The Crucifixion

One thing at least can be said with certainty about the Crucifixion of Christ; it was manifestly the most famous death in history.

The crucifixion portrays the defeat of goodness by duplicity and power; a meek and broken victim of the kind of human brutality to which we, perhaps more than most generations of men, have had to accustom ourselves.

However unlikely anything of the kind would have seemed at the time! Who among the motley collection of spectators of so obscure an event could possibly have envisaged that there before their eyes another civilization was being born which would last for two thousand years, shining so long and so brightly.

I quite agree that we of the twentieth century are perfectly capable of believing other things intrinsically as improbably as Christ's incarnation. Towards any kind of scientific mumbo-jumbo we display credulity which must be the envy of African witch doctors. I suppose every age has its own particular fantasy. Ours is science. A 17th century man like Pascal, though himself a mathematician and scientist of genius, found it quite ridiculous that anyone should suppose that rational processes could lead to any ultimate conclusions about life, but easily accepted the authority of the Scriptures. With us it is the other way around.

What then does the crucifixion signify in an age like ours? I see it in the first place as a sublime mockery of all earthly authority and power. The crown of thorns, the purple robe, the ironical title "King of the Jews" were intended to mock or parody Christ's pretensions to be the Messiah; in fact, they rather hold up to ridicule and contempt all crowns, all robes, all kings that ever were. It was a sick joke that back-fired. No one it seems to me, who has fully grasped the crucifixion can ever again take seriously any expression or instrument of worldly power, however venerable, glittering or seemingly formidable.

What I often ask myself was the Golgotha happening actually like. Clearly in no wise as momentous in the eyes of those who witnessed it as the retrospective attention lavished upon it would seem to imply. Upon history at the time it made absolutely no impact.

In some vague way they expect something to happen, and so it does; the man expires, not with a gesture of defiance befitting a putative King of the Jews, but with a cry of despair. With that cry Christendom comes to pass. We are henceforth to worship defeat, not victory; failure, not success; surrender, not defiance; deprivation, not satiety; weakness, not strength. We are to lose our lives in order to keep them; to die in order to live.

It is true of course that professing Christians and ostensibly Christian societies and institutions have by no means been true to the cross and what it signified, especially today when the nominally Christian part of the world is foremost in worship of the GDP - our Golden Calf - and in pursuit of happiness in the guise of sensual pleasure. Yet there the cross still is, propounding its unmistakable denunciation of this world and of the things of this world.

There had to be a sequel; I quite see that. The man on the cross who has given up the ghost must rise from the dead as a living God; the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion as inevitably as day follows night. And, indeed, in a sense it clearly happened. Otherwise, how should I, a 20th century nihilist, who asks nothing better than to live out his days without any concern for a God, living or dead, be worrying his head about this cross and a man who died on it two thousand years ago? Whether it happened as described in the Gospel narrative, and endlessly repeated by Christian apologists, is another question. In any case, what does it matter?