The Cry of Dereliction: Two (or More) Understandings

By Thomas H. McCall, Ph.D.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Many devout Christians take these words – words from the lips of Jesus himself – as nothing less than a scream of total desperation, and they do not hesitate to take this cry as nothing less than an expression of a complete and total rupture in the life of the Triune God. Jürgen Moltmann thinks that we cannot overemphasize the degree of abandonment that Jesus suffered at the hands of his Father. The rejection of Jesus is “something which took place between God and God. The abandonment on the cross which separates the Son from the Father is something which takes place within God himself; it is stasis within God – ‘God against God’….” There is “enmity between God and God,” and it is “enmity to the utmost degree” (The Crucified God: The Cross of Christ as the Foundation and Criticism of Christian Theology [Fortress, 1993], 152). Indeed, not only is the Father-Son relation broken as Jesus is abandoned by the Father – the Father-Son relation must be broken for God really to be God. In other words, God’s very identity is constituted by this event (together with the resurrection). This means that without us – without our sin and the abandonment that it occasions – God would not be God.

Many biblical commentators and preachers hold this view as well. Thus it is easy to hear such statements as these:

The Father rejected the Son.

Exhausting his wrath on the Son, the Father completely abandoned him.

The Father hid his face from the Son.

God cursed Jesus with damnation.

The physical pain suffered in the passion of Christ was nothing in comparison to the spiritual and relational pain that Christ endured as he was separated from his Father.

The Father turned away from the Son.

The Trinity was broken.

Sometimes such a view is taken to be a historic or traditional view. But even a brief look at what some of the Fathers and Doctors of the church have said about this text shows something quite different. Many early church theologians understood Jesus to be identifying with fallen humanity when he uttered this cry. The view of John of Damascus is both representative and straightforward: “neither as God nor as man was he ever forsaken by the Father, nor did he become sin or a curse” (The Orthodox Faith, 18). Instead, Christ was “ranking himself with us.” Similarly, Peter Lombard’s view is representative of much medieval theology. He will have nothing whatsoever to do with any kind of “broken Trinity” view, and he denies that the humanity of Christ was abandoned on the cross. What are we to make of the cry of dereliction?

A proper understanding of the cry leads us to conclude that “God abandoned that man to death in some way, because for a time he exposed him to the power of his persecutors; God did not defend him by displaying his power so that he would not die. The Godhead severed itself because it took away its protection, but it did not dissolve the union; it separated outwardly so that it was not there to defend him, but it was not absent inwardly in regard to the union” between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (The Sentences: Book Three, On the Incarnation of the Word, 21). Similarly, Calvin (despite some important disagreements with Lombard and Aquinas) insists that “we do not, however, insinuate that God was ever hostile to him or angry with him. How could he be angry with his beloved Son, with whom his soul was well pleased?” Instead of any notion of a “broken Trinity,” Calvin maintains that Christ felt, “as it were, forsaken of God,” but nonetheless “he did not cease in the slightest to confide in his goodness” (Institutes II.xvi.11-12).

On one hand we have a view – a view that is common in contemporary Christian thinking – according to which the Father is against the Son; the relationship of mutual communion, love, and trust between the Father and Son is ruptured; and the Trinity is broken. On the other hand we have something very different; the deeply traditional view is this: the Father forsook the Son to this death, and he did so for us and our salvation. But as he did so, the communion between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is unbroken.

A Closer Look: Reading the Text Canonically

What are we to make of such contrasting views? It is important to note that although both Matthew and Mark record the cry of Jesus (in both Aramaic or Hebrew), neither comments at all on the meaning of the cry. Both Gospels report the event, and they leave us with the echoes of the cry haunting us. But neither tells us exactly what it means, or just what we are to conclude from it regarding the interior life of the Triune God. Neither the Markan nor Matthean versions actually say that the Father turned his face away from the Son or that the Trinity was ruptured. Nor do they imply any such conclusion.

In fact, a careful reading of the texts actually pushes us in the direction of the traditional view. Both Matthew and Mark record a second “loud cry” that comes after the cry of forsakenness and just before his death (Matt 27:50/Mark 15:37). Neither Gospel writer tells us what Jesus said in that latter cry, but the canonical reader of Scripture is not left clueless. For John’s last recorded words of Jesus come as a triumphant cry from a man with his head held high: “It is finished” (John 19:30). Luke records the famous story of the dialogue between Jesus and the two criminals with whom he was crucified. When one criminal hurls abuse at Jesus, the other criminal responds by rebuking the abusive one. Then he cries out to Jesus: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom” (Luke 23:42). To this desperate request Jesus responds with a clear and confident declaration. “Today,” he says, “you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). Such a bold and powerful statement hardly fits the picture of a Jesus who is experiencing “spiritual separation” or who knows that he is completely rejected his Father. Perhaps more importantly, Luke tells us what Jesus cried just before he “breathed his last.” He called out loudly, “Father, into your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). This is not a statement of despair. This is not a cry of utter and total abandonment. There is no hint here of a relationship that is severed or even strained. There is no sense here of a Father who has rejected his Son or turned his back on him. In fact, it is hard to see how such a “broken Trinity” view could even be compatible with Jesus’ last words. To the contrary, they are words of complete trust: “into your hands I commit my spirit.”

It is also important to remember that Jesus quotes the first verse of Ps 22, and a closer look at the Gospel accounts show that there are many clear echoes of the whole of Ps 22. Psalm 22 says “I am scorned by everyone, despised by the people. All who see me mock me... (vv. 6-8). Both Matthew and Mark repeat this scenario, and in doing so they detail those who mock and insult: the soldiers, those who passed by, the religious leaders, and even the criminals with him. The psalmist tells us that the tormenters gamble over his clothes, and again Matthew and Mark show this in detail. The psalmist even describes the condition of the oppressed as having his hands and feet pierced (22:16). Such clear and strong echoes show that Mark and Matthew intend for their readers to be drawn into the background of Ps 22 as an interpretive key to understanding the story of the death of Jesus.

