JAT – Williams on Resurrection

Rowan Williams on Resurrection

Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his book

Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, presents us with a

useful deliberation about the difficulty of understanding the nature

of resurrection as a process:

“Even in the Gospels, one thing is never described. There is a

central silence…about the event of resurrection. Even

Matthew, with his elaborate mythological scenery, leaves us

with the strange impression that the stone is rolled away

from a tomb that is already empty…It is an event which is not

describable, because it is precisely there that there occurs

the transfiguring expansion of Jesus’ humanity which is the

heart of resurrection encounters. It is an event on the

frontier of any possible language because it is the moment in

which our speech is both left behind and opened to new

possibilities. It is as indescribable as the process of

imaginative fusion which produces any metaphor; and the

evangelists withdrew as well they might. Jesus’ life is

historical, describable; the encounters with Jesus risen are

historical and (after a fashion) describable, with whatever

ambiguities and unclarities. But there is a sense in which the

raising of Jesus, the hinge between the two histories, the act

that brings the latter out of the former: it is not an event,

with a before and after, occupying a determinate bit of time

between Friday and Sunday…however early we run to the

tomb, God has been there ahead of us…he decisively evades

our grasp, our definition and our projection.”

From: Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, 2003

Caution is in order. Williams, who is decidedly theological in this

interpretation, is not proposing something radically new. He is

appealing to expand how one thinks about the Resurrection. It is

useful to recognize that the Resurrection might be “not describable

. . . not an event, with a before and after, occupying a determinate

JAT – Williams on Resurrectionbit of time.” The best understanding of the ‘nature’ of the

Resurrection may be recognizing how much one cannot presume

anything about its nature as an event.

Points to consider

What ‘sort’ of Resurrection do we envisage Williams is suggesting above?

To what extent does this fit with other views we have encountered?

Look back at the Biblical examples and creed and see to what extent such points are reflected above.