"In the cathedral at Cologne hangs a large crucifix of the tenth century, commissioned by Archbishop Gero some time between 971 and 976. It shows the dead Christ: a figure of extraordinary stillness, the curve and sag of the heavy corpse as powerful, simple and smooth at the movement of a tree, the eyes closed, the face turned down and away. It is as unlike the great baroque crucifixes as could be. It makes no appeal to facile emotion, exerts no pressure, no blackmail; there is no crown, and the palms are spread flatly on the wood, no fingers joined in blessing. Nothing is explained. It is a plain fact in wood.
'We have the news which has no value as a response to everything.' [Pohier] We have the news of the death of God in the world of religious meanings, which is also the news of the life of God, who does not, after all, live in religious meanings - or rather, God can only live in the grammar of religious talk when that talk expresses God's freedom from it. We have something to say to human religiousness (our own included), but we are not in the business of winning arguments for good and all. What the world, religious and secular, does with the news of Jesus crucified and risen is beyond our own control, and if it were otherwise we should have lost what our own 'news' is news of." P.106.
Based on the posting to the Merton-L Discussion Group by blumesa.
Last updated: 2001/11/19