We Must Rethink the Cross

By Jason Liesendahl

Instead of seeing Jesus’ death as part of a divine plan, God’s power is expressed through uncontrolling love.

Various approaches, which can be classified as open and relational theologies, approach the problem of evil with the idea that God cannot do everything. God wants to prevent suffering but cannot always do so. In this way, the immense speechlessness that has often characterized the Christian faith can be overcome. Many attempts have been made to describe God as both all-powerful and loving, making suffering in the world a serious theological problem. It was often referred to as a divine mystery: We cannot know what God is thinking; after all, we are not omniscient. This sounds humble and is a truism, because of course we humans don’t know everything.

For a growing number of people, the reference to the divine mystery does not help anymore. It cannot be an acceptable alternative in the face of extreme violence such as the Holocaust. To say that God decided it was a good idea to allow the Holocaust rather than prevent it makes the Holocaust just that: a good idea. Just because we don’t understand why God came to this conclusion, the bottom line is that this judgment remains. And so, the “mystery card” becomes a kind of cheating game, a shell game trick. In the shell game, a small ball is made to disappear unnoticed. Something comparable happens with the mental figure of the mysterious and incomprehensible divine path. Actually, it is not the divine intentions or actions that are shrouded in mystery here; rather, the ability to call evil by its name is removed almost unnoticed. Because if even the Holocaust is a good idea from God’s perspective and part of a divine plan, how can one still say that something genuinely evil happened here? It is a speechlessness that many people accept.

The reinterpretation of genuine evil

The problem of evil can only be meaningfully addressed by reconsidering the idea of ​​divine omnipotence. In his book The Death of Omnipotence Thomas Jay Oord shows impressively that, upon closer inspection, the idea of ​​divine power as omnipotence can only be formulated with considerable qualifications. He shows that the necessary restrictions have reached such an extent that it makes little sense to even speak of divine omnipotence.

There are various reasons why this is still done. For example, the concept of omnipotence provides a high degree of security. Believing that God had a plan for the Holocaust and that nothing went wrong may initially be easier to accept than the alternative that God cannot always prevent suffering. One might accept that this is accompanied by massive internal contradictions.

Another reason is that the reinterpretation of genuine evil as a mysterious divine plan found its way into the central narrative of the faith right from the beginning of Christianity. The death of Jesus on the cross was a dark moment in which humanity demonstrated once again that it is capable of the worst crimes, unimaginable violence and cruelty. Already in the first decades of Christianity, the followers of Jesus, under the impression of the resurrection, made intensive efforts to find a theological interpretation of this event. A wealth of descriptions has been found with which the death of Jesus could be put into words in such a way that answers to open questions could be found. Images from the Old Testament were often used. Salvation and redemption were associated with Jesus’ death. Jesus’ death was interpreted as a sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, or as a victory over the powers of the world and death. And in church history, there has also been a lot of discussion about how to understand the death of Jesus and its theological meaning.

Was Jesus’ death necessary?

But for all the different interpretations that have emerged over the centuries, there is one fundamental choice that should be made in order to make sense of Jesus’ death. The question is whether Jesus’ death was necessary or not. Behind this lies the same question about God’s role in the suffering of the world. Was Jesus’ death part of a divine plan that was supposed to lead to a good goal? Or is it a senseless death like so many others in this world? Have torture, betrayal, injustice, humiliation, hatred, pain, violence and cruel murder served as God’s tools? Is God behind all this? Was Jesus’ death a divine act? But then what about all the characters involved in Jesus’ execution? Was the traitor Judas ultimately a servant of God who set the divine plan in motion? In the end, did Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, do exactly the right thing by wrongfully executing the innocent Jesus?

These questions go to the heart of what Christianity is about. For many, the Christian faith is based on the fact that we humans must believe in God’s plan of salvation through the death of Jesus on the cross in order to be saved. Many have always understood the Christian message to be exactly that: God used, brought about, planned, decided and allowed the death of Jesus in order to be able to forgive people. To put it bluntly, in this argument, Jesus would have been killed by God.

