Cruciform Scripture

Cross, Participation, and Mission

Christopher W. Skinner, Nijay K. Gupta, Andy Johnson, Drew J. Strait

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781467461900
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

What does it mean to participate in the cruciform Lord Jesus Christ so that our life together becomes a living exegesis of the gospel?

Michael Gorman has been tremendously influential in exploring this question within the New Testament, particularly in the letters of Paul, the Gospel of John, and the book of Revelation. His 2001 book Cruciformity: Paul's Narrative Spirituality of the Cross inspired a generation of scholars and was the first in a trilogy of New Testament theology devoted to exploring the role of the cross, participation in Christ, and becoming the gospel in mission. Here, an assemblage of some of the best and brightest current New Testament exegetes honor Gorman's work with contributions of their own, each of which further explores these three critical themes in various passages of the New Testament.

Cruciform Scripture is more than a tribute to a giant of biblical scholarship. Its contributors (including N. T. Wright, Sylvia Keesmaat, and Richard Hays) are masters in their own right who offer incisive interpretations of essential themes of New Testament theology and the core concerns of Christian life in community. As they reason together in this volume, they amplify one another's voices as well as Gorman's, modeling a way that careful reflection on Paul's determination to "know nothing... except Jesus Christ and him crucified" can engender fruitful insights on the nature of discipleship. Contributors

Ben C. Blackwell, Sherri Brown, Frank E. Dicken, Dennis R. Edwards, Rebekah Eklund, Dean Flemming, Patricia Fosarelli, Stephen E. Fowl, Nijay K. Gupta, Richard B. Hays, Andy Johnson, Sylvia C. Keesmaat, Brent Laytham, Christopher W. Skinner, Klyne R. Snodgrass, Drew J. Strait, and N. T. Wright.

PART ONE

The Cross and the Cruciform Life

Chapter 1

Matthew, the Cross, and the Cruciform Life

Rebekah Eklund

Michael Gorman has given us a promising new lens through which to view the New Testament texts, one not of a crucified God but of a cruciform God.¹ This theme emerges most clearly in the writings of the apostle Paul, who spent his apostolic career wrestling with the significance of Jesus’s death and resurrection for the Christian life—and indeed, for the whole cosmos. In the gospels, given their narrative character, one may perceive this theme mostly in retrospect. Nonetheless, to borrow a phrase from Richard Hays, the gospels themselves encourage us to read and reread them “in light of the resurrection.”² Mark’s Gospel is perhaps the starkest example of this, since he leaves his entire narrative hanging on a note of fear and surprise, with the women fleeing the empty tomb—prompting the readers to return to the beginning and read it again as their story.³ But one may also see Matthew’s Gospel as a text meant to be read in light of its ending, which neatly bookends its beginning with the theme of Jesus as God with us, “even to the end of the age” (Matt 1:23; 28:20).

I have chosen to explore Matthew, then, precisely because of its apparent dearth of explicit references to cruciformity, theosis, and the new covenant.⁴ I will begin by wondering if Matthew is less interested in a new covenant than in the fulfillment and perfection of the covenant. I will then argue that the “Gormanian” theme of “taking up the cross” pervades Matthew’s Gospel and resonates deeply with one very central (if unexpected) text: the Beatitudes. Finally, I will suggest that the climax of Matthew’s story (the empty tomb and the risen Jesus) focuses our attention on God both as cruciform and as resurrecting—as the One with life-giving and death-defeating power.

The (Not-So-New) New Covenant

In The Death of the Messiah, Gorman develops a “new covenant” model of atonement, a model he takes to be true to all the New Testament writers. Of course, of the three Last Supper texts in which Jesus identifies the Passover cup as his blood of the (new) covenant, only Luke includes the word “new,” but Gorman suggests that he is likely making explicit what Mark and Matthew left implicit.⁵ He sees Jeremiah’s new covenant, among other Old Testament promises, underlying all three texts.

Matthew is certainly aware of Jer 31; he uses a quotation from it to illuminate the grief of the Bethlehem mothers over the slaughter of their innocent children, linking their lament to Rachel’s inconsolable grief over the loss of her children. In Jeremiah’s context, Rachel weeps for all the children of Israel who have been carried away into exile (Jer 31:15//Jer 38:15 LXX; Matt 2:18). Matthew’s opening chapters are replete with imagery of both exodus and exile, suggesting that his use of Jer 31 (and its exilic resonances) is not incidental; the theme of Israel’s restoration and return from exile is central to his gospel and his understanding of Jesus’s mission.

