Easter Light on History

It is not uncommon for people, even those who are not historians, to evaluate historical events. They attempt to say what have been the greatest happenings in man’s story, judging the relative importance of all other occurrences in relation to them. For a long time Columbus’s discovery of America has held one of the top places in the public-opinion poll. No doubt the astronauts’ moonwalks are near the top now. To the Christian, however, the most stupendous fact of history remains the same: God became man, died for man’s sins, and rose again from the dead.

Easter is the celebration of a historical event. We know that Jesus Christ died and rose again at the Jewish Passover while Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, while Herod the Tetrarch reigned in Galilee, and while Caiaphas was high priest in Jerusalem. Yet although the Church has always stressed the historicity of this great event, it has not placed an equal emphasis upon what the Resurrection reveals about the nature of history.

That the writers of the New Testament recognized Easter’s significance for the understanding of history is quite clear from the many passages in which they refer to the course of history and its meaning in the light of Christ’s death and resurrection. One has only to think of Peter’s statements in his Pentecostal sermon (Acts 2), Paul’s teachings in Philippians 2 or Colossians 1, or Peter’s warnings in the last chapter of his second epistle. Moreover, the whole view of history found in the Apocalypse is based firmly on the fact that Christ “was dead and is alive.” To the New Testament, Easter is the key to the proper understanding of history.

But what light does Easter shed on history? What does Easter tell us of its nature?

As we read the Easter story, the first thing that reveals itself as all-pervasive is that God is history’s sovereign lord. Repeatedly Christ himself, and the apostles after him, stressed that every event of Easter was the fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose as revealed to the Old Testament prophets. Christ’s death and resurrection showed that as creator, sustainer, and ruler of this earthly existence, God not only maintains its physical laws but mysteriously guides all its historical developments.

In the fullness of time Christ came into this world, into history, to redeem his people (Gal. 4:4). The events of his life, climaxed in Easter, were no accidents, nor were they the result of God’s awaiting an appropriate moment to act. They all took place according to the divine plan and foreknowledge (Acts 2:23). In the providence of God the time arrived, and history reached its peak on Easter morning. Christ then manifested God’s sovereignty over the living and the dead. In the same purposive way, God will bring history to its dénouement in the risen Christ’s return in power and glory, when every knee shall bow and every tongue ultimately confess that he is Lord, to the glory of God (Matt. 24; 25; Phil. 2:11; Col. 1:15 ff.).

Yet while we think of God’s sovereignty, we must also keep in mind that history is the story of man. What light does Easter throw on him? The immediate answer would seem to be that he is a rebellious creature who has alienated himself from God. He is a sinner; the depth of his sin is shown in the fact that only the death of the incarnate Son of God could atone for it. Moreover, even in his death that Son brought forth the evidence of man’s evil, for Jews and Gentiles in their wickedness joined to destroy him who was sinless (Luke 23:12; Acts 2:23).

Although this all happened according to God’s sovereign plan, yet Christ’s enemies acted on their own responsibility, because they wished his death. While man makes history by his decisions and actions, he does so for the satisfaction of his claims to autonomy and independence from God (cf. Gen. 7:5; 1 Cor. 2:14). Yet even in so doing he is carrying out the will of God. Here is the fundamental mystery of history revealed so clearly in the Easter story. Man fulfills God’s purpose even while seeking to carry out his own evil plans.

But the revelation of human sin, and God’s dealing with it, goes even further. Christ’s death and resurrection were a judgment on man. They pointed to man’s inability to make atonement; his sin is too heinous for him to achieve reconciliation by anything he himself can do. Calvary revealed that in history God condemns men for their sin. Although before Easter, God, in his long-suffering, had forborn to punish man’s sin, in Christ’s death and resurrection he manifested his wrath against all those in rebellion against him (Acts 17:30, 31). Easter passes judgment upon man’s history, a judgment that will become permanent on the last day against all those who reject the risen Lord.

Yet while Easter speaks of God’s condemnation of sin in history, it also constantly presents to our view divine grace. These two historical motifs came to their clearest revelation when Christ by his death and resurrection not only gave God’s verdict against sin but also made effective his grace in history (Rom. 9:3 ff.). He completely met the divine demands of justice for men so that they could find justification and forgiveness.

Furthermore, as a result of his ascension, at Pentecost he sent upon the Church the Holy Spirit, who has since worked in history in a new way. Through him, Christ has revealed and made effective God’s grace in history by the Church’s preaching the message of reconciliation to alienated man. Thus history will end not only in judgment but also in redemption that will regenerate even nature itself (Rom. 8:19 ff.; 2 Pet. 3:12).

One other aspect of history to which history points is the conflict down through the ages between what Augustine of Hippo called the “City of God” and the “City of Earth.” Christ warned his disciples repeatedly that they would receive from unbelievers the same treatment that the unbelievers would mete out to him. John in Revelation describes this conflict in many different ways. Yet the Church must always remember, no matter how the tide of this life-and-death struggle is going, that on Calvary the victory has already been won. Easter guarantees that through Christ’s death and resurrection, the Church will eventually triumph.

This Easter perspective on history has wielded a powerful influence on historical thought and writing down to the present day. For one thing, it altered the Jewish interpretation, not by rejecting what the Old Testament had taught but by expanding and clarifying it. Whereas the Jewish expectation had been the establishment of a political messianic kingdom that would rule over the whole earth, Christ proclaimed by his death, resurrection, and ascension that his kingdom is fundamentally spiritual, “not of this world” (John 18:36). That he established this kingdom by his atonement indicated that the “last days” had arrived when history would eventually come to an end and the completion of God’s plan would take place.

Equally if not more important was Easter’s impact on Gentile historical thinking. For one thing, it denied the cyclical theory of the Greeks, who believed that history repeats itself over and over again, without end and without purpose. Easter pointed to history’s progression to a divinely appointed conclusion. It also rejected completely the chaos postulated by the atomists and the Epicureans by insisting that everything in history works according to the sovereign plan and purpose of the all-wise sovereign God. It showed history to be a coherent whole, the necessary premise for any true historical knowledge.

Although many of the practitioners of the historical art deny that Christ ever rose from the dead, much of the Easter influence on their thought still remains. The concept of linear progress, of a historical pattern, of historical cause and effect, and even of the possibility of historical knowledge—all these find their roots in the Christian view of history centered in Easter.

What is most important, however, is that Easter’s revelation of the nature of history is not merely theoretical and for the benefit of a few Christian historians. It is of supreme importance for every Christian, for it tells him that as he looks at today’s world with all its turmoil and conflict, he should not be inordinately troubled. The Easter message not only gives him assurance of life beyond the grave; it also indicates that even if today’s and tomorrow’s history is full of conflict, Christ has conquered and is leading on to the ultimate manifestation of his victory.

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