The Death of God - What It Is and What It Isn't

I remember being in session one day, with Dr. Sanders. We were talking about the Incarnation, and what it means for us to say that "God died" in the death of Jesus. And he said something so incredibly simple that I'm amazed that I haven't heard it since.

I can't remember his exact wording, but essentially, it boiled down to this: When we say that God, as Jesus, died, we mean no less - but also no more - than that the Son of God, the second Person of the Trinity, experienced the human phenomenon that is known as "death."

That's what we mean. And this stands against attempts to either minimize or over-emphasize what happened on the cross.

Jesus died. The God-Man, the being that is at once fully God and fully man, experienced death. The Son of God's spirit was separated from his body. The body of the second Person of the Trinity ceased to live.

That is death, and he experienced it in its fullness. He didn't "kind of" die. And it is especially and particularly not the case that the "human half" experienced death while the "God half" did not. To go down that road is to split Christ into two, to commit some sort of Nestorianism or Arianism. It is, eventually, to wind up with a Savior who is neither God enough to accomplish anything, nor man enough to matter.

But it works the other way as well. Because there are some who, desiring to emphasize the greatness of God's sacrifice and self-giving, will talk of the death of God as some sort of divine death, a deicide, even a separation from his divinity. Such speakers will talk of the Trinity being broken, even a temporary eradication or cessation of the second Person.

That did not happen either. The second Person did not somehow cease to exist or become not-God, because none of that is included in what "death" is. None of that is included in what the Bible means when it talks about death. Remember: The Incarnation, Death, and Resurrection of Christ accomplish what they accomplish because it's God sharing in our experiences...not God sharing in some super-special God experiences.

This is important to remember, if for no other reason than avoiding confusion during Easter! But it's also important for another reason: That in desiring to give praise to God, we might actually commit blasphemy. Take it away, Karl Barth!

"The more seriously we take this, the stronger becomes the temptation to approximate to the view of a contradiction and conflict in God Himself. Have we not to accept this view if we are to do justice to what God did for man and what He took upon Himself when He was in Christ, if we are to bring out the mystery of His mercy in all its depth and greatness?"

Barth rhetorically suggests that if we are to really grasp what God did for us, we must take Christ's death, his cry of dereliction, as far as possible: Take it to the point of contradiction and conflict in God Himself! But, he continues, there is a danger in this.

"But at this point what is meant to be supreme praise of God can in fact become supreme blasphemy. God gives Himself, but He does not give Himself away. He does not give up being God in becoming a creature, in becoming man. He does not cease to be God."

And why is this important?

"If it were otherwise, if in [this condescension] He set Himself in contradiction with Himself, how could He reconcile the world with Himself? Of what value would His deity be to us if--instead of crossing in that deity the very real gulf between Himself and us--He left that deity behind Him in His coming to us, if ti came to be outside of Him as He because ours? What would be the value to us of His way into the far country if in the course of it He lost Himself?"

Here it is, in a nutshell: In dying, Jesus defeated death. He didn't lose Himself in it. He experienced the human phenomenon known as death, and in doing so he broke its power. (to loosely paraphrase Athanasius,he lured Death to him and then snapped his freaking neck). If you try to expand that, to make Jesus experience some sort of super-special God death, you aren't actually praising him: You'e naming him not-God.

The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything

"[The women] found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, 'Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen.'"
Luke 24:2-6

I've always been interested in angels. However, most of what I'm thinking about saying is totally unrelated to what I really want to say in this post, so I'll just settle for... can you imagine what it would be like to be these two angels? To be the bearer of the greatest news since... ever? To tell these women, who have come to the tomb expecting to honor the body of their beloved lord and friend, that he is not here?

I love the question the angels open with. "Why do you seek the living among the dead?" Do the angels not know? Are they sincerely wondering why the women are looking for Jesus? Of course not. It's a rhetorical question. But such a question! The way I imagine them saying it... laughing, shouting, voices like a great, triumphant, joyful song, one of those questions ending with a "!?" "Why do you seek the living among the dead!? He is not here, but has risen!"

This last sentence is quite possibly the greatest sentence spoken since creation, and it will not be surpassed until the end of this world. He is not here, but has risen. Christ is not among the dead–he is not like the Egyptian god-kings who still lie and rot in their pyramids. He is not like Buddha or Mohamed . He is not like every false messiah that has ever walked the face of the earth. He is not in the grave, and even though he died he is not dead. He is not here, but has risen!

And this... this is the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. God rules a suffering world, and at a real time in a real place God said to the world, "I suffer with you." However, that is not the end of the story. If it were, our faith would be meaningless. "If Christ has not been raised," Paul says, "then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain" (1 Cor. 15:14). Now, I take it one step farther, and say that if Christ has not been raised, our lives are in vain. Without the resurrection of Christ, we are left with the author of Ecclesiastes, saying "Vanity of vanities! All is vanity." Without the resurrection, the story of Christ is merely one of defeat, of suffering and pain and a last, hopeless cry in the dark which is not answered. But praise be to God that Christ has risen! This is the twist, the great reversal, that what seems to be the ultimate defeat becomes the ultimate victory. Life is not merely suffering, and the story does not end with death. Those who mock and jeer at the one on the cross are not the victors. The suffering will end, and there will be redemption and victory. And he who is seated on the throne will say, "Behold, I am making all things new."

Emmanuel, God With Us... forsaken

"Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?" My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Matthew 27:46. This is without a doubt one of the most important and most puzzling passages concerning our Christian faith. I've just finished writing 4,000+ word paper on this one phrase, these few words. In this post, I want to relate some of what I've learned and been thinking about.

