Did God die on the cross?

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Delahunt

Delahunt

Puritan Board Freshman
Hi all!

Working through my Christology, and am trying to grasp at how to articulate Christ's death on the cross. Did God die on the cross? In some ways the question seems easy - absolutely not! and yet in some other was, it seems that a divine payment was needed to secure divine forgiveness/satisfy divine wrath....so yes??? Scripture, Reformed/Confessional quotations, thoughts all would be helpful. Thanks!
 
"We believe that Jesus Christ was God incarnate. We also believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross. If we say that God died on the cross, and if by that we mean that the divine nature perished, we have stepped over the edge into serious heresy. In fact, two such heresies related to this problem arose in the early centuries of the church: theopassianism and patripassianism. The first of these, theopassianism, teaches that God Himself suffered death on the cross. Patripassianism indicates that the Father suffered vicariously through the suffering of His Son. Both of these heresies were roundly rejected by the church for the very reason that they categorically deny the very character and nature of God, including His immutability. There is no change in the substantive nature or character of God at any time.

God not only created the universe, He sustains it by the very power of His being. As Paul said, “In Him we live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28). If the being of God ceased for one second, the universe would disappear. It would pass out of existence, because nothing can exist apart from the sustaining power of God. If God dies, everything dies with Him. Obviously, then, God could not have perished on the cross.

Some say, “It was the second person of the Trinity Who died.” That would be a mutation within the very being of God, because when we look at the Trinity we say that the three are one in essence, and that though there are personal distinctions among the persons of the Godhead, those distinctions are not essential in the sense that they are differences in being. Death is something that would involve a change in one’s being.

We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ. Somehow people tend to think that this lessens the dignity or the value of the substitutionary act, as if we were somehow implicitly denying the deity of Christ. God forbid. It’s the God-man Who dies, but death is something that is experienced only by the human nature, because the divine nature isn’t capable of experiencing death."

https://www.ligonier.org/blog/it-accurate-say-god-died-cross/


LATE EDIT: I like Daniel and Tim's clarifications below, however.
 
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1 Corinthians 15:21-22

“For since by man came death, by man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive.”
 
To deny the proposition that God died on the cross is Nestorianism. While the divine nature could neither suffer nor die, it was a divine person who suffered and died in his human nature. Hence, when correctly understood, it is proper to say that God died - otherwise you will have to deny the unity of Christ's person.
 
Reformed Covenanter said:
To deny the proposition that God died on the cross is Nestorianism. While the divine nature could neither suffer nor die, it was a divine person who suffered and died in his human nature. Hence, when correctly understood, it is proper to say that God died - otherwise you will have to deny the unity of Christ's person.
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Yes, and scripture itself says that God bled:

"Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)

It is the God that bled also the God that died, though since the human nature was not essential to the divine, there was also no change in the essence of God. It's true that if the human nature was essential to the divine that death would necessitate change in the Godhead, but we do not believe that the human nature is co-eternal, but rather "the human nature... a creature, having beginning of days, being a finite nature, and retaining all the properties of a real body" was added to the divine. When we consider these facts, we can carefully and rightfully concur both that God died on the cross and that God cannot die.
 
WCF 8.7 is helpful. Actually, study all of chapter 8 carefully. It is very carefully laid out.

Christ, in the work of mediation, acts according to both natures, by each nature doing that which is proper to itself; (Heb. 9:14, 1 Pet. 3:18) yet, by reason of the unity of the person, that which is proper to one nature is sometimes in scripture attributed to the person denominated by the other nature. (Acts 20:28, John 3:13, 1 John 3:16)​
 
I've always thought of Romans 5:7-8 pointing to the divinity of Christ in his death:

"For one will scarcely die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die--but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us."

The argument is that you would not substitute your life for another (especially an unrighteous one), but God substitutes His life (in Christ) for us.
 
We need to be clear on several terms (which are almost never clarified).

*When you say "God," do you mean the essence, a divine person, more than one divine person, etc?

*When you say "die," do you mean the soul is separated from the body, a cessation of consciousness (which isn't even true of humans)?
 
