The Sign of the Cross

From Golgotha to Genocide

Daniel Rancour-Laferriere

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351474214
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This book presents a unique effort to create a new understanding of the Christian sign of the cross. At its core, it traces the conscious and unconscious influence of this visual symbol through time. What began as the crucifixion of a Jewish troublemaker in Roman-occupied Judea in the first century eventually gave rise to a broad spectrum of readings of the instrument used to accomplish such a punishment, a cross. The author argues that Jesus was a provocative, grandiose masochist whose suffering and death initially signified redemption for believers. This idea gradually morphed into a Christian sense of freedom to persecute and wage war against non-believers, however, as can be seen in the Crusades ("wars of the cross"). Many believers even construed the murder of their savior as a crime perpetrated by "the Jews, " and this paranoid notion culminated in the mass murder of European Jews under the sign of the Nazi hooked cross (Hakenkreuz). Rancour-Laferriere's book is expertly written and argued; it will be readable to a large audience because it touches on many areas of controversy, interest, and scholarship. The work is critical, but not unfair; it employs psychoanalysis, art history (the study of the symbol of the cross in works of art), religion and religious texts, and world history generally. The interweaving of these various themes is what gives this work its ability to draw in readers-and will ultimately be what keeps the reader interested through the conclusion.

1

Introduction: The Scandal of the Cross

“What is this strange and uncouth thing?”

—George Herbert, “The Cross”

The cross is a sign that represents the Christian faith, as opposed to other religious faiths. Its historical origin is grim. It was the instrument utilized to torture and kill a particular human being who has since come to be seen as the founder of Christianity. Theologians have noted that, while the founders of other major religions such as Moses, Muhammad, K’ung-tzu (Confucius), and the Buddha lived till old age and died natural deaths, Jesus preached only briefly as a middle-aged man, and then died an extremely violent, painful, and shameful death by crucifixion.¹ In retrospect, it is difficult to comprehend the idea that the founder of what is today the world’s most populous and widespread religion² died in this fashion. It is equally remarkable that no symbol of any other of the world’s major religions—for example, the Star of David, the crescent moon and star, the Om/Aum sign, the wheel of Dharma—signifies murder.

For Jews, crucifixion was a degrading punishment: “Anyone hung on a tree is under God’s curse” (Deuteronomy 21:23). St. Paul takes these words seriously, paraphrasing them in a letter to the Galatians (3:13), and understanding them to refer to crucifixion, the capital punishment of choice in his Roman imperial context.³ How could anyone hung on the “tree” of the cross be regarded as an important religious teacher, much less the “Messiah” (whatever that slippery term meant either to Jews or to Jewish Christians, who translated it as “Christ”)?⁴ As for Gentiles, the idea that a crucified man should be said to possess divine status was preposterous. The sheer pain of prolonged dying on the cross was accompanied by humiliation, or “foolishness” (mōria) in worldly eyes, as Paul says (1 Corinthians 1:18, 23). To pagans of the first few centuries it was sheer madness (mania—Justin), or pernicious superstition (exitiabilis superstitio—Tacitus) that one should worship a crucified God.⁵ The Jewish homeland in which Jesus preached was occupied by Rome, after all, and under Roman law people who were crucified were by definition criminals, such as escaped slaves or insurrectionists. Many Jewish rebels had already been crucified before the crucifixion of Jesus.

Such was the anomaly of a crucified God. Yet God he became within a century after his death, and God he still is to countless Christians—such as Anglican evangelist John Stott: “I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross.’”⁶

No charismatic religious leader should have been murdered in such a disgraceful manner. Again to quote Paul, what Christ endured was “the offense of the cross” (to skandalon tou staurou—Galatians 5:11)—but here the original Greek is better rendered by its etymological equivalent, the scandal of the cross—as in the Rheims, Jerusalem, and Christian Community translations into English.⁷ Inconceivable as it may have been to non-Christians, this “scandal” was early on considered an integral part of the “good news” or “revelation” (to euangelion) which was the gospel (1 Corinthians 15:1–5). Something truly hideous, shameful and offensive would eventually be transformed into something good, even beautiful. For, as St. John Chrysostom wrote in the fourth century, “No one is ashamed, no one hides his face because he thinks that this is a symbol of an accursed death. Rather, we would all prefer to adorn ourselves with the cross than with crowns, or diadems, or necklaces of countless pearls.”⁸

