Dr. Eric W. Gritsch

Brach Jennings
28 July 2019 

Gnadenstuhl: A Trinitarian Theologia Crucis
from Martin Luther to James Cone for a Holy Saturday World

Martin Luther’s proclamation of the Triune God’s faithfulness in Jesus Christ through his theologia crucis can be mined for theology today in light of massive social-political oppression by tracing this theological motif in the early Luther to its re-interpretation in Karl Barth, and then through a particular, cross-centered incorporation of Barth to Jürgen Moltmann and James Cone.  This dissertation seeks through this intellectual trajectory to be faithful to Luther’s theologia crucis, while also diverting from and expanding on Luther to bring the heart of this kerygmatic theology to the twenty-first century.   

The dissertation finds its doxological focus in the Gnadenstuhl sculpture.  This sculpture shows the three persons of the Trinity with closed eyes in silent waiting on Holy Saturday.  This day of silence and waiting within the Triune God, Christ’s “baptism of hell,” is the basis for contemporary Trinitarian theological reflection centered in a theologia crucis.^[1]  Through this doxological center, I argue for prayerful theological reflection as the essence of Christian life in praise and in the presence of the “waiting Trinity” amid a world filled with social-political exploitation and suffering.  The Triune God experienced the fullness of human life and death in Christ’s three-day journey from crucifixion outside the city walls of Jerusalem in the “no place” of Golgotha to Joseph’s garden tomb to the empty grave of Easter Sunday.^[2]  Emphasizing the garden tomb of Easter Saturday keeps the tension between cross and empty grave, and allows for a new application of Martin Luther’s celebrated theologia crucis.   

The dissertation begins with a lengthy chapter on Martin Luther’s theologia crucis to anchor my subsequent systematic-constructive theological claims.  I will explore what Luther said in the sixteenth century (especially in his early theology, and ending with On Bound Choice in 1525) in order to the historical foundations of my contemporary constructive theological work.  Therefore, my dissertation is confessional: I am committed to the heart of Martin Luther’s theology for the claims made throughout my thesis, as I seek to expand and bring Luther’s theology to the 21^st century.  After establishing the historical context of the theologia crucis as the hermeneutical key to Luther’s theology of God’s justification of sinners, I will be ready to begin bringing this theological hermeneutic to the contemporary world. 

Pertinent methodological-hermeneutical lenses in the first chapter include the following: 1) Addressing the historical questions of Martin Luther’s incorporation and development of Medieval passion piety and addressing the relationship between theology of the cross and mysticism.  (This theme allows for me to focus on Holy Saturday.) 2) Exploring the debate between the “historical” Martin Luther vs. Luther “reception”; how does a systematic theologian interpret Luther’s theologia crucis for today while being grounded in historical sources? These methodological-hermeneutical considerations will anchor the dissertation’s subsequent constructive claims in Luther himself, with the goal of appropriating Luther’s theology for the present day.  This historical examination will also show where the present work will diverge from Luther himself in order to proclaim the heart of Gospel today.    

Remaining exclusively in Luther himself would restrict contemporary theological construction, as he cannot address the contemporary world directly as a sixteenth-century thinker.  Therefore, I turn to Karl Barth to serve as the catalyst for bringing Luther to the present day.  I have chosen Barth for his immense importance to the history of theology in general, and because he is not often read from the perspective I argue for in this thesis.  Incorporating Luther’s thought in Karl Barth allows for my doxological-theological focus on the Gnadenstuhl. 

Barth bridges the sixteenth century and today because of his Christological incorporation of Luther’s theologia crucis in Volume 2.2 of the Church Dogmatics.  After examining Barth’s theologia crucis in relation to Luther, Barth’s warm, direct, and powerful Christocentrism is then read through the lens of Holy Saturday, through which the dissertation shows the Trinitarian structure of a contemporary theologia crucis.  Essential to this Trinitarian structure is Barth’s insistence that God has elected the cross and garden tomb as God’s kingly throne (CD 2.2, pp. 164-165).  Luther’s shocking proclamation of the “crucified God” in the Explanation of the 95 Theses (1518) becomes, through Barth, God’s election of the cross and tomb, through which then the crucified God (God in God’s opposite) is present in the Holy Saturdays of today. 

Before exploring the theme of Christ’s presence in a contemporary Holy Saturday world, I first examine what exactly Christ’s descent into hell looks like in Luther.  Close analysis of Christ’s descent into hell in Luther’s Romans Lectures (1516) shows again the dissertation’s centering on Luther even while re-framing the theologia crucis as a Trinitarian doctrine of election in relation to Holy Saturday.  Also, Christ’s descent into hell is crucial to the theme of the dissertation because this motif will be re-framed in relation to history’s victims and perpetrators and racial oppression today.  The work on Luther’s Romans Lectures will demonstrate, yet again, the dissertation’s confessional commitments, as I seek to show confessional application to contemporary society. 

