21.6.14
Next meeting – 28.6.14
Last meeting was cancelled because of Dr. Emma’s death (13.6.14)
My sharing about Abelraj
Rowan’s book presentation – “The Crucified God” – Jurgen Moltmann (1976)
“Theology of Hope”
From nominal Christian family
World War II – POW
Bible – Psalms – suffering servant
Mark’s Gospel – cry of dereliction
Auschwitz – Holocaust – hell on earth – GOD-talk in the light of this. Perspective of the victim – the crucified Christ
Influenced by Eli Wiesel, Ernst Blosch
Liberation theology (Latin America) influenced by this book. GOD of the poor.
Poverty – not just economic – powerlessness, marginalised, hopeless, helpless
Atheism in Europe. Why?
The godless GOD of the godless
1Cor. 1:18-25
The godlessness (alienation) within GOD – horror, death, pain, evil
The scandal of the Cross
One who can identify with our pathetic existence
The unapologetic revelation of the Cross
People wearing golden crosses
The Cross as a theory of salvation
The god of the philosophers
Philosophical theism & Christian atheism
The powers that be
Fear & harmony go together!
‘The art of dying’
Religiosity vs. Faith
Markan gospel – messianic secret. He is revealed as the Son of GOD only through his death!
Bizarre/absurd
No resurrection in Mark!
God does not need us, but wants to be with us – love-sacrifice! But we need GOD, and don’t want to be with Him – hate-suicide!
Hanging in between heaven/GOD & earth/man (rejected by both!) – crucifixion
NOT a martyr/hero
Methexis vs. Dialectic
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1. Material to prepare presentation, reflection & discussion of Crucified God:
Rowan’s handout & my notes
Beyond theism & atheism: Crucifixion scene from Pervert’s Guide to Ideology – 1:49:20 – 1:56:16
2. Meditate on final questions from retreat; follow-up email
Revise SFG commitments & give ultimatum/deadline to members!
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Notes:
Title & theme; ToC
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
‘Jewish theology after Auschwitz’. Elie Wiesel. the question about God for me has been identical with the cry of the victims for justice and the hunger of the perpetrators for a way back from the path of death.
The identity and relevance of Christian faith and action in the context of the 1960s when many were deserting the church.
Optimism of the early 1900s shattered! The sinking of the Titanic, World Wars, brutal totalitarian regimes, etc.
Death reigns through oppression, ignorance & apathy. The tragedy & horror of innocent suffering…
GOD so rarely seems to accomplish his will in the world. So often, GOD’s purpose, if it can be discerned, seems to be defeated. His redemptive presence is manifested, not as sovereign over history, but the one who picks up the pieces after the disasters of our time…
“Who is Jesus Christ, really, for us today?”
Only the scandal & mystery of the crucified GOD can resolve the problem of human suffering.
The more the church asserts it’s traditional dogmas & moral notions, the more irrelevant & unbelievable they become!
THEOLOGICAL CONTEXT
Crucifixion => resurrection
&
Theology of hope => Crucified God!
The temptation to sublate the Cross-passion in Resurrection-vindication.
– I began to see things with the eyes of the Christ dying
on the cross. whatever can stand before the face of the crucified Christ is true Christian theology. What cannot stand there must disappear. This is especially true of what we say about God. This cry of abandonment is either the end of every
theology and every religion, or it is the beginning of a truly
Christian theology—and that means a liberating theology. The
criticism that emanates from Christ’s cross exposes us theologians for what we are, like Job’s friends.
– But then I turned the question around, and instead of asking just what God means for us human beings in the cross of Christ, I asked too what this human cross of Christ means for God. What is manifested in the cross is God’s suffering of a passionate love for his lost creatures, a suffering prepared for sacrifice.
Resurrection as triumphalism (overcoming or eliminating suffering/evil)
Vs.
Resurrection as vindication of the Crucified One (solidarity with the oppressed => innocent sufferer/unjust persecution) as Son of GOD
There is an inner criterion of all theology, and of every church which claims to be Christian, and this criterion goes far beyond all political, ideological and psychological criticism from outside. It is the crucified Christ himself.
