The reactions to Easter run the entire gamut from explicit rejection to ardent self-immolating acceptance. In the spectrum in between, we can find various responses to the church’s cry, “Rejoice, the Lord is risen!”

The question of what Easter means was first answered by St. Paul in one of the earliest expressions of the church’s teaching. Paul was writing to the Corinthians. For him, the risen Lord was the heart and soul of Christianity. The risen Lord necessarily implies a resurrection.

In writing to the Corinthians, Paul apparently was attempting to settle some of the problems revolving around the question of the risen body. Paul does not seem to face any challenge on the fact that Christ is risen. In fact, he presents this as the accepted Gospel message — accepted also at Corinth: “I handed on to you the facts which had been imparted to me, that Christ died for our sins … was buried, that he was raised to life on the third day” (1 Cor 15:3-4).

Paul’s teaching

Interestingly, in this earliest formula of faith we see listed the fact that Christ was dead and bodily buried. His death was not symbolic, nor was there question about the fact that he was committed to the grave as are all the dead. This one phrase “was buried” is not without significance alongside the next line that reads, “he was raised to life.” For St. Paul the continuity of Christ’s life-death-risen life is an established fact. The same Christ, in the flesh, who hanged on Calvary, was anointed for burial, and rose from the dead.

Paul goes on in his letter to explain that the resurrection of Christ was a pledge to all believers that they too would rise. But the keystone of his whole argument is that first Christ is risen. “If there be no resurrection, then Christ was not raised” (15:24).

Surely Paul, who just finished relating the narrative of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, is not speaking of his resurrection “in spirit” only. To the Corinthians he is preaching a bodily resurrection. It is precisely this bodily resurrection that they doubt. So Paul links every resurrection in glory to Christ’s resurrection in the flesh. “If Christ was not raised, then our Gospel is null and void and so is your faith” (15:17).

Not only does Paul stake the worth of his whole mission on the physical resurrection of Christ but the validity of the entire Christian dispensation. The new order preaches not only Jesus resurrected from the land of the dead as the Christ — flesh and spirit, who walked the land of the living — but it preaches our resurrection from the dead because of Christ. “We turn out to be lying witnesses for God because we bore witness that he raised Christ to life, whereas, if the dead are not raised he did not raise him” (15:15).

The whole basis for belief in the resurrection of the dead is the resurrection of Christ. That resurrection is confirmed by the knowledge that Christ appeared to his disciples with a risen body after death. Without this fact, Christian faith is sterile and the Christian way of life is needless bother.

Equally important is the fact that Paul appeals to history and the evidence of eyewitnesses to the appearance of Christ, many of whom were still alive, to attest his witness. Paul seems to take for granted that all know and believe firmly that Christ rose bodily from the dead. His object was to convince the others that resurrection has an effect also on them.

Today, the same exhortation might be in order. Theological questions naturally arise. If Christ rose from the dead, where is his body? What physical substance is there in the kingdom of the risen? But these questions are secondary to the fact that Christ is risen.

As the Corinthians questioned the resurrection of all the dead, so Paul replied that Christ was also the explanation of eternal life. So too as we question academically what became of the body or what will become of our bodies, the church, with Paul, answers. If Christ is risen, then our faith need not falter over little points we find hard to understand. Paul writes and the church teaches. “But the truth is, Christ was raised to life — the first fruits of the harvest of the dead” (15:20).

In later Pauline writings we see this theme carried to a fuller development. In the letter to the Colossians, the author says, “He is, moreover, the head of the body, the church. He is its origin, the first to return from the dead, to be in all things alone supreme” (Col 1:18). Whereas all creation was through the Word, so all re-creation is through the risen Christ.

The resurrection of all the dead in this sense is seen as a participation in the resurrection of Christ. For Paul this takes place in stages. First, Christ is raised from the dead. In so doing, he conquers death and offers the same victory to his followers. Then come all those who share in his resurrection. These will join him at this second coming, and die in that hope. Finally comes the end when Christ, joined by his faithful, hands over his kingdom to his Father.

In the letter to the Colossians (1:13), the author apparently carried the same theme through to a more explicit expression. In any case, it is precisely death that is defeated by Christ. Not only the hostile spiritual powers that threaten man, but death itself, meets its victor.

Needless to say, Paul, as does the church, distinguishes between what has been started and its perfection. Neither death nor the forces of evil have been definitely vanquished in so far as this world goes. But the final victory has been declared. Christ’s own resurrection is the sign that it will certainly come.

The church has always maintained that God sent forth his Son into the world. The Son alone won our redemption with the price of his blood. But by rising from the dead, the Son was able to return to his Father. In so doing, he could send the Holy Spirit to bring to completion what his own life and work had started. It is the ancient faith of the church. John synthesized the elements of God’s plan in the first chapter of his Gospel.

Here we see not a Christ of “influence” affecting man. John presents no memory of a good, even heroic man as our present hope. No cult myth guarantees our final victory over this world. The risen Christ, Jesus the Galilean, in the flesh, raised from the dead, ascended to his Father, is our Lord. As the Lord of the living and the dead, he sends the Spirit to lead the church to find triumph.

Fundamentally, the acceptance of a risen Lord rests on the acceptance of the Incarnation. Through the God-made-man and then glorified, we have the church made holy by the Spirit. The Son, reunited with his Father, sends his Spirit that other men may live forever.

All of these are “hard sayings,” but God coming into our human bodily life is itself a “difficult idea.” In faith, the fact remains that through these crooked pens God chose to write a straight line. He took a body, raised it and glorified it. But even more importantly, he promised us the same.