A Wesleyan Appropriation of the Cry of Dereliction - Part 1

I apologize for the sparse posting of recent: I spent much of June preparing for a paper I presented at a colloquium in Manchester, from which I have shared a brief piece with you in the last post on impassibility. In the next few posts, I want to share some of the conclusions I have come to in regards to exploring a Wesleyan appropriation of Jesus' cry of dereliction at the cross ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?").

As you can read on this post, I have written bits and pieces on this issue, but in the next posts I will be sharing how this issue developed into the paper I presented. The paper was much more lengthy than what I'm going to share, so I'll cut right to the chase on the issues I see at stake.

When it comes to addressing the question of the significance of Jesus' cry from the cross, it is vital to turn to Psalm 22, seeing that Jesus was quoting that Psalm. John Wesley's introduction to his notes on Psalm 22 made it clear that he read the Psalm through the lens of Christ in saying that it was:

…directly, and immediately intended for, and [was] properly to be understood of the Messiah…[and was held to be so] by the Hebrew doctors themselves, and by Christ himself and by his apostles. And there are many passages in it, which were literally accomplished in him, and cannot be understood of any other. In this psalm David speaks of the humiliation of Christ, ver. 1 - 21. Of the exaltation of Christ, ver. 22 - 31.

Many of Wesley’s notes throughout the Psalm are valuable for ascribing different verses therein directly to Christ on the cross. Potential difficulty arises, however, when we view Wesley's comments on the meaning of ‘forsaken'ness (v. 1) as applied to Christ as well as Wesley’s clarifying comment on the affirmation that God had not hid his face from the psalmist/Christ (v. 24), which is where we will direct our attention in this post.

On the word ‘forsaken’ Wesley interprets it as though Christ is saying: ‘[My God, Why have you] withdrawn the light of thy countenance, the supports and comforts of thy spirit, and filled me with the terrors of thy wrath’ and then adds in commenting that ‘this was in part verified in David, but much more fully in Christ.’ In verse 24, the psalmist says, ‘For he hath not despised nor abhorred the affliction of the poor: neither hath he hid his face from him, but when he called unto him, he heard.’ Wesley qualifies this significantly in taking ‘[neither hath he hid his face] from him’ to mean ‘for ever: tho’ he did so for a time.’ Said otherwise, according to Wesley, God hid his face from Jesus for a short time, though he does not specify if this was only a brief moment on the cross, for the duration of the crucifixion, or perhaps even from his praying in the Garden of Gethsemane. On Luke 22:44, in the midst of the passage of Jesus' praying in the Garden, Wesley noted that Jesus was ‘Probably just now grappling with the powers of darkness: feeling the weight of the wrath of God.’ That he began to feel God’s wrath even then might suggest that, according to Wesley, God’s face might have been hid from this moment. Wesley’s note on Jesus’ cry in Matthew’s gospel (27:46) does not clear this up but conveys, similarly,

Our Lord hereby at once expresses his trust in God, and a most distressing sense of his letting loose the powers of darkness upon him, withdrawing the comfortable discoveries of his presence, and filling his soul with a terrible sense of the wrath due to the sins which he was bearing.

It is clear that, for Wesley, God’s wrath is intricately linked with whatever is meant by God’s hiding his face from Christ. Although Wesley does not go so far as to say there was an actual separation or a split in the Godhead, which is the conclusion some are unafraid to explicitly embrace, the implications of this idea upon the doctrine of the Trinity are potentially disastrous. The thing that may rescue Wesley from committing a grievous error in rending apart the Persons of the Trinity might be in his comment on the first part of verse 24, when he clarifies that God had not ‘abhorred…’ in saying, ‘He did not turn away his face from it, as men do from things which they abhor.’ Wesley, it seems, interpreted at least this part metaphorically in that we should not equivocate human actions or emotions with those of God. Perhaps this is related to what Wesley said in his notes on Romans 5:9 on the nature of God’s wrath:

Wrath in man, and so love in man, is a human passion. But wrath in God is not a human passion; nor is love, as it is in God. Therefore the inspired writers ascribe both the one and the other to God only in an analogical sense.

If he saw the first part of Psalm 22:24 as analogical, then it is reasonable, though by no means definitive, to suggest that Wesley read the latter part, of God hiding his face from Jesus, analogically also.

In the remaining posts of this series, we'll look at the issue of Jesus' abandonment, whether it was real or perceived, look to a few Patristic sources as well as some more interaction with Wesley in relation to that question.