Reparation is usually the act of a culpable party providing compensation for wrongs done to an offended party. The Bible speaks to the issue of reparation, specifically and in general terms, in numerous accounts. For example, Exod. 22 deals specifically with reparation for theft, damage to crops, false judgments, sexual irresponsibility, and the lending of money. According to Hebrew law at that time, not only were perpetrators required to pay back what was stolen (or the equivalent of what was stolen) but also they sometimes were required to go beyond the original value and double or even quadruple the value of what was stolen. By extracting ethical guidelines from the Exodus passage, we can reason that when injustices occur that can be handled through reparation, acts of reparation should be taken very seriously.
The reparation principle continues into the NT period as affirmed by Jesus. In Jesus’ interaction with Zacchaeus, the tree-climbing tax collector, the latter admits to his extortion. He then offers to give half of his possessions to the poor and specifically to pay back four times the amount to those whom he had cheated. Zacchaeus’s actions, which were within the parameters of the requirements in Exod. 22, appear to have pleased Jesus immensely. Jesus’ response was to tell Zacchaeus that he had found salvation that day (Luke 19:8-9), no doubt invoking the promise of Isa. 58:6-8 to those who free the oppressed, feed the hungry, help the homeless, and cover the naked. As that prophetic OT passage reports, the promise of a salvific experience awaits such people who make these reparations: “Then your light shall break forth like the dawn, and your healing shall spring up quickly; your vindicator shall go before you, the glory of the Lord shall be your rear guard.”
Reparation fits broadly in Scripture under the universal principle of Jubilee and its accompanying theological construct shalom. The Hebrew noun salom (“well-being, wholeness, perfection of God’s creation, prosperity, peace”) is used 225 times in the OT. The functional Greek equivalent in the NT, eirene (“restoration of relationship, wholeness, healing, peace”), is used 94 times. The Hebrew verb salam (“to repay in full, make obligatory restitution, repay for loss, restore, be at peace, make peace, fulfill a vow, bring to completion, accomplish the goal”) is used 117 times in the OT. The concept of shalom encompasses a whole range of descriptors, but certainly reparation is included in order to make things right in God’s shalom purview.
Jesus’ proclamation of Jubilee was an affirmation of the ethical principle of reparation. When Jesus announced to the synagogue at Nazareth that Jubilee was now a reality (Luke 4:18-21), at the least it meant that those who were oppressed and treated unjustly would in some way be compensated. The Jubilee was seen as the fulfillment and realization of God’s intended shalom kingdom. Jesus’ words reflected the fulfillment of those principles, specifically those mentioned in Isa. 61:1-2. One can argue, at least in general terms, that Jesus’ mother understood something about justice and reparation within its J ubilee context. The onset of Jubilee fulfillment is the occasion about which Mary sang in Luke 1:51-53: “He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
How do we distinguish reparation from the broader theme of justice and shalom? Reparation becomes the specific actions taken to ensure that God’s intended shalom kingdom is continued. It is the enduring effort to make compensation for what has been taken. Acts of reparation are unambiguous and should have a direct relationship to the offense. For example, if land has been stolen, then land plus other compensation should be given to the offended party in order to compensate for the loss of capital in the land.
On a national level, the ethical practice of reparation has not often been utilized. Since numerous nations now exist on lands that many argue have been wrongly taken from and rightfully belong to indigenous peoples, it would be an awkward situation for the colonizer to make reparation to the colonized. Still, arguably, the responsibility exists for those who claim to live according to principles founded on Scripture.
The world has observed prominent instances of attempted reparation in the past century. Germany made monetary reparation to the Allied nations after World War I and to Israel for claims regarding the Jewish Holocaust. More recently, the United States made monetary reparation to survivors of the Japanese internment camps that occurred during World War II.
In recent history, reparation has been a hotly contested topic in America. Among African Americans, the case of reparations has been introduced to assist descendants of slavery. Others argue that social programs that favor African Americans, such as minority hiring preferences, constitute reparation. Native Americans, who, arguably, have lost more than anyone, have not received reparations for the loss of the American continents. The same is true for the Aboriginal people of Australia, the Maori people of New Zealand, and many other indigenous groups who have been colonized.
See also Colonialism and Postcolonialism; Jubilee; Justice; Justice, Restorative; Reconciliation
Bibliography
Brown, W. The Ethos of the Cosmos: The Genesis of Moral Imagination in the Bible. Eerdmans, 1999; Brueggemann, W. The Land: Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith. Fortress, 1977; idem. Peace. Chalice Press, 2001; Habel, N. The Land Is Mine: Six Biblical Land Ideologies. Fortress, 1995; Memmi, A. Colonization and the Colonized. Beacon Press, 1991; Powers, E. Signs of Shalom. United Church Press, 1973; Swartley, W. Covenant of Peace: The Missing Peace in New Testament Theology and Ethics. Eerd-mans, 2006; Wright, R. Stolen Continents: Five Hundred Years of Conquest and Resistance in the Americas. Houghton Mifflin, 1992; Zehr, H. The Little Book of Restorative Justice. Good Books, 2002; Zinn, H. A People’s History of the United States: 1492—Present. Harper Collins, 2003.
Randy S. Woodley
The notion of repentance is closely related to the concept of “conversion,” and signifies in the OT and the NT a turning from whatever hinders one’s radical orientation to God, together with a turning to God in wholehearted devotion and faithfulness.
The concepts of “repentance” and “conversion” have become associated especially with the Christian faith, but these are not particularly NT terms, nor in the ancient world are these concepts peculiar to early Christian proclamation and literature. In the OT, “to turn” (sub) is used especially with reference to Israel, and thus the demand for repentance emerges from its covenantal basis in God’s initiative and call. Accordingly, the term is often translated “to return.” Form-critical work has demonstrated a basic pattern for the prophetic call to repentance (see Steck): (1) rehearsal of Israel’s unfaithfulness; (2) a reference to divine patience; (3) at times, a reference to Israel’s rejection of God’s messengers, the prophets; (4) the call to repentance; and (5) at times, warnings or promises tied to the people’s response to the message of repentance (e.g., Jer. 7; Zech. 1:3-6; Mal. 3). This pattern evidences a central motif found elsewhere in the OT—namely, that God’s people may serve as agents for the conversion of others, but they themselves have a continuous need for conversion. Repentance centers especially on turning away from idolatry and might explicitly include remorse and confession of sin, as well as turning to God in love and obedience and, thus, restoration of covenantal relations.
