Thoughts for Eastertide

 He is risen!

 

In each of the Gospel portraits of Jesus Christ the events of a single week occupy a sizeable portion of the text.  This is the week which began with His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, riding on a donkey in fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah, and thus publicly announcing Himself to the nation as the long-awaited Messiah.  This is the week which ended on the Sabbath in which in the visible world His body lay in the tomb in which Joseph of Arimathea had laid it while in the invisible world He in spirit had entered the other Kingdom of Death not as those who had gone there previously, a captive, but as a Conqueror. (1)  In this week, the week of Creation is recalled and fulfilled.  On the day corresponding to that in which God said “let there be light”, Christ, the Light of the World, announced Himself publicly.  On the day corresponding to that in which God made man in His Own image and so finished His work of Creation which He pronounced good, Jesus Christ just before dying proclaimed the word τετέλεσται (Jn. 19:30) which means “It is finished.”  The work He thereby proclaimed finished was the work of redemption, the work of propitiation, the work of Atonement, the work made necessary by man’s fall into sin.  Then on the day corresponding to that in which God rested from His work of Creation, His body rested in that borrowed tomb.

 

Last week was Holy Week, the week in our liturgical Kalendar devoted to special remembrance of this week of Gospel events.  It began with Palm Sunday, in which palms are waved and hosannas shouted in commemoration of Christ’s Triumphal entry.

 

On Maundy Thursday we were reminded of the Last Supper where the Sacrament of Holy Communion was instituted, where the New Commandment, “A new commandment I give unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another” (Jn. 13:34), so like those with which the Lord summarized the Law and yet so different at the same time, was given, and where the Lord Himself set the example of this by washing His disciples’ feet, an act ritually re-enacted on the day which takes its name from the Commandment. 

 

On Good Friday the Crucifixion itself was the focus.  In outward appearance, this was the opposite of the Triumph at the beginning of the week.  Instead of “Hosanna”, the crowd cried “crucify Him”, instead of riding into the city He had to carry His cross out of it.  Beneath the outward appearance, of course, this was His true moment of Triumph.  He had told His disciples from the moment St. Peter had confessed “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16) at Caesarea Philippi that this would come, that it was for this purpose that He entered into the world, that this is what it truly meant for Him to be the Christ.  He had not come to bring political deliverance to the Old Testament nation, but to bring deliverance from the slavery into which the Fall of Adam had delivered all mankind, slavery to sin and death, and He could only do this by suffering and dying Himself.  Since St. Anselm, we in the West have tended to think of this primarily in terms of the payment of a debt.  Man owed a debt but had no resources to pay, God had the resources but could not pay the debt qua God, so He became Incarnate as a Man and the God-Man paid the debt on behalf of the world.  In the East, they tend to think of it more in terms of a hostage situation in which Death, man’s enemy, has held him captive and Christ, Who is stronger than Death and over whom Death has not even the usurped claim due to sin, allowing Himself to be taken by Death so that He could destroy Death from the inside and set the captives free.  Both ways of thinking about it are taken from Scripture.  Ultimately, Charles Wesley spoke for Christians East and West when he put it “Amazing love! How can it be, that Thou my God should die for me!”

 

Holy Saturday commemorates both the resting of His body in the Grave and His Descent (as Conqueror) into Hell.  Traditionally, the second of these themes received more emphasis in the liturgy of Holy Saturday.  That this is not the case today (2) is in part due to unfortunate liturgical revisionism that has been influenced by the even more unfortunate theological revisionism which is squeamish about anything having to do with Hell. (3)  The other part is that often the only service on Holy Saturday is the evening vigil which begins with the Holy Saturday themes but moves into the theme of the Resurrection.  The evening of Holy Saturday is, by the reckoning of time established in the week of Creation (4), part of the following day.

 

That following day, of course, is the most important day of celebration in the Christian Kalendar.  In the English-speaking world we call it Easter, similar to how the Germans call it das Ostern.  Those silly and foolish individuals who come creeping out of the woodworks around this time each year to denounce the celebration as “pagan” get most of their mileage out of this name.   Even if, however, their questionable etymology of the word were to be proven correct, their argument is still nonsense because the thing itself, the feast day, was around long before this name got attached to it. 

 

The Hebrew word פסח (Pesach) is the name of the most important feast day of the Old Testament religion.  It is called Passover in English and it is the day on which the Israelites remembered their deliverance from slavery in Egypt as told in the book of Exodus. By the time of the New Testament the Israelites were speaking Aramaic more often than Hebrew and in Aramaic פסח took on a final aleph to become פסחא.  In Greek, the language in which the New Testament was written and the primary language of the Church in the earliest centuries, this was transliterated into Πάσχα and at least as early as the second century this term was used for the Christian feast as well.  It retained this name in the North African/Western part of the Church where Latin superseded Greek as the primary language and in Latin it is spelled Pascha.  To this day, in the vast majority of languages the feast called Easter in English is called Pascha or some variation thereof and even in English we use the adjective “Paschal” to refer to things pertaining to Easter.

 

The history is clear.  The holiday did not begin as a pagan feast named Easter that was appropriated by the Church but as the Christian Passover.  This remains the essence of the feast regardless of what other names derived from the time of year in which it occurs became attached to it later in countries with Germanic languages.

 

Our silly and foolish friends if they are capable of pursuing their case any deeper than the superficial argument about the name may point out that the authorization for the Old Testament Passover, along with detailed instructions as to how to keep it, came directly from God, and ask where the similar authority for a Christian Passover is to be found.  The answer lies in what the New Testament teaches about the relationship between the events commemorated by the Old Testament Passover and those we commemorate in Holy Week leading up to Easter.

 

According to the New Testament, most especially the book of Hebrews, the Old Testament consists of types which prefigure or foreshadow the Gospel.  The blood sacrifices of the Levitical system were types of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God, Who takes away the sin of the world.   The earthly Tabernacle/Temple was a figure of the Heavenly Tabernacle made without human hands.  Other examples, not spelled out the way these were in Hebrews, are just as clear.  Moses, for example, the Law-Giver, was allowed to lead the Israelites up to the Promised Land but he was not allowed to lead them in, that role was given to Joshua (5) in which can be seen prefigured everything St. Paul had to say, which was a lot, about how the Law cannot make one righteous before God, only the grace brought by Jesus Christ can do that.

