As you can see by clicking the question below,"Did The Father Forsake Jesus On The Cross?"
Steve McVey gave a one-word answer (with commentary) to one of the million dollar questions.
Since his opinion is (surprisingly) the minority opinion, it is worth wrestling with.
And in the spirit of Ole Anthony's great article,
Truths I Couldn't Find in Church,
and the classic expose by "The Jersey Girl Among the Georgia Peaches"...
feel free to question what we learned in USAmerican Sunday School and seminary.
In a book that our churchthing started wrestling with Sunday, Tim Chester suggests
that the other and opposite one-word answer to the same question is inevitable based on the doctrine of the Trinity:
"The abandonment of Jesus by humanity is eclipsed by his abandonment by God..That God should be divided from God only makes sense if God is a trinitarian community. Only if there is some distinction within God could it ever be possible for God to be forsaken by God"
-Chester, "Delighting in the Trinity", p. 61
Hmm, strikes me that that argument could..maybe should..be used for the OTHER answer..
something Larry Mullen helps me think about:see 1:15-2:24 here in this video. The part about "It's been a long relationship, and based on some very deep things, and Bono is probably the only person in the world who could really hurt me, and I'd be able to say 'It's okay, that's fine. I can deal with it" always got me. But though the analogy doesn't quite perfectly work for teh inter-trinitarian relationship, it does enlighten.
So, weigh in with your working answer.
Even if it's a nuanced"yes and no".
Not sure I answered the question myself in my sermon called
"The Lord Be With You..,,.Even When He’s Not!"
...but I like the paradox of the title, anyway.
Shame on you Dave! You can't post on this topic and not reference Moltmann's "The Crucified God." And my answer to your question is, "Yes and no!" You might be interested to know that I did my honours dissertation on "The Holy Spirit at the Cross." It's something I intend ot go back to, because there's no way that a 12,000 word dissertation is the final word on the subject.
ReplyDeleteabsolutely..that book is incredible, as is his TRINITY AND THE KINGDOM...Thanks for the shaming!(:
ReplyDeleteand a lot of it a free read:
ReplyDeletehttp://books.google.com/books?id=fu5YdjDbaS0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=moltmann+crucified+god&hl=en&ei=WXZwTPnwCYjEsAO3wc2OCw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false