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8/13/2019 Easter-Ambiguous Victory (Structure of Evil)
1/6
writer for theNational Observer." (One
can't, without back issues at hand, be
dead sure of even those names.)
The very devil can cite Scripture for
any old purpose. It is inevitable, and of
short-lived interest, that any number of
less clever contemporary colporteurs
should appropriate CS. Lewis (or flag or
motherhood or Panama's Canal) to
theirs.
One looks forward to reading
Lindskoog on almost any topic; and one
hopes that she will lift up her wary eye
from the freebie review copies of all those
evangelical publishers in California and
points East, so as to let it fall on some
deviltry deserving of her gift.
So as to be constructively hopeful
one suggests: let Lindskoog write for the
Journal a review of the first issue ofTh
Born-Again Hustler, a magazine whose
advent cannot, after all, now be very fa
off.
Bernard van't Hul
Easter:the ambiguous victory
W. Fred Graham
The title of this article does not express my theology of
Easter, but comes from a reading of Paul Van Buren'sThe Burden of Freedom (Seabury, 1976). Van Buren, no
longer associated with Death of God theology, argues
that Christ 's resurrection bore "meager conse
quences/' became a "tremendous cover-up," and has
hidden from us the obvious fact that his victory
did not bring on the expected messianic reign. In
stead, although Jesus was raised to new life, death and
oppression have continued to be the lot of everyone
else.
Against this reading of the relationship between
the resurrection and the coming of the Kingdom of
God, I shall place the careful study by Thomas F. Torrance,Space, Time and Resurrection (Eerdmans, 1976), in
which a strong case is made that Christ won a cosmic
victory by his resurrection. Van Buren cries out for a
visible victoryone where sickness and disease are
overcome, liberation breaks forth, righteousness and
peace kiss each other, and even death is undone. But
Torrance holds with Augustine that we are now living
in the mil lennium if we can only view history "from
the point of triumph of the risen Lamb of God who
subornes all world events to serve God's saving pur
pose" (p. 138).
After reviewing both books against each other, I
shall conclude by calling attention to a curiously over
looked historical argument from sociologist Ernest
Becker's Escape from Evil (Free Press, 1975), which I
believe supplements and even corrects the studies of
the theologians.
I still remember with embarrassment sitting in a
young adult Sunday School class in my home church
W.Fred Graham is a professor in the department of reli
gious studies at Michigan State University, East Lansing.
in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and being asked by th
teacher how I would interpret Jesus' words in Mar13:30: "Truly, I say to you, this generation will no
pass away before all these th ings take place ." I was
seminary student at the time and would within th
hour be conducting the worship service, proclaimin
the Word of God to my old friends and relatives. Bu
that particular word, with angels gathering the elec
and Jesus coming in clouds of glory, I had not a clu
for understanding. This is not, of course, a new prob
lem. St. Paul seems clearly to have changed his min
about the nearness of the second Advent. In I Thes
salonians 4 he tells early believers that many of them
will still be alive when Christ's triumph is made complete. But in Romans 2 and 9-11, he speaks of ours a
the time of God's patience and envisions the conver
sion of Israel before the end. By the time II Peter wa
penned, it was necessary to explain the delayed com
ing by noting that God's clock doesn't keep time lik
ours.
Van Buren is no longer the confident secularist o
The Secular Meaning of the Gospel (1968), who assure
us then that we neither were able nor needed to tal
about God. In his return in theism he brought bac
two convictions that were healthy even during tha
pestilential period. First, he maintains now as he di
then that the disciples of Jesus met the risen Chris
and that the resurrection is the center of Christia
proclamation and life. Secondly, he keeps asking th
down-to-earth questions, the almost brutal, practica
questions many of us want to sidestep, as doubtless
did in that Sunday School class over twenty years ago
We may not like the Temple Universi ty professor
answers, but we cannot ignore his questions.
His is a slender book and I shall summarize a
briefly as I can. He maintains that God has give
humans freedom and in doing so qualifies his ow
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HUMAN FREEDOM DOES NOT MEANHAVING LEISURETIME TOCHOOSEBETWEEN CUTTINGTHEGRASS AND WATCHINGTHETIGERS...
freedom. Indeed, God's freedom is now dependent on
ours, "so that the realization of his freedom awaits the
realization of the freedom of the sons and daughters ofGod" (pp. 9-10). This is not a novel view, nor is its
corollary, that human freedom does not mean having
leisure time to choose between cutting the grass and
watching the Tigers, but can only be realized when all
people are free from oppression and hunger. He barks
harsh words against the false freedoms prop agandized
by both state socialism and international capitalism.
