Life After Death_ A History of the Afterlife in Western Religion - Alan Segal [326]
This is a remarkably poignant and visually creative description of the resurrection. Although the exact moment of the resurrection is not described, the physical effects of the saving miracle are portrayed in one long, beautiful arc of motion, like a long camera pan: Jesus emerges from the tomb alive, regaining his exalted nature. Jesus looks as though he were recovering from a long, restful, deep sleep. The angels are depicted as huge in stature, a typical motif from Jewish mysticism and apocalypticism, where the immense size of God and his angels was an object of meditation. The portrayal synthesizes all the various accounts of the Gospels, since it witnesses to the arrival of the man who greets the women in the Gospel of Mark (Mark 16:5). It even attempts to suggest Jesus’ recovery of his logos status, as the Prologue in John implies. Although the mystery is preserved, the narrative adds an enormous amount of information to the Christian master narrative, even while staying true to the Gospel accounts that no one actually saw the resurrection. One can see why this narrative needed to be written.
The cross itself speaks, explaining the ignorance of the world. Perhaps the personification of the cross is just a very vivid way to remove all the doubts that can be expressed about the ability of Jesus to save others when he had died in degradation, so ignominiously and painfully. That was what Paul found transforming and what the Gospels also emphasize. This Gospel wants to defuse the scandal of the cross within its message of exaltation and salvation. The ignorance of the world to the true nature of Christ’s salvation bridges and explains the temporary degradation.
Before this description (Gos. Pet. 4-6), the gospel has already described the day of judgment prophetically, supplementing our knowledge of resurrection with knowledge of the final disposition of sinners and righteous. The resurrection is taken as a demonstration that the day of judgment will follow hard on Jesus’ resurrection. It also demonstrates the importance of Gospel literature for the mission and expansion of Christianity.
In most Early Church writings, as Joanne Dewart shows, resurrection is central but not the focus of the fathers’ discussion, rather assumed as the goal. It is the subject of the argument rather than the terms of it. Where it appears, it is usually ancillary to some other issue in Christian life-for instance, the rejection of docetism, or the coming end. On the other hand, it is like a snowball, gaining momentum as it moves until almost all the third- and fourth-century fathers write extensive separate tractates on the issue.3 The reason for this is not hard to understand. As Christianity moved out of Judea and up the social ladder, Hellenistic philosophical and intellectual conflicts with pagan society became more and more important.
Resurrection started as a liability in the pagan world; the fathers turn it from an irritation to a pearl of theological reflection. Not everyone needs or wants philosophical coherence in religious belief; but those who want it tend to be extraordinarily interested in finding or creating coherence and intellectual adequacy, persevering until they can state it systematically.
In the early period, the eschaton is an important aspect of the church’s proselytizing. The early fathers differed on the order of the events of the end of time. Will all the raised be judged (as Polycarp, 2 Clement, Barnabas) or will only those just who have successfully acquitted