of course the time is coming, as the prophet Isaiah says, when “the wolf and the lamb will feed together” (Isa 65:25), but that time is not yet. And so the lambs naturally look for some defence. Indeed, the truth is that the lambs have a fair bit of wolf in them as well. But the Sermon on the Mount is not interested in how to preserve the lambs from harm. It is interested only in telling lambs how to live as a lamb should. “If you truly want to live as God’s people,” it says, “this is the way.” But why would you ever think it would be the way of the world?

And it is a way that leads ultimately to the cross. The cross is the final expression of what happens when good meets evil without compromise on either side. It is the ultimate outworking of the Sermon on the Mount —the Preacher practising what he preached. And it is the total contradiction of everything we hold to be right: faced with evil, the Good Man does nothing. And to all outward intents and purposes the evil triumph.

And then three days later, Jesus springs from the tomb, overcoming death and routing the powers of evil which thought they had him in their grip. Or at least, that is how Christians often seem to think of the resurrection. But the Bible’s language is very careful at this point, and although it is true to say that Jesus rose from the dead, it is more accurate to say that God raised him.

This man [said Peter to the crowd on the Day of Pentecost] was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death ... (Acts 2:23-24a)

Faced with evil, the Good Man does not feign death until he can turn the tables on his enemies by coming back to life. He dies, and places everything into the hands of God.

And it is precisely in this action — in dying at the hands of wicked men — that Jesus overcame evil. As Colossians 2:15 puts it, he disarmed the powers and authorities and triumphed over them “by the cross.”

The lesson of this is profound, and it was not lost on the Apostles, though it often seems it is lost on the Church. The power of God and the wisdom of God lie in what the world calls weak and the world calls foolish. And this is not confined to the cross. Rather, it flows from the cross into every area of life — or it should.

And so when the Apostle Paul saw the Christians at Corinth dragging one another to court, he asked them first if they couldn’t find one of their own number wise enough to settle the case. But failing that, he said,

The very fact that you have lawsuits among you means you have been completely defeated already. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? (1 Cor 6:7)

“But that is impossible,” we reply (and we may be sure the Corinthians did, too), “Other people have rights, and we must have them too.” And so we seek to protect and defend ourselves, and to ensure our place in society and respect for our views. And all the time we are losing our influence and losing respect.

By contrast, the first Christians had no place in society and no protection either for their views or for themselves. Yet this was seen not as a disadvantage but a privilege, for it allowed them to live as their Lord lived:

Dear friends [wrote Peter], do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. If you are insulted because of the name of Christ, you are blessed, for the Spirit of glory and of God rests on you. If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler. However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name. (1 Pet 4:12-16)

That was the way followed by the first people to bear the name of Christ. They took everything thrown at them by the might of Rome, as Christ took everything that was thrown at him. And they won, not despite this, but because of this.

This is the power of the cross. And those who truly conquer in this sign are are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

John Richardson
10 April 2009

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Good Friday: The Transforming Cross (3)

The transformation of judgement

When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, ¹⁴ having cancelled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross. ¹⁵ And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross. (Col 2:13-15)

The cross must be understood not as a momentary event, but a way of life. Furthermore, it is not just an event which happened to Christ, but an event which involves us. According to the New Testament, we are not merely passive onlookers, gazing on the cross of Christ, but active participants in the crucifixion. And this is not just, as preachers and hymnwriters have pointed out, a participation in having him crucified but a participation in being crucified with him.

The doctrine of penal substitution rightly emphasises that Christ bore the punishment for our sins. When Peter wrote of the crucified Christ, “by his wounds you have been healed”, he was alluding to the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53:5, whom the onlookers there considered, “stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted”. But he goes on to say, “he was was pierced for our transgressions,” and “was crushed for our iniquities.” The natural interpretation of the Servant’s suffering is that he bears God’s punishment for sin. The hidden truth, though, is that it is our sins, not his, for which he is being punished.

This doctrine of penal substitution, then, is not some novel reading of post-Reformation Evangelicalism, as some like to imply (though as eminent a theologian as Tom Wright denies). It is the heart and soul of the Bible, beginning with God’s warning to Adam in the Garden not to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil for, “in the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.”

