Saturday, March 26, 2005

Friday, dark but good

"The death of Jesus on the cross is the center of all Christian theology. It is not the only theme of theology, but it is in effect the entry to its problems and answers on earth. All Christian statements about God, about creation, about sin and death have their focal point in the crucified Christ. All Christian statements about history, about the church, about faith and sanctification, about the future and about hope stem from the crucified Christ...

"When the crucified Jesus is called the 'image of the invisible God,' the meaning is that this is God, and God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity...

"In the cross, the Father and Son are most deeply separated in forsakenness and at the same time are most inwardly one in their surrender. What proceeds from this event between Father and Son is the Spirit which justifies the godless, fills the forsaken with love and even brings the dead alive, since even the fact that they are dead cannot exclude them from this event of the cross; the death in God also includes them."

- Jurgen Moltmann, Der gekreuzigte Gott

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

If you use Moltmann, you should be really careful to state exactly what you do and don't agree with, just in case, since we don't want to seem the least bit non-evangelical and freak out our hyper-paranoid idiotic professors, right?

Melvin Ming said...

God help us!