Atonement Theories & Anger, Part 4: Anger is Jesus’ Invitation to Partnership
Mako A. Nagasawa
Photo credit: Melanie, “High Five,” Flickr.
Jesus Shapes Our Emotions and Emotional Responsiveness – Even for Non-Christians
How do I propose we let Jesus shape and inform our emotional life? Before I explore atonement theories explicitly in the next post, I wish to return to the letter I wrote to my church family. I wrote:
“We invite one another, and others who don’t know Jesus, to share in the emotions Jesus had and has, because Jesus’ emotional life heals ours. We share in Jesus’ responses to our broken world this way. We won’t always know what to say or do, but we trust him to be present and guide us.”
First of all, was it right of me to invite non-Christians to share in the emotions Jesus had and has? Absolutely. Mary’s emotion is a healthy starting place, for example. Let me compare her posture towards Jesus with a posture of resistance to Jesus, because it will become clear why this point is so important.
Let’s imagine a man named Robert. Abused as a child, abandoned by his father, a teen victim of youth violence, exposed first hand to white supremacists in the police force, incarcerated at a formative age as a young man, Robert could easily become resistant to Jesus. But if Robert thinks that his suffering is so deeply private, he would be fundamentally wrong. If Robert folds his arms against Jesus, if he believes his suffering makes him unique, if he insists that only he understands his own pain, or if he tries to leverage his suffering against God and aim it at Him with all fury and rage, then Jesus utterly undoes him. For in his very anger is Jesus himself.
Jesus has arrayed himself against all of the harm inflicted on Robert by others who acted under the influence of the corruption of sin. Robert cannot separate Jesus from it. There is no impenetrable curtain he can draw against Jesus. In fact, just when he might think he has cocooned himself within his pain, Robert would find that he has only drawn Jesus to his bosom, close to his heart. Jesus is already working in Robert through the very anger with which he wanted to push Jesus away. As the early bishop-theologian Diadochos of Photiki said, “Becoming incensed in a controlled manner can be viewed as a weapon implanted in our nature by God when he creates us.”[1] Jesus had already shared a moral sense and moral anger with Robert as weapons against sinfulness. And Jesus does not stand idly by when people turn those weapons against himself. Instead, Jesus invites us to partnership.
This is why I find Mary of Bethany so admirable. She did not try to close herself off from Jesus in her pain, or push him away. Quite the opposite: She demonstrated an open quality, a desire to find in Jesus something of a shared experience, and she was rewarded. Mary moved to see him, and petition him. “Mary got up quickly and came to him … to the place where Jesus was, she saw him and fell at his feet” (John 11:29, 31 – 32). For Jesus uses even the occasions of our anger and piercing grief to invite us to know Him more deeply in his anger and grief, and through his human expressions of emotional solidarity with us, the unchanging love of God the Father. Jesus met Mary’s cry with his own, and this teaches us a great deal.
Second, Christians who say they uphold the doctrine of total depravity have to be very careful what they mean by it. For this Augustinian-Calvinist idea might be accurate if we used it to say that all of our words and deeds are infected with an element of selfishness. So if we are trying to “earn our own way to God,” individualistically, as if such a thing were even possible or advisable to attempt, nothing we produce stands on its own. However, what if we are asking a question about ourselves from another angle? What if we are asking whether the doctrine of the imago dei – that we are created in the image of God – has any evidence in our emotional lives? What if we are asking whether God has in fact maintained a foothold in our consciences?
