Christ Is Risen-- So What?

I am the first and the last, and
for the living one: I became dead, and look,
I am living for ages of Ages. Rev. 1:17,18.

Human beings certainly live by hope. That much Ernst Bloch showed us. Al1 of us believe that the present will change and the future will bring us something different. Our feeling, premonition, unexpressed thought about the future may be a mixture of anxiety and hope; but the hope is there. Otherwise, why should one go on living?

Every human being believes that something can be bettered: perhaps one's salary, one's house, having children, having more wisdom, more health, more power, even more love. In fact every human being lives by some hope, however inchoate and inarticulate that hope may be.

But is one's hope to be confined to one's life span? Well, if one hopes, only for oneself, the object of hope has to be either before one's own death, or in an existence beyond death.

The tendency today in Christian theology is to go beyond the personal in hope. When one extends one's hope beyond one's own personal existence, and includes either the whole of humanity or at least the poor and the oppressed in that hope, then one's own death becomes less decisive in the nature of that hope.

Probably that was the kind of hope that early peoples of Israel entertained. As to oneself, the soul may survive in some ghostly but personal manner in a shadowy underworld; the larger hope was usually pinned to posterity to the whole people, not to oneself.

The kind of hope in personal and bodily resurrection that the Pharisees began teaching in the times of the wars of the Maccabees when so many young men were so brutally massacred brought personal hope into the centre, and Jesus teachings affirmed the personal element in hope by stressing and affirming the bodily resurrection.

But Jesus (in the fourth Gospel) spoke of this zoe aonion as his personal gift to humanity: I will raise him up on the last day (John 6:39,40,44), and as something to be experienced in union with the risen Christ. He linked it also to eating my flesh and drinking my blood (John 6: 53,55,56) as well as to Christ abiding in one and one abiding in Christ (John 6:56; 15:4ff). This is more than an individual hope. It is hope for the Body of Christ.

The Christian hope in the Resurrection, in our time, is relating again to the collective and historical aspect, and as a result, the personal and eschatological aspects recede in consciousness. Rudolf Bultmann led the way and liberation theologies consummated What Bultmann began.

Bultmann argued, in his famous but now-a-days less read essay on New Testament and Mythology, that modern man, in order to appropriate the gospel today, has to shed the mythological elements in it. The original kerygma of the Apostles is structured by its mythical world view. Bultmann singled out four elements of this world view which a modern person has to reject in good conscience:

1. a three-storied universe;
2. the intervention of natural and supernatural powers in human existence and life;
3. dominion of evil spirits and Satan over human life and over nature;
4. the imminent end of the present age, and the ushering in of a new age.

The resurrection message, being clothed in this kind of a framework, cannot be appropriated by modern persons, except in an existential sense according to Bultmann. Fundamental difference is always between life apart from faith and life in faith, the distinction itself graspable only by faith. Only life in faith is authentic, a life based on the reality of the spirit and on forgiveness; this is "eschatological existence".

Bultmann, a Lutheran pastor rooted in the Justification-by-faith tradition, and exposed the Heideggerian quest for "authentic being," stressed however the personal and eschatological (in an existential way) aspect of the Resurrection, and not its collective or historical aspect as something to be experienced by human beings as such and not just by Christians. That of course is middle class theology.

In Liberation theologies the pendulum swings the other way. The emphasis falls on the liberation of whole communities from oppressive structures. Liberation theology is more a programme of action than just a way of thought. It is a programme for "God's underground" to be in genuine solidarity with exploited social classes and to struggle with them for their liberation.

Feminist theology goes one step further. Theology itself needs to be liberated "from a patriarchal perspective of male dominance". It is a project, as Elizabeth Schuster Fiorenza would put it, "to rewrite the Christian tradition Itself; in such a way that it becomes not only his-story but as well her-story recorded and analyzed from a feminist point of view". Here half of humanity is to experience the Resurrection of liberation from male dominance.

It is to be a collective and historical Resurrection in which female persons participate, leading to be a kind of secondary resurrection for male persons also as they cease to be dominators and oppressors.

As the pendulum has swung away from the Bultmannian personal existential, "authentic" eschatological faith to the liberation of corporate communities from patterns and structures of oppression, the old question about the nature of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ as an event recedes to the margin. Liberation theologies do not care two hoots about whether the Resurrection of Jesus, as an event was historisch or qeschichtilch. But if I were to argue here that the distinction itself does not illuminate the problem, it would probably be misunderstood by many theologians, for I am not with the new trend to worry only about what we see and know and experience.

Questions about the nature of the resurrection seems remote and unrelated to the burning current questions. But to me, they only seem so. The distinction to be made is not between historisch and geschtlich, but really much simpler: Did it really happen? Or was it only a hallucination of faith?

Dan Cupitt's book and the recent controversy about David Jenkin's consecration as bishop Durham have raised the question of myth once again. To say the least, it is obvious that the question is still relevant. It is a question which raises the most fierce upsurges of emotion. The present writer is no modern man. He has been through a number of European and American institutions but has not developed the capacity to pick up rationalism and secularism as the basic structure of his understanding of reality. He remains unrepentingly trans-rational and trans-secular and regards the rational and the secular as two aspects of our perception which do not yield much ultimate meaning. I need rationality to grasp, but the secular framework, which preoccupies itself with this world and no other, seems to me narrow and arrogant.

So do not take my response to Bultmann as Characteristic of modern man. But I believe Bultmann was basically ignorant about the Christian tradition. Though he was a great scholar of modern European thought and of the New Testament background, he did not know that the Christian fathers of the East had rejected a three-storey universe and a static understanding of time and the eschaton. I have documented some of this in my Cosmic Man-The Divine Presence. The creation, at least for the Cappadocian fathers, is a dynamic entity which our rational minds cannot adequately conceptualise. It is, from our perspective, a constantly changing entity, whose main division are not three storeys-- heavens, earth, and hell, but rather the visible and the invisible; the universe open to our senses is only one perceived dimension of this dynamic reality. Heaven is that aspect of created reality which is beyond the horizon of our sense perception integrally related to what is this side of the horizon and giving meaning to it.

Precisely for that reason, the Christian does not discount the idea that powers (created) beyond the horizon of our senses affect human existence and history. The Eastern fathers do not speak of 'natural' and super-natural powers, but only of created beings, good as well as evil, which interact with human beings in the shaping of history and human existence.

The demonic, which some modern thinkers so categorically reject, is an aspect of our present existence. It impinges not only on our personal or individual lives but also on the corporate existence of societies and the structures which dominate them. So do the powers of the kingdom counteracting the demonic forces.

For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood (human beings) but against ruling authorities (arches), against power-wielders (exousias), against cosmic forces (kosmakratores), of the darkness of this age, against evil spiritual powers in the realm beyond our senses (ta neumatika tes ponerias en tois epouraniois) (Ephesians 6:12).

This is also the experience of "modern man" and if some rationalists refuse to acknowledge this fact it would be difficult either to understand why the arms race and global injustice exist side by side with the forces of liberation, emancipation, and Justice.

Whether it is male domination or injustices entrenched in social structures where women also participate and even dominate (Mrs. Thatcher the late Mrs. Gandhi, Mrs. Bandaranaike, Mrs. Golda Meir and others), they are not purely flesh and blood phenomena, but the result of a synergia between human beings and demonic forces.

Any liberation theology or feminist theology which does not recognize the presence and activity of the demonic forces as well as of the powers of the kingdom even in their own activity to be faithful to the faith and tradition of the Christian Church, even if that tradition may need demasculinisation.

To reinterpret the Christian witness to the bodily Resurrection of the Crucified Human Person, Jesus Christ, in the context of this Cosmic polemos is a necessary pre-condition to a relevant re-expression of that witness today. Neither Bultmann nor Liberation or Feminist theologies provide us that necessary re-interpretation of the traditional witness in an adequate way. "Jesus Christ - Risen to overcome all evil forces and powers" cannot be adequately witnessed to in an exclusively secular-rationalist- existentialist or liberationist-feminist framework. To the present writer, that much becomes extremely clear in the wake of the Punjab incidents and its sequel in the brutal and dastardly assassination of Indira Gandhi.

What we need perhaps, even to understand the nature of the resurrection, is more re-mythologisation rather than de-mythologisation. Human beings are unable to express their grasp of the deepest dimensions of reality through words and concepts. They need myth and ritual. And the myth and ritual of the Holy Eucharist is that through which we show forth christen death and resurrection until he "comes again".

When the church proclaims that the Crucified One is risen, she does so not as a result of historical investigations or on the basis of indubitable proof. If either historical investigation or sure proof were the basis of our proclamation, then there is no need to call for faith. What is established by the modern historical method or by sure proof needs no ''belief''.

The Church's proclamation is not based on the Biblical witness either. The source of the Church's testimony is the Apostolic testimony, a first-hand witness which is not derived f rom the Scriptures, but to which they bear witness. Through the scriptures Christians receive conformation of the fact that the Apostles -- Matthew and John, Thomas and Paul and others affirmed that Jesus Christ, the crucified son of man is truly risen in the flesh and ascended into heaven. Ultimately it is faith -- faith in God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and in the Church that confirms the message of the Resurrection and makes live - not historical investigation or incontestable evidence.

And because our faith depend upon the Apostolic testimony in the Apostolic Church, the question of whether it was a historisch or geschichtlich even does not interest us. In the very nature of the case the historical resurrection is not an event that can be established by historical investigations. That does not, for those who believe, make it a less historical event. Nor is it merely quschichtlich for the believer in the sense that it is only a fact that some people in the past did believe in a physical resurrection.

For the Church, this event, which opens time and lets them enter each other, is the very heart of its existence. Once this event is questioned or disbelieved, one falls into unbelief and automatically becomes outside the Church which is founded on faith. It is not the question of the freedom of a human being, either to believe or to disbelieve. Only by belief and baptism does one become incorporated into Christ and therefore a Christian. To deny that belief is to become not only non-christian, but anti-christian.

That is recognizably strong language. But it is the language of faith, and I hope the language of love which does not shy away from the truth.

No doubt we need new language today, not on the historicity or otherwise of the Resurrection, but on its meaning for the church's witness and for the life of humanity. There is no harm in someone trying to develop some new language to describe the unique character of the event of the Resurrection but that seems less important to me than living its meaning and participating in it through the myth and ritual of the Church.

Its meaning can be articulated in words only very partially and very tentatively. I would make the following personal affirmation, as one believer's expression of the Church's faith which I share: The Crucified One, is risen from the dead. He is risen indeed. He has overcome death and the powers of darkness and evil. He lives. He rules in the heavenlies. ln Him the new humanity, man and woman, is inaugurated. in the new humanity Christ is present, the Holy Spirit is present, the kingdom of God is present. For the new humanity, death holds no terrors, and evil cannot use the power of death to frighten the sons and daughters of the kingdom. Evil and darkness continue to operate  so long as these end times last. They can still hurt and wound, scare and torture, assassinate and exploit. But the sons and daughters of the kingdom do not fear death and will bear unfearing witness (marturia) to the kingdom of love, justice and truth, even to the point of laying down one's life. My confidence in the power of the resurrected Christ gives me strength and fearlessness in the struggle against evil forces.

My hope is not only in my own personal and bodily resurrection, but as I pray every day, that God's reign may come on earth as in heaven, and that God's will be done by human beings understanding God's will and fulfilling it in love. My hope is thus for Christ's body, that it be united intimately and fully with Christ by the Holy Spirit, free from every trace of evil or fear of it. This is an eschatological hope which must ever find historical expression. I do believe that in a manner which I cannot now conceive or express, the Lord will gather his own from the dust, forming the new humanity by the Resurrection of the flesh.

My hope is also for humanity as a whole -- that God's kingdom may come in all parts of humanity, in its personal and corporate life, in the life of the nations, in their economic, political and knowledge structures. This too is an eschatological hope that when all things are finally reconstituted, the renewed humanity ,with the church as the Body of Christ present within it, will appear with Christ as the humanity which He has assumed in the Resurrection. This means that all societies here have to move closer to that hope here in history.

My hope is not only for the Church and for humanity as a whole, but in fact for the whole creation within which the Church and humanity subsist. All things have to share in the liberty of the children of God. The creation itself must be set free-- free from evil and death, from decay and disintegration, to share in the reality of the created order as restored in Christ. For in him all things were created, and in him all things are to be reconciled.

My hope lets me struggle and strive without panic or disillusionment. l can struggle and strive along with others, that my daily prayer be fulfilled -- Thy Kingdom Come, Thy will be done. I work for the same thing as I pray for. And if failure comes, frustration does not overwhelm me. My faith in the Risen Lord helps me overcome that frustration and any element of despair, letting me go on in hope. And if others misunderstand persecute or speak evil or kill, I know that that too belongs to the kingdom in history. For it is One who said I am Alpha and Omega, who also said: "Happy are you when they reproach you and persecute you, saying falsely all kinds of evil words against you, on my account. Rejoice and be glad, because your wages are great in the realm beyond. For thus they did persecute all the prophets who lived before your time". (Luke 5:11-12)

My position implies the following theses of faith:

The healing of modern man or woman requires the re-acquiring of a capacity to experience truth by more than words and a superficial rationality; he or she will have to be trained in myth and ritual and in the sacramental mysteries of the Church, in order to appropriate fully the faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We in our time have to overcome the Enlightenment.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is a fact, a historical fact, not in the sense that it can be established by the recently developed methods of historical investigation, but because it is the truth, the truth of the Gospel, proclaimed in the power of the Holy Spirit and acknowledged by faith.

The Resurrection has its bearing and impact on three levels of existence: the ecclesial, the human, and the cosmic, in all three of which we as Christians participate. In the ecclesial realm the Resurrection becomes the basis and centre of the church's existence; everything depends on it and it is so acknowledged. In the realm of humanity, there may be no such acknowledgment; but there is a new humanity, namely the humanity of the Son of God, inseparably and unconfusedly united with the Triune God in Christ. This humanity is present where the Kingdom of God is present and can be discerned by the faithful. In the cosmic realm, the powers have not yet fully conceded their defeat; the demonic powers are still allowed to operate, for they have something to do with human freedom and its development. It is in the struggle with these demonic as well as angelic forces that human freedom still has to be experienced, expressed, and developed. That Is the way of the Cross.

Though the demonic powers which use evil and the fear of death as well as deceit as their weapons still operate, the Christian does not fear them of their weapons. Armed with the whole panoply of God, he or she or groups people confront the powers of evil, knowing fully that they have the power to crucify people. In accepting that cross without fear or anxiety is the power of the Resurrection.

The universe is interconnected; not only the visible that is open to the investigations of modern science or to our senses, but also in its three levels: the Churchy humanity and the cosmos. These are three spheres in all of which Jesus Christ incarnate is present, and the Church is present with Him as His body. The power of the Resurrection now operates in all three realms. Ultimately all three levels are to be set free from the bondage to decay and death and from the power of evil.