The Cross Alone Is Our Theology
Why the theology of the cross is endlessly captivating.
In previous posts, I have attempted to articulate my newfound affection for the theological paradigm known as the theology of the cross versus the theology of glory. There is, perhaps, no more significant or trenchant theological discipline that I’ve studied that has so thoroughly impacted and informed other facets of my theology as this window into the God who reveals himself in Christ — namely, in the Christ who is crucified for sinners. I’ve been accumulating myriad resources in recent months to deepen my knowledge of this all-important criterion by which and through which the gospel of God is understood and believed, and very often, I find my thoughts are continually returning to this theme. If I were to write another book, and, Lord willing, that aspiration will one day be realized, it would be a non-heady explanation of not only the pervasiveness but also the potency of the theology of the cross for the life of faith.
Appearing in nascent form in his lectures on the Psalms in the early 1510s, Martin Luther’s theologia crucis (“theology of the cross”) was a developing theological and epistemological avenue for understanding truth, especially as it is revealed in the person of Jesus. Even though traces of this theological apparatus can be found in his earlier writings, it wasn’t until the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518 that Luther’s understanding of the cross and glory was fully articulated — namely, in Theses 19 through 21:
19. That person does not deserve to be called a theologian who looks upon the ‘invisible’ things of God as though they were clearly ‘perceptible in those things which have actually happened’ (Rom. 1:20; cf. 1 Cor. 1:21–25).
20. He deserves to be called a theologian, however, who comprehends the visible and manifest things of God seen through suffering and the cross.
21. A theology of glory calls evil good and good evil. A theology of the cross calls the thing what it actually is.
Contrasted against the theologia crucis is the theologia gloriae (“theology of glory”), which understands the wisdom and righteousness of God as both perceivable and attainable via human means. Through the vehicles of penance, indulgences, and the virtue formed by faith, theologians of glory presume upon condign merit from God, effectively turning human action into the means by which God’s grace is experienced. As Graham Tomlin shows in his excellent monograph, The Power of the Cross: Theology and the Death of Christ in Paul, Luther, and Pascal, when taken to its extreme end, the theologia gloriae culminates in the institutional and tyrannical power of the papacy, against which Luther’s invectives were constantly hurled.1 The Roman curia, as Luther saw it, had set aside the cross in exchange for a scepter, but in so doing, they lost touch with the preeminent means by which God is known and faith is grasped.
In many ways, then, to understand the Reformation movement properly, one must understand the theology of the cross. Only there, at the site where God’s Son was cruelly and vindictively murdered, can true faith be born. After all, “true faith,” Tomlin writes, “means abandoning all conventional wisdom, being stripped of all pretension and pride, and leaving aside trust in anything but God’s word in Christ.”2 Whereas conventional or natural wisdom tells us that our efforts in pursuing holiness and virtue are sufficient to merit divine favor, the word of the cross paradoxically tells us that such pursuits are folly. Indeed, this is why “the word of the cross is folly to those who are perishing,” to quote the apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:18) — namely, because we have no holiness or virtue in and of ourselves, nor can we acquire any through arduous self-effort. Instead, the word of the cross announces that Christ himself is our merit, our holiness, our “wisdom from God, righteousness and sanctification and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30).
Faith, then, is tethered to the sufferings of the Son of God, where he who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father humbles the world by showing the depths of his love through the aegis of abject humility. In other words, faith is fixed upon the cross. “To know God,” Tomlin continues, “is to be justified by him, and to be justified by him is to know him aright, and both begin with the humbling of the sinner. In this way, the cross becomes the central motif of true theology.”3 This is why, by the way, Luther would go on to say that “the cross alone is our theology” (crux sola est nostra theologia). For him, there was no other window by which and through which God could be known and believed. Unbeknownst to those who pegged him there, that ratty Roman tree was the acme of God’s self-disclosure through the person of his Son. Consequently, it is where God is to be found. Here’s how Tomlin puts it:
The vital clue for understanding the way God works is always the cross: God works and is to be found in suffering and weakness, not strength and glory, whether in Christ or the Christian, in the first century or the sixteenth. God’s activity in the present is always continuous with his revelation in history. Luther’s theologia crucis is therefore an assertion of the unity and continuity of God’s action in history and in the present, in revelation and in salvation. He is not one God in Christ and another God for us. This is why Luther insists that to know God is to know him in Christ alone . . . To know him now, one must look to his revelation in the past. The theology of the cross roots God’s present action in his revelation in history, and refuses to sever the two. Luther’s Christology therefore asserts in the strongest possible way the faithfulness of God to his promise and his revelation. It also brings together God’s revelation in the past and his revelation in the present. As God revealed himself in the suffering Christ then, he reveals himself in the suffering of the Christian now. The theologia crucis preserved the actuality of revelation in a way which on the one hand did not render it arbitrary and speculative, and which on the other did not confine it irrevocably to the past.4
To know God is to see God in the one who was crucified for us. It is precisely there, in the crucible of suffering and death, where God’s heart to reveal himself and redeem his creatures is made manifest. Thus, indeed, God is found in our own bouts of despair, sorrow, and distress. This is a thought by which I am increasingly captivated, to the point that, devoid of any book contract, I will bombard you with posts expressing its profundity with nary a sign of regret.
Grace and peace to you, my friends.
Graham Tomlin, The Power of the Cross: Theology and the Death of Christ in Paul, Luther, and Pascal, Paternoster Biblical and Theological Monographs (Carlisle, United Kingdom: Paternoster, 1999), 190–92.
Tomlin, 185.
Tomlin, 185.
Tomlin, 184.