The Cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ: Art, History & Truth

On the web site for, Touchstone: A Journal of Mere Christianity, under comments is a posting about an exhibit of, Early Christian Art in Texas. The exhibit is at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth Texas. See "Picturing the Bible: the Earliest Christian Art." The whole exhibit looks extremely interesting and I wish I lived closer since I would like to explore it.

However, I found this fascinating for another reason. On the Web site of Voices of Sophia and at other places on the web are references to a coming new book by Rita Nakashima Brock, called Saving Paradise. It is Brock's contention that the early Church did not give much attention to the cross and that it was rather the church supported by an Empire which held the cross in high esteem.

In an excerpt placed on the Voices of Sophia web site Brock writes:

"Like most western Christians we were accustomed to images of a Christ who died in agony, hanging dead on the cross. We had been taught in church and in graduate school that Christians believed the crucifixion of Jesus Christ saved the world and that this idea was the core truth of Christian faith. In our book Proverbs of Ashes we showed how this idea contributed to sanctioning intimate violence and war by claiming the highest form of love was self-sacrifice, modeled by Jesus on the cross."

Brock suggests that "Christians did not focus" on the cross for a thousand years. In her anger at the cross she writes:

"We regard such theology as a travesty - a poisoning of souls to acquiesce to evil. It is also a theological justification for God's use of violence to save the world. We found nothing life-giving or redeeming in a theology that sanctified the torture and execution of Jesus as God's will. Even so, we were unprepared for the possibility that Christians did not focus on the death of Jesus for a thousand years."

Not to mention Scripture which puts a light on such lies, if one looks over the art mentioned on the museum web site there is proof enough against Brock's statements. But better yet is a book, The Beauty of the Cross: The Passion of Christ in Theology and the Arts--from the Catacombs to the Eve of the Renaissance, by Richard Viladesau.

A quote from the book is:

"From its earliest era, the church has applied to Christ in his passion the words of the fourth 'Song of the Suffering Servant' from the book of Isaiah (Isa. 52:13-53:12)--thinking of them, indeed, as a direct prophecy of the passion. Here we read that 'there was no beauty in him to make us look at him, nor appearance that would attract us to him' (Isa. 53:2-3). As Barth says, 'Jesus Christ does present this aspect of Himself, and He always presents this aspect first. It is not self-evident that even--and precisely--under this aspect he has form and comeliness, that the beauty of God shines especially under this aspect. . . . We cannot know this of ourselves. It can only be given to us.' Yet to Christian faith, it is given that Christ is --precisely in the cross--the supreme revelation of God's being, God's 'form,' 'glory,' and 'beauty.' The transcendent 'beauty' and 'light' of God, then, must embrace also 'the abysmal darkness into which the Crucified plunges." (10)

May all of us, the Church, God's people, boast only "in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." (a Gal 6:14)