A crucifix tells a story, a cross is a symbol.

For those like me, who didn't know.

INRI is an abbreviation for the Latin phrase "Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum," which translates to "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." This inscription was placed on the cross of Jesus during his crucifixion.

Also those beads appear to be Lapis.

Lapis Lazuli holds significant Christian meaning, particularly associated with the Virgin Mary. In early Christian tradition, the stone was regarded as the "stone of the Virgin Mary," symbolizing her purity, holiness, and celestial status.

Xeno.of.athens said:

A crucifix tells the story of our Lord's sacrifice for the salvation of the world. A cross is a symbol, like a crescent moon or a star of David.

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Considering popes, cardinals, and bishops wear a cross what is the point being made?

Also as a little matter of church history, in the beginning was the Ichthys, the fish emblem, known these days as the "Jesus fish". The cross emerged in the 2nd century and then become prolific in the time of Constantine. In the late 5th century the crucifix emerged and became prolific in the 6th century.

That may be true, but I refuse to bow to a cross or any other object ... it's against God's Law.

If you are asked what is the story you give?

The crucifix and the cross are both symbols and both can tell a story. I prefer the cross because it tells the story of a triumphant Jesus who conquered death, never to die again.

“Where, O Death, is your victory? Where, O Death, is your sting?””
‭‭1 Corinthians‬ ‭15‬:‭55‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

“knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, is never to die again; death no longer is master over Him.”
‭‭Romans‬ ‭6‬:‭9‬ ‭NASB2020‬‬

Jesus said to the Father that “it is finished” including His passion and suffering. No reason to remember what has been finished. Celebrate His victory instead.

1 Cor 1:23 But we preach Christ crucified: unto the Jews indeed a stumbling block, and unto the Gentiles foolishness:

I see little good in making a competition between a crucifix and a plain cross. Both are, in their proper uses, powerful proclamations of what God has done for us. They are signs of the Holy Gospel.

Hentenza said:

Jesus said to the Father that “it is finished” including His passion and suffering. No reason to remember what has been finished. Celebrate His victory instead.

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Should we also get rid of all Biblical text before His passion?

Valletta said:

Should we also get rid of all Biblical text before His passion?

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Really? No, we should not get rid of anything biblical before or after the passion. What in my post would lead you to post that?

Hentenza said:

Really? No, we should not get rid of anything biblical before or after the passion. What in my post would lead you to post that?

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You said "No reason to remember what has been finished."

"We proclaim your Death, O Lord, and profess your Resurrection until you come again."

Crucifix, cross, empty tomb, soon coming King.

The Alpha & Omega.

I don't think it's necessarily about right or wrong but about understanding the significance of each event in Christ's redemptive work.

Valletta said:

You said "No reason to remember what has been finished."

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Because I much rather celebrate the victory and the result that the sacrifice has on the believer. Jesus did say that it was finished.

Your pope seems to like using both the Cross and Cricifix.

Xeno.of.athens said:

It’s a gracious and sensible reminder that the crucifix and the plain cross aren’t rivals but complementary witnesses to the same saving mystery, and that the evangelical suspicion of the crucifix—often rooted in fears of “Catholic excess” or of depicting Christ “still on the cross”—misses the point that the image is not a denial of the Resurrection but a proclamation of the cost of our redemption; when used rightly, both symbols draw the faithful into the Gospel, one emphasising the victory of the Risen Lord and the other the self‑giving love by which that victory was won, and it seems far healthier for Christians to receive both with humility than to turn them into markers of tribal identity.

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ViaCrucis said:

I see little good in making a competition between a crucifix and a plain cross. Both are, in their proper uses, powerful proclamations of what God has done for us. They are signs of the Holy Gospel.

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You’ll both be pleased to know that Sunday, the Third Sunday of Lent, was the Feast of the Veneration of the Cross in the Byzantine Rite, the main liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church (except for Finnish Orthodox and the 1/2 of the Estonian Orthodox on the Gregorian calendar, who celebrated it a week previously). This cross, and its September counterpart, which is celebrated in all liturgical churches and not just the Eastern Orthodox, that being the Exaltation of the Cross, are two of my favorite holy days throughout the year.

And of course people will scream “idolatry” being unaware that the hymns for both feasts are about Christ’s Passion on the Cross and not about the Holy Cross itself, although the Cross is profoundly sacred and venerable.

Additionally John Calvin famously told a whopper, by accident I suspect, but negligent accident, when he claimed there were enough supposed fragments of the True Cross to build a galleon. This is not true; while not all fragments of the Cross have an equally reliable chain of custody, many are associated with the same kind of miracles that led to the discovery of the True Cross by St. Helena, St. Constantine’s Varangian (Byzantinized Viking from Sweden) Christian mother (like St. Vladimir the Great, who converted the Rus people, a Slavic-Nordic population the cultural ancestors of the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarussians likewise was a help in his conversion; St. Augustine is another example of a Christian who was originally an adherent of a false religion, but whose mother was Christian, and who was persuaded to be Christian as a result.

