Quotes from Fleming Rutledge

There is no more important calling for the church in our time than claiming the self-identification of the God who is the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ.

But at the same time, even as the season outside gets more exuberantly festive, those who observe Advent within the Christian community are convicted more and more each year by the truth of what is going on inside—inside the church as she refuses cheap comfort and sentimental good cheer. Advent begins in the dark.

The unique feature of the Christian proclamation is the shocking claim that God is fully acting, not only in Jesus' resurrected life, but especially in Jesus' death on the cross. To say the same thing in another way, the death of Jesus in and of itself would not be anything remarkable. What is remarkable is that the Creator of the universe is shown forth in this gruesome death.

The Christ event derives its meaning from the fact that the three-personed God is directly acting as one throughout the entire sequence from incarnation to ascension to Last Judgment.

Jesus' public ministry... was not a drama played out on an empty stage... Especially in a creation infested with sin, the proclamation and enactment of the kingdom of truth and justice is never an act of pure positing, but always already a transgression into spaces occupied by others.

It becomes clear that whereas life in Christ results in obedience, this "obedience of faith" (Rom. 1:5; 16:26) is not accomplished by a human choice of one of two ways. There is a decisive difference between a call to obey and a transfer to a new world.

As Placher well knew, there is no analogy from the side of the fallen creation that "works." None of the symbols, images, motifs, and themes "work" in any logical way, either as analogies or as theories to explain what God in Christ is doing on the cross.

In the Bible, the term "apocalyptic" (apokalypsis) encompasses a worldview in which the truly significant battle is the ongoing one between the Lord God of Sabaoth (Hebrew, meaning armies) and the Enemy, who deploys the principalities and Powers (Eph. 2: 2). This contest on the heavenly level is enacted on the earthly level by struggles large and small in the realm of human affairs —battles waged not with worldly weapons but with the spiritual armor of God (Eph. 6: 11-17).

The New Testament is from beginning to end a living witness to the apostolic preaching. The cross was meant to be preached.

We will be best enriched by the meaning of the crucifixion in all its manifold aspects, not just as an intellectual construct, but as dynamic, living truth empowering us for the living of these days.

The Christian life of obedience is, therefore, not a pilgrimage toward a goal, as is commonly supposed. It is a witness or signpost to that telos (end, goal) that has already been achieved by Christ the Kurios and will be consummated in the last day by the action of God

Indeed, as some of the Protestant traditions recognize, the symbol of a cross per se can all too readily become a mere token or amulet leading to superstition and magical thinking. Even worse, when detached from its significance, it can and often has become a sign denoting allegiance to a cause that mocks the very One who died in that way — the cross of Constantine, the Crusaders, and the Ku Klux Klan.