He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures

If we think that the resurrection of Jesus is the climactic event in the testimony of the early church, constituting the triumph of life over death for all humanity, we are missing the point.

At the beginning of an extensive discussion of resurrection, Paul recapitulates the “gospel” which he had proclaimed in Corinth:

Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures…. (1 Cor. 15:1-4)

There are two principal ways in which the later Easter tradition has got this wrong, I think.

1 comment | Read more...
The begotten Son and the subordinate woman
I’m still working on the Trinity and gender question, and I have to say, it still mystifies me that theologians on both sides of the debate will argue that relations between the persons of the Godhead are determinative for relations between man and woman. Egalitarians think that there is no… ( | 40 comments)
Subordination, Trinity and gender
The supposed connection between Trinity and gender-equality (or not) has come up for me in a couple of different settings recently. On the one hand, I have been trying to decide whether a statement about the equality of persons in the Godhead has a bearing on Christian Associates’ policy regarding… ( | 9 comments)
The wisdom of Trinitarianism
Reading Charles Freeman’s no doubt partial account in [amazon:978-1400033805:inline] of the development of Nicene orthodoxy makes you realize, nevertheless, just how entangled with the intellectual and political interests of Christendom the development of Trinitarian thought was. I have argued… ( | 35 comments)
Jesus, the gods, and the philosophers
According to the standard evangelical model Jesus died for the sins of the world, and ever since Pentecost the church has proclaimed this “good news” of personal salvation to the world and will continue to do so until Jesus returns. That model is at best a modern theological abstraction. What we… ( | 7 comments)
Is Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles a missional text?
My friend Dan Steigerwald, who lives in Portland, Oregon, has written an excellent little book called [amazon:978-1494761028:inline]. He takes the view that the church after Christendom is a church in exile and he proposes a missional model based on Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles in Babylon in… ( | 3 comments)
The Story of Israel: A Biblical Theology
I began reading [amazon:978-0830827480:inline], edited by C. Marvin Pate, on my flight from London to Los Angeles. The thesis of the book is that the Bible is held together by the “paradigmatic story of Israel” and that this story properly counts as a biblical theology. I like the… ( | 3 comments)
“My Lord and my God”
In his discussion of the imperial cult in Paul and the Faithfulness of God Tom Wright notes that Domitian liked to be addressed as dominus et deus (“lord and god”)—a phrase “familiar to readers of John’s gospel” (341).Domitian was emperor from AD 81-96. He revived the imperial… ( | 10 comments)