We Believe: He Was Crucified Under Pontius Pilate
Pilate: An Unlikely Reference
Speaking on the ever-surprising nature of Christianity, the apologist C.S. Lewis noted that,
Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe [in] Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have.
C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
If there is any one place we meet this sort of thing, it is in the Nicene Creed’s affirmation that Jesus “was crucified under Pontius Pilate.”
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As I write in At the Cross, here Jesus stands before
…a particular man, in a particular time, in a particular place. [Christians] have not only an other-worldly perspective, but also a this-worldly earnestness.
Justin D. Clemente, At the Cross: Reflections on the Stations of the Cross
So much so that next to our Lord himself and the Virgin Mary, Pilate is the only other human mentioned in the Creed. What should have been an embarrassment to the early Christians is instead enshrined in honest for all to remember.
Michael Ramsey, the 100th Archbishop of Canterbury, reflects on the way in which Christianity is uniquely tied, not only to a living faith, but to history itself:
True, we preach Jesus as living and contemporary, and we link the past history with his presence now in the Eucharist. Yet our understanding of his character and message is derived from historical events which occurred nearly two thousand years ago. True, we say that God is living and active in the world today; yet we ascribe unique and revelatory importance to those things which we say God wrought through Jesus on the soil of Palestine in the time of Pontius Pilate. However contemporary we may try to be, our authority rests upon an “old, old story.”
Michael Ramsey, The Christian Priest Today
So, however “present-day” the Faith may seek to be, it can never be disengaged from the underpinnings of history. In the Creed, there is no divorcing “the Jesus of history” from the Christ of faith.” The two must remain one and the same to be authentic, Nicene faith.
Archaeology itself, too, witnesses to the truth of our confession. A stone inscription, found in Caesarea Maritima in 1961, preserves the name of Pilate himself. The writing can be reconstructed as follows:
To the Divine Augusti [this] Tiberieum
…Pontius Pilate
…prefect of Judea
…has dedicated [this].”
Here, the rocks themselves cry out with us this unexpected truth we confess in the Creed every Sunday.
Christ’s Crucifixion: An Essential Truth
But this unlikely reference leads us to an even stranger wonder. Jesus the Messiah stood for crucifixion under this Pontius Pilate. The clause of the Creed we are looking at here is preceded by the words “For our sake.” Nothing could give the horrors of Jesus’ Cross more meaning than these words. Here, To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism points us to the brass tacks truth that Jesus suffered
…as a sacrifice for our sins so that we could have peace with God, as prophesied in the Old Testament: “But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.”
Anglican Church in North America, To Be a Christian: An Anglican Catechism. Quotation from Isaiah 53:5.
Substitution
The substitutionary nature of the cross is brought out in this clause by the fact that not only did Jesus stand before Pilate, but he was chosen over a murder. Another stood with Jesus, and his name was Barabbas. Barabbas, whose name may have actually been “Jesus Barabbas,” literally means “son of the father.” Under the sway of Israel’s leadership, Jesus himself is exchanged for this man. Christ takes the place of an actual person with actual sins worthy of real condemnation. Barrabas, the prisoner, becomes Barabbas, the freedman. This is Christ for us.
Wonder of wonders, a revolutionary and an insurrectionist is released by the crowd,
while the man called the King of Jews, the true “Son of the Father,” is condemned. The rebel goes free, while God himself becomes the rebel. The guilty one is pardoned, the Innocent One condemned. Could it be?! Yes, the Son becomes the prodigal, and the prodigal is given new life. The king casts off his crown and takes up the cross of another. Mine. Yours. Ours.
In his book Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton noted that rather than bland heresy, it is faithful, classical Christianity that contains all the genuine surprises. This is one of them:
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we knew already; but that God could have his back to the wall is a boast for all insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone has felt that God, to be wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds, Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator.
G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy
The Emblems of His Passion
In this clause of the Creed, we are also reminded of the truth that it is, in fact, the emblems and outcomes of Jesus’ Passion that endure into the Resurrection. In his first Easter Sunday appearance to the apostles, we read this:
On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord.
John 20:19-20
Sometimes Christians have argued over whether a crucifix or an empty cross is appropriate. I believe that one of the things we are shown in our confession of the Creed here is that the answer is, simply, yes. The crucifix reminds us of the great cost of the cross and the ever-present availability of Jesus’ death for us, while the empty cross reminds us that life, not death, is the last word. And we note here that the first thing Jesus does for the Apostles after his Resurrection is to show the present reality of his cross and suffering. Yes, it is finished, but it is also present and available. He shows the apostles that his cross was not for nothing.
The Impact on Our Lives
This also has implications for how we live the Christian life. This line in the Creed is a moment to reflect on how our crucified-and-yet-risen Savior gives us a very healthy, realistic dynamic for the Christian life. Unless you can meditate on and appreciate both the present scars and the now dazzling body of the risen Jesus, your Christian life will not be balanced. Suffering and triumph go together in this present life. It’s not all gloom and doom, but it is also not all winning. We must be able to hold the tension together in our minds. Apparently, this is a right and godly tension, because we’re told in Revelation that even the Lion of Judah stands in heaven as the Lamb who was slain (Revelation 5:5-6). Don’t hold your breath when we recite this line on Sundays!
The Centerpiece of History
So, a most unlikely reference leads us to an essential truth. Reality, as Lewis wrote, is truly stranger than fiction. As the 19th-century Englishman John Bowring wrote in his hymn “In the Cross of Christ I Glory,” the truth that we meet here is that the cross is the centerpiece of history and God’s redemptive work in the world:
In the cross of Christ I glory,
John Bowring, “In the Cross of Christ I Glory”
Towering o’er the wrecks of time;
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime.
When the woes of life o’er take me,
Hopes deceive, and fears annoy,
Never shall the cross forsake me,
Lo! It glows with peace and joy.
When the sun of bliss is beaming
Light and love upon my way,
From the cross the radiance streaming
Adds more luster to the day.
Bane and blessing, pain and pleasure,
By the cross are sanctified;
Peace is there that knows no measure,
Joys that through all time abide.
Image: Ecce Homo by Antonio Ciseri (1871). Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons. Digitally edited by Jacob Davis.
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