Space, Time and Resurrection 9780567660602

Citation preview

PREFACE The last time I saw Karl Barth was at his home in Basel at the end of the summer of I g68. I had not talked with him for ten years and was eager to put a number of questions to him, mostly bearing on the interrelation between theological and natural science, and the relation of his thought to the philosophy and logic of science taught by his old friend and former colleague Heinrich Scholz. Among other things, we discussed the problem of dualism in science and theology with reference to Luther, Newton and Kant, and the implication of the rejection of dualism for the problem of natural theology which had always seemed to come to prominence in an era characterized by a dualist outlook upon the universe, for example, in the middle ages or in the so-called age of reason. I was anxious to get Karl Barth's reaction to the way in which I explained to a Thomist or a physicist his attitude to natural theology by referring to Einstein's account of the relation of geometry to experience, or to physics. I put it this way. With relativity theory Einstein rejected the Newtonian dualism between absolute mathematical space and time' and bodies in motion. He argued, therefore, that instead of idealizing geometry by detaching it from experience, and making it an independent conceptual system which was then used as a rigid framework within which physical knowledge is to be pursued and organized, geometry must be brought into the midst of physics where it changes and becomes a kind of natural science (fourdimensional geometry) indissohibly united to physics. Instead of being swallowed up by physics and disappearing, however, geometry becomes the epistemological structure in the heart of physics, although it is incomplete without physics. It is in a similar way, I argued, that Karl Barth treats natural theology when he rejects its status as a praeambula fidei, that is, as a preamble of faith, or an independent conceptual system ante-

PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION In an earlier work, Space, Time and Incarnation, it was argued that the incarnation is meaningless for us unless its setting within the actual structures of space and time is taken seriously. That was done with special reference to space, but in this book concerned with the resurrection, again with relation to space and time, more attention is given to time. It seeks to be faithful to the realistic biblical account of the resurrection, and the redemptive significance of the resurrected One as God become man. The empty tomb is entirely consistent with who Jesus was in the whole course of his obedient life and work on earth, and consistent with his full reality as God incarnate for us and our salvation. The resurrection of Jesus is thus understood and treated as of the same nature, in the integration of physical and ~piritual existence, as his birth and death. An attempt has been made to elucidate this in the context of scientific inquiry and thought, in such a way as to show that the Gospel message of the risen Lord Jesus is to be taken in its full measure.

Edinburgh Advent, I997

T.F.T.

xv

INTRODUCTION I make no apology for taking divine revelation seriously. If God really is God, the Creator of all things visible and invisible and the Source of all rational order in the universe, I find it absurd to think that he does not actively reveal himself to us but remains inert and aloof, so that we are left to grope about in the dark for possible intimations and clues to his reality which we may use in trying to establish arguments for his existence. I do not deny that there is a proper place for rational argumentation in what is traditionally known as 'natural theology', for I find it contradictory to operate with a deistic disjunction between God and the universe, which presupposes belief in the existence of God but assumes at the same time that he is utterly detached and unknowable. Genuine argumentation must take place within the active interrelation between God and the universe, and is argumentation in which theoretical and empirical components in knowledge operate inseparately together, much as they do in the indissoluble fusion of geometry and physics in a 'relativistic' understanding of the universe. This demands of us, doubtless, a proper natural theology in which form and content, method and subject-matter, are not torn apart - that is, not a 'natural theology' as an independent conceptual system, antecedent to actual or empirical knowledge of God upon which it is then imposed, quite unscientifically, as a set of necessary epistemological presuppositions! The grounds upon which I find myself forced to accept a proper natural theology, however, are much the same as the grounds on which I find it absurd to think that God does not freely act within the framework of space and time, or the intelligible structures of what he has created, in making himself known to mankind. If God really is God, the living Creator of us all, not only is he intelligibly accessible to our understanding but actively at work within

CHAPTER.

1

THE BIBLICAL CONCEPT OF THE RESURRECTION • Resurrection as understood in the Bible appears to be without any parallel in the other religions. An idea of resurrection is certainly found very widely in Semitic and Hellenic thought, as is the notion of a dying and rising god, or the divinity immanent in the processes of nature who is reborn with every seasonal change from winter to spring and whose divine life becomes manifest in the resurrection of nature. Against all this the Scriptures, and not least the Old Testament, are sharply opposed. Resurrection has nothing at all to do with any dying or rising god and his cosmic rebirth. It must be admitted, however, that this heathen notion has invaded the Christian Church, probably through the syncretistic ideas that developed in early Mediterranean Christianity, and is still constantly reflected in hymns and sermons about the springing up of new life, as well as in Easter eggs and similar symbols of the dying and rising gods of nature religions. 1 'Earth with joy confesses, clothing her for spring, All good gifts return with her returning King; Bloom in every meadow, leaves on every bough, Speak his sorrows ended, hail his triumph now! It is hardly less reflected in the romantic and phenomenalist notions of history lurking in the presuppositions of those biblical scholars who attempt to reduce everything to 'history', and interpret the saving acts of God, including the resurrection, only within the framework of the historical processes of decay • See for example, The Firsl EpislZ, of C,."",." t4. 3-5; TheophUus, Ad ArdolJlCllm, 13; Minucius Felix, OdtJDius, 34; The cyclic concept of the resurrection, however, is expressly rejected by Tatian, Oralio d GrMOS, 6.

