In the passages in which it addresses the Resurrection, then, the New Testament witnesses not to the resuscitation of a corpse, and certainly nothing like a return to the life of this world. It addresses rather the entire passage of Jesus from earthly mode of existence to a spiritual and eternal mode of existence.
The Jesus whom faith proclaims as the Lord of the universe is no longer defined and limited by time and space, as he was during his life in the flesh; he is, however, accessible to human beings who are still defined by time and space. And if some reply that the only way for “an intelligent person” (whatever that means) to accept the Resurrection is to reduce it to something only historical and verifiable, then we are in the realm of what the American Scripture scholar Luke Timothy Johnson has called “epistemological imperialism,” a denial of any realm of reality outside one’s control—which is neither good history nor good science. Such objectors have made a prior judgment that material explanations are the only rational, sound justifications for everything in reality. The problem with this narrow perspective is that it has no room for artists, poets, composers, for those who give their lives to another in love and for those who give loving lives of service to many.
What, then, does it mean to say, “Jesus is risen from the dead?” It means that Jesus has entered into a new and permanent manner of existence-—immortal, deathless, no longer limited by our categories of space and time. His life is not a return to this life as we know it: it is a life in God. But it is also a bodily resurrection. The tomb was empty. But the body that went into the grave emerged completely changed.
Jesus, risen and alive—not a soul or a memory, a ghost or a force, but the beginning of the transformed universe—is no longer present in a place. He is rather, we might say, present to a place; he is no longer contained by any spatial situation. He is present to us wherever we may be. Before his Glorification, he was limited by his corporeality. Now his whole person is with us, and nothing of him is far away in some spatially imagined heaven.
This present moment is the first moment of the Resurrection of Jesus, for there is no passage of time in the realm of God, and Jesus has not changed in any way since that first moment. “All time belongs to him, and all the ages.” Every moment of every day in what we call the passing of time is embraced by the eternal present of the Resurrection of Jesus.
At this point we are closer, perhaps, to articulating the meaning of the “sacrifice of Jesus.” Totally transformed as man, he now possesses the distinctive title, Lord—reigning Messiah over the universe. By virtue of being glorified by God, he is raised to Lordship which as man he did not have prior to his death.
Jesus, in his Glorification, anticipates by a total transformation the ultimate destiny of all the dead. His transformation is the revelation, guarantee and first fruits of the future complete resurrection of all; thus we can say that his Resurrection is the beginning of the transfiguration of the world.
~Adapted from Donald Spoto, The Hidden Jesus: A New Life
