Why Did Jesus Have to Rise?
Brett Salkeld has posted very thoughtful reflection on atonement here and here. At the risk of initiating a thread that Brett might himself have started, I’m offering these thoughts both in support of his reflections and as a way of following what appears to me to be a hint of God’s “Paschal logic.”
In a nutshell: Jesus enters the human drama where our sin leads us to kill people who don’t shoehorn themselves into our skewed view of justice. He’s killed, as a just man. God raises him to illustrate that we need fear death no more. We who follow him, therefore, must follow that same compass of justice that will likely get us ostracized and maybe even killed. But who cares? God’s in charge and we’re more interested in justice than a temporary little pleasure like life.
A prolegomenon: I have a great reverence for Jewish tradition and dislike anything that smacks of supersessionism. I don’t think Jesus or Paul invented a new religion. I do think that Jesus was about calling Israel to its roots of radical obedience to the covenant with Abraham. I do think Paul’s conversion had more to do with turning away from sin than turning away from the Jews.
Why did Jesus have to rise? To show sinful humanity that death need not be feared. Israel knew how to obey God, but succumbed (as we all still do) to the temptation to hitch their horses to limited human understandings of the good. People were afraid to follow the law because, like us, they believed that only suckers follow the law. Jesus’ teachings about radical love–grace shot through everything–got him killed because the Powers and Principalities simply couldn’t tolerate that kind of upsetting of things. (Powerful people are the ones responsible for these limited versions of justice and therefore have the most to lose when prophets remind them how limited they are.) Jesus died because he lived among people who kill. Jesus rose because God is more powerful than people who kill.
Salvation, then: imagine having all your debt wiped away instantly. Student loans, mortgages, car payments, credit card bills, everything. You’re free. That happens only if, in an instant, you no longer feel beholden to those powers who hold you in thrall–even better, if you learn that those powers no longer exist.
What Jesus did is accomplish that re-ordering of who’s in thrall to whom. We are no longer in thrall to death, because Jesus showed us that it’s nothing to fear. We’re no longer in thrall to sin, because we can (if we choose) reject every form of temptation to sin because we know those limited views of justice are weak candles against the Sun of God. He set us free from our thrall: “for freedom Christ set us free.” What human beings choose to do with our freedom begins the story of the Church.
Tim Muldoon is a theologian and author of five books, and teaches in the Honors Program at Boston College.
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Thanks Tim, for your encouragement and your reflection. I was feeling guilty for not having time to write one after kicking this whole thing off, so this is perfect. My post did demand a sequel.
My favorite line is: “Jesus died because he lived among people who kill. Jesus rose because God is more powerful than people who kill.” Amen!
As a side note, I think this kind of soteriology does a nice job of balancing between earthly and heavenly concerns. “We can live well on earth because of heaven,” instead of “we only need to live well on earth in order to get to heaven.”
great point. And it also completely upends the prosperity gospel nonsense.
I might also add that God raised Jesus in order to show us that he really was just. The Resurrection is a judgment that our judgment was false.
Brett, wonderful work as usual. I’ll offer more when I can get to a computer, but I wanted to send these words of encouragement. Happy Resurrection!
Thanks Jake, but this one wasn’t me.
It’s OK– we’re on the same team.
Oops! Well, thanks Tim, and you too, Brett, for inspiring Tim!
In regards to Paul, his own words in Galatians very much seem to indicate that he -did- see his “conversion” as less of a “conversion” and more of a prophetic call (a la Isaiah 49), in keeping with his ancestral faith – So I think you’re spot on, there!
Ascension’s gonna be coming up soon… I expect another wonderful reflection. No pressure.
Dan is correct: You do need a ‘like’ button.
Vox Nova needs a “like” button.
Like +1
Death is the crisis that contaminates every relationship. Death begins with separation from the source of love. My wife just said, “Gosh! Just write Happy Easter” Amen.
I have a great reverence for Jewish tradition and dislike anything that smacks of supersessionism. I don’t think Jesus or Paul invented a new religion. I do think that Jesus was about calling Israel to its roots of radical obedience to the covenant with Abraham. I do think Paul’s conversion had more to do with turning away from sin than turning away from the Jews.
Of course, Jesus did do something new, and radically so. He inaugurated the new and everlasting covenant. Granted, this new and everlasting covenant is what had been promised from the beginning to Adam and Eve after the Fall, to Abraham, and, as we will hear again and again this week from Peter’s inaugural sermon after Pentecost and from the Gospels, in Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets. This means that any understanding of the Old Covenant, and hence the Jewish tradition, which is closed to the truth that the Covenant has been fulfilled in Jesus is, for that reason, opposed to the truth. While this does not speak to the question of culpability, it does speak to the issue of the truth of the Good News.
Jesus died because he lived among people who kill.
I might say that while Socrates died because he lived among people who kill, Jesus died because he was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep, and because it was necessary that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory. Jesus’ Passion, in other words, without in any way failing to be something done to Jesus, is always more so, mysteriously and paradoxically, a divine Action, what Jesus, the Word of Life, has done.
So, why did Jesus have to rise? Without unsaying what you have suggested, might one also ask why, when building a house, one must lay a first stone? Why, when gathering the harvest, must there be first-fruits? Christ, that is, had to rise, because he is the first of many brothers, who inaugurates the new and eternal kingdom, the new heaven and the new earth, in his very self.
Christos anesti! Alithos anesti!
Jesus died because he was the Good Shepherd who laid down his life for his sheep, and because it was necessary that the Christ should suffer, and so enter into his glory.
I don’t see this as at all contrary to the claim that “Jesus died because he lived among people who kill.” If he didn’t live among people who kill, would he have needed to suffer and die to enter into his glory? To me, our murderous habits seem the necessary presupposition here. Without our broken communion, which the story of Cain and Abel tells us leads in very short order to murder, suffering is not necessary.
Alithos anesti! Dominic, to your point:
“Granted, this new and everlasting covenant is what had been promised from the beginning to Adam and Eve after the Fall, to Abraham, and, as we will hear again and again this week from Peter’s inaugural sermon after Pentecost and from the Gospels, in Moses, the Psalms, and the prophets. This means that any understanding of the Old Covenant, and hence the Jewish tradition, which is closed to the truth that the Covenant has been fulfilled in Jesus is, for that reason, opposed to the truth.”
Yes– “o felix culpa quae talem et tantum meruit habere redemptorem.” The Old Covenant was itself made precisely because of the Logos, the divine Word, the wisdom which supersedes human knowledge. The law is the verbal expression of the Logos; the Incarnation is the sacramental expression of the Logos. The law was God’s first act of reconciling his chosen people to himself, and set the conditions in which the Redeemer might draw disciples to himself. But the law did not accomplish redemption (as the author of Hebrews asserts): only God could accomplish the redemption. So yes, something altogether unprecedented happened with Jesus.
Granted, this new and everlasting covenant is what had been promised from the beginning to Adam and Eve after the Fall . . . .
So God promised a New Covenant before he established the Old Covenant? I have to say that reading Genesis 3:15 as the “protoevangelium” is difficult to justify. Even the NAB has a note saying:
If the mission of Jesus to the “lost sheep of Israel” had been successful, would there have been a New Covenant?
David, You brought up something very interesting to me with the plurality of players in the grand scheme of things. We all struggle with our connection to this physical world. Gravity anchors us to our limitations and the power of the primitive brain overwhelms us with its reactions built for survival and mating. Do you think this passage is more related to the struggle between human beings and their passions rather than a promise of a savior coming?