From Fleming Rutledge’s masterful new work, The Crucifixion, this comes from her chapter “The Godlessness of the Cross” (ht LM):
Yet at the most fundamental level—and this can’t be emphasized too strongly—the cross is in no way “religious.” The cross is by a very long way the most irreligious object ever to find its way into the heart of faith. J. Christiaan Beker refers to it as “the most nonreligious and horrendous feature of the Gospel.
The crucifixion marks out the essential distinction between Christianity and “religion.” Religion as defined in these pages is either an organized system of belief or, alternatively, a loose collection of ideas and practices, projected out of humanity’s needs and wishes. The cross is “irreligious” because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings, and needs onto a crucified man.
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5 responses to “The Irreligion of the Cross”
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WOW–Fleming Rutledge doesn’t mince words here. This is brilliant!!
That last sentence just crushes any ‘man-made religious system’ to pieces!
WOW I need to read this . I heard it was excellent!
Followers of Christ Jesus know this to be true deep within. But the question barking right on its heels is: How has the cross become the world’s most prolific symbol of religion? Ever go into a pawn shop and glance over the varieties of crosses on display? Large, medium, small; gold, silver, turquoise, and wood polished and lacquered. Some chained, some not. But I’ve yet to see the same veneration of the electric chair.
Galatians 1:3-4 Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave Himself for our sins to rescue us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father.
Apocalyptic deliverance, as articulated by J. Louis Martyn and Fleming Rutledge, teaches that we do not so much need forgiveness of sins as deliverance from slavery to sin. They appeal to Gal 1:4. Even if this view is defended from Galatians, it really does not work in Romans 1-3, where a major component of sin is personal guilt
http://www.reformation21.org/articles/defending-substitution.php
[…] a twenty-year period, Fleming Rutledge has wrestled with seemingly every imaginable implication of the Cross. And if, as Luther put it, “The Cross alone is our theology,” what better gift for the preacher […]