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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Resurrection - how do you view it?
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
How do you view the resurrection?
I can think of at least four perspectives.
Resurrection as vindication - the resurrection confirms God's view of Christ as his beloved Son who needs to be heard, rather than the human assessment that he was an interfering trouble maker who needed to be silenced.
Resurrection as victory - principally victory over death, but by extension victory over all that goes with death, sin, alienation with humanity and with God himself.
Resurrection as the precursor to ascension - if the cross is the principle means of Christ's victory over the powers that separate us from God (very much the Latin emphasis) and the accession marks his heavenly rule, what more can we ascribe to the resurrection other than a bridge between the two?
Resurrection as it relates to Christian ethics. Whilst looking forward to a more general, universal event, as part of Christian baptismal theology, resurrection suggests new possibilities for the way we live our lives now.
How then, might you answer the question "How is the resurrection informing your life now?"
Posts: 499 | Registered: Sep 2011
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LetterOfTheLaw
Apprentice
# 18384
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Posted
Jesus' attitude towards his impending death from Luke 22:42.
"Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done."
He wasn't killing himself. He was being killed.
At the moment of death from Mark 15:34.
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?"
He was truly alone in His death.
From Matthew 26:53
"Do you think I cannot call on my Father, and he will at once put at my disposal more than twelve legions of angels?"
From Luke 23:34
"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."
With His life stolen because He allowed it to be, without any help and full of love for those who killed Him He returned from death to life.
He showed the world that no-one can stand between Him and those who love Him, even when those who love Him die.
I know I am completely safe with Him. I know I am loved by Him. I know no-one can come between us. And that makes me feel free. It also makes me feel indebted in a way I can never repay. So I try to do my best, to be my best, knowing that though I stumble and fail, I am forever with Him.
Posts: 3 | From: Here, there and everywhere | Registered: Apr 2015
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Komensky
Shipmate
# 8675
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Posted
Are these the only options?
K.
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"The English are not very spiritual people, so they invented cricket to give them some idea of eternity." - George Bernard Shaw
Posts: 1784 | From: UK | Registered: Oct 2004
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Garasu
Shipmate
# 17152
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
I can think of at least four perspectives.
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"Could I believe in the doctrine without believing in the deity?". - Modesitt, L. E., Jr., 1943- Imager.
Posts: 889 | From: Surrey Heath (England) | Registered: Jun 2012
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Raptor Eye
Shipmate
# 16649
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Posted
The resurrection informs my life now by saying that whatever people throw at me, God will not only see me through but bring some good out of it if I trust him; and that the risen Christ is alive and accessible to me.
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Be still, and know that I am God! Psalm 46.10
Posts: 4359 | From: The United Kingdom | Registered: Sep 2011
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Komensky:
Are these the only options?
K.
I am sure they are not. Raptor Eye's post reminds me that the resurrection is the beginning of a new phase of the redemption transformation of the world.
What else come to mind Komensky?
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Freddy
Shipmate
# 365
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Drewthealexander:
What else come to mind Komensky?
I don't know about Komensky, but I can think of lots of things.
The most important, I think, is that the resurrection was a victory, not over sin in an abstract sense, but a victory specifically over the power that hell had over the human race.
Jesus repeatedly talked about the fact that death leads to new life:
quote:
Matthew 10:39 He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for My sake will find it.
Matthew 16:25 For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.
John 12:25 He who loves his life will lose it, and he who hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.
Most readers easily see that Jesus is saying that people should prefer heavenly things to worldly ones. This is clarified in these passages:
quote:
Matthew 6:19 “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal; 20 but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 16:26 For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?
To “give up one’s life” means to give up worldly desires even to the point of being willing to die for God’s sake. This would be the ultimate sacrifice:
quote:
John 15:13 Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.
It is in this context that Jesus speaks of His own willingness to give up His life. He is saying that the love of worldly things is overcome by being willing to lay down one’s very life for the things of heaven, which are love and faith.
quote:
John 10:17 “Therefore My Father loves Me, because I lay down My life that I may take it again. No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of Myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again. This command I have received from My Father.”
So by His death Jesus subordinated the things of this world to the things of heaven. He overcame the world.
quote:
John 16:33 These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.”
The point is to make it possible for every person to prefer heavenly treasure to worldly treasure, by faith in and obedience to Jesus:
quote:
1 John 5:4 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.
Revelation 2:26 And he who overcomes, and keeps My works until the end, to him I will give power over the nations.
The point of the resurrection, then, is that it is the inevitable result of laying down one's life in every sense. The preference of spiritual things to worldly ones gives life, even though it seems to us that life is not worth living without a focus on worldly pleasure. The truth is that those worldly pleasures don't really die when our focus is on things like love and service. They gain a new and better life.
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"Consequently nothing is of greater importance to a person than knowing what the truth is." Swedenborg
Posts: 12845 | From: Bryn Athyn | Registered: Jun 2001
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Teilhard
Shipmate
# 16342
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Posted
The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth showed Him to be the Lord …
God answered Jesus' prayers for rescue, after all, and thus gave God's unconditional stamp of Divine approval … and not incidentally confirming Jesus as "Prophet" … i.e., what he said was fulfilled by actual events -- NOT as "prediction," by as the powerful Word of God … (in the flesh) ...
Posts: 401 | From: Minnesota | Registered: Apr 2011
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Dafyd
Shipmate
# 5549
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Posted
As in Adam all have died even so in Christ shall all be made alive.
If we are united with him in his death even so shall we be united with him in his resurrection.
So I'd use a participatory model: that because Jesus died with us, we may rise with him.
