Mystery of the Cross

Emil Brunner acknowledges that “The message of the Cross is the central mystery of the scriptural Gospel.” In his view, it “is not the task of theology to explain these mysteries: for if explanation were possible these mysteries would only be fortuitous mysteries, and thus not real and divine.”

But that doesn’t mean that we can avoid the question of what the mystery means: “it is only the meaning of these mysteries which gives us the right to regard them as the Word of God, and a divine Act of revelation, and only in their clear meaning can they be distinguished from all merely accidental, psychological false mysteries, from all that is merely emotional and irrational. Hence we have no right to be content to say that we can only behold the spectacle of the Cross with awe, as an unfathomable, unspeakable mystery. The word Mysterium must not serve us as an asylum ignorantiae, as a hidden recess in which all kinds of irrational and arbitrary ideas and mystical extravagances may be concealed. For the Gospel gives us a clear and open message of the Cross. It is not regarded as ‘something mysterious,’ but as a quite definite mystery. At this precise point, where God utters His most mysterious, unspeakable Word, let us listen and hear it plainly, and not let it fade away in an inarticulate devotional manner like the low murmur of the priest before the distant altar in some large church. What good does it do to speak in a semi-whisper about the mystery of the Cross, merely hinting at something numinous and mysterious, if behind this mysterious behaviour we are cherishing ideas which are absolutely opposed to the message of the Cross?” (The Mediator, 436).

The need to investigate the meaning of atonement is as much evangelistic and apologetic as theological. It will do little if when a skeptic responds to the gospel with, “You say Jesus’ death saves the world; but how?” we have nothing more than “I couldn’t really say.”