The Resurrection and Salvation

In my Constructive Theology class in Divinity School, we were challenged to think and write about a number of controversial ideas. One of those assignments required us to write about how we think Jesus's death and resurrection define the question of salvation and the Kingdom of God. We were also expected to discuss a couple of theologians' competing ideas about whether Jesus's resurrection was a physical event or whether it was merely spiritual. Most of what follows was written in response to that assignment.

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Jesus was a human and lived a human life. During that life, he articulated the magnificent dream that he called the Kingdom of God. It described a divine reign that had long been anticipated in the Jewish community, though the Kingdom that Jesus described ended up bearing little similarity to the messianic dominion that had been widely envisioned. Jesus envisioned a spiritual Kingdom that would be visible in the lives of God’s followers as they devoted to God their hearts, souls, minds, and strength, and as they loved their neighbors as themselves. Those who were a part of the Kingdom would never have to worry because God would provide them everything they needed, and they would learn to be content with their earthly status because God had assured them of an eventual reward that would far surpass anything possible in this life.

But even as Jesus was preaching this vision of the Kingdom something happened that his disciples never anticipated, though they would later claim that Jesus himself saw it coming. Jesus died. He was killed by Judea’s Roman procurator, just before the Jewish holiday of Passover, crucified in the outskirts of Jerusalem. As the man they called the messiah hung on the cross, his disciples either stood silently among the mob that attended his execution, fled for safety, or actively denied knowing him. In the end, Jesus’ last breath escaped in the form of a heartbroken cry to the God that he felt had abandoned him. Most people would assume that the Kingdom of God that Jesus preached had died along with him.

Jurgen Moltmann is only one of the more recent in a two-thousand year history of Christian theologians who will argue that Jesus’ death was not, in fact, the end of anything at all. Instead, it represented a new beginning. Shortly after the crucifixion, Jesus’ disciples began to claim that their messiah was once again alive, and in the assurance of his continuing life the world could still take part in the enduring Kingdom of God.

One of the important tasks (Moltmann calls it the “central problem”) set for Christian theologians is to explain this apparent resurrection in terms of how it will be understood to have happened. Moltmann and many others have argued that the resurrection, laden as it is with metaphysical and soteriological significance, must have been a resuscitation of both body and spirit. He notes Ernst Troeltsch’s argument that it is futile to think of the resurrection in historical terms because the event transcends any historical analogy that would allow those bound to such understandings to participate in the belief that Jesus did come back from the dead. As an alternative to historical knowledge, Moltmann suggests that the importance of believing in the fact of the resurrection lies in the hope that it engenders that God is in the process of resurrecting the entire world, and us within it. In this sense, the resurrected Jesus whose life continues even now can be envisioned as the “Cosmic Christ” that exists and moves within the natural world.

I agree with Moltmann's assertion that the crucifixion cannot be seen in any way as an ending of the world's encounter with Jesus. My question, however, is whether discussions about the historicity of a physical resurrection are at all necessary or useful. Paul asserted in I Corinthians that Christianity was futile if Jesus was not, in fact, raised from the dead. But why should this be the case? Is Paul correct in suggesting that Jesus's life and sacrificial death would lose importance without a physical resurrection?

On a purely philosophical level, the content of Jesus’ teachings (including his description of the Kingdom of God) does not depend on his bodily resurrection, and there is no reason why they would carry any less importance if his crucified body never regained life. As far as the way that the crucifixion and resurrection tie into the idea of salvation, I'm not at all certain that theologians (including Paul) fully grasp or account for the breadth of God's grace when they insist that all would be lost in the absence of a physical revival of Jesus's body. God has always been able to dispense forgiveness to God’s people, and I think that sacrifice was more peripheral an element in that forgiveness than most people believe. While one must acknowledge that animal and grain sacrifices were a fundamental element of the Jewish faith for a long, long time, even at that time the psalmists and prophets long understood and announced that God truly desired a “broken and contrite heart.” Repentance appears to have been much more important for forgiveness than ritual, vicarious death. Even if we are to assume that God will not/cannot grant forgiveness of sins in the absence of physical sacrifice, why would Jesus's sacrificial death be any less significant if he was not physically raised from the dead? As I read the Bible, I can’t locate one other instance in which the efficacy of a sacrifice depended on the sacrificial object’s return to vitality. In light of this, I can't really agree with Paul that Christianity is deprived of all value if there was no physical resurrection. [To be absolutely clear: I'm not denying the historicity of the resurrection, I'm simply arguing that the effectiveness of Jesus's sacrificial death does not depend on it.]

What is truly theologically important, so far as I'm concerned, is that in the days, years, and centuries following Jesus’ death on the cross, people of faith had assurance that his death did not signal an end. They were comforted because they experienced a continuing divine presence, which they understood to be a physical return of their messiah. Whether or not, historically, the body that hung on the cross was reanimated and walked again among the disciples is almost beside the point. God’s spirit gave them hope that the Kingdom Jesus preached was still alive, and that they could continue to play a role in its flourishing. For as long as the message endures that Jesus passed along to the world, and for as long as we, his followers, experience his presence in our lives, Jesus can be said to live on in the world and the Kingdom of God can be said to be at hand.