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we remain, thanks to original sin, much in love with talking about, rather than with, one another. Rowan Williams
Posts: 10567 | From: Edinburgh | Registered: Feb 2004
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Barnabas62
Shipmate
# 9110
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Posted
Drewthealexander
On your previous thread on the same subject, which was closed, Eutychus offered you the opportunity to convince the Hosts that the discussion was not a "homework thread". Explanation - a homework thread is one where a Shipmate seeks to pick the brains of other Shipmates to help them with a RL task. Such threads are verboten here, since they don't constitute serious discussion.
So I was a bit surprised to discover that you had simply re-opened the discussion without further explanation of your intentions, either by PM to Eutychus or in the new thread. In fact your OP and your response to Komensky suggests that you may still be trawling for information and ideas from other Shipmates.
So let me spell it out. I don't want to refer you to Admin for disrespecting a Host but you'd better come up with an explanation for both ignoring Eutychus' Host post, restarting the thread and giving a further impression that you are in the business of picking brains for some RL reason of your own.
I suggest you send me and/or Eutychus a PM. Meanwhile, discussion is suspended on this thread.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
[ 13. April 2015, 17:06: Message edited by: Barnabas62 ]
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Who is it that you seek? How then shall we live? How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?
Posts: 21397 | From: Norfolk UK | Registered: Feb 2005
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Eutychus
From the edge
# 3081
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Posted
hosting/
An explanation has been received by PM and discussed amongst the H&As, as a result of which this thread is once again open for business.
/hosting
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Let's remember that we are to build the Kingdom of God, not drive people away - pastor Frank Pomeroy
Posts: 17944 | From: 528491 | Registered: Jul 2002
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Full Circle
Shipmate
# 15398
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Raptor Eye:
The resurrection informs my life now by saying that whatever people throw at me, God will not only see me through but bring some good out of it if I trust him; and that the risen Christ is alive and accessible to me.
This
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Beware the monocausal fallacy (Anon)
Posts: 232 | From: UK | Registered: Jan 2010
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/
An explanation has been received by PM and discussed amongst the H&As, as a result of which this thread is once again open for business.
/hosting
My thanks - and apologies for the extra work I created for you.
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balaam
Making an ass of myself
# 4543
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Posted
The resurrection reminds me to trust no matter one.
When the Apostle Paul talks about the resurrection it is almost exclusively passive. It is not so much that Jesus rose from the dead as Jesus was raised from the dead, or God raised him up.
The passive is important, Jesus died, and corpses do not raise themselves, not even the Son of God.
So it means that we can trust God no matter how bad things get. Death is not the end. It is also the assurance that we will be resurrected at the end of time.
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Last ever sig ...
blog
Posts: 9049 | From: Hen Ogledd | Registered: May 2003
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churchgeek
Have candles, will pray
# 5557
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Posted
I like perspectives 1, 2, and 4 in the OP.
I was raised with the whole PSA (or without the P) theory of atonement, and in that model, Resurrection was merely proof that God accepted Jesus' sacrifice. Like it was a stamp of approval to show the world that God accepted it.
It was important to believe in the literal, bodily resurrection mostly because biblical inerrancy was assumed.
But the fact that Jesus remains human seemed to be a little under-emphasized.
If Jesus rose from the dead in the same body that was born of Mary (albeit changed somehow), then, I think, Incarnation is shown to be a bigger deal than merely providing a body to be sacrificed.
I believe the cosmos was created for Christ to dwell in. Incarnation was always the plan and the goal. Incarnation marries creation to the uncreated God. Resurrection confirms that union, and shows us what our own destiny is.
Christ, being God, could not remain dead. Because God does not abandon creation (as we see in Noah's flood when we compare it to other flood myths), he didn't just return to being God and not human (Psalm 16:10 says that God will not abandon God's servant to the grave and to corruption); he initiated something completely new, something previously foreign to creation: Resurrection.
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I reserve the right to change my mind.
My article on the Virgin of Vladimir
Posts: 7773 | From: Detroit | Registered: Feb 2004
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Teilhard
Shipmate
# 16342
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by churchgeek:
I like perspectives 1, 2, and 4 in the OP.
I was raised with the whole PSA (or without the P) theory of atonement, and in that model, Resurrection was merely proof that God accepted Jesus' sacrifice. Like it was a stamp of approval to show the world that God accepted it.
It was important to believe in the literal, bodily resurrection mostly because biblical inerrancy was assumed.
But the fact that Jesus remains human seemed to be a little under-emphasized.
If Jesus rose from the dead in the same body that was born of Mary (albeit changed somehow), then, I think, Incarnation is shown to be a bigger deal than merely providing a body to be sacrificed.
I believe the cosmos was created for Christ to dwell in. Incarnation was always the plan and the goal. Incarnation marries creation to the uncreated God. Resurrection confirms that union, and shows us what our own destiny is.
Christ, being God, could not remain dead. Because God does not abandon creation (as we see in Noah's flood when we compare it to other flood myths), he didn't just return to being God and not human (Psalm 16:10 says that God will not abandon God's servant to the grave and to corruption); he initiated something completely new, something previously foreign to creation: Resurrection.
All of which could open up the possibility of "Resurrection" as "Reincarnation" (IMHO) ..
Posts: 401 | From: Minnesota | Registered: Apr 2011
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Drewthealexander
Shipmate
# 16660
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Posted
quote:
Originally posted by Teilhard:
The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth showed Him to be the Lord …
God answered Jesus' prayers for rescue, after all, ...
Yes, that's as perceptive as it is challenging - that God answers a pray for vindication not by rescue (the painful situation stills runs its course with its consequences for the people involved) but by resurrection. He demonstrates very powerfully and publicly to us - and everyone else involved for that matter - that he had not forgotten us.
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