Wednesday, September 12, 2012

The Resurrection of Jesus.

"But Barth did have an answer to the question he had posed: where does the world of God have an opening towards society? God would not be God if the matter rested with the antithesis in which the world of God stands over against this world. There must be a way from there to here, since clearly there is no way from here to there. Everything which he had said up to this point rested upon a presupposition: namely, that in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead the history of God has cut through the history of this world at a single point, 'perpendicularly from above'. The movement whose power and significance has been unveiled in the resurrection of Jesus is a divine movement. The wholly other, eternal life of God has been revealed. That the resurrection was 'bodily' means that the profane world has been addressed at the very point of its subjection to the powers of death and destruction. When we know this, we can no longer live as if the laws which govern social relationships have an independent validity and significance. They have already been set aside in principle. In the light of the resurrection, we can no longer live under the illusions that we can overcome the world but we also know that God can and will. We live in hope of the coming Kingdom."

- Bruce McCormack, Critically Realistic Dialectical Theology, 198-199.