The Resurrection of Christ
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
--William Wordsworth
from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
My very personal grasp of the Resurrection of Christ is that it is an event not remote in history, but an immediately present fact. But before I get to what I mean by that, I want to briefly consider the more mundane question of resurrection itself.
If you believe there is a god, let alone believe that that god is God himself, then there should be no problem in accepting that the resurrection of a corpse is not a matter of difficulty for a god or for God. He is the creator and owner of the natural order, and he can do with it what he likes.
If you believe in no god, let alone God himself, then you must be skeptical about the concept of resurrection. Therefore, if you were offered Christ's Resurrection as the most important nexus of his human and divine natures, you would tend to reject such an event as impossible and therefore not evidence of anything. Additionally, you would reject a priori any such thing as a "divine nature." So you reject the evidence as impossible and the concept of "divine nature" as both non-existent and a contradiction in terms. This is the position of confirmed atheism.
Without sinking into a vulgar science fiction scenario to explore the scientific possibility of resurrection, I will only respond that life and death are ascertainable states, and that there were witnesses who saw Jesus dead and then said that they saw him alive again in a greatly transformed state. It will always come down to a matter of faith as to whether one accepts or rejects that testimony. No one can reject the fact, however, that the New Testament records such testimony.
But what of Christ's Resurrection as an immediately present fact?
I compare the Resurrection to the beginning of the universe itself, an event ascertainable in a phenomenon known as "cosmic background radiation."
And I argue that Wordsworth's insight as recorded in Tintern Abbey, about the "presence" that disturbs him "and rolls through all things," is a perception in things themselves of the "cosmic background radiation" of the Resurrection. But the analogy holds only so long, because the "cosmic background radiation" left over from the Big Bang origin of the universe is but a meager physical trace of an incomprehensible physical event. The light of the Resurrection, on the other hand, is the immediate spirit of the world, that now "impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought," and is the means by which we truly see the world.
It is my contention that the Resurrection was a physical event that overrode and changed the nature of physical reality itself. The Resurrection infused physical reality with itself and re-contextualized the immediacy of the material world in its transcendence. As such the Resurrection is present as its own light and as the change and imprint that it left in all things.
It is the fullest expression and the full data of Truth. In Christian theology this is generally seen as the realm of the Holy Spirit. But I'm distinguishing here between the immediate presence of the Resurrection as the light and fact of Truth and the Holy Spirit as the shepherd, guide, and voice of that Truth.
And I do not think that this is any more a mysticism than is the astonishing presence to us at any given moment of the world itself. Rather than mysticism, it is logical insight into the meaning of the Resurrection. If one seeks that meaning logically, then the immediacy of the Resurrection is found. It must dominate the presence of the world, and found in the immediate presence of the Resurrection is the presence of Christ and with that presence of Christ is the presence of the Holy Spirit. All of it is suffused into every moment of every object and every life as well as into every moment of consciousness. It is the secret and the mystery of our lives because it is the immediate presence to us of the Creator.
Before the Resurrection the presence of the Creator was but dimly perceptible as a logical insight into the context of the world, which accounts for the presence of the religious spark in virtually all cultures stretching back into the recesses of pre-history. After the Resurrection, the Creator of the natural order had merged with it and transformed it.
It was for the purpose of salvaging creation itself, that God himself incarnated as a man, died at the hands of merciless men, redeemed the world from abject sin, and rose from the dead in conquest over death and a wrongly ordered and evil world. The truth in all things was no longer the truth of a fallen material world of pain and suffering and death. It had become the Truth of the immediate fact of Christ's Resurrection, the triumph over the fallen material world. In a mere moment all inquiry was answered. Men remained who they were, but now they lived in the presence of the immediate fact of the Resurrection. They would see by its light, whether they acknowledged it or not. If they had ears to hear the Holy Spirit and eyes to see the Resurrection, then they could hear and see the final Truth.
To demonstrate to all men how weak they were, how faithless they would be, and what they would have to overcome, Jesus chose from his apostles a man who he knew would deny him three times and made that man the head of his Church. And in choosing twelve apostles he chose one who would betray him into torture and crucifixion for money. And he chose another who would doubt his Resurrection until he had seen it with his own eyes.
