Resurrection Term Papers

One must ask themselves in regards to the resurrection, why this particular act? Out of all the multitudes of acts that God could have done to get His point across, why the act of resurrecting His Son? I believe it is because the resurrection entails the principles of rebirth, creation, and “second chances” in one fell swoop. Rebirth in the way that St. Paul states in Romans 6:4, “We are indeed buried with him through baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might live in newness of life” (CSB). Because of the resurrection, we are given the opportunity to be reborn in to the creatures God intended us to be. Creation, in the sense that Jesus became something much more than a human being after His resurrection. He was more than human because of His divinity and more than divine because of His life as a human man. Add to that His victory over sin and death and He became a new creation, giving those who chose to follow Him the opportunity to become a new creation too. Second chances relates to the saving action of the resurrection. By Christ’s

As noted by O’Collins, God uses the resurrection as a means to reveal to believers and non-believers a, “...new life in grace…the future of Israel, and indeed the (future of) whole world” (O’Collins 104). Thus the act of the resurrection becomes a revelatory event. Added to that, we learn that God uses the resurrection in order to bridge the schism caused by human disobedience and sinfulness. O’Collins states that the resurrection, “...constitutes God’s decisive and final act of salvation…and the new day of atonement” (O’Collins 111), allowing the resurrection to become an act of redemption. Revelatory and redemptive, the resurrection becomes, as recognized by O’Collins, the “divine act par excellence” in its all-encompassing effect on