His third chapter treats "the mystery of Israel's free
dom," which is that she must announce the freedom
God wants for all peoples by witnessing to the liberat
ing events in her history beginning with the Exodus.
(He also has what seems to be silly advice to Israel that
she also whisper and drop hints about liberating
events in the history of others, such as the emergence
of Castro's Cuba or the new China. Perhaps had Van
Buren indicated how and who would whisper and
drop hint ss ome bo ard of rab bis ? the Israeli
Parliament?this advice would not seem so airy and
off-hand.)
But it is in his final chapter that he puts the
orthodox on the defensive. The resurrection of Jesus
Christ, he argues, was real enough but odd also be
cause in Jesus' appearances to his disciples "he either
could not or would not stay with them, and the former
seems strongly suggested" (p. 91). He ate fish with
them, but they had trouble recognizing him. They
expected his near return ("will you now restore again
the Kingdom to Israel?"Acts 1:6), but he hasn't
come though we've been waiting over nineteen
centuries.
God did something for Jesus not done for any otherman, causing his history, his story, to resume afterhis death, not merely as any man's story may continue in the memory of those who live on. To thisman it was said that death was not the last word. Inanother sense, however, his was a victory so qualified as to make one wonder. He was alive, but whatsort of victory was it that could not be realized in afull and open return to the land of the living? Hecould appear, but he could not stay. His disciplescalled him Lord, but the kingship of death and oppression continued as before (p. 93).
Two other points must be noted. First, this am
biguity is like all the liberation events in Israel's
historyExodus, the reception of the Law, captivity
and return, the State of Israel rising from the ashes of
Auschwitzthey are hints (earnests, down payments)
of the way the mysterious freedom of God acts in the
world. In them God causes freedom to happen, b
because our freedom involves the freedom of a
peoples, they are not unqualified triumphs, but awitnessing events. God is our hope and gives us sig
of a liberation to come, that we may keep up th
struggle (p. 103).
The second point to be noted is that early Chri
tians, without deliberately intending to deceive, pulle
a massive cover-up to pretend that a comple
victory had been won in Jesus' resurrection. Phase
hid his delay by interpreting his heralding a new e
on earth as preaching another world, running paralle
so to speak, to this world. The realm of righteousne
and peace is above. Phase 2 was to identify the ne
age with the church: "Was liberation promised? Theenter the church, and you are thereby liberated. I
deed, no liberation outside the church!" (p. 98). Pha
3 was to replace longing for a Messiah to bring rig
teousness on earth by teaching that each individu
will at death go to be with the Messiah in that oth
invisible world. Van Buren contrasts this sharply wi
I Thessalonians 4:15-17, where both quick and de
meet the risen Christ. (Unfortunately for Van Bur
that meeting in the air doesn't sound very earthy
me!) And thus , he charges, early Christi anity turn
its back on Judaism, its mother, which continued
affirm the prophetic (and Nazarene) conviction th
God's Kingdom must come on earth. Thus Chris
church became pagano-Christ ian, not Judae
Christian.
The basic issue here is the delay in the coming
the Kingdom. II Peter witnesses to its effect on t
early church; Albert Schweitzer made it the heart
his frustrated Jesus in his The Quest for the Historic
Jesus.And Van Buren reminds us forcefully that it is
issue that will not down. Who amongReformed Journ
readers hasn't agonized about the seemingly lit
progress we in the church have made toward a
earthly reign of Christ? And who among us, wh
holding onto the conviction that each person has lbeyond death with God, hasn't wondered why t
Kingdom teachings of Jesus make so little impact up
human history? No wonder we are tempted into d
pensational rejection of Christ's clear demands for p
fection in righteousness and love, when so few ha
lived them and so small has been their effect on wo
affairs.
Thomas F. Torrance, like Van Buren, was a stud
under Karl Barth. That is about the only thing th
8 The Reformed Jour
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BUT CAN ONLYBEREALIZED
WHEN ALL PEOPLE ARE FREE
FROM OPPRESSION AND HUNGER.
share (although their common tendency to expound
apodictically may have been a disease caught in
Basel).Space, Time and Resurrectionis a strong book. Ifin places there is a bit too much parsing of historical
theologyresurrection and justification, resurrection
and reconciliation, resurrection and redemption,
etc.nonetheless there is a lot of meat, and it engages
the Polanyi strain of modern philosophy very satisfac
torily. But we shall narrow our attention to those
places where Torrance responds to Van Buren's
concerns.
