Why Liberals Didn’t Understand Passion Play 2000 -- By: Craig A. Parton

Journal: Global Journal of Classical Theology
Volume: GJCT 04:1 (Feb 2004)
Article: Why Liberals Didn’t Understand Passion Play 2000
Author: Craig A. Parton


Why Liberals Didn’t Understand Passion Play 2000

Craig A. Parton

Santa Barbara, California

March 25, 2001—Feast of the Annunciation

Praise be to God that one Kaspar Schisler eluded the vigilant tower guards of the Bavarian village of Oberammergau in 1632 and entered the town by stealth at night. Up to that very moment the village had avoided the Black Death that had come on the heels of the Thirty Year’s War, which had been ravaging Europe since 1618.

Schisler brought with him that providential night an uninvited guest—the Black Death. He died just days later. Soon the death count in the sleepy village had risen to 84 and counting before the people of Oberammergau gathered en masse at the village church and vowed at the altar that, if God Almighty should spare them, they would every 10 years put on the “Play of the Suffering Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.” As an act of pure grace towards unseen generations to come, the town was spared. The first Passion Play was performed in 1634 at the cemetery of the town church and upon the graves of Kaspar Schisler and the other victims of the Plague.

The Passion Play has now gone forward uninterrupted for over 350 years. Interestingly, the only blights on that record occurred in 1770 and 1940—the first due to the 18th century rationalism of the pagan Bavarian Prince who forbade “superstitious Jewish myths” from being performed, and the second because of the results of a superstitious German pagan from Munich who pursued a more deeply pernicious humanistic myth concerning Judaism.

This past August my wife and I journeyed to this small Bavarian hamlet of 5,000 souls for the 40th presentation of the Suffering Death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. There we witnessed the participation of over 2000 of the villagers of Oberammergau in the presentation of the core and center of Christian faith. In the process we were reminded of the following truths:

Liberal Theology, With Its Higher Critical Approach To Scripture, Is Utterly Hostile To The Core And Center Of Christian Faith—I.E. “The Suffering Death And Resurrection Of Our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Liberal theologians were hard at work trying to get those who attended Passion Play 2000 to listen to their voice rather than to the simple words of the Gospels uttered at Oberammergau by wood-carvers, housewives, and children. Ominously I noted in reading the literature given to us the night before the Passion Play that the “major innovation” for this presentation was the appointment of a “theological advisor.” This “advisor” is a quintessential liberal—a professional at the fuzzification of the clear Biblical text and its import. The advisor noted in his extensive prologue to the Play (...

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