And so why with the weakness and skepticism of men would anyone even believe that such an event as the Resurrection could occur, let alone did occur? It was, after all, 2,000 years ago that it was said to have happened. Why believe it now? Wasn't Christ supposed to have already returned? Isn't there still suffering, and death, and evil in the world? Don't we have science now to distinguish between the possible and the impossible and to lay out the probability of the possible? Isn't nature self-contained, with nothing outside or beyond it because nature is all that there is? Is not nature, finally, the living proof that there is no god, let alone God?
The answers come just as rapidly. The event of the Resurrection is immediately present and is immediately perceptible in all things. It began in time and is of time, but its 2,000 years is barely a half-tick in time, if that. The Resurrection can be believed because it can be immediately perceived now. Christ's promised return will be on his schedule, not on the schedule of men. Suffering, death, and evil are still in the world because men and the Father of Lies still co-habitate, even in the very light of the Resurrection. Science is a plodding human endeavor that turns over another rock only to find more questions than answers, endless complexity and mystery, paradoxically knowing less as it knows more. Nature is itself an impenetrable mystery, from one angle seeming to be nothing but a projection of designs, from another angle having no bottom, from another angle posing questions too large to be answered from within it. Scientists who think otherwise engage in folly.
But the Resurrection is immediate, sweeping mindfulness into what was once mere cognition, filling perceptual voids with insight, transforming indifference into inspiration.
That is the light of the Risen Christ. It is the broadest yet most focused and detailed knowledge of right and wrong and good and evil. It is the immediate light of conscience and is common sense. It is the gift, the legacy, the Truth between the embrace and the embraced. And that light is as drinkable as water. And it is also called Love. It brims over the edge of every moment in every thing.
Revised on March 29, 2005
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man;
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
--William Wordsworth
from Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey
My very personal grasp of the Resurrection of Christ is that it is an event not remote in history, but an immediately present fact. But before I get to what I mean by that, I want to briefly consider the more mundane question of resurrection itself.
If you believe there is a god, let alone believe that that god is God himself, then there should be no problem in accepting that the resurrection of a corpse is not a matter of difficulty for a god or for God. He is the creator and owner of the natural order, and he can do with it what he likes.
If you believe in no god, let alone God himself, then you must be skeptical about the concept of resurrection. Therefore, if you were offered Christ's Resurrection as the most important nexus of his human and divine natures, you would tend to reject such an event as impossible and therefore not evidence of anything. Additionally, you would reject a priori any such thing as a "divine nature." So you reject the evidence as impossible and the concept of "divine nature" as both non-existent and a contradiction in terms. This is the position of confirmed atheism.
Without sinking into a vulgar science fiction scenario to explore the scientific possibility of resurrection, I will only respond that life and death are ascertainable states, and that there were witnesses who saw Jesus dead and then said that they saw him alive again in a greatly transformed state. It will always come down to a matter of faith as to whether one accepts or rejects that testimony. No one can reject the fact, however, that the New Testament records such testimony.
But what of Christ's Resurrection as an immediately present fact?
I compare the Resurrection to the beginning of the universe itself, an event ascertainable in a phenomenon known as "cosmic background radiation."
And I argue that Wordsworth's insight as recorded in Tintern Abbey, about the "presence" that disturbs him "and rolls through all things," is a perception in things themselves of the "cosmic background radiation" of the Resurrection. But the analogy holds only so long, because the "cosmic background radiation" left over from the Big Bang origin of the universe is but a meager physical trace of an incomprehensible physical event. The light of the Resurrection, on the other hand, is the immediate spirit of the world, that now "impels All thinking things, all objects of all thought," and is the means by which we truly see the world.
It is my contention that the Resurrection was a physical event that overrode and changed the nature of physical reality itself. The Resurrection infused physical reality with itself and re-contextualized the immediacy of the material world in its transcendence. As such the Resurrection is present as its own light and as the change and imprint that it left in all things.
