Category: Theology

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The Power of the Cross

I recently read a commentary on 1 Corinthians 1:18. I found it to be an especially poignant statement that we would do well to heed today. Below is a quote:

18 For the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

 

The death of Jesus is one of the foundational symbols that determined Paul’s vision of the Christian community (Pickett 1997: 29). But Greco-Roman symbols and mythology (see Zanker 1990) competed with the cross to provide a framework for interpreting life. The Corinthians’ quarreling reveals that they have absorbed, uncritically, the ideals and values of the pagan world around them, and Paul wants to replace pagan paradigms with the ideals and values exhibited in the cross. When he proclaimed the crucified Christ, however, every hearer from Jerusalem to Illyricum (Rom. 15:19) knew that this so-called Christ had suffered “a particularly cruel and shameful death, which as a rule was reserved for hardened criminals, incorrigible slaves, and rebels against the Roman state” (Hengel 1977: 83). The story behind Jesus’ death discloses that he was rejected by the very people he came to save, was deserted by his own disciples, was strung up by the proper authorities, and apparently was powerless to save his own skin. Paul did not sweep the crucifixion under the carpet as an unfortunate episode remedied by the glories of the resurrection. He does not say that he preached the resurrected Christ, but the crucified Christ.

Crucifixion and resurrection belong together as part of the gospel story (15:3–5), but the cross was repugnant to ancient sensibilities and assailed the world’s self-centeredness and self-destructive ways. It was not yet the “old rugged cross” sentimentalized in hymns, embalmed in stained-glass windows, perched on marble altars, or fashioned into gold charms.

Cicero (Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo 5.16) decries the crucifixion of a Roman citizen, exclaiming, “The very word ‘cross’ should be far removed not only from the person of a Roman citizen but from his thoughts, his eyes and his ears.” To proclaim a crucified Jew from some backwater of the empire as “a divine being sent on earth, God’s son, Lord of all and the coming judge of the world, must have been thought by any educated man to be utter ‘madness’ and presumptiousness” (Hengel 1977: 83). Christianity was cradled in what looks like disastrous defeat, and the unspeakable stigma of the cross exposed the preacher of this message to woeful contempt. Paul, however, did not refer to Jesus’ death with embarrassment or skip over the awkward facts. Quite the opposite, it was central to his preaching, because the resurrection disclosed Christ’s suffering and death to be God’s modus operandi in the world. Since he also argues that the followers of Jesus must share the sufferings of the crucified (Rom. 8:17; Phil. 3:10), the message of the cross is an antidote to human self-glorification. It is “hardly a message for the ambitious” (Stansbury 1990: 476). The gospel transforms the cross as a symbol of Roman terror and political domination into a symbol of God’s love and power. It shows that the power of God’s love is greater than human love of power.

How could Paul expect anyone to respond to such a message? Litfin (1994: 261) outlines the five steps of persuasion in Greco-Roman rhetoric: (1) attention, (2) comprehension, (3) yielding, (4) retention, and (5) action. Greco-Roman rhetoric stressed step three, getting the audience to yield. Paul, Litfin argues, stressed step two, comprehension. Litfin contends that, in contrast to “sophisticated speech” (1:17), this “word of the cross” was “straightforward and open” and aimed at getting listeners to comprehend the content rather than nod assent after the speaker has proven the case (see also Winter 1997d: 186–94). Paul left the third step, yielding, to the persuasion of the Spirit. Rhetorical strategies designed to manipulate an audience to withdraw its objections empty the cross of its power by putting in its place the orator’s artistry and cleverness. I (Garland 1999: 472) write elsewhere, “Paul did not get people to believe by arguing that Christ crucified accords with the common principles of logic or that belief is in the long-term best interests of the hearers. As a herald, he simply announced what God has done in Christ. From his perspective, his job as proclaimer is to make sure that each hears and understands.” Paul trusts the power of the cross to convict the audience rather than the power of his eloquence. The Spirit reveals the message’s truth to the believer (2:4, 13). The audience is dethroned as the ultimate arbiter of what is true or persuasive (see Litfin 1994: 86), and the message becomes sovereign with the power to save or condemn, depending on the listener’s response. Brown (1995: 75–77) makes the case that the word of the cross is a performative word that has the power to change one way of knowing for another: “Through the logos, the cross continues to break powerfully into the old world’s ‘dominant system of convictions’ wherever it is proclaimed.”

The Corinthians had absorbed, “uncritically the ideals and values of the pagan world around them, and Paul wants to replace pagan paradigms with the ideals and values exhibited in the cross.” Garland goes on to describe the repugnance of the cross, and how Christianity was “cradled” in what looked like “disastrous defeat.” I cannot imagine how the church has moved so far from the cross! While nodding respect to the cross, it is now gold-plated, and almost everyone in the West thinks not of an instrument of torturous death, but a decoration for churches, altars, and necklines.