 

The Old Testament Passover commemorated Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.  Israel had gone down into Egypt during the years of famine in which Joseph was the highest official in the land under Pharaoh whose favour he enjoyed.  They remained there four hundred years after which another Pharaoh, who feared rather than favoured the growing nation, had them enslaved.  Moses, Hebrew born but adopted into Pharaoh’s family, met God in the wilderness Who told him that He was sending him to Pharaoh to plead for Israel’s deliverance.  Multiple times Moses and his brother Aaron entered Pharaoh’s court with God’s demand that His people be set free, each time Pharaoh refused and a new plague fell upon Egypt.  In the final plague, the angel of death was sent to take the firstborn of every family in Egypt – only they, to whose door posts and lintels the blood of the Passover lamb had been applied, i.e., the Israelites, were spared.  Pharaoh then commanded Moses to take the Israelites and leave, only to change his mind again once they were gone and pursue them with his army to the Red Sea.  God opened a pathway for the Israelites through the Red Sea, then brought the waters down on the Egyptian army.

 

This entire event forged Old Testament Israel’s identity as a nation.  It also prefigured another, greater, deliverance.  The salvation of which the Exodus was but a type was not a deliverance from physical servitude but of spiritual servitude to sin.  Nor was it merely the deliverance of a nation but of the entire world.  This is the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ on the Cross which event took place on the Old Testament Passover.

 

Since that of which the Old Testament redemption of Israel was a shadow has come to pass, we who believe in Jesus Christ look back to that rather than to the shadow.  That there would be an annual Christian Passover celebrating Christ’s redemption of mankind was settled very early in the Church.  When it is first mentioned as such in the writings of the second century, it is treated as having been long established.  This would imply that it is Apostolic in origin and, indeed, the Apostles were barely in their grave before a dispute arose not over whether there should be a Christian Passover but over when it should be held. (6) Those who held the Quartodeciman position argued that the Christian Passover should fall on the same day as the Jewish Passover (the fourteenth of Aviv/Nisan on the Hebrew calendar), others held that it should fall on the Sunday after.  Although the sides in the controversy tended to fall along regional and ethnic lines, there is clearly an underlying theological issue here of whether the Crucifixion or the Resurrection takes precedence.  The first ecumenical council of the Church, which met at Nicaea in 325 to address the heresy of Arianism, also ruled on this matter.  Ruling against the Quartodecimans the council determined that the Christian Passover would be held on the Sunday that follows the first full moon on or after the spring equinox. (7) 

 

The ruling of Nicaea I made it clear that the Christian Passover would be a commemoration of the Resurrection rather than of the Crucifixion although by this time Holy Week was starting to take shape with Good Friday being already firmly established. (8)   In this, can be seen a parallel to the decision made by the Apostles that the Church would meet on Sundays rather than on the Sabbath (Saturday).  That this decision was made, we know from the New Testament in which the Church is depicted as meeting on Sunday (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:2). Although neither the decision itself nor the occasion for it are recorded, the reason why Sunday as opposed to say Monday or Wednesday, was selected is quite obvious.  The Sunday after Christ was crucified on the Old Testament Passover, the women among His disciples went to the tomb to complete the burial which had been done in haste due to the onset of the Sabbath.  They found the stone that sealed the tomb rolled away, the grave clothes in which He had been buried folded up and empty, and an angel there to tell them that He was not there, He was risen.

 

The importance of Christ’s Resurrection cannot be overstated.  St. Paul explains it exquisitely in the fifteenth chapter of his first epistle to the Corinthians.   Against those who took the Sadducees’ position that there will be no Final Resurrection, He argued that if the dead do not rise then Christ is not risen, and if Christ is not risen we are without hope, but that since Christ is risen, then we know that the dead will all rise.  We are all dead in the first Adam because the sin by which he brought death into the world passed from him to all of us bringing death along with it.  Christ underwent death for us that He might remove the sting of death which is sin.  His victory over this final enemy is our victory, in Him, the last Adam, we are made alive.  His Resurrection was the firstfruits of the Resurrection in which we one day will all fully share even as we are to participate in it even now by walking in newness of life by faith.  His Resurrection, while in the same body in which He had died – He displayed the scars in His hands and side to His disciples – was not to the same life that He had left behind in dying, but to a new and higher kind of life which death can never touch.

 

In this we have a clue as to why the day of the week on which Christ rose was so important to the early Church that they set it both as their weekly day of corporate worship and the annual Christian Passover.  In the New Testament it is called the “first day” with reference to the week that follows.  The early Christians, however, also called it the “eighth day” in reference to the week which preceded it.  The week signifies the week of Creation, and, as we have seen above, this was especially true of the week of Jesus’ life and ministry on which the Gospels concentrate, the week we remember in Holy Week. What then does the eighth day that follows the seven which signify the Old Creation signify?

 

One early Christian writer described it as “a beginning of another world” (9).  St. Augustine argued that the Sabbath day of rest of the Decalogue was but a figure of the eternal rest to which the eighth day, revealed to the Christians in the Gospel, looks forward. (10)  The eighth day, then, is the day which comes after the seven of the Old Creation, the day of the New Creation, the life of which Jesus entered in His Resurrection, and in which we can share even before our own resurrection on the Last Day because we participate in His life as members of His mystical body, the Church.

 

How appropriate and how utterly unpagan is that annual Lord’s Day of Lord’s days, the Christian Passover of Easter in which after the reflection on our sin and mortality in Lent, culminating in our remembrance of the week which led from the Triumphal entry to Golgotha and the tomb, on the eighth day we joyously proclaim He is risen!

He is risen indeed.

 

Alleluia!

 

 (1)   The two Kingdoms of Death are the Grave in the collective sense, the place where the body is placed, and Sheol/Hades/Hell, where the spirits of the dead go.  When Jesus died on the Cross, His divine nature remained united to both His body in the Grave and His human spirit in Hades.  Jesus’s death, like any other human death, separated His human body from His human soul.  It could not separate either from His deity.  The Hypostatic Union in which the Eternal Son of God received a full and flawless human nature into His Eternal Person in the womb of the Virgin Mary the moment she said “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” (Lk. 1:38) can never be broken.

(2)   In the West.  In the East, the Descent into Hell is still very much the focus of the liturgy of Holy Saturday.  Due to the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars, of course, the Eastern Holy Saturday and the Western Holy Saturday do not fall on the same day.

(3)   The Hell in the Descent into Hell, is the Hell referenced in note 1, vide supra, and not Gehenna, the place to which those who render themselves incurably wicked by rejecting Jesus Christ will be condemned at the Last Judgement.  That Christ did indeed descend there as confessed in the Apostles’ Creed is Scriptural despite the claim of certain evangelicals to the contrary.  St. Peter, in his sermon on the first Whitsunday (Christian Pentecost), quoted Psalm 16:10 and applied it to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ (Acts 2:25-31).  If the Resurrection fulfils “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell”, then Hell, again Sheol/Hades, is clearly where it was prior to the Resurrection.  There is no conflict here with Christ’s words to the dying thief “Today shalt thou be with me in Paradise” (Lk. 23:43).  Paradise is wherever Jesus Christ is.  On the original Holy Saturday, Hell itself was Paradise.

