Then you will know that I AM
The cross as theophany in primitive Christianity
Today is the feast of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, commemorating the day in 335 AD when the wood on which Jesus was nailed, rediscovered in an excavation directed by the Emperor’s mother after three centuries hidden in a cave, was displayed to the people of Jerusalem outside the newly consecrated Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre. To honor this anniversary, I’ve decided to share an essay I wrote for a class last year, which delves deeper into the themes of my last Camino post on the mystery of the Cross.
One of the earliest external testimonies to Christian faith in the divinity of Jesus is a letter of Pliny the Younger seeking counsel from the Emperor Trajan about correct judicial procedure in cases of accused Christians. His letter contains a brief summary of information he has gathered from ex-Christians about the nature of their former error. According to these witnesses, the “whole crime” of Christianity consists in participation in the Sunday liturgy, which involves “chanting a hymn to Christ as to a god.”[1] This observation is surprising for many reasons – first of all because these Christians were willing to die rather than offer analogous homage to the emperor himself. But a closer look at the specific liturgical context of this act of adoration makes it even more startling. Jesus is addressed as a divinity during the solemn memorial of his violent death (cfr. 1 Cor 11,26). The setting in which this faith first comes to the notice of outsiders suggests that the death of Jesus was itself regarded as a sign – and perhaps the principal sign – of his divine status by the first community of disciples.
Clearly, the disciples did not see things this way during those agonizing days between the crucifixion and the resurrection. All the extant testimony indicates that no one expected the Messiah to suffer death at the hands of his enemies. The experience of the risen Jesus played an irreplaceable role in making sense of these events, giving them a new way of reading all of salvation history. From then on, the death and resurrection of Jesus would be seen as inseparable elements of a single mystery. And this unity is palpably present in the liturgical context reported on by Pliny: the memorial of the crucifixion is celebrated not on Friday, the day of the event itself, nor on Thursday, the day on which the memorial was instituted, but on Sunday, the day of the resurrection.
Nevertheless, the Eucharistic celebration remains focused principally on the event of Christ’s death, justifying a deeper study of the connection between that event and the confessions of divinity surrounding its memorialization. This would necessarily be a post-paschal development, but could still have come very early, and even have played an essential role in the maturation of the first explicit proclamations of Jesus’ divine status. Recent exegesis on the cross as ‘exaltation’ and ‘glory’ in the Gospel of John provides a promising starting-point for investigating this role, demonstrating that the revelatory value of the cross can be articulated through pre-existing scriptural elements, and could therefore conceivably have been grasped with minimal delay in the original Jerusalem community. A firm grasp on the place of the cross in Johannine Christology sheds new light in turn on earlier sources, including hymns and prayers cited by Paul as pre-existing traditions, which constitute the most ancient testimonies of Christian belief. In this essay, I provide a preliminary sketch of how such a line of research could be developed, and conclude with some observations on the potential impact of this historical hypothesis on broader questions in theology.
The Cross as Glory in John
At the climax of the long debate with the Jews of Jerusalem that spans John’s Book of Signs, Jesus makes a surprising declaration: “When you have lifted up the Son of man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing on my own authority but speak thus as the Father taught me” (Jn 8,28 RSV). Modern exegesis has struggled with this saying, looking for ways to soften the paradox whereby the highest Christological claim would somehow be maximally visible at the lowest point of Jesus’ earthly career.[2] But more recent studies of the rhetorical structure of John’s Gospel and of the theological context of Second-Temple Judaism has reaffirmed the straightforward meaning of the verse, placing this apparent paradox at the heart of John’s whole Christology and soteriology. In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict XVI presents this hermeneutic with bracing directness: “The burning bush is the Cross. The highest claim of revelation, the ‘I am he,’ and the Cross of Jesus are inseparably one. What we find here is not metaphysical speculation, but the self-revelation of God's reality in the midst of history for us.”[3]
To understand what Benedict means here, it is helpful to read this commentary in light of his earlier synthesis of Johannine Christology in Introduction to Christianity:
In St John’s gospel Christ says of himself: “The Son can do nothing of his own accord” (5,19 and 30). This seems to rob the Son of all power; he has nothing of his own; […] On the face of it, a contradiction arises when the same Christ says of himself in St John: “I and the Father are one” (10,30). But anyone who looks more closely will see at once that in reality the two statements are complementary. […] Precisely because he does not stand in himself he stands in him, constantly one with him.[4]
The second half of John 8,28 repeats the phrase quoted by Ratzinger from 5,19 and 5,30 as expressing the core of Jesus’ identity. Having failed to make his interlocutors grasp this point through verbal dialectic, Jesus points to the cross as the visible sign that will definitively demonstrate the truth and depth of these words – that he lives entirely from and for the Father, with nothing held back, and is therefore truly one with the Father. This unity is what makes the cross a revelation of the Father’s own identity as well, as the new and definitive ‘burning bush.’
