Jesus Crucified and Risen to Judge the Living and the Dead…Is This Good News?
Translation and transition from one language and culture to another is more of a subtle art than a literal science. Familiar phrases in “American” English like “that came right out of left field” or “I was standing there beside myself”, if taken in a literal manner, can cause great confusion in the minds of those not familiar with either American culture or Americanized English. This is equally true of how the original languages steeped in cultures of centuries past get translated into English including, among many things, the Bible and the Creed and, for that matter, the works of William Shakespeare. It is often these subtleties of meaning which often get lost in translation. The rich nuances of one language and culture to another can often get inadequately expressed in those cultural transitions. Some of these will occupy this further exploration of the Creed.
The Second Article of the Creed continues with the claim that “Jesus was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate…” For the most part, these are the only words in the creed which speak to the specificity of a particular historic moment. Jesus is here identified as one who lived a demonstrably real life, a life lived out in the context of the parameters and the swirl of a particular time. The mention of Pontius Pilate, the only other person identified by name in the Creed beside Mary (and, of course, Jesus), puts us in a time and a place substantiated in the annals of history by sources other than those of the Christian Church. Pilate is known and documented to have been the Roman governor over the land of Palestine from about 27 to 37 C.E. Sometime during his reign Jesus was identified as a criminal against the state and died as the result of being crucified. The Creed highlights that Jesus had suffered, presumably died, and was buried. These claims stand in direct opposition to those who insisted that if Jesus was truly God then he could not have suffered or died. All kinds of mental gymnastics were offered as ways to reconcile the radical disparity involved in explaining away God’s suffering or death in what seemed to be Jesus’ suffering and death. Suffice it to say that those who composed the Creeds favored embracing the mystery that God in Christ redemptively embraces human suffering and death rather than notions of a god who was too good or too powerful to be subject to such human experiences. It is the very goodness and power of God’s mysterious love which moves God to become fully enfleshed in being human in all its experiential harshness.
In the original Greek of this phrase, it is possible to pick up on what may be an apparent play on words. Jesus is here depicted as having been crucified “over us” but “under” Pontius Pilate. I’m not sure if there was any intended meaning behind this phraseology, but it seems to me that it invites some deeper wonder about what may be being claimed here. Jewish people and, subsequently, the Christian Church had had a long history of being subject to imperial ruling powers “under” which they had experienced suppression, oppression, and even persecution. Jesus was likewise identified to have suffered “under” such power. However, the play-on-words does suggest that Jesus’ state-imposed crucifixion has been mysteriously transformed into a protective shield “over” us from such secularly-driven power plays.
“And on the third day he rose again…” The more common English translation here may be a little misleading. The original words successively string together “and he suffered and he was buried and he was resurrected”. “On the third day…” could easily be seen as a descriptive addendum to all three of these experiences of Jesus rather than just the resurrection. The “third day” is claimed to be understood as it finds expression in the writings, in the scriptures. What might we find in scriptures’ reference to “the third day”?
First, scripture (not at all unlike common folklore) does not often hold fast to any literal meaning of words associated with numbers. References to numerical time frames, whether they be in terms of seven days or forty weeks or a thousand years, is almost always garped in the language of metaphor. “Three” - more often expressed in terms of three-and-a-half and thus clearly after three but not quite four - signifies the “turning point” deprived from the metaphorical meaning of the number “seven”. “Seven” signifies completion or fulfillment. Thus, in common folklore, sailing the seven seas represents sailing all of them. In the same way we speak of seven years of bad luck or seven-year-aches or the seven deadly sins. We see and hear seven everywhere. Seven notes in the the diatonic scales of music (do-re-mi-fa-sol-la-ti - which beings us back to…), the seven colors of the rainbow, and the seven days of the week. Biblically speaking there are the seven days of creation, the seven seals and the seven churches of Revelation, etc. etc. These all represent the whole completed set of whatever they are identifying. “On the third day” carries the symbolic significance of having turned a corner whereby we are closer to seven and thus completion and fulfillment than not. Jesus’ suffering, death, and resurrection are less the end of the story than a turning point towards a greater fulfillment on the way to its completion. If it were the destined end, the Creed would have simply ended there with an emphatic Amen. What we are called to trust in is the God who in Christ moves through all these experiences toward a greater common purpose.
“He ascended into what is above and is seated at the right hand of the Father…” “The right hand” is a metaphorically rich phrase. For the ancients it symbolizes the hand of power, the hand which was popularly understood to wield a weapon. In many ways, this is the reason why we still greet one another extending our right hands to each other so as to display that we come without drawn weapons into one another’s presence. Just as the initial mention of a “Father” in the Creed was feminized to perhaps highlight a feminine-like holding of all-that-is, so too here, a very clearly articulated masculine Father is depicted as wielding power as envisioned and exercised in Christ. I believe that what we are intended to see in Christ seated at the right hand of the Father is God’s choice to wield only the weapon of love.
“And again he will come with glory/splendor/majesty to judge the living and the dead…” First, this is not about some “second-coming of Jesus” which I find to be a radically unbiblical concept espoused by those who too frequently turn the Gospel of Christ into a fearmongering endeavor filled with threats of fire and brimstone. Some of that may be understood to derive from the predominant manner in which we tend to see “judgment” almost exclusively in negative ways. We must clear “judgment” of all the negative connotations we too easily burden it with if we are to see what the Creed is getting at here.
The Bible, particularly the Jewish scriptures, continually speak of the judgment of God as something longed for and greatly desired. For a people regularly and unfairly persecuted, as the Jewish people have known for almost their entire existence and as early Christians certainly came to experience, the longed-for judgment of God was something to be welcome as being exercised in their favor. The Greek word translated as “judgment” is krisis (crisis). It does not imply, as we often presume, condemnation. Rather, it depicts that moment wherein a decision must be made. As such, to both Jewish and Christian consciousness, it should be laden with the long-for expectation of being finally acquitted and liberated. This declaration of acquittal and liberation is for both “the living and the dead”. I am quite sure that that leaves nobody out. I am equally sure that that is, as we hear each Christmas, “the good news of a great joy which is for all people.”
Lastly, in this second article of the Creed, is the claim that this reign of God in Christ “never is complete.” This is a most interesting turn of a phrase for what it implies. The word translated into English as “end” - as in having “no end” - can be somewhat misleading here. The Greek word in question here is “telios”. Teleology, which significantly influences the practice of both science and business, is the study of goals, aims, and purposes. What the Creed is claiming here is less about some time-defying existence of something than about a reign which never ceases in accomplishing its purposes, goals, and aims. We are to trust that, in light of and despite of all evidence to the contrary, God’s purposes are being achieved and this will ever be so.
[A teleological aside: In the Gospel of Matthew we have become accustomed to hearing Jesus words to us as being: “Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Being “perfect” becomes a rather high standard which can be easily frustrated by even the slightest of missteps which would mar us in such a way to make perfection forever out of reach. Being perfect “as God is perfect” is most certainly a bridge too far. Is Jesus really asking us and holding us to such impossible standards?
It is worth noting that the same word in the Creed translated as “end” is the same word that gets translated as “perfect” in Jesus’ saying: telios. It would be more accurate to hear Jesus admonishing us to be “purposeful as God is purposeful.” Unlike perfection, if lost, purpose can always be reclaimed.]