So it seems likely that Jer 31 is one of the texts he has in mind when he describes Jesus’s blood in covenantal terms. But does this mean that Matthew thinks of Jesus’s covenant as new? There are, to be sure, elements of newness to Jeremiah’s new covenant: namely, that God will put the law directly into their hearts (Jer 31:33–34), a theme that accords quite well with Jesus’s emphasis on the heart in the Sermon on the Mount. But it is not a covenant that differs in kind in other ways from those that preceded it; it still involves the Mosaic law and is still made with the same people: the houses of Israel and Judah. On Jeremiah’s terms, then, it operates more as a renewed covenant than a new (read: different) one.

Likewise, Matthew’s understanding of the “new covenant” community which follows Jesus still involves the Mosaic law, as it is interpreted by Jesus’s authoritative teaching (Matt 5:17–48; see also 19:3–9, 16–22; 22:34–40), and is still initially offered to the same people of God: the lost sheep of the house of Israel (15:24). Hints of gentile inclusion appear as early as the genealogy, peek out again in Jesus’s encounter with the Canaanite woman, and come to fruition in the Great Commission. But for Matthew, on the whole, practices like forgiveness, deeds of mercy, and caring for the poor and weak do not seem to be practices that result from the new covenant established by Jesus’s death as much as they were already practices described in the law of the “old” covenant. Jesus seems to assume that his (Jewish) listeners are already engaged in many of these central Jewish practices (as in 6:2–18). Of course, he interprets these actions to his followers, loosening some and tightening others, but none of them are wholly new. Perhaps, then, Matthew’s covenant theme can remind us, as Gorman himself does in the subtitle to one of his books—A (Not So) New Model of the Atonement—that the new covenant is not so new after all, at least not for the evangelist.

Taking Up the Cross

Gorman’s theme of cruciformity certainly coheres deeply with Matthew’s ethos. Hints of Matthew’s emphasis on the way of Jesus as costly, self-giving service appear in chapter one: in two foremothers of Jesus—Rahab, who hides the spies at significant risk to herself; and Ruth, who shows loving and sacrificial ḥesed to Naomi—and in Jesus’s earthly father Joseph, who risks social disgrace (no small matter in his culture) by taking a shamefully pregnant woman as his wife. Further clues appear in the temptation narrative in chapter four, when Jesus rejects the tempter’s offers of political, military, and religious power, presaging his refusal to exercise his right to call down legions of angels for protection when he is arrested (Matt 4:1–11; 26:53).

Two additional themes about the way of the cross emerge as we advance through Matthew’s narrative: persecution and renunciation. A cruciform life, writes Matthew, is a persecuted life. The followers of Jesus will be hated and persecuted because of Jesus’s name, just as Jesus himself was hated, reviled, and persecuted (Matt 5:10–12; 10:22). They will conform to this aspect of Jesus’s life, whether they like it or not. As Gorman writes, the followers of Jesus can expect to participate in Jesus’s fate: “his rejection, suffering, and death.”⁶ In the slender evidence that we can glean from Matthew’s Gospel about his community, this appears to be the case for the followers of Jesus to whom Matthew writes. They do not need a warning that they will be hated; they already experience this for themselves.

By the time Matthew composed his gospel, presumably in the 70s or 80s CE, Jerusalem had been captured by the Romans and the temple destroyed, displacing Jewish Christians (perhaps even some members of Matthew’s eventual community) along with their fellow Jews.⁷ Nero’s recent persecution of Christians in Rome surely meant Christians were keeping a wary eye on the local Roman rulers. And tensions were rising between Jews who worshiped Jesus and Jews who did not. Jesus’s predictions, then, function not as warnings but as encouragement to remain steadfast, since they are following in his footsteps. Indeed, their very suffering is the mark of their faithfulness to their Lord.

Likewise, throughout history, Christians have claimed their suffering as the mark of their faithfulness, sometimes even over against other Christians, as when Reformers and Anabaptists alike pointed to their own suffering at the hands of other Christians as the sign of their true faith. John Calvin (who was confident that he was suffering for the sake of Christ) firmly rejected the idea that the Anabaptists were being persecuted for righteousness, saying that they suffered instead for their errors.⁸ One is not a martyr, he wrote tartly, if one “suffers persecution for his own fault.”⁹ Roman Catholics likewise protested that the Protestants were suffering for their heresy, not for their faith. This should give us pause. At least, it should remind us that it is not always straightforward to judge whether Christian suffering is a result of cruciformity or some other cause.