As in Greek literature more widely, so in the NT, the concept often is signaled by the terms metanoia (“change of mind”) and its verbal form, metanoeo (“to change one’s course”), or epistrophe (“turning [toward]”) and its verbal form, epistrepho (“to turn around”). Practically from the coining of terms connoting “repentance,” their primary sense has centered on a “change in thinking.” However, this sense expands to “a change of mind, heart, view, opinion, or purpose,” often in tandem with feelings of remorse due to the perception of having acted or thought wrongly, inappropriately, or disadvantageously. This is a reminder that, in antiquity, “knowing” and “thinking” were typically collocated with a person’s dispositions, one’s habits of thinking, feeling, believing, and behaving. Moreover, repentance, if it were genuine, would be accompanied by a will to make right the wrong committed or to change the situation that eventuated in the wrongdoing, and a concomitant alteration of future behavior. In the wider literature of antiquity, repentance was sometimes the result of divine and/or human chiding. Ultimately, repentance would lead to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Repentance is prominent in the Synoptic Gospels and Acts, much less so in the NT Epistles. In the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, repentance is central to the message of Jesus’ precursor, John, to the mission of Jesus himself, and to the proclamation of Jesus’ followers when they are sent out, two by two. John’s message of repentance receives its urgency on account of his expectation of the immediate arrival of the Messiah, whose advent would mark eschatological judgment. Reliance on Jewish ancestry was out of the question, replaced in John’s preaching by an emphasis on an authentic, thoroughgoing reorientation of life around God’s purpose (Matt. 3:1-12; Mark 1:1-8; Luke 3:1-20). For Matthew and Mark, J esus’ opening words tie the inbreaking, imperial rule of God to the necessity of repentance and faith (Matt. 3:17; Mark 1:15). Luke too portrays Jesus’ mission as one of calling sinners to repentance (Luke 5:27-32). The disciples, sent by Jesus to extend his missionary activity, “went out and proclaimed that all should repent” (Mark 6:12). The vocabulary of repentance is also prominent in the book of Revelation (2:5, 16, 21-22; 3:3, 19; 9:20-21; 16:9, 11) where, as often in the Synoptic Gospels, it is associated above all with judgment. Repentance in the NT is also associated with heavenly rejoicing (Luke 15:7, 10) and with divine patience and graciousness (e.g., 2 Tim. 2:25; 2 Pet. 3:9).
Although some have attempted to draw a distinction in early Christian proclamation between repentance and conversion—with “repentance” expected of the Jewish people, “conversion” of gentiles—such a distinction cannot be maintained. In part, this is because this terminology is associated in antiquity with both the crossing of religious boundaries (as would be the case with gentiles) and with going deeper into one’s own religion (as would be the case with Jews who followed Jesus as Messiah, for whom “conversion” would have required embracing a christocentric interpretation of their religion). Moreover, the call to leave idolatry addressed to gentiles (e.g., Acts 17:22-31; 1 Thess. 1:9-10) has its ready parallels in Israel’s own history, in prophetic calls to turn from idolatry (e.g., Hosea).
As a response to the Christian message, repentance is developed most fully in the Acts of the Apostles and then in the first volume of Luke’s two-part work, the Gospel of Luke. In this respect, Peter’s call for response to the Christian message in the context of the Pentecost address (Acts 2:14-41) is programmatic: “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (2:38). Indeed, repentance is often mentioned explicitly as an appropriate response to God’s salvific work (cf. Acts 3:19; 5:31; 11:18; 17:30; 20:21), and Paul can summarize the content of his message as calling on both Jews and gentiles that they “should repent and turn to God and do deeds consistent with repentance” (Acts 26:20).
At the close of Peter’s sermon in Acts 2, baptism is the medium by which repentance comes to expression as well as the sign that forgiveness has been granted. This collocation of repentance and baptism is not at all surprising, given the identification of baptism in the ministry of John the Baptizer as “a baptism of repentance” (Luke 3:4; Acts 13:24; 19:4; cf. Mark 1:4; Matt. 3:11). For John, repentance is marked by behavior that grows out of and demonstrates that one has indeed committed oneself to service in God’s purpose (cf. Luke 3:1-20; Acts 26:20; Matt. 3:8). The examples Luke provides in his portrait of John urge the down-to-earth, relational, and socioeconomic contours of “fruits worthy of repentance”: sharing with those who lack clothing and food, honesty in financial transactions (Luke 3:7-14; these behaviors are displayed by Zacchaeus in Luke 19:10). Not surprisingly,
baptism in Acts has as its consequence, among other things, economic sharing (e.g., 2:41-47) and the extension of hospitality (e.g., Acts 10:47-48; 16:14-15, 28-34)—practices, then, that help to fill out the meaning of “fruits worthy of repentance.”
If repentance is something people are called “to do,” however, this is only because of the prior work of God. Thus, for Luke, repentance itself is the gracious gift of God—as Peter announces in Jerusalem, “When God raised up his servant, he sent him first to you, to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways” (Acts 3:26). Repentance is thus both active and passive—both divine gift (passive) and call (active) (e.g., Luke 5:31-32; Acts 5:31; 11:18).
See also Conversion Bibliography
Goodman, M. Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the Roman Empire. Clarendon, 1994; Nave, G., Jr. The Role and Function of Repentance in Luke-Acts. SBLAB 4. Society of Biblical Literature, 2002; Steck, O. Israel und das gewaltsame Geschick der Propheten: Un-tersuchungen zur Uberlieferung des deuteronomistischen Geschichtsbildes im Alten Testament, Spatjudentum und Urchristentum. WMANT 23. Neukirchener Verlag, 1967; Wright, C. “Implications of Conversion in the Old Testament and the New.” IBMR 28 (2004): 14-19.
Joel B. Green
Infertility is a human problem. Sarai (Sarah), Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth suffered from infertility (Gen. 11:30; 18:11; 29:31; 30:1; 1 Sam. 1:1, 5-6; Luke 1:7). Reproductive technologies have been developed to respond to the problems of infertility. One-third of the cases are male-related, one-third female-related, and the other cases have no specific medical issue. The problem for men and women is either with the delivery system or the quality of sperm, eggs, or womb, or with the act of sexual intercourse.
Biological Issues in Reproductive Technologies Male reproductive technologies relate to problems of penetration, ejaculation, low sperm count, and poor sperm mobility or quality. Surgery or drugs may help. Specific reproductive technologies for men use artificial insemination by the husband (AIH), which requires masturbation. The sperm is washed, selected, and implanted using intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI). Many Christians, especially Roman Catholics, regard masturbation as a selfish, self-centered, pleasure-giving, incomplete activity specifically condemned in the sin of Onan (Gen. 38:9). Yet some Catholic theologians argue that this particular act of masturbation, having the purpose of bringing about a pregnancy, is justifiable. Many Protestants have no problem with masturbation and understand the sin of Onan to be his failure to obey the levirate law rather than simply “spilling the seed.” The sperm is delivered artificially, and that may be condemned as “unnatural” because it separates the procreative and unitive aspects of sexual intercourse.
If the quality of the sperm is poor, a donor may be used. Artificial insemination by donor (AID) involves a third party. Some regard this as adultery. Although an act of sexual intercourse is not needed for this process, there is a life-creating intrusion by an external, third party. This raises questions about who is the father, and the United Kingdom has made a legal ruling that the father is the genetic rather than the social father. This may have a deep psychological impact on the husband and his relationships with his wife and any resultant children. The donor usually is paid for his services or simply donates altruistically. Ethical questions include how donors should be selected, whether parents should have any role in that selection, and whether donors should be anonymous or have any responsibility for their progeny. Do children have the right to know the identity of their biological parents? It may be medically crucial to know one’s genetic inheritance. Most clinics and countries keep careful records to enable genetic but not personal tracing.
Female reproductive technologies are responses to problems with conceiving or carrying a child. Surgery may relieve problems (e.g., blocked fallopian tubes). Gamete intrafallopian transfer (GIFT) and zygote intrafallopian transfer (ZIFT) allow transfer of eggs or even fertilized eggs directly into the fallopian tubes. These technologies relate to in-vitro fertilization (IVF), which fertilizes eggs outside the womb in a petri dish, versus in-vivo fertilization, which happens in the human body.
Eggs may be harvested from the woman seeking fertility treatment often using “superovulation,” producing many more than one egg as in the normal monthly cycle. Egg donors may be family or friends donating altruistically, or women receiving fertility treatment for donation or for payment. Moral and legal issues include payment, the impact of the health and well-being of the donor, the relationship and responsibilities between a third party and the infertile couple, the selection of the donor and of the egg or embryo, the understanding of parenthood, and the regulatory role of government or professional organizations.
