Please comment and answer
Can I be a Christian if I don't necessarily believe that Jesus was resurrected?
The dictionary defines a Christian as "one who believes in Jesus Christ and his teachings." Doesn't say anything about the resurrection. But if you go here, it says:
"Christians universally agree that the resurrection of Jesus is central to their faith...Indeed, one cannot be a Christian unless one believes that God raised Jesus from the dead."
The dictionary defines a Christian as "one who believes in Jesus Christ and his teachings." Doesn't say anything about the resurrection. But if you go here, it says:
"Christians universally agree that the resurrection of Jesus is central to their faith...Indeed, one cannot be a Christian unless one believes that God raised Jesus from the dead."
posted by SuperSkeptic at 11:41 PM
3 Comments:
It was when I admitted that I was skeptical of the resurrection that I finally realized I was no longer a Christian. However, there are a lot of liberal Christian denominations whose membership is comprised of people who are more interested in the moral teaching of Christ and less in his deity or the miraculous events surrounding his life. Personally, I am unsatisfied by this selective reading of scripture. Either he was God and his words are worthy of worship, or he was a teacher, undeserving of the ultimate reverence given him. The distinction between the two hinges upon the resurrection.
Z: Thanks for your comment and vote (no resurrection belief = not a Christian, if I understand you properly). I find your criteria for being "worthy of worship" intriguing. What if Jesus was touched by God, performed miracles, and died for our sins, but he was not resurrected? If this scenario were true, would he be worthy of worship? My gut reaction is yes; I guess I place more importance on "dying for our sins" than in the resurrection.
The short answer to your question, as far as I am able to answer it, is yes. You can be a Christian and yet not believe in a literal bodily resurrection.
I say this because, all definitions aside (and definitions exist to describe reality, not to dictate reality) there are, in fact, examples of Christians - and prominent Christians - who do not believe in a bodily resurrection.
John Shelby Spong, the now-retired Episcopal bishop of Newark and prolific author, comes to mind. But he is by no means alone, accounting in part for the success of his books.
I am agnostic on the subject of bodily resurrection. Though I affirm the importance of that doctrine in Christian history and community, I certainly cannot say that Jesus was definitively raised from the dead. How could I?
I can say, however (and I say this with, among other people, Marcus Borg of the Jesus Seminar and Oregon State University, another prolific author of a less conventional form of Christianity)that the earliest Christians experienced the resurrected Jesus, whatever it is that their experience actually points to.
Zeteo, your final comment:
Either he was God and his words are worthy of worship, or he was a teacher, undeserving of the ultimate reverence given him. The distinction between the two hinges upon the resurrection.
seems to me to be a false dichotomy. Why only two options, when many people see far more than those two?
SuperSkeptic, your response to Zeteo was a good one. However, there is a greatdeal more to Jesus - regardless of what you believe about him - than just the claims that he died for our sins and rose again.
Jesus as the Christ, the Annointed of God, has historically been seen in at least three forms, which are presented to us in story-theology as Macro Stories. Here are three very brief descriptions of the three Macro Stories which, historically speaking, Jesus as the Christ, or God's Annointed, responds to, taken from this post:
1. The Priestly Story (or the Temple Story) (note: this is the story you respond to when you talk about Jesus dying for our sins):
The Priestly or Temple Story is the most familiar Macro Story within the Christian tradition. It is the way in the role of Jesus as the Christ is most often seen, though I must confess that this story does not speak to me nearly as much as the other two. It is the story of our need for atonement.
Something has gone horribly wrong within us. We understand good and bad, we know right from wrong, and yet we so often chose wrong over right. We are corrupted. We do bad things. This creates a problem with guilt. There is a need for atonement, to make things right.
So God provides for us what we could not provide for ourselves, a sacrifice that balances the scales, that atones for our sins. In the Jewish tradition Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the ritual completion of this story; their way of connecting themselves to the story. In the Christian tradition, the death of Jesus completes and connects.
At the very least the Christian take on this story turns a very bad thing (the crufixion of Jesus) into something constructive. It redeems a senseless death. But can this be taken literally? Can we say, as a matter of literal-historical truth, that Jesus died for our sins?
Certainly many Christians say just that, though they do not have in mind the distinction between mythological truth and literal-historical truth. The statement that Jesus as the Christ died for our sins, as the completion of the Priestly or Temple Story, is a tremendous part of the Christian tradition. It has spoken to Christians for nearly 2,000 years. But as a matter of historical fact, it is simply not true.
Jesus of Nazareth, the historical figure, was killed by Roman authorities because he was seen as part of a growing Jewish threat. There had been many Messianic figures in and around first century Palestine, mobilizing Jews to revolt against the Roman authorities. Such figures were crucified, a public warning to other would be revolutionaries about what happens when you mess with Rome.
But Jesus was seen very early on as a completion to this Macro Story. Jesus was seen as both a priestly mediator between God and humanity (even to the point of being seen as the way in which God is made incarnate to us), and as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. This was a way to connect Jesus to one of the important Macro Stories of ancient Israel. Its value is found in its enduring ability to speak to Christians, rather than in the literal-historical truth value concerning the primary reason for the senseless death of a spiritual leader.
2. The Story of Exile and Return:
While this story is principally the concern of Diasporic Jews, it permeates the Jewish and Christian scripture. The story of Adam and Eve, particularly in third chapter of Genesis, can be seen as part of this story. They have been, because of their disobedience, exiled from their home. They live their life "East of Eden," outside not only "paradise," but also the only home they had ever known.
The story of Exile is a story of being far from home. It is the story of being existentially alone, wandering aimlessly with no security and no real meaning. It describes what is too often our human experience. But like all of the Macro Story, it describes both a problem and a solution. For while we are in Exile God comes to us. God is with us, in our Exile, making wherever we are a temporary home, while preparing us for our eventual return.
In the Christian tradition this story is perhaps seen best in Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. The son leaves home only to find himself in a self-imposed existential exile. Yet while he is away from home, he remembers his home, and he remembers his father. He turns toward home, only to find that his father has seen him coming and set out to meet him. While still away from home he meets his father who takes him home. Exile to Return.
Part of the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation sees Jesus as the Christ as the way in which God meets us in our Exile. While we are, existentially speaking, "strangers in a strange land," God through the Christ is with us, helping us to make a temporary home while awaiting return. In this way we know not only that our Exile is temporary (there will be a Return), but that we can find a home even in the midst of Exile. It is not the lonely, aimless wandering that it at first seems to be. It is instead a way in which God is made present to us.
3. The Exodus Story:
Jesus as the new Moses, delivering us from slavery to sin and death.
If you are more interested in this story, which is my favorite of the Macro Stories, feel free to check out the post linked above.
Sorry for taking up so much space in your comments. I hope that this interested you, and if not feel free to delete it, as it does, I now see, take up an unjustifiable amount of space.
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