 The cross after postmodernity By Eberhard Juengel © 2001 United Press International Thursday, April 19, 2001 This is the 14th installment of the United Press International series, "Christ and postmodernity."
Actually, postmodernity was never able to articulate clearly what it wanted to be. And any effort to mold it into a less than ambiguous concept seems quite paradoxical. After all, postmodernity was an affront targeted at any claim to clarity; thus it was ambiguous by definition. Confronting modernity Postmodernity assumed consequence by confronting modernity's ground-in truisms with a multitude of antitheses. Hence it contrasted modernity's haughty monotony with the desire to discern life in all its colorful facets and then to marvel at them. The postmodern man was one who set out to learn the sense of wonderment all over again after modernity had thoroughly driven it out of him in order teach him fear. That's because enlightened modernity had lost an entire dimension – the dimension of mystery as such. This rendered it incapable of awe. The postmodern man of letters tried to overcome the chasm between the professional and the amateur, a gulf typical for modernism, which was elitist and exclusivist. The push for pluralism Therefore, the postmodern man of letters pushed for a pluralism of languages, models and procedures in one and the same work of literature. Likewise, the postmodern architect combined the most diverse styles in such a way that they wound up commenting, mocking and relativizing each other. Postmodern thinkers experienced a breathtaking acceleration in the acquisition of knowledge. They experienced the speed with which ever-new interpretations of the respective stocks of knowledge were chasing each other. These experiences freed them to relativize themselves. And this in turn even made modernity appear less obsolete than the multitude of antitheses to its plausibilities suggested. The long and the short of this is that postmodernity allots to every era its genuine right and engages in a direct relationship with all times. Analagies with Christian faith Having said this, one is tempted to establish all kinds of analogies between the ways postmodernity and the Christian faith define themselves. Does not the New Testament invite and exhort the world to believe in Jesus as the one who is Lord not just over the present but over all times? "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). Is not this Lord's apostle, a master in many language games, just as much a law-abiding Jew to the Jews, as a lawless to the lawless and a weak man to the weak? Has not Paul become everything to everybody to save some by every means possible? (1 Corinthians 9:2 ff). Gospel's claim to truth Surely, Christianity would be in a position to masquerade as postmodern. It could very well do so if it were not for the gospel's trenchant claim to truth. This claim is so trenchant that Paul defiantly told Peter, the prince of the apostles, in his face that he was acting contrary to gospel truth (Galatians 2:11). In New Testament parlance, coming to faith is synonymous with acquiring of truth. Postmodern man, on the other hand, knows no unambiguous claim to truth. Like Pilate, he asks with masterful irony: "What is truth?" (John 18:38). The New Testament's answer to this question also seems almost ironic. At any rate, it impresses the reader as quite silly. Thus, Paul has called it a "folly to the Greeks" and a "scandal to the Jews" (1 Corinthians 1:23). For this truth consists of the statement that the eternal and almighty God has come to this world as a human person; that he has been executed in the name of the law as a lawfully condemned criminal. A scandal and a folly This had to strike the religious world as a scandal and a folly. What? The cross is good news? Friedrich Nietzsche claimed that this meant turning all values of antiquity on their head. Nietzsche said the God created by Paul amounted to the denial of a god. Indeed, it must seem absurd to the postmodern way of thinking that God, the highest of the highest, should be capable of such self-degradation. Natural reason perceives God, if it thinks of him at all, in the way Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109) did: God is that beyond which nothing greater can be thought of. The cross of Jesus Christ teaches us a different view: If the Highest of the Highest identifies with an executed man, then it is evidently a true attribute of divine majesty that he can also humble himself. God – great and small This is why Martin Luther balanced the statement, "Nothing is so great; God is still greater," with another statement: "Nothing is so small, God is still smaller." Yet this dialectic does not exhaust the gospel's truth. I may admire this dialectic but it does not necessarily affect me. The point of the gospel's truth is concrete. It is directed at my own existence. The point of the gospel is that God in the person of Jesus Christ participates in our death so that we may participate in his life. On the cross, God is not only one of us but actually takes our place. This is where he suffers what none of us is capable of enduring: the weight of human guilt and the curse of human Godlessness. Foolish misinterpretation This has been ridiculed and opposed as divine masochism. It is hard to conceive of a more foolish misinterpretation of Christ's vicarious suffering and death, which, mind you, seemed a folly already to the Greeks. The masochist seeks suffering for the sake of suffering. But the Crucified One has suffered the appalling force of death and all powers of destruction in order to free suffering humanity from their might. This he was capable of doing only because God himself acted in him. Ever since, Christians have been singing: "Strange and dreadful was the fray, / When Death and Life contended; / But 'twas Life that won the day, / And Death's dark sway was ended. / Holy Scripture plainly saith, Death is swallowed up of Death, / Put to scorn and led in triumph. / Hallelujah!" Death is still around, of course, inflicting deep wounds on the world every day. But it will not be victorious. It is "swallowed up in victory" (1 Corinthians 15:54). Message of victory The gospel is the message of victory, intended to reach the entire world. It gives us a new understanding of God. It makes us see God as the source of all life that is even capable of suffering death. In this unity of life and death that ultimately results in life, God is none other than love. This message of victory makes man see himself in a new light. Indeed, it places him in a new venue where he experiences himself as liberated from life's lies. There, he enjoys an existence as a new man who receives every morning his life anew from a yet unspent future that feeds on God's eternity. On Easter morning, this Urbild (archetype) of the new man became reality. He who believes in the Resurrected One and has faith in him will experience the sovereign indicative of grace. This indicative of grace, then, opens the way forward and puts us on this road – without our contributing to this endeavor. In the trail of the Ressurrected One the believing man receives and spreads the freedom that swings beyond this world. But then, this freedom swings just as powerfully back to everyday life with its duties and woes. Duties? To those who know the sovereign indicative of grace, our everyday duties cannot be anything but imperatives of freedom, liberated from the dictatorship of the law whose requirements God has written on our hearts (Romans 2:15), a law that challenges and often overtaxes us. These imperatives feed from grace and instruct the believer in the right use of freedom. They do not scorn civic morality. But they point beyond all morality. For these imperatives direct the believer to a life in which he can forget himself and does what should be self-evident. This way he mirrors Christ who "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7) and in doing so was glorified. At least in the light of this dialectic, postmodernity ought to gain a new vitality and develop a new sense of wonderment in an entirely different way. The varied grace of God There is more to discover here than colorful aspects of the lives we live. The grace of God is itself colorful and "varied" (1 Peter 4:10). This colorful grace breaks through the grayness of our everyday lives. And once in a while the original colors of creation shimmer through. This is why the way of thinking this wonderment has put in motion is not intent on putting a rational end to wonderment as quickly as possible. It was the great Aristotle who postulated putting a rational end to wonderment as a philosophical goal. But the opposite is true. The way of thinking that is focused on the Word of the Cross leads us deeper and deeper into wonderment. For this way of thinking concentrates on a mystery that becomes even more mysterious the better one understands it: the mystery of divine love that is capable of suffering and for this very reason of renewal. Prof. Eberhard Juengel, a Lutheran theologian, is director of the Institute of Hermeneutics at Tuebingen University, Germany. |
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