To this extent, entering into the mystery of the Cross must constitute the heart of the apostolic ministry, the heart of the proclamation of the Gospel designed to lead people to faith. If on this basis we may identify the central focus of Christian worship as the celebration of the Eucharist, the constantly renewed participation in the priestly mystery of Jesus Christ, at the same time the full scope of that worship must always be kept in mind: it is always a matter of drawing every individual person, indeed, the whole of the world, into Christ’s love in such a way that everyone together with him becomes an offering that is “acceptable, sanctified by the Holy Spirit” (Rom 15:16).
Finally, on the basis of these ideas, a further dimension of Christian thought regarding worship and sacrifice is opened up to view. It comes across clearly in the following verse from the Letter to the Philippians, in which Paul anticipates his martyrdom and at the same time offers a theological interpretation of it: “Even if I am to be poured as a libation upon the sacrificial offering [literally: sacrifice and liturgy] of your faith, I am glad and rejoice with you all” (2:17; cf. 2 Tim 4:6). Paul views his expected martyrdom as liturgy and as sacrificial event. Once again, this is no mere allegory or figurative way of speaking. No, in martyrdom he is drawn fully into the obedience of Christ, into the liturgy of the Cross, and hence into true worship.
On the basis of this understanding, the early Church was able to grasp the true depth and nobility of martyrdom. Thus it has been handed down to us that Ignatius of Antioch, for example, described himself as the grain of wheat of Christ, ground through martyrdom in order to become the bread of Christ (cf. Ad Rom 4:1). In the account of the martyrdom of Saint Polycarp, it is reported that the flames in which he was to be burned formed themselves into the shape of a sail billowing in the wind; the fire “formed a wall round about the martyr’s figure; and there was he in the center of it, not like burning flesh, but like a loaf baking in the oven”, and it spread “a delicious fragrance, like the odor of incense” (Martyrdom of Polycarp, 15). The Christians of Rome also arrived at a similar interpretation of the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, who was burned to death on the gridiron. They saw it not only as Lawrence’s perfect union with the mystery of Christ, who in martyrdom became bread for us, but also as an image of Christian life in general: in the trials of life we are slowly burned clean; we can, as it were, become bread, to the extent that the mystery of Christ is communicated through our life and our suffering, and to the extent that his love makes us an offering to God and to our fellowmen.
In living out the Gospel and in suffering for it, the Church, under the guidance of the apostolic preaching, has learned to understand the mystery of the Cross more and more, even though ultimately it is a mystery that defies analysis in terms of our rational formulae. The darkness and irrationality of sin and the holiness of God, too dazzling for our eyes, come together in the Cross, transcending our power of understanding. And yet in the message of the New Testament, and in the proof of that message in the lives of the saints, the great mystery has become radiant light.
The mystery of atonement is not to be sacrificed on the altar of overweening rationalism. The Lord’s response to the request of the sons of Zebedee for seats at his right hand and at his left remains a key text for Christian faith in general: “The Son of man . . . came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk 10:45).
CHAPTER NINE
Jesus’ Resurrection from the Dead
1. What Is the Resurrection of Jesus?
“If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ” (1 Cor 15:14-15). With these words Saint Paul explains quite drastically what faith in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ means for the Christian message overall: it is its very foundation. The Christian faith stands or falls with the truth of the testimony that Christ is risen from the dead.
If this were taken away, it would still be possible to piece together from the Christian tradition a series of interesting ideas about God and men, about man’s being and his obligations, a kind of religious world view: but the Christian faith itself would be dead. Jesus would be a failed religious leader, who despite his failure remains great and can cause us to reflect. But he would then remain purely human, and his authority would extend only so far as his message is of interest to us. He would no longer be a criterion; the only criterion left would be our own judgment in selecting from his heritage what strikes us as helpful. In other words, we would be alone. Our own judgment would be the highest instance.
Only if Jesus is risen has anything really new occurred that changes the world and the situation of mankind. Then he becomes the criterion on which we can rely. For then God has truly revealed himself.
To this extent, in our quest for the figure of Jesus, the Resurrection is the crucial point. Whether Jesus merely was or whether he also is—this depends on the Resurrection. In answering yes or no to this question, we are taking a stand not simply on one event among others, but on the figure of Jesus as such.
Therefore it is necessary to listen with particular attention as the New Testament bears witness to the Resurrection. Yet first we have to acknowledge that this testimony, considered from a historical point of view, is presented to us in a particularly complex form and gives rise to many questions.
What actually happened? Clearly, for the witnesses who encountered the risen Lord, it was not easy to say. They were confronted with what for them was an entirely new reality, far beyond the limits of their experience. Much as the reality of the event overwhelmed them and impelled them to bear witness, it was still utterly unlike anything they had previously known. Saint Mark tells us that the disciples on their way down from the mountain of the Transfiguration were puzzled by the saying of Jesus that the Son of Man would “rise from the dead”. And they asked one another what “rising from the dead” could mean (9:9-10). And indeed, what does it mean? The disciples did not know, and they could find out only through encountering the reality itself.
