The Meaning of Resurrection

Both Jewish and Islamic thinkers can point to others resurrected or ascended in their scriptures and say, in effect, So what if Jesus was resurrected; it’s hardly unique and at best makes him an honoured prophet. So why do Christians see the resurrection as central or pivotal?

At the other end of the scale, modern skeptics sometimes compromise their own arguments on this subject through an ignorance of biblical theology, simply not understanding what the resurrection was supposed to represent or achieve in the first place. This might involve viewing Jesus' resurrection as an arbitrary display of power whose value is in its sensational nature, merely one more story of the kind that collect around mythical figures as their sories are retold -- Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say.

In between these two positions are a large number of people who simply do not see the relevance of Jesus’ resurrection for their own life or spirituality, and many Christians are among them. We will look at the meaning of the Jesus’ resurrection in several contexts:

The four canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, share the same basic plot: Jesus does a lot of controversial teaching and healing. The teaching is controversial because Jesus speaks on his own authority, reinterprets the Old Testament, and takes up divine perogatives -- as in Mark 2:1-12 and Luke 5:17-26 for example: Why does this man speak blasphemies? Who can forgive sins but God alone?

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The healings, and other miracles, are doubly controversial since they appear to authenticate his teachings, and his stinging criticisms of the religious leadership of his first-century Judaism. After three years he is brought to trial, convicted of blasphemy and insurrection, and is sentenced to death.

So when it is claimed that Jesus has been resurrected, we are saying a lot more than that: Firstly, the resurrection represents a vindication of his life and teaching, especially over and against the charges brought at his trial and execution. Jesus has been charged with blasphemy at his religious trial, for claiming to be God: For example, in Matthew 26:62-66, Mark 14:60-64 and Luke 22:66-70 he is asked if he claims to be the Christ, the Son of God. He alludes to Psalm 110 and Daniel 7:13-14 in response, to the effect that he's literally God's right-hand man and that he expects to be served (the term is sometimes translated worshipped) by people of every nationality, forever. At which point the trial concludes, with a death sentence.

The resurrection is thus presented as a vindication of his life and teaching, by the very God that he was executed for blaspheming.

Several views of life after death existed in the Jewish world of Jesus' time. The Sadducees held that there was none, while certain hellenistic Jews (if Philo of Alexandria is any guide) expected what we might call a spiritual or disembodied (but otherwise fine) existence. Pharisaic Jews, however, anticipated a bodily resurrection at the end of time whereby many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt as Daniel 12:3 and other passages suggested. This last picture lies behind much of the New Testament; it is important because the claim that Jesus had been resurrected is a much larger and more significant claim than that he had simply been recuscitated or restored to life (in the manner of, say, Lazarus), remarkable as that might be.

We typically think of eternal life as a spiritual or non-material kind of existence: this is connected to the common notion that spirits are immaterial beings. Thus, if the body decays, what is left, if not the spirit? -- and if the body is simply a physical machine, whence comes our freedom (or rationality) if not from the spirit? But resurrection is not related to the question of whether we have intrinsically immortal spirits. Rather it says that if the body decays, God can remake it into something better: our body still, but liberated, with the rest of creation, from decay. What, when or where that mode of eternal existence may be is also a matter of some indifference to the question of resurrection, which simply holds that whatever state we may exist in, it will be at least physical and in some sense a (perfected) continuation of our present bodily existence.

Thus, when Jesus is resurrected, his body does not remain in the tomb. When he subsequently reappears over several weeks, his wounds can be touched, and he can eat food. But he also comes and goes without observing physical limits: to and from a room with locked doors; remaining unrecognized or disappearing from plain view. He is more than physical, but not less. Perhaps we could better say that physicality is one of his options. We can also observe that the nature of the appearances fit a pattern: their underlying logic is consistent with a Jewish resurrection hope; they aren't simply a collection of random wonders.