Superovulation produces more embryos than are needed. Selection, whether of sex or genetic characteristics, is normal. The number and quality of embryos replaced can lead to situations like that of Nadya Suleman (the so-called Octomom), who gave birth to octuplets in 2009. Selective reduction is sometimes used to reduce the number of embryos in the womb even if it involves killing some. Spare embryos may be donated or frozen for future use. Freezing creates new dilemmas. Years after the death of her husband, Diane Blood gave birth to two children by using sperm collected from him while he was in a coma. Freezing and defrosting may have long-term negative effects on resultant children. Many claim that experimentation on embryonic genetic material may solve fertility and genetic problems and produce cures for everything from cancer to Alzheimer’s disease using
embryonic stem cells. Governments debate what
kind of legislation and regulation should oversee experimentation on human material. In the United States, financial support for research has been a key regulative tool. In the United Kingdom and Australia, governments created regulative bodies to supervise legislation protecting human material in experimentation. This includes control of transspecies experimentation. The creation of hybrids, part human and part animal, may offer an alternative source of organs and material for transplantation ranging from pancreatic islets to kidneys and hearts.
New technologies enable the extraction of follicles that will become eggs from aborted female embryos. Public reaction has been negative, expressing the “yuck” factor of the parent of a child being an aborted fetus. Egg donors may be carefully selected for the likely genetic characteristics. This creates a market for eggs from women considered to be intellectually, artistically, or athletically gifted or physically beautiful, paralleled by the selection of similarly qualified males as sperm donors. Women may be paid up to thirty thousand dollars for their eggs, but there is deep unease that babies, eggs, sperm, and women’s bodies are commodities for sale. Some clinics offer treatment to women who are unable to pay in return for their eggs to be used for others. Coercion of women who are vulnerable, in financial need, or desperate for children seems inevitable.
In-vitro fertilization makes it possible to select which embryos may be placed. In countries such as India and China, where male offspring are generally preferred, gender selection is used. In the United Kingdom and the United States it often is possible to select gender in cases involving gender-related diseases or predispositions to diseases. How far should we go to select embryos when trying to produce desirable traits or rule out genetic disabilities?
For women unable to carry a pregnancy to term, reproductive technologies have made it possible to insert embryos into surrogate mothers. Women who “rent” or “sell” their wombs receive expenses or payment. The “Baby M” case, in which the surrogate mother refused to release the baby into the custody of the sperm-donor father and his wife, demonstrated the problems between natural and social parents even when legal contracts are involved. Feminists are uneasy about the potential pressures on women, though some argue that female autonomy and freedom of choice are fundamental.
Fertility technologies can be used not only for infertile married couples but also for single women and gay and lesbian couples wanting to have children. Clinics make judgments regarding who is eligible for infertility treatment and decide the moral bases of such judgments.
Ethical Issues in Reproductive Technologies
New reproductive technologies have created new moral questions. What is a parent? Traditional understandings of family, inheritance, and genetics have been replaced by social parental roles. Adoption has been the model for reproductive technology, but it seeks to put right what has gone wrong. In infertility technology, we are not simply putting right but rather are creating entirely new situations. For many, natural law and what is natural exclude the artificial intrusion into the personal and marital arenas. As we use certain medical procedures, our experience of what we consider normal and natural constantly changes.
Christians are divided over reproductive technologies, some seeing them as challenges to human dignity, human relationships, and God-given natural limits, others seeing them as God-given knowledge and expertise for overcoming disease and restoring human fertility to God’s initial purpose. As God blessed many infertile women, modern reproductive technologies fulfill his divine intention for marriage (Gen. 1:28).
Practically reproductive technologies cost anywhere from five hundred to thirty thousand dollars. The success level ranges widely, depending on selectivity. Producing a baby is more difficult than creating a pregnancy. In general, the rate of success is about 25 percent. Given overpopulation and widespread hunger, should we spend so much on techniques with such low success rates?
These practical moral questions raise key issues of justice. Who pays for such treatment? Is it fair that only the wealthy have access to such technologies?
The Scriptures emphasize the value, worth, and dignity of human life from the earliest stage, but they were written long before modern biological understanding and reproductive technologies. The psalmist, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and the Gospel writers assume that God is involved in human origins from the very start, and the whole Bible stresses the sanctity of human life (Ps. 139:13-16; Isa. 49:1, 5; Jer. 1:5; Luke 1:31). Accordingly, embryos must be protected. This will set limits to how reproductive technology works and what are the consequences.
Modern surgical and genetic developments enable us to put right what has gone wrong. In a fallen world, infertility is not unusual but is growing. We can help married couples fulfill God’s purpose of being fruitful and multiplying (Gen. 1:28), but we must consider the financial, social, and moral cost of such technologies.
Marriage and sexual expression are fundamental to human well-being. Reproductive technologies can threaten the human bonds between husband and wife by the intrusion of a third party and by the artificial separation of procreation from sexual expressions of love.
Parenthood, family, and familial relationships are under pressure from reproductive technologies. Secrecy and anonymity of donors are unwise both from medical and genetic points of view, as well as impacting the health of any children so conceived as they mature and want to know their biological parent.
Christians do not believe that there is a right to have a child, certainly not by any and all means. Rather, there is a freedom to have children, and reproductive technology can help fulfill that freedom. Society must set limits to the availability of reproductive technologies. Medical associations stress that for the healthy development of children there should be both a father and mother, raising questions about the artificial creation of single, gay, and lesbian parents. There is a key difference between situations that just happen and deliberately creating less-than-ideal situations.
Scripture stresses responsibility to God and to one another as human beings (Rom. 14:12; Gal. 6:2). Any use of reproductive technologies that undermines the responsibility of individuals and couples must be rejected. There is no technological imperative: availability does not require usage.
Ethical reflection on reproductive technology must evaluate motivation for its use. Wanting to help a married couple have a child of their own is different from helping a single woman have the experience of becoming a mother by artificial insemination. The means that we use have moral implications. Many Christians would regard masturbation as a legitimate means in helping a couple conceive when the husband is unable to inseminate his wife naturally, but it is another matter when we produce far more eggs than are used, destroy eggs or embryos regarded as “flawed,” or experiment on human embryos thinking that the end or possibility of producing a medical advance justifies the means of abusing human being and human beings. Secular society argues that the embryo is at best a potential human being rather than a human being with potential. Trying to produce medical cures for those suffering from crippling diseases justifies all kinds of offshoots from reproductive technologies, ranging from embryonic stem-cell and genetic manipulation to cloning and hybrid creation. Each means must be assessed, as must the principles on which we act. Christians believe that humans are made in the image of God and have a fundamental value, worth, and dignity that must be preserved (Gen. 1:26-27; 9:6). Therefore, we cannot act in ways that undermine and degrade human beings and use them as commodities, means for our own ends, or as sacrifices for others. When a child is unable to give consent for medical treatment, the parents and professionals act in the best interests of the child. We must do the same in reproductive technologies. The principle of other love drives many in medicine, but that love must be aware of the consequences.
The short- and long-term consequences of reproductive technologies compel us to be extremely careful about what we do, how we do it, and what might happen if we fail to regulate and control our practices. Part of being human and living in a fallen world is that we must learn to live with limits.
See also Adoption; Bioethics; Childlessness; Family Planning; Infertility; Resource Allocation; Sanctity of Human Life
Bibliography
Jones, D. Brave New People: Ethical Issues at the Commencement of Life. InterVarsity, 1984; idem. Manufacturing Humans: The Challenge of the New Reproductive Technologies. InterVarsity, 1987; Lammers, S., and A. Verhey, eds. On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspectives in Medical Ethics. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1998; Rae, S. Brave New Families: Biblical Ethics and Reproductive Technologies. Baker, 1996.