CHAPTER

2

THE RESURRECTION AND THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST The teaching of the New Testament makes it clear that we cannot isolate the resurrection from the whole redeeming purpose of God or from the decisive deed of God in the incarnation of his Son which ran its full course from the birth ofJesus to his crucifixion and triumph over the powers of evil. The resurrection cannot be detached from Christ himself, and considered as a phenomenon on its own to be compared and judged in the light of other phenomena. Rather it must be considered in the light of who Jesus Christ is in his own Person, in his own intrinsic logos, and indeed in the light of his divine and human natures. It was that Christ who rose again from the dead and no other.! Nor must it be considered in abstraction from his saving work fulfilled in and through the incarnation when he, the eternaJ Word and creative Source of all life and being outside of God, entered into our mortal and corrupt existence, that was wasting away under the threat of death and judgment, in order to effect the salvation and recreation of the world. Hence a double duality must be kept in view: (i) the duality formed by the union of divine and human natures in the one Person of Christ, and (ii) the duality formed by the entry of his life into our mortality, his light into our darkness, his holiness into our corruption. It is because he who lives and acts in this situation is divine and human in 0111 Person, that all he does in our fallen existence has a dark side and a light side, a side of humiliation and a side of exaltation - the one is the 1 This is why, as o. C. Quick pointed out, if we find the evidence for the resurrection sufficient, we accept it 'precisely not on the ground that such evidence would establish the resurrection of an)'Orl', but on the ground that it is the uniqueness of Jesus which makes it credible'. DoeIriMs of 1M Crud, 1947 edit., p. 150. Thus also James Denney, JISIIS and 1M Gospel, 1913, pp. 12llll"., 12gff., IS8f.

CHAPTER

3

THE RESURRECTION AND THE ATONING WORK OF CHRIST Here we must bear in mind the full content of the doctrine of atonement and shall be concerned only with the place of the resurrection of Christ within it. We may consider this in relation to justification, reconciliation and redemption, leaving to the next chapter our examination of the nature of the resurrection as an event in space and time. I.

Tkt Resurrection and Justification

Again and again the New Testament relates the resurrection to the divine act of forgiveness which is not just the nonimputation of our sins but a positive act of the divine mercy in which we are reinstated before God as though we had not sinned: forgiveness is a stupendous act which only God can do, blotting out what is past, and recreating what has been wasted by sin. As such forgiveness has two sides to it. From the side of God who forgives it is an act in which the Forgiver bean the cost and burden of forgiveness. The resurrection reveals that God himself was at work directly in Jesus Christ making himself responsible for our condition, and fulfilling it by bearing the cost of forgiveness in himself. Forgiveness is not just a word of pardon but a word translated into our existence by crucifixion and resurrection, by judgment and recreation. From the side of those who are forgiven, forgiveness means emancipation from the thraldom of guilt and reaffirmation as God's dear children in Jesus Christ. It means that the sinner's status qua sinner is rejected, and he is given freely the status of one who is pure and holy before God. The relation between forgiveness and the resurrection may be seen in the evangelical account of the healing of the paralysed

CHAPTER.

4

THE NATURE OF THE RESURRECTION EVENT The resurrection of Jesus is an event that happens within history in continuity with the living event of the whole historical existence ofJesus, yet as an event offulfilled redemption the resurrection issues in a new creation beyond the corruptible processes of this world, on the other side of decay and death, and on the other side of judgment, in the fullness of a new world and of a new order of things. How can we think these things together? We recall the Pauline and Patristic teaching that redemption is an act of anaklpkalaiosis or recapitulation with a dual movement (cf. Eph. I: IO). On the one hand, it involves a penetration backwards in time and existence into the roots of man's involvement in sin and evil, even into death and hell. We can discern something of the profound implications of that when we think of the descent into hell as a descent into the irreversibility of time and memory and guilt, as a movement that threads regressively al~ng the line of man's transgression and fall, undoing the tangled skein of disobedience and rebellion, and breaking the tyranny of guilt-laden existence and time. On the other hand, recapitulation involves a forward movement, in which the unravelled existence and time of man are gathered up and restored in Christ in ontological relation to God. Now the resurrection is that recapitulation in its positive aspect, answering to the descent into death and hell, for it is the healing, lifting up and projection of human being into a new order of things in which its existence before God is finally made good. Think of the Old Testament account of the healing of Naaman the leper as he was baptized in Jordan, when his flesh was restored to him like the flesh of a litde child, or of the prophecy of Joel as to the great day of recovery in which God

CHAPTER.