Anyone approaching the Resurrection accounts in the belief that he knows what rising from the dead means will inevitably misunderstand those accounts and will then dismiss them as meaningless. Rudolf Bultmann raised an objection against Resurrection faith by arguing that even if Jesus had come back from the grave, we would have to say that “a miraculous natural event such as the resuscitation of a dead man” would not help us and would be existentially irrelevant (cf. New Testament and Mythology, p. 7).
Now it must be acknowledged that if in Jesus’ Resurrection we were dealing simply with the miracle of a resuscitated corpse, it would ultimately be of no concern to us. For it would be no more important than the resuscitation of a clinically dead person through the art of doctors. For the world as such and for our human existence, nothing would have changed. The miracle of a resuscitated corpse would indicate that Jesus’ Resurrection was equivalent to the raising of the son of the widow of Nain (Lk 7:11-17), the daughter of Jairus (Mk 5:22-24, 35-43 and parallel passages), and Lazarus (Jn 11:1-44). After a more or less short period, these individuals returned to their former lives, and then at a later point they died definitively.
The New Testament testimonies leave us in no doubt that what happened in the “Resurrection of the Son of Man” was utterly different. Jesus’ Resurrection was about breaking out into an entirely new form of life, into a life that is no longer subject to the law of dying and becoming, but lies beyond it—a life that opens up a new dimension of human existence. Therefore the Resurrection of Jesus is not an isolated event that we could set aside as something limited to the past, but it constitutes an “evolutionary leap” (to draw an analogy, albeit one that is easily misunderstood). In Jesus’ Resurrection a new possibility of human existence is attained that affects everyone and that opens up a future, a new kind of future, for mankind.
So Paul was absolutely right to link the resurrec
tion of Christians and the Resurrection of Jesus inseparably together: “If the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. . . . But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:16, 20). Christ’s Resurrection is either a universal event, or it is nothing, Paul tells us. And only if we understand it as a universal event, as the opening up of a new dimension of human existence, are we on the way toward any kind of correct understanding of the New Testament Resurrection testimony.
On this basis we can understand the unique character of this New Testament testimony. Jesus has not returned to a normal human life in this world like Lazarus and the others whom Jesus raised from the dead. He has entered upon a different life, a new life—he has entered the vast breadth of God himself, and it is from there that he reveals himself to his followers.
For the disciples, too, this was something utterly unexpected, to which they were only slowly able to adjust. Jewish faith did indeed know of a resurrection of the dead at the end of time. New life was linked to the inbreaking of a new world and thus made complete sense. If there is a new world, then there is also a new mode of life there. But a resurrection into definitive otherness in the midst of the continuing old world was not foreseen and therefore at first made no sense. So the promise of resurrection remained initially unintelligible to the disciples.
The process of coming to Resurrection faith is analogous to what we saw in the case of the Cross. Nobody had thought of a crucified Messiah. Now the “fact” was there, and it was necessary, on the basis of that fact, to take a fresh look at Scripture. We saw in the previous chapter how Scripture yielded new insights in the light of the unexpected turn of events and how the “fact” then began to make sense. Admittedly, the new reading of Scripture could begin only after the Resurrection, because it was only through the Resurrection that Jesus was accredited as the one sent by God. Now people had to search Scripture for both Cross and Resurrection, so as to understand them in a new way and thereby come to believe in Jesus as the Son of God.
This also presupposes that for the disciples the Resurrection was just as real as the Cross. It presupposes that they were simply overwhelmed by the reality, that, after their initial hesitation and astonishment, they could no longer ignore that reality. It is truly he. He is alive; he has spoken to us; he has allowed us to touch him, even if he no longer belongs to the realm of the tangible in the normal way.
The paradox was indescribable. He was quite different, no mere resuscitated corpse, but one living anew and forever in the power of God. And yet at the same time, while no longer belonging to our world, he was truly present there, he himself. It was an utterly unique experience, which burst open the normal boundaries of experience and yet for the disciples was quite beyond doubt. This explains the unique character of the Resurrection accounts: they speak of something paradoxical, of something that surpasses all experience and yet is utterly real and present.
But could it really be true? Can we—as men of the modern world—put our faith in such testimony? “Enlightened” thinking would say no. For Gerd Lüdemann, for example, it seems clear that in consequence of the “revolution in the scientific image of the world . . . the traditional concepts of Jesus’ Resurrection are to be considered outdated” (quoted in Wilckens, Theologie des Neun Testaments 1/2, pp. 119-20). But what exactly is this “scientific image of the world”? How far can it be considered normative? Hartmut Gese in his important article “Die Frage des Weltbildes”, to which I should like to draw attention, has painstakingly described the limits of this normativity.