Thus while it is optimal in most cases for Christian women to marry Christian men, due to the power of the maternal bond and the nuptial bond, there have been cases where conversions have happened through the women. That said I would not advise any Christian woman to marry a Muslim with the possible exception of the adherents of some Sufi sects which aren’t really conventionally Islamic at all, but rather put on an Islamic visage for purposes of dissimulation (the Alevis of the Kurds and Turks, the unrelated Alawis of Syria, the Bektasis of Turkey and Albania, and the Mevlevis or “whirling dervishes” come to mind). In all other cases, the risk of violence becomes excessive.

@Xeno.of.athens thank you also for confirming your veneration of the cross as a holy symbol, recognized as such by your own church, and venerated by all Catholics on September 14tth, the feast of the Holy Cross, and by Byzanntine Rite Catholics (such as the Melkites, Ruthenians, Italo-Albanians, Ukrainian Greek Catholics, Romanian Catholics and Russian Greek Catholics; the smallest Greek Catholic church if I recall is that of Greece) on the third Sunday of Lent (most are now on the Gregorian calendar but until recently some were on the Julian Calendar, and some might still be, I’m not sure on this point). In this respect it is different from the Crescent of Islam; the Crescent if used in a non-Islamic context is beautiful, but when used by Muslims to refer to their religion it becomes a symbol of evil. I believe that Western companies should aggressively make use of the Crescent and other symbols associated with heathenism, such as the Yin-Yang symbol (which was used historically as the logo of the Northern Pacific Railroad) in order to deprive these symbols of their religious connotations, whereas conversely, the cross should be protected, in all forms. There is a delightful number of variations of the Cross - the Latin Cross, the Saltire, St. Peter’s Cross, the Greek Cross, the St. Thomas Cross used by the Mar Thoma Christians in India, which has a sort of trefoil at each point, the Syriac Cross, the Assyrian Cross, the Jerusalem Cross and the related Coptic Cross, and many others.

Indeed Coptic Christians, at least the Orthodox and probably the Catholics (I haven’t met any Coptic Catholics but I hope to rectify this) will, when writing something on a sheet of paper, start by drawing a cross at the top.

The Crucifix likewise is a holy icon.

Byzantine crucifixes are usually two dimensional, but some are made with shallow bas-relief. Some of them are designed so that the icon of our Lord can be removed on Great and Holy Friday; additionally, there is a separate icon made on a cloth which is placed in a flowery Golgotha on Great and Holy Friday in the solemn Epitaphios service, which is a funeral for our Lord, which heightens the joy of the Paschal Divine Liturgy in the early morning on Easter Sunday; this liturgy differs from the Western Rite liturgy mainly in that while it starts out very sad, like the Western Good Friday liturgy, and the Reproaches hymn, it later takes on a triumphal tone to celebrate the victory of Christ on the Cross, which has also always been a theme.

Indeed the Paschal Triduum of the Byzantine and Latin Rites is extremely similar in the pre-1955 version, particularly with the Paschal Vigils Mass, or Vesperal Divine Liturgy of Holy Saturday as it is known in the East - this historically was in both rites, pre-1955, celebrated on the morning of Holy Saturday, and featured a large number of Old Testament readings, all prophecies of the passion and resurrection of Christ our God (likewise, a Byzantine Rite liturgy features prophecies of the Incarnation of Christ in a similar manner before Christmas). The Roman Rite version featured 12 Old Testament Lessons (and still does, for some TLM parishes have revived it) and the Byzantine Rite version featured 14; however, it was not a superset of the Latin version. The Presanctified Liturgy used by the Roman Rite on Good Friday pre-1955 is basically identical to the Presanctified Liturgy of St. Gregory that is used by all Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine Rite Catholics, and was most likely compiled by Pope St. Gregory the Great, who is one of the bishop of Rome most beloved by the Eastern Orthodox (others including St. Celestine, St. Clement, St. Damasus and of course St. Peter). In the Syriac Orthodox Church, which has a high Petrology due to it being a church of Antioch, the martyred Popes St. Julius and St. Sixtus are highly venerated and have anaphoras named in their honor, that of St. Sixtus being especially beautiful (also there is an anaphora of St. Peter which is exquisite, not to be confused with the Divine Liturgy of St. Peter, a Byzantine Rite liturgy known to have been used by Russian Old Believers among others, which uses the standard Byzantine Rite synaxis but then uses the Roman Canon as its anaphora - some Western Rite parishes have also used this liturgy, but it is originally of Byzantine origin, and attests to the love of the Roman Canon as an anaphora across Christendom; it is also structurally similar to the Ambrosian liturgy, which differs from the other Gallican liturgies such as the Mozarabic in that rather than having a highly variable Anaphora, it uses the Roman Canon, albeit coupled to a standard Gallican synaxis which always had an Old Testament lesson.

