The Theology of the Cross: Cross-Shaped Theology

Everyone is a theologian. Are you human? Then you are a theologian. Every one of us is a natural-born theologian. This accounts for the tremendous variety of religions among us. From Animism to Zen, from Zoroastrianism to Atheism — everyone is a theologian.

Theology is nothing more than ideas about God. Everyone has ideas about God. Everyone is a theologian.

But that doesn’t mean that everyone is a good theologian. In fact, by nature, we are all lousy theologians. St. Paul puts it this way in the first chapter of Romans:

What may be known about God is plain to [all men], because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities-- his eternal power and divine nature-- have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened.

We are natural-born theologians. But we are fallen people; and so our theology is fallen too. Paul continues: Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles. Man-shaped, bird-shaped, animal-shaped, reptile-shaped theologies; this is the shape of our fallen theology.

And what do all those theologies have in common? Paul says, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him… [but they] exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images.

Paul is saying that instead of giving Glory to God as God, fallen man seeks that glory for himself. It began in the Garden of Eden. You will not surely die," the serpent said to the woman. "For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God…" In all of his fallen theologizing, man seeks but one thing for himself: the glory that belongs to God alone. This is the Theology of Glory.

Scripture says, There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death. The way that seems right to a man is the theology of Glory. We are all natural-born theologians of Glory. A theologian of Glory believes that:

2. God’s favor is manifested in the circumstances of life, in particular, life’s successes and victories;

All the religions of the world, except for Christianity, are theologies of Glory. Whether it manifests itself as Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism or some strange cult, it is all essentially the same theology and it is all the theology of Glory. The theology of Glory is the way that leads to death.

But Christian theology is fundamentally different. Christianity is not a theology of Glory, but a theology of the Cross. This is how Paul contrasts the two:

The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate." Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than man's wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than man's strength.

In complete contrast to the theologian of Glory, the theologian of the Cross believes that:

2. God’s favor is manifested in Jesus, in particular, His suffering, death and resurrection;

The theology of Glory and the theology of the Cross are mutually exclusive. They are two completely different ways of understanding God. One is false, the other is true. One leads to death, the other to life.

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.

What are the "invisible things of God"? This question brings us back to the first chapter of Romans:

Virtually every religion acknowledges that their gods possess certain characteristics: life, wisdom and power. Many further speculate that their gods possess qualities like justice, love and mercy. However, God’s true disposition remains completely hidden from them.

How is God disposed toward me? Is he pleased or displeased? To answer this question the theologian of Glory must speculate based upon his own life’s circumstances. If things are going well in his life he concludes that God is pleased with him.

Why is God pleased with me? The theologian of Glory speculates further and draws the only conclusion that his theology will allow:

But if things are not going well, God must not be pleased, and more effort to please Him is required.

Isaiah writes, Truly you are a God who hides himself, O God and Savior of Israel. God’s gracious disposition toward us is not revealed in the visible things God has made —it remains hidden— leaving the theologian of Glory to speculate. The theologian of Glory wrongly believes that he can discern God’s disposition from the world around him. The god he invents is a god whose disposition can be manipulated with human works.

But if God is really a God Who hides Himself, then why does God hide Himself? The answer is a paradox. God hides Himself in order to reveal Himself.

Where does God hide Himself? The answer is another paradox. God, Who is all-powerful, hides Himself in weakness. God, Who is all wise, hides Himself in foolishness. God, Who is living, hides Himself in death.

Here is where the theologian of Glory begins to object. God is not weak, foolish or dead! And here the theologian of Glory shows his true colors. Luther rightly diagnosed the problem:

This is clear: 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. These are the people whom the apostle calls "enemies of the cross of Christ" [Phil. 3:18], for they hate the cross and suffering and love works and the glory of works.

To know Jesus Christ is to know God hidden in weakness, foolishness and death. Luther writes: He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the Cross.

Rather than looking to the circumstances of his life to decipher God’s disposition, the theologian of the Cross looks to the suffering and death of Jesus to know God’s disposition. Rather than speculating that God must be pleased by human effort, the theologian of the Cross sees in Christ crucified the One who has pleased God once and for all. Life’s circumstances, whatever they might be, are now comprehended in the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus.

The theologian of Glory defines God according to human concepts of power, wisdom and reason. The theologian of the Cross allows God to define Himself, regardless of how paradoxical, weak and foolish it may appear.

Here I must sadly note that Christians are not immune to the theology of Glory. The glory of works outshines the shame of the Cross in many churches today. Pulpits free of paradox proclaim the Christian rather than the Christ. God is presented as easily understandable and easily pleased. This is a god who does not require a Cross or a dead Jesus.

In short, the Church seems anxious to exchange the shame, weakness and foolishness of the Cross for human glory, strength and wisdom. To a group of Christians who seemed anxious to do the same Paul wrote, God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ…

What is Paul saying? He is saying that the Cross isn’t just a part of our theology; the Cross IS our theology. The Cross permits no speculation about God or His disposition. There, written in the broken body and shed blood of Jesus His Son, is God’s final word.