Delahunt said:
Hi all!

Working through my Christology, and am trying to grasp at how to articulate Christ's death on the cross. Did God die on the cross? In some ways the question seems easy - absolutely not! and yet in some other was, it seems that a divine payment was needed to secure divine forgiveness/satisfy divine wrath....so yes??? Scripture, Reformed/Confessional quotations, thoughts all would be helpful. Thanks!
Click to expand...
God the Son physically died, but He still was alive, as did not suffer spiritual death, as still alive when He went and was raised up glorified.
 
BayouHuguenot said:
We need to be clear on several terms (which are almost never clarified).

*When you say "God," do you mean the essence, a divine person, more than one divine person, etc?

*When you say "die," do you mean the soul is separated from the body, a cessation of consciousness (which isn't even true of humans)?
Click to expand...

Thanks, these are crucial questions to set up a thoughtful answer. I believe I know where you are going here, but for sake of clarity and my own edification to answer someone who may ask me, let me ask those questions here
1. What if I use the word God with respect to Essence? Did God die?
2. What if I use the word God with respect to Person? Did God die?
3. What if I use the word God to encompass the Spirit or Father? Did God die?
4. What if I use the word Die to mean physical death in which the body only perished? Did God die?

Your clarifying questions are extremely useful for me to think through it, would be interested in the answers as well.
 
Delahunt said:
Thanks, these are crucial questions to set up a thoughtful answer. I believe I know where you are going here, but for sake of clarity and my own edification to answer someone who may ask me, let me ask those questions here
1. What if I use the word God with respect to Essence? Did God die?
2. What if I use the word God with respect to Person? Did God die?
3. What if I use the word God to encompass the Spirit or Father? Did God die?
4. What if I use the word Die to mean physical death in which the body only perished? Did God die?

Your clarifying questions are extremely useful for me to think through it, would be interested in the answers as well.
Click to expand...
Jesus physically died in His humanity, but not in His Deity.
 
Here, the points Rom and Daniel have raised get to the heart of the issue. To understand how we can say that the God-man died, we have to understand something of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ, and how the two natures relate to the person.

So, the person of Christ has two natures that are not divided, nor changed, nor separated (see the Chalcedonian formula). The human nature only exists in hypostatic union with the divine. So the Son did not take upon himself an already existing "out there" human nature. Rather, He added a full human nature, body and soul, to His divine nature, and which only exists in hypostatic union with the divine nature, a full human nature though it be.

This union means that there is a communication of attributes. The communication of attributes can go from either nature to the person, but not from one nature to the other. In other words, what is true of either nature can be said of the whole person. We can say that Jesus, the God-man, got tired, even though God does not get tired. The tiredness is predicated of the human nature, and therefore also to the whole person. We also say that Jesus did miracles. His human nature did not do the miracles (and it is not really appropriate to say that a nature acted, since He is a person, and the natures do not operate abstractly of the person), but He as a person did the miracles. In the case of the Acts quotation, we see what is happening: Jesus Christ died, and His blood was shed. Obviously, only human blood can be spilled, as God doesn't have blood. However, what is true of the human nature is true of the whole person. And what the confession notes is that the whole person can be designated by either nature. This is how we can say that God purchased the church with His own blood. It is also how we can affirm, in this sense, that Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer: she bore the God-man.

So, we don't simply say "God died on the cross," without qualification, which could be misleading. What we should say is that Jesus Christ, the God-man died on the cross. He died according to His human nature, a death that can then be posited of the whole person. All four of your questions should be answered in the negative, because you are not explicitly talking of the God-man there, but only God abstracted from the human nature that the Son assumed.
 
timfost said:
Yes, and scripture itself says that God bled:

"Therefore take heed to yourselves and to all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood." (Acts 20:28)

It is the God that bled also the God that died, though since the human nature was not essential to the divine, there was also no change in the essence of God. It's true that if the human nature was essential to the divine that death would necessitate change in the Godhead, but we do not believe that the human nature is co-eternal, but rather "the human nature... a creature, having beginning of days, being a finite nature, and retaining all the properties of a real body" was added to the divine. When we consider these facts, we can carefully and rightfully concur both that God died on the cross and that God cannot die.
Click to expand...

