For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried

The Text

The clause opens the gospel narrative sub-unit. Where the previous two clauses confessed the Son’s descent (clause 10) and his enfleshment (clause 11), the present clause confesses what the descent has reached: the cross. The eternal Son, who came down from heaven and was incarnate of the Virgin Mary, is the one crucified under Pontius Pilate. The doctrine of the previous clauses (eternally begotten, of one Being with the Father, through whom all things were made) presses the present clause toward its full theological weight: the one on the cross is truly God, and the death he died is therefore the death by which God himself entered into the human reality of death.

The clause is brief. The four verbs — crucified, suffered, buried — are dense with biblical and historical reference. The single proper name in the entire creed (apart from Jesus, Mary, and the Holy Spirit) is Pontius Pilate, and the choice is deliberate: the death of Jesus is not an event in mythological time but an event in Roman political history, datable to the prefecture of a specific Roman magistrate (26–36/37 AD). The catholic creed has insisted on the historical particularity of the death as the foundation of the gospel.

The for our sake (or for us, pro nobis, ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν) is the theological hinge. The death is not merely an event that befell Jesus; it is an event undertaken for us. The dogmatic substance of the entire doctrine of the atonement is compressed into these two words.

Translation Notes

Estaurōthenta / crucifixus — was crucified. The verb of the specific Roman mode of execution. Crucifixion was the punishment reserved for slaves, rebels, and the lowest classes of the Roman Empire; it was deliberately humiliating, prolonged, and public. To confess that the eternal Son was crucified is to confess that he died the death of the lowest of the low, in the maximum form of public humiliation that the empire could devise. The catholic confession refuses every euphemism. He was not killed, not died, not fell asleep — he was crucified. The specificity is dogmatically irreducible.

Hyper hēmōn / pro nobis — for our sake / for us. The preposition that carries the dogmatic weight of the gospel. The Greek ὑπέρ + genitive carries both representative and substitutionary senses: the death is on behalf of us (we benefit from it) and in place of us (he died the death we would have died). The catholic tradition has held both senses without forcing a choice between them. The Reformation gospel of justification was articulated as the exposition of the pro nobis: the death of Christ is not merely an example or a demonstration of divine love but a real exchange in which Christ takes our place, bears our sin, and gives us his righteousness.

Epi Pontiou Pilatou / sub Pontio Pilato — under Pontius Pilate. The historical anchor. Pontius Pilate served as the Roman praefectus (prefect) of Judaea from approximately 26 AD to 36/37 AD. He is mentioned by Tacitus (Annals 15.44), Josephus (Antiquities 18, Jewish War 2), Philo (Embassy to Gaius), and the inscription on the Pilate Stone discovered at Caesarea Maritima in 1961 (confirming his historicity in extrabiblical archaeological record). The presence of his name in the creed is the church’s deliberate insistence on the historical particularity of the death.

The pastoral consequence: the creed makes the gospel undismissable. The death of Jesus is not in mythological illud tempus (that time, of myth and legend); it is in datable historical time, under a Roman official whose career is documented in Roman administrative records, on a particular Friday, in a particular city, under a particular form of public execution. The catholic faith is rooted in history.

Pathonta / passus — suffered. The broader verb of the passion. The English creed often renders this as suffered death (compressing the verb with was buried) or as simply suffered. The Greek πάσχω covers the entire scope of what Jesus underwent in the passion: the agony in Gethsemane, the betrayal, the arrest, the trial before the Sanhedrin, the trial before Pilate, the scourging, the mockery, the crown of thorns, the carrying of the cross, the crucifixion, and the death itself. The English suffered preserves this breadth.

Taphenta / sepultus est — was buried. The verb of the placing in the tomb. The clause closes the death. The catholic faith confesses that Jesus really died — that the body was placed in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea (Matt. 27:57–61; Mark 15:42–47; Luke 23:50–56; John 19:38–42) and remained there until the resurrection. The clause refuses the Docetic and modern reductionist softenings that would make the death apparent rather than real: the body of Jesus was placed in the tomb, and the door was sealed.

