Resurrection: An Easter Reflection on Faith

On Easter Sunday, we are confronted by what makes faith possible. But we are also confronted by what faith makes possible.

The former – the strange but irrepressibly real life and death of Jesus Christ, the 1^st century Palestinian “godman” – is the appropriate focus of liturgical participation and celebration on Easter Sunday. For Christians worship a God who has conquered death – not in some convoluted pantomime that God acted out on this earthly stage in a costume of flesh, but in a living Person. So we say that he has “conquered death,” and do not mean he has plucked Jesus away from the gobbling worms, saying, like Kronk’s devil of The Emperor’s New Groove, “Yeah, but look what I can do”; rather, we mean he has emerged from the grave himself, and in such a way and in such a context that the meaning of this action is far, far more than a crude exhibition of divine omnipotence. Christ’s resurrection means life for those who participate in it, believe it: “whoever lives by believing in me will never die” (Jn. 11:26).

It is here that we modern minds get hung up. Yet, of course, it is precisely in this moment that the meaning of the resurrection is. The resurrection of Jesus makes faith possible, but – and without this “but” we must say “so what?” – this truth must not wander far from its twin, born only seconds later and clinging to its older brother’s heel: faith in the resurrection makes new life possible.

It is by no means an unfortunate reality that much has been made of uncertainty. A healthy dose of uncertainty is the spice of thought, and as the right amount of spice can make a whole pot of soup come to life, so too can uncertainty infuse that humility into thinking which seems to me the very wisdom behind any particular wisdom. Indeed, many great philosophers have struggled their whole lives after perfect and consummate doubt.

But it is true that doubt can become an idol, a personal god, a fundamental commitment whereby skepticism becomes absolute, rejecting in advance the possibility of a suspension of doubt for the sake of venturing into a hypothesis, let alone the possibility of actually knowing. In such habits of thought we see the perversity that results when doubt is never allowed to turn towards itself, when skepticism is never permitted to be skeptical of itself.

It is such well-buffered minds that cannot quite come to grips with this uncanny younger twin of truth, faith, and not just in terms of accounting for its presence – for such buffered minds find it hard to admit that in fact more can be done with faith than with doubt.

But is not this fact part of the whole story of the resurrection, part of what the resurrection reveals and does? The reality of the resurrection is not containable simply in its historical factuality, its small-t “truth”: its meaning, its import, is so abundant that it wells up from truth and spills over into faith – and through faith enacts itself, building up the Church, the members of Christ’s body, resurrecting them into the new life of the kingdom.

Taking my share of humanities courses in university, I have naturally had cursory access to some of the so-called sophisticated spheres of intellectual life. Taking this activity seriously – though, despite the consequences I do not mean that at the time it would have been better not to have taken it seriously – I have necessarily passed through some fairly extreme periods of questioning. There have been a few moments of my life in which I have, in mind and soul, been so confused that, like a dog vengefully biting at the fleeting tailcoat of meaning, I would become (there is no other way of putting it) angry at reality herself.

Since then, I have been struck more and more by the mysterious grace present in the leap of faith which, however incomprehensible it is in itself, makes that act of submission in belief so intriguingly sensible. Of course, this is never a blind leap – for a whole host of witnesses and a God who has proved His faithfulness in history gives reason and encouragement to the movement even before it is made, however a poor interpretation of Kierkegaard might have it. Nonetheless it is a leap, a moment where you leave the ground – to land on it anew, “heavier by the weight of where” you “have been,” as Rilke put it.

It is always gratifying to find some form and content to hazy musings of the past. Last summer, as I struggled against some unfair biases against certain expressions of Christian faith which we might call more “evangelical,” I was struck one Sunday by the incredible liberating consequences of believing something. I came home and wrote:

Undoubtedly, belief makes possible certain things that un-belief cannot yield to a person. Belief renders real psychological “options” to the believer. For example, belief in a God of justice allows/provokes a person to take their burden of guilt seriously, to look it in the ugly mug, and even to relive themselves of it. Belief in God allows a person to develop into a saint, if they let themselves. Saints are, after all, our best apologetics, our best proof of God’s existence. I believe this is the reason I am beginning to have trouble with theologies like John Caputo’s, or fundamentally uncommitted and existentialized theologies as such. Such a theology can never go far enough, for it never lets itself get to the point where it can make a true psychological difference on the individual. Caputo’s radical theology cannot make a saint. I am beginning to think more, therefore, about that moment of belief, and about what belief is – for the puzzling and alarming fact is, unless a person believes, they cannot change. If they are stuck trying to believe, they never get to the point where they can grow. If they are stuck doubting, they prevent themselves from growing. For this reason, a person’s “spiritual journey” (i.e. their life) cannot be simply about “whether they believe or not.”

Only now, after a year’s worth of thought, conversation, and reading, do I think I can attempt to bring to light some of the things that I was only feeling at here with my all-too-short theological antennae.

In the Easter narrative it really all comes to a crux, for belief, in fact the entire Christian faith, here stands or falls with the resurrection: “if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain” (1 Cor. 15:14).

Why is this? Because it is in the resurrection that all things are made new, and it is our faith in the historical and present reality of the resurrection that allows us to participate in this “new creation.” As Rowan Williams, in his book Resurrection, sums up the interconnection between these factors, “it is a story which makes possible the comprehensive act of trust without which growth is impossible” (49).

And so, on the flip side from “without the resurrection, no belief,” we can also say (with qualification to follow) “without belief, no resurrection” – that is, without belief our participation in this new creation is not active. This means that unless we accept the grace offered to us in this strange and frankly unbelievable action of God (and this acceptance, for us moderns, simply cannot help involving some form of intellection) we will be unable to fully participate in this new creation. Barth puts the basic insight that I wish to articulate so forcefully that the best thing to do is to quote it at length.

The third day a new life of Jesus begins; but at the same time on the third day there begins a new Aeon, a new shape of the world, after the old world has been completely done away and settled in the death of Jesus Christ… The game is won, even though the player can still play a few further moves. Actually he is already mated… It is in this interim space that we are living: the old is past, behold it has all become new. The Easter message tells us that our enemies, sin, the curse and death, are beaten. Ultimately they can no longer start mischief. They still behave as though the game were not decided, the battle not fought; we must still reckon with them, but fundamentally we must cease to fear them any more. (Dogmatics in Outline 123)

Albert Camus said he could not abide Christianity because it dictated the end before it came. In this way, according to Camus, it in fact lost the struggle of the existing individual to the victory of the Whole. Camus’ existential concerns led him to narrow in on the moment to moment of accessible history in a profound way – and who could argue otherwise of The Plague than that it puts forward one of the most profound ethical paradigms in history? –  in order to purify his vision of eschatological speculations and ultimate resolutions, those pernicious distractions from the suffering of actual people in the hic et nunc and the problem they pose in the hic et nunc.

But Camus might just have joined the Church if his life had not been truncated by that tragic car accident in 1960, and he might have done this without giving up his existential convictions. For, in fact, the hope contained in the Easter event only bolsters the immediacy and significance of Camus’ existential concern. In Barth’s bare-bones analysis of the meaning of the resurrection we see what hope makes possible.

If the Christian hope was some pie in the sky fantasy or naïve escapism, it would rightly fall against Camus’ criticism. But, in fact, the Christian hope is resurrectional hope, that is, it is always for the sake of the here and now – for must not resurrection by definition take place in time and space? Indeed, this hope is the heart of a Christian’s responsibility, for it pumps the fiery blood that extends into our limbs for the good work of God. It releases us from any form of ultimate fear, and does this precisely so that we may live resurrection lives, lives markedly different than the world at large, lives characterized by selfless love in resurrectional freedom.

This Christian hope is not a hopeful illusion, the kind of thing that trembling souls fashion for themselves to snuggle up against in hard times. This is the kind of hope that yells at you when things are going poorly – not as some inane cheerleader singing platitudinous ditties about how “the game is won,” but rather as a hard-ass parent on the sidelines who in such moments of difficulty and confusion, when it looks as though the game is lost, becomes sober and realistic, reminding of you of your beginning and end, your origin and purpose, and in this way offering encouragement.

Now, grasping the relation between the real happening of the resurrection and our faith, we can begin to say something really remarkable. Williams, again in his book Resurrection, articulates a participatory theology wherein our trust in God is part of God’s act in us, which, being a necessary stage or element in the general process of new creation on earth, is itself a share in that new creation: “To believe in the risen Jesus is to trust that the generative power of God is active in the human world; that it can be experienced as transformation and recreation and empowerment in the present; and that its availability and relevance extends to every human situation” (49). In this trust and only in this trust can we begin to act – as Christians, with hope, with our reality oriented and our big picture “taken care of.” This is why our belief in the resurrection is in fact a part of the resurrection. This is why we can say that this belief is a participation in the transformative work of Christ in our midst.

