Interpreting the Resurrection II

In my last post I attempted to reach a concept of the Resurrection of Jesus that respected Scriptural texts, the constraints of theology and the demands of practical reason. My conclusion was that the writers of the texts used a metaphor of the body much like Paul's metaphor of the Church as the body of Christ. The function of this metaphor was to point to the presence of Christ in the body of the Church available to believers in the preaching of the Word and participation in the sacraments.

In this essay I will extend the metaphor to the lives of believers. An interesting text, overlooked as a resurrection narrative is the parable of the Prodigal Son, or more felicitously, the parable of the Loving Father. On his return from the far country where he squandered his father's inheritance, the father speaks to his other son who has grumbled at the injustice of welcoming the prodigal home with a feast. His words are;

"Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life, he was lost and has been found." (Luke 15:31-32.)

I have chosen this parable because it uses resurrection language without referring to someone actually dying and is obviously a parable rather than an account of events. This frees from our problems with bodies coming back to life and sets the meaning of resurrection in terms of our journey to the far country where we come to grief and a subsequent return to the Father who welcomes us with a feast.

We can all identify with this parable. Resurrection is like returning home after being lost in a strange and distant place. It is helpful to remember that Paul identifies sin with death. The experience of the prodigal is an experience of sin in which he demands his inheritance from his father, treating him as already dead, and goes away from the father's love. His resurrection occurs when he turns from sin and alienation to return to the Father.

Having dispensed with ideas about the immortality of the soul as being a Greek notion that is alien to the thought of Israel, we are left with what happens in the body. Salvation is salvation in the body. This is supported by the New Testament emphasis on the "now but not yet" establishment of the Kingdom of God as an earthly reality.

But again we must look closer at what this entails. The writers of the New Testament used Old Testament texts to indicate the establishment of a just and peaceful society in which:

"The wolf shall live with the lamb, the leopard shall lie down with the kid, the calf and the lion and the fatling together, and a little child shall lead them." (Isaiah 11:6)

They envisioned a renewal of the whole earth that has been corrupted by the sin of men. Israel did not long for life after death in a cloudy heaven but for political freedom and justice and a life lived long in the land.

The other Old Testament theme is that of idolatry: the worship of what is not God. The idols of the nations were seen as dumb; it was only the God of Israel who could speak and create. Worship of dumb gods produces a loss of freedom. We give ourselves over to a thing.

Those who lived in the ancient world would not have understood a freedom without ties. In a hierarchical society everyone had a "lord" over them. Christians were free only as Jesus was Lord. Thus Christian freedom existed as a paradox; to be a slave of Christ was to be truly free because He is the epitome of freedom.

The ministry and death of Jesus demonstrates radical freedom in the face of political power, the demands of the family, the demands of the religious authorities and from self-ambition. While this may sound like an invitation to sixties hippydom in which all responsibility is shrugged off so that the individual may "be what you wanna be, do what you wanna do, yeah!" it is in fact a demanding and disciplined road.

Christian freedom is not exercised in self-seeking but in death and resurrection symbolised by baptism. In baptism we are immersed in death beneath the waters of chaos and are raised a new creation. That new creation is a human being directed towards God and the neighbour. He or she is invited to exercise freedom from the powers and principalities of the world. All worldy lords, those lords that bring us down to the dust of death, are replaced by the one Lord who alone is capable of imparting freedom and raising us from our graves.

The idols of our time are shiny and new and very seductive. As Christians we are to stand outside of their seduction to the point of being unfashionable. We are called to be aliens in the land, bowing to no power in the world that would rob us of our freedom including the illegitimate power of religion.

Resurrection is experienced in the time of our lives as radical freedom and homecoming.

The Church, in its conversation with the world, must acknowledge established understandings of the physical world as it was forced to do, embarrassingly, with Galileo's heliocentric view of the solar system. We now have Darwinian evolution, the deep time and space of the universe and the dependence of consciousness on neurological processes.

The prevailing view of the word is now materialist as witnessed to by the new atheists. There is no room for mind in the world and there is no room for purpose. The world is natural i.e. its working is determined by mechanism. For the Church to argue that consciousness may exist without the body or that God had a part in evolution or actual dead bodies may rise from the grave is futile.

Christian theology, drawing from its deepest sources and acknowledging diversions in its history that are now no longer viable, is rising to the occasion. The existence of the supernatural is no longer foundational. Theologians in universities are interacting with other disciplines and securing a respected place for themselves in mainstream academe. It is now obvious that theology has something to say to economists, psychologists, historians, political scientists and men and women of letters.

This would not be possible if theologians cling to a literalist view of Scripture rather than a view of Scripture as literature based on history. The former owes more to modernity's insistence on evidence that the intentions of the original authors and is limited in its import. The latter honours the nature of Scriptural texts and opens on to a deeper understanding of humanity and our place in the world.

Transcendence is not the difference between the natural and the supernatural but the difference between the known and the unknown. Revelation is an epistemological category; it is the revealing of the things unseen in a similar way that art exposes what we do not see.

In a similar way, the resurrection of Jesus is not proof of the power of God in the physical world but the revelation of things we did not see in the life and death of Jesus. The resurrection is the interpretation of this life and death.