Ughh!

So, I’ve been reading a book called Things that Cannot be Shaken: Holding Fast to Your Faith in a Relativistic World by K. Scott Oliphint and Rod Mays.  When I finish it, I’ll comment a bit about the book as a whole here.  Today though I want to just vent a little about a section on 2 Corinthians 5:21 under the heading “The Great Exchange” in chapter four of Things that Cannot Be Shaken (TCS).

I had just finished a section related to limited atonement that was actually kind of interesting when I came to “The Great Exchange.”  I knew I was in for it as soon as I read something along the lines of, “You know the real bad thing about the crucifixion wasn’t the physical pain but the spiritual pain.”  That’s usually a signal that someone’s about to start talking about 2 Corinthians 5:21 and that they will eventually talk about the “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” text (Matthew 27:46).  Usually, we’ll end up with the Father turning his back on Jesus because, of course, God can’t look upon sin (Hab. 1:13).  As a particularly fun add-on, some will tack on the idea that darkness fell upon the land during the crucifixion because it was at that point that the Father turned his back upon the Son (Mt. 27:45).

Well, TCS does all of these things except the darkness part.  The authors call this a “heavenly desertion.”  That’s a new one for me. 

Okay, so I call this a “pet peeve” because I hear it all the time, but without any good Biblical or theological reflection.  The very fact that everyone always quotes the same 3-4 verses is telling, I think.  It betrays the fact that this speculation (it is nothing more) is an intergenerational inheritance rather than the product of careful exegesis.  To tell you the truth, I’ve not been very impressed with TCS so far, but I was surprised to hear just the same old reasoning that I might hear from any number of hundreds of pastors or Sunday school teachers on Sunday morning.  Oliphant, after all is supposed to be a theology professor at a major seminary.  Nevertheless, we get the same shallow spin on the same 3-4 verses.  Especially in a section that is supposed to examine the Trinity and the atonement this is just disappointing.

I don’t think I'll give a full critique of this common interpretation / construction here, but let me just offer a few thoughts:

 
(1) TCS (and the common train of thought) begins with this idea of the “spiritual pain” of Jesus on the cross.  I've heard it a hundred times, that the real suffering of the cross wasn’t the physical pain, but the spiritual pain.  Really? Where does the Bible say that?  Isn’t this nothing more than speculation?  To be clear, I’m not necessarily against the idea of speculating about the sufferings of Jesus on the cross – even “spiritual sufferings”—but I think it is very important that we are careful to label these as speculations.  For TCS, this idea of “spiritual pain” becomes the lens for how they read 2 Cor. 5:21, Mt. 27:46, and Hab. 1:13.  I think that’s classic eisegesis not sound exegesis.

(2) 2 Cor. 5:21 should not be read to mean that Jesus literally became sin. Let’s set aside the fact that sin is an abstraction—a very real concept, but not something that a person can “become.”  Not even Satan is sin.  He is sinful, but he's not sin itself.  More at issue here however is just poor Bible reading.  The text doesn’t just say that Jesus became sin, but also that we became the “righteousness of God.”  If TCS is consistent, that would mean that we are literally the “righteousness of God.” But this simply isn’t the case.  What Paul clearly means here is that we have become righteous in the sight of God.  He means forensic justification—that we are, because of the atonement, counted as righteous before God.  To be consistent then, we must see that Christ became sin in the same sense in which we became righteousness.  In what sense did we become righteousness? In the forensic and not in the literal sense.  Righteousness was credited to us as sin was credited to Jesus on the cross.  On the cross, our sin was credited to Jesus.  That’s what 2 Cor. 5:21 means.

(3)TCS says that “no other explanation could be given” for why Jesus cried out “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” than the “heavenly desertion” that TCS presents.  Honestly, I find this statement to be glaring evidence of shallow reflection on this point.  There is a fairly popular explanation that is given – one that I’ve not only taught but heard from prominent speakers and Bible teachers.  In short, the explanation is that Jesus was desiring to refer the onlookers to Psalm 22, by quoting the first verse.  Psalm 22, is of course, a wonderful messianic Psalm that predicts with stunning detail the events of the cross.  If you read Psalm 22, the conclusion is very clear – it may look like God has deserted the sufferer, but nothing could be further from the truth:

I find this explanation to be much more grounded in the text than the face-value interpretation the TCS has inherited and rehashed in this book.

(4) Habakkuk does say that God can’t look upon sin. However, we have to understand this anthropomorphically.  I mean God doesn’t have literal eyes.  He doesn’t have a literal back to turn towards the crucified Jesus.  From this perspective, the person who says that it got dark because God turned his back on Jesus is just being silly.  First, the text doesn’t say that at all.  Secondly, what the heck would that mean anyway?  A couple questions for the TCS and others who espouse some kind of “heavenly desertion”:

a.       Are you suggesting that God suddenly stopped being omniscient or omnipresent?  That God literally couldn’t see the Son or that he literally wasn’t present on that part of earth?

b.      Are you suggesting that some kind of rift occurred in the Triune Godhead in that moment? That all of the sudden the Father and Son were not together as God?  That they were somehow separated?  If so, most of you will probably have to rewrite your statements of faith because you no longer believe in one God eternally existing in three persons.  Instead, you believe that in that moment there were at least two Gods.  Or, I suppose that you could argue that Jesus ceased being God on the cross.  Perhaps that there was a split in the hypostatic union – that Jesus the man died on the cross while the divine nature of Jesus went away.  If you are going down either of these roads, you must understand that what you are espousing has historically been labeled as heretical. That’s fine.  I’d just rather you have a more solid Scriptural basis.  Of course, my assumption is that you just haven’t given it that much thought.

c.       Are you suggesting that Jesus never looked upon sin?  I mean, he was God in the flesh was he not?  Unless we imagine a Jesus who is walking around constantly blindfolded, we should rather hesitate in speaking of Hab. 1:13 literally.

At the end of the day, the “heavenly desertion” theory described in TCS turns out to be nothing more than a synthetic speculation ornamented by loosely connected and shallowly interpreted proof texts.  It certainly falls far short of careful exegesis and theological reflection.  And, it could prove dangerous.  First, I think it cheapens our appreciation of what Christ really did suffer on the cross.  This theory often seems to encourage us to brush aside the very real physical and emotional torment that we know Jesus endured.  What was the shame of the cross?  What was the torture of the cross?  TCS would have us not care so much about that, after all it is the spiritual pain that was so bad.

Another danger is that this theory is precisely the foundation upon which some false teachers speak of some kind of further atonement that Jesus had to pay for in Hell after his death.  I won’t get into this here, but the basic idea is that Jesus became so hideous on the cross that he had to suffer in Hell after his death.  This of course, renders Christ’s words, “It is finished,” rather meaningless.

Okay.  Whew.  Thanks for letting me get that off my chest.  Maybe I’m overlooking something here.  Feel free to correct me – I look forward to your comments.