This death is not an effect of the fruit but a punishment of God. To the serpent, God said after the Fall, “Cursed are you”; to the woman, “I will multiply your pains”; to Adam “dust you are and to dust you will return.”

And when God showed his glory to Moses, it was the glory of a God who is merciful precisely because he turns away his own wrath:

“The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, ⁷ maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”

That God punishes sin — indeed the least sin — is surely one of the clearest lessons of the Old Testament, not least because it is one of the most difficult.

And we cannot comprehend the New Testament unless we understand how God can forgive sin without simply ignoring sin — how God can remain true to his character as Judge as well as Deliverer.

The penalty aspect of penal substitution is something which we must never let go of. Yet in holding onto this understanding, we sometimes over-stress the element of substitution, forgetting that in the New Testament we are caught up in the death of Christ on the cross. Yes, Christ died for our sins, but, Paul asks, “don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” When he was crucified, we were crucified. And as he died for our sins, we died as sinners with him.

The Christian life, then, is not simply a life lived knowing that Christ died for us, but knowing that we died with Christ. And this has radical consequences.

The familiar lesson is that we should not go on sinning because we have died to sin. And this is true, but even this has major implications, for the Apostle’s approach is not to threaten Christians with the consequences of the Law, but to appeal to their understanding of their new life in Christ.

And this is quite different from the world’s approach (indeed, it must be said it is quite different from what is often the Church’s approach). For the world always does (and always must) rely on the law and the Church has often kept the law in its back pocket for use if the gospel appears to have failed. So the world will always be moralistic in its attitude and legalistic in its solutions. The only difference between the world’s morality and that of, say, the Pharisees, is a disagreement over what constitutes moral behaviour. The world’s understanding of this may shift this way and that. But both the world and the Pharisee agree that the right answer lies in the details — indeed, the minutiae — of the law, which must control and tame the human subject, under (of course) the supervision of the experts in the law who will mould the rest of us into the pattern of living they themselves approve.

The gospel, however, has nothing with which to ‘control’ the human subject — nothing, that is, other than the word of God. And so, confronted with the less-than-desirable behaviour of the Christian (and our behaviour is always less than desirable in some regards) — the Apostle’s ultimate sanction is the appeal and the warning. On the one hand, “I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God,” (Romans 12:1). On the other hand, “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God.” (Gal 4:21). But there is no new set of Christian rules, no new list of Christian sanctions.

Yet that is not all it means for us to have died with Christ. We are dead to the Law so that we might live for God (Gal 2:19)

I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. (Gal 2:20)

And if we are dead to the law, we are dead to the prescriptions of the law. On the one hand, this is a liberty anyone would welcome. We are free, for example, from the obligations to observe rituals and regulations.

Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or drink, or with regard to a religious festival, a New Moon celebration or a Sabbath day. These are a shadow of the things that were to come; the reality, however, is found in Christ.

We might even add, we are free from the obligation of Good Friday, or Easter Sunday, for the person who observes these days and the person who does not are the same in God’s eyes, provided they have died with Christ and live by faith in him.

On the other hand, our freedom from the law means there is no limit to our obligations to others:

Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “Do not commit adultery,” “Do not murder,” “Do not steal,” “Do not covet,” and whatever other commandment there may be, are summed up in this one rule: “Love your neighbour as yourself.”

The lawyer asked Jesus, “Who is my neighbour?” hoping to tie it down. Jesus replied, “Who was neighbour to the man who fell among robbers? Go and do the same.”

But even then there is more to the life of the cross. For on the cross, our sinful self is crucified for its sins. The accusation nailed above Jesus’ head was, “King of the Jews.” The accusation nailed above our sinful selves on the cross with Christ is every sin we have ever committed (or will commit). And so we are set free not just from the penalty of sin, and not just from the power of sin, but from the condemnation of sin: “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom 8:1).