Too often, the doctrine of total depravity has been used to negate our human emotions or moral intuitions completely. Practitioners of this idea act as if we can only teach things from Scripture, or lay out “the four spiritual laws,” because our human emotions mean nothing and evidence nothing. This is why people think they can do evangelism effectively without ever really knowing the other person. But Paul shows us that God leaves traces of Himself before people come to know Jesus explicitly. He saw that the Athenians recognized an “unknown God” and were drawn to know God, so he said to them, “What you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you” (Acts 17:23). God is also at work in our consciences (Romans 2:14 – 16). We absolutely agree with the apostle Paul when he said, “Nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh” (Romans 7:18). But we must bear in mind that Paul was differentiating between the “evil [that] is present in me,” from the “me,” the “I, myself,” who “agrees with the Law, that the Law is good” (Romans 7:16), who has “the willing present in me” (Romans 7:17), who is “the one who wants to do good” (Romans 7:21), whose agreement with God is “joyful” (Romans 7:22). The “me” and “my flesh” were two different things, conceptually. And the “me” was created originally in the image of God, whereas “the flesh” was the corruption of sin from the fall, and its corrupted mode of life which was parasitic.
Jesus Shapes Our Emotions and Emotional Responsiveness – For Christians
Third, Scripture invites us to partner with God emotionally in many ways, whether we already have known Jesus for decades or are just beginning to explore who he is. It is not that our emotions are absolutely identical with Jesus’ human emotions, or God’s divine emotions. They are certainly not that way automatically. They must be trained. But there is a connection and similarity, if not by analogy then by partial participation.
If Christ is to be “formed in us” by the Spirit (Galatians 4:19), then Christ’s emotional life needs to shape our emotional life. As the fifth century Christian bishop and writer, Augustine of Hippo, said, “Why did Christ weep except to teach us to weep?”[2] Obviously, we wept before we knew Jesus. But Jesus wants to disciple our weeping. Why? So we participate more fully in his weeping. Jesus wants our partnership.
I recently read how people in one high partnership culture teach their children how to handle anger. An NPR article describes how the Inuit people in the Arctic north limit their expressions of anger. I imagine that when you must partner with others to survive brutally harsh winters of negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit, that you need to develop the capacity to deal with mistakes -- those of others, and your own. Sensitive non-Inuit observers note that the Inuit are not stoic, but restrain their expressions of anger in order to make space for other emotions, and teach their children to do so. For example, when their young children disobey, adult Inuit do not scold, even though they may feel angry. "Traditionally, the Inuit saw yelling at a small child as demeaning. It’s as if the adult is having a tantrum; it’s basically stooping to the level of the child…”[3] Adult Inuit view yelling at a child as teaching the child to yell, as if yelling solves problems (a good point). To demonstrate emotional regulation, adult Inuit tell young children pointed stories, and do so proactively. If children take food without asking, “long fingers will reach out to grab them,” they say. The storytelling engages a more thoughtful, imaginative part of them.
Inuit parents view their children’s anger or misbehavior as the result of a problem to be solved or a misunderstanding to be resolved. Then when their child is calmer, a parent will re-enact -- like in a play -- their child’s misbehavior, and the real consequences that accompany it, sometimes with playful teasing:
“For example, if the child is hitting others, the mom may start a drama by asking: “Why don't you hit me?”
Then the child has to think: "What should I do?" If the child takes the bait and hits the mom, she doesn't scold or yell but instead acts out the consequences. "Ow, that hurts!" she might exclaim.
The mom continues to emphasize the consequences by asking a follow-up question. For example: "Don't you like me?" or "Are you a baby?" She is getting across the idea that hitting hurts people's feelings, and "big girls" wouldn't hit. But, again, all questions are asked with a hint of playfulness.
The parent repeats the drama from time to time until the child stops hitting the mom during the dramas and the misbehavior ends.
Ishulutak says these dramas teach children not to be provoked easily. "They teach you to be strong emotionally," she says, "to not take everything so seriously or to be scared of teasing."
Psychologist Peggy Miller, at the University of Illinois, agrees: "When you're little, you learn that people will provoke you, and these dramas teach you to think and maintain some equilibrium."
In other words, the dramas offer kids a chance to practice controlling their anger, Miller says, during times when they're not actually angry.
This practice is likely critical for children learning to control their anger...
