Christ didn’t die, but only experienced another’s death?

I’ve been thinking lately about how Christians respond, and how we should respond to this seemingly inconsistent triad of claims:

1. Jesus died.
2. Jesus was fully divine.
3. No fully divine being has ever died.

As we’ve seen over a couple of podcast episodes, some deny 3, and some speechify about two natures (without clearly denying any of the three, or showing how they’re really consistent, or justifying accepting the apparent contradiction).

But I think that a more popular response, at least for the theologically trained, may be what we see in Biola theologian Dr. Fred Sanders’s recent piece. (It’s not a response to any work of mine, but is rather occasioned by Good Friday.) It’s title is “God Died on the Cross“ (earlier version) – a good, punchy title to be sure. It shocks, and so gets the reader’s attention. It suggests that Dr. Sanders’s response to the triad would be denying 3. But reading further, you find that isn’t so!

But first, this distraction: making a dramatic point with a problematic verse.

“God . . . died.” The Bible itself says it that bluntly in a few places, such as Acts 20:28, “God purchased the church with his own blood.”

Well… unless “God” in that verse should be “the Lord” (i.e. Jesus) or the latter portion should be translated “with the blood of his own [Son].” See the NET Bible notes on the textual and translation issues.

Back to theology, Sanders says it is obviously impossible that God should die.

“Divine death”… is probably not even a coherent idea. It seems to belong to the category of “neat tricks you can do with language,” by combining any adjective with any noun: square circle, blue height, quiet toddler, cold heat, divine death.

So he emphatically agrees with 3. But he can’t disagree with 1, right? So, 2 will have to go? Oh no. Perish the thought. It’s out with 1.

“God died” means that God experienced the only kind of death there is to experience, and that is creaturely death. How could that have happened?

Did you notices that little switcheroo? “God died” (i.e. Jesus died) can only mean that he “experienced death,” a kind of death which he could not possibly undergo. This is not a veridical experience; it must be understood as not involving his actually dying. Dr. Sanders then lovingly recounts the language of the council at Chalcedon in 451, and says that

He [i.e. the eternal, divine Logos] made that humanity [i.e. a human nature] his own, and in that appropriated humanity he appropriated real human death. He died the only death there is to die, our death.

His idea seems to be that this “human nature,” a creature, died. (Sidenote: then he was a man, a human self; you have to have a human life to lose a human life.) This death was observed at Calvary. And because of his mysterious, unique union with this thing, the real Christ (the eternal, divine Logos) “appropriated” a real human death – the death of this “human nature.” That is, Christ did not die, but in a sense made this other being’s death count as his own. In other words, he experienced this other one’s death as if it were his (which is was not – God can’t die). In Dr. Sanders’s words,

…the sentence “God died” can also be said in this longer form: “The eternal second person of the Trinity, God the Son, took into personal union with himself, without confusing it, changing it, dividing it or separating it from his eternal divine nature, a complete human nature through which he experienced death.

There was a death there on the cross, but it was not Christ’s. But Christ experienced it, so in that sense, it was “his.”

So “God died” is… a bit misleading. What he’s saying is: “Christ did not die (as God he can’t) but he experienced the death of another to which (whom?) he was closely related.” Or more simply: “Christ had an non-veridical experience as of dying.” Or better yet: “Christ ‘died.'”

Dr. Sanders assures us that

…there is no trickery and no sleight of hand in that expanded paraphrase of “God died.” The longer sentence is what the shorter sentence means, and both sentences are true precisely insofar as they mean each other.

I don’t think there’s any trickery on Dr. Sanders’s part. He uses the paradoxical sentence but immediately explains it. But I do think there would have been deception on the apostle Peter’s part if he had in mind what Dr. Sanders says and yet preached:

[Jesus] was handed over to you by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross. But God raised him from the dead…

If that’s about all Peter said, though he had in mind something like what Dr. Sanders says above, then Peter would be intentionally deceiving his hearers, because he knew this would cause them to believe that Jesus died. If, on the other hand, Peter thought that Jesus was God, and that Jesus died, then Peter had some pretty messed up theology, with a mortal god at its heart.

Happily, though, the whole context makes pretty clear that Peter thinks God is one being and Jesus is another, and that only the latter died.

I’m with Peter!

It’s easy to see the appeal of what Sanders is imagining here. Suppose you love the whales. You can’t, as a human, die a whale’s death. But suppose you could enter into some sort of “virtual reality” setup that would result in your feeling like whale feels when it is drowning to death. It’d not be a fun experience! You imagine doing this in order to show your sympathy for the whales. Better yet: imagine that we can tie our virtual reality into the brain of a whale, call him Blubber. This transmits his experiences to you, so that you experience them first person. Then, this whales loses strength and drowns to death. You have just experienced the death of Blubber! This may express your solidarity with the whales, and give you a feeling of closeness to Blubber and to his kin. You have made a sort of sacrifice, of your time, and your comfort, for the cause.

It’s not the same, though, as giving your own life (dying) to save the whales!

In general, I think the strategy Sanders displays is this. Deny 1, but loudly affirm that “Jesus died” or that “God died,” to distract from the fact that you deny those. The distraction is needed, as denying that Jesus died grates on Christian ears, and rightly so. Generally also, though, you suggest a death-substitute for Jesus. “Jesus died” is true because Jesus underwent this death-substitute. It needn’t be the experience of death, as Sanders has it. It could just be: having a nature which died. I’ve seen other suggest: suffer the division of his soul and body (those comprising the human nature which he has assumed).

Three observations about this. This distraction, I suppose, will always be needed, outside a very select crowd. Most Christians take the New Testament claims here at face-value, and hold that Jesus died. You’ll never have wide buy-in to any of the death-substitutes suggested. Second, this will wreak havoc with atonement. No literal death, no literal sacrifice. Only the appearance of a sacrifice of Christ? Third, this will wreak havoc with our doctrine of resurrection. No literal death, no return from death. Christ the immortal, rather that Christ who has been raised. But isn’t the example of Christ our assurance of what awaits us, his followers? We will die, and so will need to be restored from death to life. If Christ suffered this terrible experience that was not actually his own death, and kept on living right on through it… presumably something or someone else was raised, the thing that died? Are we to think that he or it, and not Christ, is what comforts us, knowing that death awaits?