The Logic of the Resurrection

The Logic of the Resurrection | Fr. James V. Schall, SJ | Catholic World Report

The truth of the resurrection of the body is bound up with the question of justice.

The
resurrection of the body is not primarily a question of logic. It is a question
of fact, of witness. We do not begin from a philosophical theory to deduce the
resurrection of the body. Rather we start from the fact of the resurrection of
Christ. We ask whether it makes sense, whether it is “reasonable” in some basic
manner. In this sense, philosophy follows fact, provided we can accept the
facts of what is. 

In his
book, Jesus
of Nazareth: Holy Week, Benedict XVI examined all the evidence that would argue
that the resurrection as a fact did not happen. He concluded we have no evidence
showing that the testimony and witness of the disciples present at the events
were fabricated, false, or naïve. We conclude that Jesus was who He said He
was. Included in this understanding of who He was is His resurrection. But the
resurrection involves the fact that Christ as such was one of the Persons of
the Trinity, the Word, who became man. It was not the Father or the Spirit who
became man. The resurrection thus refers to Christ insofar as He was true man,
yet also God.

We learn
in the Old Testament that God never intended for us to die. But we also learn
that death was a consequence of a prior act of man. Death followed the exercise
of freedom. Man was not forced to be what he was intended to be. We might then
expect that the overcoming of death would also be the consequence of freedom.
The question is whether the exercise of human freedom, our self-redemption, was
sufficient to accomplish this purpose. The whole account of Christ’s passion
revolves about this issue.

Behind
this question of freedom, however, is the fact that by nature we human beings,
body and soul, are not free from death. We are the mortals. We die and we know
that we die. Yet, something about us seems “immortal.” We call our souls
precisely immortal, a spiritual power. But this immortality as such does not
include our bodies, the whole persons that we are. 

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