The Cry of Dereliction in Scripture (Croall Lecture #5)

Lecture 5: The Cry of Dereliction: The Death of Christ In Eschatological Perspective

Bruce L. McCormack (Princeton Theological Seminary) continued his 2011 Croall Lectures series this past Tuesday with the fifth of a series of six lectures on the doctrine of the atonement, cast in terms of the abandonment of the Son by God the Father.  This theme of death in God-abandonment has been pressed in various ways by Karl Barth, Hans Urs von Balthasar, and Jürgen Moltmann.  In turning to Scripture, the theme comes to a head in the "cry of dereliction" uttered by Jesus from the cross: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34; Matt. 27:46)

Interpreters have long noted that Jesus appears to here be quoting Psalm 22:1, in which the psalmist first laments the apparent absence of God before going on to note that God is truly present and has not abandoned him: "For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help."  Many have argued that the cry from the cross must be read as a citation of the whole of Psalm 22 in nuce -- that Jesus was uttering a cry of confident faith (and would have been understood as doing so) and not implying any sort of separation between God the Father and the Son.  Because later dogmatics insist that the two are co-essential persons of the one Godhead, such a division would surely be unthinkable.

This is precisely the problem to which McCormack has turned his attention, not only in the fifth lecture but in the series as a whole -- indeed, in a career of scholarship in the overlapping fields of Trinity, Christology, and the thought of Karl Barth.  McCormack rightly criticizes the Psalm 22 interpretation as moving too quickly away from the darkness and difficulties of what is happening to Jesus in his death under sin and judgment.  Even the later gospels of Luke and John, he suggests, seem to be doing the same: Luke's Jesus is serene on the cross, his final words are "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (Luke 23:46).  John's Jesus ends the crucifixion scene by committing his mother to the care of his disciple, and utters with his final breath: "It is finished."

An ancient house of worship on the Royal
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Have Luke (who certainly had Mark as one of his sources) and John, too, smoothed over the scandal of the Markan Jesus' cry of dereliction?   Is there something of theological value to be found in the suggestion that Jesus was saying just what he said, and meaning just as it strikes our ears -- that His Father had abandoned him to death?  McCormack's aim is not so much to prioritize Mark and Matthew over the other canonical gospels (as some of the Q&A intimated) but to treat the cry on its own terms, in order not to "attenuate its crudeness" with another theological point of view.

McCormack begins by noting all of the statements of Jesus from the cross attested in the four gospels, and takes a first look at Mark and Matthew.  Both have but one word from the cross (the cry of dereliction), followed by Jesus' loud cry or groan as he expires.  Nothing else is said here to qualify what has been said.  If we deal with the cry seriously, without trying to explain it away, McCormack says, we must face the fact that Mark and Matthew seem to want to say that God remained silent when called upon.  Jesus' subsequent death demonstrate that the joy of the rest of Psalm 22 is indeed a subject for contrast: unlike with the psalmist, here God does not intervene.  Jesus does not live to worship God before His people.  It must therefore be Jesus' death that interprets the cry, and not the psalm.

Turning to the eschatological aspects of Jesus' death, McCormack suggests that Jesus fears not death itself but the eschatological tribulation that is sure to accompany it.  Did Jesus merely feel abandoned, or was this the actual condition of things?  A reading which considers Jesus as having taken on sin and having become a curse favors the latter.  Surely what is going on here on the cross, says McCormack, is not a cosmic battle where the Father and Son remain on the same side of conflict, but the judgment of sin and the judgment of sinners.  If Christ has taken our place to die this death as the object of divine wrath, the cry of dereliction is an important indicator of the work being done.  The Father abandons the Son as a rejection and condemnation of sin, withdrawing His sustaining power so that the Son may pass through the fires of death. (This, at least, is my interpretation.)

A large, stone slab in Edinburgh bears memorial to
the many "martyrs and covenanters" who died on
this spot while contending for their faith.

McCormack turned from a brief consideration of the prayer and arrest of Jesus in the garden at Gethsemane to a look at His next destination: the meaning of "hell" (Gehenna).  He traced the development of the imagery from the Old Testament and Jewish apocalyptic literature to religious practices near ancient Jerusalem, through the intertestamental period, and to the 12 uses of "Gehenna" in the New Testament (11 of which are from the mouth of Jesus in the Synoptic gospels).  These are very vivid word pictures, where fire is an illustration of testing for His disciples.  Fire is not just an image of eschatological judgment or torment, but something that must be passed through.  Perhaps in this sense it is God Himself who is this fire (cf. Heb. 12:29).

It's not easy to know what to do with these images for dogmatic theology, McCormack observed.  Dogmatics as a discipline of the church asks not what the prophets and apostles say, but what we must say in the light of it.  We see that "hell" is the language of eternal punishment (differing from "Hades," a sort of underworld and holding area for the dead).  And we see that punishment consists especially in separation: God's condemnation is, at bottom, in the statement "Depart from me" (Matt. 25:41).

This suggests that the outpouring of divine wrath has the character of a judicial sentence.  A second look at Mark and Matthew, then, suggests that if the Holy Spirit is the one who mediates the presence of the Father to Jesus, then the gradual withdrawal of the Spirit during the Passion (culminating in Jesus "giving up His spirit" at the moment of death) is a loss of communion with the Father.  This is where I find McCormack most original and provocative in this lecture, and I am eager to further explore his developing christological pneumatology.

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Croall Lectures: Series Index
Lecture 1: The 'Perils' of Penal Substitution
Lecture 2: The Incarnation As Saving Event
Lecture 2.1: T.F. Torrance and the Atonement
Lecture 3: 'Let Justice and Peace Reign'
Lecture 4: 'After Metaphysics'

Lecture 5: The Cry of Dereliction in Scripture

Lecture 6: 'The Lord of Glory Was Crucified' (Part 1)