There's a certain brand of self-described Christian -- they're often ministers and/or professors -- that says that the true meaning of Easter is the disciples' "resurrection faith" or some such thing that ultimately amounts to saying that Jesus never really came out of his tomb. The disciples' experience of the "risen Christ" was purely a psychological or spiritual phenomenon not to be taken in literal, physical terms.If that was the case, Luke never got the memo.
In the final chapter of his Gospel, Luke seems at pains to hammer home the point that Jesus' resurrection is a profoundly physical event: Jesus was dead and buried, and now he's back, victorious over death, in the very same (albeit mysteriously glorified) body.
This is a tad unusual and hard to believe, as both Jesus and Luke realize -- and so they try to make it as clear and explicit as possible. First, of course, there is the empty tomb.
Then, when Jesus appears to his disciples and they think they're seeing a ghost, Jesus responds, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me, and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have" (24:38-39).
As a sort of encore, Jesus asks for some food, and then eats a piece of broiled fish.
If these details are meant to convey only the disciples' "resurrection faith," and not the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, then Luke is a terrible storyteller -- and our faith is in vain, and we are still in our sins.
(Image: Raffaelino del Garbo, "Resurrection," 1510)
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A new Resurrection defined:
ReplyDeleteOn the horizon is an approaching religious and cultural furore so contentious, any clash of civilizations may have to wait.
The first wholly new interpretation for 2000 years of the Gospel and moral teachings of Christ is on the web. Redefining all primary elements including Faith, the Word, Baptism, the Trinity and the Resurrection, this new interpretation questions the validity and origins of all Christian tradition; it overturns all natural law ethics and theory. At stake is the credibility of several thousand years of religious history and moral teaching.
This new teaching has nothing whatsoever to do with any existing religious conception known to history. It is unique in every respect. What science and religion have agreed was not possible, has now become all too inevitable.
Using a synthesis of scriptural material from the Old and New Testaments, the Apocrypha , The Dead Sea Scrolls, The Nag Hammadi Library, and some of the worlds great poetry, it describes and teaches a single moral LAW, a single moral principle, and offers the promise of its own proof; one in which the reality of God responds directly to an act of perfect faith with a individual intervention into the natural world; correcting human nature by a change in natural law, altering biology, consciousness and human ethical perception beyond all natural evolutionary boundaries. Intended to be understood metaphorically, where 'death' is ignorance and 'Life' is knowledge, this experience, personal encounter of transcendent power and moral purpose is the 'Resurrection', and justification for faith. Here is where true morality, called righteousness begins.
Here then is the first ever viable religious conception capable of leading reason, by faith, to observable consequences which can be tested and judged. This new teaching delivers the first ever religious claim of insight into the human condition, that meets the Enlightenment criteria of verifiable and 'extraordinary' evidence based truth embodied in action. For the first time in history, however unexpected, the world must now measure for itself, the reality of a new claim to revealed truth, a moral tenet not of human intellectual origin, offering access by faith, to absolute proof, an objective basis for moral principle and a fully rationally justifiable belief!
This is 'religion' without any of the conventional trappings of tradition. An individual, virtue-ethical conception, independent of all cultural perception in a single moral command, and the single Law finds it's expression of obedience within a new covenant of marriage. It requires no institutional framework or hierarchy, no churches or priest craft, no scholastic theological rational, dogma or doctrine and ‘worship’ requires only conviction, faith and the necessary measure of self discipline to accomplish a new, single, categorical moral imperative and the integrity and fidelity to the new reality.
If confirmed, this will represent a paradigm change in the moral and intellectual potential of human nature itself; untangling the greatest questions of human existence: consciousness, meaning, suffering, free will and evil. And at the same time addressing the most profound problems of our age.
Trials of this new teaching are open to all and under way in many countries. For those individuals who will question their own prejudices, who can imagine outside the historical cultural box, with the moral courage to learn something new, and test this for themselves, to stand against the stream of fashionable thought and spin, an intellectual and moral revolution is already under way, where the 'impossible' becomes inevitable, with the most potent Non Violent Direct Action any human being can take to advance peace, justice, change and progress.
Published [at the moment] only on the web, a typeset manuscript of this new teaching is available as a free [1.4meg] PDF download from a variety of sites including:
[www].energon.org.uk