E. David Cook
One potentially fruitful way to read the Bible is as a dramatic series of faith-based resistance movements commissioned by God to counter the rise of idolatrous conquest states, from the first city-states arising in Mesopotamia (the “tower of Babel” civilization that Abraham left behind in Genesis) to the Mediterranean empire of Rome (the “beast” denounced by John in Revelation). The entire history of the people of Israel was lived out at the (often violent) crossroads of the perennial empires of the ancient Near East (Egypt, Assyria, Babylon), while the birth of Jesus coincided with the appearance of the greatest emperor to yet bestride the globe: Caesar Augustus. The Bible’s most formative social movement—the Hebrew prophetic tradition begun in Elijah and Elisha and culminating for Christians in the ministries of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth—could similarly be interpreted as a domestic resistance movement arising to counter Israel’s own attempts to become a superpower: the Davidic monarchy that reached its sudden apogee in Solomon’s Jerusalem temple-state before rapidly fragmenting into short-lived northern and southern kingdoms. The contrasting strategies of resistance to the second-century BCE Greek overlord Antiochus Epiphanies IV mapped out by the books of Daniel and Maccabees subsequently staked out the parameters of a postexilic anti-imperial politics of Jewish apocalypse.
Exodus and exile, the two crucibles that book-end the faith story of Israel, were struggles either to be liberated from an enslaving empire (Egypt) or to live counterculturally within one (Babylon). The Moses-led campaign of the ten plagues, culminating in the battle of the Red Sea (Exod. 1-15), crystallized an anti-imperial “Yahweh war” tradition among the Hebrews that featured reliance on divine nature miracle, and even “girl power,” rather than kings, generals, chariots, and conventional armies (examples of biblical “girl power” include the prophetic songsters Miriam, Hannah, Elizabeth, and Mary; the battle-tested judge Deborah; the secret agent Rahab; the opportunistic assassin Jael; the savior queen Esther; the foreign great-grandmother of the great king, Ruth; the patriarch-confronting Tamar; and the peace negotiator Abigail). Its mantra was “Not by might, not by strength, but by my Spirit says the Lord” (Zech. 4:6). This unprecedented way of fighting was carried forward by Joshua in the Jubilary (i.e., 7 x 7) “protest march/jam session” that brought the Canaanite fortress of Jericho tumbling down and was continued by the charismatic guerrilla commanders Deborah, Gideon, and Samson. Strong echoes of this populist impulse continued even in the transition to an Israelite monarchy, via the dire warnings of the last judge, Samuel, about the reenslavement that having a “king like the other nations” would bring (1 Sam. 8) and the “upside-down kingdom” victory of the youngest son, slingshot-toting shepherd boy David over Goliath, the greatest Canaanite commando of all.
Jeremiah’s letter to the exiles (Jer. 29) quintessentially outlined the tactics for the Jews’ exilic struggle of subversive, countercultural, synagogueshaped, and shalom-seeking polity without a king. The contemporaneous exemplars of the “servants” and “tremblers” of Yahweh (Isa. 55-65) and the “wise ones” of Daniel became paradigmatic for Jews living under imperial occupation of one kind or another ever since, including the first-century CE Galilean Jews who came to understand Jesus of Nazareth as Israel’s Messiah. In contrast, the zealously violent approach to resistance mastered for a time by the Maccabees did not “make the cut” of the Hebrew canon, a hermeneutical decision confirmed by the ultimate political failure of their many imitators (armed Jewish rebellions immediately prior to and following the reign of Herod the Great; the Sicarii; the disastrous Jewish revolts against Rome of 66-73 and 132-135 CE).
Following the lead of John Howard Yoder, whose trailblazing book The Politics of Jesus could have just as easily been titled The Politics of Paul because half of the book references Pauline Letters, scholars such as Jacob Taubes, Daniel Boyarin, James Dunn, and N. T. Wright have increasingly come to see the itinerant church-planting ministry of Paul (and other NT apostles) as representing a kind of counterimperial “politics” as well. Here the subversive shalom-seeking of Jeremian exiles was extended to include reconciliation with gentile enemies, even a Roman centurion such as Cornelius (Acts 10). It would seem more than a coincidence that John the Baptist, Jesus, Stephen, Peter, Paul, James, and other leading lights of the NT were all executed as subversives under the rule of Rome and its client kings. The book of Revelation (whose author, John, apparently was exiled by Rome to the island of Patmos [1:9]) is the most explicit among NT writings in its call to conquer the “beast” of a violently exploitative and emperor-worshiping Roman Empire by fighting a (willing-to-die-but-not-to-kill) resistance “war of the Lamb.” It could be said that the underground (and periodically persecuted) church of the first three centuries CE did indeed conquer the Roman Empire, nonviolently and from within, using just such an approach (if then paradoxically capitulating to a “Christianized” empire cult of its own).
Following the rise of an imperial Christendom in the fourth century CE, marginal sects arising from within Christianity itself, often branded as heretics, could be seen as resisters to this new state-church synthesis, from Donatists, the desert fathers and mothers, Benedictines, and Celtic Christians in the early medieval period, to later medieval renewal movements such as the Walden-sians, Cathars, Franciscans, Lollards, Hussites, Czech Brethren, Beguines, Brethren of the Common Life, and, finally, the Radical Reformation Anabaptists (and their Free Church descendants and cousins: Mennonites, Amish, Hutterites, Brethren, Baptists, Quakers, Moravians, Disciples of Christ, Adventists, Pentecostals). Continuing this venerable tradition of dissident discipleship, Christian groups have also been prominent in a wide variety of liberation struggles in the modern period—for example, the Anglo-American abolitionist and women’s suffrage movements, the African American civil rights campaign, the South African antiapartheid movement, Catholic base communities in Latin America, “people power” in the Philippines, and anticommunist struggles across Eastern Europe.
See also Civil Disobedience; Colonialism and Postcolonialism; Dissent; Freedom; Imperialism; Liberationist Ethics; War
Bibliography
Borg, M. Conflict, Holiness, and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus. Trinity Press International, 1984; Brueggemann, W. The Prophetic Imagination. 2nd ed. Fortress Press, 2001; Crossan, J. The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant. HarperSanFrancisco, 1991; Driver, J. Radical Faith: An Alternative History of the Church. Pandora Press, 1999; Ellul, J. The Meaning of the City. Trans. D. Pardee. Eerdmans, 1970; Freyne, S. Jesus, a Jewish Galilean: A New Reading of the Jesus-Story. T&T Clark, 2004; Gottwald, N. The Tribes of Yahweh: A Sociology of the Religion of Liberated Israel, 1250—1050 B.C.E. Orbis, 1979; Herzog, W. Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed. Westminster John Knox, 1994; Horsley, R. In the Shadow of Empire: Reclaiming the Bible as a History of Faithful Resistance. Westminster John Knox, 2008, idem, ed. Jesus and the Spiral of Violence: Popular Jewish Resistance in Roman Palestine. Harper & Row, 1987; idem, ed. Lind, M. Yahweh Is a Warrior: The Theology of Warfare in Ancient Israel. Herald Press, 1980; Mendenhall, G. The Tenth Generation: The Origins of the Biblical Tradition. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973; Myers, C. Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus. Orbis, 1988; Sharp, G. The Politics of Nonviolent Action. Porter Sargent, 1973; Stringfellow, W. An Ethic for Christians and Other Aliens in a Strange Land. Word, 1973; Wink, W. Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination. Fortress, 1992; Wright, N. T. Jesus and the Victory of God. Fortress, 1996; Yoder, J. For the Nations: Essays Public and Evangelical. Eerdmans, 1997; idem. The Politics of Jesus: Vicit Agnus Noster. 2nd ed. Eerdmans, 1994.