Richard Bauckham has written extensively on how this theophanic dimension of the cross is central to the whole plan of John’s Gospel, grounded in an attentive reading of Exodus in light of Deutero-Isaiah. John’s prologue concludes (Jn 1,14-18) with a contrast between Moses and Jesus, using the language of the theophany of Exodus 33,18-34,8. That event is a response to Moses’ prayer in 33,18, “Show me your glory!”, which results in God “passing by” with his glory while Moses is hidden in a cleft in the rocks (33,22). According to Bauckham’s exegesis, God’s self-description in 34,6-7 is the audible representation of his glory, the most that Moses is allowed to experience, contrasted in the prologue with the new ‘we’ of the disciples who have seen the glory.[5] The key descriptor of God’s identity as heard by Moses, רַב־חֶ֥סֶד וֶאֱמֶֽת (translated literally by John as πλήρης χάριτος καὶ ἀληθείας, 1,14) has “happened” (ἐγένετο, 1,17) in Jesus.[6] Jesus can make God’s identity historically palpable, because he shares in God’s own glory, as the “only son of the Father” (1,14).
The main theme of Deutero-Isaiah is an anticipation of such a ‘happening,’ a new Exodus in which God’s identity would be made manifest not just to Israel but to all the nations.[7] John identifies the locus of this new Exodus as the fourth Servant Song itself, in its entirety (Is 52,13-54,12).[8] The “glory” of the first line in the LXX version (ὑψωθήσεται καὶ δοξασθήσεται σφόδρα, 52,13) is thus the historical realization of the glory demanded in Exodus 33,18 and described in 34,6 – and refers to the whole event of the poem, not just the end. John makes this reading abundantly clear through his consistent use of the two verbs of the first line (ὑψόω and δοξάζω) as his preferred way of refer to Jesus’ crucifixion.[9] Jesus’ love ‘to the end’ (Jn 13,1) is the manifestation of God’s identity, of his glory.
Bauckham’s reading is supported by close readings of the Last Supper narrative as carried out by Yves Simoens and corroborated by Francis Moloney.[10] Moloney provides a compact summary of the main conclusions in his comment on the exit of Judas in John 13,30, and Jesus’ cryptic aorist response in 13,31:
Consistent with the author's use of the word doxa to refer to revelation, as the doxa of God was made visible at Sinai, the cross is the time and place where God will be revealed. […] Now the departure of the betrayer triggers Jesus' proclamation that now the Son of Man will be glorified, that the glory of God will be seen in the glorification of Jesus on the cross (vv. 31b-32b), and these intimately associated events will take place immediately (v. 32c: euthus).[11]
Analyzing this same passage, Simoens develops the link between δόξα and ἀγάπη much further – for him, this connection defines the structure of the entire unit of John 13-17. He reads the rest of chapter 13 as underlining the status of Jesus’ ἀγάπη as a truly divine prerogative, as a component of the δόξα that belongs to God alone. This is why the disciples are not yet able to carry out the new commandment (cfr. Jn 13,33.36), but must await the arrival of the Holy Spirit.[12]
This consensus in Johannine exegesis still leaves open the question of the origin of this understanding. Was it in fact something grasped immediately, simultaneous with proclamation of Jesus’ divinity in general? Or was it something that emerged only on subsequent theological reflection over the intervening decades between Easter and the composition of the New Testament texts? Promising leads for answering this question can be found in two of the most well-established pre-Pauline fragments: the Christological hymn quoted in the Letter to the Philippians, and the abba invocation referenced in Galatians and Romans.