When we look closely at Ps 22, we cannot miss the cry of lament. Yet in the midst of this apparent despair, the psalmist also recognizes that God is the “Holy One” (22:3), and he recounts the testimonies of those who have trusted in the Lord before him (22:4-5). He turns to Yahweh for help, he asks the Lord to bring deliverance, and his trust in the Lord is evident in this crescendo: “For he has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one; he has not hidden his face from him but has listened to his cry for help” (22:24). For the psalmist, this is incomparably good news for rich and poor, young and old, Jew, and Gentile alike.

So we should take Jesus’ quotation of the first line of the psalm as a signpost to the whole psalm. It is his way of announcing once again the meaning and significance of his mission. Jesus is identifying with those who need salvation. But he is not announcing that the Father has utterly abandoned or forsaken him. Jesus is not saying that the eternal communion between the Father and the Son has been broken (however “mysteriously” such rupture might be said to occur). Instead, we should conclude that he “has not despised or scorned the suffering of the afflicted one”; it is, after all, the enemies of Jesus who do that (in both Ps 22 and the Gospel accounts). The contrast between his enemies and his Father is deliberate and clear. The Father “has not hidden his face from him, but has listened to his cry for help.” Understood in the light of the broader canonical context, the cry of dereliction does not support the “broken Trinity” view. It does, however, cohere remarkably well with the more traditional approach. What the Father forsook the Son to was this death, at the hands of these sinful people, for us and our salvation.

Reading as Christians: Why the Doctrine of the Trinity Matters

For Christians, the doctrine of the Trinity is at the very heart of the faith. Far from being an ancillary or unimportant doctrine, it is vitally connected to the most crucial Christian claims. It is what is most distinctive about the Christian doctrine of God. It is the strand or cord that holds the Christian faith together; without it there is no truly Christian faith. It is central to the gospel itself. Famously, it claims that there is one God in three persons. It is monotheism, but it is Christian monotheism. It claims that one of those divine persons – one who is as fully divine as the others and one who is of the “same essence” with them – became human, lived and died as a human, and was crucified and then resurrected from the dead “for us and our salvation.” Given its centrality and importance, any and all claims that there is “spiritual separation” or a “rupture” in the relationship between the Father and the Son should be carefully evaluated.

Many contemporary theologians are “Social” Trinitarians; others are more traditional or “Latin” Trinitarians. Although there are important differences between them (for discussion see T.H. McCall’s Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism? Philosophical and Systematic Theologians on the Metaphysics of Trinitarian Theology [Eerdmans, 2010]), both Latin and Social Trinitarians agree that it is the internal and necessary relations within the Triune life that separate Trinitarianism from either unitarianism or tritheism. The upshot of all this should be plain enough. If what makes the Trinity one God rather than three gods is their relatedness (as on Social Trinitarianism), and if this relationality is lost or destroyed, then we lose all claims to monotheism. And if this intra-trinitarian communion of self-giving and receiving holy love is essential to the very being of the Christian God, then without such relationship there simply is no Christian God. To make the point a different way, for Latin Trinitarianism there is no Trinity without the relations between the persons, whereas for Social Trinitarianism there is no monotheism without the relations between the persons. Either way, then, the Triune God of the Christian faith does not exist apart from the relations among the divine persons.

The Difference It Makes

But what about the view that is so popular in contemporary theology and preaching? Should we say that “the Father rejected the Son”? No, there is nothing in Scripture that says this. Did the Father “completely abandon the Son,” causing Jesus to lose trust in his Father? No, Jesus commits himself fully to his Father at the point of death. Did the Father “turn his face away from his Son?” No, the only scriptural text that can be taken to address this question directly says that the Father did not hide his face from his Son. To the contrary, he has “listened to his cry for help.” Was the eternal communion between the Father and the Son somehow ruptured on that terrible day? Was the Trinity broken? The answers to such questions should be resoundingly negative. Careful study of the biblical text makes such a view unnecessary, and orthodox Trinitarian theology makes it impossible.

But Jesus does utter this terrible cry. If we should avoid misleading and mistaken interpretations of it, how are we to understand it? The first thing to say is that we should affirm that the Son in fact was left to die. Jesus suffered and died. This much is obvious from the passion narratives themselves, and the subsequent NT witness to the gospel makes much of the death of Christ. He, indeed, was abandoned by his Father in this sense. His Father could have rescued him; Jesus could have been spared terrible humiliation, agony, and death. The Father could have done so, but he did not. Jesus was abandoned – the Father abandoned him to this death, at the hands of these sinful people, for us and our salvation.

The second point that we should affirm is this: throughout the passion and death of Jesus, his union with humanity was unbroken (as it was through the resurrection and ascension and indeed is today as well). He is united to us in our humanity, and he identifies with us in our state and condition of fallenness. It is we who have – as rebellious sinners – abandoned God. But rather than leave us in our state of abandonment, the Son has become human and has identified himself with us: “these are my people. I am here for them. I have come to redeem them from this abandonment and to bring them home.”

The third affirmation is also of crucial importance, and it has been the focus throughout much of this discussion: the Son’s relationship to the Father is unbroken. The works of God in creation and redemption (what the Christian tradition has termed the opera ad extra) are always undivided, and the Son’s communion with the Father is unblemished. If we understand the doctrine of the Trinity properly, we will be in a position to see that saying “the Trinity is broken” amounts to the same thing as saying “God does not exist.” Such a view is utterly antithetical to the Christian faith. There is every reason to believe that throughout Christ’s passion he remains the beloved Son in whom the Father is “well pleased.”