(4)   “And the evening and the morning were the first day” (Gen. 1:5)  It is because of this pattern in the Creation account that days in the sacred Kalendar of Christianity are counted sunset to sunset, as they are in the corresponding sacred calendars of Judaism and Islam, regardless of how days in the civil calendar are counted (midnight to midnight).  In the Bible itself, this is the one of three ways of counting days, and certainly the primary way in the Old Testament.  The other two are to count from sunrise to sunrise (morning/evening rather than evening/morning) and to count from midnight (only St. John does the latter, which is why the hours during the Crucifixion account in his Gospel differ from those in the Synoptics, which count from sunrise).

(5)   Joshua is the English spelling of a Hebrew name which, taken from Hebrew into Aramaic then Greek, becomes the name of which Jesus is the English spelling.

(6)   According to Eusebius the controversy broke out as early as the time of St. Polycarp, the bishop of Smyrna in what is now Turkey and personal disciple of St. John the Apostle who was martyred around the middle of the second century.

(7)   This calculation formula translates the date of Passover in the Hebrew lunar calendar (Aviv/Nisan is the month of spring, the fourteenth is the Ides or full moon of the month) into an approximation in the solar calendar.

(8)   The commemoration of the Crucifixion on the Friday prior to Pascha/Easter is referenced as early as Tertullian.  The name “Good Friday”, of course, came much later. Note that this was no concession to the Quartodecimans.  The 14 of Aviv/Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, like the dates on the civil calendar, move across the week from year to year.  Commemorating the Crucifixion on the Friday before Easter, follows from commemorating the Resurrection on the day of the week on which it occurred.

(9)   The Epistle of Barnabas, 15.

(10)                       St. Augustine, Letter 55, 12-13.

The Eleventh Article – The Resurrection of the Body

The eleventh and penultimate Article of the Creed is, like the one that precedes it and the one that follows it, a short and simple Article.  In the modified version of the old Roman Symbol that has come down to us as the Apostles’ Creed it consists of two nouns, a subject and a modifying genitive.  In the Niceno-Constantinopolitan version of the Creed the subject noun is the same with a different modifying genitive.  We shall find the same difference between the two versions when we come to the twelfth and final Article, except that in the eleventh Article it is a simpler swap of a single genitive noun for another whereas in the twelfth it is a complex expression, two words in the Latin, three in the Greek, that takes the place in the conciliar Creed of the single noun in the Apostles’.  There is one other difference between the two versions of this Article.   Here, as in the tenth Article, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan introduces a new verb to govern the Article.

 

The verb that introduces this Article in the version published by the second ecumenical council is προσδοκοῦμεν.  This word means “we expect.” In the Latin version where the copula implied by the Greek text is spelled out we find “Et exspécto.”  This means “and I expect.”  The change from the plural to the singular is not a Latin innovation.  In the liturgical version of the Greek text the singular is substituted for the plural here as it is with the previous verbs in the first and tenth Articles.   Archbishop Cranmer in the Book of Common Prayer, rather than use the English transliteration of the Latin, translated it as “and I look for” which is a better rendition because it retains the strong sense of anticipation present in the original that words like “expect” and “hope” have lost through weakening over the last few centuries.  When we looked at the tenth Article it was noted that the shift from “believe” to “acknowledge” (or “confess”) was not a shift from one verbal idea to a completely different one but from a verb that expresses an inner action to that which expresses its external complement (“For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” Rom. 10:10).  Here the shift is one of temporal orientation.  To “look for” or “expect” is to express faith in that which is promised but yet to come.  Note the close relationship between faith and hope established in Scripture (1 Cor. 13:13, 1 Thess. 1:3, Heb. 11:1).

 

The noun that is the subject of the article is ἀνάστασις in the Greek of the conciliar Creed and resurrectio in the Latin of both versions, with the accusative forms ἀνάστασιν and resurrectionem being used because the Creed is a form of indirect discourse in which the nouns that are the subjects of the Articles are the objects of the first person verb(s).  Both the Greek and the Latin nouns were derived from complex versions of the verb for “stand” or “rise”.  In the Greek the prefix added to form the compound usually means “up.”  The Latin prefix means “back” or “again”, the second of these being the meaning it has here.

 

The modifying noun in the Apostles’ Creed is carnis, the genitive form of caro.  The use of this word rather than corporis, the genitive of corpus, may raise a few eyebrows.  Archbishop Cranmer rendered it “of the body” which would have been the literal translation had the original been corporis.  “Of the flesh” is the literal translation of carnis.  While “flesh” does in ordinary usage mean “the stuff of which the body is made” in theology it has a specialized meaning that is very different from this, a meaning established by the usage of St. Paul in his New Testament epistles. 

 

Consider Galatians 5:16.  In the Authorized Bible this reads “This I say then, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh.”  If this verse stood alone “the lust of the flesh” could be taken to mean “bodily desires” but the Apostle expands on it and in verses 19-21 lists several “works of the flesh.”  Although the list begins with things such as “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness” that would be consistent with this interpretation it goes on to include items that would not such as “Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies” etc.   In some more recent translations other things are substituted for “the flesh” presumably in order to avoid confusion with the word’s more literal meaning. Examples include “your sinful nature” (New Living Translation), “your old nature” (Complete Jewish Bible), “the human nature” (Good News), “your corrupt nature” (God’s Word), “your sinful selves” (New Century) and others have added yet a further degree of interpretation to their translation by rendering it as “selfishness” (The Message) or “selfish” as an attributive adjective rather than a noun (Common English).  While all of these are over-interpretations in a translation – explaining that “the flesh” in this verse doesn’t mean the part of you that you can see and touch but the part of you that inclines and incite you to do bad things is the level of interpretation that belongs to hermeneutics and exposition not translation – they do give you the general idea of what “the flesh” means in its non-literal sense.  St. Paul, however, chose to speak of the inherited fallenness of human nature as “the flesh” for a reason, and explaining that reason is as much the job of the expositor as is explaining what “the flesh” means in such contexts.  Since over-interpreting in translation can only explain the one and hide the other, it basically is doing someone else’s job and doing it badly by leaving it half undone.