Naturally there can be no contradiction of clear scientific data. The Resurrection accounts certainly speak of something outside our world of experience. They speak of something new, something unprecedented—a new dimension of reality that is revealed. What already exists is not called into question. Rather we are told that there is a further dimension, beyond what was previously known. Does that contradict science? Can there really only ever be what there has always been? Can there not be something unexpected, something unimaginable, something new? If there really is a God, is he not able to create a new dimension of human existence, a new dimension of reality altogether? Is not creation actually waiting for this last and highest “evolutionary leap”, for the union of the finite with the infinite, for the union of man and God, for the conquest of death?
Throughout the history of the living, the origins of anything new have always been small, practically invisible, and easily overlooked. The Lord himself has told us that “heaven” in this world is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all the seeds (Mt 13:31-32), yet contained within it are the infinite potentialities of God. In terms of world history, Jesus’ Resurrection is improbable; it is the smallest mustard seed of history.
This reversal of proportions is one of God’s mysteries. The great—the mighty—is ultimately the small. And the tiny mustard seed is something truly great. So it is that the Resurrection has entered the world only through certain mysterious appearances to the chosen few. And yet it was truly the new beginning for which the world was silently waiting. And for the few witnesses—precisely because they themselves could not fathom it—it was such an overwhelmingly real happening, confronting them so powerfully, that every doubt was dispelled, and they stepped forth before the world with an utterly new fearlessness in order to bear witness: Christ is truly risen.
2. The Two Different Types of Resurrection Testimony
Let us turn now to the individual Resurrection accounts in the New Testament. As we consider them, the first thing we notice is that there are two different types of testimony, which we may label the “confessional tradition” and the “narrative tradition”.
A. The Confessional Tradition
The confessional tradition crystallizes the essentials in short phrases that establish the kernel of what took place. They are an expression of Christian identity, a “confession” indeed, by which Christians recognize one another, by which they identify themselves before God and man. I would like to propose three examples.
At the end of the Emmaus story, the two disciples find the eleven Apostles assembled in Jerusalem and are greeted with these words: “The Lord has risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon!” (Lk 24:34). In its context, this functions as a brief narrative, but it also serves as a formula of acclamation and confession, in which the essential is proclaimed: the event itself and the witness who testifies to it.
We find a combination of two formulae in the tenth chapter of the Letter to the Romans: “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (v. 9). In this example—as also in the account of Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi (cf. Mt 16:13-16)—there are two elements to the confession: it is said that Jesus is “Lord”, which in terms of the Old Testament meaning of the word refers to his divinity. Then comes the confession of the fundamental historical event: God raised him from the dead. This already makes clear what the significance of the confession is for Christians: it brings salvation. It leads us to the truth that is salvation. We have here a prototype of the confessional formulae used in Baptism, which always link Christ’s lordship to the story of his life, death, and Resurrection. In Baptism man hands himself over to the new life of the Risen One. Confession becomes life.
By far the most important of the Easter confessions is found in the fifteenth chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians. As with the account of the Last Supper (1 Cor 11:23-26), Paul emphasizes strongly that he is not speaking on his own initiative here: “I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received” (15:3). Paul deliberately takes his place within the chain of reception and transmission. Here, regarding the essential content on which everything depends, what is demanded above all is fidelity. And Paul, who characteristically places so much emphasis on his personal witness of the Risen One and on the apostolate that he received directly from the Lord, insists here with grea
t emphasis on literal fidelity in the transmission of what has been received, on the common tradition of the Church from her beginnings.
The Gospel of which Paul speaks is the foundation “in which you stand, by which you are saved, if you hold it [that is, the word, the literal formulation] fast” that “I preached to you” (15:1-2). In this central message, what matters is not only the content, but also the literal formulation, which must be preserved intact. This link with the very earliest tradition is the source of both the unity of the faith and its universally binding nature. “Whether then it was I or they [the others who proclaimed it]: so we preach and so you believed” (15:11). In its nucleus the faith, even down to its literal formulation, is one—it binds all Christians.
When exactly and from whom Paul received this confession has been the object of further inquiry, just as we saw in the case of the Last Supper tradition. In any event, it forms part of the primary catechesis that he as a convert would have received while still in Damascus, but its essential content was doubtless formulated in Jerusalem and therefore dates back to the 30s—a real testimony to the origins.
The text handed down in the First Letter to the Corinthians has been extended by Paul, inasmuch as he has added, among others, his own encounter with the risen Lord. For Saint Paul’s self-understanding and for the faith of the early Church I find it significant that Paul felt entitled to add on to the original confession, with equally binding character, the risen Lord’s appearance to him and the apostolic mission that came with it. He was evidently convinced that this revelation of the risen Lord to him was still a central part of the emerging creedal formula, that it belonged to the faith of the universal Church as an essential element intended for all.
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