The Cross is Not Tragedy

The cross of Jesus is the world’s supreme example of anguish, suffering and injustice, but it has nothing to do with tragedy as we experience it in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare—tragic drama that ends with dead bodies all over the stage, and pity and fear as the salutary emotions that lead the audience to “metaphysical consolation,” as Nietzsche put it.

On the contrary. We must say it with awe, with reverence and with deep gratitude, but say it we must. Faith is never flippant and rarely frivolous, and it is as foolish to laugh all the time as it is to be serious…