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."
17 ¶ For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with wisdom of words, lest the cross of Christ should be made of no effect.
18 For 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.
19 For it is written: "I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, And bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent."
20 Where is the wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the disputer of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world?
21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through wisdom did not know God, it pleased God through the foolishness of the message preached to save those who believe.
22 For Jews request a sign, and Greeks seek after wisdom;
23 but we preach Christ crucified, to the Jews a stumbling block and to the Greeks foolishness,
24 but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.
25 Because the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men.--I Corinthians 1:18-25
What's next? The "Buddy Jesus"? A non-threatening Jesus Christ who is more Santa Claus than Sovereign Judge?
-- II Timothy 3:1-2, 5-9
There is not one worthy no not one!
Brock, Parker, and Crossan are all semi-Pelagians or worse. Brock comes from the Campbellite tradition (which denies original sin altogether); Parker comes from the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition (which claims that the depravity inherent in original sin is neutralized by universal prevenient grace); and Crossan comes from the Romanist position which assumes that, whatever original sin is, it is easily washed away by holy water.
A little Reformed theology would be helpful to the author of the article, I think.
(I don't write off all Campbellites, Wesleyans, and RCs, but I would point out that Reformed believers would never fall into the trap of contempt which the three liberals in the article have displayed for the Cross of Christ.)
What do you mean "next"? (c;
Started way back too. Puritans became Congregationalists and Unitarians. When, in the mid 1830's, those two congregations lost their ability to tax (in Massachusetts), they used the state as a proxy for their theology.Unitarians ran Harvard for decades. Jefferson, Millard Fillmore, John and ohn Quincy Adams were Unitarians. The church was very powerful and became more secular every year. Puritans used the church to exercise control over individuals;Neo-Puritans used the state.
Four Unitarian US presidents in 50 years was a start but no social movement gains great sucess until women are on board. And from the early 1800's on, prominent women were in the liberal churches. Beatrix Potter,Fannie Farmer,Mary Wollstonecraft,Dorothea Dix,Sophia Hawthorne (married to Nathaniel Hawthorne),Julia Ward Howe (wrote lyrics to the Battle Hymn of the Republic),Florence Nightingale,Clara Barton,Elizabeth Cabot Cary Agassiz (first President of Radicliff College),Charlotte Eliot (T.S. Eliot's mother) and Carrie Catt (founder of the League of Women Voters) were all Unitarians.
What the founders did not see when they prevented a national religion is that the state would become a national religion. Liberals of today are really Neo-Puritans.
How true! The cross is a symbol of love.
Not to disagree - I think they're clueless NOW. When we disappear I think that reality will settle in. I'm glad I won't be there ;o)
I have never read where Buddha, Mohammed or anyone else raised themself from the dead. Only Jesus Christ died for us - paying the price for our sins. Then He was resurrected - my God is alive, sorry about theirs.
Ahem....
Aside from the ridiculous idea of a God-created woman serving as a Presbyter (did God create Women to serve as servant-king husbands? Did God create Men to suckle His children at their very breasts? Let's be realistic, people -- we all have our proper Duties...)
Aside from that, I actually don't have a problem with this woman's theology (except as critically noted below).
The Cross was not a Transaction between God and Man.
The Cross was a Transaction between the Father and the Son.
God the Son: "I shall Atone, and they shall be Mine."
God the Spirit: "So it is written; so it shall be done."
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