resurrection

Peter Rollins and Tony Jones (photo by Courtney Perry)

That’s what Peter Rollins and I talked about last night at Revolution NYC, Jay Bakker’s church in Brooklyn. In fact, Pete, Jay, and I had a rolling conversation about the meaning of crucifixion and resurrection throughout the weekend that we spent together, debating the differences between saying,

The resurrection really happened

and

The resurrection is real.

It was a fascinating dialogue, and it culminated with our time together at Revolution. You can listen to the sermon below:

At Patheos, Marcus Borg recapitulates what he’s been saying for years: that the resurrection of Jesus was not bodily, it was mystical/spiritual (to be fair, he demurs on these terms, too; not because he doesn’t like them, but because people don’t rightly understand them). Money quote:

Moreover, what would it mean to say that the risen Jesus is a physical/bodily reality? That he continues to be a molecular, protoplasmic, corpuscular being existing somewhere? Does that make any sense? How can the risen and living Jesus be all around us and with us, present everywhere, if he is bodily and physical?

I have written before that I think Borg and others in his camp are beholden to a paradigm of modern rationality: if the resurrection of Jesus doesn’t jibe with modern understandings of science, then it doesn’t wash.

In 2009, I battled this notion with a series of posts. In Why Jesus Died, I wrote,