God's Supreme Work

by Fr. James Schall - April 24, 2011

Reprinted with permission.

In the Breviary for Sunday Night Prayer, the short Christian reflection introducing Psalm 4 is from St. Augustine. It reads: "The resurrection of Christ was God's supreme and wholly marvelous work." Augustine did not say that the creation of the cosmos, however marvelous, was God's highest work. He did not even say that the incarnation itself or the salvation of mankind was God's supreme work. Why is it the resurrection of Christ?

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that Christ the Word became man, which He did. Further suppose that He lived and died on this earth, which He did. In addition, imagine that He was never raised from the dead in Jerusalem three days after His execution. Yet, without this resurrection, St. Paul says, our faith is in vain. To conceive an order in which this resurrection did not take place is possible. We would read the Gospels without anything following the burial in the tomb. But with such a supposition, it would be difficult to think of why there was an incarnation in the first place.

Not a few scholars over the centuries maintained that Christ never rose from the dead. He was a pretty nice guy – a bit deluded, perhaps – but no resurrection. No philosophic or scientific grounds, they insisted, could be found for such an improbable event. Therefore, it did not happen. In the time of Christ, Jewish authorities heard rumors that Christ would rise again. They insisted that the body was carted off by desperate believers, never to be found. Thus, again, no resurrection happened.

So why is the resurrection of Christ God's supreme work? Neither does Augustine say that the resurrection of everyone's body, which is what the Creed promises, is God's supreme work. These latter individual human resurrections have not yet taken place, of course. Some theologians have tried to make resurrection somehow follow immediately on death. No scriptural foundation for this view can be sustained. But without the resurrection of Christ, no argument for the resurrection of the body of anyone else is found.

In the Tuesday of Easter Week Office, St. Basil explains, "When mankind was estranged from him by disobedience, God our Savior made a plan for raising us from our fall and restoring us to friendship with himself. According to this plan Christ came in the flesh, He showed us the gospel way of life, He suffered, died on the cross, was buried and rose from the dead." The resurrection was the culmination of a "plan." It did not just "happen." The "restoration of friendship" with God involved the resurrection.

Again, why was Christ's resurrection God's most wonderful work? If God could create the universe, surely it was a simple step to "recreate" it. Standard Catholic doctrine teaches that the risen Christ ascended into heaven complete, body and soul, to be seated at the right hand of the Father. The question of why the resurrection of Christ is God's most wonderful work is directly related to Pope John Paul II's theology of the body, to the very meaning of man in the world.

In one of his sermons, Pope Leo the Great explains that Christ "did away with the everlasting character of death so as to make death a thing of time, not of eternity." In Ezekiel 18, we read that God takes no pleasure in the death of anyone. The resurrection of Christ is God's most wondrous work because, in it, we recognize the bridge between the finiteness of man's being and the permanence of the inner life, the Trinitarian life of the Godhead. It is this latter life for which we were initially created – nothing less.

Death becomes, with the Fall, a "thing in time." Pope Benedict XVI tells us in Spe Salvi that death is both a punishment and a blessing. It was a punishment for the sin of the first parents. We "inherit" it – that is, everyone lives in the consequences of the acts of others in an unending chain that goes back to the beginning. The divine plan, however, indicates that God does not simply let things be. He responds. His response, ultimately, is the resurrection of Christ.

The resurrection of Christ followed on His real death. In this He belongs to the sons of Adam. But His resurrection is the greatest work of the Father. For, in it, all things in heaven and earth are restored in Christ. Death is a blessing. We are not, as many would have it, to go on and on in this world, as if that is what we are created for. The resurrection of Christ is the divine work that assures us that our end is nothing less than for each of us, if we will, to be whole before the Trinitarian God. No other alternative would be the real work of God.

Fr. James V. Schall, S. J., teaches political science at Georgetown University. His latest book, The Mind That Is Catholic, is published by Catholic University of America Press.