Wednesday, September 18, 2019

About Christ’s Words, ‘My God, My God, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?’

Misters Harper and McFarland fielded a question today (18 Sept. 2019) on Exploring the Word on American Family Radio about the quote above from the Lord Jesus as He hung on the Holy Cross.  The hemmed and hawed as they tried to explain what this could mean, and finally settled rather uneasily on the answer that Christ must have for a time been completely sundered from the Father.  Again, and we say this with sadness, the Protestants are muddling through these questions for no good reason.  The Holy Fathers are right here, ready to help us.  They have already answered these questions, if we would simply take the time to learn what they said and wrote. 

The answer to this question about the meaning of Christ’s lament (Matt. 27:46) given by Mr Harper and Mr McFarland is wrong.  There has never been, and will never be, division within the Holy Trinity.  Their mix-up over this is likely because of an error in their Christology; they seem to have accepted the Monophysite heresy that Christ has only one nature, a divine nature, and not two (human and divine).  If there was only one nature in Christ, then, yes, their answer is the logical conclusion:  There would have been a disruption of the perfect communion within the Godhead.  However, since there are two natures, not one, united without confusion in the One Person of Jesus Christ, then it is His human nature that suffered separation from God, while His divine nature remained impassibly united to the Father and the Holy Ghost.  Here is what St Cyril of Alexandria (+444) writes:

"We say that he 'suffered and rose again.' We do not mean that God the Word suffered in his Deity . . . for the Deity is impassible because it is incorporeal. But the body which had become his own body suffered these things, and therefore he himself is said to have suffered them for us. The impassible [God] was in the body which suffered" (Bettenson, Documents of the Christian Church, 2nd Ed., 1963 p.67).


There is no need for these kinds of misunderstandings, but they will continue amongst our Protestant friends until they stop relying on their own private interpretations of the Holy Scriptures and begin trusting those precious vessels of the Holy Ghost, the Holy Fathers of the Orthodox Church, whom God has raised up precisely to keep us from straying from the Truth.

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Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!

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