[I]f you practice having a different response or a different emotion at times when you're not angry, you'll have a better chance of managing your anger in those hot-button moments, [psychologist Lisa] Feldman Barrett says.
"That practice is essentially helping to rewire your brain to be able to make a different emotion [besides anger] much more easily," she says.
This emotional practice may be even more important for children, says [clinical psychologist and author Laura] Markham, because kids' brains are still developing the circuitry needed for self-control.
"Children have all kinds of big emotions," she says. "They don't have much prefrontal cortex yet. So what we do in responding to our child's emotions shapes their brain."[4]
From what I understand about neuroscience, traditional Inuit parenting seems to help children mature from survival-oriented, amygdala-based responses to more thoughtful, prefrontal cortex-based responses. Children learn to think best about things that frustrate them when they are not afraid. Remarkably, that includes having a gut-level fear of punishment. Adults teach them how to access other emotions, like humor, compassion, empathy, and other-regard, even while demonstrating and reenacting the emotional consequences of that child’s misbehavior. Children learn lessons: you can be patient with others; mistakes can be fixed; and thinking with others, and on their behalf, is a better problem solving posture than simply holding anger against them. That overlaps entirely with medical substitutionary atonement and its implications.
There are important lessons here. Of course, how much anger we express, and in what way, must relate to what we believe about how emotionally mature and healthy other people are. Other people’s cultural and geographic location also matter a great deal, not just practically but out of love and mission (1 Corinthians 9:19 - 22).
In the same way that children learn emotional self-regulation from their parents, for better and for worse, followers of Jesus learn emotional self-regulation by partnering with Jesus. This partnership impacts our human nature, which is a work in progress, and our relations, because we are persons-in-relation. And we learn from and observe the partnership between Jesus and the Father in the Spirit.
Jesus’ Impact on Human Nature and Human Emotions
The fifth century theologian Cyril of Alexandria reflected on Jesus in John 11 and wrote in wonder about how the divine nature of Jesus partnered with his human nature, and impacted it. Cyril says, “the movement of his body signifies what is hidden within… through the bearing of his body he signified the motion hidden within him.”[5] Significantly, Cyril demonstrates that we can use the language of “motion” to describe, not simply bodies, or persons, but natures. Today, we might use words like “leaning, inclination, desire.” Cyril is comfortable saying that the “location” of the motion, movement, inclination, desire, and leaning is not in Jesus’ personhood per se. Certain desires in God do not reflect a personal decision per se; they are desires that happen out of God’s nature of love and goodness.
The “movement” of Jesus’ human body -- in his anger, cry, and tears -- originates in a deeper “motion” located within Jesus’ divine nature towards our human condition. The “motion” of the divine nature towards the fallenness of human nature is anger and grief -- and, to be clear, anger on its behalf and for its well-being. And that “motion” moves the human nature of Jesus. Jesus chose to express it bodily. What Jesus demonstrates and experiences is the full and most accurate form of anger and grief.[6] This is a partnership of the deepest kind, which Mary and a few others were privileged to glimpse.
Incidentally, I am touched that Cyril points out that Mary believed in Jesus but was grieved at his absence. Explaining why Mary rushed to see Jesus, Cyril writes, “How could she not do this, when she grieved bitterly at his absence and her mind burned with great reverence and love for him?”[7] Mary glimpsed Jesus shaping his human nature, stamping it with the character of the divine nature. How? Jesus chose to let the “motion” within his divine nature express itself through the “movements” of his human nature, further stamping it with divine love for us.
Jesus perfected the partnership between his two natures, so he could anchor the partnership between two persons: him and you. Like children observing more mature adults, we study Jesus in Scripture to observe his emotional life in the Spirit, as the Spirit led him to be sensitive to others, like Martha and Mary. There is a subjective element and an objective element. When we are subjectively angry, anguished, and in pain, to some degree, we share objectively in Jesus’ anger, anguish, and pain. The subjective participates in the objective. In fact, the subjective flows out from the objective. The very reason I am subjectively registering anger is because anger is an imminent expression of God’s transcendent, and objective, opinion. However, I must also examine how Jesus revealed and expressed those things in their most refined, godly form, which is also the most truly human form. Because my subjective perspective and anger do not yet fully reflect the objective. I am not always aware of others as Jesus was and is. I do not always love others as Jesus did and does. So I must always be submitted to Christ.
