The Cross in Christian Tradition: From Paul to Bonaventure (review)

The Cross in Christian Tradition: From Paul to Bonaventure. Edited by Elizabeth A. Dreyer. New York: Paulist Press, 2001. 258 pp. $23.95.

This book collects nine papers that were presented over the course of a two-summer seminar (1996-97) at St. Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana. Elizabeth Dreyer has edited the essays and contributes both the Introduction and the Afterward. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor contributes an essay on the Pauline Letters. Nathan D. Mitchell deals with the cross and the shaping of the liturgy. Peter J. Gorday presents the theology of the cross in Origen. John Cavadini's essays deal with images of the cross in Augustine, and Dreyer contributes two essays on Bonaventure's theology of the cross. Together, these essays provide the reader with a serious historical, theological, and spiritual analysis of the role of the cross in Christian practice and thought from the first to the thirteenth centuries.

In the introduction, Dreyer underlines the importance of the "turn to the particular" in the study of the tradition as a way to avoid the oversimplifications of a "streamlined" narrative that fails to do justice to history. Thus, the collected essays delve "into some of the complex, symbolic resources of theologies and spiritualities" to illuminate how thinkers from the past "thought about and articulated the meaning and function of the cross" (8). This examination of the tradition serves the goal of transformation: the experiences and reflections of the past should evoke contemporary understandings that are truly "responsive to the needs of the present" (17). The essays achieve this goal admirably.

Noting the consistent refusal of the early tradition to accept the concrete reality of the cross, Murphy-O'Connor suggests that, without Paul, the gospels would not have contained the detailed accounts of the Passion that they do. The kerygma that Paul received proclaimed the death of Jesus without mention of the cross. Thus, Paul set himself apart from his contemporaries by insisting on the concrete modality of Christ's death. Paul felt deeply about the significance of crucifixion: "To follow a pattern of external observances was infinitely easier than living the sacrificial love of the Crucified" (34). His emphasis on Jesus's choice in his death on the cross is connected to his emphasis on the requisite response to God in the totality of the gift of self: "I am crucified with Christ" (Gal. 2:20). In addition, the cross of Christ redefined Paul's relationship with the world--the "new creation" is defined by its basic value of self-sacrificing love as displayed on the cross. Murphy-O'Connor develops this Pauline approach in relation to the enemies of the cross Paul challenged in his letters (Judaizers and Spirit-people), and in the images he used to develop his thought. Murphy-O'Connor concludes that, for Paul, "Crucifixion is what makes a Christian" (43).

In "Washed Away by the Blood of God," Nathan Mitchell focuses on language that not only testifies to the reality of the cross, but also interprets the life of discipleship and defines the power of the sacraments. In examining early Christian texts (e.g., Didache, The Apostolic Tradition, and the texts of Tertullian), he demonstrates how the cross is experienced as a gesture, as a devotional motif, and as the theological pivot of the Eucharistic prayer. Eventually, the cross also came to be appreciated as a "character" in its own right ("Dream of the Rood"). His essay, "The Cross that Spoke," traces the imagery accompanying the development of the liturgy of Good Friday in medieval England through the Regularis concordia (c. 970), including its connection with the development of drama. By this point in time the cross has become "part cult-object, part totem, part one who speaks and is spoken to, part marriage-bed and marriage-partner" (80). Mitchell underlines the fact that as acts of interpretation the rites surrounding the cross...