Bill,
Thank you for taking the time to answer Judy's post with such
a detailed response. Although I, too, believe that Jesus said, "My God, My
God, what have you forsaken me?" to bring Psalm 22 to the minds of those
present at the cross, and to our minds through the scriptures, the
question remains: what did the Psalmist mean by uttering that statement? How
is that statement relevant to the crucifixion of Jesus, other than being
the first line of the "song"? Does this statement apply to the Psalmist, or to
the crucified Christ? If it applies to the crucified Christ, (as does the rest
of the Psalm), then what does it mean in the context of the crucifixion? I
feel that by relegating that statement, as uttered from the cross, to a mere
memory device, we may overlook the significance of it!
Thanks,
Perry
> WT: Psalm 22.1 begins with this most haunting
cry, and both Matthew and Mark tell us that Jesus took it up when he was dying
on the cross. It is very natural for us, steeped as we are in the legal
framework of Western Evangelical thought, to see this cry of Jesus as the
supreme _expression_ of his passion. With the justice of God in the background,
Jesus takes upon himself our sin and God unleashes upon him the fury of his
eternal wrath. And in that horrible, unthinkable moment, Jesus cries out, "My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me."
>
> But is this the correct interpretation of this
verse? What if we read it as true Trinitarian Christians, with the Triune God,
not the legalized God of holy anger, in the back of our minds. Again, and I
know you know this, this cry of Jesus is a direct quotation from Psalm 22. If
we read the Psalm as a whole, we find the message does not end in despair at
all, but in Victory; in fact, it ends with the remarkable prophesy, "All the
ends of the earth will remember and turn to the Lord, and all the families of
the nations will worship before You. ... They will come and will declare His
righteousness to a people who will be born, that he has performed it"
(27&31). Between the cry and the prophecy lies the whole range of human
emotion. The first two verses are words of deep despair: "My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me? ... O my God, I cry by day but you do not answer." The
anguish of the Psalmist is heightened in that his cries are met by stone-cold
silence. But in his despair he rehearses the faith of his fathers. He goes
back to the old stories of God's faithfulness: "In you our fathers trusted;
the trusted and you delivered them. To you they cried out and were delivered.
In you they trusted and were not disappointed" (4-5).
>
> But then the psalmist takes a turn into deeper
despair and darkness: "But I am a worm, and not a man. A reproach of men, and
despised by the people" (6). He is well aware of the heroes of the faith, but
I, he thinks to himself, am not a hero. I am not even a good person. Even the
people despise me. They mock my trust in God. Go ahead, they say, commit
yourself to the Lord and see what happens. Let the Lord deliver you. Then the
Psalmist looks away from himself and the people and sets his eyes again upon
God. "Yet," he says, "You are the One who brought me forth from the womb. You
made me trust when I was at my mother's breast. Upon you I was cast from birth
and you have been my God from my mother's womb" (9-10).
>
> Here the Psalmist cries out for deliverance: "Be
not far from me, for trouble is near; for there is none to help. Many bulls
have surrounded me; Strong bulls of Bashan have encircled me. They gape at me
with their mouths, Like a raging and roaring lion. I am poured out like water,
and all my bones are out of joint; my heart is like wax; It has melted within
me. My strength is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue clings to my jaws;
you have brought me to the dust of death. For dogs have surrounded me; the
congregation of the wicked has enclosed me. They pierced Mm hands and my feet;
I can count all my bones. They look at me and stare. They divide my garments
among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. But You, O LORD, do not be far
from me; O my Strength, hasten to help me! Deliver me from the sword, my
precious life from the power of the dog. Save me from the lion's mouth and
from the horns of the wild oxen! You have answered me. I will declare Your
name to my brethren; In the midst of the assembl y I will praise You" (11-21).
The trauma of the Psalmist is staggering. His insides are shredded with fear.
He has no courage and no hope. He is crying out to God for help, for
deliverance.
>
> Then the Psalmist makes another turn. The despair
ends, and praise begins and the whole ordeal comes to a victorious end, such
that coming generations will look back on this event and see that the Lord has
performed his salvation: "I will declare Your name to my brethren; In the
midst of the assembly I will praise You. ... For He has not despised nor
abhorred the affliction of the afflicted; nor has He hidden His face from Him;
But when He cried to Him, He heard" (22, 24) "My praise shall be of You in the
great assembly; I will pay my vows before those who fear Him. ... All the ends
of the world Shall remember and turn to the LORD, And all the families of the
nations shall worship before You. For the kingdom is the LORD's, And he rules
over the nations. All the prosperous of the earth shall eat and worship; all
those who go down to the dust Shall bow before Him, even he who cannot keep
himself alive. A posterity shall serve Him. It will be recounted of the Lord
to the next generation, they will come and declare His righteousness to a
people who will be born, that He has done this" (25, 27-31). This Psalm begins
with agony and culminates in God's victorious intervention and to a prophecy
that the coming generations will look back upon this moment as the salvation
of the Lord of Hosts.