 

In the New Testament, σάρξ, the Greek equivalent of caro, is frequently contrasted with πνεῦμα (spirit).  The contrast begins with these words in their literal meanings. The spirit or breathe (the same word is used for both), is the invisible mover of the physical and visible, the flesh.  Most often σάρξ is used in its literal sense.  When St. John tells us ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο (“the Word became flesh”, Jn. 1:14) this is clearly with no implications of sinfulness, nor are there any such implications when Jesus referencing Genesis says that the man and his wife are μία σάρξ (“one flesh”, Mk. 10:8).  In contrasting the spirit and the flesh, however, the flesh is depicted as the weaker of the two.  See, for example, Matt. 26:41.  St. Paul tends to use “the flesh” in a sense that includes both flesh and spirit in their literal meanings and so means “human nature” in its entirely.  When he speaks of the flesh/spirit contrast he uses “the flesh” in this inclusive sense and it is not the human spirit that he is contrasting with the flesh, but the Holy Spirit.  In Romans 7, for example, where he contrasts his “inward man” that delights in the law of God with his “flesh” that serves sin, the “inward man” is depicted as his νοῦς (mind) rather than his πνεῦμα (spirit), so as not to create confusion when in the eighth chapter he sets forth the way of freedom from walking after the flesh as that of walking after the Spirit, clearly identified as “the Spirit of God” and “the Spirit of Christ.” (Rom. 8:9)  Similarly in Galatians 5 where the contrast with the “works of the flesh” is the “fruit of the Spirit”, the Spirit is the indwelling Holy Spirit. 

 

Therefore, when St. Paul speaks of “the flesh” as human sinfulness this should not be understood as meaning that sin originates from the physical side of human nature but rather that it originates from fallen human nature.  While σάρξ in its literal sense is interchangeable with σῶμα (“the body”) the Apostle normally restricts the sense of sinfulness to the one word.  The verses could be seen as exceptions to this rule, Rom. 6:6 and 7:24, contrast a past state or condition with that experienced after baptism and the liberating power of the Holy Spirit.

 

This brings us back to the question of the use of carnis rather than corporis in the Apostles’ Creed.  It reads this way in the oldest extent versions of the Creed.  St. Irenaeus, whose 2^nd century Against Heresies includes a “rule of faith” that is an early version of the Creed, has in the relevant place the phrase καὶ ἀναστῆσαι πᾶσαν σάρκα πάσης ἀνθρωπότητος or in Latin et resuscitandam omnem carnem humani generis which in the standard translation is “and to raise up anew all flesh of the whole human race” (1)   At the end of the fourth century Rufinus of Aquileia compared the Latin text of the old Roman Symbol to that used in his own Church and in both the phrase was exactly as it appears in the current Apostles’ Creed.   Earlier that century, Marcellus of Ancyra who was one of the Fathers at the First Council of Nicaea presented a Greek version of the Symbol to Julius I, Patriarch of Rome, in which the phrase appears as σαρκὸς ἀνάστασιν.  This strongly indicates “flesh” to be the original reading.  The evidence of St. Irenaeus may indicate it was the original reading not merely of what became the Apostles’ Creed but of the ur-Creed that was the ancestor of both versions.

 

St. Irenaeus also provides a clue as to why this word was chosen over the word for body.  The heresies that he addressed in his work are those of the type that today are collectively referred to as Gnosticism.  While the teachings of these groups varied enough that some have questioned the usefulness of the lump designation they all tended to disdain the material world and to regard matter as the unfortunate by-product of the passions of a lesser deity and the source of all evil in which the spirits of men are trapped and from which they need liberating.  Since the Gnostic concept of salvation involves this liberation the concept of a resurrection was abhorrent to them.  According to St. Irenaeus (and St. Justin Marty), the first of these and of all heretics, was Simon Magus (the Samaritan magician who tried to purchase the Apostolic power in Acts 8).  That this type of heresy had started up while the Apostles were still alive can be seen from the epistles of St. John where the heretics that he called antichrists were characterized by the denial that Christ is “come in the flesh” (1 Jn. 4:3, 2 Jn. 7).  St. Irenaeus’s “rule of faith” is found towards the end of his discussion of the Valentinians, one of the earliest of the Gnostic heresies.  It is reasonable to think that the word “flesh” was chosen for the Article about resurrection in order to take a clearer stand against this type of heresy.   The word could hardly have its specialized theological sense here as that would give the Article the nonsensical meaning of “the resurrection of the sinful nature.”  With no fear of confusion in that direction, using “flesh” instead of “body” guarded against the error of taking St. Paul’s “spiritual body” to mean “a body composed of spirit rather than matter.” (2)  Since “flesh” here is clearly used in its literal sense, which is interchangeable with “body”, the English is not a wrong translation. (3)   

 

In the Creed as published by the First Council of Constantinople in 381, the word νεκρῶν is used.  The Latin correctly translates this as mortuórum and in the Book of Common Prayer it appears, also correctly, as “of the dead.”  The difference between this version and the Apostles’ Creed is that the Apostles’ Creed identifies what will be resurrected, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan identifies who will be resurrected.   The use of this word does not raise the same sort of questions as the use of “flesh” in the other Creed. 

 

In the Athanasian Symbol, which is based on the Creed but expanded and structured differently, the section corresponding to the eleventh Article reads Ad cuius adventum omnes homines resurgere habent cum corporibus suis which in the Book of Common Prayer is translated “At whose coming all men shall rise again with their bodies” (the Canadian edition of the BCP substitutes the word “must” for “shall”).  The Symbol is traditionally attributed to St. Athanasian of Alexandria who fought Arianism in the fourth century.  Since the seventeenth century it has widely been considered to be later than this, usually sixth century although Daniel Waterland made a convincing argument for the early fifth.  Even if the attribution to St. Athanasius were correct this would still be in the period after other heresies had superceded Gnosticism as the primary opponents of orthodoxy and so the reason for using “flesh” rather than “body” was waning.  Nevertheless, the longer wording found here would effectively accomplish the same thing.

 

The resurrection confessed here is what is usually referred to as the General Resurrection.  It includes both the resurrection of the righteous, those who have been cleansed from their sins and justified by the grace of God in Jesus Christ, and the resurrection of the wicked, those who have rendered their souls incurably by final impenitent rejection of Christ.   Nevertheless, while both of these are included they are not included equally.  The place in the Creed where they are equal is in the seventh Article where they are implicitly in Jesus Christ’s Second Coming to judge “the quick and the dead.”   The resurrection of the righteous is very much what is in focus in the eleventh Article and the resurrection of the wicked is present merely as the inescapable background to the resurrection of the righteous.  This is evident from the fact that the resurrection is confessed as an object of faith.  “I believe” in the Apostles’ Creed does not merely mean “I affirm to be true”, although it does, of course, mean that but has the additional connotations of “I grasp these truths to myself and cling to them as my only hope in this life and eternity.”  In the conciliar Creed, as we have seen, the verb governing this Article is “I look for”, that is, “I look for in hopeful anticipation.”  The resurrection of the wicked to the condemnation of final and eternal exclusion from the blessedness of the righteous, while necessarily part of the General Resurrection confessed in this Article, can hardly be viewed as the object of these verbs in their fullest senses.  The appropriate way to confess belief in it is in the bare minimal sense of the word.  We believe, that is, we affirm it to be true, because both Testaments and especially the words of the Lord Jesus Christ declare it to us.

