As good evangelicals, we are always fighting off the claim that we believe in divine child abuse. We speak of the death of Jesus, the Son of God, as a sacrifice, yet one made willingly, as the one act of the one God
But in our popular piety, I don't think we can escape the charge so easily.
There is a song we sing at our church, 'Jesus, Thankyou', by Pat Sczebel, Sovereign Grace, that illustrates this well.
At one point we sing 'the Fathers wrath completely satisfied', and it makes me really uncomfortable.
It makes me squirm, not because it speaks of the wrath of God, but because it is call 'the Fathers' wrath. As though this one person of the Trinity is the one angry about sin, and the Son is the one that is nice to us. Just last week I read on a popular reformed evangelical blog the comment that ' I wouldn’t want to inadvertently suggest to peoples’ minds that the God the Son was judging God the Son'. I was too late to the discussion to ask, 'why?'. As evangelicals are fond of saying, Jesus spoke about' hell' more than anyone else. What we are less likely to do is connect all those passages about judgment to Jesus death. It is as though Jesus has dealt with the Fathers anger, but still has his own beef with us to be worked out later!
The challenge is seeing Jesus action on the cross as the action of God. That this really is God's way of judging sin, of expressing his wrath, with Jesus as the subject and not just the object of that action. A strange kind of wrath, certainly, but we follow a strange God.
Am I way off mark here? Have I missed something?
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12 comments:
Hey Mike. I think you're onto a really important point.
I often find myself swirming about exactly those kind of songs (for exactly the reason you identify). To me, Barth's 'Judge judged in our place' seems much more satisfactory than 'Father judging the Son'.
I wonder, though, if the composers of such songs might ask us a counter question: if the Father's wrath isn't being satisfied, what is he doing as Jesus bears divine wrath on the cross?
Thanks Chris.
It's not that the song is wrong about the Father, I just wonder whether it is reductive. The song doesn't create the theological problem, but I think it is indicative of the problem.
Is the Son's wrath satisfied? Is the Spirits wrath satisfied? Or are they not angry about sin, or are they still to be satisfied?
I'm fishing around in my head to find a Bible verse that specifically describes the cross as a moment of the Fathers wrath.
But there are plenty that speak of Jesus as Judge and revealer of the Father.
Most of the time we don't really know what is going on for the Father, we just know what the Son is up to. Perhaps the aversion to letting the Son be the subject is the reverse side of an aversion to the idea of the Father suffering.
This is where I have to show my hand. I don't think people take the unity of Son and Father seriously enough.
Bleat all we (in Sydney) like about not being Arians or tritheists, on a popular level, I think we are pretty close.
I can agree with you that it is inappropriate to restrict the wrath of God to one Person of the Trinity. Yet Barth's statement is still troubling to me because it appears to ignore some of the incarnational realities. Passages such as John 12 and Phillippians 2 suggest that while Jesus had the right to act as judge of the world because of his righteous wrath he left the role of judge to take on an atonement role. If we take Mike's thought to its conclusion we would have to say that Son is involved in judging himself and I'm not sure the Scriptures point us in that direction. Also, need we necessarily have an ontological difference between the wrath of the Persons? If the wrath is perichoretic then we may have a way of maintaining a unity between Persons in the atonement. If not, might we say that the wrath pertaining specifically to the Son could have been mediated through the judgment of the Father?
Luke, I don't think Phillipians 2 does what you want it to here. It is about giving up advantage, rather than shedding divine properties. As far as perichoresis goes, I think the onus is on those who want to isolate something of the divine to one person to prove it from scripture. Where is the scripture that declares that wrath belongs (appropriately) to the Father? I don't understand the aversion to the Son being involved as a subject of judgment as he takes on the sin of the world. Which incarnational reality is that violating?
Or to put the question another way, where do you learn so much about the wrath of God that it seems innapproprite for the Son? Is it from the scriptures? Or is it some other logic of how the wrath of God 'must' work? Or does it define wrath in such a way that God cannot take that wrath onto himself? How do we make sense of Jesus' pronouncements of a new exile which he then takes? He makes the judgement, but then recieves it.
are we to think of a divided will between the Father and Son? Can we really push gethsemane that far?
Luke, your language of 'roles' fascinates me here, given my jibe about arianism etc. Is it possible that Jesus exercised the judging role by his atoning role?