Clearly Torrance believes that Jesus' resurrection
did inaugurate a new age, though that age is not yet
clearly evident. He writes:
The Kingdom of Christ was fully inaugurated withhis crucifixion in its condition of humiliation, andwith his resurrection in triumph over the forces ofdarkness and evil and his ascension as Lamb of Godto the throne of the Father. That was in the mostintense sense the fulfillment of Christ's Kingdom. Inother words, this is the immediacy and the finality ofthe Kingdom of which Christ spoke as taking place inthe life-time of his hearers; but it is that same inaugurated Kingdom which will be openly manifested atthe end of time when the veil will be taken away.This is what we traditionally refer to as the "finaladvent" or simply the 'parousia'of Christ (p. 146).
But did not Jesus expect the Kingdom to come
with his person, the end-times to hasten to their con
clusion, and his ministry to have an imminent visible
fulfilment? To this Torrance has two answers. The first
is that signs of the new creation are "elusive" within
our space-time world, because we tend to understand
and evaluate according to old-order thinking. The sec
ond involves a fairly complicated argument that the
Kingdom is now fulfilled in God's time and place,
though not in ours. To both these arguments, he ap
pends his belief that Jesus did not expect a quick
consummation of the new age. Thatbelief, it seems to
me, is based not so much on the gospel texts as upon
the second argument. Let us look at each.That evidence for signs of the new creation are
elusive within our world is not fully argued and is
never illustrated, perhaps because Torrance believes it
has already been witnessed to sufficiently by others.
What he means is that if we take up our cross, if we
allow the resurrection to transform our lives and
thought patterns, then we'll find we are already in the
new age. Here no good discussion seems possible
only assertion. The "healthy-minded" like Corrie Ten
Boom and Catherine Marshall will find lice, disease,
March 1978
even infant death as events God uses to save lives. But
the "sick soul" will note that babies still starve, armies
march, and the innocent die, as they have since theDead Sea took sick. The former see the elusive evi
dence for the Kingdom's presence; the.latter do not.
The second argument, however, is more discuss
able. Following Polanyi, Torrance insists that there are
levels of inquiry which open upward, but are not
reducible downward. The lower levelsay
che mis try mus t be completed by a level above
itsay biology. Life is not explained by reducing
living things to their chemical elements; but chemical
elements are taken up into life. Just so with the resur
rection. It gives new meaning to levels of inquiry
below itsay history. But it is not reducible to historical events or to the kinds of data the historian or New
Testament scholar must use within their levels of in
quiry. Rather, the materials of history or New Testa
ment studies are given new meaning by the
resurrection.
In terms of the delayed return of Christ, two kinds
of space and time are involved, and the higher inter
prets the lower, not the other way around. The lower
is our ordinary space and timefor Jesus ascended
from Peter, James and John, etc., humans living in our
perceived space and time. But as God-Man he as
cended to God and took the human with him, so that
what he is there cannot be enclosed in our space-timecategories. God has no boundaries, so the ascended
Christ at the right hand of the Father is everywhere
although everywhere is not a space category for us.
Likewise he inhabits eternity, "God's time." So the
return of Christ in "God's space" and "God's time" is
already accomplished (pp. 127-31). This is why the
other side of our struggle for righteousness and peace
on earth is "from the point of the triumph of the risen
Lamb of God" already the millennium (p. 138).
Since, says Torrance, the New Testament Chris
tians lived in the expected imminence of the return of
Christ (because they were united to Christ, citizens ofthe new age inaugurated by the resurrection and as
cension), it is false to interpret varying New Testament
language like I Thessalonians 4 and Romans 9-11 or
Paul's awaiting death in Philippians as disillusion
ment with Christ's delay, thus forcing the church to
alter its outlook on the end- times (p. 153). St. Paul
lived in the new age, yet also in this old order. Of
course his language participates in both realities, not
as contradiction but as truth seen from different van
tage points.
9
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VAN BUREN EXEGETES 1 CORINTHIANS 15
AND COMPLETELY MISSES THE FACT THAT
IF CHRIST IS NOT RISENWEARE STILL IN OUR SINS.