The cause of exaltation in Philippians
Philippians 2,6-11 has long been an object of intense historical-critical investigation. Its concentration of hapax legomena and the way it interrupts the flow of the overall argument immediately give the flavor of a citation from a liturgical text already known to the reader, and more detailed studies have increasingly lent support to this theory.[13] This status as a primitive, pre-Pauline composition has made this passage an indispensable starting-point for reconstructing the theological vision(s) of the pre-New-Testament community of disciples.[14]
The elements of John 8,28 are all immediately present in the hymn: Jesus’ radical ‘openness’ to the Father (v. 6), the event of the cross as the supreme expression of this “obedience unto death” (v. 8), and the public exaltation of Jesus as bearer of the divine name (vv. 10-11).[15] But they are not connected in exactly the same way. For John, exaltation is the event of the cross, with the same verb referring both to the manifestation of divine glory and the physical elevation of Jesus’ body on the wood. In the hymn, the exaltation is a separate moment, conceived as the response of the Father to Jesus’ self-abasement. The distinction between the two moments introduces an ambiguity that is eliminated by John’s identification. The nature of the connection between the exaltation and the kenosis depends on the precise exegesis of the conjunction διὸ, “because of which,” that ties the two stanzas together (v. 9).
Bauckham argues for a strong intrinsic reading of this connection: the exaltation is ‘caused’ by the humiliation because it is already contained there, as John will later spell out more explicitly.[16] Romano Penna does not go quite so far, but affirms that διὸ clearly indicates some kind of intrinsic, necessary causality, which can be described in generic terms as the “explosive” value inscribed in the humiliation itself.[17] The Johannine perspective provides a compelling account of the source of this value, but this is not sufficient on its own to show that it was the perspective of the community that produced the text.
An adequate investigation would involve at least three basic elements. First of all, a detailed study of the kind of causality implicit in the Old Testament source material from which the hymn is woven, starting with Genesis 3 and Isaiah 52,13-54,12. Both of these involve obscure causal links between exaltation and humiliation that would need to be studied in light of their full canonical context as well as the subsequent theological reflections of postexilic commentators. Then the specific novelties of the hymn with respect to the source text would have to be examined. The novel fusion of the Servant Song with the Adam cycle introduces themes of obedience and of divinization that are nowhere present in Isaiah’s original text, and that at least gesture towards the theophanic interpretation of the cross. Finally, the structure of the poem would have to be brought to bear on the problem, unraveling the presuppositions of the symmetry (or lack thereof) between the kenosis and exaltation sections of the hymn.
The cry in Gethsemane
The Aramaic word abba appears three times in the New Testament, in the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane in the Gospel of Mark (14,36), and as a form of prayer practiced by Christians in the letters of Paul to the Galatians (4,6) and the Romans (8,15). The preservation of the Aramaic expression in writings addressed to Greek-speaking communities, as well as its use by Paul as a shared premise in his epistle to a non-Pauline community, points to a primitive origin for this mode of prayer among the first disciples in Palestine. J. Jeremias pushed this line of reasoning to its limit, arguing that abba was the word Jesus himself consistently used every time he addressed God in prayer, and that this mode of prayer provided the foundation for how the disciples understood his identity, thus providing the key for understanding the entire New Testament.[18] After a period of intense criticism of some exaggerations in the original presentation, the basic nucleus of this thesis has survived as a durable achievement of modern exegesis. The ‘filial consciousness’ possessed by the historical Jesus is now widely regarded by New Testament scholars as the nucleus of his own self-perception, and the basis for later confessions of his divinity.
In the Gospel of John, the cross is clearly presented as the public revelation of this intimate filial prayer (cfr. Jn 14,31). But did Paul’s original audience, and their older brothers in the faith who taught them to say abba, already have this connection in mind? Did they automatically think of the cross as the place where Jesus says abba most fully, or did they see themselves as participating generically in Jesus’ whole life and prayer?
