Glorious Abandonment: Christ's Cry of Dereliction in Hilary of Poitiers

Contemporary theology has made Christ’s cry of dereliction from the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46, Mk 15:34) a key locus for Christology and Trinitarian theology. This dissertation seeks to engage these recent reflections in light of the account of the cry offered by the fourth-century Father and Doctor of the Church, Saint Hilary of Poitiers. Hilary is an important figure in the critical theological developments of the fourth century, serving as a bridge between the older Latin tradition of the second and third centuries in which he was formed, and the Greek tradition that developed surrounding Nicaea which he encountered during his exile in Phrygia. His understanding of the cry of dereliction emerges in three of his works, each corresponding to a different period of his life: his Commentarius in Matthaeum (In Matt.), which he wrote prior to his exile; his De Trinitate (Trin.), written mostly during his exile; and his Tractatus super Psalmos (Tr. Ps.), which was composed once he had returned from exile to his native Gaul.
Over the course of these works, Hilary’s understanding developed in significant ways. Whereas in In Matt. he seems to have understood the cry to signal a separation between the Word and his humanity, by the time of Trin. he abandoned this view, perhaps identifying it with the account of his Photinian opponents. Much of his account of the cry in Trin. is devoted to denying that the cry is a mark of weakness in Christ, a view championed by those seeking to deny his divinity. Instead, he argues that the cry is glorious, meaning it is a moment of revelation—or, more precisely, that it enables the whole economy of revelation by undermining the greatest obstacle to that economy: our pride. Yet by the time of Tr. Ps., Hilary claims that Christ did experience weakness in his cry of dereliction, but that he remained full of confidence in God all the while. By this cry he prayed that the Father might glorify his humanity, so that we in turn could be glorified by our inclusion in him. This inclusion comes by joining our voices to his in his cry, becoming conformed to him in the midst of the trials of this life as we await our glorification in him.