Posted on 03/16/2002 6:42:19 AM PST by LarryLied
It's the most familiar symbol you can imagine, but ponder for a moment how odd it is that Christians display an "emblem of suffering and shame," as the hymn says.
The cross reminds us that Jesus was executed as a common criminal, hardly the upbeat message a publicist might choose.
Yet two decades after Calvary, the Apostle Paul wrote, "Far be it from me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Galatians 6:14). Under this mysterious emblem, the early Christians vanquished the empire that had crucified Jesus.
The symbol holds 21st-century power. Two days after the World Trade Center attack, a rescue worker wept as he discovered a 20-foot cross -- two fused metal beams buried in the rubble. This cross provided comfort to impromptu worshippers amid the mourning.
Yet the cross is spurned by Christian liberals Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker. They find belief in Jesus' saving death repellent, saying this sanctifies violence and submission to evil.
"To say that Jesus' executioners did what was historically necessary for salvation is to say that state terrorism is a good thing, that torture and murder are the will of God," they say in their book Proverbs of Ashes (Beacon).
Brock, a Harvard Divinity researcher, has chaired the joint global ministries board of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and United Church of Christ, and was a theology speaker at the Disciples's national assembly last year. Parker is a United Methodist Church minister and president of the Unitarian Universalist seminary in Berkeley, Calif.
Roman Catholic leftist John Dominic Crossan has joined in, hailing the authors' attack upon what he considers "the most unfortunately successful idea in the history of Christian thought." And the current Unitarian Universalist magazine features Brock and Parker in a cover story headlined "Violence and Doctrine: How Christianity Twists the Meaning of Jesus' Death."
"Perfect . . . sacrifice"
By contrast, another current author joins Paul in glorying in the cross. Fleming Rutledge, a traveling Episcopal preacher who lives in Port Chester, N.Y., embraces the Book of Common Prayer's Communion affirmation that Jesus Christ made "a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world."
Rutledge has collected seasonal meditations in her book The Undoing of Death (Eerdmans). Though sermons often fall flat on the printed page, this book is unusually readable devotional fare.
She believes the cross is misunderstood if we forget that Jesus the Son is equally God along with the Father (which liberal Christians and Unitarians deny). And some conservatives portray "a wrathful Father piling condemnation on an innocent, victimized Son. This mistake must be strenuously resisted," she writes.
The heart of the atoning sacrifice on the cross, Rutledge insists, is "the fact that the Father's will and the Son's will are one. This is an action that the Father and the Son are taking together." They are "accomplishing our redemption together," acting in united love for humanity.
However, her Good Friday sermons worry less about such liberal or conservative theories than about people's inclination to pretend their sins aren't all that bad so they have no need of a Savior.
"We do not like to believe that we deserve condemnation," she says.
Some seek to justify themselves by the kind of people they like to think they are -- more moral, sensitive, loving, intelligent, thoughtful, patriotic, fashionable or socially aware than others. Then there's the opposite, people who tell themselves they're more misunderstood, long-suffering and deserving than anyone else.
But Christianity says we're all sinners in the light of God's holiness. Despite sin, Rutledge believes, when Christ looks at someone "he sees a person that he loves more than life, more than glory, more than power, more than riches, more than divinity itself."
She also contends that the cross shows us Christianity is true. The reason? Mere human imagination or wishful thinking would never have concocted "a despised and rejected Messiah."
He is not in the church IMHO. He is automatically excommunicated from the Church for teaching heresy. BTW, he wouldn't be the first priest to be found teaching heresy. Our history is loaded with them.
Ours is made out of Aluminum. Got any Aluminum?
Welcome to the Stinking Desert National Indian Monument
and Cobalt Nuclear Testing Range.
Courtesy of the Humbolt County Manifest Destiny Bureau, Dept. of Redundancy Dept.
Thanks Doc, you took the word's right out of my mouth. But I would go a step further and call them Full Fledged Pelagians. They believe they are their own salvation and have no need of the saving grace that flowed from Christ's death on the cross!
He died for us - we deserved death instead of love and mercy. Nails could not keep Him on that cross - love kept Him there.
It really makes you wonder about them being a "god" doesn't it.
Rather like the snake lifted up in the desert..it became an idol.
I maintain from 1 Corinthians 2:14 and numerous other Scriptures that regeneration (the new birth) necessarily precedes repentance unto life. In other words, I maintain that fallen man's spiritual depravity is so profound that an unregenerate sinner will NEVER embrace saving truth.
Notice that if this position is correct, then all of the other tenets of the predestinarian position follow from it.
Taking your lead from your denominational leader (Wesley), who professed to hate the God of predestination, you have evaded the implications of 1 Corinthians 2:14 and other such verses by postulating a universal prevenient grace which overrules the obvious sense of the verse. You maintain that a natural man (non-born-again sinner) can savingly receive the things of God. You maintain that God uses prevenient grace to make sure this is the case.
The problem is, your "helpful" qualification of 1 Corinthians 2:14 makes that verse completely trite. So, I say that 1 Corinthians 2:14 stands with me against your Wesleyan-Arminian position. You are being too shallow. You are, in fact, violating 1 Corinthians 3. You are refusing the teachings of apostle Paul, preferring Wesley's theories instead.
If you will go back and look at my argument in an openminded way, you will see that I was on target when I said that you have postulated a universal prevenient grace as neutralizing total depravity. Your claim that an unregenerate sinner can savingly embrace the gospel renders the doctrine of total depravity meaningless. It also renders the doctrine of election meaningless. It also renders Romans 9 meaningless. It also renders John 3:5 meaningless. It also renders John 6:44 meaningless. It also renders 1 Thessalonians 1:4-5 meaningless.
All of these verses will start making sense to you for the first time in your life if you will forsake your party spirit.
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