Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of this World for Crucifixion and Empire
By Rita Nakashima Brock
and Rebecca Ann Parker
Beacon Press, 2008
I will never again see a person wearing a crucifix or even contemplate a church tower bearing a cross without thinking of this highly original book.
Rita Nakashima Brock (a Disciple of Christ minister and director of Faith Voices for the Common Good) and her writing partner, Rebecca Ann Parker (president of the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley, California) have, with passion, scholarship, and clear writing, laid out a fascinating thesis. It is also a stylish and readable book.
“This is,” said Diarmuid O’Murchu, the Irish psychologist-priest-writer, and no slouch himself, “the best book of theology I have read in 20 years.”
After finishing Proverbs of Ashes: Violence, Redemptive Suffering and the Search for What Saves Us in 2001, the two writers spent five years sniffing out evidence that the cruciform symbol, the central image of Christianity, arrived very late on the scene. Indeed, it was not important during the first millennium of Christian history.
For evidence they went to the art. The search took them to Rome, Ravenna, and Turkey; then to Germany.
“It took Jesus a long time to die,” Brock says. Not until 965 in northern Germany was the life-sized oak crucifix called the Gero Cross carved. On it, the Christian God was suffering and dying: an image of terror, torture, and desolation. The carving is now in the Cathedral of St. Peter and Maria in Cologne. Could there be a connection that one hundred years later, Pope Urban 11 launched the first crusade promising Christian warriors paradise after death?
“But the death of Jesus was not a key to meaning, not an image of devotion for the Christians of the first millennium,” Parker and Brock write. “He was risen, a healer, baptized, a shepherd, a teacher, and a friend.”
This book is a rock-the-foundations work. Christians have been thoroughly taught that the crucifixion of Jesus saved the world. If the crucifixion is absent in historic Christian art, what is present?
Paradise is present, Brock and Parker assert: this world, with water, sheep, hills of grass and flowers, winged seraphim, doves, deer, sheep, and a small golden city. They found these images in the art of the apse, quite hidden, in the basilica of St. Giovanni in Laterano in Rome. “Paradise, not crucifixion, was the dominant image of early Christian sanctuaries, and paradise was this world, not the next. What the images said was that God blesses this world with the spirit.”
I am easily persuaded that truth is to be found in art. In 2007, although living in the Northwest Territories of Canada, I went on a ten-day pilgrimage to Rome with feminists of faith led by Christine Schenk, CSJ of Future Church in Cleveland and taught by archeologist Dorothy Irvin. We too, as Brock and Parker, crept through the catacombs of Rome, discovering around every corner “ah-hah” moments. Our detective eye was focused on women in leadership in the early church. And we found them: bishops and celebrants at eucharists and preachers, vivid in the frescoes on walls and ceilings. They were so clear that we decided every Roman Catholic seminarian in Rome should be taught at least one course down there.
Altogether, Saving Paradise is a daring challenge to cruciform-centered Christianity. With just a whiff of political savvy and a slight hermeneutic of suspicion, readers can conclude that the crucifix was not in fact a vital symbol for early Christianity, and that its introduction in the second millennium must have served some purpose. If Jesus’ corpse was not featured in the early art and not in many early writings, why then has it become the ultimate symbol today? What political use has been made of exaggerated atonement theology? Of violent death? Of exaggerated induced guilt in believers? Of the extension of control over individual consciences by church authorities, and the creation of an obsession with the afterlife, where happiness may reside.
Ultimately, this book offers potent political theology. Our inherited theology of the cross: violent victimization and devious enemies (à la Mel Gibson) has stoked holy war, the Crusades, colonization, and racism.
Parker has said “Legacies of violence, terror, and trauma continue to bring anguish into the world”. She, with Nakashima Brock, is driven to seek its roots; the roots in religion. Together, these theologians reclaim the value of life in this world and the truth of salvation on Earth. They are reaffirming a sensibility—the affirming forms of Christianity.
The world could do with some of that.
Very interesting thesis, and the book sounds like a good read. I can't help but wonder, though, about Paul. He certainly seemed to think the crucifixion was an earth-shattering event, and his widely read letters were codified as sacred scripture early on. I'm sure the authors deal with that somehow in the book, so I look forward to checking it out.
Weren't crosses found on the walls in the ruins of Pompeii?
I think the authors are perhaps putting their own spin on things.
Crosses have been used as symbols since people started using symbols. Is there something in the Pompei crosses that confirms they were Christian? I will agree with you though to a certain extent in that the torture and execution of Christians had a huge impact on the attitudes of the early Christian church.
The emphasis though is on martyrdom and sacrifice, not dwelling on any sort of vengeance against Jews that the later Passion Plays inspired. How could they since their were so many who were still observant Jews as well as being Christian. Paul did not approve of asking new followers to observe Jewish laws but we see no mention of him blaming them for Christs execution.
It is amazing to me that one can write a book not looking at the whole scope of things. First and foremost historic Christianity is rooted in Judaism. Therefore, we as Gentiles, (thus the author) cannot make assumptions apart from Judaism. This theory is mainly philosophy based coupled with a skewed view of history (the biblical text). This serves there purpose in destroying what Christianity has been built upon and that is the Death, Burial and Ressurection of Christ!