Historical Context

The clause has been remarkably stable through the textual history of the creed. The 325 Nicene text contained the substance of the confession; the 381 Constantinopolitan revision preserved it; the Latin reception has carried it forward in the form crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato, passus et sepultus est. The Apostles’ Creed contains a parallel confession in its second article (suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried), and the two creeds together represent the catholic confession of the gospel narrative.

The clause has done specific dogmatic work against several heresies. Against Docetism, the clause affirms a real death: the Son was buried, and only a real body can be buried. Against Gnosticism (which often held that the divine Christ left the man Jesus before the crucifixion, so that only a creaturely Jesus died on the cross), the clause affirms that the same Son who is of one Being with the Father and incarnate of the Virgin is the same Son who was crucified; the death is the death of the eternal Son. Against various ancient and modern spiritualizing readings of the cross (in which the crucifixion becomes a symbol of something else rather than a real event), the clause’s insistence on Pontius Pilate makes the death historically irreducible.

The clause’s confession of the death of God is one of the most paradoxical formulations in the catholic tradition. The eternal Son, of one Being with the Father, through whom all things were made — died. The dogmatic formulation requires careful articulation: it is the Son who died, not the divine nature in itself; the Son died as human, not as God in his eternal being. The doctrine of the communicatio idiomatum (the communication of attributes) preserves the catholic affirmation: in the one person of the incarnate Son, what is true of the human nature can be predicated of the divine person, so that the church can confess (in a precise patristic-Chalcedonian sense) that God died on the cross without thereby attributing creaturely death to the eternal divine nature.

The Reformation magnified the pro nobis of the clause. Luther’s commentaries on Galatians (1535) and on the Psalms repeatedly press the substitutionary-representative reading: the Christ on the cross took our place, bore our sin, received our condemnation, and in exchange gave us his righteousness. The Reformed tradition’s doctrine of penal substitution developed within this framework, with particular sharpness in 17th-century Reformed scholasticism (Owen, Turretin). Both Lutherans and Reformed have held the pro nobis as dogmatic substance, with differences in the precise articulation of how the substitution works.

The 20th-century recovery of patristic atonement theory has restored to ecumenical attention the Christus Victor reading (the cross as the defeat of the powers of sin, death, and the devil) and the recapitulation reading (the cross as the climax of the Son’s recapitulating obedience). The catholic tradition has held all these readings together, refusing to force a single atonement model on the gospel.

Lines of Interpretation

Patristic

Tradition: Irenaeus, Against Heresies III, V; Athanasius, On the Incarnation; Gregory of Nazianzus, Theological Oration IV; Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechetical Oration; Augustine, On the Trinity IV; Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on John and On the Unity of Christ; Leo the Great, Tome

The patristic settlement on this clause carries enormous theological weight. The Fathers articulated the death of the eternal Son under several integrated headings.

Irenaeus’s recapitulation doctrine reads the cross as the climax of the Son’s gathering-up of the human race in himself. Where Adam’s no to God on the tree of the garden brought death into the human race, the Son’s yes to the Father on the tree of the cross brings life. The cross is therefore the precise undoing of the fall, the reversal of Adam’s act in the body of the New Adam.

Athanasius’s On the Incarnation §§20–25 gives the classic patristic articulation of the why of the cross. The eternal Son took flesh in order to die — not because death was the only way to redeem (the Fathers did not press this in the Anselmian-juridical direction), but because death itself was the human creature’s deepest enemy, and the eternal Word could destroy death only by entering into it. The cross is therefore the destruction of death: the eternal Word, who is life itself, entered the place of death and unmade death from within.

