The Cross and Resurrection*

 

There was a level of controversy recently, in the media at least, when certain events during the holiday period were advertised omitting the word “Easter”. Some church leaders spoke out against what they claimed was a de-Christianising of the festival.

Setting aside the detail that Easter has pagan origins, does the New Testament account of crucifixion and resurrection still have significance? Easter is central to Christianity due to its theology being based on St. Paul.

Paul promoted the notion that Jesus’ crucifixion was the sacrifice of God’s son to pay the debt incurred by Adam on behalf of humanity: Salvation from sin. The subsequent resurrection was God’s demonstration that not only was the sacrifice accepted, the debt paid, but also a promise of life beyond death for the faithful.

From a Deist perspective such an apparently supernatural intervention is open to a more rational explanation. It is based on the idea that Jesus was actually a proto-Deist within the context of the Judaism of his day.

Jesus seems not to have claimed any of the special supernatural or divine attributes that were to be conferred upon him in the centuries after his death. The “Kingdom of God” he proclaimed, that is to know God and love all your neighbours, was at hand because it is within, ready to be recognised and known by everyone.

However, by proclaiming “The Kingdom of God”, the Jewish population of the time were likely to interpret that as the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel. This would certainly have been regarded as sedition by the ruling Roman imperium.

The Jewish authorities also felt undermined, as all religious authorities do, by any claim that God’s way can be found by each and everyone within themselves. No need then for priests, the temple and the riches and power that go with them.

Also, the threat that the Romans might react in a devastating manner to a perceived threat of revolution would also necessitate a staunching of that threat. Not surprisingly, it did not require supernatural insight for Jesus to know his likely fate.

Nor is it surprising that in the hours before his arrest he fervently prayed to be spared that fate. Yet he remained resolute in his mission, with the result that the cross should be taken as a symbol of commitment, not one of blood sacrifice.

As for the resurrection, the explanation could be as mundane as Jesus actually surviving the crucifixion. From the New Testament accounts it seems he was on the cross for about six hours or so, when it usually took days for a victim to die that way.

Terrible as it was, human physical resilience to extreme trauma can be remarkable. By losing consciousness and not reacting to the spear wound Jesus’ death was declared, probably by soldiers who were only too ready to be relieved of their duty. They did, it seems, break the legs of the two crucified with Jesus to hasten their deaths.

When the disciple Thomas met with Jesus after the event he was able to actually touch the wounds, suggesting an all too real presence. Also, following his crucifixion Jesus did not preach a gospel of atoning death and resurrection.

The message Jesus charged his followers with was to make all nations into disciples observing repentance; that is, changing the way life is lived, and forgiveness of sins. That the message was for all nations rather than a “chosen people” was truly revolutionary.

What happened to Jesus afterwards is unknown. Perhaps his wounds forced him into secluded retirement, or maybe they eventually proved fatal. As to life beyond death, Jesus commended his spirit to God while on the cross. It seems he did not need to look forward to resurrection, unlike St. Paul, a man who did not know him.

 

*Based on “The Cross and the Empty Tomb” – christiandeism.com

A Deist Jesus

 

Setting aside the multifarious creeds and dogmas of all the various denominations and faiths, there is a core as old as humankind that can be termed natural religion. This is what arises from human observation and experience processed through reason.

Natural religion started to acquire a more formal aspect in 17^th Century England when deism began to emerge. The word “deism” comes from the Latin “deus” which means God and was adopted to differentiate from the Greek “theos”, the root of theism, denoting the beliefs of Trinitarian Christians.

Deists proposed that the universe in general, and humankind in particular, are not some random, chance creation. The intentional Originator is commonly called “God”, although deists often prefer the word Deus.

God or Deus, it is insisted, defies human comprehension and description, but the existence of such can be inferred from the complexity of creation acting according to discernible laws. Humans have purpose in their lives, so why should purpose be denied on behalf of wider creation.

Early deists mostly considered themselves to be Christians, their thinking emerging from the Trinitarian orthodoxy of the day. However, they insisted that Jesus had taught natural religion, his teachings subsequently subverted by Paul of Tarsus.

This subversion was further exacerbated when Christianity became a formal religion and the “word of God” was set into creeds and dogma by Church councils, beginning with the first in 325AD.

Jesus taught within a Jewish context, but his genius was to transcend it. The natural religion he promulgated was that one God was/is creator, with love of God and love of one’s neighbours being the two commandments.

Evidence that Jesus transcended his Jewish background can be seen in his broadening the concept of neighbour. At his time, according to Jewish law, a neighbour was a fellow Jew or a non-Jewish “sojourner”, a guest of the Jews. Jesus extended the notion of neighbour to include every Jew and gentile in the world.

Deists opposed Trinitarian doctrines such as original sin, the sacrificial atonement by Jesus’ crucifixion, the condemnation to Hell of non-Christians, the Trinity of God and the divinity of Jesus. Deists intended restoring the natural religion of Jesus.

Scientific thinking was embraced by deists as demonstrating the organised wonder of creation. Science was an ally not an obstacle to expanding human understanding of some of the Originator’s intentions. If science contradicted a religious precept, then that precept had been falsified and must give way.