Whether hatred and persecution are likewise the marks of a contemporary Christian’s faithfulness is an even more complicated question. Western Christians rarely suffer and die for their faith in Jesus, whereas Christians elsewhere in the world fit more closely into Matthew’s model. One need only think of the shocking plight of Syrian, Palestinian, and Nigerian Christians (among others) to recognize that some contemporary Christians are losing their homes, livelihoods, and lives for their commitment to Christ.

Matthew’s theme of renunciation likewise raises uncomfortable questions for wealthy Christians of any era. Matthew writes straightforwardly that taking up the cross and following Jesus will entail leaving one’s family, renouncing one’s possessions, having no home and nowhere soft to sleep, and loving Jesus more than one’s relatives, one’s livelihood, and even one’s own life (Matt 8:18–22; 10:37–39; 16:24–26; 19:16–30). Conversely, Jesus insists in Matthew that his cross is a light burden to bear, but this reassurance appears to be less about the costly demands of discipleship and more about Jesus’s interpretation of the requirements of the Mosaic law (11:30; cf. 23:4).

Suffering as the Way of the Cross

Like Matthew, Paul expects “that all believers will likely endure suffering.”¹⁰ Indeed, in one letter Paul names suffering with Christ as a prerequisite for being glorified with him (Rom 8:17).¹¹ It is hard to say how much this expectation arises from the sociopolitical contexts of Matthew and Paul, respectively. In the first century, whether in Antioch or in Asia Minor, Christians could expect suffering from all sides—from Jews who saw them as blasphemers, perhaps from Jewish Christians who objected to law-breaking gentiles, from local Roman rulers and sometimes from Caesar himself, and from pagan neighbors who often misunderstood or distrusted Christian customs.¹²

Today the church’s split from Judaism is complete and a painful reversal has ensued—Jews no longer persecute Christians, but Christians have been harsh persecutors of Jews. In many countries in the world, including the United States, Christians do not suffer for their faith at the hands of the government or in any significant way at the hands of their neighbors. It is possible that disdain and mistrust of American Christians is rising in the current heated political climate, but it is rare for such social pressure to result in the loss of a job or a home.¹³ And while following the earthly Jesus in his itinerant ministry led the disciples to leave behind families, job securities, and fixed addresses, relatively few Christians today take such radical steps in order to follow the risen Lord—aside, perhaps, from some missionaries. And Christians who flee as refugees from war-torn homelands are not voluntarily taking up the cross; they model in a far more painful way the cost of following Jesus in a hostile environment.

This suggests a certain nuance in the theme of cruciformity when comparing our social context to Matthew’s. Gorman acknowledges that power and privilege are relative, and he is careful to say that cruciformity must be freely chosen and “can never be imposed ‘top-down.’”¹⁴ But what shall we say about a cruciformity that is not freely chosen, but that is imposed from without, even when it results from one’s refusal to renounce faith in Christ? The Christian schoolgirls (alongside a smaller group of Muslim girls) kidnapped by the Islamic militant group Boko Haram did not freely choose to give of themselves in love. Nonetheless, might we say that they are being “persecuted for the sake of righteousness” (Matt 5:10), or that they are treading the sorrowful way of the cross? Or is their suffering simply a deep injustice and affront to the God who protects the powerless and sides with the oppressed? Matthew’s Gospel does not give us the answer to this dilemma—but it does have harsh words for anyone who causes a little one to stumble (18:1–7).

The Son of Man

A turning point in Matthew’s Gospel occurs when Jesus begins to predict that he must suffer, die, and be raised from the dead. To be certain that the disciples do not miss the importance of this declaration, he issues it three times. The second two announcements introduce the theme of Jesus as the Son of Man. Matthew’s use of the Son of Man title ties together two key Matthean themes: Jesus’s service and suffering (Matt 8:20; 12:40; 17:12, 22; 20:18, 28); and his hidden status as the judge who has ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editors’ Preface
• Abbreviations
• Introduction—Brent Laytham and Pat Fosarelli
• Part One: The Cross and the Cruciform Life
• Part Two: Participation in Christ, One with God
• Part Three: Becoming the Gospel in Mission
• Epilogue
• Dr. Michael J. Gorman: Cursus Vitae
• Contributors