Hauerwas Roundup

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

Everything you ever wanted to know about Hauerwas, his Interregnum lecture, the Q&A time afterword, the subsequent controversy, the Council resolutions, and faculty and student reactions. Expect frequent updates.

4/20/10—Richie has weighed in over at the Jester. (This is a satirical blog. Caveat lector.)

Collection of Hauerwas articles, interviews, lectures, and books.

Audio and transcript (PDF) of the Interregnum lecture with Q&A.

Audio and transcript of the exchange between Provost Olasky and Hauerwas.

Reactions from Profs. Brian Brenberg, Ethan Campbell, Robert Carle, David Innes, and Douglas Puffert.

Provost Olasky’s email to students and faculty.

Student government resolutions calling for an apology from Provost Olasky and for standards of Q&A etiquette.

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The Problem of Peace

By Brendan Case | Published: April 24, 2010

In his theological commentary on Ezekiel (Brazos 2009), Robert Jenson reflects on the manifold ways that the Old Testament is Christ-haunted country. Glossing the Lord’s furious indictment of Israel’s faithlessness in seeking alliances with Egypt, Assyria, and Babylon (ch. 22), he writes:

How are Samaria and Jerusalem supposed, in quotidian national existence, to live as the Lord demands? [...] The palaces of Samara and Jerusalem were unable to see how they were to preserve the state without resort to military force, and, if their own resources were inadequate, without resort to alliances [...] From its place after the fact, Christian theology can perceive that a king of Israel–whatever may be true of the rulers of other nations–would always find himself either defenseless against the world or fighting against the Lord. And Christian theology therefore supposes that in the last extremity no king of Israel could fulfill his role except by dying in the world, rising before God, and taking his people  with him. It thus lay in the nature of Israel’s national existence that her hope finally devolved to hope not in the next anointed, but in a last Anointed One. And that when he appeared he would be crucified and rise.

Brilliant. In its cultic, ethical, and political strictures, the First Covenant is too arduous, too daunting for men to keep in fallen time. The twinge of conscience besetting pages upon pages of the Old Testament is the thought that if such faithfulness is possible, it must be eschatological, and God must be its executor.

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China: coming to a country near you

By Brendan Case | Published: April 22, 2010

You’ve probably heard that the Chinese are after your high-tech jobs, your standard of living, and your geo-political dominance. This is not a surprising statement. I have been surprised, however, to learn recently just how quickly the Chinese can move on their stubby legs.

Howard French at the Atlantic details China’s growing campaign to seize Central Africa with a quiet blizzard of infrastructure projects, mining deals, and millions of immigrant cell phone vendors. Seriously.

Likewise, Robert Kaplan over at Foreign Affairs explains (here, but also here) how in the next century China might come to assert its dominance over an entire hemisphere, sending feelers through the Indian Ocean with a growing fleet of nuclear and conventional submarines, consolidating its influence over Central Asia and Indochina with the economic and demographic equivalent of carpet-bombing, and discreetly colonizing Russia’s vast and empty hinterland.

This will all go swimmingly, unless traumatic water shortages, self-induced demographic collapse, or rioting Uighur / Tibetan / student protest movements send the whole thing off the rails and into the South China Sea.

Where does America fall in this picture? (Worst case: very, very hard.) At the very least, we are going to have to learn to share (if not with China, then with India). A best case scenario is probably a soft landing on the order of Britain’s passing the baton after the Second World War: we could be the king-maker, balancing China and India (not Russia, I think — too much wodka, too much tundra) as they reel with the initial giddiness that comes from so rapid a rise.

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Less is more

By Brendan Case | Published: April 22, 2010

Scraping through Pascal’s Pensees, I felt convicted by this:

L’éloquence es une peinture de la pensée; et ainsi, ceux qui, après avoir peint, ajoutent encore, font un tableau au lieu d’un portrait.

In other words: keep it simple, stupid.

