Normally I look forward to the Holy Week cover stories in Newsweek and Time to serve as grist for my Easter sermonic and teaching mill, since most of these stories advocate theories usually biased against Christian orthodoxy, and thus they give me an opportunity to articulate an apologetic for the Christian faith in the manner urged upon us by 1 Peter 3:15. This year, however, I need look no further than our own PRESBYTERIAN OUTLOOK for such assistance in the essays by Cynthia Rigby, “The Significance of the Resurrection,” and by George Stroup, “Easter Faith, Easter Church.”
As I read these two articles, particular words of C. S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters, those entertaining and enlightening missives from Screwtape the mentor demon to his protégé demon (and eventual main course) Wormwood, come to mind. In letter 13 Screwtape begins, “It seems to me that you take a great many pages to tell a very simple story. The long and the short of it is you have let the man slip through your fingers.” Upon reading Rigby and Stroup, one gets the very same sense of Rigby and Stroup as Screwtape does of Wormwood. Rigby and Stroup go through a number of rhetorical gyrations to tell but a simple tale, and in so doing they both let the true power of the Resurrection slip through their fingers.
It is easy enough to dissect the serious flaws in both articles. Take Rigby’s effort first. She starts by telling us she encourages her students to watch out for “litmus test theology,” that if anyone presses them on what they might actually believe regarding Christian doctrine, they are to “redirect the conversation.” One can only imagine what these students will do when they encounter a pointed discussion with a Committee on Preparation for Ministry or a Pastor Nominating Committee. I would love to be the proverbial fly on the wall to witness the verbal gymnastics that must ensue.
But more to the point is the reason Rigby counsels her students to respond in this way. Why? Because “Jesus cares less about ‘right answers’ than about us being committed disciples,” she says, deftly cleaving in twain orthodox faith from orthodox practice and apparently considering the two mutually exclusive. Yet her illustrations fail to support her point. For example, the rich young ruler is in trouble not because he gave the right answer to Jesus but lived unrighteously, but that he gave the wrong answer and still lived unrighteously: he had kept all the commandments. Jesus then practices his spiritual surgery on the man by exposing the ruler’s failure at one point—his use of money—so that the ruler may see himself as he really is rather than as he wants to see himself and to be seen by others. Could it be that Jesus is concerned both with right thinking and right living? Not if Rigby is correct.
Then Rigby states that it is the Resurrection that shows us “bodies, and this world and day in which bodies live, matter to God.” The Incarnation, not the Resurrection, is usually considered to make a much better case for this point (C. S. Lewis’s essay “The Grand Miracle” is but one example of this). The Resurrection, it seems, has different fish to fry, different aims in mind, such as victory over sin and death and the gift of eternal life for all who trust Jesus. The affirmation of the physical universe doesn’t appear to be a major concern here.
Then we move to Stroup’s essay. He asks if there is only one “‘orthodox’ interpretation” of the Resurrection we must accept or if instead all possible interpretations are acceptable. Another option, that there might be a range of interpretations, in keeping with the witness of the Biblical texts, that all fit within the boundaries of Christian orthodoxy, as well as a range of options that are all outside these boundaries never seems to occur to Stroup. Instead we are presented with a false dichotomy: either one orthodox, rigid position, or no orthodoxy at all. The straw man Stroup erects is thus easily struck down: who can encapsulate the Resurrection by one thought alone?
In addition, he pits Paul against the Gospels, stating that the accounts of Jesus as in the Gospel of John somehow (although he doesn’t say exactly how) contradict those rendered by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15. There is no logical reason according to the Law of Noncontradiction or to any other logical maxim why both descriptions of the resurrected Christ cannot be true. Jesus is the prototype, the “first fruits” of such a body, and we end up trying to cope with Mystery at such times. But Stroup doesn’t allow for this possibility either: Paul says one thing, and the Gospel of John another, and there is no way these different perspectives can be harmonized. Furthermore, he misappropriates Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 15. Paul doesn’t say that those who “fail to see and live what Jesus’ resurrection means for faith, hope, and love are ‘of all people to be most pitied.’” It is instead those who deny the Resurrection who are so described. Without this Resurrection actually happening, faith is in vain and sins remain unforgiven.
But as serious as these flaws of Rigby and Stroup’s essays are, they are but byproducts of the primary problem: neither Rigby nor Stroup are willing to make any truth claim for the Resurrection in any physical, bodily, “it really happened” sense. After all, “right answers” and “orthodox interpretations” are beside the point for them. They want to talk about the significance of the Resurrection without admitting whether or not the Resurrection really happened. Their essays beg the response by the observant reader, “How can you apply the teachings of the Resurrection and interpret what the Resurrection means for my life if you are unwilling to affirm that the Resurrection actually occurred?” They divorce their theology and praxis about the Resurrection from the reality of the Resurrection itself and fail to see the inherent foolishness of such a move. They inform us how the Resurrection applies to our lives without affirming the actuality of the Resurrection that gives their interpretations substance in the first place.
