Claim. The disciples’ unanimous grief and indignation over Jesus’s death — not mere sadness but bitter resentment toward the Jewish leadership who delivered him up — is incompatible with a death they understood as the foreordained goal of his mission.
Elaboration. Per 1.3. Jesus’ Death on the Cross: Stephen burned with indignation over the Jewish leaders, calling them “murderers and rebels.” Christians since have shared that reaction. DP’s argument: if the cross had been God’s predestined plan, the disciples might have grieved Jesus’s suffering, but they would not have been bitterly resentful over it nor angry at those who caused it. We can infer from this reaction that Jesus’s death was “unjust and undue.”
This is the first of three independent evidence chains supporting the contingent-cross thesis. It is an argument from psychological coherence: the canonical New Testament emotional posture toward the crucifixion is incompatible with the canonical theological posture (Plan A from before creation) that mainstream Christianity later reads back into it.
A mainstream counter would distinguish the immediate disciples’ grief (psychologically natural even for foreordained sacrifice) from the later apostolic theology (23 — “delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God”) which already integrates the cross as divine intention. DP’s reading flattens that development.
See also. dp-gods-preparation-of-israel-shows-cross-was-not-foreordained, dp-jesus-own-words-and-gethsemane-show-cross-was-not-foreordained