A Wesleyan Appropriation of the Cry of Dereliction - Part 3

In continuing the exploration of a Wesleyan interpretation of Jesus' cry of dereliction ("My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"), the last post centered on the Trinitarian question as we noted the vital importance of maintaining a unity in the essence and purpose among the Persons of the Godhead. Seeing that the Son and the Father, together with the Spirit, are eternally of the same substance, we see that any suggestion of a split or separation of the Godhead at any point brings disastrous implications. In this post, we will see what, if any, insights of the doctrine of Christ's two natures (fully divine, fully human) can provide for the question of Christ's desperate cry.

Several early church fathers suggested that the cry is according to the flesh or according to his humanity. For the sake of space, we will appeal only to St. Ambrose, who in, The Sacrament of the Incarnation of Our Lord, wrote:

According to the flesh, He was forsaken, who according to divinity could have been neither deserted nor forsaken…These words [‘Why hast thou forsaken me’] are said according to the flesh, which are very foreign to the fullness of His divinity, for the words of sins are foreign to God, since the sins of words are also foreign to Him; but since I [Christ] have assumed the sins of others, I have assumed also the words of others’ sins, so that I say that I, who am always with God, have been forsaken by God the Father.

In his, On the Christian Faith, St. Ambrose offered another note on the passage that might clarify the issue further, especially in referring to the dereliction as a perceived abandonment:

Finally, He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” As being man, therefore, He speaks, bearing with Him my terrors, for when we are in the midst of dangers we think ourself abandoned by God. As man, therefore, He is distressed, as man He weeps, as man He is crucified.

One might think that this borders too closely to, if it doesn’t cross over into, Nestorianism, which divided the two natures to such a degree that there is no unified person, but two persons. In avoiding this error, it is worthy to note, firstly, that St. Ambrose wrote prior to the Nestorian controversy. Even so, he did not separate Christ into two persons, but instead affirms Christ's assumption of humanity. What we humans experience, God has assumed in the Person of the God-human.

Secondly, it could be that the cry of dereliction is an example that highlights that there were two wills in Christ, just as there are two natures. Accordingly, Jesus' cry from the cross might be seen in comparison with his earnest pleading in the Garden of Gethsemane, perhaps the most well-known passage that appeals to the two wills in Christ, when he prayed for the cup to pass from him, "nevertheless, not my will but yours be done."

And in this case, there is evidence of Wesley’s support of Christ’s two wills. In The Repentance in Believers, John Wesley stated the following:

[A will] is an essential part of human nature, indeed of the nature of every intelligent being. Our blessed Lord himself had a will as a man; otherwise he had not been a man. But his human will was invariably subject to the will of his Father.

I realize that much of what I've said and appealed to may be rather complicated and perhaps is attempting to address something beyond our capacity to understand. It is not my interest to explore this question merely as an academic or intellectual exercise. I really believe this theological unpacking has a significant pastoral payoff, and I intend to tease out at least one significant conclusion, a distinctively Wesleyan one that will pick up on this last quote from Wesley, in the next and final post in this series. If you're still with me, thanks for following and I look forward to any criticism or questions you may have.