The life of the cross is not a life weighed down by an awareness of guilt and sin but of the “glorious freedom of the children of God” (Rom 8:21). We are aware of our sin, and we are aware of our guilt, but we are aware of them in the way that a person whose debt has been cancelled might be aware of their debt, or as someone whose headache has gone might be aware of their headache, or as someone who thought they’d lost their wallet might be aware of their anxiety when they discover it in their coat.

Our God is a God of judgement. Let us never forget. But the cross transforms judgement. No longer does it hang over our heads, not because there is nothing to judge, but because it has been hung over our heads on the cross itself, when we were crucified with Christ.

John Richardson
10 April 2009

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Good Friday: The Transforming Cross (2)

The transformation of suffering

“Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?” (Acts 26:8)

When the Apostle Paul made his defence before King Agrippa, described in Acts 26, he spoke as a Jew to Jews. He was therefore able to make a number of assumptions about things they held in common, prominent amongst which were, first, that the Jews were God’s people, living in expectation of his promises, and, second, that God is supreme, and therefore capable of fulfilling what he promised.

Paul’s argument, therefore, was that he was still living as a faithful Jew, even whilst proclaiming the risen Christ as Lord:

The Jews all know the way I have lived ever since I was a child, from the beginning of my life in my own country, and also in Jerusalem. They have known me for a long time and can testify, if they are willing, that according to the strictest sect of our religion, I lived as a Pharisee. And now it is because of my hope in what God has promised our fathers that I am on trial today. This is the promise our twelve tribes are hoping to see fulfilled as they earnestly serve God day and night. O king, it is because of this hope that the Jews are accusing me. (Acts 26:4-7)

Now it is true that there were differences in Judaism about the expectation of the resurrection. The Sadducees, famously, did not believe in the resurrection, or in angels. Paul was well aware of this, and had exploited that difference in the recent past. But the Sadducees were a minority, and in any case, as Paul pointed out to Agrippa, nothing is impossible to God, so why would anyone be shocked at the message of Jesus’ resurrection?

Yet as Paul knew perfectly well, the message was shocking, and it made many people angry. And Paul knew that because he had once been shocked and angry himself, and had gone about persecuting the Church as a result. But why were people shocked and angry? It was not, as Paul had just observed, at the notion that God raised the dead, but at the notion that God had raised “this Jesus, whom you crucified”, making him Lord and Messiah.

Paul’s view of the world, in other words, was not changed by coming to believe in the resurrection. He already believed in the resurrection, as did most of his fellow-countryman. What really changed his world was realizing that the Messiah was the crucified one. When the risen Jesus appeared to him on the Damascus Road, Paul realized not that he had been wrong about the resurrection, but that he had been wrong about Jesus.

Certainly Paul preached the resurrection, but it was the resurrection of Jesus. And Paul’s message to people was not ‘resurrection’, but the resurrected Christ. Hence this man, whose life was transformed by an encounter with the risen Jesus, could write to the church at Corinth,

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.

Now this is important, because there are many today for whom the resurrection of Jesus is becoming the central message, with the cross as a kind of preparation for that. Rowan Williams does it eloquently in his book titled Resurrection. What the resurrection does, according to him, is to present the resurrected Jesus back to those who judged and crucified him as ‘the judge of his judges’ (3). However, the judgement he pronounces is on their judgement:

The exaltation of the condemned Jesus is presented by the disciples not as threat but as promise and hope. (3)

Salvation, then, is found not in the work of Jesus on the cross, but in accepting those we have rejected, just as the rejected Jesus accepted his judges and rejected their rejection of him.

But we find it in far more simple applications than that. Here is a clergyman writing in a recent newsletter:

The significance of Jesus’ resurrection is not just that one man rose from the dead but that the transformation of his cruel and lonely death is a sign of the transformation that is possible for all of us who trust in God as Jesus did. [....] For the first Christians and for Christians now, the resurrection of Jesus captures what God is seeking to do for every human being throughout history, taking the sorrow and suffering and wickedness and turning and changing it to inextinguishable life with him [...].

