Quotations concerning the Theology of the Cross

Luther understands the secret

He (Luther) saw something in the cross of Christ which before him, as far as we know, no one since the days of the apostles had noticed.  He saw not only the depth of God's wrath and the magnitude of His love, but with a grasp of both he probed the deep secret of the way God comes to us human beings, the secret of how He deals with man, the mystery of revelation itself. 

·       Herman Sasse, We Confess Jesus Christ, ( St. Louis: CPH, 1984), p. 46.

The cover story for the 27 March 2000 Newsweek is entitled “Visions of Jesus.”  To celebrate the pope’s visit to the holy land, the article discusses how Jesus is viewed by Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism.  It’s not a particularly helpful article until the second-to-last paragraph (p. 60), where the cross remains the scandalon for the major religions of man.

“Clearly, the cross is what separates the Christ of Christianity from every other Jesus.  In Judaism there is no precedent for a Messiah who dies, much less as a criminal as Jesus did.  In Islam, the story of Jesus’ death is rejected as an affront to Allah himself.  Hindus can accept only a Jesus who passes into peaceful samadhi, a yogi who escapes the degradation of death.  The figure of the crucified Christ, says Buddhist Thich Nhat Hanh, ‘is a very painful image to me.  It does not contain joy or peace, and this does not do justice to Jesus.’  There is, in short, no room in other religions for a Christ who experiences the full burden of mortal existence—and hence there is no reason to believe in him as the divine Son whom the Father resurrects from the dead.”