When the Lord Was Cut Off From the Light of God's Countenance

Recently I finished reading Thomas Watson's 'Divinity' It is an excellent, classical work. Watson too wrote about God's wrath. I will quote the relevant section below yet would first comment that Paul House (a lecturer in OT Theology) noted that Job and Isaiah 40-48 addressed the 'why' questions a lot-that is why do certain kinds of suffering occur, and of pastoral difficulties in forming replies sometimes. That was in the context of the question of free will, and does mankind have that if God is omniscient. Plainly Jesus as God was not entirely subject to quantum determinism of the steady-state Universe (e.g. walking on water, raising the dead), his will was free though he too was pre-destined to die on the cross. 

That is the question becomes is prescience the same as predeterminism? How can God make himself subject to His own creation? That's a neat trick (I mean this as the highest compliment). I have different ideas than does House on the idea of causality viewing it not necessarily in a linear or tree branching temporal series exclusively because of reading in quantum cosmology of contemporary physics (I am not a physicist or scientist though). I believe God is complete master of quantum wave-particle forms and membranes or monads that issue light and such, and have different ideas than House about creation theology yet I have moved beyond the criterion of theistic evolution quite a bit. On that topic I would say that the simple answers are true such as are presented in the OT. The point was to illustrate the point that everything hasn't an accurate simple-to-understand causal explanation that can fit neatly within human perspective. As House said sometimes one has to just trust God on matters of 'why' as all things for people of faith work for the glory of God...Here is what Watson wrote about the independent experience of suffering of the Lord...Thomas Watson wrote the following of Christ's death on page 135 of 'Divinity'...

“(I.) In the sufferings of his body. He suffered truly, not in appearance only. The apostle calls it mors crucis, the death of the cross. Phil 2: 8. Cicero, when speaking of this kind of death, says, quid dicam in crucem tollere? [How can I describe being raised up on a cross?] Though he was a great orator he wanted words to express it. The thoughts of this made Christ sweat great drops of blood in the garden. Luke 22: 44. It was an ignominious, painful, cursed death.

Christ suffered in all his senses. His eyes beheld two sad objects, his enemies insulting, and his mother weeping. His ears were filled with the revilings of the people. 'He saved others, himself he cannot save.’ Matt 27: 42. His smell was offended when their spittle fell upon his face. His taste; when they gave him gall and vinegar to drink. His feeling; when his head suffered with thorns, his hands and feet with the nails. Totum pro vulnere corpus [His whole body one great wound]; now was this white lily dyed with purple colour.

(2.) In the sufferings of his soul. He was pressed in the wine-press of his Father's wrath. This caused that vociferation and outcry on the cross, 'My God, my God,' cur deseruisti? Christ suffered a double eclipse upon the cross, an eclipse of the sun, and an eclipse of the light of God's countenance. How bitter was this agony! The evangelists use three words to express it. 'He began to be amazed.' 'He began to be faint.' 'To be exceeding sorrowful' Mark 14: 33; Matt 26: 38. Christ felt the pains of hell in his soul, though not locally, yet equivalently.”