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."
? Yep, hard core Christian, won't even consider reading his Nephi this and Moroni that.
At the time of the Olympics when the thread against Mormon bashing was going on, he posted another one, the same that was banned earlier. I confronted him that he was deliberately trying to provoke a Saturday night slaughter of the true saints, and for my money, he's at it again, along with WM.
Paul did speak of the third heaven and an understanding of Jewish beliefs will clear it up. As usual, spiritually dull individuals take it at its first meaning and build doctrine around it.......
Wrigley is not reading the book by Donna Hill (who I believe is LDS?). I am. Wrigley was reading or had read another book regarding Mormonism. I just started the book and there are no baptisms spoken of yet.
Do you understand WHY we would consider you outside mainstream Christianity?
Just what are you at it again about?
You too White Mountain what are you at again?
It was said this place crawls?
The cross is, to me, a symbol of the defeat of the mortal Christ. It is about His DEATH, when in fact the entire purpose of His atoning sacrifice was not DEATH, but LIFE EVERLASTING.
Therefore, the symbol of Christianity is and ought to be the resurrected Christ Himself.
If He had been hung, people would wear nooses about their necks. Had He been beheaded, little axes. That's pointless. Focusing on His death is pointless.
request or ask to be baptised most likely it was in the book.
His talks on the trials are very informative.
He dose good work on gathering historical facts.
These are talks which can be hear on real play!
As for your other comment, I'm not too concerned with what you consider us. My observation on the Calvinist threads is that y'all will attack anyone and everything. It seems that about the only thing Calvinists and the rest of the Protestants can agree with each other on is that they all disagree with Catholics, Mormons, etc. And the only thing that Calvinists, non-Calvinist Protestants, and Catholics can agree together on (having the Trinity belief in common) is that they disagree with Mormons. And the only thing Calvinists, non-Calvinists, Catholics, and Mormons can agree on is that they/we disagree with Jehovah's Witnesses. etc. etc. etc. Yeah, sure, I'm over simplifying but that's the basic idea.
Oh yes! this person
THE ABANES ABOMINATION CRI supporter, author, and former employee, Richard Abanes, goes on the offensive concerning CRI, Hank Hanegraaff, On The Edge, and more.
No one knows. No one, that is, except Abanes. And that he will have to live with. What a supreme disappointment Abanes is. He has virtually become a liar, a manipulator, and a seeker of self aggrandizement - all at his own expense. He has reportedly come full circle since being showing his rage and indignation against Hanegraaff, and has all but become like Hanegraaff."
No, it says in the book that it was done without the consent of those baptized. It is hard to give consent when you are dead.
You know nothing what the Lord instructs His servants that are calls as was Aaron -
Heb. 5
4 And no man taketh this honour unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was Aaron.
A prophet of the Lord is to perform sacred ordinances and that includes baptism for the and at times will be contacted by those from the Paradise/Spirit World
2 CORINTHIANS 12
Paul caught up to the third heaven—The Lord gives men weaknesses that they may triumph over them—Paul manifests the signs of an apostle. 2 I knew a man in Christ above fourteen years ago, (whether in the body, I cannot tell; or whether out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
3 And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth;)
4 How that he was caught up into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.
ISAIAH 55
8 ¶ For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
Yep, I have been made to understand that you do not worship the Ancient of Days so I do assert that "this place crawls" with those who DENY Almighty God in some kind of wierd hatred of Him.
Wrigley, I come to the conclusion you are brain dead!
He is a liar, a manipulator, and a seeker of self aggrandizement
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