Your response is a very good corrective.

Do you think the quote I provided from Ligonier's is one-sided or unbalanced on this issue?
 
Pergamum said:
Your response is a very good corrective.

Do you think the quote I provided from Ligonier's is one-sided or unbalanced on this issue?
Click to expand...

Ligonier meant well but they didn't think through their answer. The term "God" and the term "died" were left ambiguous. What we have to maintain is that the divine nature suffered no "perturbations" (my word). The divine person, however, most certainly did die. That's the whole point.
 
Pergamum said:
Your response is a very good corrective.

Do you think the quote I provided from Ligonier's is one-sided or unbalanced on this issue?
Click to expand...

I like much of it, but I think this is problematic:

"We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ."

This seems unbalanced for the following reasons:

1. It separates the work of the Person to the work of a nature.

2. Dort states "This death is of such infinite value and dignity because the Person who submitted to it was not only really man and perfectly holy, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, which qualifications were necessary to constitute Him a Savior for us..." (Dort 2.4). If the atonement was only accomplished by the human nature, it would be of finite worth. It is the hypostatic union that makes the atonement of infinite worth.

Heidelberg 14 says: "Can any mere creature make satisfaction for us? None; for first, God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man committed; and further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin and redeem others from it." It was not the human nature alone that atoned for sin since a) a human nature is only worth one human nature which is both finite and insufficient to substitute for many, and b) the human nature could not sustain the burden of God's wrath-- it would have been swallowed up in eternal punishment.

Does this help?
 
timfost said:
I like much of it, but I think this is problematic:

"We should shrink in horror from the idea that God actually died on the cross. The atonement was made by the human nature of Christ."

This seems unbalanced for the following reasons:

1. It separates the work of the Person to the work of a nature.

2. Dort states "This death is of such infinite value and dignity because the Person who submitted to it was not only really man and perfectly holy, but also the only begotten Son of God, of the same eternal and infinite essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, which qualifications were necessary to constitute Him a Savior for us..." (Dort 2.4). If the atonement was only accomplished by the human nature, it would be of finite worth. It is the hypostatic union that makes the atonement of infinite worth.

Heidelberg 14 says: "Can any mere creature make satisfaction for us? None; for first, God will not punish any other creature for the sin which man committed; and further, no mere creature can sustain the burden of God’s eternal wrath against sin and redeem others from it." It was not the human nature alone that atoned for sin since a) a human nature is only worth one human nature which is both finite and insufficient to substitute for many, and b) the human nature could not sustain the burden of God's wrath-- it would have been swallowed up in eternal punishment.

Does this help?
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Yes, thanks. While reading the article I also glanced over at the Formula of Chalcedon and remembered that we also have no problem calling Mary the Mother of God. So it follows then that we can allow for loose verbiage which also speaks of God dying on the Cross.
 
Not only did God die on a cross, God was born of a virgin. We must let Scripture expand and inform our preconceived notions about birth and death.

Another thing, we needn’t be so careful to say the Son died in his human nature. He did. But if to die is to be separated from a body, then the whole Son died. An impersonal human nature wasn’t separated from a body. A divine person with a human nature was.

When the Son died he could no longer perform divine acts in human form. Nor could the human nature perform physical acts. Yet the human soul existed and functioned according to an intermediate state. The human soul of the Son was not restricted in thought but it was restricted in bodily function upon death. We are not annihilationists.

But just as the human soul was separated from the body, the divine person was too. So, the second person in and through the divine nature could do all he ever could do - which is all his holy will, upon the second person’s separation from the body. The Son, in both natures, could do what the Son in both natures could do apart from a body. The human nature was restricted upon death but the divine person in his divine nature was not restricted when the second person was separated from the body of the human nature. He could function as always before upon separation from his body.
 
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BayouHuguenot said:
We need to be clear on several terms (which are almost never clarified).

