Retraction

To my Readers (both of them) I offer this apology for having posted sloppy work, a retraction of the offending material, and an examination of the error.

I have removed the following paragraph from my comments on the Cry of Dereliction, posted on March 06, 2008:

This view also assumes, without exegetical support, that Jesus took our sins upon himself (or that they were laid on him) at some point on that Good Friday. The better exegesis of the New Testament would be that he bore our sin all his life long, from the assumption of our humanity at his conception to the resurrection of it in his resurrection. The fellowship of Jesus with the Father shows the Father’s attitude to the One who fully lives in metanoia, i.e., in a constant “turning” from the dictations of sin, the flesh, and the devil to the Father in the power of the Spirit.

This had been the fourth of five paragraphs under “Theology.” The reasons for that change are twofold:

1) Even if we assert that Jesus “bore our sins all his life long,” for which I still think there is good exegetical and historical support (see Note below), the final conflict and conquest that occur at the cross differ both in kind and extent from the rest of his life. The agonizing prayers in the Garden of Gethsemane introduce the successive horrors of betrayal and desertion by his friends, a rigged trial by the supposed shepherds of Israel, being ejected from the covenant community for judgment, a public and shameful execution in extreme physical pain, and (harshest of all) the silence of his Father. As the prophets and apostles show us, Jesus there took upon himself the curse due to us that we might instead receive God’s blessing (Gal. 3:10-14). See also, for example, Isaiah 53:3-11, esp. vv. 6, 11; II Cor. 5:14-21, esp. v. 21; I Pet. 2:24.

2) Given these passages and others, the wording “without exegetical support” makes a universal negative claim that is plainly (and embarrassingly) untrue. See Calvin’s masterful treatment of the relevant passages in his Institutes of the Christian Religion, II.xvi.6; II.xvii.4.

Note:
Although it is possible to interpret John 1:14, Romans 8:3, Phil. 2:7, Heb. 2:17, and Heb. 4:15 as attributing to Jesus a human nature that is, unlike ours, untouched by the fall, I think that this kind of abstraction is alien to the texts and that they, rather, state that Jesus, by his incarnation, entered fully into the human situation with all its weaknesses and that he did not himself commit sin, but turned that nature to complete obedience to the Father. The Heidelberg Confession, Q. and A. 37, takes a similar position.