āBecause divine apatheia is the infinite interval of the going forth of the Son from the Father in the light of the Spirit, every interval of estrangement we fabricate between ourselves and Godāsin, ignorance, death itselfāis always already exceeded in him: God has always gone infinitely further in his own being as the God of self-outpouring charity than we can venture in our attempts to escape him, and our most abysmal sin is as nothing to the abyss of divine love. And as the Word possesses this Trinitarian impassibility in his eternal nature, and so as God cannot suffer, as a man he can suffer all things, bear any woundāindeed, bear it more fully than any other couldāas an act of saving love: as Easter. And while Godās everlasting outpouring, which is for him a life of infinite joy, in assuming the intervals of our estrangement from God, appears for us now under the form of tragic pain and loss, the joy is the original and ultimate truth of who he is, is boundless, and cannot be interruptedāand so conquers all our sorrow; our abandonment of God, and the abandonment of the Son and of every soul in death, is always already surpassed by the sheer abandon with which the Father begets and breathes forth his being. And the terrible distance of Christās cry of human dereliction, despair, and utter godforsakennessāāMy God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?āāis enfolded within and overcome by the ever greater distance and always indissoluble unity of Godās triune love: āFather, into thy hands I commend my spirit.āā - David Bentley Hart




















