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The History of the Resurrection

James J. Cassidy

Sixty years ago, Time magazine published an issue featuring “Theologian Karl Barth.” On its April 20, 1962, cover was a picture of the Swiss theologian with a depiction of an empty tomb behind him. Across the top of that cover was a quote from Barth that read, “The goal of human life is not death, but resurrection.” For a mere twenty-five cents, you could read all about it.

Barth was a peculiar option for featuring in an issue on the resurrection of Christ. His record on the historicity of the resurrection was not exactly crystal clear. When several American theologians asked Barth a question that had to do with the resurrection, Barth declined to answer, expressing frustration with “certain fundamentalists” and “cannibals.”

Karl Barth on the Resurrection

So, is the resurrection a historical event for Barth? Does not Barth believe in the “corporeal resurrection” (Time, 59)? His answer is “yes.” But it is also “no.” Let me explain.

Karl Barth did not like the idea of trying to prove that the resurrection actually happened. In his day, many historians and theologians tried to do exactly that. For Barth, this was very disrespectful to the resurrection. After all, the resurrection is such a great event, how could its significance ever be made to stand or fall on our own human efforts at history? So, the resurrection must be something better than what our history can offer. It is the kind of event that is so grand, it did not even occur in the history we humans experience here and now. It took place in a special, higher history. This is God’s history (sometimes referred to by the German word Geschichte).

So, for Barth, “yes” the resurrection is historical. But, at the same time, “no” the resurrection did not happen in the history we experience as humans.

Barth’s position is all the more troubling when you keep in mind that the Bible is not, for him, the revelation of God. It is a man-made document that witnesses to things like the resurrection in God’s special history, but the Bible does not reveal the fact and meaning of the resurrection.

The Reformed View of the Resurrection

Now, if you find that confusing and unhelpful, good. It is quite confusing and unhelpful. And here is why.

First, according to our standards the Bible is the infallible Word of God. The Bible is the “infallible truth” and has “divine authority” (Westminster Confession of Faith [WCF] 1.5). God’s Word, contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, contains “all things necessary for his own glory [and] man’s salvation, faith and life” (WCF 1.6). It is, in fact, “immediately inspired by God” (WCF 1.8). As Paul makes clear, “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Tim. 3:16–17). The direct nature of the inspiration of Scripture is also taught by Peter: “no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet. 1:21). It is true that if historians and theologians (not to mention every individual believer!) had to depend on only certain evidence (acceptable to the fallible historian’s guild!) for our conclusions about what happened in history, then our knowledge of the resurrection would be irrational indeed. But God has not left us in the dark about these things. That Christ was raised, and what that means for us, are both to be believed upon because God revealed it to us. Only if one denies that the Bible is the very revelation of God is this a problem.

Second, the resurrection actually takes place in our history. If the resurrection took place in a special history distinct from our own, then Christ’s body was in no way “man’s nature, with all the essential properties” (WCF 8.2). But in fact, Christ has the same flesh as ours, yet without sin (Heb. 4:15). The great ancient theologian Gregory of Nazianzus said, “That which is unassumed is unhealed.” What he meant was that if Christ in his incarnation, life, death, and resurrection is not of the same human nature—body and soul—as ours, then we cannot be redeemed. The human nature (no less than the divine nature) of Christ is necessary for our salvation. And so, if Christ is not raised in our history, then we are still lost in our sins. And there goes our real hope, grounded as it is in the historicity of the resurrection. Without it, there is no hope for a day when “believers, being raised up in glory, shall be openly acknowledged and acquitted in the day of judgment, and made perfectly blessed in the full enjoying of God to all eternity” (Westminster Shorter Catechism Q/A 38).

Third, not only is the historical fact of the resurrection revealed in the Bible, so is its significance. Without the Bible as the revealed Word of God, we would be utterly clueless as to the resurrection’s meaning for our lives. But Paul, under the infallible inspiration of the Holy Spirit, wrote that Jesus was “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25). Because of the resurrection of Jesus, we are now in him able to walk in newness of life (Rom. 6:4). Because Jesus was raised, we can have hope that the Spirit will give life to our mortal bodies (Rom. 8:11). He is the firstfruits of our resurrection (1 Cor. 15:20). In fact, even now we are already raised with him in his resurrection (Eph. 2:6). We can be comforted to know that by virtue of his resurrection from the dead, he is now head of all things for his church, reigning and ruling over all things for her good (Eph. 1:19–22). The resurrection of Christ even informs our ethical obligations as Christians (Col. 3).

Finally, the Bible reveals to us the relationship of the union we have in Christ’s resurrection. In our union with Christ, which is wrought by the power of the Holy Spirit who works faith in our hearts, all the benefits of redemption he accomplished are applied to us in the here and now.

Benefits Applied

This is such a large and rich area of theology, but we only have space here for a couple examples to illustrate our point (for more, readers would do well to consult John Murray’s Redemption Accomplished and Applied, and Richard B. Gaffin’s Resurrection and Redemption).

In terms of what Christ accomplished, let’s focus on his resurrection. How does the resurrection of Christ apply to us today? Consider our adoption and justification.

In Romans 1:4, Paul says Christ was declared the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead. Of course, Christ is from eternity past the divine Son of God. Nothing can add to or take away from that. But in our history, when God raised him from the dead, God himself made an open legal declaration that this Jesus of Nazareth is in fact his Son. There is a kind of adoption of Christ in his resurrection. And now we, in union and covenant identity with him, are also adopted into the family of God (Eph. 1:5; Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:5). This is an “act of God’s free grace, whereby we are received into the number, and have a right to all the privileges, of the sons of God” (Shorter Catechism Q/A 34).

But Christ’s resurrection was also his justification. In 1 Timothy 3:16, Paul explains that Christ was vindicated in the Spirit. In context, this is certainly a reference to his resurrection. The vindication in view here is his being openly declared righteous (it’s the same Greek root for “justification”). And now we, in our grace-bestowed union with him, share in his vindication. Having received his perfect righteousness by faith alone, we have confidence to stand in God’s presence as those who are pardoned of their sins and accepted as righteous in his sight (see Shorter Catechism Q/A 33).

But neither of these benefits can be ours unless Christ shares in our same history in his resurrection. Unless Christ shared in our history back then and there, we cannot share in his benefits here and now.

Conclusion

Barth’s notion of resurrection does ring somewhat gnostic. While for him the resurrection was historical and bodily (in God’s history), it still has its own special history related to, yet distinct from, our own history. But our own history is where God performed his mighty works of redemption. It is here, in our time, where we sinned, we fell, and in which we need to be redeemed. Can God in Christ really heal a people and their history if such a history is not the history of the resurrection? Certainly Paul believed that it is in our history where Christ was both “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Rom. 4:25), such that if Christ is not raised in our selfsame history as his, we are of all people most to be pitied (1 Cor. 15:19). But, praise be to God, Christ has been raised and is now the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep (1 Cor. 15:20).   

The author is pastor of South Austin Presbyterian in Austin, Texas. New Horizons, April 2022.

New Horizons: April 2022

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