Claim. Jesus’s own ministry — his repeated demand that the people believe in him, his lament over Jerusalem’s unbelief, his Gethsemane prayer to let the cup pass, and his cross-words “forgive them, they know not what they do” — reveal that he did not approach his death as the predestined fulfillment of his messianic mission.
Elaboration. Per 1.3. Jesus’ Death on the Cross: Jesus said “this is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent” (29). He wept over Jerusalem (“you did not know the time of your visitation”; “how often would I have gathered your children… and you would not”). He reproached those who “search the scriptures… yet refuse to come to me that you may have life” (John 5:39-40). His performance of miracles was a desperate effort to lift the people from disbelief — not the rhetoric of someone walking a foreordained death-road.
DP highlights two clinching texts: (1) Gethsemane — “if it be possible, let this cup pass from me” prayed three times — incoherent if the cup was the mission; (2) the cross-cry “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (34) — framed as Jesus’s recognition that his death was due to ignorance, not the consummation of God’s design. He prayed those prayers because “his death would shatter the hope of attaining the Kingdom of Heaven on earth.”
This is the third of three independent evidence chains supporting the contingent-cross thesis. Argument from Jesus’s own affective and verbal posture.
See also. dp-disciples-grief-shows-cross-was-not-foreordained, dp-gods-preparation-of-israel-shows-cross-was-not-foreordained