Properly understood, the cry of dereliction means that the Father abandoned the Son to this death at the hands of these sinful people, for us and our salvation. It means that the Triune God is for us – and he is for us in a way that goes beyond our wildest hopes or dreams. It means that by the power of the Spirit, the Son of God “emptied himself, [and] became obedient to death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:8). And it means that the Father has “exalted him to the highest place, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Phil 2:9-11). It means that “God is love” (1 John 4:8), and that the God whose nature is holy love “so loved the world” (John 3:16) that he “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all” (Rom 8:32). God – the God who is Triune – is for us.

By Thomas H. McCall, Ph.D., associate professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, and author of Forsaken: The Trinity, the Cross and Why It Matters (IVP Academic, forthcoming).

Top 10 Guitar Solos of All Time

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Below is an excerpt from Guitar World’s 50 Greatest Guitar Solos article. We have listed the top 10 below but we really want to know what your favorite solos of all time are. When you think of great guitar, what song comes to mind? What solo makes your passion for music really burn? What is the solo that made you want to be a guitarist? We know what Guitar World thinks…what about you, our faithful fans, readers, and customers? Vote above and we’ll publish the results very soon!

10) "Crossroads" (Eric Clapton) - CreamWheels of Fire, 1968

For over three decades, Eric Clapton has been bemused by his fans’ adulation of his solo on Cream’s radical reworking of bluesman Robert Johnson’s signature tune, “Crossroads.”

“It’s so funny, this,” Clapton says. “I’ve always had that held up as like, ‘This is one of the great landmarks of guitar playing.’ But most of that solo is on the wrong beat. Instead of playing on the two and the four, I’m playing on the one and the three and thinking, ‘That’s the off beat.’ No wonder people think it’s so good—because it’s fucking wrong.” [laughs]
Perhaps one reason for Clapton’s difficulty finding the downbeat was that the concert at which the song was recorded, at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom, got a late start due to drummer Ginger Baker’s tardy, and rather dramatic, appearance. Recalls Tom Dowd, who engineered the recording and ran the mobile recording unit that night: “The group was supposed to go on and we didn’t have Ginger and couldn’t figure out where the heck he was. We were worried, and Bill Graham and others said, ‘God, I hope he’s okay. Maybe we should call the police.’ Then I look out from our vantage point upstairs and see a Corvette speeding towards us, with a couple of police cars a block behind it. That was Ginger arriving. I have no idea what happened, but he pulled up to the stage entrance, abandoned the car, ran up on stage and the band started playing.”

And what they played is what you hear; contrary to a persistent, widely held rumor, the solo on “Crossroads” was not edited down.

“It’s not edited and I’ve got an audience tape from the same show which verifies that,” says Bill Levenson, who produced the Cream box set, Those Were the Days (Polydor). “That was a typical performance of the song. I’ve listened to a lot of tapes and all of the ‘Crossroads’ that I’ve heard come in at four minutes and change. They never seemed to expand it beyond that.”

9) "Crazy Train" (Randy Rhoads) - Ozzy Osbourne Blizzard of Ozz, 1981

Guitarist Randy Rhoads employeed a two-part process when recording his solos for Blizzard of Ozz, Ozzy Osbourne’s first album following his ouster from Black Sabbath. First, the classically trained young shredder would take his customized Jackson guitars to a stone room downstairs at England’s Ridge Farm Studios where he would work out each of his solos, among them “Crazy Train.”
“This was after we did the backing tracks,” says Blizzard of Ozz engineer Max Norman. “Randy had a Marshall and a couple of 4x12s, and we had him set up in this room with the cabinets facing up out into the main studio. They were miked at various points: close, at three feet, and again at about 12 feet. I would make Randy a loop of the solo section and we’d just let that play into these big monitors downstairs, where he would just sit and jam away for hours and hours until he had composed his completed solo.”
With the solos arranged to his liking, Rhoads would then report upstairs to the control room to record them.

“We’d plug the guitar directly into the console,” recalls Norman. “We’d preamp it in the console and send it down to the amp from there. That way we could control the amount of gain that hit the amp, which is always a problem when running a remote amplifier and trying to get a good enough signal to it.

“Randy would put down his solos pretty quickly once he had them worked out. We’d do two or three takes to get the majority of the solo down, then maybe punch in a few little fix ups. He’d try to get the first take as good as possible, then he’d double it and triple it. Ozzy always wondered why Randy double tracked everything, and he really didn’t want him to. I must admit, at the time I really didn’t think it was a very good idea, either—but when you double and triple track a solo, it actually adds to the accuracy because it’s somewhat more forgiving as far as pitch and timing; it blurs the edges.

“Of the three tracks on each solo, the one that we liked the best would be pretty much down the center of the mix, and the other two would be ghosted back 3 or 4 db, swung out pretty wide on either side. What happens then is that it doesn’t become such an obvious double or triple track—it’s more of an effect, really, because you tend to get the phasing between the different pitches. In addition, with guitars two and three panned left and right, you get a fourth guitar—a phantom guitar—in the middle. So what Randy’s got on those solos is a double track of his main guitar, and the other two guitars attempting to create a ghost guitar. It actually averages out pretty well—it works better than you might think.”

8) "Hotel California" (Don Felder, Joe Walsh) - The Eagles Hotel California, 1976

Credit for the guitar majesty of “Hotel California” is often given to Joe Walsh, who toughened up the Eagles’ laid-back California sound when he joined the band just prior to the Hotel Californiaalbum’s recording. Actually, the primary guitar heard throughout the solo belongs to Don Felder, who wrote the music for the track and actually conceived and played the solo’s intricate harmonies on his initial, instrumental demo.

