Great thought for Easter Wednesday from Russell Moore: In the long run we’re all dead, and in the longer run we’re all raised from the dead. There’s a freedom that comes from seeing that. -Tempted and Tried: Temptation and the Triumph of Christ
Tagged: death, Freedom, Resurrection, Russell Moore
Now that the Savior has raised His body, death is no longer terrible, but all those who believe in Christ tread it underfoot as nothing, and prefer to die rather than to deny their faith in Christ, knowing full well that when they die they do not perish, but live indeed, and become incorruptible through the resurrection…. Death has become like a tyrant who has become completely conquered by the legitimate monarch; bound hand and foot as he know is, the passers-by jeer at him, hitting him and abusing him, no longer afraid of his cruelty and rage, because of the king who has conquered him. So has death been conquered and branded for what it is by the Saviour on the cross. St…
Tagged: Athanasius, death, Faith, Resurrection, Resurrection of Our Lord
Now that the common Saviour of all has died on our behalf, we who believe in Christ no longer die, as men died afore time, in fulfillment of the threat of the law. That condemnation has come to an end; and now that, by the grace of the resurrection, corruption has been banished and done away, we are loosed from our mortal bodies in God’s good time for each, so that we may obtain a better resurrection. Like seeds cast into the earth, we do not perish in our dissolution, but like them shall rise again, death having been brought to nought by the grace of the Saviour. St Athanasius, On the Incarnation
Tagged: Athanasius, death, Death of Jesus, Earth, Grace, Incarnation, Resurrection, Resurrection of Our Lord, Seeds
Matthew Levering, in his Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian, surveys the various approaches to the intermediate state before and after the death and resurrection of Jesus. He affirms, as do I, that the death of Jesus affected a change for those who died in the faith before the passion of Jesus. Is it legitimate to imagine the joy of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—that is, the inauguration of the “consolation of Israel” and the “redemption of Jerusalem”—when Christ Jesus came to them in the intermediate state? If one holds with Wright and Metropolitan Hilarion that there is an intermediate state, as I do, then it should indeed be a place of joy for those who love God.…
But beyond all this [i.e., the first reason for the incarnation], there was a debt owing which must need be paid; for, as I said before, all men were due to die. Here, then, is the second reason why the Word dwelt among us, namely that having proved His Godhead by His works, He might offer the sacrifice on behalf of all, surrendering His own temple to death in place of all, to settle man’s account with death and free him from the primal transgression. In the same act also He showed Himself mightier than death, displaying His own body incorruptible as the first-fruits of the resurrection. -Saint Athanasius, On the Incarnation
St. Athanasius on the effects of the incarnation of the Word and His assuming death in our stead: Now, therefore, when we die we no longer do so as men condemned to death, but as those who are even now in process of rising we await the general resurrection of all, “which in its own times He shall show,” even God Who wrought it and bestowed it on us. On the Incarnation, II.10
Tagged: Athanasius, death, Incarnation, Resurrection
Matthew Levering in Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian takes issue with N.T. Wright; Levering finds Platonism embedded in the New Testament, seeing that as a good thing. I cannot agree with this statement: If we emphasize the renewed material creation and a new set of cosmic adventures, we risk turning eternal life into something quite banal. My own view is that in the new heavens and the new earth which is promised in Revelation, there is a “renewed material creation,” albeit without sin. It will not be banal, but unendingly beautiful. It’s possible I’m misunderstanding Levering, and further reading will bring greater clarity.
The Christian confession regarding salvation is not that we are translated to some spiritual “heaven.” Rather, we believe in “the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting.” Matthew Levering quotes R.R. Reno on this hope of Christians: The divine Son … became incarnate, suffered, and died for us in order to give “us a new future in the flesh, not a new metaphysical location.” -Matthew Levering, Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian
Tagged: Matthew Levering, R.R. Reno, Resurrection
“Platonism clearly dominated Western, even Christian, thinking down to the threshold of modern times; we have only to think of the stress laid on the ‘immortality of the soul’, and how the resurrection was held to be an almost unnecessary ‘accidental blessedness’ superadded to the substantial blessedness already possessed.” Hans Urs von Balthasar, in Matthew Levering, Jesus and the Demise of Death: Resurrection, Afterlife, and the Fate of the Christian
All pastors began as idealists. No one goes to seminary to be a role player, a cog in the machine, just as no baseball player while he’s playing high school ball dreams of someday being a minor league batting coach. When a young man goes to seminary, he goes to change the world. He really believes that his ministry is going to make a noticeable difference. He’s not just convinced that he’ll be better than his field work pastor or vicarage supervisor; no, make him District President, Synod President, or seminary professor, and he’d bring about a great reformation. He believes this. When a young man goes to seminary, he goes to change the world. You have to hold on to your ideals. Especially as a…