Deism accepted the example Jesus set, that orthodoxy is no guarantee of veracity. Indeed, natural religion requires each individual to engage with creation, look beyond accepted orthodoxy and employ reason to gain some appreciation of divine being.

Easter Story

 

Hardly has Christmas passed, it seems, when Lent is upon us with the prospect of an early Easter. In around three months or so, the Christian story unfolds from its beginning through to its end. And then, of course, beyond.

The Easter narrative is generally familiar, at least in outline, even to those who are not church attendees. Those with a fundamental conviction believe the crucifixion, death and resurrection of Jesus to be literally true.

The 18^th Century deist, Thomas Paine, in his book, “The Age of Reason”, gives an account as to how he came to reject the Easter story from an early age. He heard a sermon, possibly delivered by his aunt Miss Cooke, on the subject, ‘Redemption by the death of the Son of God”

Aged about seven or eight, Paine was not impressed. “I revolted at the recollection of what I had heard…that it was making God Almighty act like a passionate man, that killed his son, when he could not revenge himself any other way…”

He went on to reflect, “How different this is to the pure and simple profession of Deism! The true deist has but one Deity…endeavouring to imitate him in everything moral, scientifical (sic), and mechanical.”

Paine goes on from that point to celebrate the scientific advances in understanding the world and the cosmos made up to that point over the three previous centuries. They were the wellsprings of his religious thinking, not recycled ancient mythologies as literal truth.

 

Quotations from, “The Age of Reason” by Thomas Paine, Dover Publications Inc., 2004. Pages 64-65.

Easter

 

What does Easter mean today? For committed Christians it continues to be their celebration of Jesus’s resurrection, proof of God’s sacrifice of His own son for mankind’s salvation. For those not so committed to the Church it might, at best, be a welcome spring holiday.

Could it be that both are missing the point? Deists do not subscribe to the notion the Jesus was possessed of divinity, being the literal Son of God. It certainly seems, from Gospel writings, that he was not expecting to be raised bodily from the dead.

Indeed, given the option his stated preference in his prayers in Gethsemane was to avoid the whole nasty business. There can be no doubt he was very much aware of the likely consequences of his preaching: the Romans did not take kindly to those advocating alternative kingdoms to their own rule.

However, when it came to the final moment as he hung in agony on the cross, Jesus committed his spirit into the hands of God, he didn’t make an “I’ll be back” pronouncement. This followed on from his experience of absolute despair when he cried aloud his questioning of God, “Why have you forsaken me?”

This question resonates because it manifests itself in the manifold traumas humanity experiences. This is one significance of the crucifixion, the cross can be a symbol of personal agonies, physical and mental, or even of acts of genocide – that oft asked question, “Where is/was God?”

This can lead all too readily, as it has done for so many in Western society at least, to a complete renunciation of God. It seems that no matter how forsaken he felt, Jesus had faith enough to still entrust God with his spirit.

Perhaps Jesus recognised, as deists do, that God is beyond all human comprehension, appreciating the existence of his own life, and the lives of others, is the crucial evidence that God imbues creation with life.

Many deists conclude that God having set the dynamics of creation in motion does not intervene in the universe. When Jesus felt forsaken that was very much a human in distress reaction, not God arbitrarily deciding not to come to His son’s aid.

Nor was it to ensure the completion of some divine grand plan for human salvation through sacrifice. Certainly there is no evidence in the Gospels that Jesus held such a view. It was Paul, persecutor then militant apostle, who developed that concept.

Indeed, Paul insisted if the resurrection had not occurred then there could be no hope of life beyond death. That hope was then invested in the Church giving it its awesome power. For near two thousand years this has given the crucifixion a meaning it never had.

Other than what is written in the Gospels, some while after the event, and the pronouncements of Paul, there is no indication, certainly not contemporaneous, of such a miraculous event. Although Gospel accounts of the empty tomb and subsequent meetings with the crucified Jesus may not be fanciful.

Perhaps the simplest explanation is that Jesus did not die on the cross. When he committed his spirit to God it could be he slipped in unconsciousness, not unreasonably considering the scourging he’d suffered and then the crucifixion. A spear in the side wouldn’t necessarily elicit a response in such circumstances.

Jesus had been on the cross for six hours which, interminable as it must have felt, was actually a short time as it usually took days for a victim to actually die. It could be that some did die quickly, surely the shock would be enough for this to be possible.

Therefore, the guard being convinced Jesus was dead, broke the legs of the two crucified either side of him to hasten their deaths through asphyxiation. Get the business over with and back to barracks. Jesus then revived. While this may appear unlikely, the ability of human beings to survive great traumas is well attested.

Certainly it seems Jesus was able to convince his disciples of his presence by displaying his wounds. Interestingly, he did not instruct those disciples to go into the world preaching about his death and resurrection, rather repentance and forgiveness, consistent with his pre-crucifixion message.

Jesus then disappears from history. He might well have succumbed to his ordeal or been so badly traumatised as to simply withdraw. There can only be speculation. The importance of all this is that no supernatural element is required for Jesus to have continuing significance, even for deists, as a man, a son of God, as we are all sons and daughters of God.