“Every once in a while it seems like the cosmos part and something great plops into your lap,” says Felder. “That’s how it was with ‘Hotel California.’ I had just leased this beach house in Malibu and was sitting in the living room with all the doors wide open on a spectacular July day, probably in ’75. I was soaking wet in a bathing suit, sitting on the couch, thinking the world is a wonderful place to be and tinkling around with this acoustic 12-string when those ‘Hotel California’ chords just oozed out. I had a TEAC four-track set up in a back bedroom, and I ran back there to put this idea down before I forgot it.
“I set this old rhythm ace to play a cha-cha beat, set the right tempo and played the 12-string on top of it. A few days later, I went back and listened to it and it sounded pretty unique, so I came up with a bass line. A few days after that, I added some electric guitars. Everything was mixed down to mono, ping-ponging back and forth on this little four-track. Finally, I wound up with a cassette that had virtually the entire arrangement that appeared on the record, verbatim, with the exception of a few Joe Walsh licks on the end. All the harmony guitar stuff was there, as was my solo.

“Then I gave it to Don Henley on a tape with eight or 10 ideas, and he came back and said, ‘I really love the one that sounds like a Matador…like you’re in Mexico.’ We worked it all up and went into the studio and recorded it as I wrote it—in E minor, just regular, open chords in standard tuning—and made this killer track. All the electric guitars were big and fat and the 12-string was nice and full. Then Henley came back and said, ‘It’s in the wrong key.’ So I said, ‘What do you need? D? F sharp?’…hoping that we could varispeed the tape. But he said no, that wouldn’t work, and we sat down and started trying to figure out the key—and it turned out to be B minor! So out comes the capo, way up on the seventh fret. We re-recorded the song in B minor and all of a sudden the guitar sounds really small and the whole track just shrinks! It was horrible, so we went back and tried it again. Luckily, we came up with a better version in B minor.

“I kept the capo on and recorded the acoustic guitar through a Leslie. They took a D.I. out of the console and a stereo Leslie, and this got this swirly effect. Then I went back and did most of the guitars, except for the stuff where Joe and I set up on two stools and ran the harmony parts down. I play the first solo, then it’s Joe. Then we trade lines and then we go into the lead harmonies

“Now that I’ve heard it for 20 years, the 12-string part sounds right to me, but it’s still not as nice as the E minor version we did. And even when we’d finished the song and made it the title track, I wasn’t convinced that it should be our single. I thought it was way too long—twice the normal radio length—and sort of weird because it started out quiet and had this quiet breakdown section in the middle. I was very skeptical, but I yielded to the wisdom of Henley.”

7) "One" (Kirk Hammett) - Metallica ...And Justice for All, 1988

“I had a very clear idea of where I wanted to go with my guitar playing on …And Justice for All,” recalls Kirk Hammett. “Unfortunately we didn’t have enough time for me to fully execute my ideas.

“We worked on basic tracks for six or seven months, and then I only had eight or nine days to record all my leads because we were heading out on the Monsters of Rock tour [with Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken and Kingdom Come]. To get that done, I had to do incredibly long, grueling days—like 20 hours at a pop—and it took so much out of me. As soon as I finished one solo, I had to do the next one. There was no time to breathe, as the whole vibe was to do it the best you could and keep moving. It was a pretty frustrating experience, to be honest.”

Despite these frustrations, Hammett was immediately pleased with most of his work on “One,” which featured three very different solos. “The first solo and the last solo were completely worked out in advance because I had been playing them for months,” recalls Hammett. “So in those cases it was just a matter of fitting in tonewise. I elected to use a clean sound in the intro solo, which was the first time we used that kind of sound. I dialed it up on an ADA preamp and, once we found the right sound, it just flowed. For the final solo, I used my conventional lead sound of the time. That one flowed quickly, too—once I worked out the intro right-hand tapping technique, a process I really enjoyed. I wanted a high energy intro that would be different from anything I had done in the past. So I got those two solos done quickly and was pleased with them. But the middle one just wasn’t happening.”

Ultimately, Hammett was so displeased with the results of his second solo that he returned to the studio in the midst of the Monsters of Rock tour—spending a day at New York’s Hit Factory with producer Ed Stasium. “I redid the entire second half of the second solo and worked to make it all fit in,” Hammett recalls. “It was better, though I was never totally satisfied with it. I guess I did a good enough job, though.”

Apparently so. The song would soon become Metallica’s first legitimate radio and MTV hit, its solos firmly established as Hammett signature licks.

6) "November Rain" (Slash) - Guns N' Roses Use Your Illusion I, 1991

Long before the world embraced Guns N’ Roses as the quintessential Eighties rock band, the L.A.-based outfit recorded in one day a demo tape that featured many of what would become the band’s best-known songs, including “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City” and “Mr. Browstone,” all of which would wind up on the band’s 1987 breakthrough album, Appetite For Destruction. Also on the tape was a song called “November Rain,” a sprawling, grandiose piano-driven ballad that would lie dormant for the remainder of the decade, eventually resurfacing in 1991 on the band’s two record set, Use Your Illusion.

“I think that demo session was the first time we played ‘November Rain’ together as a band,” says Guns guitarist Slash. “We actually did it on piano and acoustic guitar. As far as the guitar solo, it was so natural from the first time I ever played it on the demo that I don’t even know if I made any changes to it when we did the electric version on Use Your Illusion. I never even went back and listened to the old tapes. One of the best things about a melody for a guitar solo is when it comes to you the same way every time, and that was definitely the case with ‘November Rain.’ When it came time to do the record, I just went into the studio, played the solo through a Les Paul Standard and a Marshall [2555, Jubilee head] and said, ‘I think that sounds right,’ ” he laughs. “It was as simple as that.”

5) "All Along the Watchtower" (Jimi Hendrix) - The Jimi Hendrix Experience Electric Ladyland, 1968

Joining the Experience for the initial “Watchtower” session was Traffic guitarist Dave Mason, who, it was decided, would contribute a 12-string acoustic part. “Dave hung out a lot with Jimi and was a regular in the studio,” says engineer Eddie Kramer. “Jimi was aware of his ability and felt that he could cover the part adequately.”

Jimi, says Kramer, had a firm understanding of just how the song was to be arranged and performed, but the session proved to be anything but smooth. Mason, whose job it was to double Jimi’s six-string acoustic rhythm part, struggled mightily, causing Jimi to reprimand him several times.

