The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ

by Fleming Rutledge

Death in the New Testament does not refer solely to extinction at the end of natural life, which was taken for granted (though not welcomed, to be sure) by the Hebrews of the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Death has become a hostile Power; therefore, to die is not simply to pass into Sheol, and certainly not to inherit immortality — Paul is explicit about that23 — but is experienced as condemnation and defeat at the hands of God’s Enemy.

Also, the passages already examined from I Peter suggest that not even the dead are beyond the reach of the re-creating, revivifying Word. In Romans 11, with its powerful evocation of “life from the dead” in verse 15, Paul strongly hints at the redemptive activity of God among unbelievers even beyond the grave.

there has never been a satisfactory account of the origin of evil, and there will be none on this side of the consummation of the kingdom of God. Evil is a vast excrescence, a monstrous contradiction that cannot be explained but can only be denounced and resisted wherever it appears.64

In the end, the various philosophical approaches to the problem of evil offer little help to those who are grappling with actual horrific evils, either in their own lives or in their concern for the lives of others.

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

We have sought repeatedly to explain that any model requiring us to split the Father from the Son violates the fundamental Trinitarian theology of God and must be renounced.