I have no vested interest in defending this book, but I also don't believe the authors are either ignoring the Jewish context of the New Testament Scriptures, nor "destroying...the Death, Burial and Resurrection of Christ." Protestant churches have often included EMPTY crosses to focus attention on the redeeming act of resurrection, not to ignore the Jesus' death, but to affirm our belief that death does not have the final word.
Of course a Jewish context would say: no images, no idols. Practically every church I know has ditched that reading of the commandment. Also, in Jewish faith, tikkun olam, repair of the world, is central to living faithful in this life, not just seeking reward in a life to come. I suspect that these authors may have a "this world" sense of redemption -- that feels like Easter faith to me!
I recall an art history study I enjoyed some time ago. It seems that the cross was not the focus of Christian art until some centuries into the evolution of that religion.
I recall growing up with atonement theology as the focal point of my father’s religious point-of-view. I recall with horror listening to him talk about it. I recall reading Anselm, Luther, and Calvin with the same sense of horror. Yet, it never came to (my) mind to envision Christianity without that theological focus.
Finding alternative visions of Christianity greatly refreshes me. Thank you for the review.
I am a coauthor of this book. We wrote a readable, exciting, interesting book. However, we did extensive research, and our 100 pages of endnotes document our insights and conclusions. Before you accuse us of bogus things, at least make sure you've understood what we've said.
The idea of salvation as paradise in this world is deeply grounded in Jewish texts and ideas, esp Gen. 1-2, Song of Songs, Isaiah, Ezekiel, and the Psalms. Chapters 1-2 of our book show the deep roots of the Jesus movement in Middle Eastern religions, even in the pre-biblical Sumerians.
The idea that Jesus' crucifixion saved the world is the betrayal of Christianity. Paul is clear in Rom 6, Jesus died once, he will never die again, death has no power over him and Christians worship the RISEN Christ. Worship of crucifixion was war propaganda for imperial conquest and holy war.
One key point the review elides. There are crosses after Constantine, but they depict life and resurrection. They are golden and jeweled, dotted with doves or spiraling into green vines of abundant life. Jesus sometimes appears on them alive and unwounded. Jesus is NOT DEAD on the cross til 960. There are crosses by the 4th-5th centuries, but not crucifixions.
Based on your last paragraph, would the title of this review be a misnomer? To be clear, are you making the case for a "Christianity without a cross," "Christianity without crucifixion," a "Christianity despite the cross," or something else altogether?
It seems to me (solely based on this review, I will get your book) that cross/crucifixion is not "read out" of the Jesus story for early Christians, but is rendered by them to be negligible.
I am not sure how the author can quote Paul as being 'clear', which is an apeal to authority, and not acknowledge that Paul was very clear in regards to woman. Paul would have told the authors to sit down and shut up. 1 Timothy 2:11. Let them learn in silence, and that he would not suffer them to speak. That was Christianities, and Pauls idea of Paradice.
I'm sure the authors know what you may not, namely that Paul did not write 1 Timothy, even though its anonymous author succesfully borrowed Paul's name to advance his own spin on the basically misogynist interpretation he gave to Paul's understanding of the Christ of which he wrote in his 7 authentic letters.
Dear friends, please continue learning about Christianity, and the unfathomable gift of Christ on the Cross. It can be a stumbling block, but we all can and should continue to learn. And do also consider a few corrections to your book and thesis.
Please take a look here (cut/paste and take out the spaces to make the link work, had to cut it up per the comment engine),
http://www.archart.it/archart/mostre/ mostra-Dalla-terra-alle-genti/ foto-archeologia_cristiana127.jpg
At center is a fully recognizable crucificion scene, complete with Mary and John at the foot of the cross, and the soldiers with the lance and sponge, the good and bad thieves at the crucified Christ's sides....
This is not 9th or 10th century. This is not later. This is the late 550s. For the iconograpy to be so well developed, so dense, and so familiar with what we know today....probably wasnt the first of its type! Hmmm, maybe those early Christians thought something of that crucifixion thing, huh?
And oh, just look at the other scenes in this reliquary cover in the Vatican museums... so many scenes of Mary on it...this is the Woman of the Church, our Mother.
All you women must have had a memorable interesting trip in the catacombs and looking at the Theodora mosaic. But if you look longer and farther, you can see more crosses in any number of museums, relics, and mosaics in Ravenna and Rome, as, for instance at Sta Pudenziana of the 5th c or Sta. Maria Maggiore in Rome, circa 5th c. Again Mary.
Say a prayer to or at least contemplate the magnificently humble Mary - she'll guide you back to the foot of the cross of her Crucified Lord and Son.
And oh yeah, depictions of the earthly paradise? Well, that was included to mean alot of things. Palms were the symbol for those who made it to Heaven, so palms in a grassy area symbolized Heaven. And typically there always are 4 rivers in the grasses of these paradises, symbolizing a new Eden, beyond those old rivers, often on the other side of a bigger river named Jordan where Christ our Redeemer was baptized. Paradise is a visual shorthand for people to understand that the events of salvation, in simultaneous narration, is/was taking place here then and always beyond in the divine realm...
