Of course Jesus' suffereing cannot be taken merely "existentially" as a symbol ("the fact of being dead") for our personal understanding of our existence as involved in death. Nor can it be understood purely "futuristically"" as promise of a utopian freedom from suffering, sin and death, still lying completely in the future. Nor finally highly "speculatively" as in inner-trinitarian (eternal) historyof suffering of a crucified god, enacted dialectical between God and God, God against God; Jesus being directly instead of indirectly identified with God and the distinction between Father and Son played down in favor or one divine "nature" or "substance" as understood by later Hellenistic or especially Latin speculation on the Trinity. [The footnote contains a reference to criticism of Moltmann's trinitarian interpretation of the history of salvation by J. B. Metz. I tried to access it but couldn't, perhaps others can. ]
The historical suffering and death of Jesus therefore may not be dissolved either by existential reduction or by utopian futurization, nor by lofty speculation on argumentative theology, but must constantly be narrated afresh as what it was. But, unless we are content with a scarcely helpful naive repetition of the biblical stories or even with a new acceptance of myths (like the descent into hell), historical-critical reflection perused with an eye on the present is also necessary. This sort of reflection has show us how Jesus' Passion was so shattering just because it was consistent with his whole action. From the standpoint of the official religion the condemnation of the heretic, pseudo-prophet, blasphemer and seducer of the people to an ignominious death was quite right and made it obvious that he had nothing to do with the true God. In his death he was forsaken by men and, as we saw, his abandonment by God was also unparalleled and boundless; left utterly alone by him on whose presence he had staked everything. It was all in vain; a pointless death, which cannot be made into a mystery.
One of the points in the Gospels which is most incomprehensible to anyone holding a traditional (medieval, monarchical) view of Jesus (at least as taught by much of Western and some of Eastern Christianity) is when in Mark and Matthew, he cries from the cross, Father why have you forsaken me?
Though there is a path towards understanding that in Paul's statement that Jesus was like us in all things but sin, it would mean that in the agony of a death by crucifixion, at the very height of the pain and suffering, what Hans Kung notes is a circumstance that brings us to experience the very point at which our life, our body, our human person, our minds comes into its most direct and agonizing connection with a universe which, as the materialist sees it, wants to destroy us, that has no meaning, goal or good. Jesus was the equal of others who were crucified, tortured, suffered the agony and fear and terror of death. I don't think Jesus would have said that merely to demonstrate a point to witnesses so it could be told, what they witnessed was the most personal and concrete of experiences of the person, Jesus. I think at that point Jesus was his most intensely human.
Some point out that the idea is the same as at the beginning of Psalm 22
My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?
I have cried desperately for help,
but still it does not come.
During the day I call to you, my God,
but you do not answer;
I call at night,
but get no rest.
Which is a pretty good statement of the problem of pain and evil and something which, since he quoted so many of the Psalms, Jesus would have had on the tip of his tongue.
If Jesus was consciously (or by attribution) calling attention to the Psalm is open to speculation. The Gospels in question don't give much to go on. In the Psalm the poet who lived on to finish his thought that starts out in a long doxology:
But you are enthroned as the Holy One,
the one whom Israel praises.
Our ancestors put their trust in you;
they trusted you, and you saved them.
They called to you and escaped from danger;
they trusted you and were not disappointed.
But Jesus - in a unified combination of the four Gospels - asks for a drink, is given wine in a sponge on a branch of hyssop - declares that it is finished or consummated or the debt has been paid (depending on how you would translate the Greek word), commends his soul into the hand of God and dies. It is unknowable if he was referencing this Psalm as a statement of his faith as that terrible experience happened to him.
What I think this shows is that in agony, at the point of death, even Jesus, "more than a prophet" could feel the very human fear, agony and experience of total abandonment which is the very human experience of evil. That is something that certainly many people experience as their own death. In that Jesus may be at his most human.
I don't think there would have been any reason for any of his followers or any of his supporters to have bothered to tell or record that, it's a common enough event in human experience and fear. In the context of their time and place and culture, it was an ignominious and common death meted out to the lowest among them. As Kung also points out, the only reason for giving an account of the Crucifixion is that the same people also experienced the Resurrection or heard from it by people they trusted to tell them the truth who said they experienced the risen Jesus. And there wouldn't be much of a reason for them to care about even that if they didn't also believe that his Resurrection was relevant to them and their loved ones. The deist god of deism isn't anyone anyone has to care about much, like the morality of material determinism, it is meaningless. It just happens. Yet both of those are considered preferable by the foremost wielders of the question of pain and evil for reasons their own ideology can't articulate.
But the record of the Crucifixion of Jesus might show why death might be necessary if there is a resurrection, that we must leave the state of being we are accustomed to in human experience, the experience we have through our merely physical bodies, for more than that. That is my answer, at least for now. It also, I will note, matches what those who experience "clinical death" and come back to tell of their experiences, in many cases, and other testimonial evidence. If you're holding out for science about any of this, you are either posing something you don't really believe or you are terrible naive about what science is and can do.
That would do nothing to lessen our experience of suffering but it would leave us the hope that even Jesus included in that cry of agony, that God, our Creator, our Parent, is still there even at that most horribly intense point of human physical exposure and experience. The only way for any of it to make any kind of sense, to be any kind of good - if you are going to have evil, you're not going to get away without having good - is by there being more than the ending in terrible, useless, meaningless death. If you leave it there, your questioning about pain and evil are as useless as the god of conveience invented by the atheists who call themselves "deists".
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