In his book Insurrection, Peter Rollins makes a number of provocative philosophical arguments regarding the Christian church’s historial unwillingness to, as he says “participate in the Crucifixion,” and therefore fully embrace the gospel story.
The book’s focus is Christ’s forsakenness on the cross, which has been uniquely and beautifully illustrated for Old & New by Scott Allen Hill.
The book is a good challenging read for religious christians, non-believers or anyone interested in either the gospel story or just religion or religious philosophy in general. Here’s a passage that touches on the significance of the language used by Christ on the cross (and the reason we chose to quote it directly on Old & New rather than simply translate):
Domesticating Christ’s Cry
from Insurrection by Peter Rollins
In a desire to silence the true horror of Christ’s cry of dereliction, many have claimed that he was really just quoting Psalm 22 and therefore affirming the entire content of that psalm—a psalm which, in its totality, expresses deep belief. So, the claim, his cry of dereliction was really a shorthand description of belief, comfort, and security.
This perspective, however, fails to take into account the significance of the fact that the cry recorded in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark is put in Jesus’ native tongue (Aramaic) rather than in the psalm’s original Hebrew. in the Jewish faith, the Hebrew Scriptures are read, memorized, and recalled in the original language, not one’s native tongue, so while this cry might be inspired by the psalm, the words reflect a person’s heartfelt cry of agony and loss rather than some mere quote. To read it otherwise would be to view it as part of some kind of cosmic theatrical show, a phrase that provides the whole Crucifixion scene with a sense of drama and despair all the while offering a wink that tells us everything is really fine.
We must instead give this cry its full theological and existential weight. We must read it with all of its horror and potency. It is a cry that comes from one cut off from all grounding in a deeper reality, one who has lost all sense of meaning, all mythological frames. It is a cry that exposes us to a man utterly destitute.
Here, right at the heart of Christianity, God despairs of God.