Hendrix and Noel Redding also clashed, and the bassist, angered by what he saw as Jimi’s obsessive quest for perfection, bolted from the studio midway through the session. Mason took over the bass in Redding’s absence, but Hendrix ultimately overdubbed the part himself, using a small, custom bass guitar that Bill Wyman had given to Andy Johns.

After the basic rhythm tracks were finally completed to Jimi’s satisfaction, he turned his attention to the song’s four distinct solo sections, each of which were recorded separately. “Once Jimi started working on his solos, the session moved very quickly,” says Kramer. “The thing that occurs to me was how completely prepared he was. One thing that people don’t realize is that Jimi always did his homework. He and producer Chas Chandler always got together to work out ideas well before he walked into the studio. Jimi knew exactly what he wanted to play.

“He used an different tone setting for each part. I recall him using a cigarette lighter to play the slide section, and that the delay effect on each of the sections was applied later. I used an EMT plate reverb—that was the only thing available to us at the time.”

4) "Comfortably Numb" (David Gilmour) - Pink Floyd The Wall, 1979

How do you reason with two guys who once went to court over the artistic ownership of a big rubber pig? That was Bob Ezrin’s mission when he agreed to co-produce Pink Floyd’s The Wall with guitarist David Gilmour and bassist/vocalist Roger Waters. The legendary tensions between the two feuding Floyds came to a head during sessions for The Wall in 1979—which was why Ezrin was called in.

“My job was to mediate between two dominant personalities,” recalls Ezrin. However, the producer turned out to be no mere referee, but contributed plenty ideas of his own. “I fought for the introduction of the orchestra on that record,” says Ezrin. “This became a big issue on ‘Comfortably Numb,’ which Dave saw as a more bare-bones track. Roger sided with me. So the song became a true collaboration—it’s David’s music, Roger’s lyric and my orchestral chart.”

Gilmour’s classic guitar solo was cut using a combination of the guitarist’s Hiwatt amps and Yamaha rotating speaker cabinets, Ezrin recalls. But with Gilmour, he adds, equipment is secondary to touch; “You can give him a ukulele and he’ll make it sound like a Stradivarius.”

Which doesn’t mean Gilmour didn’t fiddle around in the studio when he laid down the song’s unforgettable lead guitar part. “I banged out five or six solos,” says Gilmour. “From there I just followed my usual procedure, which is to listen back to each solo and make a chart, noting which bits are good. Then, by following the chart, I create one great composite solo by whipping one fader up, then another fader, jumping from phrase to phrase until everything flows together. That’s the way we did it on ‘Comfortably Numb.’”

3) "Free Bird" (Allen Collins, Gary Rossington) - Lynyrd Skynyrd, 1973

“‘Free Bird’ was actually one of the first songs we ever wrote,” says guitarist Gary Rossington. “Allen [Collins] had the chords for the pretty part in the beginning, two full years, but Ronnie [Van Zant] kept saying that because there were too many chords so he couldn’t find a melody for it. We were just beginning to write and he thought that he had to change with every chord change.

“Then one day we were at rehearsal and Allen started playing those chords, and Ronnie said, ‘Those are pretty. Play them again.’ Allen played it again, and Ronnie said, ‘Okay, I got it.’ And he wrote the lyrics in three or four minutes—the whole damned thing! He came up with a lot of stuff that way, and he never wrote anything down. His motto was, ‘If you can’t remember it, it’s not worth remembering.’

“So we started playing it in clubs, but it was just the slow part. [A demo of this version of the song appears on the Lynyrd Skynyrd box set (MCA, 1991)—GW Ed.] Then Ronnie said, ‘Why don’t you do something at the end of that so I can take a break for a few minutes?’ So I came up with those three chords at the end and Allen played over them, then I soloed and then he soloed…it all evolved out of a jam one night. So, we started playing it that way, but Ronnie kept saying, ‘It’s not long enough. Make it longer.’ Because we were playing three or four sets a night, and he was looking to fill it up. Then one of our roadies told us we should check out this piano part that another roadie, Billy Powell, had come up with as an intro for the song. We did—and he went from being a roadie to a member right then.”

On the studio version of the song, which appeared on Skynyrd’s debut album, Collins played the entire solo himself on his Gibson Explorer, with Rossington playing rhythm on his Les Paul, “Bernice,” and adding the slide fills on his SG. “The whole long jam was Allen Collins, himself,” Rossington says. “He was bad. He was super bad! He was bad-to-the-bone bad. When we put the solo together, we liked the sound of the two guitars, and I could’ve gone out and played it with him. But the way he was doin’ it, he was just so hot! ! He just did it once and did it again and it was done.”

The resulting track was nine minutes long, and no one’s idea of a classic radio song. “Everybody told us that we were crazy to put the song on our first album, because it was too long,” recalls Rossington. “Our record company begged us not to include it. And when it first came out, they did all kinds of awful radio edits until it got big enough where it didn’t matter any more.”

Shortly after the album was recorded, bassist Leon Wilkeson returned to the group after a brief hiatus and Ed King, his replacement, slid over to guitar, creating a three-guitar juggernaut that could reproduce the song’s majestic attack on stage. By the time Skynyrd cut the 1976 live albumOne More From the Road, Steve Gaines had replaced King and “Free Bird” had soared to over 13 minutes in length. This version, with its famous shouted intro, “What song is it that you want to hear?,” triggered air guitar frenzy from coast to coast and firmly sealed “Free Bird’s” status as a national treasure.

2) "Eruption" (Eddie Van Halen) - Van Halen Van Halen, 1978

It is hard to imagine a more appropriately titled piece of music than Edward Van Halen’s solo guitar showcase, “Eruption.” When the wildly innovative instrumental was released in 1978, hit the rock guitar community like a hydrogen bomb. Two-handed tapping, gonzo whammy bar dips, artificial harmonics—with Van Halen’s masterly application of these and other techniques, “Eruption” made every other six-stringer look like a third-stringer.

