Bearing the Cross

Taken from The Reformers and their Stepchildren, 1964, by Leonard Verduin, pages 256-7

The Stepchildren fell heir to the concept of the “Cross” which one encounters also in the medieval “heretic.” Because they were rebuked for this, the matter deserves a place in this study.

In authentic Christianity the Cross is God’s most emphatic no to man’s yes, His most emphatic yes to man’s no. A clear example is to be found in Galatians 6:12, where St. Paul pits a religion of human achievement and merit (of which circumcision was the symbol among the people whom the Apostle was opposing) against a religion of grace. He brings the issue into sharpest focus by saying “they constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer persecution for the Cross of Christ.”

The Cross is a sweeping declaration of man’s inability to save himself from his predicament; this is bad news for every man who has not as yet capitulated to the speech from the beyond [the call to be converted]; hence it entails persecution against those who have so capitulated. When one experiences the hostility which the Gospel of grace is certain to encounter as it collides with unhumbled man, then one experiences the Cross. This is the one and only meaning Cross-bearing has in the New Testament writings.

To bear the Cross is to experience the dislike which confirmed unbelief is wont to heap upon the Christ and upon those that have aligned themselves with Him.

It goes without saying that when Christianity is thrust into the sacral pattern [everyone in the area is a Christian], Cross-bearing becomes obsolete, there being no further occasion or opportunity for it. [There are no unhumbled men!] Who would vent his spleen, and on whom, and what for? The erstwhile [past] tensions subside in the climate of “Christendom”; the controverting speech from the beyond [the voice of the Spirit] is no longer heard; autosoterism[1] is again enthroned. What further Cross-bearing will there, can there, be?

If the Constantinian change [whereby Christianity became universal in the state] made Cross-bearing obsolete, the word Cross was of course retained; it was too much a part of the erstwhile [from way back] Christian vocabulary, too much a part of the heritage, to be simply excinded [removed]. It was therefore tranvaluated [given a new meaning].

The old and only authentic meaning was dropped and a new meaning was infused into the word. On the one hand the Cross was carried into the liturgy [the services] of the Church; it became an object that henceforth occupied a prominent place in the Church’s furniture. Moreover, the custom of “striking a cross” arose, a piece of pantomime [humorous play acting] that to this day marks the man who stands in the tradition of medieval “Christian sacralism.”

On the other hand a new content was poured into the expression “bearing the Cross.” Whereas the New Testament reserves the expression for the unpleasant experiences that are wont to follow upon being a Christian, the experience was now made to connote the sufferings that dog our footsteps because we are men. Here is a man with a sightless eye, a palsied hand, a cloven palate – what a “cross” for such a man!

This spurious connotation, however, finds not the faintest support in the New Testament. It is part of the perversion which the “heretics” called the “fall of the Church.”

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[1] [The author’s footnote:] Autosoterism is, of course, the theology in which man is his own savior. The most subtle autosoterism comes to expression in the place assigned to Mary in the Catholic theology, the “Mother of God.” In this theology humanity has itself provided what was needed, by a sort of “miracle-of-Mary.” The “heretics” refused a theology in which Mary becomes in any sense “co-redemptrix.” [Click on number to return to text.]