Fourth, showing anger often requires discernment of others, and trust, just as it did for Jesus. Mary was grieving while believing. She wanted to see and hear and feel from Jesus that he loved her brother Lazarus, too. Jesus’ response to Mary seems to have been unique, and uniquely for her. For Jesus, self-expression was important, but it did not take precedence over love for neighbor. Jesus was sharing while loving. He discerned what Mary was asking, what she was ready for, and what she would appreciate and interpret well.
When I lost a dear mentor to a brain aneurysm, I felt anger and grief at her loss. And I carried that heaviness with me for a while that day. I can’t remember if the phone call came during the evening and I waited until my young children went to sleep, or if the phone call came during the day and I waited a bit longer because I was in a caregiving role at work. Whatever the case, with my wife, I finally opened the floodgates of feeling. She entered into my anger and tears without feeling the need to “steady” my believing in Jesus.
Reading the Gospels First, Then the Epistles: Jesus’ Anger in the “Space" for Anger
Fifth, this appreciation of Jesus’ anger and grief in John 11 has helped me understand other key Scriptures about human anger. When we have a Christ-centered approach to our emotional health, then it leads us to read the Epistles in light of the Gospels, not the other way round. James and Paul, for example, “allow” a limited “space” for anger. But when we read the Gospels, and study Jesus’ anger, there is much more meaning to the anger that the Epistles “allow.” That anger is in fact a deep “space.”
James suggests a great deal about anger, especially since he seems to have written during one of the many famine or near-famine conditions in Judea (James 1:11; 5:17 – 18). Thus, anger that is motivated by covetousness or lust, especially in a time of crisis, does not produce the righteousness of God. James’ concern addresses the poor and the rich.
The poor may feel angry from injury, to be sure. It appears that many poor people in James’ audience are treated as “less than” by others who are wealthier, since James speaks of favoritism in the treatment of the rich over the poor even during Christian worship services (2:1 – 13). Some in James’ audience are poor because the rich refuse to share with them, as wealthy Christians were failing to materially support the poor (2:14 – 26). The wealthy speak in a casual manner about moving away during hard times, and are indifferent to the lack of confident mobility among the poor (4:13 – 17). Some of the wealthy employ the poor as workers and even economically exploit them (5:1 - 6). James places his cautionary statement about human anger in the overall context of his concerns about trials, temptations, and covetousness (1:12 – 20; 4:1 – 3). James recognizes that those in his audience who are poor need to face trials with courage (1:2 – 4). They need to face temptations with faithfulness (1:12 – 18). They need to speak in conflicts without cursing (3:8 - 10) but with peace-producing wisdom (3:5 - 7; 3:13 – 4:10).
Our anger, grief, and suffering are heavy burdens – that is true. They are stresses on the body, and taxing for the mind and soul. It is significant that Jesus’ anger transitioned to grief and tears. I am not inclined to think that anger is a cloaked or false expression of sadness, but rather an initial form of mourning and grieving. For various reasons I am inclined to think this is part of one continuous response. We are meant to transition from anger to grieving, or mourning.
But while James says to be slow to anger, he does not forbid anger, or counsel indifference to the anger of others. For rich people tend to get defensively angry when confronted with their disobedience to the command to love the poor, and the negative impact their disobedience has on others. For James, some self-controlled form of anger is appropriate when expressed towards the wealthy who are indifferent to the poor and who exploit the labor of others. Those people, especially, need to be “quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger” (1:20) and quick to “receive the word implanted” which makes one an active doer of Jesus’ perfect law to care for orphans and widows in their distress (1:21 – 27), to treat the poor with equal dignity as the rich (2:1 – 13), and to eagerly share with the poor (2:14 – 26; 5:1 – 6). “The word implanted” is, almost certainly, the command to love (2:8) which bears fruit in us when we receive and internalize it.