One of my favorite hymns:

Beneath the cross of Jesus I fain would take my stand,
The shadow of a mighty rock within a weary land;
A home within the wilderness, a rest upon the way,
From the burning of the noontide heat, and the burden of the day.

O safe and happy shelter, O refuge tried and sweet,
O trysting place where Heaven’s love and Heaven’s justice meet!
As to the holy patriarch that wondrous dream was given,
So seems my Savior’s cross to me, a ladder up to heaven.

There lies beneath its shadow but on the further side
The darkness of an awful grave that gapes both deep and wide
And there between us stands the cross two arms outstretched to save
A watchman set to guard the way from that eternal grave.

Upon that cross of Jesus mine eye at times can see
The very dying form of One Who suffered there for me;
And from my stricken heart with tears two wonders I confess;
The wonders of redeeming love and my unworthiness.

I take, O cross, thy shadow for my abiding place;
I ask no other sunshine than the sunshine of His face;
Content to let the world go by to know no gain or loss,
My sinful self my only shame, my glory all the cross.

****We do well to learn as we are taught, but we should not fancy ourselves all to be experts, substituting our own thoughts for the wisdom of the great saints, for they have read the same book we have, and have mastered its lessons far better.****

Not looking through the prism of Catholic or Protestant, but in the name of Christian love, I'll pick on us Proddies.

qUESTION: who is the greater modern saint:

Joel Osteen

Pastor Stanley H. Phiri

My point here being, we must guard our hearts against false doctrine and nor look at those who are easy on the eye, or preach a seductive doctrine of health and wealth. We must have a strong enough sense of sound doctrine to detect manure when it is packaged in a seductive manner.

Yep...you know the teaching, by your fruits you will know them -

I was thinking of Bonhoeffer, myself...who worked so hard do do the right thing during WWII and was martyred because he loved God more than his own life. I believe he was Lutheran.

And Francis of Assissi, another person deeply and totally in love with God.

And the lady at a local church who supervises the Altar guild (it's a Lutheran church), and radiates love of God.

And a person I know in Pakistan, where being Christian is almost equal to saying "Martyr me!"

And this dear man, working with the poorest of the poor, rag pickers' children, to teach them something about God and Jesus where the workers are far too few and the harvest is huge.

They're there - those who love the Lord with all their heart and all their soul and all their mind, and their neighbor as themselves.

They've all figuratively stood beneath that cross of Jesus, and looked up at those eyes of love, and falling to their knees, clinging to that cross, say, "Thank you, Lord" and sometimes, often quietly, move mountains out of that love, for they are doing it for their beloved.

It's hard for a big-name preacher to sometimes reach or stay at that place. Yet, they reach so many people, and open the door for a lot who might never hear the word and take it to heart at all, that all I can say is let God be the judge. John Osteen preached some sermons that helped me on my way to where I am....and I might have had trouble making it if it hadn't been for some of these televangelists.

God's willing and will use all of us as much as we're open to him.

Yet watered down gospel is at the root, I believe, of a lot of stuff nowadays. It's thin gruel where we need to get the meat of the Cross, and what it really means.

Lord,
teach us to stand brave,
filled with your spirit,
under the banner of your cross,
unashamed,
ready to be your witnesses,
this day,
and always,
Amen.

I'll leave it to Protestants to decide how they want to determine who constitutes a great saint. Any answers a Catholic maight provide would seem triumphantalist, or reference articles of faith you don't believe in.

[OK, I'd like to keep these issues seperate, but these are the issues I have as a Catholic trying to address that question. The magisterium in the Catholic Church is not any given person, although the Pope represents it. Rather, it is the consensus that the Catholic saints have come to. Historically, there seems to be a lack of consensus among Protestants about key doctrines, besides simply agreeing that Catholics are wrong. However, to the extent that any such consensus does exist, it provides a good example of what I'm putting forth: the adherence to and elucidation of an "orthodox consensus."

With this established, it becomes more possible to discern those whose faith yields miraculous signs (Fatima, for instance) apart from the charlaitans and crackpost (Bayside, for instance). Of course, the best accompanying sign is a resurgence of religious dedication. Again, this has to be distinguished from a religious fad through the lens of history and orthodoxy. Obviously, however, what consititutes miracles and orthodox adherence will be an inevitable source of disagreement.]

Bernadette Souborous, because of her unswavering loyalty to the message given to her, and her undying faithfulness to God - she refused to be budged, even with all the pressure to recant, or change her story, or make a big name for herself.

She is one of my heros - and a great role model, not for what happened at Lourdes, but for how she lived long after it was over.

St. Therese of Lisseux, because of her incredibly deep love of Jesus and the desire not to be big, but to put up with all sorts of irritations and trials in daily life, so she could love God all the better, and who taught us her little way of doing little things with great love, in the name of Jesus.

St. Jean Vianney, who, although a poor student who barely passed out of seminary, loved God with a flame in his heart that was obvious to all around. Just a simple parish priest whose greatest wish was that he could go be a hermit and pray for his sins, he had such a ferverent love of God that people came from all over France to have him hear their confession, and he converted many, many to living as a true child of God.