But the most remarkable thing, perhaps, about the unaccompanied solo is that it almost didn’t make it on the guitarist’s debut album.

“The story behind ‘Eruption’ is strange,” says Van Halen. “It wasn’t even supposed to be on Van Halen. While we were recording the album, I showed up at the studio early one day and started to warm up because I had a gig on the weekend and I wanted to practice my solo-guitar spot. Our producer, Ted Templeman, happened to walk by and he asked, ‘What’s that? Let’s put it on tape!'

“I played it two times for the record, and we kept the one that seemed to flow. Ted liked it, and everyone else agreed that we should throw it on the album. I didn’t even play it right—there’s a mistake at the top end of it. Whenever I hear it, I always think, ‘Man, I could’ve played it better.’”

As for the distinctive echo effect on the track, Eddie recalls that he used a relatively obscure unit—a Univox echo chamber. “It had a miniature 8-track cassette in it, and the way it would adjust the rate of repeat was by the speed of the motor, not by tape heads. So, if you recorded something on tape, the faster you played the motor back, the faster it would repeat and vice versa. I liked some of the noises I got out of it, but its motor would always burn out.”

“I like the way ‘Eruption’ sounds. I’d never heard a guitar sound like that before.”

1) "Stairway to Heaven" (Jimmy Page) - Led Zeppelin Led Zeppelin IV, 1971

If Jimmy Page is the Steven Spielberg of guitarists, then “Stairway” is his Close Encounters. Built around a solid, uplifting theme—man’s quest for salvation—the epic slowly gains momentum and rushes headlong to a shattering conclusion. The grand finale in this case is the song’s thrill-a-second guitar solo.

Page remembers: “I’d been fooling around with the acoustic guitar and came up with several different sections which flowed together nicely. I soon realized that it could be the perfect vehicle for something I’d been wanting to do for a while: to compose something that would start quietly, have the drums come in the middle, and then build to a huge crescendo. I also knew that I wanted the piece to speed up, which is something musicians aren’t supposed to do.

“So I had all the structure of it, and ran it by [bassist] John Paul Jones so he could get the idea of it—[drummer] John Bonham and [singer] Robert Plant had gone out for the night—and then on the following day we got into it with Bonham. You have to realize that, at first, there was a hell of a lot for everyone to remember on this one. But as we were sort of routining it, Robert started writing the lyrics, and much to his surprise, he wrote a huge percentage of it right there and then.”

Plant recalls the experience: “I was sitting next to Page in front of a fire at our studio in Headley Grange. He had written this chord sequence and was playing it for me. I was holding a pencil and paper, when, suddenly, my hand was writing out the words: ‘There’s a lady who’s sure, all that glitters is gold, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven.’ I just sat there and looked at the words and almost leaped out of my seat. Looking back, I suppose I sat down at the right moment.”

While the spontaneous nature of Plant’s anthemic lyrics came as a pleasant surprise, the best was yet to come. The beautifully constructed guitar solo that Guitar World readers rated the “best ever” was, believe it or not, improvised.

“I winged it,” says Page with a touch of pride. “I had prepared the overall structure of the guitar parts, but not the actual notes. When it came time to record the solo I warmed up and recorded three of them They were all quite different from each other. All three are still on the master tape, but the one we used was the best solo, I can tell you that.”

“I thought ‘Stairway’ crystallized the essence of the band. It had everything there, and showed the band at its best. I’m not talking about solos or anything; it had everything there. Every musician wants to do something that will hold up for a long time, and I guess we did that with ‘Stairway.’"

Lenten Asceticism

By Greg Peters
Scriptorium Daily

As most of you know, we are nearly two weeks into Lent, that forty day period that we set aside before Easter to prepare ourselves for the remembrance of the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It’s an important season in the church calendar and should be an important time of preparation for all Christians. In the words of the Book of Common Prayer:

Dear People of God: The first Christians observed with great devotion the days of our Lord’s passion and resurrection, and it became the custom of the Church to prepare for them by a season of penitence and fasting. This season of Lent provided a time in which converts to the faith were prepared for Holy Baptism. It was also a time when those who, because of notorious sins, had been separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church. Thereby, the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.

I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word. And, to make a right beginning of repentance, and as a mark of our mortal nature, let us now kneel before the Lord, our maker and redeemer.

I personally think that this is a beautiful invitation into the Lenten season. I particularly like the aspect of self-denial that is expected of each believer during Lent. In the words of the Rule of Benedict: “Although the life of a monk ought to have about it at all times the character of a Lenten observance, yet since few have the virtue for that, we therefore urge that during the actual days of Lent the brethren keep their lives most pure and at the same time wash away during these holy days all the negligences of other times. And this will be worthily done if we restrain ourselves from all vices and give ourselves up to prayer with tears, to reading, to compunction of heart and to abstinence.” Again, I think that these words are a beautiful exhortation to all believers to engage intentionally in ascetical practice during Lent. Given that “asceticism” is likely not a daily discipline for many of us, an explanation would be helpful.

Asceticism comes from the Greek ask?sis and literally means exercise, practice or training. In earliest Christianity, ask?sis could refer to the study of the Scriptures, bodily discipline and as a technical term for the monastic life. The most common use of the word was in reference to an austere or disciplined life. Such bodily discipline is not unique to Christianity, since it was also characteristic of early Buddhism and ancient Judaism. The Old Testament is greatly concerned with bodily actions, observing ascetical practices as diverse as fasting, abstaining permanently from certain foods, not touching a woman in her menses, requiring that a person perform purification rites after sexual intercourse, adopting sexual continence and wearing coarse garments. Furthermore, the Essenes, a Jewish communal group, were rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and committed to fulfilling its precepts by incorporating many ascetic practices into their way of life. These practices included celibacy, a simple life free of material possessions, temperance in food and drink, simplicity of dress, reserve in speech, desert separatism and strict rules of ritual purity.