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From the Archives: The Death of Difficulty

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 21, 2010

The Gadfly didn’t start as a magazine; it began as one article, more specifically an editorial detailing the many instances where we believed King’s was forsaking its mission.  As the months went on, this article sat in a drawer and the examples kept piling up.  Most remarkably, as we waited, more people began to recognize the problems as well.  What began as one article launched as a 36-page magazine in December 2008.  Alongside a review of Brothers Karamazov, a denunciation of the shotgun wedding of capitalism and theology, and Brendan’s attempt to make the Trinity seem even more confusing, “The Death of Difficulty” appeared.  A year and a half later, with one of its authors graduated and two others just weeks away, “Death of Difficulty” remains surprsingly current.  Some of our concerns, such as the elminiation of math and Interregnum reading, have been assuaged.  Others, such as the dropping of GPA requirements and apotheosis of Gothamization, remain.  And, in that time, many new concerns have emerged, concerns we will address in time.  For now, we thought it appropriate to repost, without comment, revisions, or updates, our inaugural editorial – the article that began a magazine that almost got us all expelled. 

Enjoy.

The Death of Difficulty

The year was 2006, and the theme, de jure and de facto, was “Difficulty.” With Peter Wood in the provost’s office and Stan Oakes in the president’s, we arrived in New York wide-eyed with wonder at what lie ahead of us, consoled at each new challenge by one thought: our small Christian-school-that-could had set its sights on the rarefied orbit of the elite colleges. Academic rigor was the engine powering our heady ascent toward greatness, while rigid academic standards demarked our steady climb.

Today, the mission of The King’s College is different, and so we must offer an awkward criticism to the current administration. Awkward, for our criticism is that the administration responds too readily to students’ criticisms. King’s students are a restive bunch, and it doesn’t take much to provoke a petition demanding the firing of this professor or reversal of that decision. Such protests once elicited a predictable, maddening response: No. “No, you may not transfer Politics from a community college.” “No, you must re-take College Writing II just like everyone else who got a C-.” “No, the professor’s accent is not an excuse for failing the course.” Lately the response is, “Let’s see what we can do for you,” or, worse yet, “We don’t want your studies get in the way of your New York City experience.” Business students may think this is a great thing: customer service! We think it’s more like the inmates running the asylum.

If you doubt that standards have declined, consider the evidence:

Senior theses are no longer a graduation requirement. For a school that claims to emphasize written communication, we are making students do less of it. Keep in mind that the “elite” colleges we are trying to compete with almost universally require a senior thesis.

The school has dropped GPA requirement for receiving internship credit from 3.0 to 2.7. While we understand the value of internships, we think the school cheapens the value of its credit by lowering this standard, especially since it’s difficult to assess the actual value of each individual internship and the student’s per- formance on the job.

We have removed math from the course map. It has long frustrated a small group of King’s students that more math classes weren’t offered. Now even the paltry core math requirement is no more. The ostensible (albeit shallow) reason for this is our emphasis on the liberal arts as opposed to the hard sciences. Yet math has been a part of a liberal arts education since the concept was con- ceived—arithmetic and geometry represented half the classical Quadrivium.

TKC has amended its graduation standards to require a 2.0 cumulative GPA, with the former 2.7 requirement for courses in your major dropped altogether. Some hasten to explain that “even the Ivy Leagues did not require such unrealistic expectations.” We are still working out how the Ivy League could “require” an “expectation,” but we suspect the editors wish to convey that the Ivy League doesn’t have such high graduation requirements. This is true. But keep in mind that around 90% of Harvard students graduate with honors, meaning they have a GPA of 3.5 or above. A standard everyone meets is superfluous.

Even the attendance policy, once ironclad, has been bent on behalf of several students (some of whom had gone over their allotted absences in several classes), as if asking a student to show up to 75% of his or her classes is unrealistic.

Courses such as Senior Fellows and Intro to the City—which students freely describe as “GPA boosters” and “fluff courses”—represent grade inflation, something King’s has always been opposed to. There are students with As in Intro to the City who are failing their other four courses. “Easy As” shouldn’t be part of a rigorous education.

Not one incident of plagiarism has been reported this semester. Even allowing for the possibility that every King’s student is overcoming the temptation to cheat, it seems unlikely that accidental plagiarism, so harshly punished in the past, has disappeard entirely.