James demonstrates how important it is to interpret people and events around us with a Christ-centered, growth orientation. He begins his letter by saying, “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials” (1:2). He anchors his audience in a godly interpretation of trials. Matthew McKay, Peter D. Rogers, and Judith McKay, in their book about anger which I referred to earlier, remind us that anger is not simply our response to events around us; anger is often tied to how we interpret those events. Our interpretations are not a given, because typically we learn from others how to interpret events around us.[8] An ordinary psychological study demonstrates this fact. In one volunteer study, participants were given an injection of what they were told was a vitamin supplement. In truth, it was adrenaline. While they waited in a room, another person (who was part of the experiment) acted strangely. With some groups, the person acted euphoric and silly: “throwing paper airplanes, laughing, and playing with a hula hoop.” With other groups, the person acted annoyed and angry, “finally tearing up a questionnaire he was supposed to fill out.”[9] Those people who were not told to expect side effects from the “vitamin supplement” -- namely, a state of heightened psychological arousal caused by the adrenaline -- tended to express euphoria or anger based on what the “planted” person displayed. But people who were told to expect a possible heightened psychological arousal did not. The experiment showed that our interpretation of our own psychological state matters and is, in principle, separable from it. Even being around a person who might become aggressive is not enough to become angry per se. When we face a person whose behavior and emotions we cannot predict, like on the subway, we might feel more other-aware, self-aware, and sensitive to our environment and how other people seem to be responding, too. But angry? Not necessarily.
James tells the rich to interpret the claims of the poor upon them as the occasion to repent and grow in love, not as threats to their wealth. Although not all types of anger interfere with love, defensive anger certainly does. People who are defensively angry blame other people for being angry. Psychologists call this projection. It is as if anger in others inherently disqualifies those people from raising an issue with you, while your fear of change or stubborn defensiveness is perfectly fine. You use piety as a cloak, as you try to evade the fundamental issue. But just because the emotional wrapping might be unpleasant, loving your neighbor means being able to receive their fundamental, underlying concern because you are able to hear the command of Jesus through their hurt and through their anger.
Since James quotes Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount more than twenty times, it seems he shares with his audience a knowledge of Jesus’ teaching about anger and reconciliation (Matthew 5:21 - 26). Minimally, he himself must think it. Seen in this light, Jesus’ warning about escalating anger (5:22) becomes a warning to those who let other people become angrier and angrier.
“Therefore if you are presenting your offering at the altar, and there remember that your brother has something against you...” (Matthew 5:23; emphasis mine).
I think that is the fullest interpretation of Matthew 5:21 – 26 and its role in the Christian community. Thus, according to James, the rich need to heed the critiques of the poor even when the poor are angry with them, and work towards growth and reconciliation. This is not “class warfare,” but an opportunity to grow. One thinks of America today, where men fault women for being angry about not understanding the challenges women face, or where wealthy suburban megachurch-goers fault working-class people for being angry about labor and housing, or white evangelicals fault Christians from minority communities for being angry about how non-white people are held to higher standards and provided fewer resources. James and Jesus show us that other people’s anger is not an excuse to ignore them. There is an internal spiritual discipline we must practice: hearing Jesus’ command to love despite the angry human intonations in which it reverberates.
