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Can god Suffer? Flashcards

1
Q

Docetism

A
  • the Heresy that Jesus didn’t suffer on the cross because his body was not human but either a phantasm or of real but celestial substance
  • therefore his sufferings were only apparent
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2
Q

Why is the suffering of Jesus heretical?

A
  • if Jesus only seemed to be human, then he only seemed to die and resurrect
  • Jesus’ death and resurrection brought about humanity’s salvation; if he didn’t really die, then we aren’t really saved
    CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS CLAIM THAT JESUS WAS REALLY MAN AND REALLY GOD- that’s why it’s a heresy
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3
Q

Moltmann crucified God - Christian worldview

A
  • ‘The crucified God’ is profoundly offensive to a certain Christian worldview
  • this worldview, he contradicts, has a number of elements which is traditionally:
  • God can’t suffer or feel- he is impassible
  • the Trimity of Father, son and Holy Spirit are separated by their function NOT united in their feelings and experiences ( what the son feels the father does not)
  • ## the question of how God can be omnipotent, omnibenevolent and omniscient is answered in a certain way by arguing that God needs to be true to himself and so cannot change- and feeling (passibility) involves change
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4
Q

Moltmann: crucified God - the final words of Jesus (Gospel accounts)

A
  • Moltmann work is rooted in the final words of Jesus according to various different Gospel accounts
  • in Mark 15:34 - “my God my God why have you forsaken me”(same given in Matthew)
  • in Luke 23:46 - “father into your hands I commit my spirit- when he said this he breathed his last”
  • in John 19:30 - “it is finished … he bowed his head and gave up his spirit”
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5
Q

Moltmann: The crucified God - Jesus final words

A
  • he grounds his theology firmly in the final cry of the crucified God in Mark. ‘The son of God’ utters what has sometimes been called a cry of dereliction- in the loneliness and agony of crucifixion Jesus seems to ask of God the unanswerable question that is on the lips of every abandoned person “my God my God why have you forsaken me”
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6
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God- the important of the cry in Mark

A
  • For Moltmann this cry in Mark (hence why he doesn’t refer to Matthew) is unmitigated by any sense of relief , there’s no easing of it.
  • because as if to emphasise the point, the author of Mark has no resurrection appearances and leaves the disciples fearful, confused and bewildered with only a hint of a resurrected Jesus going in ahead of them in Galilee
  • that cry of Jesus on the cross is also a direct quotation from psalm 22:1 but instead it is the nation of Israel is pleading with God at the time of exile and disaster
  • whereas in the Markan account it is Jesus who claimed to be Gods special son, the messiah, anointed one who is abandoned
  • therefore that cry is radically personalised
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7
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - what does Moltmann himself say

A
  • “ the cry of Jesus in the words of psalm 22 means not only “My God why hast thou forsaken me? “ but also “my God why hast thou forsaken thyself”
  • the abandonment on the cross which separates the son from the Father is something which takes place within God himself ; it’s the statis within God - ‘God asgaimst God’
  • particularly if we are to maintain that Jesus bore witness to and lived out the truth of God”
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8
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - the paradox of the cry of God- forsakenness

A
  • the cry of God forsakeness has at its centre a paradox
  • the is the idea that God the father and God the son are still united but are also separated by the sentence of crucifixion
  • Moltmann argues that the father is still suffering with the son and with the spirit whereas traditional theology of the cross holds that Jesus descends into a place of utter desolation where there is no hint of unity with the father preserved - this is him going against that traditional Christian worldview
  • for traditional Christianity, that cry in Mark is the separation of the son from the Father and Jesus is sacrificed for sin
  • but for Moltmann the father is still suffering with the son
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9
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God- Moltmann vs the Christian worldview

A
  • Moltmann argues that the father is still suffering with the son and with the spirit whereas traditional theology of the cross holds that Jesus descends into a place of utter desolation where there is no hint of unity with the father preserved - this is him going against that traditional Christian worldview
  • The traditional Christianity that cry in Mark is the separation of the Sun from the father and Jesus is sacrificed for sin
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10
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - abandonment

A
  • so the cross and its cry signify the profoundest abandonment and profoundest depths of despair that are possible; God against God
  • just as ‘the resurrection of the Sun abandoned by God unite guide with God in the most intimate fellowship” so the abandonment of God suggests a most agonising separation
  • God knows what it is like to lose a son
  • at the same time the resurrection also knows what it’s like to experience the joy of knowing your son is not dead
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11
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - the acknowledgment of our own suffering

A
  • he acknowledges that the death cry of Jesus forces us to come to terms with our own suffering- stripping away the pretence and concealment, the suffering of our present time and asks why and what is to be done with suffering
  • traditional Christianity would respond to this problem through traditional theodicy but Moltmann response is radically different which is linked to the idea that God is passible
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12
Q

Moltmann: The Crucified God - the death on the gallows, Moltmann’s answer and the trinity

A
  • the young boy for some reason struggled for half an hour, dying on the gallows
  • someone was heard saying “where is God? Where is he”
  • Moltmann’s answer is to argue that God the father wasn’t just looking on
  • God was involved in the suffering himself
  • part of Moltmann’s argument is to say that God allowed the suffering and gave Jesus the strength through the spirit
  • “the father allows himself to sacrifice himself through the spirit”
    -the only way to understand the cross is through the theology of the trinity but Moltmann pushes this theory further
  • he argues that the father is not impassible or unfeeling but unites with the son in this moment of dereliction- so he knows himself what it is like to suffer
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13
Q

