The cross is not and cannot be loved. Yet only the crucified Christ can bring the freedom which changes the world because it is no longer afraid of death. In his time the crucified Christ was regarded as a scandal and as foolishness. Today, too, it is considered old-fashioned to put him in the centre of Christian faith and of theology. Yet only when men are reminded of him, however untimely this may be, can they be set free from the power of the facts of the present time, and from the laws and compulsions of history, and be offered a future which will never grow dark again. Today the church and theology must turn to the crucified Christ in order to show the world the freedom he offers. This is essential if they wish to become what they assert they are: the church of Christ, and Christian theology.
Since I first studied theology, I have been concerned with the theology of the cross. This may not have been so clear to those who liked Theology of Hope, which I published in 1964, as it was to its critics; yet I believe that it has been the guiding light of my theological thought. This no doubt goes back to the period of my first concern with questions of Christian faith and theology in actual life, as a prisoner of war behind barbed wire. I certainly owe it to the unforgettable lectures on Reformation theology which I heard from Hans Joachim Iwand, Ernst Wolf and Otto Weber in 1948/49 in Göttingen. Shattered and broken, the survivors of my generation were then returning from camps and hospitals to the lecture room. A theology which did not speak of God in the sight of the one who was abandoned and crucified would have had nothing to say to us then. One cannot say, of course, whether as the result of our experiences we understood the crucified Christ better than anyone else. Experiences cannot be repeated. Moreover, one speaks of personal experiences only to explain why one is fascinated by what one is trying to communicate. It is not the experiences which are important, but the one who has been experienced in them. The theology of the cross which was meaningful to us then, and gave us firm ground beneath our feet, came to my mind again when the movements of hope in the 1960s met stiffer resistance and stronger opponents than they could stand, and many abandoned their hope, either to adapt themselves, half resigned, to the usual course of events, or to withdraw into themselves in total resignation. I can only speak for myself, but on my disappointment at the end of ‘socialism with a human face’ in Czechoslovakia and the end of the Civil Rights movement in the USA, and at what I hope is only a temporary halt in the reforms in the ecumenical movement and the Catholic church which began so confidently with the Second Vatican Council and the Uppsala Conference in 1968, the centre of my hope and resistance once again became that which, after all, is the driving force of all attempts to open up new horizons in society and the church: the cross of Christ.
The criticism of the church and theology which we have been fortunate enough to experience, and which is justified on sociological, psychological and ideological grounds, can only be accepted and made radical by a critical theology of the cross. There is an inner criterion of all theology, and of every church which claims to be Christian, and this criterion goes far beyond all political, ideological and psychological criticism from outside. It is the crucified Christ himself. When churches, theologians and forms of belief appeal to him—which they must, if they are to be Christian—then they are appealing to the one who judges them most severely and liberates them most radically from lies and vanity, from the struggle for power and from fear. The churches, believers and theologians must be taken at their word. And this word is ‘the word of the cross’. It is the criterion of their truth, and therefore the criticism of their untruth. The crisis of the church in present-day society is not merely the critical choice between assimilation or retreat into the ghetto, but the crisis of its own existence as the church of the crucified Christ. Any outside criticism which really hits the mark is merely an indication of its inner christological crisis. The question of ecclesiology, however unpleasant it may be for conservatives and progressives, is no more than a short prelude to its internal crisis, for only by Christ is it possible to tell what is a Christian church and what is not. Whether or not Christianity, in an alienated, divided and oppressive society, itself becomes alienated, divided and an accomplice of oppression, is ultimately decided only by whether the crucified Christ is a stranger to it or the Lord who determines the form of its existence. The objection has been made that it is still too early to raise this question in the churches and ecclesial communities, that the churches have not yet achieved the openness to the world which society has achieved, that in their ideology and practice they have not even admitted the justification of secular freedom movements and the criticisms which they make—and now their very basis is being questioned. I admit that this tactical question is justified, but do not believe that it leads any further than to the adaptation of antiquated forms of the church to newer forms. As far as I am concerned, the Christian church and Christian theology become relevant to the problems of the modern world only when they reveal the ‘hard core’ of their identity in the crucified Christ and through it are called into question, together with the society in which they live. Ideological and political criticism from outside can only force theology and the church to reveal their true identity and no longer to hide behind an alien mask drawn from history and the present time. Faith, the church and theology must demonstrate what they really believe and hope about the man from Nazareth who was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and what practical consequences they wish to draw from this. The crucified Christ himself is a challenge to Christian theology and the Christian church, which dare to call themselves by his name.
But what kind of theology of the cross does him justice, and is necessary today? There is a good deal of support in tradition for the theology of the cross, but it was never much loved. It begins with Paul, to whom its foundation is rightly attributed, and then leaps forward to Luther, in whom it is given explicit expression, and is present today in the persecuted churches of the poor and the oppressed. It returned to life in a distinctive way in Zinzendorf. It left its mark on the better side of early dialectical theology and on the Luther renaissance of the 1920s. In a famous lecture in 1912, Martin Kähler described the cross of Christ as the ‘basis and standard of christology’, but unfortunately did not cling to this principle himself. In all the cases we have mentioned, the theology of the cross was relevant only within the framework of human misery and of salvation, even though attempts have been made to take it further.