Kent Davis Sensenig
In a world of too many people and not enough food or other natural resources, humans need to allocate limited resources carefully. Ecologists and economists have suggested various schemes based on some form of justice and fairness. These schemes respond to human needs and outline the responsibilities of societies and individuals to provide for themselves and each other. The problem of resource allocation is magnified in natural disaster, famine, and war, where triage is often used to decide which people should be fed, treated, and cared for and in what order. When the Titanic was sinking and lifeboats were in short supply, “women and children first” was a basic form of resource allocation. Today, resource allocation is especially important in the area of healthcare provision, determining how to allocate limited healthcare resources in a world of overpopulation and increasing life expectancy.
Healthcare systems are under pressure because of our ability to keep alive people who in previous
generations would have died, to extend the life of
those near death, and to treat illnesses that previously were untreatable. The pressure continues to increase because of the rising cost of medical technologies and medicines as well as the development of new treatments and the rising number of people without medical insurance in the United States.
Resource allocation relies on the diverse strategies of delay, dilution, diversion, and the discouraging or denying of treatment. Healthcare economists have introduced the concept of the “quality-adjusted life year” (QALY) to present a more objective, scientific basis for healthcare decisions. This calculation compares different treatments and individuals, predicting how long persons might live and the quality of their lives should they be treated. These calculations generally favor the young and healthy over the elderly and the sick, who, consequently, are less likely to receive treatment.
Currently, governments, insurance companies, doctors, and patients have some say in resource allocation by the decisions they make and the practices they follow. The kinds of criteria used in medical moral decision-making range from personal preference on grounds of age, sex, or relationship; merit (giving people what we think they deserve in terms of social worth and past, present, or future contribution to society); or a host of other considerations—for example, the patient’s ability to pay, the likely success of treatment in terms of increased life expectancy or quality of life, equality (everyone receives the same treatment or same sum of money for healthcare), or the need or urgency of the situation (where life-threatening, emergency care will trump nonurgent, elective procedures).
The dangers in many systems of resource allocation are those of reductionism (reducing the person to a unit or to his or her disease), materialism (considering only the physical body), determinism (treating people as machines), and depersonalization and dehumanization (ignoring the whole person in the entirety of his or her context, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual).
Specifically Christian approaches to resource allocation are holistic and begin with God, whose image the human family bears and to whom humans are ultimately responsible (e.g., Gen. 1:27-28). The consistent witness of Scripture is that God’s aim for humanity is shalom—health, well-being, and peace—and that this is achieved only in the context of dispositions and practices of justice and mercy (e.g., Mic. 6:8). This has immediate influence on criteria in resource allocation. Additionally, Scripture emphasizes the dignity and worth of individual persons and the responsibility of all to protect the weak and vulnerable. In biblical visions of the new heaven and earth, all are restored to perfect humanity and harmony (e.g., Isa. 35; Rev. 21-22). In their contributions to the difficult challenges involved in allocation of limited resources, Christians will reflect on the importance of the human body in the incarnation and resurrection of Christ and the renewed, transformed bodies of humanity in God’s ultimate reign in eternity.
See also Healthcare Ethics; Human Rights; Image of God
Bibliography
Kilner, J. Who Lives? Who Dies? Ethical Criteria in Patient Selection. Yale University Press, 1990; Lammers, S., and A. Verhey, eds. On Moral Medicine: Theological Perspective in Medical Ethics. Eerdmans, 1998.
E. David Cook
In contemporary parlance, “responsibility” is most often used as a synonym for “accountability.” Retrospectively, it is used to allocate blame or praise, as well as punishment or reward, for a specific action or outcome. Prospectively, it is used to assign certain roles, activities, or outcomes to particular persons or groups of persons. In both legal and philosophical circles, therefore, it gives rise to fundamental questions about requirements for accountability. In philosophical circles the concept of responsibility often provokes discussions of the minimal requirements for moral agency, including the nature and possibility of free will. In legal debates it leads to related questions about mitigating conditions that limit accountability, such as immaturity or mental incapacity.
Even though the term responsibility did not come into use until the late eighteenth century, it is generally understood as a fundamental facet of human morality. Although the term does not appear anywhere in Scripture, scholarly examinations have focused their exploration of responsibility on biblical notions of accountability. Because modern society has an individualistic orientation, special attention has been paid to concepts of collective responsibility in Scripture. In the ancient
Near East, accountability was a social rather than a personal phenomenon. Commendation and blame, rewards and punishments, devolved to entire social groups, including future generations. So children inherited the rewards and punishment of their parents, and entire groups were held accountable for the actions of their members (Exod. 20:5-6; 34:7; Deut. 5:9-10; Josh. 7:1-26). That such a notion of collective responsibility was still current in Jesus’ time is evident in the narrative about the man born blind (John 9:2). It also had significance for Paul’s understanding of both sin and salvation: “Therefore just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all” (Rom. 5:18). Notions of individual responsibility are also present in Scripture (Deut. 24:16; Prov. 24:12; Ezra 14:20; Jer. 31:30). Because the notion of collective responsibility flies in the face of modern assumptions about moral agency and autonomy, it has been the focus of attention.
Amid the struggle against National Socialism in Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a Lutheran theologian and ethicist, developed a christocentric model of responsibility to loosen the rigid moral requirement to obey the designated authorities without jettisoning a sense of moral obligation. He argued that a responsible human agent is characterized by both freedom and relationship. Humans are bound to one another and to God; therefore, moral responsibility is always a matter of deputyship, acting for the sake and on behalf of another. Jesus Christ is the perfect model of human responsibility: complete surrender of oneself for the sake of the other. Responsible persons do not impose a foreign ideal or law upon recalcitrant reality, but rather conform themselves to reality as it is realized in Jesus Christ, who has taken all of reality unto himself.
Criticizing the legalism of the modern Roman Catholic Church (particularly the role of the manuals in ecclesiastical life), Bernard Haring, a German Catholic theologian, used the language of responsibility to emphasize the fundamentally relational character of religion and ethics. Religion entails a “response” to the presence and power of God. It is a dialogue between the person and God that establishes a personal relationship. Salvation, in this sense, is communion with the living God. Like religion, morality is primarily relational. It entails relationships of mutual responsibility in the light of a fundamental response to God. Salvation is a social reality, which includes personal relationships of responsibility with God and all God’s creation. Haring does not reject the place of law and command in the religious or moral life; rather, he renews their significance and depth by embedding them in the existential, relational context of personal response to God and neighbor.
H. Richard Niebuhr, a Reformed theologian and ethicist, provided the most sustained and systematic development of the language of responsibility in mid-twentieth-century theology and ethics. Without dismissing the significance of deontological and teleological approaches to ethics, he found them wanting. Neither the pursuit of ends nor obedience to law properly captures the social and reflexive nature of human moral existence. Humans are not autonomous agents, but rather are relational beings, more acted upon than acting. The metaphor of responsibility captures the social and contextual nature of human activity. From this perspective, human moral activity is more a matter of doing the fitting or appropriate thing in the given context than obeying a timeless law or pursuing an ultimate goal. Discerning the “fitting” thing requires an interpretation of what is going on and how to respond properly. It also assumes accountability in a continuing relationship of responsibility with the realities with which the agent contends. Human morality is, therefore, not judgment about discrete, atomic acts or decisions, but rather a dialogic process of revising, reorienting, and reacting within the context of a continuing relationship with the realities that one encounters.
