Program / Course 15: The Problem of Evil and Suffering / Lesson 5.3
What you will learn
- Explain the meaning of Christ’s cry of dereliction in its setting in Psalm 22.
- Describe how Christians have understood the cross as God’s response to suffering.
- Compare Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant emphases on the cross and suffering.
- State the limits of the claim and the strongest objections to it.
The big idea
Christianity does not offer an argument that explains why suffering exists. At its center it offers an event: God in the person of Jesus Christ undergoes torture and death, cries out in abandonment, and is raised. Christians have drawn many meanings from this. God is not distant from pain, evil is defeated by being borne, and suffering united with Christ can be given meaning. These claims console many people. They also raise sharp questions, such as whether the cross explains anything about why God permits evil in the first place.
Key terms
- Cry of dereliction
- Jesus’ words on the cross, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34), the opening of Psalm 22.
- Incarnation
- The Christian teaching that the eternal Son of God took on a full human nature in Jesus of Nazareth.
- Atonement
- The work of Christ by which humanity is reconciled to God. Christians hold different theories about how the cross accomplishes this.
- Impassibility
- The classical teaching that God is not changed or made to suffer by anything outside himself.
- Christus Victor
- The view that on the cross Christ defeats sin, death and the devil. It is strong in the early church and the Orthodox East.
- Penal substitution
- The view, stressed in the Reformation, that Christ bore the punishment due to sinners in their place.
- Redemptive suffering
- The idea that suffering joined to Christ’s can have meaning and bear fruit.
Background
The four Gospels agree that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate, and Roman and Jewish sources outside the New Testament also mention his execution. Crucifixion was a death of torture and public shame. Paul calls the message of the cross a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Greeks (1 Corinthians 1:23). To say that the Lord of all was nailed to a cross is not to offer a comfortable answer.
Yet from the earliest centuries Christians found in the cross the center of their reply to suffering. They did not first try to explain why suffering exists. They pointed to what God did about it. The lesson sets out the main strands of this reply, then looks at its limits.
A note on the sensitive nature of the subject. The cross has sometimes been used to tell the suffering to endure abuse, which is a serious misuse. Christian writers across traditions have rejected that use, and this lesson takes up the point at the end.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: The cry from the cross
Matthew and Mark record Jesus saying in Aramaic, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34). The words are the first line of Psalm 22, a lament that moves from anguish to praise. Interpreters differ on how to read the cry. Some say that Jesus truly experienced abandonment by the Father. Some say that he was praying the whole psalm, which ends in trust. Many hold both: a real cry of anguish uttered within a prayer of faith.
What is clear is that the Gospels do not soften the scene. The Son of God dies with a lament on his lips. This gives sufferers a precedent. Their cries of why are not outside the faith, since the Lord himself used them. Luke and John record other words, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit” (Luke 23:46) and “It is finished” (John 19:30), and the Gospels together show anguish and trust.
Step 2: God shares human suffering
The Letter to the Hebrews says that Christ is a high priest who can be touched with the feeling of human infirmities (Hebrews 4:15), and that he learned obedience by the things which he suffered (Hebrews 5:8). Christians conclude that God is not a distant observer. In Christ he enters human pain, hunger, betrayal and death. The doctrine of the incarnation is thus the center of the Christian reply: God is with the sufferer.
Some modern theologians have pressed this further. Jürgen Moltmann, in The Crucified God (1972), argued that the cross shows God himself taking suffering into his own life. This conflicts with the classical teaching that God cannot suffer. Defenders of the classical view reply that God the Son suffers in his human nature, and that the divine nature is not diminished. Both sides wish to say that God is truly involved, and differ over how to say it without denying God’s perfection.
Step 3: The victory over death and evil
The early church often spoke of the cross as a victory. Athanasius taught that the Word took a body in order to die, and by dying to destroy death. Orthodox Easter hymns sing that Christ has trampled down death by death. The theme of Christus Victor holds that sin, death and the powers of evil are broken by the cross and resurrection. Here the cross answers evil not by explaining it but by defeating it.
This fits with Christian hope. The resurrection is the promise that death is not final and that evil will be undone. Paul writes that death is swallowed up in victory (1 Corinthians 15:54). Revelation promises that God will wipe away all tears (Revelation 21:4). The cross and resurrection together are the pledge that the present suffering will end.
Step 4: Different emphases among Christians
Catholic teaching holds that Christ’s passion has redemptive value and that those who suffer can unite their pains to his (Colossians 1:24). The Church also gives great energy to the care of the sick. Protestants, especially in the Reformation tradition, stress that Christ bore sin and punishment in the place of sinners, so that the cross answers the problem of guilt, and often add that Christ is present to the afflicted. The Orthodox stress the victory over death and the healing of human nature, which Christ makes whole by uniting it to God.
Theologians such as Fleming Rutledge, an Episcopal priest, emphasize that the cross shows how deep evil goes and how costly the remedy is, and warn against softening it. These emphases overlap. Most Christians use several at once.
Step 5: Limits and objections
The cross does not say why God permits evil in the first place. A critic can accept that God shares human pain and still ask why a God who could prevent it made a world of pain. Defenders reply that the cross is a response and not a theoretical explanation, and that the Christian claim is that God does something about evil, which is more than a theory.
Other objections concern the meaning of the atonement. Some critics say that the view of the Father demanding the death of the Son makes God cruel. Christian theologians reply that the Father and Son act as one, and that the Son goes willingly. A further and serious warning is the misuse of the cross to tell abused persons that they should suffer in silence. Pastors and theologians in every tradition have said that Christ’s suffering is never a justification for injustice, and that evil done to a person remains evil. The cross sanctifies the sufferer’s dignity and does not bless the oppressor.
- Why do you think the Gospels record Jesus’ cry of abandonment and do not soften it?
- How can the claim that God suffers in Christ be said without denying that God is perfect and unchanging?
- In what sense is the cross an answer to evil, if it does not explain it?
- How do the themes of victory, substitution and solidarity differ, and can they be held together?
- How should the cross be used, and how should it never be used, in speaking to someone being abused?
- What does the resurrection add to the meaning of the cross for a sufferer?
Examples
A hospital chaplain
A chaplain sits with a dying man who asks where God is. She does not offer an explanation. She reads Psalm 22 and says that Jesus prayed these words. The man says it helps to know that God has been where he is. (A constructed example, typical of reports from chaplains.)
Easter hymns
In the Orthodox Easter liturgy the congregation sings that Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life. The hymn does not explain evil. It announces that evil’s last weapon has been broken.
A misuse of the cross
A pastor tells a woman in an abusive marriage that she must bear her cross. Christian leaders in many traditions today reject this advice, saying that the cross is Christ’s act of love and not a rule that victims must stay in danger. (A widely reported kind of case, here constructed.)
Different perspectives
Catholic
The Catechism teaches that Christ’s passion is the sacrifice that redeems the world, and that Christians are called to carry their own cross united to him. Pope John Paul II’s Salvifici Doloris (1984) teaches that Christ has given suffering a new meaning, while Catholic social teaching insists on relieving suffering wherever possible.
Orthodox
The Orthodox emphasize that God the Word took on human nature to heal it and to conquer death. Athanasius and John of Damascus are central voices. The cross is understood within the whole mystery of the incarnation, death and resurrection, and is not separated from Pascha. Orthodox writers are cautious about theories of satisfaction as a legal exchange.
Protestant
Reformed and Lutheran theology stress substitution, that Christ bore the penalty of sin, and also that God is revealed in the cross, a hidden presence under the opposite appearance, as Luther taught. Many contemporary Protestants, including Rutledge, retrieve the theme of victory over the powers. Some liberal Protestants stress the cross as an example of self-giving love.
Critical and secular views
Critics argue that the cross explains nothing about why a good God permits evil, and that atonement theories can be morally troubling. Some feminist and womanist theologians criticize pictures that glorify suffering. Other scholars note that crucifixion was a tool of terror, and that the early Christian proclamation of a crucified Messiah was shocking in its day.
Why it matters
For most Christians who suffer, the central help is not a philosophical theory but the claim that God has not stayed away. The cross is the heart of that claim. Understanding what it does and does not say lets a student speak of it with respect and honesty, and avoid both cheap comfort and misuse.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: The cross shows that God wants people to suffer.
Correction: The Christian claim is that God enters suffering in order to defeat it. Scripture and the tradition present evil as an enemy, and the church has always cared for the sick and oppressed.
Misunderstanding: The cross is a complete theoretical answer to the problem of evil.
Correction: Most theologians say it is not a theory but an act of God. It leaves open questions, such as why God permitted evil to begin with.
Misunderstanding: Christians who believe in the crucifixion agree on exactly how it saves.
Correction: The creeds affirm that Christ died for sinners and rose, but do not define a single theory of atonement. Traditions emphasize victory, substitution, healing or example in different degrees.
Knowledge check
What is the significance of Jesus’ cry My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
It quotes the opening of Psalm 22, a lament that ends in trust. It shows that Jesus voiced the sense of abandonment that sufferers feel. Interpreters differ whether the Father truly forsook the Son or whether Jesus prayed the whole psalm, but all agree that the cry gives believers permission to lament.
How do Christians say that God is present to those who suffer?
Through the incarnation, in which the Son of God takes human nature and shares hunger, rejection, pain and death. Hebrews says he can feel human weaknesses. Some theologians, like Moltmann, say God himself suffers. Others hold that the Son suffers in his human nature. Both speak of God as truly with the afflicted.
What is Christus Victor?
It is the view that on the cross and in the resurrection Christ defeated sin, death and the powers of evil. It is strong among the early Fathers and in Orthodox worship, and has been recovered by many Western writers. It presents the cross as God’s act against evil and not as an explanation of evil.
What are the main limits of the cross as a reply to evil?
It does not explain why God permitted evil in the first place. Some atonement theories raise moral objections, and the cross can be misused to tell victims to endure abuse. Christian teachers reject that misuse. The cross is best seen as God’s costly response, together with the promise of resurrection.
Think it through
- What difference would it make for you if God were distant from suffering rather than present in it?
- Which image of the cross, victory, substitution or solidarity, speaks most to you, and which seems hardest to understand?
- How would you warn against the misuse of the cross while still affirming its centrality?
Independent assignment
Psalm 22 and the cross
In your own notebook, write about 400 words. Read Psalm 22 in the King James Version and the Gospel account in Matthew 27:33 to 54. Mark the lines of the psalm that appear in the Gospel narrative. Then describe, in your own words, what it means to say that the Son of God prayed this psalm. Add a paragraph on one objection to the claim that the cross answers suffering. Keep the work private.
Further study
- Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ Read selectively for an account of the cross and evil.
- Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word Read the chapters on why the Word took a body and died.
- Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (Why God Became Man) Read for the Western satisfaction account of the atonement.
- Martin Luther, The Bondage of the Will Compare Luther’s emphasis on God hidden in the cross where it appears.
- Matthew 27:46 Jesus’ cry from the cross.
- Psalm 22:1 The psalm of which Jesus’ cry is the first line.
- Hebrews 4:15 We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.