often been viewed as effacing the cross. The latter is seen as being “The meaning of history is tied up overcome and superseded by the with an event which takes place former. It is sometimes argued as if in the depth and hiddenness of a the resurrection has rendered the man who ended on the cross. The cross superfluous. It is often meaning of history is found in the forgotten that the cross comes first humiliated Christ.” and that there is no resurrection (Dietrich Bonhoeffer) without the cross, that it is the way of the cross that leads to the resurrection.”72 The crucifixion is central to Christianity. "The cross stands at the heart of the Christian faith, " says theologian Alister McGrath.73 Theologian Altizer says, "Western, if not Eastern, Christianity primarily knows Jesus by way of the crucifixion."74 The crucifixion is central to history. Dietrich Bonhoeffer says, “The meaning of history is tied up with an event which takes place in the depth and hiddenness of a man who ended on the cross. The meaning of history is found in the humiliated Christ.”75 Theologian Tom Wright agrees, “ …the cross, seen in the light of Easter, offers itself as the great turning-point of history. If we are to follow Jesus’ own understanding of his vocation, it was the moment when the evil and pain of all the world were heaped up into one place, there to be dealt with once and for all.”76 The crucifixion may even be central to scientific history and even evolutionary biology. Journalist Bryan Appleyard has an idea that, I think, deserves consideration. He suggests that the cross has a powerful claim to be the sole creator of the modern world. “The world destroyed its saviour. God sent his Son to become human and to suffer and die as a human… Perhaps, in becoming flesh, God died. Perhaps the story tells us that truth is here, now and within, rather than in some distant paradise. And, if that is so, perhaps it us here, now and within Einstein, Newton or Galileo as much as in Jesus or St Paul.”77 If Appleyard is right, why should this insight apply any less to Charles Darwin? If there is important truth in the suffering and death of the humble carpenter, then perhaps studying worms can help us unravel evolutionary history.78 Darwin, perhaps, owes a debt to Jesus. The question of the centrality of the crucifixion for science is best left to historians, so I will not pursue it here. However, there can be no question about the centrality of the crucifixion for Christian theology.79
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