THE RESURRECTION of Christ, like the Incarnation and Passion, is a continuing process. Nothing new is in the world. Only the same old things are happening to new people, as is proven by the "news on the hour." What plane will be sky-jacked tomorrow? Who will be murdered? Hidden in the media's love of the tragic is not only a hidden death wish, but also an unconscious concern with the ultimate: death. Accidents. muggings, assassinations are interesting as penultimates because they avoid facing the ultimate. The same is true of the passion for revolution and the despisal of the past. One would almost think to hear revolutionaries speak that they were born without navels - having no debt or bond or cord to the past. For the first time they no longer think about history, so as to avoid old errors with new labels; rather, they seek consciously to create history as a "now."

But this forgets that what Easter did was to create the "new." The Church became the "new" Israel, and each person a "new creature." "When anyone is united to Christ, there is a new world. The old order has gone, and a new order has already begun." - 2Cor. 5:17 -

the Resurrection, if regarded so exclusively as past, finds its vision is limited to the empty tomb, if directed exclusively to the future, it zeroes in on judgment and the final resurrection. But if the Resurrection is progressive, and based on Christ's victory over death, then it affects me now. The Resurrection is not just hope in the sense of futurity, as Ernest Bloch would have us believe. Oscar Wilde's remark is here apropos: that a world map which fails to display the land of Utopia hardly deserves a glance.

Nor is credence to be put in Bultmann's view which ignores the historical part of the Resurrection and makes it only mythological or subjective. According to this view what matters is the "now," not whether Christ really rose from the dead. Nor may one so eliminate the future and the transcendent as does Feuerbach, who would "transform theologians into anthropologists, lovers of God into lovers of man, candidates for the next world into students of this world, religious and earthly monarchs and lords into free, self-reliant citizen of earth."

Nowhere in Scripture does belief in the Resurrection as a fact and as a hope militate against responsibility to earth, but rather "bring healing for all mankind" and demands "living a life of temperance, honesty and godliness in the present age." - Titus 2:12 - The Christian is one who simultaneously rejoices in hope and endures affliction: "Let hope keep you joyful; in trouble stand firm; persist in prayer."

The Resurrection is not just something that happened; it is something still happening. And it continues because it happened once, like a great cosmic explosion that sent the planets spinning and in constant motion.
The perfect person goes to a triple crucifixion in order to attain a corresponding triple resurrection:

1. Death to the womb and birth to human life.
2. Death to human nature and birth to participation in the Divine nature.
3. Death to death and birth to the Glorious Resurrection.

If we were conscious in the darkness of the womb, would we not have shrunk to have left its security for an unknown life? If some agnostic could have addressed us he might have said: "Do you really believe there is another life than prenatal life? What evidence have you who live in darkness that there is such a thing as light? Why barter away the security of nourishment without effort for the insecurity of 'pie in the sky'? You may have faith that there is another world than the one you experience, but your faith is subjective and so void of any scientific certitude of another life."

But would we not have answered that person: "Listen! See these arms of mine laid across my breast, with fingers at their tips? Would I have ever formed them, unless I could touch something and hold somebody like myself? My eyes have a capacity for seeing, my ears for hearing, though I never saw or heard a symphony. My legs! Useless they are now, but were they not made for playing, for walking, for running? I am made for another world, even though my senses have never seen it. Someday the particle of flesh that entombs me will burst with a momentary cry of Calvary's agony of birth, and then will come the joy of light and music and friendship."

Humanity is made up of two................

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Sunday, May 24, 2009

I have through years of reading, pondering, reflecting and contemplating, the 3 things that last; FAITH . HOPE . LOVE and I would like to made available my sharing from the many thinkers, authors, scholars and theologians whose ideas and thoughts I have borrowed. God be with them always. Amen!

I STILL HAVE MANY THINGS TO SAY TO YOU BUT THEY WOULD BE TOO MUCH FOR YOU NOW. BUT WHEN THE SPIRIT OF TRUTH COMES, HE WILL LEAD YOU TO THE COMPLETE TRUTH, SINCE HE WILL NOT BE SPEAKING AS FROM HIMSELF, BUT WILL SAY ONLY WHAT HE HAS LEARNT; AND HE WILL TELL YOU OF THE THINGS TO COME.

HE WILL GLORIFY ME, SINCE ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. EVERYTHING THE FATHER HAS IS MINE; THAT IS WHY I SAID: ALL HE TELLS YOU WILL BE TAKEN FROM WHAT IS MINE. - JOHN 16:12-15 -