Did God abandon Jesus on the cross?

My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?

This saying of Jesus on the cross is referred to as his “cry of dereliction.” Dereliction, of course, means abandonment. Many Christians rightly find deep consolation in this: Jesus felt God-forsaken, as we often do. Therefore, he understands this darkness that lurks in the depth of human experience and surfaces all too often in our lives.

However, some Christians understand the cry of dereliction to be a literal description of what Jesus experienced on the cross: they would say that God actually did abandon Jesus.

I grew up in a tradition that interpreted the cross as Jesus taking on himself the punishment due all humanity for every single sin. That’s a lot. If, in fact, God is interested in punishing every sin, the amount of suffering required to satisfy that is mind-boggling. Especially if you hold, as many Christians do, that every human being who ever lived deserves to spend eternity in a hell of conscious torture. And crucifixion is bad…but can it really suffice to balance out the torment of eternal damnation?

The most reasonable response, if you want to maintain this position, is to say that Jesus’ innocence means he can satisfy the need for evil to be punished without undergoing an eternity in hell. However, the explanation I heard growing up was that Jesus literally suffered more than anyone else ever did. In three hours on the cross? Even if you added up everything he may have suffered in his entire life, I’m pretty sure many people, tragically, have suffered more. To shore up this assertion that Jesus suffered more than anyone—or rather, more than all human suffering added together—the reasoning went that he suffered separation from his Father. Again, this is something the damned suffer for all eternity, on this account; but for Jesus, it would be so much more painful because of his closeness with his Father. This magnitude of suffering would be unfathomable for us. Problem solved, right?

I don’t think so.

What that line of thought proposes is that somehow the Eternal Source, the First Person of the Holy Trinity, literally abandoned the Second Person of the Trinity. God abandoned God. I don’t see how this can make any kind of sense. In the Incarnation, the eternal divine Logos assumed humanity in what theologians call the “hypostatic union.” This is a permanent joining of the divine and human into one person. The orthodox account has been that Jesus’ divine and human natures are united, but without comingling into some “third thing” (tertium quid) that would no longer be divine or human. Rather, Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine. Granted, this is beyond our ability to fully understand. But I don’t think it allows Jesus to be abandoned by God in any meaningful sense. I just don’t think you can split the Trinity like that. “Trinity” is a word that was specifically coined to describe the Christian understanding of God as one God in three Persons. Because this is completely unique—there is no other trinity (despite the common usage of the word when “triad” is what is really meant)—it’s difficult for us to understand. But if you split the Trinity by making one Person abandon another, you now have at least two gods. (And where does the Holy Spirit fit in here?)

The idea that Jesus literally was abandoned by God the Father, I think, is read into Scripture thanks to a human need for sin to be adequately punished. It’s a punishment we demand, not God. And there’s an argument to be made, as it sometimes is, that God accepted our demand and the punishment or sacrifice of the crucifixion is not for God’s sake but for ours.

At any rate, I am not denying that Jesus felt abandoned by God. Being fully human, that feeling is quite natural—even if I have no idea what it means for the incarnate God to feel that way.

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” is the opening line of Psalm 22 (which, as a choir member, I chanted last night while the altar was stripped and cleaned as part of the Triduum liturgy). That psalm is full of imagery Christians sometimes take to be prophetic predictions of the crucifixion. That’s a matter for another blog post I will make some time on prophecy, though, so I won’t go into it here.

But while that psalm is a cry of intense suffering, it is a direct engagement with God. Even the opening line addresses God. This is an act of faith, or at least of the habit of faith: even when you feel abandoned by God, you talk to God about it. It is worth reading the Psalm all the way to the end.

Psalm 22 (from the Book of Common Prayer 1979 Psalter)

1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? *
and are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress?

2 O my God, I cry in the daytime, but you do not answer; *
by night as well, but I find no rest.

3 Yet you are the Holy One, *
enthroned upon the praises of Israel.

4 Our forefathers put their trust in you; *
they trusted, and you delivered them.

5 They cried out to you and were delivered; *
they trusted in you and were not put to shame.

6 But as for me, I am a worm and no man, *
scorned by all and despised by the people.

7 All who see me laugh me to scorn; *
they curl their lips and wag their heads, saying,

8 “He trusted in the LORD; let him deliver him; *
let him rescue him, if he delights in him.”

9 Yet you are he who took me out of the womb, *
and kept me safe upon my mother’s breast.

10 I have been entrusted to you ever since I was born; *
you were my God when I was still in my mother’s womb.

11 Be not far from me, for trouble is near, *
and there is none to help.

12 Many young bulls encircle me; *
strong bulls of Bashan surround me.

13 They open wide their jaws at me, *
like a ravening and a roaring lion.

14 I am poured out like water; all my bones are out of joint; *
my heart within my breast is melting wax.

15 My mouth is dried out like a pot-sherd;
my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth; *
and you have laid me in the dust of the grave.

16 Packs of dogs close me in, and gangs of evildoers circle around me; *
they pierce my hands and my feet; I can count all my bones.

17 They stare and gloat over me; *
they divide my garments among them; they cast lots for my clothing.

18 Be not far away, O LORD; *
you are my strength; hasten to help me.

19 Save me from the sword, *
my life from the power of the dog.

20 Save me from the lion’s mouth, *
my wretched body from the horns of wild bulls.

21 I will declare your Name to my brethren; *
in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.

22 Praise the LORD, you that fear him; *
stand in awe of him, O offspring of Israel;
all you of Jacob’s line, give glory.

23 For he does not despise nor abhor the poor in their poverty;
neither does he hide his face from them; *
but when they cry to him he hears them.

24 My praise is of him in the great assembly; *
I will perform my vows in the presence of those who worship him.

25 The poor shall eat and be satisfied,
and those who seek the LORD shall praise him: *
“May your heart live for ever!”

26 All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD, *
and all the families of the nations bow before him.

27 For kingship belongs to the LORD; *
he rules over the nations.

28 To him alone all who sleep in the earth bow down in worship; *
all who go down to the dust fall before him.

29 My soul shall live for him; my descendants shall serve him; *
they shall be known as the LORD’S for ever.

30 They shall come and make known to a people yet unborn *
the saving deeds that he has done.

Last night when we chanted that psalm, we didn’t chant every single verse of it. It would have detracted from the mood of the moment to chant all of the verses that celebrate God’s goodness. And that’s fine, for a liturgy.

In Jesus’ day, as in churches today, the psalter would have been used in worship. He would have been quite familiar with the psalms, and would have understood them as prayer.

To my mind, it is most reasonable to understand the “cry of dereliction” as an abbreviated recitation of this psalm. Whether or not Jesus said any more of the psalm, or ran through it in his mind—either of which would likely have been prohibitively difficult in the circumstances—the Evangelist didn’t tell us.

But if we’re going to read our presuppositions into the text (as we always do), I would rather apply trinitarian theology than a human (mis)understanding of justice as retribution. To my mind, Jesus is praying Psalm 22 which, ultimately, is an affirmation of faith in God.