Hi all- A few days late, here are some weekly thoughts from our German friend. Today’s excerpt comes from Jesus Christ for Today’s World.
When we talk about Christ’s resurrection from the dead we are not talking about a fact. We are talking about a process. We are talking in one and the same breath about the foundation, the future, and the practical exercise of God’s liberation of men and women, and his redemption of the world. So what we can know historically about Christ’s resurrection must not be abstracted from the question of what we can hope from it, and what we have to do in its name.”
One of the (many) problems with modern theology is that it tends to get tied up in factual questions, spending all energy proving or disproving something while overlooking the reason why the event means something in the first place. I have no problem discussing my view of the factual reality of the resurrection (it happened–really and truly) but I do think Moltmann puts us on the right path by talking not about fact but about process. What God put into play that Easter morning was a story of redemption that went further than we had imagined before. It brings hope to the past, present and future of history. As communities of faith gather around Eastertide stories of Jesus showing himself to the disciples, we can get off track and talk about what kind of body he had, or we can talk about what we can hope from the story of Christ’s resurrected body, and what we are now called to do in response. Seems to me a much more interesting and productive question.
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