To return today to the theology of the cross means avoiding one-sided presentations of it in tradition, and comprehending the crucified Christ in the light and context of his resurrection, and therefore of freedom and hope.
To take up the theology of the cross today is to go beyond the limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God. Who is God in the cross of the Christ who is abandoned by God?
To take the theology of the cross further at the present day means to go beyond a concern for personal salvation, and to inquire about the liberation of man and his new relationship to the reality of the demonic crisis in his society. Who is the true man in the sight of the Son of Man who was rejected and rose again in the freedom of God?
Finally, to realize the theology of the cross at the present day is to take seriously the claims of Reformation theology to criticize and reform, and to develop it beyond a criticism of the church into a criticism of society. What does it mean to recall the God who was crucified in a society whose official creed is optimism, and which is knee-deep in blood?
The final issue, however, is that of the radical orientation of theology and the church on Christ. Jesus died crying out to God, ‘My God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ All Christian theology and all Christian life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus asked as he died. The atheism of protests and of metaphysical rebellions against God are also answers to this question. Either Jesus who was abandoned by God is the end of all theology or he is the beginning of a specifically Christian, and therefore critical and liberating, theology and life. The more the ‘cross of reality’ is taken seriously, the more the crucified Christ becomes the general criterion of theology. The issue is not that of an abstract theology of the cross and of suffering, but of a theology of the crucified Christ.
I may be asked why I have turned from ‘theology of hope’ to the theology of the cross. I have given some reasons for this. But is it in itself a step backwards? ‘Why,’ asked Wolf-Dieter Marsch with approval, ‘has Moltmann come back from the all too strident music of Bloch, step by step to the more subdued eschatologia crucis?’ For me, however, this is not a step back from the trumpets of Easter to the lamentations of Good Friday. As I intend to show, the theology of the cross is none other than the reverse side of the Christian theology of hope, if the starting point of the latter lies in the resurrection of the crucified Christ. As I said in Theology of Hope, that theology was itself worked out as an eschatologia crucis. This book, then, cannot be regarded as a step back. Theology of Hope began with the resurrection of the crucified Christ, and I am now turning to look at the cross of the risen Christ. I was concerned then with the remembrance of Christ in the form of the hope of his future, and now I am concerned with hope in the form of the remembrance of his death. The dominant theme then was that of anticipations of the future of God in the form of promises and hopes; here it is the understanding of the incarnation of that future, by way of the sufferings of Christ, in the world’s sufferings. Moving away from Ernest Bloch’s philosophy of hope, I now turn to the questions of ‘negative dialectic’ and the ‘critical theory’ of T. W. Adorno and M. Horkheimer, together with the experiences and insights of early dialectical theology and existentialist philosophy. Unless it apprehends the pain of the negative, Christian hope cannot be realistic and liberating. In no sense does this theology of the cross ‘go back step by step’; it is intended to make the theology of hope more concrete, and to add the necessary power of resistance to the power of its visions to inspire to action. In giving a more profound dimension to the theology of hope, I am aware that I am following the same course as Johann Baptist Metz, who for several years has been associating his politically critical eschatology more and more closely with the ‘dangerous remembrance’ of the suffering and death of Christ. Ernst Bloch too is becoming more and more disturbed by the problem of evil, and the failure of both philosophy and theology to give it conceptual form. Nor need anyone feel comforted that the theme of the ‘theology of revolution’ is no longer to be found in the chapter headings. The revolution of all religious, cultural and political values which proceeds from the crucified Christ will come in due time.
I have presented individual ideas and parts of this book in lectures in various European and American universities. I have discussed them with my students in lectures and seminars in the University of Tübingen. I would like to thank all who have taken part in these dialogues for their critical stimulation. I would like to thank, too, my assistants, who have encouraged me to work out a theology of the cross: Dr Karl-Adolf Bauer, Dr Reiner Strunk, Dr Rudolf Weth and Gerhard M. Martin. I thank Douglas Meeks, Daniel Louw, E. P. van de Beek, Rafael Severa, Herwig Arts and Martin Tripole, who have written theses upon my theology and have obliged me to give fresh thought to my arguments. Michael Welker has constantly criticized and corrected this manuscript. I owe him special thanks.
In front of me hangs Marc Chagall’s picture ‘Crucifixion in Yellow’. It shows the figure of the crucified Christ in an apocalyptic situation: people sinking into the sea, people homeless and in flight, and yellow fire blazing in the background. And with the crucified Christ there appears the angel with the trumpet and the open roll of the book of life. This picture has accompanied me for a long time. It symbolizes the cross on the horizon of the world, and can be thought of as a symbolic expression of the studies which follow. A symbol invites thought (P. Ricoeur). The symbol of the cross invites rethinking. And this book is not meant to bring the discussion to a dogmatic conclusion, but to be, like a symbol, an invitation to thought and rethinking.
Tübingen