MODERATOR's note. The link contains a second commandment violation.
Modern Reformation - Articles
What do you think of this article? It is from Modern Reformation.
Modern Reformation - Articles
What do you think of this article? It is from Modern Reformation.
An important aspect of the Christian gospel that seeks to proclaim the love, mercy, and compassion of God is the affirmation of God's identification and solidarity with human suffering. A suffering humanity needs a God who knows what it means to suffer. The church has traditionally met this need by emphasizing the passion and death of Jesus Christ. Especially in the theology of the Reformation, a "theology of the cross" sought to recognize God's self-revelation hidden in the humility, shame, and suffering of the cross of Jesus Christ. Through the theology of the cross, God is known as the God who suffers with and for humanity. Yet, how does God identify with human suffering? Does God suffer in himself, in his own being; or is God immutable (unchanging), and therefore impassible (incapable of suffering), as the church has historically affirmed? Can God's impassibility be upheld while at the same time affirming his real awareness of, and true identification with, human suffering? Why is it theologically important to maintain the historical witness to God's impassibility, especially in the face of so much suffering in today's world?
In this article, I will seek to answer these questions in two ways. Negatively, I will offer a critique of the contemporary theological trend that seeks to attribute suffering to God's being, or to assert God's passibility. (1) This trend affirms that God suffers in himself, and that the suffering of Jesus is the actual suffering of his divine nature. A clearly articulated representation of the general trend, and a viewpoint also being voiced in wider evangelicalism, is Jurgen Moltmann's theology of the cross. The most important discussion of Moltmann's theology of the cross is found in his book, The Crucified God, where he attempts both to understand God's being from the suffering and death of Jesus and to apply this understanding to what he calls a "theology after Auschwitz." (2) A representation of this theological project in contemporary evangelicalism is found in Dennis Ngien's article, "The God Who Suffers," which appeared in the February 3, 1997, edition of Christianity Today. (3) Positively, I will seek to answer these questions by reaffirming the Christian historical understanding of the trinitarian conceptual distinction, the incarnation, and Chalcedonian two-nature Christology; and by demonstrating the proper relationship between them as the context for a theology of the cross. In view of these key doctrinal formulations, I will demonstrate how an evangelical theology of the cross can and should affirm both divine impassibility and God's true identification and solidarity with the suffering of this hurting world.
Last edited by a moderator: