The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesiological Theology

February 6, 2012 by Jason Hood

The Resurrection is the Crux

Pun intended, I suppose. I just finished a conversation with a distraught co-worker about a local “Christian” school, whose approach to the faith is revisionist in every respect. What galls her, as it galls me, is the insistence on keeping the label “Christian” when virtually everything that is distinctly Christian has been jettisoned: the ethics, tenets, Scriptures, and historical events are surrendered wholesale.

Also today: a former student sent this highly relevant snippet, found in a letter dated 29 January 1886, from Theodosius Harnack to his son Adolf Harnack, the famous critical biblical scholar:

Our difference is not merely theological but a profound and directly Christian difference, so that if I overlooked it I should be betraying Christ; and no one, not even someone who stands so near to me as you, my son, could demand that of me or expect it.

To name only the all-decisive main issue: whoever regards the fact of the resurrection as you do is in my eyes no longer a Christian theologian. I totally fail to understand how anyone can still appeal to history after that sort of historical construction; or I understand it only if the appeal to history is meant to denigrate Christianity. So, either–or…

For me Christianity stands or falls with the fact of the resurrection; with the fact of the resurrection the Trinity, too, stands for me rock firm.

– J.C. O’neill. The Bible’s Authority: A Portrait Gallery of Thinkers from Lessing to Bultmann. The letter is in Agnes von Zahn-Harnack, Adolf Harnack, 1st ed. page 143, 2nd ed. page 105.

Categories: General | Historical Method | Jason Hood | biblical studies