Risen From Shame
The Original Honor/Shame Inversion called “Christ Crucified"
In this article, I seek to put the reader into the historical shoes of those in ancient Rome who would witness the rise of a movement that declared a previously humiliated “Messiah” was now “Lord of Lords and King of kings”. What one personally believes is—for the moment at least—besides the point.
Honesty
The other day I met with some old friends over coffee, and they were talking about how they no longer call themselves “Christian”.
Was it because they had a crisis of faith and no longer believed? No, actually. They just had a realization about the word itself—“Christian”—that it really has become a cliche that applies to a wide spectrum of people (and culture) that can by no means be assured to share their same viewpoints and practises. In essence, they were just being honest how the word was misleading and lumped them in with others for whom they did not feel a part of.
I respected this.
I still also remember decades ago, when a childhood friend told me over coffee that he had finally been honest with himself and admitted he was not really a “Christian”—that he didn’t want to be a hypocrite anymore; that he hadn’t really been honest with himself before and he wanted to make that right. I respected that. And I thanked him for it. He had much more courage than most I knew.
But more than just this admirable honesty, these incidents speak to a much bigger issue: that society exists in the afterglow of a movement that, 2,000 years ago, conquered the world. And so successful was it, that it is now hard to “see the forest for the trees”, and thus it is really hard to discover for one’s own self what one truly believes. And so, I think, it is really important to take some time to step back and reconsider the true historic shock of what exactly it was that St. Paul preached to begin with.
Agree or disagree, believer or unbeliever, in a sense it doesn’t really matter. Sometimes we really just need to start from scratch.
“Science”
Modern man claims to be “scientific”. At least—in theory. Of course this word “science” is just that: a word. And particularly after covid, my already well-earned distrust of those who claim to “follow the science” has really only increased.
But long before the whole covid debacle, I remember well the internet clashes that raged throughout the early 2010s—you know, the “science vs religion” debates, particularly among christian/atheist circles, where the question of whether Jesus of Nazareth literally rose from the dead or not was always a major feature.
Even to this day, there are many who claim to carry the torchlight of “rationality” in the hopes of banishing superstition and this silly notion that a man could literally rise from the dead. Among the most notable are people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins. But also figures like Richard Carrier and Robert M Price.
And there were (are) many who firmly took up the cause of defence—the most scholarly (in my opinion) being Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig. Christian apologists have, in some cases, devoted their whole lives to the logical (historical, philosophical, etc) defense of the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith (especially, the resurrection).
Forest, Meet Trees - False Dichotomy
But what if I told you that all of this back and forth between skeptics and true believers was actually missing a critical point? What if—as thoughtful as men like William Lane Craig (and his opponents) may be—there was actually something fundamental to the Bible story that even they were glossing over? What if, in all their elaborate efforts to reveal Christianity as a “reasonable faith”, they skipped over the very idea that was, in fact, basic to the ancient peoples who originally heard the message?
Yes, what if modern man, full of pretensions to logic and “reason” (both believer and unbeliever) had in fact lost the ability to “see the forest for the trees”? What if the whole debate was tone deaf; what if we were all arguing about the wrong thing?
Risen to what?
Modern man seems to have a hard time with what I’m about to discuss here. We are all so used to “taking sides” on things.
But what if I told you…
Physical resurrection from death simply wasn’t as big a deal for ancient peoples as it is for us.
Now don’t get me wrong. They would certainly notice if someone were to rise from the dead. But most people wouldn’t be so awe-struck at the claim of resurrection as modern (“scientific”) man now seems to be. In fact, if you were considered great enough (like some Caesars were), many would even be on the look-out for the possibility of you being ascendent to the heavens after you die.
Now there’s definitely some grey area here about what exactly constituted “resurrection” in those particular cases, but what mattered most to ancient Romans was not so much the absolute physicality of resurrection (or that it was “spiritual” or whatever), but rather the direction of the glory of your path after you died—i.e. that you ascended to the place of highest honors after death as a sort of crowning of your life’s many great accomplishments.
The glory was not so much that you had been physically risen in and of itself, but rather what you had been risen to. You were raised to a culminated status of ultimate glory—AMONG THE GODS.
Risen from what?
But part and parcel of this ascendence to the heavenlies were certain assumptions (which the Bible doesn’t really spell out, thus we sometimes need to look into the social context to help us understand better). The main assumption was that you had not suffered a terrible indignity along the way, especially unto death. If you had managed to suffer, say, crucifixion, then by virtue of that fact alone, it would mean that you could not ascend to a status among the gods after death.