Gregory of Nyssa’s Great Catechetical Oration §§22–24 develops the Christus Victor reading at length: the cross is the bait by which the devil’s grasp on humanity is broken. The devil seizes Christ, who is human, and discovers — too late — that Christ is also divine; the devil’s overreach unmakes the devil’s authority. The image has been criticized for its mechanical character, but its dogmatic substance — that the cross is the cosmic defeat of the powers — is the catholic affirmation.

Augustine’s On the Trinity IV develops the doctrine of the exchange (admirabile commercium — the wonderful exchange): the eternal Son took on what was ours (death) so that we might receive what is his (life). The image is patristic, integrated by Augustine into a comprehensive trinitarian-soteriological framework, and is the foundation of much subsequent Latin atonement theology.

Cyril of Alexandria’s On the Unity of Christ gives the most precise patristic articulation of the who of the death: the one and the same Son is the eternal Word and the crucified Jesus; the death is the death of one person, the eternal Son, in his assumed human nature. The dogmatic substance was extended at Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451): there is no separation between the divine Son who cannot die (in his eternal nature) and the human Jesus who did die (on the cross). The same Son is both, and the death is the death of the one Son in his assumed humanity.

Strengths

• The patristic settlement holds together every legitimate reading of the cross
• Irenaeus’s recapitulation gives the cross its proper anthropological depth
• Athanasius’s destruction of death gives the cross its proper ontological scope
• Gregory of Nyssa’s Christus Victor gives the cross its proper cosmic-spiritual scope
• Augustine’s admirabile commercium gives the cross its proper personal-soteriological depth

Weaknesses

• The polemical context produced sharper articulations than the catholic substance required
• Gregory of Nyssa’s image of the devil’s overreach has sometimes been pressed in directions that risk mechanical-mythological readings

Scholastic

Tradition: Anselm, Cur Deus Homo; Peter Abelard, Commentary on Romans; Peter Lombard, Sentences III; Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.46–52; Bonaventure, Sentences III; Duns Scotus

The scholastic tradition received the clause and articulated it under the doctrine of the atonement (the satisfactio of Anselm and the meritum of the scholastic mainstream).

Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Human, c. 1098) is the classic medieval treatise. Anselm’s satisfaction theory: the human race owes God a debt of obedience that, having been incurred and broken by sin, only an obedient human can pay; but the debt is infinite (because the offense is against an infinite God), and no finite creature can pay an infinite debt; therefore the debt can only be paid by one who is both God (to give the infinite worth to the payment) and human (to make it humanity’s payment). The doctrine has been criticized for its juridical-feudal framework, but its catholic substance — that only the God-human can accomplish our salvation — is the catholic affirmation.

Peter Abelard’s Commentary on Romans (c. 1135) offers an alternative reading: the cross is the demonstration of divine love, the act by which God shows us how much he loves us, and our response to this demonstration is the love that transforms us. Abelard’s moral influence reading has often been opposed to Anselm’s satisfaction reading as if they were mutually exclusive, but in fact Abelard does not deny the substitutionary substance; he emphasizes the subjective effect.

Aquinas’s treatment in ST III.46–52 is the comprehensive scholastic articulation. The cross is fittingly (not necessarily) the means of redemption; it is suffering (the Son’s passion), merit (the Son’s obedience), satisfaction (the Son’s payment of the debt), sacrifice (the Son’s self-offering to the Father), and redemption (the Son’s purchase of humanity from the powers). The catholic doctrine of the atonement holds all these images together; no single image exhausts the dogmatic substance.