One promising avenue for addressing this question is opened by the verb κράζω, which accompanies the abba invocation in both of Paul’s citations. This choice of vocabulary is surprising, because this verb normally has a negative connotation in Greek, as a shriek or cry of distress.[19] In the LXX, it occurs often, particularly in the Psalms, as a cry to God from the midst of great suffering.[20] In the New Testament, it also appears as a collective cry of a large crowd, acclaiming the entrance of Jesus into Jerusalem (Mk 11,9), and also calling for his death (Mk 15,13-14). The word thus calls to mind a much narrower set of possible contexts than other terms that Paul easily could have used.[21] This peculiarity has generated a variety of exegetical theories, such as reference to a collective liturgical proclamation or even glossolalia,[22] but none has yet gained a definitive consensus.
In his commentary on the relevant passage of Galatians, Frederick Bruce points out that the Gospel of Mark already gives us a compelling way of interpreting the ‘cry,’ by placing the abba of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane.[23] Although Mark does not use the verb here, the κράζω of the Psalms would clearly be an appropriate term for the kind of prayer he describes. On this reading, the verb does not refer to the concrete setting in which the word is pronounced, but rather to the existential context of limitation, suffering and death, as exemplified by the cross. Just as in the Gospel of John, the transformative action of the Holy Spirit enables the believer to transform this situation into a manifestation of divine love, through participation in Jesus’ own filial consciousness.
A full development of this argument would have to start by completing the word study of κράζω and its synonyms. In Jesus of Nazareth, Pope Benedict dedicates several pages to this very task, highlighting especially the presence of the verb κράζω itself at the moment of Jesus’ death in the Gospel of Matthew.[24] It is noteworthy that Luke interprets this same exclamation as an explicitly filial prayer. One would then need to examine the role of the reference to the abba prayer as a premise in Paul’s argument in Galatians and in Romans, to see if this understanding is consistent with the rhetorical function of the reference. Bruce notes in passing that the context of the citation in Romans fits remarkably well with this reading, citing some previous scholarship identifying a “martyr theology” in the middle section of Romans 8, which could be a useful starting point for continuing the investigation.
Conclusion
Any discussion of the cross as theophany necessarily calls to mind the theologia crucis of Martin Luther. As a scholar of scripture, Luther saw the abstract debates of late scholastic theologians as far removed from the mentality of the primitive Christians who experienced God in the cross of Christ, in direct continuity with their own vital experience of suffering and limitation. Without falling into Luther’s exaggerated dialectic between metaphysical reasoning and the spirit of scripture, contemporary exegesis lends significant support to his basic insight about primitive Christology.
But this exegesis also fleshes out the content of the theologia crucis in a way that provides a strong basis for critique of later followers of Luther. Influential 19th and 20th-century Lutheran theologians, inhabiting an increasingly secularized society, and under pressure from the first generations of historical-critical scholarship, came to identify empirical reality with an apparent absence of God.[25] The fragility and limitation represented by the cross would thus contain the experience of abandonment by God, of an existence where God plays no tangible role, and can only be related to by blind faith.
As interesting as these ideas might be in the contemporary situation of dialogue and confrontation with the secular world, the historical investigation sketched here suggests that they are far from the original experience of the first Christians. If the first post-Paschal community really did see the cross as theophany in John’s sense, then it was never viewed as the place of separation from God, but rather as the revelation of Jesus’ radical identification with his Father, to the point of receiving the divine name as his own possession. The first Christians would thus have experienced the cross in a way strikingly similar to that of St. Josemaría Escrivá: “Tú has hecho, Señor, que yo entendiera que tener la Cruz es encontrar la felicidad, la alegría. Y la razón – lo veo con más claridad que nunca – es ésta: tener la Cruz es identificarse con Cristo, es ser Cristo, y, por eso, ser hijo de Dios.”[26]
[1] Pliny the Younger, Epistularum ad Traianum liber ; Panegyricus, B. G. Teubneri, Leipzig 1912, 10,96: “carmenque Christo quasi deo dicere secum.”