Without losing contact with the commonsense meaning of responsibility, these three twentieth-century theologians developed and enriched its significance in ways that are consistent with modern realities but also alleviate some of modernity’s weaknesses. In response to excessive formalism and idealism in moral and religious theory, the idea of responsibility provides a way to reconcile fact and value, the real and ideal, the spiritual and the material. In response to the association of the modern ideals of freedom and equality with individualism and autonomy, the language of responsibility provides a means to recover the social nature of human existence and a concern for the common good apart from premodern models of hierarchy. More recent explorations of the idea of moral responsibility in theology and ethics have placed it in conversation with related, but distinct, concepts of moral realism. What they share is the idea that human moral activity takes place in the context of realities that limit and shape human moral possibilities. Where they differ is in how those realities should be understood and interpreted: are they the negative forces that resist and limit moral and religious possibilities, or are they the positive realities that press humanity toward more responsible moral and religious existence. The former camp, the moral realists, seems more indebted to Max Weber and his use of the term responsible (as well as Reinhold Niebuhr), while the latter camp, moral responsiblists, follows more closely in the tradition of Bonhoeffer, Haring, and H. Richard Niebuhr.
While biblical scholars, attentive to the common usage of the term responsibility, have identified and explored cognate terms in the biblical literature, the rich possibilities for dialogue between biblical studies and theological ethics in this arena have not been realized. Mutual instruction between theological ethics and biblical studies concerning the concept of responsibility will take place not at the level of common terminology, but rather through an exploration of fundamental questions of human relationship to God, one another, and all reality—the sort of approach associated with the broad sweep of biblical theology.
See also Accountability; Collective Responsibility; Equality; Freedom; Individualism; Moral Agency; Reward and Retribution
Bibliography
Bonhoeffer, D. “History and the Good.” Pages 224—62 in Ethics, ed. E. Bethge, trans. N. Smith. Macmillan, 1965; Buckers, H. “Kollektiv- und Individualvergeltung im Alten Testament.” TGl 25 (1933): 273—86; Gamwell, F., and W. Schweiker. “Realism and Responsibility in Contemporary Ethics: Introduction.” JR 73 (1993): 473— 637; Gustafson, J. “The Place of Scripture in Christian Ethics: A Methodological Study” Pages 121-45 in Theology and Christian Ethics. United Church Press, 1974; Gustafson, J., and J. Laney, eds. On Being Responsible: Issues in Personal Ethics. Harper & Row, 1968; Haring, B. General Moral Theology. Vol. 1 of The Law of Christ: Moral Theology for Priests and Laity. Trans. E. Kaiser. Newman Press, 1963; Niebuhr, H. The Responsible Self: An Essay in Christian Moral Philosophy. Harper & Row, 1963; Robinson, H. “The Hebrew Conception of Corporate Personality.” Pages 49-62 in Werden und Wesen des Alten Testaments: Vortrage gehalten auf der internationalen Tagung alttestamentlicher Forscher zu Gottingen vom 4.—10. September 1935, ed. P. Volz, F. Stummer, and J. Hempel. BzAw 66. Topelmann, 1936; Weber, M. “Politics as a Vocation.” Pages 115-28 in Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, ed. and trans. H. Gerth and C. Mills. Oxford University Press, 1958; Zank, M. “ ‘Where Art Thou?’ Biblical Perspectives on Responsibility.” Pages 63-76 in Responsibility, ed. B. Darling-Smith. Lexington Books, 2007.
Timothy A. Beach-Verhey
Rest See Sabbath
In its simplest definition, restitution means paying back for any loss, damage, or injury. Justice is satisfied when the offender repays the loss caused by the offense. Restitution is a commutative concept, or one that involves exchange, that focuses in contemporary usage more on the restoration of the offended party than on punishing the offender, although elements of both persist.
Within the Jewish and Christian traditions, restitution takes its basic cues from the Decalogue commandment “You shall not steal.” Inherent in this command is a respect for both persons and property and the recognition that this respect is both spiritually and politically effective. Numerous legal codes and examples of restitution-based justice follow this command. Exodus 22, for example, demands restitution payments for a host of offenses ranging from thievery to allowing one’s livestock to graze in a neighboring field. This passage deals primarily with property rights, which in Exodus includes both slaves and women. It is not an exhaustive account of restitution; instead, it represents properties that most directly affect the agrarian ways of life.
While the passage in Exodus applies most specifically to property owners, Lev. 25 extends restitution to the poor and to those who have been victimized by economic hardships. In this passage, the kinsman redeemer and the Jubilee Year are instituted to reorient the economic balance of the Hebrew people, a balance that orients much of the Hebraic and Jewish law traditions. The book of Ruth provides one of the clearest narratological examples of the kinsman-redeemer clause, where the unlikely Boaz assumes the role and redeems Naomi’s family line. The resultant marriage of Naomi’s daughter-in-law Ruth to Boaz results in the birth of Obed, the grandfather of David (Ruth 4:21). The Jubilee Year also relates to restitution and its ability to balance society because special provisions were to be made to forgive debts and return lands to families that had lost them. Although we have no historical evidence that Israel ever enacted any such Jubilee Year, the idealistic concept still permeates Judaic self-perceptions. For the Israelites, the Jubilee served as a reminder that Yahweh was the rightful owner of the land (Lev. 25:23).
The NT also provides examples of restitution. So, for example, when Paul writes to Philemon, he promises to repay all of Onesimus’s debts (Phlm. 18). And Jesus’ parable of the servant whose debts were forgiven by the king but who failed to forgive his own debtor recalls the Jubilee imagery (Matt. 18:23-35). Perhaps the clearest example is in Luke 19:1-10, which describes the Jewish tax collector Zacchaeus, who, upon his encounter with Jesus, vows to repay fourfold anyone he has wronged. Both the Mosaic laws and these NT passages deal with the returning of things to their intended order and serve as Christian justifications for restitution theology, wherein restitution plays a crucial role in the doctrines of atonement and creation. Further continuity exists between the passages in Exodus and Luke on the issue of overcompensation by the guilty party. Just as Zacchaeus pledged to pay back fourfold, the Exodus passage demands a minimum of double the value of stolen property and a maximum of the thief’s life.
This precedence for overcompensation raises an interesting question for contemporary moral conceptions of restitution. Since excess repayment is required to satisfy justice, restitution is supplementary in character (Santi 89). Excess compensation, then, serves a function beyond the mere restoration of original damages; it emphasizes the guilt associated with the infraction and exacts a punishment to make amends for the guilt of the crime (Santi 90). Restitution in this sense encroaches on retributive or punitive forms of justice. Opponents of this view focus instead on the ideal of “pure restitution.” This ideal focuses on the offended party and the desire for compensation rather than on any desire to see the offender suffer punishment (Kaufmann 55; Barnett 289). The victim remains the focal point of pure restitution as the paid damages by the offender are extracted in accord with “common sense” (Barnett 287-88).
While biblical precedent for restitution focuses primarily on individuals and families, the principles of restitution within ethical discourse apply to larger entities as well. With land restitution, for example, corporations and governments justify and maintain their rights to occupy the lands that they inhabit. The apartheid government in South Africa upheld laws, including issues of restitution, that overwhelmingly privileged white inhabitants. Many of these laws were justified by the white Voortrekkers’ literal application of Exodus and by the presumptuous notion that South Africa was their “promised land.” Such literal interpretations of the OT proved insufficient for answering postapartheid questions about the nature of private ownership, how historic imbalances should be rectified, and the feasibility of land redistribution (Vorster 686). Since Israelite land ownership had numerous manifestations in Israelite history, Scripture is useful for current ethical analysis if we can discern its underlying principles (Vorster 689).