Often too this paradise featured symbols of the Universal Church, meaning of the Jewish people and the Gentile peoples, represented, respectively, by Peter and Paul, or two idealized bejewelled cities often explicitly labeled Jerusalem and Bethlehem, or two women in various garb, 6 lambs on one side, 6 on the other, etc.
Later the Byzantines and the Orthodox made other visual shortcuts, albeit expensive ones, and replaced all that paradisical imagery with gleaming gold backgrounds, symbolizing what we now recognize as divine light of Heaven and God's presence therein shown to us.
We dont use alot of the paradise imagery anymore, as beautiful as it is. We ache for Eden. It is a loss, but then again, we lost the first Eden, remember? We pang for paradise. And that is a good thing, because that yearning can lead us to learn of the New Adam and the New Eve (Jesus & Mary), restoring the way the truth and the life through the cross once and for all, if we believe, keep His commandments, and remain in His Love. (All that per John, the other one at the foot of the cross who can take you there too....)
May God Bless you, Christ Keep You, the Holy Spirit's scriptures enlighten you, and Mary guide you!
Look here...another surviving image in fresco of a pre-10th century crucifixion scene. Found recently in Rome at Sta. Maria in Antigua, from reign of Pope St. Zacharias(741–752). Likely the oldest labeled depiction of St. Longinus -- As shown, he's the one who then speared Christ and let loose the torrent of the precious blood and water from that devastating 5th major wound of Christ.
He is a good saint to consider for us all ...he converted even after all that he did. His statue and spear are now in St. Peter's Basilica in one of the 4 places of the crossing of the transcept and the nave around Bernini's bronze altar baldacchino.
Here's the link, again with spaces, so cut/paste and edit the spaces out...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/ Santa_maria_antiqua%2C_roma%2C_crocefissione%2C_effresco %2C_741-752.jpg
http://campus.belmont.edu/honors/ ECArchTwo/RomStaSabinaDoorCrucifix.jpg
Here's a crucifixion of Christ and the 2 thieves on the front doors of Santa Sabina in Rome...One of the amazing panels in cedar carved in 420's. This is only about 100 years after Constantine granted Christians the freedom to worship God and Jesus Christ without persecution... The church itself, one of the first, was built in a CRUCIFORM shape floorplan too...this is repeated and developed to our day...directly symbolizing by design Christ on the Cross.
In my book, a great church like this with all its art by 420 was working pretty fast. Our own national Basilica Cathedral in DC, for instance, is still being decorated. Gaudi's Sagrada Familia is still being built in Barcelona. London's Westminster Cathedral is still covering bare walls and vaults.
But for the art you all see lacking before 950s, could it be that so much of the early work was destroyed or damaged by the earlier iconoclasts? Or the later periods of antiChristian iconoclasm even up thru and in our day?
Also, a contemporaneous review of the history of the Niceen Creed, a.k.a. Profession of the Faith, codified in the 300's will show the undeniability and import then and now of the Crucifixion, far better and more important for millenia than any work of art. If you have doubt, pray for faith and profess the faith which so many Christians do daily even today...
Lastly, I would suggest that Christians VENERATE the unfathomable cross and WORSHIP Christ. Venerate means to remember, to reverence, to honor, to reflect on, to value....don't really know anyone who 'worships' the cross at the expense of worshipping Christ.
There is a cross on a wall in Ercolano, destroyed with Pompeii in 79AD. There is an inscription on a wall in Pompeii which might be Christian.
"If you ask one of the crucial theological questions--why was Jesus killed?--the answer isn't 'because God wants us to love one another.' Why in the hell would anyone kill Jesus for that? That's stupid. It's not even interesting.
Why did he get killed? Because he challenged the powers that be. The church is a political institution calling people to be an alternative to the world. That's what the cross is about." - Hauerwas
Whether or not the cross showed up earlier doesn't change the meaning we can derive from the cross, as illustrated above. Christianity without the cross, is grace without the costliness of following Christ.
I wonder if anyone making all these learned comments has read the book or understood the context. The authors are not saying there were no depictions of the cross, and mention the doors of Santa Sabina in the book as an example. If you look at pictures of the door, you'll see a cross, but Jesus is not shown as suffering and dying, but as resurrected and alive. It is the living Christ that animates the early Community, not a dead corpse.
Well, actually one question...I hope one of the co-authors is lurking out there still. How does your reading incorporate, or not, the Incarnation? I understand the crucifixion to be an inevitable reaction by powers, dominions, 'the world,' to the coming of the Holy that overthrows arrogance, evil, and ultimately death.
Second, I'm going to have to go back to the book again...I'd read about 100 pages and put it aside b/c I wasn't finding the points/assertions sourced to any Biblical or non-Biblical text. Still find the topic intriguing, and I suspect important...I'm just hoping for a bit more rigor. Or maybe I gave up too soon?
I'm finding loads of references at the back of the book. Check there.
Comments closed
The comments for this story have been closed. Thank you to everyone who participated.