For the most part, the feedback I received on my last post amounted to the following complaint: “It makes no sense to believe a story, no matter how convincing it was to the generations who preceded us, if that story has as its central element an event totally unlike anything we can presently observe directly. The ancients were wrong about lots of other things, so when their accounts don’t fit into our present scientific models for how the world works, we should be skeptical of what they have to say.”
This argument strikes me as problematic for three reasons. First, its very from is a clear example of the Argumentum ex Silentio logical fallacy. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and there is a certain hubris to inferring from our own limited experience that others were mistaken in their own observations. Second, it is a fundamental misunderstanding of how science works to suggest that we should disregard evidence simply because it can’t be explained by our present theories. Finally, and most importantly, it is false to suggest that direct access to the truth of Christ’s resurrection died with our ancestors. Belief in Christianity is justified not just by historical accounts but also by philosophical argument and our modern experience. In this post, I would like to argue that the narrative of Christ’s incarnation, death, and subsequent resurrection follows a consistent logical thread. Then, in my next post, I’ll discuss the ways in which we can witness the unfolding of that story even today.
To begin, I should start with what I believe to be the central doctrine of the Church. This doctrine is, of course, already expressed concisely in the Creeds, but briefly, this is what I mean when I talk about the Christian story: An infinite, omni-benevolent God created the world out of an outpouring of love. Subsequently, mankind has consistently rejected the very love that is the fabric of his being, denying God and replacing Him with false idols (i.e. manifestations of power, material entities, and even one’s own sense of self). Death, then, emerges as the spiritual distance we create between ourselves and the very thing that sustains us. Because this situation is intolerable, God took further action to rescue mankind from itself and ultimately Himself became incarnate. We continue to reject Him and crucify Him (I knowingly use the present tense here, even though I am, in part, referring to an historical event). Yet, in the words of St. Paul, “Death is swallowed up in victory” (Corinthians 15:54), and through God’s own atoning act, we ourselves become divine.
There is no doubt that elements of this story seem outlandish — even offensive to our modern sensibilities. The proposition that our frail frames have the potential to bear within them an infinite Godhead itself seems preposterous. The idea that God somehow redeems the world by suffering death on a cross, only to rise again in victory seems even more so. However, if we think seriously about the matter, it’s hard to see any other solution to the problem of evil, and in that light, the incredibility of the Christian story becomes itself circumstantial evidence for its truth. As C.S. Lewis writes in Mere Christianity:
Reality, in fact, is usually something you could not have guessed. That is one of the reasons I believe Christianity. It is a religion you could not have guessed. If it offered us just the kind of universe we had always expected, I should feel we were making it up. But, in fact, it is not the sort of thing anyone would have made up. It has just that queer twist about it that real things have. (C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, Book 2, Chapter 2)
I have already addressed the question of whether it makes sense to believe in purposeful creation or nihilistic randomness in a previous post. I have also already suggested that it is self-evident that we live in an imperfect world. The portion of the story above about false idols amounts to a re-articulation of this point. It is, of course, the Christian doctrine of original sin (albeit expressed in less mythical terms) and it is exactly consistent with my intuitive sense that it is my obsession with my own sense of self that distorts my relationship with everything else. The rest of the story, I argue, follows naturally from the proposition that the creator of this world (i.e. God) is all-loving. We will come back to this proposition in my next post, but for now, assume that it is true.
If it is the case that we exist because of the act of an omni-benevolent God, then, by definition, we exist because of an act of love (as all acts of an omni-benevolent being must be imbued with His all-loving nature). My experience with love is that it is characterized fundamentally by a willingness to give unconditionally one’s self to another. So, logically, if God created us by an act of love, then we can say equivalently that God created us by giving Himself to us. To reject God’s love, then, is to reject one’s own creation. It is to reject life itself, and this is the very definition of death. The exact mechanisms of death are a matter for medical science, but the underlying cause becomes undeniably that we are corrupted by our own depravity.
In this context, God’s response in our story is a matter of common sense. Of course an omni-benevolent God would seek to restore life to those who are rejecting it. Of course He would seek to transform our flawed and decaying existence into something perfect and incorruptible. To breach the divide that is the source of Death in the first place, God needs to make Himself known to us, such that we are open to receiving Him. What better approach could there be for this than for God to become man? What clearer a way to enable the creation of a right relationship than to become the only thing that we really understand and relate to — ourselves?
Sadly, the next chapter of the story is just as obvious. Einstein famously said that the the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This is almost exactly the story of the incarnation. Over and over again, we create our own demise, and yet, God is “betting” that if we can just meet Him face-to-face, we’ll finally understand. And of course we don’t.
But here we come to the “queer twist”. If the ontology of Death is the destruction of our relationship with God, and if that culminates in the killing of God Himself, then what can possibly remain after Death’s ultimate victory? The concept of relationship with a life sustaining God ceases to make any sense if God is dead. The very existence of the world sustained by God ceases to make any sense in the absence of a God who can sustain it through the continual gift of Himself. Thus, the death of God must also be the death of Death, for the latter cannot exist without the former.
On the other hand, in no way can the utter destruction of the world be seen as an act of love if that’s the end of the story. To suggest that an all-loving God would recklessly “bet” everything on an act of insanity clearly doesn’t work. And so we come to the Resurrection. To be an act of love, God’s death can’t just be the cataclysmic end of the world; it needs also to be the inflection point in human history that brings about a totally new creation. That this should begin with God, who is outside of time and space, giving back to Himself the life of the world makes perfect sense. How else could there be any light out of the darkness?