All I wish to convey, and all I am struggling to understand and commit to, is simple, really: we cannot live the resurrection life without actually believing in the resurrection. It is not my intention in saying this to persuade anyone not convinced to “simply believe” – that is not the kind of belief needed, in any case. Nor do I mean this reflection as some kind of post-game yell-down: “come on, people, we need to believe more!” That is equally obtuse.

I am just trying to see clearly what exactly is going on in the Christian faith which stakes so much on the resurrection. This Christian faith is complicated, painful, paradoxical, filled with 2000 years of stupid mistakes, accumulated insights, spiritual practices, ethical atrocities, and etc. after etc.  But again and again in it we find the simple question: “how are we to act decisively – which is freedom – if we are indecisive about our faith?”

This is why faith is so much more than dreaming, than a lozenge for anxiety. This is why faith is a gift (i.e. something more than just “free,” but something worth something that happens to be free), for there are real consequences to faith. It has fruit which are directly experienced and determinative in history. In a philosophical climate where sophisticated uncertainty (whether it be Rortian “irony” or Heideggarian “authenticity” or some other newfangled take on the ambiguity of reality) is apparently prized as the ideal disposition, where the dark side of faith is emphasized more than its far brighter side, where doubt seems to constitute the “examined” life, we have much to gain by beginning to perceive that there is indeed something special and advantageous about believing. What one can do, if one is able to presuppose!

And here, as a kind of endnote, or icing on the cake, we may discern an implicit apologetics contained within faith itself. Is not freedom from ultimate fear some indication of the worth, if not truth, of faith – the same way that the condensation on the inside of a windowpane in winter is an indirect indication that there must be warmth in the house? There is something worth considering about this faith, for it is a faith that makes life more, not less, accessible. As Barth writes, “The Christian hope does not lead us away from this life; it is rather the uncovering of the truth in which God sees our life… The man who believes that is already beginning here and now to live the complete life” (154-55). To take up the analogy of the house in winter again: is the cold any more revealing of our nature than warmth? Cannot we live better, in fact, if we come in from the cold?

It hardly needs to be said that we ought not to, then, believe things indiscriminately for the sake of the “benefits of confidence.” But we cannot neglect to see, either, the positive consequences of a true faith, realities which in some sense constitute the best apologetic for faith. Despite the fact that these fruit do not provide satisfactory historical/philosophical/aesthetic defenses – these can and should be sought elsewhere – they embody their own defense.

This is why we ought not to dismiss certainty out of hand, and even consider the possibility, that the gospel provides us not just with a compelling object of belief (the resurrection) but the compelling possibility of allowing that belief to transform our existence – but only if we unflinchingly stake our lives on this reality, unabashedly believing in the power of God to restore us and complete us and in the love of God to preserve and ensure the future of our story. 

The Greater Stress: Nietzsche’s Test of Affirmation vs. Christ’s Test of Renunciation

Nietzsche

"...for here there is no place that does not see you. You must change your life."

- Rilke, "Archaic Torso of Apollo"

A while ago I was struck by the need for someone to write a Christian parody of Nietzsche’s famous and most haunting passage, “The Greatest Stress,” in which he spells out the psychological implications of his doctrine of eternal recurrence (the idea that the universe will forever replay itself and your life will be caught in its eternal cycle). This parody, being the Christian reverse of Nietzsche’s original parable, must naturally be based on a linear cosmology, in which the demon whispers to you in the liveliest hour of the day, and the highest point of your soul: “is your desire something you could live with for all eternity?” (or something along those lines). This test, I thought, seemed to be a test of the same, if not greater, existential intensity. Could you imagine proceeding through eternity on the trajectory you are on?

I was, of course, simultaneous struck by the awareness that this parody would likely go unwritten for a long time… unless I wrote it. This was less than ideal, since it would take an equal of Nietzsche for this parody to have the force I would like. Nonetheless, I could not spend my life in wait of a genius to accomplish the task. So below is my attempt. But first, the original parable, and then some background.

The greatest stress.

How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you-all in the same succession and sequence – even this spider and this moonlight between the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a grain of dust.”

Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, “You are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly.”

If this thought were to gain possession of you, it would change you, as you are, or perhaps crush you. The question in each and everything, “Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?” would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. Or how well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal Confirmation and seal?

(Nietzsche, The Gay Science)

Contained in this passage is Nietzsche’s doctrine of Eternal Recurrence. Nietzsche was fond of none of his ideas as much as this one (insofar as it is possible to be “fond” of the sort of ideas that Nietzsche had). The idea came to him, Nietzsche tells us, when he was taking a stroll through the woods by lake the lake of Silvaplana. He stopped by a magnificent boulder and – “this idea came to me.” Eventually the idea embodied for Nietzsche the ultimate test for his Übermensch. At that moment in front of the boulder he had stumbled on (what he believed was) the hardest worldview to affirm. Here was a stone that even Sisyphus could not roll up the hill – but could the Übermensch? The one who could, at his lowest point, still find the resources to will it all, and not only that but to will it all again and again: that one is worthy of life. Thus this most difficult of affirmations became Nietzsche’s “formula for the greatness of a human being” (Ecce Homo).