Losing and Recovering the Scandal

Over the course of the roughly two millennia since the “scandal” of the crucifixion occurred, other issues and events within Christianity have tended to eclipse it. For example, an overarching purpose has been attributed to it, namely, the loving redemption of sinful humankind by God in the person of Jesus, who was mysteriously understood to accomplish a triumph by means of his shameful defeat. Catholic theologian Hans Küng writes: “this man who had suffered a shameful execution was the one confirmed by God with power, so that this sign of shame was a sign of victory. Indeed, this dishonourable death of a slave and rebel could finally be understood as a saving death bringing redemption and liberation.”⁹

The semiotic shift indicated by the two boldfaced phrases in Küng’s statement is one of the great accomplishments of the early history of Christianity. From a psychoanalytic viewpoint, as we will see, such a shift is defensive (specifically, the defensive denial of death gets supplemented by other defenses, such as rationalization and reaction formation). In some contexts a euphemistic camouflage for the crucifixion is also utilized, as when the Greek term xulon (“tree,” “gallows”) is increasingly substituted for stauros, or when just the word for “sign” (Greek sēmeion, Latin signum or signatio) stands in for “sign of the cross.”¹⁰

Nor should we forget many other elements which have tended to occlude the “scandal” of the cross, such as: Christ’s preachings (“sayings”) during his lifetime, especially the Sermon on the Mount (including the Lord’s Prayer) and the many parables; the miracles supposedly performed by Christ, including his own resurrection from the dead; the eventual founding of a church which would develop a liturgy, administer sacraments, and propagate a faith encouraging people to seek eternal life with Christ God now and in the hereafter. With time, many branches of this Christian church would come into existence, disputes over religious correctness would be waged, cruel inquisitions and Crusades against “heretics” would be conducted, corruption would become rampant within the Church, and religious wars would be fought between rival Christian factions or between nominally “Christian” nations. Non-Christians—especially Jews and Muslims—would be killed in mind-staggering numbers. Room would eventually be made for secularism in many parts of the formerly Christian world as well, and religious freedom—including even freedom from religion—would be tolerated to a greater or lesser degree. Parts of Christendom evolved into pluralist societies.

In short, the “scandal of the cross” receded into the background.

True, there have been historical periods or particular Christian subcultures in which the “scandal” of the cross has been emphasized. Küng mentions with disapproval the medieval flagellant movements in which “the discipleship of the cross was often confused with a cult of the crucifix, with mystical immersion in a private, obsequious sharing in the suffering of Jesus or even with copying the way of the crucified Jesus in his passion.”¹¹ Küng does not go into the details of these practices, but he is clearly “scandalized” by them. He prefers instead to focus attention on Christ’s admonitions to love one’s neighbor, to minister to the hungry, the thirsty, the ill, the persecuted, and the downtrodden generally. We should not seek suffering for suffering’s sake, or even for the sake of imitating Christ. Apparently it does not matter to Küng that narration of the passion of Christ occupies a disproportionately large section of each of the four canonical gospels. Rather, we should focus on the recorded preaching, such as the admonition(s) to help the needy and the suffering. Küng points to the charitable work conducted by the church since its beginnings, and even raises the question of “whether the systematic care of the sick for the sake of Jesus has not become a specifically Christian concern which marks Christianity out from the other world religions.”¹² Perhaps Küng is thinking of the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has indeed rendered humanitarian aid to the sick and to the suffering of this world—although this organization with its cruciform symbol was remarkably unhelpful and quiet¹³ as the Nazi regime persecuted Jews under its own—scandalous—sign of the hooked cross (das Hakenkreuz), euphemistically known in English mistranslation as the “swastika.”