Strengths

• Anselm’s Cur Deus Homo gives the substitutionary reading its mature medieval articulation
• Aquinas’s integration of suffering, merit, satisfaction, sacrifice, and redemption is permanent
• The scholastic tradition has held the multi-imaged catholic doctrine together

Weaknesses

• The juridical-feudal framework of Anselm’s satisfaction has been broadly criticized
• The medieval focus on the suffering of Christ has sometimes drifted toward sentimental-devotional excess (the late-medieval Stations of the Cross devotions, for example, have been pressed in directions that obscure the dogmatic substance)

Lutheran

Tradition: Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535), Heidelberg Disputation, Bondage of the Will; Augsburg Confession III–IV; Formula of Concord III, V; Lutheran scholastic theology (Gerhard, Quenstedt, Hollaz)

The Lutheran tradition has held the clause as the dogmatic center of the gospel of justification. Luther’s Heidelberg Disputation (1518) gives the doctrine its characteristic Lutheran shape: the theology of the cross is the true theology, in contradistinction to the theology of glory that would have us seek God in human ascent toward heaven; the theology of the cross knows God in the divine descent into the cross.

Luther’s Lectures on Galatians (1535) press the pro nobis as the burning center of the gospel: Christ took our sins upon himself, Christ became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21), Christ became a curse for us (Gal. 3:13), and in exchange he gave us his righteousness. The admirabile commercium of the patristic-Augustinian tradition becomes, in Luther’s hands, the wonderful exchange (der fröhliche Wechsel) that is the center of the believer’s actual life.

The Augsburg Confession IV articulates the doctrinal substance: men are justified freely for Christ’s sake, through faith, when they believe that they are received into favor and that their sins are forgiven for Christ’s sake, who, by his death, has made satisfaction for our sins. The Lutheran doctrine of penal satisfaction — that Christ’s death has made the satisfaction for sin that the sinner cannot make — is the Reformation magnification of the catholic pro nobis.

Strengths

• Luther’s theology of the cross is one of the great recoveries of patristic substance in the Reformation
• The Lutheran integration of the cross with the gospel of justification is the permanent Reformation contribution
• The pro nobis receives its sharpest pastoral articulation in the Lutheran tradition

Weaknesses

• Some Lutheran scholastic articulations pressed the doctrine into juridical refinement
• The polemical context of the Reformation occasionally produced articulations sharper than the catholic substance required

Reformed

Tradition: Calvin, Institutes II.16; Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 37–44; Belgic Confession Articles 20–21; Westminster Confession Ch. 8; John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ; Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1; T. F. Torrance, Atonement

The Reformed tradition has held the clause in catholic form, with characteristic Reformed precision on the substitutionary character of the death. Calvin’s Institutes II.16 articulates the doctrine under the three offices of Christ (prophet, priest, king): on the cross, Christ exercises his priestly office, offering himself as the sacrifice that takes away sin.

The Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 37–44 give the catechetical form. Q. 37: What dost thou understand by the words, “He suffered”? That he, all the time that he lived on earth, but especially at the end of his life, sustained in body and soul the wrath of God against the sin of the whole human race; that so by his passion, as the only propitiatory sacrifice, he might redeem our body and soul from everlasting damnation, and obtain for us the grace of God, righteousness and eternal life. The catechetical form is dense and dogmatically careful.

John Owen’s The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647) gives the Reformed scholastic articulation of particular redemption (the doctrine that the death of Christ was offered specifically for the elect and not for all humanity indiscriminately). The doctrine has been controverted in the Reformed tradition itself (the Amyraldian school, named for Moïse Amyraut, has held a hypothetical universalism), and it is not received by the Wesleyan tradition (see Wesleyan Voice below). But within the magisterial Reformed tradition, particular redemption has been a major dogmatic position.

Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/1 has reshaped the 20th-century Reformed conversation. Barth reads the cross as the dogmatic center of the doctrine of reconciliation: in the cross, the judge has become the judged in our place, and the divine No to sin has been spoken once for all, definitively, in the body of the eternal Son.

T. F. Torrance’s Atonement (2009) articulates the cross in patristic-Reformed integration, with particular attention to the ontological dimensions of the cross (the cross as the place where the eternal Son enters into the human reality of death and unmakes it from within).