That we have abandoned the message of the cross is now so evident in our rush to entertainment as outreach, and the setting aside of preaching. Corresponding to our entertainment thirst is the ancient practise of rhetoric. Garland quotes Litfin (St. Paul’s Theology of Proclamation: 1 Corinthians 1–4 and Greco-Roman Rhetoric. Society of New Testament Studies Monograph Series 83. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.) who describes contemporary rhetoric in Corinth. Note that Paul places himself as a hearld, not as a rhetorician!

“Paul did not get people to believe by arguing that Christ crucified accords with the common principles of logic or that belief is in the long-term best interests of the hearers. As a herald, he simply announced what God has done in Christ. From his perspective, his job as proclaimer is to make sure that each hears and understands.”

In Paul’s preaching, “The audience is dethroned as the ultimate arbiter of what is true . . .” Could we even begin to imagine speaking this way in our era? What does modern wisdom have to say about this?

 

David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 801.

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That's a Feature, Not a Bug

I was preparing a post along the lines of the above title, but then I found this, that states it all much better than I could, from

Reymond, Robert L. Contending for the Faith: Lines in the Sand That Strengthen the Church. Fearn, Ross-shire, UK: Christian Focus Publications, 2005.:

The Arabic word translated “Islam” is etymologically related to the Hebrew word “shalom,” usually translated “peace.” But “peace” does not mean to most Muslim clerics in the Middle East what it means to the Westerner. To these Muslim clerics “peace” connotes “surrender” or “submission” to Allah, which means for them with respect to the non-Muslim world “placing their foot on their enemy’s neck.”

No Muslim scholar can truthfully deny that Muhammad taught that the faithful should “make war on the unbeliever …, and deal sternly with them” (Sura 66, “Prohibition,” verse 9; see also Sura 8, “Spoils of War,” verses 13–17, and Sura 9 [virtually a declaration of war against unbelievers], “Repentance,” verses 5, 14, 29, 112, 123). Muhammad himself, as he sought to propagate his religion beginning with his move to Yathrib or Medina (this move is called the Hegira) in September, AD 622, waged “holy war” (jihad) in the name of Allah against village after village in Arabia, finally entering his birth city Mecca in AD 630 as a conqueror and cleansing its chief shrine (Kaaba) of the 350 idols worshiped there. In other words, from its beginning Islam was spread by the sword. And the first four caliphs (successors) of Muhammad—Abu Bakr, Umar, Othman, and Ali—also drew the sword and conquered one land after another through Palestine and North Africa all the way to Spain, killing multiplied thousands as they did so and also establishing a tax system (the Dhimma) to subjugate those they did not force to convert.

While Christianity has had its misguided Crusades, its Spanish conquistadors, and has committed other misdeeds in the name of Christ, spreading Christianity by the sword has not been its normal mode of operation and was never its founder’s mode of operation. Yet in the last 100 years Muslim expansion still goes on apace by warfare. The Muslim Ottoman Turks slaughtered a million and a half Armenians in 1915–24 (a fact still ignored by much of the West). Today converts to Christianity are regularly executed in Saudi Arabia and tortured and murdered in Egypt. In the Sudan over two million Christians have been slaughtered and a million Christian children have been sold into slavery, all under the direction of the Islamic General Umar Bashir. In Indonesia Muslims have killed over three hundred thousand East Timorese Catholics since 1975. And Muslims in Palestine, Lebanon, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, etc., danced in the streets with joy while our widows and orphans mourned their dead on September 11, 2001. The late Hashemi Rafsanjani of Iran declared:

Every problem in our region can be traced to this single dilemma: the occupation of [modern Palestine] by Jewish infidels or Western imperialists … The everlasting struggle between Ishmael and Isaac … cannot cease until one or the other is utterly vanquished. (Cited by George Grant, The Blood of the Moon, 56)

And the late Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran stated:

Until the cry “Allah Akbar” resounds over the whole world, there will be struggle. There will be Ji’had … Islam is the religion of militant individuals.… Weapons in our hands are used to realize divine and Islamic aspirations. The more people who die for our cause, the stronger our Ji’had shall become … The governments of the world should know that Islam cannot be defeated. Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Koran will prevail all over the world … We have in reality, then, no choice but to destroy those systems of government that are corrupt in themselves and also entail the corruption of others, and to overthrow all treacherous, corrupt, oppressive, and criminal regimes. This is the duty that all Muslims must fulfill, in every one of the Muslim countries first, and then throughout the infidel West, in order to achieve the triumph of our revolution and to garner the blessing of Allah. (Cited from George Grant, The Blood of the Moon, 72)

Nevertheless, in spite of the words of the Koran, Muhammad’s own military actions, Islam’s bloody history, and such declarations as the two just cited, Western political leaders are representing Islam to their people as a religion of peace and affirming that such Muslim clerics as I just cited are “radical Muslims” who have simply “hijacked this great and beautiful religion”! But Muslim authorities know very well that the Koran prescribes jihad as the obligation of every able-bodied male and that Islam from its inception in the seventh century to the present has sanctioned war and conquest as means of advancing Islam. The truth of the matter is that Islam is a religion of war, literally a killer religion. So in spite of what President George W. Bush, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and every major news agency asserts, the true nature of Islam is jihad, and the Muslim clerics in the West who say otherwise either do not understand their own faith (they are called “folk Muslims” by Middle Eastern Muslim clerics) or are purposefully attempting to conceal from the gullible Westerner the true nature of Islam.