In 2006 students who failed the Interregnum exam were required to memorize pages of Pilgrim’s Progress for recitation before their peers. Now the Interregnum exam is gone, and with it the key motivation of students to read the assigned texts. This on the heels of last year’s exam, which no one failed, and for which few seriously studied.

Recently, the House scholars and the majority of the King’s Interregnum Committee recommended that Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s classic The Brothers Karamazov be required for this year’s interregnum. The Brothers K has been widely heralded as one of the pinnacles of Western literature, and is important enough to a liberal arts education that Prof. Ethan Campbell, one of the foremost experts on literature in the King’s community, argues that every King’s student should read the book (Page 20). The proposal died a quiet death on the Fifteenth Floor. The reason? It is too long and difficult of a read, and there’s a good chance students won’t read it.

Any of these examples taken individually would be scant evidence of a general problem. Taken together, however, they demonstrate a decline in standards matched by a decline in rigor that is diminishing the value of a King’s degree.

To some seniors who still remember King’s before Difficulty, and to some students who actually think our school should be easier academically, our regression toward mediocrity is a positive development. To the rest of us, those of us who came to a no-name school hoping it would someday be more than that, it is a betrayal. We are backsliding down the hill of difficulty we once so arduously ascended.

King’s ostensibly has a mission, although we don’t talk much about that these days. Remember the rhetoric about influencing strategic institutions? Remember President Oakes saying, “We’re gonna kick Columbia’s ‘you-know-what’”? Remember thinking this tiny upstart school was really going places? Remember thinking that our school would soon represent the pinnacle of Christian academic thought? What is becoming of that King’s?

Undeniable excellence is the only way forward; anything less will propound our tendency toward intellectual sloth. If we trade academic excellence for such illusory qualities as “leadership” or “city-engagement,” we will soon discover that we have forfeited both. It is precisely the students who earn high marks in class who manage their time and energy with sufficient discipline to work at the best firms, acquire the most prestigious internships, and enjoy the heights of New York’s culture.

So here’s a new petition for the provost, the president, and the administration they direct: make our lives more difficult. Challenge us. Cater to our best impulses, not our worst. Educate us. We, like pilgrim Christian, will grit our teeth and muddle through for the sake of our rich reward.

And someday, we’ll thank you.

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Audio of Hauerwas’s Interregnum Lecture and Q&A

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

Here is the audio of Stanley Hauerwas’s Interregnum lecture delivered Thursday, April 8, 2010 at Calvary Episcopal Church in New York. See also the Gadfly’s Hauerwas Interregnum Lecture Transcript (PDF).

Or, if you’re looking for the exchange between Provost Olasky and Hauerwas, here’s the audio and transcript.

(Q&A begins around 37:30. Total length is around 1:15:00.)

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Audio of the Olasky-Hauerwas Exchange

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

This exchange occurred at the conclusion of the question and answer time following Stanley Hauerwas’s Interregnum lecture on April 8. See also the Gadfly’s transcript of the exchange.

Also be sure to listen to Hauerwas’s lecture, or read the full transcript (PDF).

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Transcript of the Olasky-Hauerwas Exchange

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

This exchange occurred at the conclusion of the question and answer time following Stanley Hauerwas’s Interregnum lecture on April 8. See also the audio of the exchange.

Also be sure to listen to Hauerwas’s lecture, or read the transcript (PDF).

OLASKY: Stanley, I appreciate your coming here, and I enjoyed your speech, but I have to say that in answering some of these questions you seem to be reading from a different Bible than the one I’m familiar with. [Applause.] And we could go book-by-book-by-book through the Bible, but let me just give a couple of examples.

Sure, there’s charity for widows and orphans, people, let’s say, who weren’t physically capable of helping themselves, but the classic biblical poverty-fighting device was gleaning in the fields. Gleaning was hard work. The corners of the fields were left ungleaned so people who were poor could go in and work very hard, and get food for themselves and their families and probably if they worked very hard enough food so that they could sell in the marketplace and begin earning some capital. The fruit from the trees was picked from the lower branches, but the upper branches were there for the poor people to get to. It was hard work; it was doable, people could achieve, but it was hard work. You look at the narratives like the story of Ruth, and she’s working very hard through the day, she’s very commended for that.

