Cross and Resurrection: God's Wonder and Mystery

Preface to the English Edition

vii Preface to the English Edition The high quality of Ken Jones’s and Mark Mattes’s sensitive translation has made me fully aware of the difference of the horizons not only between the languages but also between the situations and the mindsets for German- and English-speaking audiences. There are a number of points and phrases in my original text that seemed virtually untranslatable into any foreign language. In my eyes, that they have bridged this gap is the foremost merit of this translation. In spite of German allusions or references to items that are not common knowledge in the United States, the English text thus reads clearly and cogently, and the original book’s demanding character remains present and accounted for. Indeed, because of the topic itself and the conditions of our era, the cross and resurrection of Christ do not, like a song on the pop charts, make themselves immediately accessible. They require that we open ourselves to them, or rather, to the Lord. Perhaps this sounds hard or even embarrassing . But it is a common experience that works of art, for example, require our commitment so that we become able to grasp their message. And when we devote ourselves to them, our hearts grow. In the same way, no person of sound mind would assume we could find or meet God as a coincidence viii Preface to the English Edition or in passing. To put it bluntly, the people the Lord met never heard him say, “Think of it sometime this afternoon,” or “Have a nice day and, if there is time left, remember me.” Instead, he said to them, “Follow me.” And in contrast to the dime-a-dozen junk we find just about anywhere, Jesus declares the gospel to be a treasure hidden in the field; there it at least takes the trouble of hard digging to gain it. My goal in this book is to make sure that the gospel in the cross and resurrection is a real treasure and that it is valuable enough for us even to struggle for it. We will not be able to prove it like an algebraic equation, but we can be sure of it like a connoisseur is certain of a painting’s quality or like the beloved knows that she or he is loved. We can only hint at these subtle events and hope that we succeed in conveying at least some taste of it. ...