In the New Testament traditions it is the objective nature of this event that empowers the believing response of individuals. While Jesus’ resurrection is not complete without peoples’ subjective response, it cannot be reduced to it. In Jesus’ resurrection a victim is raised up from death, so that the executioner does not triumph over him. A part of creation is rescued from annihilation and elevated into the glory of God, as a foretaste of the destiny that awaits the rest. The resurrection of Jesus transcends the dichotomy of subjective and objective dimensions.57 As a saving event his resurrection has a relational dimension and a purpose that is not complete without its subjective appropriation by those who have faith in it. Yet this appropriation is a response to something that has happened apart from their response to it.
As Jesus’ resurrection has objective and subjective dimensions, it is both an event, an objective reality and a symbol expressive of its meaning, a promise that points beyond itself. It was an event before it became a symbol. Yet the transcendent nature of this event is such that it could only be interpreted in “metaphoric and mythic categories.”58 It is a symbol based on a real event,59 but its symbolic power is not limited to what historical inquiry can establish.60 Because it is based on a real event, it is a promise that presses towards its fulfillment, when what it symbolizes will become fully real. One can speak of it as a saturated event full of multidimensional and inexhaustible meaning61 that reshapes one’s worldview and continually presses towards new and further expressions of its excess of meaning. It presents an ultimate newness62 that can empower struggles for justice, acts of compassion, mercy, forgiveness, and reconciliation.
Yet if the “in spite of” character of Jesus’ resurrection is forgotten it can become a source of imperialism and religious oppression.63 The meaning of Jesus’ resurrection is intrinsically tied to his cross. Jesus’ resurrection did not obliterate this, but stands in a dialectical relationship to the continuing realities of what his cross symbolizes, such as suffering from oppression, the tyranny of empire, and injustice. When the historical concreteness of Jesus’ cross is remembered, his resurrection becomes an expression of God’s preferential option for the poor. This is a transcendent principle.64 As the face of evil changes from age to age, Jesus’ resurrection calls for solidarity with and liberation of the new poor, who, depending on the time and place, may be Jewish, Islamic, or atheist.
The “in spite of” character of Jesus’ resurrection also relates to the church. The risen Jesus is still on the way to the fulfillment of what is promised in his resurrection and remains transcendent to the church, which always needs to learn new aspects of the truth of his resurrection. As a result the risen Jesus frequently confronts the church as a stranger and in judgment. Accompanying this, one of the key meanings of Jesus’ resurrection is forgiveness. The risen Jesus may confront the church through the voices of other religions. This difference between the risen Jesus and the church creates a dialogical situation between Christianity and Judaism65 and, by extension, between Christianity and other religions. Aspects of the meaning of the symbol of Jesus’ resurrection can be revealed through dialogue with the symbols and teachings of other world religions.
Theological and Soteriological Dimensions
of Jesus’ Resurrection
Jesus’ resurrection has theological and soteriological trajectories of meaning. Both summary and narrative traditions interpret it as God’s vindication of Jesus’ person and ministry over against the repudiation of both in his crucifixion. An early and permanent meaning of this, picking up the apocalyptic understanding of resurrection, was that here God’s love triumphed over evil in a definitive way that points towards a final overcoming of evil. As Jesus’ resurrection was a vindication of his person and message, it was also, for those believing in it, a revelation of God. It affirms the characterization of God in Jesus’ ministry and reaffirms the Jewish belief in God as a source of hope for the final overcoming of evil. It reveals God to be ultimate (Rom 4:17), yet also living,66 active in history in specific events and new ways and doing new things. The similarity of the grammatical structure of some early expressions of Easter faith such as “God raised him from the dead” (Rom 10:9) to some summary statements of faith in the Hebrew Bible such as “God brought Israel out of Egypt” (Deut 8:14) points to how the Easter faith of some parts of the early church was “an innovation within Judaism” that could regard “the Easter experience qualitatively as on the same level as God’s classical act, the Exodus of Israel from Egypt.”67 The resurrection of Jesus was thus seen by some as a defining event in the life of God.
Jesus’ resurrection was also interpreted as the exaltation of his person into the presence of God.68 This led to him being portrayed in the New Testament as the key figure and his coming as the decisive event in the history of salvation. The transformation of Jesus’ person here was also seen to affect the Holy Spirit and Jesus’ relationship to it. Through his resurrection and exaltation, Jesus went from being inspired by the Spirit during his earthly life to becoming the giver of the Spirit as the risen Christ.69 The Holy Spirit was experienced as present in a new way through faith in Jesus and became identified in the early church as the Spirit of Christ. Jesus’ resurrection was thus interpreted as part of a theological event that included his ministry and crucifixion and the pouring out of the Holy Spirit. Through these events God became present in history in a new way.
This experience and interpretation of Jesus’ resurrection, combined with the idea of his exaltation into God’s presence, led to worship of Jesus in significant portions of the early church, soon including prayer and praise directed to him. This created a dialectical relationship between the early church’s communal memory of Jesus and its inherited understandings of God, so that throughout the New Testament “given concepts of God are used to interpret what happened to Jesus and what occurred within the Christian church and its mission, and faith in God is in turn shaped by faith in Jesus and related events.”70 Jesus’ resurrection thus had a far-reaching effect on the early church’s worship and theology.
Jesus’ resurrection was interpreted as revealing that God’s love is greater than sin and evil, so that it came to be seen as a source of hope against various forms of suffering and alienation. As God’s vindication of Jesus as a victim of violent injustice, Jesus’ resurrection revealed that God’s love is ultimately greater than forces of oppression that bear down on people from without. Interpreted as involving forgiveness for those who deserted him,71 Jesus’ resurrection also shows God’s love as able to overcome the damaging effects of one’s own actions to one’s identity. The saving significance of Jesus’ resurrection also extends beyond history and human relations. For Paul it promises the coming of a transformed existence in which sin and death are no more (1 Cor 15: 22). Its eschatological character “makes it an event of significance not only for Jesus’ person but for the whole of reality.”72 Theologians concerned with the environmental crisis have seen in the resurrection of Jesus’ body a promise of salvation for the whole creation73 and a call for faithfulness to the earth. As the cross symbolizes all that negates God’s presence and alienates people