But to return to the originary scandal. There have been individual Christians who at various times in the history of Christianity manifested in their own way an intense interest in the crucifixion of Christ. Tradition has it that the apostle Peter, for example, arranged for himself to be crucified in a peculiar manner: “…since I am not worthy of hanging on the cross as my Lord did, turn my cross round and crucify me upside-down!” (the Roman executioners supposedly obliged Peter).¹⁴ I have already mentioned Paul, who goes so far as to claim that “I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me”; “I carry the marks [stigmata] of Jesus branded on my body” (Galatians 2:19–20; 6:17). One thinks also of St. Francis of Assisi (1181–1226), who beheld a crucified Seraph in a vision and subsequently developed his own stigmata, that is, wounds—or what appeared to be wounds—in his hands, feet, and side. This mysterious form of identification with the wounded Christ on the cross, however achieved, was to spread among some hundreds of other holy men and (especially) women since the time of St. Francis. Notable examples are St. Catherine of Siena (whose wounds were felt but “invisible”), Catherine of Genoa, Anna Katharina Emmerick, Therese Neumann, and the famous twentieth-century stigmatic Padre Pio.¹⁵

In the literary field there are scholars who, understandably, prefer to deal with texts about the scandal of the crucifixion as aesthetic rather than as religious objects. Yale critic Harold Bloom includes “The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version” in the “Western canon,” right alongside works of Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, Cervantes, Montaigne, Joyce, Proust, Tolstoy, and many other famous authors.¹⁶ The book by Jack Miles on Christ as “a crisis in the life of God” is avowedly a reading of the New Testament as a literary classic, although it bristles with theological insights and textological nuggets.¹⁷ Maud Bodkin, in her seminal 1934 book Archetypal Patterns in Poetry, studies the gospel story (focusing on a passage in John) “as poetry,” and compares the sacrificial Christ to such tragic literary heroes as Oedipus and King Lear.¹⁸ A whole tradition of reading “the Bible as literature” now exists, and has increased our understanding of texts without staking claims in the realm of religious belief.¹⁹ Nor should we forget that some literary artists themselves, such as the author of the famous Anglo-Saxon Dream of the Rood, Nikos Kazantzakis in The Last Temptation of Christ and The Greek Passion, or Mikhail Bulgakov in his classic Soviet-era novel The Master and Margarita—have retold or transfigured the story of Christ’s passion in interesting ways.²⁰

In the visual arts as well we can find creative works which have as their theme the scandal of the cross. The literature on the iconography of the crucifixion is vast.²¹ One recent book on this topic has recently been published with the improbable title The Beauty of the Cross.²² At first blush it may seem perverse to represent an instrument of torture and execution as an aesthetic object. Try to imagine, for example, such analogous possible titles as “The Beauty of the Hangman’s Noose” or “The Beauty of the Guillotine.” Comedian Lenny Bruce once quipped, “If Jesus had been killed twenty years ago, Catholic school children would be wearing little electric chairs around their necks instead of crosses.”²³

There do exist exquisitely beautiful paintings, icons, sculptures, reliquaries, and other visual representations of the murder of Christ on the cross. Some of these, such as Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece (before 1516), or Gabriel José de Ovalle’s Crucifixión (1749)—represent the dying of Jesus with truly gruesome and bloody explicitness. Contemplation of such works can provoke a range of psychological responses, but among these there has to be admiration and sheer aesthetic enjoyment. A c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction: The Scandal of the Cross
• 2. The Crucifixion of Christ as a Narration of Grandiose Moral Masochism
• 3. Christian Masochism versus Christian Masochism by Proxy
• 4. Resurrection: The Victory of the Cross
• 5. Crusades: From the Cross to the Sword
• 6. Paranoia versus Paranoia by Proxy: The Cross and Christian Antisemitism
• 7. The Holocaust: The Hooked Cross and Christian Antisemitism
• 8. Unresolved Aftermath of the Holocaust
• 9. Conclusion
• Bibliography