Making Sense of Christ Confounded

In my last contribution to CSR, I tried to articulate, as briefly as possible, the “phenomenology of grace.”¹ How do persons sense, discern, and abide the world as it’s presented to them? How do Christians know if we’re suffering “for the right reasons?” How can we perceive and partake in the life of grace? To put it another way—how do we make sense of the world in our personal, lived experience? I hope I succeeded in articulating some helpful meditations about the relationship between memory, prayer, and imagination in the life of faith.

We can indeed make some sense of our experiences. But not always. Sometimes, we think we perceive God’s workings but are disappointed to find that our intuitions about “what God is up to” are unfounded. We must be careful not to over-narrate our lives, that is, because we see through a glass darkly.² For example, a cancer patient receives a hopeful prognosis from the doctor, attributes it to answered prayer, and then discovers days later that the doctor referenced the wrong file and her prognosis is actually bleak. The patient’s mistaken belief is not evidence of God’s infidelity; it just reveals our limited perspective. God writes our story, not us, and sometimes the plot is incomprehensible.

Here, I want to reflect on those times when we cannot make sense of what’s happening—when the world as it’s presented to us, even (and especially) in light of our faith, is utterly nonsensical. Thankfully, we’re in good company. From the Cross, Jesus cried, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?³ He, too, knew absurdity and despair. And so, before addressing how we endure confounding moments in our own lives, let’s turn to Jesus.

The Forsaken Son is a difficult theological pill to swallow. If Jesus was sinless—if He adhered perfectly to the Father’s will—why did God have to push it that far? Christ had already submitted to horrendous suffering and death, so what possible justification is there for a loving Father to reward that obedience with abandonment? God tells us, doesn’t He, that He’ll never leave us nor forsake us?⁴ Of all people, shouldn’t that promise apply to the Son? Further, wasn’t Jesus’ spotless life enough to defeat sin? What possible need could Christ Forsaken fulfill in the economy of salvation?

Christians have wrestled with these questions for centuries, and I can here only scratch the surface. Twentieth-century Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar is perhaps the most voluminous and insightful writer to reflect on Christ’s forsakenness. For Balthasar, Jesus’ cry of abandonment isn’t a rhetorical flourish or mere psychological despair. He insists that Jesus entered real God-forsakenness, bearing sin’s full existential and ontological consequences. In Mysterium Paschale⁵ and Theo-Drama,⁶ Balthasar describes this as Christ’s descent into the “second death”—the estrangement from God that is sin’s ultimate fruit. Balthasar doesn’t mean that the Trinity was ontologically ruptured (the Father ceasing to love the Son). Rather, the eternal love of the Father and the Son encompasses this forsakenness: the Son truly experienced abandonment in the economy of salvation, while remaining in perfect filial obedience.

In abiding this mystery, and reflecting on it, we might come to see the terrifying beauty—the soteriological necessity, even—of Christ Confounded. For that’s what Jesus was in the moment of abandonment: He was confused. He could no longer see or feel the Father’s presence. He no longer experienced God’s faithfulness that—until that point—He’d known every moment of His life. Christ could no longer perceive the efficacious outpouring of the Father’s love.

At the end, Jesus, through whom all things are made, could not make sense of what was happening to Him. This realization, I believe, is the lynchpin of Christian theology. It is faith’s fulcrum, hope’s bedrock, and love’s revelation. Let it sink in.

As Christian communication scholars, we strive for clarity and certainty through discourse. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with deploying reason, seeking clarity, or desiring certainty in the Christian life. God is sometimes very direct and affords us the means to discover and adhere to His precepts. But the final measure of Christian fidelity is neither epistemological comprehension nor communicative efficacy. Rather, we enter the Kingdom as we exercise loving trust in our moments of confoundedness. We may only know “what God is up to,” truly and fully, by beholding God Incarnate—Jesus, the Word made flesh.

And what do we see in Christ? What does He do that we do not, or cannot?

Adrienne von Speyr, Swiss physician, mystic, and Balthasar’s theological interlocutor, said, “Jesus’ descent into hell is the taking on of the ultimate distance from God… [Yet] Love remains. And only Love descends.”  In blackest hell, forfeiting any hope of His own rescue or relief, Jesus’ love came to full expression—not a love of cognition or certainty, but kenotic love. In this utter self-gift, love becomes the final faculty, the deepest “sense” of God when all sensory and imaginative perception fails.

Aquinas said that love is the greatest theological virtue because it is all that remains in heaven; this is true since we will need neither faith nor hope in the eschaton. I think, too, that love is the greatest because it is all that remains in the Forsaken Son. On the Cross, Jesus was deprived of faith and hope: He despaired of His life, of God’s plan, and of His ability to make sense of His suffering. Yet Christ’s Love—for the Father and for us—remained.

Into Your hands I commit my spirit.⁷

This is perfect Love for the other, as other, without expectation of reward or even the consolation of understanding. And He didn’t have to do it. Unlike us, Jesus could’ve avoided suffering. He could’ve commanded legions of angels to descend on Golgotha. But by His free obedience, Christ took our just punishment and united the Godhead and fallen humanity. The Word made Himself void—God gave Himself over to confoundedness and death—so that you and I might begin to understand, and live.

Reason, debate, and discourse are good gifts from God. But we should remember—as scholars, as citizens, and as Christians—that our salvation does not come, ultimately, from theological sophistication or even zealous evangelism. Neither does our individual, familial, or political prosperity depend, finally, on the quality and precision of our words, however powerful they are and carefully we should wield them. We get so caught up in saying the right things—in communicating our convictions as clearly as possible (because they will see their error if I can just say it right!)—that we forget to fix our gaze on the Cross.

If we really look, the view will render us speechless.

1. Mitchell, A. C. (2025, July 22). Revelation and Remembrance: Prayer and the Phenomenology of Grace. Christian Scholar’s Review, Christ Animated Learning Blog.
2. 1 Corinthians 13:12.
3. Matthew 27:46.
4. Deuteronomy 31:6-8; Hebrews 13:5-6.
5. Balthasar, H. U. von. (1990). Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. (Aidan Nichols, Trans.). Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans.
6. Balthasar, H. U. von. (1988–1998). Theo-drama: Theological Dramatic Theory (Vols. 1–5). San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press.
7. Luke 23:46.