Screeds
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
A Life Undying
April 11, 2004
Today is Easter Sunday, the holy day on which Christians worldwide commemorate the Resurrection of Christ. The Resurrection is the event that defines Christianity.
An agnostic friend recently asked your Curmudgeon: Why is this the defining event, and not one of the others of Jesus's life? According to the gospels, He performed miracles aplenty. He pronounced truths that struck to the hearts of all who heard them. He went willingly to a horrible death out of a sense of duty that transcends anything known among men. So why the Resurrection? Wasn't that just one more "deed of power," no greater than His others?
The answer demarcates the camps. On the one side are those who venerate Jesus as a great moral philosopher, arguably the greatest. On the other are those who accept Jesus as the Son of God and the Redeemer of Mankind.
In the three years of His ministry around the Sea of Galilee, nearly all of what Jesus said had been said before. The great Hebrew theologian Hillel voiced many of the same precepts. Confucius, the moral genius of ancient China, said much the same as Jesus did. To the best of your Curmudgeon's knowledge, the only thing Jesus said that no one before Him ever had was this:
You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. -- The Gospel According To Matthew, 22:37-40
As for the miracles, the writings of the ancient world report many miraculous deeds. They were performed by men of many races and creeds. Some were taken for gods; others were deemed representative of powers greater than they. In sum, they appear to match the miracles of Jesus as reported in the four canonical gospels.
The one fact of His life that made Jesus of Nazareth unique was this: He prophesied His own arrest and death by torture, submitted to it willingly, and rose to present Himself to his disciples and followers as proof of His words. He foresaw it all, including His Resurrection. Indeed, He would not permit His disciples to interfere:
Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, "Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?" -- The Gospel According To Matthew, 26:51-54
And indeed it did.
Some will say that the legends of antiquity speak of other gods that died and rose again. Let it be remembered that none of these went willingly to their deaths. More, they struggled with identified antagonists -- usually other supernatural creatures -- for power over the world. They expressed no mission on behalf of the world at large.
Others will say that the gospels cannot be considered authoritative. What's recorded in them is uncorroborated by any other scribe of the time. Flavius Josephus, the only first-century non-gospel historian who mentions Jesus, does so only in passing, as a minor figure. Therefore we have no reason to accept the gospels' narrative as a telling of historical facts.
But the Jews of classical Judea were a scripture-oriented people, the most assiduous historians of their time. The scriptures were their history and their religion. Christ's followers, who compiled the gospels and went forth to spread His teachings, were all Jews, steeped in the historo-scriptural traditions of that people. So why, if the stories of David and Solomon are accepted as reliable, should the history of this other figure be denigrated as implausible?
Ultimately, the arguments are irresolvable. A historical record is always open to dispute and disbelief, unless one has witnessed the deeds it records with one's own eyes. Those who decline to accept the gospels as an accurate record of Jesus's life cannot be argued out of their position, for that position is a premise, and therefore immune from argument.
But ponder this:
Let all the miracles be taken as fictions. Let nothing of the gospels stand except Jesus's teachings and His willingness to suffer and die horribly as a final testament to their importance. If we allow them no other credence, still the gospels tell the story of the greatest figure who ever walked the earth: a moral philosopher without peer, the first ever to marry charity to justice, so devoted to His teachings that He sacrificed all privacy, all comfort, and all security to bring them to the world, and so determined to establish their truth beyond the human propensity to quibble and doubt that He accepted the most painful and gruesome fate imaginable. A Man who, by His teachings alone, completely transformed the world. A Man whose life, measured by its influence on others, has extended two thousand years beyond the death of His body, and promises to extend infinitely further. A Man to stand above all other men, now and forever.
Now add the Resurrection, and nothing else. With that increment alone, Christ steps from the pinnacle of Mankind to a place above Man.
And the angel answered and said unto the women, 'Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, just as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you unto Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.' -- The Gospel According To Matthew, 28:5-7
Happy Easter, for He is risen, just as He said.
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