Even Jesus' teachings about the imminence of his
return and the inauguration of the Kingdom of God
are more fully apprehended after the resurrection. Forthe resurrection interprets Jesus' words, not the other
way around. Torrance's picture of an imaginary biog
rapher who travels about with Jesus and then must
reshape his notes and rewrite his material after the
resurrection is very good (pp. 161-66).
To sum up: Torrance gets around all of Van Bu-
ren's arguments about the failure of the Kingdom to
arrive when expected by the analogy of "stereoscopic
viewing." Seen from one sidethe mundane, histori
cal viewwe experience delay in Christ's return and
the establishment of the Kingdom. Seen from the
otherthe higher, resurrection overlookwe seehis complete victory. Taken separately, we have two
views. But whe n we focus stereoptically "the historical
Jesus and the risen Jesus are fused into one image of
spatio-temporal depth," and we are "really able to see
and understand Jesus Christ as he is in reality"
(p. 167). In this way the concerns of both the New
Testament scholar or historian and the modern Chris
tian who wants, say, an end to Communist-caused
death in Cambodia or capitalist-militarist-caused
death in Chile are both answered. The Kingdom has
come and we can in faith be part of that new creation,
jus t like the Christ ian proletariat who were fed to lions
in the Colosseum.
I confess some unhappiness with both Van Buren and
Torrance. Against the former, I find no place in his
monograph for the atonement. He can exegete I Corin
thians 15 and completely miss the fact that if Christ is
not risen we are still in our sins. To me such an omis
sion is an admission of special pleading. Further, it is
unnecessary and tendentious to interpret the over
comin g of death for Chris t's faithful as part of a
cover-up. For there is plenty in the synoptic reportingon Jesus to argue that our Lord took individual life
beyond death as seriously as the inauguration of an
earthly kingdom. In addition, Van Buren's assertions
that the resurrected Christ was not able to stay with
his disciples are merely thatassertions. Van Buren
hardly tries to document that inability.
Against Torrance, I agree with Van Buren that the
evidence for the Kingdom of God should not be quite
so elusive. Without agreeing that the early church
covered up for the delayed return, one must grant that
the church's charge by its Victor-Christ ought not to
have dribbled out so early, to have proclaimed anti-
Semitism as part of its message, and to have triumphedover Rome so fully and yet to have failed people so
completelyas the history of Christendom shows
even today. It is disturbing that Torrance's discussion
ignores so completely the absence of external evidence
that Christ is Lord. It is truly "ivory tower" in that
respect. Is all that Old Testament imagery of an earthly
reign of God really "old-order" talk? Must his reign
be only in the individual's life and thus so elusive?
For one who has lived in Torrance's Scotland for a
time, there is a disturbing parallel between Torrance's
ignoring the church's failure to exhibit the Kingdom
and the inability of the Church of Scotland to be alivein the time and space of Scotland's people. Can some
thing be so elusive it can no longer be found?
Ernest Becker, though Jewish, understood the mean
ing of the resurrection for early Christians. Further
more, he argued that its power affected both the indi
vidual Christian and the community, and extended
itself into what promised for several centuries to be
non-violent conquest by lovea kingdom both o
heaven and of earth.
In his widely acclaimedThe Denial of Death (1973Becker analyzed the fateful element in human life a
our denial that we are going to die. In a running battl
with Freud, he argued that all the neurotic behavio
that Freud uncovered and explained as rooted in th
libidinal and aggressive Id is really rooted in our frigh
at our bodies, the creaturely and mortal part of us, tha
dooms us to death. Soto give but one exampleth
anally retentive person is not one fixated upon a par
ticular infant-parent Oedipal relationship durin
toilet-training; rather, such a person is horrified at hi
production of feces, a decaying body excretion tha
foresignals the ultimate death and decay of the physical bearer of both feces and individual life. The bowe
movement is a reminder of body, which is a reminde
of death.
