The Risen One

Christos Yannaras

 (From Chapter Chapter 8 of Elements of Faith (T&T Clark: Edinburgh, 1991)

Christ rose again on the third day after his burial. Both the biblical testimonies and the church’s later iconography and hymnology allude to the resurrection indirectly, one could say, by means of signs like the empty tomb, the angel of God who freed the entrance of the grave, the linen burial clothes “lying by themselves”. A particular moment when the dead body of Christ received life again and began to function biologically again is neither specified nor described as in the case of the dead whom Christ himself raised during the period of his public life. But there is the experience and evidence of his bodily appearances after the resurrection: The risen Christ appears to the myrrh-bearing women and to the travelers on the road to Emmaus and to the gathering of the disciples in the upper room in Jerusalem or on the shores of Lake Tiberias.

For the experience and certainty of the Church, the resurrection of Christ differs from the resurrections of the dead which he himself realized in his earthly life. To the dead body of Lazarus, or of the son of the widow of Nain, or the daughter of Jairus, the sovereign command of Christ restores the dead functions of life, just as in the cases of other miracles he restored certain specific functions, the sight of the blind or the hearing and speech of the man deaf and dumb or walking to the paralytic— but, the bodies of those raised remained corruptible and mortal. All of them died again at some later time because their bodies which had once been raised were subject, as they were before they were raised, to the consequences of the human fall, to the necessity of corruption and death. The raisings of the dead which are described in the Holy Scripture are, to the human eye, astonishing examples of the power of God, that is, of his freedom from every natural limitation. This power can overturn the laws of nature but cannot change the mode of existence of nature. Such a change cannot be imposed from without; it can only be the fruit of personal freedom, an accomplishment of freedom. As we have often emphasized in the previous pages, it is the person who hypostasizes life and existence, and hypostasizes it either as a natural self-sufficiency (subordinating existence to the necessities of the created) or as an event of loving relationship and erotic communion with God (freeing existence from corruption and death). But love and eros are not imposed from without; they are only an achievement of personal freedom.

This achievement of freedom is completed by Christ on the Cross and is manifest existentially in his resurrection. By his obedience to the Father’s will even to the point of death, Christ leads his human nature to the perfect renunciation of every demand for existential self-sufficiency, transposing the existence of nature into the relationship of love and freedom of obedience to God. And this nature which draws its existence from the relationship with God does not die because, even though created, it exists now in the manner of the uncreated, not in the manner of the created. Christ’s raised body is a material body, a created nature. But it differs from the bodies of other raised people because it exists now in the mode of the uncreated, the mode of freedom from every natural necessity’ And so, while it is sensible and tangible, with flesh and bones(Lk 24.30), while it can take nourishment like all other bodies (and the risen Christ eats honey and fish before the eyes of his disciples (Lk 24.42)) and while the marks of the wounds which he received are obvious on him, still this same body enters the upper room “with the doors locked” Un 20. 1) and vanishes at Emmaus after the breaking of the bread (Lk 24.31) and finally is received into heaven (Mk 16.19; Lk 24.51) enthroning the human “clay” in the glory of the divine life.

The transformation in the mode of existence of Christ’s human nature after his resurrectionis shown in the Gospels indirectly again: it is not possible to define and describe it with the objective categories which determine our common everyday experiences. It notes an “otherness”: he is the well-known “son of man”, but “in a different form” (Mk 16.12). Mary Magdalene in the garden with his tomb in it thought him to be a gardener. The two travelers on the road to Emmaus thought him a chance passer-by. The disciples who were fishing in Lake Tiberias heard him asking them for something “good to eat” and did not suspect again that it was he who was waiting for them on the shore. Everyone discovered him suddenly and self-evidently, but after they had been mistaken at the beginning. What is it that made him different in principle and which had to be transcended in order to recognize him?

Certainly something which is not to be said but only experienced. Perhaps if the relationship with him stops at the apparent individual, it will not succeed in recognizing the hypostasis freed from individual self-sufficiency. We do not know and we cannot describe the experience; we can only dare to approach it interpretively from the events which accompany it: The body of the risen Christ is the human nature free from every limitation and ever need. It is a human body with flesh and bones, but which does not draw life from its biological functions, but is hypostasized in a real existence thanks to the personal relationship with God which alone constitutes it and gives it life.