Paul, also, made “space” for anger. He said, speaking of general situations of conflict, “Be angry, and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger” (Ephesians 4:26). Anger by itself is natural and appropriate when someone else does wrong. Some people might be quick to stress the Christian duty to forgive and be peacemakers. Of course, it is true that Jesus calls us to forgive and be peacemakers. But it is also true that Jesus gave people space to mourn and emotionally process all the challenges that come up along the way to forgiving and peacemaking. There is a process of truth-telling, listening to the victim, space for anger and grief, and accountability that must happen as part of that forgiveness. To skip over the emotional process completely further marginalizes the people who feel more deeply pained and angered. We should feel anger. And we need to process it in a healthy way. Like Jesus, we need to let it transition to grief and sorrow, even if it is about the sins of others or the challenges of living in a fallen world. For it is still true that holding on to anger is like keeping a stress or poison in our bodies. For our own sakes, and also for others, we are to process our anger with Jesus.
I have seen Sunday services or prayer meetings or funerals which, whether consciously or not, follow this pattern. Early on, they acknowledge anger. They allow people to cry out to God in anger. They avoid worship songs that are happy, or have too much celebration and closure. But one way or another, towards the end, a transition happens. There is a focus on grieving. There is space to weep. Silence is okay. There is some gentle encouragement to see other people from Jesus’ perspective while still processing our own emotions. And while that may not whisk all the anger and grief away, neither is that the goal per se. The goal, conscious or not, seems to be to uncover the grief and sorrow, to allow Jesus to touch and shape us, to model an openness to the Spirit instead of self-medicating or isolating. We remind one another that Jesus is at work in us and in others.
Finally, anger and grief are the result of God making us in His image (Genesis 1:26 – 28). They are “weapon[s] implanted in our nature by God when he creates us.”[10] Then, when actively become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4) through Christ, the Spirit stirs up a “motion hidden” [11] in us, like he did in Jesus.
Our moral rejection of human death and sin – sin which is often expressed in the form of ongoing human evil and sustained injustice – bears witness that we have in ourselves a still, small voice of moral conscience. That conscience revolts against death and sin (Romans 2:12 – 16). Anger and grief of this sort are connection points with Jesus in his humanity. In a preliminary form, in human beings in general, they appear in us as part of our moral intuition. In a cultivated form, for Christ-followers united with Christ by the Spirit, as we allow Christ to be formed in us (Galatians 4:19), they afford us a glimpse into Jesus’ normative humanity, including his approach to other people. This is not only Jesus’ work of redemption in our humanness by his Spirit, this is also revelatory: Our own emotions are windows by the Spirit into God the Father. For with the perspective that Jesus affords to us, anger and grief are connections points to God, and ways to participate in the very life of God.
Questions for Reflection
● What are some challenges to feeling your own sorrow or anger? What are benefits?
● What are some challenges you feel to feeling other people’s sorrow or anger? What are benefits?
● Get into a worshipful and prayerful space with Jesus, and talk to him about one thing that has made you feel grieved and/or angry, recently or further back.
[1] Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Perfection 62. Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.19 – 20.
[2] Augustine of Hippo, Tractates on the Gospel of John 49.19. Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.21.
[3] Michaeleen Doucleff and Jane Greenhalgh, “How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger,” NPR, March 13, 2019; https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger. See also Jean L. Briggs, Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674608283.
[4] Michaeleen Doucleff and Jane Greenhalgh, “How Inuit Parents Teach Kids To Control Their Anger,” NPR, March 13, 2019; https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/03/13/685533353/a-playful-way-to-teach-kids-to-control-their-anger.