Moltmann: The Crucified God - the death on the gallows, Moltmann’s answer and the trinity

A
  • the young boy for some reason struggled for half an hour, dying on the gallows
  • someone was heard saying “where is God? Where is he”
  • Moltmann’s answer is to argue that God the father wasn’t just looking on
  • God was involved in the suffering himself
  • part of Moltmann’s argument is to say that God allowed the suffering and gave Jesus the strength through the spirit
  • “the father allows himself to sacrifice himself through the spirit”
    -the only way to understand the cross is through the theology of the trinity but Moltmann pushes this theory further
  • he argues that the father is not impassible or unfeeling but unites with the son in this moment of dereliction- so he knows himself what it is like to suffer
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14
Q

Moltmann: The crucified God - dismissal of Docetism

A
  • Moltmann dismisses Docetism due to any argument that it was only the human nature of Jesus that suffered while the divine nature of Jesus was unaffected
  • the cross, for Moltmann, is the start of the divine process whereby the death of the son and grief of the father led to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit
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15
Q

Moltmann the crucified God- the trinity

A
  • “ the firm of the trinity which is revealed in the giving up of the son (the cross) appears as follows: 1 the father gives up his own son to death in its most absolute sense, for us; 2 the son gives himself up, for us; 3 the common sacrifice of the father and the son comes through the Holy Spirit, who joins and unites the son in his forsakenness with the father”
  • Moltmann’s argument is not just that this event reveals the character of God, but the essence of God the father is included in the event
  • it is this point about the trinitarian nature of the cross, whereby each part of the trinity, father son and the Holy Spirit share in the event, which many Christians find offensive
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16
Q

Moltmann the crucified God- the trinity

A
  • “ the firm of the trinity which is revealed in the giving up of the son (the cross) appears as follows: 1 the father gives up his own son to death in its most absolute sense, for us; 2 the son gives himself up, for us; 3 the common sacrifice of the father and the son comes through the Holy Spirit, who joins and unites the son in his forsakenness with the father”
  • Moltmann’s argument is not just that this event reveals the character of God, but the essence of God the father is included in the event
  • it is this point about the trinitarian nature of the cross, whereby each part of the trinity, father son and the Holy Spirit share in the event, which many Christians find offensive
17
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - conclusion

A
  • suffering is part of the human condition as in sense the hardest part for a Christian to explain
  • to atheists, suffering just is
  • an atheist sees no meaning or purpose in suffering
  • but a Christian, suffering has a purpose:
    1- God identifies with us in suffering. If God has experienced suffering he knows what it is for human beings to suffer and therefore comfort us
    2- it points toward the end, when judgement of the world will come upon us
    3- it points beyond the immediate to a higher purpose of transformation through suffering. Jesus’ cross, Moltmann reminds us, should never be seen in isolation it’s the death and resurrection of Christ
18
Q

Moltmann: the crucified God - conclusion pt 2

A
  • Moltmann also presents us with the challenge of making all this relevant to a world which appears to reject God
    -“ Christian theology Michelle how far the Christian confession of faith in Jesus is true as seen from the outside and must demonstrate that it is relevant to the present day and understanding of reality and the present day dispute about the truth of God and the righteousness of man and the world “
  • Moltmann’s conclusion is a powerful one he believes that God didn’t put humanity on like we put on a shirt but actually became human entering right into the human condition we’ve always complexity and paradox 
19
Q

Traditional world view of God

A
  • traditionally the Christian view of God is that he is omni benevolent omnipotent, omniscient and transcendent.
  • he’s also considered as impossible.
  • Meaning that God cannot experience any pain or suffering so he has no emotions similar to human beings
  • this is because God is thought as immutable meaning that his unchanging
  • if you think of the concept of God being a perfect being then is something that is perfect changes in no longer becomes or is perfect so God has to be immutable and that links to God being impossible as a perfect being does not change within itself therefore God who is a perfect being cannot be able to experience any sufferring or emotion
20
Q

The old testament on the nature of God the

A
  • The old Testament reveals an omniscient, omnipotent and omni benevolent God who transcends existence. A God that exists at an epic distance can never be truly known and unless he reveals himself.
  • however some evidence in the old Testament would reveal a hint of possibility shown by God.
  • some Christians would argue that nothing causes a change in gods inner emotional state and that he consistently ask him with compassion and mercy.
  • although he outwardly displays a range of emotions such as love, grief, compassion and anger and that causes him to repent or change his mind 
21
Q

OT scriptures

A
  • 1 Samuel 15:11 “ I regret that I’ve made Saul King because he turned away from me”
  • Exodus 32:14 “ The lord relented and did not bring on his people the disaster he threatened”
  • these are hints that would suggest Gods passibility
  • but most Christians would argue that the inner emotional state of God does not change therefore he is immutable and passible
22
Q

The New Testament

A
  • whereas the new Testament reveals of God who has become incarnate in Jesus and Jesus is clearly passible
  • e.g John 11:35 “Jesus wept” - Jesus experienced emotion
  • Matthew 9:36 “… he had compassion on them”
  • despite the above the impassibility of God’s divine nature remains and shows that it’s always been God‘s plan to overcome suffering through resurrection
  • the father remains impassible who is separate (yet combined ) and the son is passible who experience suffering

Christianity (11 decks)

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