The Shock of the Crucifixion
Sunday, 15 July 2018 06:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cjbanningThe death of Jesus would have been shocking to His disciples, in the way that the sudden and unexpected death of a close friend is always shocking. But it would not have been paradigm-shifting, at least not in the way we might think.
It is not at all clear that any of the disciples, let alone all of them, truly understood Jesus’ fully divine nature. The first explicit mention of Jesus as God in the Gospels--indeed, the only truly explicit mention in the entire Bible--is after the Resurrection, when St. Thomas addresses Jesus as “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28).
So if the apostles were shocked, it was not so much that Jesus died on the Cross. They understood perfectly well that if you nail a human to a cross and leave them upon it, that person will die within days. Indeed, they understood that all humans die eventually. If the apostles were shocked at Jesus’ death, it was not that Jesus died, but that God let Jesus die.
The disciples did understand, if imperfectly, that Jesus was both the promised Messiah and the Son of God. They knew that Jesus was the Savior sent by God to liberate and save the oppressed people of Israel, after all. That His revolutionary movement seemingly ended in defeat with His death upon the cross would have seemed to indicate the ineffectualness of God Himself. It was only with the Resurrection that the fullness of God’s plan was finally made known to them.
Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight. The Church clarified long ago her Christological and Trinitarian doctrines, and so we do understand (albeit still imperfectly, if possibly not quite so imperfectly) and receive as essential doctrine that Jesus was and is God, fully divine and fully human, of one being with the Father and part of the indivisible Godhead which is the Holy Trinity.
For us, with the benefit of hindsight, the truly paradigm-shifting event is neither the Crucifixion nor the Resurrection but the Incarnation. The shocking fact is not that Jesus died, or even that He rose again on the third day; it’s that Christ made Himself vulnerable to death by becoming incarnate of Mary His mother, and became human. Christ’s giving of Himself for us (Gal 2:20) did not happen on the Cross, at least not primarily: it happened in the creche, with the first gasping breath of the baby Jesus.
When St. John writes that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn 3:16) the evangelist is not referring to the Crucifixion alone, but to the Incarnation. God the Father sent Christ into the world--not out of the world, but into!--that the world might be saved through Christ (Jn 3:17).
Still, the Cross as a symbol brings into stark relief the realities which were already present within the creche. While it is an interesting theological question whether a peaceful death at age eighty would have been equally effective in terms of our salvation, the fact remains that Jesus' death was especially horrific and painful.
In the creche Christ enters into our human condition, making Himself vulnerable to pain, suffering, and death, but on the Cross He actually suffers in a way which is immediate, real, and extreme. He experiences not only being human, but the very worst of that which it entails.
It is not at all clear that any of the disciples, let alone all of them, truly understood Jesus’ fully divine nature. The first explicit mention of Jesus as God in the Gospels--indeed, the only truly explicit mention in the entire Bible--is after the Resurrection, when St. Thomas addresses Jesus as “My Lord and my God” (Jn 20:28).
So if the apostles were shocked, it was not so much that Jesus died on the Cross. They understood perfectly well that if you nail a human to a cross and leave them upon it, that person will die within days. Indeed, they understood that all humans die eventually. If the apostles were shocked at Jesus’ death, it was not that Jesus died, but that God let Jesus die.
The disciples did understand, if imperfectly, that Jesus was both the promised Messiah and the Son of God. They knew that Jesus was the Savior sent by God to liberate and save the oppressed people of Israel, after all. That His revolutionary movement seemingly ended in defeat with His death upon the cross would have seemed to indicate the ineffectualness of God Himself. It was only with the Resurrection that the fullness of God’s plan was finally made known to them.
Of course, we have the benefit of hindsight. The Church clarified long ago her Christological and Trinitarian doctrines, and so we do understand (albeit still imperfectly, if possibly not quite so imperfectly) and receive as essential doctrine that Jesus was and is God, fully divine and fully human, of one being with the Father and part of the indivisible Godhead which is the Holy Trinity.
For us, with the benefit of hindsight, the truly paradigm-shifting event is neither the Crucifixion nor the Resurrection but the Incarnation. The shocking fact is not that Jesus died, or even that He rose again on the third day; it’s that Christ made Himself vulnerable to death by becoming incarnate of Mary His mother, and became human. Christ’s giving of Himself for us (Gal 2:20) did not happen on the Cross, at least not primarily: it happened in the creche, with the first gasping breath of the baby Jesus.
When St. John writes that “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn 3:16) the evangelist is not referring to the Crucifixion alone, but to the Incarnation. God the Father sent Christ into the world--not out of the world, but into!--that the world might be saved through Christ (Jn 3:17).
Still, the Cross as a symbol brings into stark relief the realities which were already present within the creche. While it is an interesting theological question whether a peaceful death at age eighty would have been equally effective in terms of our salvation, the fact remains that Jesus' death was especially horrific and painful.
In the creche Christ enters into our human condition, making Himself vulnerable to pain, suffering, and death, but on the Cross He actually suffers in a way which is immediate, real, and extreme. He experiences not only being human, but the very worst of that which it entails.