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- Herausgeber: IVP Academic
- Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
- Sprache: Englisch
"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" How should a Christian interpret this passage? What implications does the cross have for the trinitarian theology? Did the Father kill the Son? Theologian Thomas McCall presents a trinitarian reading of Christ's darkest moment--the moment of his prayer to his heavenly Father from the cross. McCall revisits the biblical texts and surveys the various interpretations of Jesus' cry, ranging from early church theologians to the Reformation to contemporary theologians. Along the way, he explains the terms of the scholarly debate and clearly marks out what he believes to be the historically orthodox point of view. By approaching the Son's cry to the Father as an event in the life of the Triune God, Forsaken seeks to recover the true poignancy of the orthodox perspective on the cross.
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To Cole, Josiah, Madelyn and Isaac—
because the holy love of the triune God
is far better than we dare dream and hope,
and because the gospel is for you.
Contents
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my students (from whom I learn so much), especially those in the spring 2010 installment of “Christology: Classical Formulations and Contemporary Issues”: Jerry Bimber, David Feiser, James Gordon, Taylor Jackson, Kevin Johnson, Jung Kook Kim, Hanyoung Kwak, Bing Nieh, Tekletsadik Belachew Nigru, Scott Swingle and Whionho Yi. I also thank David Luy and Gary Deddo for their insights. I am grateful to Trinity Evangelical Divinity School for a sabbatical in the fall of 2010, and to the audiences at Seoul Theological University and The Orchard Evangelical Free Church.
Introduction
Christians believe that there is exactly one God. But Christians also believe—and this is what makes Christian belief distinctively Christian—that this God is three persons. Surely this is mysterious, but there is more: Christians also believe that one of these divine persons, without ceasing to be fully divine, became fully and completely human as Jesus of Nazareth. They believe that he “suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried,” and further that he rose again from death. They hold these truths dearly, for without them there simply is no Christian faith.
But Christians also read Scripture, and there they encounter the piercing and haunting cry of Jesus from the cross: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Naturally, important questions arise: Did God forsake Jesus? Did the Father turn his back on the Son in rage? Was the Trinity ruptured or broken on that day? Did the death of Jesus somehow make it possible for God to love me? Why did Jesus die? Did his death accomplish anything? Or was it merely a senseless act of brutality, a meaningless tragedy?
Many people, including devout Christians, sometimes feel as though God has forsaken them. Does God forsake those who are dearest to him? Does God do so because of sin? Must God do so because of sin? Is Jesus for us, on our side, protecting us from God? Again, how exactly are we to understand what happened on the cross of Christ? What does it say about the relation of Jesus to his Father, and about our relation to the Father and the Son? And how does all this matter?
The chapters in this book are organized around such questions. In chapter one, I address the question, was the Trinity broken? looking closely at Jesus’ cry of dereliction and contrasting the understanding of the cry, very common in contemporary exegesis and theology, that the Trinity was somehow “broken” in that moment, with more classical Christian interpretations. I make a case for the traditional view. In chapter two, I ask if the death of Jesus makes it possible for God to love us, and here I explore the relation of divine wrath to the love of God. In chapter three, I ask if the death of Jesus was a meaningless tragedy, and here I show that God has provided the remedy for our sin in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Finally, in chapter four, I show that the doctrine of the Trinity makes a massive difference in the Christian life: persons joined in union with Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit face no condemnation, no defeat and no despair.
I make no claims here either to originality or comprehensiveness. I do not have the last word on any of these matters, nor am I confident that full and complete answers are within my reach. Nevertheless, I believe God has revealed enough of himself and his actions that we can hold some things very dear and close while also avoiding some misleading, problematic and potentially damaging conclusions. I write not for other scholars (although I will be grateful if some benefit from what I say) but for pastors, students and friends—indeed, for anyone genuinely interested in moving toward a deeper understanding of God’s being and actions.1 I write from the conviction that the Christian conception of God is true, and that it matters more than we can say.
1Was the Trinity Broken?The Father, the Son and Their Cross
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” The question shocks us—so much so that it may seem wrong-headed from the start. Those of us who believe in the faithfulness and justice of God might be tempted to think that whoever asks such a question is fundamentally mistaken, and indeed that the question itself demonstrates a flawed understanding of God. “Don’t you know? God doesn’t forsake anyone! You must have forsaken God.” Such a question surely comes from someone who has been unfaithful—and who now blames God for their abandonment. Otherwise, the only possible explanation must be that this question comes from a truly pious—though mistaken—person who just feels abandoned; it is only the honest cry of someone who believes that she has been forsaken.
