Speaking to YHWH Pure Spirit
The most debated statement in the crucifixion account has a single precise answer, and that answer has been available since Document 1 of this series declared the Sh’ma. One YHWH. Divine to divine. The cry from the cross is not abandonment. It is the most intimate communication possible, the divine nature speaking within itself in the darkness and aloneness the covenant passage required.
Document 9 of 13
Eight documents have built to this one. Document 1 declared the foundation, one YHWH, echad (unified oneness containing differentiation without fracturing into separate beings), the Sh’ma as the declaration that grounds everything. Document 2 showed what the councils did when they replaced the Hebrew declaration with Greek philosophical categories, three persons, separate hypostaseis (distinct modes of being, the Greek philosophical term the councils used for what they called persons of the Trinity), a hierarchical framework the Hebrew text never used. Document 3 established the registers, Av (Father), I am, incarnate, Ruach (Spirit), four modes of the same divine reality, the same full presence of one YHWH in each. Documents 4 and 5 showed the tzelem (shadow or image) built in the shape of the builder and the Word moving in to complete what the building project had always been heading toward. Document 6 showed the behold, the Heh letters of YHWH’s own name, given to Avraham and Sarah, the covenant people bearing the letters that point toward the hand and the nail YHWH kept in his own name. Documents 7 and 8 established the darkness and the third day, the structural signature of one YHWH keeping the oath he swore by himself in the dark while Avraham slept.
All of it has been moving toward the question that has sat unresolved in the souls of covenant people for two thousand years. The question no tradition has been willing to sit with long enough to let it be what it is. The question that the one YHWH framework, built carefully across eight documents, is now precisely positioned to answer.
Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.
Who is speaking? And who are they speaking to?
Two thousand years of theology have circled this question without entering it. The one YHWH framework built across eight documents is now precisely positioned to let it be what it is. Divine to divine. The most intimate communication in the history of the covenant.
The tradition has offered three readings and none of them has ever fully satisfied. The first says Yeshua was quoting Psalm 22 liturgically, that by opening the psalm’s lament he was declaring its eventual vindication. The second says he was genuinely experiencing the weight of human alienation from YHWH, feeling what every person in the condition of sleep had felt in separation from the divine presence. The third says the Father literally turned away from the Son because YHWH cannot look upon sin and the Son had taken sin upon himself. Each reading is defended by serious theologians. Each carries problems that have never been fully resolved.
The first diminishes the rawness of the cry into liturgical gesture. The second leaves the Father absent from the cross at the moment that matters most. The third, the most common in the tradition, introduces a rupture in the divine unity that the Sh’ma does not support and that makes the nature of YHWH incoherent. If YHWH cannot look upon sin, and the Son bearing sin caused the Father to turn away, then the cross produced a moment in which the divine nature was genuinely divided against itself, the Father on one side, the Son on the other, separated by the sin between them. This reading fractures the echad. It makes the cross the event that broke the divine unity rather than the event that sealed the covenant for all who slept.
The register framework of Document 3 dissolves all three problems simultaneously. Not by explaining the cry away. By showing what it is.
The register framework does not explain the cry away. It shows what it is. One YHWH, the Av register and the incarnate register communicating within the divine nature in the structural aloneness the covenant passage required. Not abandonment. The most costly communication within the divine nature in the history of the universe.
On the cross it was YHWH in a physical body, the incarnate register, the Word who had eskenosen (pitched his tent, moved in) among us in the tzelem of humanity, speaking to YHWH pure spirit, the Av register, the covenant-holding, the relational mode of the divine nature, the one who passed between the pieces in Genesis 15 while Avraham slept. Divine to divine. Not a human being crying out to a God above him. One YHWH communicating within himself across the registers of his own divine nature in the darkness and aloneness the covenant passage required.
The Av register had not abandoned the incarnate register. Sha’ul (Paul) says plainly in 2 Corinthians 5:19 that God was in Mashiach (Messiah, the anointed one) reconciling the world to himself. Was in, en, inside, within. The Father was inside the Son. The Av register was present within the incarnate register throughout the cross. But the Av register’s participatory presence, the presence that could intervene, that could send twelve legions of angels, that on a different mountain had said enough when Yitzchak lay on the altar and provided the ram, that participatory presence had withdrawn. Not in abandonment. In covenant faithfulness. In the structural aloneness that the covenant completion required, the same stepping back that Genesis 15 required so that YHWH could pass through the pieces alone, holding both sides, sealing the covenant unconditionally for all who slept.
The cry is real. The aloneness is real. The darkness is real, Document 7 established that. And the aloneness is not the absence of YHWH from the cross. It is YHWH experiencing within his own divine nature, across the registers of his own being, the condition of all who slept. The condition of being outside the participatory presence of the divine, in the dark, alone, without the warmth and nearness of the one in whom all things hold together. YHWH entered his own absence. From inside. In the incarnate register. So that the absence could be sealed from inside and all who slept could be held in what was being completed in that aloneness.
YHWH entered his own absence. The incarnate register experienced from inside the divine nature the condition that all who slept had experienced in relation to YHWH, the darkness, the aloneness, the withdrawal of the participatory presence. He became the separation he was sealing shut.
My God, my God, the I am in the incarnate register addressing the I am in the Av register. Within one divine nature. Across the structural aloneness of the passage between the pieces. Not two beings separated by divine judgment. One being, echad, experiencing within itself the covenant completion that could only be accomplished in the structural condition the covenant had always required. The darkness. The aloneness. The passing through alone.
And why have you forsaken me, the question from inside the aloneness. Not the question of the abandoned. The question of the one who is in the passage, who understands the aloneness is required, who is experiencing from inside the divine nature what it costs for one YHWH to hold both sides of the covenant simultaneously in the most complete act of covenant faithfulness in the history of the universe. The why is not confusion. The why is the sound of the divine nature bearing the full weight of what the covenant passage costs, for the last time, for all who slept, for all flesh, from Adam. The why is the passage between the pieces, in the dark, alone, completing what was sworn by YHWH alone because he had no one greater to swear by.
Two thousand years. Councils, creeds, commentaries, sermons, theological systems. None of them entered this place because none of them had the foundation to enter it. The foundation is the Sh’ma. YHWH is one, echad. And when one YHWH cries out on the cross, Eli, Eli, the one crying and the one being addressed are the same one. In the registers of the same divine reality. In the darkness the covenant requires. In the aloneness that makes the sealing unconditional. Communicating within the divine nature in the most intimate, most costly, most covenant-faithful act since the fire pot and the torch passed between the pieces in the dark while Avraham slept.
Divine to divine. One YHWH. Both registers. The Sh’ma declared at the beginning of this series has arrived at its deepest expression. Hear O Israel YHWH our God YHWH is one. And the one is on the cross. In a physical body speaking to pure spirit. Across the darkness. In the aloneness. Holding both sides. For all who slept. Weeping into the divine nature of what it costs. And completing it.
Eli, Eli, YHWH in a physical body speaking to YHWH pure spirit. One divine nature. The cry from inside the covenant passage. Not abandonment. The most costly act of covenant faithfulness in the history of the universe.
The tradition says: the Father abandoned the Son.
The Sh’ma says: YHWH is one, echad.
The cry from the cross is not two beings separated.
It is one YHWH communicating within himself.
The Av register and the incarnate register.
In the darkness. In the aloneness. Holding both sides.
Divine to divine.
Not abandonment.
The most intimate communication within the divine nature.
For all who slept.
The Gospel Revolution • Mike Williams Ministries
William Ethan Massengill • Michael Lilborn Williams • Daniel Thomas Rouse
Published by Audrey Williams