[2] cf. Moloney, F. J., The Johannine Son of Man, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 2007, 2 ed., 135–141 on Bultmann’s “low” reading of the “I am,” and on the efforts of other exegetes to make the “lifting up” refer to the resurrection/ascension.
[3] Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: from the baptism in the Jordan to the transfiguration, Doubleday, New York 2007, 349.
[4] Ratzinger, J., Introduction to Christianity, Ignatius Press, San Francisco 1990, 1 ed., 133.
[5] Bauckham, R., Gospel of Glory: Major Themes in Johannine Theology, Baker Academic, 2015, 72–73.
[6] Bauckham, R., Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament’s Christology of Divine Identity, Eerdmans Young Readers, 2008, 51.
[7] Ibidem, 52.
[8] Bauckham, Gospel of Glory, 73.
[9] Ibidem, 73–74.
[10] Simoens, Y., La gloire d’aimer : structures stylistiques et interprétatives dans le Discours de la Cène (Jn 13-17), Rome : Biblical Institute Press, 1981; Simoens, Y., Selon Jean, Institut d’études théologiques, Bruxelles 1997; Moloney, F. J., The Gospel of John, Liturgical Press, Collegeville (MN) 1998.
[11] Moloney, The Gospel of John, 385.
[12] Simoens, La gloire d’aimer, 64: “le Fils de l’homme ne peut donner efficacement le commandement nouveau que parce qu’il est glorifié, en pleine conformité d’ailleurs avec la théologie de la nouvelle alliance. Dieu seul peut donner à l’homme de pratiquer la loi d’amour. De lui-même, l’homme — pécheur — en est incapable.”
[13] cfr. Penna, R., I ritratti originali di Gesù il Cristo: inizi e sviluppi della cristologia neotestamentaria, San Paolo, Cinisello Balsamo 1996, II,122-123 for a concise summary of the evidence.
[14] cfr. Hurtado, L. W., How on earth did Jesus become a god? historical questions about earliest devotion to Jesus, W.B. Eerdmans, Grand Rapids (MI) 2005, 83.
[15] cfr. Penna, I ritratti originali di Gesù il Cristo, 53-63,136-137 on the relation of this passage to the Old Testament theology of the divine Name.
[16] Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel, 51.
[17] Penna, I ritratti originali di Gesù il Cristo, 135: “La congiunzione διὸ che apre la terza strofa (vv. 9-11) indica chiaramente una conseguenza, che, posta la condizione dell’umiliazione precedentamente esposta, è ritenuta quasi necessaria e che comunque spiega il valore per così dire esplosivo, insito nell’umiliazione stessa.”
[18] Jeremias, J., Abba, Paideia, Brescia 1968.
[19] Liddell, H. G., Jones, H. S., McKenzie, R., Scott, R., A Greek-English lexicon, Clarendon Press, Oxford (UK) 1958, κράζω.
[20] Fitzmyer, J. A. (ed.), Romans, Yale University Press, London 2008, 1 ed., 501.
[21] e.g., the λέγω of the closely parallel text in 1 Cor 12,3, which also declares the role of the Holy Spirit in prompting a specific form of prayer.
[22] Balz, H. R., Schneider, G. (eds.), Diccionario exegético del Nuevo Testamento, Sígueme, Salamanca 1996, κράζω.
[23] Bruce, F. F., The Epistle of Paul to the Galatians: a commentary on the Greek text, Paternoster Press, Exeter 1982, 200.
[24] Benedict XVI, Jesus of Nazareth: from the entrance into Jerusalem to the Resurrection. Part two: Holy week, Ignatius Press, San Francisco, Calif 2011, 163–5.
[25] Christoph 1955-2021 Schwöbel, Taking the Form of a Servant: Kenosis and Divine Self-Giving in Thomas Aquinas and Martin Luther, 2021, «Angelicum» 98 (1).
[26] Urbano, P., El hombre de Villa Tevere: Los años romanos de Josemaría Escrivá, Plaza & Janés, Barcelona 1995, 165.