*When you say "God," do you mean the essence, a divine person, more than one divine person, etc?

*When you say "die," do you mean the soul is separated from the body, a cessation of consciousness (which isn't even true of humans)?
Click to expand...

I like this. It gets to my point. I think people impose non consciousness upon the reality of death, which is akin to annihilation. But if we consider death in terms of a person separated from his body, then that was true of the divine Son.
 
RWD said:
But just as the human soul was separated from the body, the divine person was too. So, the second person in and through the divine nature could do all he ever could do - which is all his holy will, upon the second person’s separation from the body. The Son, in both natures, could do what the Son in both natures could do apart from a body. The human nature was restricted upon death but the divine person in his divine nature was not restricted when the second person was separated from the body of the human nature. He could function as always before upon separation from his body.
Click to expand...

Hmm... This seems to contradict the Belgic Confession 19, "But these two natures are so closely united in one Person that they were not separated even by His death. Therefore that which He, when dying, commended into the hands of His Father, was a real human spirit, departing from His body. But in the meantime the divine nature always remained united with the human, even when He lay in the grave; and the Godhead did not cease to be in Him, any more than it did when He was an infant, though it did not so clearly manifest itself for a while."

Would you take exception to this article or am I misunderstanding you?

Thanks for clarifying!
 
timfost said:
Hmm... This seems to contradict the Belgic Confession 19, "But these two natures are so closely united in one Person that they were not separated even by His death. Therefore that which He, when dying, commended into the hands of His Father, was a real human spirit, departing from His body. But in the meantime the divine nature always remained united with the human, even when He lay in the grave; and the Godhead did not cease to be in Him, any more than it did when He was an infant, though it did not so clearly manifest itself for a while."

Would you take exception to this article or am I misunderstanding you?

Thanks for clarifying!
Click to expand...

No, as I understand it, I would not take it exception. It’s a great truth but I don’t think what I’ve said even interacts with it.

What you cite from the BC seems to be teaching that the Second Person retained both natures in one person upon death. He did. Whatever the union of the two natures in one person, the Second Person remained a human being and a divine being. One person, two natures, never stopped.

More to the point, since the divine nature of the Son is one and the same (numerically one) with the Spirit and the Father, we should be saying for clarity sake not that the two natures remained united but that the human nature remained united to the divine Second Person. For in the incarnation, neither the Father nor the Son, who fully share the divine nature, emptied themself (“by addition” i.e. by adding humanity to themself). Only the Second Person became forever man.

We must be careful not to say that the divine nature (without any qualification) has a body. The Second Person who is divine does. The Son has a human body. Upon death, the body of the Second Person lay in the grave. The human spirit (nature or essence) was commended into the Father’s hands. The human being was with the Father, apart from the body. Where the human being of Christ is, he is as one person, the undivided Son. But the Son yielded up his human ghost when it was finished. So, no matter the relationship of the human soul and divine nature of the Son, one person with two natures existed as one person, even when the body lay in the grave. Where the human spirit of the Son was, he was there as the undivided God-man, awaiting the resurrection. Yet also, the omnipresent Son was not merely in one place, constrained by time and space.
 
RWD said:
No, as I understand it, I would not take it exception. It’s a great truth but I don’t think what I’ve said even interacts with it.

What you cite from the BC seems to be teaching that the Second Person retained both natures in one person upon death. He did. Whatever the union of the two natures in one person, the Second Person remained a human being and a divine being. One person, two natures, never stopped.

More to the point, since the divine nature of the Son is one and the same (numerically one) with the Spirit and the Father, we should be saying for clarity sake not that the two natures remained united but that the human nature remained united to the divine Second Person. For in the incarnation, neither the Father nor the Son, who fully share the divine nature, emptied themself (“by addition” i.e. by adding humanity to themself). Only the Second Person became forever man.

