Did God Die On The Cross

[Byzantine]

And what implications does this have? Thanks!

[cappie]

Since Jesus' natures, divine and human, can not be separated, though they are distinct, then YES! God died on the cross. The Trinity didn't die on the Cross, but the 2nd Person of the Trinity died on the Cross, and the 2nd Person of the Trinity is God.

The Catechism says,
68 ...... Thus everything in Christ’s human nature is to be attributed to his divine person as its proper subject, not only his miracles but also his sufferings and even his death: “He who was crucified in the flesh, our Lord Jesus Christ, is true God, Lord of glory, and one of the Holy Trinity.”<Council of Constantinople II (553): DS 432; cf. DS 424; Council of Ephesus, DS 255>

469 The Church thus confesses that Jesus is inseparably true God and true man. .....And the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom proclaims and sings: “O only-begotten Son and Word of God, immortal being, you who deigned for our salvation to become incarnate of the holy Mother of God and ever-virgin Mary, you who without change became man and were crucified, O Christ our God, you who by your death have crushed death, you who are one of the Holy Trinity, glorified with the Father and the Holy Spirit, save us!”<1, 2; PL 54, 191-192>

And again,
253 The Trinity is One. We do not confess three Gods, but one God in three persons, the “consubstantial Trinity”.<Council of Constantinople II (553): DS 421> The divine persons do not share the one divinity among themselves but each of them is God whole and entire: “The Father is that which the Son is, the Son that which the Father is, the Father and the Son that which the Holy Spirit is, i.e. by nature one God.”<Council of Toledo XI (675): DS 530:26> In the words of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), “Each of the persons is that supreme reality, viz., the divine substance, essence or nature.”<Lateran Council IV (1215): DS 804>
And even in the works of the divine economy, the work is the common work of the three Persons, yet in the way specific to the Person (see CCC 258 for more on this):

267 Inseparable in what they are, the divine persons are also inseparable in what they do. But within the single divine operation each shows forth what is proper to him in the Trinity, especially in the divine missions of the Son’s Incarnation and the gift of the Holy Spirit.
So, granted that the Trinity is supremely Mystery, I believe we must say that yes, "God died." God the Son died "Personally", yet always God, and always One with the Father and the Spirit - always One and in all works and operations, except in being Father and in being Spirit. Thus, God the Father and the Spirit were fully One with the Son Jesus in His death on the cross. We cannot say that the Father or the Spirit died on the cross, but God did: He is never divided or separated - only distinguished in the processions.

Many words, but I think it is important

This passage from Scripture seems to "nail the issue down," certainly with all the other references and arguments -
Act 3:14 But you denied the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer to be granted to you,
Act 3:15 and killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.

I think most would acknowledge that God alone is "the Author of life."

Let Bishop Fulton Sheen have the last word: to the Teaching Nuns of Ireland, gathered in annual conference in Dublin,

You ask, for instance, "Did God die on the Cross?" The answer, happily, is Yes — as I have said the first answer is usually right. But if you go on and ask "What happened to the universe while God was dead?" nearly all abandon the great truth to which they have just assented, and explain that it was not God who died on the Cross but the human nature God the Son had assumed: which roughly is the Nestorian heresy, condemned at the Council of Ephesus in 431, one year before St. Patrick landed for the conversion of your ancestors and mine. The true answer, you may say, sounds not so very different from the heresy: need we bother the young with technical distinctions of this sort? But upon this distinction our redemption depends and the young are quite capable of seeing the distinction, and of rejoicing in it. [url="http://ewtn.com/library/HOMESCHL/TCHREL.HTM"]http://ewtn.com/library/HOMESCHL/TCHREL.HTM[/url]