In his book, Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist, Walter Kaufmann explains that the meaning of the doctrine of eternal return is not simply that of a introspective test you might perform on yourself while waiting for the bus – and then (upon a negative answer) work on it with all the diligence of one engaged in “personality improvement.” It is an introspective test, yes, but its power ought to rattle you to your foundations.

So, says Kaufmann, while many believe that the doctrine was intended to require man to ask himself constantly: ‘Do you want this once more and innumerable times more?’ [t]hat, however, is not the meaning of Nietzsche’s conception of ‘the greatest stress.’ As ever, he is not concerned with particular actions but with the individual’s state of being. Man is to ask himself whether his present state of being is such that he would have to answer the demon with impotent anger and gnashing of teeth, or whether he could say: ‘Never did I hear anything more godlike!’ If he is one of those who are still imperfect and unredeemed, if he still finds that the demonic doctrine all but drowns his soul in dread, then it might serve him as the greatest possible stimulus to his ‘will to power’ and to his yearning for that joyous affirmation of himself and life which would enable to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation. (325)

The idea is certainly a powerful one; what is so interesting, though, apart from its inherent power to seize a soul, is that in it we have a distillation of Nietzsche’s essential stance towards life, the universe, and everything. What is the nature of this stance?

Nietzsche’s basic posture towards life can be viewed best, I think, if set alongside another, paradigmatically different stance. For instance, Christianity. (In what follows some Christians may be surprised at what I am calling a “Christian stance.” I apologize, in a half-sincere sort of way, for using this label if you disagree with its content and desire to brand your own approach with it – though I do try to represent the essential content of the spiritual approach of the large and varied Christian tradition[s]). 

Kaufmann describes the one who affirms the eternal return as one who, “instead of relying on heavenly powers to redeem him, to give meaning to his life, and to justify the world, he gives meaning to his own life by achieving  perfection and exulting in every moment” (324). Simply put, Nietzsche’s idea of the perfect man truly and sincerely “wants nothing to be different – not forward, not backward, not in all eternity” (Ecce Homo).

How is this different from a Christian approach to one’s life, all of history, and the future of the universe and all things in it? I believe the two approaches face opposite directions, though they do contain the same raw energy, the same spirit of affirmation. I will get to that similarity later, for the more concerning antagonism must be addressed first. Nietzsche’s ideal human poses one of the most direct challenges to the heart of Christ’s message and the entire spiritual tradition of Christianity. While the key virtue for Nietzsche is amor fati, a total and perpetual yes-saying, the key virtue in the Christian tradition is renunciation. (True, love is “the greatest of these,” but at least vis-à-vis one’s fallen life, renunciation is prior to and more immediate than love. One might call it a “movement of love,” but the point stands.) Because our natures are tangled in untruth and our desires distorted, the Christian “ideal” is always grounded in the ability – the incredibly difficult ability – to want everything to change, to want one’s self to change, to want the universe to reverse is basic orientation. The kind of repetition Nietzsche advocates celebrating is the epitome of hopelessness in the eyes of a Christian, whose life is built on the foundations eschatological hopefulness.

So, for Nietzsche the point is an unqualified affirmation – an ecstatic embrace of this world, one’s own life and the entire history of things and events that made it possible – amidst a decadent European environment of ressentiment and other-worldly desires. We might say that, for Nietzsche, affirmation is the ultimate good, because it is only affirmation that redeems life (not some promise of a future life). For this reason, says Kaufmann, “the eternal recurrence was to Nietzsche less an idea than an experience – the supreme experience of a life unusually rich in suffering, pain, and agony. He made much of the moment when he first had this experience because to him it was the moment that redeemed his life” (Kaufman, 323). So, insofar as the idea of eternal recurrence is affirmed, it is redemptive. The embrace of the idea stimulates one to an enhanced existence: “The weak, who are able to stand life only by hoping for kingdom, power, and glory in another life, would be crushed by this terrifying doctrine, while the strong would find in the last incentive to achieve perfection” (325). Stimulus to life? Nothing wrong with that! … Right?