The most powerful nations today exist as a direct result of their colonial exploits, which forcibly removed, subjugated, or killed indigenous inhabitants. This realization has raised complex ethical questions among postcolonial scholars. What would restitution look like if colonial nations followed the principles of restoring lands to their original inhabitants? How might nations approach restitution when repayment for damages would bankrupt nations? If the lands were returned, what further restitutions would have to be made for the damages caused by the desolation of indigenous families and by the desolation of the land itself as a result of industrialization? Finally, if political and economic realities make the overcompensation of indigenous peoples unfeasible, theological ethicists must determine what form of restitution is feasible in light of its scriptural mandates.
See also Apartheid; Colonialism and Postcolonialism; Jubilee; Justice, Restorative; Justice, Retributive; Reparation; Ten Commandments; Theft
Bibliography
Barnett, R. “A New Paradigm of Criminal Justice.” Ethics 87, no. 4 (1977): 279-301; Kaufmann, W. Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy. P. H. Wyden, 1973; Santi, E. “Latinamericanism and Restitution.” Latin American Literary Review 20, no. 40 (1992): 88-96; Vor-ster, J. “The Ethics of Land Restitution.” JRE 34 (2006): 685-707.
Aaron Conley
The Greco-Roman world accepted the “immortality of the soul” and the “transmigration of souls” but never the “resurrection of the dead.” In the religion of Israel (as presented in the OT) there arose a set of convictions that focused on the eternal nature of God’s covenant with his people and the attendant expectation that God somehow would sustain relations with his people even after their deaths. During the period of Second Temple Judaism (c. 200 BCE-120 CE) there came to expression a number of various understandings of what “resurrection of the dead” meant. It was, however, God’s resurrection of Jesus that both established and clarified for Christians their belief in the resurrection of the dead, with the result that the recently past bodily resurrection of Jesus, together with the present spiritual resurrection of believers in Jesus and the future physical resurrection of Christ’s own at his parousia (return, second coming), became the cornerstone of Christian hope in the writings of the NT and the central proclamation of the Christian church.
The English word resurrection translates the Greek noun anastasis. In its basic sense, resurrection denotes restoration to existence or life after a period of decline, oppression, or obscurity (as with the nation or a group of people) or after an interval in the realm of the dead (as with a person or people). The English expression raise up translates the Hebrew verb qAm and the Greek verbs anistemi and egeiro. The noun anastasis (or exan-astasis) and the verbs anistemi and egeiro appear throughout the NT for both the historical resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of people in the eschatological future.
Convictions about the Continuance of God’s Covenantal Relations with His People Even after Their Deaths
There are stories in the OT of people being brought back to life after their deaths (1 Kgs. 17:17-24; 2 Kgs. 4:18-37; 13:20-21). However, these are not, strictly speaking, resurrection accounts; they are miracle stories about resuscitation, revivification, or reanimation. The people in these stories were restored to their former lives, not to a new life or to the life of the new eschatological order, and so (evidently) they had to die again. There are also stories of certain righteous individuals who were taken up by God into heaven without dying (Gen. 5:22-24; 2 Kgs. 2:1-12). But again, these are not resurrection accounts; they are stories of translation into God’s presence without the experience of death.
The imagery of being raised up by God is used primarily in the OT for the restoration of the nation Israel in the eschatological future—that is, of God’s people with whom he had established his covenant. In Isa. 44:21-26, for example, God is portrayed as declaring that he has not forgotten the nation Israel and, in particular, as saying of Jerusalem, “It shall be inhabited,” and of the cities of Judah, “They shall be rebuilt, and I will raise up their ruins.” In Isa. 49:6 the eschatological servant’s mission will include the task “to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel.” In Hos. 6:2 the prophet assures his people, “After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.” In Amos 9:11 there are included within God’s promises regarding the nation’s eschatological future these words: “On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches, and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old.” And throughout the prophecy of Ezekiel such a raising up of the nation is graphically portrayed by various dramatic actions and symbolic figures, particularly by the vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezek. 37 and the attendant visions of restoration in Ezek. 40-48.
Among righteous Israelites, however, there was also the hope that God somehow would continue relations with his people individually even after their deaths. It was a hope based on their convictions about divine justice and the fulfillment of God’s covenant. Thus Job could declare, “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth; and after my skin has been thus destroyed, then in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26). And David could exclaim, “My heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. For you do not give me up to Sheol, or let your faithful one see the Pit” (Ps. 16:9-10). Likewise, the Korahites are credited with proclaiming, “God will ransom my soul from the power of Sheol, for he will receive me” (Ps. 49:15).
Among the latter prophets, such individualist convictions about God’s justice and the eternality of his covenant were developed to apply to the life of the nation, as in these words of Isaiah: “Your dead shall live, their corpses shall rise. O dwellers in the dust, awake and sing for joy! For your dew is a radiant dew, and the earth will give birth to those long dead” (Isa. 26:19 [cf. Ezek. 37:1-14; Hos. 6:1-2]). Further, these basic convictions began to be developed in ways that had not only national but also universal significance, as in this prophecy of Daniel: “At that time Michael, the great prince, the protector of your people shall arise. There shall be a time of anguish, such as had never occurred since nations first came into existence. But at that time your people shall be delivered, everyone who is found written in the book. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:1-2).
Developments during the Period of Second Temple Judaism
Expectations regarding the future state of the dead were in flux during the period of Second Temple Judaism. Immortality doctrines were rampant. Some of these immortality teachings were clothed in resurrection language, others in astral imagery, others in terminology that paralleled expressions used in speaking about reincarnation and the transmigration of souls, and still others in distinctly Grecian anthropological terms. Hopes for some type of resurrection of the dead also became increasingly prominent during this time.
What can be said about these developments and particularly about the relationship of resurrection and ethics? (1) Passages such as 1 En. 22.1-14; 25.4-22; 90.28-42 suggest a resurrection and gathering of righteous Jews into an earthly messianic kingdom, with some type of transformation of the righteous taking place. (2) Second Maccabees 7:1-41; 14:37-46 and 1 En. 51.1-5; 61.5; 62.14-16 present fairly explicit statements regarding the expectation of a future physical resurrection of the dead. (3) Fourth Ezra 7.32-38; 14.35 and 2 Bar.
49.1- 3; 50.1-51.16 spell out in quite explicit detail Jewish hopes with regard to the nature of a future resurrection body. (4) Sibylline Oracles 4.175-191 presupposes a similar doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as found in 4 Ezra 7.32-38 and 2 Bar.
50.1- 51.16.
God’s Resurrection of Jesus as the Basis for the Christian Belief in the Resurrection of the Dead Although Jews understood that the nation corporately and righteous people individually would suffer, with hope that both the nation and the dead would somehow be raised up or resurrected in the eschatological future, there was little if any expectation that the Messiah would suffer death or need to be resurrected from the dead. Only in 4 Ezra 7.28-31, written sometime about 100 CE, is there any reference in the writings of Second Temple Judaism to the death and subsequent resurrection of the expected Jewish Messiah. Jewish hopes for the future were expressed, at least in the great majority of cases, without any thought of either the Messiah’s death or the Messiah’s resurrection.
