Christianity and *The Passion* (2)

Within the varieties of the Christian religion, there are a vast range of interpretations and emphases among the various elements of the faith. But it's worth remembering in the discussion over The Passion that the central event for Chrisitian theology is the Resurrection, just as the Exodus is the central event for Jewish theology.

The Resurrection is a statement that the love of God survives even death, that God is a God of renewal and new beginnings, who affirms life and hope in the face of despair.

In the early centuries of Christian theology, the crucifixion as such was not emphasized as it came to be later. The earliest known depiction of Jesus on the cross is a hostile caricature in the Imperial residence in Rome from the 3rd century. It shows a man bowing before a crucified man with the head of an ass. The caption affixed to it says, "Alexamenos prays to his god."

After Constantine adopted Christianity as the religion of the Roman Empire, the cross began to be used more commonly as a symbol for Christianity. But, according to the Christian theologian Hans Küng, it was the influence of mystical visionaries like Bernhard of Clairveaux (1090-1153) and Francis of Assisi (1181/2-1226) that first made the images of the suffering Jesus in the passion widely popular.

The idea that Jesus identified with the suffering and the persecuted has proved to be a powerful inspiration for change in Christianity. The Jesuit "liberation theologian" Jon Sobrino of El Salvador wrote in 1982 (from Jon Sobrino, Jesus in Latin America):

In the human race today - and certainly where I am writing - many women and men, indeed entire peoples, are crucified. This situation of so much of humanity makes the recollection of the one who was crucified something connatural and demands this recollection in order for Jesus' resurrection to be concrete, Christian good news and not abstract and idealistic good news. These crucified of history furnish the special lens through which we can grasp Jesus' resurrection "Christianly" and make a Chrisitian presentation of it.