Co-missioners,
Last week our editor stumbled across a little piece he wrote two decades ago. It was intended as an appendix to an essay on justification that appeared in Gospel Blazes in the Dark, Crossings’ 2005 festschrift for Ed Schroeder. For some reason the appendix didn’t make the cut when final copy was dispatched to the printers. After that it sank not only from sight but from memory too until lo, there it was again some days ago in a most unlikely place. On scanning it again after all these years, it struck the editor as something to share, so here it is.
Here’s the question this little piece will tackle: What do we need Christ for? Is it only to solve the problem of death, great as this is, or is there something more at stake? Or to put this another way in Crossings lingo, what is the God-problem (D3) that Christ was crucified to address (P4)?
You’ll see a mention here of one “Average Joe.” For background to this, check out our Thursday Theology post of December 29, 2011. It presents a portion of the essay on justification for which this was supposed to be an add-on.
Peace and Joy,
The Crossings Community
_________________________________________________________________________________
Christ and the Fate Worse than Death
An Appendix to a 2005 Essay on Justification
by Jerome Burce
Against judgment as the deepest human problem coram deo stands an opinion, current in some theological corners of the ELCA, that the deep problem is death. This idea is a novelty in the history of Christian thought. In the present writer’s small estimation it cannot bear scrutiny. Facetiously, one asks of theologians holding this opinion which their own greater grief might be, that they will one day be dead or that, unlike Aquinas, Luther, or Schleiermacher, they will one day be ignored and forgotten.
More seriously, one notes at least the following: first, that death leading to judgment is an empirical fact and a daily occurrence (thus the commenting crowd at a funeral home); second, that human beings have ever distinguished between a good death and an evil death, or, as in the case of soldiers, between a glorious death and an inglorious death, or again, between death with honor and life with dishonor, the former being preferred; third, that some suicides will take their lives expressly to escape a burden of adverse judgment, which judgment, as it happens, is only and always magnified by the fact of their death; fourth, that human beings commonly think about the postmortem judgments that will be rendered on them, if not by God then by survivors, and that some take deliberate steps to shape what these judgments will be.
These are but a few examples of judgment manifesting itself in ordinary human experience as the matter of ultimate concern. Average Joe is known to “make peace” with death. He is not known to make peace with someone’s adverse opinion about him. Average Joes everywhere share an intimation of a fate worse than death. It is for such as these that the dying thief speaks when he wishes to be remembered well (Lk. 23:42).
Attending to such as these Christ makes judgment, not death, the first and last of his own concerns. Thus his opening words to the paralytic (Mk. 2:5). Thus also his “Peace be with you,” the first word spoken to the disciples post-resurrection (Jn. 20:19). Were death the greater problem Paul’s counsel concerning the Corinthian cad (1 Cor. 5:5) would make no sense.
Also and finally on this point: life is the creature and consequence of the word of God (Gen. 1; Jn 1:3-4). So is death (Gen. 3:22-24). Accordingly, of highest priority and ultimate concern to any person is the word God chooses to speak about that person and the evaluation implicit in that word. But of each person God speak two words, the one shaped and measured by the Law, the other formed by the justifying word and work of Christ. Of both immediate and ultimate concern, then, is which of these words one will trust. Christ himself connects the immediate and ultimate in his caution again rendering judgment (Mt. 7:1-2) by which he can only mean judgment other than God’s forgiving judgment rendered in and through him (Mt. 18:21-35). “The measure you give will be the measure you get.” If Law then Law, if Christ then Christ. Again, which will you trust and thus employ? By that God measures you.
Judgment and the standard of judgment: there lies the issue. Death, however grave (pun intended) is secondary.
