…but my attention has been drawn to this, from America. What do I think? Was Jesus raised from the dead? Of course, for the God who created the universe*, anything is possible – it might not even involve breaking the laws of physics, except for the one about entropy increasing – so incredibly improbable if not impossible. But I still find the idea troubling, mainly for the reason that my greatest understanding of the faithfulness of God comes from the reliability of the laws of nature. Sure, those laws contain within themselves randomness and uncertainty – but we find we can think about and begin to understand the randomness and uncertainty, their nature and their limits. Why would God want to break the very rules that demonstrate his love so clearly? Likewise, I am troubled by what Paul writes about this.
I believe that Jesus is alive. This belief gives me no trouble, only joy. And I can believe he was raised from the dead in the way that is traditionally understood – but it does trouble me. More important right now, though, is that people love and follow him and his life makes a difference to the world.
* or ‘universes’ if you will. Language is changing – I used to think that ‘universe’ meant everything that is, not just everything that we can in principle interact with. Although even the word ‘is’ is troublesome when time itself is part of the universe.