Resurrection. Unamuno, Life 4.2

What is the resurrection? Not a natural or normal event, says Unamuno. Or at least, the early Christians did not see it thus.


Hase afirmado del cristianismo primitivo, acaso con precipitación, que fué anescatológico, que en él no aparece claramente la fe en otra vida después de la muerte, sino en un próximo fin del mundo y establecimiento del reino de Dios, en el llamado quiliasmo. ¿Y es que no eran en el fondo una misma cosa? La fe en la inmortalidad del alma, cuya condición tal vez no se precisaba mucho, cabe decir que es una especie de subentendido, de supuesto tácito, en el Evangelio todo, y es la situación del espíritu de muchos de los que hoy le leen, situación opuesta a la de los cristianos de entre quienes brotó el Evangelio, lo que les impide verlo. Sin duda, que todo aquello de la segunda venida del Cristo, con gran poder, rodeado de majestad y entre nubes, para juzgar a muertos y a vivos, abrir a los unos el reino de los cielos y echar a los otros a la gehena, donde será el lloro y el crujir de dientes, cabe entenderlo quiliásticamente, y aun se hace decir al Cristo en el Evangelio (Marcos IX, 1), que había con él algunos que no gustarían de la muerte sin haber visto el reino de Dios; esto es, que vendría durante su generación; y en el mismo capítulo, versículo 10, se hace decir a Jacobo, a Pedro y a Juan, que con Jesús subieron al monte de la Transfiguración y le oyeron hablar de que resucitaría de entre los muertos aquello de: «y guardaron el dicho consigo, razonando unos con otros sobre qué sería eso de resucitar de entre los muertos». Y en todo caso, el Evangelio se compuso cuando esa creencia, base y razón de ser del cristianismo, se estaba formando. Véase en Mateo XXII, 29-32; en Marcos XII, 24-27; en Lucas XVI, 22-31; XX, 34-37; en Juan V, 24-29; VI, 40, 54, 58; VIII, 51; XI, 25, 56; XIV, 2, 19. Y sobre todo, aquello de Mateo XXVII, 52, de que al resucitar el Cristo «muchos cuerpos santos que dormían resucitaron».

Y no era esta una resurrección natural, no. La fe cristiana nació de la fe de que Jesús no permaneció muerto, sino que Dios le resucitó y que esta resurrección era un hecho; pero eso no suponía una mera inmortalidad del alma, al modo filosófico (Véase Harnack, Dogmengeschichte. Prolegomena, 5, 4.) Para los primeros Padres de la Iglesia mismos, la inmortalidad del alma no era algo natural; bastaba para su demostración, como dice Nemesio, la enseñanza de las Divinas Escrituras, y era, según Lactancio, un don —y como tal, gratuito— de Dios. Pero sobre esto más adelante.


It has been argued of early Christianity, perhaps too hastily, that it lacked eschatology: that its faith was not yet firmly placed in another life after death, but rather in the proximate end of the world and the establishment of God's kingdom on eartha position known as chiliasm. Are these two positions, the eschatological and the chiliast, perhaps the same, in their rudiments? Faith in the soul's immortality is presumed, and silently supported, throughout all the Gospel, though the condition of the soul is never closely discussed there. It is the spiritual situation of modern readers that impedes their ability to notice this, a situation opposite and opposed to that of primitive Christians. Without doubt, we must understand all the talk of Christ's second comingthat he shall appear in great power, surrounded by majesty in the clouds, with the purpose of judging the quick and the dead, opening the kingdom of heaven to some and casting others down to Gehenna, where shall be wailing and gnashing of teethin chiliastic terms. The gospel of Mark even makes Christ say that there were with him some folk who would not taste of death without having seen the kingdom of God, meaning that it would come during their generation (Mark 9.1). The same chapter of Mark, in the tenth verse, says of Jacob (), Peter, and John that after they had ascended the mount of transfiguration with Jesus, and heard him say that he would return from the dead, "they kept his teaching to themselves, wondering with each other what this resurrection from among the dead could mean." In any event, the gospels were composed when belief in the triumph over death was forming, becoming the foundation and raison d'être of Christianity. Witness also Matthew 22.29-32; Mark 12.24-27; Luke 16.22-31 & 20.34-37; and John 5.24-29; 6.40, 54, 58; 8.51; 9.25, 56; 14.2, 19. And above all, the passage in Matthew 27.52, which records that when the resurrection of Christ occurred, "many holy corpses that had slept also returned to life."

This was not a natural resurrection, by any means. The Christian faith arose out of the conviction that Jesus did not remain dead, but that God resurrected him, and that this resurrection was a fact. This did not suppose merely the immortality of the soul, in a philosophical sense (witness Harnack's History of Dogma, 5.4 in the preface). For the first fathers of the church, the immortality of the soul was not a natural phenomenon. The teaching of holy writ was enough to demonstrate it, as Nemesius says (‡), and Lactantius considers it a free gift from God (*). But more about this anon.


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(†) The apostle Jacob, son of Zebedee, is usually called James in English, occasionally James the Great to distinguish him from the brother or cousin of Christ (James the Less).

(‡) Nemesius (floruit c. 390 CE) was bishop of Emesa in Syria, and author of a Greek treatise on the nature of man (Περὶ φύσεως ἀνθρώπου), where some have found anticipated the idea that blood circulates as a result of being pumped by the heart (a discovery usually credited to William Harvey). Unamuno refers to this treatise here.

(*) Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (c. 250-325 CE) was born in north Africa, where he entered public life after studying with Arnobius to become an orator. Summoned to Nicomedia to teach Latin rhetoric by the emperor Diocletian, he converted there to Christianity, and resigned his imperial post, going into exile. Constantine summoned him back to court to tutor his son Crispus, who was ultimately put to death by his father in 326. The fate of Lactantius is unknown, but he left quite a few Latin writings, which impressed humanist scholars enough that they called him the Christian Cicero.