Having demonstrated that the all-encompassin
fear of death drives us to attempt to transcend deat
through culturally standardized hero systems an
symbols, Becker turns in Escape from Evil to look a
how these "heroic self-images" are the root causes o
human evil. He accepts Otto Rank's thesis that th
Roman Empire finally and fully eliminated the cla
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TORRANCE'S ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE DELAYED PAROUSIA THESIS
MAY LOOK GOOD FROM HEAVEN,
BUT SEEM CURIOUSLY DETACHED FROM EARTH.
and its rituals as the chief locus for immortality-
projects and substituted the patriarchal family. The
tyrant-father in each family was symbolized by the
emperor. Roman society caused terrible social in
equality, for it destroyed "clannishness" and its inbuilt
tendencies to equality. (However, primitive equality
was offset somewhat by power-gathering within the
clan by sacred persons, medicine men, who tapped
into the spirit world.)
What Christianity did, says Becker, was introduce
"The Era of the Son," in revolt against the oppressions
and inequalities of the family. The sons and daughters
were free of the father and of all earthly domination,
for they were immortal sons of God, a sonship that
was heavenly, but had social consequences, for
the individual could fashion his own salvation independent of any earthly authority. Christianity was agreat democratization that put spiritual power rightback into the hands of the single individual and inone blow wiped out the inequalities of the dispossessed and the slaves that had gradually and inexorably developed since the breakup of the primitiveworld and that had assumed such grotesque proportions in the mad drivenness of the Mediterraneanworld (p. 69).
Of course, we know what happened. After Chris
tianity exploded in a flash fire that lit up the whole of
Mediterranean society, which Becker somewhere calls
the most amazing non-violent conquest in history, the
Empire came hat in hand and asked the church if she
needed help. And the church, flattered, gave up most
of her power to Rome and quickly exerted what was
left on the Roman patriarchal model. The Christian
solution to humanity's penchant for avoiding death by
erecting horrible state systems and unhelpful hero
models ceased to apply. The Reformation, says Becker,
was a late attempt to reassert the promise of early
Christianity, but it failed when caught up in the poli
tics of the period.
It can be seen, I think, that the resurrection meetsthe human need to transcend death, and does so with
out the anti-physical asceticism of other religions. By
doing so, it also introduces an authentic note of social
egalitarianism by its declaration that all believers are
join t-heirs of the Kingdom. Eternal life wi th God is no
cover-up to hide the delay of the Kingdom of God, but
is essential to the transformation of human society. All
of this fits Becker's thesis and counts against Van Bu-
ren's discussion.
Most of Van Buren's case is lost: no cover-up took
place; the resurrection-teaching meets the basic
human need; no world-denial was necessitated be
cause of a parallel kingdom in heaven. However, a
major argument remainsthat Jesus and the early
church expected the quick, visible coming of his king
dom but that God works more slowly. Torrance's ar
guments against the delayed parousia thesis may look
good from heaven, but seem curiously detached from
earth. At this one point his is a "P.G. Wodehouse
theology," where great things happen to liberate indi
viduals from real and fancied crises, but the reader
knows the "real" world of hungry and exploited
peoples is deliberately set aside and unacknowl
edged.*
Perhaps we have astand-off. 1 find myself concluding
with Van Buren that God expects his people to work at
Kingdom-bringing-in. And also with Torrance that
because Jesus' resurrection and ascension are not
earth-escaping, a stereoscopic faith knows that defeat
in our history does not negate Christ's victory for us.
But I would rather put it Becker's way, that the church
had one chance and blew it. Will it get another? It
may. And if it does it will have to ponder a last word
from the modern Jewish prophet:
I think that today Christianity is in trouble not be
cause its myths are dead, but because it does notoffer its ideal of heroic sainthood as an immediatepersonal one to be lived by all believers. . . . Primitive Christianity is a real threat to both commercialism and communism, at least when it takes itsown message seriously. Primitive Christianity is oneof the few ideologies that has kept alive the idea ofthe invisible dimension of nature and the priority ofthis dimension for assuring immortality. Thus it is athreat to any one-dimensional immortality ideology,and could work in a democracy that modern democratic man himself finds too burdensome, a societyfree of class and race struggle, because symbols ofclass and race prestige don't carry weight in therealm of the invisible spirit (pp. 164 and 86).
Replacing the culture heroes of militarism and the
packaged heroes of modern consumerism by the
hero-saint is the work of the Holy Spirit. But how to
become primitive Christians in the twentieth century
is our personal calling.
*My disagreement with Torrance should probably be balanced by areading of a sympathetic assessment of Barthian "triumph of Easter" theology; e.g., Berkouwer's comments in A Half Century ofTheology (Eerdmans, 1977), pp. 67-74.
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^ s
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