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Some Representative Works on the Resurrection

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Some Representative Works on the Resurrection COMPASS SOME REPRESENTATIVE WORKS ON THE RESURRECTION GERALD O’COLLINS SJ E WOULD COME up with a ted- cise definitions that would pin it down. Rather iously long list if we were to reply it provides the broadest horizon within which Wcomprehensively to the question: we can recognize what human life ultimately what have they been saying about the resur- means, how we should live, and what we can rection of Jesus in the last ten years? In any expect from the God who raised Jesus from case many authors go over the same ground the dead. and do not add very much either to the de- This latest plea for the utter centrality of bates about the resurrection or to the conclu- Easter faith follows earlier attempts to focus sions that can be reached. Hence I have de- Christian thinking and life on the resurrection cided to select nine books that have signifi- of the crucified Jesus. In the run up to the Sec- cant things to say, either positively or nega- ond Vatican Council, François-Xavier tively, about the resurrection and the possibil- Durrwell helped to ‘rehabilitate’ Easter as the ity of Easter faith and hope. This representa- central mystery of Christianity.2 In the tive sample will bring readers into the current postconciliar years some writers, like the Lu- state of resurrection studies. theran Wolfhart Pannenberg and myself,3 tried In presenting these nine works, I do not again to revitalize theology and its various intend to take readers through them in com- specializations by recalling where they should plete detail and provide full-length book re- constantly go to draw meaning, values and ports. Instead, I shall choose and highlight sig- guidelines: the light of the first Easter Sun- nificant features that should interest students day. of the resurrection. But the strange neglect of the resurrection persists. Sadly, leading figures in liberation Some Positive Contributions theology have reflected only a little on Christ’s rising from the dead.4 Themes other than the Anthony Kelly, The Resurrection Effect: resurrection continue to engage the attention Transforming Christian Life and Thought of Catholic moral theologians, and, even more (2008) surprisingly, the resurrection can be seriously Anthony Kelly deserves to lead the team neglected by those who write in the area of of those who have contributed positively to sacramental theology.5 We will return later in the study of resurrection.1 He brings together this book to ways in which Easter faith should biblical, theological and philosophical think- enliven those two branches of theology, as well ing to show how the resurrection of Jesus ‘satu- as liberation theology itself. Here I wish only rates’ the whole of Christian faith and should to endorse Kelly’s call to engage ourselves transform the life and thought of believers. As much more fully with the resurrection of Je- the key to God’s relationship with Jesus and sus from the dead. human beings, the resurrection eludes any pre- * * * 10 REPRESENTATIVE WORKS ON THE RESURRECTION N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son Gerald O’Collins, s.j., of God (2003) taught at the Gregorian A magisterial volume by N. T. Wright of- University (Rome) for 33 fers over eight hundred pages in response to years and is now an basic questions about the origins of Christian- adjunct professor of ity and the resurrection of Jesus.6 What did ACU. He has authored or the first Christians mean when they proclaimed co-authored sixty books; including Rethinking that Jesus of Nazareth had been raised from Fundamental Theology the dead? Where does the historical evidence (O.U.P.), and Pause For lead us when we investigate what precisely Thought (Paulist Press). happened at the first Easter? What should be said about believing today in Jesus’ resurrec- limbs cut off by executioners (2 Macc 7)? tion? On two scores, as Wright shows, Christian The historical and biblical strength of this faith in resurrection had no strict precedent book emerges right from the first two hundred even in Judaism. First, it proclaimed that one pages that map ancient beliefs about life be- individual (Jesus) had been raised from the yond death in both pagan and Jewish worlds. dead in anticipation of the general resurrec- Wright takes us through a panorama of what tion at the end of all history. Belief in Jesus’ Greeks and Romans held about where souls resurrection could not have been generated by went after death. The pagan world assumed prior Jewish beliefs or study of the biblical that resurrection was impossible. Among the texts expressing those beliefs. Second, the Jews, earlier hints (e.g., Isa 26:19; Ezek 37:1– other striking difference