In fact, I would not quibble with the phrase “affirmation is the ultimate good.” Christianity, however, would just like to put in, “yes, but before affirmation there must be a rejection.” And in this difference whole worlds are contained. As far as affirmation goes, Nietzsche does not differ with the best of the Christian tradition, which is far from “other-wordly.” But affirmation must be rightly orientated, rightly placed in time, and have as its content only the best. 

Augustine also made much of the moment that redeemed his life – writing one of the greatest works in the western tradition: Confessions. But this moment was not a moment of pure affirmation: it was characterized by a renunciation, a conversion from one way of life to another, a destruction of himself, a death – and a resurrection. Here was a man whose life might be used to demonstrate Aristotle’s magnanimous man. Affirmation was easy for him – but renunciation? Could it not be that he also discovered a worldview impossibly difficult to affirm – perhaps even more so than that of the eternal return? What a thing to do, at the height of life, to suddenly turn around and renounce it! “Is it that I’ve known bliss?” asks O’Siadhail in his poem “Pond”. What a startling question to ask oneself of one’s own happiness.

But there is an incredible seed of affirmation contained in this rotten fruit of renunciation. It is the longing for a higher possibility in the self breaking out like a solar flare. For, in truth, we never know what is best, what is highest, what is worth affirming, by some default of our nature. “We are without understanding of ourselves,” says Teresa of Avila, “we are at an infinite distance from our desires.” If we are honest, we find it intensely difficult to say what exactly is for our own good.

In the final page of the Ultimatum of his Either/Or II, Kierkegaard puts the meaning and purpose of renunciation like this: “In relation to God we are always in the wrong.” But instead of a resulting in despair or passive obedience, “this thought puts an end to doubt and calms the cares; it animates and inspires to action… Would you wish, could you wish, that the situation were different? Could you wish that you might be in the right; could you wish that that beautiful law which for thousands of years has carried the generation through life and every member of the generation, that beautiful law… could you wish that that law would break” (341)? Wishing that we might be in the right would mean wishing that there were in fact nothing better than what we know and that we could never be more than what we are. It is, then, profoundly life-affirming to wish that we are in the wrong, profoundly life-affirming to wish to renounce what is not life – and to wish to have eyes that can see the difference.

At the height of life, then, what if the demon came to you? Could you wish it for yourself, certain that this is your highest fulfillment? Or would you tremble to think – standing there with your fancy drink amidst the din of another party, or perhaps sitting there on the couch reading a favorite book in front of a fire, or perhaps in the very moment of winning the lottery or a promotion – that there might be something greater out there which you neglect?  Could you possibly stomach the thought that you will have in eternity what you desire most in this life, that everyone will hit precisely the target they are pointing themselves towards when death’s gun fires? This is the great terror contained in Matthew 8:5-13: “Be it done for you, as you believed,” says Jesus to the centurion, and so it is. Kierkegaard, expounding these words in Works of Love, says, “God’s relationship to a human being is the infinitising at every moment of that which at every moment is in a man” (352). This is the Christian paradigm, which phrases the question thus: What if in the end, our desire, our interpretation of things, the direction of our life and the framework that allows that direction, are (graciously or horrifyingly) real.

A Christian parody of Nietzsche’s test of the Übermensch, then, might look something like this…

The greater stress.

How, if some sunny day an angel were to push past the noise and the pleasure and the people, were to catch you in your relentless, exhilarating forward motion at the peak of your life’s bliss, and yell to you, “This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will continue living, for eternity, it becoming increasingly more itself, rolling into itself more of the same goodness, more of the same joys, that you experience only in embryo even now. The trajectory of bliss you have set for yourelf – with all the money and sex and power, or all the comfort and pleasure of mildness and stability, or all the gratitude and recognition and personal gratification of immense learning, or all the vague titilations of entertainment and travel and dilettante experience – you will have and never, never lose.

Would you not say in exultation, “you are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly”? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have thrown yourself down and gnashed your teeth and cursed the angel who spoke thus? Ah, who would apprehend what the angel speaks of as hell?

But if you did, if you discerned in the angel something tantalizing, attractive perhaps, disturbing certainly, but compelling – if you let the angel’s words take possession of you, they would change you, as you are, or perhaps crush you. For who could be certain, if they allowed themselves to step back a moment, that the bliss they experience here on earth is of the highest sort, is their final fulfilment? The question in each and everything, “Do you want this now and forever?”  would weigh upon your actions as the greatest stress. “What if you get exactly what you desire? What if…?”  How strange would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than that you do not get what you want, that your bliss might not carry on into eternity but be transformed for something unknown, something you have never seen, but something you are told is better, higher… holy?