Appealing to the one who judges them most severely and liberates them most radically from lies and vanity, from the struggle for power and from fear. The churches, believers and theologians must be taken at their word. And this word is ‘the word of the cross’. It is the criterion of their truth, and therefore the criticism of their untruth.
The Christian church and Christian theology become relevant to the problems of the modern world only when they reveal the ‘hard core’ of their identity in the crucified Christ and through it are called into question, together with the society in which they live.
Either Jesus who was abandoned by God is the end of all theology or he is the beginning of a specifically Christian, and therefore critical and liberating, theology and life. The more the ‘cross of reality’ is taken seriously, the more the crucified Christ becomes the general criterion of theology.
Rather than sterile arguments about whether Jesus was “truly God” or “truly man,” which set the wrong framework, Christians should enter into dialogues with Jews about the meaning of “Messiah.” In that terrible hour, the very deity of God was at stake, and believers were forced toward a new and more nuanced concept of the divine.
I suffer, therefore I am.
Protest atheism (the freedom & dignity of man threatened by an omnipotent, impassible GOD) – Critical theory – under its aegis, criticism of the status quo became the substitute for faith in a heavenly judge.
METHOD
Luther’s ‘theologia crucis’ & ‘theologia gloria’ – ‘deus revelatus’ & ‘deus absconditus’ come together at the Cross! Contradiction & dialectic
To take up the theology of the cross today is to go beyond the limits of the doctrine of personal salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God. Who is God in the godforsaken cross of Christ? Inquire about the liberation of man and his new relationship to the reality of the demonic crisis in his society… To criticize and reform, and to develop it beyond a criticism of the church into a criticism of society.
Simple theism has proved inadequate. Together the cross and Resurrection drive us beyond even the monotheism revered in Christian heritage.
Revelation is not dogma or proposition but an event happening in contradiction; God is able to make use of whatever appears furthest from the divine. Dialectic Vs. Analogy.
A radical reformulation of God as beyond both theism and atheism.
Perhaps the word ‘hope’ brings with it a different set of associations for different people. Advertises some sort of lack in the present. Indeed, one might even speak of ‘contradiction’ here, for the future is a hope of glory, whereas the present state of the world appears as its diametrical opposite. Interplay of two opposite things.
Passibility/mutability/temporality vs. Impassibility/immutability/eternality of GOD
TRINITARIAN
Moreover, seeing the Trinity through the lens of the Cross not only clarifies the inner life of God but also marks a paradigm for the unfolding of earthly history toward its goal. Moltmann has adopted the term “panentheism” to navigate between the extremes of austere theism and shapeless pantheism.
The Father suffers the loss of the Son as the Son suffers death, but the Father himself does not die. Further, in their separation they are united, and out of the event of the cross comes the Spirit. Hence we have to do with a third person. He finds evidence of trinitarian activity in the cross (all 3 members of the Godhead participate in it!) – the way the Trinity opens itself out in time to embrace the extremities of God-forsakenness.
INCARNATIONAL
Moltmann has changed the central thrust of his theology without sacrificing its most vital element – passionate concern to alleviate the world’s suffering. The theme is nothing other than the explosive presence of the sighing, fighting & liberating Spirit in the midst of this life. A timely reminder to disillusioned visionaries! Takes the dark side of the human condition seriously and relates it to redemptive hope through the agony of GOD in the crucified Christ.
How can such identification take place within the God-forsakenness experienced by Jesus? The answer gives us the clue to God’s relation to the world. In that very God-forsakenness God comes to be present.
The problem of theodicy. The Cross is not only a revelation of what GOD has done for us, but who GOD really is (trinitarian, incarnational & eschatological being) and the depth of His involvement with the (suffering of our) world…
“Our cries in His cry” – theopaschitism
ESCHATOLOGICAL
The theological foundation for Christian hope is the raising of the crucified Christ . Anyone who develops a ‘theology of hope’ from this centre will be inescapably reminded of the other side of that foundation: the cross of the risen Christ. Hope without remembrance leads to illusion, just as, conversely, remembrance without hope can result in resignation.