appears in a distinc- 14; and Hos 6:1–2; 13:14) developed, and, in tively Christian consensus about the nature of response to the deaths of those martyred in resurrection. The newly embodied life of the God’s cause, became a full-blown belief in resurrected Jesus involved a glorious transfor- coming resurrection (Dan 12:2–3; 2 Macc 7). mation of his human existence, the ‘spiritual Of course, some like the Sadducees rejected body’ of 1 Corinthians 15. That made Chris- any life beyond death worth speaking of, and tians agree in expecting that kind of risen ex- others expected only a disembodied immor- istence for themselves. Thus when compared tality. But by the time of Jesus ‘most Jews be- with Jewish hopes for resurrection, the Easter lieved in resurrection.’ 7 They expected a gen- message of Paul and other early Christian wit- eral resurrection at the end of the present age: nesses contained two strikingly new elements. that is to say, a newly embodied life at the end Through the heart of his book Wright de- of history. But no one imagined that any indi- ploys the historical data that support accept- vidual had already been raised from the dead ing the appearances of the risen Christ and the or would be raised in anticipation of the last discovery of his empty tomb. Those two events day. Here one should note that Hosea 6:1–2 prompted the resurrection faith in Jesus as the (‘us’) and 13:14 (‘them’) speak in the plural messianic Son of God, a faith that set Christi- and of a community resurrection, and not in anity going and provided its essential shape the singular or of an individual’s resurrection. Wright traces to the third century the trajec- Nor was there any agreement among those who tory of Easter faith and resurrection hope trig- believed that (general) resurrection would gered by Jesus’ own victory over death. eventually happen as to what it would be like. In such a monumental study different read- Would it involve being woken from the sleep ers will have their favorite sections. I was par- of death to ‘shine’ forever like the stars and ticularly struck by what Wright wrote on the ‘the brightness of the sky’ (Dan 12) or to en- Easter stories we read in the closing chapters joy a reassembled body and the restoration of of the four Gospels. They contain surprising, 11 COMPASS even strange, features.8 For example, up to the the kind of person God could be expected to death and burial of Jesus, all four Gospels have raised from the dead. (c) In making his constantly quote and echo the Jewish scrip- case, Swinburne paints with broad sweeps of tures. A familiar theme in Matthew is his ‘all the brush, but also introduces some specific this took place to fulfill what had been spoken questions and arguments. (d) He draws to- by the Lord through the prophet(s),’ to which gether his case by concluding with a calculus the evangelist then attaches one or more bibli- of logical probability. It expresses in a formal cal citations. Surprisingly such biblical ‘em- manner his previous steps, and aims at show- broidery’ does not show up in his final, Easter ing how it is very probable that the resurrec- chapter. The other evangelists also leave their tion happened. I know of no other book on the Easter narratives biblically ‘unadorned.’ A sec- resurrection that ends in such a mathematical ond unexpected feature is the absence of per- way with twelve pages of axioms, theorems sonal hope in the Easter stories. Elsewhere the and an apparatus of calculus. New Testament writers repeatedly express Let me comment on each of the four steps. their own hope for risen life when they refer As regards (a), the suffering and sinning of to the resurrection of Jesus. A classic example human beings make it plausible that in his in- of this connection being made comes in 1 finite love God would act by personally com- Corinthians 15, a letter written years before ing on the scene to set right a tragic situation. any of the Gospels took their final shape. These After all, John wrote: ‘God so loved the world and further strange silences and unexpected that he gave his only Son, so that everyone features of the Easter chapters in the Gospels who believes in him may not perish but may should encourage us to agree with Wright that have eternal life’ (John 3:16). Nevertheless, the substance of these chapters represents a the incarnation did not have to happen. God very old telling of the discovery of the empty might have dealt in other ways with the trag- tomb and of Jesus’ encounters with the disci- edy of human sinning and suffering, or—to use ples—a time before biblical and theological Swinburne’s way of putting things—have ‘ful- reflection began working on connections and filled’ the divine ‘obligations’ 10 in ways other implications to be drawn from that discovery than the incarnation.
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