The Death, Burial, and Resurrection of Jesus—The Nicene Creed for Noncreedal Christians, Post #12

 

 For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 

he suffered death and was buried. 

On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures; 

he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.

As we continue our journey through the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed during this 1700^th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, we are in the midst of the Creed’s statements about Jesus Christ. In the previous reflection, we focused on the statements concerning the incarnation, including the virginal conception. In that statement, the Creed affirms the humanity of Jesus. Now, we turn to the death, burial, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus.

                As I’ve noted earlier, one of the major criticisms of the ecumenical creeds is that they say nothing about Jesus’ life, ministry, and teachings. While the questions being raised in the fourth century may not have centered on Jesus’ life and teachings, they are not irrelevant. In fact, they are central to the Christian faith and need to be lifted up by the church. One could (should) say that the point of the incarnation is to embody the love of God in the person of Jesus.

                With this affirmation of Jesus’ life and teachings, I turn to the next set of statements. The first statement has to do with Good Friday. Here is the message of the cross, which is central to the Christian faith. As the Creed reveals, “for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate.” The reference to Pontius Pilate roots Jesus’ death in history. It was under the Roman governor that Jesus was executed. That mode of execution was crucifixion, a form of execution often reserved for people who threatened the authority of the empire. That Pontius Pilate’s name is included here could be seen as a sign that Rome took responsibility for Jesus’ execution. After all, Constantine called the council to resolve questions threatening the unity of the church he hoped would help unify his empire.

                While the Creed stipulates that Christ was crucified for our sakes under the auspices of the Roman government, thus dying and being buried, the Creed does not provide a theory of atonement. It is in the previous statement, concerning the incarnation, that the Creed roots our salvation. It is only after making that statement that the Creed speaks of the cross, but does not reveal what the cross does for us. Having said that, I believe that this word from the late Disciples theologian Joe Jones is helpful: 

In the cross the eternal and incarnate Son receives the full brutal force of the principalities of sin that pretend to be the determiners of human life, meaning, and destiny. These powers, in their utter attraction, coercive power, and destructiveness, symbolize the wrath of God—God permitting sin to reap its own dreadful consequences in time. It is these consequences of sin that manifest themselves as the crucifiers of Jesus—intending in his death his complete annihilation and the demonstration of their destiny determining power. But, in dying under their destructive power, Jesus is the divine Life suffering with sinners, dying with sinners, and finally rendering sin powerless to determine human life before God. [Jones, A Grammar of Christian Faith, 2:475].

As Jürgen Moltmann has demonstrated, in Jesus we encounter the Crucified God who has suffered with us because of human sin. Moltmann has declared that the Christian faith stands or falls with the cross, for in the crucified Jesus we encounter the crucified God. In his view, “All Christian statements about history, about the church, about faith and sanctification, about the future and about hope stem from the crucified Christ” [The Crucified God, p. 204].

The God we encounter in the incarnate Jesus is the one who suffered on Rome’s cross, died, and was buried. However, that is not the end of the story. The Gospel does not leave the crucified one in the grave. Rather, the crucified Jesus is raised from the dead. As the Creed declares, “On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.” When the Creed refers to the Scriptures, one would assume that this is a reference to the Old Testament. The early church writers sought to ground their message in the Old Testament, such that they might demonstrate how the death and resurrection of Jesus were part of God’s response to human sin, from the very beginning. But the fourth-century theologians, such as Athanasius, were concerned about connecting Jesus' death and resurrection with our death and resurrection. Athanasius wrote in On the Incarnation:

Indeed, with the common Savior of all dying for us, we, the faithful in Christ, no longer die by death as before according to the threat of the law, for such condemnation has ceased. But with corruption ceasing and being destroyed by the grace of the resurrection, henceforth according to the mortality of the body we are dissolved only for the time which God has set for each, that we may be able to ‘attain a better resurrection’ (Heb. 11:35). For as seeds sown in the ground, we do not perish when we are dissolved, but as sown we shall arise again, death having been destroyed by the grace of the Savior. [Athanasius, On the Incarnation, p. 71]

There is one more declaration to be made. After confessing that Jesus was crucified, died, and buried, we confess that he was resurrected on the third day. But one more action is necessary, and that is the ascension. Thus, we confess that Jesus “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.” The one who descended from heaven returns to heaven, taking his rightful place at the right hand of the Father. As we ponder this declaration, perhaps this word from the seventh chapter of the book of Revelation will light our imaginations. It is important to note that here in the seventh chapter, Jesus is imagined as the Lamb of God, who holds the seven seals. In this scene, God sits on the throne of heaven together with the Lamb. Thus, John of Patmos records his vision of the heavenly realm:

After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. ¹⁰ They cried out in a loud voice, saying,

“Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne and to the Lamb!” (Rev. 7:9-10).

There is one more statement, which I will leave for another day because it has an eschatological dimension to it, a dimension that is rooted in this final statement concerning the ascension of Jesus to the right hand of God’s throne.