The Resurrection

Article 3: The Resurrection

1. The Relation of Christ’s Resurrection to His Death

Christ’s glorious Resurrection may be considered from three distinct points of view.

Apologetically, i.e., regarded as a historic fact establishing His Divinity, it is the bulwark of our faith¹ and the pledge of our own future resurrection.²

Christologically, the Resurrection signalizes Christ’s entrance into the state of glory which He had earned for Himself by His passion and death.³

Considered from the distinctive viewpoint of Soteriology, the Resurrection of Christ was not, strictly speaking, the chief, nor even a contributing cause of our redemption;⁴ but it was an essential complement thereof, and constituted its triumphant consummation.

a) The Catholic Church regards the Resurrection as an integral, though not an essential, element of the atonement. That is why she mourns on Good Friday and celebrates Easter as the great feast of the Redemption. “Lastly,” says the Roman Catechism,⁵ ”… the Resurrection of our Lord was necessary, in order to complete the mystery of our salvation and redemption; for by his death Christ liberated us from our sins, and by His Resurrection he restored to us the principal blessings which we had forfeited by sin. Hence it is said by the Apostle: ‘He was delivered up for our sins, and rose again for our justification.’⁶ That nothing, therefore, might be wanting to the salvation of the human race, it was meet that, as He should die, He should also rise again.” This teaching is in perfect accord with Sacred Scripture, which links the crucifixion of our Lord with His Resurrection and represents both events as one indivisible whole. Cfr. Luke XXIV, 46 sq.: “Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead, the third day, that penance and remission of sins should be preached in his name unto all nations.”⁷

b) St. Paul deepened this conception by pointing out that the Crucifixion and the Resurrection contain the two essential elements of justification—remission of sin and infusion of a new life. As Christ died and rose again from the dead, so shall we die to sin and arise to spiritual life. Cfr. Rom. VI, 6 sqq.: “Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin may be destroyed, to the end that we may serve sin no longer. For he that is dead is justified from sin. Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall live also together with Christ: knowing that Christ rising again from the dead, dieth now no more.” The Apostle loved to apply this sublime symbolism to the Sacrament of Baptism, in which the acts of immersion and emersion emblem both the burial and Resurrection of Christ, and the liberation from sin and sanctification of the sinner. Cfr. Rom. VI, 4: “For we are buried together with him by baptism into death; that as Christ is risen from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also may walk in newness of life.”⁸

2. The Resurrection of Christ as a Dogma

The glorious Resurrection of our Lord is a cardinal dogma, nay the very foundation and keystone of Christian belief. For this reason the phrase “on the third day He arose again” was embodied in all the creeds and reiterated in numerous doctrinal definitions.

The Catholic Church has always emphasized two distinct points in regard to the Resurrection, viz.: (1) Its reality or truth, and (2) the transfigured and glorified state of the risen Redeemer. To safeguard these two aspects of the dogma she strenuously insisted on the real reunion of Christ’s soul with His body,⁹ and formally rejected the Origenist teaching of the ethereal nature and sphericity of the risen body as well as the heresy of its alleged corruptibility. Thus the Council of Constantinople (A.D. 543) says: “If any one assert that the body of our Lord after the Resurrection was ethereal and spherical in shape, … let him be anathema.”¹⁰ And the symbol of Pope Leo IX declares that Christ arose from the dead on the third day “by a true resurrection of the flesh, to confirm which He ate with His disciples—not because He stood in need of food, but solely by His will and power.”¹¹ All these statements can be convincingly demonstrated from Divine Revelation.

a) Christ had positively predicted that He would arise on the third day (cfr. Matth. XII, 40; XX, 19; XXVII, 63; Mark X, 34; Luke XVIII, 33; John II, 18 sqq.). He proved the reality and the truth of His resurrection by repeatedly appearing to His disciples, conversing with them, allowing them to touch His sacred body, eating and drinking with them, and so forth. (Matth. XXVIII, 17 sq.; Luke XXIV, 41 sqq.; John XX, 24 sqq.; I Cor. XV, 6). The Apostles would not have so courageously and uncompromisingly stood up for their faith in the Resurrection had they not seen and conversed with the risen Lord. Cfr. Acts IV, 33: “And with great power¹² did the Apostles give testimony of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ our Lord.”¹³ Though not an eye-witness, St. Paul was a bold and enthusiastic herald of the Resurrection: “If Christ be not risen again, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.”¹⁴

That Christ rose in a glorified body is evidenced by the circumstances surrounding His Resurrection,¹⁵ and by the fact that His risen body was endowed with certain attributes which man cannot enjoy except in a transfigured state.¹⁶

He retained the marks of His five wounds¹⁷ for reasons of congruity, which St. Thomas explains as follows: “It was becoming that the soul of Christ in the Resurrection should reassume the body with its wounds. First, for the glorification of Christ Himself; secondly, to confirm His disciples in their faith in the Resurrection; third, that in supplicating the Father for us, He might always remind Him of what He had suffered for men; fourth, to recall the divine mercy to those whom He had redeemed, by exhibiting to them the marks of His death; and, lastly, that on Judgment day He might show forth the justice of the judgment by which [the wicked] are damned.”¹⁸

That Christ really and truly rose from the dead in a glorified body, is so evident from Sacred Scripture that we need not stop to prove it from Tradition.¹⁹

b) In connection with the Resurrection of our Lord the Catholic Church has always held two other important truths, viz.: (1) That His Resurrection is the prototype of a general “resurrection of the flesh,” and (2) that Christ arose by His own power.

Both these truths are clearly taught in the famous Creed drawn up by the Eleventh Council of Toledo (A.D. 675): “And on the third day, raised up by His own power, He rose again from the grave; by virtue of this example of our Head we profess that there will be a resurrection of the flesh for all the dead.”²⁰ The phrase “by His own power” (virtute propria) points to an active rising (resurgere), which is more than a miraculous awakening (resuscitari).

The dogma is clearly contained in Sacred Scripture. Cfr. John II, 19: “Jesus answered and said to them: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.”²¹ John X, 17 sq.: “Therefore doth the Father love me: because I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No man taketh it away from me: but I lay it down of myself, and I have power to lay it down: and I have power to take it up again.”²²

Christ Himself ascribes this power to His consubstantiality with the Father. John V, 21: “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and giveth life: so the Son also giveth life to whom he will.”²³ Hence, if Holy Scripture elsewhere speaks of our Lord’s being raised up by the Father,²⁴ this is obviously an appropriation, based on the fact that the efficient cause of our Saviour’s Resurrection was not His humanity, which had been resolved into its constituent elements by death, but His Divinity, which remained hypostatically united with His soul and body. The Roman Catechism explains this as follows: “There existed a divine energy as well in the body, by which it might be reunited to the soul, as in the soul, by which it might return again to the body, and by which He, by His own power, might return to life and rise again from the dead.”²⁵