Being and Becoming

Jesus is the “living one” (Revelation 1:18). He doesn’t mean that He has always been. He is the living one in the sense that He has been through the chiasm of death to life:

A. and I became (egenomen)

B. dead

C. and behold

B’. alive

A’. I am (eimi) unto the ages of ages.

If we can press the contrast of the verbs: Jesus became dead. We might take that as a gloss on incarnation. The Son entered into becoming, which is to say, He entered into death. Heidegger was right insofar as he described the Adamic world: our existence is becoming unto death.

But that is not the final condition of Jesus.In His resurrection  entered into an endless state of “I am.” He is the “I am” through all the changing ages of the world, the same yesterday, today, and forever. Because He has been raised from the dead, never more to die, He is beyond all dying, beyond all the becoming of mortal existence. He is fully alive because He is alive on the far side of the grave (N.T. Wright’s “life after life after death”).

Again, if we can press the verbs: Being in the absolute sense is not a state of persistence from the beginning; being is the condition of life beyond death. To be is to be resurrected.