As mentioned already, Jesus' resurrection is seen as programmatic for creation. So, for example, does Paul write in 1 Corinthians 15 (I quote at length, but reading the whole chapter is worthwhile with this background in mind). He first recalls the resurrection appearances, including Jesus' appearance to himself, which he has addressed in other places. Then he skips back to the bigger picture:

But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since death came by man, the resurrection of the dead also came by man. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then those who are Christ’s, at his coming. Then the end comes, when he will deliver up the Kingdom to God, even the Father; when he will have abolished all rule and all authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.

Note the connection of the 'Kingdom', harking back to the absolute core of Jesus' teaching in the gospels: how many parables begin The Kingdom of God is like this.... But it is not an earthly kingdom; as he said at his trial, My kingdom is not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world, then my servants would fight... But my kingdom is not from here. Now Paul continues, linking Jesus' resurrection with the wider hope of human resurrection in general:

Now if Christ is preached, that he has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither has Christ been raised. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith also is in vain.

The structure of the argument is important: Paul is arguing from Jesus' resurrection, as a given, to a wider expectation of human resurrection. It is the latter that his hearers are unsure of, not the former. This leads directly into a discussion of the nature of that resurrection, and it's fundamentally embodied nature.

But someone will say, “How are the dead raised?” and, “With what kind of body do they come?” You foolish one, that which you yourself sow is not made alive unless it dies. That which you sow, you don’t sow the body that will be, but a bare grain, maybe of wheat, or of some other kind. But God gives it a body even as it pleased him, and to each seed a body of its own. ... So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption. It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.

The distinction, then, in Paul's thought, between 'natural' and 'spiritual' bodies is not between material and immaterial (for both are at least physical, as Jesus' natural and spiritual bodies were; hence we shall be like him ), but rather between corruptible and incorruptible, imperfect and perfect, earthly and heavenly. We may leave 1 Corinthians there, but there are other passages that add detail to this picture. Prominent among them is the following, from Romans 8.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which will be revealed toward us. ... For the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of decay into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and travails in pain together until now. Not only so, but ourselves also, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for adoption, the redemption of our body.

In these and related passages, Jesus' resurrection can be seen to underlie enormous swathes of New Testament thought on such matters as our eternal states, the problem of evil and suffering (including perseverance in adversity), and God's eternal purposes in creation, ambiguity and self-disclosure.

Considering the meaning of Jesus' resurrection requires a consideration of the circumstances of his death. Muslims in particular find it difficult to believe that Jesus could have been apparently abandoned by God to a cruel and degrading death. So the thought that God would voluntarily incarnate as a human being, and subject himself to this, is simply off the scale for them. Ancient Romans felt the same way about their own gods. Yet the idea appears repeatedly in early Christian writings, and is best expressed in Philippians 2:

Have this in your mind, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, existing in the form of God, didn’t consider it robbery to be equal with God, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, yes, the death of the cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him, and gave to him the name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, those on earth, and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This raises numerous issues. First among them is the problem of thinking about suffering: Suffering is not truly understood without analogous experience and consequent empathy. The propositional truths of crucifixion (nails, hours, etc) are not the full facts of the matter. Suffering is unavoidably a subjective human experience. On the one hand, it is tempting to avoid painful realities, even secondhand, by reducing them to conceptual problems (logistics, medicine, justice, theology) instead of facing the experience. On the other hand, discomfort can become a reason to avoid thinking about those very issues. Jesus' death, like any other, can be difficult to think about directly.

Second is the problem of suffering in general. One of the classical answers to the problem of evil and suffering has been called 'soul making': Evil expresses freedom, grows human qualities (e.g. perseverance, realism, cooperation), and teaches responsibility. So without being good or pleasant, the existence of evil and suffering has good and pleasant side-effects which might not otherwise eventuate.

