Most discussions of Luther's theology of the cross begin with suffering. They tell us that God works through weakness rather than strength, through suffering rather than triumph, through hiddenness rather than glory. While all of this is true, it may not be the most fundamental point Luther is making.
My contention is that the heart of Luther's theology of the cross is not suffering. It is truthful judgment.
The decisive text comes from the Heidelberg Disputation of 1518, where Luther writes:
"The theologian of glory calls evil good and good evil. The theologian of the cross calls the thing what it actually is."
The contrast is striking because Luther does not say that the theologian of glory suffers too little or that the theologian of the cross suffers more. He says that one names reality falsely while the other names it truthfully. Simply put, the primary issue for the theologian of the cross is judging rightly.
The theologian of glory lives within a distorted account of reality. He judges according to power, success, achievement, influence, and visible accomplishment. Strength appears self-evidently good. Weakness appears self-evidently bad. Success seems to indicate blessing. Failure seems to indicate judgment.
The problem is not that such judgments are irrational; it is that they are made according to a false model of the real, and it is the cross that reveals this.
At Calvary, divine power appears as weakness. Divine wisdom appears as foolishness. Divine victory appears as defeat. If one judges merely by appearances, then Good Friday can only be understood as catastrophe. Yet faith recognizes that precisely there, under the form of weakness and shame, God is accomplishing reconciliation with the world.
The theologian of the cross therefore learns a difficult discipline. Like Plato, she learns to say what is real apart from appearances to the contrary. Accordingly, she claims:
- Sin is sin.
- Death is death.
- Judgment is judgment.
- The creature is creature.
- God is God.
The point sounds almost trivial until one recognizes how much energy human beings expend avoiding such naming. What do we humans do?
- We rename sin as woundedness.
- We rename guilt as dysfunction.
- We rename death as transition.
- We rename rebellion as authenticity.
- We rename judgment as intolerance.
Our age is remarkably skilled at redescribing reality until the thing itself disappears beneath its preferred vocabulary.
This tendency is hardly limited to secular culture. The church is often tempted by the same impulse. We preserve theological grammar while quietly evacuating theological reference. We continue speaking of grace, resurrection, repentance, and Christ while becoming increasingly uncertain whether these words refer to realities outside our own religious practices.
The result is a culture of managed descriptions. Everything is interpreted, but nothing is named. The theology of the cross stands against this entire enterprise.
It insists that reality possesses a determinate contour independent of our descriptions of it. More importantly, it insists that this reality is disclosed most clearly in the crucified Christ. The cross becomes the criterion by which false naming is exposed and truthful naming becomes possible.
This is why the theology of the cross is not anti-rational. It is neither a celebration of paradox for its own sake, nor is it an invitation into theological obscurity. It is instead a discipline of intellectual honesty.
The theologian of the cross does not refuse to think, but refuses to allow thinking to be governed by false appearances. The theologian of the Cross refuses
- To call success faithfulness.
- To call power wisdom.
- To call self-justification righteousness.
- To call evil good and good evil.
This is not merely an academic exercise, but the precondition for hearing the gospel. Accordingly,
- Forgiveness can only be proclaimed where sin has been named.
- Resurrection can only be proclaimed where death has been acknowledged.
- Grace can only be proclaimed where judgment has been spoken.
The cross names in order to promise; it kills in order to make alive; it unmasks in order to redeem.
Luther's theology of the cross therefore remains profoundly relevant to our contemporary horizon. We inhabit an age of therapeutic management, technological control, institutional ambiguity, and semantic evasion. Everywhere we find pressure to rename reality into forms that are easier to bear. It is against all of this that the theologian of the cross stands.
While such a theologian is not specialist in suffering, not a lover of paradox, and certainly not an enemy of reason, she is one who has been judged by the crucified and risen Christ and thereby set free to call a thing what it is.
