THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, April 6, 1996 TAG: 9604050045
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E5 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: Issues of Faith
SOURCE: Betsy Wright
LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
BEFORE JESUS CHRIST could be resurrected, he had to die. And since his death, the cross has been a symbol to humanity.
But what is the cross a symbol of?
Unlike other Christian tenets of faith - the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the Apostle's Creed and others - the meaning of the cross was never formalized into a dogma. No one group of men (and it was always men) ever sat down to officially decide exactly what the cross should mean to Christians.
It's meaning was left up to the individual believer.
This is not to say, however, that there were not teachings about the cross. The earliest teachings come to us through the letters of the Apostle Paul.
In his letter to the churches of Galatia, recorded in the Christian Testament in Galatians 3:13, the Apostle Paul wrote, ``Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us. . . .''
It was believed that what Paul meant was that Christ's sacrificial death was a ransom paid to Satan. Paul believed that since the Garden of Eden and the fall of man, Satan had owned the souls of humans. Jesus Christ came along, was sinless and never broke the law of God, but still chose to become vicariously accursed and die on the cross. His death was thus a ransom paid by God to release humans from eternal death.
That was the fairly accepted view of the meaning of the cross until the Middle Ages, when two great theologians emerged.
The Italian Benedictine theologian Anselm, who lived from 1033 to 1109 and became the Archbishop of Canterbury and a saint, dismissed the ransom theory. Anselm argued that Jesus - who was sinless and therefore owed nothing to God - gave himself up freely for humanity. God then owed Jesus a reward, which Jesus then transferred to humanity. That reward was salvation.
Around the same time, Peter Abelard, a French theologian and logician who lived from 1079 to 1142, dismissed both Paul's ransom theory and Anselm's penance theory about the cross.
Abelard's view of the cross was that Jesus, through his life and death, is the greatest revelation of God's willingness to forgive humans, but that forgiveness cannot be granted unless it is desired. How are humans inspired to want redemption? Abelard believed that inspiration comes from the cross.
What do I believe about the cross? My personal beliefs about the meaning of the cross come closest to Abelard's. I find it hard to believe that Jesus' death was some primitive sacrifice demanded by a bloodthirsty God Almighty. Nor can I fully - though some of it makes sense - believe that God needed a supreme penance in order to grant humans forgiveness.
The cross, to me, is God's ultimate gift. I believe it is God's desire that this gift inspire human hearts to turn to him. By the cross, humans are saved and reconciled to God. By the cross, God continues - as God has since humanity began and as he still does today - to offer himself to all of humanity.
Is belief in the Jesus Christ of the cross the only means of salvation? I do not believe we can know the answer to this question. Belief in Jesus Christ is not a work, though some have turned it into that. Belief in Jesus Christ does not win you salvation as if it were some prize at a county fair.
Belief in Jesus Christ is a response to a gift (salvation) that God has already given us. Belief in the Jesus Christ of the cross says, ``Yes, God, I will take the salvation you offer.'' Belief in the Jesus Christ of the cross does not say, ``OK God, I believe. Now you owe me my salva-tion.''
What's the difference in the two? The view that says belief is a work that wins salvation means that only those who pledge belief in Jesus Christ are saved. This means that all non-Christians and those who lived before Jesus Christ and could not have known him and those who have never heard of him, are beyond God's grace.
The view that belief is a response to God's gift of salvation means that while believing in Jesus Christ as Savior is the ultimate response to God's call, it is not the only way in which humans respond. It means that just as humans cannot control who God saves, neither can we control how God saves.
Ultimately, I believe as Dr. Nathaniel Micklem, who wrote in his 1964 book, ``Faith and Reason,'' that we humans ``pervert the idea of God if we allow ourselves to suppose that God did not and could not forgive sins apart from the death of Christ.''
The cross is there for all, Christians and non-Christians. It beckons to each of us, asking us, ``What does this mean?''
What do you believe? MEMO: Every other week, Betsy Mathews Wright publishes responses to her
opinion column. Send responses to Issues of Faith, The Virginian-Pilot,
150 W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510; call (804) 446-2273; FAX
(804) 436-2798; or send e-mail to bmw(AT)infi.net. Deadline is Tuesday
before publication. You must include name, city and phone number.
by CNB