Ambrosian Chant, if you’ve never heard it, is exquisite - Ambrosian and Mozarabic Chant feel like they exist in a happy middle ground between Byzantine Chant and Gregorian Chant, and I prefer them, especially Ambrosian Chant, to both. Ambrosian Chant also exists because of St. Ambrose introducing to the Western Church Greek style antiphonal hymnody in an effort to maintain the morale of his people during the vigil they held in a basillica in Milan which St. Theodosius I, known for his enmity towards Arianism, in a rare moment of weakness had been frightened into offering to the Arians - which St. Ambrose was not having. Ultimately, this vigil was a success - the basilica remained a Christian church (like most basilicas it likely had historically been a Roman court of law and center of public administration), and whatever violence the Arians threatened did not amount to any kind of major disruption of Imperial security. This incident however remains the only real stain on the record of St. Theodosius (aside from his ill-advised decision to divide the Empire between his sons, which led to the isolation of the Western Empire and hastened its collapse, which caused much misery in Western Europe). But insofar as St. Theodosius made Christianity the official religion of the Roman Empire and banned Arianism and Paganism, destroying the Pagan temples, smashing the altar to the goddess victory, and replacing idolatry with worship of Christ our True God, the Cross triumphing over idolatry, he is worthy of veneration. Indeed its amazing and delightful to consider how many animals he saved from being sacrificed to idols of demons simply by closing the Pagan temples.

Thus, I view Christians who despite the Cross and the Crucfifix as profoundly misguided, and I view Christians who abhor St. Theodosius the same way - were it not for him, the rivers of blood would have continued to flow from Pagan temples across the Mediterranean, one of which our Lord in the Apocalypse likened to the throne of Satan (that being the Altar in Pergamon).

Another thing we can all agree on, as traditional Christians, is the importance of the Sign of the Cross as a gesture that invokes the protection of our Lord and also memorializes His passion for us - recently while visiting an LCMS parish, most members did not bat an eyelid at my crossing myself, but I had one member ask me why I did that - clearly someone poorly catechized and not of the confessional Lutherans like our friend @ViaCrucis who are called Evangelical Catholics. Likewise in Anglican parishes the sign of the cross is extremely common.

Hentenza said:

Because I much rather celebrate the victory and the result that the sacrifice has on the believer. Jesus did say that it was finished.

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On this point, we Orthodox believe he was referring to the completion of humanity, which was finished with His passion on the Cross; in his resurrected form, Christ our True God represents the fullness of humankind through His incarnation, passion and triumph over death. A very good book which explains this view was written by Fr. John Behr, who now has the job once held by Metropolitan Kallistos Ware at Oxford, and before that was the Dean of St. Vladimir’s Seminary, called Becoming Human. His view is that our salvation essentially involves becoming human in the manner God intended, by making ourselves an icon of Christ our Savior through the grace of the Holy Spirit (for we would not be able to do it on our own - that being the error of Pelagianism). He also did a superb lecture on the subject.

Even if you disagree with the Eastern theology I would suggest you might find it academically interesting. I myself like to sharpen my faith while softening my heart towards other Christians by studying other forms of Christianity in a loving manner - thus I’m able to appreciate the beauty in, for instance, Baptists, even though I have profound disagreements with them (this is also why I tend to be so ecumenically focused).

By the way, your approach to the Crucifix, while not shared by the Eastern Orthodox, is the prevailng view among many Oriental Orthodox, particularly the Syriac Orthodox, who prefer the Empty Cross for the reasons you outlined.

Thus, because both the Crucifix and the plain Cross are in use in ancient churches and have been since antiquity, and both are used extensively by the Eastern Orthodox, I regard the choice between them as a matter of what the Lutherans call adiaphora, or rather an issue of rite-specific tradition, provided one does not object to the Crucifix on iconoclastic grounds (however, most people who do that usually also object to the Cross on iconoclastic grounds; the film Cromwell begins with a very distressing scene that I find rather horrible, where the actor playing Cromwell rants about graven images before seizing a gilded cross from the altar of an Anglican church and hurling it against the wall; the film is interesting in that it largely depicts Cromwell in a negative light but concludes with a monologue praising him, for reasons that confuse me - perhaps the film’s producers feared without that, the film would alienate Protestants, although the issue there is that King Charles I was a Protestant, a high church Anglican, but a Protestant nonetheless.

It was also under Cromwell that the most violent persecution of Catholics in Europe since the Reformation that I am aware of happened, even in places such as Ireland with a Roman Catholic majority, and additionally, there were horrible outbreaks of iconoclasm which destroyed much priceless cultural heritage, and the celebration of Christmas was prohibited based on extreme Calvinist-Puritan theology. I also dislike the Westminster Confession of Faith because it originated during Cromwell’s dictatorship; I find myself wishing Calvinists would use other confessions which lack such a provenance, such as the Heidelberg Confession or the Belgic Confession (also declaring the Bishop of Rome to be the ex-officio anti-Christ is not only deeply offensive but also likely inaccurate, in that while I am not a premillenial dispensationalist, I do believe that the definitive anti-Christ is part of the Eschaton, although I also suspect the Number of the beast refers to Nero, who was the prototype of the anti-Christ in his violent persecution of Christians.