We must be careful not to say that the divine nature (without any qualification) has a body. The Second Person who is divine does. The Son has a human body. Upon death, the body of the Second Person lay in the grave. The human spirit (nature or essence) was commended into the Father’s hands. The human being was with the Father, apart from the body. Where the human being of Christ is, he is as one person, the undivided Son. But the Son yielded up his human ghost when it was finished. So, no matter the relationship of the human soul and divine nature of the Son, one person with two natures existed as one person, even when the body lay in the grave. Where the human spirit of the Son was, he was there as the undivided God-man, awaiting the resurrection. Yet also, the omnipresent Son was not merely in one place, constrained by time and space.
Click to expand...
Was not Jesus the fullness of God the Son incarnated though, so all of Him was present as Jesus on Earth? So As God Man, He could taste and suffer death in the physical sense as a Man in a real sense, but not as God?
 
timfost said:
Hmm... This seems to contradict the Belgic Confession 19, "But these two natures are so closely united in one Person that they were not separated even by His death. Therefore that which He, when dying, commended into the hands of His Father, was a real human spirit, departing from His body. But in the meantime the divine nature always remained united with the human, even when He lay in the grave; and the Godhead did not cease to be in Him, any more than it did when He was an infant, though it did not so clearly manifest itself for a while."

Would you take exception to this article or am I misunderstanding you?

Thanks for clarifying!
Click to expand...

Neither human nature nor divine nature is synonymous with the soul. BC is saying that the natures aren't separate. It isn't saying that the soul doesn't part (however temporarily) with the body. That's more or less the classic understanding of what death is from Plato to Augustine to Aquinas to Calvin to Belgic.
 
Dachaser said:
Was not Jesus the fullness of God the Son incarnated though, so all of Him was present as Jesus on Earth? So As God Man, He could taste and suffer death in the physical sense as a Man in a real sense, but not as God?
Click to expand...

I believe I addressed this above. Maybe consider...

What does it mean to die? When a human dies, is he separated from the body, yet conscious with a will etc.? Is that the essence of death? Was the Second person separated from His body? Do Persons or abstractions die? Did a person die in our stead or an impersonal human composite of body and soul?
 
RWD said:
I believe I addressed this above. Maybe consider...

What does it mean to die? When a human dies, is he separated from the body, yet conscious with a will etc.? Is that the essence of death? Was the Second person separated from His body? Do Persons or abstractions die? Did a person die in our stead or an impersonal human composite of body and soul?
Click to expand...
Jesus really did die in our place as our son bearer, but God cannot everdie in the ultimate sense of that term
 
Dachaser said:
Jesus really did die in our place as our son bearer, but God cannot everdie in the ultimate sense of that term
Click to expand...
Please ask clarifying questions— and then take time to think and study— rather than state thoughts in declarative form. This will benefit everyone much more.
 
Dachaser said:
Jesus really did die in our place as our son bearer, but God cannot everdie in the ultimate sense of that term
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Perhaps this might be a bit more nuanced than that. By analogy, God is Spirit. He cannot be seen (nor tempted). Jesus is God. Jesus was both seen and tempted. Was “God” tempted?

The Son was tempted through his human nature and only by that occasion. Notwithstanding, a person was tempted, lest a person did not fulfill all righteousness on our behalf. In the like manner, not just a human nature but an actual person died upon the cross, lest we aren’t redeemed (and only our natures are redeemed).

Excursus...It’s my understanding that William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland do not think Christ has two wills, a human and divine will. But wouldn’t this imply our wills are not redeemed? As Oliver Crisp points out, they may save themselves from violating Chalcedon. Maybe. But as Crisp also observes, do they violate the 3rd Council of Constantinople? Should we affirm monothelitism? I should say not.
 
RWD said:
It’s my understanding that William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland do not think Christ has two wills, a human and divine will. But wouldn’t this imply our wills are not redeemed? As Oliver Crisp points out, they may save themselves from violating Chalcedon. Maybe. But as Crisp also observes, do they violate the 3rd Council of Constantinople? Should we affirm monothelitism? I should say not.
Click to expand...

Correct. Craig is a monothelite. He wrote that section in Philosophical Foundations. Moreland hasn't really commented on that issue.
 
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