Easter Morning
C.S. Lewis, on the Resurrection:
Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. "Rum thing," he went on. "All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once."
-- Surprised by Joy
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.
-- God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
I believe in the literal, historical fact of the bodily resurrection of the physically incarnate Son of God, known on Earth by the common name of Y'shua --Joshua -- Jesus. But I also believe it to be the climax of the most wonderful Story ever told, about the most remarkable Character ever to grace the page.
He is risen, indeed.
Early in 1926 the hardest boiled of all the atheists I ever knew sat in my room on the other side of the fire and remarked that the evidence for the historicity of the Gospels was really surprisingly good. "Rum thing," he went on. "All that stuff of Frazer's about the Dying God. Rum thing. It almost looks as if it had really happened once."
-- Surprised by Joy
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens - at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle.
-- God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics
I believe in the literal, historical fact of the bodily resurrection of the physically incarnate Son of God, known on Earth by the common name of Y'shua --Joshua -- Jesus. But I also believe it to be the climax of the most wonderful Story ever told, about the most remarkable Character ever to grace the page.
He is risen, indeed.