Why the need for such nuance? Why not come out and say something like, “I affirm without hesitation that Jesus actually, literally rose from the dead, as the Gospels and the Epistles state, and as evidences from early church history (such as the existence of the church at all!) show.” Perhaps in some academic guild circles Rigby and Stroup then might be considered ignorant and unsophisticated. But in the great cloud of witnesses surrounding us, such responses would be considered the only reasonable and faithful response any human being can make. Then Rigby and Stroup can expound on the significance of the Resurrection for our lives to their hearts’ content, and their expositions will be grounded and rooted in the Resurrection’s meaning and historicity. Otherwise, what we have here are mere rhetorical exercises, interesting to consider but ultimately useless for strengthening and developing Christian growth.
Cynthia Rigby Responds:
Thank you for the invitation to reply to Clay Brown’s critique of my essay, “The Significance of the Resurrection.”
I must say that I am mystified at how Brown could accuse me of teaching students to avoid discussions of what they actually believe. The whole point of avoiding “litmus test” theology is, precisely, to spend our time and energy discussing what we believe rather than hiding behind prescribed answers. As people of “faith seeking understanding,” we are called to explore why and how the church’s confessions matter to our lives of faith. The point I make about not focusing “merely … on right answers” is not that commitment to sound doctrine isn’t essential, but that sometimes our insistence on being “right,” and in testing the “rightness” of others, stands idolatrously in the way of faithful Christian discipleship.
I do think, in contrast to Brown’s interpretation, that this is one of the messages we are taught in Mk. 8:27-33 and Lk. 18-18-29. Both the rich young ruler and Peter, clinging to their “right” answers, turn from being faithful followers of Jesus Christ. This is not to say that to be a disciple of Jesus Christ is to have an “anything goes” mentality, when it comes to Christian doctrine. It does mean that making definitive claims about what we believe means very little apart from reflecting on and living out how these claims matter to our lives of faith. Truly, as Brown well suggests, “orthodox faith” cannot be separated from “orthodox practice.”
Contra Brown’s criticism, my essay is, in fact, devoted to saying what I actually believe. Specifically, I bear witness to our confessional claims that “Jesus Christ rose again from the dead” and that one day we, too – as members of the communion of saints – will be bodily resurrected. This is what I believe. More importantly: this is what we believe, as Christians. The article clearly does not bring these beliefs into question, but seeks to explore how they make a difference in our lives of discipleship.
Brown correctly quotes me as saying that “the Resurrection … shows us ‘bodies, and this world and day in which bodies live, matter to God.’” He indicates that a case can be better made for this point by way of the doctrine of the incarnation, indicating that “the Resurrection … has different fish to fry … such as victory over sin and death and the gift of eternal life for all who trust Jesus.” Attention to my article will lead one to see, in relation to Brown’s point, that (1) I am intending to make a link between what we learn in the incarnation and what we learn in the resurrection. I understand one of the significances of the bodily resurrection to be that the incarnation is not temporary, but a revelation of God’s very self. The resurrection of Jesus Christ does not, then (to use Brown’s phrase), “fry different fish” than the doctrine of the incarnation, but reveals to us that (in my words, from the article), “the God who met us in Bethlehem did not simply pay us a visit, but is eternally with us, participating in the joys and sorrows of our creaturely existence.” (2) While what we learn from the resurrection reaffirms what we learn about God in the incarnational event, we also learn new things that we would not know from the incarnation alone. As Brown rightly notes, the resurrection is about “victory over sin and death.” And this is in perfect agreement with what I write in my article! Perhaps Brown neglected to read the following words, cited straight from the essay: “ … our confession of the resurrection tells us that the cross – and the suffering and death associated with it – are not the end of the story. While the resurrection affirms life in this world, it does not argue that this world is all there is, and that it will therefore be indefinitely maintained. If it did, what hope would our confession bring us? After all, the last thing we desire is to be stuck, for all eternity, with the sin and suffering associated with creaturely existence!”
While I agree with Brown that the resurrection brings victory over sin and death, I disagree with him when he says that “the affirmation of the physical universe doesn’t appear to be a major concern” of the resurrection. Not a major concern? If that were the case (as I suggest in the essay), why didn’t Jesus just leave his body behind? Our Lord and Savior cared about the healing of bodies as well as of souls. He was resurrected in body, and we will be bodily resurrected. The physical universe – including our bodies – matters to God, as incomprehensible as that may seem to us. God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son … and when the Son rose, embodied, with the nail prints in his hands, God demonstrated God’s love for the world all over again.
He is risen, indeed! Thanks be to God.
Send your comment on this report to The Outlook
Please include your full name, hometown and state.
