Tony Jones challenged us to answer the question, “Why the Crucifixion?“ I think that there are two quotes that can sum it up better than I could.
The theology of the cross, which may be stimulated by a certain kind of anthropological pre-understanding, is nevertheless first of all a statement about God, and what it says about God is not that God thinks humankind so wretched that it deserves death and hell, but that God thinks humankind and the whole creation so good, so beautiful, so precious in its intentions and its potentiality, that its actualization,its fulfillment, its redemption is worth dying for.”
“The divine love that is ready to suffer birth in human form ‘must’ follow through, if it is really love for creatures, for us. It ‘must’ suffer life, not only birth; it ‘must’ suffer death, too.”
Douglas John Hall, “The Cross in our Context” (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), pgs. 24, 28.