But this question, of course, does not come from someone who has been unfaithful. It does not come from a pious person who simply isn’t theologically astute enough to know better. It comes from the lips of none other than Jesus Christ. It comes from the only one who has been utterly faithful. It comes from the one of whom the Father said, “This is my beloved son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased” (Mt 3:17). It comes from the one who is the eternal Logos (Jn 1:1), the second person of the Trinity. So these words ring out like a thunderbolt. My God, my God. Why have you forsaken me? Why? Why have you forsaken me? Why have you forsaken me? Why have you forsaken me?
Many devout Christians understand this as nothing less than a scream of total desperation, and they do not hesitate to take this cry as anything less than an expression of a complete and total rupture in the life of the triune God. It is very common, especially among conservative evangelical Christians who strongly defend the necessity and sufficiency of Christ’s atoning work, to hear statements such as the following.
The Father rejected the Son.
As he exhausted his wrath upon the Son, the Father completely abandoned the Son.
The Father hid his face from the Son.
Jesus “became sin.” Therefore the Father’s wrath was poured out on Jesus.
The Father turned away from the Son.
The physical pain Christ suffered in his passion was nothing in comparison to the spiritual and relational pain that Christ endured as he was separated from his Father.
God cursed Jesus with damnation.
The eternal communion between the Father and the Son was ruptured on that fateful day.
The Trinity was broken.
Many preachers—especially in the sermons of those who believe that Jesus Christ was our substitute in the sense that he paid the penalty for our sins—make such solemn pronouncements. But such claims raise some interesting, and very important, questions. Is such a view of Christ’s abandonment really necessary for a robust view of the gospel? Is it even consistent with the good news? Jesus seems to be quoting from Psalm 22, which begins with apparent despair but ends in confidence and hope: could this be important? Must we say that the Father-Son relationship was ruptured? Indeed, can we even say that the Trinity was broken—or are there troubling implications of such a claim? In what follows we explore some of these issues. We look first at how a few representative theologians and exegetes (from across the theological spectrum) understand this cry as a rupture within the Trinity, and then we contrast this common understanding with some representative examples from the early church. This contrast will enable us to take a closer look at the cry itself and to come to a better understanding of it.
DERELICTION IN MODERN CHRISTIAN THOUGHT
Despite some differences in nuance among them, many contemporary theologians share an understanding of the cry of dereliction, very common in contemporary Christian thought, that the cross of Christ represents a rupture within the Trinity. A few representative examples make this plain.
Contemporary theology: Some examples. Jürgen Moltmann, according to one scholar “probably the most widely known and popular contemporary Protestant theologian,”1 is also possibly the “best-known expositor” of the twentieth-century revival of trinitarian theology.2 His view of the cry of dereliction has exerted massive influence in contemporary theology. He insists that all truly Christian theology must grapple with this haunting question. Indeed, it is the starting point of all truly Christian theology: “All Christian theology and life is basically an answer to the question which Jesus asked as he died. . . . Either Jesus who was abandoned by God is the end of all theology or he is the beginning of a specifically Christian, and therefore critical and liberating, theology and life.”3 Moltmann does not only mean that we should understand our plight as sinners and our hope of salvation in light of the cross of Christ (although he means this too), but he also insists that we must understand God in light of the cross. The cross—more particularly Jesus’ scream of abandonment from the cross—is decisive for our understanding of God as well, for “to take up the theology of the cross today is to go beyond the limits of the doctrine of salvation and to inquire into the revolution needed in the concept of God.”4
Moltmann’s working principle is that we can only truly understand something in contrast to its opposite.5 This principle means that “God is only revealed as ‘God’ in his opposite: godlessness and abandonment by God. In concrete terms, God is revealed in the cross of Christ who was abandoned by God. . . . The deity of God is revealed in the paradox of the cross.”6 He explicitly connects Jesus’ experience of abandonment on the cross with the proper understanding of God: the cross shatters the utterly unique and unparalleled communion shared between Father and Son. He insists that the level of abandonment is directly proportional to the previous level of trust and love, and he dismisses the idea that Jesus only felt abandoned. Thus he concludes that “just as there was a unique fellowship with God in his life and preaching, so in his death there was a unique abandonment by God.”7
According to Moltmann we cannot overemphasize the degree of abandonment Jesus suffered at the hands of his Father. The rejection of Jesus must be understood “as something which took place between God and God. The abandonment on the cross which separates the Son from the Father is something which takes place within God himself; it is stasis within God—‘God against God’—particularly if we are to maintain that Jesus bore witness to and lived out the truth of God.”8 Make no mistake: Moltmann is here describing nothing less than “enmity between God and God”—and it is “enmity to the utmost degree.”9 He interprets Paul’s statement that Jesus became “sin for us” (2 Cor 5:21) in a directly literal way (rather than as a “sin offering”), and he takes Paul’s teaching that Jesus was cursed (Gal 3:13) to mean that the Son was cursed by the Father.10 Moltmann explains what this means for his theology.
