Resurrection I

Follow up on the Cameron controversy over the Resurrection. Go the theology and the texts themselves.

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From a theological point of view---that takes into account modernity--the primary issue is the theological and literate framing of the stories about the Passion and Resurrection: the two form a unit which of course Da Vinci and Cameron-like analysis misses.

I'm not going to cut and paste long Biblical quotations. I'll just cite chapter and verse. I use the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) which you can read here.

The Gospel of Luke starting 24:13 has two disciples walking along sad and dejected after the Crucifixion of their leader. A stranger approaches them who is the risen Jesus in disguise, catch the symbolism of that, (i.e. he wasn't wearing a Groucho Marx mustache) and then "beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures. (Lk 13:27)."

In other words, literate Christians have re-read the Jewish Scriptures--the reference to Moses means the first five books the Pentateuch anciently ascribed to Moses and the Prophets are the Hebrew Prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, etc--and found within them the meaning of the event of Jesus' death (and resurrection?).

Now at this point there are choices to be made. That prior understanding can be and is accepted by both of the two camps I'm about to delineate. One camp says that on the third day the resurrection happened--for the moment ignore what that was, a trance? a vision? a body?--which caused the re-thinking. The other group (more theologically liberal) would say no such event need necessarily be postulated.

The meanings and themes that were discovered in the Hebrew text are the themes of the suffering innocent servant of God, the faithful loving-kindness of the Lord, and the vindication of the righteous.

One of the most important passages from the Book of Maccabees concerns a woman who watches the horrific murder of her seven sons because they will not break Jewish kosher laws and eat pig while under military occupation by the Gentile Syrians. The sons cry out that they will be resurrected and redeemed.

The Hebrew Bible is filled with the dyad of God punishing and yet never abandoning, healing after the pain. That is God always maintain covenantal relationship. The punishing and the re-receiving are simply different moments of the journey with God.

Adam and Eve eat the apple and are banished from the Garden and yet God sews fig leaves to cover them. Cain murders his brother and is sent to wander the earth but is given a mark by God so that he will not be harmed by others.

God allows Jerusalem to be sacked by the Babylonians and the leaders to be sent into exile only so that they may be restored to the land and chastened.

Now that set of images of second set of images doesn't exactly work because Jesus is thought to be innocent. But the dialectic between persecution and vindication are kept. The Maccabees story gives an innocent suffering.

The Psalms are replete with images of the individual feeling abandoned by God only in the end to call in praise upon God. Jesus specifically states in Mark's Gospel "My God my God why have you forsaken me?" (Mk 15:34) which is an exact quotation of Psalm 22:1. The Psalm begins with lament and despair and ends with trust in God. See how the theme is more important than the question of whether Jesus said those exact words are not--which is undecidable anyway. Crucifixion=despair, trust in God=Resurrection/Redemption.

So we know that such involved theological reasoning could not happen in 2 days. Much less the taking of what are those theological themes/ideas and translating them into narrative format. The question then remains--was that thinking triggered by an actual resurrection event or not?

I think that question is actually unanswerable and doing a more genetic analysis there is a tendency from positions to go from: yes (traditional), to no it was symbolic (liberal), to maybe the question is the wrong question wrong way of broaching the issue.

And the yes can be either as "a real body" or as a mystical experience/vision. The liberal position would be something more like the memory of Jesus is held by the people and for them they believe he is redeemed and Lord but no objective referent/event.

I've held all of those positions at one or another point in my life. I believe in Resurrection, even the Resurrection of Jesus still; I just don't get hung up on the mechanics anymore. I wouldn't say I know for sure some such event did not take place nor do I know that one did.

I guess if pushed I would hazard a guess that its seems more likely than not that there was a vision type experience but my faith does not rest in that. My faith rests in the experience of being able to commune with the Spirit of God in Jesus Christ today. That signifies to me that there is a resurrection, that his spirit remains active in this world. That position is not accepted by a large number of Christians. That's fine for me.

But whatever one's opinions, I'm not advocating for mine really, I'm more interested in exploring the meaning and the texts. More to come on that front.