The Hebrew word for God here is 'ēl, which by its very nature refers to the strong, acting God who is mighty to save. In this question, Christ is saying, "My God, you are strong, and you do not abandon your people... and yet you have abandoned me!" It is extremely important to note that Christ has not lost his faith. He cries out to his God, twice affirming his faith in this mighty God. But he is absolutely terrified. His God and Father, with whom he's had the closest communion possible through his entire life on earth, is gone.

Christ, the Son of God, most likely spent his entire life in close communion and fellowship with his Father. In fact, this passage in Matthew is the only time when Christ does not address God has "Father." Christ was accustomed to the Father's tangible, felt presence. When Christ was baptized, God the Father opened up the heavens and said "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased." Later on in Matthew, when Christ was transfigured, God again speaks, this time from a bright cloud, and says, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him." And now, when Christ has been beaten, and whipped, and hung on a cross, he searches for his Father, and he finds nothing. Terrified, he cries out with a loud voice, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" And there is no answer.

Can you imagine? All your life, you've been able to feel your Father's presence. Whenever you ask him something, he hears you and grants your request. Twice he has visibly affirmed your status as his beloved Son. And now, after three hours of total darkness, when you can hardly think for the pain from the whips, the staff, the crown of thorns, the nails through your wrists and feet, and you are slowly suffocating, finding it harder and harder to breathe as you hang on this cross... you search for your Father, who has always been there–and there is nothing there. You scream out to God, pleading with him to come back... and there is no answer. You cry out to your mighty Father, knowing that he could save you, he could come back to you and comfort you... but there is nothing. Where is the bright cloud? Where is the voice from heaven? All is darkness, and out of the darkness comes the mocking laughter of the very ones you came to save, are dying to save.

And yet this passage, so terrifying and horrifying for Christ, is one of the greatest passages of our faith. This passage is the great apologetic for Christianity. In this moment, in refusing to answer Christ, God answers the world. The world asks how a loving God can allow suffering in the world and is made silent by the cry of "Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani" echoing through the ages. The world says, "God is far from me, I suffer, I am lost in the darkness, it isn't fair." All of their objections are met with this same cry from the cross. In this cry, God says, "I, too, have suffered."

The Death of the Living One

Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, ¹³and in the midst of the lampstands one like a son of man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash around his chest. ¹⁴ The hairs of his head were white, like white wool, like snow. His eyes were like a flame of fire, ¹⁵ his feet were like burnished bronze, refined in a furnace, and his voice was like the roar of many waters. ¹⁶ In his right hand he held seven stars, from his mouth came a sharp two-edged sword, and his face was like the sun shining in full strength.
¹⁷ When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he laid his right hand on me, saying, "Fear not, I am the first and the last, ¹⁸and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades."
Revelation 1:12-18

I love this passage. When I read it and take the time to really think on it, to meditate on it, it sends shivers down my spine. Easter is coming up, and churches are going to be focusing on the gospel narrative, and that's totally cool and awesome, but I think this verse, specifically the words of Christ in 17-18, really gets to the heart of one of the most amazing aspects of Easter, the greatest contradiction of all time, the "stumbling block to the Jews and folly to the Gentiles"–the death of the Living One.

So, I'm trying to picture what's going through John's mind right now. He's just chilling on Patmos, probably meditating, "in the Spirit," and suddenly he starts having this vision, and a voice tells him to grab his notepad and write stuff down. He turns to see who is speaking to him and he sees something he has only seen once before, when Christ was transfigured in Matthew 17 (Note: I'm not totally sure about this, but there are some interesting correlations, so I don't think it's too much of a stretch). He sees this person who, from the description, was probably shining so brightly that it hurt to look at him and, as he did the last time he saw Christ like this, falls down on his face "as though dead." This is not a surprising reaction. It would, for example, be much more surprising if he stayed standing, said, "Hey, Jesus, long time no see," maybe stepped in for a man-hug. But I digress.

So, he falls down on his face as though dead, probably under the impression that he is, or soon will be, literally dead, because of the glory that he is beholding. Then something amazing happens–this shining, burning, gloriously holy "one like a son of man" places his hand on John and says "Do not be afraid." This is crazy. Here is John, prostrating himself before the Son of God, and Christ places his right hand on him, possibly drawing him back up, but at any case demonstrating an astonishing familiarity and intimacy never before seen between God, in His glory, and man. The first and the last, the living one (referencing the multiple times God is called "the Living God."), is intimate with his people.

I apologize. I meant for this post to be solely about this next section, but I got caught up. I hope you don't mind. Anyway, on to the next bit.

"I... am the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore." Amazing. Just... mind-blowing. Is he serious? This person, with a voice like the roar of many waters and a face like the sun shining in full strength, couldn't really have died, right? And that's the amazing bit. He did die. The living one, the Living God of Israel, died. That is half of what we remember when we celebrate Easter. We remember this great contradiction in terms, the high humility of the Son of God as he reconciles a sinful world to his holy self. But, as I said, this is only half of what we remember.

Yes, the living one died. But wait! Look! Behold! He is alive forevermore. The Living God of Israel died, and that is what the Jew stumbles over, what the Gentile sees as folly. But they forget the other part of it–that in dying, Christ defeated death, and is now alive forever. Not only is he alive, but he holds the keys to Death and Hades. He has been through death, and death has not overcome him. Hades cannot stand against him. He is first, before death, and he is last. He is the living one, who died but is alive forevermore.