When we get to the New Testament, we hear, and it can’t be any plainer than this, the Apostle Paul’s telling the Thessalonians “if a man does not work, he shall not eat.” And we could go through book after book after book of how this works out. Now, when there’s a famine, when there are people in great need, as the people in Jerusalem were at some point, then there’s charity, but the normal poverty-fighting process was not begging. The normal poverty-fighting process was hard work. And if you look at the early church, in the first few centuries, churches typically had what they called the “three-day rule.” When a person came, was poor and helpless, they’d provide shelter and food for the person for three days, but after that, again, if the person was able-bodied, had to work. All through Scripture, book after book, you see this through much of the history of the Christian church.

Now you do see at some time in the Middle Ages a deviation from that where begging was prominent, but that’s a deviation. That’s something different from the biblical pattern, and that’s something different from the pattern of the church through most of the centuries.

HAUERWAS: I didn’t say that every Christian has to be literally a beggar. But every Christian is a beggar vis-á-vis our relationship with God——

OLASKY: Absolutely. God’s grace is supreme.

HAUERWAS: ——and that that has to take material form. There is nothing I said, I hope, that implied that what it means to be part of a good community is to participate in the common good of that community through the kinds of work that serve that common good. But that kind of work itself is part of the sharing of the community. That’s the reason why it becomes quite disastrous to only aid the poor in a way that they become dependent without ever sensing a contribution they make to the community. So I want to think that work is part of that, but some people, you know, the work they give the community is primarily receiving. They receive. And that makes us who we are. They’re not asked to do anything other than to receive, and in the receiving, they do it without regret.

What I’m thinking of in that regard is a Jean Vanier L’Arche community, where the core members receive, and they return what they receive by giving us joy. And that is a kind of work that we all depend upon. So, I want to be careful about underwriting a “work ethic” in and of itself. Look, I was raised a bricklayer: I know work. And I work as an academic. But if you want a place where we are very tempted to idolatry, it’s work, where I cannot live without it. [Applause.] And that is part of what I was trying to say.

OLASKY: Well, I appreciate that. So we’re agreed that there are temptations to idolatry all over.

HAUERWAS: Sure.

OLASKY: There are temptations to greed everywhere. The community you spoke of is a wonderful example of Christian charity. I think we’re agreed that when there are people who are less physically or mentally capable and they need help, then this is a wonderful thing to be able to offer that help. But I guess are we also agreed that the common pattern for able-bodied Christians most of the time is work and not begging?

HAUERWAS: Sure, it’s to work. But——

OLASKY: Well, that’s good.

HAUERWAS: ——but Vanier doesn’t understand what he does as charity. He understands what he receives from the people who allow him to bathe them is charity, not what he does. And that that’s very important, because what we fear in the face of the people he bathes is their weakness, because they expose our weakness, and that that is the most fearful thing that we possibly confront.

OLASKY: Well, I agree, in a sense we allow God to bathe us, and so we learn about God’s mercy by being merciful to others, and this is a great thing. So, again, thank you for the clarification, thank you for coming here.

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Student Government Resolution Calling for an Apology

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

The following resolution was adopted by The King’s Council, the student government of The King’s College, on Monday, April 12th, by a vote of 7-1 with one abstention.

Whereas the exchange of ideas is protected by protocols of decorum, and

Whereas the Interregnum Evening Session was a guest lecture and not a debate, and

Whereas decorum prohibits an academic host from publicly confronting his invited guest, and

Whereas a violation of such decorum reflects poorly on The King’s College, be it therefore

Resolved, That Provost Olasky breached decorum by expressing disagreement with a guest of the College in an inappropriate manner; and

That The King’s Council respectfully urges Provost Olasky to apologize to the Interregnum Committee, whose efforts and hospitality he discredited; and

That The King’s Council respectfully urges Provost Olasky and President Mills to apologize to Professor Hauerwas on behalf of The King’s College; and

That on behalf of the student body, The King’s Council apologizes to Provost Olasky and Prof. Hauerwas for the students’ breach of decorum.

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Student Government Resolution on Standards of Etiquette

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

The following resolution was adopted by The King’s Council, the student government of The King’s College, on Monday, April 12th, by a vote of 8-1.