Of course, it is not wholly wrong to say that God is working to transform us, and indeed to transform the world. But here the work of God is manifested in taking our suffering, as he took the suffering of the cross, and transforming it into something else — as the cross gave way to the resurrection.

In other words, God is seen in the triumph, not the tragedy, and we are back with Luther’s ‘theologian of glory’.

Now the mistake is innocent. There is no malice in what was written, nor is there unbelief. Yet the effect is to change the entire understanding of the Christian life, for God is not seen in the death of Christ on the cross, but in the life of Christ in his resurrection. As he writes,

... this transformation is not a ‘cancelling out of the cross’ but rather the life which is born through it ...

It sounds fine, but it is precisely where the fault lies, for the result is that God will not be seen in sorrow, suffering and wickedness, but only in overcoming sorrow, suffering and wickedness. Now we see Luther was right when he wrote that the theologian of glory prefers “glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.” The theologian of glory also prefers resurrection to crucifixion.

And who wouldn’t? But the message of the cross is precisely the message that the cross is God’s work and God’s way. And so the Apostle Paul wrote a very different testimony about God’s answer to prayer from the ones we would like to give:

To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. (2 Cor 12:7-9)

What is transformed here? It is not Paul’s experience but Paul’s understanding of his experience, and therefore Paul's response to his experience. Of course Paul knew God could answer prayer by taking away the cause of his torment, and at first he believed that God would answer this prayer in that way. There is no argument here for giving up prayer.

But the answer he received was not an alternative to God’s gracious goodness, but an expression of that gracious goodness. And the answer was not that Christ’s power would overcome his weakness. It was that the weakness was the power. And this is the message of the cross: the power of God and the wisdom of God.

We must never make the mistake of imagining that the cross is the weakness of God and the resurrection is the power of God. For if we do, then there will be many times in our lives when we will be wondering when we will see God at work instead of seeing precisely that God is at work in the things we are waiting for him to change.

For the great work of God in the first instance is this: that we should be transformed into the likeness of his son; the son who, the writer of Hebrews tells us, was made perfect (which is to say ‘complete’ or ‘finished’) through suffering.

It is indeed not incredible to anyone who believes in any God Almighty that God could raise the dead. What is incredible is that God Almighty would be at work in the sufferings of the righteous one. Yet that being the case, all suffering is transformed.

John Richardson
9 April 2009

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Good Friday: The Transforming Cross (1)

The transformation of glory

Now there were some Greeks among those who went up to worship at the Feast. They came to Philip, who was from Bethsaida in Galilee, with a request. “Sir,” they said, “we would like to see Jesus.” Philip went to tell Andrew; Andrew and Philip in turn told Jesus. Jesus replied, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” (John 12:20-23)

In April 1518, the Reformer Martin Luther was summoned before a general chapter of his own Augustinian order of monks at Heidelberg, and called to recant the position he had adopted the year before in his 95 Theses.

Luther refused, though he did resign as district vicar of his order. Instead, he put forward a much more lengthy statement of his views, in what became known as the Heidelberg Disputation. This showed how his thinking went far deeper than merely to opposing indulgences, or even to relying on faith rather than good works for salvation.

Rather, Luther’s theology (though ‘theology’ is too dry and clinical a word for it) was, at heart, the theology of the cross — an understanding that the cross transformed all of life. Indeed, for Luther the cross of Christ was not just the means of our salvation, it was an insight into the very heart of God —the point at which the invisible God is truly revealed.

But God is only revealed through the cross to the eye of faith, whereas most people think of God’s unseen character as being revealed through the physical things we see. In Luther’s opinion, this led to a false understanding of God:

That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the invisible things of God as though they were clearly perceptible in those things which have actually happened.

In other words, we cannot look at the world around us and truly understand God on the basis of surface appearances alone. Our natural inclination is to look at the mountains and say, “Here is the majesty of God,” or look at the stars and say, “Here is the power of God,” or to look at a newborn baby and say, “Here is the love of God.” But the eye of faith looks on the cross and says, “Here, truly, are the majesty of God and the power of God and the love of God.”

So Luther continued,

He deserves to be called a theologian ... who perceives the visible rearward parts of God as seen in suffering and the cross. (Following McGrath, here.)