Strengths

• The Reformed tradition has held the catholic substance with great care
• The Heidelberg Catechism gives the catechetical form its definitive Reformed shape
• Barth’s reading of the cross as the center of reconciliation has reshaped modern Protestant theology
• Torrance’s patristic-Reformed integration is one of the major modern syntheses

Weaknesses

• Some Reformed scholasticism pressed the doctrine of penal substitution into juridical refinement
• The doctrine of particular redemption is not received by the Wesleyan and broader Arminian-Wesleyan traditions

Eastern Orthodox

Tradition: the Christus Victor reading of the cross; the Paschal Homily attributed to John Chrysostom; John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith III; the iconographic tradition (especially the Anastasis / Harrowing of Hell icon); modern: Vladimir Lossky, John Behr

The Eastern tradition has held the clause in catholic form with characteristic emphasis on the Christus Victor dimension and on the integration of the cross with the resurrection. The Eastern liturgy makes the paschal unity of cross and resurrection the dogmatic center: the cross is the gateway to the resurrection, and the resurrection is the fruit of the cross. The two are inseparable.

The Paschal Homily attributed to John Chrysostom (read at every Eastern Orthodox Pascha) gives the dogmatic substance: Christ is risen, and the demons are cast down; Christ is risen, and life reigns; Christ is risen, and not one dead remains in the grave. The cross is the means by which death itself is undone.

The iconographic tradition expresses the doctrine visually. The Eastern Orthodox Anastasis (Harrowing of Hell) icon is the Eastern icon of Easter, and it depicts the crucified Christ descending into Hades and raising Adam and Eve from the dead. The icon makes the cross the means by which the eternal Son enters the place of the dead and breaks death’s hold on the human race.

The Eastern tradition has generally been less attentive to the penal dimension of the cross than the Western tradition (both Catholic and Protestant), preferring the ontological register (the cross as the destruction of death) and the cosmic register (the cross as the defeat of the powers). The contemporary Eastern conversation with Western theology has restored some attention to the penal dimension while preserving the integrated catholic reading.

Strengths

• The integration of cross and resurrection is permanently valuable
• The Christus Victor reading preserves the cosmic-spiritual scope of the cross
• The iconographic tradition makes the doctrine visible in the liturgy
• The Eastern emphasis on the ontological dimensions of the cross is a permanent contribution

Weaknesses

• The Eastern tradition has sometimes been thinner on the penal-substitutionary dimension than the catholic balance requires
• The Anastasis iconography can be pressed in directions that obscure the historical particularity of the cross

Wesleyan

(See Wesleyan Voice below.)

Modern Ecumenical

Tradition: Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1; Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God; Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale; Wolfhart Pannenberg, Systematic Theology II; Robert Jenson, Systematic Theology I; Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion; Katherine Sonderegger, Systematic Theology

The 20th- and 21st-century theological recovery of the doctrine of the cross has been substantial and ecumenically convergent. Barth’s Church Dogmatics IV/1 makes the cross the dogmatic center of the doctrine of reconciliation. Moltmann’s The Crucified God (1972) pressed the cross into trinitarian-eternal register: the cross is not merely an event in the historical life of the man Jesus but an event in the eternal life of God, with consequences for how we conceive the divine being itself. Moltmann’s reading has been controverted (some have charged it with collapsing the trinitarian distinctions in a way that risks patripassianism), but its dogmatic seriousness has been broadly received.

Balthasar’s Mysterium Paschale (1969) gives a substantial Catholic articulation, with particular attention to the triduum (the three days from Good Friday to Easter Sunday) as the integrated dogmatic event. Fleming Rutledge’s The Crucifixion (2015) is a major contemporary Protestant articulation, defending the substitutionary-representative reading against its modern critics while integrating the patristic Christus Victor and the catholic multiplicity of atonement images.

Pannenberg’s Systematic Theology II articulates the cross in eschatological register: the death of Jesus is the proleptic anticipation of the final judgment, and the resurrection vindicates the cross as the divine Yes spoken through the divine No.