 

As an object of faith and hope, the bodily resurrection of the dead distinguished the religion of the True and Living God from heathenism even before the Advent of Jesus Christ.  Job, in one of the oldest books of the Old Testament, possibly the oldest, testified in the midst of his affliction “And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God: Whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes shall behold, and not another; though my reins be consumed within me.” (Job 19:26-27)  Although the Old Testament speaks of Sheol, an underworld so similar in conception to those of pagan mythology that it is rendered Hades in the Septuagint and in New Testament quotation, the Old Testament contains what pagan mythologies did not, hope of deliverance from it.  This is most observable in the Psalms and while “thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10) is a Messianic prophecy of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is clearly depicted in the New Testament as the guarantee of the resurrection of all others.  By contrast, in pagan mythology deliverance from the underworld is generally depicted as something that heroes attempt and fail, as in the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. (4)  While pagan philosophers such as Plato explored the idea of the spirits of the dead returning to this world this was conceived of in terms of reincarnation not resurrection.

 

By the time of the New Testament a sect called the Sadducees had arisen which held only the books of Moses to be Scripture and which denied the doctrine of the General Resurrection.  Each of the Synoptic Gospels records Jesus demonstrating the truth of the resurrection to them out of the only books they recognized after they attempted to trip Him up with a garbled retelling of the story of the book of Tobit.  In St. John’s Gospel, Jesus early on identifies Himself as the One Whose voice will call the dead back to life. (5)  Later, when Lazarus dies, and He tells Martha “thy brother shall rise again” (Jn. 11:23) she understands him to speaking of the General Resurrection, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day” (v. 24) and He says of Himself in response “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die” (vv. 25-26) which, when asked if she believed, Martha responded with “Yea, Lord: I believe that thou art the Christ, the Son of God, which should come into the world” (v. 27).  Her confession is identical to that of St. Peter at Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:16) and to the content of saving faith as identified by St. John later in his Gospel (Jn. 20:31).  The doctrine of the General Resurrection and Jesus’ role as the Agent in it is thereby made inseparable from the basic truths at the heart of the Christian faith.

 

We find this again in the fifteenth chapter of St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians.  This chapter begins with St. Paul declaring the Gospel that he preaches, “that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures” (vv. 3-4) which is followed by a list of eyewitnesses to the risen Christ (vv. 5-8). (6)  This leads into St. Paul’s argument against those who deny the resurrection of the dead.  If the dead do not rise, St. Paul argues, then Christ could not have risen, but since Jesus Christ rose from the dead, therefore the dead rise. (vv.12-20) The resurrection of Jesus Christ, an element of the Gospel itself, stands or falls with the General Resurrection, therefore.  St. Paul then goes into how Christ is the firstfruits of the resurrection of all, an argument that draws on the same parallel between Christ and Adam that he would later make in the fifth chapter of his epistle to the Romans.  By Adam death came upon all, in Christ all shall be made alive, (vv.20-23) something that is connected both here (vv. 24-28) and at the end of the chapter (vv.54-57) with Christ’s triumphant defeat of all of His enemies.

 

This chapter also includes St. Paul’s response to a hypothetical question about the nature of the body with which the dead are raised. (vv.35-55). Careless misreading of this passage has been responsible for many, perhaps most, errors regarding the resurrection both in the early centuries and in more recent ones.  We have already touched on some of this when considering why the Apostles’ Creed uses the word carnis rather than corporis.

 

St. Paul compares the resurrection to the planting of grain, a comparison that the Lord had previously used in reference to His own resurrection (Jn. 12:24).  He observes that the grain when it is planted is not yet the plant that will grow from it (1 Cor. 15:37).  He then observes that flesh comes in different kinds (v. 39) and bodies come in different kinds (v. 40-41), and states that in the resurrection of the dead, the body sown is different from the body raised (vv. 42-44).  “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” (v. 44) This verse does not mean, as many have misread it to mean, that the resurrection body is not physical or material.  The word rendered “natural” in this verse is ψυχικός (the neuter form with a final nu instead of sigma).  This word does not mean anything like “material” or “physical”.  It is derived from the word for soul, life, or mind from which word all of our English words beginning psych- are derived.  Yes, it is contrasted with “spiritual”, but both words are adjectives modifying the word σῶμα (body).  The idea of physicality or materiality is implicit in this word, the noun.  Consider the different types of bodies mentioned in verses 40-41.  They are all composed of matter.  The two adjectives are both derived from words that denote the immaterial side of human nature.  While these words they usually depict different aspects of that side it is not uncommon for them to be used interchangeably.  In 1 Cor. 15:44 the adjectival forms are used to create a distinction and since both basically refer to an immaterial force that animates and controls the body the distinction is between that which animates the body in this life and that which will animate it in the resurrection.  In the following verse Genesis is quoted about Adam having been made a ψυχὴν ζῶσαν (living soul) and the Last Adam (Christ) is said to be a πνεῦμα ζῳοποιοῦν (quickening or life-giving spirit). The distinction made by calling the pre-resurrection body “natural” or “soulish” and the resurrection body “spiritual”, therefore, is that in this life the body is animated by the life that was bestowed upon man in creation and which has come down from Adam and which has been corrupted by sin bringing death upon us all but in the resurrection the body will be animated entirely by the new life that Jesus Christ came to give us.

 

This also tells us what St. Paul’s use of the grain analogy that Jesus had used for His Own resurrection had hinted at and what the description of Jesus as the firstfruits of the resurrection states explicitly.   The final resurrection is the same resurrection that Jesus has already undergone.  It is not like the raising of Jairus’ daughter, the son of the widow of Nain, or Lazarus.  In these instances, prior to Jesus’ resurrection, the Lord returned these individuals to the same condition they were in prior to their death – life, but mortal life, susceptible to disease, decay, and death.  Jesus, when He rose from the dead, rose never to die again.  This is the resurrection for which we look.   One of the other differences between the present body and the resurrection body stressed in 1 Cor. 15 is that the present body is corruptible but the resurrection body – and the body into which the “quick” will be changed without undergoing death at the Second Coming (vv. 51-54) – is incorruptible (vv. 42, 50).

 

That Jesus’ resurrection is the pattern of the future resurrection for which we look is the final nail in the coffin of the idea that the “spiritual body” is not a physical body.  When Jesus appeared to the Apostles on the evening of His resurrection they were afraid because they thought they were seeing a ghost but He said “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have” (Lk. 24:39) and after showing them His hands and feet gave them further proof by eating a piece of fish and a honeycomb (vv. 41-42).  Later He challenged St. Thomas who had been absent on that occasion to put his hand in the hole in His side (Jn. 20:27).  From this it is clear that Jesus’ resurrection body was a physical body, the same body in which He had been crucified, and recognizably so.  While it had been changed into a glorified, incorruptible, body with new capacities it remained a physical body.

