Did It Happen on 9 April? 
Frank Kermode
In about 56 AD, St Paul writing to the Christians of Corinth, made his position very clear. Somebody had been suggesting that the dead cannot be resurrected, and this was his response: ‘If there be no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain and your faith is also vain.’ The creeds still require the faithful to declare their belief that Jesus died, was buried, descended into hell, and on the third day rose again. Paul explains that the requirement is reasonable: provided the dead can rise, there can be no reason to suppose Jesus did not do so. In fact if he didn’t, ‘we are of all men most miserable.’ Like Paul, the creeds also insist on ‘the resurrection of the body’, though Paul had in mind not every body but those of the brethren who had died between the death of Jesus and the postponed but imminent day of judgment. As Geza Vermes remarks, he seems not to have given any thought to the very large numbers of dead between Adam and his own day.
Subscribers to the print edition can log in to view the entire article. For information about subscribing to the London Review of Books click here. This article and the back issue are also available for purchase online. Buy this article / Buy this back issue
Frank Kermode’s books include The Sense of an Ending and The Uses of Error.
Other articles by this contributor:
‘It’s the way people like us don’t talk’ · Andrew Motion’s Boyhood
Here she is · Zadie Smith
No Tricks · Raymond Carver
Writing about Shakespeare · Frank Kermode has his say
Nutmegged · The War against Cliché: Essays and Reviews 1971-2000 by Martin Amis.
Who has the gall? · Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Complicated Detours · Darwin’s Worms by Adam Phillips
Point of View · Atonement by Ian McEwan
print layout
tell a friend