If We Preach Christ Crucified, What About the Resurrection?

We preach Christ crucified. So says St. Paul himself.

But shouldn’t we also preach Christ resurrected? In other words: crucifix or cross?

The question really hinges on how we relate to what happened in ancient Palestine some two thousand years ago. There is a tendency among evangelical Protestants—and perhaps others across the Christian spectrum—to view the passion, death, and resurrection of Jesus as a closed historical event.

Catholics agree to a point: the death and resurrection of Jesus indeed are true historical events. But we do not believe that its historical facticity closes off this event from us today. In a very special way, it remains accessible to us. We can enter into it and still experience it—at Mass, but also through prayer, a special devotion or prayer, or even meditating on a certain icon or the crucifix itself.

So we do preach Christ crucified. But certainly we must also preach Christ resurrected as well? Or not?

The letters of Paul—whose own words raise the question—also contain the answer. In fact, the best place to start our search is 1 Corinthians where Paul makes his famous declaration. That comes at the very beginning in 1 Corinthians 1. Here is his statement, with some of its accompanying context:

For Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are called, Jews and Greeks alike, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength (verses 22 to 25).

It’s one of the great texts on the fundamentals of the Christian faith—and no mention of the resurrection there, or anywhere else in the chapter for that matter.

Our answer awaits us at the end of the epistle, in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul refers to preaching Christ ‘as raised from the dead’ (verse 12). So is Paul now contradicting himself? Perhaps over the course of the intervening chapters he changed his mind? Not at all:

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came also through a human being (verses 20-21).

The two statements now seem compatible. For Paul, to preach Christ crucified is also to preach Christ resurrected since it is precisely through His death that the resurrection comes. But then some who hold to a certain theological perspective—largely evangelical Protestant—point out that Christ died for us. Since he died for us, the thinking goes, it is a mistake to focus so much on His death when it is the resurrection that is the big news—the gospel.

Again, this is not what Paul teaches. For Paul, the death of Christ is something we experience in our lives. This conviction informs his understanding of baptism: “Or are you unaware that we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?” (Romans 6:3). His view of suffering: “We are afflicted in every way … always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus” (2 Corinthians 4:8,10; see also Colossians 1:24). And his moral theology: “We know that our old self was crucified with him, so that our sinful body might be done away with, that we might no longer be in slavery to sin” Romans 6:6).

The goal, Paul writes, is to become united to Christ’s death. In his words: “For if we have grown into union with him through a death like his, we shall also be united with him in the resurrection” (Romans 6:5). Again it is through Christ’s death that resurrection comes.

Does this diminish the importance of the resurrection? Far from it! As Paul himself goes on to write in 2 Corinthians 4, cited above, we carry His death so in our bodies so that we also may manifest His life. This is why we Catholics make such a point of celebrating a long Lent and a long Easter each year. Our spirituality is indeed a joyful one, but it is a sober joy (to paraphrase the great nineteenth century social psychologist William James).

There is a sense in which our spiritual outlook remains centered in the crucifixion. How else could it be? How could we have our Easters without our Lents? (as Fulton Sheen observed). How could we sustain such joy amid such suffering? Everything, it seems, radiates outward from the cross. And it is always Christ on the cross who consoles us, who suffers with us, and yes, who points us to paradise (as He did with the thief).

Indeed, the New Testament never really holds up the empty cross for us as an image for contemplation. In the resurrection accounts, the enduring images are the empty tomb and the risen Christ who still exhibits His wounds—both images that, significantly, point back to His death. The all-too-familiar image of three empty crosses on a hill is not a biblical one.

As Paul himself writes in 1 Corinthians 15:

But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead came

also through a human being. For just as in Adam all die, so too in Christ shall all be brought to life, but each one in proper order: Christ the first fruits; then, at his coming, those who belong to Christ (verses 20 to 23).

So we look forward to the resurrection, but it is envisioned and experienced now through the crucifixion. So we journey on, joyful but also somber, as we suffer and groan in this world awaiting the fullness of the world to come. But we do not journey alone. The crucified Christ accompanies us. This is why we preach Christ crucified.

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Stephen Beale is a freelance writer based in Providence, Rhode Island. Raised as an evangelical Protestant, he is a convert to Catholicism. He is a former news editor at GoLocalProv.com and was a correspondent for the New Hampshire Union Leader, where he covered the 2008 presidential primary. He has appeared on Fox News, C-SPAN and the Today Show and his writing has been published in the Washington Times, Providence Journal, the National Catholic Register and on MSNBC.com and ABCNews.com. A native of Topsfield, Massachusetts, he graduated from Brown University in 2004 with a degree in classics and history. His areas of interest include Eastern Christianity, Marian and Eucharistic theology, medieval history, and the saints. He welcomes tips, suggestions, and any other feedback at bealenews at gmail dot com. Follow him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/StephenBeale1

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