More on Suffering: Who is God?

Do these questions feel familiar?

“There is but one only, living, and true God, who is infinite in being and perfection, a most pure spirit, invisible, without body, parts, or passions; immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute; working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will, for his own glory; most loving, gracious, merciful, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; the rewarder of them that diligently seek him; and withal, most just, and terrible in his judgments, hating all sin, and who will by no means clear the guilty.” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 2.1)

The god described in this passage of writing is essentially the god of classical philosophy. God becomes the idea of perfection, separate from creation in the way he is so different, so impenetrable, so transcendent above us and so impossible to comprehend. And all this is true of course, but not in the sense that there is no way of knowing him beyond an idea of absolute perfection. Getting there somehow by reason and talking lots about ideals tests the limits of our imagination and helps us to sort of conceive of a divine, but it doesn’t help us to know that divine being.

The cross has always been the central symbol for Christianity to draw attention to the sacrifice Christ made on the behalf of human beings, and a reminder of God’s grace. However, to have chosen to communicate His love and grace through this particular sacrifice says much more about the nature of God. However, in most popular writing around this, it does not go beyond the sentimental or symbolic. In his book, Drops Like Stars, Rob Bell muses "Perhaps that's why people... continue to identify with the cross. It speaks to our longing to know that we're not alone, that there's someone else "screaming alongside us." Is the cross God's way of saying "I know how you feel"?”  Even self-confessed atheist theologian, John Shelby Spong sees it as the ultimate expression of who God is, saying “"...the cross is not a place of torture and death; it is the portrait of the love of God seen when one can give all that one is and all that one has away. The cross thus becomes the symbol of a God presence that calls us to live, to love and to be."

But if we are to formulate a more complete understanding of the relationship of Jesus within the Godhead in suffering, we must go beyond divine empathy and using symbolic language around the cross. How is God Himself located within the suffering of Christ and the crucifixion? Nicholas Wolterstorff briefly explores this tension in saying:

"God is not only the God of the sufferers, but the God who suffers. The pain and fallenness of humanity have entered into his heart... Though I confessed that the man of sorrows was God himself, I never saw the God of sorrows. Though I confessed that the man bleeding on the cross was the redeeming God, I never saw God himself on the cross, blood from sword and thorn and nail dripping healing into the world's wounds."

How exactly is one to see God suffering in Jesus? This becomes a highly problematic task when God is understood primarily in terms of transcendence, impassibility and distinctiveness without a strong appreciation for His immanence.

What does the cross actually say?

God dies an excruciating, shameful, humiliating, painful and bloody death. What do we even do with that?

Have we become used to the idea of the cross?

Has it become an empty symbol, a shallow trinket?

Why does it not shock us anymore?

How is this God Himself?