It seems we slip rather quickly into seeing Jesus as the revealer of the Father as a negative, that we see the Father as we see how the Father acts upon the Son, molding him this way and that. This is undoubtedly true (the resurrction being the biggie), but it misses the huge way in which we are to see the Father IN the Son. Now tell me honestly, how much were you encouraged to do that in four years of College? Not just, Jesus reveals things about the Father, but Jesus is the image of and reveals the Father. honestly, I heard the image statement made, but never unpacked in specifics.
Mike - As I said, I have no problem with the Son having wrath. I believe, however, that it is difficult to see the Son's particular wrath being expended on Calvary if it does not occur through the action of the Father. To insist on too much particularity in this instance could lead us into the Arianism that you are keen to avoid. On the other hand, a case could be made that the wrath of the Logos was made known through his lifework of preaching as he condemned the idolatry of the people in order to bring them back to God. Jesus could use some strong language regarding those who led others astray.
I stand by my 'roles' language and my interpretation of Philippians 2 in this case, but I agree that talking in these terms exclusively can lead us into trouble. The divine properties must be expressed in a Person-appropriate way if we are to have anything more than a functional subordinationism. Therefore, the Son (as the one through whom and for whom all things were made) had the right to be the judge of the world, yet this was a role which was set aside in order to achieve a truly Trinitarian redemption. I believe that the wrath of the Son will be revealed at the return of Jesus when those who rejected the blood of the Lamb as a sacrifice will then see the resurrected Lamb sit in judgment on sin. What is Hell if not the place of the wrath of the Son?
Hey Luke.
See Blomberg http://www.biblegateway.com/perspectives-in-translation/2010/12/what-do-we-know-about-harpagmos-in-phil-26-craig-blomberg/
It simply aint talking about the shedding off of divine attributes.
So where are you getting the idea that this role was set aside, rather than worked out through Jesus ministry?
I'm happy to say there is divine wrath going on at the cross, but taking subjectivity away from the Son sounds pretty darn close to rendering him a lesser God. And, it leaves our notion of the Father completely untouched by the radical reality of Jesus the Son.
or Rod Decker
http://ntresources.com/kenosis.htm
Nowhere have I stated that divine attributes are being shed, just not exercised. Jesus makes it very clear that in his earthly ministry he is not judging the world at that time (Jn 12:47-48). When the judgment of the Son is spoken about in the NT it is either as a reality that is achieved post-resurrection (e.g. Acts 10:42) or as an End of the Last Days event (e.g. Acts 17:31, Rom 2:16). It was perfectly possible for Jesus to have risen to the challenge to "come down from the Cross" and open up a big canfull of Wrathful Whoop-ass. Yet this does not occur. The Son is 'abandoned' by the Father to receive the full force of Divine Wrath which only he, as the Divine Son, could bear.
Much rests on what we mean by Divine Wrath being 'satisfied'. If we mean 'completely expended' then it is demonstrably false as attested by the many warnings of wrath that is still coming (e.g. Col 3:6, 1 Thes 1:10). I'm struggling to find better words, but a more appropriate definition might be something like 'dealt with sufficiently for the purposes of the atonement of the elect'. This leaves room for the wrath of the Son to be exercised as he reassumes the judgment seat following his ascention.
Thanks Luke. Wow, a whole range of issues there.
Firstly, though Jesus dindn't hop down off the cross and open up a can of woop ass, is it possible that this is how he is demonstrating the divine wrath, by dying on a cross.
Secondly, if the above is true, then John 12 makes sense within my hypothesis, Jesus came to save the world.
Thirdly, did I just hear you going for Limited Atonement as a solution? Deary me, we sure have opened a can of worms haven't we.
Yes, I can't believe that I seemed to head towards LA either! Think I'll stop the can opener right there...
As with the complementarian issue, the solution is the architecture of the Godhead, reflected in the three domains corrupted by sin: Garden, Land, World; or Most Holy, Holy, Courts. The Father judged the Son in the Garden and defeated the serpent. The Son judged the rulers of the Land in AD70 and avenged the blood of Abel. What is yet to come? The world. In that final case, it will be judgment by the Spirit, of which Scripture never speaks. What is it, then? It is judgment by those whom the Spirit has gathered, the church, the Bride, with the wisdom of Christ, at the Word of the Father. Then God will be all in all.
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