WE ARE BEGGARS ALL

“Embracing Nihilism
This article seeks to explore a theology of the cross for ministry, which sees the theologia crucis as an invitation for theological engagement in a nihilistic world of radical doubt and radical freedom. Nihilism is often a word we use to disparage another’s position or perspective (“you have a very nihilistic [meaning ‘bleak’] outlook on things”). Nihilism has become a bad word. But here I use it not as a bad word, but as a word of description of ourcontext. The Ethics Toolkit states, “. . . nihilism [is] commonly taken to imply . . . (a) that there is no truth; (b) that there is no right and wrong . . .; (c) that life has no meaning; and even (d) that it’s not possible to communicate meaningfully with one another.”1 In the shadow of globalization, pluralism, mass media, and hyper-consumerism, social theorists like David Lyon have argued that most would agree with at least a few of those descriptions.

Therefore, Lyon argues that our present cultural ethos exhibits nihilistic tendencies: “This means,”he states, “that reality is blurred and that establishing truth is not as straightforward as it once seemed. It does not . . . mean that people believe in nothing . . . ”2 I will assert that a theology of the cross is
the invitation not to hipper models of ministry or more intense assertions about the truth of the faith. Rather it is an invitation to face the nihilism of our time, and to find God in the nothingness of our existence. I will argue that the ‘thing’ to which Luther is referring in thesis 21 of the Heidelberg Disputation is the despair of nihilism, which links Luther’s time with our own, making a theology of the cross a lens into ministerial action in our context. The way of ministry in our time, following Luther, is not to fortify a battered tradition through rigid confessionalism or to seek a missional style born from a postmodern aesthetic, both of which never address the ‘thing.’ Rather, ministry that calls a thing what it is embraces the nihilism (suffering) of late modernity, seeking God’s presence in the emptiness and confusion of human existence.”