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Rowan Williams on Resurrection
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JAT – Williams on Resurrection
Rowan Williams on Resurrection
Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in his book
Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, presents us with a
useful deliberation about the difficulty of understanding the nature
of resurrection as a process:
“Even in the Gospels, one thing is never described. There is a
central silence…about the event of resurrection. Even
Matthew, with his elaborate mythological scenery, leaves us
with the strange impression that the stone is rolled away
from a tomb that is already empty…It is an event which is not
describable, because it is precisely there that there occurs
the transfiguring expansion of Jesus’ humanity which is the
heart of resurrection encounters. It is an event on the
frontier of any possible language because it is the moment in
which our speech is both left behind and opened to new
possibilities. It is as indescribable as the process of
imaginative fusion which produces any metaphor; and the
evangelists withdrew as well they might. Jesus’ life is
historical, describable; the encounters with Jesus risen are
historical and (after a fashion) describable, with whatever
ambiguities and unclarities. But there is a sense in which the
raising of Jesus, the hinge between the two histories, the act
that brings the latter out of the former: it is not an event,
with a before and after, occupying a determinate bit of time
between Friday and Sunday…however early we run to the
tomb, God has been there ahead of us…he decisively evades
our grasp, our definition and our projection.”
From: Resurrection: Interpreting the Easter Gospel, 2003
Caution is in order. Williams, who is decidedly theological in this
interpretation, is not proposing something radically new. He is
appealing to expand how one thinks about the Resurrection. It is
useful to recognize that the Resurrection might be “not describable
. . . not an event, with a before and after, occupying a determinate
JAT – Williams on Resurrectionbit of time.” The best understanding of the ‘nature’ of the
Resurrection may be recognizing how much one cannot presume
anything about its nature as an event.
Points to consider
What ‘sort’ of Resurrection do we envisage Williams is suggesting above?
To what extent does this fit with other views we have encountered?
Look back at the Biblical examples and creed and see to what extent such points are reflected above.
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