The West cannot defeat the Muslim world by the sword. Only Reformed churches, using the spiritual tools God has made available to them (see 2 Cor. 10:3–4), can defeat Islam, for the real problem is one of the human heart and only Jesus Christ can change the heart of Muslims.

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Why don’t we talk about these?

Since the postwar 1940’s and 50’s, which saw the rise of the parachurch movement, there has been a great emphasis on Christian unity. Much of this unity, however, has been at the expense of two important Christian doctrines, which are both God’s gift to His church: baptism and the Lord’s Supper. For example, the late Bill Bright, founder of Campus Crusade for Christ and author of the famous, Four Spiritual Laws, doesn’t mention baptism or the Lord’s Supper until book six of his 10-part series on Christian growth. Even then there is no teaching on baptism, but rather these questions:


“Ordinances of the Church
What do you believe baptism accomplishes? (Matthew 28:19) Who is eligible for baptism? What was the significance of your baptism?
What is the meaning of the communion service? (I Corinthians 11:23-26)
How do you prepare yourself to observe the Lord’s supper?”

He does suggest that one be baptized:

“Take the initiative; call the pastor of a nearby church where Christ is honored and God’s Word is preached. Make plans to start this week and to attend regularly. If you have not already been baptized, plan to be baptized as an outward expression of your identification with Christ.”

As far as I can tell, he never defines baptism as immersion, sprinkling, or pouring; and since much of his audience consisted of lapsed church goers, one who always thought that sprinkling was the way to go would have no reason to think otherwise. In all of his training material and evangelistic writings, I found no theology of baptism or communion, no Biblical teaching on the meaning or significance of these two ordinances. As well, their statement of faith is silent on this subject.

It’s not my purpose to pick on Campus Crusade for Christ (now CRU), or any other particular organisation; I simply want to point out a trend among some of the most influential evangelical leaders in the second half of the twentieth century to discount doctrines that might seem “divisive.” Many, if not most, parachurch organisations sought to be trans-denominational and both baptism and communion are often denominational distinctives, and therefore deemed divisive. In the name of Christian unity, and for the sake of “working together,” it was decided not to discuss them further. This tendency is also evident in the Billy Graham Evangelistic Organisation.

Problem is, how do we preach the Gospel together without discussing the human response to the Gospel (baptism), or the means of grace God gives us to fellowship with Himself (the Lord’s Supper)?

Looking back, it seems to me that in the rush to unite Christians, the unity achieved was a pretend one. I would venture that most of the early leaders of parachurch evangelistic associations had strong views on both baptism and the Lord’s supper, but lived in “two worlds,” the church, and the parachurch. The latter has largely won the day among conservative protestants in the West, which might help to explain the weak and individualistic nature of Western Christianity. It also seems that this pragmatic unity came from outside the church, not from within. With the wild success of the parachurch movement in getting things done, doctrinal authority was transferred from the church to the parachurch. If successful parachurch organisations believed that, for the sake of unity, baptism and communion were not to be seriously considered, who could argue? In fact, arguing against such success could easily be seen as reactionary.

But keep in mind that Christ established a church (Matthew 16:18) and not an organisation of the likeminded, it might be good to continue to contend for Biblical truth, expressed within the context of the church of Christ.

Prior to the advent of the parachurch movement, many Christians were sadly divided over doctrine. These debates, however, rather than being ignored or shuffled off to a few obscure journals, need to be brought to light. The parachurch movement created an apparent unity, but this unity has, in the long run, weakened the faith. Many Christians could, earlier in the last century, define and defend their understanding of Christian doctrine. This includes their understanding of baptism and communion. Today, after being taught for decades that these issues are unimportant, the comprehension of these truths has passed. But so has the appetite for Christian teaching, for Bible knowledge as a whole. What we might be left with is a unity to preach a Gospel that we know less and less about, which reduces all Christian truth to “believe God and be nice.” But without Biblical teaching, “believe” “God” and even “nice” make no sense.

I don’t want to see Christians attacking one another, but with the level of Christian knowledge available today (whether that knowledge is apprehended or possessed is another matter), is it not possible to find unity on the Bible’s terms rather than on an organisation’s “best practises”?