Interpreting the cross as a revelation of innertrinitarian agony is a bad habit, & a recent one. What we ought to see on the cross is the human death of the divine Son, not a partial eclipse of the Father/Son relation. Reading WB Pope (about 150 years back) helps with this:
Pope says "the incarnate Redeemer, in these the days of His flesh, felt in all its purity & force the recoil of life from dissolution that belongs to human nature..." That is, the Son felt human death par excellence. "But death came not to Him after the common visitation of man."
I think a lot of modern preachers would reach, at this point, for a Father-Son claim (turned away, broke fellowship, etc). But Pope leans into the dissolution in the assumed nature: "No created being will ever know the agony that separated the soul & body of the Lamb of God."
It's a big difference. I submit that WB Pope has his vast Trinitarian & Christological categories in place before he gets to atonement theology, & this gives him balance & proportion. It lets him pick the right point of emphasis for opening the mystery of Christ's death for us.
(The quotes are from Pope's sermon "The Hour of Redemption" in the collection Discourses on the Kingdom and Reign of Christ.) fredfredfred.com/resource/disco…
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