For now, we can note that whatever reasons God may have for allowing evil and suffering, he is not a disinterested spectator in the process. It is not that he needed to incarnate to understand the human condition; being omniscient, he would already know about human suffering from all human perspectives, as deeply or more so than we do ourselves. But it may still be another thing to go through it. We can say at least that God does not make us to experience anything that he will not himself endure. God is not merely transcendent and immanent in spirit, but has also been embodied.

Third is the question of what the point of the exercise may be. It is viewed in the New Testament as fulfilling and superceding the Old Testament concept of substitutionary atonement, whereby an animal sacrifice was offered for personal evil. This meant that (1) since sheep are money in an agrarian society, restitution carries a cost, and (2) the cost is also emotional: a living creature, one which you have raised or purchased, dies on your behalf. The sacrifice is messy and unpleasant; this seems to me to be the whole point of it. But we may also ask if there is not a better solution?

Thus in Matthew 20:20-28 | Mark 10:35-45 Jesus says that the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many. (The 'Son of Man' is Jesus preferred term for himself in the gospels.). Or Paul, in one of several longer passages (see Acts 17 for background) writes:

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old things have passed away. Behold, all things have become new. But all things are of God, who reconciled us to himself through Jesus Christ, and gave to us the ministry of reconciliation; namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and having committed to us the word of reconciliation. We are therefore ambassadors on behalf of Christ, as though God were entreating by us. We beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (Paul)

Paul's summary, addressed to non-Jews, is easier to explain simply than that of, say Hebrews, which endeavours to relate Jesus' death and resurrection not merely to sacrifice, but to the larger picture of the the laws and ceremonies of ancient Israel, and to think it all through -- for many of the early Christians were still also Jews (see e.g. Acts 15 for background). Thus we read in Hebrews 10, for example:

For the law, having a shadow of the good to come, not the very image of the things, can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect those who draw near. Or else wouldn’t they have ceased to be offered, because the worshippers, having been once cleansed, would have had no more consciousness of sins? ... Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin.

In comparing Paul's presentation to Gentiles with that to Jews in Hebrews, we begin to see how Jesus' death and resurrection 'works' on many different levels of understanding. To a ancient Jew, he fulfils their law, but in a way that generalizes to many other belief systems -- and this is most of them -- where human effort (through self-discipline or law) proves inadequate to produce moral behaviour. To a contemporary thinker, he dives into the problem of evil and suffering, and begins to unsnarl it. Many more examples could be given (for example see its mythical significance, below) but the multi-layered nature Jesus' death and resurrection is something that I will be returning to.

One of the most obvious points about the resurrection is that it is consistently presented as the point of origin, and source of momentum, for the early Christian movement in the New Testament. It answers the question 'why did this movement come into existence at this time and in this manner'.

The book of Acts traces one route by which Christian belief travelled from Jerusalem to Rome in the years between the thirties and sixties of the first century. Throughout, the resurrection is the focus of messages spoken to Jewish and gentile people in and around Palestine (eg. Acts 2:14-42, 3:11-16, 5:27-32, 10:34-43), to Hellenistic Jews and 'God-fearing' Greeks in the Greco-Roman world (eg. Luke's synopsis of a typical synagogiue speech in Acts 13:13-52), and even to people with no Jewish heritage at all (eg. Paul in Athens in Acts 17:16-34), though the general revelation of God in nature takes logical precedence here, as before at Lystra (Acts 14:8-18).

Perhaps the most memorable phrasing of the core question (if somewhat bombastic) was that of C.F.D. Moule: If the coming into existence of the Nazarenes, a phenomenon undeniably attested by the New Testament, rips a great hole in history, a hole the size and shape of the Resurrection...?. What indeed, if it does? But see Impact for more on these such questions.

C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein, were Christian academics; both professors of literature, and authors of fiction and myth in Narnia and Middle Earth respectively. Lewis wrote, concerning Jesus' relationship to mythology:

Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens -- at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth... I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from the myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed.

This is a theme explored more fully in another place, but it is also worth mentioning here. As Philips Brooks had written:

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie,
    Above they deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by.
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting light,
    The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.