Can these bones live?

Overview of Christian Theology: Assignment 8

What does it mean to be resurrected? More specifically, what does it mean to say that Jesus is risen?

Guthrie makes a big point of the physical, bodily resurrection of Jesus: “the risen Jesus is the same Jesus they had known before. He walks, talks, eats, and can be touched. The risen Jesus is no ghost or phantom, He is a real flesh-and-blood human being.” (p. 275) This is the same Guthrie, however, who seems almost always to refer to the condition of those who were healed by Jesus through exorcism as in-quotation-marks “possessed.” (p. 281) Like just about everyone, Guthrie picks and choses which of the biblical witnesses he will construe literally, and which he will let a modern understanding of reality reinterpret as essentially metaphorical.

I am also struck by the claim that the resurrection of Jesus was a unique event, and absolutely critical in recognizing the divine nature of Jesus, in as much as the Bible gives us at least one other out-and-out resurrection story. No one goes around proclaiming “Lazarus is Lord!” as a result; yet, according to Guthrie, Jesus didn’t resurrect himself any more than Lazarus did. It was the way that Jesus behaved while he was alive and with us as a fully human being, in combination with the experience his followers had and continue to have of his risen life, that prompts the confession that “Jesus is Lord!”

For me, the most compelling appearance stories are those where the disciples recognize Jesus in strangers. They suddenly see Jesus in others (just as we are called by our baptismal vows to seek and serve Christ in all people). Does this mean Jesus was disguised, and then the disguise fell away? Or does it mean that they were empowered to see the Christ-nature and to learn from the Christ-spirit unexpectedly and powerfully present in a person encountered along the road or on the beach? I am able to proclaim “Christ has died, Christ has risen, Christ will come again!” in good faith because I read scripture figuratively.

Guthrie says, “If we want to distinguish between God’s Spirit and our own spirits... we have to look at what scripture tells us about who the Spirit is and what the Spirit does.” But as we adopt a different posture toward scripture than that of the church leaders who formulated the canon and shaped doctrine, where are we permitted or required to revisit those teachings? What does it mean to recognize that the Holy Spirit is doing a new thing—especially if we are only to recognize and confirm that it is of the Holy Spirit by testing it against our scriptural and doctrinal understanding?

Where is the authority of continuing revelation, if there is such a thing, to be located? What about cases where scripture is silent, contradictory, or where modern understanding seems to clearly indicate that scripture is wrong—or perhaps I should say ‘conditioned by its time and place of production, its historical-cultural context.’

Unformed Christian that I am, I have always felt (pace Basil of Caesaria) that the Holy Spirit is the most accessible person of the Trinity. I can personally witness to the presence and work of the Holy Spirit in my own life and in the life of my church community. I have witnessed gifts of the Spirit poured out and received, both dramatically and quietly. I would say, as well, that I have witnessed the Holy Spirit moving powerfully in non-Christians that I have been privileged to encounter and in non-Christian communities in which I have participated. I believe that the unity of the Holy Spirit is not only a restrictively Christian unity, but a human unity that—tragically, and often downright evilly—is not recognized by all.

If the Kingdom is both here and yet to come in all its fullness, then an ever-deeper, ever-expanding understanding of and faithfulness to that Kingdom—and the God who’s Kingdom it is—seems to be our primary task in the between time, this present age. I remain cautiously skeptical of all claims of certainty (especially my own when I am rash enough to make them) about what that understanding must necessarily be.

Reading cited: Guthrie, Jr., Shirley C. 1994. Christian Doctrine. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press.