Theology of Hope, that theology was itself worked out as an eschatologia crucis. Theology of Hope began with the resurrection of the crucified Christ, and I am now turning to look at the cross of the risen Christ. Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative, Christian hope cannot be realistic and liberating. it is intended to make the theology of hope more concrete, and to add the necessary power of resistance to its visions, & inspire to action.
‘Dangerous remembrance’ of the suffering and death of Christ.
Christology (the true/full revelation of Jesus’ identity) is completed only by eschatology – the messianic future of the New Creation. History is incomplete and hope (flowing out of the wellspring, that is the Cross) is the new/open future of endless possibilities that is dawning upon us…
The history and eschatology of Jesus the Jew who was crucified as a political rebel and a condemned blasphemer, and was raised by God.
Christian eschatology is an eschatology of the cross. the suffering of God in the Passion Story of the world. Connects the suffering of the cross with the suffering of the world.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS FOR THE CHURCH/WORLD
Wherever Christian hope makes people active and leads them into the ‘creative discipleship’ of Christ, the contradictions and confutations of the world are painfully experienced. ‘When freedom is near the chains begin to chafe’. In a civilization that glorifies success and happiness and is blind to the sufferings of others, people’s eyes can be opened to the truth if they remember that at the centre of the Christian faith stands an unsuccessful, tormented Christ, dying in forsakenness. The recollection that God raised this crucified Christ and made him the hope of the world must lead the churches to break their alliances with the powerful and to enter into the solidarity of the humiliated.
Crucifixion is followed by resurrection for Christ, but for us who follow Him from the other side, faith/hope in resurrection leads to the praxis of crucifixion!
These martyrs are the seed of the resurrection of a new world. My own ‘dark night of the soul’. I came into contact with orders vowed to poverty and the mysticism of the cross… The community of the sufferers and the seekers is an open, inviting community!
The cross is not and cannot be loved. Yet only the crucified Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it is no longer afraid of death… Yet only when men are reminded of him, however untimely this may be, can they be set free from the power of the facts of the present time, and from the laws and compulsions of history, and be offered a future which will never grow dark again.
It is not the experiences which are important, but the one who has been experienced in them.
The centre of my hope and resistance once again became that which, after all, is the driving force of all attempts to open up new horizons in society and the church: the cross of Christ.
Whether or not Christianity, in an alienated, divided and oppressive society, itself becomes alienated, divided and an accomplice of oppression…
Critical solidarity with our contemporaries.
Theistic religion has been the most susceptible to unholy alliances with autocratic regimes or mystical privatism.
Christian-Jewish relations.
Christian faith as political and as liberating.
Against long traditions which have domesticated the cross and disguised its violent and murderous character. Jesus as the witness who announces the reign of GOD in the midst of competing powers (state, religion, market, media, caste, race, class, etc.).
This is the most fundamental question of power. It points to an appreciation of human society as a community of those who differ; this leads to liberation from a death‑denying (a-pathetic) society into one which contradicts those powers which inflict death, and are opened to the future transforming not merely human society but also the cosmos.
The conference was not conceived as merely ‘retrieval’ but attempted to prompt an engagement with the theological challenge which is this book’s legacy.
“The knowledge of the cross brings a conflict of interest between God who has become man and man who wishes to become God…. God became man that dehumanized men might become true men. We become true men in the community of the triune (diverse, loving) & incarnate-crucified-resurrected (suffering and loving) God.”
Divine nature as saving righteousness & creative love. Destroy the conflicted border between oppressor & oppressed by uniting the divine judge with the hapless victim…
Trinity & eschatology are explored and explicated in order to teach us to bear the cross of the present in our discipleship and seek therein the liberation of humankind, which is the goal of God.
