I’ve been wrestling with resurrection. That’s what I said all through Lent; I said I really wanted to write on the idea of resurrection in a reflective way, but then I just couldn’t do it. Any wrestling that occurred was almost subconscious.
Of course, I know the dictionary definition of the concept: rising from the dead, as Christ did on Easter or as believers are to do at the last day. I also know the relevant part of the Apostle’s Creed: “I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.”
It’s one thing to know the concept and the words, but sometimes it’s a totally different thing to know at a “gut level” that what the Bible says is true. I, at times, have doubts, as, no doubt, some of you readers also do. And so I was searching for answers. Factual answers that somehow felt like that “gut reaction.” And I felt stymied. I was, however, reading and listening, and I had my internal antennae working.
The first idea I came across was Pascal’s Wager, mentioned in a book by Jon Meacham. Blaise Pascal, a seventeenth century, mathematician, physicist, theologian, and philosopher, believes it is only rational to believe in God, and, therefore, the resurrection. His argument can be summed up as follows: “. . . a rational person should live as though (the Christian) God exists and seek to believe in God. If God does not actually exist, such a person will have only a finite loss (some pleasures, luxury, etc.), whereas if God does exist, he stands to receive infinite gains (as represented by eternity in Heaven) and avoid infinite losses (eternity in Hell)” (Wikipedia, source noted on page). Rational, yes, but the wager sounds like a gamble, or, as some would say, utilitarian or useful. I didn’t want useful—I wanted something more concrete.
I found what I considered a good explanation of why the “wager” might work in an article by Antony Aumann, published in 2011. He likens the wager to the thought that goes into a marriage vow, one that all of us, on the front end, fully intend to keep. He concludes with these words:
As a result, the ideal wagerer is not very likely to arrive at the conclusion that he or she is ill wed to the religious life. For he or she continually works in the opposite direction. If this is correct, we need not worry very much about the threat of a ‘bad marriage’” (p. 14).
Aumann says that it’s like “crossing a point of no return”; thus, the wager isn’t so much a wager as it is “a stable course of action” (p. 14). I really liked the idea of the “stable course” which argues, basically for a total shift in our thinking, something we do in conversion. Still, I didn’t think this helped me get to the point I wanted.
The next ideas came from my pastor and theology professor Dr. Mark Quanstrom. At the end of an evening in which the class was covering how pastors deal with funerals, he said the following statements: “We have to live forever because love is eternal,” and “Death can only be redeemed in the resurrection.” Ah, these were words I could latch on to: if God is love (I already believe in God) and love is eternal, then God will always be loving us, regardless of what happens to us at the point of death. The other statement follows suit: if Jesus, God the Son, loved us so much to go through death, then that, indeed, is redemption.
At the end of the class session, I wrote down these lines from the old hymn: “My Hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’s blood and righteousness.” At that moment I realized that I didn’t need to “wrestle” with the resurrection; I just needed to accept it in faith, as I always have.
Then I went back to Meacham’s book on the last words of Christ from the cross. In his conclusion he quotes the early church father Athanasius who was answering his own question about why Christ had to be crucified:
[I]f the Lord’s death is the ransom of all, and by His death the middle wall of partition is broken down, and the calling of the nations is brought about, how would He have called us to Him had He not been crucified? For it is only on the cross that a man dies with his hands spread out. Whence it was fitting for the Lord to bear this also and to spread out His hands, that with one He might draw the ancient people, and with the other those from the Gentiles, and unite both in Himself (qtd. in Meacham, pp. 105-06.)
His hands spread out to reach his Jewish forefathers and all Gentiles who would subsequently believe: for the redemption of all—and for resurrection for all—Jesus paid it all: Love paid it all.
Works Consulted
Aumann, Antony. “On the Validity of Pascal’s Wager.” The Commons. Northern Michigan University, 2011.
“Blaise Pascal.” Wikipedia. Last update: Jan 13, 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Pascal
Meacham, Jon. The Hope of Glory: Reflections on the Last Words of Jesus from the Cross. Convergent Books, 2020.
Quanstrom, Mark. Lecture Notes for CMIN 594/674, April 5, 2021.
A Myriad of Things 