Ancient Greek and Roman philosophy also advocated asceticism. The Stoics are the most well-known of the ancient schools of philosophy for adopting ascetic tendencies. They believed that humankind was perfectible in its earthly existence, thus creating the need to live ascetically. The task of human beings, for Stoics, was to cultivate their own soul so that they could achieve complete harmony between what they desired and sought after and what right reason set down. In his Meditations, Marcus Aurelius wrote, “By remembering, then, that I am a part of such a whole, I shall be content with everything that happens. And inasmuch as I am in a manner intimately related to the parts which are of the same kind with myself, I shall do nothing unsocial, but I shall rather direct myself to the things which are of the same kind with myself, and I shall turn an my efforts to the common interest, and divert them from the contrary. Now, if these things are done so, life must flow on happily” (10.6). The goal, therefore, of Stoicism is apatheia, that is, moving beyond those powers (such as anger) that affect one’s behavior and disposition. In part, this was accomplished through various types of asceticism.

From its earliest history, Christianity also practiced a number of forms of asceticism, due, at least in part, to its Judaic heritage and the influence of Greek and Roman philosophy. Already in the New Testament literature a paradigm for asceticism is presented in the person of John the Baptist, who lived in the wilderness, wore camel’s hair clothing, ate locusts and honey and fasted with his disciples (Mark 1:6; 2:18). Jesus himself established a firm foundation for the ascetical lifestyle when he admonished his followers to deny themselves, take up their cross and follow him (Mark 8:34). As well, Jesus often fasted and seemed to care little for accumulating material possessions. Soon after Jesus’ earthly ministry, there was a dispute between those Jews converted to Christianity and the Hellenized Christians. The core of this dispute centered upon the need for non-Jews to receive circumcision, on the eating of clean or unclean foods and on food sacrificed to idols (cf. Acts 15:1-21). Though the apostle Paul urged that all food may legitimately be eaten by Christians, he also fasted (Acts 14:23) and advocated, for some, celibacy (1 Cor. 7:25-40) together with “spiritual marriage,” a term for the practice of female Christian ascetics who lived with men, lay and ordained, where both parties took a vow of celibacy. It appears, then, that in addition to “normative” ascetical practices, such as fasting, celibacy and avoidance of material possessions, perhaps as early as the first century the Christian churches were institutionalizing practices of asceticism.

This being the case and all things considered, it would be good today if more Christians took ascetical practice seriously, as least making an effort during seasons such as Lent. It appears clear that it was a common practice both in the biblical tradition and in non-biblical history. In both cases this sets a good precedent for us today and certainly God will not be displeased if we make a holy Lent, assisted by intentional ascetical living. May God give us the resolve to take up our cross, deny ourselves and walk in the manner that Jesus walked.

5 Things I Learned at Torrey From John Mark Reynolds

By Peter David Gross
Scriptorium Daily

In the previous post, John Mark announced that he was leaving the honors program he founded to become the new head of academics at Houston Baptist University. He’s continuing, of course, to be an essential member of the team at Wheatstone Ministries through insight at board meetings, speeches at conferences and events, his kind and jolly mentoring, and so much more (…and, by the way, since that’s the case, look out Houston! Before too long, Wheatstone will be rolling back into town…), but it’ll be sad when we’re unable to pop by his house on a whim to laugh and to talk.

I’m very, very grateful for his work at the Torrey Honors Institute. With his peers, he built a program so personal and so profound that it felt both like home and like a whole new world to me and to my friends when, as starry-eyed freshmen, we stepped on in. We were challenged simultaneously to achieve more and to love more. We were given an education that is so deeply based on people that we could take it wherever people go, whether to the cubicle, the halls of power, or to bedside storybook time. It’s very good.

But in addition to producing an academic program without equal, John Mark also poured himself personally into the lives of students who attended. And that’s where I feel the loss for Torrey. The Institute will keep on keeping on when Reynolds moves to Houston, and it’ll still be among the best undergraduate programs in the world, but future Biola students won’t get to sit at Reynolds’ feet like my friends and I did. I learned a lot while sitting there. I learned things that have changed the direction of my life.

Prominent among the things he taught me are the following five. You can find these ideas in Plato, Augustine, Lewis, Chesterton, and other greats to whom Torrey introduced me, but I trace my most personally meaningful encounters with them back to John Mark Reynolds. It’s because he helped me discover these things that I’m sad to see him leave the program I’ve come to love.

Through Reynolds, at Torrey, I learned that….

1 – Deepened education produces deepened love.

When I left for college, my uncle looked me in the eye and asked me not to head so far up in the ivory tower that I forgot about my family. Likewise, I’ve seen new acquaintances become suddenly less personal when they hear I studied anthropology and philosophy. A highly educated intellect just makes for personal inaccessibility, right? And, well, much of the time, yes, it does. Aspiring scholars often become snobby or prickly, and their social networks become closed, leaving others outside.

But Reynolds modeled and advocated a different, brighter purpose for increased education: increased love. He taught me that love is communicated between people by means of things they share, and that the more they have to share, the better they can communicate their love. Every new word added to my vocabulary, every conversational skill, every book I read or film I watch could become a conduit for friendship or (Reynolds’ favorite) for flirting. Rather than demanding that others step up to whatever I appreciate and rejecting them if they don’t, Reynolds taught me to use every new appreciation as a means for reaching out to others.

And he’s right (though it’s not often recommended): it’s possible to flirt using logic.

2 – Morality is bound up with joy.

Education isn’t the only characteristic with a reputation for stuffiness. If anything, morality has it beat. Being good and having fun: they’re opposites, right?

Not so with the good doctor. He exudes a downright other-worldly confidence that God’s rules for good living end up being the same as God’s rules for joyful living. He teaches me that part of what it means that “the Sabbath [and any law] was made for man” is that God’s laws must fit with human exuberance. He taught me to honestly believe in the delightful kingdom that Christ is coming to establish, and to look forward to it by pursuing foretastes of it now. Anything that’s bad turns out to be bad because it dilutes the delight of God in His creations and of His creations in each other and Him. Joy is at the center of things.

