Jürgen Moltmann's Views On Suffering

Responding to the problems of suffering in the world and the atheist “protest against a detached, indifferent, and invulnerable God” (McGrath, 2017a, p. 185), German theologian Jürgen Moltmann developed a theology of suffering based on the suffering of the Father and the Son in the crucifixion of Christ. Far from being detached from the real world, as the atheists suggested, God is intimately involved in the lives of His children as reflected in His own suffering. “If God were really incapable of suffering,” Moltmann postulates, “he would also be as incapable of loving” (as cited in McGrath, 2017b, p. 192). God is not invulnerable and indifferent to human suffering; rather, He understands and empathizes with suffering because He Himself
While I agree with Moltmann regarding the suffering of the Trinity, I disagree that the suffering was through abandonment. Paul, in 2 Corinthians 5:19, says, “that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself” (New American Standard Bible). The entire Trinity was united in their effort to effect the salvation of the world. The picture is not one of abandonment, as Moltmann suggests, rather, it is closer to that of Abraham and Isaac. Clowney (2013) observes, “Without the typology of Abraham’s sacrifice, we could not understand the depth of meaning in the New Testament teaching about God’s love in giving His Beloved. In the darkness of Calvary, the Father, too, paid the price of love” (p. 62). The Father’s agony, not in abandoning His Son, but in willingly sacrificing His Son, the Son’s suffering in willingly being sacrificed by His Father, and the Spirit’s anguish in willingly empowering the Father and the Son in this sacrifice, are unparalleled. Through the suffering of God, the Trinity accomplishes the impossible: the salvation of the world. The poignancy of the Gospel is driven home, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life” John