It is the fullest expression and the full data of Truth. In Christian theology this is generally seen as the realm of the Holy Spirit. But I'm distinguishing here between the immediate presence of the Resurrection as the light and fact of Truth and the Holy Spirit as the shepherd, guide, and voice of that Truth.
And I do not think that this is any more a mysticism than is the astonishing presence to us at any given moment of the world itself. Rather than mysticism, it is logical insight into the meaning of the Resurrection. If one seeks that meaning logically, then the immediacy of the Resurrection is found. It must dominate the presence of the world, and found in the immediate presence of the Resurrection is the presence of Christ and with that presence of Christ is the presence of the Holy Spirit. All of it is suffused into every moment of every object and every life as well as into every moment of consciousness. It is the secret and the mystery of our lives because it is the immediate presence to us of the Creator.
Before the Resurrection the presence of the Creator was but dimly perceptible as a logical insight into the context of the world, which accounts for the presence of the religious spark in virtually all cultures stretching back into the recesses of pre-history. After the Resurrection, the Creator of the natural order had merged with it and transformed it.
It was for the purpose of salvaging creation itself, that God himself incarnated as a man, died at the hands of merciless men, redeemed the world from abject sin, and rose from the dead in conquest over death and a wrongly ordered and evil world. The truth in all things was no longer the truth of a fallen material world of pain and suffering and death. It had become the Truth of the immediate fact of Christ's Resurrection, the triumph over the fallen material world. In a mere moment all inquiry was answered. Men remained who they were, but now they lived in the presence of the immediate fact of the Resurrection. They would see by its light, whether they acknowledged it or not. If they had ears to hear the Holy Spirit and eyes to see the Resurrection, then they could hear and see the final Truth.
To demonstrate to all men how weak they were, how faithless they would be, and what they would have to overcome, Jesus chose from his apostles a man who he knew would deny him three times and made that man the head of his Church. And in choosing twelve apostles he chose one who would betray him into torture and crucifixion for money. And he chose another who would doubt his Resurrection until he had seen it with his own eyes.
And so why with the weakness and skepticism of men would anyone even believe that such an event as the Resurrection could occur, let alone did occur? It was, after all, 2,000 years ago that it was said to have happened. Why believe it now? Wasn't Christ supposed to have already returned? Isn't there still suffering, and death, and evil in the world? Don't we have science now to distinguish between the possible and the impossible and to lay out the probability of the possible? Isn't nature self-contained, with nothing outside or beyond it because nature is all that there is? Is not nature, finally, the living proof that there is no god, let alone God?
The answers come just as rapidly. The event of the Resurrection is immediately present and is immediately perceptible in all things. It began in time and is of time, but its 2,000 years is barely a half-tick in time, if that. The Resurrection can be believed because it can be immediately perceived now. Christ's promised return will be on his schedule, not on the schedule of men. Suffering, death, and evil are still in the world because men and the Father of Lies still co-habitate, even in the very light of the Resurrection. Science is a plodding human endeavor that turns over another rock only to find more questions than answers, endless complexity and mystery, paradoxically knowing less as it knows more. Nature is itself an impenetrable mystery, from one angle seeming to be nothing but a projection of designs, from another angle having no bottom, from another angle posing questions too large to be answered from within it. Scientists who think otherwise engage in folly.
But the Resurrection is immediate, sweeping mindfulness into what was once mere cognition, filling perceptual voids with insight, transforming indifference into inspiration.
That is the light of the Risen Christ. It is the broadest yet most focused and detailed knowledge of right and wrong and good and evil. It is the immediate light of conscience and is common sense. It is the gift, the legacy, the Truth between the embrace and the embraced. And that light is as drinkable as water. And it is also called Love. It brims over the edge of every moment in every thing.
Revised on March 29, 2005
Comments
Thanks Martin.
Not being a Christian, I can't say I agree with all you wrote, but I will say I found both posts very well done. Reasoned & passionate at once: I was reminded of C.S. Lewis' sermons and apologetics.
I found you thru Billy Beck's blog, btw. Keep up the good work.