5

THE ASCENSION OF JESUS CHRIST It is with his ascension that Jesus Christ was fully installed in his kingly Ministry.1 His prophetic ministry began with the incarnation, that is the ministry of the Word made flesh, but even there Jesus was born to be King, and as he entered his public ministry he stepped forth as the King of the Kingdom he proclaimed. His priestly ministry is associated mostly with his passion in which as High Priest he offered himself in sacrifice for our sins and holy oblation to the Father, but even in the midst of this ministry he was King, crowned with thorns, but King because of the Cross and through the Cross. However, it is with his exaltation to the throne of God and his sitting at the right hand of the Father that his kingly ministry properly began. It stretches from the ascension to the final advent, when he will come again as Lord and King of all in open majesty, power and glory. Nevertheless within this kingly ministry we must not lose sight of the triplex munus of Christ, his threefold office as Prophet, Priest and King. That is the general order in which it is natural to study Christology, for it would appear to be the order determined by the mighty salvation events in the course of Jesus' life among us, but as we consider the threefold office within the period inaugurated by the ascension, it is evidently with another order that we have to work: King, Priest and Prophet. His kingly ministry is supreme from ascension to parousia, but within that his ministry as Priest and 1 Neither St. Matthew nor St. John speaks about the ascension in their Gospels; St. Mark alludes to it, at least in the addendum to his Gospel, 16: 19, but a fuller account is given by St. Luke, 24: 50-53, Acts I: 9-11. There are, however, references to it elsewhere as in the early Jr.rygmtJ reported in the Acts ofthe Apostles (2. 32f.; 5: 30£.), etc., and in the epistles (Phil. 2: 6-9, 3: !l0; Eph. 4: 8-10; I Tim. 3: 16; I Peter 3: !I!I; Heb. !I: 9, 12: !I; cf. also R.om. 8: 34; Col. 3: I; I Peter I: 21).

CHAPTER

6

THE NATURE OF THE ASCENSION EVENT We are back again here at the same question that we had to face in regard to the event of the resurrection, and certainly it has the same baffling character, especially when it is taken out of the context of the whole movement of the incarnation and the saving acts of God within it. That we cannot do this is surely one of the lessons to be learned from 'the forty days' between the resurrection and the ascension, for they had nothing to do, as is sometimes alleged, with a progressive spiritualization or immaterialization of the body of Christ, but with the training of the disciples through a manifestation of Christ in which the thoughts of suffering and glory, of humiliation and exaltation, were bound together in his own Person in indissoluble union. 1 Nevertheless, while closely tied up with the crucifixion and resurrection in this way, and indeed as continuous with them, as is assumed in the Epistle to the Hebrews, I the ascension must be understood in a correlation with the incarnation, as the anahasis (ascent) of the Son of God corresponding to his katahasis (descent).· I.

How is the Event of the Ascension Related to Space and Time?

This is the other pole of the question as to the relation of the incarnation to space and time which gave rise in the sixteenth century to the controversy over the so-called extra Thus William Milligan, Tit. Asmuion of Our Lord, p. 5. 'The resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ are two distinct but inseparable momenta in one and the same event. The resurrection is to be undentood as the terminus a quo, ita beginning, and the ascension as ita terminus ad quem, its end.' Karl Barth, Churcla Dogmatiu, IV/2, p. 150. • This was a favourite theme of Irenaeus, Adu. !wresu, 3. I. 6, 18. 2, 19· 3; 5· 21. 1,36• 3. etc.; cf. EpUIeizis,8Sf. 1 I

CHAPTER

7

THE ASCENSION AND THE PAROUSIA OF CHRIST Parousia, normally translated as coming or advent, means coming and presence, the real presence of him who was, who is, and who is to come. 'All is present, and yet all is future'.l It is not applied in the New Testament or in the early Church in a spiritualized sense, as if it meant a presence in Spirit only. Rather does it refer to a coming-and-a-presence in the most realist and effective sense. This is made clear by its application to the coming of the Son of God in the incarnation - it is the special kind of divine presence in which God is present in his own being (ousia), but who has come to us not only as Creator but as creature within our creaturely being (ousia), for he has entered within the created order to which we belong and is present within its space and time as one of us (par-ousia). Moreover, the physicality of the incarnation, in which the Word was made flesh and in which Jesus Christ rose again in body, indicates that here we have to do with a presence in which God has bound up the life and existence of his creation with himself. This is not a parousia in the flesh which is merely a temporary episode, so that all it represents is a transient epiphany or manifestation: it has a finality about it, even for God. This is not a parousia of God in the flesh which consumes the flesh, but one in which the physical being of the creature is established and confirmed through being included in a covenanted relation with the Creator actualized in the incarnate Son. It is here that the resurrection of the man Jesus is of decisive and determinative significance, for with the crucifixion it constitutes the epitome and consummation of the incarnation: through the resurrection the incarnate parousia is established and exalted as the material content of all the 1

H. R. Mackintosh, /mmorlalily and the Futur" 1915. p. 64.