Abstract
‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ Two gospels record these words as Jesus’ only statement from the cross (Mark 15:34, Matthew 27:43). Hence, the practice of protest prayer is at the crux of the Christian story. Recently, scholars have advocated a recovery of the practice of lament and protest within contemporary Christianity. But recovery suggests a loss in the first place. So, when did Christianity lose lament, and specifically, lose the ability to protest against suffering, and against God?
To ascertain when the practice of protest disappeared from Christianity, I use Walter Brueggemann’s schema of core and counter-testimony, which he uses to explain the witness of Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures and I explore whether the same pattern is present in the witness of Christianity.
Protest prayer is attested to in the earliest threads of oral tradition that became the writings of the early Christ-believing movement, with substantial traces in each of the gospels. However, that record has not remained static. While it seems Jesus drew on the Psalms of lament in order to protest his fate before God, some early followers heard instead prophecy of his messianic identity, or proof of the divine necessity of his Passion. Paul employs the Psalms of lament to indict humanity rather than God, to encourage submission to suffering, rather than the resistance to it, and to show believers that suffering unites them with God rather than separates them.
The Gospel of Luke also includes trace elements of Jesus’ engagement with lament and protest prayer, but here they have been shifted towards speaking of a noble, obedient sufferer, who knew and accepted what was required of him. John’s Gospel paints Jesus in even more strident hues, with the desperate Jesus of Mark’s Gethsemane well and truly overwhelmed.
In the Patristic period, we find the Psalms of lament actively engaged with, without much evidence of protest against suffering or against God. Athanasius and Augustine both provide comprehensive engagements with the Psalms. Athanasius approached the Psalms as a school for the soul, where anger, grief and despair can be expressed. However, Athanasius’ commendation of the Psalms did not entail an endorsement of protest against God. Rather, praying the Psalms becomes an opportunity for personal transformation. Augustine, by contrast did have a place for protest, but only against the world, and the unreformed self. For Augustine, protest became a form of penitence.
Finally, I explore a wide variety of Patristic commentaries on Psalm 44, one of the most confronting Psalms of protest, to ascertain how the element of protest is appropriated by Patristic authors. The results are varied and creative, yet categorically exclude protest. For these Patristic writers, the Psalmist’s words of protest become occasions for penitence or judgement or praise, but never remain as protest. God’s will is only ever good, and is above questioning.
By the end of the Patristic period, it appears that the practice of protest prayer was largely extinct within orthodox Christian communities and the language of protest was overtaken by a theologically based fatalism.