And
he it was who wrote those immortal words: "Now if Christ be preached
that He rose from the dead, how say some among you that there is no
resurrection from the dead? But if there be no resurrection of the dead,
then is Christ not risen; and if Christ be not risen, then is our
preaching vain, and your faith is also vain.... Then they also which are
fallen asleep in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have hope
in Christ, we are of all men most miserable" (I Cor. xv. 12-19).
And it is possible to affirm that thenceforward he who does not believe
in the bodily resurrection of Christ may be Christophile but cannot be
specifically Christian. It is true that a Justin Martyr could say that
"all those are Christians who live in accordance with reason, even
though they may be deemed to be atheists, as, among the Greeks, Socrates
and Heraclitus and other such"; but this martyr, is he a martyr--that is
to say a witness--of Christianity? No.
And it was around this dogma, inwardly experienced by Paul, the dogma of
the resurrection and immortality of Christ, the guarantee of the
resurrection and immortality of each believer, that the whole of
Christology was built up. The God-man, the incarnate Word, came in order
that man, according to his mode, might be made God--that is, immortal.
And the Christian God, the Father of Christ, a God necessarily
anthropomorphic, is He who--as the Catechism of Christian Doctrine which
we were made to learn by heart at school says--created the world for
man, for each man.
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