The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

David Hart, writing about The Brothers Karamazov, describes Ivan’s posture as “rage against explanation.”153 Hart argues that we must not be persuaded into a position that requires us to make sense of everything that happens. It is premature to say to a sufferer, “There must be some reason for this.” The sufferer may (or may not) eventually come to this belief by himself, in and through the suffering; but it is a first rule of pastoral ministry that the would-be consoler must never put such words into the sufferer’s mouth. In many situations the best rule for the “comforter” may very well be silence. Unfortunately, it is often the case that the “explanations” offered are consoling only to the “comforter,” not the sufferer. There are only two possible responses to horrendous suffering. The first is to share the sufferer’s pain at length, in silence.154 The second, as Hart concludes, is to “hate these things with a perfect hatred.”155