Whereas we, as students, desire to hear opinions and arguments regarding viewpoints different from ours, especially in an educational institution which claims to teach students how to think, and not what to think, and

Whereas guest lectures and interviews are a marvelous way for us to invite such intellectual exchange, which broadens our understanding of the world, and provides opportunity to ask probing questions about areas of tension with the lecturer’s views, and

Whereas hospitality precludes hostile debate when invited guests have the floor, and because an antagonistic tone can ruin a perfectly legitimate question, and

Whereas The King’s Council has noticed aggressive questioning and audience responses in several events this year where a Q&A happens;

Therefore, let it be resolved:

That this sort of behavior insults the invited guest of our college, and damages the reputation of our college and our Christian witness, and

That The King’s Council requests that The King’s College create a set of guidelines explaining the etiquette for Q&A situations, and that the guidelines be explained adequately to all current and future students, faculty, and staff. The overall intent should be to provide a model of behavior for students who desire to be both academically savvy and witnesses of Christ.

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Olasky’s Email to Students and Faculty

By Gadfly Staff | Published: April 16, 2010

From: Marvin Olasky
Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 2:21:39 PM
To: Students
Cc: Faculty
Subject: Hauerwas

Students,

There’s been a lot of buzz about Stanley Hauerwas’s talk Thursday night and my reaction to it. Here are some thoughts I put down over the weekend and some that Dr. Innes offered this morning.

Cordially,
Provost Olasky

Saturday, April 10

James Madison learned to think Christianly at the College of New Jersey, later renamed Princeton. His biblical thinking was evident in the most famous sentence he ever wrote: “If men were angels, no government would be necessary.” His point in the 51st column of what became The Federalist Papers was that men are not angels, so “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

Our free market system, now under sharp attack, emerged from a similar understanding — men are not angels – and the corollary question: How can we act less selfishly than is our tendency? Adam Smith in 1776 wrote, “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” The baker bakes bread, another person works to provide a good or service the baker wants, they trade the results of their effort, and both are better off.

Men are not angels but lemons: Some societies rue that fact but others make lemonade. As Madison put it, the “policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public.” Our system of government relies on self-interested departments and individuals checking and balancing others also self-interested. Our economic system also runs on self-interest, but that’s different from greed.

Markets are particularly beneficial in the world of scarcity that man has lived in ever since the Fall recorded in chapter three of Genesis. Free enterprise in some countries during the past two centuries has significantly reduced scarcity, but since people have different needs and wants we’ll always need markets. (Given that in most of human history most people have been poor and on the brink of famine, the spectacular story now is not that some are poor but that more and more people in much of the world are on the brink of abundance.)

Market systems rely on exchange, not greed, but since men are not angels greed can emerge. Redeemer pastor Tim Keller points out in his recent book, Counterfeit Gods, that an idol derives its power from our tendency to take something that is good and make it our ultimate desire, thus depriving God of His rightful place in our thoughts.

Applying this to economics, we can see that hard work is good but if we abandon our family in the process of working hard, we’ve turned good into bad. Earning money and stewarding it wisely is good, idolizing money is bad. And this brings us to the lecture by Prof. Hauerwas last Thursday evening, and particularly the question and answer session following it. During that session he struck at two biblical concepts that are also at the heart of what we teach at King’s: the value of hard work within a market economy and the importance of stewardship, which he called “self-deception.”

You heard what he said so I won’t give a recap here but I did not want to leave unchallenged Prof. Hauerwas’s direct opposition to biblical teaching. It doesn’t matter that he is popular in some spheres of academia and media because he gives a religious gloss to the left’s fundamental hatred of free markets. He just doesn’t grasp the simple truth that markets force people to think about what someone else wants. He denigrates stewardship, even though King’s and Duke both exist only because some individuals have worked hard and then given away what they earned.

Why, then, given his reputation, did King’s invite him? Two reasons: First, Interregnum is a wonderful example of student initiative, and it’s a King’s tradition to have students choose the speaker. Second, it’s good to hear directly what people on the left think. I’ve invited many of them to the Distinguished Visitors Series, but since DVS does not offer an honorarium to interviewees and in almost all circumstances does not even pay travel expenses, only a couple have come. The Interregnum speaker, however, receives a hefty honorarium.