Strengths

• The modern recovery has restored the dogmatic centrality of the cross
• Rutledge’s The Crucifixion is the major recent Protestant ecumenical articulation
• Barth’s reading has reshaped modern Protestant theology
• The ecumenical convergence on the multi-imaged catholic reading is remarkable

Weaknesses

• Some modern reconstructions (Moltmann in particular) have been criticized for trinitarian-doctrinal overreach
• The Western anti-penal-substitution polemic of the late 20th century occasionally produced articulations as thin as the penal-substitution-only articulations it was criticizing

Wesleyan Voice

Wesley’s confession of the cross is unambiguous, deeply pastoral, and characteristically integrated with the doctrine of prevenient and universal grace. The Methodist Articles of Religion (1784), Article II, names the doctrine in classical form: the Son … truly suffered, was crucified, dead and buried, to reconcile his Father to us, and to be a sacrifice, not only for original guilt, but also for the actual sins of men. Wesley’s Notes on the New Testament read the passion narratives with patristic depth.

What is distinctively Wesleyan is the affirmation of the universal scope of the for us. Where the Reformed scholastic tradition has held the doctrine of particular redemption (Christ died only for the elect), the Wesleyan tradition has held the doctrine of universal atonement (Christ died for all). The two positions divided the magisterial Protestant traditions in the post-Reformation period, and the divide remains. Wesley’s polemic in Sermon 110, “Free Grace,” is sharp: if Christ did not die for all, then the gospel cannot be preached to all in good conscience, and the great commission becomes incoherent. The for us human beings of the previous clause and the for our sake of the present clause are read together: the us is the human race without distinction, and the for our sake is the comprehensive divine love that holds the cross out to every human being.

The Wesleyan doctrine of prevenient grace is integrated with this confession. Because Christ died for all, the Spirit is at work in every human life prior to conscious faith, drawing every human being toward the offer of grace. The cross is not a narrow gospel held out to a narrow people; it is the broadest divine yes to humanity ever spoken.

The Wesleyan reading of the cross has also been attentive to the integration of the cross with the new birth and Christian perfection. Sermon 5, “Justification by Faith,” integrates the cross with justification: the believer who looks to the cross in faith receives the forgiveness of sins. Sermon 18, “The Marks of the New Birth,” integrates the cross with the new birth: the believer who has received the forgiveness of sins is then born of God by the Spirit. Sermon 40, “Christian Perfection,” integrates the cross with sanctification: the believer who has been justified and born again is then transformed in love by the Spirit who comes through the crucified and risen Christ.

Charles Wesley’s hymnody confesses the cross with particular passion. The cross is the burning center of the Wesleyan hymnic repertoire. And can it be that I should gain / an interest in the Savior’s blood? / Died he for me, who caused his pain? / For me, who him to death pursued? / Amazing love! how can it be / that thou, my God, shouldst die for me? The hymn is one of the great Wesleyan confessions of the pro me of the cross — and the pro me is held in conscious harmony with the pro omnibus (for all): the same Christ who died for me died for all.

Jesus, the name high over all — He breaks the power of canceled sin, / he sets the prisoner free; / his blood can make the foulest clean; / his blood availed for me. O for a thousand tongues to sing — He breaks the power of canceled sin.

The pastoral Wesleyan posture: confess the cross without modification; receive it as the for me of the believer’s actual hope and the for all of the universal gospel together; let the for me of the Lutheran tradition and the for all of the Wesleyan-Arminian tradition be held together, without opposition; preach the cross as the foundation of justification, the new birth, and Christian perfection; let the love that died on the cross be the almighty love that transforms the believer in this life.

Hymnody

The hymnody on this clause is the densest in the Christian tradition. The Lenten and Holy Week repertoire is largely a meditation on these words.

“Were you there” (African-American spiritual, 19th c.) is the great hymnic confession of the cross in personal-existential register: Were you there when they crucified my Lord? … Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. The hymn is one of the most pastorally powerful expressions of the pro nobis in any tradition.

