Professor explains paradox of Cross

This article appeared in the Conference edition of the Church of England Newspaper on 21 September 2003 and is reproduced here with their permission.

The paradox of the Cross as power and weakness was outlined yesterday by Prof Anthony Thiselton.

The former Principal of St John's College, Durham, contrasted the views of the Christians at Corinth, who saw the Cross as a sign of weakness, and the attitude of the Apostle Paul, who saw it as the power of God for redemption and new life.

He told NEAC 4: "What we may have perceived as God's 'weakness' becomes manifest as God's power. What we might have perceived as 'folly' we now see as God's wisdom."

The modern perspective on power had influenced Christian thinking, so that many envisage power as high voltage electric current, or in the world of politics as majority votes.

Prof Thiselton, a member of the Crown Appointments Commission, said that the Cross undermined such notions of power. He pointed out that Jesus said 'blessed are the meek, the mourners, the persecuted'; not 'blessed are the powerful'.

The paradox of the Gospel was that in apparent weakness and failure, Christ made perfect the power of God. And that reflected what the theologian described as "a fundamental axiom" in God's universe.

"If an organism is defensive and puts up walls for self-protection, what will survive is only the organism itself, with all its limitations. If an organism yields its life and empties itself, there will emerge some transformed life, for which it has yielded its own," he said.

The theme of the Cross is one of the key issues under focus at NEAC 4 and Prof Thiselton admitted that evangelicals are sometimes criticised for viewing it as merely the freedom from the sins and burdens of the past. The usual rejoinder is that the work of holiness in the lives of Christians is the work of the Holy Spirit, rather than the effect of the Cross, but he argued that it is, in fact, both.