Marginal Christianity

  February 9, 2015 by Peter Enns 0 Comments Is there resurrection from the dead in the Old Testament? No. Not really. Well, sort of. O.K., yes, but it depends on how you look at it. Resurrection is pretty central to the New Testament, in case you haven’t noticed. Yet searching for that kind of resurrection it in the Old Testament makes you come up basically empty-handed. We do have one lengthy passage, Daniel 12, which is an important text for understanding the development of Jewish faith later in the Second Temple period (in the second century BCE) when “resurrection” of individuals was in the air generally within Judaism (more below). 2 Maccabees is another example of a text from roughly the same period and which mentions the future resurrection of the dead as if no one needs it explained to them (e.g., see 2 Maccabees 7:9) Neither Isaiah 25:7 (the Lord will “swallow up death forever”) or 26:19 (“Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise”) se...

What was God's response?  What was the reaction of the Triune God to such a disaster?  The response of the Father, Son and Spirit to Adam's plunge into ruin can be put into one word: No!  In that No! echoes the eternal Yes! of the Trinity to us.  Creation flows out of the fellowship of the Triune God, and out of the decision, the determined decision, to share the Triune life with us.  That will of God for our blessing in Christ, that determined Yes! to us, translates into an intolerable No! in the teeth of the Fall.  God is for us and therefore opposed–utterly, eternally and passionately opposed–to our destruction.  That opposition, that fiery and passionate and determined No! to the disaster of the Fall, is the proper understanding of the wrath of God.  Wrath is not the opposite of love.  Wrath is the love of God in action, in opposing action.  It is precisely because the Triune God has spoken an eternal Yes! to the human race, a...