Why? Because crucifixion was shameful—the fate of slaves. And if a Caesar could somehow suffer that fate (no matter how great he was in his lifetime), then the very fact that the gods would allow such a thing to begin with would be enough to negate his former greatness. Ascendence to divinity would then be off the table for that person. This—was the fatalism of the gods.
And the ancient Israelites were really no different from the Romans in that regard. They had a verse from their Torah that summed up the already widespread sentiment:
“Cursed is he who is hung on a tree.” (Deuteronomy 21:23)
All nations agreed with this. But for the Israelites, the shame of crucifixion was just before one God. So, in a sense, the shame of such prospects was even worse for the Jews than it was for other polytheistic nations. Yes, it was not for no reason that Jesus cried out on the cross:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” (Matthew 27:46)
As we’ve already discussed, the shame of crucifixion was actually worse than the physical ordeal of it all. It was proof positive that you would not be one of those who could then rise from death to glory, because for ancient peoples (in stark contrast with us), there was no clean separation between miracle claims and claims of honour. Resurrection implied so much more than a mere miracle.
When Romans worshiped their newly departed Caesar as a god (what was called apotheosis), they didn’t marvel so much at the potential of physical resurrection, but rather that Caesar had been so great, that he was now numbered among the gods. And the fact that he had never been subject to something so terrible as crucifixion was just extra evidence for his ascendence. He was risen from a life and death of honor.
“Christ-crucified” as Grenade - Honor/Shame Inversion
In all our debates about whether the miracle of resurrection actually happened or not, we have missed the deeper significance of the historically-loaded powder keg of phrases like “Christ-crucified”. Today, such phrases are cliche—but 2,000 years ago, it was a very different matter. The offense of the idea that Jesus was physically risen from physical death was far less offensive than the further idea he had ascended to the highest place of glory and honour after being humiliated in the worst way. Claiming this could get you in serious trouble—not just that a man had risen from death (as was claimed previously that men like Lazarus had).
Contradiction in Terms
We’re so used to hearing the name “Jesus Christ”, the average person on the street now likely may think that “Christ” was Jesus’s literal last name. But for first century Rome (and especially for first century Judaism), these two words put side by side were to play with fire—and whether on purpose or not, to pick a fight with society’s moral standards.
Because for the Jews, “Christ” or “Christos” (from where we get our word, “Messiah”) had to do with political liberation and the conquering of one’s enemies—that is, being a victor of the highest order. It was certainly not anticipated that a “Christos” could be humiliated (especially crucified)—the phrase alone was an unreasonable contradiction in terms. It was like saying a person was an “innocent criminal”—you were really just a crazy person spouting contradictions in the same breathe.
This is why Paul talked about the strangeness of “Christ-crucified” (1 Corinthians 1:23) and how it was a stumbling block to virtually everyone (especially Paul’s own people). Notice he didn’t say that people stumbled over the idea that a man had risen from the dead? Unlike our modern “skeptics”, Paul didn’t say that non-believers scoffed at the possibility of miracles. What they were scoffing at was a dramatic shift in values—that is, the very notion that a man who had been humiliated in the worst way (unto death) could now be at the highest place of honor possible.
The highest (and most shocking) miracle was ascendence to honour after humiliation—not mere resurrection (which, by the way, many people considered to be undesirable to begin with). This was the ultimate inversion of society’s standards of honour and shame. It was indeed a grenade tossed into the values of virtually everyone, and in many cases, could get you a front row ticket to your own death.
St. Paul’s message was that the son of God himself had actually been subject to the very fate that Israel (and all other nations, for that matter) had always been trying to avoid. And thus, those who declared this crucified “Christos” as “Lord” (and were willing to suffer the risks associated with that) would eventually be raised to ultimate honour, vindication, and righteousness with this risen (from shame) “Christ” as well.
When I look back now at Christian apologists like William Lane Craig (and his skeptic counterparts), I feel a great ambivalence. On one hand, I myself have benefited from some of their ideas. But on the other, I feel like this whole debate has been one grand waste of time—in the sense that it has really taken away from what the actual message of the early Christians were.
From this perspective, it’s not really at all about what you “believe”. Rather, it’s about if a person is open to understanding the grand story of the Bible in the amazing (and often foreign to us) ancient world and social context in which it was born.