CHRIST CRUCIFIED.

In the hottest part of the day, thousands of people, tourists and locals are
gathered to witness one of the most gruesome and bloodiest events that are
annually held at Brgy. San Pedro Cutud, City of San Fernando, Pampanga. We
call this annual event in capampangan Maleldo 1 or Holy Day wherein a group
of devotees some as old as 50 and as young as 18 years old voluntarily allow
themselves to be crucified literally with nails, as they believe this will greatly aid
or God will grant them forgiveness of their sins. To the devotees this is a different
picture, some think of it as a opportunity for business but to most of all
attenders they see at as if they are seeing the firsthand experience of Jesus
being crucified on the Cross, The Christ crucified..

By the term, Christ crucified, I mean this as the doctrine that Christ
suffered death on the cross to make atonement for our sins,-that by His death He
made a full, perfect, and complete satisfaction to God for the ungodly,-and that
through the merits of that death all who believe in Him are forgiven all their sins2,
Christ was indeed crucified; and Christ was God. Jurgen Moltmann has
ample warrant, therefore, for giving his book on the cross the title, The Crucified
God.3 Moltmann has clearly highlighted the paradoxical nature of the fact that
1 Cervantes,Ding."PoliticsShunnedin'Maleldo'"Philstar.com.March29,2010.AccessedDecember13,
2015.http://www.philstar.com:8080/nation/561846/politicsshunnedmaleldo.
2 See Peter 3:18
3 J. Moltmann, The Crucified God (London: SCM Press, 1974)

God was crucified; insisted that it is not something we can just take in our stride;
and drawn attention to some of its revolutionary implications for our theology, our
individual Christian practice and out ecclesiastical ethos. The fact of the crucified
God must be not only the foundation but also the judge of our Christianity. Just as
The cross, said Luther, is the test of everything. (Crux probat omnia).

The doctrine of Christ crucified is the grand peculiarity of the Christian

religion. Other religions have laws and moral precepts, forms and ceremonies,
rewards and punishments; but other religions cannot tell us of a dying Saviour:
they cannot show us the cross. This is the crown and glory of the Gospel; this is
that special comfort which belongs to it alone. Miserable indeed is that religious
teaching which calls itself Christian, and yet contains nothing of the cross. A man
who teaches in this way might as well profess to explain the solar system, and
yet tell his hearers nothing about the sun.

Crucifixion was probably the most horrible form of capital

punishment ever devised by man. The ancient Persians practiced it 4 for
example, when Darius, a Persian ruler, conquered Babylon (the second
conquest), he had three thousand leading citizens crucified 5. Later
crucifixion became a mode of Greek execution 6. Following the
destruction of Tyre, Alexander the Great crucified two thousand men of
military age
4 ca. 522 B.C.;
5 Herodotus, The Histories 3.159
6 Rollin 1857, 526