The Wonder of Resurrection

The Disciples Peter and John Running to the Sepulchre on the Morning of the Resurrection, Eugène Burnand 1850 – 1921, oil on canvas (82 × 134 cm) — 1898 Musée d’Orsay, Paris

In his first letter to the Christians at Corinth, Paul declares that the objective reality of the resurrection of Jesus is an essential Christian teaching. He writes, “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile…If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.” (15:17 & 20) Some in Corinth had been teaching that the resurrection of Jesus Christ wasn’t possible and therefore hadn’t happened. According to the Book of Acts, Paul had been confronted by the risen Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus. That experience made him an eyewitness. He also understood that the divine economy of grace depended on Jesus Christ’s victory over death, which requires a real, live bodily resurrection of Jesus that is objectively true.

This puts us in a bind. The resurrection of Jesus is unknowable to us in the empirical way we know most things. We base much of our knowledge on centuries of observation, description, and experimentation – trying the same thing over and over again with the expectation of getting the same, desired result. Humanity has figured out quite a bit through this scientific method that presumes that the created order is just that, ordered and reliable. We call them “laws of nature.” I think that this reliability of reality is a condition of divine faithfulness. This reliability leads to a sense of predictability. We know how things will be because we know how they have been.

Here’s the thing, Jesus’ resurrection (let’s continue to assume that it happened) is a one-off. There’s never been another one! Yes, the Gospels tell us that Jesus raised people from death, but those were resuscitations. The accounts of Jesus’ resurrection suggest that Jesus’ resurrection was transformative in some way that the Gospels illustrate through their accounts of Jesus resurrection appearances, but never fully describe in any detailed or systematic way. It’s never happened since. People who die, stay dead. It’s a law of nature.

But what if the resurrection of Jesus is the beginning of a new way of being, a new way of reality? The physicist and theologian, Robert John Russell proposes this idea as a key to taking the Biblical accounts seriously while remaining in the culture of empirical thinkers – the culture we all inhabit.1 He thinks that the resurrection of Jesus is the first manifestation of a new law of nature. For Russell, it’s not a miracle that violates nature’s laws, resurrection is a divine act – like creation – that comes with its own laws, laws that change the current ones. In this view, in the future, all of us will rise naturally.

There’s a lot more to think about, but I find this to be an intriguing idea. St. Paul describes Christ as “the first fruits of those who have died.” I wonder if Russel’s idea is a way of saying the same thing.

Pastor Jim 

Rev. Katherine Museus and Rev. James A. Wetzstein serve as university pastors at the Chapel of the Resurrection at Valparaiso University and take turns writing weekly devotions.

April 23, 2025

  1. Robert J. Russell “Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology.” Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments. Peters, Ted, Robert J. Russell, and Michael Welker, eds. Grand Rapids, Mich: W.B. Eerdmans Pub, 2002.