All posts tagged Jürgen Moltmann

  • March 24, 2016

    Good Friday: A World Indicted

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    Good Friday: A World Indicted
    Brian Zahnd

    Good Friday offers humanity a genuinely new and previously unimagined way of understanding both the character of God and the nature of human civilization. As Jürgen Moltmann writes in The Crucified God, “the cross is the test of everything.” But to understand Good Friday we need to be clear on who did the accusing, condemning, and killing of Jesus of Nazareth.

    As we read the passion narratives in the Gospels it’s obvious that it isn’t God who insists on the execution of Jesus. Mark tells us, “the chief priests accused him of many crimes.” (Mark 15:3) Jesus’ jealous rivals accused him of heresy, blasphemy, and sedition because they were possessed by the satanic spirit of rivalry and blame. It wasn’t God who charged Jesus with capital crimes. It wasn’t God who shouted, “Crucify him!” It wasn’t God who ordered Jesus flogged with a lead-tipped whip. The work of accusation, condemnation, and torture is the work of human civilization under the sway of the satan. The spirit of God is not heard in the crowd’s bloodlust cries of “crucify him,” but in Christ’s merciful plea, “Father, forgive them.” We must not imagine the machinations of the devil as the handiwork of God!

    When Jesus arrived in Jerusalem on Palm Sunday the principalities and powers of Caiaphas, Herod, and Pilate and their constituent institutions of religious, economic, and political power were at enmity with one another. These power brokers were bitter rivals locked in a fatal embrace. But when they took their rivalry-induced fear and hate, and projected it onto Jesus as their chosen scapegoat on Good Friday, they achieved a demonic unity. Luke precisely tells us this. “That same day [Good Friday] Herod and Pilate became friends with each other; before this they had been enemies.” (Luke 23:12)
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    No Comments / Atonement, Cross, Jesus, Salvation, Theology, Violence /

  • March 21, 2016

    The Crucified God

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    The Crucified God
    Brian Zahnd

    Here’s a big question. What is God like? I suppose this is the biggest question theology can ask. And we don’t need to be a theologian to ask this question. It’s one of the most basic questions facing anyone who attempts to worship or even just think about God. But how shall we answer the question?

    Our capacity for imagining God seems virtually limitless. Is God like Zeus whose incited anger results in hurled thunderbolts? Is God like Ganesh, the lovable elephant-headed god of prosperity from the Hindu pantheon whose idol I’ve seen in hotel lobbies across India? Is God like the comic white-bearded old man sitting behind a computer from a Far Side cartoon? Does God bear any resemblance to the primitive tribal deities who lead their people in waging war on other people? Is God totalized Will-To-Power whose omnipotence controls every event in the universe? Is God the aloof and absent clockmaker of Thomas Jefferson and the eighteenth-century deists? Is God the amorphous everything and nothing of New Age spirituality? And so on.

    To even venture an attempt to answer the question of what God is like seems to court idolatry. How can mere mortals possibly try to answer the question about God’s nature without being guilty of not only theological error, but outrageous hubris?
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    18 Comments / Atonement, Cross, Theology, Uncategorized /

  • March 3, 2014

    The Crucified God

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    The Crucified God
    Brian Zahnd

    “When the crucified Jesus is called ‘the image of the invisible God,’
    the meaning is that this is God and God is like this.”
    –Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God

    “Being disguised under the disfigurement of an ugly crucifixion and death,
    the Christform is paradoxically the clearest revelation of who God is.”
    –John R. Cihak, Love Alone Is Believable: Hans Urs von Balthasar’s Apologetics

    “Jesus is the only perfect theology.”
    –Brad Jersak

    God is like Jesus.
    God has always been like Jesus.
    There has never been a time when God was not like Jesus.
    We haven’t always known this.
    But now we do.
    –Brian Zahnd

    I want to know who God is. I want to know what God is like. So what should I do? Read the Bible? Yes…but. The Bible is a big and complicated book and subject to what Christian Smith wryly calls “pervasive interpretive pluralism.” Smith is referring to the embarrassing plethora of contradictory interpretations from equally qualified and well-intentioned interpreters.

    So what do we do? Where do we stand within Scripture in order to interpret the rest of the text? Genesis? Leviticus? Joshua? Revelation? What we need is a way to center our reading of Scripture – a vantage point from which to interpret the whole of Scripture. My humble suggestion is that this place is the cross. Not only do I advocate a Christocentric reading of the Bible, I contend that the cross is the most Christ-revealing moment in the Bible.

    If we want to know what God is like, the best thing we can do is look at Jesus upon the cross. God is like that!
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    3 Comments / Cross, Jesus, Theology /

  • March 28, 2013

    How Did Jesus Understand His Death?

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    How Did Jesus Understand His Own Death?
    Brian Zahnd

    A question for Good Friday:

    How did Jesus understand his own death?
    What meaning did Jesus give to his crucifixion?
    Did Jesus have a “theology of the cross”?

    Jesus repeatedly predicted his own death by crucifixion to his inner-circle of disciples, but did Jesus ever speak about what it meant?

    Yes.

    In Jerusalem a few days before Good Friday Jesus said this in reference to his impending crucifixion:

    Now is the judgment of the world.
    Now will the ruler of the world be cast out.
    And when I am lifted up from the earth—
    I will draw all people to myself.
    –John 12:31, 32

    Jesus says his crucifixion (seen in the light of resurrection) does three things…

    1. Judges the world.
    2. Reorganizes humanity.
    3. Drives out the satan.
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    6 Comments / Christianity, Death, Jesus, Theology, Violence /