In the forsakenness of the Son the Father also forsakes himself. In the surrender of the Son the Father also surrenders himself, though not in the same way. . . . The Fatherlessness of the Son is matched by the Sonlessness of the Father, and if God has constituted himself as the Father of Jesus Christ, then he also suffers the death of his Fatherhood in the death of his Son.11
Moltmann goes even further. Not only is the Father-Son relation broken as Jesus is abandoned by the Father—the Father-Son relation must be broken for God really to be God. In other words, God’s very identity is constituted by this event (along with the resurrection), which means that without us—without our sin and the abandonment that it occasions—God would not be God. As Moltmann puts it, “A trinitarian theology of the cross perceives God in the negative element and therefore the negative element in God, and in this dialectical way is panentheistic.”12
Moltmann’s understanding of the cry of dereliction should be clear. It refers to the utter, total, complete separation between Jesus and his Father. For “when God becomes man in Jesus of Nazareth, he not only enters into the finitude of man, but in his death on the cross also enters into the situation of man’s godforsakenness. In Jesus he does not die the natural death of a finite being, but the violent death of a criminal on the cross, the death of complete abandonment by God. The suffering in the passion of Christ is abandonment, rejection by God, his Father.”13 So for Moltmann, we dare not take the cry of dereliction as anything less than full and complete rejection of the Son by the Father. The forsakenness of the Son by the Father is what makes the gospel really good news. Indeed, the forsakenness of the Son by the Father is what makes God God.
Moltmann has made a massive impact on modern and contemporary theology, but he is certainly not alone. His views are representative of many theologians. As another example, consider this statement of Alan Lewis: “God’s very being as trinitarian community has on Easter Saturday been delivered up to contradiction and falsification; the Godness of the Father who gave up his only Son; the Godness of the Son who gave himself away; the Godness of the Spirit who, it seems, allowed death to sever the divine fellowship’s eternal bonds of unity.”14 Note what Lewis claims here: not only that the Father sent the Son into the world and “delivered him up” (see Rom 8:32) for the sake of the guilty sinners, but nothing less than this: God’s own being “as trinitarian community” has been broken and “the eternal bonds of unity” severed. This is truly a radical doctrine, one with far-reaching consequences.
Contemporary biblical commentary: A gallery. Given, first, biblical scholars’ commonly stated commitment not to go beyond what is explicit in the text and, second, their general aversion to speculative theology, we might expect more caution from them in their conclusions. And, indeed, some commentators are quite cautious. Robert Stein says of Mark’s Passion Narrative that “Mark does not give us any explanation” of what is going on here.15 He insists that we should understand this cry of dereliction in light of Paul’s teaching on salvation, and when he says “Pauline soteriology” he evidently means a particular aspect of Paul’s doctrine of salvation, for he highlights only the importance of Romans 3:24-25; 2 Corinthians 5:21; and Galatians 3:13. So we are to understand the cry of abandonment in terms of Jesus’ becoming a sin offering and taking the curse of death as the punishment of sin. And yet, Stein insists, “Jesus’s cry is not one of total despair, for he quotes Ps. 22:1.”16
R. T. France says that Mark’s account creates a “mind-stretching antinomy, which Mark leaves unresolved for his readers to work at.”17 He cautions against concluding too much from Psalm 22, for to read “into these few tortured words an exegesis of the whole psalm is to turn upside down the effect which Mark has created by this powerful and enigmatic cry of agony.”18 He warns that interpreting this text by appeal to 2 Corinthians 5:21 or Galatians 3:13 “goes far beyond” anything in Mark’s account itself, and he concludes that “a commentary on Mark is not the place to debate how this sense of abandonment fits into the christology and trinitarianism of later Christian orthodoxy.”19
Craig Evans thinks that “perhaps Jesus did have the whole of the psalm in mind . . . but the reality of his sense of abandonment must not be minimized.”20 He concludes that “Jesus has not lost his faith in God, [but rather] feels utterly abandoned.”21
D. A. Carson insists that Jesus in Matthew’s account “does trust in God. . . . Jesus does trust his heavenly Father. But that means that his cry of desolation cannot be read as evidence that he does not trust his heavenly Father.”22 He also refers to the Father’s “judicial frown,” and he says that “we hover” at “the edge of the mystery of the Trinity.”23