 

St. Paul tells us in Romans and elsewhere that we can participate in the resurrection life of Jesus Christ in the here and now by the power of the Holy Spirit Who indwells us.  To fully share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, however, when our bodies are transformed through death and resurrection or translation at the Second Coming to be like unto His, this is the first part of our hope which is our faith looking forward into the future.  We shall discuss the second part of that hope when we come to consider the twelfth and final Article of our Creed.

 

 (1)   St. Irenaeus, Against Heresies, I.10.1.  Translation that of Alexander Roberts and William Rambaut in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe, 1885.

(2)   This is not mere speculation on my part.  Philip Schaff explained the use of “flesh” here as that “by which the ancient Church protested against spiritualistic concepts of the Gnostics” in his notes on the Apostles Creed in the second volume of The Creeds of Christendom.  This occurs in the context of discussing how earlier translations of the Creed had rendered it literally, the first change to “body” having been made in The King’s Book in 1543, and the literal reading retained even by Cranmer in the interrogatory version used in the order of Baptism and Visitation of the Sick.  Schaff spoke of the change to “body” in a tone of approval because flesh “may be misunderstood in a grossly materialistic sense.” Elsewhere (in the third volume of his History of the Christian Church) he mentions the disagreement in the early church between the “spiritualistic” interpretation of the resurrection body held by Origen et al., and the “more realistic” interpretation of Tertullian and the Apostles’ Creed, saying that the realistic interpretation was “pressed by” Epiphanius and St. Jerome in a “grossly materialistic manner” that in his opinion contributed to the development of the cult of relics.  This is obviously what he was referring to in his comment on the wording of the Creed. 

(3)   Roman Catholic English translations of the Creed also tend to use “body” rather than “flesh”, as for example, in the English version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  Interestingly translations in some other languages (German and Armenian, for example) sometimes substitute the Niceno-Constantinopolitan reading for the Apostles’.

(4)   The interesting exception to this is the myth that was dramatized by Euripides in his play Alcestis.  The title character was the wife of the Thessalonian King Admetus, whom the Fates had allowed to outlive the day they had appointed for his death provided someone was willing to take his place.  The only person so willing was his wife.  Hercules, (Heracles in the original Greek), in the midst of his labours, arrives at the palace in the midst of the mourning right after Alcestis had died and learns, despite the king’s attempt to keep it secret, what had happened.  He departs, to return soon after with a veiled woman whom he had won in a wrestling match and hands over to Admetus.  When the king removes her veil, he discovers that it is Alcestis, whom Hercules had wrestled away from Death himself.  C. S. Lewis, like St. Justin Martyr and Clement of Alexandria, believed that God had been working among the ancient pagan nations albeit in a different way than He had been working in Israel to prepare for the coming of Jesus Christ.  Whereas St. Justin Martyr and Clement believed this preparation to have taken the form of the ancient philosophy that sprang from the “seeds of the Logo”, Lewis argued (especially in God in the Dock) that ancient mythology, although polytheistic and containing many other errors, grew out of the truths written into the natural world and since natural revelation comes from the same God Who ultimately revealed Himself in history in the events of the Gospel, that the truths myths point to find their ultimate fulfilment in Jesus Christ.  It would be difficult not to see how this applies to the myth of Alcestis.  However imperfect their depiction, the Greeks had somehow grasped that only the Son of the Highest God could defeat Death and release those who had been held captive by him.

(5)   John 5:25-29.  Verse 25 is likely referring to spiritual regeneration rather than the resurrection, but verses 27 to 29 clearly refer to the resurrection and Final Judgement.

(6)   The structure of the Gospel is that of two acts of Jesus Christ, each supported by two forms of testimony.  The two acts of Jesus Christ are that 1) He died for our sins, and 2) He rose again from the dead.  The Scriptures are the first testimony to each. The additional witness to Christ’s death is His burial.  The additional witness to His resurrection is the long list of eyewitnesses.

 

Holy Week

 We are in Holy Week, the week of the Christian liturgical Kalendar that leads up to the annual celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ that is Pascha or Easter depending upon where you live and what language you speak.  The celebration of Pascha/Easter goes back to the very beginning of Christian history.  In the early centuries of persecution before the legalization of Christianity there were disputes as to when and how the Christian Passover – Pascha is the Latinization of Πάσχα which is the Greek transliteration of פֶסַח (Pesach), the Hebrew Passover – was to be celebrated.  The majority regarded the Christian Passover as a celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and held it on the Sunday after the Jewish Passover.  Some, primarily among the churches of Asia Minor to which the book of Revelation was addressed, thought that it should be a commemoration of His death to be held on the date according to the Hebrew calendar on which He died.  Since that date was the fourteenth of Nisan these were called Quartodecimans from the Latin for fourteen. A variation of this, held by a much smaller number of Christians located mostly in Gaul, celebrated on the date He died according to the Roman calendar, which was the twenty-fifth of March.[1]  Settling this controversy was the main non-doctrinal accomplishment of the First Council of Nicaea in 325.[2]  The earliest extent mention of the observance of the entire Holy Week dates to the last half of the century prior to that.[3]  Towards the end of the fourth century, just prior to the second ecumenical Council (the First Council of Constantinople, 383), the Spanish nun Egeria made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land and in what is actually a long letter but which also reads as an early example of a travel journal[4] provided a detailed account of the Holy Week services held by the Christians in Jerusalem whose bishop at the time was the important Church Father St. Cyril.  This was the most elaborate celebration of the Holy Week at the time and through accounts such Egeria’s Jerusalem’s practice came to influence other Churches throughout the Christian world.

 

The observation of Holy Week seems like an inevitable development.  The four Evangelists present a much clearer picture of what Jesus said and did in the week of the Crucifixion than of any other period in His earthly ministry.  The week begins with Palm Sunday, remembering Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem in fulfilment of Zechariah 9:9-12.  We might begin it with the eve of Palm Sunday, when the anointing of Jesus by Mary at the supper in Bethany took place.  SS Matthew and Mark tell of this event in the middle of their account of Judas’ pact with Jesus’ enemies to betray Him for thirty-pieces of silver.  By doing so they indicate not when the supper occurred but that Judas’ decision to betray Jesus began with this event.  It is from St. John that we learn that the anointing had taken place a few days earlier than Judas’ deal with the high priests, which took place on the Wednesday of the week of the Passion.  St. John connects the two events in a different way by identifying Judas as the one who had voiced the objection to Mary’s act.