Given the controversial nature of Prof. Hauerwas’s remarks, though, another tradition came into play: No one gets a free ride. At major colleges and universities, the tradition is to offer vigorous challenge to someone who gives a speech. Questions and comments are supposed to be tough. When a speaker neglects important evidence, others are supposed to point out for the benefit of the audience what he has omitted. This is standard academic practice, and a pro like Prof. Hauerwas has encountered it often.

Besides, as Christians, which most of us are, we are charged to honor God and not fear men. On Thursday night I heard two students asking challenging questions, but most of the audience response was docile, and that concerned me. It was almost as if we were in awe of Prof. Hauerwas’s designation by Time as America’s top theologian, or we desired too much for Prof. Hauerwas to love us or love King’s. Yet this emperor had no clothes, and it was important to say so.

I take seriously the concern of some that, by saying Prof. Hauerwas was reading from a different Bible and by noting some of his omissions, I was being inhospitable. It didn’t seem that way to me, because I’m used to the academic tradition of challenging and correcting speakers, but I can see how some might feel that way, and that’s a good concern to have.

I do think, though, that we should keep this in mind: Prof. Hauerwas was not volunteering his time and doing King’s a favor, the way a Distinguished Visitor or a Commencement speaker is. Prof. Hauerwas was more a well-paid contractor than a guest, and it may not be inhospitable to critique poor workmanship in such a situation.

The other concern I’ve heard is that my remarks seemed angry. I’m sorry that they seemed that way: I did not want to take up much time and was speaking fast. I didn’t feel personal animus toward Prof. Hauerwas, and spoke with him amicably as we walked back to midtown afterward. But I guess I was angry about some of the things he said, perhaps because I’ve heard them so often for so many years, and believed them in the early 70s when I was a Marxist and parroted speakers very much like him.

So, do I want you to imitate what I did? No, do better than I did. If I spoke too intensely and came off as angry, learn from that and be winsome. But do not be passive when anyone, no matter his plaudits, distorts what the Bible teaches. Build the reputation of King’s as a place that invites in all kinds of people yet challenges them and all of us through our loyalty to God’s Truth. Be zealous for Christ.

And, as many of you know, if you want to talk my office door is open, except maybe when I’m in a meeting, or eating peanut butter and an apple for lunch.

Late Sunday evening, April 11

At Redeemer this evening we had a prayer of confession based on 1 Corinthians 13. We read statements such as “Love is courteous” and “Love delights in truth and righteousness,” and after that last verse were supposed to meditate on this question: “Do I put obedience to God first in my life?”

Was I courteous to Prof. Hauerwas? Some students have told me I was, some told me I was not. Did I put obedience to God first? In this situation, yes. I don’t want to fall into religio-speak, but I felt the Spirit of God coming upon me as I only rarely have before; I had to speak up. Some might mock that, and as an historian I’ve sometimes wondered about such reports, but I felt that to remain silent would dishonor God. Did I speak well? It seems that I could have done better.

But pastor Tim Keller drew our attention to the central part of the chapter, where it describes the love that “is not rude, it is not self-seeking,” and also notes that “Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth.” He said it’s vital to remember that this passage is not about us: It’s about Jesus.

Christ knew when it was right to overturn tables and shoot scornful words at Pharisees, and when it was not. We all err. Christ took upon himself all the sins of omission and commission that occurred on Thursday evening. If Prof. Hauerwas twisted Scripture or if I was rude, Christ’s blood covers that. Christ died for those who didn’t ask hard questions and for the person who yelled at Hauerwas, “You’re an idiot.”

At the end of the service tonight we sang what may be the only modern hymn that really gets to me, “The Power of the Cross.” You may be familiar with it, but for those who aren’t, here are the lyrics:

“The Power of the Cross”
Words and Music by Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music

Oh, to see the dawn
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Christ became sin for us;
Took the blame, bore the wrath—
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Ev’ry bitter thought,
Ev’ry evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees;
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
“Finished!” the vict’ry cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death;
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

FINAL CHORUS:
This, the pow’r of the cross:
Son of God—slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.

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