From Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion
(Eerdmans, 2015)
Yet at the most fundamental level – and this can’t be emphasized too strongly – the cross is in no way “religious.” The cross is by a very long way the most irreligious object ever to find its way into the heart of faith. J. Christiaan Beker refers to it as “the most nonreligious and horrendous feature of the gospel.”
The crucifixion marks out the essential distinction between Christianity and “religion.” Religion as defined in these pages is either an organized system of belief or, alternatively, a loose collection of ideas and practices, projected out of humanity’s needs and wishes.
The cross is “irreligious” because no human being individually or human beings collectively would have projected their hopes, wishes, longings and needs onto a crucified man.”