 

St. John also tells us that Jesus had arrived at Bethany six days prior to the Passover.  This was the Saturday before Palm Sunday, six days before the Passover on the Friday on which Jesus was crucified.  Some see a conflict between St. John and the other Evangelists on the day of the Passover but the conflict disappears upon closer examination.  When St. Mark tells us that “the first day of unleavened bread, when they killed the Passover, his disciples said unto him, Where wilt thou that we go and prepare that thou mayest eat the Passover” (Mk. 14:12) this does not mean that the Passover lambs were killed on the Thursday before the Crucifixion.  St. Mark, like St. Matthew and even the Gentile doctor St. Luke, used the Jewish method of counting days as starting with the previous evening.  This is rooted in the creation account of the book of Genesis, where of the days of creation it is repeatedly stated “And the evening and morning were the X day.”  We also use this method of reckoning days when it comes to holy days in our sacred Kalendar.  That is why the twenty-fourth of December is called “Christmas Eve” and the thirty-first of October is called “Halloween” (short for All Hallows Eve).  Clement Clark Moore was wrong.  “Christmas Eve” is not “the night before Christmas” but rather the part of Christmas that falls on the evening of the twenty-fourth.  When the Synoptic Evangelists tell us that the disciples prepared the Last Supper on the day when the Passover lambs were killed they are counting the evening of the first Maundy Thursday as part of Good Friday.  In the Hebrew calendar it was already the fourteenth of Nisan.  Jesus died at the ninth hour of daylight - three pm - on the fourteenth of Nisan.  This was the hour the sacrificial Passover lamb was slain.  By the method of reckoning days used by the Synoptic Gospels this was still the same day on which the Last Supper had taken place. 

 

This raises the question of what was going on with the Last Supper. It took place, as the Synoptic Gospels say, on the day the Passover lamb was slain, at the beginning of that day, the evening prior to the slaying.  This would seem to rule out it being a Passover meal proper, since this was eaten on the evening following the slaying of the lamb, the evening that begins the fifteenth of Nisan.  St. Luke, however, seems to clearly identify the Last Supper as a Passover meal.  He calls it such himself (Lk. 22:13).  He records Jesus’ calling it such “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer” (Lk. 22:15).  He includes details indicative of a Passover meal such as the first cup (the Kiddush) at the beginning of the meal (Lk. 22:17), before the institution of the Eucharist with the breaking of the bread (Lk. 22:19) and the cup after supper which if this was a Passover meal would have been the third of the cups signifying redemption and blessing.  .

 

The answer to the question is present in the Scriptural texts.  Yes, the Last Supper was a Passover meal, and yes, it was eaten before the Passover lamb was slain, a day before the Jews in general ate the Passover that year.  For the only lamb mentioned as being present at that meal was the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world.”  He offered Himself to be eaten at meal in the bread and the cup.  “This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me” He said after breaking the bread while giving it to His disciples (Lk. 22:19) “This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” He said over the cup after supper (Lk. 22:20).  Chronologically, it would not be until the following afternoon that His blood would be shed and His body given, but He offered His disciples His body and blood in the first Eucharist the evening before, just as they were eating a Passover meal the evening before the Passover was slain. 

 

There is an important lesson in this.  Although the events in which the salvation of mankind was accomplished, the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, are historical events, events which occurred at a specific place and specific time in the history of the world, at the centre of these events is a Person Who is not bound or limited by space or time.  This Eternal Person Who entered the world of space and time in order to redeem and save, is declared by the Scriptures to be “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).

 

The Law of Moses specified that the Paschal lamb was to be selected and separated from the rest of the flock on the tenth of Aviv (“Spring”, the original name for the month re-named Nisan in the Babylonian Captivity).  Note how St. Mark concludes his account of the Triumphal Entry: “And Jesus entered into Jerusalem, and into the temple: and when he had looked round about upon all things, and now the eventide was come, he went out unto Bethany with the twelve.” (Mk. 11:11)  The impression that this verse gives, that after the Triumphal Entry, Jesus had a quick look around and then went back to Bethany is reinforced by His promise to the donkey colt’s owners that “straightway he will send him hither”, (Mk. 11:3) i.e., that He would return the animal immediately, which only St. Mark records. This is the only indicator in any of the Gospels of the time of day of the Triumphal Entry.  It was late on Palm Sunday, as the afternoon was turning into evening, at which time the ninth of Aviv/Nisan was ending and the tenth was beginning. 

 

In sermons the events of Palm Sunday and Good Friday are often contrasted.  The crowds that welcomed Jesus with “Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest” on Palm Sunday became the mob that screamed “Crucify Him!  Give us Barabbas” on Good Friday.  The contrasts are important but the underlying harmony between the two events should not be overlooked.

 

When Jesus rode into Jerusalem that Sunday He publicly presented Himself to Jerusalem, King David’s city, the capital of national Israel, as the Messiah they had been awaiting, the Christ.  He had not hidden His identify before this.  That He is the Christ was the import of His remark in the synagogue of Nazareth at the beginning of His public ministry about the prophecy of Isaiah being fulfilled.  What He said about Himself in His sermons and parables and in His controversies with the Pharisees and scribes would be very strange, to say the least, if He did not claim to be the Christ.  He had identified Himself as Christ to individuals such as the Samaritan woman at the well from before His public ministry even started (the encounter with the woman took place prior to the arrest of John the Baptist and hence prior to His public ministry) and when St. Peter, speaking for the Apostles, confessed Him to be the “Christ, the Son of the Living God” (Matt. 16:15) He praised this as having been divinely revealed (Matt. 16:17).  The Triumphal Entry, however, was His official presentation of Himself to the nation as their Messiah or Christ.  The crowds who met Him with palm branches and shouted Hosanna recognized this, of course.  What they didn’t recognize was that by presenting Himself as the Christ, He was presenting Himself as the true Paschal Lamb.  Neither did His disciples recognize this even though He had begun explaining it to them following St. Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi (Matt. 16:21) and at His anointing at Bethany, intrinsically connected with His official presentation of Himself as the Christ the following day in that it was a literal anointing of the “Anointed One”, He had again made the connection by saying that “against the day of my burying hath she kept this” (Jn. 12:7). 

 

The disciples, like the rest of Israel, were familiar with the prophecies of the Messiah, the Anointed Son of David, Who would deliver Israel, restore David’s throne, and establish it and rule it forever.  Their Scriptures also predicted that He would suffer and die and be raised from the dead.  Isaiah’s account of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah,[5] Daniel’s prophecy of the Messiah being “cut off, but not for himself”[6], the 21^st/22^nd Psalm[7], prophecies of this nature are found throughout the Old Testament, including in the words spoken to the serpent “and thou shalt bruise his heel” in God’s very first promise that He would send a Saviour.[8]  Prior to their fulfilment, of course, it was difficult to see the connection between these prophecies and those of the triumphant Son of David.  The Genesis prophecy was the key connection.  There were no nations when that promise was made.  The promised Saviour was for all mankind.  Israel, in the Messianic prophecies, is the kingdom of priests Exodus 19:6 declares her to be, performing the priestly function of representing the entire world of mankind.  The promised deliverance, is not mere deliverance of the nation from political subjection to empires such as Assyria, Babylon or Rome, but deliverance of mankind from bondage to the enemies that took mankind captive in the Garden of Eden – Satan, sin, and death.

