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The Resurrection of the Dead (St. Paul)
12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
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| Abstract: If there is no resurrection of the dead, St. Paul says, “Our preaching is useless and so is our faith.” If Christ was not raised from the dead, then “faith is futile.” If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christians are “of all people most to be pitied.”
The idea that one’s beliefs are incorrect—one’s faith futile—may arouse rage in the mind of the believer.
What a violent anti-Semite seeks to kill—or kill off—is disbelief; the idea that there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead. In this symbolic sense, Jews are“Christ killers.”
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Christianity lies at the center of Western civilization lies Christianity. And at the center of Christianity lies St. Paul—who defined Christian ideology more clearly than anyone else.
At the core of Pauline Christianity is belief in the resurrection. St. Paul testified that God “raised Christ from the dead” (1 Corinthians 15) and that believers in Christ will also be resurrected.
To the right is St. Paul’s lament: what if there is no resurrection of the dead? If Christ has not been raised—then “our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” If Christ was not resurrected—one has not to been resurrected in Christ—then faith has been in vain.
Anti-Semitic ideologies grow out of a fundamental root: the idea that Jews--though they may believe in God--do not embrace Christ and His resurrection. According to Jews, Christ was not God and was not resurrected.
By not embracing the resurrection of Christ, Judaism constitutes negation of Christianity. As Daniel Goldhagen put it, “If Jews were right, then Christians were wrong.” As long as Jews rejected Jesus’ revelation, they unwittingly “challenged the Christian certitude in that revelation.” If Jews, the People of God, shunned the Messiah that God had promised them, then something was awry.
Ideologies often promise “eternal life” to believers. As a corollary, other groups of people who do not believe in one's own ideology (Ernest Becker) may constitute the negation of one's ideology. From the perspective of a Christian who believes deeply in the resurrection of Christ, Jews thus are non-believers, “heretics” who negate the ideology of Christianity. Anti-Semitism begins with the idea of Jews as the negation of Christian ideology.
If there is no resurrection of the dead, St. Paul says, “Our preaching is useless and so is our faith.” If Christ was not raised from the dead, then “faith is futile;” those who have “fallen asleep” in Christ are lost. If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christians are “of all people most to be pitied.”
The idea that one’s beliefs are incorrect—one’s faith futile—may arouse rage in the mind of the believer.
What a violent anti-Semite seeks to kill—or kill off—when seeking to kill Jews is disbelief, that is, the belief that there is no such thing as the resurrection of the dead (immortality). In this sense, Jews are--symbolically--“Christ killers.” Their belief system negates the Christian belief in Christ's resurrection; in the resurrection of the dead.
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