The White Crucifixion and the Radical New of the Resurrection

Abstract

This paper offers a hermeneutic-theological reading of Marc Chagall’s White Crucifixion (1938) as a visual meditation on the paradox of the Cross and the Resurrection – the inseparability of suffering and transfiguration. Painted in the aftermath of Kristallnacht, Chagall’s luminous white Christ, draped in a tallit, stands amid burning synagogues, fleeing exiles, and the devastation of Jewish life. Through this audacious fusion of Jewish and Christian symbols, the painting becomes a theologia crucis of endurance (ὑπομονή), lament, and hope. The paper interprets the Crucifixion not as defeat but as divine μαρτυρία – witness to a love that abides (μένειν) within history’s darkest hour. Drawing on the theological insights of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the phenomenology of revelation in Heidegger and Gadamer, and the symbolic grammar of color, the analysis shows how Chagall’s white radiance anticipates the “radical new” of the Resurrection: not as reversal but as unveiling (ἀλήθεια) within brokenness. The study concludes that White Crucifixion is both an artistic midrash and a Paschal icon – a space where divine presence dwells in absence, where black and white become the grammar of faith, and where hope, transfigured by waiting, becomes the practice of resurrection.