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The Cry of Jesus on the Cross: A Biblical and Theological Study
by Gerard Rosse, Stephen Wentworth Arndt
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Paulist Press (1988-01)
ISBN: 0809129221
EAN: 9780809129225
Dewey Decimal #: 232.9635
Paperback: 145 pages
SKU: 10867
Condition: Good
Comments: Binding: Softcover. Condition: Good. Slightly creased front cover corner and slightly bent 1st serveral page corners.
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Customer Reviews
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Excellent Material.
Rating  (4)
Date: 2006-10-25
1 out of 1 customers found this reveiw helpful
This review is dedicated to Father Wood. While I can't quite place this writing on the same level as Father Raymond E. Brown, Bishop Richard Holloway, or Bishop John Spong, there is some really important material in this book. One of the 1st things this book tells us is that there are in a sense 2 Jesuses to us as Christians. (The historical Jesus and the Jesus of faith.) While we often take things from all 4 Gospels, there are notable differences, so hence the 4 Gospels can't all be historically correct. But that does NOT mean that they do not have theological value. Very quickly, the 4 Gospels were written for different audiences, and some people needed the Jesus in Matthew. Some needed to see Jesus as he is portrayed in Luke and John. Along this line, this book also emphasizes that Jesus is the most powerful in the Gospel According to John. (In John's Gospel, there is no agony of Jesus in Gethsemani, there is no Simon of Cyrene to help Jesus carry his cross, and it almost seems that the crucifixion happens by Jesus' permission.) Another crucial thing this book points out is that the Bible IS NOT a newspaper. It IS narrative theology. (Bishop John Spong makes this point in his excellent book "Rescuing the Bible From Fundamentalism.") Some attention is also paid to the Roman Guard who acknowledges Jesus as the son of God at the crucifixion. If I may be permitted a slight digression to Father Raymond E. Brown's works, it may very well serve as irony in that it is the Romans along with other Gentiles who will uphold Christ. (An interesting sidenote is that in the Bible, Paul's 1st letters are to the Romans.) The greater part of this book focuses on Christ's quoting Psalm 22 at his crucifixion. This has been the subject of much theological dispute, but in my opinion, the reasoning is not complicated at all. If Jesus had in fact been crying the Psalm from despair and abandonment, he would have given his enemies a perfect opportunity to laugh at him. As this book says: "Psalm 22 is essentially a prayer NOT of despair, but of trust." This book later goes on to explain the matter very simply: "If God the Father had intervened before his death, if he had interrupted the experience of abandonment which for Jesus meant complete, unlimited gift of himself...he would not have allowed Jesus to express his filial relationship being God's son to the full." While some Protestant denominations would probably sneer at this book, this book truly belongs in the library of any Roman Catholic or Anglo Catholic.
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