These people have several things in common: They loved Jesus with all they had, followed where he led.

We should all have such a personal relationship with Jesus.

Of course I realize I did treat your question as if it were rhetorical. Joel Osteen's web page and ministry certainly seems all glitz. That is not a critique on his role as a teacher. But the great Catholic saints have tended to eschew worldliness in a way Osteen doesn't seem to have done. Remember how I lumped "bishops and preachers" together as mere teachers? That wasn't to disdain their roles, but it was to acknowledge the great saints are set apart from them.

I don't mean to assert that Protestantism doesn't have its humble, un-worldly, "doctors of the faith," like Therese of Lisiuex, Catherine of Sienna, or Francis of Assissi, or even the likes of Padre Pio, Faustina of Poland, or Maximillian Kolbe. I have not learned of these saints through the secular press, so even if I were a neutral observer who did not think Catholicism to be the true faith, my own ignorance alone could account for why I have not heard of such men and women among Protestants. (I'm hoping you'll realize why I don't compare them to such figures as Jonathan Edwards or John Calvin.)

If one can have a falling in love with a saint experience, I had one with the St. Jean Vianney...what an example of putting God before self, and being a true shepherd of his flock.

For those that don't know, he was a peasant who got a chance to go to school, and barely passed, and got sent to a ticky little backwater town that hadn't had a pastor since before the French Revolution, which had been several years before, and turned it around from a mostly Godless (or, much like today, where God isn't in the equation for a lot of people, although they like him) community, into a thriving holy place. He had the gift from God to help people see and face their sins and ask God's forgiveness, and he would counsel people for hours and hours every day.

He gives me hope as an example of what impact that people who are radically committed to the truth of Jesus can do...

But without the Cross, without the truth of Christ crucified, you can't have this. Pray, my friends, for more truly committed people who will be like lamps filled with Christ's true light in the midnight.

I concur Dataman. I don't necessarily agree with the statement made by the author:

1. God’s ways are paradoxical and hidden to human reason;

Certainly, there are aspects of God that are paradoxial and difficult to comprehend (Jesus wholly God and wholly man, etc.). But there is nothing that defies logic in God or His character. As a matter of fact, God is a God of reason and this is one way that man is made in His image. If we espouse to the world that they must throw out reason and follow Christ, we have started down a very slippery slope!

Noted.

If you are so inclined, look for Joel Osteen on TV sometime. Cook up some popcorn and be prepared for something that looks more like an Amway convention and sounds like a motivational speeck.

You won't hear Christ preached. (Christ born, died, rose again, your sin, faith, etc) What you will hear, week after week, is that God wants to bless you. If you aren't blessed, it's because you don't want it enough.

Yeah, I've heard him; not so much that I'd want to pass judgment on him; I haven't heard any particular heresies, but the focus did sorta seem off. One of the errors of popular-notion Catholic-school-nun Catholicism (as opposed to the real thing) is that if you're not broke and miserable, you're doing something wrong*. He sorta came across like the opposite extreme, and no more centered on the Word than Norman Vincent Peale or Steven Covey.

(*There are several notions of Catholicism which Catholic-school students have a fairly twisted sense of. They were taught very adult spirituality as children, then when they hit the adult years, the AmChurch went juvenile on them, so they never came to understand the adult teachings. Hence, the saints' joy in suffering and renunciation of worldly goods came across to many as if it were saying that God wanted Catholics to be poor and miserable.)

I guess I didn't quite look at it they way many of you are and I'm not familiar with Lutheran doctrine but you may be right Suzy. When the author talks of God's ways being "paradoxical and hidden to human reason" I think of Paul's writings where he talks of paradoxes. Rereading the article from you perspective I must admit I'm a little confused.

2Co 6:8-10 " by glory and dishonor, by evil report and good report; regarded as deceivers and yet true; as unknown yet well-known, as dying yet behold, we live; as punished yet not put to death, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing, as poor yet making many rich, as having nothing yet possessing all things.

Paul's list of "paradoxes" are no more paradoxical than the water we drink and the air we breathe give us life and take it away at the same time. The root of the paradox problem is that we are finite and He is infinite. He must accommodate our limitations in order for us to understand even a little. Therefore our limited understanding makes the paradoxical elements only apparently paradoxical, not actually paradoxical. It is not true reason that is weak but the finite mind that attempts to employ it. This is also why the greatest thinking, the greatest books, and the greatest discoveries are more common among Christians because there has been a transformation of the mind.

Since, therefore, the natural man is at a greater disadvantage, it is not reason that is at fault, but the condition of his unrenewed mind. Again, The first 6 chapters of I Corinthians reveal the two types of wisdom (or, in the case of the world, "sophistry"). Another problem we discover is that many of the first principles of the world are also false. If they are false, the conclusions based on them are as well.

It becomes clear why the secular idea of autonomous reason (Rousseau) is impossible. Human reason does not exist outside of the human mind; it is dependent on it. Various minds have various abilities to employ reason. The perfect mind does not exist and has not ever existed in humanity save Christ's. Therefore reason is dependent on a flawed human mind. Anything dependent is not autonomous.

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