What is Christianity? Unamuno, Life 4.5
Unamuno
follows Paul in maintaining that the resurrection is the central
doctrine of Christianity, even when this means that he must deny the
testimony of Justin Martyr.
Así,
cada uno por su lado, judíos y griegos, llegaron al verdadero
descubrimiento de la muerte, que es el que hace entrar a los pueblos,
como a los hombres, en la pubertad espiritual, la del sentimiento
trágico de la vida, que es cuando engendra la humanidad al Dios
vivo. El descubrimiento de la muerte es el que nos revela a Dios, y
la muerte del hombre perfecto, del Cristo, fué la suprema revelación
de la muerte, la del hombre que no debía morir y murió.
Tal descubrimiento, el de la
inmortalidad, preparado por los procesos religiosos judaico y
helénico, fué lo específicamente cristiano. Y lo llevó a cabo
sobre todo Pablo de Tarso, aquel judío fariseo helenizado. Pablo no
había conocido personalmente a Jesús, y por eso le descubrió como
Cristo. «Se puede decir que es, en general, la teología del Apóstol
la primera teología cristiana. Era para él una necesidad;
sustituíale, en cierto modo, la falta de conocimiento personal de
Jesús», dice Weizsäcker (Das
apostolische Zeitalter der christlichen Kirche,
Freiburg i. B. 1892). No conoció a Jesús, pero le sintió renacer
en sí, y pudo decir aquello de «no vivo en mí, sino en Cristo». Y
predicó la cruz, que era escándalo para los judíos y necedad para
los griegos (I Cor., I, 23), y el dogma central para el Apóstol
convertido, fué el de la resurrección del Cristo; lo importante
para él era que el Cristo se hubiese hecho hombre y hubiese muerto y
resucitado, y no lo que hizo en vida; no su obra moral y pedagógica,
sino su obra religiosa y eternizadora. Y fué quien escribió
aquellas inmortales palabras: «Si se predica que Cristo resucitó de
los muertos, ¿cómo dicen algunos entre vosotros que no hay
resurrección de muertos? Porque si no hay resurrección de muertos,
tampoco Cristo resucitó, y si Cristo no resucitó, vana es nuestra
predicación y vuestra fe es vana ... Entonces los que durmieron en
Cristo se pierden. Si en esta vida sólo esperamos en Cristo, somos
los más miserables de los hombres» (I Cor., XV, 12-19).
Y
puede, a partir de esto, afirmarse que quien no crea en esa
resurrección carnal de Cristo, podrá ser filocristo, pero no
específicamente cristiano. Cierto que un Justino mártir pudo decir
que «son cristianos cuantos viven conforme a la razón, aunque sean
tenidos por ateos, como entre los griegos Sócrates y Heráclito y
otros tales»; pero este mártir, ¿es mártir, es decir, testigo de
cristianismo? No.
Thus
did Jews and Greeks, each people from its own origins, arrive
together at a true discovery of death. This is the discovery that
causes nations, like individuals, to enter spiritual puberty, which
is characterized by a tragic sense of life. When humanity enters into
this sense, the sentiment of adolescence, it creates the living God.
The discovery of death reveals God to us, and the death of the
perfect man, Christ, was the ultimate revelation of death: it showed
us the man who should not have died, but did nonetheless.
This
discovery, the revelation of immortality prepared by the religious
traditions of Jews and Greeks, was specifically Christian. And it was
carried to fruition most of all by Paul of Tarsus, a Pharisaical Jew
who had also adopted Greek culture. Paul never knew Jesus personally,
and for that reason he discovered him as Christ. "It can be said
in general terms that the theology of the Apostle Paul was the first
Christian theology. It was necessary for him, compensating, in his
case, for lack of any personal knowledge of Jesus," as
Weizsäcker says (The Apostolic Age of the Christian Church,
Freiburg, vol. 1, 1892). He never knew Jesus, but he felt the Lord
reborn within himself, and was able to say, "I do not live in
myself, but in Christ." He preached the cross, which was scandal
to the Jews and folly to the Greeks (1 Cor. 1.23), and the central
tenet of his apostleship was Christ's resurrection. What mattered to
Paul was that Christ had made himself man, had died, and had come
again to life; what he did in life was not important. Paul preached
the Lord's religious work, the work that makes life eternal, not his
moral or pedagogical works. Witness the apostle's immortal words: "If
we preach that Christ rose from the dead, then how do some among you
come to say that there is no resurrection of the dead? For if there
is none, then Christ too was never resurrected, and if Christ never
rose, then our preaching is vain, and your faith empty ... And those
who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If we have hope in Christ
only for this life, then we are the most miserable of men" (1
Cor. 15.12-19).
From
this we may conclude that a person who does not believe in the carnal
resurrection of Christ, though he be a friend to Christ, cannot be
essentially or truly Christian. Certainly someone like Justin Martyr
could say that, "as many as live in keeping with reason are
Christians, though they be counted as atheists, like Socrates and
Heraclitus and others among the Greeks" (†). But is this
martyr really a martyr here, a witness of Christianity? No.
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(†)
Justin Martyr (c. 100-165 CE) was born a Samaritan, on the fringes of
Judaism but not within it. He studied philosophy as a youth, but
never affiliated with any school. After encountering an old man who
preached the gospel to him, he was converted to Christianity and
decided to preach it himself, in the garb and style of a philosopher.
He made his way to Rome, where he opened a school, like other
philosophers (cf. Plato's Academy in Athens). Eventually, his dispute
with the Cynic philosopher Crescens led to an accusation of impiety
that landed him in court, before the tribunal of Marcus Aurelius'
friend Rusticus. He was found guilty, and as he refused to
repent—which would have involved offering nominal obeisance to
pagan gods—he was executed. The passage Unamuno quotes,
illustrating his argument that virtuous pagans and Jews can be
counted Christian, comes from his First Apology
(§ 46),
which was addressed to the emperor Antoninus Pius (Marcus Aurelius'
adopted father): καὶ οἱ μετὰ λόγου βιώσαντες
Χριστιανοί εἰσι, κἂν ἄθεοι ἐνομίσθησαν,
οἷον ἐν Ἕλλησι μὲν Σωκράτης καὶ
Ἡράκλειτος καὶ οἱ ὅμοιοι αὐτοῖς, ἐν
βαρβάροις δὲ Ἀβραὰμ καὶ Ἀνανίας καὶ
Ἀζαρίας καὶ Μισαὴλ καὶ Ἡλίας καὶ
ἄλλοι πολλοί, ὧν τὰς πράξεις ἢ τὰ
ὀνόματα καταλέγειν μακρὸν εἶναι
ἐπιστάμενοι, τὰ νῦν παραιτούμεθα.