Gorman Abstract CTRF

John Gager (2005) refers to Paul’s “violent christology of the cross” that, he claims, (a) results in Paul’s own commitment to “participation in the violent act of crucifixion” as “his way of participating in Christ” and (b) is rooted in Paul’s “own personality, his own predilection for images and symbols of violence, his ‘excessive zeal.’” Understanding the relationship of the resurrection to the cross in Paul’s experience and theology demonstrates how Paul’s zeal for violence has been radically altered, and provides a paradigm for our own reflection and action. The first part of the paper examines the roots of Paul’s zealous violence in the OT example of Phinehas and his spiritual descendants like the Maccabees, as well as the manifestation of this zealous violence in Paul’s own life. The second part of the paper argues that Paul’s experience of the resurrected crucified Messiah Jesus results in his conversion away from violence and toward nonviolent forms of reconciliation. Because of the resurrection of Christ, Paul comes to see the cross, not merely as a means of death, but as a means of life. He also sees Christ’s resurrection by God as God’s pronouncement that covenant fidelity, justification, and opposition to evil are not achieved by the infliction of violence and death but by the absorption of violence and death. The third part of the paper draws on Paul’s experience and theology for contemporary theological and ethical reflection. Those who are in Christ identify with the life-giving and reconciling cross of Christ, validated by God in the resurrection, not as an expression of a violent personality or a conviction that violence is salutary, but in the paradoxical belief that in Christ and his cross God was nonviolently reconciling the world to himself and giving to us the ongoing task of nonviolent reconciliation.