Jack King ⎮  Winter 2012

Suppose an inquiring soul types in the Google search “Anglican theology” and finds his way to the Anglican Church in North America’s Theological Statement.  There he will find a solid, trustworthy affirmation of Anglican faith in the 21st century.  An introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles awaits our inquirer in the final element of the statement: “We receive the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion of 1571, taken in their literal and grammatical sense, as expressing the Anglican response to certain doctrinal issues controverted at that time, and as expressing the fundamental principles of authentic Anglican belief.”   Even if curiosity is piqued about Anglican theology and the Thirty-Nine Articles, an inquirer will likely ask the post-modern question, “so what?”  I suggest a subtitle engages the “so what” question, framing Anglican theology with action and participation from the outset: Theological Statement (A Divine-Human Drama).  In the rich tradition of Dorothy Sayers, N.T. Wright, and Charles Williams, I recommend that Anglicans read their theology in dramatic fashion.  Let the dramatic implications of our theology be our witness to an inquiring world.  Perhaps Ms. Sayers represents the dramatic nature of theology best of all: 

It is the dogma that is the drama, not beautiful phrases, nor comforting sentiments, nor vague aspirations to loving kindness and uplift, nor the promise of something nice after death — but the terrifying assertion that the same God who made the world lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of death.  Show that to the heathen, and they may not believe it; but at least they may realize that here is something that a man might be glad to believe. 

The “terrifying assertion” of the Gospel that Sayers mentions provides a summary for this series on the 39 Articles thus far.  From “that same God who made the world” (Article I) to the Son who “lived in the world and passed through the grave and gate of life” (Articles II-IV), our attention now rests on Christ’s resurrection.  There is no dry, stuffy, or boring doctrine here.  This is the climax of a saga that shapes all things in human history and eternity. 

Yet this drama can never be confused as fiction.  Over the past 20 years, core doctrines of Christian faith have been disputed, giving us manifold reasons to appreciate the wording of Article IV, particularly in the first phrase: “Christ did truly rise again from death… .”  For the sake of amplifying the dramatic nature of this event, some have sought a Gnostic, exclusively spiritual interpretation of the resurrection, but once the actual historical event is rejected, the divine drama disappears as well.  According to Alistair McGrath, “heresy is a doctrine that ultimately destroys, destabilizes, or distorts a mystery rather than preserving it.”  In the case of Jesus’ resurrection, the whole premise of Christian doctrine meets McGrath’s consequence of rejecting the historical nature of Christ’s resurrection in the body—our faith would be destroyed.  St. Paul is even better here:  “If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins; we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Because Christ is truly raised in the flesh, our faith is not in vain.  The resurrection of the Son of God is the climax of human history, the event wherein the divine-human saga does not meet its end, but discloses a new beginning in Christ.  Using N.T. Wright’s theatrical metaphor--creation, fall, Israel, Jesus--the resurrection is the centerpiece of Act IV in God’s divine-human drama.  Act V is reserved for the age of the Church and the Spirit where disciples of Jesus become participants.  But this story would have come to a decisive end without a Spirit-filled God-man defeating death in his body.  Because God has accomplished victory over death in Christ’s body, a new creation has begun. 

Therefore Anglican faith is grounded in the true, bodily resurrection of Jesus, not in some spiritual myth of ‘risen hearts.’ From nativity to resurrection and beyond, Anglican theology maintains the essential nature of Christ’s incarnation in the flesh.  In the christological section of the Articles, one finds this incarnational theme shaped by phrases that are deliberately physical.  Article II steers clear of any docetic tendencies, instead confessing the patristic doctrine that the Gospel only remains good news when the union of body, soul, and spirit are sustained in Christ.  Thus, Article II employs the language of substance to emphasize physicality: “The Son took Man’s nature in the womb of the blessed Virgin, of her substance.”  The nature of Christ’s suffering was necessarily physical, too: “[he] truly suffered, was crucified, dead, and buried.” 

The theology of Christ’s body in Article II is a necessary preparation for Article IV’s emphasis on Jesus’ bodily resurrection.  Here one encounters a mystery that escapes words:  there is continuity between the incarnate, crucified, and risen Christ.  Yet between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, Christ’s body is transfigured with glorious victory.  “Christ took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature.” How this took place is a mystery hidden from our eyes.  The resurrection is not a riddle to be solved, but a divine drama to be entered, much like Peter entered the empty tomb to behold the Easter miracle.  Austin Farrer, an Oxford priest and theologian, bids us to behold not how resurrection happens but Who is raised:

We do not know what happened when Jesus Christ rose from the dead; that is God's secret.  We do not know, that is, what happened to him, what change he underwent, what it was like for him to rise.  Through the signs of his presence which he bestowed, he made [his disciples] understand at least this about himself: the whole Jesus who had lived with them before his passion was again alive, and with them again; nothing had been lost where everything had been glorified.

Gazing on the risen Christ, one sees the purpose of Jesus’ mission, the perfection of human nature.  St. Athanasius succinctly captured Jesus’ deifying mission in his famous statement, “God became man so that man might become God.” At the Bethlehem inn, human nature was exalted when Christ took a human body; at the empty tomb, human nature is glorified in Christ.  Because the resurrection is the ultimate vindication and exaltation of Jesus after he was “made perfect through suffering,” those who believe in the risen Christ will share in the glorification of their human nature—body and soul in perfect unity.  As Christ radiated light, power, and splendor on Easter Sunday, we will also radiate the beauty of God in our resurrection bodies.  St. Irenaeus believed nothing is more pleasing to God, “for the glory of God is a living man; and the life of man consists in beholding God.”

Our life is sustained by continually gazing upon the glorified Christ, but the reformers remind us with a simple Elizabethan conjunction that our gaze is by faith, not by sight: “Christ … took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day.”  We dare not miss the connection the reformers intended for us to see in Christ’s ascension.  The perfection of man’s nature has ascended into heaven and the perfect Man reigns as King over heaven and earth.  The glory of Christ no longer belonged in this world of corruption; the “firstborn of the dead” belonged in the incorruptible realm of heaven. There he prepares for the day when he marries his bride, the Church, the denouement of this divine-human drama. 

Where Christ prepares for the Church’s final resurrection day in heaven, his disciples prepare for that same day on earth.  In this world the Christian’s existence is marked by experiences of angst and suffering, but we are called to see these afflictions in the glory of Christ’s resurrection.   In the midst of a culture given to despair, St. Paul brings hope and power in the following prayer by invoking Christ’s resurrection in the midst of our suffering:  “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead.”  Without resurrection, suffering would be unbearable.  With Christ’s resurrection, our afflictions become an opportunity to share with the world “the hope that is within us” that our risen Lord will make all things new.  

Like the other Articles of Religion, perhaps the best feature of the article on the resurrection of Christ is found not in individual phrases or clauses, but in their location—a  prayer book for common worship.  Theological statements separated from worship make no sense, for they are empty, disembodied principles without a story.  That is the exact antithesis of resurrection, for the Gospel is only good news because it is the true story that “Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death unto death.”  On the other hand, theology embedded in common prayer leads one to worship, which inevitably calls one to mission and action.  This doctrine is not simply a tenet to be confessed, but a lyric to be sung, a dramatic role to be enacted.  “The dogma is the drama,” and the dogma always sounds best in the regular prayer and worship of God’s Easter people.