Thanks for this, it gets at the core of the issues very well. Cone gave the Paddock Lectures at General Theological Seminary, where I was library director, while he was finishing The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I'd worked at Union & knew him a bit, but it was in those lectures that I recognized the positive orthodoxy of Cone's theology--given the intensity of the subject, I remember those lectures as almost irenic, i.e. that we were in this project together.
So, several years later, when I was serving every Sunday at a Black parish in the south Bronx, his words came to mind for my first Palm Sunday there. Here's the sermon I preached. I think it's pretty orthodox, at least as orthodox as one can be while facing the facts of the crucifixion.
"It is a great temptation to assume that our religiousness or good-will make us more aware, or more merciful, and that we don’t need to worry about the consequences of our actions or our attitudes." ... Man, that cuts like a scalpel, Andrew... And what a privilege it must have been to hear Cone preach!
You're spot on about the (almost scandalously) irenic core of what he had to say. I remember listening to the last part of C< while I was kayaking on a river, so glad to be alone on the water because I was crying my eyes out over those last few pages, over his offer of peace and reconciliation and hope that I felt so, so undeserving of. It was truly an offer of forgiveness "from below," as Joel describes in his comment. It still shakes me to my core.
Thank you for this article. It is impossible to not make the connection between Cone's "Cross and The Lynching Tree," and his statement in "A Black Theology of Liberation" regarding forgiveness. He said, and I dare to paraphrase, that forgiveness is a gift from below. It comes from the oppressed without the pressure of the oppressor. It must be given freely, for we cannot add another burden to the oppressed through forgiveness.
Absolutely. I think that point is most powerful when coupled with Cone's theology of God as (heuristically) Black, which I hope to get into in the next few weeks. It puts the prodigality of the oppressor in such stark and high stakes perspective.
There's this irreducible moral horizon, short of which we turn the command to forgive into an imperious demand on others, like you said... Distinguishing God's work in history from our manifesting that work is especially important here, I think.
Thanks for this, it gets at the core of the issues very well. Cone gave the Paddock Lectures at General Theological Seminary, where I was library director, while he was finishing The Cross and the Lynching Tree. I'd worked at Union & knew him a bit, but it was in those lectures that I recognized the positive orthodoxy of Cone's theology--given the intensity of the subject, I remember those lectures as almost irenic, i.e. that we were in this project together.
So, several years later, when I was serving every Sunday at a Black parish in the south Bronx, his words came to mind for my first Palm Sunday there. Here's the sermon I preached. I think it's pretty orthodox, at least as orthodox as one can be while facing the facts of the crucifixion.
https://drewkadel.wordpress.com/2015/03/28/crucify-him/
"It is a great temptation to assume that our religiousness or good-will make us more aware, or more merciful, and that we don’t need to worry about the consequences of our actions or our attitudes." ... Man, that cuts like a scalpel, Andrew... And what a privilege it must have been to hear Cone preach!
You're spot on about the (almost scandalously) irenic core of what he had to say. I remember listening to the last part of C< while I was kayaking on a river, so glad to be alone on the water because I was crying my eyes out over those last few pages, over his offer of peace and reconciliation and hope that I felt so, so undeserving of. It was truly an offer of forgiveness "from below," as Joel describes in his comment. It still shakes me to my core.
Thank you for this article. It is impossible to not make the connection between Cone's "Cross and The Lynching Tree," and his statement in "A Black Theology of Liberation" regarding forgiveness. He said, and I dare to paraphrase, that forgiveness is a gift from below. It comes from the oppressed without the pressure of the oppressor. It must be given freely, for we cannot add another burden to the oppressed through forgiveness.
Absolutely. I think that point is most powerful when coupled with Cone's theology of God as (heuristically) Black, which I hope to get into in the next few weeks. It puts the prodigality of the oppressor in such stark and high stakes perspective.
There's this irreducible moral horizon, short of which we turn the command to forgive into an imperious demand on others, like you said... Distinguishing God's work in history from our manifesting that work is especially important here, I think.