But many New Testament commentators (including some who are excellent scholars) do not exercise such restraint, and they insist on very bold conclusions. James Edwards concludes that “Jesus is wholly forsaken and exposed to the horror of humanity’s sin”; this is a “horror so total that in his dying breath he senses his separation from God.”24 Ronald Kernhagen says that “it is impossible for us to comprehend the sense of abandonment that Jesus felt.”25 He insists that “the cry of despair was authentic, and it came from a kind of pain that no other human being can understand.”26 This is because “God had turned away” from Jesus.27 Commenting on Matthew, France says that these are words of “unqualified desolation.” To read all of Psalm 22 into these words of Jesus is to “read a lot between the lines”; instead, we should conclude that there was a “temporary loss of contact” between Father and Son.28 Alan Culpepper goes further: “The abandonment reflects an enmity between God and God that ‘requires a revolution in the concept of God.’”29 William Lane speaks of a “full alienation from God” and says that Jesus was “cut off from his Father.”30 Craig Blomberg also rejects the idea that this is a shorthand reference to Psalm 22: “the view that Jesus’ quotation of Ps 22 anticipates the vindication found in the larger context of the psalm stresses what does not appear in the text at the expense of what does” appear. He concludes that this text shows us nothing less than “spiritual separation” of Jesus from his Father—what we have here is an “abrupt loss of communion with the Father.”31 He warns that “readers of the Gospels who cannot accept this concept probably reflect an unwitting Docetism—the heresy that Christ was not fully human.”32 Leon Morris thinks that “for some modern readers the words are so shocking and so different from anything Jesus said . . . that they feel it is impossible to accept them.”33 But he insists that we must accept them for what they are—and the cry indicates nothing less than a broken relationship between the Father and the Son. He rejects appeal to Psalm 22 at this point, but he is more radical in this than many other commentators. While other scholars think it is mistaken to read all of Psalm 22 into this cry, Morris doubts that Jesus intended any reference to Psalm 22: “He may not have been quoting at all,” and at any rate it is “perilous to argue from the use of one verse that Jesus was quoting the whole psalm.”34 Morris explains this text with reference to Habakkuk 1:13: “Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.” Since he takes 2 Corinthians 5:21 to mean that Jesus Christ really was “made sin” for us, he concludes that the Father must have turned away from and utterly rejected the Son. “It seems that in the working out of salvation for sinners the hitherto unbroken communion between the Father and the Son was mysteriously broken. It surely is better to accept this, knowing that we do not understand it fully, than to attempt some rationalization of the saying so that it becomes more palatable to the prejudices of modern Westerners.”35 Quoting Moltmann as authoritative, he concludes: “Not until we understand this abandonment by God and Father . . . can we understand what was distinctive about his death. Just as there was a unique fellowship with God in his life and preaching, so in his death there was a unique abandonment.”36
We can summarize much of this recent theology as follows: Jesus cries out in despair because God has forsaken him completely. God has turned away from Jesus because Jesus has “become sin” and now bears the wrath of the Father. Jesus has been cursed by his Father. The eternal communion between the Father and the Son has now been broken. We now see “God against God.” And amazingly, it is this event that defines God, that gives the triune God his own being and life.
DERELICTION IN THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION
Some consider the foregoing account—we’ll call it the “broken-Trinity” theology—to be the old-fashioned or traditional theology. But even a brief look at what some of the fathers and doctors of the church have said about this text shows something else.
Patristic theologians. First we look to the early church, to the theologians who articulated the orthodox understanding of Christ and the doctrine of the Trinity. By way of example, the fourth-century theologian Athanasius explained Christ’s cry of abandonment as identification with our human affections. In the incarnation, the Son “receives them from us and offers them to the Father, interceding for us, that in him they might be annulled.”37 Ambrose, also in the fourth century, takes a similar line: “He speaks, bearing with him my terrors, for when we are in the midst of dangers we think ourselves abandoned by God.”38 So we are not to conclude that Jesus is himself abandoned—Jesus says these things only to identify with us. He represents us, and he knows that sometimes we feel as though we are abandoned by God. As our substitute, Jesus takes our affections—in all of their marred and distrustful expressions—and offers them to God on our behalf.
