For my Lenten reading, I have taken up Living by Faith by Oswald Bayer, a book that I have found to be extremely illuminating. At the beginning of Lent, I posted about what I was learning from Bayer about how we have a primal need for justification, how we are always trying to justify ourselves, and the difference it can make to realize that Christ justifies us (see this and this and this and this). I thought for the end of Lent, I would quote some passages from Bayer that I found both provocative and helpful.
Today, as Holy Week begins, I offer his reflections upon the necessity of knowing God not just through His glory but through His Cross. From Oswald Bayer, Living by Faith , Chapter 3:
In Luther’s exposition of the twentieth thesis of the 1518 Heidelberg Disputation we read that “none of us can talk adequately or profitably about God’s glory and majesty unless we see God also in the lowliness and humiliation of the cross.” Christian theology does not begin in the heights as other religions do; it begins in the depths, in the womb of Mary and the death of Jesus on the cross. “The glory of our God is precisely that for our sakes he comes down to the very depths, into human flesh, into the bread, into our mouth, our heart, our bosom.”
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