Traces of a Theology of the Cross in James H. Cone’s Black Theology and Black Power

Despite several scholars describing James Cone’s final book, The Cross and the Lynching Tree as his theology of the cross, the possible presence of this theme in Cone’s first book, Black Theology and Black Power, has not been explored. Therefore, this article examines Cone’s first book for traces of the theology of the cross. The article investigates Cone’s creative synthesis of black theology and the Black Power movement, Cone’s early Christology, his collective-political and eschatological expansion of the “happy exchange,” his references to texts from the early Martin Luther, and his re-interpretation of the Pauline-Lutheran themes of “neighbor love” and “new creation” for following Jesus Christ in the ghetto. By so doing, the article claims that Cone’s theology up to 1975 contributed to the ongoing tradition of the theology of the cross, and that mystical-sapiential and prophetic theology can be connected through Cone’s early theology for a contemporary Lutheran theology of the cross.