But what about 2 Corinthians 5:21 and Galatians 3:13? Did not Jesus become sin and thereby become odious to God? Was not Jesus damned by God? Gregory of Nazianzus deals with these texts directly, and he denies that the eternal and holy second person of the Trinity became sin. Instead, he insists, what Christ became was a sin offering, an offering for sin (a reading that is entirely consistent with the biblical text itself, one that is even indicated in marginal readings). It was “not that the Lord was transformed into either of these [sin or a curse], how could he be?” For Gregory it is simply inconceivable—literally nonsensical and thus unthinkable—to suppose that the divine Son, who is eternally and necessarily holy, could literally become sin or a curse. So what are we to make of these important texts? Gregory is clear again: Christ represents us. “But because by taking them upon Him He took away our sins and bore our iniquities.”39 Cyril of Alexandria, in the fifth century, agrees with this line of thought: we are to understand 2 Corinthians 5:21 as indicative of the fact that Jesus Christ was “counted among the lawless.”40 So when we hear Jesus’ cry of dereliction, Cyril insists, we should not think in terms of a broken and forsaken man.41 Rather we are to “understand that in becoming man, the Only Begotten spoke these words as one of us and on behalf of all our nature. It was as if he were saying this: ‘the first man transgressed. He slipped into disobedience. . . . But you Lord have made me a second beginning for all on the earth, and I am called the Second Adam. In me you see the nature of man made clean, its faults corrected, made holy and pure.’”42
The work of John of Damascus, who lived in the seventh and eighth centuries, often serves as sort of a summary of mature patristic theology, and this is true with respect to the cry of dereliction. His view of the matter is straightforward: “Neither as God nor as man was he ever forsaken by the Father, nor did he become sin or a curse, nor did he require to be made subject to the Father. For as God he is equal to the Father and not opposed to him or subjected to him.” Because Jesus Christ is the fully divine Son, the second person of the Holy Trinity, it is, strictly speaking, inconceivable that he could be divided from or opposed to his Father. What are we, then, to make of the statement? We are to understand it as his identification with us and our sin: “Ranking himself with us, he used these words.” For it is we who are “bound in the fetters of sin and the curse as faithless and disobedient, and therefore forsaken.”43 Rather than being forsaken himself, Jesus Christ identifies with those who are forsaken—with us—and in so doing bridges the gap over our forsakenness and rescues us from the curse of sin.
Medieval theologians. To Christians accustomed to the broken-Trinity view, these important theologians might sound unconvincing and perhaps even evasive. John of Damascus simply denies that Jesus Christ was forsaken by God. So what are we to make of the statement of Jesus himself? It surely sounds like Jesus was forsaken by God. Who are we to deny what is so obvious from Scripture?44 Theologians in the medieval era reflected further on this issue, and they offer further clarification.
Peter Lombard wrestles with this cry of Jesus. He has absolutely no room for anything that even remotely resembles a broken-Trinity view. But he is also wary of several other possible options. Importantly, he insists that the cry of dereliction not be understood as signaling God’s abandonment of humanity. He denies that God rejected the humanity of Christ on several grounds. His first objection is christological: “God had not departed from the man in such a way as to dissolve the union of God and man, otherwise there would have been a time when Christ, who was still alive, was man and not God, for he was still alive when he called.”45 This would be a clear case of the ancient heresy known as Nestorianism, for it would entail the problematic conclusion that the incarnation was a man (rather than human nature) joined with God, and it would result in the independent existence of the man Jesus Christ apart from his divine nature. Lombard’s second objection is soteriological: God’s rejection of Christ’s humanity would have terrible implications for our salvation. On this view God would become incarnate and would sojourn with human sinners, teaching and healing and ministering and challenging and inviting and warning. And then—right at the point of greatest need, right at the point where humanity is most desperate for salvation—God abandons humanity. Lombard rightly has nothing but scathing criticism for such a view.
