Theology
Posted Thursday, May 01, 2008
Torture and the Cross
by John F. Hoffmeyer
Debates about torture have been more prominent in the United States over the last several years than at any other time in recent decades. Most recently, the President vetoed a bill that would have held the CIA to the same interrogation standards as our military. The White House rejects the term “torture” as a description of the practices that it wishes to safeguard for the CIA, preferring euphemisms such as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The Center for Victims of Torture, which is perhaps the leading program in the United States for the treatment of those who have suffered torture, insists that the techniques in question are torture. So does the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, the only international organization composed entirely of torture survivors.
In the midst of these debates, it is important to remember that Jesus was a torture victim. Surprisingly, this direct statement is unusual, at least in my experience as a white Christian in the United States. If someone does say explicitly that Jesus was a torture victim, no one denies the fact. The passion narratives in the gospels pull no punches about the horrific treatment to which the legal authorities subjected Jesus in the last hours of his life. Yet the explicit recognition that the Christian religion centers upon a torture victim remains unusual.
It is striking that this would be the case in the United States, a country where Christianity is easily the dominant religion. The cross, the most famous of the torture instruments used against Jesus, is one of the most common symbols in our culture. Artwork depicting Jesus on the cross – that is, artwork depicting Jesus in the process of being tortured – is anything but unusual. Yet the explicit reminder that Jesus was a torture victim can be startling, even shocking. One way to test this is to take a well-known hymn and to substitute the word “torture victim” for references to Jesus. For example, what if we sang, “The church’s one foundation is a torture victim”?
Along with remembering that Jesus was tortured, Christian theology needs to attend to how it frames that torture. Christian thought needs to avoid two terrible errors. First, in the sad tradition of Christian anti-Judaism, Christians have blamed “the Jews” for the Jesus’ torture. Second, some theological interpretations of the meaning of Jesus’ death have suggested that ultimately God is the torturer, the one who desires or needs Jesus’ suffering and death in order to do the work of salvation.
By contrast, Christian theology in its better moments has insisted that sinful humanity is the torturer, and that God, in Christ, is the torture victim. Especially in the current controversies surrounding torture, this theological insight can provide important guidance.
John F. Hoffmeyer
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology
The Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia