Resurrection

Christian Century, May 15, 2007 by David J. Krause, Richard E. Koenig, Owen L. Norment

THE CENTURY editorial "Bones of contention" (March 20) reads like something I might have expected from Christianity Today. It states that "Christianity began with reports of an empty tomb and appearances of a risen Lord." But these events are not synonymous, and Paul, whom the editorial immediately cites speaking about the resurrection, famously states nothing about an empty tomb. Neither does Paul's testimony about Jesus' appearance to him and the other disciples allow for any "ascension event" that takes the physical body of Jesus to heaven, since that event (as later described in Luke and, rather differently, in Acts) would have removed Jesus from earth several years too early to account for Paul's own experience.

The editorial then asks: "Would the discovery of the bones of Jesus mean that Christianity must close up shop?" I guess that depends on which Christian shop one is patronizing.

David J. Krause,

Ann Arbor, Mich.

The last sentence in the editorial "Bones of contention" is truly amazing. "If--speaking very hypothetically--Jesus' bones were ever to be discovered, it might put Christians closer to the position of Jews: while we may hope for the resurrection, we can offer no testimony that Jesus is the 'first fruits' of God's power to destroy death."

Is that all? Such a discovery would do more than dampen down the Christian hope; it would destroy it whole cloth.

The resurrection as metaphor won't do either. Both the flat-out rejection of the Easter event as recorded or its transformation into something other than what the Great Tradition has always held it to be mock the prayer offered by the officiant at the funeral liturgy of the faithful: "In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ ..."

There is no way to escape the risk that faith takes when the faithful recite what the creeds say about the resurrection of the Lord. But neither is there any need to.

Richard E. Koenig

Cromwell, Conn.

Belief in a spiritual resurrection, for which verified discovery of Jesus' bones might well be deemed irrelevant, is not at all necessarily "cordoned off from history," despite what the editorial says. What if Jesus had somehow been cremated instead of entombed? What if his body had not been properly buried by his friends but was carelessly disposed of in a shallow grave by his enemies and left for scavengers, with the formation of empty-tomb traditions being later and legendary (cf. John Dominic Crossan's discussion in Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography)? Would it really matter? The problem is not with what final skeletal remains might be left behind after the resurrection, but with our often superficial understandings of what spiritual and Paul's expression spiritual body might mean.

We now understand from quantum physics that the whole universe is a single, unified energy system, a composite of various interactive and entangled energies, with what we see as corporeal matter being only transient manifestations of energy. We might then think of spirit--Divine Spirit--as the subtle but fundamental energy underlying the created universe, the immanent ground of all being and becoming, and the energetic matrix of the spiritual bodies that at death will replace our earthly selves.

Whether we think of the spiritual body as a special gift of divine grace at death or as a sort of "energy body" intricately enmeshed even now with the mental and physical energies of our current lives (my own preference), an essential point is the same in either case: spiritual body should be construed not as a vapid abstraction but rather as substantive, vital, vibrant and energized. The psychophysical mortal body of flesh and blood and bones, which is, to be sure, important for a season, is finally quite immaterial to our eternal destiny.

Owen L. Norment

Charlottesville, Va.