Love’s Radical Inversion
German theologian Jürgen Moltmann states:
“Humiliation to the point of death on the cross corresponds with God’s nature in the contradiction of abandonment. When the crucified Jesus is called the ‘image of the invisible God,’ the meaning is that this is God, that God is like this. God is not greater than he is in this humiliation. God is not more glorious than he is in this self-surrender. God is not more powerful than he is in this helplessness. God is not more divine than he is in this humanity. The nucleus of everything that Christian theology says about ‘God’ is to be found in this Christ event.”
“God is not more powerful than He is in this helplessness.”
This part of Multmann’s quote has marinated in my consciousness since the time I first read it over a year ago. I felt that there was something there about God’s character that was intrinsically wonderful beyond thought (mind-bending) but until today I couldn’t get at it.
Strength In Weakness
Could it be that the universe was spawned with a power as vulnerable as helplessness, that the peak strength of almighty “power” is in weakness? If this is true, then God is not exempt from the truth that in weakness there is strength. (This brings me to read 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 in a whole new light.) Is it possible that the helplessness exemplifying the power of God at the cross is not only the power that saved the cosmos from universal destruction but also the power that created it?
Perhaps in our re-creation God does not operate from a different place than He did in our creation. He forms or reforms us from a place of weakness, vulnerability, and helplessness. He does not, indeed cannot, operate from a place of power as we have most often conceived of it. For “God is not more powerful than He is in this helplessness.”
Love’s Radical Inversion
To me, this indicates that the systems of power and control that we have developed in this world—hierarchy, commerce, and reward/punishment—are worthless in the economy and life of the Trinity. They are a radical inversion of the design law of Love and antithetical to creation and the power of divinity.
