Spirit and Trauma: A Theology of Remaining

the identity of Jesus as human sufferer and the further identity of that suffering with the divine action are never eclipsed in the language of Christian Scripture.

No amount of the rhetoric of ‘self-transcendence’ can substitute for the recovery of the self, the self as the memory of crucifixion and crucifying: there are no dead selves discarded or buried to be the foundation-stones of new identities, because God is the God who opens our graves and gives back the past.

the strong pressure to accept a ‘heavenly power’ model is repeatedly resisted in the name, initially, of the need to affirm without ambiguity the vulnerability of Jesus to suffering

Psychology calls this object-permanence. Theology in its own proper way calls this presence-in-absence.

They form us into a people who can hold the depths of our sorrow with utter honesty even as we hold to the promises of God.

Suffering people can love and trust a suffering God, Only a suffering God can “save” suffering people, Those who have passed across this chasm can and will save one another.