Of course, this raises a lot of other questions: Why is it necessary for an innocent person to die to save humanity? Isn’t the murder of an innocent person an unjust act in itself? What’s good about a brutal execution? What kind of plan is that supposed to be? Here too, many see Jesus’ suffering in connection with a punishing God who punishes Jesus for sin instead of the sinful world. This leads to new questions: Why does God have to punish someone in order to be able to forgive? Why must God deal with the evil of the world in a way that creates new evil? However you answer these questions, if you consider Jesus’ death to be necessary for the salvation of the world, then that is an approach that seeks to recognize a divine plan in suffering. There are many Christian thinkers who have followed this path. This view is undoubtedly part of the mainstream.

From Omnipotence to Love

It becomes exciting when you also take note of other perspectives. At this point, Thomas Jay Oord’s approach to “amipotence” seems appropriate to me. How would it be to examine Jesus’ death on the cross from this perspective? If you want to describe the divine power of love, you obviously have to clarify what is meant by love. Thomas Jay Oord defines love in this context as “acting intentionally, in relational response to god and others, to promote overall well-being (…) And because love is inherently uncontrolling, neither divine nor creaturely love controls.” How can this be related to Jesus’ death on the cross?

I think that God tried everything to prevent Jesus’ death, but ultimately God could not save Jesus. The message of the cross is not that God pulls the strings even in suffering, but that God does not let the darkest sides of people dissuade him from loving the world. At the cross, we can see God’s response to torture, injustice, hatred, pain, and violence—a response that does not respond to malice with more malice, but rather with healing, forgiveness, recreation, change, and resurrection. God does not allow himself to be seduced into counter-violence by even the darkest evils of humanity. And if that means that God himself is executed by his enemies, then divine love endures that too. God loves his enemies to the utmost. Nothing more is possible. God does not use suffering for his own purposes but wants to prevent it. And where that is not possible, God wants to transform suffering.

But this is only possible if the truth about the suffering is brought to light. Evil must be called by its name; there can be no reparation beforehand. On the cross, God’s attitude toward evil and the resulting suffering becomes clear. God removes every mask from the evil of suffering: it is unjust. God abhors suffering and calls evil by its name. God comes as close as he can to the evil of the world so that the truth about evil can be fully revealed. However, the story of the cross and resurrection shows that absurd suffering is not the end of history, but that God is involved in suffering in order to create something new. Where senseless suffering seems to have the last word, there is new life, hope and a divine spiritual power that never stops writing another chapter of salvation history. God wants to continue with humanity, that is the message of the cross.

What about hope?

There is a big difference between the spiritualizing of suffering and Christian hope. Christians want to hold on to the fact that there is hope. If we take the approach of amipotence seriously, then as Christians, we cannot base our hope on the idea that God has everything under control in suffering. That’s not what the cross stands for, or at least it shouldn’t stand for that. The cross shows that there is absurd suffering. Genuine evil is real. Christian hope cannot be anchored in a reinterpretation or spiritualization of evil. You cannot put a divine label on the death on the cross that identifies it as a divine plan. Christian hope lies in the divine, nevertheless. The cross is not the end of the story; it has just begun. God is not finished yet.

But the fact that something positive can arise from the cross does not make it any less absurd. Maybe it would have been good if Jesus had lived to be 80 or 90 years old. The fact that his life had an incredible impact on world history does not justify the cross. It remains pointless and absurd. God’s transformative and re-creating power as a response to violence, torture and suffering, however, is the center of Christian hope. This makes it clear that love is the greatest force at work in the world.

Bio: Jason Liesendahl works as a teacher of literature and history. He is also a public theologian, has a teaching position at the CVJM University in Kassel and hosts the podcast “schöner glauben” (more beautiful faith). As the author of the book “Gott kann auch nicht alles” (God Can’t Do Everything), he would like to bring process theology more into the conversation.

OORD’S DRABBLE* RESPONSE

Jason Liesendahl and I share uneasiness about appeals to divine mystery. When it comes to God and evil, the “mystery card” feels like a cheat. I appreciate how Jason emphasizes Jesus’ death as recognition of genuine evil. I also value his rejection of the idea that the crucifixion was divinely planned. Like Jason, I believe God attempted to prevent Jesus’ death but failed. We agree that the cross and resurrection testify that unnecessary suffering lacks the final word. They are not the end. Divine love, not suffering, proves the greatest force at work in the world, shaping life beyond tragedy.

For more on Oord’s view of Jesus as an argument for a relational God, see this article.

* A drabble is an essay exactly 100 words in length.