“When I survey the wondrous cross” (Isaac Watts, 1707) is the great Protestant hymn of the cross: When I survey the wondrous cross / on which the Prince of glory died, / my richest gain I count but loss, / and pour contempt on all my pride. The hymn is one of the most theologically dense in the English-language repertoire.

“O sacred Head, now wounded” (Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th c., trans. Paul Gerhardt, 1656, into German; trans. James Waddell Alexander, 1830, into English) is the great medieval-Reformation hymn of the suffering Christ: O sacred Head, now wounded, / with grief and shame weighed down, / now scornfully surrounded / with thorns, thine only crown.

“Ah, holy Jesus” (Johann Heermann, 1630, trans. Robert Bridges, 1899) is the great Lutheran hymn of the pro nobis: Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee? / Alas, my treason, Jesus, hath undone thee. / ‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee; / I crucified thee.

“Alas! and did my Savior bleed” (Isaac Watts, 1707) is the great Calvinistic hymn of the cross: Alas! and did my Savior bleed, / and did my Sovereign die? / Would he devote that sacred head / for sinners such as I?

“Beneath the cross of Jesus” (Elizabeth Clephane, 1872) is the great Victorian hymn of the cross in personal-existential register.

“The old rugged cross” (George Bennard, 1913) is the great popular American hymn of the cross.

“There is a green hill far away” (Cecil Frances Alexander, 1848) is the catechetical hymn of the cross: There is a green hill far away, / outside a city wall, / where the dear Lord was crucified, / who died to save us all.

“Lift high the cross” (George Kitchin, 1887; rev. Michael Newbolt, 1916) is the processional hymn of the cross: Lift high the cross, the love of Christ proclaim, / till all the world adore his sacred name.

“And can it be” (Charles Wesley, 1739) is the great Wesleyan hymn of the pro me of the cross.

“Hail, thou once despised Jesus” (John Bakewell, 1757) is the great Wesleyan confession of the pro nobis: Paschal Lamb, by God appointed, / all our sins on thee were laid; / by almighty love anointed, / thou hast full atonement made.

For the liturgical year: this clause is the dogmatic substance of the entire Lent–Holy Week–Good Friday cycle. The pastor who teaches the parish to sing its own Holy Week hymnody is teaching the dogma of the cross.

Pastoral and Liturgical Use

Three pastoral tasks attach to this clause.

The first is teaching the parish to take Pontius Pilate seriously. The name in the creed is the church’s deliberate insistence on the historical particularity of the cross. The pastor’s task is to refuse every spiritualizing reduction. The death of Jesus is not in the mythological once upon a time; it is on a particular Friday in 30 or 33 AD, in the city of Jerusalem, under the prefecture of a Roman official whose name we know. The catholic faith is rooted in history, and the historical particularity is part of the gospel. When the parish confesses crucified under Pontius Pilate, they are confessing that the gospel is undismissable: this happened, in datable time, in a particular place, by particular human hands.

The second is restoring the breadth and depth of “for us.” The two words carry the entire dogmatic substance of the atonement. The pastor’s task is to preach the for us in its full catholic breadth: the cross is the divine yes to humanity that takes the form of a divine no to sin; it is the eternal Son’s bearing of what would otherwise undo us; it is the destruction of death from within death; it is the defeat of the powers that hold the human race captive; it is the public demonstration of divine love that creates the love by which we love in return. No single image exhausts the dogmatic substance, and the pastor does well to preach the multiplicity of biblical images — sacrifice, substitution, victory, redemption, reconciliation, ransom, exchange — without forcing them into a single juridical model. The catholic tradition has held them together.

The third is teaching the parish that the death was real. The catholic faith confesses that Jesus really died. The clause’s suffered death and was buried refuses every Docetic or modern reductionist softening. The Son did not swoon, did not appear to die, did not transcend the experience of death; he died, and his body was placed in the tomb. The pastoral consequence is enormous: the eternal Son has entered into the deepest human reality, the reality of death, and has emerged on the other side. The believer who fears death — and every believer fears death — has the consolation that the eternal Son has gone there first.

