a. Verse 46 in the ancient
church. This saying of Jesus created problems for belief in the divinity of
Christ. Is that why Gos. Pet. 5.19
has Jesus pray just before his death: “My strength, my strength, you have left
me”? It is not clear whether we are to interpret this call in the sense of a
docetic Christology. The gnostic Gospel
of Philip also, immediately after the cry of abandonment, speaks of the
separation of him who is begotten of God “from the place.” There are docetic
tendencies in orthodox writers as well. From the perspective of the church’s
orthodoxy Ambrose’s statement is quite suspicious: “It was the cry of the man
who because of his separation from divinity is going to die.” Such a statement
shows how difficult our verse was for the church’s Christology.
Most of the church’s interpreters tried to walk a tightrope based on
the paradox of the two-natures doctrine. On the one hand it is important to
them that Christ actually became human and therefore also actually, not merely
“in appearance” (κατὰ φαντασίαν), was
crucified. According to Hilary, Jesus was actually abandoned by God, because
his death is a result of his humanity. On the other hand, for Greek theology
God is by essence “without passion” (ἀπάθης). The Logos is incapable of suffering; only the flesh suffered. Thus,
as the Logos, Jesus was never abandoned by God. Jesus, who was God, suffered no
damage to his divine nature on the cross. Scholastic theology reduced this to
the formula that Christ was abandoned by God neither with regard to the union
of the two natures nor with regard to divine grace but only with regard to his
own experience of suffering. However, the ancient church was at least in
agreement that Christ’s cry was not to be understood as an expression of
deepest despair but was to be interpreted in terms of the victory to which his
death on the cross leads. The Easter perspective triumphs in these
interpretations, and thus in the final analysis Jesus’ divinity proves to be
more important than his humanity.
Along with the christological interpretation of v. 46 in the narrower
sense, the ancient church also knows of a soteriological interpretation that
became especially important in the Middle Ages. Origen already mentions in
passing that Jesus spoke the words of the psalm because he was seeing the sins
of the people for whom he died. Christ represents the sinful human being for
whom he dies. It is from that perspective that Jesus prays vicariously. Jesus
cries to the Father not out of his own distress; he cries on behalf of other
people out of compassion for them. Since Augustine the idea surfaces that
Christ is praying here as the head for his body, the church. Paschasius
Radbertus thus describes this prayer of Jesus not as a cry of despair but as a
sacrament. “He weeps for the misery of those whose nature he takes on,” says
Strabo, and he adds: “He thereby shows how much those who sin must weep.” For
Bridget of Sweden, Mary the Mother of God says: “His cry came more from his
feelings for my pain than for his own.” Being abandoned by God is the situation
of the sinner, and Jesus here takes it upon himself.
b. The Middle Ages: Suffering
with the Crucified Man. In the High and late Middle Ages the suffering of
the man Jesus is increasingly emphasized. The human response to this suffering
is compassio: receiving,
experiencing, sharing, repeating what Christ has suffered for us. That clearly
means that compassio does not
contradict the christological and especially the soteriological interpretation;
it presupposes them and builds on them. Dionysius the Carthusian writes that
with v. 46 Jesus wanted to express how immense was the pain that he felt in all
parts of his body. It is not that he was abandoned by divine grace and glory
but that nevertheless no comfort flowed from the higher part of his soul into
the lower part. “Thus daily, even more often: several times a day, we want to
remember whole-heartedly how much the blameless lamb has borne for us, the most
wretched of creatures—he who is the God-man, the creator, brother, our judge
and helper—and we want to be inflamed by his love.” We too should stand
alongside the cross: “You also are to stand beside the cross and weep for the
Lord who has died for you.” Even the sorrow of the sun that hides itself wants
to summon hearts of stone to compassio.
The model for such an attitude is the grief of Mary, the Mother of God, who in
countless pictures from the period stands under the cross and in many passion
plays laments and weeps while being comforted by the Beloved Disciple. (Ulrich
Luz, Matthew 21-18: A Commentary [Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical
Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis: Augsburg, 2005], 545-56)
