We are tempted
to believe that, although the Resurrection may be the climax of the Gospel,
there is yet a Gospel that stands upon its own feet and may be understood and
appreciated before we pass on to the Resurrection. The first disciples did not
find it so. For them the Gospel without the Resurrection was not merely a
Gospel without its final chapter: it was not a Gospel at all. Jesus Christ had,
it is true, taught and done great things: but He did not allow the disciples to
rest in these things. He led them on to paradox, perplexity and darkness; and
there He left them. There too they would have remained, had He not been raised from
death. But His Resurrection threw its own light backwards upon the death and
ministry that went before; it illuminated the paradoxes and disclosed the unity
of His words and deeds. As Scott Holland said: “In the Resurrection it was not
only the Lord who was raised up from the dead. His life on earth rose with him;
it was lifted up into its real light” (On Behalf of Belief, 12).
It is a
desperate procedure to try and build a Christian Gospel upon the words of Jesus
in Galilee apart from the climax of Calvary, Easter and Pentecost. If we do so
we are professing to know Jesus better than the first disciples knew Him; and
the Marcan record shows us how complete was their perplexity before the
Resurrection gave them the key. Every oral tradition about Jesus was handed
down, every written record of Him was made only by those who already
acknowledged Him as Lord, risen from the dead.
It is therefore
both historically and theologically necessary to “begin with the Resurrection.”
For from it, in direct order of historical fact, there came Christian
preaching, Christian worship, Christian belief . . .
The Gospel of
God appears in Galilee: but in the end it is clear that Calvary and the
Resurrection are its centre. For Jesus Christ came not only to preach a Gospel
but to be a Gospel, and He is the Gospel of God in all that He did for
the deliverance of mankind.
- from Chapter 1 of The Resurrection of Christ (1945)
Michael Ramsey 1904-1988
(Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974)