[5] Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Ancient Christian Texts: Commentary on John, Volume 2, translated by David R. Maxwell, edited by Joel C. Elowsky, Thomas C. Oden and Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), p.91
[6] It must be said, however, that Cyril envisions the emotional impact of Jesus’ divine nature upon his human nature differently than I do. Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Ancient Christian Texts: Commentary on John, Volume 2, translated by David R. Maxwell, edited by Joel C. Elowsky, Thomas C. Oden and Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), p.89 writes:
“Since Christ is not only God by nature but also human, he undergoes human experience with the rest of us. When grief begins to stir in him and his holy flesh inclines to tears, he does not allow it to indulge those tears without restraint, as we often do. He “was troubled by the Spirit,” that is, by the power of the Holy Spirit he rebukes his own flesh, in a manner of speaking. That flesh, since it cannot bear the movement of the divine nature within it, trembles and gives the appearance of being troubled. I think that is what “agitated” refers to. Otherwise, how could he experience trouble? How could that nature that is undisturbed and calm be troubled? The flesh, then, is being rebuked by the Spirit and taught to have feelings beyond its own nature. That is, after all, why the almighty Word of God came to be in the flesh, or rather he became flesh, so that by the energies of his Spirit he might strengthen the weaknesses of the flesh, free its nature from feelings that are too earthly, and transform it, as it were, to only such feelings as are pleasing to God. Now it is an infirmity of human nature to be tyrannized by grief. But this infirmity, along with the others, is neutralized first in Christ so that this benefit may extend to us as well.”
Thus, Cyril says humanity writ large is vulnerable to grieving, and assigns Jesus’ divine nature the role of subduing the grief of his human nature. Apparently, Cyril believes the divine nature is not the source of Jesus’ grief, which is the opposite of Diadochos of Photiki and Potamius of Lisbon (above), and my own position.
I believe Cyril’s interpretation shows inconsistencies and weaknesses. (1) Relationally, Cyril suggests that Jesus might have been more overcome with grief than Mary, which is surprising and a bit unrealistic. Would Jesus, as a friend to Lazarus, have felt more grief than Mary, Lazarus’ own sister, did? That would be rather odd. (2) Cyril claims that Jesus is “restrained,” even though Jesus does not seem to be restrained at all, and John the narrator does not suggest “restraint” on Jesus’ part. (3) Cyril seems to not consider the major Johannine theme of the Son revealing the Father, which is a larger literary consideration. Why does Jesus’ grief reveal mere humanity but not divinity here? (4) Cyril asserts that the Spirit takes the role of restraining Jesus’ human grief, which Cyril suggests is the reason for Jesus’ appearing “troubled.” But John the narrator encourages us to read Jesus’ appearing “troubled” as the result of Jesus’ love for Lazarus and Mary, through the words of the Jewish onlookers. When Cyril comments further on those onlookers, he suggests that Jesus was thinking of more than Lazarus alone: “The Jews thought that he wept over the death of Lazarus, but he actually wept out of pity for human nature as a whole. He was not crying for Lazarus alone, but he was thinking of what afflicts everyone, namely that the entire human nature became subject to death when it justly suffered so great a penalty.” (p.90) This introduces another problem with Cyril’s interpretation: Was Jesus’ human nature alone feeling grieved for the human nature of others? Wasn’t Jesus’ divine nature “feeling” something, too? (5) Finally, Cyril does not coordinate the emotions assigned to God in the Old Testament with the emotions Jesus demonstrates.
Despite this disagreement over which emotion went where, Cyril’s basic framework would allow him to embrace my own conclusion. The important contribution Cyril makes here is to assign “motion” to natures, and to suggest that Jesus’ divine nature had a formative emotional impact on Jesus’ human nature.
[7] Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Ancient Christian Texts: Commentary on John, Volume 2, translated by David R. Maxwell, edited by Joel C. Elowsky, Thomas C. Oden and Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), p.88.
[8] Matthew McKay, Peter D. Rogers, and Judith McKay, When Anger Hurts: Quieting the Storm Within (Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1989), p.10 - 13.
[9] Ibid, p.11 - 12.
[10] Diadochos of Photiki, On Spiritual Perfection 62. Quoted in Joel C. Elowski (editor) and Thomas C. Oden (general editor), Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture: New Testament IVb: John 11 – 21 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2007), p.19 – 20.
[11] Saint Cyril of Alexandria, Ancient Christian Texts: Commentary on John, Volume 2, translated by David R. Maxwell, edited by Joel C. Elowsky, Thomas C. Oden and Gerald Bray (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015), p.91