Bryan Cross Spouts Nonsense

Over at Green Baggins, in the discussions on Christology, Bryan Cross (#25) posits a faulty thesis when he asks, “if Christ suffered in His human nature, but is impassible in His divine nature, this doesn’t fit with the notion that on Good Friday, “the ancient, eternal fellowship between Father and Son was broken”…That’s because in His divine nature, Christ enjoys the perfect happiness of eternal communion with the Father and Spirit.

Bryan posits another faulty notion (#36) as he asks:

given Chalcedonian Christology, and this conception of propitiation by the exhaustion of divine punishment for sins on a substitute victim, then to whom were our sins imputed, and who bore the Father’s wrath? It has to be a who; it cannot be a mere nature. So it has to be the Logos. But this only raises further difficulties. If the sin was imputed to the Logos without qualification, then the break in communion between the Father and the Logos during the crucifixion entails that God is passible even in His divine nature, as I explained in #25. The rejoinder is that sin was imputed to the Logos only according to His human nature. But, even so, it is still the Logos, not a human nature, who becomes guilty. And therefore the wrath of the Father cannot be directed only to a human nature, but must be directed to His own Logos. So this rejoinder doesn’t resolve the problem of a breakdown in intra-Trinitarian communion, or preserve divine impassibility.

In the first place, “impassibility” as Bryan posits it requires a good deal of qualification, and his implied definition is more in line with that given by Clark Pinnock and the “neotheists”, who are “notorious for incorrectly explaining the meaning of such terms as … impassible” (see the discussion of impassibility here).

Responding to the question of “does God suffer?”, John Frame notes in his, “The Doctrine of God”:

is there any sense in which God suffers injury or loss? Certainly Jesus suffered injury and loss on the cross. And I agree with Moltmann that Christ’s sufferings are the sufferings of God. The Council of Chalcedon (451) … said that Jesus has two complete natures, divine and human, united in one person. We may say that Jesus suffered and died on the cross “according to his human nature,” but what suffered was not a “nature,” but the person of Jesus. And the person of Jesus is nothing less than the second person of the Trinity, who has taken to himself a human nature. His experiences as a man are truly his experiences, the experiences of God.

Are these the experiences of only the Son, and not of the Father? The persons of the Trinity are not divided; rather, the Son is in the Father, and the Father is in the Son (John 10:38; 14:10-11, 20; 17:21)…

However, the Father does not have exactly the same experiences of suffering and death that the Son has. Although they dwell in one another, the Father and the Son play different roles in the history of redemption. The Son was baptized by John; the Father was the voice from heaven at his baptism. The Son was crucified; the Father was not. Indeed, during the Crucifixion, the Father forsook the Son as he bore the sins of his people (Matt 27:46; see my discussion of Mark 15:33-34 below).

Was the Father, nevertheless, still “in” the Son at that moment of separation? What exactly does it mean for the Father to be “in” the Son when he addressed the Son from heaven? These are difficult questions, and I have not heard any persuasive answers to them. But we must do justice to both the continuity and the discontinuity between the persons of the Trinity. Certainly the Father empathized, agonized, and grieved over the death of his Son, but he did not experience death in the same way that the Son did.

Paul, in Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all—how shall he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” Here Paul states the cost of our salvation to God the Father. Surely this is loss to the Father. We cannot imagine how much. The Father did not die, but he gave up his own Son.

But God the Son did die, and of course he rose again. So in his incarnate existence, God suffered and even died—yet his death did not leave us with a godless universe. Beyond that, I think we are largely ignorant, and we should admit that ignorance (pgs 613-614).

As for his thought that somehow there might be some sort of breakdown of “intra-Trinitarian communion” with, commenting on Mark 15:33-34, the authors of “Pierced For Our Transgressions” say:

As we reflect on the terrible final moments of our Lord’s earthly life, two elements of Mark’s account call for closer scrutiny: the supernatural darkness at midday, and Jesus’ cry of dereliction, a quotation from Psalm 22:1.

On numerous occasions in the Old Testament, darkness denotes God’s wrath. This imagery is used in particular with reference to the Day of the Lord; for example, in Isaiah 13:9-11:

9 See, the day of the LORD is coming
—a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger—
to make the land desolate
and destroy the sinners within it.
10 The stars of heaven and their constellations
will not show their light.
The rising sun will be darkened
and the moon will not give its light.
11 I will punish the world for its evil,
the wicked for their sins.
I will put an end to the arrogance of the haughty
and will humble the pride of the ruthless.

(see also Joel 2:31; Amos 5:18-20; Zeph. 1:14-15)

Significantly, Mark himself quotes from these verses two chapters earlier, in Mark 13:24-25. The meaning of the darkness at the cross therefore seems unambiguous. God was angry. But angry with whom? … the juxtaposition of the darkness with Jesus’ cry of abandonment suggests that [this is the primary meaning]: God’s judgment was falling on his Son as he died as a substitute, bearing the sins of his people.

So we have exegetical reason for saying that “that the Father’s wrath and complete punishment for that sin was poured out on Christ.”

In a footnote, the authors say, “Some have attempted to evade this conclusion by suggesting that Jesus’ quote from Ps. 22:1 was not intended to describe the experience of God-forsakenness; rather his intention in speaking these words was to call to mind the whole psalm, particularly its concluding note of victory. But as Stott comments, this seems ‘far-fetched. Why should Jesus have quoted from the psalm’s beginning if in reality he was alluding to its end? … Would anybody have understood his purpose?’ (Stott, Cross of Christ, p. 81. For further discussion see pp. 78-82).”

“Others object to the idea that Jesus was forsaken by his Father because they fear this might entail a sundering of the Trinity. Certainly, care is needed here, and a theologically nuanced exposition would need to avoid suggesting that God the Father was no longer ‘there’ at Calvary (even in hell God is not absent in every sense…). Rather, the language of ‘abandonment’ or ‘forsakennes’ is a metaphorical way of referring to divine judgment.” For this also see the selection from John Frame posted in my previous comment.

Continuing with the authors:

Mark presents one final piece of evidence. On the Mount of Olives just before his arrest, Jesus predicted that his disciples would shortly desert him:

“You will all fall away,” Jesus told them, “for it is written:
“‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep will be scattered.’ (Mark 14:27)

The remarkable thing about the text in Zechariah 13:7 from which Jesus quotes is that God is the agent of the shepherd’s suffering. Jesus is categorical: the afflictions that lie ahead of him, in consequence of which his disciples will desert him, come from his Father’s hand.

Summary
The cup Jesus must drink, the darkness at noon, the cry of dereliction, and Jesus’ own prediction that he will be handed over to the Gentiles all testify that at the cross he suffers God’s wrath. Why is this? He dies as our substitute, paying the ransom price of his death for our life. Thus Mark’s Gospel teaches penal substitution (pgs 71-73).

Finally, Alan Strange in comment #38 affirms from the WLC the Reformed doctrine of Christology.

Bryan is questioning how “Chalcedonian Christology” is compatible with the Reformed doctrine of the Atonement. Roman Catholics are fond of pointing out “mystery”. Here is a genuine Scriptural mystery. And we are beholden to Scripture. Yes, God’s wrath is poured out on the person, Jesus Christ, on the cross. Yet the Trinity is not in any way “broken down”, as he suggests. Nor is there anything wrong with Reformed Christology. Rather, it is Bryan Cross’s nonsensical questions that need to be adjusted.