Ritröð Guðfræðistofnunar - 01.09.2007, Page 24

theology, the sacrifice in catholic mass and sacrificial morality. More
recently this was focussed in the reproach of victimization levelled against
patriarchal religions and has been justified by the defamation of the
Christian theology of the cross. The “sadistic God” is now turned into a
heavenly practioner of child-abuse (as the Moloch of the Phoenicians), on
the pattern of the atrocious fathers who abuse their own daughters. I am
absolutely against victimizations of sons and daughters, because I myself
hardly survived being “sacrificed” for my “holy fatherland” in World War
II. The Christian theology of the cross of Christ ended, as a matter of fact,
sacrificial religions “once for all”, just as the Mount Moria story of Isaac’s
non-sacrifice stopped child sacrifices as religious requirement (cf again
Moloch, the child-eater in Carthage, or Kali, the boy-eating Goddess of
Calcutta). The theology of the Cross of Christ is also a strong Christian
argument against the death penalty. In the meantime Dorothee Sölle and
some German feminist theologians turned more and more to the recogni-
tion of the presence of the suffering because compassionate God [’shares’?]
in the pains and sorrows of suffering people.18
3. THE CRUCIFIED GOD TOMORROW
The secret goal that I was searching for during the whole period of my
theological life was a theological reflection of the Easter joy and a theolog-
ical anticipation of the eternal glory in the new creation of all things. The
depth of the Cross and the height of the Resurrection of Christ are not in
balance. “How much more”, the apostle Paul always said: pollo malon.
“Christ who died for us, yes rather [??], is risen again” (Rom 8, 34). But
where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom 5, 20). There
is this surplus value of the victory over defeat, of the resurrection over the
crucifixion, of grace over sin and joy over pain. I learned this from Paul
Ricoeur.
18. See now Marit Trelstad (ed), Cross Examination. Readings on the Meaning of the Cross Today,
Minneapolis 2006.
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