The Politics of the Resurrection: A View from John Howard Yoder

The present meaning of the Resurrection for ethics is that we are never boxed in. As believers, we are not to be calculating on the basis of the assumption that we are boxed into a world in which there are no new options. Many “saving” events in history were unforeseeable, unplanned, but they happened. the resurrection was an impossible, unforeseeable new option, and it happened…We cannot show them how resurrection works with modern, scientific, causal models, Yet we are committed to confessing as relevant for our ethics that there is a power in history that reaches beyond the boxes in which we find ourselves. So one more reason that the cross is meaningful is that even though it fails, it does not fail if there is a Resurrection.