Testing Scripture, by John Polkinghorne

Chapter Seven

1.  Throughout the Roman world crucifixion was regarded with such horror that ‘cross’ (Greek stauros) was a word of sinister meaning to a degree that it is hard for us to recapture, since for us it has come to mean simply a conventional religious symbol. There is no depiction of the crucified Christ in Christian art until the centuries in which crucifixion was no longer a contemporary reality. The earliest Christians preferred to represent Jesus as the Good Shepherd.

- The cross upon which Jesus died carries multiple meanings.  What did it mean to those first Christians, and what does it mean to us today?

2.  There are stories in the Gospels of persons who were apparently dead being restored to life. However, these are resuscitations, that is to say, those so restored will undoubtedly in due course die again. They have only experienced a temporary reprieve from mortality, somewhat like people in our own day who have had near-death experiences. Jesus’ resurrection is quite different. He is given a permanent victory over death.

- Why is resurrection such a unique & difficult reality to embrace?

3.  The earliest statement of the Resurrection that we have occurs in the Pauline writings, which predate the Gospels. (Writing to the Corinthians about the year 55…).

- What was the timing and nature of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance to Paul?

4.  At first sight it might seem that we are simply confronted with a bunch of variously made-up tales, constructed by different Christian communities as ways of expressing their conviction that in some way Jesus continued to be their living Lord. However, there is an unexpected and persistent feature of the stories, expressed in different ways that persuades me that their historicity needs to be taken seriously.

- What was this “feature?”

5.  A second line of evidence is of course presented in the Gospels, which all tell the story of the discovery of the empty tomb (Matthew 28.1–8; Mark 16.1–8; Luke 24.1–10; John 20.1–10). There is a good deal of agreement between these gospel accounts, even if there are differences about such details as the names of the women and the exact time of morning they made their discovery.

- In what ways do the gospels address the challenges of believing in the empty tomb?  Then why isn’t everyone convinced?

6.  For the Christian believer, the Resurrection makes sense because it represents a triple vindication. It is the vindication of Jesus, for his life had a character that meant that it should not have ended in rejection and failure. It is a vindication of God, who was not found after all to have abandoned the one who had wholly committed himself to doing his Father’s will. It is a vindication of a deep-seated human intuition that in the end the last word does not lie with death and futility, but we live in a world that is a meaningful cosmos and not ultimately a meaningless chaos.

Christians see the resurrection of Christ as the sign and guarantee within history of a destiny that awaits the rest of humanity beyond history (‘for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ’, 1 Corinthians 15.22).

- What does your baptismal covenant mean to you…that you will one day, beyond this life, share in the resurrection of Jesus?

- What does Jesus’ resurrection mean for the renewal of creation itself?