Jesus, however, is portrayed in all four canonical Gospels as speaking repeatedly about his approaching death at J erusalem and his resurrection three days afterward (Mark 8:31-32 pars.; 9:31-32 pars.; 10:33-34 pars.; see also Mark 9:9 pars.; 14:58 pars.; 15:29 pars.; Matt. 12:40; 17:9; 26:61; John 2:19-22). And all four evangelists focus on Jesus’ death and resurrection as being the most crucial and significant features of his ministry, not only in the concluding chapters of their respective Gospels but also by way of anticipation in all that they set out earlier. The resurrection of Jesus is, in fact, the high point of the four NT Gospels. For God’s resurrection of Jesus from the dead vindicates all that Jesus believed, said, and did, and so it is the definitive answer to the cross.
The resurrection of Jesus, itself an intrinsically
eschatological event, was the impetus for the
christological thinking of the early church and the content of most of its preaching. Further, it is the proper beginning for all distinctly Christian teaching about the ethical lives of those who commit themselves to Christ and for all distinctly Christian teaching about what they may legitimately expect regarding the future. For it is the message about Christ’s resurrection that informs his followers as to what kind of resurrection lives they are to live presently as his people and assures them that they will share in Christ’s resurrection and glory in the future.
The Message of the Resurrection in the New Testament
As in the OT, there are stories in the NT of people being brought back to life after death (Mark 5:3543; John 11:30-44; Acts 9:36-42; as well as the amazing report in Matt. 27:52-53). But as with the similar OT instances, these are not, strictly speaking, resurrection accounts; they are miracle stories about the resuscitation, revivification, or reanimation of people who were restored to their former lives and (evidently) had to die again. The proclamation of Jesus’ resurrection, however, has to do with the defeat of death and the inauguration of the messianic age, while the promise of a future general resurrection has to do with the completion of the salvation that God effected through the saving work of Jesus.
God’s resurrection of Jesus, together with the implications of this momentous event for the eschatological resurrection of the dead, is the central affirmation of the Christian message as given throughout the book of Acts. The mandate given by Jesus to his followers was to be “my witnesses” (Acts 1:8), and that mandate is further explicated as being “witness to his resurrection” (Acts 1:22). The preaching of Peter focuses on God having raised Jesus from the dead, to which events the apostles were commissioned to be the accredited “witnesses” (Acts 2:32; 3:15). The accounts of the trials of Peter and John before the Jerusalem authorities begin with the council’s accusation that the apostles were “proclaiming that in Jesus there is the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 4:2) and end with the apostolic statement “The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. . . . And we are witnesses to these things” (Acts 5:30-32). Paul’s own conversion resulted from being confronted by the resurrected, ascended, and heavenly Jesus (Acts 9:3-5). Peter’s preaching to the Roman centurion Cornelius had as its high point the proclamation that “God raised [Jesus] on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:40-41). Paul’s preaching in the synagogue at Antioch of Pisidia had as its major content the resurrection of Jesus from the dead (Acts 13:32-37), and his message to the Athenians is epitomized as being “the good news about Jesus and the resurrection” (Acts 17:18). Further, in his defenses before Jewish and Roman courts Paul is portrayed as declaring that the central issue for which he was being tried was “the hope of the resurrection of the dead” (Acts 23:6).
The importance of the resurrection in Acts is rivaled only by the significance of the death of the Messiah within the divine purpose, alongside which it often appears. Luke, the author of Acts, wanted readers always to keep in view the nexus between Jesus’ death and Jesus’ resurrection. But while always emphasizing the importance of the death of Christ in the divine program of redemption, Luke must also be seen to have been particularly concerned to present the apostolic response to Jesus’ resurrection and its redemptive implications—a concern that appears not just in his giving a narrative about the apostles’ witness to Jesus as having been resurrected by God from the dead but also in presenting that narrative itself as a witness to Jesus’ resurrection and an explication of its significance for the realization of God’s redemptive purposes.
Implications, Future and Present, for the Lives of Christians
Three types of resurrection statements appear in the NT. First, there are statements regarding the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the grave to immortality, as in “We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him” (Rom. 6:9). Second, there are statements having to do with the present spiritual resurrection of believers in Christ, which is from slavery to sin to newness of life, as in “We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4 [see also Rom. 6:6, 13, 17; Col. 2:12). Third, there are statements declaring a future physical resurrection of believers from death to immortality, as in “The dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed” (1 Cor. 15:52). In all three of these types of statements the resurrection of the dead has to do with the raising of a person from the dead to a new and permanent life in the presence of God. Such a definition applies first of all to the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself, but it also applies to the present ethical lives of believers in Christ Jesus and to their future experiences of death, resurrection, transformation, and exaltation at the time of Christ’s eschatological parousia, his eagerly awaited second coming or presence.
Paul includes in 1 Cor. 16:22 what appears to have been a cry that arose within the worship of the early Jewish Christian church: “Our Lord, come!” (Aramaic: marana tha). And John closes his apocalypse in Rev. 22:20 with the words of “the one who testifies to these things,” Jesus Christ: “Surely I am coming soon” (Nai, erchomai tachy);
and then he immediately expresses the church’s response: “Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” (Amen, er-chou kyrie lesou). It is this parousia of Christ that Christians look forward to with expectation, for included among the events of his second coming will be their own resurrection, with its resultant transformation into an immortal life and its exaltation into the very presence of Jesus Christ the Son and God the Father. Of all of that, however, there is nothing that can be done by Christians, for that time is known only to God and will be worked out only by God. All that followers of Jesus can do with respect to his parousia and their own physical resurrection is await that time with eagerness and prepare for it with earnestness.
With respect, however, to the new spiritual resurrection that believers in Jesus Christ have received by faith, there is much that they can do by way of coming to appreciate more and more their new resurrection life, being constantly open to the needs and situations of others, and seeking the direction of God’s Spirit as to how they can effectively express that new resurrection life today. For as the apostle Paul has written, Christians need always to recognize that “just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father,” so they are called to “walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).
Christian ethical living springs from the new resurrection life given by a loving God, on the basis of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ and through the ministry of God’s Holy Spirit. So the Christian life, while awaiting a future resurrection, must always be understood as the present experience of a new type of spiritual resurrection life—a life given by God through the work of Christ and the ministry of God’s Spirit, and a life to be lived out in ways that glorify God, respond to the work of Christ, follow the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and serve others in representing the resurrected Christ.
See also Eschatology and Ethics; Hope Bibliography
Harris, M. From Grave to Glory: Resurrection in the New Testament. Zondervan, 1990; idem. Raised Immortal: Resurrection and Immortality in the New Testament. Eerd-mans, 1985; Longenecker, R., ed. Life in the Face of Death: The Resurrection Message of the New Testament. MNTS 3. Eerdmans, 1998; Marshall, I. H. “The Resurrection in the Acts of the Apostles.” Pages 92-107 in Apostolic History and the Gospel: Biblical and Historical Essays Presented to F F Bruce on His 60th Birthday, ed. W. Gasque and R. Martin. Eerdmans, 1970; idem. “The Resurrection of Jesus in Luke.” TynBul 24 (1973): 55-98; Martin-Achard, R. From Death to Life: A Study of the Development of the Doctrine of the Resurrection in the Old Testament. Oliver & Boyd, 1960; Nickelsburg, G., Jr. Resurrection, Immortality, and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism.
HTS 26. Harvard University Press, 1972; O’Donovan, O. Resurrection and Moral Order: An Outline for Evangelical Ethics. Eerdmans, 1986; Perkins, P Resurrection: New Testament Witness and Contemporary Reflection. Doubleday, 1984; Stuhlmacher, P “The Resurrection of Jesus and the Resurrection of the Dead.” ExAud 9 (1993): 19—30; Wenham, D. “The Resurrection Narratives in Matthew’s Gospel.” TynBul 24 (1973): 21-34.
Richard N. Longenecker Retribution See Reward and Retribution