Annotation CLXIV

”And saying this, he expired.” — Luke 23:46

Whether the Godhead was separated from the humanity of Christ through death.

Ambrose, in book 10 on Luke, teaching how our Redeemer expired, seems to hold that the humanity of the dying Christ was divided from the divinity of the Word — writing thus:

“I will not blush to confess that Christ did not blush to profess with a loud voice, attesting the withdrawal of the divinity and the body. For thus it stands: Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying,¹ ‘God, my God, look upon me; why hast thou forsaken me?’ The man cried out, about to die by the separation of the divinity. For since the divinity is free from death, death assuredly could not be, unless life departed — because life is the divinity.” In the same opinion — as we noted above, Annotation 126 — Hilary is believed to have been, in canon 33 on Matthew. The Master of the Sentences, book 3, distinction 21, elucidating the sayings of both doctors, says that the separation of which both speak is to be so understood as the forsaking signified by those words, “Why hast thou forsaken me?” — that is, not according to the loosing and division of the union of God and man, but according to the withdrawal of protection; by which the divinity, laying aside for a time the patronage of the humanity, deserted that man in torments, pains, and death, [as one] separated from the [divine] defense, not divided from the union. Read Annotation 126 of this book.