Theological Journal: Moltmann Monday: Christology

“There can be no theology of the incarnation which does not become a theology of the cross. As soon as you say incarnation, you say cross. God did not become man according to the measure of our conceptions of being a man. He became the kind of man we do not want to be: an outcast, accursed, crucified. Ecce homo! Behold the man! is not a statement which arises from the confirmation of our humanity and is made on the basis of ‘like is known by like’; it is a confession of faith which recognizes God’s humanity in the dehumanized Christ on the cross” (The Crucified God, 205).

“He became the kind of man we do not want to be” – there you have it in a nutshell!

-Why we have the kind of Christianity we’ve had through most of Western Church history.

-Why Christmas is far more important to us than Easter.

-Why we cannot admit he is the measure of genuine humanity and opt either for a quasi- or even fully docetic Christologies, on the one hand, or an ethical, moral(istic) Jesus, on the other.

-Why we resist the notion of Christ’s vicarious humanity – if he really took on a sinful human nature and lived the life he lived, one pleasing to God, and healed and put to death our sinful nature by his obedience, we might have to take “the man we don’t want to be” seriously. 

Other than this, we have no problems with Jesus at all!