>
> So, the question must be asked, Why did Jesus
quote the first verse of this Psalm from the cross? because in his day--and
this is where knowledge of extra-biblical history comes in--to hear the first
verse of a Psalm was like hearing the beginning of a favorite song. The tune
kick-starts the tape in our heads and sends us singing the rest of the song.
So familiar with the Psalms were the Jews that to hear the first line was to
hear the whole Psalm. When Jesus quoted from the first line of Psalm 22, he
set the whole Psalm playing in their heads. And in so doing, he was
interpreting the event of his passion and death for them.
>
> On the cross Jesus surely identified with the
suffering of the Psalmist, but he also identified with the whole Psalm. What
is happening on the cross? What is the meaning of this event? This is what we
must ask -- and Jesus is answering all of these questions; he is saying, Here
it is, right here is Psalm 22. It looks as though all is lost. It looks as
though the dogs are winning and as if God has abandoned him, utterly forsaken
him to the abyss. But not so! "For He has not despised nor abhorred the
affliction of the afflicted; Nor has He hidden His face from Him; But when He
cried to Him, He heard." (24) Judy, you want to say that God forsook his son;
indeed, the very opposite is true!
>
> In the greatest of ironies, the cry of Jesus, "My
God, my god, why have you forsaken me?" actually sets in motion a line of
thought that completely reinterprets what is happening on the cross. Far from
being a perverse moment when the angry God (of Jonathan Edwards, if you want
to know where your theology comes from, where this angry God) pours out his
wrath upon the Son and utterly rejects him, the Cross is the moment when the
Father absolutely refuses to forsake his Son; it is the moment of moments when
he does not hide his face, or turn his back on him in abandonment. Far from
being the moment win the wrath of God is vented upon the Son, the Cross is the
event where the relationship between the Father and the Son is the most
triumphant. Yes, in sin's greatest darkness, Jesus penetrated to the core of
Adamic estrangement, where everything shouts that God has rejected us and
abandoned us to the abyss. But it was precisely there, precisely in that
estrangement, that fallenness and depravity, "where human ity is at its
wickedest in its enmity and violence against the reconciling love of God"
(Torrance), that the fellowship of the Father and Son and Spirit stood fast.
This we know, when we let the Trinity guide our thinking through the Bible.
>
> I need to thank Baxter Kruger, a wonderful
professor of theology and Church history in Jackson, MS, for first
enlightening me to this Truth. I'm tired. I'll get to the rest of your remarks
later. Thanks for being patient, while we wade though this.
>
> Bill Taylor
>
> BT: After establishing the historicity
of these beliefs and attaching their origin to the writings of the Apostles,
he (Mr. Torrance) then goes on to state, "before long in the fourth century
there began a revolt against the idea that Christ took our fallen humanity
including our depraved mind upon himself in order to redeem it from within.
Thus there developed especially in Latin theology from the fifth century a
steadily growing rejection of the fact that it was our alienated, fallen, and
sinful humanity that the Holy Son of God assumed, and there was taught instead
the idea that it was humanity in its perfect original state that Jesus took
over from the Virgin Mary....
>
> JT: So the good professor attached or added his
thesis to the writings of the apostles? By the 2nd century the
professing Church had gone off into the apostasy Jesus and the apostles warned
of. We are not to look to history to lead us into all truth, this is why Jesus
sent us the Holy Spirit ...
>
> BT: Nor do I claim that history can lead us into
all truth. I do think, however, that in leading us to all truth the Holy
Spirit can lead us to historical truth. What do you think? Is the Spirit mute
in everything except for the illumination of Scripture?
>
> JT: The other spirit can lead us to some places
also. The Holy Spirit works in concert with the Word of God which
he inspired from the beginning and he points to Jesus (the real one
that is) "Howbeit when he the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into
all truth, for he shall not speak of himself but whatsoever he shall hear that
shall he speak and he will shew you things to come. He shall glorify me for he
shall receive of mine and shall shew it unto you" (John 16:13,14); this tells
me that we need to understand what he has already written before we go looking
to other sources. The teaching of scripture is that Jesus is the "eternally
begotten Son of God" as well as the "only begotten Son of God" - Modern
translations such as the (RSV, NIV, NEB and others) dilute key verses like
John 3:16 by changing "only begotten son" to "only son" which makes the Bible
contradict itself. Jesus was not the only son of God. (a) Adam was
a son (Lk 3:38) (b) Angels are s ons (Job 1:6) (c) All
believing Christians are sons (Jn 1:12). But Jesus is the "only
begotten" Son of God which makes Him different. The Greek word is
monogenes which clearly means "only generated" and this word is used only 6x
in the NT. Five times referring to Jesus and once in Hebrews 11:17
where it refers to Isaac as Abraham's "only begotten son" indicating that he
is a type of Christ (a son of promise). 1 John 1:14 says God sent
his only begotten son into the world indicating that he was God's only
begotten son BEFORE he came into the world.