“What happened to jollification?” he asks, while blowing bubbles in the academic office, or balancing a spoon on his nose, or making puppets out of marshmallows and toothpicks. When you’re around him, you can’t help but wonder that too.

3 – Excellence isn’t perfection, and that’s a good thing.

If you’ve heard him say it once, you’ve heard it a thousand times: “Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.” Whether he’s advocating for amateur theatre and writing rushed plays for high school homeschool performers, or encouraging a disheartened student to keep on working when they didn’t meet their own expectations, or diffusing premature grumpiness in tech-impaired twenty-somethings who wish we still got around on horses, Reynolds reminds me that working in the real world is always better than grouching from an ideal one.

That principle ends up being at the center of most endurance. Without sacrificing idealism, we have to become people who work with what’s at hand and who strive to do our best, whatever that best might be. If we can learn to follow the principle, we’ll keep on being messy people, but we’ll be messy people who’ve made and done a bunch of nifty things, and that’s pretty darn desirable, relatively speaking.

4 – Everything can be questioned; the truth will out.

It has (thank goodness!) become an old Christian adage by now that “all truth is God’s truth,” but John Mark has a way of living it out that always refreshes me. He applies it in every direction, from the eager examination and discussion of cultural kitsch to the unblinking exploration of life’s hardest questions and Christianity’s strongest challenges. He deeply, purely believes that any question asked with honesty and humility in submission to Christ–any question–is a step taken toward truth. As best he can (and better than just about anyone I know) he strives to root out any fear, bias, or condescension that would block true questions or create dishonest ones.

This was refreshing to me as a eager, clean-out-of-the-press, happy Christian student, and it was salvific for some of my friends whose doubts and questions had been inappropriately suppressed. It involves a deep trust in God’s good intentions for us, and a rigorous commitment to honesty, humility, and hope. It means taking Christ at his word when he says, “Seek, and you will find.”

5 – Change need never be fearful.

Visiting one part of the Reynolds’ house can be something like visiting a blinking museum of technological development. An (in?)famous “first adopter,” John Mark can get downright giddy about tech’s new directions, and it shows. Yet step a room or two over, and you’ll find yourself in a space stuffed with images of czars and saints and kings and philosophers. It can be a bit head-spinning at first, but before too long you begin to wonder why everyone else doesn’t just follow suit.

You see, Reynolds has never been too impressed by the theory that everything inevitably gets better all the time, but he doesn’t make the mistake that some anti-myth-of-progress types do: habitual nostalgia. He strives to stretch out his arms and embrace all of history, including the history that’s about to be made. He’s learned that God’s people can suffer an awful lot and still pull through, and that puts him at peace with whatever’s ahead. This wide-sweeping acceptance of what has happened and will happen allows him to look to the future keenly, and confront changes with boldness and with creativity. I wish we could all emulate him.

Because John Mark helped me discover these things while I was a student at Torrey, I’m sad to see him leave, but it’s also because he helped me discover these things that I’m proud to see him go. How could I be anything but joyful at the expectation that these ideas will spread to more people in more places? How could I not be filled with anticipation to see what this remarkable man can achieve when he sits with Robert Sloan at the helm of one of our best rising Christian universities? With a new scope for his ingenuity, and a solid base on which to build, I can’t help but think that John Mark’s years of greatest impact are still ahead of him.

John Mark, congratulations on your new position. May your love and learning be always deeper, may your life be filled with joy, may you have both room and support as you seek to excel, may you find new wonders to question and explore, and, John Mark, may your eyes be bright as you look to today’s changes and to tomorrow’s hopes. We’ll miss you at Torrey. We’re excited to expand our work with you at Wheatstone. HBU, buckle your seatbelts and get ready for a wild, jolly, and wonderful ride.

Lent or No Lent, Life is War

By John Piper
Desiring God Blog

Lent or no Lent, not doing some things you feel like doing is the daily pattern for the disciples of Jesus. Yes, daily. “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me” (Luke 9:23).

In the resurrection there will be no self-denial because none of our desires will be sinful or foolish. Till then we have sinful and foolish desires daily. Hence, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross daily.”

What Paul Says

This is so essential in Christian living that Paul made it part of his one-time sermon to Felix (“he reasoned about righteousness and self-control and the coming judgment,” Acts 24:25); he made it part of the fruit of the Spirit (“faithfulness, gentleness, self-control,” Galatians 5:23); he made it part of the qualifications for overseers (“self-controlled, upright, holy, and disciplined,” Titus 1:8).

And he gave us a taste of the sort of thing he meant: “But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry” (1 Corinthians 7:9). So he means there are times for denying some of the desires we have for sex.

It’s the sort of thing that athletes do. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things” (1 Corinthians 9:25). Paul had very little trust in the desires his body threw at him daily: “I discipline my body and keep it under control, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified” (1 Corinthians 9:27). That’s an innocuous translation. Literally: “I give my body a black eye (hupopiazō) and make it a slave (doulagōgō).”

The Christian Experience

This is normal, daily, Christian warfare. Only saints delight in the law of God at their depths. Here is how they talk: “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind” (Romans 7:21–23).

A war indeed. Daily. “The desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do” (Galatians 5:17).

And make no mistake, sexual desires are not our most deadly desires that need daily denial. Anger, resentment, fear of man, discouragement (yes), self-pity, self-promotion, hardness, envy, moodiness, sulking, indifference to suffering, laziness, boredom, passiveness, lack of praise, lack of joy in Jesus, disinterest in others, etc. These need daily killing (Romans 8:13).

Is this Christian Hedonism? Yes. Why does Paul live like a self-disciplined athlete? Simple: Greater joy. “Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable” (1 Corinthians 9:25).