Interpreting the Resurrection II

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.