According to my conviction, scholarly theology has for its target the sermon. Alliance between theological reflection and call to action, and the attempt to discern and delineate the stark contours of biblical (as opposed to a purely natural) theology.
The prisoner experienced an inner conversion when he gave up hope of getting home soon, and in his yearning he rediscovered that deeper ‘hope against hope’.
The point of a theology of the cross, like a theology of hope, is to energize us in our witness. Luther had spoken of a theologia crucis, but for our day it must take the form of a social-political criticism.
Identification with the crucified Christ lies less in mystical, passive suffering, ingredient though that is in Christianity, than in active, imitative suffering.
“Political consciousness in every treatise of Christian theology … The church must develop a critical and self-conscious political theology.”
This is no crude despiritualizing politicization of Christian religion. On the contrary it expresses authentic Christian spirituality -the spirituality of the crucified Christ… stand against the gods of power and self-glorification which are idolatrously formative of our cultures? And do not the biblical texts themselves unfold their meaning to those who read them as a clarion call to suffer in the world for the cause of God? ‘Political hermeneutics’ of the gospel – missionary orientation.
Solidarity with, & promise of blessing/salvation to, the mendicant, the outcast & the lawless/irreligious/immoral!
Psychological liberation – the Cross leads man into ‘the history of God’ and this frees him for an acceptance & embrace of this human life which makes him capable of suffering well, and capable of loving the world.
This has immediate ramifications for the pastoral ministry of the Church.
Reflections:
Those who suffer are comforted, because their misery is redeemed in union with His Cross, and those who are happy are inspired to be compassionate (solidarity, sacrifice & service) toward the crucified.
Those who are unjustly persecuted can easily fall into a sense of self-superiority (& complacency, even euphoria!), because of their (relative) innocence!
3 responses to the crucifix:
Glorifying the gore as our glorious (penal substitutionary) atonement.
Turning away in disgust, and focusing instead on the empty cross of the risen one.
Deeply entering into the life-giving death of GOD, and thereby feeding on the heavenly Bread!
My depression and the desperate attempt to taste fulfilment/satisfaction through intentional living & vocational design. Moving from passive to active to vicarious suffering! Coward (self-protection, preservation & pleasing) => soldier (passion) => martyr (compassion)
Rich now + laughing now + content now – that’s NOT me! Woe to those who are ALL 3. Blessed are those who are poor, mournful AND hungering (for righteousness). Material, psychological & social prosperity TOGETHER are spiritually deadly! Prosperity (material)-comfort (physical)-complacency (psychological)-acceptance (social). But what about those who are in between?? In the area in which you are ‘rich’, you are to redeem it by giving to others (GOD in the ‘least of these’), & in the area in which you are ‘poor’, you are redeemed by receiving from GOD (the community of the faithful). Salvation = sharing all of life with GOD & others.
The scars on the resurrected Christ show that the Cross always remains real & relevant! Resurrection is not the cancellation or transcending of crucifixion, but the eternal affirmation & continuation of the divine passion!
Faith in the crucified GOD => freedom from fear of suffering-death => love of the poor => compassion/solidarity/service => sacrifice!
“The refusal to cease suffering” (to struggle faithfully – confront & resist throughout life, until death) is Christian victory! Conquering evil BY becoming its righteous victim…
Phil.3:10-11 – power/resurrection as a faith/hope becomes real/actual only in the fellowship of His suffering!
Philosophy vs. Ideology => theology!
The individual as a political entity! Authentic self-actualisation (realization + expression) is not possible without a right attitude & interaction with the powers that be in one’s context. Therefore, whether you are within the dominant systems or outside of them, they are nevertheless integral to you!
What about the wickedness of the world, as opposed to its suffering? Is there not a crying need for judgment as there is for compassion? Forgiveness, reconciliation & transformation of the wicked, in the passion of the Holy One!
Individual uniqueness does not define the what (end) of life, but only the how (means)!
Does the theology of the Cross produce a masochistic spirituality?
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