Emphases of Resurrection in Christian Religion

NOTE: Got this from "

A Call for Resurrection Theology Christian theology has tended to focus on the birth and the death of Jesus, and in so doing has defaulted in explaining the significance of the resurrection.

When Christian religion has attempted to address the resurrection in its theological considerations, it has done so in a way that continues to short-change the significance of the resurrection. The resurrection in Christian theology has been relegated to apologetic arguments of historicity, defense of Jesus' deity, and futuristic expectations of bodily resurrection.

Christian religion has emphasized the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, employing a variety of sources to document, authenticate, and validate the historical resurrection of Jesus. Apologists like Frank Morison (Who Moved the Stone?6) and Josh McDowell (The Resurrection Factor 7) have sought to provide Christians with historical "proofs" for the resurrection of Jesus.

Having "proven" the historical veracity of the resurrection by their chronological and logical evidences, Christian religion has then emphasized that the resurrection of Jesus was a supernatural miracle that verifies the divinity or deity of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus has been used as a tool for apologetic defense, as a leverage to authorize and "prove" Christ's divinity and the church's teaching.

As Robert D. Brinsmead explains, "The so-called 'historical proofs' of the resurrection have been marshalled, not to explore the meaning of the mystery itself, but to validate the church's claims about the divinity of Jesus, the authority of the church, and its possession of an exclusive and absolute truth."8 Claude Geffré likewise comments that,

"since the end of the nineteenth century the resurrection of Christ has become the favorite object of Christian apologetics. It was a matter of establishing the historicity of the resurrection in order to furnish a proof for the divinity of Christ and thereby accredit his message and its legitimacy. And when apologetics had defended the historical character of the miracle of the resurrection, it seemed dogmatic theology had no more to say about the mystery of the resurrection." 9

On the basis of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection and the theological establishment of His deity, Christian religion has proceeded to emphasize that the primary theological import of the historical resurrection of Jesus is to validate the assurance of the eventual resurrection of Christians' bodies in the future. The historical, physical resurrection of Jesus is used as the foundational basis for authenticating the expected bodily resurrection of the Christian after death.

Is this not the argument that Paul uses in I Corinthians 15 in the "Resurrection chapter"? Yes it is, but this is not the entirety of what Paul had to say about the subject of resurrection. Though it is the most extended passage that he seems to have written on the subject, it is not the predominant or primary emphasis that Paul makes concerning the resurrection. The historical sitz im leben context of I Corinthians was that the Corinthians were so enamored with their present "spirituality" that they were eschewing or denying anything beyond the present. To counter this triumphalistic diminishment of hope, and to correct Hellenic concepts that deprecated embodiment, Paul ties the bodily resurrection of Jesus with the expected bodily resurrection of Christians.

In so doing, Paul does not necessarily imply that the resurrected physical body of Jesus is prototypical of the resurrected body of the Christian after death. The physicality of the resurrected body is not the issue Paul was addressing.

Secondly, it must be noted that the predominance of Paul's references to the resurrection of Jesus do not relate to the future bodily resurrection of Christians. Paul's primary inference from the resurrection of Jesus is that anyone who is receptive in faith to the living Lord Jesus can be spiritually raised to newness of life (cf. Rom. 6:4,5) by the resurrection life of the living Jesus. Paul emphasized the present availability of life in Christ, and avoided lapsing back into the Jewish framework of theology that he had espoused in the past.

Jewish theology was always a theology of future expectation. As can be noted throughout the Old Testament (the old covenant literature), the Jewish people were always looking for fulfillment in the future; the prophetic promise of that which was yet to come. Regrettably, Christian theology has often fallen prey to just such future expectations in a reversion to a Jewish paradigm of theological expectations.

New covenant Christian theology, as expressed in the New Testament, emphasizes that God's promises and man's expectations are realized in Jesus Christ. Christian theology looks back to the "finished work" of Jesus Christ (cf. John 17:4; 19:30). Christians are "complete in Christ" (Col. 3:10). Christian theology is a realized theology (cf. I Cor 3:21-23; II Pet. 1:3). The emphasis is not on "it is coming," but on "it is done!" for the whole of God's intent is in the risen and living Lord Jesus.

The emphases of Christian religion on resurrection have traditionally been on proving the historical accuracy of Jesus' resurrection in order to authenticate His divinity, which in turn has been used to convince and assure Christians of an eventual bodily resurrection after physical death.

If Christian theology does not get beyond the cradle and the cross, the birth and the death of Jesus, then all we have to offer is a static history lesson with no contemporary consequence. If Christian theology does not get beyond apologetic defense for what "was", and longing expectation for what "will be," then it becomes an irrelevancy of temporalized "bookends" that fails to address what "is" and "should be" presently.

H.A. Williams explains that,

"Resurrection, at least in Western Christendom, has invariably been described as belonging to another time and place. The typical emphasis has been upon the past and future ­ a past and future with which our connection can only be theoretical... So, for example, a book about the resurrection is naturally assumed to be a discussion either about what can be held to have happened in the environs of Jerusalem and Galilee on the third day after Jesus was crucified or about what can be held to be in store for us after our own death.
When resurrection is considered in terms of past and future, it is robbed of its impact on the present. That is why for most of the time resurrection means little to us. It is remote and isolated."
It is a neat trick...this banishing of resurrection to past and future. It saves us from a lot of reality and delivers us from a great deal of fear. It has, in short, the advantage of safeguarding us from life."10

What a tragedy that the Christian religion has itself blockaded people from life in Christ by projecting the implications of the resurrection to an historical event of the past or to an anticipated expectation of the future. These are not the predominant emphases of resurrection in the new covenant literature of the New Testament as we shall proceed to note.