The fourth chapter of the dissertation, on Jürgen Moltmann’s post-Holocaust Trinitarian theologia crucis as an eschatological theology of hope, shows the importance of Christ’s descent into hell on Holy Saturday as the concrete root of eschatological hope and social-political transformation for the sake of the kingdom of God.  Moltmann’s contemporary theology of the cross addresses the question of the Triune God’s presence with and liberation of history’s victims and perpetrators.  Here is a message needing hearing in relation to the wider question of where the Triune God is found in a world that appears so-often to have either “moved on” from God or to proclaim God’s absence in sin, suffering, death, and hell.  There is hope in a so-often hopeless world because of the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ’s presence amid disaster and catastrophe. 

Moltmann expands Luther’s emphasis on justification and Barth’s doctrine of election by emphasizing justification in Jesus Christ for victims and perpetrators.  Luther thought in terms of sin and grace, Law and Gospel, and did not primarily address God’s vindication of innocent victims of catastrophes and the putting to right of perpetrators who act unjustly against their victims.  By expanding justification to include innocent victimhood, Moltmann shows the Triune God is a God of solidarity with victims and the God who calls perpetrators to renewed humanity.  Stressing innocent victimhood means Moltmann interprets Luther’s notion of the “happy exchange” as Seelsorge in light of innocent victimhood and catastrophes.  In this framing, Jesus Christ stands in solidarity with the victims of history and acts as their liberator in his resurrection into the Triune God’s future.  However, God’s future all too often appears bleak and hopeless for the victims of docetic white supremacy today.  With this in mind, I turn to the founder of Black liberation theology, James Cone, whose dialectical incorporation of Christ’s cross and the lynching tree is the culmination of this thesis. 

 James Cone proclaims the Gospel of Jesus Christ in relation to over four centuries of black oppression by white supremacy in the United States.  His black liberation theology frames the theologia crucis as a theology of empowerment for oppressed black bodies.  Karl Barth’s Doctrine of Election and Jürgen Moltmann’s solidarity Christology receive a particular contextual stamp from Cone: The Triune God elects black bodies who white supremacists de-humanize, and God is in solidarity with oppressed black bodies because God is black.  Therefore, Jesus Christ is black. 

My home denomination, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, was recently declared to be the whitest Protestant denomination in the US from a study by the Pew Research Center.[3]  As countless testimonies from people of color in the ELCA attest to, white supremacy runs rampant not only in the United States as a whole, but particularly in the ELCA.[4]  Therefore, as a white Lutheran from the United States, I think it is crucial for Lutherans to draw from Cone’s theology as we seek to proclaim and live the Gospel today.  James Cone’s powerful, passionate theology calls Lutherans to take the radicality of Luther’s theologia crucis with the utmost seriousness, in order to unleash the power of the Gospel for repentance from white supremacy and hope for renewed humanity in the new creation.

I will read Cone’s theology through the Trinitarian Gnadenstuhl of Holy Saturday with the question in mind of how docetic white supremacy relates to Holy Saturday, where Jesus Christ, light of the world, lay buried in a cold, lifeless tomb, paradoxically showing the power of the living God.  A Holy Saturday world has particular importance for black bodies that are continually exploited, oppressed, and dehumanized.  This will be demonstrated concretely by drawing on texts such as Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, to show mass incarceration of people of color as a contemporary hell where Christ has descended to.  Incorporating texts such as Alexander’s into the chapter on Cone gives the theological ideas I am articulating throughout this work concrete applicability, remaining true to the tradition of Luther’s theologia crucis as an embodied theological hermeneutic. 

While I will draw from all of James Cone’s major theological works, Cone’s key contribution to this thesis is his book The Cross and the Lynching Tree, a landmark text exploring the symbolic relationship between the cross of Jesus Christ and the lynching of black bodies in the United States.  Cone says to understand the cross in the contemporary United States, it must be viewed as a first century lynching.  He refuses to let white Americans forget about the horror of lynching or cover it up.  Cone’s connection between Christ’s cross and the lynching of innocent black bodies shows Luther’s “happy exchange” re-framed from the standpoint of oppressed black bodies and is especially important in light of continuing dehumanization of black bodies by docetic white supremacists.  For Cone, theology done from the standpoint of black blood is the core of a biblical theologia crucis.  Cone’s linking of Christ’s cross to the horror of lynching in the United States shows the contextual relevance of the theological trajectory beginning with Luther examined in this thesis and is the telos toward which all other theological explorations in this thesis lead. 

In sum, the present dissertation reframes Luther’s theologia crucis through the Barthian tradition for situations of suffering in a contemporary Holy Saturday world.  By following the intellectual trajectory of Luther, Barth, Moltmann, and Cone, we see a radicalization of Luther’s theology, turning from focusing exclusively on sin and grace, Law and Gospel, to the Triune God’s presence amid innocent victimhood and freedom from oppression.  The theological lineage studied here thus shows the ongoing relevance of Luther’s theologia crucis by proclaiming Jesus Christ’s solidarity with and liberation of history’s victims and perpetrators.  This work unites confessional, Reformation thought with contemporary systematic-constructive theology for contemporary political discipleship in the name of the Triune God.  Reflecting theologically on these themes is a major constructive task with a doxological center: the “waiting Trinity” who holds creation’s future in the Triune God’s care, love, grace, and glory.      

2019 Fellowship
Brach Jennings' Log From Germany

2018 Fellowship
Thomas Santa Maria's Log From Rome