>
> BT: I have no disagreement with anything you say
here.
>
> JT: When was he begotten?
>
> BT: The Son was eternally begotten of the Father.
But the Son was not always Jesus; i.e., he was not always Incarnate. The Word
became flesh (Jn 1.14). He became something which he was not before, which he
was not from eternity: He became flesh. Do you agree with me? I would like to
suggest that you look into the biblical connotations of sarx -- Gr. for flesh.
In the NT sarx is a loaded term. Check it out. I think John probably knew what
he was doing when he chose this term over other less loaded language like, for
instance, soma, which means body or person, in today's sense of personhood.
Check it out and let me know what you discover.
>
> JT: I'm familiar with the meaning of the word
flesh, sarx in Gr. #4561 in Strongs which is defined as physical and moral
frailty or carnal nature with appetites. Why do you call it a "loaded term?"
>
> BT: It seems to me that Christians should be able
and willing to ask the question, What has happened to influence my thinking in
this area? Why did early Christians accept this teaching, when I am unable
even to consider it?
>
> JT: I don't know who these "early Christians" are
but they are not apostles or this concept could be seen in both gospels and
epistles; also it would have been prophesied in the OT and there would be no
need for a "virgin birth"
>
> BT: Well, interestingly, one of the first hints at
this doctrine is found in OT prophecy and at the same time in the context of
the virgin birth: "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold,
the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.
Curds and honey He shall eat, that He may know to refuse the evil and choose
the good. For before the Child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the
good, the land that you dread will be forsaken by both her kings" (Isa 7.14-16
NJV). Tell me, Judy, Was there ever a time in your Jesus' life that he did not
know to refuse evil?
>
> JT: The child who ate the milk and curds and who
would see the demise of two kings before he could be taught to discern between
good and evil was the son of Isaiah ShearJashub referred to in Isa 7:3. Verse
14 is the only one in Isa Chapter 7 that is Messianic. I don't know
for sure whether or not my Jesus was ever "confused" but I doubt
it. I do know that he grew and waxed strong in spirit, was filled
with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him; at the age of 12 he was found
sitting in the midst of the doctors at the temple both hearing them and asking
questions and all who heard him were astonished at his understanding and
answers - so in light of this - no I don't believe he was confused...
>
> BT: Why the virgin birth? because a human father
cannot be the Heavenly Father. Only a virgin birth could stand as proof that
Mary had conceived of the Spirit.
>
> JT: And why was it important for Mary to conceive
of the Spirit if her child was to take upon himself our fallen human nature,
our actual human existence laden with sin and guilt, our humanity diseased in
mind and soul in its estrangement or alienation from the Creator?. Natural
generation from Adam on would have taken care of this. The preacher
wrote in Ecc 1:9 that there is no new thing under the sun which is now even
recognized as a scientific law and this includes the work of human
reproduction. However because of man's sin God began the work he had foretold
in ancient times which included a promise that "the seed of the woman" (Gen
3:15) would come someday to accomplish a work of reconciliation and since all
normal reproduction requires the male seed such a miracle would mean God would
have to create a new thing (prophesied in Isa 7:14; 9:6-7and Jer
31:22). God would create, by His mighty power, a new thing, a
perfect human body, without inherited sin or physical blemish, and w ith no
contribution from either male or female, in the womb of a specially called
virgin.
>
> BT: Why do you say that there was no contribution
from female? I can understand why you say no contribution from male, but
wasn't the virgin his biological mother? Wasn't it she who conceived and gave
birth to a Son? Wasn't he "made of Woman"?
>
> JT: He wasn't made of the woman in the
genealogical sense - he had no inheritance in the first Adam after the fall.
His blood was pure and holy and He was a perfect sacrifice without spot or
blemish. Bill, if you can show me in the scriptures where I am missing it, I
will be glad to pray about it and reconsider. However, IMO it is a waste of
time to try and understand truth by way of what different persons or groups
think about this and that, even well meaning theologians can be
wrong. Only God's Word endures.
>
> Grace and Peace,
> Judy
>