For the preacher: when this clause comes around in the Sunday creed, do not let it pass as routine. The cross is the burning center of the gospel, and every preaching of the gospel is, in some way, the preaching of these words. For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried. The whole of Christian preaching is, in some sense, the exposition of these eleven words.

For the liturgist: the historic Christian liturgical practice has been to mark this clause with particular solemnity. The Roman tradition makes a bow at this clause on Good Friday; the Anglican tradition has retained the practice in some forms. The pastoral consideration is whether the gesture might help the parish receive the dogmatic substance with proper gravity.

Further Reading

• Genesis 22 — the binding of Isaac (the patristic typology)
• Exodus 12 — the Passover lamb
• Leviticus 16 — the Day of Atonement
• Psalm 22 — the cry of dereliction
• Psalm 69 — the suffering of the righteous one
• Isaiah 52:13–53:12 — the Suffering Servant
• Wisdom of Solomon 2:12–24 — the just one persecuted
• Matthew 26–27; Mark 14–15; Luke 22–23; John 18–19 — the Passion narratives
• Acts 2:23–24, 36; 3:13–18; 4:10–12; 10:39–43; 13:27–30 — the apostolic preaching of the cross
• Romans 3:21–26; 5:1–11; 8:31–39 — the doctrinal substance
• 1 Corinthians 1:18–25; 2:1–5; 15:1–4 — the cross as the gospel
• 2 Corinthians 5:14–21 — the wonderful exchange
• Galatians 2:19–21; 3:13; 6:14 — Pauline meditation on the cross
• Ephesians 1:7–8; 2:13–18 — peace through the blood of the cross
• Colossians 1:19–22; 2:13–15 — the cosmic cross
• Hebrews 9–10 — the priestly sacrifice
• 1 Peter 1:18–20; 2:21–25; 3:18 — the suffering Christ
• 1 John 1:7–9; 2:1–2; 4:9–10 — the propitiation
• Revelation 5:6–14; 7:9–17 — the Lamb who was slain
• Tacitus, Annals 15.44 — extrabiblical witness to the crucifixion under Pilate
• Josephus, Antiquities 18 — extrabiblical witness to Pilate
• Ignatius of Antioch, To the Trallians, To the Smyrnaeans
• Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho
• Melito of Sardis, On Pascha
• Irenaeus, Against Heresies III–V
• Athanasius, On the Incarnation §§19–32
• Gregory of Nyssa, Great Catechetical Oration §§22–24
• Augustine, On the Trinity IV
• John Chrysostom, Paschal Homily
• Cyril of Alexandria, On the Unity of Christ
• Leo the Great, Sermons on the Passion
• John of Damascus, On the Orthodox Faith III
• Anselm, Cur Deus Homo
• Peter Abelard, Commentary on Romans (on Romans 3)
• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae III.46–52
• Luther, Lectures on Galatians (1535); Heidelberg Disputation
• Augsburg Confession III–IV; Formula of Concord III, V
• Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion II.16
• Heidelberg Catechism QQ. 37–44
• Belgic Confession Articles 20–21
• Westminster Confession of Faith Chapter 8
• John Owen, The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (1647)
• Articles of Religion of the Methodist Church (1784), Article II
• John Wesley, Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament on the Passion narratives
• John Wesley, Standard Sermons, Sermons 5, 18, 40, 110
• Charles Wesley, “And can it be,” “O Love divine, what hast thou done,” “Hail, thou once despised Jesus”
• Isaac Watts, “When I survey the wondrous cross”
• Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics IV/1
• Jürgen Moltmann, The Crucified God (Harper & Row, 1974)
• Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale
• T. F. Torrance, Atonement (IVP, 2009)
• Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ (Eerdmans, 2015)
• N. T. Wright, The Day the Revolution Began (HarperOne, 2016)