 

The way the Messiah would defeat these enemies was by meekly submitting to their killing Him.  For the only claims Satan, sin, and death have over mankind arise out of mankind’s voluntary entrance into bondage by sinning in the Garden.  The Messiah is the eternal Son of God, Who when He took human nature to His Own eternal Person in the womb of the Blessed Virgin, became Man but without sin.[9]  He bore the sins of mankind on the Cross, because His death was the true Day of Atonement as well as the true Passover, but He had no sin of His own.  Satan and death, therefore, had no claim on Him, and when He allowed them to take Him anyway they found that they had captured Him over Whom they had no claim and could not hold.  The final day of Holy Week, Holy Saturday, remembers the day when Jesus’ body lay in the grave, the one kingdom of death, while He entered Hell[10], death’s other kingdom, not as captive but as Conqueror.  Note His promise to the repentant thief on the Cross “Today, thou shalt be with me in Paradise.”[11]  While Paradise and Hell are ordinarily thought of as opposite places far removed from each other – think of the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus[12] - at the ninth hour on that fourteenth of Nisan that was the first Good Friday, Paradise invaded Hell.  When on Easter Sunday He rose again from the dead, He left behind Him a Hell the gates of which He had smashed to pieces, and whose captives He had set free.  As Conqueror, He claimed as His spoils, all those that Satan and death had taken captive in the Garden, i.e., mankind.

 

Therefore, while the difference between the Hosannas of Palm Sunday and the demands for crucifixion on Good Friday may illustrate the fickle nature of the whims of the mob, ultimately there is a unity between the two.  By joyously receiving their Messiah on Palm Sunday, the crowds of Jerusalem had selected and separated the true Paschal Lamb, and by demanding His death on Good Friday, they sent Him to the death for which He hand come into the world, by which He accomplished the salvation to which the liberation of the Hebrews from Egypt on the original Passover pointed.

 

Have a blessed Holy Week!

 

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[1] The Crucifixion was one of several events – the first day of Creation and the testing of Abraham with regards to the sacrifice of Isaac are among the others – which ancient Christians, going back to at least the second century, believed to have taken place on the twenty-fifth of March by the Julian calendar.  That the early Christians also regarded this as the date of the Annunciation – and therefore the conception of Jesus Christ, nine months before Christmas, His birth – is believed to be derived from its having been the date of the Crucifixion.  While you won’t find the “integral age” theory spelled out in any Patristic source, that the early Christians were thinking in such terms seems to be a reasonable deduction from the coinciding of the date set for the Annunciation and the date of the Crucifixion.  That the figure through whom God established the Old Covenant, Moses, died on his 120^th birthday, seems to be the implication of Deuteronomy 31:2, and was certainly held to be the meaning of this verse by the ancient rabbis (see Sotah 12b in the Talmud) who held this to be also true of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and King David (see Rosh Hashana 11a in the Talmud) on the basis of a general principle extrapolated from Exodus 23:26 and the example of Moses.  While a direct application of the rabbinic concept to Jesus would have placed Christmas rather than the Annunciation on the twenty-fifth of March, the reason the early Christians would have been thinking in terms of the conception rather than the birth in Jesus’ case is fairly obvious.  The Annunciation and not Christmas was the date the Incarnation took place.  In the early centuries, the Church was challenged by heretics who taught that the union of the divine and human in Jesus took place at some later time.  The most common form of this heresy was to say that it took place at the baptism of Jesus.  The orthodox doctrine, however, is that Jesus’ human nature was united to His Person from the moment of conception, that it was never the human nature of anyone but the Eternal Son of God, that the Incarnation was not the fusion of a human person with a divine person or the possession of a human person by a divine person, but a Divine Person taking a complete human nature that was formed to be His own to His own Person.  Therefore it made more sense to the ancient Christians that the Son of God would die on the day He became Man rather than on His birthday like Moses.  This also lined up better with the Biblical evidence as to the time of His birth.  From the fact that when Gabriel visited Zechariah in the Temple all of Israel was assembled there (that is the significance of “and all the multitude of the people” in Luke 1:10) this had to have been Yom Kippur for no other day in the course of Abihan’s two weeks of duty involved a national assembly (its first week of duty earlier in the year fell on the week after Shavuot, the Hebrew Pentecost) therefore the Annunciation had to have taken place around Passover in March.

[2] The council ruled that Pascha or Easter was to be celebrated on the first Sunday after the first full moon on or after the twenty-first of March.  This was a translation into the solar calendar of the day when the Resurrection occurred which was the Sunday following the Jewish Passover.  The Hebrew calendar is a lunar calendar – a calendar in which the month’s following the lunar cycle takes precedence over the year’s following the solar cycle and so each month begins on the new moon – and Passover occurs in the middle (on what would be called the Ides of the month on the old Roman lunar calendar) of the first month, which is the spring month, ergo the full moon of the month when spring starts.  By the council’s ruling, spring is considered to start on the twenty-first of March, although astronomically the vernal equinox can occur anywhere between the nineteenth and the twenty-first (this year it fell on the twentieth).  

[3] Apostolic Constitutions, 5.13-19.

[4] Peregrinatio Egeriae. There are numerous variations of the title both in Latin and in translation. In some of these there is a “th” instead of a “g” in the nun’s name.  The 1919 SPCK translation by M. L. McClure and C. L. Feltoe, is an example of this.  It can be read here: The Pilgrimage of Egeria

[5] Is. 53.

[6] Dan. 9:26.

[7] 22^nd by the Hebrew numbering, which our Authorized Bible uses, 21^st by the numbering of the LXX and Latin Vulgate.

[8] Gen. 3:15.

[9] Heb. 4:15.

[10] Hell, when used in this way, should be thought of as “the depository of the souls of the dead” rather than “the place to which the incurably unrepentant will ultimately be consigned” although there is a great deal of overlap between the two concepts.  This is the original meaning attached to the word, although today it is more commonly used of eternal punishment. The Bible brings the two together in Rev. 20:14 when it speaks of Hell, in the original sense of the word, being cast into the Lake of Fire which is Hell in today’s sense of the word, at the Last Judgement.

[11] Lk. 23:43.

[12] Lk. 16:19-31.