So Lombard, as a believer in the orthodox Christian doctrine of the Trinity, will have nothing to do with any kind of broken-Trinity view. It simply is not an option for him. Nor will he entertain the possibility that God abandoned the humanity of Christ. So what are we to make of the cry of dereliction, for Lombard? His answer is simple and straightforward: the Father abandoned the Son to this death, at the hands of these sinful people, on this cross. “So let us profess that God abandoned that man to death in some way, because for a time he exposed him to the power of his persecutors; God did not defend him by displaying his power so that he would not die. The Godhead severed itself because it took away its protection, but did not dissolve the union; it separated outwardly so that it was not there to defend him, but it was not absent inwardly in regard to the union” between Father, Son and Holy Spirit.46
Thomas Aquinas takes a similar approach. Given his understanding of the nature of the triune God, any kind of broken-Trinity view is not possible. Nor is the “abandonment-of-humanity” view viable for him. As he puts it, “Since, then, there was no sin in Christ, it was impossible for the union of the Godhead with the flesh to be dissolved.”47 Again, Aquinas tells us what we are not to conclude about the cry of dereliction. But what are we to make of it? His answer echoes that of Lombard (and Augustine): God forsakes him “by not shielding him from the passion, but abandoning him to his persecutors.”48
When it comes to the doctrines of the Trinity and the person of Christ, there are many differences of opinion among the theologians of the early church and the middle ages. Even within the bounds of creedal orthodoxy, there are those who, for instance, think that the human nature of Christ is “abstract,” and there are others who think that it is “concrete.” Among those who think that it is concrete, some employ “part-whole” strategies for resolving difficulties related to the two natures of Christ, and some prefer “subject-accident” strategies.49 Despite these differences, however, there is considerable agreement—from patristic to medieval and from Greek to Latin theologians—as to what we should and should not conclude about the cry of dereliction. We should not understand it to mean any abandonment of the humanity that Christ came to take on himself and to save. And we should not understand it to mean that the communion between the Father and the Son was disrupted or that the Trinity was in any way “broken.” We should, however, take the cry of dereliction as a powerful expression of the identification of the Son of God with us and our predicament. And we should understand it to mean that what the Father abandoned the Son to was death at the hands of sinful people. So while the abandonment is real, it in no way implies a loss of contact or relationship between the Father and the Son.
Protestant theologians. John Calvin rejects the view (held by some predecessors, as we have seen) that Christ was only giving expression to the opinions of others and only venting their feelings as their representative when he uttered this awful cry. And yet for Calvin, though Christ stands in for us as our representative, he is not “swallowed up” by death.50 Thus Calvin insists that “we do not, however, insinuate that God was ever hostile to him or angry with him. How could he be angry with his beloved Son, with whom his soul was well pleased? Or how could he have appeased his Father by his intercession for others if He were hostile to himself?”51 So how are we to understand this cry? “But this we say, that he bore the weight of the divine anger, that, being smitten and afflicted, he experienced all the signs of an angry and avenging God.”52 Christ felt, “as it were, forsaken of God,” but “he did not cease in the slightest degree to confide in his goodness.”53
The post-Reformation scholastic theologian Francis Turretin takes a view in many important respects similar to Calvin’s. He denies that Christ enjoyed the beatific vision, and he is certain that the sufferings of Christ were not merely physical or outward but also internal and spiritual.54 But he also denies that the desertion of Christ was “absolute, total, and eternal.”55 In even the darkest moment of his passion, the Son did not lose “communion and protection because God was always at his right hand (Ps. 110:5), nor was he left alone (John 16:32).”56 The forsakenness Jesus experienced was, then, at most only a loss of the intimate sense of his Father’s power and presence. It was a “withdrawal of vision, not as to a dissolution of union; as to the want of the sense of the divine love”—but “not as to a real privation or extinction of it.”57
So on one hand we have a view—very common in contemporary Christian thinking—according to which the Father is against the Son; the relationship of mutual communion, love, and trust between the Father and Son is ruptured; and the Trinity is broken. On this view, the Father turns his face away from and utterly rejects the Son. This utter rejection, these contemporary theologians tell us, is good news. On the other hand, we have something very different; the deeply traditional view is this: the Father forsook the Son to this death, and he did so for us and our salvation. But even so, the communion of Father and Son is unbroken. And this too, the tradition tells us, is good news.
READING AGAIN
What are we to make of such contrasting views? Given the centrality of this cry to the gospel and its importance for a proper understanding of the nature of God, I suggest that we revisit the biblical texts and think through the broader theological implications.
Starting with the text.
