Resurrection and time

This is the framework in which the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus may be understood but with two important twists. Firstly, the end of history is accomplished on the cross. It is here that the world is judged. Secondly, the judgment, which included evildoers, did not sentence them to eternal death but lifted them up with their victims to eternal life. Grace is seen to triumph over law and raw power.

This is how the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus is a source of hope for the whole world because:

"The one will triumph who first died for the victims and then also for the executioners, and in so doing revealed a new righteousness which breaks through the vicious circles of hate and vengeance and which from the lost victims and executioners creates a new mankind and a new humanity." Moltmann The Crucified God p178

Those who are 'in Christ" are freed from the attempt at righteousness through the law and freed from being in thrall to the violent powers of the world.

It is this freedom that indicates that we who were dead are now alive and enjoy a life that cannot be taken away, even though we die, and thus may be called "eternal". We live in a time after the end of the world, after the eschaton in the resurrection. Our fate and the fate of the world is not determined, ultimately, by our own efforts or by our dream of a just society or the spread of democracy but by the death of one man. This is why the cross of Christ is history because it changes the future. The resurrection of Jesus tells us that we will find him in the future and that consequently the future is redeemed.

We may protest that an examination of human history does not reveal this new humanity, that the victim knows no justice and the murderer triumphs. A reading of the history of the twentieth century is enough to make one sceptical of any renewal in humanity. But the end of history established on the cross of Christ is always a promise glimmering on the horizon. It is always now but not yet. But without this promise human life is destined to live in darkness even in the face of our fancy technologies and our trust in our own capabilities.