Luther is alluding to the request of Moses, when he said to God, “Show me your glory” (Ex 33:18). God replied, “When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand and you will see my back ...” (Ex 33:22-23). What Moses saw of God was what a man is able to see and live — “the visible rearward parts”, to use Luther’s phrase.

Therefore the only theologian worthy of the name, according to Luther, is the person who recognizes the cross to be God’s ‘back’ — that is, the place where God’s glory may truly be seen by mortal human beings.

But if this is so, then it overthrows everything that human nature assumes about ‘glory’. So Luther went on to speak with contempt about the ‘theologian of glory’, meaning the person who thinks glory is ‘glorious’. This person’s whole life is based on the assumption that God’s power and love will be manifested in powerful, lovely things. Yet such a life is actually entirely mistaken and entirely un-Christian:

He who does not know Christ does not know God hidden in suffering. Therefore he prefers works to suffering, glory to the cross, strength to weakness, wisdom to folly, and, in general, good to evil.

The last phrase is particularly striking: “he ... prefers good to evil”. Aren’t we supposed to do that? Aren’t we supposed to prefer good to evil? Luther’s point, however, is that what the world means by good and evil stands opposed to what the Bible means.

Thus the world calls suffering ‘evil’. The Bible calls suffering ‘good’. “We rejoice in our sufferings,” says Paul, “because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope” (Rom 5:3-4). The world calls the cross ‘evil’, the Bible calls the cross ‘good’. When Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that the Son of Man must be crucified, Jesus replied, “Get behind me, Satan! You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.” (Mk 5:33)

The false ‘theologian of glory’ may speak of the cross, adore the cross or wear a cross, but they prefer to know nothing of the cross in their own life. They see God’s power only in things everyone would call powerful, God’s miracles only in things everyone would call a miracle, God’s answers to prayer only in things everyone would call answers to prayer. They call themselves Christian, but they lack anything distinctively Christian in their view of life.

By contrast, Luther’s understanding of being a theologian is this:

Living, or rather dying and being damned make a theologian, not understanding, reading or speculating. (Alister McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross London, 1985, 152, quoted from WA 5.163, 28-29)

It is in the experience of what the world calls evil — indeed of what is evil: of ‘death and damnation’ — that, if we are living by faith in Christ, we truly encounter the true God.

Thus the word of the cross is not a momentary call to conversion: “Believe in Jesus and you will be saved.” Nor is it an invitation to escape from the awfulness of daily life: “Be saved and you will know God’s marvellous plan for your life.” The word of the cross calls us to the way of the cross: “Take up your cross and follow me.”

Hence, when Jesus referred to the crucifixion as “the hour ... for the Son of Man to be glorified,” (Jn 12:23), he immediately went on to apply the same principle to his disciples:

The man who loves his life will lose it, while the man who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me ... (John 12:25-26)

There is nothing new or surprising for most of us in what Jesus says here. We know we must follow Jesus, we know we must take up the cross, we know we must deny ourselves. We even know, if we have been to the right sort of meetings or listened to the right sort of talks, that as Romans 3:28 puts it, “in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”

But we still struggle when God actually does what he has said he would do. We forget that Romans 3:29 goes on,

For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

That is to say, the ‘good’ that ‘all things’ work for in those God loves is the good of being like Jesus. But Jesus, who is the image of the invisible God (Col 1:15), reveals the invisible God’s power, majesty, goodness, love and glory in this world in the cross. Hence the risen Jesus did not just tell Peter to feed his sheep as Jesus had fed them, but told him the manner of his death by which he would glorify God, as Jesus had glorified God (Jn 21:19).

This is the completion of what John says at the start of his gospel:

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

The glory of the Word-become-flesh was seen when he was lifted up from the earth, drawing all men to himself, bearing God’s judgement and casting out the prince of this world (Jn 12:31-32).

This is the kingdom, the power and the glory. And this is the way, and the truth, and the life of those who would glorify God in the likeness of his Son.

John P Richardson
8 April 2009

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